Green Bamboo

Hurry up and finish

2012-01-12T16:26:00.000-08:00

The end of the term is nigh.

Not nigh enough, though. The term has been dragging painfully to a conclusion. The one bright spot is that we don’t have to come in on Monday. Yeah, Monday is the actual last day of term. Could this Empire be more stupid?

What has term been like this year? Short for one thing. With the Spring Festival being so early, term is ending nearly two weeks before it usually finishes, but that means the second term will drag on even longer. Even so, in spite of a shorter first term, I’m feeling knackered.

It may be an age thing, but getting up at 6.00am while it could still be any time during the hours of darkness has had a worse effect on me than previous years. There’s a reason why I hate alarm clocks: I inevitably wake up before they go off, and that might mean anything up to an hour. I did it twenty years ago and I still do the same today. But, as I said, it’s felt worse this term to be getting up so early and to be arriving at school just as the sun is beginning to rise. It then exacerbates the situation to be stuck at school for the next eight hours.

The Senior 1s did not seem to be the most auspicious group in the beginning because of invidious comparisons with last year’s classes, but in the course of the term, they have got better and could actually be on to get more As than previous classes so long as they put some work in next term.

The Senior 2s have been a disappointing. I landed Classes 3 and 4. Class 3 does have some very good students, but about two-thirds of the class are boys, which has a negative effect on the attitude of the class, and there’s a certain amount of arrogance among them. The problem is that they were meant to concentrate on IELTS and TOEFL this term, do the tests, and then start doing SATs. Instead, they’ve been off doing IELTS, TOEFL and SATs just as they please, and have then been regarding classes as a little pointless.

I admit that the classes have become a little aimless, but I’ve been trying to give them what I think will benefit them, viz. note taking practice and proper vocabulary. They’re generally not good at the former because they lack the level of competence necessary to take good notes. (Very much a case of geniuses at programmable activities [i.e., anything to do with maths]; utter rubbish at thinking; apt to give up without even trying.)

I’ve also given the Senior 2s brief news quizzes, but after several days of doing this, I could not, it seemed, provoke them into familiarising themselves with news stories of the day. In the main I focused on significant stories such as the crisis in the eurozone rather than home news. Nor was I doing this just for my amusement. The little darlings do need to broaden their horizons, but no matter how many times I ask them who Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife is, they’ll never remember that it’s Carla Bruni.

I definitely don’t want to be teaching the Senior 2s when they become Senior 3s next year. They’re already behaving like Senior 3s and are a step away from the upgrade, which is not bothering to come to classes at all. Their thinking tends to go, “There is no exam; therefore it is not important”. Au contraire, children. English is important for you even if you don’t have an exam. But ignorance is bliss, as they say, and the little darlings are so very ignorant.

I suppose I should do some planning for next term. It starts on Tuesday, which is also my worst day.

That's your job

2012-01-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

No, it’s yours.

Oh, bugger. Fred asked me where tomorrow’s English exam paper was. I thought he was dealing with it. Turns out he was taking care of the mock exam for March this year; and thus, we don’t have an exam for tomorrow.

Actually, make that “didn’t have”. I’ve thrown something together this afternoon, but it’ll be a close-run thing with the paper being printed this afternoon.

No one reminded me or asked me about the exam, which is why this didn’t come to light sooner. The confusion which led to this problem is a consequence of the AQM setting end-of-term exams in the past, which is why I thought that’s what Fred was doing.

It’s also another argument for having Adobe Acrobat here at school so that I could pluck pages from this exam and that, and plonk them in a single file, which I could then have sent to Iris so that they could be dispatched directly to Mr Photocopy.

To add insult to injury, I have Friday off because of certain teachers being absent last Saturday through no fault of their own… Let me explain. When we were told that we’d have the Friday before New Year off, all of my colleagues in the office opposite made plans. A few days later, we were having to work on Saturday and would get Monday and Tuesday off. By then, it was too late. As a consequence, I’m not going to be invigilating any exams on Friday, but the English exams are tomorrow, and I can’t dither and delay with the marking. Friday shall be no rest day for me (to parody Alexander Pope slightly).

Man, this is some dangerous acid

2011-12-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

The things kids bring to school.

One of my esteemed colleagues came into the office yesterday morning with a bottle of concentrated nitric acid, which he’d taken off one of the nitwit students who’d brought it to school for reasons which I still can’t fathom. This is the stuff that would be found in research labs, and was a mostly full bottle.

In a civilised country, this would be a rather serious incident, but in the great imperial chicken coop, the concepts of health and safety are the subject of meaningless banners displayed on building sites. The cretinous student in question wandered into my class the following period without the slightest hint of contrition (or an apology for being late) and then seemed to be narrating the entire aftermath for the entertainment of his classmates. No serious consequences will arise from this, of course.

My colleagues in the English Department, whose Chinese is way better than mine, were talking about the concept of common sense in Chinese. I think Fred had been trying to get the A2s to understand the idea. One translation in Chinese is 常识 (chángshí) which means “common knowledge”; another is 判断力 (pànduàn lì) which means “(ability to make a correct) judgement”. Neither seems to quite capture common sense, which isn’t exactly common knowledge and isn’t exactly a judgement.

In fact, translating common sense as “a supposedly sensible belief” would be just as accurate because common sense is only assumed to be correct and can often be shown to be completely wrong. It might also be translated as “supposedly prudent course of action”.

Well, as I said, no course of action will probably be taken. The witless blot who brought the acid will be unable to comprehend that his action was a bad idea; the parents will probably yell a bit and then buy him the latest iPhone.

Motorists' revenge

2011-12-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

But no one will’ve learnt anything.

I was on my way to Yamazaki to buy something for lunch when I found that the intersection at Jiefang Lu was a little blocked because some clown on an electric scooter had had an encounter with a car. I don’t have to scratch my head to guess who was more at fault although the rider of the electric bike doesn’t seem to be injured.

As for the injury I sustained a week ago, the bruise which appeared on my left wrist has turned yellow although the bruise at the base of my thumb is still a dark bluish black. My hand has somewhat greater functionality, but I still get twinges when I try using it the wrong way.

We have tomorrow off, but before that, we must suffer another student concert. I’m tired for the usual reasons and perhaps as a side effect of the antihistamines that I’ve been taking for the allergy/cold/whatever (delete inapplicable answer) which hit me a couple of days ago. My initial diagnosis was an allergy caused by the air con, but all my sneezing has now become a cough, which suggests a cold. The affliction has not been that cold-like because I don’t normally sneeze so much.

Some students came round today dispensing gifts, but there was not much enthusiasm from AS3 and 4. I’m not surprised and not that bothered. I did get a nice card from one girl in AS2 thanking me for remembering her name. She was one of my students last year; bit anonymous.

Red light? What red light?

2011-12-15T20:53:00.000-08:00

I’m the emperor. Red lights apply to other people.

I’m almost across Jiefang Lu yesterday afternoon when some f_cking plonker on an electric scooter comes out of nowhere from my left and cuts across my bows just as I’m accelerating. I slam my brakes on and end up tumbling off my bike, coming down hard on my left hand at the base of the thumb and severely bruising it. When I get up, I find that my bike is upside down, sitting on the seat and handlebars, and the culprit has run off like the snivelling cur that he probably is.

My thumb has been feeling a little better today, but my left hand has minimal functionality. Above wiggling my fingers, there’s not much I can do with my left hand. For example, I can’t grasp things [Mentally? –ed.] or pick things up where some bending of the wrist is involved; and mastur… I mean, reading spiritually uplifting volumes is rather difficult.

The base of my thumb is swollen and my fingers feel puffy as well, and I’m back on the diclofenac sodium, which may have spared me an uncomfortable night last night.

I give up

2011-12-06T22:21:00.001-08:00

I have no desire to go to the (icy) barren wastes.

I wanted to switch to the IB programme for a couple of reasons. One is the lack of intellectual depth in EFL programmes. Another is the lack of motivation among students. A third reason is the opportunity to teach some real English (or to put it another way, teach English as an academic subject).

But that’s not going to happen because I was wondering whether one of my esteemed colleagues would be making the switch to teach business or English. Since another of my esteemed colleagues has been approached to teach business, Colleague 1 would be teaching English. I can’t compete with Colleague 1 because he has a wife, family and home here. I cannot imagine that I’d be appointed ahead of him even although moving is such an enormous pain i’ th’ arse for me. (Possibly, though I don’t know for certain, I’d have to pay for the move myself.)

There is an added complication because one of the centres in the programme is leaving it, and the teachers there all want to come here. The teachers from a second centre are also clamouring to come here because, perhaps, they don’t want to be sent to some remote outpost of the school in question. Thus, Colleague 1 may not be in the frame, but the outside interest in this school doesn’t help my chances either.

I could still apply to switch to the IB programme, but then I’m at the mercy of the Overlords, who might send me to some frigid outpost or a remote one or one which is both.

Wuxi has not been as bad as I originally feared. It’s a bit dull and boring; it’s quite polluted; but it’s not entirely devoid of things which keep foreigners happy (cheese, wine, proper bread, bars, an international airport). However, it’s also possible to end up somewhere which has none of these things. I have no desire to be dispatched to a place which is wanting those things which make life here just that little bit less intolerable.

Where's your plan?

2011-11-30T23:04:00.001-08:00

Plan? What plan? I’m a writing genius!

I started marking the AS writing this morning, but I’m not putting much effort into it because their writing, which is definitely more sophisticated than that of the PAL students, is typically annoyingly inane. They’ve been taught to write vacuous waffle at New Oriental or English First using words and phrases for every occasion, which sound impressive, but say little or nothing as they waste ink and consume space. Actually, that, in my experience, also suits undergraduates quite well. I know lots of them like writing blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, we’re not interested in undergrads today.

We gave the little darlings the opportunity to produce a plan, but because they’re ever so good at writing, they don’t need to plan. Some of them have enough focus to be able to maintain a discussion about an idea for a paragraph although the internal mechanics won’t necessarily be that good. Coherence is usually all right (or sufficient; sentences are rarely incomprehensible, but ideas may get butchered), but cohesion tends to be another matter. The transition from one idea to the next can often be abrupt although outright non sequiturs are less frequent.

I see, though, my day is over, which sends me off to Carrefour to do some shopping. I’d much rather go home and have a snooze, but dying of starvation is a bit of a bitch as the saying goes.

[What happened to the title?]

2011-11-24T18:22:00.001-08:00

Roll out the clichés; we’ll have a cliché of fun.

It’s monthly test time. Yawn. Another opportunity for me to see the same errors my little darlings made a month ago.

I tried to teach them how to write interesting responses to the writing tasks, but they’ve reverted to type and been dull and boring. Unfortunately, I can’t mark them down for being dull and boring, or regurgitating something half-remembered from Chinese English classes. Yes, once again I’m dishing out good marks for dog turds.

They’re also doing the usual thing of mixing up articles and letters. Knowing that they like to do this sort of thing, I’ve tried to make it clear that an article ≠ letter, but I’ve been doing that for years.

One nitwit has just written that snake charmers might be entitled to government acid. She probably got overexcited or was busy thinking about the Chemistry exam. Another nitwit talks about the younger generation becoming more interested in working with snacks (common error for “snakes”). The same dunce has just told me China is a clean country. Not round here it ain’t.

Fortunately, I have little to invigilate because we had SAT training yesterday and today, though I don’t need to go, there’s IELTS training, which has given me ample time to get marking, thus ensuring that my weekend isn’t completely ruined.

After the fall of the Roman Empire

2011-11-18T22:41:00.001-08:00

Is the EU just more of the same?

I’ve been wondering about the EU over the past couple of days. I’ve long supposed that its creation was to prevent more European wars of the same magnitude as the First and Second, but I’ve also started wondering more recently whether, subconsciously, the EU is just more of the same going back to the days of the Holy Roman Empire. That is, some European country wants to be the predominant power in Europe, starting, I think, with the Germans once the Dark Ages were over and done with.

The Spanish had a bit of a go as well, and then the French from the late 18th century before the Germans reformed the band. Then someone thought that diplomacy might be a better idea than fighting horribly destructive wars which had become tainted with unpleasant political ideologies. Either way, it’s all about whether the French or the Germans get to run Europe. The British don’t really want anyone to run Europe, hence we don’t mind the pretence that the French and Germans are working in harmony when really they’re continuing the manoeuvres of centuries.

Mr Shouty Person, the Sonneteer

2011-11-16T22:23:00.001-08:00

Zum Befehl, Herr Oberst!

At some time in the past, and more recently, I’ve had the distinct impression that a lot of sonnets can be quite shouty sorts of things. They seem to have a high percentage of imperatives, which the poet employs to berate the object of his desire like some mere servant.

Samuel Daniel’s first sonnet to Delia isn’t so bad. He doesn’t start shouting until the third quatrain. In the second sonnet, he’s shouting from the very beginning “Go, wailing verse… Present the image… Witness your father’s grief…” Nag, nag, nag.

It’s not just Daniel because I’m sure this is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in passing before. Perhaps the shouty ones were written by schoolboys (although they were probably 16-year-olds at university; same thing back in the 16th and 17th centuries), who aren’t known for their moderation.

The next day. I thought I’d use the first sonnet from Michael Drayton’s Idea series as the next sonnet to torment my little darlings. The qualitative difference in writing between Daniel and Drayton in noticeable. As I was reading on Bartleby in the antiquated Cambridge History of English and American Lit., English sonneteers aren’t exactly famous for their originality, and I’ve been wondering whether Daniel was producing inept translations in which he tries a little too hard to follow the original.

Daniel’s fourth sonnet to Delia feels a little muddled.

These plaintive verse, the posts of my desire,
Which haste for succour to her slow regard,
Bear not report of any slender fire,
Forging a grief to win a fame’s reward.
Nor are my passions limned for outward hue,
For that no colours can depaint my sorrows;
Delia herself, and all the world may view
Best in my face where cares have tilled deep furrows.
No bays I seek to deck my mourning brow,
O clear-eyed rector of the holy hill!
My humble accents bear the olive bough
Of intercession but to move her will.
These lines I use t’ unburden mine own heart;
My love affects no fame nor ’steems of art.

The first part seems to be about some sort of artifice (“forge” here seems to mean “create a fake”). Then there’s something about how painting would fail to capture the poet’s mood, which can be seen better in his face. He doesn’t want praise for his efforts because he’s writing for Delia’s grace (as Chaucer would’ve said). The poet isn’t after the Man-Booker Prize.

I’m not really convinced that this is anything but clunky and strained. It lacks a feeling of cohesion even if the basic idea, that the sonnets are an expression of love and not an attempt to win literary repute, is clear once you’ve waded through it.

You know it's November when

2011-11-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing much happens.

The temperature seems to be beginning to take that late autumn tumble when it goes from being cool to being cold. Our gradual shift to winter seems to be being a little more benign here. Two years ago, we had snow on the 1st of November and winter lasted until late April with rare bouts of pleasantness that were false dawns on each occasion. Last year the shift to winter was less dramatic, but it’s been awhile since one of those years when the weather has been reasonably tolerable to the end of December before the winter freeze in January.

It’s been a day of new stuff. New version of Freegate, which I’ll use from home while I can; new version of Firefox, but I’m inclining to Chrome; updates for Windows; and a new version of Font Creator. Thanks to the first of these I was able to watch the Need for Speed: The Run videos on gamespot, which are otherwise blocked. (“I was f_ckin’ rubbish at Hot Pursuit,” admitted Emperor Jintao, “which is why I had those f_ckers blocked. F_ck you, bitches! I am da Emperor!”) Most of the videos on gamespot are viewable, but often slow to appear. I had to get the trailers at school.

I’m fed up with the crappy connection from home. As I’ve said in another blog entry, ten years ago when I was trapped in a world of modems, I accepted that my connection speed wasn’t good enough. Ten years later, I still see “Watch the video” and because I expect that it’ll 2.5 minute or so for one second of video to appear (I kid you not), I don’t bother. That’s not how it ought to be, but you live in a Third World country with 19th century mores and a medieval attitude to the rest of the planet, and you get the same sort of connection speeds which St Bede had to put up with in the 8th century. (“The bloody Irish have broadband,” complained Bede one evening.)

Well, time to make tea.

Because I can still do so

2011-11-01T18:03:00.000-07:00

Another pointless post.

What the hell is wrong with the Greeks? Mind you, what the hell was wrong with Europe pretending that the EU could adopt a single currency all those years ago. I may not be an economist, but even I wondered how the economies of such a disparate group of countries were meant to function successfully together. I’ve also wondered on other occasions about the point of the EU. 66 years ago after World War II, it might’ve made sense after 145 years of the French and the Germans squabbling over who got to be Top Nation in Europe. I don’t believe there was any harm in Western European countries working closely together (which was undoubted spurred by the Cold War), but a united Europe makes less sense than a civilised one where the wars of the past millennia and a half become part of history.

Meanwhile, there’s been another spate of stories about hacking and fingers being pointed at the Empire. “We never done it,” the government whines. “We’re opposed to hacking.” No one should actually believe either statement. In the 19th century, the Empire seems to have been described all too frequently as a nation of thieves and liars, but this was not just duplicity practised on foreigners, but also on their fellow citizens. The biggest (?) irony of the 19th century must be Hong Kong, which the imperial government probably thought was a piece of useless crap far from the corridors of power that would never thrive. Instead, Hong Kong is a 21st century city while the rest of the Empire wallows in backwardness.

I’m going to give AS3 some newsademic today and see how they react to it. I predict their reaction will be one of indifference. TOEFL bores me as much as it bores them, but I live in a no-win world. If I tried to give them some real English, they’d give up because it’s beyond their capabilities.

Will I ever have a decent night's sleep again?

2011-10-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Oh, bugger! 4am again.

I do not sleep well. It takes me ages to get to sleep and if I’m being woken by an alarm clock, I tend to wake up early in anticipation of the alarm going off. Sometimes that can be a little too early.

This week things have got worse. I'm guessing I’ve waking up at about 4am every day this week, and I cannot for the life of me get to sleep again – not properly. I might drift off a little, but the damage has been done. It has become a pernicious habit over which I have no control. Normally, there’s one night, often a Thursday, it seems, when the pattern is broken, but not this week. I hoped I might get through the whole night without waking up too early. No such luck.

It’s no good going to bed sooner, and I don’t want to go to bed later either because of the lead-in time before I actually fall asleep.

I’m also not good at leaping out of bed, either. I need time to make the transition between being half-awake and actually awake. I need to feel that I control the pace of my mornings, which I don’t when I have the alarm clock bleating at me like a persistent sheep. I need to have a long, leisurely start to the day, and eventually, when I feel awake, then I’m ready.

Right, I’d better post this before my Internet assistant fails again. Bloody imperial censorship. It’s now buggering the Guardian as well.

No cliché was left unclichéd

2011-10-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

Robots and their automated responses.

All the writing which I have seen out of this year’s PAL classes so far has been a veritable fest of clichés. Their answers to the first writing task in the monthly test were almost all identical as they wheeled out the same dull stuff about not having seen some nameless relative for a long time. The response to the second writing task was a little less uniform.

Anyway, because of all the marking, I’ve only just looked at some of the practice writing I had them do before the test. That, too, is larded with clichés, almost all delivered in the same order, and yet there’s no conspiracy here. One student didn’t do all the writing while the rest copied.

As anyone who’s taught Chinese students knows, they are completely lacking in imagination. As far as I’m aware, Chinese class doesn’t occasionally involve the teacher saying, “Write me a story.” When I’ve asked students why they’re not writing anything, a typical answer is that they don’t know what to write.

I was thinking about the matter of planning and that this is not something I’ve taught well. The problem is that you show students what to do, whether it’s a brainstorm with bubbles or lists with indenting, and they then completely ignore that step and just start writing (probably because the clichés are dripping off their pens).

Last year I thought they could forego planning for short pieces of writing between 100 and 150 words, but this year I think I need to make them plan for the sake of variety. In Exam Exercise 6, the planning is done for students, but just lacks specific details, which are then replaced by clichés in their writing.

My intention is to have students plan and then put up a variety of their ideas on the board to see whether I can get them used to the idea that they don’t all have to think in the same way. Sad to say, I see the hill and the water that I’m trying to push up it.

Live Journal live again

2011-10-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

Unless you’re using Firefox. Sort of.

At school I was able to append material to existing entries on my Live Journal blog, but I was unable to post anything new. At home, I still can’t access Live Journal at all via Firefox, even via mail messages advising me of unwelcome comments. That has been the means by which I’ve been visiting LJ from school.

For want of any solution to the problem at home, I switched to Chrome and – make surprised face now – everything worked. I could log in to LJ, see my blog, and post a new entry. I double checked with IE9 and met with the same success.

What is it about my version of Firefox at home that’s preventing me from getting near Live Journal? I thought it might be noscript, but disabling that made no difference. I wondered whether some cookie was affecting access, but deleting ones with .ru in them didn’t help. But… but… Doh! I should’ve deleted the LJ cookies.

Done.

And?

There’s my blog… No, I can’t log in. Nor can I get to the main Live Journal page.

Well, it seems that you should ignore almost everything I’ve just said. At the time of writing, I can’t see Live Journal with Chrome or IE9; I can see it with Firefox, but I can’t log in. I thought the problem had been resolved, but perhaps I happened to get lucky. There’s one other thing I can try, but so long as I’m on blogger, I can’t use it. That is, I can’t log in to LJ because I’m using my Internet assistant to post an entry here.

And what was the solution, if it was even that? Last night, I found that if I reloaded the page in Chrome, Live Journal was working again. The same proved true in Firefox and IE9; and my Internet assistant was off. That was last night.

This morning, Firefox just doesn’t want to know; Chrome doesn’t want to know; IE9 doesn’t want to know. I think the problem may be my Internet assistant, and the way it functions. Anyway, for the moment, I want to see the real Internet and not just the bits which some bunch of brain-dead, zombie-ruling, peasant-brained despots want me to see.

And the answer actually is… It was my Internet assistant. Quite why it buggers up access to Live Journal, I don’t know, but I can guess. I’m now hoping that LJ will behave itself because since that’s the only blog Linda can see, it’s going to end up seeing me a little more often.

Another update for my little Internet helper

2011-10-20T03:40:00.000-07:00

The new version.

After several days of reasonable good service, the forces of ignorance seem to have been trying their hardest to strangle my Internet assistant. However, this afternoon, I managed to get the latest version, and things seem to be fairly steady at the moment. Once again, I’m able to see the real Internet as I ought to be able to see it. If the Chinese want to stick their heads in the sand and their government want them to stick their heads in the sand, they’re welcome to wallow in their ignorance.

In fact, there’s something disturbingly wrong with countries whose governments are so obsessed with keeping their citizens so ignorant. In China it’s because the government is obsessed with keeping power at all costs; though because the population is so zombie-like already, they could unblock most of the Internet, and it wouldn’t, I believe, make any real difference. The number of people who hate blocks on Facebook, YouTube and other non-porn sites is, I suspect, tiny. I’ve always maintained that the people hurt most of all are the poor sodding expats.

Mind you, it’s a little disturbing to look at the supposed bastions of democracy and wonder whether they’re that different at all. Both America and China are large countries with parochial populations, which barely look beyond their own noses. Both Britain and China have governments which seem to believe in their divine right to govern for eternity. The Tories always disgusted me with their belief that they were the natural party of government, and then Nu Labour aped them (or possibly did what any British government would do, viz. claim that the God of the Christians had anointed them to rule forever).

I’m tired; I’m not in the best mood.

A sea of toothpaste

2011-10-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

And only another couple of kilometres to go.

It’s been a slow business escaping from the choking tendrils of unwarranted censorship today. After working so well, my little helper has been choking badly today, and if I can post this entry, I’ll be very lucky. The connection to reality keeps coming and going, which makes me wonder whether the hysterical reactionaries are fighting back in their ongoing campaign to keep the benighted populace of the inGlorious Motherland in witless ignorance.

I finished marking the PAL tests at the weekend and have started on AS, which is always painful. The PAL classes did quite well for the level at which they were being assessed, but that tells me that they’re good at this level and would, on average, get a C, which is the maximum mark they can attain in the Core exam. As I noted on my WordPress blog, their writing was boringly identical, and the range of marks was typically 7 to 9 with a few 10s. But it’s also worth noting that if their writing had been marked according to the criteria for the Extended exam, most of them would still only be getting 7 to 9 with some of the 10s possibly deserving higher marks.

In other words, students have no real idea just how proficient they are in English because both classes averaged the equivalent of an A in absolute terms. In fact, most of the PAL students are no more than Cs. I must also keep this in mind in later exams so that if I do give them an Extended exam, I’m not artificially inflating their marks by giving them 6 or more for Content and Language because that seems about right.

Where the PAL students almost all produced the same informal letter and mere variations on the same formal letter, the AS students are capable of producing a wider range of academically mediocre responses to IELTS writing task 2. They are academically better than this year’s PAL students, and their English is more sophisticated grammatically (excluding semantics, which often takes a bit of a beating), but the actual content goes from being reasonably well structured to a muddle of space-filling tangents and disparate ideas. Conclusions often agree and disagree with the topic (an aspect of consumerism).

This sort of writing is a pain because the reader has to struggle to see a clear line of thought. The better ones try, but sooner or later, they manage to make a mess of things somewhere. The worse ones have an appallingly bad grasp of the topic and I wonder how many references to the iPhone 4S I’m going to be seeing.

I’ve decided, though, that I don’t do enough about planning. I sort of let students get away with things at IGCSE level because even they don’t really need to have a formal plan for writing 100-150 words. In fact, it would help with the exam if they had to show their planning just as they have to show their working in maths and other subjects. Unfortunately, when I do remind them to plan, they hear me say, “Now write your paragraph”; and once they’ve done, they hear themselves say, “Perfect. I don’t need to check it or revise it or anything.”

I’m having an idea for future classes, partly to make them plan and partly to try and prevent them from all writing exactly the same response to the writing task. (Though watch that fail miserably.)

Live Journal or Dead Journal?

2011-10-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

A lunchtime update.

I’m using lunch as an excuse to add some further information about the current state of Live Journal, but I should really be ploughing through lunch and getting on with marking some tests while at the same time enjoying a horrible little headache.

There’s a story about Live Journal on Global Voices which offers some hints about the current cranky state of the service. I don’t know whether everyone is banging their head against a brick wall trying to access their blogs or anyone else’s. The Information Policy site has this post from early August about the mistreatment of Live Journal. It looks like the Russian authorities (though which authorities is another matter) are probably to blame for the current state of affairs and that Live Journal is about to become Dead Journal.

17.10.11. The latest update is that I was able to update an LJ post and access most of the site, but I was unable to post anything new.

18.10.11. Still unable to post new entries on LJ, but was able to edit one. So, nothing new to report.

It's been a long week

2011-10-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

Let’s say stupid things.

I’ve just been reading Meeting signals pressure on microblogs from the China Media Project. It’s about the new State Internet Information Office and its antics. This paragraph is classic Doublespeak

At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ …” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.”

Which is basically saying, “We must utterly control everything to the sub-atomic level as usual”. Don’t even get me started on “management by rule of law”, which means “application of the law when it suits us and neglect of the law when it doesn’t”. “Microblogs serving society”? I think it really means, “microblogs serving the imperial government”.

The impression I have of Weibo and Twitter is that they go where the Zeitgeist of the moment takes them. But Nanny will want millions of posts which say, “I’m sorry to hear about the rail crash. I know the government is working hard to deal with the matter.” I can imagine the poster now with the three kinds of proles (factory workers, peasant farmers, and migrant workers) standing fanned out with monotone rays of sunlight behind them, and the main caption reading, “The Internet: Safe, Dull, Anodyne”.

I don’t know whether this is going to mean more frustrated expats as even less of the Web becomes viewable or whether the main focus is on the Intranet.

While WordPress is out, I don’t know what Live Journal is. It doesn’t seem to be out, and a website I found this morning, which monitors whether websites are up or down, had it performing solidly. I can only wonder if this has something to do with Freegate and the way it operates, but I’m not sure. LJ doesn’t like me visiting whether I use Freegate or not.

Not sure that WordPress is out of the woods itself. The tabs on the composing page weren’t doing what they, and when I tried some editing, they behaved in the same fashion.

Waaah! Waaah! Names will ever hurt me

2011-10-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Grow up, Nanny.

Last night Internet access kept cutting out and some time just before 11pm, Google got blocked and I lost access again.

This morning, things weren’t much better. At first access was all right. I could see Google again, but when I went to The Guardian, I couldn’t get past the main page, and I then lost Internet access again. The message claimed that my username and password weren’t being recognised.

Just before I came to school, I did manage to get online again, but Google was blocked once more. It looks like we’re in for a few days of disruption because the hypocritical Chinese government is having another infantile tantrum at Google.

So what's the matter with Live Journal?

2011-10-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

Dose of the flu?

I did a little experiment last night, posting to WordPress using IE9, Firefox and Chrome. Apart from the WP toolbar being quirky with Firefox and Chrome, there were no further problems.

Live Journal has remained quirky today. From home I still can’t access LJ or if I can, it’s temporary. I can see some parts of the site, but not others, and then the former join the latter. From school I was able to edit an entry, but when I tried to post a new entry, I hit a brick wall. The odd thing is, it doesn’t matter whether I’m using Freegate or not: I can’t post new entries on my LJ blog. When I did manage to see the LJ status page, it claimed all was well. Mind you, that may be like Windows saying, “This device is working properly” when you rather suspect it’s probably doing no such thing.

I’m hoping the current situation is temporary although I don’t know where the problem lies.

Of the various blog hosts, what’s still accessible from this darkest of dark holes on the Internet? If we class LJ with the damned, then there’s nothing almost nothing left. I did try Yahoo!’s 360 service awhile back, but because they’re the toadies of the imperial government and because one of my posts got nuked, I’ve ignored them ever since. Also, who ever runs across a Yahoo! blog? What about a pay-per-view blog? Well, that’s my LJ blog. I have thought that pay-per-view blogs might be immune from Nanny’s strictures because they’d be well beyond the pocket of most imperial citizens, but that’s just a piece of personal mythology.

If I don’t look at the big providers, where else do I look? A friend of mine uses the New Zealand-based blogtown, but the question will remain whether it can be accessed from the Empire without Freegate or a VPN or simply by leaving and going to a civilised country.

Bloody hell. There’s even something called edublogs, which isn’t really what I’m after although that’s not to say it might not be useful in a professional capacity.

I think I might wait and see what happens to LJ, but things are looking rather gloomy on that front. I’m quite happy to use blogger and WordPress through the magic of Freegate, and it’s not as if Linda learns anything from my blogs which we don’t discuss via qq or Skype.

All Unquiet on the Blogging Front

2011-10-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Server maintenance.

This morning things have gone from bad to server maintenance. I was able to see my WordPress blog, but when I tried to go to the dashboard, there was a lot of wheel spin before a message popped up saying that some work was being done on the server.

Over on Live Journal, I cannot still see the blog at all and get an unhelpful error message. In fact, the entire site is now inaccessible; unlike last night, I can’t even access the page for deleting unwelcome comments.

So as usual, I’m left scratching my head wondering whether it’s coincidence that the only two accessible blog hosts have been buggered (one blocked, the other apparently malfunctioning).

I was able to post an entry on WordPress a little later this morning, but after some initial success from school with Live Journal, the service is inaccessible. I can see my LJ blog, I can’t do anything else. Later. Now trying Chrome. Access to LJ possible but painful without my little helper. Access to WordPress possible only with my little helper, but very painful trying to post. Firefox may not be the problem I thought it was.

Just to make matters worse this morning, when I went into the kitchen, I thought my bottle of water might’ve leaked, but it then became apparent that the leak probably came from some pipe in the wall. On top of that, the hot water in the bathroom has also been faulty for a few months now probably because the washer has perished, and the flushing mechanism in the loo hasn’t worked since it was replaced because the job wasn’t done properly in the first place.

WordPress is off

2011-10-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

Another victim falls to self-delusional paranoia.

I was at school this afternoon when Linda told me that she’d been unable to access my WordPress blog (Green Bamboo) all day. I checked and yes, sure enough, without that little program to help me get past the big, bad wolf, WP had been blocked. I’m surprised that the service has been accessible for so long because in the past it’s been one of the victims. If blogspot has been buggered, then WP has probably also been buggered.

What’s the deal this time? Well, it might be mainly because of the spat about a Mr D. Lama of Tibet trying to visit South Africa for his friend’s birthday only to be prevented from going for the most doubtful reasons. That’s top of my list, but I have also seen stories about the imperial government getting even more paranoid about social media. Although that might specifically refer to Weibo and other Twitter rip-offs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nanny was skimming through the list of blog hosts and found that WP was still open to the 老百姓. The old girl probably blew a fuse.

Anyway, has WP finally gone the way of blogspot or is this some bout of temporary extreme paranoia?

I’m now having problems with Live Journal, but that may be something else and I need to do a little experiment.

Later. Actually, the reason for the block may have something to do with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China, which the BBC called (coyly) the 100th anniversary of the deposing of the last emperor.

Meanwhile, the problem with LJ persists and I’ve been having problems posting to WP. I can do a bunch of admin stuff on both sites, was able to post an entry on LJ, but couldn’t post a revised entry on WP. Seems a little strange that those two services should both be having very similar problems at the same time.

Later than later. I can access bits of LJ, but now cannot log on to the site. WordPress seemed to come right, but there are still quirky problems with the text editing box not loading properly or disappearing if I switch from one tab to the other. The site is, of course, still blocked from China.

The scales have fallen from my eyes

2011-10-08T04:58:00.000-07:00

English is a multifarious subject.

I’ve suddenly realised something. I was having a look at PAL 2’s Learner Diaries today. Last week before the holiday, we started a unit with a food theme while, unknown to me, the little darlings were also doing a unit about chocolate in their Chinese English class. What have I suddenly realised? They mistook the theme of the unit for the subject of study. The pupils in my classes for the past ten years have probably thought that English class was actually a kind of pot pourri of subjects. I may be trying to teach them English, which is likely to be thematised, but I suspect that they don’t understand the object of the exercise.

The food vocabulary at the start of Unit 3 is just vocabulary per se, but I wouldn’t be surprised if students expected to be tested on it specifically whereas the actual focus of Unit 3 is the writing of an informal letter about a trip to a restaurant. (09.10.11 Lo and behold! in one of the Learner Diaries I saw this morning, a student specifically stated that she expected to be tested on the food mentioned in Unit 3.)

The book tends to build up to the main exercise with various preliminary activities. It ought to clearly flag the main exercise because by the time students have had another crack at practice for Exam Exercises 1 and 2 or have done some more speaking or listening practice (all focusing on the particular topic of the unit), they’ve forgotten what they’re really meant to be doing in the first place.

I understand the point of building things up because students are practising skills for other parts of the exam while they’re being primed for the main exercise. But they can’t remember what that is, and as the book drags on and my interest flags as well, I forget to mention that there is a point.

Of course, if we gave them a textbook where they had to do every exercise 500 times without any of the preparatory exercises, they’d probably be happier even although it wouldn’t really improve their chances.

There's the barrel; there are the fish

2011-10-07T04:38:00.000-07:00

Fire!

I was in one of those tacky little market shops in Chengdu yesterday where I saw a card which said “Thinking for you”. Must be the one the imperial government sends out at Christmas.

Yeah, I know. Too easy to take a swipe at this one.

I had no idea Steve Jobs had died. Millions in the Empire will be mourning his passing as the purveyor of modern-day shiny beads, which distracted so many of the nation’s youths. The government is probably more upset than anyone else. Why think about how rotten the system is when you can have a nice, shiny iPad?

The other news item which I missed because I was away was the quashing of the convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kerchner. I’ve been sceptical about the pair’s claims of innocence, but I’m also not missing the point that there does seem to have been sufficient uncertainty to undermine the certainty of the original conviction.

I don’t like the sound of Knox’s reception back in the States. There should be a very dark cloud over both her and Sollecito for years to come. There’s also the matter of Rudy Guede, who does seem to have been left in the lurch, but I believe he confessed, did he not? I don’t know where Italian law stands on confessions, but if the other two defendants have been acquitted, Guede’s confession cannot be sound.

Three-score and two years ago

2011-10-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Party time!

Yes, it’s that day again when the Empire celebrates the occasion when the new emperor stepped up to the microphone in Tiananmen Square in 1949, took a deep breath and said, “Would the owner of the Audi A6 who’s left his car outside Zhongshan Park please move it as it’s blocking the entrance.” There was a pause. This was not the announcement the crowd was expecting. “Oh, shit! That’s my car. Sorry about this.” (The headline in The Daily Propagandist the next day was ‘Grateful nation gives emperor Audi A6’.)

And when he got back to the mic, he spent three and half dull hours reminding everyone who wasn’t a.) the new emperor of the Chinese Empire or b.) rich and important that they should obey the law.

“Coming up next, the Hundred Flowers Campaign in which I’ll trick everyone into revealing what they really think about the new regime and how it’s the same as the old one, and then I’ll destroy their lives. And if you think that’s fun, wait till you see what I have in mind for you next.”

While Britain has been roasting, the weather here has gone downhill and probably won’t be climbing back up any time soon. It seems that we may be in for another long winter.

What are we going to do now, Papa Smurf?

2011-09-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

“Let’s have a sports day.”

Sports days in the Empire always seem to coincide with the threat of rain, and this week, we’ve been threatened with rain all week, rain that didn’t arrive until yesterday evening. It would appear that we can blame Typhoon Nesat, which smacked the Philippines around and then Hong Kong.

I arrived at school this morning expecting to be teaching, but around morning exercise time we got word that the sports days were back on in spite of the increasingly heavy rain. I’m a little surprised at the decision, but I suspect that the school hierarchy schedules sports days so that they can go off on their hols a little early.

Right now, the students are either huddling their umbrellas in the stands or taking part in some events on the running track.

I’m stuck here mainly because I want to avoid being rained on more often than I can possibly avoid. But with the hols starting tomorrow, and having done all the necessary preparations for the resumption of classes, I don’t have a lot to do.

I’ve spent the morning mucking about on Google+, Google Reader, Facebook and Scribd with which I renewed my acquaintance last night. That, too, is blocked, although because Issuu isn’t, I wonder whether Scribd’s connection with Facebook caused it to be removed from the menu. I’ve got Linda on qq, but apart from that, there’s not much else for me to do.

Holy blogroll, Batman!

2011-09-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

Random, not religious.

I started clicking on the Next blog link without logging on to Green Bamboo. What did I get? Religious nutjobs. I clicked on the link again. There was another; and another; and another. What’s wrong with you people? I want random blogs written by sane, rational people. Why would Google think that I’d want to see a bunch of blogs by barking mad religious types?

Ah, a little light comes on. It’ll be because my blogroll includes the British Humanist Association and Investigating Atheism, and for some reason a lot of people think that atheism must be some sort of alt. religion like Buddhism, for example. It’s not. Atheists don’t believe in disbelief as if it’s something that we worship. We just don’t ascribe life, the universe and everything to some alternative to the flying spaghetti monster, but rather to scientific principles.

Born – live – reproduce – die. That’s it. In between, we may achieve something which leads to lasting fame, but for most of us, we pass into history without having had any significant impact on existence. That’s the way life is, and there’s no point in getting fussed about it.

The economy

2011-09-24T22:26:00.000-07:00

Verge of disaster or business as usual?

I’m not an economist with a special interest in China, but I have been seeing stories about the Chinese economy faltering. This is of some concern to me because the students in my programme come from some very wealthy families and my job depends on these people, their capacious wallets, and their love of conspicuous consumption.

I’ve been wondering whether the two flats flanking my place are anything to go by. Neither of them has been occupied in a long, long time, and when people are there, they seem to be using the place as a matter of convenience. Someone turns up in the flat adjacent to this room to use the shower, but no one seems to live there. The other flat has occasional visitors, and seems, on occasion, to be lent out to people on a temporary basis. At the moment, I’m guessing it’s being used by Mr Shag-on-the-Side and Miss Concubine. Either that or these two like washing their underwear.

But neither flat has been permanently occupied for months now. The family which used to live on one side barely ever seemed to use the place and were often there only late at night. Possibly, the place was temporary because they were on the bridge side of the building, which must make that flat quite noisy, I guess. It’s also possible, I suppose, that some people are chasing the fashionable place to be or because of the likely oversupply of places, they can be fussy about where they live. The other flat next to mine is probably even colder than this place in winter, although it may be easier to heat.

Are the presence of these empty flats indicative of the housing market or also symptoms of an economy which is no longer charging into the future? At the moment, I’m a little more inclined to them being indicative of the housing market rather than of the economy; but I’ve been wondering what signs I might see around me which give me a hint of the state of the true state of the Chinese economy.

It is a little difficult because in the two years since I came to Wuxi, the city has started building a Metro system, huge swathes of old buildings have been demolished, and there are massive developments all over the city. Wuxi is also a rich place in Chinese terms with an average income of ¥81,000 pa, although that’s probably buoyed up by the people at the top with insanely large incomes. As I’ve said elsewhere, about half the city has been demolished and is being rebuilt, and the other half is waiting to be demolished. In other words, Wuxi seems not to feel the effects of economic problems elsewhere in the world, but there may be signs if I knew what I was looking for.

Check out the irony

2011-09-24T04:27:00.000-07:00

Rebellion is never justifiable, is it?

I’ve just been reading an article on The Economist about China’s attitude to the rebels in Libya and its wibbly-wobbly approach to dealing with the rebellion there. It includes one of those deathless lines, viz.:

It does not want to send signals at home that rebellion can ever be justified.

Let’s think. What happened the last time there was a change of government in China? Oh that’s right. A small number of people decided that by violently opposing the previous regime, which itself had not gained office through a popular vote, they had the legitimate right to govern the Empire. Did they bother asking everyone else what they thought?

While we’re talking about irony, why are the Mainlanders complaining about the Americans selling posh kit to the Taiwanese? They should be quite pleased because Beijing doesn’t have to spend 一角 on the defence of Taiwan which, as we know, is part of China. (True, but a stupid truth.) Since the Taiwanese are paying for all this new gear, it means the top brass on the Mainland can spend more money on SUVs and S-class Mercs. Thus, the American arms industry makes some money; Taiwan can contribute to China’s defence; and the military on the Mainland can buy some more nice luxury cars.

I think that’s a little too much irony for one post.

For the sake of it

2011-09-23T01:17:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to say, but this is the Internet.

The financial world is going to hell. Again. And what can most of us do about it? Nothing. Europe seems to be about to slide down the toilet and even the Empire is apparently wobbling a bit.

Meanwhile, there are particles which might just be able to exceed the speed of light. Confirmation pending.

Amanda Knox might yet be released from prison. As on other occasions, I have no idea whether we’re being conned into believing she’s actually innocent or whether there really isn’t the proof to secure a certain conviction. I’ve seen one article, in The Guardian, which went into why the conviction was sound; but most of the time, overtly or covertly, the assumption is that the conviction was, at least, unsound.

Meanwhile, the Americans are executing people on allegedly flimsy grounds and blocking Amnesty International writing campaigns. It’s also further proof that Amnesty International isn’t partisan. It leaves the Empire in an awkward position. I’m sure the mandarins would like to crow about America’s discomfiture, but they don’t want to be seen siding with AI. Ah, irony.

24.09.11 I said “meanwhile” one time too many, didn’t I?

Tick, tick, tick

2011-09-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Or tock, tock, tock.

My access to the real Internet has been a little intermittent so far. I’ve had some quite good runs, but also occasions when nothing is getting through. It probably depends on the amount of traffic; and even if only a small percentage of Internet users in the Empire are surfing on authorised sites outside the prison walls, a small percentage of them using the same service as me is still quite a lot of people.

As a consequence, posts here may be few and far between both because there isn’t always something pointless to say and because I haven’t necessarily been able to access the site. Right now, having got access to blogspot for the first time today, I’ve now lost it again, and even if I get it back, it won’t last.

There, it’s back. I should go while I still can. No, it’s gone, and I’m having no luck getting through. Back. No, damn, gone again. Bugger! Total wipe-out. And there it goes again.

23.09.11 The ending to yesterday’s entry was abrupt because I had to post it when I had the chance. Things are a little better this morning, but I’d better not delay too much.

Nothing personal

2011-09-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

It’s not deliberate, but it is stupid.

Now that I’ve been able to view the real Internet again (within certain technical limitations; access comes and goes), I’ve found that neither the Phil Soc site nor the downloads section of the pgn mentor site have vanished. Both have almost certainly been blocked not because the imperial government hates the Phil Soc or chess games in pgn format, but because they’ve been taken out by the primitive Third-World software which does the blocking.

The Phil Soc has probably been whacked because it looks like Tibetan or is a word in Tibetan. It’s merely the usual abbreviation for the Philological Society, which has no particular interest in the Empire or countries occupied by the Empire. If you’re one of the Empire’s Internet snoops (I expect you can surf wherever you please), check out the site. Harmless, as you’ll see, and blocked without justification.

As for the pgn mentor site, I can only guess at that one. I suspected that pgn was the initials of a high-ranking corrupt official, but it could also be the initials of some organisation which sends Nanny running to the loo in paroxysms of diarrhoea.

As you’ll also see, I’ve also changed the theme of the site. Of course, if you’ve never been here before, that won’t mean a thing.

Not quite dead in the water

2011-09-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

The hole in the wall is still open.

I had thought that the hole in the wall (by which I don’t mean some species of ATM) had been closed and that my brief return had been cut short once again.

The news, unexciting, is that the weather has turned quite cool after last week’s summer-like temperatures, and the forecast isn’t looking promising. There would seem to be no gentle decent into autumn although I’m hoping that the present spell of chilly weather isn’t the harbinger of a long, cold winter to come. In my first year here, it snowed on the 1st of November and did not get warm again until late April

The bicycle inventory which I mentioned led to reg. plates for our bikes. My plate is in my rucksack. I completely forgot about it last night. Honestly, I don’t want to attach such a thing to my machine, and I don’t see the point because foreigners, at least, don’t have to register their bikes. In fact, I’m not sure anyone does these days.

The joy vampires have been at it again, killing off some popular talent show on Hunan Satellite Television. Putative reasons are that CCTV is using SARFT as its bovver boy to beat up a more popular rival; or that popular votes on acts appearing on the programme might foment democracy. Apparently the programme will be replaced with some puritanical drivel. The irony is that I then saw an article on the Cambridge Evening News website about some Shanghai-based talent-quest programme looking for hopefuls among Chinese communities in various towns in the UK.

Why are dictatorships so utterly humourless?

What's in a list?

2011-09-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

You really don’t need to know this.

When Bruce came round this afternoon compiling a list of those of us who ride bikes, I got a sinking feeling that someone has decided we need a lecture on road safety. Road safety in China? What the hell are the road rules here? Cars at least obey the traffic lights (unless they’re turning right), and valiant men and women armed with flags make others stop at intersections because the electric bike people and cyclists think the pretty lights are optional. In fact, to them, all the rules are optional.

There’s a hierarchy of size, but that’s a custom not a law. Riding the wrong way and riding on the pavement are also popular customs. It’s also a popular custom among the police to turn a blind eye to such indiscretions.

Pedestrian crossings are a joke because the people crossing pay little attention to the cars and the cars pay little attention to the pedestrians.

I’ve been riding a bike here for about five years now and have three basic rules:

Go when it’s safe.
Expect traffic to come from the other direction.
Pay attention because no one else is.

My custom is to go like a bat out of hell so long as it doesn’t conflict with the Mr Bamboo’s Three Laws of Cycling.

Quite a few more of us are riding bikes than I realised. For the past two years it’s mainly been me (oh, and there was Mr Blather-On last year), but suddenly most of us seem to have them. Possibly my run-in with Ben the other day was a coincidence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that has spurred the school to want to interfere in our existence.

More proof that speed is relative

2011-09-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Or, Western vs. Oriental speed.

A couple of days ago, I had an encounter with the Chinese director of our programme. I’d just got back to school from buying lunch and for the first time ever since I’ve been working at the school, I got reminded of the rule about wheeling bikes through the school. I don’t do that because as far as I’m concerned, rank hath its privileges and, as a teacher, I shouldn’t be subject to this particular restriction. I note that those teachers who drive cars don’t have to get out and push their cars and that the ground staff never get off their bikes.

I think what’s really going on is the over-solicitousness which foreigners sometimes encounter here. It’ll probably be known that I’m quite fast on my new bike (although I was also quite fast on the old one), and they’ll mistake my reasonable pace for speed because their own pace is so sluggish and torpid. I have heard one story about a foreigner who bought a bike and could go nowhere without being surrounded by a whole troop of his students.

It’s annoying because I do keep a fairly sharp eye out everywhere I go because this is a nation of traffic morons. When I’m waiting to cross the road in the morning, I wait until it’s clear while the local imbeciles just march out into the traffic with no regard for their safety. In other words, I’m more responsible on the roads than a lot of them, especially the clowns on their electric bikes.

However, I also have to be careful but the last thing I need is for the school to start getting tetchy. I’m still going to ride my bike through the school in the morning because there’s no one around. The joy vampires have made sure that the students are already at school. But I may have to start walking it at lunchtime because I come and go through the main gate. As much as I don’t want to be reduced to the level of some snivelling schoolboy, it’d perhaps be politic to be seen to plod about. I had thought that I was a dog, but it seems I’m just a tail.

Hello, World, I'm back

2011-09-13T03:15:00.000-07:00

Did you even miss me?

Thanks to one of my colleagues, I now have access to the Internet again – the whole thing and not just some declawed cat. I’m now facing my old dilemma of what to do with this blog which has been so idle for so long. My WordPress blog remains my main blog with my LJ one in the wings. Apart from those two I have a couple of others for my more specialised interests, but they need not concern anyone apart from me.

The first difference I note is that YouTube videos are appearing on websites where they have, until today, been missing. It’s not that I was a massive fan of YouTube, but it is a blasted sodding nuisance to miss out on the video part of some online article because of a bunch of mean-minded, miserable sods. In fact, I’ve started calling them joy vampires because they want to suck as much happiness as they possibly can out of everyone else’s lives.

I see over on Language Log, Victor Mair has posted an entry about the use of the phrase “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”. The phrase, as Mair notes, is overwhelmingly used with reference to China. As I’ve observed before, the only people who seem upset is the government, who are a bunch of infantile, lying scoundrels. (Oops! Slightly messed up number agreement there.) Mair professes not to understand what the phrase is all in aid of, but I think the answer is easy.

Unlike Britain, where we still mock the Germans for losing the war, but in a good-natured way (I hope), China has this tendency to paint itself as the eternal victim. Instead of poking fun at the Japanese for losing World War II, the Chinese are still in a monster-sized strop that that Japanese had the effrontery to invade them in the first place. It’s another illustration of the humourlessness which blights China.

The bitter irony is that if you looked at Chinese history and asked, “Who has killed the greatest percentage of the Chinese people throughout history?”, the answer would be the Chinese people themselves. They are their own worst enemies and I doubt whether the Tibetans, the Mongols, the Turkic peoples of central Asia or the Japanese have killed anywhere near the number who have by and large been unjustly slaughtered by warlords and corrupt officials down through the dynasties. Thus, if they start whining about how they’re the victims of someone else, ignore them.

Is the curtain going to fall again?

2011-02-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Last post for the next two years?

I’m hoping that I’ll be returning to the Empire with some means of circumventing the Great Wall of Paranoia, although whether such means work depends on just how exceedingly paranoid the imperial government is. I’d like the Internet back, thank you very much.

As I said, Spaces got transferred to WordPress, which first got crippled while the mandarins had their conference, and then got sent to intensive care – behind the locked door. So much for my main blog. That forced me to switch to Live Journal (Green Bamboo) and basically begin again because five years’ worth of blogging was no longer accessible. I assume that Live Journal has been left alone because it’s popular with the Russians, and since the imperial government views the Grand Duchy of Muskovy as safe (i.e., corrupt, paranoid, and authoritarian), such people aren’t likely to care about those little inconveniences such as human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and democracy.

Anyway, if I don’t add any more entries after this one for a very long time, then the means I mentioned above will’ve failed to work. I have added a link to Green Bamboo (Live Journal) above and in the sidebar, and there you can read just how much I continue to hate the the Empire and its robotic and barbaric behaviour.

I can post here

2011-02-01T22:57:00.000-08:00

And I’m bloody well going to do so.

As I’ve just said over on my new main blog, I should be making some effort to read The Girl who Played with Fire, but I also feel that I should use and abuse my blogs now that all of them are accessible. On that matter, I’ve taken some steps which might get me round the petty paranoia of the current regime so that I can see the Internet as Al Gore invented it to be.

I have seen one or two articles in the past couple of months which have observed that the Web hasn’t brought democracy because it’s spurred various disreputable regimes to extend their degree of control on the channels of information. In fact, the Web won’t bring democracy, I think, but rather offer a channel for the next oppressive regime to make a bid for power. In truth, the Egyptians will get more of the same unless they end up with some nutjob theocracy. (That probably means more of the same, but with prayers and mindless chanting against Egypt’s supposed enemies; all right, the Hittites.)

I’m just reading an article on China Geeks called Chinese Overseas Students, Then and Now, which is about how Chinese students studying abroad have changed from those who wanted to effect some change in the Empire a century ago, to those who are merely interested in the personal benefits of a foreign education and the maintenance of the status quo today.

I’ve never really thought about what effect studying abroad might have on my little darlings. I do know that one who went to study law in the States was very interested in the rule of law, but the rule of law is never going to happen in the Empire any time soon. Most of my current lot are planning to go off and do engineering, business, and physics, and some of them get into good universities (two have managed to get into Oxford, and possibly some more might as well).

But what the effect of such opportunities might be, I don’t know. I expect that my little darlings will only use English when they have to; will never make a single non-Chinese friend; will contribute little or nothing in tutorials; and will show no real personal development. I doubt whether they’ll be able to think for themselves at the end of their degrees with any greater aptitude than they can do that now. (I told PAL 2 last week to amuse themselves, and more than one ask me what they should do.)

There might be a few who buck the trend, but I can’t imagine it.

The point is that I don’t expect them to come back chanting, “Down with the imperial government”, but it would be nice if the experience of being abroad could have some beneficial effect on their attitude, which might then affect others in some small way, thus provoking some gradual, positive change. The Empire is not a place which changes easily, and which, with the rest of the world, can’t afford to return to the bad old days of fragmentation.

I'm back again, again, again

2011-01-30T13:10:00.000-08:00

And I'm pissed off.

After a somewhat arduous trip this weekend, I'm in New Zealand where I'm able to get onto blogspot for the first time since that day in August last year when the site was temporarily unblocked. My suspicion is that blogger and YouTube are blocked because of their affiliation with Google rather than their alleged threat to the imperial government's raging desire to ensure the ignorance and stupidity of the Empire's citizens. Have at you, Critical Thinking! Away with you, Independent Thought!

Rather annoyingly, after Spaces was transferred to WordPress, that site was partially crippled when the Party boys were having some conference, and then completely blocked long after that at about the time Ai Weiwei was serving crabs. Whether there was some link between that and the disappearance of WordPress, I don't know, but I wasn't surprised.

So, now that I'm away from the Dismal Empire, I'm going to try and set up a VPN so that I can blog on blogspot and WordPress, watch the latest pointless videos on YouTube, and occasionally waste time on Facebook, unfettered by a regime which should have no right to determine (within reason) what anyone can say or see online.

Next stop, why sites hosting pgn files were blocked. Which corrupt official was behind that one?

Well, this is unexpected to say the least

2010-08-04T00:23:00.000-07:00

I'm back. I'd better make the most of it.

I don't honestly know what's going on, but this morning I found that YouTube widgets were not only visible, but there now seems to be partial access to material on the site. More than that, I thought I'd try blogspot. I was able to access the blog, although when I tried to go to blogger.com via some Chinese interface, the site got blocked. When I checked what Google services were available via iGoogle, I got a very limited list, blogger not being among them. But I then switched to Google UK, checked the service list, and got a great many more options than the first page I looked at. Not only that, but I was also able to access blogger and post this entry. I hope.

However, I don't know whether my discoveries are a happy coincidence, or whether YouTube and blogspot are truly accessible again. Sad to say, I suspect that this may all be temporary and may be nothing more than a hole in the Great Firewall while Nanny installs new software because we can't have the people of this country reading all that trivia which fills blogs just like this one.

I did come here back in February when I went to Hong Kong because of the spam boys from that offshore island which is and isn't part of some sort of China. In truth, they were wasting their time because being unable to permit such crap to be posted, I simply had to leave their spam in a holding pattern. I did stop people from posting comments, a policy which will have to remain in force because there's no guarantee that blogger and YouTube will still be accessible tomorrow.

02.02.11. Well, that was a one-off, and it’s only because I’m temporarily beyond Nanny’s choking, arthritic grasp that I can actually add a comment here today. My current theory is that blogspot and YouTube have remained blocked because of their association with Google and the philosophy of certain senior members of the company. It’d be nice if the imperial government grew up and the little turd in charge of Internet paranoia accepted that a lot of people are going to hate him for ruining the Internet. He probably got the Tibetans to riot so that he’d have an excuse to kill blogspot and YouTube off once and for all.

I've heard of pass-the-parcel, but this is ridiculous

2009-05-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

Baby or hot potato?

Janet and John want to have a baby, but can’t. They do have the money for in vitro fertilisation with donated sperm and an egg, and they hire the womb of Edith Honeydew, who gives birth to a baby, which is called Sam.

When Mr Spick, the consultant, phones Janet and John, he finds that they’ve split up and don’t want the baby. Nor does Ms Honeydew when Mr Spick phones her. And when the IVF company tracks down the donors of the original genetic material, one can’t be found and the other isn’t interested.

The problem is, whose baby is it?

The answer in my mind is Janet and John’s; not that this is a satisfactory answer. You could simply treat Sam the Baby as if he was something you’d bought at a shop, but while returning a book or DVD is one thing, returning a baby is quite another. He’d have to be offered up for adoption unless Mr Spick took the matter to court, which could well rule that Janet and John, the original purchasers, were responsible for the child. The biological parents were merely donors selected by the clinic and Ms Honeydew was a womb for hire. None of them should be responsible for Sam, or even expected to want him. Mr Spick and his company end up being Sam’s parent by default until Janet and John take responsibility for him.

From babies to organ donors. The organ harvest begins tomorrow.

Out with the new

2009-05-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

And in with the newer.

Mrs Green is about to go on holiday when finding that she’s pregnant, she has the embryo removed and deep frozen so that she can have it re-implanted afterwards. But while she’s on holiday, she meets someone else and decides not only to divorce Mr Green, but also to have her new paramour’s baby instead. And she has the original embryo destroyed much to Mr Green’s disgust.

The removal of the embryo in the first place seems a little strange and somewhat indulgent, but it doesn’t appears to be reprehensible. The destruction of the original embryo without Mr Green’s consent seems unethical. On the other hand, what’s he going to do with the embryo? Find a surrogate of some sort? A very understanding girlfriend?

But if Mr and Mrs Green can’t agree on the fate of the embryo, whose cause wins the day? The party who wants to keep the embryo?

Tomorrow’s scenario is another from the Big Book of Unwanted Baby Stories.

The nine-month parasite

2009-05-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

And the excuses.

The excuse which the nurse peddles for using Toni as a life support machine is pregnancy, which would require her to support another life just as she’s supporting the other patient. But Toni would seem to view pregnancy, whether it was planned or not, as a natural phenomenon against which this contrasts as something unnatural.

Anyway, at this point, they start questioning her mental state, recalling a blow to the head and how her relatives thought she’d be in favour of the doctors’ actions. they sedate her and leave her in a coma-like state for the remaining five weeks.

But when they revive Toni, she’s ashamed of her refusal to play her part and thanks the staff for all their help. She even gives the biotechnologist a big bunch of flowers. (In a moment of extreme irony, which I’m adding for my own amusement, the man reacts badly to the pollen and dies.)

Did the doctors do the right thing after all?

Their excuse for sedating Toni sounds a little specious, but perhaps we’re meant to understand that Toni really isn’t in her right mind and that under other circumstances, she’d be willing to help.

Actually, it’s when the nurse uses the analogy of pregnancy that we get to the core of the case. This is an analogy devised by those in favour of a woman’s right to choose. Those who are insist on a woman having a baby would surely not hold the same objection if the other life was not her own baby.

The discussion in the book also notes that doctors have got legal injunctions to treat patients who object to certain sorts of treatment on religious grounds, hence the part of the scenario about Toni not being in her right mind.

Even although Toni emerges as more altruistic than she when entered the scenario, the doctors have had to make their decision without knowing how she would eventually react.

I suppose that most people would probably feel some disapproval about the doctors’ decision; yet if I knew better than someone else about some matter, I’d feel justified in taking a decision on their behalf. Unlike some colleagues of mine, I don’t ask my pupils what they want to do in class because many of them don’t want the class in the first place and would be unable to make constructive suggestions. Similarly, I don’t shun the book in favour of topics of my own devising because what might interest me won’t necessarily interest the vegetables or even be pitched at a suitable level. Besides, my pupils are not my peers whose views I might value and schools are not known to be democracies.

Hmmm. Think about it. The headmaster is a jumped up tyrant; the teachers are the governors and satraps of his provinces; the pupils are his slaves, who may be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Anyway, more baby-based bother tomorrow.

Batteries not included

2009-05-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

It’s like The Matrix.

Toni Chestnut gets knocked down by a car and eventually comes to in hospital where, she’s told, she’ll be for six weeks. But she soon realises that she’s actually all right. When she starts trying to disconnect herself from the machines, the doctors stop her because her kidneys are actually being used to help another patient. They weren’t able to ask her for her permission because she was unconscious when the decision needed to be made. Toni wants her body back, but the doctors explain that the man she’s helping is a biotechnologist who has developed strains of rice that help millions. And he has a girlfriend and three small children. Toni is unmoved and wants the machine to be disconnected from her.

Should she be disconnected from the machine even if the other patient dies?

On the one hand, the doctors needed someone to keep the other patient alive and Toni happened to be unable to give her consent; on the other, once she’s conscious shouldn’t the doctors acquiesce to her wishes? What right do they have (did they have) to use Toni like some battery whether she was conscious or not? Apart from appealing to her sense of altruism, what right do the doctors have to expect that she’ll continue to support the other patient now that she’s able to make a decision? If the other patient was related to or special to Toni, she might agree to continue, but I think she’s well within her rights to want to be disconnected.

Of course, the scenario is designed so that the audience is potentially inclined to regard Toni as selfish if she refuses.

Anyway, Part II tomorrow and the truth behind the analogy.

Perhaps they should ask for a second opinion

2009-05-11T01:57:00.000-07:00

The confusing Father Black.

Mrs Mauve contracts a form of flu which will result in her baby being blind. Although she could have an abortion, she decides to have the child anyway.[1]

Mrs Brown also catches the same flu and is warned against getting pregnant in the following six months or risk her child also being born blind. But she ignores the doctor’s advice.

Father Black, who’s supposedly an expert on morality, says that both women have done the right thing. But is he right himself?[2]

Mrs Blue is in the same position as Mrs Mauve, but knows of a herbal remedy which will protect the foetus. Yet she’s not prepared to stump up the money (the grand sum of 50p) for it.

But Father Black accuses Mrs Blue of betraying her unborn child and condemning it to a life of disadvantage. She says she won’t play God with its life.[3]

Who’s right and why has Father Black changed his tune?

I don’t know. Personally, I think Mrs Mauve should abort the foetus and try again, but it’s her choice. Mrs Brown just seems to be irresponsibly horny. Mrs Blue is being cheap and stupid. I assume that for the purposes of the scenario, Mrs Mauve never hears about the herbal remedy. Father Black takes a different line with Mrs Blue because she has access to this remedy, but Mrs Brown can also go without sex, which Father Black should approve of – unless he’s the one bonking her. Whoops, vicar, there go my trousers!

Notes
1. “Why am I a whiny bitch, mother? Because if you’d aborted me, I would’ve been born sighted and, therefore, wouldn’t be perpetually dependent on you.”
2. Father Black is, obviously, opposed to abortion, which means that from his perspective, Mrs Mauve is doing the right thing; but Mrs Brown is being knowingly irresponsible (or horny), which can’t be a good thing if she’s treating a potential life with such cavalier disregard. Perhaps the implication is that Mrs Brown isn’t using contraception which, again from Father Black’s perspective, is a good thing.
3. But how is taking the remedy any different from taking the child to a doctor after it’s born?

Tomorrow, we’re asking Toni Chestnut to keep some annoyingly saintly guy alive at her expense. Well, in fact, we’re not asking and now she’s pissed off.

Two states at once

2009-05-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Green and red.

Can something be red and green at the same time? I assume that this means the thing can simultaneously red and green without these being discrete colours or some wavelength in the visible spectrum which stands halfway between them (somewhere between orange and yellow). As far as colours are concerned, such a thing isn’t possible, although I can imagine some state in which the colours shimmer a bit like an animated blend function in a graphics program.

According to the book, there are things which can be in two complementary states simultaneously such as negative numbers which, when multiplied together, produce a positive number, but which can have square roots. Unfortunately, I think Cohen has misunderstood i. Also, I don’t think this is necessarily an example of something being X and not X simultaneously. I’m not sure.

If anything, specific opinions may contradict our general outlook. Think of Dave “Lost my bike again” Cameron. He’s a Tory, but I believe he’s very pro NHS, which is contrary to Tory philosophy in general. Or both main political parties which are meant to be different, but aren’t.

Perhaps we have to follow Meinong here with notions of real but doesn’t exist.

Is pleasure good or not?

Define “pleasure” and I’ll try to tell you.

μηδὲν ἄγαν, said the Greeks. In other words, pleasure is good, but not to excess.

Apparently, this seems to be a real/not real and existent/non-existent problem. G.E. Moore, a Cambridge philosopher, said that “is” should only be used of natural properties (e.g. The sky is blue), but never in sentences like “Pleasure is good”. As the book notes, Moore never really explained how “good” wasn’t a natural property.

I Kant [sic!] do these.

I quote

Can there be analytic a posteriori propositions? Or synthetic a priori propositions?

Can I even understand the questions? Strangely enough, I think I sort of can. That is, I can until I see what the discussion in the book says and find that I haven’t understood them at all.

I’m assuming the terms “analytic” and “synthetic” are normally used with a priori and a posteriori respectively. And that’s about as much as I understand. This strikes me as being another paradox.

Well, the discussion in the book claims that “analytic” comes from Latin, whereas it comes from the Greek ἀναλύω “to unloose, set free; analyse” (cf. ἀνάλυσις “a loosing, releasing”); and that “synthetic” comes from the same language, whereas it comes from Greek συνθετικός “skilled in putting together; constructive” which is from the verb συντίθημι “to put together”. But etymological errors aside, it seems that I was right about such statements a.) being a bit incomprehensible to me and b.) being a paradox.

Citizens, know your morals! Or perhaps not!

Again I quote

Are all moral claims synthetic? Or analytic? Or a priori? Or a posteriori? Or both? Or neither? Or both of both, or neither of either??

Er, yes. No. Yes and no. How the hell should I know?

Actually, I’d guess that we learn our morals as we learn our native language – without the slightest idea we’re learning them. Since the morality of a society is not innate in the children which are born into it, they can’t be a priori, but it might be possible to show that a sense of morality (well, ethics perhaps) is innate without being specific about what is moral.

Turning the tables on reality.

Apparently I’m meant to ask whether the table exists. I know it’s there in the other room, but I can’t see it because the curtains to this room are always drawn (in lieu of a wall, I suppose). I suppose it’s fun to think that nothing exists if there’s no one around to perceive it, but that’s a bit like saying that Uranus didn’t exist until 1781, and Neptune until 1846 (or the 17th century; it doesn’t matter either way on this occasion). If there’s a planet beyond Neptune (excluding Pluto, which is a dwarf planet and thus doesn’t count), then it exists whether we can see it or detect it or not. Same goes for atomic and subatomic particles which we’re unable to perceive directly, but there they are.

I can’t say that I have much regard for such questions, which do rather seem to assume that existence revolves around the human race.

We’re off to the doctor’s tomorrow. I’m going to have to learn how to spell ‘inoculate’ again.

Though the king of France does not exist

2009-05-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Is he bald?

Well, let’s see. In one version of Uncle Angel’s historical novel, Brush with a Comb, (which is set in the future) we read

Louis XXVI was so hirsute that people said his head had been mugged by a shrub.

But in a later draft we read

“Look out!” muttered one of the guards through the side of his mouth. “Here comes King Chrome Dome.”

Of course, the reviewers noted that Louis XXVI seemed to be both bald and not bald, the novel being somewhat inconsistent on this point.

I think the question is pointless. If the King of France doesn’t currently exist, then it’s not currently possible to answer the question.

Is snow white?

Yes. I assume that because the basic building block of snow is ice, which is clear, that there’s some physical property which makes snow appear white once crystals form flakes. It’s probably like clear plastic which, once you’ve folded it a few times, becomes silvery and translucent.

Are all bachelors unmarried men?

Only if we’re using the word to mean “man who is unmarried or has never been married”. On the other hand, the word does have other senses such as “holder of a first degree” and “young knight who serves another”. So provided we’re clear about which one we’re using, there can be no such thing as a married bachelor.

Who was the author of Waverley?

Sir Walter Scott, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’ve seen this question somewhere else, but can’t recall the import of it. It’s not one of those name-and-title things, which, I believe, Lewis Carroll did somewhere in one of the Alice books. The title of the book is X, but it’s name is Y. Apparently, this has something to do with Bertrand Russell and indefinite references to a thing. Here’s a paragraph from Russell’s Mysticism and Logic (Chapter X Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description) which explains the deal.

The first point to observe is that, in any proposition about ‘the author of Waverley’, provided Scott is not explicitly mentioned, the denotation itself, i.e., Scott, does not occur, but only the concept of denotation, which will be represented by a variable. Suppose we say ‘the author of Waverley was the author of Marmion’, we are certainly not saying that both were Scott — we may have forgotten that there was such a person as Scott. We are saying that there is some man who was the author of Waverley and the author of Marmion. That is to say, there is someone who wrote Waverley and Marmion, and no one else wrote them. Thus the identity is that of a variable, i.e., of an indefinite subject, ‘someone’, This is why we can understand propositions about ‘the author of Waverley’, without knowing who he was. Where we say ‘the author of Waverley was a poet’, we mean ‘out and only one man wrote Waverley, and he was a poet’; where we say ‘the author of Waverley was Scott’ we mean ‘one and only one man wrote Waverley, and he was Scott’. Here the identity is between a variable, i.e., an indeterminate subject (‘he’), and Scott; ‘the author of Waverley’ has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a constituent of the proposition.’

Alles klar, ja?

Martian water. Like Perrier, but drinkable.

So, if some liquid found on Mars has the structure H₃O₂ and in all respects appears to resemble the more familiar H₂O, is it water?

You could call it “Martian water”, or this particular liquid could be called “water” in the right context (i.e., on Mars itself), but it seems to be a case of “Water, Jim, but not as we know it”.

Colour me eye rolling.

There’s this colour, gruebleen, which is is green up to teatime in the year 2000 and blue thereafter. What colour is it really?

It isn’t a colour since the property of this so-called colour is inconsistent with the properties of other colours which remain constant. Colours can fade or be modified in various ways, but that’s due to external factors and not something the spectrum of visible light is about to do any time soon.

So, in other words, another meaningless sentence.

The next day. Shifting from one part of the spectrum to another is not a property of colours, but changes in colour are the property of quite a lot of things such as octopuses, chameleons, skin, leaves. We think of the thing changing colour rather than some shift in the colour itself, which might leave an odd gap in the spectrum. When leaves change colour from green to yellow or orange and then to brown, the colours themselves remain constant in other things.

As Willow liked to say, “Bored now”, which means we’ll look at the remaining short problems in this section tomorrow.

Reality, fantasy, facts and truth

2009-05-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

Unicorns’ horns

How many horns do unicorns have?

Er, one.

Apparently this is a question concerning facts about what doesn’t exist. Alexis von Meinong (1853 - 1920) distinguished between those things which have existed or do exist and those which have never existed or no longer exist. He then distinguished types of relationships such as that between the colours red and green which is real, but doesn’t exist.[1] Then there’s the matter of factuality. If someone state a fact, we can say it’s true.

The implication seems to be whether truths about things which have never existed can really be true. Even although unicorns don’t exist, there are certain ‘facts’ about them – single horn, equine in appearance, quadriped.

Meinong thought that truth was a human construct even if facts were eternal. I’m inclined to agree. The truths of the past are not always the truths of today even if the fact is still the same.

Notes
1. I’m guessing that he’s talking about things that we perceive such as (abstract) qualities and ideas. Presumably the relationship between red and green is their membership of the set of colours called the spectrum, (perhaps) their relative positions within that group (i.e., wave lengths), and that they’re complementary colours. These are all ideas and real, but don’t exist per se. I think I understand what Meinong was getting at.

Tomorrow, the King of France, who is currently non-existent, and his baldness. Leave your combs and brushes at home.

Three ears. No, six ears.

2009-05-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

Three, but… No, six, er…

Well, as far as each hare is concerned, it has two ears even although the picture has three hares and three ears. They perpetually chase each other round in a circle because there’s nowhere else for them to go.

And that’s about it really. No more pictures. Just yet.

Anyway, it seems we have a few minutes before today’s problem comes to a conclusion. We could always talk about the three hares a bit more. For example, what do they symbolise? They’re common on churches in some areas of England. The book suggests that they might represent the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic, or the Trinity. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they represent something that pre-dates Christianity, the meaning of which has been long since forgotten. Of course, it’s wrong to assume that this image couldn’t have been imagined anew in the Middle Ages since it’s not unique to Europe and thus not unique to a particular time either.

Actually, here’s a twist – the ears form an impossible triangle. Well, apparently we’ve only got thirty seconds left. The producer’s waving her hands frantically, telling me it’s time to thank my guests, the three hares and… Goodbye.

Tomorrow we embark on twelve traditional philosophy problems. They might be brief, but I bet the answers are long.

Mind the ladder

2009-05-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

But does the ladder mind?

Another of Escher’s cunning pictures of the impossible. This one, Belvedere, is done by taking two rectangles and turning one 90°. In reality, that would form a cross, but on paper, one rectangle will merely be above the other in spite of its orientation.

I don’t find this picture quite as satisfying as Waterfall because the columns to the left and right of the ladder, supporting the upper level, look wrong, just as the one to the left of the figure at the other end of the balcony seems wrong because both rest on something that is forward of their position. But if the columns were allowed to sit where they ought to be (at least in two dimensions), the illusion of the picture would probably be spoilt.

I also note that the picture is based on a skewed, flattened hexagon.

Also, I suspect that the two tiers would have to be tilted if you attempted to do this in reality even although they look horizontal in the picture.

(In an unrelated exclamation, it seems that wordpress blogs are viewable again from the imperium sericum. I wonder how long that’ll last.)

Tomorrow, three hares, but how many ears?

The water's going nowhere

2009-05-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

But you have to love the architecture.

I’ve always liked this picture using Penrose impossible triangles. Even if this really was possible in three dimensions, the water would have to go uphill, thus appearing to make the picture impossible on two counts. I also note that this is a reverse capital sigma (Σ).

I’ve seen the triangle itself done in three dimensions, but it can only look real when viewed from the right direction. Basically it’s three pieces, but the two at either end are angled away from each other. When you rotate the structure to make it look like a triangle, it’ll seem to be an impossible triangle.

Who said two dimensions were boring?

Anyway, more of the same tomorrow.

Day and night

2009-05-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

Just where do you think you’re going?

The white birds fly towards the night and the black towards the day. My brain is too mediocre to work out what metaphorical (or metaphysical) import these tessellated flocks might have. Opposites attract? Night will become day just as day will become night? Between black and white, there is a spectrum of shades of grey so that only what is extreme can be absolute? An artist’s purpose is impossible to fathom? Looking at the book may resolve the intention that the author had when he included the picture in it?

Well, according to Martin Cohen, the birds are swooping down to become part of the landscape while that produces more of them.

I looked at the picture (the thumbnail above) and more readily saw the birds emerging from the landscape, which is, I think, how I’ve seen it in the past. I don’t see some sort of cycle here, but that’s just me. Apparently one physicist thinks this is a good model for the nature of the universe in that there ended up being a bit more matter than anti-matter because, like the geese as they emerge from the landscape, there was a slight mutation.

Fascinating stuff and there’s another picture tomorrow from the world of impossible triangles.

The inheritance

2009-05-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Please click on the link to download it.

It seems that Mr Megasoft got over the whole atomic watch thing and had children with his girlfriend before vanishing into space on his space yacht. As the kids subsequently discover, their father had been intending to leave his money to a computer called Deep Thought.

It ends up in court where the children’s lawyers argue that Mr Megasoft couldn’t leave his money to a computer because it wasn’t alive. Mr Megasoft’s lawyers argue that as a thinking machine, the computer should be given the same rights as organic thinking machines and even ask to be allowed to cross examine the children to see whether they’re thinking beings or merely going to produce programmed responses. They claim that Deep Thought can think and have views for itself.

But can they prove it?

I don’t see how they could successfully prove such a claim. My laptop sits here on the desk and does what it’s programmed to do (well, at least as far as Vista works properly). It never offers any spontaneous advice; it’s unaware of the time of day or year (no, displaying such information doesn’t constitute self-awareness); it has no idea that it’s sunny outside at the moment or that I’m wearing a red T-shirt; it doesn’t know nor will perceive my absence while I go and buy something for lunch. Of course, no one reading this will notice that I was gone.

It can switch itself off, but it has no choice when that happens. It can’t switch itself on whenever it likes. It can’t reason or give opinions. It can’t lie (or, perhaps, produce any response contrary to whatever programme it’s running unless it’s the result of a software bug). It has no emotional responses. If, say, I didn’t use it for a few days, it wouldn’t reproach me for neglecting it when I switched it on again or express pleasure that it was functioning again. It has no consciousness.

Enter the computer.

In the second part of the scenario, Deep Thought is brought into court and cross examined. It explains how it would use Mr Megasoft’s legacy. The jury are impressed, but the children’s lawyers subject Deep Thought to more complicated questions, which it answers, even admitting when it is ignorant. (Hang on, doesn’t that make it as wise as Socrates? from which we must conclude that Socrates was a computer, and because computers are inherently immune to poison, he could not have been executed successfully.)

So now the jury has to decide whether Deep Thought should be denied the money Mr Megasoft bequeathed it.

Does Deep Thought need something more than the appearance of having consciousness to win this one?

As the discussion at the back of the book says, even the primitive computers of the late 1960s were able to produce responses which quite gulled the human “conversing” with it. Nonetheless, this was partly a matter of programming and partly, it seems, some early social engineering which was achieved by the repetition of key words which, to a human, would have made it seem that the computer was on topic and responding in a sympathetic vein.

The appearance of consciousness isn’t sufficient in my mind for Deep Thought to be given de facto human rights and thus inherit the money. In fact, technology isn’t sufficiently advanced for this to be an issue. Yet it may become significant in the future if the technology becomes sophisticated enough for us to produce Cylons.

Tomorrow sees the beginning of a short series of picture posts with the help of the art of M.C. Escher.

And now for the forecast

2009-05-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

With the lovely Cassandra.

Cassandra is forecasting great losses for the Greeks if the sea battle (ναυμαχία, as they say in Greek) goes ahead. But since the enemy had already sent the Greeks an invitation to which they’d RSVPed, the admiral thought it would be rather rude of them not to attend. [Paraphrasing scenarios is one thing, but you're just making this up. –ed.]

Unfortunately for the Greeks, Cassandra’s forecast was accurate, and when the accuracy of subsequent prophecies became known, the Greeks took to consulting her before any military engagements.

But the admiral wasn’t so pleased and got a couple of sophists and a couple of philosophers to undermine Cassandra’s credibility. As Euthydemus proved, sophists were idiots, but the philosophers had an idea.

They suggested that because the future hasn’t happened, Cassandra’s forecasts must be false. Also, if the admiral had conducted the battle a little differently, the outcome would’ve been different, thus invalidating the prediction. In a modified statement, the philosophers declare that Cassandra’s forecasts are neither true nor false, but, instead, undetermined by undetermined events.

Cassandra is a little pissed off because her forecasts are of events that’ll actually happen and, therefore, true. She counters that statements about the past and present might be exactly the same, being neither true nor false but pending confirmation.

So who can the people believe?

I was thinking back to the recent scenarios about time and realised in a slightly perverse way we can see the future. If someone throws a ball to you, you know that in the very near future you’re going to catch it. As you watch the ball, you can see the future coming. Of course, this is different from prediction of a more remote future. I can only see the future (even although, paradoxically, it’s coming in from the past) as far as my perception allows me to see anything. Only things coming towards me are in my future; those that are going away move further into the past; those which travel on a parallel course at the same speed remain unchanged.

According to the discussion in the back of the book, this scenario gets into issues of free will. If Cassandra’s predictions are correct, there’s nothing anyone can do about them and, therefore, no free will. It’s possible, of course, not to have any choice in our decisions either because we’re externally or internally constrained. External constraint is when someone tells you to do something; internal constraint is selecting the choice which seems best to you, but may not be the most optimal choice. Free will (of a sort) is where there are (several) choices and all seem reasonable. I doubt whether this happens often.

I’m inclined to agree with the philosophers that Cassandra’s statements are undetermined, although that might only apply to people who aren’t clairvoyant. What, for instance, would the situation be if Cassandra had told the admiral what to do to avoid defeat? Is her prediction evidence that he ignores her? On the other hand, if he takes her advice and the Greeks win the battle, what did Cassandra actually see? That can’t be the future. In other words, even if Cassandra did tell the admiral how to avoid defeat, he’s going to be defeated anyway because he ignored her. But that’s his choice, isn’t it?

If, on the other hand, Cassandra sees a victory, that means that the admiral did do whatever thing was necessary to win the battle. But that’s still the future and not some alternative to a future in which the fleet was defeated because the admiral did the wrong thing.

The situation is a little like language change which often appears teleological when it isn’t. The admiral could take Cassandra’s advice or ignore it. He may ignore it, but the future isn’t making him do that because it has no conscious aims. He could do something which might’ve won the battle but happens to fail.

They’re sophisticated but they’re not clever: computers. Tomorrow’s scenario will be served with beer and sandwiches. (NB Patrons must bring their own beer. And sandwiches.)

The door was locked anyway

2009-04-30T23:38:00.000-07:00

But does that abrogate free will?

John Locke suddenly wakes up at 4am one morning with a brilliant idea. He’d like to get up and go to his study, but he knows that his landlady (who is probably inclined to application rather than theory) is a light sleeper and always complaining about his nocturnal activities. But he realises that in order to mollify his landlady, he can deal with it in the morning and being, in fact, rather comfortable, he goes back to sleep.

By the next morning, though, he’s forgotten what his idea was and is rather annoyed. But he did choose to go back to sleep and simply has to accept the outcome of his decision.

But here’s the twist. His landlady actually locked the door to prevent him from roaming around at night so that even if he had got up, he couldn’t have reached the study.

Locke thinks he made a free decision, but did he?

Whether Locke knew the door was locked or not, I’d say that he did make a free decision because he could’ve chosen to get out of bed and try the door only then to find it was locked and, instead of bringing a charge of false imprisonment against his landlady, he could then have chosen to freely accept her reason for locking the door. But whether the door was locked or not, he made his decision.

Like Locke, I make many (or perhaps all) decisions in ignorance of all the relevant factors because I assume that there will be no impediments to my undertaking. But if I know there’s some impediment, then my choices will be different. I assume, though, that there is some impetus behind our choices, which makes any free decision less free than it might seem. I went to the shop just before because I wanted to buy something to drink as part of the lunchtime ritual. Strictly speaking, I didn’t need to. I have orange juice at home and I’m not that thirsty. I’m a little bored with drinking Coke. On the other hand, I wanted to assess the clemency of the day (quite pleasant) and ultimately I needed to put my bike back in the bike shed because I’d had it inside for want of anywhere to park it out of the rain last night now that Mr Gatekeeper is locking the door to the bike shed somewhat earlier than he used to. All these factors guided my decision in one way or another.

I don’t see any of them as being particularly constraining. It’s only when circumstance forces me to make an unjustified choice that I’d rather not take that I’d regard some decision as truly unfree. That’s when I tend to get migraines.

Unlike the classical Cassandra, the people believe the predictions made by tomorrow’s Cassandra.

Ira furor breuis est

2009-04-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

“I’m not myself today.”

It seems that the florist shares the same opinion about Steve as me, that he’s still the same old Steve underlyingly. But Martin disagrees with him because Steve has chosen to be unfriendly. Martin then learns that Steve has been taking some hormones which make him more aggressively. This news makes Martin think that Steve probably is the same person as before, but he’s been chemically altered.[1]

Martin goes back to Steve to try and remonstrate and gets a basket of rotten fruit tipped over him, making a mess of his suit. Steve apologises and says that because of the pressures of business, he just hasn’t been himself. Should Martin forgive him or is this now a matter for the police?

§1. It is not Steve who should be on trial today, men of Athens, but those who were the cause of the change to his personality. Nonetheless, it was Steve who tipped a basket of rotten fruit over me, which resulted in a £25 dry cleaning bill.

§2. Formerly, Steve was noted for the amiability of his personality so that when I found that he was inclined to be rude and aggressive, I wondered whether he was, indeed, the same person whom I had once known. This can be attributed to two causes, as I shall outline in my opening statement.

§3. I asked the other shopkeepers about him, but they all replied that Steve was well-known for being ill-tempered. It was from the florist that I learnt he had taken an assertiveness class. Therefore, I am also indicting the teacher of that class on a charge of personality violation.

§4. It was from the chemist that I then learnt that Steve had been taking hormones to increase his aggressiveness. Now since the chemist merely sells licensed drugs and may not withhold those products from his customers which are freely available, whether he believes them to be detrimental or not, it would be improper of me to indict him. But it is the responsibility of the manufacturers of such drugs to clearly indicate the effects of the drug, which they do not do, as I shall show. Therefore, I am charging them with inadequate labelling of a drug called Confidunce™.

§5. Thus, gentlemen, you can see how it is that Steve, once polite, friendly and mild-mannered, has become rude, unfriendly and aggressive. Because of the damage that he did to my suit and the subsequent cost of having it cleaned, I am asking that he be fined £50, £25 for the cost and £25 as punitive damages; because of the changes to Steve’s personality, I am asking that the teacher of the assertiveness class be sent into exile and be deprived of his citizenship; and finally, I am asking that the company which manufactures Confidunce™ be fined £10,000,000.

§I. Was it those who are alleged to have altered Steve’s personality who should be here on trial today? Perhaps it ought to be, but I am not here to prosecute or defend them, but to defend Steve against the charge against him.

§II. Since we all have free will over ourselves at least and since we change as time passes, Martin was obvio0usly wrong to expect that his friend would necessarily be the same person that he was when the two were acquainted. Moreover, witnesses shall reveal that Martin’s personality has also changed since they first knew each other.

§III. It should be noted that the shopkeepers were stating their opinions about Steve’s personality, but not being experts in the field of personality, their description of his personality may not be strictly accurate because behaviour which might be described by some as rude and aggressive is actually assertive and confident; and I shall call expert witnesses to confirm this.

§IV. On the labelling of Confidunce™, I will not deny that the notice describing the effects of the drug may be small, but it is, in accordance with state-authorised guidelines and fully discloses the effects of the drug. Steve is not aggressive because of the hormones, but rather confident. Martin, like the neighbouring shopkeepers, is not an expert in human personality and has misinterpreted Steve’s behaviour.

§V. I do not seek to deny Steve’s action. He has always admitted that he tipped a basket of rotten fruit over his friend. But what he does deny is that it was caused either as a consequence of assertiveness classes or confidence-enhancing hormones, being, rather, a consequence of the stress of operating in a difficult business climate. He has offered to pay for the cost of the cleaning of the suit, but Martin has unreasonably rejected it. Because of that, I would ask you, men of Athens, that even if you find in Martin’s favour, he should gain no financial advantage from this suit.

Judgement. In the case of Martin vs. Steve, the jury finds Steve guilty of wanton suit filthying, but only fines him the cost of the cleaning because of the effects of assertiveness classes, hormones and economic stress. Neither the assertiveness teacher nor the manufacturer of Confidunce™ should be subject to any penalties since both operate within and comply with the law and since Steve freely chose to take assertiveness classes and confidence-enhancing hormones. Nonetheless, we still believe that he is, underlyingly, the same person whom Martin originally knew.

Notes
1. I assume that Martin thinks Steve has chosen to be unfriendly as an exercise of free will, but Steve would also have exercised his free will by choosing to take the drugs. It’s hard to see how Martin can then absolve Steve by blaming Steve’s condition on the hormones.

Tomorrow, John Locke has a sleeping problem, but his consideration for others causes him to forget a good idea.

Old habits die hard

2009-04-29T04:55:00.000-07:00

New ones may be harder to eliminate.

Martin goes in search of his old friend Steve, but is shocked to find that he’s not only a greengrocer, but he’s become a rude bastard as well. Martin asks the neighbouring shopkeepers about Steve who’s known to be bad-tempered. Steve wonders whether any of his more amiable disposition survives, but no one seems to think so. Martin learns from the florist that Steve took an assertiveness training course to help him deal with difficult customers

So does Steve have a friendly disposition or not?

I don’t doubt that he does, but he doesn’t appear to know when to code switch. (I’m sure there’s probably some term for behavioural switches according to the social situation. I just don’t know what it is.) Also, if Steve’s got used to being a bastard, he may find it hard to break the habit. It doesn’t mean that Steve really is a different person, but his work persona doesn’t appear to stay at work.

Tomorrow, Martin remains sceptical and Steve’s been taking assertiveness medicine. Look out for flying fruit.

Talking in your sleep

2009-04-27T21:44:00.000-07:00

Or is it all a dream?

Being a busy boy, Norman has to sleep while he’s doing other things such as commuting or sitting in front of the TV. The problem is that people insist on bothering him while he’s trying to slumber.

He has now trained himself to say, “I’m asleep” whenever anyone asks him a question when he is sleeping. But is he really asleep?

I don’t know. I’m not aware of people being able to answer questions while they’re asleep, but it may be possible. If that’s Norman’s only answer, then it might be regarded as being little more than a Pavlovian response to an utterance. The book doesn’t say whether he only says, “I’m asleep” when asked a question or whether any old statement will elicit such an answer. I might be able to play something which had a similar sort of pitch and rhythm to speech and find that Norman was equally happy to answer that.

But if someone told me that they were asleep, I’d assume that they were awake, but trying to get to sleep and implying that they don’t want to be disturbed.

The discussion in the book is about the role of sleep in philosophy because in sleep the soul is freed, which is all well and good, but if you don’t believe in the existence of the soul as a non-corporeal entity which can exist separately from the body, then the soul, the animus, the ψυχή, the mind is still trapped inside that tiny cavern called the head. In truth, sleep would seem to release the control mechanisms of the conscious mind, about the only insight into which we get from dreams which, I think, are recollections of things that we have done, but often presented in a peculiar way that doesn’t necessarily make any sense. I may recognise a person or thing in my dream even although the figure in it is not the entity I’m actually dreaming of. Whether the substitution is significant, I don’t know, but I’m not inclined to think that it is or is, indeed, indicative of any latent expressions of myself.

Sometimes, my dreams, when I recall them, are irrational and I can see no obvious link between the dream and reality. Perhaps there is one, but my mind isn’t making it easy for me. My dreams, when I do recall them, are often rather surreal. Perhaps that’s everyone’s dreams, although a recent article I saw suggested that weird dreams may indicate a wonky mind. I may yet end up a dribbling old loon. [We’re waiting for the dribbling to start. –ed.]

Well, it’s time I had a shower and since tomorrow hasn’t arrived, I can tell you that that’s when we’re going to be moving on to personality and whether we still underlyingly remain the same person we were when our outwards selves have changed.

Black sheep, white sheep

2009-04-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

It’s all just mutton on the table.

Emerald Z. Gibb writes a children's story story about a sheep called Robert who, finding himself ostracised by the other sheep because he has black wool, goes in search of others like him. And having found them, he lives happily ever after. But the book founders on the rock of literary reviews which accuse the author of racism. The book is banned from schools and public libraries.

Is the book ‘racist’?

It depends on the agenda of the reviewers and how they interpret it. It’s really just a version of the ugly duckling story, although Robert’s still a sheep at the end of the tale. It could also mean that we will eventually find our niche in life and people with whom we share things in common. Birds of a feather.

Would the real Emerald Z. Gibb please step forward.

And when she does, not only is she black, but she’s most indignant about the equation the reviewers have been making, black sheep = black person.

But the damage has been done. The book disappears from the shelves and is forgotten until some radical South American group claims that it’s a metaphor for racial discrimination by white people. Suddenly the book’s back on the menu and Gibb is speaking out for all those who are discriminated against. The book is republished as a manifesto for toleration and equality before the law.

Should schools reconsider their position?

Perhaps, er, not. The book does seem to have ceased to be a story for children and I don’t find that I’m convinced by the new interpretation anyway. Also, just as the book was considered injurious when it was thought to be a racist tome, isn’t the new interpretation also injurious because it implies that (all) white people are racists? That can’t be helpful.

Tomorrow, the man who talks in his sleep.

Half a brain is better than none

2009-04-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

Just look at the morons I have to teach.

Apparently today we’re transplanting Derek Parfit’s brain to someone or something else’s body. It seems fair enough to say that it’d still be him. He might have some problems controlling the body of a quadruped using a human brain, and he wouldn’t be able to speak, but he could scratch words into the earth such as, “Help! I’m being eaten by lions!”

But Derek (who’s an Oxford man I see from a little online research) has so many brains (as they all do at Oxford) that he’s suggested that if half of his brain is all that’s necessary, then each half could be transplanted into a different body and we’d have two of him.

Assuming that both halves of the human brain have the same functions (which I believe they don’t) and store identical information about the original person, then there really would be two of him. After all, the same piece of software can be installed on computers made by different manufacturers. My copy of Quake or Heretic II or PSP 7.04 can be installed on any machine. The software remains the same in all cases.

Thus, my body is insufficient as the means by which to define me. Someone might see me and find me physically attractive, but as a person find me utterly repugnant. It’s something I’ve noted in the past myself. There was this Welsh woman at Manchester who had yet to finish her thesis, but was lecturing. She was gorgeous. I happened to go for a drink with her and a friend of mine one evening, which was a sufficient demonstration of her personality to convince me that I wouldn’t have wanted a relationship with her.

Tomorrow, the black sheep of the family and metaphors of dubious validity.

Are you the same now

2009-04-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

As you were then?

tempus fugauit, and a good thing too because we’re now in the world of the self. The question is whether the person you were last summer is the same person you are now.

Physically, no. I’m sure a whole bunch of me has been replaced by newer bunches of me, and some of me has gone, never to return again. There might also be some editions as the effects of being in my forties take their toll. Mentally, I have many new memories, and have forgotten or filed away all manner of other things. I’ve no doubt recalled memories from the archives. But unlike my physical being, my mind changes less rapidly, I think, because I still remain the same person I have been since whenever: a cynical, sarcastic old bastard.

That’s not to say that I can’t change mentally in a fairly short space of time to become and remain a person that I was not originally, but it would probably take some catastrophic event for that to happen. On the other hand, I expect that changes in my mood may be rapid, but within the span of my life, only ever brief. I’m not sad all the time nor happy. In fact, if I do have a typical mood, I might say that I’m indifferent, but in a kind of disinterested sense rather than a callous one.

But although when we examine ourselves we might conclude that we aren’t really the same person from one moment to the next, I would argue that we’re a sum of our parts to which we’re constantly adding, or from which constantly subtracting. Unfortunately, I fear there’s rather too much adding to my waistline these days.

It seems that we’re looking at the horror of twice as many half-wits in Split Brain Theatre. Bring pop corn.

Time doubt

2009-04-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

Mr Megasoft gets ticked off.

Mr Megasoft buys a pair of atomic watches, one for himself and the other for his girlfriend, Charlene. They’re meant to be synchronised to the nearest nanosecond. Every day, when Mr Megasoft arrives home, he’s gratified to see that the two watches remain in harmony.

But after a long trip, Mr Megasoft arrives home to find that the watches are no longer in sync. He takes them back to the shop, but after the shop tests them, they find nothing wrong and refuse him a refund.

Mr Megasoft then goes on another business trip and when he returns home, the discrepancy between the two watches is even more pronounced. Mr Megasoft isn’t pleased, but is he entitled to a refund?

As far as I’m aware, no. Experiments with atomic clocks have shown that this is exactly what happens when you fly one of these things around, although according to the book, the effect is from gravity rather than the motion of the plane.

Anyway, that's enough about time. I’m officially calling time on this section, but…

Uh oh! We’ve got personal problems tomorrow. Bring a therapist.

Plans on ice

2009-04-23T04:47:00.000-07:00

Does Who know Wenn?

Now the daft Dr Wenn thinks he’s seen time go backwards. He has some water. It freezes. Then it thaws. And later, it freezes again. Time must be going backwards.

So is my patience with Dr Wenn; and Lucy’s. She notes that there’s more to this than the reversing of physical effects. True. If Dr Wenn were to scratch his name in the ice, it’d disappear when the ice melted and wouldn’t return when the ice froze.

But perhaps if it was possible to reverse time, things wouldn’t necessarily happen in precisely the same way they originally did. If time has no aetiology, then forwards or backwards there should, perhaps, be no guarantee that what’d been done the first time should necessarily be undone because of quantum level uncertainty. Yes, I know I have no idea what I’m talking about, but surely time isn’t like some sort of recorder remembering where everything once was. For example, would time reverse the effects of gravity? If something has crumbled off a building when time was going forwards, would it then crumble on again if time was going backwards? What about the water cycle which is driven by the sun? Would rain really rise into the sky if time was reversed? Would evaporation really fall?

Here’s one last one. Would school boys be praised for unbreaking windows with their footballs? (And, therefore, be told off for not doing so?)

It’s an interesting matter to think about, although I’m probably doing little more than revealing my ignorance. Think of me like some of those early Greek natural philosophers with their dotty ideas about the natural world and its ways.

Tomorrow, time and travel, and getting your atomic clocks out of sync.

Stopping time

2009-04-21T23:03:00.001-07:00

Why use a machine when boredom and anxiety will do the job nearly as well?

Dr Wenn now unveils a machine which can stop time and does (through the agency of the mischievous Lucy) for a thousand years. Of course, nothing has changed and Lucy is, again, unimpressed. Dr Wenn says that the time machine can be used in conjunction with the time stopper.

Lucy asks about travelling backwards in time, but Dr Wenn says that it’s not possible because the past doesn’t exist. Lucy disagrees. Dr Wenn explains that the past is a memory of present moments, and the present is infinitely small. He thinks that the only thing which is real is the future, which ceases to exist the moment you arrive.

Lucy continues to play the sceptic. The present exists and even although it’s infinitely small, it adds up to something, which is the past. No one would get very far trying to deny past indiscretions.

Who’s right?

I was thinking that we travel through time all the time. I don’t mean with regard to two or three minutes passing while I walk from here to school. If something is fifty metres away from me, it’s fifty light metres in the past. As I approach it, I’m approaching its present. If I walk away from it, it’s receding into the past again. The one thing I can’t do is come at it from the future or move it, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, into the future. Life is all about being aware of the past. Only because of the speed of light and our rather slow perception, can we talk about Now, even although we know, in truth, that by the time we think of Now, it’s Then.

Of course, this is a consequence of the physical world in which we live. As I approach something, I approach its present; as I leave it, I enter its past, but I can’t ever approach it and still be in the an earlier past. In other words, I can’t get to the thing as it was fifty light metres earlier. If I was a four-dimensional being, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Tomorrow, Dr Wenn makes a wormhole.

The time machine that never was

2009-04-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

Or was it?

Dr Wenn tries to get his assistant, Lucy, to hang around in a box for a week on a brief one-way trip through time, although she can’t come back. Ever. Lucy isn’t too impressed. (“Worst mad scientist ever,” said Lucy.)

Well, we’re all time travellers so long as we’re going forwards, but by the time the future arrives, it’s already the past because we’re too slow to perceive the now. Or perhaps you could say that we always perceive the past, never what is now, and can only know that we’re entering the future.

Dr Wenn wants to stop time tomorrow. I have a theory – superboredom. But I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow.

Now it's potatoes

2009-04-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

For what it’s worth.

As I explained yesterday, Frederick explains to Sandra that the price of the stamps is all to do with rarity value. But she’s not impressed by the logic of a market place in which people pay a price based on what they might accept as a reasonable offer. Thus, she prefers sets of stamps, but isn’t paying for them what she thinks their value is. Nor is she paying the value other people place on them.

This would seem to make the value of the stamp different from what people think it’s worth. Frederick sees her point and wonders whether the worth of something is based on what we think others think it’s worth.

Sandra thinks that this potentially makes the price of things random so that people could charge just about anything they like such as potatoes for £5 a kilo instead of 50p a kilo. Frederick agrees that it might work if all the potatoes sellers agreed.

Could he be right?

I don’t think he is right. After all, if all the potato sellers start charging £5 a kilo, people will switch to sweet potatoes or something else. You could try marketing potatoes as a luxury item, thus appealing to the vanity of conspicuous consumers (which would work quite well in China). As the book notes, some items have a fairly stable price, while others fluctuate according to the vagaries of the market. Frederick’s stamps are a good example of the latter.

I’ll skip Problems 35 to 40 because they’re about our perception of images and involve a lot of pictures. Instead, we’ll start looking at some problems about time.

Philately

2009-04-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

And the art of making money.

Sandra doesn’t think much of her friend Frederick’s hobby of collecting stamps. He’s putting some in his album right now. They have a blue giraffe eating red leaves.

About a year later, Frederick’s looking through a stamp catalogue only to find that those stamps are now worth £100 each because of a printing error, and he has twenty of them.

But where has the extra money come from?

I assume that this is a supply and demand thing. If the supply is low and the item is desirable (at least among one group of people), you can charge a higher price for it. I suppose the buyer then hopes that the value will appreciate.

It was stamps today and it’s going to be potatoes tomorrow. Time to post a potato.

The idea of it

2009-04-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

I thought of it first.

At the school of Greytowers, Dobbin ran a lunchtime club called Curious Questions from which he noted down various strange facts about the world, and he had the idea of putting them into a list also called Curious Questions.

They were popular with the club, but although the editor of the school magazine, Flash Bagman, thought they were a bit dull, a teacher put up a copy of them on the notice board.

But one day, Dobbin’s mum read out a story from the news paper about how a certain Flash Bagman had won a prize for Curious Questions, much to Dobbin’s great vexation.

Flash had also set up a club called The Curious Questions Club, which, when Dobbin said he’d take the matter to the teachers, he changed to The Curious Questions’ Club (the apostrophe making all the difference).

The material which Flash had used was, by and large, similar to Dobbin’s, barring a little rewording, but when Dobbin challenged his rival, accusing him of intellectual theft, he was dismissed. Flash thought that no one would confuse their styles, and the facts were all in the public domain. And if Dobbin’s going to cause trouble, there might be Brains to deal with.

Who’s the prima donna?

Hold on. Prima donna? Isn’t this scenario all about plagiarism? Oh well, if anyone’s being a prima donna, it has to be Flash Bagman who’s getting maximum mileage out of Dobbin’s idea and all the glory for it. Dobbin, on the other hand, was content with his Curious Questions discussion group and some minor fame at school.

The discussion in the book seems more concerned with this scenario as an allegory (obviously about the Internet).

Tomorrow’s scenario is a tale of rarity value. It’s all money in the bank, I’m sure.

What is art?

2009-04-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

And more to the point, what’s it worth?

Lord Snotty has bought a Van Dryver, or so he thinks until art historian, Maurice Dance, comes calling and reveals that it’s actually a Van Rouge, who used to copy Van Dryver’s pictures as practice. Lord Snotty is mortified and the picture is hidden away in the attic.

But a few years later in the Telegraph, Lord Snotty reads that Van Dryver’s greatest works were actually by Van Rouge who should now be recognised as an artistic genius.

Lord Snotty doesn’t know what to think or do. He wonders whether he should put the picture on display again or whether it’s been a masterpiece all along.

An artist needs two things, talent and critics: talent so that we can see they’re not just any idiot waving a brush or wielding a hammer and chisel; and critics, incomprehensible and unchallenged, to waffle about the artist’s oeuvres. But it’s through the latter that we know the art is great because most of us aren’t art historians. We’re not equipped to judge such works much beyond the superficial level of aesthetic appeal. Most of use can’t even read the paintings of the Old Masters. It might be the Rape of Europa, but its symbolic significance is something else; like metaphor, really.

Thus Lord Snotty had a potential masterpiece all along, but it needed a critic to tell him that. He could’ve displayed the picture anyway and have said that he liked it perfectly well, but only Maurice Dance could have elevated it to the first rank.

Tomorrow, intellectual property rights and the case of the boy who published first.

And kick and twirl and turn and jump

2009-04-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

And jump and turn and twirl and kick.

Another of Zeno’s paradoxes today. I have no idea what the paradox is, but the book has pictures. The top line of dancers moves to its left. The middle line of dancers stays where it is. The bottom line of dancers moves to its right. They all end up aligned with each other. It might be some sort of paradox about relative motion or something to do with Zeno’s paradox about space and continuous vs. discrete space.

According to the book, the top line will’ve passed twice as many members of the bottom line (and vice versa, I assume) as it will’ve passed of the inert middle line of dancers. I think I can see what Zeno’s getting at. It seems to be like a question I’ve had about spinning disks. The further from the centre a point on a disk is, the faster it goes to complete a circuit. But that means that at the very centre of the disk, there’s no movement at all.

But in that case, the points on the edge of the disk are the same distance from the point of origin. With two lines of dancers, the distance would shorten and then lengthen as they pass the central point. The dancers at the end points will be the furthest from each other, but if both lines only have to line up with the end points of the middle line, they will still only move the same distance horizontally. There are really two axes of movement within space here. The dancers move physically along the x-axis while the spatial distance changes along the y-axis.

No, I don’t know what that actually means if anything.

I can’t turn the page.

Problem 30 is that I can’t, at least in Zeno’s limited conception of the matter, turn the page because, allegedly, I can’t pass through an infinite number of points in a finite amount of time. But in my universe, I can turn the page and do.

And we find that tomorrow’s problem is about the value of art.

Start by thinking big, really big

2009-04-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

And then think even bigger than that.

When I was young, I remember we used to play a word game of a sort asking where something was and having to give its location inside the next largest unit above it until we’d hit the universe and be stuck at that point. And that’s today’s question: what’s the universe in?

I have no idea. I suspect that if I could go fast enough to reach the edge of the known universe and pass it, I'd find absolutely nothing. Possibly the laws of physics would no longer apply and I’d cease to exist the moment I left the universe. (Seems a little unlikely, though, because there couldn’t be a universe if the laws of physics, though not immediately present in the void, were not viable once they arrived.) Another possibility is that I’d get lost because unless I stopped and waited for the universe to expand to my position. I’d be unable to see it until light, at least, caught up with me. I might also run into a universe coming from the other direction.

Another problem from Zeno tomorrow. Something about dancing girls, but might have something to do with motion. Who knows?

Crawling to infinity

2009-04-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

Is that Calculus I see peeking through the curtain?

Today we look at one of Zeno’s Paradoxes. This is the one about Achilles and the tortoise, and why the former, πόδας ὠκύς though he was, could never catch the tortoise. Of course, the problem is idealised, but I like it to my record of games of Freecell. At the moment, I win about 75% of them, but, of course, even if I never lose another game of Freecell in my life, the number will only approach 100%, but never actually reach it. In other words, the goal of 100% always remains in front of me just as the tortoise, at least as a mathematical construct, remains ahead of Achilles.

Zeno, according to the book, considered the problem of continuity vs. discretion in matters of time and space. If time is continuous, there can be no present; if it’s a series of infinitely small, discrete moments, then it can only ever be present and unchanging. Space could be similarly described. At least with regard to time, I’ve long wondered whether we experience being rather than time. If, for example, I never changed and the world around me never changed (at least not at a level perceptible to humans), then I probably wouldn’t understand the idea of time because it is through change that we know time passes. However, that would mean a completely inert existence.

Similarly, how I, as a changing creature, would perceive time would probably depend on my lifespan. A gnat might live a full and happy life in a time span that’d seem all too brief to me. To the gnat, my lifespan would seem marvellously long.

Human perception is always behind the curve because by the time I register Now, it’s always Then. Everything I can see is in the past, but my brain is too slow for this to affect my perception of the world. It’s only at extraterrestrial distances that looking into the past makes any serious difference because a star which is 60,000 light years away is not the star which is actually contemporary with me. It might’ve exploded ten minutes ago, but we’re not going to know that for another 60,000 years.

The same might be true of space for similar reasons. By the time I know I’m Here, I’m actually There, not necessarily because time/being has passed because, although I don’t notice it, I’m always moving. The Earth rotates on its axis; it orbits the sun; the sun orbits the galaxy and the galaxy is flying around in space.

Anyway, I think we’re insulated from the problem because of our perceptions and our Newtonian niche in the universe. If we were quantum-level creatures, things might be very different. I suspect that Zeno’s space-time paradoxes, interesting little brain-teasers though they are, are like Achilles and the tortoise – born out by the maths, but not by reality.

Tomorrow, the infinite containers paradox (a name which I just invented).

The hotel at the end of the universe

2009-04-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

The roomiverse is infinite.

The policy of the hotel at the end of the universe (owned by the Zake Busybod Foundation) is to build two new rooms for every one that people come to fill.

Zake’s business partner, Harry, decides to go into business for himself and builds another infinite hotel, but even bigger than the original. Nonetheless, he wonders how it might be done. His manager suggests that they should divide the rooms in half each time.

Harry then advertises that his infinite hotel has twice as many rooms as Zake’s infinite hotel. Zake isn’t pleased and decides to take the matter up with the Advertising Standards Council.

The questions are who is right and what should the ASC rule?

I assume that this is all about divergent vs. convergent series. Zake’s approach is divergent, while Harry’s is convergent. The problem for Harry is that his rooms will rapidly become too small to accommodate guests. Either way, there’s still infinity to be had.

The discussion in the book mentions Georg Cantor and different types of the infinite – that which has no bounds (Zake’s infinite hotel) and that which is bounded (Harry’s hotel).

Tomorrow, we embark on some of Zeno’s paradoxes and I may have to use the word “calculus”. Oh dear.

Ignorance is bliss (statistically speaking)

2009-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Which is why there must be giraffes on the planets orbiting Alpha Centauri.

At a seminar with his colleagues, Hugo Wellie claims that there are breeds of dog on one of the planets orbiting Sirius. Naturally, one of his colleagues asks how that can be and he counters with the question whether there’s life on Mars or the moons of Jupiter. It seems probable that there is, but as Hugo notes, if there is life, it’s probably just bacteria. The discovery of more complex creatures is highly unlikely. But our man thinks that if the chance of finding complex lifeforms in the solar system is highly unlikely, then it’s highly likely that they will be found on one of the planets orbiting Sirius.

OK, Hugo, dazzle me with your genius.

The Principle of Insufficient Reason. If we have no information about something, there’s a 50-50 chance that it is or is not. (It’s like yesterday’s problem, it would seem – heads vs. tails; true vs. false; yes vs. no; black vs. white; day vs. … [I think we’ve got the idea. –ed.]) (I’m sceptical because whether something is or is not, I’m still speculating either way; by Hugo’s reasoning, what he thinks is highly likely is just as equally unlikely unless, of course, my reasoning is flawed; the reason for his confidence that something is is just as good a reason for someone else’s confidence that it isn’t; are we getting into Hume’s is-is-not-ought territory?)

Hugo’s subsequent analogy based on coin tossing would seem to be flawed as Louie’s reasoning was flawed yesterday. Even if a coin were to be heads five hundred times in a row, there’s still only a 50-50 chance that it’ll be tails on each occasion. The chance of tails doesn’t increase just because the coin comes up heads n times. But he seems to be using such a reason to claim that there are dogs on some planet orbiting Sirius.

The discussion in the book is about strange coincidences which are, unsurprisingly, statistically unlikely such as the father and daughter who were both killed on a level crossing at the same time by the same train driven by the same driver, but four years apart; or the fortuitous wrong number which saved someone during the war; or the superstitious who have been saved because some chance event had deterred them from travelling on a plane which then crashes.

I still think Hugo’s reasoning is flawed by being based on idle speculation and because he overlooks the possibility that the same arguments seem just as applicable to a state of non-being.

We’re staying in an infinite hotel tomorrow; or perhaps one that’s even more infinite. Pack your suitcases; we might be in for a long stay.

The fifty-fifty chance

2009-04-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

Tossers.

Two idiots, Matt and Louie, like gambling, but decide that if they bet against each other, they can’t lose. They toss a coin, the winner getting a pound. Louie keeps calling tails and Matt keeps getting heads. He switches to heads and Matt then gets tails. Louie thinks that the odds of such a thing happening must be slight, but Matt thinks they’re 50-50 every time.

Who’s right?

Matt. There are only two possible outcomes. I don’t know whether it’s possible to calculate the odds of a coin landing heads up n times in a row, but that’s a different thing. Also, the more frequently it lands with one side up has no effect on the event on the next occasion. It wouldn’t matter whether it’d been tails for the past hundred tosses, the odds of a head remain the same.

Tomorrow, there must be dogs on a planet orbiting Sirius. It stands to reason.

This time you voted for your tyrants

2009-04-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

And now you want to have your cake and eat it.

We’re back in Diktatia today, which has recently become a democracy. The current concern is the overconsumption of sugary treats which is going to affect about 20% of the population. The cabinet agree with Madame Dampsponge that something ought to be done, namely a public campaign against the evils of sugary snacks; information for schools; and the heavy taxation of the profits of the food industry.

But the Minister for Minorities disgreed, believing that there was no absolute connection between sweets and health, and also wondering whether it should be left to individuals to decide.

Which parts of the plan should ministers back?

All of them. The Minister for Minorities probably wasn’t listening. The Health Minister wants to educate the public in general; children (brainwash them while they’re young); and tax sweets and chocolates. And it’s all being done for the benefit of the nation. [Yeah, I think we understood all this this first time. –ed.]

(Of course, for sweets read “tobacco”. [We knew that, too. –ed.])

Full cabinet support.

Once the cabinet is shown all the stats and the chancellor realises how much extra money the proposed Choccy Tax will bring in, the cabinet just can’t vote unanimously enough.

But the campaign rather backfires, with the lardies increasing in size and number, and sweets gaining covert prestige among Diktatia’s young.

Madame Dampsponge is returned to office in the elections and now has some new proposals. The consumption of sweets in public places is banned; they’ll only be sold to adults and be marked with health warnings; and those people who have health problems because of the effects of overconsumption will be made to pay for their treatment.

Is the Reichsführer Secretary of State for Health going too far?

Again, have sweets been banned? No. Although there are restrictions on who can buy sweets, it’s up to the individual.

And support still fills the cabinet.

The cabinet goes along with Madame Dampsponge’s proposals (which do result in a reduction of lardies) and after the next elections, she’s back and fulminating against the sugar addicts. She wants a complete ban on the sale of sweets or even their cooking at home (including chocolate cakes, fudge and pizza).

This time her colleagues are less enthusiastic because this campaign is making the government unpopular.

It’s the old story of a road to a police state being paved with good intentions. There’s a point beyond which measures taken for the good of the public cease to seem good and merely smack of government control. Apart from that, there’s also the consequences of a total ban. The Americans may have had the Prohibition, but it seems to have made alcohol all the more desirable and it made it lucrative for criminals to smuggle the stuff into the country. The continuing war on drugs seems to be ineffectual, and once every so often someone suggests legalising the stuff. The classification of marijuana has bounced around all over the place in the past decade. It seems to have gone from being “Close friend of Public Enemy No. 1” to “Mostly harmless” and back again.

We move on to some number puzzles tomorrow, which probably means that unless you know differential calculus, statistics and logic (all at the same time), you’re probably going to end up scratching your head until you see the answer – and then start scratching your head again.

That which does not kill me

2009-04-08T02:38:00.000-07:00

Makes me more susceptible to secondary infections.

The Marjon Community Council adopts a system of majority voting and everything settles down after that.

But then Marjonians start dropping dead from some terrible disease which is a consequence of the irrigation canals. They are a breeding ground for pesky-flies and if something isn’t done, about two-thirds of the population will die. Fortunately, according to the government druid, if they chew the leaves of the tabako plant, they’ll be immunised against the disease.

The proposal for compulsory mass immunisation is put to the Community Council and is about to be passed unanimously when someone raises the question of people reacting badly to the effects of tabako. The druid admits that about a twentieth of the population will die because of an adverse reaction to the leaves, but once the disease strikes, the leaves are ineffective.

How should the Council vote? For or against?

If they were to be utilitarians about it, they ought to vote for it. One twentieth sounds much better than two-thirds as the death rate. It also means that the remaining population would pass on their genetic tolerance for the tabako leaves to their offspring. After all, it’s just evolution at work – sort of.

In this particular scenario, there seems to be no solution without someone dying sooner or later. You might say that they should destroy the network of irrigation canals, but that puts them back on square one unless the climate improves. They probably don’t have the means to eradicate the fly population short of trying to kill them all, which would be an impossible task.

But wait! There’s more…

I survived the disease and all I got were these horrible scars.

One of the Marjonians has had the disease and survived. To him it seems unnecessary to knowingly risk his life by eating the tabako leaves to immunise himself against a disease he’s naturally immune to. But the Community Council vote in favour of the programme.

If everyone is made to eat the leaves, is such a decision fair and democratic or unfair and despotic?

The problem is that the Marjonians cannot know three things. The first is who will succumb to the pesky-fly disease if they haven’t already had it and survived; the second is who will succumb to the effects of the tabako leaves; the third is who might survive the former but not the latter. The third group are going to die for the least good reason so that if they’re made to chew the leaves as part of the programme, it’s really no different from shooting them for no good reason.

In other words, the scenario end up coming full circle. The compulsory immunisation programme is the same as the old requirement for Council decisions to be unanimous and leads to the same sort of problems. Of course, they doesn’t really clear up the issues about who will die one way or the other. A programme which could identify groups would help.

We’re off to the democratic Diktatia tomorrow as the nation faces a health crisis. Don’t ask for ice cream.

Sooner or later some serpent turns up

2009-04-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

Trouble in Paradise.

The climate takes a turn for the worse and the fertility of much of the land declines. A lucky ten percent have natural springs on their land and are able to produce an abundance of fruit. They get other Marjonians working for them for extra breadfruit and when the Marxist proposals, which were originally rejected, come up at the next Council meeting, there’s a bit more debate this time.

Some families have lost children through malnutrition, but those who have access to springs like having the control they offer them. And even if the breadfruit was distributed evenly, there probably wouldn’t be enough. As before, there doesn’t seem much point if people are toiling to produce breadfruit without any benefit to them.

The Community Council fail to reach a consensus, but the Chair of the Council thinks hardship for some is better than people being forced to do something against their will.

Is the Community Council still right?

That would depend on who you asked. The Association of Breadfruit Producers would object to any attempt to infringe on their civil liberties. The poor Marjonians, who don’t have enough to eat, would give less of a damn about civil liberties because they would consider the price they place on survival one worth paying (especially because they’re not paying it).

But the matter could be reduced to naturalistic terms. When some food source thrives, the things which depend on it also thrive. When the available quantity declines, the things dependent on it also decline. Nature’s a hard bitch. The Marjonians face the same situation (assuming for the sake of the scenario that the climate has changed naturally).

I don’t be holdin’ with these new-fangled inventions.

The idea of irrigation comes to Marjon. It seems to be a good thing with everyone benefiting. But the conservative tendency objects to change and, frustrated by the inertia in the Council, the poor Marjonians implement irrigation by force.

Is that justified?

No. It might seem fair because irrigation is going to improve the lot of Marjonians generally and although some might lose something, the resulting inconvenience isn’t catastrophic. But the actions of the poor Marjonians are probably illegal and, in effect, they’re creating a state within a state because they would then have to control the irrigation canals to prevent the Association of Breadfruit Producers from sabotaging the whole thing. The government of Marjon can’t function properly if a considerable number of Marjonians are essentially ignoring the law.

It might help if the Community Council didn’t have to make unanimous decisions and was representative.

The second of today’s problems, which I’ve included because I forgot to write up the first problem yesterday, is really part of a slightly different set which continues tomorrow when again we ask

Can the sacrifice of the few be justified for the survival of the majority?

It was only from a clearing left by a fallen tree that we could see

2009-04-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Lost Pyramid of Marjon.

(All right, so the title doesn’t have much relevance to the story apart from the name of the fictional place. No, there’s no pyramid. There could be a pyramid, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.)

Marjon is a fecund tropical paradise. The Marjonians all have their own plots of land from which they harvest food. The Community Council meets once a month to make decisions and all decisions must be unanimous.

But the Marxists had been in town and had suggested that all the produce should be collectively owned and distributed according to need. (They left out the bits about concomitant totalitarian dictatorship.)

One of the Elders wondered what the point would be. If everyone could help themselves, why would anyone bother growing breadfruit? If anyone wants extra, he suggested, they just have to grow it.

Is the Elder right?

I don’t know. The assumption seems to be that under this system, people would simply altruistically hand over their breadfruit recognising the collective need. Yeah, I think the Elder’s right. People are either going to grow stuff for themselves or they’re going to assume that someone’s going to grow it for them but without having the faintest idea who. Unless the Council orders people to grow, harvest and contribute, I’d guess that most people would continue to grow breadfruit for themselves. Since Marjon is so fertile, I can imagine the population agreeing with the Elder. It would also seem a little a little stupid to contribute to the breadfruit loaf (it’s like an EU wine lake or butter mountain) if you’re just going to get your contribution back again.

At this point in time at least, Marjon society doesn’t need to go all collective ownership. No one seems to have too much nor anyone too little.

Tomorrow, problems in paradise. It might be time for regime change.

Going to the dogs

2009-04-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

The animal-loving professor.

Professor Purple is so engrossed in writing a paper for the Philosophical Society that he forgets he has an ethics class to teach. But as he hurries to the lecture theatre, he sees that a dog has fallen into the lake and is unable to get out. Professor Purple wades in and rescues the dog, but by the time he gets to the class, he’s rather late and the students aren’t pleased.

Professor Purple explains what happened and sets the event as an ethics problem. The students think that he did the right thing by saving the dog.

But the next week, the same thing happens. This time about half of the students think that he should’ve left the stupid creature to its own devices.

The week after, and the dog’s back in the lake and Professor Purple refers the matter to one of the university porters. When he gets to class, he tells his students his new policy. Rescuing the dog every week is outweighed by the professor’s need to get to class on time. As he explains, this is utilitarianism.

But on this occasion the dog drowns.

Professor Purple’s first duty is to his ethics class and not some suicidal dog. However, I’m puzzled why the animal-loving prof neither adopted the dog as a pet nor took it to the RSPCA nor informed the appropriate department of the local council. He did took responsibility for the dog by rescuing it, but hasn’t bothered following through. I do applaud his decision not to save the dog himself a third time – and the porter can be blamed for the idiot creature’s demise instead.

Foolish, contrary creatures.

But now the students, being typical hair-brained creatures themselves, now accuse Professor Purple of flouting a fundamental duty to save the life of a sentient creature. This duty allegedly supersedes other considerations such as arriving for lectures on time. (Oh dear. If the prof arrives late because he was saving the dog, the students complain; if he arrives on time, but doesn’t save the dog, the students complain. This is the sort of muddle-headed logic I expect from my students. In fact, I think it’s an international phenomenon.)

Professor Purple notes that if he’d been a surgeon rushing to an important operation and he’d encountered the same situation, he would’ve been criticised for wasting time on some dog. He notes that class agreed with him that his arrival on time outweighed the risk of the dog drowning and adds that in making moral decisions some sort of system for weighing up rival elements is needed.

But the students refuse to have anything to do with sense and reason, and start getting rather uppity with boycotts and graffiti. Is Professor Purple missing something?

I don’t think he is, but his students are. It’s rather like Optimality Theory, but with the constraint ranking not necessarily being the same every time. Professor Purple starts with SaveTheDog » ArriveOnTime and his students agree. The next week, he’s still applying that constraint ranking, but some of his students re-rank it and by the following week, Professor Purple has followed suit. The week after, the death of the dog has caused the students to rank the SaveTheDog constraint (or, perhaps, the SentientCreatures constraint) above everything else. The prof is still applying the ArriveOnTime » SaveTheDog ranking because that’s what his students seemed to want.

Actually, the situation can’t really be modelled in OT terms because you’d then need metaconstraints which affect the order of a constraint ranking and might even lock it. The emotive DeadDog metaconstraint reverses the ArriveOnTime » SaveTheDog ranking, and then locks it and blocks the CommonSense constraint.

Professor Purple can never really win.

Tomorrow, it’s off to the exotic Lost Kingdom of Marjon. But we’ll have to get visas from the embassy.

I don't like Grandpa Alloi

2009-04-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

“Well, just eat the chips.”

Professor Quesay, who has been studying the Alloi tribe, is invited to Grandpa Alloi’s seventieth birthday dinner. During the course of the meal, he wonders where the old man is, and then sees his glasses in the tureen. Professor Quesay, who’s obviously rather absent-minded, only then remembers that in Alloi society, it’s the duty of the children to kill their parents when they reach the age of 70 and eat the body.

The professor turns rather green now that he realises what, well, who he’s been eating. Of course, it’s a great insult to turn down the fare on offer.

There’s nothing Professor Quesay can do; and why shouldn’t he continue to enjoy the meal as he did initially?

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Custom is king. The professor may not like it, but he can only lump it. The Alloi would probably wonder what sort of weird society interred or cremated their dead.

Anyway, dog rescue tomorrow. A heart-warming story from the Trevor MacDonald And Finally… series.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

2009-04-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

Or something like that.

After a bomb attack in People’s Republic Diktatia, the government has the usual suspects rounded up. Basically, they should name the bombers or they’ll all be shot. Problem is, they have no idea who the bombers are. It’s suggested that two of them should admit to being the bombers so that the others can go free.

Yeah, free to be rounded up the next time someone slaughters a bunch of innocent people strikes a blow for freedom. [Revised by the Freedom Fighters’ Association of Diktatia. –ed.] There’s no solution as far as I can see. So long as the government of Diktatia acts in such an arbitrary fashion it won’t really matter whether two of those rounded up sacrifice themselves or not. There’s nothing to stop the survivors being rounded up a second time or a third or etc. It probably wouldn’t even matter whether a bomb went off while they were all banged up. The government of Diktatia is probably so paranoid that the lives of the hostages would be no more secure as a result.

Tomorrow, a dinner party with a difference. It’s that custom thing again.

All you need is useless information

2009-03-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

The slightly annoying philosophy problem.

To prevent a bunch of freeloaders overwhelming the Society for Useless Information (SUI), the Society demands a single item of useless information from prospective members. But twelve years later, there’s not a single new member and it appears this noble and august society is going to have to close.

What’s gone wrong?

I can imagine this being the sort of problem presented to you by some smug git who knows the answer, taunts you for not being able to work it out, and provides with a series of useless clues until you punch the annoying twat in the face.

I would argue that there’s no such thing as completely useless information. It might be of limited use to the point of being almost utterly uninformative, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn’t be useful to the right person in the right circumstances. In fact, this is more or less what the book suggests, but with particular reference to the SUI. No matter how banal and pointless the information may be, it does have one use: enabling people to gain admission to the SUI. Of course, this means that no one can become a member because the information they have isn’t completely useless after all.

Now you can see why I said this is the sort of problem which would be put to you by some smug git just for the purpose of watching you wonder what the hell the answer might be.

(Have I done this problem before? When I was adding the tags, I found I already had a tag for useless information. Indeed I did in May two years ago. Not so useless after all.)

I’ll skip the remaining two problems in this section, which I see I’ve done before, and move on to the section on ethics instead.

It began life as a trireme

2009-03-30T04:56:00.000-07:00

And ended up being a two-wheeled cart.

The Greeks built a trireme nicknamed Thunderprow which they thought the gods themselves had blessed so that it couldn't be sunk or fail to sink enemy ships. But eventually after many successful battles, it needed to be repaired with about half of the timbers needing to be replaced. The old timbers were kept as a mark of respect.

Another third of the original timbers needed to be replaced, and then the captain had Thunderprow sailed back to port for a general overhaul. While it was out on patrol, the people of the town rebuilt the ship from the old parts as a monument.

The current version of Thunderprow was less successful than the original in naval engagements. To Sorites, the captain of the ship, the monument undermines them by making it seem that the ship reconstructed from old parts is Thunderprow. The people thought that the ship was still Thunderprow even after two rounds of repairs in the shipyard. Nonetheless, Sorites made them destroy the original timbers and nails, but Thunderprow’s prowess continued to be mediocre.

Which of the three ships was the original Thunderprow?

I’ve been in this situation myself a couple of times. By the time my PC was stolen by some crooked removal man about seven years ago, it was no longer the machine I bought in late 1997. The casing was still original and, I think, the sound card might’ve survived, but the rest had long since gone. The only other original parts were the keyboard, mouse and speakers. Similarly, I once had a bike, the frame of which sheared through one day. By the time that bike disappeared into history, probably only the peripheral parts of it were original. To all intents and purposes, it was a new bike.

The first version of Thunderprow was the original, I’d say, but the ship didn’t cease to be Thunderprow even after two refits. Similarly, you might say that English is no longer English because it’s changed so much over the past 1300 years or so from internal and external changes that it should be called something else. As the book notes, this is like asking how many grains make a heap of sand. There’s no fixed number, of course, because we have a rough idea of how a heap should look. We don't really care about how many grains it took to get to that point.

In other words, we have to be a bit vague when dealing with non-discrete entities because there’s no gap between now and now.

Tomorrow, the Society for Useless Information puts itself out of business. Sharpen your irony now.

The surprise exam

2009-03-29T03:45:00.000-07:00

It’s never going to happen.

Today’s problem could be a description of my own classes – slow and lazy. The teacher tells the class that they’re going to have a test, focusing on Aristotle in particular, some time between now and the end of the term. And it’s going to be a surprise.

Later Bob and Pat are talking about the announcement. Bob, being a shining example of slowness and laziness, is worried, but Pat’s not so sure that there’s even going to be a test. She reasons that the closer to the end of term it gets, the less of a surprise the test will be. But this chain of logic can be used to work backwards, thus making it seem that there’s never going to be a test at all.

About a week later, though, the teacher announces the test much to Bob’s dismay.

Was Pat’s reasoning flawed or what?

Pat’s reasoning doesn’t seem wrong. The longer the teacher leaves the test, the less surprising it’s going to be. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it was left until the last day of term, and since that date can be eliminated, so can the previous day and so on. In reality, on the other hand, the teacher is free to set the test at any time. To set it a week after it was first announced is as good a time as any.

Another gradient problem tomorrow and an old friend – the Sorites Paradox.

I never done it

2009-03-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

Stitching them up a treat.

Two girls have been caught climbing in the window of the school tuck shop. The headmistress, Dr Gibb, suspects that they’re the notorious tuck shop thieves. If they confess, they’ll be suspended for the rest of the term; but if one admits guilt and the other doesn’t, the latter will be expelled. They could both keep stumm, but they would have to have agreed on this strategy beforehand because they’re kept separate from each other.

Of course, this only works when the thief has an accomplice. A lone adolescent felon would deny everything whether there was evidence against them or not.

Tomorrow, infinitessimal calculus; or, the test is never going to happen.

You can have any colour so long as it's black

2009-03-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

Ravens.

Today’s official problem is about proving the statement that all ravens are black.

Well, you can’t. Nor can you specifically define them solely by the colour of their feathers or blackbirds and mynah birds would be ravens as well. And black swans.

You can’t prove things like this. I suppose you could say that there’s a high probability, but it’s dangerous to claim it as an absolute truth.

Tomorrow, you’re nicked! The case of the tuck shop thieves. (Which I think we’ve done before.)

Excursus

2009-03-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

The No Rules Paradox?

Last year, one of the cretins in one of Quincy’s classes produced this feeble response to one of the exercises in the book. It re-emerged from under a pile of papers on my desk a few weeks ago, but it only struck me yesterday that this is another paradoxical statement. If the best rule is “No rules”, then, I’d assume, the rule should apply to itself. If you don’t state such a rule (because it’s better not to state it), then how would anyone know it is a rule? But more than that, it suggests that it’s impossible to have no rules because even saying that there are no rules is to state a rule.

Nor does it matter that it’s been stated by some idiot school boy. Of course, I suppose you could ask what sort of statement “The best rule is no rules” is. It defines the best rule, but isn’t really a rule itself. But if the list of rules starts 1. There are no rules, then the statement is contradictory unless this is meant to be, say, a principle which, unlike a rule, isn’t meant to be enforceable. One way to avoid this is to state it in positive terms, such as “You may do anything you like” or “The best rules are those which minimally interfere in your life”.

Cuts will be needed

2009-03-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

A hair-brained law.

In the Hindu Kush, the rulers decree that the town’s hairdresser has to cut everyone’s hair and that anyone whose hair hasn’t been cut after six months will have their heads cut off. (I’ve heard of a little off the top, but this is ridiculous.) Amateurs cannot cut anyone’s hair and the hairdresser may not cut their hair of anyone who does it themselves. If he does, there are a couple of guards who will chop his hands off.

It sounds like a good deal for the hairdresser who gets paid one piece of silver for each cut. It sounds like a good deal until he realises that there’s a slight flaw in all this and goes into hiding for twenty years.

What’s the problem?

The hairdresser falls into two categories. He’s the only person who can cut other’s hair and is banned from cutting the hair of people who do it themselves – which includes him.

The only way out of this paradox is a third party solution. He’d have to go to the rulers and explain the situation so that they could then emend the law (and perhaps fine the people in the legal department for not formulating the law more carefully). Actually, I suppose you could take an OT-style approach to the problem and say that the six month constraint outranks the ban on cutting the hair of people who cut their own hair. So long as the former constraint is satisfied, the latter has no effect. But this isn’t really a solution because if the hairdresser does cut his own hair and the law is then applied, he’ll be executed in six month’s time. Again, without recourse to a third party, the hairdresser can’t simply change the terms of the law.

In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a solution. If you get painted into a corner like this, the only way out is to walk on the paint. I’m inclined to agree with those who have declared these sorts of things to be meaningless. It’s a bit like saying that something is simultaneously completely black and completely white, but not a shade of grey.

The paradox illustrates Russell’s Paradox (wikipedia; it includes a more comprehensible illustration of the paradox than “the set of sets which are not members of themselves – is it a member of itself?”).

Tomorrow, ravens and universals.

Problem 3

2009-03-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

All rise for the Lord Chief Justice.

Protagoras has been teaching Euathlos how to be a lawyer, but the latter doesn’t have to pay any tuition fees until and unless he wins his first court case. But instead of going off and practising law, Euathlos becomes a musician. Protagoras decides to sue. If he wins, he’ll be awarded the tuition fee; if he loses, he’ll still be awarded the fee because Euathlos will’ve won his first case and still has to pay. (Protagoras seems to have forgotten that someone else might defend Euathlos.)

Euathlos thinks that if he loses the case, he’s not going to have to pay; but if he wins the case, the contract will effectively be nullified – and he still won’t have to pay.

And what does the Lord Chief Justice, Uncle Angel, have to say?

I think Protagoras has hoisted himself by his own petard. In his contract, he needs to have added at least two clauses, one stating that Euathlos must pursue a career in law and is not permitted to undertake any other form of employment, and the other stating that Euathlos’ first case cannot be against Protagoras or his family or any employees. Thus, I’d fine him 50 drachmas for being a rubbish lawyer. However, I would order Euathlos to pay half the tuition fee or 50 drachmas (whichever is the lesser amount) in recognition that Protagoras has spent time teaching Euathlos about the law.

Although both arguments are valid, Protagoras as the originator of the contract does, in my mind, bear greater responsibility for the resulting paradox and perhaps needs to be referred to the Bar Council.

Another legal case tomorrow in Hairdressers of the Hindu Kush.

Problem 2

2009-03-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

Right for all the wrong reasons.

Farmer Field wants to make sure that his favourite cow, Daisy, is safe and sound. It’s not just enough for the dairyman to say that she’s in the field, he wants to be certain. So he goes to the field and sees a black and white shape behind some tree in the distance. All is well with the world, or so it seems.

The dairyman also goes to check and finds Daisy sitting in a hollow out of view of the gate and a large piece of paper caught in a tree.

Thus Daisy really was in the field, but was Farmer Field right to say that he knew she was?

I don’t think there’s probably a satisfactory answer to this question. Even although Daisy was in the field, Farmer Field was wrong to say that he knew she was there because he never confirmed his observation. It looked like a cow; therefore it was a cow. On the other hand, he was right at the time even although what he thought was Daisy was a large piece of black and white paper because he believed he was correct. His situation was like human knowledge. What we think is fact today might turn out to be erroneous tomorrow. Once upon a time, for example, people thought that the Earth was the centre of the universe around which all else revolved. Then Copernicus showed that the planets revolved around the sun and we know today that we’re a long way from the centre of the galaxy let alone the universe. In other words, the dairyman is sort of Copernicus to Farmer Field’s Ptolemy. (Although the analogy is imperfect.)

Knowledge, I suppose, is not the same as fact. My knowledge contains both facts and fictions; some of those fictions I’ll know to be fictions (e.g. Ptolemaic cosmology), but some of those fictions I’ll believe to be facts. And some of my knowledge will encompass matters which might be fact or fiction, but I don’t know the truth of it.

When it comes to my own field, linguistics, I note that knowledge of the subject has evolved and each stage in the evolution bears the hallmarks of the previous stages. The 19th century started with historical and comparative linguistics, and ended with the development of synchronic linguistics in the form of Structuralism. But linguistic rules seem to be a throwback to the historical linguistics of the 19th century even after the development of generative phonology. That started as linear phonology until it was displaced after about 10 years by non-linear phonology, although much of the baggage was inherited from SPE. And although Optimality Theory dispensed with rules, much of the baggage of non-linear phonology was carried over to OT. But has our knowledge of language and its doings actually advanced? Does OT provide a better description of how language behaves? Hasn’t it possibly imported errors from rule-based phonology? Has linguistic theory ever been anything more than a model rather than a definitive statement? I’d have to put linguistics in the third category: descriptive models might be fact or fiction.[1]

Protagoras finds that lawyers can be slippery devils. He ought to know – he trained Euathlos.

Notes

1. I’m inclined to view OT as a dead end, a powerful fiction that lacks adequate constraint and is just about impossible to falsify. The one area of language where it is a demonstrable failure (at least in its early incarnations) is opacity. Prince, McCarthy and co. resorted to analogy (but rebranded it as correspondence), which seems too random a thing when chronologically we know that the chain was A --> (B) --> C, where B is necessary to account for C, but “disappears”. An alternative is the reintroduction of levels, which were a feature of lexical phonology.

Problem 1

2009-03-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

Let’s start with a paradox.

101 Philosophy Problems commences with the tale of a nefarious criminal – the Philosopher – who’s sentenced to be hanged unless he makes one true declaration, in which case he’ll spend ten years in prison instead.

The next day when he’s taken to Tyburn, he hands the executioner a piece of paper, who orders the Philosopher to be released. What might this notorious criminal have said to get himself released?

I guessed the answer rather than reasoned it when I was looking at this problem a few months ago. The statement must come from the Liar’s Paradox stable. If the Philosopher says something false, he’ll be executed; if he says something true, he’ll be sent to prison for ten years. He obviously hasn’t said something false, or he’d be jiggling on the end of the rope; but he hasn’t said something true or he’d be sent to prison. Whatever he said, must’ve been a paradox.

The book suggests that the Philosopher might’ve written, “I’ll be hanged tomorrow.” Hanging’s too good for this one.

Tomorrow, belief, but not that sort of belief.

The last ethical dilemma

2009-03-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

It was all about washing-up liquid.

The final dilemma in the book is the argument in response to the anti-vivisectionists. Would you rather that thousands of people died of washing-up liquid than one rat to assess its toxicity/acidity?

As I’ve said before, if you change the rat to something cuddly like a dog or a cat or a rabbit, then you might get a different response, but a rat seems to be a price worth paying. Besides, what if your gran got extreme skin cancer because of the carcinogens in washing-up liquid that hadn’t been fully tested? Why wasn’t it tested? you’d ask. “Well,” the evil company suit would reply, “You didn’t want us to test our products on animals and our computer simulations revealed nothing. Of course, even if we had tested the washing-up liquid on animals, it might’ve posed a danger to people.” Look, you’d reply, here’s a tenner for you to go down the pet shop and buy as many rabbits as you like. “So that’s what a tenner looks like,” the suit would say, leaving you to think for a moment that the company had a minuscule research budget. “I've never seen a denomination so small.”

I suppose if a bunch of technologically advanced aliens turned up, they might treat us as suitable subjects for vivisection, although they’d have to be even thicker than we are if they thought human physiology and their own were close enough for such experiments to be of any use to them. And besides, if they’re so advanced, why do they need to do experiments on live animals?

Well, that’s the last ethical dilemma. I was thinking of moving on to a running commentary on TY Ancient Greek, but since I’m doing that on the other Green Bamboo, it looks like we’ll have to move on to Martin Cohen’s 101 Philosophy Problems. Actually, I think some of these are also in 101 Ethical Dilemmas (the book’s at school, which is where I’m about to go to retrieve it), hence I probably won’t be covering all 101. But never mind.

Tomorrow – another day, another dilemma.

Cabaret Voltaire

2009-03-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

But first a word from our sponsors.

Yesterday’s dilemma was the world depicted as a village of a hundred people. That a few people have most of the money and control most of the resources can be seen as an implicit criticism of such unequal ownership. I couldn’t help but note that this really is how Nature seems to do business, although perhaps with less disparity between the haves and have-nots. Chickens really do have a pecking order. It’s in the nature of all animals to acquire as much as they can to the detriment of (intentionally or otherwise) others lower down the pecking order.

But it struck me that when the developed world was developing, there were no international aid agencies. Plague, famine, war and death turned up without the UN following behind them.

While the developed world bears much of the responsibility for the environmental mess the world is in, it seems that the developing world isn’t interested in learning lessons from our mistakes. They (like many of my students) take the view that because someone else did X, they can do X as well. The Third World doesn’t seem to understand that they need to see the bigger picture before they go spewing pollution into the air and water, and need to be more responsible about the environment now. What does it matter and why should it matter if it takes a little longer for them to become developed countries if, by acting as they develop, they benefit the whole planet? But as I said above, animals want as much as they can get and some animals live in countries where the checks on their activities are weak and feeble.

And now the main feature: Dilemma 100.

In AC Grayling’s book on Descartes, which I read when I was in New Zealand during the winter holiday, there is a description of Descartes cutting open a live dog and sticking his finger into its heart, feeling it beat as the creature died. He thought of animals as mere machines, hence his brutish treatment of them. But in today’s dilemma, Voltaire notes that animals are not just machines. They can learn and would appear to have memory. There are examples of dogs looking for masters who have died.

When Descartes cut dogs open, didn’t he notice that they have much the same internal structure as we do and responded to the infliction of pain that cannot be merely mechanical?

Of course, this dilemma is about vivisection. I think I noted in the discussion about a previous dilemma (perhaps the 11th) that it perhaps depends on the creature as to how we react to the act. Rats (and rodents in general) bad, vivisection all right; dogs (and any animal kept as a pet) cuddly, vivisection not all right. I may be anticipating tomorrow’s dilemma by wondering what purpose such an act has. Is it mere cruelty (or worse, sadism)? Is it curiosity (in which case the animal could be killed first)? Is it to watch the animal ticking (or rather, dying)? What have we learnt from doing this and does the knowledge gained justify the act? Ever?

The discussion at the back of the book quotes CS Lewis who observed that the objectification of an animal means that something of its reality has been lost; and George Bernard Shaw who noted that we could learn the most by vivisecting live humans, but lose some of our humanity in the process. Back in Dilemma 31, it was shown that testing drugs on animals first doesn’t necessarily confirm that they are safe for human use.

Tomorrow we reach the final dilemma in which the counterargument is posed. And once I’ve done that, what am I going to do next?

The Microcosm

2009-03-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

The world writ small.

As I was going along Zongfu Lu just east of Tianfu Square, I happened to meet Masters Lao, Kong and Meng who accosted me and asked me where I was going. I told them that I was heading to Chunxi Lu and asked where they had been or were going.

“We’re going to 百人庄,” said Master Lao.

“I’ve never heard of it,” I replied. “Is it famous for something?”

“There are only a hundred people living in the village,” said Master Kong. “About thirty of them are Europeans and about one in eight are Africans.”

“About half are men and half are women and half are homosexuals,” added Master Meng who paused for a moment. “Oh dear. It seems I’m doing things by halves again. About half a dozen are homosexuals. The village religion is supposedly Christianity, but only about thirty are Christians.”

“It sounds like at interesting mixture of people,” I said.

“It is,” Master Lao said, “but things there are not all well. Six people own nearly half of everything, while many of the villagers have sub-standard housing.”

“But is it not normal for a few people to have a disproportionate amount of the wealth?” said Master Kong. “There are always people who are more talented or Fortune favours them with some opportunity just at the right moment. Similarly, not everyone can live in the best houses because we must live where we can afford to live.”

“Is that natural?” I wondered. “Did anyone help them?”

“I think it is natural; and at first they helped themselves, but then afterwards they got the others to help them,” Master Kong continued. “The dominant birds and animals always get the greatest share. The tallest trees in the forest get the most light while the lowest plants get the least. Just because people, who are natural organisms, are like this doesn’t mean that this state isn’t natural.”

“But is it fair?”

“Indeed not,” said Master Meng, “but it is natural and I’m sure Nature will sort things out in the end.”

“But it shouldn’t be natural that half the village shows signs of malnourishment and about a third of serious malnourishment,” Master Lao said.

“How can that be?” I asked. “Is it because of the greediness of the richest six?”

But my friends could not say if it was.

“Many are suffering from disease and many of them because they have no clean water, but must draw it from the village’s drainage ditch,” said Master Kong.

“Are the richest people in the village to blame again? Do they take too much of the water? Why don’t they spend some money on sinking more wells?” I could not imagine why they would let this happen, but Master Kong was uncertain why this was.

“They can apply to the village chief,” explained Master Meng, “but in writing, which is a skill only about a third of them have. And only the deputy head of the village has been to university.”

“Is it really necessary for all of them to be literate?” said Master Lao. “Or for more to go to university.”

“It would be advantageous on both counts,” said Master Kong.

“But if too many go to university, then that devalues their achievements and pushes up the price of jobs. Shepherds would not seem to benefit from a degree in Ovine Management since they learn about sheep through experience,” Master Meng replied.

“And literacy is, really, an artificial form of language because we primarily speak and listen,” said Master Lao.

“But don’t those who are literate then, in effect, control those who are not by controlling the flow of information?” I said.

“True,” Master Lao then admitted, “but if the literate are benevolent, then they will use their knowledge to the benefit of others.”

“Then we have to hope they are benevolent,” said Master Kong. “I’m not sure about the six, though. We heard a report that there was trouble in the village and two of them were going to restore order.”

“Harmony and social stability are so important,” said Master Meng without a trace of irony.

And with that we went our separate ways.

Tomorrow, Voltaire walks his dog. Bring a leash.

The half-hour principle

2009-03-20T00:46:00.000-07:00

A Clockwork Orange.

I remember when A Clockwork Orange was released and the frisson which surrounded it. My parents went to see it, but this was adults-only territory. I didn’t see the film until Kubrick died and it was shown in UK cinemas. I went to see it mainly because I wanted to see whether it was worth all the hysteria.

I’ve come to note that films often try to hook the audience in the first half an hour. That’s generally when you’ll see the gratuitous artistically justified topless scene. In A Clockwork Orange, that’s where all the controversial material is after which the rest, as far as I recall, was dull and insipid.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), because I’ve never read the book, I feel that I’m out of my depth discussing this dilemma which focuses on four points:

the emotional violence of the nuclear family
the economic violence of capitalism
the anarchic violence of hooliganism
the organised violence of modern science

As the book notes, violence for Alex and his droogs is just like an ordinary job from which come similar material trappings.

SparkNotes (A Clockwork Orange) have some useful background material:

Burgess's novels address fundamental issues of human nature and morality, such as the existence of good and evil and the importance of free will… His portrayal of human beings as inherently predisposed toward violence, for example, reflects his acceptance of the Catholic view that all human beings are tainted by original sin.

Burgess may have had something to say, but the religious angle invalidates it for me. A similar issue came up in a previous dilemma where humans as killer apes (the Luddite view) was contrasted with humans as social and co-operative animals. Burgess seems to have preferred to view humans as killer apes.

Burgess was inspired to write A Clockwork Orange during a visit to Leningrad in 1961. There, he observed the state-regulated, repressive atmosphere of a nation that threatened to spread its dominion over the world… Burgess regarded communism as a fundamentally flawed system, because it shifts moral responsibility from the individual to the state while disregarding the welfare of the individual. Burgess’s deeply internalized Catholic notions of free will and original sin prevented him from accepting a system that sacrifices individual freedom for the public good. A Clockwork Orange may be seen in part as an attack on communism, given the novel's extremely negative portrayal of a government that seeks to solve social problems by removing freedom of choice.

But there’s more to the book than just a critique of the old Soviet Union “because the dystopian world of the novel draws just as much on elements of English and American society that Burgess detested.” He didn’t like the British pursuit of social stability in favour of the individual or American apathy. He was also satirising behaviourism; that is, the conditioning of humans or animals in response to stimuli. In the film, Alex is conditioned to resist his violent impulses and sexual urges, but he eventually breaks his conditioning to become an individual again.

Burgess’s view seems a little too pessimistic and may have been conditioned, (yes, I’m being ironic; no, I didn’t notice until a few minutes after I wrote this sentence; behaviourism? geddit?) by World War II just as much as his lapsed Catholicism.

Anyway, tomorrow we’re…

“Hold on a tick. What about the ethics?”

Oh, yeah, ethics. Well, I guess because of all the slaughter the Roman Catholic church is responsible for (the Crusades; the Conquistadors; Thirty Years’ War etc.), then Catholics, even the lapsed ones, should STFU about ethics.

“I don’t think that’s an answer.”

No, you’re right, but I did say I was out of my depth on this one.

“Fair enough. Now what?”

Tomorrow, the global village and the stats of inequality or iniquity.

Do I cut the green wire or the blue wire?

2009-03-19T01:08:00.001-07:00

By the way, did I mention I’m colour blind?

Part 1

We go to the movies in the 97th dilemma, which is based on a film called The Bombmaker (starring Dervla Kirwan). An Irish housewife, and former bomb maker, is re-employed under the threat that her daughter will be killed if she doesn’t build a bomb in London. Throughout the film, she’s frequently reminded of her daughter’s peril.

What should she do?

Get a better agent. I was suddenly struck by the utter stupidity of this story. Why would the terrorists employ her? Were all the other bomb makers on holiday? Anyway, back to the question.

She could tell the terrorists to kill her daughter because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (© Mr Spock). Or she could say it’s great to be back at work and thank the boys for such generous maternity leave. Or she could sacrifice herself and blow them all to perdition.

“I don’t want to build you a bomb.”
Shut up or we’ll kill your little girl. Oh, here’s some high explosive and a detonator.
“It wouldn’t be a bomb without them.”
[Kaboom!]

I told you it was a silly story.

Apparently in the real film, the SAS turn up and kill everyone. Rule Britannia.

Part 2

Meanwhile, the daughter goes all Stockholm Syndrome on one of the terrorists who begins to sympathise with his captive. When the order to kill the child comes, the good terrorist kills the bad terrorist, and the girl promises not to grass him up. He’s nicked and the child is brought in to identify him from a line-up.

What should she do?

She owes the guy one and should repay her debt, which she does in the film. On the other hand, he’s part of the gang responsible for her mother’s death, which would motivate her to stitch him up good and proper. But then again, if she’s Irish and the British are the enemy, she doesn’t want to be seen as a collaborator.

Yeah, it’s that stupid storyline.

I have to go back to school now, but we’ll be looking at the ethics of A Clockwork Orange tomorrow. Book your tickets early.

Blackbirds

2009-03-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

And I don’t mean the reconnaissance plane.

As Father McMoor departs, he calls on Mr Crofter to remember his duty, implying his duty to the animals on the island. The question is, “What duty can there be to animals?”

Similar to previous dilemmas in which animal rights have featured, I would still argue that whether the animal in question is domesticated or not, we ought to be bound to ensure it’s well treated and doesn’t suffer from our activities; that how we exploit it (if that’s what we’re doing) doesn’t endanger it. In other words, if we’ve intruded into its habitat, we’ve just become responsible for it. That the species in question might actually be wild is neither here nor there. Probably it is wild because a bunch of humans have intruded. We can’t assume that an animal has anywhere else to go because it may be restricted to a very limited niche.

Mr Crofter could still have an ecologically sound golf course, perhaps even one that’s a little more interesting for its setting. Certain parts of the island would, in effect, be designated as nature reserves. He could offer tours (for a price), for example, and the publicity might be beneficial, especially if Father McMoor starts talking to the media. Well, it’s play nice with nature or have a bunch of tree-hugging eco-freaks causing trouble.

Here endeth Dilemma 95

Here beginneth Dilemma 96

Huntin’, shootin’, an’ fishin’
Cash cows.

Just when Mr Crofter’s employees are preparing to receive Sanctuary Island’s first customers guests, he spots some sort of big fat seal near the jetty. He orders his people to get rid of it and others like it, but his secretary, Lara, suggests that people could hunt the seals because she’s hoping that by making them economically valuable, she might be able to save them from the same fate as the other animals on the island.

The resort is a great success, the seal hunt is a major attraction, and there are jobs for the locals. The Scottish Humanist Society erects a statue of Mr Crofter in Glasgow. But there are some people (was that Father McMoor I saw talking to a journalist?) who say that he hasn’t earnt the honour.

From an anthropocentric perspective, Mr Crofter might’ve improved the lot of local people, but from a natural one, he’s an animicidal [sic] (animacidal?) maniac. The scenario doesn’t actually say whether the animals which are being hunted are also being properly managed so that the population can be sustained. But Mr Crofter seems to represent the vein of humanity that sees nature and cannot abide such unproductive untidiness. I’m reminded of an earlier series of environmental dilemmas (83-86) and how humanity wasn’t separate from nature but part of it.

The problem with Lara’s suggestion (as the book notes), you can have hunting as a form of management (e.g. too many elephants despoil the forest), but you also have people opposed to hunting. It does seem to be a pity, though, that plants and animals have to have an economic value before they’re valued. I can imagine the effort that would be put into protecting an endangered plant if it contained some key ingredient in a universal cure for cancer.

We all need to do something. I don’t mean that we have to turn into a bunch of eco-Luddites, but little things add up to a lot. Developed countries should do something, but shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the burden of fixing things alone. The Third World shouldn’t be allowed to stick its head in the sand and pretend that just because we made a huge mess, they should be allowed to make a huge mess as well. But it does take everyone.

We leave the environment behind for the world of B-movie ethics. Box office bombs away!

They'll have to go

2009-03-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Mr Crofter and his unexpected tenants.

Mr Crofter has bought Sanctuary Island off the coast of Scotland which turns out to be the unexpected home of some rather exotic animals. These are a nuisance because Mr Crofter wants to turn the island into a golf course and he’s rather dismissive when his secretary suggests that perhaps a few of the Great Auks could be kept. On the other hand, when the staff start running down those furry animals whose hides can be exploited, he’s not pleased about that and orders such creatures to be captured.

The local religious nutter, Father McMoor, arrives one day and is aghast to learn that Black Mountain will be blown up. When he protests, Mr Crofter tells him that his company will build a replica, although that doesn’t placate Father McMoor.

The book wonders whether it’s better to save something.

Presumably it would be better if something was saved, although perhaps that just delays the inevitable if the population isn’t viable without a lot of in-breeding among the surviving creatures. I cannot imagine that Mr Crofter’s slaughter of some rare animal species would go unnoticed by the outside world. Even if he tried to suppress all knowledge of the various rare species that inhabit the island, someone with a conscience would eventually reveal their existence.

The discussion in the back of the book is about the extinction of species like the Great Auk; how many extinct species come from (or rather, came from) Australia; and whether natural areas which have been replaced after, say, mining are any more or less natural than what was there before.

Tomorrow’s dilemma is about our duty to animals.