2001: A Space Odyssey (Review)

     2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Classic film, a creation myth. Based on Arthur C Clarke's short story "Rendezvous with Rama", and the book. Answers the question How did we become human? Clarke tended towards mysticism, see his Childhood’s End for an earlier treatment of the theme. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Keir Dullea.
     I first saw this movie in the triple-screen version, with 16 or 32 speakers, which immersed you in the experience as no other movie technology has done. It enabled multiple images, the kind of layered visual experience that the web has made commonplace. The movie just doesn’t have the same impact in Cinerama,  especially on a TV screen. Howeve, the result of the smaller screen and only two speakers was a new insight: this is a movie about technology. The tension comes from the fact that Dave and Frank have to solve an engineering problem. Dave and Frank focus on the engineering challenge, suppressing whatever impulses to panic are roiling beneath their carefully calm surfaces. Impressive. It’s rare that problem solving in itself generates such anxiety.
     HAL-9000's misbehaviour endangers their lives, but its (his?) assessment of the mission is valid: something strange will happen near Jupiter. Just how strange is still a subject of debate: what does the light show signify? It’s some sort of journey by Dave, but he’s not in control, and whoever or whatever is taking him isn’t saying what or where. The scenes in the bedroom (decorated as a French palace) don’t answer any questions either and the appearance of the star child doesn’t help resolve the questions. Some sort fo rebirth is about to happen. Did Clarke and Kubrick envisage a sequel? There is one, 2010, which we’ll watch fairly soon.
     I think Clarke didn’t understand evolution correctly, or else wilfully forgot what he knew about it. This story, like Childhood’s End, implies some directing intelligence. Star people have some sort of soft spot for Earth and its life forms, and take a hand in directing their development. Clarke wants to believe that we humans are special after all, that our technical inventiveness denotes progress, and above all that scientific adbvances are a form of progress. It is, in a small way; but since our moral and intellectual development lags behind our technical skills, it is dangerous progress.
     One of the most impressive things about the movie is that all the visual tricks and illusions were achieved without computer graphics. Still, I give it ***

Conrad Black on Gregg & Company (TVO)

Conrad Black on Alan Gregg (TVO, 18 September 2011)

     Last night (17 September 2011) I watched Alan Gregg's interview with Conrad Black. It was recorded some time before Black returned to prison. It left me with mixed impressions. There is no question that Black is a very intelligent man, and accustomed to deference. He interrupted Gregg several times, which Gregg tolerated with good grace. Watching such a program, we have to remember that it is edited: which camera angles to show is decided after the taping, the display of facial expressions is the director's decision, and we don't see or hear a continuous, uninterrupted flow of conversation, because the interview has to fit into the 30 minute time frame. On the other hand, it is impossible to fake the connection between interviewee and guest that is Gregg's strength. This time, Gregg seemed to be more on his guard than Black.
    Clearly, Black is still outraged at what was done to him. He blames both the "prosecutorial culture" of the US justice system and the "corporate governance zealots" for his woes, apparently convinced that in Canada or Britain there would have either been no charges brought against him, or else he would have been acquitted. He refuses to accept any guilt or culpability for actions that many people could and did consider as unethical at least, and possibly criminal at worst. He knows that many other people don't accept his principles, but he's convinced they're wrong and he's right. This kind of moral and ethical absolutism is either disingenuous, or else Black has not yet achieved the level of humility that he claimed at the end of the interview, when Gregg asked him how his experiences have changed him. On the other hand, I believe Black when he says he had been unaware of how what he calls "sociological conditions" result in injustice. He seems to have made a good impression on his fellow inmates, 36 of whom took the trouble to write letters of support when he appealed his sentence. Whether his insights into how poverty is a systemic effect of mercantile capitalism will prompt him to advocate for economic or political changes remains to be seen.
     There is a good deal of truth to Black's observations about how the US justice system is focussed on convictions. Prosecutors are for the most part elected. Incumbents run on their record of successful convictions, and challengers win by promising to be even harsher. The result is an incarceration rate six to fourteen times that of any developed country. As Black points out, it is unlikely that Americans are six to fourteen times more inclined to crime than other people. But it's a bit of a jump from that to agreeing that Black's own case is one of wrongful conviction.
     Black's expressions were interesting. When he listened to a question, he showed a stony and somewhat hostile face: he seemed to be assessing whether the question was a trap, or whether he could safely answer its substance. When answering, his face was more mobile, but he never showed the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm that many of Gregg's guests have shown when they talked of principles they upheld. The only time I thought I saw genuine emotion was when Black referred to the graduates of the GED program in which he tutored fellow inmates in English. He seemed to be embarrassed that he was moved by the event, and his high praise for how the Florida Bureau of Prisons handled it seemed to me to be an attempt to hide his emotions. By praising them, he could distance himself from what he himself felt as he witnessed it.
     That's when, on reflection, I realised that Black is a very private person. His vocabulary is abstract, his sentences well formed, often with multiple dependencies, and when he referred to himself, the tone was as dryly factual as he could make it. Even his outrage was couched in terms of an abstract attack on the US justice system, and an expression of hope that others, who might not have the resources he had, would find his account of use. It's as if he were thinking about himself in the third person, with only the exigencies of English grammar requiring him to use "I".
     Overall, the interview seemed to me a carefully constructed performance. Black is a skilled actor. I doubt he would do someone else's script as well as he does his own, however.

Update 2020 08 25: President Trump pardoned Conrad Black on May 19, 2019, following assiduous fundament osculation by Black, who praised Trump's astounding superior qualities during the 2016 election, and has become ever more separated from objective reality since then.

 

Math: Pyramids, Prisms, and Infinity

   I like math, because you can formulate questions that you know can be answered, even if you haven't always enough knowledge to answer them yourself.
   For example:  Take a tetrahedron, a pyramid of three triangles on a triangular base. If all four triangles are the same, then it's a regular tetrahedron, the smallest of the five regular solids. Like the other solids, you can, within limits, change the proportions of its faces in some way. You can increase the height of the triangles that make up the sides of the pyramid. How much? As much as you like.
   Now here’s the question: What happens when the height is infinite? Well, that depends on how you define “infinite” in this context. If by “infinite height” you mean “without limit”, then the tetrahedron becomes a pyramid of infinite height. As the height of the triangular sides increases, the pyramid becomes more and more like a prism of triangular cross-section. That is, the edges become closer and closer to being parallel. We can say that the difference between three edges that converge on a point (the apex of the pyramid) and three edges that are parallel becomes smaller and smaller. This difference approaches zero. “At the limit” it is zero: then the pyramid has become a triangular prism.
   Does it make sense to talk about a limit here, when we are talking about a pyramid of infinite height? Yes, on the same grounds that the differential calculus uses the concept of a limit. But this question, and its answer, are beyond my ability to explicate or justify. The best I can do is to notice that stretching the pyramid towards an infinite height is the same as rotating each edge about a point (the corner) so that they become parallel.  So the pyramid “eventually” morphs into a prism. That “eventually” is “at the limit”, when the difference between converging and parallel edges has become zero. It corresponds to a pyramid of infinite height. This implies that prisms as we conceive of them (of finite height)  are sections of infinitely high pyramids.
   I don’t know whether the above line of thought is mathematically acceptable. Maybe I’m mixing two branches of math illegitimately. But it feels right. So I’ll state my conclusion as a theorem:
   “A finite prism of N sides is a section of an infinitely high pyramid of N sides.”

Fred Moves

After much badgering and whinging, Fred has got his way: he's moved to the book case, so he can view not only the living room but also something of the outside world. For the moment, he's content. How long this odd state will last is anyone's guess. Even Fred doesn't know.

Politics 1

It's too bad: many of the people whom I chatted with recently think the election won't change anything. Some said they wouldn't vote. Then of course their opinion will be a self-fulfilling prohecy.

It seems the only time Canadians take politics seriously is election time. And even then, too many Canadfians have a cynical attitude. This cynicism is just right for any parrty that wants to hi-jack our government. All they need to do is ensure that all their supporters come out to vote, while stoking the cynicism of the people who are not of their party, knowing that the more cynicsim there is, the less likely it is that those others will vote.

Book Review: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (Pagels)

 

     Pagels, Elaine Adam, Eve , and the Serpent (1988) 22 years old, yet still relevant. Pagels recounts the early history of the Church in terms of Genesis 1-4, and the evolving interpretations of these still crucial chapters of the Bible. Initially, the Gospel was understood as proclaiming the liberty of human beings, a liberty that not only enabled but required autonomous moral choice, instead of unthinking acceptance of social mores, one's place in society, and subjection to the ruling authority. That is how Paul's claim that Jesus' sacrifice fulfilled the Law was understood. There was no Fall; Genesis recounted Adam and Eve's choice as an affirmation of free will, and incidentally as an example of what not to choose, not as the sin that condemned us all.
     After Constantine made Christianity the State religion, the story was reinterpreted as describing the origin of sin. More than that: the story demonstrated that human beings after Adam are incapable of freely choosing to act morally. Human nature was corrupted; humans no longer had free will. Augustine was instrumental in this change in doctrine (his Confession shows why: he was a sex addict, and believed his experience of uncontrollable lust was universal.) The doctrine of original sin and corrupted human nature seems to be almost entirely Augustine's invention. Why it should have had such a profound and long-lasting influence is IMO clear: it justified the exercise of coercive power, political and ecclesiastical. If human beings were tainted from birth, were incapable of choosing the right path, then coercion was necessary to keep them from acting on their evil impulses. Not to impose the rule of law would be an dereliction of the ruler's duty. The question of how the ruler escaped the taint and was capable of making ethical choices for his subjects seems not to have occurred to Augustine and his followers.
     The Protestant Reformation did not change this gloomy view of human nature; if anything, it reinforced it. The doctrine of original sin is central to Luther's teaching that only faith can reconcile you to God, and furthermore that faith is a gift. One of the first things I learned was that "I cannot by my own reason or strength come to Jesus." (Significantly enough, Luther was an Augustinian monk.) The dissenting churches' leaders reserved to themselves the same power to demand assent to their doctrines as did the Roman church. Thoreau's famous opening sentence of Civil Disobedience is a direct descendant of Augustine's view. But Thoreau's essay implies that human nature could change, that we are capable of working our way towards an ethical and moral autonomy that will reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate the need for secular government.
     Pagels knows that her work could be used to justify some claim to re-establish an original or "pure" Christianity. (Indeed, many sects have justified such claims by reference to just this same knowledge.) She carefully explains as much of the diversity of opinion, teaching, and practice as she can, and in an epilogue explicitly warns against believing that a single, pure, and unadulterated version of Christian belief is possible. I agree. More: I think that knowing about the early history of the church should make us wary of claiming exclusive or special grace, and should make us willing to accept testimony that differs from our own experience. Augustine's narcissistic argument for his doctrines is a bad model. Not that I'm expecting any such reformation of Christian (or other) belief any time soon. People seem to have great difficulty accepting that other people may be so different that they seem like alien beings. Scipio said Nullam humanum mihi alienum puto, I deem nothing human alien to me. A saying we should take to heart.
     Pagels writes well. She has a knack for explication, for the arrangement of facts to clarify her analysis. Her book is thoroughly researched, with numerous notes in every paragraph referring the reader to original works (and translations), as well as other scholars' discussions. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the history of the church. ****

Book Review: Rocannon's World (Leguin)

Leguin U. Rocannon's World (1966) A story very much of its time, with light-speed ships, FTL robots, and a slew of humanoid aliens, some of whom are telepaths. A rebel force attacks the anthropological team on an unnamed planet. Rocannon, the sole survivor, enlists the Angyar, a warrior people, to help him find the rebel base, where he use the "ansible", an FTL communications device, to call in the robot bombs that will destroy the rebels. By the time the League force arrives, he's dead, but the planet has been named for him. That's the plot, and simple enough it is, just the kind that John Campbell liked to publish in Analog Magazine. But Leguin makes of this simple material a complex and nuanced story of the varieties of human experience.
     There's a frame: a visit by one of the Angyar many years earlier to retrieve a necklace, which ended up in a museum on another planet. When she returns, only a few days older subjectively, it's many "objective years" later, her husband is dead, her daughter a grown woman. Rocannon eventually receives the necklace from that daughter, and finally gives it to the Angyar woman with whom he spends his last years.
     What keeps us reading is Leguin's skill at advancing the plot: she tells the story as a quest, which allows for all kinds of surprises, hair's breadth escapes, and so on. It also allows for revelation of both the planet itself as a beautiful and varied ecology and topography, and of the cultures of the several tribes and nations. Through Rocannon we get "our" p.o.v., that is, that of an experienced reader of SF.
    The Angyar are somewhat Norse, their serfs the Olgyior (of the same species) are presented as rather too loyal to be believe. The Gdemiar, a species of troglodyte, recall H. G. Wells's Molochs, the Fiia (a telepathic/empathic species descended from the same species as the Gdemiar) recall the Eloi. A devolved species of predatory bird-like humanoids round out the catalogue. Leguin has the knack of making them real, and their interactions plausible. The book could have been more complexly plotted (and bigger), which would give even more scope for character and cultural nuances, but it is a finished work as is. It's an early work, and it seems to me like a trial run of the themes and motifs that would occupy Leguin in her later, mature works. Very good of its kind. ***