Mr Harper's War on Science

Since taking power in 2006, the Harper government has systematically reduced funding for anything that directly or indirectly opposes their ideology. John Dupuis has compiled a chronology  on Science Blogs. Read it and weep.

Human Cantilever Bridge

 

Boing-Boing republished the above old photo, which I first saw in a Wonder Book, a series of compendiums first published in England sometime in the 1920s, and continued into the 1950s: Human cantilever bridge

George Gently & Miss Fisher: two TV series episodes

     Gently: The Lost Child (2012) Episode 3 of the 2012 season. [D:Nicholas Benton. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby] An adopted child is kidnapped, but the reasons aren’t money. The kidnapper was himself an adopted child. The adoption agency is run by a woman with well-meaning but mistaken motives. Gently and Bacchus must navigate an emotionally intense tangle of past history, motives, secrets, and events. People are unable or unwilling to reveal essential knowledge because they are afraid of their own vulnerability, and because they want to do what’s best for their partner. Well meaning motives cause trouble. Gently and Bacchus’s own lives mirror some of the relationships they must investigate.
     Like the other Gently episode we’ve seen, this one’s moody, sad, psychologically complex. Hunter (the author of the books) clearly is more interested in how the random collisions of private and public knowledge and motives lead to catastrophe. ***

     Miss Fisher: Raisins & Almonds (2012) [D: David Caesar. Essie Davis, Nathan Page.  Based on the books by Kerry Greenwood.]
     It’s the 1920s. The Hon. Phryne Fisher is for some reason displaced to Melbourne. There she lives in a fine house with a full staff and several hangers-on that assist her in her investigations. Just how she has created a PI career for herself is unclear, since this is the 5th episode. The series is now in its third season, we will watch it when we can.
     The series is agreeable fluff, lovely clothes and cars, stereotypes galore (Australia at the time was still very much a colony), many different accents, and light-weight historical references, which in this episode form a large part of the plot and puzzle. The McGuffin is a formula for synthetic rubber, created by the murder victim, who has Zionist connections. Family rivalries motivate the murder. There’s some kind of romance developing between Miss Fisher and Inspector Jack Robinson. Miss Fisher has a gun and a dagger, both of which she uses when she needs to. In short, an adventure romance of the kind that is rarely written these days, which may explain why these books are quite often translated into video.
     The scripting, acting, photography add up to competent story-telling. A well-crafted entertainment. Worth watching if you like this genre. Wikipedia has entries on both Kerry Greenwood and the TV series.**½

Fundmentalism and art

     A news item today (27 February 2015) reports on ISIS attacking Assyrian Christians, and destroying ancient artworks. Al Qaeda destroyed ancient art in Afghanistan. The Puritans defaced and destroyed religious art during the English Civil War. In Europe, Protestants defaced Catholic churches during the Counterreformation. The Nazis attacked what they called Degenerate Art. Maoists and Stalinists imprisoned artists who produced unofficial art. All kinds of fundamentalists have attacked literature and poetry and drama that they didn't like, often murdering the authors.
     And so on.
     Why do fundamentalists, secular and religious, destroy and deface artworks? Why are they so enraged by literature? One could write a lot of analysis about each case, pointing to doctrines, beliefs, attitudes and values. But it boils down to a very simple fact: Art records and expresses how someone knows the world.
     We understand an artwork to the extent that we are able to imagine being someone else. More than that, the artwork makes it possible to do that. Through art we can imagine different values, attitudes, feelings.
     And that's why fundamentalists hate art. Art is proof that it's not only possible to be different from you, but that it's inevitable.
     Fundamentalism is the inability to tolerate the diversity of humankind.

Codebreaker (2011)

     Codebreaker (2011) [D: Clare Beavan and Nic Stacey. Ed Stoppard, Henry Goodman, and contemporaries and family of Turing] Short documentary about Alan Turing, about his work as code breaker at Bletchley Park, his seminal papers on computing, and his conviction for gross indecency and his eventual suicide. He was sentenced to receive stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen, which among other things messes up the brain. The title is ambiguous: Turing broke two codes.
     Alternating between voice-over narration of Turing’s life and dramatised sessions with Franz Grünbaum, the psychiatrist who treated Turing (and who became his friend), the film is an effective indictment of the attitudes that destroyed one of the most brilliant minds we’ve been privileged to know. We are somewhat less benighted now, but there are discouraging signs of increasing acceptance of hostility towards those who depart too far from current norms. It’s depressing to watch a story about the destruction of human being.
     The movie reminded me of how the Turing Test has evolved over time. For a while, I participated in a newsgroup about artificial intelligence. We ascribe awareness, self-awareness, personality, etc, because of the  behaviours of our fellow creatures. Sometimes, we go too far: I don’t think a snail is aware of pain, even though it recoils from flame. But it is certainly capable of learning, if by that we mean changes in behaviour that depend on the history of the individual. Since learning is an essential component of intelligence, the snail has some degree of intelligence. And since we see intelligence of varying complexity in many different creatures, it’s no stretch at all to expect that machines will exhibit intelligence. It’s when we conflate intelligence with self-awareness, with consciousness, that we get into trouble. More precisely, “intelligence” as a cognitive trait is far too stretchy a term. For many people, it includes creativity, for example. For many others, it requires not only problem solving, but also awareness that one is solving a problem. And so on.
     Recently, I came across a fact I’d ignored, and a comment that reframes Turing’s Test.
     The fact is that Turing machines are incredibly inefficient compared to brains. We can compute “that’s Uncle Fred, and he’s happy” in a fraction of a second expending a few joules of energy. A machine needs longer and expends many kilojoules of energy to compute that “That’s Uncle Fred”, and it can’t (yet) compute that he’s happy.
     The comment is that the Turing Test is really about humans, not machines. It tests whether the human can be fooled by a machine. And since the program is devised by a human, it really tests whether one human can fool another one. But we already knew that.
     It’s mark of Turing’s gift to us that even as we mourn him, we want to think about the things that mattered to him. ***

Anti-terrorism and Bill C-51

     Do we need protection from those who would attack us? Of course we do. We already have that protection. The laws we have work just fine, when they work. But to make them work requires that CSIS and the Mounties have the resources to do their work. But when you have a government that is more afraid of a deficit than of terrorism, those institutions are unable to do their job.
     Bill C-51 is part of a carefully orchestrated campaign to stoke fear, in the expectation that fear will shift votes in Mr Harper's direction in October.   
      C-51 sets up the framework for a secret police in the service of the government.
     It gives CSIS the power to "disrupt" what they might deem to be a terrorist plot. Sure, a judge must sign an order permitting CSIS to do this, but once they have that order, they can do whatever they think is necessary. C-51 does not indicate any limits.
     It criminalises intent. But intent is the eyes and imagination of the beholder. Anyone who is opposed to the government of the obviously intends to get rid of it, if possible. So who will decide at what point that intent is criminal, and that therefore I should be arrested?
     It criminalises unlawful protest. But lawful protest is that which has permit. If a permit is withheld, then your protest is unlawful. So who decides whether to give you a permit or not? Clearly, if the authority that grants the permit doesn't like the point of your protest, they can withhold the permit and automatically make you a criminal.
     Those who shrug off the dangers of  C-51 either don't know or have forgotten that the secret police forces we think of as the worst ever, the Gestapo and the KGB, both operated within the law. They were give the legal authority to do what they did.

Gently with Class (2012)

     Gently with Class (2012) [D: Gillies MacKinnon. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby] Rerun on WGBH. From the series Inspector George Gently, based on books by Allan Hunter : see the Wikipedia entry.
     Moody photography, with elliptical story-telling, cross-cutting and flashbacks, which develop the puzzle and the theme jigsaw piece by jigsaw piece, until the final punch-line that makes the socio-political point: the new rulers of Britain will be just like the old ones.
     DS Bacchus is convinced that James Blackstone, son and heir of Hector Blackstone, drove the upturned car half-submerged in the river, in which a girl drowned. Bacchus has twice arrested James for drunk driving, but James’s  mother has twice drawn him out of harm’s way.
     But this time it’s more complicated. Bacchus is itching to take the toffs down. Gently just wants to find out who done what. None of the suspects tells the truth, and when they do begin to spill it, they don’t tell the whole truth. As often happens in such complicated stories, the denouement is a perfunctory exercise in tying up loose ends. If the script follows Hunter’s novel, his real focus was on class and class-driven resentments. That was well done; we almost don’t care who actually did what.
     Gently is an interesting character, oddly detached from his job, the passion to uncover the truth concentrated in Bacchus. But Bacchus doesn’t want the truth for the sake of justice, he wants it as a weapon in the class war. Well done entertainment. **½

2026-02-05: The series is being rerun by GBH, available on PBS Passport. It has also been issued on DVD, I've found several seasons at the usual 2nd hand sources.