Yes, the virtual world is more beguiling than the real world. In the virtual world, people who know next to nothing about a subject don't get interviewed as experts.
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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2:04pm on Sunday, 21st March, 2010:
Comment
This was also in today's Observer:
Yes, the virtual world is more beguiling than the real world. In the virtual world, people who know next to nothing about a subject don't get interviewed as experts.
11:51am on Sunday, 21st March, 2010:
Outburst
The Observer comes with a supplement containing articles from The New York Times. I find it encapsulates well many of the contradictions of America: how it somehow manages to couple deep thinking with profound ignorance; how it can only see itself when it looks at others; how it invests the same energy and dynamism in whatever it does, whatever its worth; how it can be compassionate at the same time as causing others to need compassion. I'm sure that outsiders looking at UK newspapers would be able to find a similar set of contradictions about our national character, too, of course; I'm not singling out America here. To a large extent, contradictions are what make a great country great.
I mention all this because there's a particularly good example from the NYT supplement in today's Observer, which concerns new research that suggests empathy may have a basis in evolution. That sounds fair enough to me: if you're not empathetic to other people, they won't be so empathetic towards you, and then when you need help you won't get it. You die, you don't reproduce, and so your non-empathetic qualities are not passed on to any offspring.
Here's a snippet from the article:
Uh?
Why would any kind of atheist not think religion could have helped direct the evolution of empathy? This is evidence-based reasoning, it makes sense: it's just the kind of thing with which atheists are fine. Although religious people may dogmatically refuse to countenance as worthy anything that has been touched by atheism, the reverse does not apply. Where atheists would draw the line is in suggesting that empathy came from some kind of deity; that has no evidence to support it.
If they'd said, "Even die-hard fundamentalists might admit that this natural inclination to co-operate might have, historically, evolved" then that would have been more appropriate. The difference is that no, die-hard fundamentalist would do that, because it's part of the deal with being a fundamentalist that you don't concede any ground there.
See? Good research, good conclusions, strange misunderstandings: from such dialectics societies establish their own, unique identities.
5:44pm on Saturday, 20th March, 2010:
Anecdote
Seen this afternoon in Highwoods Tesco, Colchester:
I didn't look at Women's Interests, but I expect it was just a bunch of magazines with women on the front cover.
5:58pm on Friday, 19th March, 2010:
Anecdote
My younger daughter is having a sleepover tonight. There are an extra six 16-year-old girls staying here. We went to Blockbuster and got six videos, on the grounds that this was a pound cheaper than getting four. There are bags and bags of popcorn, crisps, tortilla chips, chocolate and biscuits. We only have around 8L of fizzy drink — I hope it'll be enough or they may turn nasty.
As a result of this, I'm going to be trapped in my office for the entire evening. That's how things usually are for me, though: I don't get to watch our snazzy new TV because it can only receive talent shows and series 5 of programmes I haven't seen series 1 to 4 of. So, no change there.
My wife, on the other hand, is experiencing something relatively new for her — being banished to a bedroom, where she'll be doing some actual work (even though this is out of hours on a day she has off). Now, she too will know what it's like to be ... trapped!
6:58pm on Thursday, 18th March, 2010:
Outburst
This is a poster outside the nightclub on Colchester's High Street, Liquid:
Uh? I guess that kind of thing must still be legal, then. "Men" have to pay £15 to get in on Friday but "ladies" only pay £12?
OK, so given that this isn't a gay club, I can see why they would do this. They generally want a balance between men and women ladies, but more men want to go than women ladies want to go. By charging men more, they reduce their numbers (and, furthermore, give those men who do attend the impression that there will be lots of women ladies there because it's cheaper for women ladies to get in).
I think it's disgraceful that they are allowed to do this. Imagine the furore if West End musicals charged men less to get in than they charged women! They could reason that lots of husbands are reluctant to go to these sorry affairs, therefore their wives don't get to go either, but if they charged the men less then they would go, which would mean two people in the audience who wouldn't be there if they charged the same amount. Yet there would still be pages of newsprint devoted to it, virtually none of it complementary.
What particularly annoys me about this kind of thing is that when change finally does come, it's generally because women feel they're getting a bad deal. Nightclubs that charge men more than women ladies are basically using women ladies as bait; they are trying to get more women ladies to go, because the more women ladies that go then the more men will go. That's demeaning (or whatever) to ladies women, therefore it must be stopped. Yes, I can see that being used as a reason to make women ladies have to pay the same as men, but I can't see its happening purely on fairness grounds.
I seem to recall the 1970s British Rail practice of charging women less for InterCity train travel was finally banned for this kind of reason (ie. it implied that men went out to work whereas women stayed at home), rather than because it was unfair. The last case I heard of when such a gender-based price differential went to court was for a woman who had her hair done at the same establishment as her husband and she was charged twice as much; judgment went against her because it took three times as long to do her hair than it did her husband's.
It's sad when so much anti-sexism is itself sexist.
5:35pm on Wednesday, 17th March, 2010:
Anecdote
It's crocus time in our garden — only a few weeks later than usual.
Every year, my younger daughter and I plant a hundred or more crocus bulbs in the garden. Some thrive, some don't, but over the time we've lived here we've got several patches started.
Here are the crocuses that were already planted when we moved in 15 years ago:
These are some in a circle on a patch where we once had a bonfire. Those are daffodils coming up in the middle:
These were planted 2 years ago in a space where we used to have a bush. My father-in-law took a dislike to the bush, hence the space:
This is a bunch in the flowerbed. They're very visible from the house, and the number of crocuses present gets bigger every year:
At the front of the house we have some white crocuses bordering a patch of grass:
We have some gold ones bordering a different patch, but the photo didn't come out in focus and the flowers have gone in now because it's getting dark.
We even have some crocuses in among the snowdrops that live in the wall (the wall that my wife and father-in-law knock down when turning into the drive):
These are the crocuses we planted in November last year, new for this year:
Oh well, you can't win them all...
3:13pm on Tuesday, 16th March, 2010:
Anecdote
When I was a teenager, I used to carry a pack of cards around in my blazer pocket at school. We'd play at break and lunchtime — mainly (hardcore) Solo, but other games too — especially when it was bad weather outside. Living on the East Yorkshire coast, this meant quite frequently...
The packs I carried would get beaten up fairly quickly, becuse they were used a lot and they were sharing my pocket with other things a good deal harder than they were (keys, coins, small pieces of wood, paperclips, screws — gawd knows what else). The cards would get bent in play, dropped and trodden on, and generally sustain injuries that meant they were either unusable or identifiable from the back. Once too beaten up to use, I'd throw them away and get a new pack.
Here's a pack I didn't throw away, though. This one I kept:
As you can see, those are no ordinary cards (although I did buy them from my local newsagent's). They are, in fact, Slavonic — or as they say, Slovonic. Here's their box:
I left the lid flap open so you could read where it was manufactured: the USSR. I don't exactly know how the one thing I ever saw that came from from the Soviet Union was a pack of cards exported to the shop a mere 5 minutes' walk from where I lived in the back of beyond, but that's how it was.
The cards were used: they have sweat stains on them from where scores of schoolboy hands have held them, and you can see from the box that it was subject to the same rigours as the other cards I used. I kept it not because it was from the USSR (which in the mid-1970s was still 15 years away from collapsing); neither did I keep it simply because it was different (although that is why I bought it); no, I kept it because I liked its look. I'm glad I did, too, because when I open it up and riffle the cards, for a fleeting moment I'm 14 again.
Ah, happy days...
5:03pm on Monday, 15th March, 2010:
Anecdote
I thought I'd blogged about this ages ago, but a quick search of my hard drive reveals that I haven't.
I'm the proud possessor of three ivory chessmen:
These were given me by my mother last year; she in turn got them from her Auntie Edie, who regarded them as antiques. They're made of ivory. If you look close, you can see traces of red on one of the elephants (rooks), because the original chess set was in red and white:
The story is that the people in whose house my great aunt worked as a servant were having some rubbish thrown onto a bonfire for disposal. A chess set was among the rubbish; my great aunt had always liked the chess set, and asked the man doing the burning if she could have it. He'd already burned most of it, but found three pieces that he'd missed. These, he gave to my great aunt.
When I was a child, I saw the pieces in my great aunt's display cabinet. She claimed to have a lot of antiques, but none of them were remotely worth anything. I really liked these for what they were, though, so was pleased that my mum got them; I wasn't as pleased as I might have been when she passed them on to me, because she did it when my brother died. I like them, though, and so does my wife, so we keep them on display in the living room.
I often wondered what the whole set would have been worth if it hadn't been thrown away. I got my answer several years ago when just such a set appeared on the Antiques Roadshow: £750. They're 20th Century, made in (I think) China.
So, that's another heirloom I won't be selling to finance my retirement. Still, that's not the point of having them. They remind me of my childhood, my (Great) Auntie Edie (whom I liked), and they're even game-related.
I don't suppose I'll be seeing a full set on eBay any time soon, though.
7:12pm on Sunday, 14th March, 2010:
Anecdote
Continuing the occasional series...
Below the shelf with the boxes on is this shelf. It's one of two that hold stationery (the other is below it, as we'll see next time). It's a big taller than it needs to be, so there's a lot of wasted space; one of these days I'll move it up a rung and the shelf beneath it too, which will release more space where I need it for my computer games (two shelves below, as we'll see next next time).
The pile on the left is made up of card, transparencies, coloured paper, labels, pads, !4 notebooks, document wallet sleeves and a few smaller notebooks I've put on top. It also has some more exotic items such as carbon paper (all at least 30 years old, and some possibly from the 1950s), tracing paper and graph paper. This is where, when my kids would show up without notice and demand something bizarre they needed for homework, I'd probably find it.
The next pile has some more A4 books (quite nice ones that I intend to use but have never thought of anything important enough to want to use them for). There are more transparencies, more A4 pads and some smaller pads an notebooks that I take with me every once in a while. That small shoebox at the top contains my spare batteries; it doesn't actualy go there but on the shelf below, I'll move it...
Next to this pile is a green box and four notecard boxes. The green box contains everything I need to wrap up presents (except regular, clear sticky tape, which is on the shelf below). There are scissors, a hand-held zip-along cutter, pens that write on anything, sharp-bladed paper knives, novelty sticky tape, large rolls of sticky tape left over from last century before I bought a proper dispenser that uses smaller rolls, and glue. The glue isn't paper glue (I chucked that out ages ago when it dried up); it's superglue, used for when my mother presents me with the latest ornament/plate/cup she has broken while dusting. I also have the solvent I need to get superglue off my hands in that box, too. I suppose I shouldn't really keep superglue there as it doesn't really fit with the present-wrapping theme, but "it's where I keep my glue" so that's where it is. I have some polystyrene cement in there, too.
The four notecard boxes behind the green box contain records of my classical music cassette tape collection. If I want to find some piece that is on a compilation, this is where I'll look. So long as I got it before about 1995, there's probably a sheet for it. In fact, there will be several sheets, as I wrote a program to generate several sheets for each piece, ordered by composer (or composers) and name (or names) of the piece. Some of the records — all of which are on paper rather than card — are on lineprinter paper, from the days when I was a PhD student. I'll maybe show you a few sometime. The collection isn't complete because I lost track of the tapes I hadn't indexed when we moved house about 15 years ago; besides, the program I wrote (well, rewrote — I had versions for the DEC-10, Atari ST and MSDOS) stopped working with Windows 98.
Finally, the pile on the right contains assorted envelopes, paper bags andcard so thick that it qualifies as being board. If I need some brown paper to wrap up a parcel for posting, this is where I'll look if the roll of brown paper at the top of the cabinet to the left has run out. Behind the paper are some index cards bought in Los Angeles in 1995.
Oh, I like stationery, by the way. If I ever come into crazy amounts of money, I shall be buying as wide a variety as I can just so I can own it...
5:46pm on Saturday, 13th March, 2010:
Anecdote
I've been thinking about getting a new PC for the past couple of months, but this week the desire to get one has become more pressing. When I switch it on first thing in the morning, the screen on my monitor flickers. It continues to flicker for several minutes (longer and longer each day) until it eventually stabilises and looks normal. I suspect it's a power supply problem.
The reason I didn't buy a PC earlier was because I was reading stuff and writing stuff and didn't want to disrupt anything or I'd miss deadlines. Just as I was getting close to finishing, I got asked to write a book chapter for an academic LOTRO anthology. I've almost finished this, but have now got a request to make changes to a chapter I wrote for a different book, based on the talk I gave in Magdeburg last year. Meanwhile I have a dissertation, two theses and a movie script I've promised to read. If I get a new PC, it'll be days before I can use it for anything worthwhile as I transfer over all the stuff from my current PC. Yet if I don't, it could be that next time I switch it on, it doesn't come on.
I guess I'd better hit the mail order PC web sites...
7:03pm on Friday, 12th March, 2010:
Comment
There was an interview in this week's MCV with Melanie Jones, European Sales Director of Hubb.
Yes, this is the same MCV and the same Hubb that you may recall I mentioned with regards to last week's "want to see more?" ad.
Well, if it was placed there by a department headed by a woman, I guess that makes it unsexist after all (except in its assumption that men will buy anything in response to titillation, but that rarely seems to count).
Is it just me, or does that model in the ad look like she has two belly-buttons?
6:52pm on Friday, 12th March, 2010:
Comment
I read in the paper this morning that there are an estimated 2,000,000 potholes in British roads.
Well, having just driven the two miles from our house to the chip shop in Eight Ash Green, I'm wondering where the other 8 are.
2:05pm on Thursday, 11th March, 2010:
Anecdote
With its being Mother's Day this Sunday, I thought I ought to get my mother some kind of present. This used to be hard, but now it's easy: I get her diabetic chocolate (because she's diabetic). She gets it for Christmas, birthday, mother's day and occasionally as a surprise. I usually get her 7 or 8 150g bars (one of each kind they do) from a chemist's shop in the Co-op, which lasts her around two days.
No, I'm not kidding: my mother will eat 8 large bars of chocolate in two days. This may be how she got diabetes...
Anyway, recently I noticed that Boots had started selling diabetic chocolate again, so I bought some from them, too. My mother will have four days' worth of chocolate this time. Unlike the Co-op, Boots do regular-sized bars, too. Out of curiosity, I decided to buy one and scoff it myself.
Hmm.
I don't think chocolate will feature strongly in my diet should I get diabetes myself...
5:48pm on Wednesday, 10th March, 2010:
Anecdote
Oh, here's something I haven't mentioned before: for some reason completely unknown to me, I have an excellent gaydar. Basically, I'll see or hear someone and out of nowhere will just know that they're gay. I don't ask to know it, and I don't seek to know it, I just suddenly know it. I have no idea how or why it happens, it just does. I noticed I was developing the ability in my late 20s, by which time I was married; I don't know if that has any bearing on it, but there you go.
When the signal goes off, I'm almost invariably right (at least I have been in cases where the result could be confirmed). That doesn't mean it goes off for every gay person that falls within its range, but it does trigger a lot quicker and a lot more often than it seems to for other people — even for some gay people. It's a bit annoying, actually, because the information is utterly useless to me: imagine what would happen if, every time you saw someone with red hair, suddenly you became aware that they were red-headed — that's how it is. Unless I were specifically wanting to discuss some matter of red-headedness with a redhead, why would I want an alert every time I spotted a redhead? Yet that's what happens with gay people. It's bizarre.
There are some limitations:
I mention this as a personal quirk that I can't help having and have no use for; I guess it could say something deep-rooted about my emotional attitude to homosexuality (which is basically DOES NOT COMPUTE), but actually I don't think this is the case — it's purely an observational thing. Hmm, I'll maybe explain what I mean some time in a post I've been intending to write for some time but have yet to get around to — look out for a future mention of bananas, fonts and Chinese women from behind...
Captain Jack — ping! But why?
3:40pm on Tuesday, 9th March, 2010:
Anecdote
This fell out of the copy of the Daily Mirror that my father-in-law bought today:
Spot the difference between the ear with the hearing aid and the one without, eh? Well it's certainly hard, but if you look closely:
There, you can just about make out a clear plastic tube running up out of the ear on the right. The rest of the image looks pretty much the same, though.
Hmm ... perhaps a little too much the same?
Here are the two images showed fast one after the other. It's a bit jumpy, because I can't be bothered to spend ages lining it up just for you, but you can see what I mean:
Apart from the clear tube and two swatches of hair, everything else is the same. When putting the hearing aid in (or taking it out), no other hair was displaced. Only the hair that might get caught in the picture when cutting the thin tube from one image and pasting it into another moved. If you look closely enough, you can even see a rectangular boundary.
So there you go, you've spotted the difference: the image on the right has been photoshopped and the image on the left hasn't.
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Copyright © 2010 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).