Non-verbal communication

A recent article in Current Biology—“Orangutans Modify Their Gestural Signaling According to Their Audience's Comprehension” by Cartmill and Byrne describes how orangutans adapt their gestures to whether they consider themselves to have been understood or not. To be more precise, the orangutans were offered fruit and vegetables and would make signs to indicate that they wanted the tasty bananas rather than the icky leeks. Now, if they just got half a banana they would make more emphatic gestures of the same kind to clarify that they wanted all of it, but if they got leeks, they would try different gestures to indicate that they wanted the banana. This then indicates that they have a concept of different modes of misunderstanding and that they have different strategies for alleviating different misunderstandings, which then in turn has consequences for hypotheses of the evolution of communication in apes.

This reminded me of another non-speaking primate, namely the Only-begotten Son when he was younger. At one point we had happened to buy a big bag of ice lollies which he took to, sweet, cold and brightly-coloured as they were, so he would gladly have eaten nothing but them. His parents however thought that even two a day were quite a lot, especially considering the Technicolor results they left in his diapers. So, one day the little tyke comes and takes me by the hand and pulls me to the kitchen where he eagerly points towards the freezer. I decide to play stupid and claim I do not understand what he wants. The little one immediately zips off and returns moments later with a used lolly stick in his hand, holds it up to me and points at the freezer with the other hand. I could but capitulate and give him his prize…

Do you trust the police?

I and the Only-begotten Daughter were walking by the Police house this morning and she reflected that there probably was lots of secret tunnels and stuff under it. I conceded that this was the case, pointing out the ventilation shafts rising from the ground and she gleefully exclaimed “They undermine our city and they don't obey our laws!”

The pride of my children

Last Sunday I was completely knocked out—nauseous and dizzy. As I had been airbrushing an unusually big model the day before I was worried that I suffered from solvent poisoning. (Yeah, I still use Humbrol enamels, I know how they work and I have a couple of hundred tins.)

As the dizziness subsided, but did not completely disappear, I went to see a physician for a second opinion. He explained that I had a textbook example of Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo which would sort itself out with time. So what causes BPPV? Aging. Thanks a lot!

I told the children of this diagnosis and the Only-begotten Daughter was very disappointed as she had already told all her friends that I had almost died from thinner sniffing. Ah well, gotta keep my reputation up, I guess…

Cutting your losses would mean slashing your wrists

Tim Kreider is one of my favourite cartoonists, who, while being ground down by despair yet refuses to become personally cynical. His latest two installments of The Pain—When Will It End? contain some of the most poignant writing I've read on the inevitable losses that life subjects us to and the realisation that Things probably won't work out. And yet, we go on, not because conscience makes cowards of us all but as heroes, gritting our teeth, doing what has to be done because others depend on us.

Veckans ord: ytnyttja

Jorden är begränsad, så det gäller att ytnyttja den effektivt. Det kan man göra genom att stapla på höjden, så går det inte åt lika mycket yta. Så har man gjort i New York.

Men det finns ju också andra värden som man kan behöva ta hänsyn till. Akademiska Hus har i uppdrag att dra in pengar från de universitet och högskolor som utnyttjar deras lokaler. Akademiska Hus struntar i vad universiteten använder lokalerna till, det är inte deras problem. Labbsalar och verkstäder tar mycket yta men används bara ibland och inte av så många personer åt gången. De blir relativt sett dyrare än t ex kontorslokaler som det sitter många personer i hela dagarna. Alltså bestämmer sig institutionen när den gör sin budget för att man nog kanske kan klara sig utan en labbbsal i alla fall och göra laborationer på dator i stället, så kan man lämna ifrån sig utrymmet till Akademiska Hus som kan göra kontor av dem och hyra ut till t ex nåt företag som behöver lokaler. Då har man ytnyttjat effektivt, och alla är glada. Men studenterna får se allt mindre av verkligheten och sitta alltmer vid simuleringar istället.

Going nowhere

This morning the bus driver regaled us passengers by playing bhangra music very loudly. It however failed to transport me anywhere else but Vasastan.

Poker face? I don't even have a poker mouth

Kal notes that he has a poker face in front of patients, which threw my memory back to when I was in high school, training to become a medical engineer. Part of this was a two-week internship at the Department of Medical Physics at Huddinge Hospital.

One day I and my partner got to make a study visit to see the gamma camera unit and follow an examination. The patient was an elderly gentleman with prior history of cancer who was there for a follow-up. The technician showed us how the camera was operated, the pictures were taken and then we went a bit further down the corridor for developing (long before digital equipment, this was). Slowly the big image came out of the machine and the technician put it on the light table for a check. As soon as I see the ghostly silhouette, peppered all over with dense black spots, I blurt out:
“All those are metastases!?”
“HUSH!” hiss both my partner and the technician. The former gives me a “You idiot!” glare and the latter glances furtively towards the patient, who is obliviously standing further down the corridor. Luckily it seems he hasn't heard me, or he has a better poker face than I.

The technician shoves the pictures into an envelope and seals it with half a dozen staples and then immediately sends the patient down for X-rays. To us he says:
“It's his doctor's job to explain”, and then mumbles “They get really good results with chemotherapy these days…”

Vinnande bidrag i kategorin ”Snårigaste inledning”,eller,Mycket skrik för lite ull,eller,Finns det nån tanke bakom alls?

För länge sen, när jag pluggade på Teknis, fanns på Flygsektionen en teknolog som hette Einar. Einar var något av en legend, inte bara på Flyg utan även på övriga KTH, som på den tiden var tillräckligt litet för att man skulle kunna ha någorlunda koll på varandra. Det förefaller mig också ibland att trots den mindre mängden personer så fanns det fler original. Kanske kunde de sticka ut mer på den tiden.

Einar var ett kårvrak, en av dessa som lägger ner mängder av tid på att anordna fester, driva studentfackliga ärenden och hjälpa andra teknologer, kort sagt en av dessa eldsjälar utan vilken ingen förening överlever. En följd härav är att studierna lätt blir lidande och när Einar med tiden gick hädan för egen hand hade han varit inskriven i femton år eller så, vilket naturligtvis gav förutsättningar för mängden historier om honom och inte minst den ärliga saknad och sorg bland många över hela KTH som uttrycktes i den vackra dödsruna som sektionskamraterna skrev. (Jag var doktorand ungefär lika länge och när jag hörde en yngre kollega beskriva mig som en ”institution på institutionen” började jag på allvar anstränga mig för att ta mig därifrån – dock i mitt fall genom att ta examen.)

Men, under mitt första år som teknolog levde han fortfarande och jag läste i Flygs sektionstidning en anekdot om honom som gick ungefär så här:

Einar skulle upp på tentan i Mek. Mek-tentorna bestod huvudsakligen av typtal och hade man plugggat fem extentor fick man garanterat godkänt. Einar var ambitiös och pluggade tio extentor. Tyvärr hade detta bara gett honom tid att memorera svaren.

På tentan kommer mycket riktigt ett av typtalen och Einar skriver raskt ner svaret medan han fortfarande kommer ihåg det. Sen börjar han arbeta med lösningen men fastnar halvvägs. Han utgår då från svaret och börjar jobba sig bakåt men kommer inte riktigt ända fram till den punkt där han fastnat tidigare. Vad göra? Einar inför överraskningskoefficienten stora Ö och sätter likhetstecken. Einar klarar tentan.

Denna historia återberättade jag något senare för ett par sektionskamrater. En av dem, en ärans träbock som till min stora lättnad hoppade av studierna inte alltför långt senare, gned sig på hakan och invände:
– Men inte kan väl tentarättaren ha godkänt det?^*
– Förbannade historieförstörare! skrek jag.
Orubbad fortsatte träbocken att gnida sig på hakan och konstaterade fundersamt:
– Ja, man kanske inte ska analysera historier på det sättet…

Vilket för mig till det som egentligen var det jag tänkte skriva om, nämligen att analysera sönder en billig vits, jag kanske är gammal nog att kunna tillåta mig att vara en träbock.

Christina vrålar i vrede och frustration över (bl a?) det mansdominerade samhället och jag drar mig till minnes en historia jag läst någonstans för länge sen:

En gumma kommer in på apoteket och får syn på en flaska med en dödskalle och texten ”GIFT”. Hon konstataterar:
– Ja, se karlar kan se ut hur som helst, de blir gifta i alla fall.

Nu skulle man kunna tänka sig att den som ursprungligen totade ihop denna historia helt enkelt utgick från de dubbla betydelserna i ordet ”gift” och sen försökte baka ihop en historia runt det, men man behöver inte vara Freud för att reflektera över den bitterhet som lyser fram. Bara att gumman utgår från att dödskallen är en man (om hon nu inte förstås var (f d) osteolog och kunde identifiera könet på ögonhålornas form, men ikoniska framställningar är nog i allmänhet inte tillräckligt detaljerade för att detta ska vara möjligt), kopplat till det förmodat åtråvärda tillståndet att vara gift. (Man kan till och med fundera över om det är så att äktenskapet ska uppfattas som åtråvärt för mannen enbart.) Frågan är också om det finns en antydan av tvång, samhälleligt eller annorledes, som garanterar äktenskap åt männen, oberoende av deras yttre företräden. Det är dock oklart om gumman anser karlar vara kräk även i sina inre egenskaper, det skulle kunna tänkas vara givet förstås. Inramningen av historien antyder att den utspelar sig kanske inte direkt i nutiden, där det sällan står flaskor framme på apotekshyllorna på det sättet och framförallt inte heller med sådana etiketter. Kanske är giftermål inte lika viktigt idag heller, även om tvåförhållanden fortfarande tycks vara normen.

Om nu dessa funderingar hade nån sorts slutsats skulle den här bloggen inte heta som den gör…

---

^* Jo, nog kunde tentarättaren det. Några år senare hamnade jag i i stort sett samma situation på en Diff & Trans-tenta där Greens formel fallit mig ur minnet, men jag jobbade mig mot mitten av problemet från bägge hållen och satte likhetstecken i mitten. Jag blev också godkänd på tentan.

Why Germany lost the war, reason #427

So I have a case of serious cognitive dissonance with relation to the military business, but I'll admit to occasionally enjoying march music—especially with bag pipes—and will always sing along to Kgl Södermanlands Regementes marsch (”Här i Bayern skall ölet flöda fritt”).

Now, one would perhaps expect Nazi Germany to have been particularly good in the march area, it certainly sounds so in films, but having discovered a stash of original WWII music (children under the age of 18 are kindly requested to stay away) I must say that Nazi marches all sound like dirges, even those written in the beginning of the war. Prescient.

Veckans ord: idelologisk

Ideologier kan man ha på olika nivåer. Förmodligen har väl alla nånstans i botten nån sorts känsla för vad man vill med världen och hur man bör behandla sin omgivning. Med lite tankemöda kan man försöka organisera sina känslor så att de inte är alltför motstridiga och då kan man börja kalla det för en ideologi. Nu är det ju inte alla som gör sig besväret med att fundera över sin världsbild och om den är logiskt sammanhängande. Man kan istället överta en ideologi som nån annan formulerat och kanske har man till fullo har förstått den, kanske har man bara tagit till sig fraser och formuleringar.

Om man nu bara tagit till sig utanverket utan att ha förstått skillnaden på mål och situationsberoende medel, kan man inte desto mindre vara politiskt aktiv och hårt argumentera för den ena och andra problemlösningen som man tror är en viktig del av ens ideologi, men eftersom man inte förstått grundaxiomen blir argumentationen idelologisk.

Giant churches ≠ megachurches

In my childhood my family spent the summer holidays in Finland, staying at various rental cottages until we converged on a nice place right in the geographical centre of Finland where we children found friends our own age and spent the summers swimming, fishing, and playing in the local sand-pit. (For example dodging tractor tyres rolled down the hill—it's a wonder none of us was injured.)

However, my father tended to get impatient after a few days and had us bundle into the car and drive away to look at some “tourist attraction” or other. Now, this was truly in the middle of nowhere; I understand the artificial insemination facility is still on the local tourist board's top-five list of sight-seeing spots… So, one of these more or less remarkable things we went to see was Pirunkirkko, the Devil's Church.

Of course—a recurrent event whenever we went on these trips—we got lost and spent seemingly hours carefully navigating narrow forest roads that tended to suddenly end in nothing, but thanks to a local yeoman on one of these roads, we eventually got to the right spot as marked by a hand-painted wooden sign pointing into the forest. Walking a bit further we finally got to the spot marked X, and it was good that it was or we would have missed it completely. Apparently the rocks at that point were slightly larger than the surrounding rocks and placed slightly more resembling a rectangular shape than not, but for the rest they were just as moss-covered and granitic as all the other rocks in the forest. One would have thought that we would have been hardened by then, yet we were disappointed and Father's exhortations to use our imaginations to locate the pulpit and altar really didn't help.

I was reminded of this event when I read this article on “Giant churches” in Ostrobothnia in Hufvudstadsbladet. The accompanying photograph does not give any hint of what they actually look like, but they are assumed to be stone-age constructions though not houses. Their purpose and function has not been known and they have not been excavated to any great extent, but now a careful excavation of a giant church in Alaveteli has been started.

Shout-out to Åsa and Martin, what are your expert comments on giant churches?

Tropes

“Trope” is not a word in my active vocabulary, but it may end up there now. In the literary sense it is about recurrent motifs within genres, design patterns if you will, or in other words, why too many fantasy books feel all alike.

TV Tropes is a wiki about tropes not only in television series but in increasingly more tenuously connected areas and as in all good dictionaries, you can browse for much too long, learning the use of the The Worf Effect in X-Men, how Phlebotinum can save the day and why everything happens in New York.

Instant anthology

One attempt to get past spam filters is to hide the sales pitch as a picture in a thicket of random phrases. This recent spam seemed to use sentences culled from fiction stories and several of them seemed as if they could be interesting. So, if you, like me, really should be doing more important things, here is the Spam Anthology, with every sentence linked to the webpage from which it apparently was lifted:

A wad of silkpaper followed the powder down the barrel.
By the end of the 1980s, medical MRI scanning had become a major enterprise, and Damadian had won the National Medal of Technology, along with many other honors.
By the time it managed to stabilize itself and line up a shot, I had pumped a total of fifteen rockets.
The stream of oil was moving at a speed of no more than one metre per second.
By the door of her son's room the mother knelt upon the floor and listened for some sound from within.
I have bespoke supper to-morrow night in Eastcheap.
Unfortunately, its development seems to have been abandoned.
By the time his soft warm kisses reached her thighs, she was panting with suddenly and unexpectedly awakened desire.
But if it tickles, I won't be able to stand it.
Plantagenet shall speak first.
His small, bright eyes studied Deke without malice.
By studying this code, you can learn about all the details associated with the SCC and discover how to extend or otherwise modify the Standard Library routines.
By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming.
By the late nineteenth century the recurrence of this pattern had become obvious to many observers.
By the way, I like ecc but if (as the comments say) it can't deal with loss of block sync, I'm tempted to throw some time at adding that capability.
The user types the two numbers to be added, then clicks a button, which in turn sends the two numbers to the Web server.
By shifting his camp and taking circuitous routes, he prevents the enemy from anticipating his purpose.
C'est vrai, elle est en train d'accoucher.
By the time you're forty, you've done everything you possibly could with our present, 'natural' sexual system.
Ay, go your ways, go your ways.
By the time they are found out they have already taken what they want from your system and have compromised several others.
By the way, what were you doing when you were summoned to headquarters.
By the time the cruise missile impacted against the wing wall, I'd rolled on the other side of it, protected.
Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great sword of justice defend us.

Interestingly, many of these seem to link to various repositories of scanned literature on Russian servers—a sinister connection between stock tip spammers and copyright breakers, clearly the organised crime on the Internet I've heard so much about.

Veckans ord

Ibland hittar jag ord som är felstavade som om det varit en tanke bakom och då skriver jag upp dem i min Palm för att de inte ska förfaras. Men det är ju klart att jag måste dela med mig av dem, så jag tänkte försöka skriva om ett sånt ord varje fredag ett tag framöver.

Veckans ord är alternaiv.

Jag tycker det är väldigt väl beskriver en viss sorts människotyp som okritiskt hoppar på allt som är mot Etablissemanget. Man brukar kunna hitta alternaiva personer på yogakurser, miljöpartiets stämmor eller ute i Järna…

Zing!

The company will outsource its IT support and interviewed a small consulting company. Among their references was a fairly big multinational.
“How do you manage handle all their support with so little staff?”
“We've uninstalled Internet Explorer, cuts down the support cases to nothing.”

Broken English

I stumbled upon the Speech Accent Archive, a collection of several hundred persons reading the same English paragraph. Each person has a speech recording with phonetic transcription and notes on their pronounciation differences from standard US English.

My reaction to hearing the recordings was that the speakers in general spoke quite understandable English. My experiences with non-native English speakers from around the world suggests that the recorded speakers may not be entirely representative of their region. Of course, one can presume that the speakers are not quite randomly selected, but that there might be some degree of self-selection for people speaking relatively good English involved. Then of course, the speakers were presumably aided by the given text in that they didn't have to spend effort on generating grammatically correct sentences in addition to pronouncing the words correctly. On the other hand, sometimes it is clear that the speakers are struggling with just reading the text, being in a foreign alphabet and all, and this of course affects the speech rhythm in a specific way. Otherwise it would be interesting to note the differences in prosody in addition to the differences in pronounciation.

Why I'll never be a comedian

Arkland has a hilarious take on the recent debate about archaeological pseudoscience.

I just have to admit that I could never have written anything similarly funny, I would have got too caught up in actually computing the correct path of Uranus in 4321 BCE.

…men framåt eftermiddagen kände han sig lite piggare

Top-heavy

I'm a first world traveller, apparently.


create your own visited countries map

Further evidence

I told you Mike Slackenerny is really me and now we find he does slashed zeroes too:

CA is fantastic!

Cyanoacrylate glue is a miracle substance: it will quickly form permanent bonds between any two surfaces—except the ones you wanted attached…

Edible science

While I personally always have considered it rather disgusting, Kalles Kaviar is an important breakfast component for many Swedes. As it comes in a tube, inquisitive minds want to know how many standard pieces of crispbread you can cover with a tube. And what is a standard piece of crispbread anyway? Peter and Alex do a very carefully controlled study.

Life is pain

Cyanide and Happiness meets the futility of existence head on (or possibly off). Their Depressing comics week goes all the way with comics that are no fun at all in any way.

Extremely sensitive

I just bought the soundtrack to Wonderland from iTunes. All pieces came marked with the soothing label “Clean lyrics”. Ehm, these are instrumental pieces. I think we have a case of people who get annoyed at those who whistle lewd songs…

The music is soft Michael Nyman piano and string music fitting my current mood.

World Population Day

It is World Population Day today. The population of the world has doubled within my lifetime. This is not unconnected to global warming, environmental degradation and species extinction.
Unfortunately, all too many governments, even those that pay lipservice to environmental issues, seem bent on further increasing their populations. I see a faint glimmer of hope in the report by the Optimum Population Trust that exhorts the UK government to encourage a voluntary two-child limit in the country and cites evidence that even voluntary efforts actually lead to good results. I have written to my MP and asked that this idea be promoted in Sweden too. You can do so too, addresses to all MPs can be found here.

As if the candirú wasn't enough

Recently I ran into the word “cockchafer”. That sounded unpleasant; it turned out to be a beetle when I looked it up. So what is it called in Swedish? Ollonborre! Definitely I'll be wearing padded trousers when they are around.

Sculptural, cultural

The exhibition Skulptur 2007 opened yesterday at Konstnärshuset and I was invited. Here are some pieces that caught my eye:




The exhibition is open to the public: go see!

In the top 9%

Övers anm

Huruvida man ska översätta namn på litterära personer är en grannlaga fråga som inte har något enkelt svar. De förefaller dock som om översättare tidigare varit mer benägna att översätta namn, men att man idag oftast väljer att behålla originalnamnen. Kanske är detta en följd av att de potentiella läsarna idag antas vara mer bekanta med utländska (läs ”engelska”) namn. Knepigt blir det när namnen är ordvitsar som kan ha betydelse för handlingen, eller, i värsta fall, visar sig ha betydelse för handlingen flera böcker senare i en serie. Nånting som händer inte helt sällan är att översättaren gissar sig till vilka namn som ska anses vara betydelsebärande och översätter dessa men lämnar resten orörda.

Tintin är ett av dessa fall, där t ex « Tryphon Tournesol » på mer eller mindre goda grunder blivit ”Karl Kalkyl” i den svenska översättningen. En person som däremot inte fått sitt namn översatt är Piotr Szut, den estniske piloten och legosoldaten. Detta är lite märkligt med tanke på att en enda poängen med namnet är det lite enkla skämtet att det låter som « zut », vilket ger en anledning för kapten Haddock att bli upprörd när Szut presenterar sig. Estniskt är det i alla fall inte. (Och det är inte heller den kosackdans Szut uppvisar vid ett tillfälle.)

Här kunde man tänkt sig att förvandla honom till, säg, en holländare vid namn „Peter van Heller” så hade man behållit skämtet, men det kanske inte hade passerat obemärkt förbi väktarna av barndomens oskuld.

This is all about me

Catching the “eight facts about yourself” meme from Martin R.:

1. I am very susceptible to motion sickness.
2. I have every issue of MACH.
3. I have seven streets to choose from for the shortest route to work.
4. I skipped a grade in primary school.
5. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 is the subject I've built the most models of.
6. I have a membership card in the Planet Patrol, giving me the right to land on every planet in the Solar system without requesting permission.
7. My hat size is 61.
8. On two occasions I've had a bike stolen the same day I bought it.

It's not all about you

Before French roundabouts you can find this sign:


It's like a Memento mori.

On account of the passing of Povel Ramel

As everybody knows by now, Povel Ramel has passed away. I looked at YouTube for suitable videos and found this half-decent recording of ”Underbart är kort”, although not with Ramel himself (his version comes last on this video):


I have made a singable translation of the lyrics, it feels a bit flat, but it's an honest attempt:

Only a single rose on an endless creeper
such is our life, boring goes deeper.
But wonderful is short, always is too short.
Destiny takes you through long and narrow alleys
sunshine comes last to the valleys,
'cause wonderful is short, always is too short.

Ev'ry summer meadow holds a lone lucky clover—just for you,
and only once in life you'll find a friend who'll win you over, so do come through—
don't wait or she will be gone, wonderful is short, always is too short.

Maybe it's not too far off

Which Programming Language are You?

Unexpected hitches

So, it was time to go south again. I boarded the usual 12:20 X2000 from Stockholm towards Malmö and sat down with a stack of papers to read while up to three unhappy babies protested having to travel. I was distracted, not by annoyance, but by the fatherly reflex to rush up and comfort the crying children, but their parents already did their best.

I nabbed Ud & Se on the train to Copenhagen and started on the Danish crossword puzzle, somewhat trickier this time.

The usual boring stopover in Copenhagen, where it seemed some people were recording a music video in the main hall, singing harmonies somewhat out of key, I wonder if they will use studio recordings for the music.

Very heterogeneous rolling stock; some parts will stop in Dortmund, others continue to Munich and others further to Basel.

The night train arrived, I had a berth in the usual double-decker sleeper car. Very satisfied with myself I solved the word puzzle in mobil, the DB onboard magazine. Eventually I prepared the bed, as it seemed that I had the compartment to myself. Not quite though, by midnight a young gentleman got on in Neumünster and needed the top bunk, but I could live with that.

Change to the Thalys in Cologne early the next morning. Now I was less happy as I had to share the car with a German school class going to France for exchange studies. Their conversation tended to be loud and consist to a large part of „Arschloch!”… Well, we got to Brussels without me having actually killed any of the noisy youngsters.

I can't begin to imagine what that object with the lamps is for.

Brussels on the other hand seemed to suffer from some kind of traffic problem, the Thalys had to wait for a while before we could enter Bruxelles Midi and then there was considerable confusion about which platform the TGV to Nice would arrive at. Someone who apparently did not appreciate this was a fellow looking very annoyed in a black dress composed almost entirely of pockets. I first took him to be a security guard but he didn't seem to have the other associated paraphernalia and when he started retrieving lots of weird luggage from somewhere, said luggage including a racing bicycle with live cyclist, I began to suspect he was rather a street artist of some kind. Then he started hauling his luggage onboard the train. This caused an argument with the conductor, the contents of which I couldn't catch from where I was sitting, but it was clearly very heated and attracted more railway staff. When two burly guards arrived and started unloading his luggage for him, the man in black had to give up and content himself with angrily kicking his bags as the train left without him.

This TGV is not a double-decker, on the other hand it seems to be double-long. The journey from Brussels to Antibes is slightly over five hours, half of that time is spent on the distance from Marseilles–no specially prepared straight tracks here, so the TGV has to move at milk train speeds.

The usual lack of taxis at the train station in Antibes, but I finally get one up to Hotel Le Relais. Everything is much the same as when I was there in January, the next morning the breakfast lady recognises me even though I have a different hair colour than last time. I walk up the hill to ETSI and the seminar I came for. Three very intense days follow, covering the operations and organisation of ETSI and 3GPP in careful detail. The complex weighted voting process and its application in different situations is a surprise. The general rule is to avoid voting situations as much as possible. I note with some glee that even the moderator, who presumably uses it every day, has difficulty getting around the amazingly non-user-centred-designed ETSI portal.

Fort Carré d'Antibes

The days are not particularly warm and the nights seem to be rainy, so even though I had planned for it, I don't feel like using the hotel pool. Then of course on the Friday, when I'm leaving, the full Mediterranean blast furnace turns on. I enjoy myself by riding the bus down into town. I fail to find luggage boxes at the train station, so I'm forced to drag my cabin bag with me around town. Unaware of the totally unsuited terrain I even drag the bag out to Fort Carré. Stupid, it's not exactly paved streets there. I leave and get back into the city centre, thinking that maybe I can sit in a park and read. Unfortunately I can't find a park, so I go and sit in the railway station instead. A young man there apparently thinks he is performing a public service by blasting out French rap music from his mobile. I'm quite impressed by the performance of the phone, in spite of its diminutive size it manages to be clearly audible in the entire station.

I am rescued by the TGV taking me away. This one is a double-decker and I get to ride on top. It really does make a difference to the view to get up that little extra bit. At Gare de Lyon the ticket machines in the Métro are on the blink, so there are long queues by the two that still work. I get my ticket in time to hop on the RER to Gare du Nord.

I get a snack, not at the slow-service sandwich place where the scammers prowl, and then try to find my train to Hamburg. It's a very long train, taking up the entire platform length and my car is the one furthest away. It's not a double-decker sleeper and after a while I decide I actually like this model better, as it is slightly roomier and I do get the compartment to myself this time. I awake very early in the morning and on the way to the bathroom run into the car attendant who advises me to go back to sleep, we are several hours late due to a fatal accident (not involving our train). OK, so my connection to Copenhagen is shot, but I'll just catch a later train then, I think. The conductor is kind enough to continuously give us information in several languages–he even attempts passable Scandinavian, though breaks down and continues in English for the more complicated bits.

However, when we finally arrive in Hamburg, two and a half hours late, and I make my way to the information desk (called „Service Point” in German, as the conductor points out) it turns out that I will not be able to reach Stockholm at all that day, but will have to stay the night in Hamburg and then take the early morning train to Copenhagen–on Deutsche Bahn's bill, to be sure. The service staff do sort tickets and reservations out in the end, but while they have pre-prepared forms at hand, they work as if they had just seen the forms for the first time, somewhat surprising to me, since, as I've claimed before, DB trains do tend to run late (and this certainly didn't improve the statistics), so the staff should be used to handling delay consequences.

A fellow traveller, who not only will be late to Stockholm but miss the ferry to Helsinki, is quite upset, but I can allow myself to be more sanguine. I check in at Europäischer Hof, which is just outside the railway station. It is a four-star hotel, but I get a very little room. This has happened to me before, that very fancy hotels also have some really small and relatively cheap single rooms. Well, I don't need much space; of more concern is that the room doesn't have air-conditioning and by now the outside temperature is quite high.

Now, what can one do on a Saturday in Hamburg? A little bell jingles in the back of my mind and I call my friend Harald: Isn't there a giant model railroad somewhere about here? Sure there is and I get instructions on how to get there. Cool, my hotel check-in ticket is also a public transport pass! However, finding the correct U-bahn entry turns out to be non-trivial, it seems every line has its own entrance and even though they all pass by the Hauptbahnhof, they are not connected to each other. I end up circling the entire station area before I find the right entrance. As it turns out, I only have to go two stops and I probably could have walked to my destination in the time it took me to find the U-bahn.

If people are queueing a long time, why not sell food to them in the meantime?

Miniatur Wunderland! This is a huge H0 scale model railroad landscape, initiated by two brothers who have decided to live out their childhood dream to the fullest and clearly they see their visitors as sharing that dream. Visitors are enjoined to register for the Wunderland newsletter and are invited on special back-stage tours. Wunderland constantly update expected queueing times both at the entrance and their web site, so that visitors can plan their most suitable arrival time. The staff do the IKEA trick and hand out ice cream to the children and soda to their parents–twice I have my back turned when the drinks tray passes, so I don't get anything.

Typical nice touch: rechargers for every conceivable type of mobile phone, digital camera and camcorder, so that visitors will not be kept from photographing just because their batteries run flat.

Finally I get in and the experience is overwhelming: The actual railroads all but disappear in the huge landscape which is covered in houses, forests, mountains and people, details and gimmicks everywhere: seven dwarfs walking through the mountains, a Bigfoot in the forest, a monk…eh, blessing? a naked woman and literally thousands of such little things. I find I can't really take in the entire scene as I keep looking for and at all the little details. Many of them can't even be properly seen by the visitors as the scenes are so wide–one would actually need opera glasses or something. I understand that one will have to return, over and over again, to fully appreciate the exhibition. I stagger out three hours later, my brain all full.

This is not the entire model railroad, this is one corner of one of four rooms…

I walk back to the hotel and as it still is hot, I locate the hotel spa and paddle around in the pool a while. Suitably refreshed I go out and buy some underwear and a shirt in a very non-masculine shade of powder blue. Dinner at Ristorante Massimo and they can consider themselves to be ON NOTICE: Having paid, I politely ask for a receipt. The waiter breezily replies: “I lost it.” but digs in his shirt pocket and digs out a random receipt: “Here, you can have this!” Stunned, I accept it, but you have now been warned. (And yes, the receipt was for a lower amount than I had paid…)

It is warm all night, so I sleep very fitfully and am rather groggy when I get up the next morning, gather up my belongings and make for departure. At the breakfast table I find the guy from the day before, who clearly has not gotten to Helsinki yet. The breakfast buffet is excellent and the cooks beam back at my happy smile. Unfortunately I don't have the opportunity to eat as much as I'd like, as we soon have to leave for the train. My travelling companion and I turn out to have many common interests and we have an animated discussion while gliding through Schleswig-Holstein. We get the ferry tour from Puttgarden to Rødby, which is nice, if a bit early-morning chilly. Copenhagen is warmer, but the X2000 soon arrives. DB has upgraded us to 1st Class, managing to apologise for doing so on account of 2nd Class being full. We don't mind the upgrade a bit. Now this train too manages to get delayed, but not more than twenty minutes or so and I am soon home again.

“Go for it! What's the worst that could happen?”

Well, I guess I could make a tragic mistake, costing the company millions and accordingly be fired, be unable to find a new job, injure myself during job retraining, become dependent on painkillers and spend all my savings on buying drugs, get kicked out of my home, steal food from rubbish bins, living outdoors with no hygiene facilities, contracting painful sores followed by HIV, TB and hepatitis infections, my mother driving her car into a lake insane with sorrow, I turning up at the funeral babbling incoherently, combining loss of bowel control with vomiting all over antique paintings in the church, requiring not just cleaning but a complete renovation, during which a number of workers are seriously injured, of which two fatally, when a scaffolding collapses, this also causing further damage to the church, while I am in and out of hospitals, carrying extremely resistant strains of several pathogens and infecting staff members, other patients and their visitors. When I finally die, my coffin drops on the feet of two of the carriers, requiring amputation of several toes and disinfection of the crematorium.

Cheerful people simply have no imagination.

In hard competition with bog rolls

I've just been placed on my first blog roll! Check out the sidebar (and the rest) of Trauma Queen.

Fluffy Rubber

Fluffy Rubber is very good with a camera:

For all us battered souls with shattered dreams

An American Tune, more appropriate than ever:

Things children say

The only-begotten children have grown up in an atmosphere of concentrated geek so they have had a…non-standard vocabulary from early on. One of my favourite stories is from when the only-begotten son was perhaps three years old and I was taking him home from daycare in his stroller. Leaning back he spotted an airliner passing overhead and asked:
“How many neutrons are there in that plane?” [Well, it was more like “newtyons” as he couldn't pronounce “r”.]

I realised that for a change this actually was an answerable question, even if I had to look up a few things first. An Airbus 320 has an empty weight of about 42 000 kg, say that as it was on the finale towards Arlanda it would have weighed something like 60 000 kg with passengers, cargo and fuel. It is mostly made of composites and aluminium, i e mainly elements with as many neutrons as protons in the nucleus, so we can take half of the mass to consist of neutrons (that have a mass of 1.67×10^-27 kg). In other words the number of neutrons would be 6×10⁴/1.67×10^-27/2 ≈ 2×10³¹.

My TI-53

MarkCC has posted about innumeracy, to be specific, the misuse of terms in a mathematical context. This is of course something that is interesting in its own right—just the other day I heard a sales manager claim that sales of a product category had increased by 250%, rather than to 250% (of the index) and insisted it was correct even when I pointed out the error—but more importantly the discussion reminded me of my old Texas Instruments TI-53. I got it for my birthday, it must have been when I was in 9th grade. Pocket calculators were quite unusual at the time, but my father had a thing for gadgets and for once he had hit on something useful. This was a great toy. I read through the relatively thick but small (so it'd fit in the same box as the calculator) manual and soon had figured out how to program the calculator.

This was magic. I could easily compute functions and plot them on squared paper and got some kind of intuition for how they worked. I used my TI-53 almost all through high school, where it was invaluable, and with the constant use it eventually wore out, the keyboard sensors failing. It got an appropriate funeral: I opened it up to see what it looked like inside and then soldered off the surface-mounted processor. Eventually I sewed it to the breast of my student overall, where it still sits today.

This is for Kal

The Daughter's friend Nina laments:
What do my Dad and an ambulance have in common?
They both go “Niiinaaa, Niiinaaa!”

Amazing card trick

This is a card trick that will make you drop your jaw. Can you spot the trick?


Thanks to Mixing Memory!

More geeky comics

If you like xkcd, you'll probably also enjoy indexed, which is similar but different.

Hear the mighty engines roar

It should really be experienced in Sensurround, Dolby, quadriphonic stereo and whatnot, but one has to make do with the palest shadow of the engine sound of the Tupolev Tu-95 audible on this video. (It's been claimed that the intercepting F-16s won't fly closer than as shown because the noise is so overwhelming.)


And when you've seen that, watch this, particularly the bit from 1:58 to 2:05. Fantastic!

Imaginary conversation

“Hey! Stop throwing down disgusting stuff on me!”
“I'm not throwing down, I'm throwing up!”

quoth the Daughter suddenly from the depths of an armchair.

Knowledge nets

Sometimes it seems to me that knowledge is like a trawl you extend—the more you catch the denser you can make the mesh and catch even more. You find something out, evaluate it against what you already know, try to fit it in. Sometimes you have to throw away bits of the old. Sometimes the new bits can't be tied to anything else, but can be kept around until the rest of the net has grown so much you can fit the loose bits in.

For me, binding this mesh denser and denser is a deep-down necessity, forged by training and nature, with the effect that it seems I constantly overestimate the quality of other people's knowledge nets. Recently I was visiting an elderly relative and we watched the tv news. One item was about a Holocaust survivor, illustrated with his own photographs from Auschwitz. My relative stirred:
“When did this happen?”
Er, what? That was bloody Auschwitz! I thought but calmly said: “During the Second World War, '39 to '45.”
“In the 1900s?”
In your lifetime, yes! “Yes.”
And then the momentary glimpse of interest waned, as there were apparently no other hooks to tie the information to.

So this knowledge net, completely preposterously to my mind, lacked the loops to catch information about important parts of contemporary history. Admittedly, my own knowledge net has large empty areas when it comes to participants of reality shows, radio top 10 songs and such, but I'm not quite postmodern enough to consider all facts equally important.

I suspect that with such an incomplete net the daily news would be mostly gibberish that cannot be tied together to form a coherent world (which may contain contradictory claims, to be sure) since there is nothing to tie the individual facts together. (Often when I've seen science items in the news I've thought to myself: Those pictures were probably only meaningful to those who already knew what they was about.) And of course, if information does not make sense, what point in trying to get more of it? Tabloid headlines are to be rejected because they are too scaring, rather than rejected because they go against science and proven experience.

An ignorant population is possibly damaging to the democratic process and whatnot but I'm more worried people missing out on the beauty, terror, excitement and weirdness of the universe and I often wonder: “What went wrong?” Is it that some people just aren't interested in finding out more about the world? Did they have their curiosity stifled by bad teachers? Can they be recovered? Am I too impressed by my own magnificient general knowledge that I think everybody must understand a smattering of everything?

Boycotting the blocked

Spam is very annoying. Therefore I want to make sure that I do not encourage spammers by ever buying anything from them. To make sure spammers don't waste my time, I have a very effective spam filter. This means I almost never see spam sent to me. This means I don't know if a company has spammed me so I don't know if I should boycott them. To find out I'd have to carefully go through the bit bucket to see who has sent me spam, thus wasting my time. It seems they've got me coming and going…

Why?

The killer at Virginia Tech had “obliterated” the serial numbers on his weapons. This has returned to my thoughts over the past two weeks. Why would he do that? He certainly wasn't attempting to hide his identity and why should he care if the weapons were traced after he was dead, which apparently was the intended result.

I'm sure one can construct amazing conspiracy theories based on this loose-flapping factlet, but somehow I suspect it was simply because all the cool killers file off the serial numbers on their guns. sigh

Blinding flashes of the obvious

From a research proposal:
“Identify the remaining probable set of threats, including those that are illegal &hellip, because those that want to cause problems might not respect the law.”

I'm happy someone caught on to that in time.

In honour of the First of May

A site with renditions of the Internationale.

Get involved, get informed

Sometimes things are so close you don't notice them. I just found TreeHugger, a portal for all things environmentally friendly. Obvious URL, really.

I wish I could sing like that

Det hör rörelser till också…

När trollmor har tatt sina elva små troll
och lindat in dem i bacon
så stoppar hon in dem i ugnen
och sätter gasen på trehundra grader.
Oh! Aj aj aj aj! PUFF!
Oh! Aj aj aj aj! PUFF!
Oh aj aj aj aj PUFF! PUFF!
Oh aj aj aj aj! PUFF!

More weird maps (weirder maps?)

It seems another thing you can do to avoid doing what you should be doing, is to look for anomalies in Google Earth. The Register has collected many of these findings.

Other views of the world

I love maps and can study them for hours. Strange Maps finds unusual maps, maps showing statistics, maps showing unexpected parts of the world, maps using unusual projections and conventions.

Damn those kids!

The only-begotten daughter's theatre class gave a play they had written themselves. I have attended these shows for many years from the first embarrassing recitals consisting mostly of muffed lines and exits in the wrong direction, but they have learned. Oh, how they have learned… Within an hour they had me fighting the tears.

The play consisted of short scenes from a theatre school—work, breaks, joy and sorrow; the students' lives off-stage and the scenes they rehearsed subtly reflecting each other. The girl who so full of hope had auditioned reciting “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day” was killed in the final scene and when her friend, holding her body, read the sonnet over her I was this close to losing it completely. Afterwards, the daughter got a bit embarrassed when she noticed how moved I was.

Spam, spam, spam, spam!

Every now and then spam letters achieve a certain level of amusement, especially when they pretend to be sent exclusively to you, yet blatantly give away their mass-mailing origin. So for example this charming effusion, sent to the company's support mailing list:

Hi to you

I can imagine that you will wonder to get today the letter from unknown, but pretty woman from such far country like Ukraine. As for me I could not yet believe that I write to foreign man whom I don't know, but whom I do want. The reason of my letter is very simple: I want to find my love, my soul mate, that is why I am here. I decided to try to find love with you. I feel with all fibres of my soul that you are descent man and your heart is kind and is able to love. You may ask me how I know. I will tell you that I have well-developed intuition and my intuition chose you among thousands. and I want you to become the One...
I ask you not to ignore my letter and not to throw it to the rubbish bin. Read it, please, as attentively as you can. I am as serious as i have never been.
I am fed up to be lonely and to feel jelous if I see loving couples.
I want to scream, I want to cry, but I doing nothing I won't change situation.
If love don't come to me, I want to invite love to come into my heart.
And that is why I need to find my soul mate.
If you agree to help me to find love, become my soul mate -write me, I will wait http://loveandonly.com/happiness

Waiting for your mail

Olya P

Going home

We had a good meeting and then took our farewells, the hotel staff located the sunglasses I had mislaid and then I walked down to Brussel Zuid. It wasn't as hot as the day before and it was a nice walk. On the way I passed a beggar who had decided to do his begging with style—he was royally seated in a large red upholstered chair and kept up a constant patter in Bruxellois at the passers-by. Not being able to make my mind up about food on the way there, I ended up with a pizza on the station.

The THALYS to Cologne was on time and so was the connecting night train. On this leg I did not get the compartment to myself but had to share it with a kindly Danish gentleman. I found that the top bunk actually was easier to sleep in as my legs could stick out over the end. The Danish gentleman solved his sleeping problems by drinking himself into a stupor. Or, at least he had a beer before he turned in.

In the middle of the night I woke up from the distinct smell of tobacco smoke, apparently someone nearby was smoking in flagrant breach of all rules, but I couldn't really do anything about it, except try to crank up the air conditioning, which didn't necessarily help. The car attendant also smelled it but couldn't pinpoint the source.

I had worried that I would be deposited in Odense as on the way down, but we did get all the way to Copenhagen. Quick transfer to the Malmö train and from there to Stockholm. For some reason I couldn't reach the wireless net on the train, so I had to make do without on the way up. I think my laptop is slowly giving up.

Hot and bothered

I get to Copenhagen in good time, snag a sort of dinner and then try to find the night train to Cologne. Nothing on the screens. Info desk tells it will arrive at track 7, just go there. There's a local train there—will my train come in just after it? But why isn't it announced on the screens? Possibly the tannoy calls may say something, but the sound reproduction qualities are such that I find it impossible to understand them even when they (presumably) are not in Danish. In addition, shouldn't there be more people milling around, waiting for the night train? I am struck by a thought and ask a nearby railway employee—apparently I am supposed to get on this train and go to Odense, where the night train will pick up its passengers. No explanation of why this is or how this was supposed to have been communicated to the passengers. I jump on at the last minute, rather miffed, I had looked forward to a quiet compartment of my own by now rather than a crowded car (seemingly) full of children in high spirits. Then comes the announcement that we will soon be arriving in Odense and passengers with Eurocity so-and-so should change here—given in Danish only. Still, even the Portuguese-speaking ladies get the message, since everybody start taking down their luggage from the overhead racks and preparing for disembarkment.

In Odense we wait uncertainly for a few minutes before the train arrives and I can finally get my quiet compartment. I feel tired and decide to retire immediately. As mentioned before, folding out the beds requires a special key that the car attendant has, but I study the construction and a couple of seconds of work with the Swiss army knife brings down the bed. Several hours later the attendant comes to fold out my bed and is surprised and embarrassed to find me in bed already.

Though not quite asleep. Advertisers like to write how night trains gently rock one to sleep so that one arrives fresh and ready for a new day at one's destination. The truth in my experience is that one is rudely shook about all night in a bunk that's really too short for comfort and then one has to get up before dawn to be deposited in a city where nothing is open yet.

At least there are showers on these trains to freshen you up, but somebody seems to have fallen asleep in the shower compartment; after watching the red light for twenty minutes I give up.

Cologne. Quick change to the Thalys for Brussels. The Ardennes are as pretty as ever, I'll have to go there some day. In Brussels the train makes a stop at Brussel Noord and we are told that those who wish can get off there. I decide it will make a change from Bruxelles Midi, so I hop off. I exit the station to find I apparently have ended up in the/a red light district—there is a shopping window with a couple of half-naked ladies half-heartedly wiggling about right in front of me. At nine in the morning? Well, it's of course good if the ladies get to keep office hours…

I instead turn right and quite unexpectedly find myself in the Botanical Gardens. I've always been fond of botanical gardens and this is a nice oasis in Brussels—or would be if there wasn't a major throughfare and several construction sites next to it supplying a deafening noise to the park.

The day soon turns quite hot as I meander through the streets, a cool museum would be just the thing. I take aim at the Musée de l'air, walking through a sweltering Parc du Cinquantenaire, but am sadly disappointed: the museum is closed on Mondays. Even worse, across the court yard I see the posters for a Franquin exhibition, that closed the day before… This is the final straw, I trudge up to my hotel and have a cool shower.

In the evening dinner with the people I'm meeting. Yeah, it's all engineers, we all withdraw to our rooms by 21. I try the TV and get a scandal story about the mismanagement of Her Majesty's Prison Rye Hill. I wonder a bit if the main problem is that it run by a private company, or that it has to be run on such a low budget that nobody could do it right.

And then the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech. There is probably a lot to be said about that, but that will have to wait until we know what actually happened…

I feel holier than him

Meteorologist Pär Holmgren has done his best to raise consciousness about global warming in Sweden, but in a recent interview in Dagens Nyheter he reveals that his environmental conscience does not stretch as far as taking the twenty hours one-way to take the train to Brussels. He flies.

I, on the other hand, sit on the X2000 southwards. I have web connectivity and prepare material for a guest lecture next week. It is indeed considerably more expensive to go by train, but an Interrail card takes a bit of the edge off the pain. The tab will be picked up by the European taxpayers anyway, so it's not that much of a personal sacrifice for me—except for the teenage girl in the seat behind me who has been continuously speaking on her mobile since Stockholm. Apparently the reception is bad, because every second word she says is “What?”. sigh

Tomorrow I'll have most of a day free in Brussels and the weather seems fair. Updates as events warrant.

Translation of the week

From the January/February issue of Avions:
“Phoney war” = « Guerre du Téléphone »

Rather disappointing

Art Garfunkel's previous album, Everything Waits To Be Noticed was interesting in many respects—Art was openly writing lyrics and music and indeed produced some touching, not to say occasionally haunting, pieces, sung together with, the perhaps somewhat anonymous, Maia Mondlock and Buddy Sharp, creating a record that definitely is among his best. (I'm not that much of a Jimmy Webb fan anyway.)

After that his latest, Some Enchanted Evening, is a letdown. It is a collection of ear candy, beautifully sung to be sure, but it blazes no new trails. Come on, you've shown that you can do better!

A Day in the Life

The only-begotten son has an essay on biological warfare due for the next morning, but the printer is acting up. We fiddle with things and as such things tend to go, we have to install new software and then I feel the need to dispense some professional advice on the formatting of literature references and of course we have to look up some interesting pathogens in the Tree of Life and… What's that smell of burning? Aaacckk! The pie! It is well on its way to briquettehood when I pull it out of the oven.

Fortunately there are enough leftovers from Easter for us to be able to improvise dinner anyway.

Truth in advertising (cont)

University applications are to be sent in this week and various institutions advertise to attract students. So does KTH:

Kan du bli nobelpristagare,
toppchef eller helt
vanlig astronaut?

Now, I wouldn't trade my degrees from KTH for anything, but to be honest, no KTH graduate has ever received a Nobel prize.

Uppsala University seems to be the place to go to if you are hankering for a Nobel Prize.

Foresight

All the time we make predictions of the future, many of these never come true and we forget them (until somebody points out what an idiot we were for not signing up Astrid Lindgren or the Beatles). But if you make sufficiently many predictions, some of them will of course come true, and some of these uncannily so.

I've always been struck by how similar to Ronald Reagan president Prexy in John Brunner's The Sheep Look up was, long before Reagan's ascendancy to the presidency. But even more startlingly prophetic is The Onion's satire of George W Bush, just after the 2000 elections: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.

If it's printed, it must be true

When I last went to Burger King, the tray liner said: ”99,999999999999999999999999999999999999999% nötkött är inte tillräckligt”. From this we understand that allowed contamination is less than 1 part in 10³⁹. Sooo, for a 100 g burger patty, anything not beef must weigh less than 10^-40 kg. This is less than 1/10000 the mass of the electron neutrino. Conversely, we can accept the contamination by a single water molecule of non-beef origin in a hamburger the size of Kebnekaise.

I'd really like to see the cleanrooms where they make the Whoppers…

Ow, I've been infected!

Martin R has tagged me with explaining why I started to blog.

It was simply because I came up with the name. Everybody else seemed to be blogging and I thought: “If I had a blog I'd call it ‘Pointless Anecdotes’.” I mentioned this to my friend Mats Li and he immediately responded that if I wrote a blog, he'd read it. (Are you there, Mats?)

Then, I saw Martin's Salto Sobrius in its original black splendour and realised that that was how I wanted my blog to look and getting a Blogger account was rapidly done. With time both Martin and I went for a design that was easier on the eye, but I still retain a lot of elements he came up with and I thought were cool. The English was not directly inspired by Martin, but there for the same reason: I try to include my non-Swedish-speaking friends, though I reserve the right to occasionally do bits in any other languages that strike my fancy.

I will not explicitly tag anyone else, but if you feel infected and write something, leave a link in the comments.

Dysthemic, that's what I am

Almost invariably when somebody sends me something with the comment that it is “food for thought&rdquo, my reaction tends to be “it's actually crap already”.

I'm not quite sure what to think about this extract from Barbara Ehrenreich's book Dancing in the Streets, discussing how depression has become increasingly more prevalent in the Western world since the 16th Century. It is definitely in the food-for-thought category, but is it nutricious? I'm not convinced that the reason people are depressed is that they don't party enough, but the discussion about the creation of the individual and how this allows oneself to get depressed is interesting. But what says that an entire group couldn't be depressed?

Oh carp!

Cognitive Daily notes that most researchers don't understand error bars and reading through the explanation I see that apparently I haven't either, specifically my lic thesis does incorrect analyses of statistical significances at some points. Well, the results I presented were so vague anyway, so I don't think this particular gaffe makes much of a difference…

Finite Simple Group of Order Two

Songs like this always make me happy.

Finished model 2007-III

HMS Victory, Royal Navy. Model from Airfix, scale 1/600, donated by my daughter. It has been suggested that two different people made the port and starboard halves of the moulds for this model; I think it was the same person, just before handing in his resignation. Definitely the moulds can be recycled with no loss.

Hos optikern

– Goddag, jag vill köpa ett par glosögon, jag ska läsa franska. Och så vill jag ha röstfria skälmar, så jag inte blir störd.

After the party

Ten years ago. It's after the party and I'm standing on the rocky shore of Maui. Night has fallen and I can't see if the little crabs that scuttle around the rocks in daytime are still there or not. I listen to the Pacific rolling in in a slow pulse. (All week I have waged a battle beyond visual range with the person cleaning my hotel room—every night when I return I turn off the air-conditioner and open the window to let the soft warm air in and hear the waves, every day when I'm out she closes the window and turns on the air-conditioner.)

I'm standing there alone, listening to the waves, looking at the stars. The crescent moon is lying at an unaccustomed angle, apparently the Earth is round. Through the night sky a set of blinking lights: a 747 on its way to Japan, too far away to be heard. On board passengers will be trying to sleep uncomfortably in their seats, cabin crew dozing or doing the neverending chores in the pentry, flight crew monitoring the plane as it flies itself, alone in the night, high above the seemingly endless ocean. I and the plane, both alone. And the stars; one day we will go there, our lights bravely blinking in the infinity.

The next day, simulations and demonstrations: the ground water is being used up faster than it is replenished, all the Hawai‘i islands will become uninhabitable within a few generations. Indigenous species only remain on the highest peaks, where they risk extinction every day. Tourists are physically eroding the islands, we are entreated not to take away any rocks. Yet I take home the dried-up exoskeleton of one of the little scuttling crabs, telling my conscience it isn't actually a rock.

Ten years later. Perhaps the party isn't quite over yet, but the catering staff have started to carry the dishes away. For those of us who were invited to the party, that is. Most people have not been allowed to go the other end of the Earth and watch the Moon from strange angles. Probably that will be the fate for all of us now. It is unlikely that humanity will die out outright, but the great expenditures of energy will be over, the time of great physical projects is gone, humanity will have to retreat, scrimp and save.

And there will never be blinking lights sailing away into infinity.

A new blog

John Bowers has started his own blog, Suborderly, with a link to his Flickr photopages. In the first posts you will find a poignant and sad reminiscence of a childhood friend of his who died doing cold fusion research.

Alas, computer science offers few opportunities for sudden and glorious death.

Worth his prize

I've come to feel increasing respect for Jimmy Carter even though he didn't make that great an impression on me at the time. “JB” sums it up:

And the reality is also that Carter took the proper course of action with the [Iran] hostages because all of them came home alive -- which would certainly never have occurred had Bush been in office at the time. He would have bombed the country and the hostages would have been killed. But Americans would have loved it because they love action -- especially aggressive action.

Asteroids!

I've written about asteroid deflection. Others also think about it.

The importance of Lego for animators

What would filmmakers do without Star Wars Lego?

Clearly not this video.

The first griffons of spring

Rare sighting: A pair of Gripen flying southwards over Stockholm at high speed and with considerable noise.

When the invisible hand cannot be seen

This is really a human tragedy, but I will for a few moments go abstractly economic.

In India (and in many other parts of Asia) female children are considered only as a liability, as one will have to pay a dowry to get them married and will not have any perceived benefit from them once they are married. Yet married they have to be. So, in order to improve family finances, female fœtuses are being aborted and grown women killed to the point that there is a serious skewing of the (numerical) gender balance in India. Now, according to the laws of demand and supply that I were taught in high school, this should mean that women as going down in supply would appreciate and thus be more appreciated, but the opposite seems to be the case. So when parents attempt to pay smaller dowries or not at all, the men instead kill off their wives so they can remarry and get more dowry (doughry?).

This is an example of non-linear economics: the underlying traditions and assumptions about the value of women are stronger than (what used to be considered) economic logic. We can see similar examples in South Africa where funerals traditionally are very opulent affairs that have important social functions. However, with the current AIDS epidemic funerals happen so frequently that families do not manage to recover economically between them.

I'd like to draw a parallel to, say, the Western economic disaster of relying on endless growth of the population and the economy, where however, the consequences have always managed to be pushed far enough beyond the horizon that the connection can denied.

And how will India fare? My imagination is not quite sufficient to visualise a future India bereft of women, starting acquisition raids over the border of Pakistan (or all the way to Sabina). Indeed many things can be done. From the standpoint of women, supporting education and financing for women so that they do not necessarily have to marry to support themselves; from the standpoint of their parents, social security would lessen the need for parents to rely on their children (sons) for old age support. Married high-status men, however, may not necessarily see any benefits in a change of the status quo and are also the ones in the best position to block any reforms. So, can the rest of us use soft power to affect Indian traditions and opinions? Maybe. Where should we start?

Politician vs Industrialist

In a short article in Dagens Nyheter today Norwegian conservative minister Ansgar Gabrielsen comes out as insightful and foresightful: Twenty years ago was raised the issue of the lack of women on company boards. The industry promised that things would sort themselves out within ten years. Nothing happened. So, the minister, in spite of being conservative and thus presumably all for letting companies self-regulate as much as possible, took the consequences of that and successfully forced through quota legislation, to the benefit of everyone.

In opposition to that we have in an article on the next page Håkan Eriksson, spokesman for the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise who blithely says that things will sort themselves out within 15–20 years. Apparently what he has learned from the Norwegian example is to give a date far enough into the future that he will have retired if and when any Swedish minister decides to follow up the promises. (Not that that is likely to happen.)

I'd be happy to hear if anyone knows of a case where industry has promised to self-regulate and this actually has happened. Ever.

Mixing with the upper class

As I've indicated before I consider myself to have a working class background (even if I never actually did live in a cardboard box in the middle of a road), but my university education has catapulted me into reluctant touch with the upper crust.

Take today, for example. It was the occasion of the annual meeting of the Friends of the Vasa, beginning with dinner. I was a bit late from work so when I arrived everybody else was already sitting and eating. It seemed the only seat left was at a smaller table with some people so I just sat down there and tore into the food. While eating I listened to the conversation around me and realised with increasing embarrassment that I had just plopped down next to the society's chairman, Admiral So-and-so, and the rest around the table were his relatives; they'd wave at passing millionaires and discuss how difficult it was to get in touch with their friends now that they were ministers. But the peak of embarrassment came when one of the ladies recognised me and realised I was the father of her best friend's grandchildren—I was family too and greeted into the fold!

How will I ever live this down?

Is it an insult?

One would imagine that Svensk Fastighetsförmedling would be able to broker their own premises, but the task went to another company. All concerned probably think there is a good reason for it.

Research can be anything!

When I once got involved with Young Scientists, someone expounded on how you could turn anything into research—the method is everything! Some who have taken this to heart are the people behind My Science Project. They look into questions that most of us would just idly speculate about and instead carefully find out exactly what you have to do to nail jelly to a wall, how to keep cut flowers fresh with Viagra, and whether Dick Cheney probably told the truth about his shooting accident.

My god, it's full of CARs!

I laughed myself silly at this installment of xkcd:

Finished model 2007-II

Fokker Dr I 474/17 from Jagdstaffel 2, ca 1917. Model from Revell, scale 1/100, donated by Björn B, decals by Al Superczynski. It was completely impossible to get the wings to go on straight and I need to practice more on the Fokker dope streaks, but I like the colour scheme.

Finished model 2007-I

Northrop F-20 Tigershark GG1001 in factory demonstrator colours, 1982. Model from Airfix, scale 1/144, decals by Al Superczynski. There is apparently an Arii kit of the Tigershark in 1/144, I would urge anyone to use that instead of the Airfix horror. Other than that I really like the colour scheme, though it's a pain to get on in this scale. I have duplicate decals if anybody wants to try their hand.