Life is Short

"So many books, so little time."

Frank Zappa, possibly.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

Hunter S. Thompson

There is a stark, terrifying fact I must come to terms with. An idea more mind-rending than Lovecraft's cosmic horror, or quite possibly akin to it; the universe does not exist with the interests of humanity built in. Obviously, I am (and for a long time have been) aware of the lack of human bias in the universe. It's impossible to forget Douglas Adams' Parable of the Puddle (as I am now going to call it):

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.


So all this is pretty clear-cut and acceptable, the consequence of this fact I have not yet accepted - or at least not yet modified my behaviour in light of - is that my own life is very much finite. Life really is hideously short. Is this, in itself, a reason to be passionate and live every moment like it's my last? I don't think so, it seems like a huge reason to prioritise what I want to do so that I can squeeze as much as possible into the time I've got. This certainly doesn't mean I wont be passionate, it doesn't mean I wont skid to a halt at the end of a life well-used and worn-out to loudly proclamation whatever seems fit; it's just I only have a limited amount of time which I want to use to maximum effect, the only question remaining is how...


The men in my family tend to live longer than the women, between 80 and 110 years. Taking into account likely medical advances (and assuming no early discovery of the singularity) I think it's reasonable to expect the reaper at the conservative old age of 91. As I'm 21, this gives me 70 years but I'll take off 10 years for dementia and other such depressing conditions. So that's 60 years to maximise fun and positive impact.


The key areas I want to take (part) in are science, literature, nature, philosophy, politics, history, food, drink and cinema. What I mean by this is that I want to contribute in science and possibly literature, I want to read classic and thought-provoking books, I want to look into the grand canyon, the clear night sky and the aurora, I want a general understanding of most concepts within philosophy and a specific understanding of several areas, I want to understand why the world is in the place it's in politically and where it is advisable to go, I want to be able to cook a lot of different types of food and I want to have eaten most things, I want to have an understanding of various wines, cocktails, beers and spirits, I want to see important and beautiful movies.


I currently have a stack of 50 books in my bedroom plus another 50 on my wishlist. Many of these are introductory texts or the beginnings of series', I can expect maybe another 10 or so per year leaving me at a figure around 700 hundred. So that's about 12 books per year I need to get through. 1 a month seems pretty reasonable.
The philosophy, history and politics are likely to come bound in the the books, so that's a plus. The science should be pretty well crossed off if my career goes well. The cooking plus a little bit of effort, should come with merely fuelling myself. The drinks might take a bit of effort but I'm sure I'll find the time for that (I have done pretty well, so far). The same goes for movies too.


So the last area I need to put some effort into is seeing some of the marvellous sights in nature. Doesn't seem like as much of a challenge as I'd expected it to be although it's probably too much to expect to go into space.

If I have to think about it this hard, it probably is racist

I have finally come to a conclusion that I have failed to reach since an issue became apparent with argument between me and my entire Government & Politics class (the teacher included) in 2007. It has bothered me on-and-off over the past 5 years and I've blushingly avoided (or confusedly stumbled through) any discussion about it. I have been left wondering if I was being racist or if society was being over-sensitive.
My problem was the inability to separate (or the inability to even think of separating) the effectiveness of a particular method with the ethics of using that method. This may seem stupid, but I make the rather lame excuse that no-one ever bothered to pointed out this distinction to me either. 


The subject of the debate? Racial profiling. More specifically, the stop and search powers used by the police in London in order to try and reduce knife crime. The issue is that these powers are used disproportionately on young black men (henceforth YBM) which is troubling to dissenters (and my entire class, my teacher and most people I've known) in several ways:

• It's racist. It's hard to argue with this except to claim, as I did, that it's not racist but instead the result of statistics and resource management.
• It is thought to foster feeling of resentment towards the police (and perhaps authority figures in general) with the possible effect of driving more YBM into crime. This seems like a pretty logical thought however I think I was unwilling to acknowledge it at the time (I can't claim to remember all the points made and my views on them clearly).
• It may lead to acceptance of other racist policies. I don't think I accept this, it seems like a slippery slope logical fallacy provided the case for racial profiling is empirically justified.
• It may lead to people accepting the following view, "I can't hire him, he's young and black. Everyone knows YBM are criminals, the government say so". Again, hard to argue with a quite possibly true.

The justification given by supporters (and me in 2007) is that this method works. It's that simple, whilst I haven't seen strong evidence which does not suffer from bias, the reasoning seemed to stand alone - if more YBM commit knife crime then targeting YBM will give higher success rates and therefore make a bigger difference. This is reasonable if the italicised premise is correct, and not itself subject to a sampling bias (police target more YBM therefore it appears as though more YBM commit knife crime). I want to make it very clear that I was very insistent on this premise needing to be correct for the policy to be acceptable, I knew that without it the policy was unequivocally racist and unjustified.


I don't know whether I could have been convinced at the time by someone saying to me, Separate the efficacious from the ethical, you must. However my embarrassment at holding this view (yes, I have been very embarrassed to hold a view dissenting from my liberal friends, I'm human) makes me think I could have been convinced by someone earlier than 2012.
It was probably a mixture of discussion and consideration of torture which put me in a mindset very willing to accept the idea that whether it works or not, it infringes on individuals rights and is therefore unnacceptable. Or as put by Massimo in an article which helped me to reach that long awaited conclusion:


"[...] in an open society, profiling of any sort – no matter how effective – is a breach of the fundamental principle that all our citizens have the same rights and ought to be treated equally by the law."


It's been a long time, but that's one less thing that will keep me up at night... or at least it would be, except now I have the new worry that the police actually do this and now it's definitely wrong.

If I have to think about it this hard, it probably isn't racist

Eugh, Abbot-gate. So many hypocritically Tories gleefully frothing over the "racist" black woman. So much of Labour shuffling somewhat awkwardly. So many Lib Dems unsure which way to lean. Considering how many people (herself included) have claimed that the comment made by Diane Abbot was taken out of context, it's bloody difficult to find the conversation in it's entirety. I think these were the only relevant tweets but I may certainly be wrong...

D: Norris and Dobson sentenced. Neither sentence as long as the 18 years they spent dodging justice & nothing will bring Stephen back.

D: Brian Paddick: "I think the police put more resources into this reinvestigation than.....any case in history." Good Thing.

B: This may be true. But it doesn't heal intraracial tensions and doesn't make for much useful dialogue. We can do both, surely?

D: I understand the cultural point you are making. But you are playing into a "divide and rule" agenda.

B: Diane, I truly appreciate what you say. I'm just tired of no-one listening, then speaking under umbrella of 'black community'

D: White people love playing ‘divide and rule’ We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism

D:Ethnic communities that show more public solidarity & unity than black people do much better #dontwashdirtylineninpublic

The next day, Diane deleted the original tweet and posted the following:

D: Tweet taken out of context. Refers to nature of 19th century European colonialism. Bit much to get into 140 characters.

Whilst Diane's comment might be a bit racist, at least a bit unacceptable for someone in her position (i.e. representing a variety of people), it's really not that big a deal. It seems to be the result of the media wanting to put a -gate after everything and the Tories being arseholes.

What is much more of a big deal is her trying to get out of the ensuing shit-storm my claiming she wasn't talking about the here and now, I would have had a lot more respect for her if she'd said sorry for being a bit inappropriate but stated that it clearly wasn't a resigning matter and it highlights a serious issue that should be discussed - that might even start the discussion which the original tweets called for!

More splutterings at Dreams of creativity along with a resolution

"The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."

Alan Moore - being his brilliant self

I'd love to write a superhero comic book, obviously my utter ineptitude with a pencil would make me drawing anything literally impossible. I would love to examine several themes including LGBTQ heroes, religious characters (i.e. Lucifer and God), alternate realities - both fictional (e.g. What if MJ had been bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter?) and non-fictional (e.g. What if Britain had kept it's empire?), the inherent fascist nature of superheroes, less muscles.
I could combine the ideas of this with my previous post about being creative and create a dystopian world of superheroes, ("Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all." -V in V for Vendetta) scenes could be portrayed entirely in CCTV. My instinct is to have the state hunting down those with superpowers but that seems so obvious I almost want to avoid it. Perhaps someone telling the fascist Superman that "Only the weak succumb to brutality", oooh how dreadfully clever. That was sarcasm, still maybe the state propaganda could involve many quotes from superheroes that seems cruel and oppressive when in this new context.
Of course, if I had a comic about superheroes, I would be duty bound to have characters called Bruce Brown and Mary Rose. I think a character called Emma Reeves would be good, it's a good name with no-one too significant attached to it (Reeves of course coming from the old protagonist Christopher). Maybe Christopher Cameron, perfect for inherently fascistic heroes.


I really wish I could draw. Still, wishing wont make it so; doing will. I will practice with the aim of becoming vaguely capable using this list (which has been sitting around on my computer for a long time):

The worst that can happen is that I do some better diagrams in exams!

We

“I am not a number, I am a person.”

No.6 in The Prisoner

Let me start by saying Spoiler Alert, a big fat spoiler alert is hereby rubber stamped onto this post. Now to business...


I have recently reread Brave New World and 1984 as well as having my first reading of their elder sibling, We. The first two left me with a tremendous emptiness (not feeling nothing, but instead a deep feeling of nothingness) which was somewhat reduced for the latter. I don't know whether my reduced response to We is a result of my age, the fact I read the others in adolescence, a sign of the story's quality (I certainly found the characters less believable - unlike the other two, I really can't see humans acting that way) or just a sign that it was originally written in Russian.
That is not to say We is without qualities, simply the fact that it was written by an author within Stalin's Russia makes it illuminating and important; the mathematical ideas and representations of concepts was amusing to say the least, and probably plays a large part in social engineering; and whilst everything being literally made of glass feels like a crude metaphor, it certainly makes it's point. The first-person, diary style is really what makes it; the rushed and emotional nature of one entry contrasting with the relaxed and power nature of the next.


I am also left wondering if it possible to create a story so poignant in this genre without having a bleak ending, without leaving the reader with a picture of the future involving a boot stomping on a human face — for the foreseeable future. I suppose it's easy to see any of these books becoming vulgar Hollywood-ised dross if there was a revolution and a fight back, that certainly happened in both the screen and animated versions of Animal Farm.
Maybe all we get is O-33 being beyond the Green Wall with her child, we have that spark of hope. Maybe that's the point - the revolution is not easy, we need to make it happen; and even if we try, there are simply no guarantees.

So Long Procrasta- Fuck.

"Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness."

- Charlie Chaplain as The Barber in this (The Great Dictator)...

Energ-aaaaah, why am I so tired! It's not going great, I need to wake up earlier to actually get anything done and this requires going to sleep earlier which requires being tired for which I need to wake up earlier... You see the problem. I suppose I'll just have to bite the nasty, early bullet and set a few early alarms tomorrow.
Once awake, I am going to drink a can of Red Bull and go for a run with my sister. Throughout the day I will not nap and so I will be tired and go to sleep nice and early.


Motivation, motivation, motivation. Just saying it over and over does not make me have it. Typing is so objectionable right now that Rainbow being sick was a welcome relief - Yes, cat sick was preferable to dissertating. I need to make it less monotonous by having a countdown of time I have left to do (in one hour chunks) so that I have a clear finish line. 


My aim of 5 hours a day is certainly not being reached yet, I have managed about 2 a day for the past couple of days. If I can be on 5 by the time I get back to Leeds (and have to start getting into a good cycle all over again) it will feel like a success.

A Little Game in Time

If you could take one object back in time, what would you take and who would you give it to?


Just as a butterfly flapping it's wings in Tokyo may cause a hurricane in San Francisco, taking a simple weather prediction device (to help with crop planting) back to 1500 may very well lead to a weather machine by 2000 and a hurricane in San Francisco. This means most obvious answers like vaccines or a computer or even a science textbook become a potentially harmful object because they threaten the development of certain ideas; big important ideas like the scientific method, civil rights, international cooperation, etc!

If you just turned up out of the blue with something like penicillin or an iPad people would be impressed and it might be that you could save a few million lives (assuming they would cooperate with your plans) but you may damage their outlook massively - you don't have evidence for penicillin or any basis for it's creation therefore you might as well have come up with it by revelation, you'd be no better than Christ curing a leper (Clark's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). You could unintentionally set back science by a millennia. If you gave any technology with possible military implications you might inadvertently spawn a totalitarian dictatorship with as much concern for personal freedoms and international relations as (presumably) Kim Il-Sung.


Almost any technology could have possible apocalyptic or dystopian impact so the whole exercise may well be an attempt at damage-limitation; I am not such a pessimist, just as when Homer Simpson travels back in time...

...some of the worlds he 'creates' are better than the one he started with.


The other option is to not take technology back per se, but instead to take an object that will change the way people think. If you took a book there is still the large problem of getting people to believe you aren't just a crazy person or a god so it really needs to be an object.


I have two choices, one in each strand of reasoning:


First, an object that is not so miraculous as to be mistaken for magic but still significant enough to save millions (if not billions) of lives... The flush toilet.
If taken back to say, ancient Greece or medieval Europe it could be easily replicated by others; there would be no need to justify it as reducing disease (it's just there to make the smelly stuff go away, honest guv); it wouldn't change anyone's perspectives about science, etc in any negative way (it might show people they are capable of changing their world with technology); the reduced amounts of disease may even lead someone to stumble on germ theory early; there is a potential problem that is, with massively increased population resulting from lower death rates there may be a lack of resources leading to... well... more deaths. Another problem is that increased populations in one region might lead to the outcomes of certain wars being different for better (taking the crapper back to Greece might allow them to survive longer allowing continuation of some of the finest philosophy ever known) or worse (giving medieval Britons a pooper might cause them to conquer all of Europe along with the rest of the world and leave us stuck with a monarchy).


Secondly, and probably the best option, an object capable of changing perspectives in a way that promotes enquiry and the development of important ideas... A microscope/telescope.
Whilst I sway towards the former due to my professional bent, astronomy (as a slave to astrology) is where science really began. It is a real game-changer with only one obvious disadvantage - military benefit; with a telescope it becomes possible to coordinate armies more effectively and change the course of global history in a potentially negative way.
The microscope avoids this problem, at least for a time, as looking at the very small doesn't provide the same tactical advantage as looking at the very far away. This would provide a huge leap towards germ theory (and the creation of the flush toilet) as well as a deeper understanding of the world, however it would only take a mid-level genius to take this concept, change it into a a telescope and conquer the world.


All things considered, there probably isn't one good, fool-proof plan for objects to send back in time. I guess I will have to restrict my use of time travel to history, hijinks and shenanigans.

An evidence-based approach to Victory

"The will to win means nothing if you haven't the will to prepare."

Juma Ikangaa, 1989 NYC Marathon winner

I often find myself justifying too far back. When I started writing this post I ended up backtracking through my own reasoning to a point where I had to justify the use of evidence. I shall take the utility of evidence to be self-evident.

So, I know there are some tried-and-tested methods for preparing to marathon.

I have only experienced a half-marathon and my immediate training was negligible (starting less than a month in advance, and consisting of 9 progressively longer runs); my fitness level was relatively high after running with periods of some intensity for the previous 18 months.

The suggested training plans on MapMyRun (the app is the way I record all my workouts) involve 12 weeks of either 16-42 or 35-52 miles per week, for beginners or intermediates respectively. A variety of different running distances and speeds combined with workout days and days off make these schemes rather complicated. If there is one thing I can not be bother with, it's a complicated training plan.

In terms of real scientific evidence, I have previously found information of good training practice (specifically the benefits, or otherwise, of barefoot running) pretty hard to find. That which I could locate was questionable due to funding coming from vested companies (I seem to remember it was a Nike-funded study discovering how great barefoot running is prior to the release of Nike barefoot running shoes).

If I'm honest with myself, I think there is probably a wealth of information out there. It's just in the daunting form of gargantuan databases of papers with contrasting ideas of minute and specialised aspects of running: basically tl;dr. Review papers are really the only way to go...

• Nutrition: This was the only abstract that pointed in the right vein in terms of nutritional information, I'll have to read the whole paper when I get back on uni intranet. In summary, eat carbs, drink water, caffeine might be helpful, other supplements are probably not. Not much that wasn't known already then.
• There are several papers on heart damage and the general consensus appears to be that it's too early to have any clear consensus. I take that to mean there is no obvious and startling connection between running and heart attacks. I think it's safe for me to assume I'll be ok as I am in a pretty low risk group for heart attacks as it is.
• Studies looking at other injuries don't give a lot that I could change beyond training well before an event to avoid muscle injury and, as far as I could glean from the abstract, the more you run the greater your risk of damaging your legs or possibly visa versa ("Among the modifiable risk factors studied, weekly distance is the strongest predictor of future injuries").

And that's about it for real evidence I could find. It may be the case that PubMed is not the place to go for this, I may try Web of Knowledge at a later date.

I think my best approach is to aim for common sense healthiness until I am about three months away from the big run when I can start taking training seriously. That should take me to... May/June.

Until then, let's us go with 10 miles a week and lots of gentle running; working out to build some muscle mass; not eating like an idiot; not smoking; not drinking too much too often (everything in moderation, including moderation).

The Problem of Procrastination

"Procrastination is like masturbation. At first it feels good, but in the end you're only screwing yourself."
Unknown

I really need my dissertation done (or at least drafted) by the end of January in order to give the next semesters lectures a good crack. That gives me 31 days from now, once I add in time for applications to PhDs and the inevitable hungover days that come with returning to an awesome shared-house after a month away I am left with somewhere around 20 days in which to write 30 pages coherently.


The Less Wrong blog is always a good place to find methods of thinking which are often helpful and this topic is no exception. I am reading the article as I type this so I'll note things as I go along, firstly my procrastination appears to be a mixture of dislike for doing lots of writing and an impulse to do more interesting things. As phrased in the article and fitted into the equation below: "Writing a term paper is grueling (low value), the results are uncertain (low expectancy), and the deadline is far away (high delay)."

So once more taking guidance from the article, I need to set up goals in which I will succeed in order to increase my expectancy for success to do this I will write in this blog regularly (because it's easy and it's something I have wanted to do for a while, a goal) and ensure I keep running (aiming to do increasing distances thereby having infinite goals).

Optimism is the next point, I think the best bit I can take from this is the motivational speeches, quotes and biographies; starting as I mean to go on:

Mental contrasting is next, Where do I want to be and how does that compare with where I am now? I want to be doing a PhD after getting a first, running a marathon and having a good understanding of the field I am working in. I am currently behind on my third year project, I only just managed to run 6 miles a couple of days ago, I struggle with sit ups and often feel my basic knowledge of science is lacking.


Next, avoiding over-optimism, I think I did this anyway. Plan for the worst but hope for the best hence having 20 days of real work.


That's optimism out of the way, now I must increase the value of the work I am doing. Whilst I am instructed that to reduce the boringness rating of my task I should make it more difficult, I think the task is pretty difficult already so I'll avoid that. The same goes for meaningfulness. Energy seems to be an area I can tackle:

• "Drink lots of water.
• Stop eating anything that contains wheat and other grains.
• Use drugs (especially modafinil) as necessary.
• Do short but intense exercise once a week.
• When tired, splash cold water on your face or take a shower or do jumping jacks or go running.
• Listen to music that picks up your mood.
• De-clutter your life, because clutter is cognitively exhausting for your brain to process all day long"

All of these seem achievable, for drugs I'm going to go caffeine; jumping jacks or showers when tired seem like a good plan, nice and easy too; music perhaps, but it may be distracting so I'll see how it goes; clutter can be dealt with easily enough, I'll tidy my room later today.


Rewards seems to be another area I can implement simply, I shall buy some fizzy strawberry lances (the Roger Federer of chewy sugary goodness) and reward the completion of a section with a pack and a chapter of whatever book I am reading.
Finally for value is passion, I feel I have enough of this in what I am doing so I'll just skip over this.


Time for the last big factor I have control over, Impulsiveness. Pre-committing is the first strategy, getting rid of distractions; as my distractions include TV, sleep, books and the delights of the internet. I shall turn off the TV and keep it off, I shall set an alarm at 9 and ensure I am up before 10 (if I fail to do this I will have to find a new strategy), I will set books up as a reward and thereby keep them out of the room otherwise and finally, I can't really work without the internet for reference but keeping my browser closed when I am working is likely to make a real difference.


Setting goals, I have already done this to a degree, it is worth noting that rewards tie into this well. My current goals measure outputs (i.e. this much work done) as opposed to inputs (i.e. doing work for this long) so perhaps it is worth having some input goals as well:

• I will aim to do work in blocks of 1 hour at a time and I will aim to do 5 hours per day.

I think this is a good start (aside from being an excellent bit of procrastination per se); I will post as to how things are going, which strategies are working, which need to be changed and which are total flops.

An Introduction: What am I doing here?

I want to start a blog. Why? I want to start a blog for several reasons. First a foremost, all the cool kids have blogs! I really admire some people with blogs and envy what they do. I don't think it's because I want to be a blogger; I'd hate to be one of those people who wants to be a musician more than they want to make music.

So, there's many reasons I want to start (and carry on with...) a blog; the idea of a dissonance diary, a way to track my own ideas and opinions in order to see how they change and where they contradict each other. Dissonance theory is discussed to a real consciousness-raising level in Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me). Erm... consciousness-raising is discussed to a erm... consciousness-raising level in The God Delusion (td;dr it changes the way you look at things in a pretty fundamental way).

I would also like to be able to express political, philosophical or whatever opinions in depth (or perhaps just record conversations, debates or - heaven forbid - arguments for the sake of posterity). There is always the worry I am ranting and rambling when talking to someone or talking online.

It may be that I end up writing a literary criticism or personal profile; if I really find a knack for it I might write a literary profile or personal criticism. If I get drunk, I might accidentally spout an emotional torrent. That should be disregarded as akin to the ramblings of man yelling at traffic.

Most of this has a general aim (or self-justification) that I want to be better at writing. It's just dawned on me that I could also do some picks in the manner of the Rationally Speaking blog, I suppose I unintentionally did that in this post. Sweet.