Bloodless Coop

Birthday update

2008-08-08T10:54:00.002Z

Resurrected for a day!

Nice.

Um, birthday plans are looking ropey, due to the weather. The contingency plan is the following:

1. Arrive at my place, 57C Lambert Road SW2 5BB from 12.30 onwards. Still bring picnicky stuff, we will do an indoor picnic and other fun stuff.

2. At some point, we may then stretch our legs out to a nearby pub, probably The White Horse on Brixton Hill around the corner.

I will confirm on-blog and on Facebook later today....

More in a Series of Fortunate Events

2006-12-22T18:48:00.000Z

Today was a landmark day, a little sad; I said goodbye to my research unit and my position as a postdoc. The place and people prised their way into my heart and, unlike many of their patients, I will never forget them.

But every event has its echo, and this one carries backward - to an interview and offer last month - and forward, to a new job in the new year. More details as I get them, loyal readers.

Tomorrow is also a landmark day; we move into a house that we own.

The day after is Christmas Eve (you might know that one), with all the busyment that follows.

All in all, 2006 is making a big exit.

Speak in... 07?

A rant on progressive social programs

2006-12-22T12:23:00.000Z

Not mine, but a quote I mined:

It might be right to say that the "true" cause of poverty and lack of life chances is ignorance, malnutrition, antisocial behaviour etc, but as Chris Dillow often says, you don't cure a pedestrian with a broken leg by sending the bus backwards over him.

From the comments to this provoking post.

Mad tidings we bring?

2006-12-18T13:59:00.000Z

Something to do with the combination of dark nights, fairy lights, jingly sleigh-bell music and heavy-rotation advertising going on in the background means there's a palpable whiff of greasy hysteria in the air. A feeling that everything's about to shut down and hibernate, so you've got to get your oar in now while there's still time. It's all bells and tinsel and unhinged grinning urgency. No wonder Die Hard was set at Christmas. Watching Bruce Willis crashing through windows and machine-gunning terrorists would have seemed downright boring if he'd been doing it on pancake day.

Charlie Brooker at Comment is Free

A Series of Fortunate Events

2006-12-18T13:58:00.000Z

Part One. Disa passed her PhD viva with flying colours. She's the top squirrel in the park!

More to come.

I will pay to do your work for you.

2006-11-20T17:18:00.000Z

Speaker: Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.
Snippet of Abstract: "Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games."
Awesomeness: Pretty awesome.

Overhead online

2006-11-16T09:34:00.000Z

On whether university economics skews you politically rightwards:

I never was taught basic economics (Latin and Greek were thought to be much more useful), but the logic of a rightward shift seems pretty straightforward to me.

First, you are taught how to conjugate a verb. That would be Latin 101.

Metella est mater. Quintis est filius et ambulat in hortum. Hic, haec, hoc. (This is all I can remember)

Then you spend the next 5 years learning all the 20,000 exceptions to the rule. That would be real Latin.

Similarly, Econ 101 is for libertarians, while economy is for, huh, real economists. The libertarians never get past the Esperanto-like first grade version of Latin.

They only learn the first bit: how markets work. They never get round to the second, far more frustrating bit: markets don’t work all the time, and can indeed fail disastrously. The invisible hand often needs guidance.

Jasper Emmering at Crooked Timber.

Leaving the test centre at 9am Saturday morning...

2006-11-11T11:22:00.000Z

...now I can drive - in theory.

Help me out

2006-11-10T12:49:00.000Z

I've thrown together this image for a manuscript I'm trying to finish up. I'm not entirely happy with it as it stands, so looking for a few pointers.

For those memory-research naive, what does the diagram give you? Are you any more informed about Memory loss? Anything particularly unclear?

For those of you with a bit of a background in this stuff, I'm not sure about the caption coming off of the Event Theta (the little easter egg symbol). PTA extends aft AND before the insult, but I worry that it'd start to look really scruffy if I shoehorn another event in just before and recolour. Also, PTA doesn't really cut it - there are also confusional states and other stuff. Is there a pithier way to get at this?
Also - I guess for anyone - if I added more colour (they want glorious technicolor in their publication), what would be fair candidates? A colleague suggested the PTA-period getting a different colour, but the program I'm using, Paint.net, although nice (and free) doesn't appear to offer you gradients from one colour into another so it would look a bit blocky and coarse. Could colour certain events... however, in all cases, I would prefer to add colour when it actually means something, and to definitely avoid it when it actively confuses.

Any comments hugely appreciated, folks!

I'm finally using a reader so now everyone else has to.

2006-11-09T23:01:00.000Z

Since I'm updating a little more than usual, I thought my world-worn and harried readers may benefit from the benefits of a web reader*. This is an "inbox for the web", meaning that sites you are interested in have their new information plonked into one location for you to check out, much like emails all pour into one location for you to read them (instead of having to check different locations for each person who might send you something). This technology has been around for donkey's years, or at least blog years; Bloglines is a well-known and established provider. I've never quite got my head around it, but recently with Google reloading their version, I thought I'd give it a go. And really, it's dead easy.

Step 1. Go to Google Reader, or a preferred alternative, if you know better. I'll just talk about the Google one, as it's what I know.

Step 2. Get a google account. If you have a gmail email account then I think you already have one; if not, you just give an email and password and you're away.

Step 3. Add subscriptions; that is, the sites you want updates from. You do it by putting information in the text box opened by the add subscription button (genius!). Obvious candidates are news sites - BBC news has a list of their news feeds here, for example - or blogs. I did have a lengthy thing about how to find the right address for the feeds (all blogger blogs are the webaddress plus /atom.xml) but it's even easier than I thought. Just put the basic web address in and in most cases, it'll just find the feed for you.

Step 4. View at leisure. When you come back to your Google Reader page, you can see all the new content that's been added to your favorite sites (not always new comments on posts though, depending on the feed), and as you scroll through to find something enticing, the nice front-end automatically marks everything you pass over as old. You don't get a big inbox to manage, just a quick scroll-through and next time it's all gone.

Step 5. Sharing? Too early a stage to say how useful this is, but one feature is a no-bones proto-blogging feature, in that things you see and find interesting enough to share can be sent to a shared page just by clicking on the share button. Then others can see it and marvel at your powers of discovery and superior (or gloriously bad) taste. I threw a few things on today, and you can peek it. Blogging for people who don't see the point in putting "as the incomparable William T. puts it" before an excerpt, and "indeed." after it.

That's it. Do it and put me on top, and keep on top of the quality.
EDIT: I wanted to say - and make clear that it's not all about me - that thanks to having this in place I know immediately when something internet-worthy has happened to any of my pals. I just got a nudge that Tom has had a bad day, for example. I also have everyone from my friends list on the right in, so when Akin has more baby news, I know it. This is especially handy for keeping up with people who update only occasionally; I have great respect for people who've kept up with my blog given that there have been months where I haven't said a peep, and they've presumably been fruitlessly checking back over that whole time. No more, people, no more!

*that is, RSS. But ignore the acronyms if you, like me, find them full of dangerous magic.

Beyond words

2006-11-09T10:39:00.000Z

Unbearably sad.

Thoughts about homelessness in London

2006-11-08T21:17:00.000Z

Not profound ones, mind, just things that have atruck me recently.

1. From the top floor of the number 59 on my way from work I witnessed a homeless guy grudgingly empty his can of superlager into a drain under the impassive eye of a policeman/community support officer.
Why?
Granted, I didn't catch the whole scene - the guy might have been spraying the pinstriped backs of London's great and good with frothy brew - but assuming he was doing what most people do with alcohol, drinking it, for whose purpose is he prevented from doing so? Mine? I'm definitely aware of the impact that large-scale vagrancy has on a local environment, living in King's Cross, but I hardly think confiscating cans of lager gets us anywhere better. For the homeless fellow? Now, I'm under no illusion that life on the streets is fun and games and bonhomie, but surely we're not in the position of making decisions about responsible drinking and leisure activities for someone with a bagfull of possessions and a dearth of options?

2. On another day, at the end of my route, I passed yet another London Lite/London paper vendor (for those who don't know, these are free evening papers which are being agressively shifted off to punters in a war for control of the market). I almost didn't realise that's who it was, as they were almost exactly in the spot of the local big issue seller, who, sure enough, was standing plaintively opposite offering his charity paper you have to pay for to folk who were having free papers thrust upon them. Now, this comparison was particularly acute, but it's got to symbolise a wider trend. I'm not a big fan of the Issue - it can have some pretty good content but I tend to pick up my magaziney info (reviews, news pieces) online - but I would make an impulse buy if I was in a good mood and I had a journey ahead of me to fill. I imagine I'm not alone. With the agressive hawking of free (if utterly banal) content, I neither need more reading material nor desire another street transaction. I imagine I'm not alone in that either. The Issue is going to be squeezed by this. This seems to point at a problem with market solutions to social problems - the market is intrinsically callous, and indifferent to whether innocent bystanders get shot in a turf war. And whereas a failed venture isn't the end of the world for a larger company, pushing the disadvantaged beyond a viable honest living is going to see them make other choices right now, rather than waiting to voice their displeasure at a stakeholders' meeting.

3. As an addendum (this post was sitting in blorgatory the last few days) today I got approached by a homeless guy who asked to speak to me and then said "don't run away! Why is everyone scared of me!"
Which, in my opinion, is quite an affective way of getting someone to be a little scared of them.
I did immediately, and fluidly, say "I'm not scared of you, mate" with a incredulous chuckle in my voice... but after I chucked him some scrilla and walked off I did get the sense of a bit of a near miss.

Jefferson Airplane with swords

2006-11-04T15:37:00.000Z

The first ever versus- person fighting game had vector- graphic characters fighting over a printed, very psychedelic landscape.

Apparently the game was pretty poor, but the image is striking.

See Wikipedia for a rundown.

Gig lowdown

2006-11-03T08:33:00.000Z

Went to see Neko Case on Wednesday. Neko does what I hesitate to call alt.country - because I got a glimpse of her contract rider sitting on the sound stage, and it made it clear that under no circumstances should the words alt.country appear on any promotional material - but hey, that's what it is, country/folk steeped music with a particularly modern compositional bent and idiosyncratic subject matter. Oh, she has a tremendous voice, and puts it to use. Check out Hold on Hold on, playing here, or Deep Red Bells, here; I highly rate both albums that birthed them. It was certainly a good show, although I think the set was stronger when I saw them back at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

M Ward supported, and I need to urgently recommend this guy. I got my hands on Transfiguration of Vincent recently but only allowed it to dent my consciousness, but seeing him live was an electric experience. Part eccentric showman, part troubadour, and part wounded artist, his songs are recklessly inventive but allow the music of ages to breathe through them. Tremendous stuff and I have indeed suscribed to his newsletter!

AllMusic review of M Ward.
AllMusic review of Neko Case, and reviews of albums Fox Confessor.... and Blacklisted at trendier-than-thou music portal Pitchfork.

November uprisings

2006-11-02T20:35:00.000Z

Whoops! Looks like National Write a Novel Month has begun, and I didn't tell anyone! (Well, I didn't know.)

It's a nice idea, and although I have no intention of doing it myself, it's spurred me to try and write a little more on this little blog. For this post, my purpose is simple - everyone who reads this should think about a creative aim that they've been putting off: knit that hat for little nephew, make that list of greatest songs, write that letter to the editors, redraft your story, write a story, update your blog, draw something.

Now do it.

Seriously, this coming week, starting with the heaps of free minutes the weekend offers, get it done. Then, if it's done, do something else. In this little microcosm of the world, November is get something creative done month. I will keep you posted of my attempts; promise.

EDIT: Bloody Hell! So my decree goes double now. Get something creative done in the next 3 days, and then give the month a good going over.

Into every generation, is born...

2006-10-20T19:17:00.000Z

Big evil threatening to ruin the world as we know it?
A trio of misfit schoolkids - wisacring girl leader, goofy guy spilling popculture references and a redhead - are the only ones who can stop em?
The crew helped out by a plummy-voiced school teacher, who takes off and on her specs at plot-significant moments, is flummoxed by their youthful decisions and carries an air of "I don't know why I bother"?
The school- built on top of an older evil - as the focal point for bad things to happen?
Comic dialogue and outlandish schemes supporting a story about vigilance and personal responsibility?
Reoccuring bad-ass with bleach-blond hair?
The Chosen One?

Yup, it's early 90's CBBC show Dark Season , penned by Queer as Folk / Dr Who scribe Russell T Davies. What did you think I was talking about?

Spooky Buffy parallels aside (and DS predates even the Slayer movie by a year), this is a pretty cracking series. It's incredibly pulpy, with Nazi plots and desperate professors, with science being both the problem and the answer. It foreshadows Davies' Who work, as Marcie, the shows nicely paranoid voice of reason, is very much a Doctor. It really strips away the fluff and gets straight to the action - the first plot arc is resolved in 3 twenty-five minute episodes; shame there's only 6 in all.

Neowhonow?

2006-09-19T12:34:00.000Z

Neo-Liberal

You scored 54% Personal Liberty and 27% Economic Liberty!

A neo-liberal believes in moderate government intervention on personal matters and moderate to high government intervention on economic matters. They believe in a social safety net or welfare state and try to balance personal liberty with safety or security. Some neo-liberals believe in more foreign intervention or war then most other leftists. Others are more like Centrist Democrats. More authoritarian- leaning Neo-liberals (such as personal 40/economic 30) are the result of a "fusion" between "old left" and "new right" tendencies.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 33% on Personal
You scored higher than 1% on Economic

Take the test here (NB you will have to sign up to a random site at the end of the questionnaire).

I like the fact that they call it economic and personal liberty - that is, you're maximum "for liberty" if you reject any societal obligations.

Weather

2006-07-26T15:59:00.000Z

Weather. Weather. Weather. Blooming weather.

That weather.

The weather thing.

Everywhere I go, weather.

(Weather weather - watch the meaning bleed from the word as it becomes overused, weather, weather. It's what Chris Moulin calls jamais vu, the subjective experience of lack of recognition for a familiar item, that resembles but may not be equivalent to semantic satiation, an objective decrease in the ability to judge as meaningful a repeatedly presented word.)

I've been to 3 countries on 3 continents in the last 3 weeks. On every one, weather.

China: Very hot. Very sticky. And lots of rain. Had to spend days ducking into and out of the heat into air conditioned shops + museums, or when desperate climb into icecream freezers or the path of a disapproving gaze from a distinguished posh lady. Freezes the blood that.
Australia: Damp. Very very wet, and damp and dank, and damp. Spent the time hiding from thunderstorms or tumbledrying my drenched trousers, shivering in an unheated bedroom and drinking to keep the heat in. Come back China, all is forgiven! Heat is great.
UK: Hot and sticky, close and windless. Stuck in the office feeding moisture into the padding of my chair via the conduit of my glistening shirt. How I long for the cool tempuratures of Sydney. That was idyllic, no?

In other news of my trip...gah, no, weather, phew, cor, weather, end.

PS Chris does a lot more stuff on deja vu/deja vecu, and there's a nice article about it here.

Ketchup

2006-07-05T15:57:00.000Z

Catchup. Some of you may have been watching the World Cup of Soccer (this is a sporting event quite popular in some parts of the world for an Aussie rules footie knock-off); just to say that
a) England aren't in it any more - eject your ire in the comments below
b) The last 2 matches (Fra-Bra + Ger-Ita) were really rather good; disagree in comments below
c) The last of my rare gambling flutters flitted into an open flame and went poof, with Ukraine going out miserably. I blame Duncan; blame Duncan in comments below.

Also, I am going to be away for a few weeks in 3 top cities - Shanghai, Beijing and Sydney, so do throw me any advice/luck that occurs to you.

Finally, I (finally) got confirmation of my PhD this week. Old news really, but hey.

To revisit old thoughts with a different head...

2006-06-28T09:11:00.000Z

I stumbled across an old review of the book - DC Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea - that shaped my college love affair with natural selection, and it does a damn good job of shaking some of Dennett's grand edifices.

Dennett has long championed the notion that Darwinism might explain why some ideas and styles flourish while others perish.6 Darwinism thus explains not just the biological origin of consciousness and culture, but their changing contents.... why is he ineluctably drawn to the view that cultural change involves some brand of Darwinism? The reason is that he believes natural selection is an "algorithmic process," a blind, formal procedure whose operation is guaranteed to return a certain kind of result. A defining property of an algorithmic process is its "substrate neutrality": An algorithm does a job and returns a result whatever the input. Dennett concludes that natural selection, as an algorithm, is also substrate neutral. One can select between genes on chromosomes, codes in a computer, or ideas in a culture. As long as mutation, replication, and differential survival occur, any substrate can be selected. For instance, ideas can change (mutate), they can spread (replicate), and some can die out while others persist (differential survival), so we would seem to have a substrate suited for selection. Following Dawkins, Dennett claims that the substrate that gets selected in cultural evolution is the "meme," any memorable idea, jingle, or fashion that lasts long enough to get copied by another person.

This substrate neutrality argument is supremely important to Dennett. It -- and nothing else -- explains why selection can be lifted from its historical base in biology. It is what makes Darwinism so dangerous. But Dennett slips here. While it is true that many different kinds of substrate can be selected, it is simply not true that Darwinism works with any substrate, no matter what. Indeed Darwinism can't even explain old-fashioned biological evolution if the hereditary substrate doesn't behave just right. Evolution would quickly grind to a halt, for instance, if inheritance were blending, not particulate. With blending inheritance, the genetic material from two parents seamlessly blends together like different colored paints. With particulate Mendelian inheritance, genes from Mom and Dad remain forever distinct in Junior. This substrate problem was so acute that turn-of-the-century biologists -- all fans of blending inheritance -- concluded that Darwinism just can't work. Modern evolutionary genetics was born in 1930 when Sir Ronald Fisher cracked this problem: Population genetics shows that particulate Mendelian inheritance saves the day. It is just the kind of substrate needed for evolution by natural selection to work.

What, then, about Dennett's memes -- all those "tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes-fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches." Do they show particulate or blending inheritance? Do street fashion and high fashion segregate like good genes, or do they first mix before replicating in magazines or storefronts? Does postmodern architecture reflect a blending of the modernist and classical or the inheritance of distinct LeCorbusier and Vitruvius genes? I do not know the answers to these questions. And neither does Dennett. And neither does anyone else.

The whole review is here.

Dungeon fighting

2006-06-27T12:45:00.000Z

Do not waste your time doing this.

I died in the Dungeon of Judd Sonofbert

I was killed in a rough-walled passage by Ptevis the owlbear, whilst carrying...

the Dagger of Boxninja, the Wand of Aaronace, a Figurine of Shiffer, the Shield of Trooper6, the Crown of Niwandajones, the Shield of Bob Goat, the Sword of Akira, the Wand of Warren Ellis, the Amulet of Burning Wheel, the Shield of Grrm, the Crown of Jhkimrpg, the Dagger of Drivingblind and 144 gold pieces.

Score: 184

Explore the Dungeon of Judd Sonofbert and try to beat this score,
or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...

Minor cleanup

2006-06-23T16:36:00.000Z

I've tidied up the site a bit and added some links to friends who have blogged up recently - on the sidebar at the right.

That is all...

For your consideration, friends, the fourteen kinds of animals:

2006-05-26T17:14:00.000Z

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies

Neu future?

2006-03-20T14:33:00.000Z

Vaughan at yonder Mind Hacks site pointed me to a blog called neurofuture who are holding a contest to coin neologisms around the word neuro. I submitted mine but not sure if they'll get through the moderation, as the site seems pretty transhumanist, leaving my contribution seeming a little mischievous.
Regardless, here are mine:

Neuro-tic: involuntary, even unconscious tendency to bring neuroscience into any conversation.

Neuriposte: making a comeback to based on pseudoscientific speculation as to their neuropsychological makeup: 'that's a very frontal thing to say', 'what a systematiser', 'it seems to me you've not developed your area BA10 :)'. See also Evolutaunt.

Neureality: The belief that we are stepping into a new stage of human existence defined by advances in neuroscience. 'Everything's different now.' Characterised by neuro-tics and when pushed, neuroripostes.

Neurrelavent: Best practise when dealing with a neuriposte or neuro-tic, e.g. 'that's neurrelavent and you're lowering our intelligence just by bringing it up'.

Making the case for Story Games III: Why would you need a rules to make a story together? Why not just talk it through?

2006-03-11T15:09:00.000Z

I've been talking about the attraction of creating your own stories, and the incentives offered by doing it with other people. (It's worth reading these first to get something out of this post.) At first blush, it might seem like doing things in a freewheeling manner is better than worrying about a bunch of rules. Surely, you just get your creative juices flowing, and run with it? One massive brainstorm?

If this appeals, all power to you! However, there are a number of reasons why using a system may make this activity both more creative and fun.

The first was touched on above: system can be actively involved in creating story. It accomplishes this by offering well-focused constraints on what can happen in the story. The constraint "if any character commits a sin, the next step in the story is to focus on the repercussions of that sin" dictates the progress of certain parts of the story, but doesn't determine the outcome (the repercussions could be infinite in breadth). It also provides an over-arching focus - people creating the story are aware that in this story sin is a major feature - a theme or premise, if you will - and introducing it will drive and direct the story.

The second reason relates to the social aspect of creating story. You know where I said that it's very likely that other people will shake up a story just where you wouldn't? If this gave you any misgivings, hey, I'm with you. Without a guiding system, this could be a recipe for fruitless bickering, with everyone confident that their creative vision is the best. Ultimately things could end up unresolved or decided through force of personality, either way with the potential to bring about ill feeling.

With a system? The problem can largely disappear. "Allan can decide everything that happens in part one of the story - but everyone else gets one overrule that they can use to change something they feel strongly about". If you stick to the system, there's really no avenue to argue, and given a basic level of trust among everyone, the sticky points get passed by quick to get to some more great story.

The third reason I'll offer is even broader, on the social aspect of doing stuff. When I said it "can enhance any activity" I'm sure you came up with counterexamples; we all can. Some of this will be because some people are bad eggs, and a bad egg can ruin any activity. It's a shame, but there you go. Avoid. But many other people will be perfectly cool, and potentially great partners in a number of activities, but only if you're on the same page to begin with. If you want your story to avoid graphic violence, or to offer a redemptive view of religion, it's best to make sure everyone knows this. You can agree on these rules at the beginning, in which case they become part of the system you are using, albeit one spoken rather than written, or you can use a rule-set that lays out the creative experience it intends to emphasise, making sure that everyone finds this interesting. In many cases, you do both.

These are some of the ways in which rules, as a formal explicit part of a story-creating system, can be hugely useful. There is another, hugely important part of using rules. This is that it can make the process into a game*. This isn't necessarily so, as systems like Oulipo, or the strictures of a writers workshop demonstrate, but is true for almost every such system that is used for leisure. The reason is obvious: games are fun. And the very best systems utilise the fun of playing games to produce story as an outcome.

*I'm not going to get into the semantics of what a game is, but use the maxim of 'you know it when you see it'.