Egregious ignorance

In what way is a word processor better than a typewriter? Firstly, because it can wrap text automatically at the end of a line. Secondly, because it allows users to define text styles. Every word processor I have used over the past quarter of a century has supported styles. So why does almost nobody use them? Of course Microsoft make them less intuitive with every new version of Word, but even before Word 97 people insisted on reinventing the wheel with every paragraph.

Doctor Who at its best

Russell T. Davies is due a lot of credit for regenerating Doctor Who for the 21st century, but his artistic contribution hasn’t been the greatest. Hats off to Eccleston and Tennant as the Doctors, and a huge surprise in Billie Piper, whom I fully expected to be the worst assistant since Bonnie Langford. But among the writers, Steven Moffat reigns supreme. His CV outside Doctor Who is impressive, with Press Gang and Jekyll as notable landmarks. Within Doctor Who, his The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances was nothing short of stunning.

Given my high expectations, I was slightly disappointed in last week’s episode, Silence in the Library, although I was pleased that it introduced a concept I’ve long felt was strangely absent from time-travel fiction in general, namely that two people can encounter events in a different sequence. But last week’s episode was the first of a two-parter, and this week’s Part 2, Forest of the Dead, was better than I dared hope. It even managed to get a fair performance out of the real worst assistant since Bonnie Langford.

Takes me back a bit

I’m sitting in front of Pink Floyd Night on BBC4. I don’t watch much television, and I don’t listen to much Pink Floyd, but it’s fascinating stuff and it takes me back to a time when adolescent hormone imbalance made this stuff seem so earth-shatteringly significant.

There are four old guys, frightfully English Public School, terribly decent on TV and probably a huge PITA in person. I’m struck by the fact that Rick Wright reminds me so much of Nigel Havers, more by manner and accent than physiognomy. The image is so striking, I have to see resemblances in the others. Roger Waters looks like Richard Gere, but then I start to struggle. Nick Mason looks vaguely like Douglas Adams and I’m really struggling with David Gilmour - perhaps a touch of Christy Moore?

They’re talking (well, Wright is) about music in terms that are very frustrating to me. I’m a scientist by nature and training. He talks about chords in a way that is completely alien to me. I struggle to tune my 3-year-old daughter’s Spongebob Squarepants Ukulele; I certainly can’t see why Wright thinks one chord sounds so effective - I like some jazz, but obviously I lack the intellectual grounding to understand much of it.

I can’t analyse it, but I must go and play Dark Side of the Moon.

Dumbing down

I’ve followed the journey of The Independent with interest since its inception. When new, it was visually striking. Its then state of the art printing process, together with its editorial policy, led a renaissance in photojournalism. Its initial attempts at political neutrality made it a bit boring, but it soon settled down. As it struggled to find its niche in the market, it sought new stories, often with a strong, sometimes preachy, moral voice. Its international coverage has been better than most.

The story of why the Indy went tabloid is an interesting one. Somebody on the staff (I don’t recall who) drew up a chart. Draw a vertical line down a page, dividing it in half. Draw two horizontal lines across the page, dividing it in six. That’s the UK newspaper market (as it then was). Left and right are the political stance of the papers; top to bottom you’ve got broadsheets, mid-market tabloids and red-tops. Top left is The Grauniad; top right, The Times and The Torygraph. Bottom left is The Daily Mirror; bottom right, The Sun. Middle right are The Daily Express and The Daily Mail. Middle left is (or was) nothing. That was an obvious gap in the market.

I used to buy the Indy daily, then weekly. The Saturday magazine crossword is one of the most entertaining there is. Of course, nobody can beat Araucaria in the Grauniad. And The Listener Crossword is more challenging - but I wouldn’t buy The Times for that. More recently, I’ve found that my main reason for buying the Indy on a Saturday has been (though it pains me to admit it), Jeremy Beadle’s quiz. Now he’s dead and, though his replacement compiled a creditable effort on Saturday, I thought I’d take a long hard look at the paper to see if it was really worth my while.

Of course it’s got a lot of crap in it. It’s always had fashion pages, and the centre pages on a Saturday are always full of bling for brain donors. Even Saturday’s cover story was about fashion. Racism is a serious issue, but I can’t get terribly worked up about serious issues set in a context of a market that only exists because some people are too stupid to choose their own clothes.
I’ve been vaguely aware of a few stories in recent editions that appeared to be pure padding, with no substance to them at all. Turning to page 5 of Saturday’s edition, I came across something that triggered alarm bells - “Computers ‘to match human brains by 2030′“. The first sentence was enough to convince me this was likely to be garbage. Computer power to match the intelligence of human beings - by what measure of intelligence? I don’t know if the piece said, because I never reached the end of it. The second sentence talks of “technical progress” in a way that suggests to me the author doesn’t know the difference between “technical” and “technological”. But maybe he’s a fairly junior writer - or out of his area of expertise? No, his name is Steve Connor and he styles himself “Science Editor”, no less.

I got as far as the fourth paragraph before I encountered this gem: “optical character recognition – the technology behind CDs”. Remember, this pig-ignorant cretin describes himself as a “Science Editor“! Not only should he be dismissed for incompetence, but so should whoever employed him in that post. I gave up in despair and disgust.

Scum

How should one respond when caught up in a tabloid story that’s blatantly untrue? I’m not the victim, but a relative is. From some of the details they’ve got right, it’s clear they’ve been talking to someone  who knows the victim; from some of what they’ve got wrong, it’s clear they’re lying when they claim the story came direct from the horse’s mouth. The advice of people more accustomed than I am to the attentions of the sewer-rats seems to be to ignore it. Punch a journalist today - it’s in society’s interest.

A man I never knew

I’ve spent some time drafting some text for this post, but I think I’ll just state the facts. My attention was drawn by a post at Cosmic Variance to a posthumous post by an Andy Olmsted at Obsidian Wings. I’ve subsequently seen other links to it. It’s a touching piece. I’d also recommend his last post to his own blog, and especially the comments.

Religion in politics

Religion in UK politics has been much in the news lately with Blair’s Damascene conversion to Catholicism, and Nick Clegg’s revelation that he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus’s grumpy brother. UK politics is a little healthier than the US version in this regard, but it’s still disappointing that Clegg felt obliged to wait until he was elected party leader before coming out with this. Then again, as long as he didn’t lie about it beforehand, if no interviewer ever asked him the question, that’s not his fault.

Of course, no rational person believes that Bliar has really changed. He’s been lying about this at least since 2004. And that’s the important thing. Belief in fairies isn’t unforgivable in a politician, but lying about it is. I may be naive, but I think there is a peculiarly British tradition of honesty, of compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law. This places us at a significant disadvantage in international trade when UK law is at odds with the practices and traditions of our international customers.

There are sound pragmatic reasons for lawyers to take a more professional, even cynical, view of the law. It is appropriate that they should strive to fight their clients’ cases, employing every trick they can (within the law). But when lawyers become politicians, it demeans the entire establishment when they try to play the system. Sometimes they get away with it: Bill Clinton’s reputation seems to have survived his bizarre testimony to the grand jury. Sometimes, they come across as very silly indeed, like the absurd arch-hypocrite Jonathan Aitken.

There is a long tradition of religion in the military. There are a couple of reasons for this. One fairly obvious one is that it’s relatively easy to recruit someone to risk death in the course of their employment if they don’t believe death is final. Another more subtle one goes back at least as far as Clausewitz, if not the more cryptic allegory of Sun Tzu. Military commanders must be prepared to make decisions and stand by them. When those decisions are based on incomplete data, they may turn out to be right or wrong. Dithering is always wrong. Military commanders must have the self-confidence, even arrogance, to stand by their decisions. Sometimes that self-confidence is boosted by prayer.

Politicians, like military commanders, make important decisions. Like military commanders, they operate on less than perfect situational awareness. Unlike military commanders, they often have days or months to make their decisions. While in principle senior military commanders have access to advice collated by senior analysts informed by hundreds of specialist experts, in practice time constraints rarely allow them this luxury routinely enjoyed by politicians.

We may pragmatically accept that military commanders often need mythological support when they act on our behalf. It is dangerous, but danger is inescapable in split-second life-or-death decisions. When politicians rely on supernatural guidance to inform decisions that they, and their army of civil servants, have had months to consider, those politicians present a danger that we could well afford to do without.

Briefly

I imagine there’s lots of stories like this. I don’t know why this one has attracted attention. Obviously, it’s a law drafted by morons, and the consequent tragedies will go almost entirely unreported.

I had occasion to chastise Stephen Fry yesterday.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Yesterday, Scotland’s kick-ball team went down to another memorable defeat. We really do seem to have a knack for bumbling through the group stages of major tournaments doing almost enough to stay in until, in the last game, we have to beat one of the strongest teams in the world, sometimes by a preposterous margin. The most memorable example was perhaps the 1978 World Cup, where the nation had hyped itself up, partly through an excruciatingly embarrassing team song, to a level of confidence totally unsupported by the objective facts. After the usual mediocre performance in the first few games, we came to our last group match. To stay in the competition, we had to beat the Netherlands, one of the strongest sides in the world, by three goals. In the 68th minute, Scotland went 3-1 up; suddenly even the most level-headed dared to dream. The dream lasted four minutes.

Yesterday’s challenge was similar. We had to beat Italy, the reigning World Cup champions. The margin was immaterial - one goal would do. Even a draw would leave open a chance (but that would then depend on Partick Thistle beating Brazil, or something equally unlikely). We had home advantage (and Italy had never beaten us here); even the torrential rain was on our side. Still, it was a herculean task.
In this household, we’re not terribly interested in the game, so we hadn’t (unlike my mother!) taken out the necessary month’s subscription to Sky to get TV coverage. Nor was I sufficiently interested to go out to a pub to see it. But I dipped into the radio coverage between household chores. Until I heard, with 15 minutes to go, the score stood at 1-all. We’d scored once already, we could do it again. In the next few minutes, we came close twice (bear in mind, I’m going by the radio commentary). The commentators were agreed that the Italians were knackered. Sadly, it was not to be, and the Italians sealed it with a goal in the last minute.

I saw TV interviews with both managers after the match. From those, and commentaries I’ve subsequently read, it seems Italy’s winning goal followed a poor decision to give them a free kick that probably should have gone the other way. But Scotland seem to have had the advantage of two off-side decisions that denied Italy a legitimate goal and gave Scotland a more debatable one. The officials were poor, but we can’t complain.

While musing on this game, I was reflecting on the meaning of the term “national sport”. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the subject. But surely you can’t legislate for taste? It’s the shortest law I’ve ever read, but what’s it for?

World’s worst crop circle

I live in an obscure little village between Glasgow and Paisley called Ralston. It’s a village in the southern English sense, where they pretend that some arbitrarily-delineated group of roads has its own identity, distinct from the next few roads in the seemingly endless continuum of homogeneous conurbation. North of Ralston is Barshaw municipal golf course, a quite decent course available to the public.

North of Barshaw is a strange little oasis of farmland, complete with its own crop circle. Unfortunately, it’s been made by drunks, and it’s not very circular.