Politics as it Might Be: Political Science Fiction

     Martin Greenberg & Patricia Warrick. Political Science Fiction (1974) A college textbook, complete with introductory notes to each story, designed to guide the student through the difficulties of unfamiliar ideas. Ignore those bits, and you have an interesting and sometimes entertaining collection of short stories. The ideologies of the Cold War intrude on some of the stories, which makes them not only dated but silly.
     A handful of classics redeem the collection, such as Gordon Dickson’s Call Him Lord, in which the Emperor's eldest son visits Earth to be tested, and fails. Or Alfred Bester’s Disappearing Act, a nicely done satire on the futility of practical solutions. Or Isaac Asimov’s Franchise, in which a single, statistically normal, citizen is selected, whose answers to questions will determine who is elected President.
    All in all, an entertaining read. Out of print of course, but worth picking up if you find a copy. ** to ****

John Allen, the Genius of Monterey

     Linn Westcott. Model Railroading with John Allen (1981) The first few signs of Allen’s genius were few and hardly noticed: a few photos, and a couple of articles in the model railroad magazines in the 1940s. Then people took notice, and editors solicited more photos and manuscripts. By the early 1960s, John Allen was famous among model railroaders. His Gorre and Daphetid demonstrated what Frank Ellison had pioneered in America: that a well-designed layout was a combination of visual and operational concepts whose purpose was to provide the operator (and casual visitor) with the impression of a complete world. The goal was plausibility. Layout designers have taken this principle to heart ever since, whether the layout was based on the owner’s imagined fantasy or on some slice of actual railroad.
     The Gorre and Daphetid is a fictional bridge line across the Akinbak mountain range, somewhere in western America. It provides vital local transportation in an area with few and dangerously steep and winding roads. It’s not much of a money-maker, and its management has bought most of its rolling stock secondhand. Passenger traffic serves mostly tourists who appreciate the spectacular bridges and scenery.
     Westcott gives us a history of Allen’s layouts, an overview of the final version, information about rolling stock and operations, and a glimpse of Allen himself. Allen was friendly and enjoyed showing off his work, but he was an intensely private man. His work must represent the person.
     Allen died in 1973, and his house burnt down a few days later. Little of his work was salvageable. It lives on in his photographs and a short film. Westcott himself died in 1980 while editing the final version of his book. Bob Hayden led the editing team that put Westcott’s manuscript into print.
     The production standard is very high. Westcott’s style is clear and conversational. The book is out of print, but is worth a search. ****
    There are several websites devoted to John Allen and the Gorre and Daphetid. A search will find texts, pictures and the short video. George Sellios's Franklin and South Manchester was inspired by John Allen's work. Through his Fine Scale Miniatures company, Sellios offfered several kits based on the GD, beginning with a wood water tank. 

Reaility: It is what it is.

Do We See Reality? By Donald Hoffman
(New Scientist, Vol 243, Number 3241, pp. 34-17)

Of course not. As Hoffman is at pains to point out, we see an image constructed by our brains. But in his discussion, I think he mistakes image for object.

“Reality is virtual” reads a subhead. No, it’s not. Reality is what it is. Our image of it is virtual. More precisely, our experience of reality is virtual. And what exactly is this virtual image? It’s patterns abstracted from the flood of data we take in with our senses.

Abstraction begins with the senses, which filter the data. We sense a very narrow band of electromagnetic radiation as light. We sense an even narrower band as heat. We sense a small fraction of the compounds that impinge on our noses and tongues. We sense our bodily movements with varying degrees of precision. And so on. More tellingly, we do not consciously perceive most of the sensory data transmitted to our brains. Hoffmman is right: our images of the world were and are constructed to foster survival. But that doesn’t mean the images are false. They are merely differently incomplete, and abbreviated. They consist as much of tokens as of representations, maybe more. They are simplified versions.

In attempts to understand “what reality really is” (what an odd collocation of words!), we use the methods of science. And here, something strange happens. We take our built-in facilty of abstracting patterns from the data as a method of arriving at “deeper truths.” Physicists claim that the most abstract patterns, the ones describable only in mathematics, are more true than any others. It’s obvious, I think, that what we perceive of the world is a highly edited, multi-level collection of not too carefully constructed represenations of reality. The notion that the most highly abstracted ones are the most true is, to my mind, exceedingly strange.

The fact is that abstraction occurs at many levels. It begins with sensation, which becomes perception, which becomes data. Data are organised into information. We combine information into knowledge, and knowledge affords insight. Insight permits understanding, which enables theory. Abstract the patterns of theory, and you may gain wisdom.

That chain of abstraction levels is what make our grasp of reality human. It’s what has enabled us to alter and exploit the environment to suit ourselves. That none of us achieve more than a modest level of wisdom may be our undoing: it’s difficult to accept that we must deny ourselves so many of our achievements if we wish our species to survive.

A haiku

Haiku
Words float on the air
like smoke and dry leaves.
Memory fails me.

Also posted on the Poems page.

Trump the Real Estate Guy Part 2

The Guardian reports that Trump cancelled his Denmark trip after Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, said Greenland was not for sale. And after all the nice things Trump said about them, too

Update:
The Danes aren't happy about Trump's actions.

Stalingrad: The Pity and the Terror

     Antony Beevor.  Stalingrad (1998) One of my uncles went missing at Stalingrad, so my reading of this book was coloured by that knowledge. What stands out most to me is the appalling mistakes made by Hitler, and the toadying of the careerist generals who put their careers ahead of their loyalty to the Nation. And of course there were generals who believed the Nazi race theories. They were Prussians; the Prussian military caste was supposedly raised to put the Nation first.

     The other take-aways simply make that military betrayal all the more poignant. The siege was a battle of attrition. The Russians won because they could support their supply lines better than the Germans could; because they produced more materiel (a fact that the Nazi-imbued command couldn’t believe); because they were willing to sacrifice their men; and because Hitler and his general staff understood neither the sheer size of Russia, nor the violence of the Russian winter. Like Napoleon’s, their conception of the battle field was limited by their circumscribed European experience.
     In the end, the battle cost about one million lives, most of them soldiers. The city was reduced to rubble. And Hitler, supported by a general staff and  Nazi hierarchy that would not disobey his increasingly crazy commands, prolonged the war and the slaughter for another two years.
     Beevor tells his story clearly, but it helps to have the maps at hand while reading. It would also help to have coloured maps, and more of them. Still, the shape of the battle and siege are clear enough on a first reading.  I won’t read this book again, though. Beevor includes many verbatim reports gleaned from written records and interviews. These, even more than the accounts of the troop movements, bring the waste of Stalingrad to vivid life, and death.
     I don’t want to think about what happened to my uncle. He was a Lutheran pastor, who volunteered as a private because he didn’t want the officer rank of chaplain to come between him and the men he expected to serve. Less than 10% of the 5th Army eventually returned. These men brought what news they could, but much of it was garbled, or incomplete, or little more than a name. My uncle may have survived the siege. If he did, he did not survive Siberia.
     Recommended. ****

Rumpole's Creator

   John Mortimer.   Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) A re-read, and just as exhilarating and moving as the first time. Mortimer’s style is anecdotal: he’s a story teller, but an artful one, who knows how to bring the story to a point, a punch-line, or a twist that recasts the whole meaning of what he has told. The ambience is wry amusement at the follies of being human, and melancholy regret for the losses that make up our lives.

     The reminiscences about his father were made into a TV show, Voyage Round My Father, which I’ve seen, and recommend. Available on Youtube.
     Mortimer was apparently a good lawyer. His practice clearly informed Rumpole of the Bailey, which has the same combination of amusement and regret as this book. He was married twice, and had four children. He’s reticent about the details of his private life; the impression is of the same mix of joy and frustration that most of us know. Wikipedia gives more information.
     This book is worth reading in part because it’s a witness to England as it was between the world wars and after the second one. For Rumpole fans, it’s worth reading in any case. ****

Trump the Real Estate guy

So Trump has confirmed he's considering buying Greenland.

ROTFLMAO.

He's become the master of unwitting self-mockery. Really, you can't make this stuff up. Nobody will ever take him seriously again.

Update 20200728: I have underestimated the, um. loyalty of his followers.

Need to tweet? No phone? No problem: Use the fridge.

The Guardian reports that a teen's tweets from her smart fridge went viral.

If the fridge can be used to send tweets, you can bet that it's being used to monitor the family's refrigeration habits. That data is valuable to advertisers, which can use it to "suggest" that some supplies need to be replenished....

Because you see, tweeting requires a link that works in both directions. So if the frdige can be used to send data out, it can also be used to send data in. And that, my friends, is the real purpose of smart devices.

Say Hello to Alexa..

Update: This news item has been  outed as fake. As you can see above, I was fooled, too. The effect of too much confidence in my expertise,

Mother and Child Reunion: Dactylografies

  

     2019-08-08 Dactylografies (Timber Village Museum, Blind River. Until September 3, 2019) Jonathan Brodbeck saw his mother Isabelle Michaud using her typewriter (she likes the tactility of the machine). He decided he wanted to use it too, and began writing notes about his daily life. He’s on the Asperger’s spectrum, and expressing himself was highly unusual. Isabelle, with his permission, began making abstract paintings incorporating his typewritten notes.
     She uses acrylics on 2ftx4ft mahogany plywood intended as floor underlay. She likes the texture created by the interaction between brush, wash, paint, and wood. So do I. Some of her paintings include organic forms based on the typewriter: beasties with scrawny necks and round, blank heads, like typewriter keys transformed and given life. Most of the paintings use colour fields, some randomly shaped, some rectangular, some indefinite, made with wash or paint. The colours somehow relate to Jonathan’s words, an effect I can’t account for.
     I liked the show. We met Jonathan and Isabelle there. They are interesting people. Recommended ****

Why Crack Dealers Live with Their Moms (Freakonomics, 2006 edition)

     Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner. Freakonomics (2006, expanded edition). A re-read, and just as much fun as the first time around. Almost in one sitting, it's that good. This edition is the expanded one of 2006, with the original New York Times Magazine article, a handful of columns written by Levitt and Dubner, some blog entries, and extensive Notes.
     I was again impressed by the way Levitt was able to find data that would answer his questions. However, most data out there can't be used the way Levitt uses it. Just because the data is related to a question doesn’t mean it can be used to answer it. I was a teacher, and the perennial question is how to evaluate students. For example, how would you prove that an objective test measures insight and understanding? What scores would show mastery of content? Are essays a better instrument? Is it meaningful to compare students to each other? Etc.
     Some of those questions are matters of principle. I don’t think comparative grading tells you much, but that’s what teachers do. Claiming that a student’s performance is measured against some expected standard just interposes a layer of obfuscation, which may soothe the teacher’s conscience, and certainly reassures parents. But grades merely quantify two features: the student’s stage of development; and their family’s socio-economic status.
     Other questions are worth asking, but answers require data sets that are hard to come by. For example, it’s fairly obvious that the test questions must relate to the insights we wish to measure. It’s not obvious how such questions should be framed. Nor is it obvious how to determine whether the results tell us anything useful about anything else, such as the student’s future performance. What data we have show that test results correlate most strongly with postal codes, which in turn identify neighbourhoods, which in turn correlate with socio-economic status.
     As you see, Freakonomics prompts musings and questions. That alone makes it worth reading. It’s well written, entertaining, and mind-stretching. ****
     Footnote: Many years ago, I administered a series of vocabulary tests to my classes. I found that my students consistently picked the same "incorrect" answers for some words. The reason? Subtle differences between the regional dialects spoken by my students and the test makers.

Memoirish Stories by Mantel

Hilary Mantel. The Assassination of Mrs Thatcher (2014) Hilary Mantel’s reputation rests on her novels. Wolf Hall was adapted for television, see my review elsewhere on this blog. I read nothing by her until I found this book in our Food Bank Permanent Yard Sale. Mantel is very good at creating character. The first story was first published at a memoir, which I suppose trained her skills at (re-)imagining the first person narrator. Her plots have endings rather than resolutions. They feel like memoirs.
      Even the title story doesn’t get anywhere: it stops just before the assassin squeezes the trigger. But the banal details (he asks for a cup of tea) of everyday life create a sense of reality that any writer would be happy to achieve. The collection provided a couple of hours of entertainment, worth well more than $1 I paid for the book. ** to ***

Poems

I see no one has visited the Poems page. I added several poems today. Go have a look. Comment if you like (or don't like) them.

2019-08-18: OK, I've added this collage (it's an ATC). Maybe it relates to one of my poems, maybe not. Check for yourself. 

 

Truth and Memory

"Truth" is a slippery concept. How do you know the photo you're looking at shows your Auntie in her wedding dress? Mostly because the face resembles the one you recall. IOW, your mental image of her matches the photo well enough that you are willing to accept the photo as described by your family. Your memories of her make the photo a true image.

Truth isn't "out there". It’s "in here". It's a property of representations of the world. Pictures, descriptions, theories, etc. How do you know one such is  true? Because it matches what you imagine to be reality. That image of reality is created from your memories of your experience.

Does that mean you can't rely on what you read and see in the media? No. It just means you need to think slow and analyse. That's a difficult habit to acquire.

2019-08-03

Climate is a chaotic system

     Climate is a chaotic system. It consists of a web of interconnected feedback loops. This makes it difficult to model precisely, since 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 two or more other feedback loops. Chaotic system are characterised by non-linear relations between causes and effects. Small (sometimes very small) changes in some factor can become magnified into huge effects.

Some chaotic systems cycle through a series of states ("the seasons") that vary within some range but average out over time (number of cycles). 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.

However, 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.

There is no question that burning fossil fuels has increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, now approaching double the concentration of pre-Industrial Revolution levels. This is having an effect on climate (ie, on 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: Predictions of the extent of summer seas ice (the extent of summer sea ice melting) have underestimated the melting. The general trend is faster melting than predicted by the models available at the time.

Answer to c) Nobody knows for sure how far climate change will go. Models are continually updated and tested with new data (both historical and current). Reserach uncovers new feedback loops. As these models get better they imply several (from my POV) important conclusions:

1) Climate can change very rapidly from one normal limit to the other (look up Little Ice Age).

2) Seasonal weather patterns can change in opposite directions;

3) Seasonal weather patterns can go from one extreme to the other within a year or two.

3) 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 popular yearning for "near certainty" in their predictions. But the certainty is higher than required in a civil law case ("balance of probabilities"), and IMO close to that required in a criminal case ("beyond reasonable doubt, emphasis on "reasonable").