After decades of respite from the notion that courts should be televised, it is reported (iin March 2012) that the UK government intends now to take this step. Some of the reasons for and against such a step are similar now to what they were in the 1980s when broadcasters were trusted to spread knowledge and avoid
sensationalism. Now, increasing pressure from a wider market makes it much more difficult for broadcasters to deliver a public service; and to this difficulty, some other reasons for caution about televising courts should be added.
Bearing the tarnished colours of News International, Sky TV now proposes to take on the good work of hoping to make the public understand and appreciate better the work of the court; they propose to do this not just by reporting what has been going on in courts but by deploying cameras in courts. NI and the Government may hope that this will improve relations between them, but televising the courts is not the best way to do this, not least at a time when NI staff past or present, themselves come before the courts .
A more subtle psychological consideration is that the acts of looking and hearing (broadcasts) are likely to encourage people to think that they have truly understood what they see, and that some court proceedings represent most others. Such interpretations are less likely when one reads, in the press, of events in court, as the role of the reporter there is more evident.
When TV was brought into Parliament it was hoped that the public would know more about and better appreciate the work done for us by MPs, moreover that MPs’ behaviour would be positively influenced and that they would themselves welcome the broadcasting. Though the broadcasting authorities at the time carried out short term research to evaluate these goals, there is little sign of any long term research that reassures society that the broadcasting of Parliament has done better than the print reporting it has largely supplanted. When the Law Lords’ function was removed into a new Supreme Court, there was no plan to assess the move in order to make any improvements in provision, and there appears to be no intention to link an incursion into the criminal or civil courts with any formative research.
The reported proposals seem not to have been well conceived and should be opposed.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Dengl 47 The Psychology of Football
One of my career spells had been in Nigeria in 1964-6 and I emerged with a notion I called "sensotypes" - perhaps a genetically imbued characteristic of intelligence or mental structure that took different forms, depending on the communication methods which the culture had focused on for the past many generations. Thus print literacy eventually (in Europe etc) created an inner-directed 'inlook' (intellectual if you like) while cultures depending on oral (and kinaesthetic) signs would develop otherwise.
I "predicted" a flowering of athletic and physical-artistic achievements from Africa plus where formally academic, those that focused a bit more on human relations (medicine, law).
I could see where this stereotype was heading, and I retreated from saying any more about it (it had already been said by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong SJ, and several others).
Now, after another career in television audience research, I merely watch soccer on the screen.
About this I have a suggestion (for David Horrocks, who had an article "Brains in their feet?" in the Psychologist, January 2012) on which I would be interested to hear any reflections on a few points I made to him:
After scoring a goal, players (much encouraged by tv depictions I imagine) indulge in what may be energetic displays of euphoria and celebration of achievement - which I wonder may not be dysfunctional. One goal has not won the match. Nor has it notched up the player's wages another 10K. Is it possible that, in a simile with a pent up dam, what we see is something like the discharge of all the water it has collected, so that subsequent action has to emerge from a slow (?) re-establishment of pent up force? Might it be better for the manager to discuss with his lads - wait until the 90 mins are over; save the energy (both physical and mental) you are currently 'blowing' in celebrations, to apply to subsequent play. Get back to your positions,
channel that energy into immediately following play. If and when we win - do somersaults etc in front of our fans.
You report a couple of particularly articulate and insightful players - I wonder how far this goes with the others. What I noticed in Nigeria (1965) where European players mixed in with the locals was a clear degree of generalship - amongst the older more experienced Euros (UK, Greek...) - which helped their side. You are quite right in emphasising the merits of generaliship. The picture they gave your article showing Scholes is perhaps telling - a much older player is being celebrated by Ferguson as still very effective. Other examples of people in their 30s, doing very well for their sides include Brad Friedel, and John Terry.
Interacting with the matter of at what age players are replaced is the heavy expectation placed upon the culture - not least by television commentary and discussion - which
says nothing about things you have mentioned such as club history - even player position history
emphasises a 'throw away culture' - sack the manager, sack this or that player ...
emphasises attack over defence - "buy another "striker" ..." (seldom identify 'buy a new midfielder' ..)
Apropos the "meaning" of "what IS a club?" I devised a 'thought experiment' which I put to one or two people:
consider that Arsenal puts ALL its players on the transfer list and at the same time Spurs put ALL their players on their transfer list - and then Arsenal buy all the Spurs players and vice versa. Is the club one used to call Arsenal still Arsenal? And Spurs still Spurs? My relatives (all Arsenal supporters) seem to refuse to enter into this question, but uneasily say the new Arsenal is still Arsenal.
To me, two considerations about 'branding' are pertinent. One is the change of name - even place - where surely Wimbledon is no longer the same as MK Dons? the "emirates" stadium and "club" are perceptibly a bought-over plaything of foreign potentates who may change their support at any time. In other words, the new 'brands' are probably very fragile and ephemeral; not only do they give ambiguous meaning to their supporters - but (this is where it connects with your argument) they do not have such a potential to convey a clear grop identity to the (new) players. Harry Redknapp who says that all that matters is cash - maybe right (only occasionally does a Sol Cambell transfer to opponents evoke deep feelings among supporters - and possibly players.
I "predicted" a flowering of athletic and physical-artistic achievements from Africa plus where formally academic, those that focused a bit more on human relations (medicine, law).
I could see where this stereotype was heading, and I retreated from saying any more about it (it had already been said by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong SJ, and several others).
Now, after another career in television audience research, I merely watch soccer on the screen.
About this I have a suggestion (for David Horrocks, who had an article "Brains in their feet?" in the Psychologist, January 2012) on which I would be interested to hear any reflections on a few points I made to him:
After scoring a goal, players (much encouraged by tv depictions I imagine) indulge in what may be energetic displays of euphoria and celebration of achievement - which I wonder may not be dysfunctional. One goal has not won the match. Nor has it notched up the player's wages another 10K. Is it possible that, in a simile with a pent up dam, what we see is something like the discharge of all the water it has collected, so that subsequent action has to emerge from a slow (?) re-establishment of pent up force? Might it be better for the manager to discuss with his lads - wait until the 90 mins are over; save the energy (both physical and mental) you are currently 'blowing' in celebrations, to apply to subsequent play. Get back to your positions,
channel that energy into immediately following play. If and when we win - do somersaults etc in front of our fans.
You report a couple of particularly articulate and insightful players - I wonder how far this goes with the others. What I noticed in Nigeria (1965) where European players mixed in with the locals was a clear degree of generalship - amongst the older more experienced Euros (UK, Greek...) - which helped their side. You are quite right in emphasising the merits of generaliship. The picture they gave your article showing Scholes is perhaps telling - a much older player is being celebrated by Ferguson as still very effective. Other examples of people in their 30s, doing very well for their sides include Brad Friedel, and John Terry.
Interacting with the matter of at what age players are replaced is the heavy expectation placed upon the culture - not least by television commentary and discussion - which
says nothing about things you have mentioned such as club history - even player position history
emphasises a 'throw away culture' - sack the manager, sack this or that player ...
emphasises attack over defence - "buy another "striker" ..." (seldom identify 'buy a new midfielder' ..)
Apropos the "meaning" of "what IS a club?" I devised a 'thought experiment' which I put to one or two people:
consider that Arsenal puts ALL its players on the transfer list and at the same time Spurs put ALL their players on their transfer list - and then Arsenal buy all the Spurs players and vice versa. Is the club one used to call Arsenal still Arsenal? And Spurs still Spurs? My relatives (all Arsenal supporters) seem to refuse to enter into this question, but uneasily say the new Arsenal is still Arsenal.
To me, two considerations about 'branding' are pertinent. One is the change of name - even place - where surely Wimbledon is no longer the same as MK Dons? the "emirates" stadium and "club" are perceptibly a bought-over plaything of foreign potentates who may change their support at any time. In other words, the new 'brands' are probably very fragile and ephemeral; not only do they give ambiguous meaning to their supporters - but (this is where it connects with your argument) they do not have such a potential to convey a clear grop identity to the (new) players. Harry Redknapp who says that all that matters is cash - maybe right (only occasionally does a Sol Cambell transfer to opponents evoke deep feelings among supporters - and possibly players.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Dengl 46 Woeisme 1 - on Education
well - this is not a dengl "for fun" as this website is headed - it is for woe; maybe I should set up a separate site. Later.
this one began when I read a "light hearted" press article:
A story in the i Newspaper is headed:
A staycation? Forget it, most of us would only go and get lost
the author is:
Josephine Forster
The internet refuses to supply the article in the (small) i newspaper - but a very similar version, in the full Independent, by the same author consists of::
Trending: If you're staying at home this year, you'll clearly need a map
Josephine Forster Independent 12 March 2012
The recession-fuelled fashion for staycations is all very well, but it seems Britons are in danger of getting lost in their own backyard. One in five British adults couldn't tell you how many countries there are in the UK, a poll of 2,000 UK citizens found.
The royal family often holiday in the UK, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, but more than half of those surveyed (53 per cent) couldn't say where that was.
One in five could not find the seaside resort of Blackpool on a map while the location of Stonehenge was a mystery to one in 20 people. When asked to name England's biggest mountain, 58 per cent answered either Mount Everest, Ben Nevis or Snowdon. A startling 25 per cent thought the Australian sandstone formation Uluru (Ayers Rock) was in the UK. Big cities fared no better, with over a third of people (33.8 per cent) suggesting that the Home Counties circled Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow.
Karen Gee, of the travel operators Journeys of Distinction, which carried out the survey, said: "We were astounded that while Britons clearly have an enviable knowledge of famous cities abroad, they seem to display a lack of geographical awareness in their own nation."
Whether you blame our reliance on Google maps or SatNav – or the British weather – it's unavoidable. We couldn't locate the top sights of the British Isles if our holiday depended on it.
______________
Both forms of the article GENERALISE that "most of us" are sufficiently ignorant to get lost. Some questions did in fact deliver a MAJORITY who got them wrong (Mt Everest, Balmoral) though other questions produced well under 50% who misplaced the Home Counties or Ayers Rock (Uluru). Overall, while the story makes a stir about widespread ignorance, the journalist (who the web tells us has an MA in Journalism from the City University) seems herself to be shaky on the story that can or should be retrieved from the numbers in a study.
One of the problems about this is that once a story is seeded in one place, it gets repeated with the danger - or certainty - of distortion in subsequent tellings. Thus does myth wend its merry way into the folk zeitgeist.
I agree that these results from (presumably) a representative sample of 2000 reveal widespread geographical ignorance.
This may be (I tend to think that this is) because any geography lessons that occur in schools these days and in recent years do not bother to build up a cohesive "map in the mind" of the world, of the UK's place in it, and of the places within the UK; I have no idea what does go on in schools but I suspect their geography time is spent on what may be partisan programmes of tales about wells (or no wells) in Ethiopia, or on melting of the ice cap - without being all that sure where either of these places are. Perhaps the Ethiopians could get their water from the melted icecap? Does the east wind blow from Latvia therefrom bringing hot, or cold? Will Joseph Kony be found in Uganda or the Congo and where are these places, anyway? Will US Presidential candidates differentiate between Slovakia and Slovenia, (correctly) and does it matter if they can not or will not? Who knows - or cares whether others know?
I imagine that even more distressing ignorance could be demonstrated for example by asking - which British county has more (or more dense provision of) windfarms - Northumbria or Northamptonshire - replies would simply be guesses; and if asked to point to either county on a map - this would reveal even wider ignorance; similarly many people would not be able to (or care less about) identifying the whereabouts of Somerset and Sussex, or of Herefordshire and Hertfordshire. If they want to find out, it is said these days - people can go to the internet for the answers; find out perhaps from Twitter; but would they know what questions to put?
These are the people asked to vote in elections and referenda, who are trusted by the arch democrats as each one of them having a right to influence national policies from a base of what knowledge they have and the opinions and judgments based thereon.
this one began when I read a "light hearted" press article:
A story in the i Newspaper is headed:
A staycation? Forget it, most of us would only go and get lost
the author is:
Josephine Forster
The internet refuses to supply the article in the (small) i newspaper - but a very similar version, in the full Independent, by the same author consists of::
Trending: If you're staying at home this year, you'll clearly need a map
Josephine Forster Independent 12 March 2012
The recession-fuelled fashion for staycations is all very well, but it seems Britons are in danger of getting lost in their own backyard. One in five British adults couldn't tell you how many countries there are in the UK, a poll of 2,000 UK citizens found.
The royal family often holiday in the UK, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, but more than half of those surveyed (53 per cent) couldn't say where that was.
One in five could not find the seaside resort of Blackpool on a map while the location of Stonehenge was a mystery to one in 20 people. When asked to name England's biggest mountain, 58 per cent answered either Mount Everest, Ben Nevis or Snowdon. A startling 25 per cent thought the Australian sandstone formation Uluru (Ayers Rock) was in the UK. Big cities fared no better, with over a third of people (33.8 per cent) suggesting that the Home Counties circled Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow.
Karen Gee, of the travel operators Journeys of Distinction, which carried out the survey, said: "We were astounded that while Britons clearly have an enviable knowledge of famous cities abroad, they seem to display a lack of geographical awareness in their own nation."
Whether you blame our reliance on Google maps or SatNav – or the British weather – it's unavoidable. We couldn't locate the top sights of the British Isles if our holiday depended on it.
______________
Both forms of the article GENERALISE that "most of us" are sufficiently ignorant to get lost. Some questions did in fact deliver a MAJORITY who got them wrong (Mt Everest, Balmoral) though other questions produced well under 50% who misplaced the Home Counties or Ayers Rock (Uluru). Overall, while the story makes a stir about widespread ignorance, the journalist (who the web tells us has an MA in Journalism from the City University) seems herself to be shaky on the story that can or should be retrieved from the numbers in a study.
One of the problems about this is that once a story is seeded in one place, it gets repeated with the danger - or certainty - of distortion in subsequent tellings. Thus does myth wend its merry way into the folk zeitgeist.
I agree that these results from (presumably) a representative sample of 2000 reveal widespread geographical ignorance.
This may be (I tend to think that this is) because any geography lessons that occur in schools these days and in recent years do not bother to build up a cohesive "map in the mind" of the world, of the UK's place in it, and of the places within the UK; I have no idea what does go on in schools but I suspect their geography time is spent on what may be partisan programmes of tales about wells (or no wells) in Ethiopia, or on melting of the ice cap - without being all that sure where either of these places are. Perhaps the Ethiopians could get their water from the melted icecap? Does the east wind blow from Latvia therefrom bringing hot, or cold? Will Joseph Kony be found in Uganda or the Congo and where are these places, anyway? Will US Presidential candidates differentiate between Slovakia and Slovenia, (correctly) and does it matter if they can not or will not? Who knows - or cares whether others know?
I imagine that even more distressing ignorance could be demonstrated for example by asking - which British county has more (or more dense provision of) windfarms - Northumbria or Northamptonshire - replies would simply be guesses; and if asked to point to either county on a map - this would reveal even wider ignorance; similarly many people would not be able to (or care less about) identifying the whereabouts of Somerset and Sussex, or of Herefordshire and Hertfordshire. If they want to find out, it is said these days - people can go to the internet for the answers; find out perhaps from Twitter; but would they know what questions to put?
These are the people asked to vote in elections and referenda, who are trusted by the arch democrats as each one of them having a right to influence national policies from a base of what knowledge they have and the opinions and judgments based thereon.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Dengl 45 Shelves, Clouds and Caves
Shelves, Caves and Clouda
Something Erica Wagner (their book critic) wrote in Saturday's Times Review stuck in my mind as an important, even a potential milestone observation.
She was lamenting the smothering of "the book" inundated by the tsunami of tsweet (my word, I think – not hers).
A penny dropped in my mind prompted also by my experience of two different systems of handling my email. I had a system called Eudora - which is now somehow disabled on my computer - though it may conceivably be
reinstalled and I very much hope it will. Currently I mostly used gmail.
(Since then I have also used iMail – which resolves several of the difficulties described below).
Old E-mails as Book Ingredients
Amongst the advantages (though some claim other disadvantages) of Eudora is that it allowed one to slide a message from its own window, to the desktop. From here, it could be transferred to folders for storage. It seems (through its absence, and what Wagner said) that those messages were not like the modern (dispensable) tweet, but like documents which ultimately could be compiled into articles or books. It was good for one's own storage and control. One readily had a plan to organise and benefit from what went where. (Eudora's statistic facility tells me that before this year with my wind-down, I handled some 5,500 messages last year; most, it seemed to me, were satisfactorily dumped or stored where they 'belonged').
iMail now lets me slide into a folder - though imposing awkward demands and byways of its own – it conserves the “shelf” in digitaland; good.
New E-mails as Dross
I have not found a way of simply moving a gmail message from its arrival window (like a platform in a railway station) into an appropriate folder. The only plan I have (had, then) is/was to copy the text within a gmail, and paste it into a word or other document one sets up, to act as the folder once did, within the Eudora regime. The advantage of the Eudora-sourced folder was that it was like the shelf in the library - one could open the folder and see an array of messages - each with its title - to facilitate choice and study). The disadvantage with the word document store of gmails is that not only does it need time to set it up by copying and pasting, but having done that, the new document is not like a shelf but like a volume - it is less easy to scan within itself.
It does seem that google mail is not constructed to serve its users as Eudora did, to help one compile (quasi) books.
Instead, googlemail is constructed to leave one with a morass of messages whose labels within the inbox or the outbox ("sent mail") make it harder to discern sense and plan within what seems a cacophony of chattering birds. The temptation is, then, to disregard the pile-up and maybe, from time to time, to sweep away the contents into some 'bin' - maybe as the council rubbish-people may have swept the floor of Trafalgar Sq of pigeon droppings in the pre-Livingstonian era.
I recently visited the "sent mail" (= "bin") location in my gmail. I found 800 messages piled up - waiting for ... what?
I have been through them from top down and bottom up and discarded around 600, leaving the rest requiring further sorting into meaningful (for me) locations. These 200 will take more work to "shelve" than it took to dump the 600.
(Gmail had introduced – it took me a while to discover it – a list of ‘mini-bins’ where one can put material into sub-categories for easier retrieval).
Incidentally, Google offer some distinction between the instruction in one place to "delete" and elsewhere to "discard". I have no idea what they are getting at. My inbox has around 80 messages - which I try to keep down to far less than this number, 50 ideally, so I can actually see in one window what has been going on.
Amongst all the discourses in which I indulge it has been helpful in previous years to set up folders (and further folders within each) to store and take stock of correspondence. This seems to have been made harder or more time-consuming to do, with Mr Brin's system.
A few more notes on Google:
I have a massive list of “contacts” – over 700 – and believe I could effectively trim this down to half. I looked everywhere for a tab or pointer as to how to delete. It turns out that one summons up the ‘dead or departed’ name and presses a tab called “MORE” (when what I really seek is LESS) and find a place where I can then delete. The effect of this is to pile up more names – and this is not for MY convenience but for someone else’s ….that is Google’s. They want to advertise a ‘client list’ of so many billions - but an amount of this is spurious or double counting. One eventually gets on top of it.
This whole phenomenon is misleadingly called a CLOUD (not cuckoo-land) giving the impression that the data are stored in a satellite or perhaps in the upper atmosphere rotating the earth. Enquiry suggests this is not so. The data are in hard “servers” with massive capacity. We are assured that there is considerable duplication and back up and that no mishap could punch effective holes in the system. Is this perhaps an impression put about by the security services to allay doubt or suspicion among users/clients? Maybe it is really true. It does seem that bombing a large ‘server warehouse/cave” has either not occurred to the miscreants in our society, or they have not managed to “take out” a CAVE; yet.
There have been ‘outages’ due to power cuts said to have isolated some of the smaller servers.
A different kind of ‘outage’ or outrage? Has been suffered by several people I know. Their account is “hacked” by a miscreant; the innocent person has to send out scores or hundreds of messages of apology to contacts – and suspends their password (or whole account membership). If this is done in not the right way (with the victim under some time pressure and anxiety) their whole “store” of messages, some considered personally very valuable – is lost. It is of no reassurance to be told that the data are “somewhere there in the cloud” or amongst cave-bound servers, as there is no visible way of getting at one’s erstwhile intellectual “property”.
Eudora and Gmail - a couple of conparisons
It may not be a coincidence that Eudora is/was developed and offered by a University (of Illinois) - hitherto the domain of the book, while gmail descends via internet from big daddy arpanet, a military operation. I understand that all of gmail's clients' (it tells me I am using 238 MB out of "my" 7426 MB - what made it "MY" 7426MB? - what is the total MB capacity across all Google Clients? - and how many are we happy band?) messages are stored, physically, in something called a server (am I right?). This server array either actually or metaphorically is in a Cave in Colorado where the machines can be kept cool (or, they are looking to move to Alaska for cheaper storage). I also am given to believe that all my (and everyone else's messages including those which I appear to have deleted or discarded) are stored there.
Clearly, the Colorado Cave is not like or in any sense equivalent to a Library (of Congress), or analogous publicly accessible source. Google is good at making searches and no doubt can and does search within its Colorado Cave. It does this, to help us clients when we search for knowledge - and to serve us with what it seems to believe are relevant advertisements (alongside what I write, now, are nurseryman ads (baby? anyone?) offering me apple trees to buy); thus we individual clients are served to advertisers. It is, largely, a mutually beneficial deal.
The Colorado Cave is a resource that is potentially (or routinely?) very valuable to our security/intelligence organisations. Somebody will be wanting to defend these servers from any potential physical attack. That somebody is the military. We may not easily see what is likely to be in place, but how can it be other than that special defence systems are indeed organised around the Caves (yahoo and maybe some other outfits also have their own caves). Organisations striving to destabilise our society will have it in mind to try to damage or even destroy these over-centralised resources.
Movie plot, anyone?
quote from a recent newsletter:
SERVERS SEEKING COOLER CLIMES
Google is said to operate a global network of about three dozen data centres with over one million servers. Microsoft is adding up to 20,000 servers a month. As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature than is used for computing. Electricity consumption at the largest data centres rivals the needs of an aluminium smelter. Microsoft's new $500m facility near Chicago will need three electrical substations all to itself to keep it running. Finding a site for a large data centre is now more about securing a cheap and reliable source of power than anything else. It's the reason that so many in America are close to the Columbia River, where there is plenty of water for cooling, and massive dams produce cheap hydroelectricity. Such sites are in short supply in the US, however, and the boom in data centre construction is spreading to some unexpected places. Microsoft is looking for a site in Siberia where its data can chill. Iceland has begun to market itself as a prime location, firstly for its cool climate, but also because of abundant geothermal energy.
http://short.zen.co.uk/?id=a7a
(most of the above was written in Feb 2010 – but it has been updated now, Feb 2012; the essential categories explored remain, I think, intact)
Something Erica Wagner (their book critic) wrote in Saturday's Times Review stuck in my mind as an important, even a potential milestone observation.
She was lamenting the smothering of "the book" inundated by the tsunami of tsweet (my word, I think – not hers).
A penny dropped in my mind prompted also by my experience of two different systems of handling my email. I had a system called Eudora - which is now somehow disabled on my computer - though it may conceivably be
reinstalled and I very much hope it will. Currently I mostly used gmail.
(Since then I have also used iMail – which resolves several of the difficulties described below).
Old E-mails as Book Ingredients
Amongst the advantages (though some claim other disadvantages) of Eudora is that it allowed one to slide a message from its own window, to the desktop. From here, it could be transferred to folders for storage. It seems (through its absence, and what Wagner said) that those messages were not like the modern (dispensable) tweet, but like documents which ultimately could be compiled into articles or books. It was good for one's own storage and control. One readily had a plan to organise and benefit from what went where. (Eudora's statistic facility tells me that before this year with my wind-down, I handled some 5,500 messages last year; most, it seemed to me, were satisfactorily dumped or stored where they 'belonged').
iMail now lets me slide into a folder - though imposing awkward demands and byways of its own – it conserves the “shelf” in digitaland; good.
New E-mails as Dross
I have not found a way of simply moving a gmail message from its arrival window (like a platform in a railway station) into an appropriate folder. The only plan I have (had, then) is/was to copy the text within a gmail, and paste it into a word or other document one sets up, to act as the folder once did, within the Eudora regime. The advantage of the Eudora-sourced folder was that it was like the shelf in the library - one could open the folder and see an array of messages - each with its title - to facilitate choice and study). The disadvantage with the word document store of gmails is that not only does it need time to set it up by copying and pasting, but having done that, the new document is not like a shelf but like a volume - it is less easy to scan within itself.
It does seem that google mail is not constructed to serve its users as Eudora did, to help one compile (quasi) books.
Instead, googlemail is constructed to leave one with a morass of messages whose labels within the inbox or the outbox ("sent mail") make it harder to discern sense and plan within what seems a cacophony of chattering birds. The temptation is, then, to disregard the pile-up and maybe, from time to time, to sweep away the contents into some 'bin' - maybe as the council rubbish-people may have swept the floor of Trafalgar Sq of pigeon droppings in the pre-Livingstonian era.
I recently visited the "sent mail" (= "bin") location in my gmail. I found 800 messages piled up - waiting for ... what?
I have been through them from top down and bottom up and discarded around 600, leaving the rest requiring further sorting into meaningful (for me) locations. These 200 will take more work to "shelve" than it took to dump the 600.
(Gmail had introduced – it took me a while to discover it – a list of ‘mini-bins’ where one can put material into sub-categories for easier retrieval).
Incidentally, Google offer some distinction between the instruction in one place to "delete" and elsewhere to "discard". I have no idea what they are getting at. My inbox has around 80 messages - which I try to keep down to far less than this number, 50 ideally, so I can actually see in one window what has been going on.
Amongst all the discourses in which I indulge it has been helpful in previous years to set up folders (and further folders within each) to store and take stock of correspondence. This seems to have been made harder or more time-consuming to do, with Mr Brin's system.
A few more notes on Google:
I have a massive list of “contacts” – over 700 – and believe I could effectively trim this down to half. I looked everywhere for a tab or pointer as to how to delete. It turns out that one summons up the ‘dead or departed’ name and presses a tab called “MORE” (when what I really seek is LESS) and find a place where I can then delete. The effect of this is to pile up more names – and this is not for MY convenience but for someone else’s ….that is Google’s. They want to advertise a ‘client list’ of so many billions - but an amount of this is spurious or double counting. One eventually gets on top of it.
This whole phenomenon is misleadingly called a CLOUD (not cuckoo-land) giving the impression that the data are stored in a satellite or perhaps in the upper atmosphere rotating the earth. Enquiry suggests this is not so. The data are in hard “servers” with massive capacity. We are assured that there is considerable duplication and back up and that no mishap could punch effective holes in the system. Is this perhaps an impression put about by the security services to allay doubt or suspicion among users/clients? Maybe it is really true. It does seem that bombing a large ‘server warehouse/cave” has either not occurred to the miscreants in our society, or they have not managed to “take out” a CAVE; yet.
There have been ‘outages’ due to power cuts said to have isolated some of the smaller servers.
A different kind of ‘outage’ or outrage? Has been suffered by several people I know. Their account is “hacked” by a miscreant; the innocent person has to send out scores or hundreds of messages of apology to contacts – and suspends their password (or whole account membership). If this is done in not the right way (with the victim under some time pressure and anxiety) their whole “store” of messages, some considered personally very valuable – is lost. It is of no reassurance to be told that the data are “somewhere there in the cloud” or amongst cave-bound servers, as there is no visible way of getting at one’s erstwhile intellectual “property”.
Eudora and Gmail - a couple of conparisons
It may not be a coincidence that Eudora is/was developed and offered by a University (of Illinois) - hitherto the domain of the book, while gmail descends via internet from big daddy arpanet, a military operation. I understand that all of gmail's clients' (it tells me I am using 238 MB out of "my" 7426 MB - what made it "MY" 7426MB? - what is the total MB capacity across all Google Clients? - and how many are we happy band?) messages are stored, physically, in something called a server (am I right?). This server array either actually or metaphorically is in a Cave in Colorado where the machines can be kept cool (or, they are looking to move to Alaska for cheaper storage). I also am given to believe that all my (and everyone else's messages including those which I appear to have deleted or discarded) are stored there.
Clearly, the Colorado Cave is not like or in any sense equivalent to a Library (of Congress), or analogous publicly accessible source. Google is good at making searches and no doubt can and does search within its Colorado Cave. It does this, to help us clients when we search for knowledge - and to serve us with what it seems to believe are relevant advertisements (alongside what I write, now, are nurseryman ads (baby? anyone?) offering me apple trees to buy); thus we individual clients are served to advertisers. It is, largely, a mutually beneficial deal.
The Colorado Cave is a resource that is potentially (or routinely?) very valuable to our security/intelligence organisations. Somebody will be wanting to defend these servers from any potential physical attack. That somebody is the military. We may not easily see what is likely to be in place, but how can it be other than that special defence systems are indeed organised around the Caves (yahoo and maybe some other outfits also have their own caves). Organisations striving to destabilise our society will have it in mind to try to damage or even destroy these over-centralised resources.
Movie plot, anyone?
quote from a recent newsletter:
SERVERS SEEKING COOLER CLIMES
Google is said to operate a global network of about three dozen data centres with over one million servers. Microsoft is adding up to 20,000 servers a month. As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature than is used for computing. Electricity consumption at the largest data centres rivals the needs of an aluminium smelter. Microsoft's new $500m facility near Chicago will need three electrical substations all to itself to keep it running. Finding a site for a large data centre is now more about securing a cheap and reliable source of power than anything else. It's the reason that so many in America are close to the Columbia River, where there is plenty of water for cooling, and massive dams produce cheap hydroelectricity. Such sites are in short supply in the US, however, and the boom in data centre construction is spreading to some unexpected places. Microsoft is looking for a site in Siberia where its data can chill. Iceland has begun to market itself as a prime location, firstly for its cool climate, but also because of abundant geothermal energy.
http://short.zen.co.uk/?id=a7a
(most of the above was written in Feb 2010 – but it has been updated now, Feb 2012; the essential categories explored remain, I think, intact)
Friday, February 3, 2012
Dengl 44 What Iranian Missiles? The heated edges of Rings of Fire*
Last night I saw the third instalment of BBC2's fine series on Russia and America - depicting some very knotty matters at the cutting edges of the encounter between two massive systems of tradition embodied in statehood.
Unavailable at present to US viewers, via iPlayer, surely this will soon be available to US viewers widespread?
I was (as previously) impressed by the US front line negotiators (Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) and also maintained my improving view of Bush. Rice & Powell appear to have done everything they could (to draw freedom's ring tighter round a diminishing 'Greater' Russia) though the impression emerged that Bush's hands were weighed down by 'backroom boy policy makers' who bid for more than they perhaps could get, given the toughness of Putin and the needs and sensibilities of NATO members such as Germany, France.
I dont know if the programme makers had discussed whether to give any space to one or two symbolic elements
which, perhaps Umberto Eco might have woven into the narrative - one: there we saw the sculpted head of American son Winston Churchill in the picture just behind Bush at the White House - an 'ideology reminder' to the President ...another was the presence of George Brown (how are the mighty fallen!) on Bush's right hand at a summit declaration ...
a third was the event of a women's beach volleyball match at Beijing which in the words of a website:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/content_9267520.htm
".... was of symbolic significance due to the conflict between the two neighbors. Georgia began military action against South Ossetia's forces last week in an attempt to re-establish control over the region. In response, Russian troops moved into the region to fight the Georgian forces."
Do I remember rightly that Georgia's team was hugely helped by the presence of two players of Brazilian birth very recently given Georgian citizenship ...?
Might political considerations have played an unseen part in the drama enacted on the sands of Beijing playing fields?
Putin went to talk with Bush, in Maine, in (I think ) 2007 - not long after the 2006 Tear Drop monument** had been unveiled (in Bayonne, NJ). Might it have been opportune for the powers to have drawn on that earlier symbolic gesture?
Questions for Programe 4 (next week) include: Putin said in (2007?) Iranian missiles were a joke; has Russia been helping Iran to get on with its missile development? And right now standing by Iran's ally Assad of Syria? Why? With what risks? Is Obama as firm an exponent of liberty for free countries, as evidently was Bush? Will any symbolically important contests emerge at the London Olympics?
*title of an article by me, in the US journal Conflict, 1986.
** http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/teardrop.asp
Unavailable at present to US viewers, via iPlayer, surely this will soon be available to US viewers widespread?
I was (as previously) impressed by the US front line negotiators (Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell) and also maintained my improving view of Bush. Rice & Powell appear to have done everything they could (to draw freedom's ring tighter round a diminishing 'Greater' Russia) though the impression emerged that Bush's hands were weighed down by 'backroom boy policy makers' who bid for more than they perhaps could get, given the toughness of Putin and the needs and sensibilities of NATO members such as Germany, France.
I dont know if the programme makers had discussed whether to give any space to one or two symbolic elements
which, perhaps Umberto Eco might have woven into the narrative - one: there we saw the sculpted head of American son Winston Churchill in the picture just behind Bush at the White House - an 'ideology reminder' to the President ...another was the presence of George Brown (how are the mighty fallen!) on Bush's right hand at a summit declaration ...
a third was the event of a women's beach volleyball match at Beijing which in the words of a website:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/13/content_9267520.htm
".... was of symbolic significance due to the conflict between the two neighbors. Georgia began military action against South Ossetia's forces last week in an attempt to re-establish control over the region. In response, Russian troops moved into the region to fight the Georgian forces."
Do I remember rightly that Georgia's team was hugely helped by the presence of two players of Brazilian birth very recently given Georgian citizenship ...?
Might political considerations have played an unseen part in the drama enacted on the sands of Beijing playing fields?
Putin went to talk with Bush, in Maine, in (I think ) 2007 - not long after the 2006 Tear Drop monument** had been unveiled (in Bayonne, NJ). Might it have been opportune for the powers to have drawn on that earlier symbolic gesture?
Questions for Programe 4 (next week) include: Putin said in (2007?) Iranian missiles were a joke; has Russia been helping Iran to get on with its missile development? And right now standing by Iran's ally Assad of Syria? Why? With what risks? Is Obama as firm an exponent of liberty for free countries, as evidently was Bush? Will any symbolically important contests emerge at the London Olympics?
*title of an article by me, in the US journal Conflict, 1986.
** http://www.snopes.com/rumors/tributes/teardrop.asp
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Dengl 43 Two Thoughts for 2012
Eligibility for Voting in a Referendum on Scottish Independence
Should Scottish expatriates – and others with Scottish roots, family and or jobs be eligible to vote in a referendum on Scottish independence? What about the other inhabitants of the United Kingdom who live outside Scotland, whose Union will be affected? Should they all be entitled to vote?
The refurbished National Museum in Edinburgh has an installation which tells visitors that there are five million people in Scotland, but also 25 million of Scottish descent in other countries. One such person is David Cameron, whose father is from Aberdeen and who would prefer the Union to stay. Another is Sir Sean Connery, who says he will remain outside Scotland until it achieves independence.
There is much to be said for both parties having a say – in this case, Scottish and non-Scottish members of the United Kingdom. As a Londoner with two Scottish grandchildren and family in Glasgow, I wonder if I might claim entitlement to vote.
Scope for an “International Yad VaShem” to honour those who opposed genocide
An elderly woman had written to the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/opinion/honoring-all-who-saved-jews.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
that a heroic Tunisian man had saved her and many of her family from Nazi threats (elsewhere leading to extinction). Her plea to Yad VaShem the Israeli institution which decides on a definitive honured status of “Righteous Gentile” for those who saved Jews from the Nazis, had her request for recognition for Khaled Abdul Wahab.
This led me to think of a need for an inistitution of wider application, rejected:
Is there an internationalised (or even, heaven help us on a smaller scale a Euro) version of Yad VaShem which would honour those who acted in this way anywhere else? No shortage of heroes and heroines of such episodes since WWII – including those who saved gypsies, gays, who knows what others from systematic attempts to erase their group...?
the Nobel outfit with money attached seems the wrong base ...
There must be many unsung hero(in)es to be recognised – in Tibet, Burma, the Balkans, Cambodia ...?? even shias rescuing sunnis and vice versa ...(in the face of lethal inter-communal aggression ...) and there are certainly many instances in "the Indian subcontinent" (including Sri Lanka).
Should Scottish expatriates – and others with Scottish roots, family and or jobs be eligible to vote in a referendum on Scottish independence? What about the other inhabitants of the United Kingdom who live outside Scotland, whose Union will be affected? Should they all be entitled to vote?
The refurbished National Museum in Edinburgh has an installation which tells visitors that there are five million people in Scotland, but also 25 million of Scottish descent in other countries. One such person is David Cameron, whose father is from Aberdeen and who would prefer the Union to stay. Another is Sir Sean Connery, who says he will remain outside Scotland until it achieves independence.
There is much to be said for both parties having a say – in this case, Scottish and non-Scottish members of the United Kingdom. As a Londoner with two Scottish grandchildren and family in Glasgow, I wonder if I might claim entitlement to vote.
Scope for an “International Yad VaShem” to honour those who opposed genocide
An elderly woman had written to the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/opinion/honoring-all-who-saved-jews.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
that a heroic Tunisian man had saved her and many of her family from Nazi threats (elsewhere leading to extinction). Her plea to Yad VaShem the Israeli institution which decides on a definitive honured status of “Righteous Gentile” for those who saved Jews from the Nazis, had her request for recognition for Khaled Abdul Wahab.
This led me to think of a need for an inistitution of wider application, rejected:
Is there an internationalised (or even, heaven help us on a smaller scale a Euro) version of Yad VaShem which would honour those who acted in this way anywhere else? No shortage of heroes and heroines of such episodes since WWII – including those who saved gypsies, gays, who knows what others from systematic attempts to erase their group...?
the Nobel outfit with money attached seems the wrong base ...
There must be many unsung hero(in)es to be recognised – in Tibet, Burma, the Balkans, Cambodia ...?? even shias rescuing sunnis and vice versa ...(in the face of lethal inter-communal aggression ...) and there are certainly many instances in "the Indian subcontinent" (including Sri Lanka).
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Dengl 42 Lord Melvyn Bragg Speaks About the King James Bible
I was lucky to have been sent a ticket to attend a talk by Lord (Melvyn) Bragg - novelist and well known broadcaster on cultural matters, over several decades; the event took place in the Nave of Westminster Abbey and one could reflect on (or absorb) one's surroundings if all else failed. Behind Bragg was a reredos (Victorian?) with a memorial to Isaac Newton amongst others.
Unfortunately, for a famous and highly feted talker, Bragg left me behind on much of what he had to say. He was near a mike, and I was even nearer a small loudspeaker AND wore my hearing aids. Volume was not the difficulty; diction was.
Bragg was so enthusiastic about his topic that he talked fast; and not just fast at an even speed - interspersing fast and slow as his whim required - but not the whim of the listener. On three occasions he took a swig of water - bending down (out of mike range) talking into a large tumbler - before resuming refreshed. Important observations missed - and attention transferred to irrelevancies.
I have asked speakers at courses I run (including student questioners) many times to try and help - all to no avail.
That is perhaps because most people I ask are still lucky enough to hear well.
but wait -
thanks to the blessings of walkmen and ipods, a wide age band will arrive sooner at the situation I am now describing. I wont be there to savour their feelings - but I can imagine them.
Now - what did Bragg SAY - since I did hear about 40% of what he said?
He spent a good time on the antecedents of KJB - particularly the great figure of William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the right words - many or most of which are monosyllables - which Bragg said contributed to the rhythm,, comprehensibility and impact of Tyndale's English. Presently, England was blessed with Shakespeare - who thrived in the rhetorical culture so enriched by Tyndale. Soon after, when Elizabeth died the Scottish King James VIth became King in London and set up the great project of creating a definitive translation of the Bible into English.
Bragg is a man of the book (perhaps more so than of the microphone) and spoke of the literary qualities of the KJB. There were statistics - so many phrases introduced into the language - but though he is a fellow of the Royal Society (a scientific institution) - he did not approach the text and its influences in a scientific manner. By this I suggest that he could ask certain questions and look for evidence with which to answer them; some such questions are 'positive' ones - does KJB DO X,Y,Z; others are negative ones - does KJB NOT achieve a,b,c, or some other translation achieve it better?
For example - were there translations into other European vernaculars and if so, did they weave together with their countries' histories in ways which were more, equally or less potent than did the KJB in English (for the Anglophone world)?
When the KJB was followed by a Revised version in 1880 did that renew the mission of those who worked with the KJB - or did that mission miss the strength of the now challenged edition? Lord Bragg spoke a good deal about the long campaigns to eradicate slavery and argued (I think, persuasively) that the KJB gave particular strength to the campaigners (and, to the slaves some of whom came across the text)? But would this impact have been greater with a different translation from King James's committee? Or with one of those to come, subsequently?
There is no way to answer that directly - but there may have been certain passages which impeded the great thrust of moral rectitude that came to the fore in Anglophone society - how may KJB have influenced attitudes towards minorities - such as witches, homosexuals, Jews? Lord Bragg did not (I think) have much if anything to say about any 'downside' to the KJB.
This was, after all, an occasion to celebrate its strengths - but one final assertion of Bragg's remains to be worked out: he pointed out that James' son Charles, like his father, believed in what was called the Divine Right of Kings - a doctrine that authority passed directly into the earthly sovereign (at coronation) from the Divinity; Lord Bragg seemed to indicate that this view was reinforced by a reading of texts in KJB. A powerful text, however, is found in First Chronicles Chapter 29 v 11 onwards in which the young King David explicitly disavows a human refraction of Divine authority - the spectacular difference from the behaviour of Pharaohs and Ceasars (and in a small version, of early Stuart Kings) is surely not supported, but repudiated in a KJB text (which is, incidentally, more resonant and moving than are later translations). Not that it can be diluted either, in later texts - but KJB was probably not a thoroughgoing support for quasi-divine regal behaviour.
One can remember these things when walking down Whitehall, past where Charles I had his head cut off, and past Westminster Hall, fronted with the statue of the regicide Cromwell (who also used the KJB).
Unfortunately, for a famous and highly feted talker, Bragg left me behind on much of what he had to say. He was near a mike, and I was even nearer a small loudspeaker AND wore my hearing aids. Volume was not the difficulty; diction was.
Bragg was so enthusiastic about his topic that he talked fast; and not just fast at an even speed - interspersing fast and slow as his whim required - but not the whim of the listener. On three occasions he took a swig of water - bending down (out of mike range) talking into a large tumbler - before resuming refreshed. Important observations missed - and attention transferred to irrelevancies.
I have asked speakers at courses I run (including student questioners) many times to try and help - all to no avail.
That is perhaps because most people I ask are still lucky enough to hear well.
but wait -
thanks to the blessings of walkmen and ipods, a wide age band will arrive sooner at the situation I am now describing. I wont be there to savour their feelings - but I can imagine them.
Now - what did Bragg SAY - since I did hear about 40% of what he said?
He spent a good time on the antecedents of KJB - particularly the great figure of William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the right words - many or most of which are monosyllables - which Bragg said contributed to the rhythm,, comprehensibility and impact of Tyndale's English. Presently, England was blessed with Shakespeare - who thrived in the rhetorical culture so enriched by Tyndale. Soon after, when Elizabeth died the Scottish King James VIth became King in London and set up the great project of creating a definitive translation of the Bible into English.
Bragg is a man of the book (perhaps more so than of the microphone) and spoke of the literary qualities of the KJB. There were statistics - so many phrases introduced into the language - but though he is a fellow of the Royal Society (a scientific institution) - he did not approach the text and its influences in a scientific manner. By this I suggest that he could ask certain questions and look for evidence with which to answer them; some such questions are 'positive' ones - does KJB DO X,Y,Z; others are negative ones - does KJB NOT achieve a,b,c, or some other translation achieve it better?
For example - were there translations into other European vernaculars and if so, did they weave together with their countries' histories in ways which were more, equally or less potent than did the KJB in English (for the Anglophone world)?
When the KJB was followed by a Revised version in 1880 did that renew the mission of those who worked with the KJB - or did that mission miss the strength of the now challenged edition? Lord Bragg spoke a good deal about the long campaigns to eradicate slavery and argued (I think, persuasively) that the KJB gave particular strength to the campaigners (and, to the slaves some of whom came across the text)? But would this impact have been greater with a different translation from King James's committee? Or with one of those to come, subsequently?
There is no way to answer that directly - but there may have been certain passages which impeded the great thrust of moral rectitude that came to the fore in Anglophone society - how may KJB have influenced attitudes towards minorities - such as witches, homosexuals, Jews? Lord Bragg did not (I think) have much if anything to say about any 'downside' to the KJB.
This was, after all, an occasion to celebrate its strengths - but one final assertion of Bragg's remains to be worked out: he pointed out that James' son Charles, like his father, believed in what was called the Divine Right of Kings - a doctrine that authority passed directly into the earthly sovereign (at coronation) from the Divinity; Lord Bragg seemed to indicate that this view was reinforced by a reading of texts in KJB. A powerful text, however, is found in First Chronicles Chapter 29 v 11 onwards in which the young King David explicitly disavows a human refraction of Divine authority - the spectacular difference from the behaviour of Pharaohs and Ceasars (and in a small version, of early Stuart Kings) is surely not supported, but repudiated in a KJB text (which is, incidentally, more resonant and moving than are later translations). Not that it can be diluted either, in later texts - but KJB was probably not a thoroughgoing support for quasi-divine regal behaviour.
One can remember these things when walking down Whitehall, past where Charles I had his head cut off, and past Westminster Hall, fronted with the statue of the regicide Cromwell (who also used the KJB).
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