Friday, December 25, 2020

Christmas Wishes


 

The Winter Solstice has been marked in the Northern Hemisphere throughout human history, and certainly before. The feast celebrates the return of the Light, the victory over the darkness.

 Whatever tradition  guides your celebrations, I wish you all possible comfort and joy. My the Light that shines in each of us vanquish fear and give you hope.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Bridges around Edmonton: Rivers and Rails


 

     Alan Vanterpool. Rivers & Rails (2014) A survey of bridges on the former Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific Railways, as well as the CPR’s High Level Bridge, and couple of road bridges within the city. The selection criterion was “Edmonton and district”, with a bit of stretch on the “district” part.
     Basically, a catalogue raisonnĂ©e, with a diagram, statistics, and dates for each bridge, and whatever other data (location maps, photographs, news reports, etc) that Vanterpool was able to find. The photographs are generally too small, and at best adequately printed. The information seems to be as complete as Vanterpool could make it, with records of personal visits to some of the sites. The deeply-cut river valleys of the prairies required large bridges, which extended the technology of the time to its limits. Several were for a short time the longest and/or highest in the world. In short, they were pioneering efforts at spanning large valleys. A general essay introducing the book could have stressed this and other aspects of the history of bridge-building in western Canada.
     Occasional Paper No. 1 of the Edmonton & District Historical Society. Worth having as data. **½

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Banks Solves a Cold Case

 

Peter Robinson. In A Dry Season (1999) Banks’s career is in bad shape, his marriage has just about fallen apart. Supt Riddle gives him the job of solving a very cold case when an imaginative boy seeking the Talisman finds a skeleton in the remains of a village long submerged under water but revealed when the reservoir dries up. Banks is assigned DS Annie Cabbot to assist him. The skeleton dates from the second World War, and bears signs of violence. Discovering the killer depends on the usual combination of carefully sifted and collated data, a couple of lucky breaks, and the imaginative empathic insight that Banks relies on to give him the necessary feel of the relationship between victim and killer.
     The book is structured as a parallel narrative: one of the participants in those long-ago events has written a memoir-novel, which provides us, and eventually Banks and Cabbot, with part of the solution. The usual niggling details lead to the rest, justice is done, and some of the damage is healed.
     An interesting experiment, this structure works reasonably well. I found the wartime story more than readable. I recall a few details of the last year of the war in Austria, and much more than a few details of post-war England, where we lived and visited between 1945 and 1954. That made Robinson’s evocation of war-time England more than a little engaging.
     A well done novel, recommended. ***

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Banks and Gristhorpe hunt a psychopath.


Peter Robinson. Wednesday’s Child (1996) An early DCI Banks tale. A child goes missing, a gruesomely killed corpse is found above the town, DCI Banks and Supt Gristhorpe split the load, but the two cases converge (of course). The perp is a text-book psychopath. Robinson’s plotting is near immaculate.
     I find these books a good read. Robinson’s ability to invest even secondary characters with enough suggestive detail for realism, and his leisurely but steady narrative pace make for a better than average entertainment. He keeps the gore to a minimum, sets the scenes well, and traces the twisting and turning and occasionally dead-ended path of the investigation clearly. Recommended, as is the TV series. ***

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Rumpole's Swan Song


 

 John Mortimer. Rumpole and the Primrose Path (2003) The last collection of short stories. Rumpole has recovered from his heart attack, but it takes some time for his career to restart. These tales show him in all his glory, objecting to and fighting against the inevitable miscarriages of justice caused by police tunnel vision and occasional corruption, presumptions of guilt by respectable lawyers who should be assuming the opposite, and biased judges. The impression that Mortimer is using Rumpole to vent his flustration at the misnamed justice system is stronger than ever. I won’t spoil you pleasure by recounting any of the tales. Buy or borrow the book, and enjoy finding out for yourself. For more information, check Wikipedia. Four novels were published after this last series of short stories.

Recommended ****

Spike Milligan at War

 

 





Spike Milligan. Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall (1971), Rommel: Gunner Who? (1975), Monty, His Part in My Victory (1976), Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall (1978). Milligan’s “war biography”. There were three more books, which I haven’t found yet. Milligan was drafted into the Royal Artillery, rose to the rank of Lance Bombardier (corporal), and in Italy was demoted by a career martinet of a Major. He also suffered shell shock. The last book ends with his spending time in a psychiatric ward.
     The first volume has a good deal of The Goon Show in it, but as time and the war progress the tone becomes more realistic and darker. Milligan still attempts humour, but it feels more and more like a defence against the madness that surrounds him and that begins to affect his psyche. He suffered from bipolar disorder for the rest of his life; there is some evidence that the war either triggered or worsened it.
As records of how the war felt to a fighting soldier, these books are priceless. I read them compulsively. My uncle served with the Warwickshire Mounted Infantry in North Africa. Milligan’s book gave me some taste of what it was like for him, too. Recommended. ****

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Covid-19 denial by people who have it:

 


An ER nurse in South Dakota tweeted about some of her patients who deny they have covid-19.: 

How does one react to this report? I can see that some people would deny their peril in any case. We don't want to face  the near-certainty of death. But I suspect that most such denials would be versions of hope, a clinging to the near-zero chance of recovery. What this nurse reports is something else: denial triggered by politics, by ideological poison, by delusions promoted by a demagogue. What's worst about is that it prevents the comfort of family connection, of seeing and talking with loved ones.

Update: On reflection, I think that in these cases politics and ideology complicate what is a normal human reaction to the prospect of imminent death. I don' t think it's common, though.

Update 2021-09-09: I've now read stories about the Delta variant surge in Oregon and other places. The anecdotes are heartbreaking. Yet vaccine-denial and covid-denial continue, even in those places hardest hit by the latest surge in infections and death. The sad fact is that an unvaccinated person admitted to ICU has a less than 50% chance of surviving.

 


Saturday, November 14, 2020

Middle school kid adapts to real life: Judy Blume's Then Again, Maybe I Won't

 Judy Blume Then Again, Maybe I Won’t (1971). Judy Blume annoyed a lot of people who believed that children’s and young people’s literature should present severely filtered versions of the real world. Why some adults think that protecting their offspring from reality will somehow help them is puzzle to me. Not that I want to push children into the dark, but when they encounter it, I want them to have some defences. Stories that acknowledge the dark, and show their protagonists as dealing with it, provide just such defences. That’s what this page-turner of a book does.
    Thirteen-year-old Tony Miglione’s father sells an invention to an entrepreneur, which means the family can move to Rosemont, and live in a big house, with a maid and such. The neighbours’ son Joel and Tony become friends, Tony develops a crush on Joel’s sister Lisa, Grandma is banished from the kitchen, and so on. Joel doesn’t know how to handle the stress of seeing the changes in his family, Joel’s shop-lifting, and the physiological and psychological effects of puberty. But he survives the year, and while there are no earth-shaking developments in his life, Tony realises that life is improving for him. The book ends on a note of “to be continued”, which may not be so for the book, but will certainly be so for Tony.
    Blume seems to have invented the “young adult” genre. This now almost 50-year-old book still reads well. Recommended ****


 

Comment on anti-vaxxers (updated)

I've updated the post. Click on this one.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Long Covid



Comment on a report in New Scientist, October 31-November 6, 2020, pp. 10-13.

The latest data show that symptoms of covid-19 persist for up to four months in some people. Probably longer, as the study stopped at that point. The symptoms range from fatigue through “brain-fog” and memory loss through problems breathing. Blood clots threaten to provoke strokes. Headaches are common. Damage to heart, lungs, and other organs has been observed. Hospitalised people appear most likely to suffer these symptoms. The data are incomplete, but it’s likely that around 5% of people who recover from covid-19 will experience more or less serious symptoms two months or more after the onset of the infection.

I think that somewhere between one and five percent will suffer from “long covid”, defined as debilitating symptoms for two months or longer. That’s a serious consequence, since these people will need some continuing care, and/or accommodation at work. The more severe cases will be unable to work at all. The economic losses will be high, combining lost productivity and cost of care. Or, to put it another way: a significant proportion of human and other resources will be diverted from the usual economic activities.

Unanswered questions: Who is most likely to be affected, and why? What kinds of treatment will mitigate long covid? How long will it actually last?

Saturday, November 07, 2020

Model Railroad Building tips


 

 Jeff Wilson. Basic Structure Modeling (2005) A well-done overview of the craft, with good co-ordination of text and photos. In the Olden Days, the photos would have been line-drawings. Each chapter deals with one main aspect (plastic kits, roofs, painting, etc). Wilson writes clearly, adding significant detail and tips in the right places, and cross-references to other chapters when the current topic skims over some important content.
     Like any such book, best suited to the reader who has tried the craft and realises they need to know more. Wilson could have emphasised a couple of points, such as the need for painting both sides of wooden (and card) parts. I found it a welcome reminder and organiser of what I already knew, which added up to inspiration for building a couple more small cabins. Just need to decide on the colour first.... ***

Photography for Modellers


 

Mark Hembree, ed. A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos (1991) An odd duck of a book. Four skilled photographers of model railroads (Dave Frary, Malcolm Furlow, John Olson, Paul Scoles) write about how they do it. Beautifully printed, deftly organised text, diagrams, and photos, a pleasure to look at, and to read if you want some insight and instruction. But the puzzle is, Who is the intended audience?  Photographers who want to specialise in scale models? Scale modellers who want to take better photos?
     The four photographers write well. They use 35 and large-format film cameras, hence the emphasis on lighting, exposure, and film choice. Anyone who took photography even semi-seriously in the pre-digital age will feel a few twinges of nostalgia reading about main and fill lights, daylight filters, four-minute exposures and the problems of reciprocity. The advice about lighting, focus, and depth of field is still relevant, and the photos repay study for angle, composition, and so on. The photographers were better known as modellers. That’s why this book is a puzzle: model railroaders looking at layout photos don’t think of them as photographs, but as documents, and inspiration.
     A good book. ***

Pain in Poems: Spike Milligan's Open Heart Surgey


 

Spike Milligan. Open Heart Surgery. (1979) A book published to cash in on the spike in Goon Show popularity in the 1970s/80s. A few of the verses are worth reading twice. Most are diary entries, of interest only to Spike and those who care about him. I like the Goon Show, and love Milligan’s off-kilter squint at the world. But these verses don’t do it for me. Reading them, I feel like a voyeur. The decorations by Laura Milligan relate to the companion verses in their expressions of similar hurts. *1/2

Friday, November 06, 2020

Conan Doyle's Father

 

Michael Baker. The Doyle Diary (1978) Reproduction of one of Charles Altamont Doyle’s sketchbooks, made while he was at Sunnyside, a lunatic asylum in which he spent most of the last years of his life. He was Arthur Conan Doyle’s father. Arthur in his early reminiscences dealt harshly with his father, who was not the financial success he could perhaps have been. Later, Arthur mellowed, perhaps because both his medical and his personal experience showed him that Charles was a sick man, badly treated. Baker tells the story at length, not easy to do, because there is little documentary evidence of Charles life, and partly because there was a good deal of reticence about the details of his ill health. Baker concludes that Charles suffered from epilepsy made worse by alcoholism. Charles was not a pushy man, he lacked his older brothers’ ambition and energy. Dicky Doyle had a successful career as a cartoonist for Punch, for example. Perhaps alcohol was self-medication for his sense of failure.
     The drawings and text of Charles sketchbook show us a man of gentle feelings and sometimes mischievous humour. He describes himself as a “harmless old gentleman”, which on the evidence he was, He certainly wasn’t a lunatic, even by the vague standards of the time. Long-term care homes existed, but were little more than hotels with some medical services, so the asylum was the only place to tend him when he became unable to care for himself and his family.
     I don’t recall where I found this book, or when. And addition to a collection of Holmesiana, and a document relevant to the study of our treatment of the harmless ones among us. **½

Learning to See in the Dark (poems by Lorraine Janzen)

 


 

 Lorraine Janzen. Learning to see in the dark (2003) Janzen was teaching at Nipissing University when she published this book of poems. She is now professor emerita at Ryerson, and has earned a reputation as a pioneer in studying the relationship between text and image in illustrated books.
These poems are readable, and collectively show us a persona that’s sensitive to her world, and not quite sure how to reconcile the light and the dark. The title suggests a method, but there’s no guarantee it will work. As poems, they show a nice talent. Her ability to make something with words isn’t always as strong as her ability to imagine something worth making.
Nevertheless, here are some random lines that made me read twice:

Shuffling the leaves of past and present
I see footsteps everywhere
shadows so deep
you could disappear forever.
...
There’s a ghost
in my mother’s typewriter

It eats the endings of her words
...
There’s a hole in my heart
where you passed through

I’ve kept the bullet
wrapped in burlap

In the spring
I’ll plant it in my garden.

Most of Janzen’s verse is discursive, it’s rhetoric written line-wise to guide the voice into its meaning. You discover a mind alert to memory and meaning, even if not always sure of its insights. A good read for anyone who likes poetry, and certainly, I think, a souvenir for anyone who knows her personally. **½

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Plagues and the Fall of Empires

 

 Plague in Marseilles, 1720

Yesterday (November 2nd), I read an article in Junior Skeptic (included in Skeptic Magazine). It told the history of plagues, of epidemics, of pandemics. How an unknown disease killed upwards of 20% of the population of Athens (404 BCE). How a plague during Marcus Aurelius’s reign (161-180 CE) killed 20% or more of the citizens of Rome. How the first wave of bubonic plague killed somewhere between 25 and 50 million people in Europe (it reached Constantinople in 542). The second plague pandemic killed about 1/3rd of the European population, and some settlements were wiped out completely. (The last plague epidemics occurred in the 1600s and 1700s.) How smallpox ravaged Europe. How the Europeans brought smallpox to the Americas, killing up to 90% of indigenous populations.

In every case, major political and economic change followed. Athens lost the Peloponnesian War. Rome became weak, and finally lost its hegemony a couple of centuries later. The bubonic plague finished off the western Roman Empire. And so on. A little extra research showed that the second and third waves of bubonic plague caused Europe-wide wars and re-arranged the remnants of the Roman Empire. Even the Spanish Flu of 1918-19 caused disruption: the Roaring 20s were as much a reaction to it as to the Great War.

And generally speaking, people forgot the great plagues almost as soon as they fizzled out. School histories tend to ignore them. In fact, I didn’t know about the Athenian epidemic until I read this article; and I thought I had learned a pretty good overview of ancient Greek history.

We don’t want to be reminded that we are subject to the random appearance of pathogens. Even now, when SARS-COV-2 is infecting people, there are many who claim it’s a hoax, or no worse than the flu, or caused by G5 phone towers, or whatever. Anything, it seems, rather than face up to the terrifying truth: we have no defences against new pathogens. And another, much less convenient, truth: that these new pathogens transfer from animals to us. Which means that as climate change alters ecosystems, it also alters the interactions between humans and other animals, and so increases the odds that a new pathogen will emerge.

One of the factors in today’s US presidential election is covid-19. Mr Trump persists in downplaying its severity and perils. Mr Biden persists in using covid-19 as a symbol for Mr Trump’s failures as a President.

We shall see what happens. But in any case, the American Empire has begun its downward trajectory.

See Wiki’s article on SARS-COV-2

Pandemic statistics: bad news, good news.

Katharine Cove, Lake Superior, 2001
 
This morning's US covid-19 death count is 231,566. Canada stands 10,262. See Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Dashboard for more. That's the bad news. The good news is that the case-fatality rate is decreasing: fewer infected people are dying. The reason is a mix of good and bad news: In both countries the infection rate of younger people has gone up. Older people die at ten times the rate (or more) of younger people. So there's what at first glance looks like a paradox: much higher daily case numbers, not many more daily deaths.

Other considerations: 
a) Younger people tend to be the wage earners, so their higher case numbers affects the labour market, which is already a mess because the pandemic has reduced demand, and so reduced the need for labour.
b) The long-term effects of covid-19 range from longish recovery times to varying degrees of physiological and cognitive damage. The data suggest that 5% or so of covid-19 recover with such in long-term effects. In the long run, that could have worse effects than the present infection rates.
c) The economy is in serious trouble, because too many people are still thinking in terms of getting back to normal. The pandemic has shown that a very large segment of our economy has relied on discretionary spending, aka as whim and desire. This segment will not return to its former profitability.
d) We hear a lot about anti-mask demonstrations, but in general, most people do wear masks, which I think means that we are generally more aware of our connections to the larger community. Which brings me to that last comment for today:
e) Most of us have found that we haven't taken the casual daily contacts, the greetings, and chats etc seriously enough. We need social connection, we need face-to-face connection. Screens and tinny voices coming from inadequate speakers aren't enough.
 

Monday, October 19, 2020

Mermaids greet a Captain Hailborne

A mermaid from a clip-art collection. The picture caption reads "Capt. Hailborne At St. Johns Newfoundland", the details suggest the 1600s, but the mermaid's welcoming gesture is a fantasy.

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Jane Ash Poitras, a deliberate artist

 Virginia Eichhorn Consecrated Medicine. (2004) An illustrated monograph about Jane Ash Poitras, to accompany an exhibition at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. Poitras is deliberate artist, she plans her works with meanings and messages in mind. Here, the meaning is indigenous medicine, and the colonial dismissal of indigenous knowledge and wisdom.

 

     The pictures are not easy; they’re neither elegant nor pretty. They are layered compositions of collaged images in several media, surrounded by or overlaid with painted symbols and figures and texts. These add up to densely complex and not easily grasped meanings. One must read the work like a book, which I think is Poitras’s intent. Reading is both an intellectual and an emotional investment in constructing meaning. The layered images make us re-read the texts, and create both ironic distance and dissonant emotions. We both deconstruct and reconstruct meanings.  It’s a journey from comforting cliche to unsettling insight. I think that’s what she intends.
     Her personal history is I think the impetus for her art. She was a homeless indigenous child found and raised by an elderly German immigrant woman. She embarked on a conventional career as a university-educated micro-biologist. She apparently always maintained links to her heritage. She was not assimilated after all. But reconnecting to her indigenous self meant deconstructing the settler persona acquired in her adoptive home, and reconstructing her Cree self. Making art was her method. Her artworks invite us to share in her journey. Reading her art, we follow her on that journey, and we deconstruct the comfortable settler persona we’ve developed. What do we construct out of the wreckage? I hope it’s a new awareness of and respect for the indigenous people who were here first.
     Poitras is part of the quest for what it means to be Canadian. It doesn’t mean what it was in colonial times. It doesn’t mean what it’s become in our multi-culturalist present. What does it mean, then? I don’t think we have the answers, but Poitras’s work contributes to the conversation. It’s a conversation whose meaning is constant reconstruction of the answers.
     Go look at Poitras’s art if you get a chance. ****

The Song of the Three Holy Children (Illustrated by Pauline Baynes)

 
 
    Pauline Baynes. The Song of the Three Holy Children (1986) A beautifully illustrated hymn from the Apocrypha, beginning O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: Praise him and magnify him for ever. It’s an addition to the Daniel, each verse names of lists one of the works of the Lord. Baynes had a good career as an illustrator, good enough that she could choose projects like this one. She adapts her style to the text, in this case alluding to medieval paintings and book illustrations. She has an eye for the telling line, and loves bright colours. Her books are always a pleasure to look at.
     A lovely example of the book as object. ***
 

Gardening Advice

 


Gerald M. Knox. Lawns, Groundcovers, and Vines (Better Homes and Gardens pamphlet 1988) Nicely done summary on the topic, good photos, useful information, but no warnings about invasiveness of some of the plants described. Good reference for a beginner, good reminders for the experienced gardener. Begins with the “fundamentals” (soils, water, fertilisers, tools), then treats each title topic, and wildflowers and summer bulbs. The climate zone map that ends the book is drawn in black and white, which makes it hard to read. Good buy if you find it at a yard sale. ***

Saturday, September 26, 2020

A Mixed Threesome: Art, Model railroading, Tolkien.




Notebook Magazine (Issue Two, 2007) Issued by a “An Edmonton Art and Writing Collective”. Works are accompanied by answers to a standard interview. The art is generally pretty good, some with a regrettable tendency to shock and annoy, the rest interesting experiments in style and media. The writing is at best average, most of it should have been edited. Much of it assumes that if you have an interesting story to tell, you don’t need to make it interesting.
     I looked up all the contributors online. Most have disappeared from public view, but Timothy Atherton (photos), Heather Millar, Stephanie Jonsson, Bruce Barry are among the few that have continued to make art. Interesting mag, not a keeper. **


Art Curren. Kitbashing HO Model Railroad Structures (1988). Kitbashing??? The art of using the parts of kits as raw material, rearranging them, cutting and splicing them, and of course painting them and adding new signage, in order to create a structure that better fits the layout design. Curren was a master at doing this. Some of his creations are fairly obvious variations on the basic kit, e.g., Maple Street, five houses made from the same farmhouse kit. Others are new designs, e.g., the Perry Shibble Fruit & Produce Co-op, which began life as a small brewery. That name shows his skill at creating groaners, too, but by the mid-80s punning names were already becoming unfashionable.
     Curren writes well, tossing in the odd warning of possible mishaps, and ‘fessing up to changes he made when he realised his original concept didn’t work out. As inspiration this book is excellent. As a set of project instructions it’s pretty good, too, as most of the kits are still available, most in new packages. Cheap plastic kits will be with us for a long time, and for the modeller willing to ignore instructions, mess with a perfectly good kit, and practice painting and weathering skills, they will continue to provide raw materials for unique buildings better suited to a layout theme than the originals..
     Out of print, but recommended if you can find a copy. ****


     J. R .R. Tolkien. Smith of Wootton Major (1967; 2nd edition 1975) Illustrated by Pauline Baynes, a distant connection through an aunt. That’s why I bought the book, a very handsome object, beautifully printed on heavy paper. The story itself feels like an experiment in folktale, with its chronicle-like stringing together of events, minimally sketched characters, and matter-of-fact assumption of magic and Faery as realities.
     At a feast of the Great Cake a boy swallows a Faerie star, which not only gives him a talent for singing, but grants him access to Faery, which he visits regularly. The cook’s Prentice is implicated in all the major events, guiding the human actors into making the choices that are best for them, and for Faerie too.
     I enjoyed reading the book. The black and white drawings are well done, but lower the production values of the book-as-object. Apparently, the publishers didn’t think it worth the cost of commissioning colour. No doubt a collector’s item for the Tolkien fan. It merits its own entry in Wikipedia. ***

Monday, September 21, 2020

Once more with feeling: Climate Change (longish read)


A comment based on my current understanding of the science

     Climate is a chaotic system. It consists of a web of interconnected feedback loops. For example, cloud cover cools the ground below, which reduces evaporation, which reduces the amount of water in the air, which reduces the odds that there will be rain. However, water doesn’t cool as rapidly as the ground, so evaporation from large lakes continues, which increases the amount of water vapour in the air, which increases the odds that there will be rain. Which is why cloud cover over the Great Lakes usually signals rain, while cloud cover over the Prairies does not.

     These links between feedback loops makes it difficult to precisely model the weather and hence the climate. Some feedback loops cancel the effects of other loops, and some feedback loops enhance the effects of other loops, and all of them are entangled with one or more other feedback loops. Such systems are characterised by non-linear relations between causes and effects. Small (sometimes very small) changes in some factor can become magnified into huge effects. Hence the sometimes rapid development of afternoon thunder storms after a bright, cloudless morning.

     A chaotic system cycles through a series of states ("the seasons") that vary within some range but average out over time (average annual seasonal temperatures, etc.) This average is called the attractor. "Regression to the mean" is a common effect: Think of a baseball pitcher's performance over time. Pitching is the influenced by many factors, most of which affect each other. The pitcher's performance is a chaotic system: sometimes he's hot, sometimes he's not, most of the time he performs near his average level.

     Chaotic systems can change radically. If some factor or factors exceed some limit (too much or too little), the whole system will shift into a new series of states, some or all of which are radically different from the previous ones. Hence climate change, or global warming.

     There is no question that burning fossil fuels has increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, now (about 400 parts per million) coming closer to double the concentration of pre-Industrial Revolution levels (about 280 parts per million). (See this graph) This is having an effect on climate, the  annual weather cycles. The important questions IMO are:
a) How fast is this happening?
b) Is it happening faster in some climate zones than others?
c) How far will it go?


     Answer to a) Unknown, but climate models so far have understated the expected changes. This is shown in:
     Answer to b) Yes. For example, the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the temperate zone. Predictions of the extent of summer sea ice have repeatedly underestimated the numbers. The general trend is melt beginning earlier and proceeding more quickly than predicted by the models available at the time. Thus, there is less sea ice, and it’s thinner. The last ten years or so have seen record ice loss almost every year.
     Answer to c) Nobody knows for sure how far climate change will go. Models are continually updated and tested with new data, both current and historical (from Greenland ice cores, for example). As these models get better, they imply what I think are several important conclusions:

1) Climate can change very rapidly from one normal limit to the other. For example, the Little Ice Age, a fairly sudden cooling of the northern winter, which among other things destroyed the Viking settlements in Greenland.

2) Seasonal weather patterns can change in opposite directions, for example, rainfall shifting from winter and summer, hence wetter springs and falls, and dryer summers and winters. This means flash flooding and drought when neither was common in the past.

3) Weather patterns can change from historic averages within two or three years, for example the now five-year drought on the West Coast of the USA.

4) There's a lag between the warming effects of CO2 and climate change because of heat-sinks, chief of which is the ocean: Over half of the recent rise in ocean levels is caused by the expansion of water as the oceans warmed up.

It's true that climate models aren't good enough to satisfy the non-scientist's yearning for certainty. But I think the certainty is higher than required in a civil law case ("balance of probabilities"), and close to that required in a criminal case ("beyond reasonable doubt”, emphasis on "reasonable").

(Revised 2020 09 21)

Wednesday, September 09, 2020

Three Elegies by Rilke

     Rainer Maria Rilke. Requiem (1909) Three of Rilke’s elegies, for Paula Modersohn-Becker, Wolf Graf von Kalckreuth, and an unnamed boy, the last in the boy’s own voice.
     I’ve always liked Rilke. He uses an almost purely Germanic lexicon, and the simplest German syntax to create dense lines of poetry. He avoids poetic diction, and turns the vernacular to his purposes. Few poets in any language can match his ear for the music of vowels, or for subtle variations in rhythm. Repetition enlarges the meanings of words, extends our grasp of his intent, focuses the imagination:

So hab ich mich dem Allen aufgedrängt.
Und war doch Alles ohne mich zufrieden
und wurde trauriger mit mir behängt.
Nun bin ich plötzlich ab-geschieden.

[So have I urged myself onto the All.
Though All had been content without me
and became sadder when with me adorned.
Now sudden have I disengaged me here.]


      So speaks the boy, after relating his discovery, his naming, of the world.
      Written in 1908, published 1909 by the Insel Verlag, which set itself the task of printing and reprinting the best available classic and contemporary literature. I’m glad I found this little book in my father’s library. ****

 


Tuesday, September 08, 2020

Fantastic Sculptures: Sergio Bustamente


Alejandro de la Vega et al. El Mundo de Sergio Bustamente (1989) A beautifully printed teaser-catalogue of a book, showing several of Bustamente’s eerily menacing fantasies, beautifully photographed, presented as advertisements. A lion with a human face, for example. We saw several of his pieces in a high-end shop in Matamoros, the kind that caters to tourists with money. The few works small enough to fit into a suitcase cost more than we were willing to spend, so we bought this book as a souvenir. I now think it was a wise choice: these are pieces that I would tire of quickly. There is more novelty than insight in them. They are more decorative than revelatory.
     Bustamente repeatedly riffs on the same motifs: animals with human faces, sun and moon with disturbingly realistic human faces, surreal combinations of figures, unconventional colour, detached body parts arranged in a 3-D composition, and so on. His sculptures are all meticulously crafted. Search for him online, and study the Images the search tosses up. He’s obviously successful; the text in this book is printed in five languages. ** for the art, *** for the book.


Escher Pops Up



Anon. The Pop-Up Book of M. C. Escher (1991). Eight of Escher’s more familiar drawings converted into pop-ups, with varying success. A curio, worth a look or two, and no doubt appealing to serious Escher fans. Brief comments about each image help the casual reader make sense of Escher’s work. I don’t know why I bought it, and can’t recall when. Probably at a yard sale. Not a keeper. **

Monday, August 31, 2020

A Fishy Mystery


John Moss. Still Waters (2008) “A Quin and Morgan Mystery”, it says on the cover. The first of a five-book (so far) series, a moody mystery, heavy on ambience and history, with minimal sketches of police procedures.
     The victim, found in one of his fish ponds, turns out to be a psychopath. There’s a tangled back-story which eventually accounts for the death. But Quin and Morgan’s interior lives interest Moss more than their detecting. Minor characters are also well conceived. Koi fish figure in creating ambience and character, a lot of by-the-way fish lore is scattered throughout. There’s almost no gore, a refreshing change from the current fashion of splashing blood about.
     Moss can write, his story draws you in. Until the last act, it moves in plausible grooves. But the last act felt contrived and over-drawn. More of a Ruth Rendell than a P D James crime novel. Nevertheless recommended. ***

Difficult Essays by George Steiner.



George Steiner. On Difficulty and Other Essays (1972-78) Steiner is one of my heroes: his insights into how we use language have I think not been surpassed. They have certainly helped stimulate modern linguistics, which has widened its focus from the comparison of available texts to include the study of actual speech. Herewith some stray thoughts responding to and prompted by these essays.
     The study of spoken pre-literate languages has produced some unexpected results, such as that not only the lexicon but the grammar of a dialect can change radically within a speaker’s lifetime. (McWhorter, The Power of Babel). Writing slows down the rate of language change. It also, eventually, spawns two forms of the language, written and spoken, each with its own conventions and usages missing from the other.
     Steiner’s critiques of Whorf’s and Chomsky’s stances on the nature of language (Whorf, Chomsky, and the Student of Literature) feed into experiments by Pinker and others that have shown that grammatical gender, for example, affects how people feel about the world around them. That supports Whorf’s hypothesis that language shapes our experience. But Bickerton’s researches into pidgins and creoles suggest that pidgins reveal the essential features of all human languages, and the creoles show how languages acquire first the regularities that we label “grammar”, and then the idiosyncrasies that differentiate them, and eventually make them new languages. Those findings support Chomsky’s hypothesis that language is innate
.

     Steiner’s stance is that neither Whorfian nor Chomskyian hypotheses can account for actual language. This reminds me of the surprising success of computerised translation, which depends not only on dictionaries, but also on statistical features such as the most likely adjective-noun combinations. “Style” also can be statistically defined, and so can some genres. Combine these ideas with AI pattern-matching systems, and an AI algorithm can write a credible sports news report when given a handful of facts about the game.
     Steiner wrote these essays before ubiquitous personal computers, which limited his speculations and predictions about the future of reading and books (After the Book?). He correctly predicted that audio-books (cassettes) would gain market share, and that hard-cover books would lose out to other formats. What would he make of e-books and texts preserved in the electronic web? I think his judgement would stand. What he calls “deep reading” would continue to decline. The kind of awareness of other texts, past and present, which characterises serious literature, would become the preserve of a literate elite. The rest of us would be semi-literate: able to decode text, but unable (and increasingly unwilling) to take the time to relate texts to each other and to the present moment. Which is exactly what has happened. Since serious literature is historical in its very essence, the awareness of history, especially of its messiness, its ethical ambiguities and contradictions, has also declined. I haven’t read more recent essays by him, so I don’t know whether my speculations about his opinions are accurate.
     I think semi-literacy tends to simplistic literalness, a resistance to and intolerance of ambiguity, an inability to recognise irony or handle metaphor, and a suspicion of any text that assumes familiarity with allusions to the past. The digital world is an eternal present, with yesterday already receding into the mist-obscured ancient past.
     I read several of these essays twice. A book that’s difficult in Steiner’s sense, but well worth the effort. His language is ornate, laced with Latinisms, but so appositely that even
unfamiliar words yield their meaning(s) transparently, and enrich the reader's understanding. ****

George Steiner 1929-2020
[British Council]

Sunday, August 30, 2020

A Loony Hero: Spike Milligan's The Lonney


Spike Milligan. The Looney (1997). Milligan was one of the script-writers for the Goon Show, which changed sketch-comedy forever. His writings have the same crazy mix of puns, riffs, dead-pan literalism, absurdly valid logic, and unexpected but somehow fitting plot twists as the shows. They also contain occasional bits of painful self-revelation. Milligan’s humour was his armour, his shield against despair. His rage at the hypocrisy and selfishness of the human race, at indifference to suffering, at the despoliation of nature, is barely contained. The combination makes his books hard reading at times.
     Dick Looney believes his father’s claim that the family is not only descended from Irish royalty, but are the rightful rulers of the Isle. The story, such as it is, follows Looney’s attempts to confirm the rumour and claim his throne. The short chapters read like Goon-show sketches, but as in the Goon Show, they coalesce into a sufficiently coherent narrative that the ending satisfies. ****

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

The Dougnut: A sustainable economy is one that doesn't "grow".



Kate Raworth proposes a new economic model based on the ecological limits of the Earth. Sensible. Realistic. Humane. Therefore certain to be opposed by the pathetic "entrepreneurs" who believe that profit will somehow insulate them from the facts of biology and physics. Or the "libertarians" who believe that economic freedom mean being free to make as much money as possible.

Find a brief video here: The Doughnut Economy.

Wiki has an article, too: Doughnut (economic model).


Sunday, August 23, 2020

Doing Science


John Brockman, ed. Doing Science (1991) Brockman founded “The Reality Club”, an invitation-only assembly of scientists and other thinkers, whose apparent purpose was to think big-picture thoughts about science. Etc
      Each of the essays in this collection is worth reading. A couple that impressed me:
     Big Trouble in Biology, Lynn Margulis’s attack on Neo-Darwinism, which she characterises as a religion, and which she opposes mostly because it’s reductive, and fails to account for the dynamics of ecosystems. In the 30 years since her essay, biology has begun to shift its focus to ecology. Increasingly, the governing stance is that organisms exist not only as individuals, and as members of genetically defined breeding groups, but also (and I think primarily) as members of a network of interlaced feedback loops.
     “A network of interlaced feedback loops” is one way of describing chaotic systems, the subject of an essay by Ralph H. Abraham, Chaos in Myth. and Science. Abraham posits that science is informed by the same myths that inform and regulate all other aspects of our social systems. In Western mythologies, “chaos” is bad. The recent discovery of chaos mathematics and its applicability to ecosystems, the weather, human societies, etc, as well as a  still incompletely catalogued slew of physical systems, requires a restructuring of the mythologies in which Chaos figures a source of disorder, strife, and evil. Chaos must be seen as the partner of order.
     How to Tell What Is Science and What Isn’t, by Richard Morris, concludes that pseudoscience is crazy in the sense that its truth would require denying large swaths of what we know to be true. However, Morris hasn’t noted the difference between science as knowledge of what’s real (an ontological enterprise), and science as way of acquiring reliable, if limited, knowledge (an epistemological enterprise). Thus, “what we know to be true” is always tentative, which guarantees that pseudoscience will sometimes include notions that will eventually turn out to be true enough to count as science.
     A keeper. ****

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Setting the Stage: Scenery for Model Railroads


Carl Swanson, ed. Model Railroader: Best of Scenery. (2020) Collection of articles, some revised, all well done, most brief and to the point. Model Railroader staff and the contributors have perfected the art of combining pictures with text to help the reader learn. Three stories show layouts with impressively plausible scenery. Throughout, there is the explicit and implicit advice to observe the world around you. Recommended. ****

Winners (Short Story Contest finalists)


 Michael Blackburn, Jan Silkin, Lorna Tracy, eds. Stand One. Winners of the Stand Magazine Short Story Competition. (1984) Just what it says, 13 stories by unknown writers, all good to very good. The first-prize winner tells of a Vietnam vet suffering from what we now call PTSD, told by his sister. The satire on ignorant law enforcers, venal TV personalities, and the fear engendered in uncomprehending neighbours and family arise naturally from the narrator’s naive and loving story. It’s a well-constructed story, but also a well-told one.

     Most of the rest are well-constructed, but not well told. Reading them, I don’t feel that the narrator felt compelled to tell me the story. For example, Hakanono, a satire on colonial attitudes, achieves its aim of showing the stupidity of assumed superiority, but in the end we care neither about the colonial administrators nor about the natives they despise. Well, I didn’t. And the suggestion of supernatural intervention didn't supply the frisson apparently intended by the author.

     The stories are very much of their time, relentlessly well-intentioned in their depiction of life's shadows. Most of the authors (and I suspect the editors, too) haven’t forgiven life for not fulfilling the promises of childhood. They haven’t yet seen that the loss of illusion is necessary to gain what little wisdom we can bear. ** to ****

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

A Brief History of English

Beginning of Canterbury Tales


The history of English has two main themes: first, the words (lexicon) come from many sources, and second, the grammar is fundamentally a simplified Germanic one, marked by an almost complete absence of grammatical gender. English is essentially a multi-layered creole.

The prehistoric peoples (who settled the islands 5,000 years ago or earlier) as far as we know left no traces in the English language. Then there were the Britons, a motley crew of miscellaneous Celtic tribes. These were conquered by the Romans, whose language had some influence on the Celtic dialects, mostly in place names. They built forts and roads, and romanised the indigenous people. Many place names date back to the Roman occupation, for example London (from londinium), and names ending in -chester, -cester, or -caster (from L. castellum).

From about 450 AD, several northwest European peoples invaded the Island. First came the Angles and Saxons, followed by the Danes and the Norwegians. The Anglo-Saxons brought their languages with them, and adopted or adapted some words and place names from the Celts they displaced or enslaved. For example car (originally from Latin), the Avon, Salisbury (Salis- from Celtic Sorvio, a personal name, plus Anglo-Saxon burh, a fortified settlement), and many other place names in southwestern England. The Danish and Norwegian invasions affected the northern and eastern Anglo-Saxon dialects, which are still distinct from the southern and midland dialects that became the language of the court. Anglo-Saxon as written is a jumble of dialects that are mutually intelligible enough that they form a language.

In 1066, William the Bastard of Normandy conquered England and brought Norman French with him as the language of government and trade. Over the next couple of centuries, the existing Anglo-Saxon dialects and Norman French blended into what we now think of as Middle English. By 1400, it was not only a practical language but a literary one: Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) in his Middle English, London-centric dialect. It became the source of modern English, which in vocabulary is basically Anglo-Saxon with an overlay of French, and a grammar regularised and simplified as Anglo-Saxon and French speakers mashed up their languages into a mutually intelligible creole. Hence cow, bull, cattle for the animals, beef for their meat. Anglo-Saxon houses and fields made up French real property. French and English shared a plural ending -s, which became the near-universal way of making plural nouns, and gender survived only in the third person pronouns and some feminine suffixes.

During the Roman era and throughout the Middle Ages, Latin and Greek words were adopted into the vernacular all over Europe. In English, that produced “church”, “bishop” and “bible”, for example. During the Renaissance, English speakers, like other Europeans, adopted many more Latin and Greek words. By the later Middle Ages, scholars had developed the habit of using Latin and Greek terms when writing in their local languages, and still do so today.

In 1473, Caxton brought printing to England. During the 1400s and 1500s, Middle English was evolving into Early Modern English (the language of Shakespeare). Printers wanted standard spelling (and to some extent also standard vocabulary) to widen the market for their books. Thus, English spelling became standardised at a time when its pronunciation changed rapidly. The result is the most inconsistent spelling system in the world: each of the main streams of language that make up the Modern English lexicon has its own spelling system.

Here's the Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon:

Fæder ure Ă¾u Ă¾e eart on heofonum; Si Ă¾in nama gehalgod to becume Ă¾in rice gewurĂ¾e Ă°in willa on eorĂ°an swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfaĂ° urum gyltendum and ne gelæd Ă¾u us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soĂ¾lice (note: the old english "Ă¾" is pronounced "th")

Read more at: https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/lord_old_english_medieval.html
Fæder ure Ă¾u Ă¾e eart on heofonum;
Si Ă¾in nama gehalgod
to becume Ă¾in rice
gewurĂ¾e Ă°in willa on eorĂ°an swa swa on heofonum
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg
and forgyf us ure gylta
swa swa we forgyfaĂ° urum gyltendum
and ne gelæd Ă¾u us on costnunge
ac alys us of yfele soĂ¾lice 

Note on pronunciation:
There are no "silent letters".
Anglo-Saxon "Ă¾" is pronounced "th" as in "thin";
Anglo-Saxon "Ă°" is pronounced "th" as in "this";
The vowels are pronounced as in "pat, pet, pit, pot, put";
"y" like "ee" in  "beet".
"æ" is a vowel about halfway between "pat" and "pet";
both vowels in double vowels are pronounced;
"c" before e and i is pronounced like "ch"  in "chin",
otherwise like "k"

Fæder ure Ă¾u Ă¾e eart on heofonum; Si Ă¾in nama gehalgod to becume Ă¾in rice gewurĂ¾e Ă°in willa on eorĂ°an swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfaĂ° urum gyltendum and ne gelæd Ă¾u us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soĂ¾lice (note: the old english "Ă¾" is pronounced "th")

Read more at: https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/lord_old_english_medieval.html
Fæder ure Ă¾u Ă¾e eart on heofonum; Si Ă¾in nama gehalgod to becume Ă¾in rice gewurĂ¾e Ă°in willa on eorĂ°an swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfaĂ° urum gyltendum and ne gelæd Ă¾u us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soĂ¾lice (note: the old english "Ă¾" is pronounced "th")

Read more at: https://www.lords-prayer-words.com/lord_old_english_medieval.html
 

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Hong Kong should be independent

Hong Kong

From a NYT piece by Samuel Chu, who is a U.S. citizen, a pro-democracy activist and wanted by the Hong Kong police.

I had violated Article 38 of the new law, which states: “This Law shall apply to offenses under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.”

This law violates all standards of international law. No country may extend its jurisdiction beyond its borders without a treaty. (A treaty is a mutual recognition of some limited jurisdiction.)

I think the Chinese Government has over-reached. It has violated the treaty which granted it jurisdiction over Hong Kong. It has violated international law with this unilateral claim to jurisdiction outside its borders.

I think the citizens of Hong Kong have every right to protest this law, to agitate against it, and to advocate democratic freedoms for Hong Kong. If the Chinese Government is unwilling to accept these rights, then Hong Kong citizens have the right to secede.

I support the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. I oppose the Chinese Government’s attempt to reduce and eliminate Hong Kong citizens’ rights and freedoms. I advocate for the independence of Hong Kong as a sovereign state.

Oh dear, it seems I may have broken the law. So under article 38, the Chinese Government will have to issue an arrest warrant for me.





Monday, August 10, 2020

Financial Crimes

Arianna Huffington. Pigs at the Trough (2003). Here it is 17 years later, and the game continues. Some of the star players have been retired (some via criminal indictment), the rules have been tweaked to benefit the cheats more than ever, and the referees no longer pretend to control the game.
     Huffington’s book is a detailed overview of the financial scandals of the early 2000s, with names like Enron and Andersen showing up in several chapters. Lessons learned? Just keep on buying the most complaisant legislators available. Five years later, we saw the financial meltdown of 2008, in which the rescue money went to the perpetrators instead of their victims. Business as usual. If the bail-out money had been credited directly to the borrowers’ accounts, most of them would have become home-owners pretty quick, and the decade-long limping towards recovery would have lasted maybe three years.
     History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but humans solve problems in much the way as their ancestors did. These solutions toss up the same problems as before, and the cycles continue. If you find a copy of this book, read it. It will help you recognise the players on the current teams of malefactors. ****

Saturday, August 08, 2020

Mathematics and the News

 

 

John Allen Paulos. A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995) I bought this book because I’d read Paulos’s Innumeracy, a seminal book that I think every teacher should read. This book extends one of his themes, that the media are a prime source of innumeracy, and so tend to distort and misinform. Each section corresponds to a section of the paper, News, Sports, the Arts, etc. The misuse or misreporting of statistics features in all sections, but the unwarranted surprise at coincidences, and confidence in economic and sports forecasts, together come a close second.
     Once again, Paulos muses on the vagaries of voting. Every voting system ever attempted has produced results that annoy a large section, sometimes even the majority, of voters. If he were to write today, he would note the vacuousness of political polling, which always produces more or less misleading results.
     But mathematics is about patterns and processes, so even the society section, with its reports about charity balls, the doings of famous people, etc, gives opportunity for mathematical musing about relationship networks, and the interconnectedness of our social circles, which Facebook et al have made more obvious than ever in the 25 years since Paulos wrote the book.
     This was a re-read, I enjoyed the book, but not as much as Innumeracy. ***

     Update 2020 08 13: Percentages are real problem.
     One of the most common errors is to report a percentage change without reporting the base rate. For example, "XYZ increases the cancer of some obscure organ  by 150%". True, it increases the rate from 1 per 100,000 per year to 3 per 100,000 per year.
     Another egregious error is to confuse percentage points with percentages. Thus, "Unemployment rate increases 2 %". Yup, it rose  from 5% to 7%, which is an increase of 2/5, or 40%.

   Update 2020 12 22: Raw numbers vs Rates: How to misreport covid-19
     Every day now we hear the number of new cases and deaths from covid-19. Almost never the rates. For example, Ontario reported some 2100 new cases the other day, while Alberta reported about 1800. But Ontario has roughly three times the population of Alberta, so the rate in Alberta is about three times higher.
     The mistake is to treat every jurisdiction equally, which hardly ever makes sense. The same error shows up when reporting miscellaneous numbers about cities and towns. Such as crime rates. Small towns naturally have fewer crimes, but related to population, the crime rates are usually higher than in the large cities.
     Related to time, the rates are of course lower. Hence the pained astonishment when a neighbour murders his family. This suggests that we pay more attention to events along our individual time-lines, and less to events within the communtiy at large. Our preception biases mislead us.
     Rule of thumb: Do The Arithmetic! Always calculate the rates.

     

Saturday, August 01, 2020

Design in the 1960s

Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill. Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons (1963) One of a series published by Reinhold Studio Vista, pleasant to look at, useful for anyone interested in design, and collectively a good documentation of 1960s design theory and practice. The designs have worn well: the 60s have cast a long shadow, perhaps because designers explored the technical boundaries of their craft.
     Here, we see mostly advertising and related messaging in print. Notions of suitability and decorum gave way to the realisation that the design of messages succeeded when it drew attention and conveyed much meaning with the least possible means. The digital revolution has merely made it easier to do what these people did by hand. As with photography, reducing the craft skill for mastering the medium has shifted the focus to content and context. McLuhan claimed that the medium is the message. Contemplating how technology has made messaging easier, I’d say that the medium determines the message.
     I’ve looked through this book several times in the 40-odd years I’ve owned it, and each time I’ve seen things I did not notice before. But mostly, it’s reminded me, once again, that the world we inhabit is designed. The environment shapes us. The designers both make and are made by the environment they design. ***


Four ordinary people: Quartet in Atumn (Barbara Pym)

Barbara Pym. Quartet in Autumn (1977) Pym seems to be a nice lady who tells stories of nice and not so nice people of little consequence. T...