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").

Folly in high places: Lews Lapham's Age of Folly

     Lewis Lapham. Age of Folly: America Abandons its Democracy (2016) Lapham’s deep knowledge of literature and the Classics enable him to see below the surface of things as they seem. His writing informs, educates, delights, and annoys. Sometimes it infuriates, as when he recounts his interview with a CIA hiring board of three young Yale  men who asked him about tennis and a well-known debutante. These were the people who messed up the USA’s international politics in the last century, and their heirs are doing a fine job of emulating them in this one.
     Lapham was born into the American aristocracy, which has given him an intimate and personal knowledge of the oligarchy that has come to rule that unhappy land. For example, in chapter 22, Propaganda Mill, he outlines the history of the right-wing conspiracy to shift US politics away from its centre to the right. We live with the results. Will American democracy survive? Right now, I think the odds are against it.
   Much of the book is commentary on the Bush years. 15 to 20 years later, Lapham’s observations have the aura of prophecy.
     No matter what your politics, you will be offended. I think that’s the highest recommendation for a book about contemporary life. ****