Still sick. Still not enough brain for writing. Not an exemplar of saintly patience with these two data.

Accordion-playing buskers really make me wish that it were socially acceptable to indicate one's feelings about street entertainment by taking a dollar or two from their boxes as well as by positive reinforcement for the good ones.

Today's post is on another blog which I don't update often enough (though I really should because it's the closest thing I have to a professional blog -- on the other hand we do now have a blogging service at work, which I should probably be starting to use for actually-work-related things... MORE HOURS IN DAY PLS KTHX).

I'm having a screen-free day tomorrow, so if there's anything you want to say to me you'd better do it now :-)

The effort I've put in to my health and fitness (that was previously spent on OU) is really paying off, and I'm now walking fabulously well for an hour or so a day. 2.5 yesterday! The more I do, the more I want to do - I'm off in an hour, rain or no. (And it will be rain)
I love feeling strong.

Also, any Cambridge folks want to come and see The Men Who Stare At Goats on Monday evening? Cineworld 6/8:30, Vue 7:30. With my Mon/Fri work from home schedule, these seem fairly safe days on which to have a social life :-)

Pete and I are off to Kingham Lodge until Tuesday, as part of our unseasonal holiday in the Cotswolds. Recommendme things to do, preferably indoors, and see you all next week! :P

There are a lot of rants going round my head at the moment on the theme of science, knowledge, ignorance, learning, information literacy, and what makes a thing worth knowing. I am emphatically not claiming any expertise in any of these things. At the moment I'm just writing around things I observe and trying to draw lines between them.

Today's irritation (I wish these things were the bit of oyster-grit around which a pearl forms, but I fear they're actually just the bits of shoe-grit around which a hole in your sock forms) was this popup 'poll' (advert) from Shell which pasted itself like Bill Stickers over the article about cycling which I was trying to read:



"Biofuels Can Be Produced From A Wide Variety Of Biomass Sources. Which Of The Following Do You Think Is Most Viable?"

Now, there are questions where people's opinions are the most important data you can gather, assuming you want to know the answer to the question in the first place (for example, "What's your favourite colour?"); and there are issues where people's opinions are a useful part of the picture even if there are other things which can be measured or taken into account (for example, "What do you think of our new website?"); and there are issues where there are actual facts which can be brought to bear on the question, and people's opinions aren't actually very useful or interesting except maybe as part of a general knowledge guessing-game (for example, "Which do you think is taller, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Eiffel Tower?").

Then there are poorly-defined questions where people's opinions are utterly useless, like this one. Look, if you want to know which biofuels are more efficient (in terms of, say, energy generated per weight), this is something you can measure. If you want to know which biofuels can be grown most efficiently (in terms of, say, yield per area), or are the most hardy (most likely to grow in adverse conditions), or are the least polluting when used as fuels (in terms of ppm of pollutants), these are things you can measure. If none of these are what you mean when you say "most viable", you're going to have to define the terms of your question a bit better. The only context I can think of in which people's opinion would be the most important factor here is if you were trying to measure which biofuels would meet with the least public resistance; for instance, whether people would feel happier about running their cars on palm oil, or human bones, or rabbits.

Now I know this is an advert, and adverts want to provoke a reaction, because no publicity is bad publicity. But the advertisers know that this sort of thing makes people want to click on it, want to record their opinion. And, on the other side of the screen, there seems to be no shortage of people who want to hear the opinions of ignorant people -- often in preference to hearing the opinions of experts. "Let's find out what the man on the street thinks," we say. When it comes to something which is manifestly measurable and testable, I don't actually give an atom of biomass what the man on the street thinks; I want to know what the person with the tools to measure it, the expertise to interpret the measurements, and the eloquence to explain it thinks. In my examples above I've doubtless missed a lot of sensible scientific questions that could be asked about biofuels; the point is, I can pick half a dozen more meaningful questions to ask (assuming you want to get a meaningful answer -- and then we're back to begging the question again) than the one in the poll, but I wouldn't be asking the internet. This is more like the sort of questions that get asked on the BBC website's Have Your Say (which, as you probably all already know, is best viewed through the hilarious bile-coloured glasses of Speak You're Branes): none of which are actually questions, even if they're phrased as such. They're not looking for an answer; the point is quite simply to let people Have Their Say. The content of what they're saying is irrelevant; they might as well just say "Please type in the idiot box" or just "Your bile here".

I think there's a kind of amateurism and maybe even primitivism at work here: a sense that the opinion of "the people" is somehow more real, more authentic, and hence more important than the opinions of "the so-called experts" (who are, of course, still people, but are somehow cheating by actually knowing stuff about stuff). addedentry says (my armchair research assistant!) that it's the ideal of democracy taken to its extreme; he may have a point. I don't know where it comes from (and I'm not trying to answer all the questions here) but I want it to go back there. I think there's also a sense that Being Heard is vitally important -- which in many contexts it is -- whether or not you have anything to say.

In a sense, I guess that's the human condition: shouting into the void to try to prove to yourself that you exist. Thank Dawkins it's Friday!

Stopping here because this already overlaps slightly too much with the second half of the post about ignorance (which is still only in draft form mostly IN MY HEAD). Maybe one day I will marshall all this content into something more sustained and structured.

Erm, not done a proper post in a while. Well, went down with lurge the day after Angua's fabulous fire-walk. Could be that we all caught it at the same time and Angua's hot coal induced adrenaline held it off for a bit.

Last weekend I coughed my way through a stay by the lakeside that is Rutland Water where we got to eat unhealthy breakfasts that were so huge we didn't get hungry again until the evenings. Sat in hides and ticked off a list of over 50 wild-fowl and other life forms. Went for walks in the sunshine. I got some sketching done. Went to the owl and falconry centre and got to look at loads of very very cute, if slightly pissed off, owls and some hawks and vultures. I know these places take in creatures that wouldn't survive in the wild and they play a conservation role, but I always get a bit conflicted at seeing a wild animal in captivity - even though I'm totally loving being able to see it.

This week, house progress still halted due to lurge going to chest. Feel very down with being unproductive. Trying to do the little jobs. Also planning what goodies I'm going to make for Christmas. Currently eyeing up the cardamom fudge featured in the December issue of Country Living (I LOVE that magazine, appeals to the posh country gal that lurks deep within my soul, despite the fact that I'm the granddaughter of a window-cleaner). Exposed beams and hydrangea darling - with brass period door knobs on!

Spare Ooom almost finished - it is SO vintage chic and I am SO proud. Cath Kidstone eat your heart out...

Read this which is Jennifer Crusie first draft of a scene, and then read this which is her analysis of how she's going to fix it.

This is a kind of writing about process that people don't do enough, and which people learning to write could really do with. I said in comments there that this isn't the way I work, but in a way it is. I don't formally ask those questions, but this kind of shaping is what I do when I go back through what I just wrote. It's how I stop things being flabby and heading off in the wrong direction. In a way I'm constantly doing this -- that's why I have the whole file open when I'm writing, so I can go and put in the tightening or the set-up where I need it when I figure that out.

It feels weird out there, bright but grey, like hot ash settling on stone. It's a storm-gathering day, all the streets hunched and hurrying and hooded. I slipped out into the drizzle to get a hot chocolate from the sandwich shop, warmed my hands on it as I carried it back to the office, more for the comfort than the heat. (It's no coincidence that "hot mug" has a "hug" wrapped around its outside.) I want to be at home with a warm drink and the crossword, but I'm doing the best I can on my own in the office: door closed, music out loud but on low. Eventually I'll have to cycle home in the dark and the rain, and I'll put it off until the building gets dark and echoey. In my waterproofs I feel like a boiler-suited B-movie alien, shambling wetly through the dark.

This isn't today's post, unless I don't get a chance to do another one, in which case I might just count it. I make the rules up as I go along, you know, and if I say it's time for a cup of tea, then it's time for a cup of tea.

For those going on tonight's Nottingham pub crawl to kick off Novacon and are thinking of eating, the Queen Adelaide where we will be starting does a well-recommended Friday night fish supper from 5 to 8pm.

The Nottingham pub crawl on the Friday evening (13 November) of Novacon will start at the Queen Adelaide at 99 Windmill Lane, Nottingham (NG3 2BH). If you are starting from the convention hotel, you are probably best getting a cab. This pub has gone from a keg only pub five years ago to having its first entry in the Camra Good Beer Guide 2010. It is on top of the hill near the windmill with gorgeous views over the city. When you get there, ignore the main entrance but go to the right-hand side into the public bar. I will be there from about 7pm and plan to leave for the next pub at about 8.30pm, so that's the window to arrive if you want to join the crawl. If you are going to arrive later, let me know and I'll give you my mobile number so you can find where we are.

Yes, of course I've been quiet about it - our lot would have had between zero and buckley's chance of winning in this yellow-dog Labour fortress even if our candidate were the Archangel Gabriel, no matter what the bar-chart waving pollyannas may say. Hard truth, but cold fact. Doubt if it'll be as low as eighth, as the Greens reckon, but that's the Greens for you, and this is Glasgow after all. This could be as bad as our previous low water mark at Hamilton, but as I say it's a no-hope seat. The result will be here, though, just as you've come to expect. So much for the midnight finish; very slow for such a poor (32%) turnout, and supposedly down to spoilt papers. What's worrying about this turnout is it may or may not mean that the BNP will either finish third or keep its deposit or both. The knuckle-dragging Orange vote there, marvellous. I notice Tommy's been very quiet this time around; it's not like Mr Sheridan to hide his light under a bushel. Perhaps our Tommy correspondent loveandgarbage could cast some light onto this?

By the way, who on earth at the BBC hired the hopeless Laura Kuenssberg (sp?) as a correspondent? My cat knows more about psephology than she does; you can't extrapolate the results of an ultra-safe seat like this on a national scale.

Closer to home, I see the question of dodgy communalist voting has reared its ugly head once more; and the same will happen again in Bradford West next time, trust me. It's always a tricky one to report; it's almost as if any time anyone opens their mouths about it, the parties concerned will invariably play the race card. The Conservative Association in question played a masterstroke last time, though, in choosing the otherwise useless Robertshaw to fight and win in Bowling and Barkerend, as a "look at us we're real actual conservatives, not communalist chancers, honest guv" move; and while I don't go along with the doomsaying from both Labour and the Tories re Bradford East (it's just a mixture of psy-ops and that they hate David and Jeanette), the presence of Riaz on the Tory ticket is going to put pussy well and truly among the pigeons.

Anyway... more to come, result will be here as soon as it's called.

1.50 AM - appears that the Tory has finished third ahead of the BNP, though whether the fash held their deposit is a moot point. Sounds unlikely that they have; fingers crossed.

1.52 AM - talk from the count of a Labour majority of 8,000. See comments re "yellow-dog Labour" above.

1.55 AM Here it is;

Charlie Baillie - British National Party 1,013

William Bain - Labour 12,231

Eileen Baxendale - Liberal Democrats 474

Mev Brown - Independent 32

Colin Campbell - The Individuals Labour and Tory (Tilt) 13

Ruth Davidson - Conservatives 1,075

David Doherty - Scottish Greens 332

Mikey Hughes - Independent 54

David Kerr - SNP 4,120

Louise McDaid - Socialist Labour Party 47

Kevin McVey - Scottish Socialist Party 152

Tommy Sheridan - Solidarity 794

John Smeaton - Independent Backed by the Jury Team 258

43 spoilt papers

LAB GAIN (from Speaker) - MAJ 8,111

Sixth place then, behind the BNP and Sheridan, albeit in a seat where, realistically, there was no point in running anything more than a paper candidate. But still, a very poor do. If Rennard was still running the show he'd spin this as a 2% increase since the General Election :) At least the fash did lose their deposit - just; if one fact can be drawn from this by-election result, it just proves that apathy only helps crazed extremists like the BNP. You can bet none of them failed to turn up at the polling stations yesterday, and they'll be there at the General, so staying at home and wishing a plague 'pon all their houses is not an option! But of course you don't need me to tell you that.

Why do people display apparent pleasure -- and even pride -- in their ignorance?

(Like so many of my posts, this one's powered by irritation; and like many irritations, they were all on Radio 2.)

The first of these was perpetrated by Sarah 'TBW' Kennedy. Following a news item which mentioned the Taliban, she moaned, in her (thankfully) inimitable gin-sodden gurgle, "Why won't somebody tell me what the Taliban really want?" ... Well, let's see. Could it be because you work for the UK's flagship news and media organisation, and thus have access to current affairs reference resources that most people can only dream of? Could it be because they think that, even without all the BBC's resources at your fingertips, you could probably manage to type 'taleban' (spell it how you like, Google will figure it out) into the idiotbox and read (maybe even comprehend) some of the results? Could it be because, in short, you're an adult living in an age of unprecedented access to information, and "nobody told me" is absolutely no excuse for your continued ignorance on issues which involve actual factual content and where you have a desire for more knowledge? (This is, of course, begging the question. We'll come back to that.)

The second incident was perpetrated by Terry Wogan (yes, I suppose I do bring this irritation upon myself). Following a news article about a predicted increase in flooding in Wales brought about by climate change, Wogan cheerily chuntered "Why would it flood in Wales? Is there a scientific reason for it?" Well, I suspect that even the most green-crayon-fingered of climate change deniers would probably agree that there's a "scientific reason" for flooding: lots of water comes out of the sky, and doesn't drain away fast enough. Oh, you want to know why that happens? Well, my extremely dim memory of GCSE Science (I'm doing this without research, you know) is that the sun heats the ground, which heats the gases in the air, and then at higher altitudes they cool down, turn back into water, and fall to the ground. Or something. ... Oh, you want to know why that happens? Er, dunno. Physics. Most things are Physics, when you come down to it. Go and look it up. Eventually I guess you get back to the primum movens, and (I'm really handwaving now) you either say "God done it" or you say that it's Physics all the way down. Now, I suppose it's possible that Wogan a) is such a fundamentalist Christian that he believes that the only relevant cause for any occurrence is God -- that not a single sparrow (or raindrop in Wales) falls but that God wills it to be so, and/or b) is a less fundamentalist Christian who believes in chemical/physical cause and effect but believes that it is set in motion by God, and that by calling the 'scientific reasons' into question he's subtly challenging the atheistic orthodoxy of the age. (We'll come back to that, too.) Frankly, I just don't think he's that clever. (Maybe part of the problem here is that I'd rather believe that stupid people don't believe in climate change than that clever people are using their cleverness -- not to mention their mass-media platform -- to undermine the general public's understanding of climate change. But that's a digression, and not one that I want to follow up in a comments flamewar, thanks.)

The third incident was, surprise surprise, Wogan again (the reader's sympathy with my irritation will by now have long since expired!). Following a news item (do you see a pattern here?) about the Lisbon Treaty, he burbled (and I paraphrase because I can't remember the exact wording) "Everybody is getting in a state about the Lisbon Treaty but nobody knows what it is -- you don't know, I don't know, the people who are talking about it don't know." Well, sorry, Terry, but you're wrong: lots of people know. Some of them are paid to know a great deal about the Lisbon Treaty. Others know because they're interested: in politics, in law, in current affairs, in things which affect the world and society in which they live. Even I, with my relative ignorance about (and lack of interest in) European politics, know that it's something to do with reforms to European politics... a bit like the Maastricht Treaty? ... and is a Good Thing for human rights. Bleh, I'm embarrassed at how little I can articulate about it. But, like I said, I'm doing this without research, and I don't work for the BBC; I'm not surrounded by newsmakers and broadcasters, political knowledge resources, expertise. (Okay, I'm surrounded by expertise; but I still don't work for the BBC, and I'm neither asked nor expected to comment on the news.) I don't think I've even read any news articles on the Lisbon Treaty. I fail at current affairs. But if I wanted to know (and we'll come back to that, too) I could look it up. I could read the Wikipedia article to get a kind of overview; I could read (or at least skim) a couple of news articles and figure out the basic outline of what had just happened; I could read a couple of more in-depth news articles (preferably from different viewpoints -- the Economist and the Guardian would do here, no need to check out whether the Daily Mail thinks Lisbon causes cancer) and learn a lot more. But either way, I wouldn't cheerily proclaim my ignorance to my colleagues, and certainly not on national radio. I would admit that I find it hard to feel really engaged with politics at any level other than the local (which is not to say I have no interest in national and international politics, just that I find it big and confusing and everything you read about it is either very dry and academic or very partisan in ways which are not always obvious). I would also sheepishly admit that, for an educated person with access to all the information in the world (or at least the world wide web) I know embarrassingly little about Lisbon, Maastricht, the EU... oh wait, I did admit all that, back there. The embarrassment doesn't make the ignorance any 'better'; I feel (though would struggle to defend it) that the pride makes the ignorance worse; but rather than exercising moral judgements, I want to look at why people wear their ignorance so proudly and shout about it so loudly...

... but I don't have time to do that tonight. (To be continued in a few days' time, probably, as I may not have time to finish writing/keying the rest tomorrow or Saturday.)

Like swords, but awesomer: made up words in science fiction and fantasy, The Magus, Lord of Light.

A little poking around online has confirmed that both my Domestic Advisor saying "I'm not even supposed to be here today" and my Military Advisor saying "Sleep is for the weak" are genuine easter-egg messages that show up on rare occasion in Civ III rather than things I imagined.

Considering that the last few nights' dreams have included "being pulled up on stage for a new audience-participation Stephen Sondheim musical with Morgan Freeman", "The Amazing Adventures of desperance, markedformetal and The Twelve-Metre Albino Crocodile*", and one of the nastiest nightmares I have ever had (detail of which I am not going into here), this is something of a relief.

*From the crocodile's POV.

I am less than entirely well. I am quite a bit better than yesterday, nor do I think it is flu; it's basically exhaustion, the odd spot of dizziness, and the glands in my neck doing the your-immune-system-is-BUSY-right-now thing. It appears, thus far, that neither the $bosses nor anyone else in my team is in today, so I suppose I do more seminar today.

(Oh, and scatter-brainedness. The several other things that I wanted to put in this post have fallen out of my head.)

 
 "An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying cancelled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count."

-- Vladimir Nabokov

Quoted by Alexander Hemon in his review of the new Nabokov fragment appearing now with publishers' brass band fronting.  www.slate.com/id/2235023/


Of course Nabokov wasn't in the business of selling his drafts to collectors -- a nice source of income for those who need it.

Via BoingBoing: Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering

Some of these I've never really run in to (e.g. #4 - that's what charity shops and eBay are for) but those ones are more than made up for by the ones that I do in spades.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow between the crosses,
row on row. We cannot even count our losses,
a generation scattered to the winds like seeds
on stony ground. The flesh grew into leaf, to bud,
to crimson petals (glibly signifying blood
to other generations' poets), faces turned
towards the sky. So many left, so few returned
to tell us what the petals meant, the mud
that silently obliterated, where it should
have fed (perhaps, in better times) the growing seeds.
Sharp retorts are laid to rest beneath soft mosses
in Flanders Fields, where poppies blow, between the crosses.



(with apologies to Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae)

I don't usually repost links. For one thing, the people I repost them from usually will have got the majority of my readers. Nonetheless, I think that the following is worth breaking my prohibition on: Facts about Drugs.

I know drugs policy has been in the news a lot recently, and possibly there's a whole other post on scientific advice to government. Nonetheless, I have been of the opinion for a while that prohibition isn't the answer to "the drugs problem", despite having never partaken myself.

This short rant seems to cover quite a bit of the ground pretty well.