I also love the idea (one Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse explore later on in other sketches) that there are construction workers who appreciate the arts, and it is not the preserve of some snob elite.

The author talks about how fluent speakers of English can still be confused by the English found in mainstream newspapers and news sites. Definitely worth a ponder.

Everyday I come across headlines in the web that just can’t be made sense of. Yesterday the BBC had ‘Hammer Mother Murder Jailed’ or some equal such nonsense. Today I find ‘Millionaire Riot Student Guilty’!!

I often joke on Twitter about these headlines, i.e. What’s a Millionaire Riot, or what’s a Riot Student? But it takes someone not used to this format some considerable effort to parse these sentences. Brevity becomes an Achilles Heel here, especially as English has a lot of  natural ambiguity in terms of its adverbs.

As most people know, there is a formula for writing press articles called, I think, the Triangle approach. The headline at the top sums up the entire story as best possible, the next paragraph or two gives broader details, and the remainder of the article covers all the detail available at the bottom.

This style of constructing a news piece gives a casual reader / browser the opportunity to decide quickly whether they want to engage in the whole piece, and it is this more than anything else in my opinion that has led to our familiar browsing styles, which have carried on from print journalism to online reading.

It also helps us retain a familiarity with a chosen newspaper or news site; one as distinctive as editorial slant.

They got up and stood around in the yard, trembling with the cold for they were mostly wearing only their shifts, it all happened so damn quickly, with God turning his face away from them to have a look at the harvest in Brazil instead. (Bargan gives up)

This man had put all his money on one card and now he was defending it. But the card was a loser, and the more he put on, the more he lost; he knew all about it, but he probably just wanted to get rid of all his money, he couldn’t help it any more. That’s what happened to him, this great man, a special effort on God’s part, and it’s what could happen to any of us: you get assaulted in broad daylight, that’s how secure we all are on this planet. (Bargan gives up)

Then he got into bed. We’re not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It’s whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, towards a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of planet we’re not responsible, he thought. But then it grew too dark in bed. (The revelation)

So the blind man walked in darkness and pondered how he could increase his sufferings in order to endure them better. For it seemed to him that a great torment was easier to bear than a small one. (The blind man)

When the captain arrived they were standing in an open space fifty metres apart, each with a carbine raised to his shoulder, and were sniping at each other in the half-light. Neither was in any danger, for they were dreadfully drunk. But everyone else was in mortal danger since the two of them, fervently and with trembling hands, were shooting holes into the morning.

If the captain had been incompetent he would have yelled and punished them but he only said: ‘You’re not hitting anything, why not beat each other up, that would make better sense.’ After which they had a drunken brawl which was a pleasure to watch. (The Lance-sergeant)

From: Collected short stories ed. Willett, J. & Manheim, R. Methuen London 1999.

And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at ‘clink and bandy’ ‘chock’ and ‘taw’ and
ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Like a ruin of the past all alone

When I used to lie and sing by old eastwells boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a ‘swing’
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a
thing
With heart just like a feather- now as heavy as a stone
When beneath old lea close oak I the bottom branches broke
To make our harvest cart like so many working folk
And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak
O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting
Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to
wing
Leaving nothing but a little naked spring

When jumping time away on old cross berry way
And eating awes like sugar plumbs ere they had lost the may
And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day
On the rolly polly up and downs of pleasant swordy well
When in round oaks narrow lane as the south got black again
We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rai n
With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain
How delicious was the dinner time on such a showry day
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
The ancient pulpit trees and the play

When for school oer ‘little field’ with its brook and wooden
brig
Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big
While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig
And drove my team along made of nothing but a name
‘Gee hep’ and ‘hoit’ and ‘woi’- O I never call to mind
These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind
While I see the little mouldywharps hang sweeing to the wind
On the only aged willow that in all the field remains
And nature hides her face where theyre sweeing in their
chains
And in a silent murmuring complains

Here was commons for the hills where they seek for
freedom still
Though every commons gone and though traps are set to kill
The little homeless miners- O it turns my bosom chill
When I think of old ‘sneap green’ puddocks nook and hilly
snow
Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew
And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view
Whe n we threw the pissmire crumbs when we’s nothing
else to do
All leveled like a desert by the never weary plough
All vanished like the sun where that cloud is passing now
All settled here for ever on its brow

I never thought that joys would run away from boys
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such
summer joys
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and
done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer
sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

By Langley bush I roam but the bush hath left its hill
On cowper green I stray tis a desert strange and chill
And spreading lea close oak ere decay had penned its will
To the axe of the spoiler and self interest fell a prey
And cross berry way and old round oaks narrow lane
With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again
Inclosure like a Buonapar te let not a thing remain
It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And hung the moles for traitors – though the brook is
running still
It runs a naked brook cold and chill

O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men
I had watched her night and day besure and never slept agen
And when she turned to go O I’d caught her mantle then
And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay
Aye knelt and worshipped on as love in beautys bower
And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon her flower
And gave her heart my poesys all cropt in a sunny hour
As keepsakes and pledges to fade away
But love never heeded to treasure up the may
So it went the comon road with decay

- John Clare

Composed c. 1832    First published 1908

If we’re prepared to discard the idea that there is something inherently about football as a sport that makes it difficult for gay people to play, then it stands to reason that there are gay footballers amongst the 5000 or so professionals in the UK.

Since not a single one in 21 years has openly claimed to be gay (although I don’t believe anyone has to; it’s nobody else’s business), one must assume that they’re hiding their homosexuality.

This leads one to think about how they might be doing this. Perhaps a lot of the footballers who lead the headlines in newspapers with their “lewd night romps” are actually gay and stage such bawdry antics to blow smoke and cover their actual preferences.

Quite a few names pop to mind.

If so, I think the public should reassure these footballers that it’s ok for them to be gay, and that they can stop pretending to be Lotharios and stop deliberately ruining their public image just because they fear the stigma of being gay.

According to her, a key reason for our current political mess is the use of Public Relations to feed nonsense to the public. This includes the use of ‘statistics’ with a variety of methods used to undermine the usefulness of any data. (I intend to read Dr. Ben Goldacre on the use of statistics in British health as he was the one who pointed out some everyday examples during the ‘Night of a Billion Stars’ show I went to recently.)

Brooke is specifically questioning the role of PR in a democracy; one might argue that PR is acceptable in Private commerce as its primary role is to achieve sales, whereas the obligation on the Public services is to provide information. I myself have worked in an industry that generates a copious amount of PR material, and I recognised all the forms of PR she mentions, namely:

Pseudo-events, Deference to authority, Appeals to fear, and Claims of infallibility.

But you only have to look at ads on telly (one of my favourite sample sources) to see all four of the above in use. Do people recognise for instance-

• That a ‘Laboratoire pour excellence Dermatologique’ is just a sham body, used to lend plausibility to a skin product that otherwise is indistinguishable in a cramped market? (Deference to authority)
• That smelly breath was a scare created deliberately as a marketing ploy to shift Listerine, for which there originally was no market? (Appeals to fear)
• That a company posting “Upto 99.99% results” never posts what the lower end of the spectrum is, nor what the frequency of the top results to median and low results is, nor indeed what the ratio of good results to poor results is? (Claims of infallibility)
• That mid-term sales, pre-winter sales, post-summer sales and all the other sales advertised bear very little relation to the original purpose of sales and have rendered the term obsolete? (Pseudo-events)

There are countless examples, but do we spot them all? The key is to remain cynical and question everything.

A book of randomness and chance I’m reading suggests not.

Leonard Mlodinow’s ‘The Drunkard’s Walk: How randomness rules our lives’ has a beautiful example that illustrates the role of chance in performance and that shows how assumptions are made when using past performance to predict future results.

He takes the CEOs of the top 500 (Fortune 500) companies and assumes each of them has a certain probability of success each year, defined by their own company’s measure. And also assumes that these successful years occur at a frequency of 60%. He asks whether this means in a 5-year period each CEO will have a 60% success rate (3 successful years).

And he shows that the chances that in a given 5-year period any single CEO’s success rate will match the underlying rate is 1 in 3. In terms of the Fortune 500 companies this means that over the past 5 years (not an insignificant amount of time) around 333 CEOs would demonstrate results that did not reflect their true ability!! And by chance alone around 10% of the CEOs will have a 5 year winning or losing streak.

I have always argued that CEOs (and football managers, etc) often seem to be given credit and apportioned blame in amounts disproportionate to their real observable effect on a company. If only because they haven’t been at the company long enough for the results to shake off the randomness that can crop up anywhere.

Mladinow’s book has more insights on related topics such as

• The Law of Large (and small) Numbers (small sample sizes not reflecting true results, like for example “8/10 women prefer this shampoo to others” when only 100 women have been asked..)

• Human preferences for spotting patterns where there is true randomness, and vice-versa.

• Determinism where actors (in the social science sense) believe and act as though they have a greater say in an outcome than is true.

Mladinow also highlights throughout the book areas such as medical trials, court trials and betting shops, as well as day-to-day life, where knowledge of randomness and chance is absolutely critical.

Read it!

I never understood why the Art of Sabotage is not taught by any business school. While studying I searched in vain for any mention of deliberate strategies to unseat your opponent, apart form the occasional doffing of the hat to the impenetrable text of Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’.

This would be like enrolling in a school of wizardry and witchcraft that didn’t teach you Defence Against The Dark Arts, indeed where they told you blithely that the ‘Dark Arts’ don’t exist, even though you as a speccy kid with a scar on your forehead shout “But the Dark Arts killed my parents!!!”

Are they scared of creating a ‘One-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’, a Saboteur Extraordinary? (This reminds me of a Frank Herbert sci-fi novelette, set in a future where bureaucracy ran so smooth a governmental Bureau of Saboteurs was required to keep things operational)

But we all know there are countless ‘Companies-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’ that are at this very moment ripping the eyes out of any competitor. While kicking them in the nadgers.

On a more personal scale you may have noticed this yourself (I shall claim not to have met any such characters personally); the nefarious schemers (Weasels of Dilbert) undermining each other to get a raise. And simple economics suggest that as long as office politics are arranged as a tournament, where the best performer gets rewarded, this will continue. Because one sure way of making yourself appear the best performer, apart from doing any actual hard work, is to make your colleagues appear dumber by comparison.

Logical enough. But why don’t we see this mentioned anywhere? I guess it’s because business studies are for business managers, who haven’t any answer to the conundrum of arranging work so that everybody contributes, while getting just reward.

And we sure don’t want to endorse sabotage as a viable option.

I suppose it’s a subset of the question of morality, and whether doing the right thing can be counterproductive to an individual. As Nietzsche said, some morals were created by man to hold back superman from acheiving what he could.

Is sabotage the unspoken truth? The elephant in the room? Is it a fact of business, nay life, that goes unmentioned but hovers around in the background like the smell of last night’s kebab, permeating everything with its odour?

And more importantly, is there money to be made writing a book called the Art of Sabotage…?

The ‘Night of 200 Billion Stars’ show kicked off in the Manchester Apollo on Tuesday, with Tim Minchin, Adam Rutherford and Helen Arney also appearing.

Favourite part? The video by science journalist Adam Rutherford consisting of original clips of the Space Shuttle program’s 135 missions, arranged in chronological sequence. I felt it was a moving tribute to one of mankind’s greatest accomplishments and beacons of hope. You can view the Space Shuttles United video on Nature Video Channel (YouTube); it’s accompanied by an amazing soundtrack by 65 daysofstatic, so turn the volume up to 11.

Robin Ince’s performance as a compere was top-notch, he kept things rolling along nicely even with having to make difficult segues between speakers on unrelated topics. Great story about 8 monkeys attempting the works of Shakespeare…

The cryptologist Simon Singh exhibited an actual Enigma machine, even dismantling it on stage to see the workings. He also rubbished the centuries-old trend of finding hidden codes and predictions in religious texts, by demonstrating them to be down to pure mathematical chance.

Dr Ben Goldacre gave what is quite possibly the only talk on statistics ever that could be termed ‘interesting’! As a doctor treating patients, he was concerned with ethics committees and drugs companies making it hard for doctors and patients to trial and/or see evidence supporting claims of drug benefits.

Prof Brian Cox walked us through the timeline of our cosmic beginning, with an interesting note about evolution in molecular biology, and I learned that Hubble’s Constant (rate of expansion of our universe) can be written as 42 miles/ second/ 3 million light-years. He ended with a quote from Dr. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos; in fact the last words in the book’s last chapter ‘Who Speaks For Earth?’

I’ll type up the words from my copy; they deserve to be repeated:

“Some 3.6 million years ago, in what is now nothern Tanzania, a volcano erupted, the resulting cloud of ash covering the surrounding savannahs. In 1979, the paleoanthropologist Mary Leaky found in that ash footprints – the footprints, she believes, of an early hominid, perhaps an ancestor of all the people on the Earth today. And 380,000 kilometers away, in a flat dry plain that humans have in a moment of optimism called the Sea of Tranquility, there is another footprint, left by the first human to walk another world. We have come far in 3.6 million years, and in 4.6 billion and in 15 billion.

For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth.Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”

Wasn’t too sure about the funny songs by Helen and Tim though; I guess the format just doesn’t work for me beyond raising a few chuckles. The lyrics just end up being too brainy, and get shoe-horned into some semblance of a song. You can also see why audience participation is necessary to allow the performer(s) to feed off; it was kind of hard getting a stadium full of sceptics to sing along!

Thanks to Tom and Jill for arranging tickets!!

Four Seasons By Candlelight

The 25th of Nov was another great evening at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.

This time it was ‘Four Seasons By Candlelight’ playing Baroque music (a style of Western Classical music from around 1600 to 1760 AD. Which fact I didn’t Wikipedia at all. Honest).

The Mozart Festival Orchestra walked out on stage bedecked in the finest period costume, from the powdered white wigs through waistcots and knee-breeches down to the buckled shoes. It was a masterpiece of showmanship to transport the audience to the time when this music was written and played. I applaud the effort.

The music was divided by an interval; the first half had a well-thought out introduction to the period. It opened with ‘Te Deum’(Charpentier) and then followed Mozart’s ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, Vivaldi’s ‘Concerto for two trumpets’, Bach’s ‘Air on the G string (don’t laugh!)’, Handel’s ‘Trumpet Suite’ and the beautiful soprano Ruby Hughes singing a moving ‘Dido’s Lament’(Purcell) and a joyous ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’(Handel).

The second half was Vivaldi’s. The Four Seasons.
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.

Credit here must be given to conductor and lead violinist David Juritz for a superb performance, and also for taking the audience along with the music, introducing key aspects of the pieces and generally making it a very enjoyable experience.
I also enjoyed the jolly trumpet soloist Crispian Steele-Perkins (as I suspect most of the audience did).

We walked away from it with a general agreement that classical music made accessible and appreciable is a nice thing to have.

p.s. Happy Birthday to Ioan’s mum and cheers for the free ticket!!