Two short reviews

     Truman Capote. A Christmas Story (1956; originally published in Mademoiselle) A reminiscence about the young Capote’s friendship with his elderly cousin, and their annual ritual of gathering the makings of Christmas fruit cakes and baking them. The old lady was a little simple, but to the 9-year-old boy that meant only that they understood each other as true companions. *** (2005)

    Wm D. Middleton. The Pennsylvania Railroad Under Wires (2002) Middleton gives a brief history of the Pennsy’s electrification to accompany a diverse collection of excellent photographs mostly drawn from the David P. Morgan memorial Library of Kalmbach Books. One in a series on “Classic Trains”, and very nicely done. Not a typo anywhere, clear and informative prose, and beautiful reproduction of the photos. Any fan of the Pennsy or electrification will enjoy this book. I did, and I learned few things about the Pennsy’s locos too. *** (2005)

Don Mitchell. Walkaround Model Railroad Track Plans (1991)

     Don Mitchell. Walkaround Model Railroad Track Plans (1991) Mitchell’s talent for track planning is not quite up to John Armstrong’s, but he is very good. Like Armstrong, he designs layouts, not track arrangements, and focuses on the expected style of operation. The graphic style of these plans varies annoyingly. It’s not clear whether that’s because of Mitchell’s experimentation with different styles, or because of Model Railroader’s unwillingness to redraw them to a common standard. Most irritating is the use of call-outs for everything from curve radius to elevation. Mitchell’s comments on the ergonomics of layout design are worth attention. ** (2005)

Jan Karon. A Light in the Window (1995)

     Jan Karon. A Light in the Window (1995) Tim is in love with Cynthia, but he isn’t willing to commit, and this provides the plot of the second instalment of the Mitford series. The rest of the town is up to its usual day to day troubles and pleasures. This book is somewhat weaker than the first. Religion appears as set pieces, each of which makes a theological point. Prayer is here less a communing with God than a request for favours. The characterisation is somewhat perfunctory, the book is more of a soap opera, with its comic-strip swiftness of narrative, than the first book, in which Karon took time to relax into the tale. Still, it brings us up to date: at the end of the book, the banns for Tim and Cynthia’s wedding are announced. I’m enjoying this series, probably because it’s really a soap opera. **½ (2005)

Mike Schafer, ed. Traction Guidebook (1974)

     Mike Schafer, ed. Traction Guidebook (1974) Despite its date, most of the information in this book is still useful and valid. The only chapters that show their age are the presentations of actual layouts, which show the effect of the lack of sufficient scenery materials and still inadequate scenic techniques of the late 60s, and the modelling technology, which relies heavily on soldering, paper and wood for the rolling stock, and cardboard and plaster for streets. The prototype information (three railroads profiled, many plans, and overhead construction data) never ages. The track plans offer as much inspiration now as they did then. A good book for the traction fan and modeller. **½ (2005)

John Armstrong. Track Planning for Realistic Operation (2nd ed. 1979)

 Track Planning, 2nd edition

     John Armstrong. Track Planning for Realistic Operation (2nd ed. 1979) Every time I look into this book, I notice something that I’ve either forgotten, or didn’t pay enough attention to previously. And it’s always good to refresh one’s understanding of Armstrong’s concepts. This time, I reconsidered curvature and “squares,” Armstrong’s brilliant insight that since layout design is constrained mostly by curves, a square within which one can fit a quarter circle of minimum or design radius is a basic measurement.
     I have decided that my 12'6" x 12'6" space (actually slightly larger, but it’s best to design for a slightly smaller space) will allow 5x5 squares with a design radius of 26". A skewed U design with stacked loops would produce a nice long run, but entails duck-unders to the centres of the loops. Round-the-wall plus peninsula would be a walk-in design, but would still entail a duck-under to permit access to the track along the base of the peninsula where it meets the wall. A swing-away or drop-leaf entrance section would also be required. No matter what, a smallish square space like this one means severe compromise with one or another desideratum. Oh well. Anyhow, Armstrong’s book was a pleasure to look through. I even re-read a couple of chapters. *** (2005)

Track Planning, 1st edition

Jan Karon. At Home in Mitford (1994)

     Jan Karon. At Home in Mitford (1994) Mother gave this book to Marie, who enjoyed it thoroughly, and read all the other books in the series (there are now eight.) I finally read it, too. It tells of a year or so in the life of an Episcopalian priest, Timothy, in the village of Mitford, where he has ministered for some thirteen years. He’s bachelor, used to a relatively quiet life (interrupted only by the crises of his flock), but he acquires a dog, Barnabas, who calms down only when he hears scripture; an 11-year-old foster child, Dooley, who comes from a badly ruptured family; and a delightful neighbour, Cynthia Coppersmith, who writes and illustrates children’s books, and has very good legs.
     It’s charming. Most “Christian” literature sets my teeth on edge, but in this story, faith is merely a part of everyday life. The matter-of-factness of Timothy’s prayer life is very nicely rendered. The story rambles, as all good slice-of-life soap operas do, and a couple of the set pieces are perhaps a trifle too evangelistic in intention. The people have quirks and foibles rather than vices, and Karon develops most of the townsfolk as “characters”, but many of them eventually morph into believable people. Timothy, who likes sweets rather too much, develops diabetes, doesn’t keep up his regimen of exercise and diet, and suffers a diabetic coma which nearly kills him. The book ends with his setting off on a long-overdue vacation to Ireland with his cousin. No doubt there will be a sequel (in fact, there are seven more so far). Karon belongs to one sentence paragraph school of writing, which I find irritating, but you get used to it. **½ (2005)

The copy I read had a different cover.

Tough Politicians

“In These Tough Economic Times,” politicians claim, “We have to make tough decisions.”

Funny how tough it is to reduce unemployment benefits, social supports, disability pensions, housing subsidies, programs for homeless, and so on.

I guess it must really hurt those politicians to make these tough decisions. I mean, the pain of having to say no to people who need help. Doesn’t bear thinking about. The poor devils must be lining up for treatment for Post Tough-decision Stress Disorder. We really should be feel more kindly towards the politicians. After all, they do our dirty work.

The really tough decision would be to raise taxes, of course. Especially at the top end of the income pyramid. (2012)

1812 War (Canadian War Museum, Ottawa)

 1812 War (War Museum) Viewed 31st July 2012
     The war of 1812 is the strangest one I know of. Nobody won it. After three years of conflict and diplomacy, and some 35,000 dead, the result was pretty well the status quo ante, albeit accepted by all parties, and therefore strengthened. There were no major changes in territory. The general shape of North American political divisions was confirmed. The First Nations, who might have been able to forge the beginnings of a permanent and independent confederation of nations if the British had won, were no further ahead. The main players, the still young and weak USA, and the loosely collaborative Canadian colonies, acknowledged each other’s territorial claims, and made them a basis for future frontier drawing as both expanded westward to the pacific. Britain, which had already shifted its geo-political focus elsewhere, reestablished friendly terms with its erstwhile colonies.
     The show at the Canadian War Museum sets out the four participant’s perspectives on the war. It’s very well done, with enough detailed information mixed into the overview to individualise the participants’ experience of the war, and to suggest what it was like for ordinary people like ourselves. The arrangement was a bit confusing, as viewing all the exhibits required a partial retracing of steps in each room; but that’s my only complaint. That, and the usual limitations of the computer survey, which began by asking which of the four parties you identified with. I identified with all and none. I could understand and empathise with all four perspectives. I have a visceral antipathy towards war, this is no doubt a reason I can’t feel comfortable taking sides.
     Rating for the show: ***½ (2012)

Update 2023-06-29: In proportion to the populations of the warring parties, 35,000 dead was an enormous number, on the order of millions today. That may be one of the reasons the two sides simply topped fighting.

Truth (Post in a newsgroup about artificial intelligence; 2010-07-19)

Truth
Posted in comp.ai.philosophy 2010-07-19
Thread: Truth (Was: Re: PROOF INFINITY DOES NOT EXIST!...

I don't think "exist" is a good word to use about truth. I prefer "subsist" as the technical term. But that's a side issue.

This sub-thread on truth is marred by an absence of definition. Exactly what do you mean by truth? What do Curt and the others mean?

All the examples used are statements, which should be a clue. That is, an implicit stance in all the arguments so far is that truth is a property of statements. I don't think that is a good enough concept, as part two of this screed will I hope demonstrate.

A) Formal (logical) and contingent truth

I taught formal logic in high school, (I sneaked it in under the aim of "teach critical thinking".) As you might expect, some students twigged to the fact that "truth" is a vague, ambiguous, polysemous, slippery term.

"Logical truth" is clearly defined: A statement is "logically true" when it has the form X = Y, where X and Y are well-formed statements in some language, and the rules of inference allow the transformation of X into Y, and vice versa. Note that this is a characterisation of a statement.

However, it is not clear that X or Y are themselves true. A logical argument can demonstrate that some conclusion follows from some premises. If the premises are true, then so is the conclusion. But logic cannot demonstrate that the premises are true. You can show that the premises follow from some other premises, and so on, until you get to the axioms. But the truth of the axioms must be assumed. IOW, we need some means for agreeing on the truth of the premises.

At this point in the discussion, students started invoking experience, common sense, obviousness, etc. And realised that "what is true for one person is not true for another." It was difficult to get them past that, but in the end most accepted that some replicable procedure could guarantee a limited truth: if we have the same experience, and say the same things about it, then the odds are that what we say is true, more or less. If we differ, then what we both have said is more or less wrong. Since someone can always disagree about what we have said, all statements about common experience are more or less wrong (and conversely more or less true). This too is a characterisation of statements: here we have contingent truth.

B) Truth as a relationship

So, what do we mean when conceive "truth" as a property of statements? A statement is an image of a concept. It has the same relationship to a concept as a photograph has to its subject. Of both we say that they are "true" if we apperceive some similarity between the statement and the concept, the photograph and its subject. Ditto for a theory (model) and the slice of universe it refers to.

IOW, "truth" is a relationship between image and object, where "image" can be a sentence, a picture, a piece of music, an equation, etc, and "object" is whatever those images "are about".

That relationship between image and object is an unanalysed given: we either get it or we don't. It rests on some formal equivalences, on patterns. We are a pattern-perceiving species, so much so that we perceive patterns "that aren't really there", in the sense that a slightly different point of view may destroy the pattern, while a "real" pattern can be perceived from several (sometimes drastically different) points of view. (Science has been characterised as the search for patterns that remain the same no matter how you look at them.)

In a sense, we are democratic about truth, as Curt seems to be claiming: if a lot of people can see the same pattern from many different points of view, and/or if many people can replicate the pattern by some agreed-upon process, it is "really there." But we are also elitist: some patterns can be perceived only after more or less arduous training. But amongst those who have undergone this training, there is a pretty strong consensus on what the "real" patterns are, hence on what can be truthfully said about them.

It should be obvious that "consensus" truths are contingent. They are also empirical: some unanticipated future experience may change our notion of what they refer to, of their limits as true statements. This is so even in the realm of formal truths, where we often do not know a priori whether any two statements are logically equivalent, or whether some set of premises implies some set of conclusions. Only the experiment of devising proofs can decide the question. And those proofs may show that the equivalence or conclusion is limited to a range of values (ie, objects that it refers to). In this respect, mathematics resembles empirical science.

For more on how we arrive at some consensus about what's true, see Bas van Fraassen's "The Empirical Stance", Yale University Press, 2002.

Disclosure: Bas and I were classmates many years ago, and discussed much of what I've distilled above. He discusses these themes much more expertly than I can. Hence my recommendation of his book. We do not entirely agree: ask two philosophers a question, and you'll get four answers. At least. ;-)

Roger Cook and Karl Zimmerman. Magnetic North: Canadian Steam in Twilight (1999)

     Roger Cook and Karl Zimmerman. Magnetic North: Canadian Steam in Twilight (1999) In 1954 and ‘55, the authors, then teenagers, travelled from New York to Montreal and Canada to observe and photograph Canadian steam locos. Their account of their travels and their encounters with Canadian steam is evocative and personal. The photos are very good; and they were able to persuade Jim Shaughnessy, Don Wood and others to contribute photos to complement their story and illustrate the long ending of the steam era in Canada. Marie gave me this book for Christmas. It’s published by Boston Mills Press, and exhibits their usual very high standard of bookmaking, no typos, good looking page layouts, and superb photo reproduction. It's unlikely that teenaged railfans would be allowed to go on a similar quest these days. *** (2005)

Two books I didn't finish

     Kinky Friedman. When the Cat’s Away (1988) Friedman is one of those authors who thinks that obvious puns and wordplay are signs of wit and intelligence and will persuade the reader that plot, character, and narrative structure must be up to the same level. They aren’t. Or rather, they are, namely abysmally low. Didn’t finish this book, even though it was a present from RoRo, so I felt a little guilty tossing it.


     Graham Wright. Jog Rummage (1974) Billed as a fantasy in the same league as Tolkien’s work, this book is tedious in the extreme. The world Wright imagines never takes on the kind of compelling reality that a fantasy world must, else we lose interest. There are a few puzzles that I may regret never solving, such as why the world seems to be in darkness, illumined only by a Moon that occults at regular intervals, and the differences between the Rats and the Jogs, but I can live without that knowledge.

     (2005)

Four track planning books

     John Armstrong. 18 Tailor-made Track Plans (1983) I’m reading a number of track planning books. Why? Because I don’t to get down to actually building a layout, I suppose. Anyhow, these plans show how a different aspects govern or influence the plan. Lots of good ideas. Armstrong’s favourites, the double-sided backdrop and the empties in - loads out pairing of mine and power plant - show up on most plans. He also tries hard to make walk-in plans, and will accept an 18" aisle in order to achieve it. A couple of his plans could be cut up and rearranged to fit the 12'10" x 12'6" space I have available. Armstrong is always a pleasure to read. ***

     Mike Schafer ed. Railroads You Can Model (1976) A collection of good prototype information and rather strange track plans based on the railroads described. Armstrong would have done a better job. I don’t know who designed the plans. They are OK for operation, but waste space, using neither staging yards nor two-sided backdrops. The result is huge layouts, well beyond the capability of most people to build without assistance. The plans include interesting examples of how to adapt prototype track layouts to models, but otherwise this book has little value. That may be the reason it went out of print early on. *

     Linn Westcott. HO Railroad That Grows (2nd ed, 1972) The update consists partly of rewriting for clarity and concision, partly of redesign of the illustrations (including some new ones), and partly of updating the bench work and other technologies. The concept is still one of the best: write a book that follows what people actually do, namely set up a loop of track, then add to it. But show ways of changing and undoing earlier work so that the end result is a more interesting layout. I’m not sure how a novice would interpret this book. Would the bite-size projects reassure, or would the total of the work done intimidate? Anyhow, the book covers all the aspects of model railroading, and as such this book is as good as any other for introducing a neophyte to the hobby. **½

     Mike Schafer, ed. More Railroads You Can Model (1978) Better than the first book, since the plans assume a fixed space, and so show buildable layouts, whereas the first book showed assemblages of possible track plan elements. There’s also some use of two-sided backdrops and greater use of staging. The discussions of possible operations are more thorough. The Graham County RR is shown as a shelf layout with some care taken with the scenic design, the Milwaukee’s brewery branch is shown as both a shelf and a 4x8 two-deck switching pike, which would work quite well if structures were chosen to emphasise the cramped quarters of down-town railroading. But as with the first book, the real value lies more in the information about the prototype than in the track planning. Layout design has come a long way since these books were published. **½
      (2005)

Love sonnet

Love sonnet

You can’t write a love sonnet these days.
Regular rhythm & rhyme are out of fashion.
Let line and subject wander any way
they want.  You can’t limit passion
to fourteen lines.  So they say.
Now memories of your skin and hair distract
me. Your eyes, blue and grey, recall skies of fall weather,
bounded by winter’s cool and distant pact
that defines our endings. We don’t know whether
in our encounters we should yield or act.
But either way, we know we’ll be undone
by love’s illusion that we will still be one.

(2006 & 2013)