Danny's Weblog

2008 Sep 16 [ Tue ]

"Intellectual Property" -- paint "A Starry Night" again, man

Joni Mitchell, the famous singer-songwriter, made a live album "Miles of Aisles". On one track we hear the audience calling out to her in the gap between songs, hoping to hear their old favorites. Joni addresses them directly:

That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.

I have attended live performances by any musicians quite seldom, because when I do so it turns out that I have grown used to the recorded version of the songs, and the live performance seems like an inferior copy. Her "The Last Time I Saw Richard" is better on "Blue" than on "Miles of Aisles": www.lyricsfreak.com [http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni+mitchell/the+last+time+i+saw+richard_20075265.html]

Joni Mitchell has had a long career, and has frequently talked about how irritating it is that her fans prefer her older work to her current work. I have to say I feel the same way; "Hissing of Summer Lawns" is not as good as "Blue" and "Court and Spark", etc. Apparently, she would prefer to produce new music which does not have to compete against her own older music. Of course, she is one of the most admired and respected figures in popular music, so her new music continues to be marketed. (I wonder if Joni is the singer Philip K. Dick refers to without naming her in several of his stories.)

The position of an unknown musician who's trying to find an audience is rather more difficult. An ex-girlfriend of mine many years ago – let's call her Renate – was a passionate and accomplished singer-songwriter. She was living in NYC and doing occasional gigs on Bleeker St. One weekend I was staying with her at her ex-boyfriend's house in Connecticut and helped her record several songs as a demo. One of them, "For the Sake of Believing", in my opinion is as good as anything Joni Mitchell ever sang. It was just her, and her guitar, and her beautiful voice, in a small back room, and me with her ex's Dolby Stereo cassette deck and her semi-pro mikes. They were basically single takes.

Renate wisely dumped me shortly after. She continued to get gigs, but never got anywhere in the music business. I saw her at an sf convention 13 years later when she was promoting her novel, and heard she had given up on her music.

Renate had had to compete with Joni just as Joni did. But Joni's recordings had been made with top session musicians, the best equipment, and skilled technicians at the peak of their careers, assembled by producers with years of experience. And then they had been heavily promoted, with millions of dollars going into making sure that everyone who might enjoy her music would be exposed to it. And then all of this had been amplified by her subsequent career. Anyone who might have considered promoting Renate to compete with Joni would have had to match that sort of investment.

A few years after Renate dumped me I was dating a music company owner – let's call her Sally-Anne – and I asked her to listen to the original tape I'd made of Renate. When Sally-Anne (also wisely) dumped me and I was leaving her house, I happened to see the tape in a pile with other tapes. I took it because I was sure Sally-Anne would never listen to it, and I didn't want to lose the original recording. But I still wonder if I should have left it.

That's the real cost of music copyrights. They make it possible to build a vast business out of pouring investment into a tiny few performers, while destroying the lives of everyone else. Without copyrights, there would be no incentive to invest in someone's career. Instead of going to watch Joni glumly reproducing her old favorites, we would listen to ten thousand performers who were close to her level, or even better, performing songs we had never heard before.

It's also the cost of movie copyrights. The requirements of the movie *business*, which depends on mass promotion, result in movies aimed at the crudest human drives. I've only attended a pro baseball game once (at Fenway Park), and my clearest memory of it is that the bulk of the spectators were very visibly mentally subnormal, in the 60 to 80 range, I suppose. But the drives of *that* group are what the "summer blockbuster" has to aim at. The "Die Hard" movies are obviously crude revenge fantasies with resentments and explosions, made by skilled and thoughtful people who might have made something like Dr Zhivago – or Dr Strangelove – with that part of their lives, but instead they polish and polish until even I find these movies watchable. Of course, they would not have had so much money to throw around in the absence of copyright, but why exactly is Bruce Willis, for instance, worth tens of millions of dollars per picture? Mainly because of his presence in similar movies which were also heavily promoted. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of actors who could do as well or better.

In the absence of copyrights, nobody would invest in movies, *unless* they just wanted the movie to exist. The internet makes it possible for small groups to produce very tightly focused work. A good example is the anime subtitling community: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub]

The issue of software copyrights and patents is even clearer. In many cases, patents have been granted on algorithms which are basically obvious and which require no great or distinctive effort to create, unlike music, or movies. Amazon's "one-click" patent springs to mind. A Slashdot discussion of such a case: yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/09/15/2223259.shtml]

But the real problem is even worse, ie network effects: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect]

Once you establish a monopoly, you can use the network effect to build a wider and wider monopoly position. That's certainly what happened with Microsoft; by controlling Windows, MS was able to destroy Lotus and Word Perfect, and with the cash from Windows and Office, MS was able to flood the market with "free" Internet Explorer, destroying Netscape. There's no equivalent to network effects in the entertainment media, although vertical integration is also bad, especially combined with technical standards like widescreen or video cassettes.

In the absence of copyright, we would lose some work. For instance, one of my favorite musicians is J. J. Cale: en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_J_Cale]

As I said, I don't usually like to attend live performances. But I thought J. J. Cale's music was particularly likely to work well in performance: it sounds underproduced, with audible master tape noise and rumble on some tracks. I went to see him play at a lesbian bar near MIT about ten years ago. But he sounded terrible: the songs that had sounded relaxed and warm and genuine in his recordings sounded sloppy and meandering in his live performance.

Maybe he just had an off day. But it's possible that he's simply not very good (or routinely wasted), and he can only build himself up to a good performance once or twice a year. Without income from recordings, he probably wouldn't survive against his less famous competition. Without music copyrights, we might lose his music. But we would gain the music of a thousand others.

And on TV, maybe we would lose shows aimed at attracting the maximum number of gently-anaesthetized viewers to commercials and designed to deliver hidden messages about how weak and helpless individuals are, and gain shows that people created because they wanted them to exist.

2008 Sep 11 [ Thu ]

Another good one-liner for atheists

Atheism is like masturbation. Faith is like masturbating with a smiley face drawn on your hand.

Source: news.slashdot.org [http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=960201&cid=24955885]

2007 Dec 26 [ Wed ]

Glamour Magazine: they would, wouldn't they

Every now and then I like to read Glamour magazine. In England, it's a small-format women's magazine. Honestly, I "read it for the articles", not because I was in Asia as a pre-op.

Anyhow, the articles always seemed more real than other magazines, particularly Cosmopolitan, which is superficially very similar. Here are a few ways I've noticed magazine articles falling below the threshold of readability:

1. Laziness: my picture of women's magazines has them staffed with the laziest and dullest employed writers, who will seize on a publicist's press release as the basis of a "story".

2. Pandering: yet another story aimed squarely at the reader's prejudices (at least most guys are aware that Penthouse letters and the like are fiction, but the equivalent "true life" stories in women's magazines are at least as sappily unrealistic).

3. Infomercials: pages and pages that are ads lightly disguised as editorial.

As I say, I've actually found Glamour to be one of the best on such criteria: certainly better than T3, for instance. But lately I've become aware of two problems.

One is a huge rise in infomercials. For instance, in the current issue, p 155, "6 beauty resolutions to break (and 6 to make)". Glamour suggests breaking "I will go to the gym for an hour every day to get my dream body" and advises "Forget the gym, go shoe shopping!..."

But what was truly egregious was their subscription blowin. In the small print under "your details" was "tick the boxes to receive information/ great offers from Conde Nast by email _ telephone _ or sms _ and great offers from companies and partners selected by the Conde Nast Publications Ltd..." Typical. "Selected", indeed, I thought. As in, we sell your name for 0.20 UKP to a mailing list house.

But the real kicker was in the even *smaller* print, carefully sandwiched between "INSTRUCTION TO YOUR BANK OR BUILDING SOCIETY" and (in red) "Subscriptions will begin with the first available issue" (which btw means they send you the one you just bought): "Please tick this box if you DO NOT wish to receive direct mail from The Conde Nast Publications Ltd _ or other reputable companies _."

This is clearly absolutely and intentionally fraudulent. They make the first opt-in relatively easy to see and hide the second opt-out.

How can companies get away with things like this? (Probably, I can hear you saying, because most people don't have enough time on their hands to read the small print on a magazine subscription.) It's left me feeling stupid about buying it and I don't intend to do it again for years. On the other hand, I am just complaining about it here and not writing a letter to Glamour.

It reminds me of a perception I had recently: simply by being lying murdering power-crazed gangsters, politicians make most of the electorate decide that *every* politician is worthless, and that any involvement in the political process is contaminating. Perhaps there are still some people in Glamour's editorial department who would care about this sort of thing, but who could have faith in that?

2007 Oct 14 [ Sun ]

Feminized jobs and their effects on men

I like the word "feminized" but since I started thinking about this article I have realized that most people use "feminized jobs" in a rather different sense than I had understood it.

Most people think that classically high-female-ratio jobs like nursing or teaching are "feminized". But that "ize" ending suggests to me a more active form of planning than the historical evolution of those roles.

For more than thirty years business has been under tremendous pressure to "improve" its gender ratios and the gender gap in pay. But how could they actually do that? The feminists who pushed for this program seem to have assumed, or at least given the impression, that business managements only needed to remove unfairness and the gender issues would magically disappear. But actually there are many qualifications for jobs: not just in education and experience, but also in social and psychological parameters.

As a result managements actually had to *change the jobs*. Feminists whiffled about tangential aspects of this, like maternity leave, but they chose not to talk about the effects on the *men* of job changes.

You see, managements have stopped rewarding men for the things they used to be good at. Men used to grow up knowing that they would need to support a family, so they would study hard, and undergo a lengthy appreniceship, all of which, combined with experience, would make them valuable and even irreplaceable to management.

But for decades now management has need to create the kind of jobs that women like: interchangeable, with heavy social interaction, requiring only superficial study, like web page design.

And these jobs have slowly eliminated real jobs, so that slowly men have been discouraged from investing their time and energy in training and skills. And now their earning potential has fallen to that of women – rather than women's rising to meet men's. Women must have some dim feeling that the good men, the good "catches" have been disappearing: the ones who could support them and their children. Instead, the women find themselves too busy and tired with meetings and planning conferences to be able to take advantage of the (still inadequate) maternity leave. And anyway, their genes tell them it's dumb to bear the child of a man who can hardly earn as much as they do, and whose job is a woman's job.

The cockamamie Chinese one-child policy

As soon as I heard of it I could see it would lead to a situation in which males would seriously outnumber females. According to Wikipedia, the ratio has been steadily rising, and was already at 1.17 by 2000 (although Chinese official statistics are notoriously unreliable).

At the time it simply struck me, as a male, that this was a bad thing. I thought the rulers of China, being male, should be more clever than that.

Recently it occurred to me that this effect was surely as instantly obvious to China's rulers as it was to me. But what could their intentions have been? I somehow could not accept that their plan was to break down Chinese society's predilection for sons by having a catastrophic period of shortage of females.

I believe it fits in with the ruling class's perception of itself as a class, whose interests are not the same as the citizens'. The ruling class are rich and powerful enough to seize as many women as they feel like anyway: *so long as they retain power*. So their aim is to use population policy to retain control. But how?

Religion certainly has many aspects, but I believe the reason a religion becomes popular is because it serves the interests of the ruling class. "Unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" is a motto which Caesar was probably pretty happy with. Religions that try to oppose governments tend to get the label "cults", like David Koresh's group.

A recurring aspect of religion is the monastery, certainly common in Semitic religions and Buddhism. It seems strange, doesn't it, that rulers would allow a religion to take away a large fraction of the manpower. But what are the results of that subtraction? It only requires a small difference in the sex ratio to leave either gender desperate to find a partner. If access to a suitable partner is controlled by the state, the state has almost total power over one or both genders. Just as the fundamental mode of operation of governments is to turn the people against each other, its fundamental means of controlling people is artificial scarcity.

Recently English newspapers have had many accounts of the generation of women whose potential mates were wiped out in the Great War. But actually my thoughts turned to the young men who died virgins at the age of 18, as opposed to the women who died as old maids. What was in their minds? What makes a young man die for his nation?

I think the Chinese ruling class is planning to *use* that looming surplus of young men, desperate to find a mate and vulnerable to propaganda which makes them think that "all the nice girls love a sailor".

The Chinese don't even really need to *win* that war. *All* the ruling classes like a nice war now and then.

2006 Dec 30 [ Sat ]

Hermann Hesse's "Demian", and thoughts on "coded" art

Here are some notes I wrote about Hesse's Demian when I had to study it for a German course I did years ago. I can't be bothered to translate the German but I think it's fairly obvious that Demian is about a young man who has no way to come to terms with the fact that his sexual orientation is as a homosexual submissive.

I happened to come across this text when I was doing a backup of old files. When I now look at it, I think about the reaction of the other members of the class when I told them about it. None of them really took it seriously.

Many references suggest that the book was influenced by Hesse undergoing Jungian analysis. I think that probably explains the references to the hero seeing his own image as that of Demian; I imagine homosexuality was seen as narcissism.

Presumably Hesse was conscious of all this himself! It makes me wonder about the (rather abrupt) end to the book in which the hero and Demian rush off to fight in WW1. Is he saying that the impulse to serve in battle is based on homosexual and submissive urges?

Several years ago I looked at quite a lot of references on the web to Demian, and found none which addressed my theory specifically. However it just occurred to me to search for "hesse demian homosexual", and I found the following page which acknowledges the homosexuality angle although not the submissive side: www.anneke.net [http://www.anneke.net/education/coursework/320/paper_320.html]

Incidentally it appears to have been written by someone studying German whose German is stunningly bad. In parts it reads as if it was translated by computer.

Here's another: www.gss.ucsb.edu [http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/projects/hesse/forum_archive_new/forum_archive/759~showflat.html]

The following three references do not address either: www.anneke.net [http://www.anneke.net/education/coursework/320/paper_320.html]

en.wikipedia.org [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demian]

www.kirjasto.sci.fi [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hhesse.htm]

I found nothing under "hesse demian homosexual submissive".

So what does it *mean* that a perfectly straightforward explanation for just about the entire book – not to mention the fact that Hesse initially had it published under a pseudonym in 1917 – is either completely missed, or almost completely unmentioned?

I think it certainly means that there must be *many, many* more coded works in literature and the movies. Not just about homosexuality, either – in fact homosexuality is probably the element which is most notoriously coded, and which is most assiduously sought out. The fact that "Demian" is not a *famous* example surely suggests that any other coded topic is liable to remain completely unnoticed.

It may also mean that Hesse was an extraordinary writer. He apparently managed to write a classic book which many have cited as an influence on a whole generation, yet one which was not even about what its readers imagined.

Notes on Demian, by Hesse 10 May 1991 / 2006-12-30

Title Demian

Written 1917 Published 1919

Author Hermann Hesse DOB 1877 Calw (sic), Wuerttemburg, Germany Died 1962

Characters

Emil Sinclair Viewpoint character.

Father

Mother

Franz Kromer Child who terrorizes (peinigt) Emil at school

Max Demian Slightly older friend of Emil. (Name came to Hesse in dream: Dämon, demon, spirit, evil genius)

Fr. Demian Max's mother

Alfons Beck The oldest student at the Knabenpension in "St. ". About 18 when Emil meets him.

Pistorius Ex-theologian, now organist.

Knauer Fellow student of Emil's.

Chapters

Foreword

The viewpoint character says this is a true story (what a fib) and says it might be a bit confusing but that's the way real life is (what shit) and says if men were not immortal there'd be no point writing stories (what a twerp) and everybody's story, because he's an individual, is worth something (not to me!).

"Einen Wissenden darf ich mich nicht nennen. Ich war ein Suchender und bin es noch."

"Das Leben jedes Menschen ist ein Weg zu sich selber hin... Mancher wird niemals Mensch."

Chap. 1 Zwei Welten

"Ich lebte sogar zuzeiten am allerliebsten in der verbotenen Welt." At ten, in a "süddeutscher Kleinstadt", he encounters Kromer. He brags about stealing apples. Kromer makes him swear it's true. Then Kromer says the owner said he'd pay 2 marks to find out who did it. Kromer says he'll go to him or the police. "Sag mir doch, Franz, was ich tun soll! Ich will ja alles tun!" Kromer demands he steal from his parents. "Meine Sünde war nicht dies oder das, meine Sünde war, daß ich dem Teufel die Hand gegeben hatte." "Ich wußte, da ich jetzt ein Geheimnis hatte, eine Schuld, die ich allein und selber ausfressen mute." "Ich fühlte mich meinem Vater überlegen!" "Dieser Augenblick war das Wichtige und Bleibende."

Emil takes the money out of his piggy-bank (Sparkasse), but it's only 65 Pf, and Kromer isn't very happy. Kromer still wants his money, which Emil pays off in dribs and drabs, and Kromer starts to use him like a slave, running errands (Augsänge zu besorgen), or ordering him to stand on one leg. "Mein Zustand zu der Zeit war eine Art von Irrsinn."

Chap. 2 Kain

Demian retells the Kain story: Kain was blessed in spirit, people were afraid of him and his children and made up a story. "Nett war bloß die Art, wie Demian solche Sachen sagen konnte, so leicht und hübsch... und mit diesen Augen dazu!"

"Ich hatte mir eingebildet dies Zeichen sei eine Schande, es sei eine Auszeichnung, und ich stehe durch meine Bösheit und mein Unglück höher als mein Vater, höher als die Guten und Frommen."

Emil dreams of Kromer: "in denen ich ganz und gar sein Sklave wurde... Der furchtbarste... enthielt einen Mordanfall auf meinen Vater."

And then of Demian: "Ich träumte wieder von Mihandlungen und Vergewaltigung... aber statt Kromer war es diesmal Demian, der auf mich kniete... das erlitt ich von Demian gerne."

Rumors about Demian; mother very rich; not churchgoers; Demian very strong; Demian had had sex (Umgang mit Mädchen und alles wisse).

Kromer demands Emil bring him his sister: "Mein Entschluß, das nie zu tun, stand sofort fest." (Jealousy!) Demian sees Emil, says he can read minds, and says somebody did something wrong, and someone else knows about it and so has power over him. Demian also guesses that Emil has dreamt of him. Demian tells Emil to get rid of him, and says he would help Emil to kill Kromer if necessary.

Emil doesn't see Kromer for a while, and then Kromer avoids him. Demian says he had had a word with Kromer.

Emil remarks that he did not feel grateful to Demian for freeing him. "Ich mußte die Abhängigkeit von Kromer durch eine neue ersetzen, denn allein zu gehen vermochte ich nicht... so wählte ich die Abhängigkeit von Vater und Mutter..." Emil asks his father about Demian's view of Cain, and his father says that it was an old heresy which he should put out of his mind.

Chap. 3 Der Schächer (the robber, as in the one crucified with Christ)

"Es kamen die Jahre, in welchen ich aufs neue entdecken mute, daß in mir selbst ein Urtrieb lebte, der in der erlaubten und lichten Welt sich verkriechen und verstecken mußte." Emil talks about puberty and sex, but not girls. "Was einst Franz Kromer gewesen war, das stak nun in mir selber."

Emil hears a rumor that Demian "lebe mit seiner Mutter wie mit einer Geliebten".

His mother decides to have Demian be confirmed, later than usual, so that the older Demian is in the same confirmation class as Emil. They exchange glances during a discourse on Cain and Abel, and then Demian starts sitting closer and closer. Emil remarks how eagerly he sniffed for the fresh soap smell from Demian's neck (!). "Die Morgenstunden waren nicht mehr schläfrig und langweilig. Ich freute mich auf sie."

Demian says he can control the other pupils and the teacher with his mind, and says nobody has free will, but "Wenn ein Tier oder Mensch seine ganze Aufmerksamkeit und seinen ganzen Willen auf eine bestimmte Sache richtet, dann erreicht er sie auch." (Use the force, Luke!)

Emil mentions that Demian never took him home so he had no idea what Demian's mother looked like.

They discuss the Crucifixion. Demian says he prefers the sinner who did not repent, and would prefer him as a friend. Demian says God should bless the whole world: "Man müßte sich einen Gott schaffen, der auch den Teufel in sich einschliet, und vor dem man nicht die Augen zudrücken mu, wenn die natürlichsten Dinge der Welt geschehen."

Emil tells Demian about his "two worlds". Demian says "Nur das Denken, das wir leben, hat einen Wert." Emil says "es gibt... verbotene und häßliche Dinge... soll ich denn... ein Verbrecher werden?" Demian says "Die Griechen und viele andere Völker haben im Gegenteil diesen Trieb zu einer Gottheit gemacht..."

In class, Emil sees Demian meditating, aparently outside his body; Emil tries to imitate him, but cannot.

Emil is sent to another school.

Chap. 4 Beatrice

The school is in "St.".

Emil feels lonely and unattractive: "die Liebenswürdigkeit des Knaben war ganz von mir verschwunden... nach Max Demian hatte ich oft große Sehnsucht".

Alfons Beck invites him to a Kneipe and they talk at length. Emil gets drunk and feels guilty the next day. But he soon becomes a regular drinker and man about town (verflucht schneidiger Bursche). But "ich war niemals dabei, wenn meine Kumpane zu Mädchen gingen, ich war... voll hoffnungsloser Sehnsucht... Niemand war... schamhafter als ich".

The teacher in charge of the boarding house sends Emil's father a letter to warn him of the deterioration in Emil's schoolwork. Emil feels sorry for him but does not react to his threats.

Emil sees a woman in the park that he feels attracted to; he calls her Beatrice, from an English artwork. She has "diese Schlankheit und Knabenhaftigkeit der Formen... die ich liebte..." Emil cleans up his act and stays away from the Kneipen: "Ich war wieder bei mir selbst zu Hause, obwohl nur als Sklave und Dienender eines verehrten Bildes". Emil resolves once again to renounce the "Dunkle und Böse" in himself. "Nicht Lust war mein Ziel, sondern Reinheit." "Ich begann den Morgen mit kalten Waschungen..."

Emil takes up painting. He tries to paint Beatrice, but without success: then he tries to paint his ideal woman. "Es war nicht das Gesicht eines Mädchens... Es sah mehr wie ein Jünglingskopf aus als wie ein Mädchengesicht..." Emil falls in love with this fantasy woman, who reminds him of someone. "Wie hatte ich das erst so spät finden können! Es war Demians Gesicht." Then he sees the painting as himself.

Emil longs for Demian. He dreams of Demian holding in his hands the crest that hung over his parents' house, but the crest is distorted; Emil paints the crest as it appeared in the dream, and sends it to Demian without a note. Emil is now doing better at school, but living in a fantasy world.

Chap. 5 Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei

Emil receives a mysterious note at school: "Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott heißt Abraxas." Emil is sure the note came from Demian. The teacher happens to describe Abraxas: "(der) die symbolische Aufgabe hatte, das Göttliche und das Teuflische zu vereinigen".

Emil again feels an urgent "Trieb des Geschlechts". "Unmöglicher als je war es mir, die Sehnsucht zu täuschen und etwas von den Mädchen zu erwarten, bei denen meine Kameraden ihr Glück suchten."

Emil dreams of embracing a woman who combines Emil's mother and Demian. Emil also senses Abraxas: "Wonne und Grauen, Mann und Weib gemischt, Heiligstes und Gräßliches ineinander verflochten, tiefe Schuld durch zarteste Unschuld zuckend – so war mein Liebestraumbild, und so war auch Abraxas". "Ich wollte ja nichts als das zu leben versuchen, was selber aus mir heraus wollte. Warum war das so sehr schwer?"

Emil hears organ music from a church and starts coming back to listen. Emil sees the organist: he has strong eyes and brow, but soft, childish mouth and chin. Emil approaches him and mentions Abraxas. The musician is taken aback.

The musician invites him home. He lives with his parents, has many books and a piano. He had studied theology. They gaze into the fire for an hour (!). On leaving, Emil sees the name Pistorius.

Emil remarks on seeing invented images in random forms.

Emil says he was never very impressed with what Pistorius was saying, but it helped him to "Eierschalen zerbrechen". Pistorius interprets Emil's dream of flying as meaning that Emil will fly when most people fear to.

Chap. 6 Jakobs Kampf

Emil is now 18. "Oft hatte ich mich für ein Genie angesehen, oft für halb verrückt." Pistorius is still helping him reach Abraxas.

Emil repeatedly dreams of returning to his mother to find that she has become the androgynous figure.

Pistorius tells him to do what his dreams tell him, and says "Wenn wir einen Menschen hassen, so hassen wir in seinem Bild etwas, was in uns selber sitzt". Emil later sees Pistorius drunk, and wonders if that is his way to the world inside himself.

Knauer introduces himself. Knauer has chosen celibacy, but it is very difficult for him. Knauer asks Emil for advice, but Emil tells him he has to look inside himself. Knauer is disappointed and shouts at him.

Emil has a dream in which he sees the androgyne very clearly, so he can now for the first time paint Abraxas. Emil faints before it and the next morning it is missing. Emil wanders the city and finds himself at a building site where Knauer is hiding. Emil tells him he was drawn there, and guesses that Knauer had been about to commit suicide. He tells Knauer ("Es sprach aus mir") "Du bist den falschen Weg gegangen".

Emil is making progress in mysticism. He feels he can summon Pistorius mentally, both Pistorius in the flesh and an image of him that Emil can talk to. Meanwhile Knauer has become a pet of Emil; Emil feels that Knauer's questions help him (Emil) make progress. "Dieser Knauer verlor sich später ungefühlt von meinem Weg."

Emil has been feeling less benefit from Pistorius, and one evening tells him, "Das, was Sie da reden, ist so – so verflucht antiquarisch!" Pistorius is wounded. "Er war ein Sucher nach rückwärts." Emil feels guilty and leaves, and feels for the first time the mark of Cain. Emil decides he must give up dreams of becoming a poet, artist etc: "Wahrer Beruf für jeden war nur das eine: zu sich selbst zu kommen". He meets Pistorius again; P. tells him he has decided he wants to become a priest, as he is not suitable for the "new religion".

Emil feels lost without a guide. He longs to contact Demian. His school is finished; he is to take a vacation and then go to university, starting with a semester of philosophy.

Chap. 7 Frau Eva

Emil visits Demian's old house: they had moved away. The new inhabitant shows him a picture of Demian's mother, whom Emil recognizes as his "Traumbild". During his vacation, Emil wanders hoping to find her. He brushes off a woman who pesters (nachstellen) him.

Failing to find her, he enters university in "H." and is unimpressed. He enjoys the freedom however. One day he recognizes Demian on the street with a Japanese; Emil greets Demian, who is pleased to see him. Demian says his mother is living with him here too. Demian says the groups forming in Europe are not real communities, but the outcome of irrational fears. "Diese Welt will sterben, sie will zugrunde gehen, und sie wird es." They arrive at Demian's house; Demian does not invite him in, but tells him to come anytime (?).

The next day Emil makes a visit. Let in by the maid, he sees his painting of the bird and the world-egg. He sees Frau Eva, her face "gleich dem ihres Sohnes ohne Zeit und Alter". She is pleased to see him, and says Demian had told her many years ago that Emil would be his friend. Emil refers gnomically to his dream, and perceives her reply as a rebuff. She tells him to call her Frau Eva, and then sends him to Demian, who is doing boxing practice; Emil finds him very attractive (prachtvoll). Demian says she has never asked anyone else to call her Eva in the first hour.

Emil spends much time there. He learns more about the secret of the "Zeichen". Most people see humanity as something to be protected, but the initiates see humanity as the far future. The house is visited by many mystics of various kinds; Emil and the Demians are unimpressed, seeing their duty as becoming themselves. They also worship fate.

Emil finds it difficult to be so close to Fr. Eva without embracing her, so stays away for a few days. Fr. Eva tells him to do something about his desires or forget them.

He recounts a dream to her in which he joyfully joins a sea or a star; she says "Der Traum ist schön. Machen Sie ihn wahr!"

Emil sees Demian meditating. Emil asks Fr. Eva if he's sick, and she tells him not to be a little boy and sends him away.

In a storm , Emil sees a vision of the bird. he tells Demian, who says that he and Fr. Eva have also seen visions. He is not sure what they mean, but that "Etwas Großes und Furchtbares im Anzug ist, das mich mit betrifft". Emil feels anxious.

Chap. 8. Anfang vom Ende

Emil resolves to summon Fr. Eva, but Demian shows up with the news of war with Russia. Demian mentions that he is a lieutenant in the Reserve, and will be in the field in a week. Emil sees that the news overshadows his relationship to Fr. Eva. Demian mentions that they had felt him calling, so Fr. Eva had sent him.

Emil feels ready to accept his fate with millions of others. Demian and then he are sent to the front. Others speak of "Vaterland und Ehre", but he sees "Schicksal". He sees that while few will live for an ideal, many are ready to die for one, yet it can not be a personal ideal.

Emil sees a vision, a city with Frau Eva as its goddess. She cries out in pain, a star flies down to him. Emil wakes up wounded, feeling that "ich dort sei, wohin ich gerufen war". He sees Demian next to him. Emil cannot speak, but Demian tells him that he is going away, but Emil will be able to summon him from inside himself. He tells Emil that his mother wanted him to give Emil a kiss for her. Emil goes to sleep. When he wakes up, Demian is gone.

When Emil can avoid thinking of his pain, "...dann brauche ich mir nur über den schwarzen Spiegel zu neigen und sehe mein eigenes Bild, das nun ganz Ihm gleicht, Ihm, meinem Freund und Führer".

2006 Feb 18 [ Sat ]

More about the meaning of games, the sequel (my theory of history)

I recently posted about the human weakness for games representing a dangerous vulnerability in the human mind which may already be being abused in unexamined ways: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Opinions/Society/games02.html]

At the time I had no idea *why* humans have this weak point. Since then however I remembered something else I've posted about: if predators always try to breed and consume at the maximum rate, they are vulnerable to catastrophic crashes in population when they eliminate their prey species. And one can say games=play.

So it is very striking that every predator animal spends a great deal of its time in play, dominance rituals and just lying around sleeping, while prey animals all eat and breed as fast as they can. I think it would be a reasonable guess that humans, as a predator species (although my own sabre-tooth-tiger-trapping skills happen to be rather limited) are hard-wired to limit their normal "cruising" efficiency in various ways just like lions, wolves and otters do.

On the other hand bird and insect predators do *not* have any form of play that I ever heard of. Perhaps the triggers which induce the "limiter" to cut in are rather subtle and difficult for an insect/bird brain to discriminate.

However, I would have thought that the triggers would *not* have to be very subtle. It could be just something like "am I well fed? Are there a lot of people around me?" (I'm guessing that the people would also need to be close to one's own genotype, too.) That kind of thing could work off nothing more high-level than pheromones.

So when people started to gather in cities, they presumably started to have fewer children and sit around drinking all day. That probably isn't what ruthless leader types wanted, so they had to invent crap like religion to make the workers keep working.

I've always thought that the world had all the technology at the *beginning* of the twentieth century to make the world a paradise. Sure, most of us would probably not say no to penicillin among other things, but basically we could have been a lot happier by 1930 than we are now. Looking at it from this predator-game loop aspect, our ruthless leaders seem to have decided that unless *all* human societies had balanced levels of lotus-eaters, the cruellest and most "efficient" would eventually eliminate *them*. So they invented the conflict between capitalism, socialism and fascism to entertain us and make it look like we all had to work extra hard, when in fact it was only necessary if you think maintaining the ruthless leader class is necessary. Bread and circuses.

2006 Feb 15 [ Wed ]

More about the meaning of games

I was musing about games yesterday: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Opinions/Society/games01.html] and of course referred to computer games.

Today there's a thread on Slashdot about some Pentagon gnome who figures that the games are now sufficiently accurate simulations to help soldiers react in real combat: games.slashdot.org [http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/14/2158232]

I had already been thinking about warfare. It seems to me that despite the obvious danger of death and whatnot, plenty of people experience wartime as exhilarating and involving. Actual wartime, it seems to me, is mesmerizing because of its game-like elements.

Paranoid as usual, it makes me wonder about whether the PTB actually exploit this consciously. We know that the Pentagon withholds cooperation from war movies with "undesirable" themes or elements; perhaps one might work backwards from the detail changes it insists upon to estimate which buttons the Pentagon wants the movies to push in our brains.

Since I realized what blatant lies 9/11 and the war in Iraq were based on, I had to reevaluate the Vietnam War. Slowly I am starting to reevaluate the entire 20th century. Was that entire horrible century set up merely to *divert* us? As some sort of macabre entertainment to make us believe... what? That governments matter?

Those plastic models of Spitfires and Phantom jets and Stukas... why are they sold?

From the thread:

"It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn't even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! "

A lot of people are scared by stuff like this, but in my eyes, it's how it has to be. We're not talking about cold-blooded killing, we're talking about one of mankind's greatest quirk - war.

It's all a matter of making a more effective soldier out on the battlefield. One might liken my perspective to that of "brainwashing" or "propaganda" used by Nazis and Japanese in WWII, but I think it is more mild and acceptable like our propaganda.

2006 Feb 14 [ Tue ]

Why do we enjoy games? What are they for?

For the past few months I've been doing the Sudoku puzzle several times a week. I considered posting my system for completing them after I checked the sudoku site and discovered their hints were so useless, but I gave up when I thought about *why* people play games. Ie, it is essentially pointless to provide ways to play Sudoku "better". (Incidentally, if you want hints, try the Wikipedia entry.)

Basically, games take considerable time and effort and there is no objective reward at all. I can remember no analysis of why we do them that went any deeper than "because they're fun". But *why*? For instance, how do you *improve* a game? Major sports occasionally change their rules and there is considerable argument over the details each time, but while everybody has an opinion I get no impression of a body of knowledge which could be used to systematize the various arguments somehow in order to reach a conclusion.

Likewise, when computer games are reviewed the reviews tend to concentrate on things like framerate and polygons rather than the playability of the game. How many polygons does Tetris have?

In my own case I played a *lot* of bridge when I was in college. I was never very good: I simply enjoyed seeing the random allocation of cards presenting so many interesting puzzles. It was all a terrible waste of time. There were people who developed heroin habits that got better grades than me.

Musing about this, it occurred to me that a game is like a meme, or a virus. It is crafted to appeal to something at a *subconscious* level, and then it takes over the host, who then walks around trying to find three more people to play bridge (you never played before? No problem!).

It also occurred to me that this is similar to addictions. Now of course it's trivial to call computer games an addiction. But when you consider that there is no objective benefit from them, you start to see them as a little more worrying. They represent proof that there is some sort of vulnerability in human minds which allows a cycle of destructive behavior to be established.

Which makes me wonder whether this vulnerability is not exploited by other social forces and behaviors. For instance, it's a commonplace observation that people who were raised in abusive families tend to become abusers in the same way. My analysis of this is that *they become addicted to the game*. It's like football fans: if they just yell at their spouse it's like Monday Night Football, but if they put them in hospital it's like the Superbowl. They are going through a *pattern* which is as hypnotic as the falling shapes in Tetris. Their mind is responding to a system of rewards which we do not understand, even though we play *explicit* games every day.

Incidentally, my personal observation is that people who "inherit" abuse do not seem particularly likely to take either role – a man with an abusive mother may become an abuser himself, or with about the same probability may seek out or "train" an abusive wife.

One of my favorite sf authors wrote a book (actually a collection of short stories) called "The War Against the Rull". At one point, the hero, Professor Jameson, manages to trap one of the Rull by exposing him to a pattern of lights. As soon as the Rull sees them, his mind is captured: his body continues to move, endlessly mimicking the sequence of lights.

Like me playing Millipede.

2006 Jan 30 [ Mon ]

A believable argument for why the gold standard is bad

There's an interesting posting on Slashdot: politics.slashdot.org [http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175545&cid=14594809]

Metal standards tie international currency exchange and therefore to the most desirable country's interest rates. So let's say everyone wants to trade with the USA. A dollar equals an X of gold. So if the British pound is nominally worth two dollars then a BP is also equal to X/2 [Danny: he means 2X shurely?] of gold. Now if the US economy is doing well and interest rates are 6%, then interest rates must be 6% in England as well. If the economy is doing poorly in England then to make capital more affordable interest rates CANNOT be lowered by the Bank of England. If they did lower the rates, arbitrage trading would take place on the BP, effectively borrowing up all the pounds, converting them to dollars for short term, higher interest loans, and then converting back and paying off the pound denominated loan. This would steal away all the capital from England. So world interest rates get locked. Fiddling with interest rates is one of the strongest tools available to central banks for ameliorating business cycle swings. Take this away and you can get terrible bouts of depressions and/or stagflation that can take decades to get out of.

On the other hand, the poster seems to think that dinking with interest rates is a fine upstanding way for governments to behave. (For decades, HMG imposed currency controls in an attempt to decouple interest rates within the country from outside the country. Eventually HMG decided that this effort was futile.)

He also seems to be assuming that the British govt in his example would simultaneously be trying to maintain the price of the UKP in gold, and maintain the interest rate. For instance, if the US economy is doing well as in the example, wouldn't it be natural to allow the dollar to rise against gold, and/or to allow the UKP to fall against gold?

It's true that all this stuff is interrelated. I think that many people who are sympathetic with proponents of a return to the gold standard simply want the operations of governments to be more transparent, and if there were some mechanism which automatically produced obvious signs of manipulation, so that the electorate couldn't be hoodwinked as easily, it would be better. The value of one's national currency is certainly something that makes the electorate sit up and take notice.

In his example, the British government would be able to maintain the value of the currency against the dollar, and would choose to maintain the interest rate, at the price of a disastrous flow of capital out of the country. This is almost exactly what did happen in England when Lawson was chancellor, due to his insane insistence on joining the ERM (despite his avowed opposition to a single European currency).

However it did not cause the uproar it should have, so I suppose the value of a return to a gold standard for regulating the behavior of governments is probably slim.

2006 Jan 12 [ Thu ]

Another reason torture doesn't work for interrogations

I've always said that the USA is using torture not because it's full of homosexual sadists (although that could well be true), not because it's full of incompetents (obviously true too) but because the US government *knows* the actual results – hatred, the failure of its ostensible mission, the corruption of the US armed forces, the isolation of the USA from the free world – and wants them.

But today it struck me that torture is *clearly, logically* unable to produce reliable intelligence information.

When you torture someone, the victim clearly has no other reason to give you information, right – he has no incentive to give you correct information.

His *only* incentive is to give you information that will stop the torture. The problem is you – the torturer – *don't know if what he's saying is true*. You have no means of distinguishing between fact and fiction. The accounts of the pedophile witchhunts in America – where the child witnesses were only mildly tortured by police – show that interrogators cannot distinguish between fact and fantasy when the victim is trying to give the interrogator what he demands. (The children produced utterly preposterous accounts which were solemnly recorded, and then the interrogators threw away the parts which were so ridiculous they would make it impossible to get a conviction even in the hysteria of the times.)

You could say "well the interrogator can compare stories from multiple people". But how does he know the *first* story is correct? If he knows that he doesn't need to torture anyone else. And if he doesn't, he's probably just amplifying the original fantasy story, like a polymerase chain reaction.

So the inerrogator has no way of "rewarding" the truth, so the victim has no incentive to provide it. Indeed, even if, through faulty analysis, the victim *tries* to provide it, the torturer will probably reject it. And the torturer has "experience" of all the "successful" interrogations he's already conducted (on hapless strays kidnapped by brigands and sold to US forces for thousands of dollars) so he's not likely to be "fooled" by the truth.

Torturer: You took your orders from Masawi, right?

Victim: Yes, yes! Masawi, right!

Torturer: So when did you meet him??

Victim: Aaah! Erm, erm, August 2nd 2002!

Torturer: You lie, pig! Masawi was in Indonesia on that date!

Victim: Yes, you are too clever for me! I too was in Indonesia!

Torturer: Hah! [Writes "Masawi Indonesia confirmed 8/2 in notebook]

2005 Sep 30 [ Fri ]

Hurricane Katrina -- looting by police officers?

I previously speculated that rescue helicopters were fired on because their crews were looting: www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Opinions/Society/looters01.html]

Those who found my speculation overly paranoid should check out this story: www.latimes.com [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nopd30sep30,0,7003476.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews] in which the New Orleans Police have to investigate looting allegations, apparently because their officers were caught on video. Hah.

2005 Sep 03 [ Sat ]

Hurricane Katrina: real reason rescue helicopters are getting shot at

Here's a little more of my trademark paranoid speculation. It has been reported that helicopters being used for emergency services in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath have been shot at: www.boingboing.net [http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/01/nola_rescue_worker_e.html]

This seems a little unlikely to me. Why would a looter shoot at a helicopter? It only attracts attention (unless you use serious military-style hardware – only Rambo can shoot down a helicopter using a bow and arrow).

It seems much more likely to me that the operators of the helicopters *themselves* are taking the opportunity to loot. Remember, they have a perfect excuse to surveil and land in any location. They can pick and choose a perfect deserted site to plunder.

If they make a mistake however, they need to eliminate witnesses. If they happen to encounter an armed citizen, he might put some holes in the helicopter – or them – before they splat him (or they may need to shoot some holes in their own helicopter in the process of bringing him down). What are they going to say then? Are they going to say "we got shot at while we were looting"?

2005 Mar 06 [ Sun ]

Emergent behavior and human society

"Emergent behavior" refers to the insight, originally from studies of insect colonies, that apparently intelligent behavior by a community of organisms can result from a few, seemingly unintelligent, rules.

In the course of a recent Slashdot discussion on emergent behavior in microbots: science.slashdot.org [http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/03/05/1848258.shtml] several posters made these points:

1. Human societies can be considered emergent, because they evolve seemingly intelligent behavior, eg Einstein's formulation of the General Theory of Relativity, out of a bunch of twerps who paint themselves blue, sacrifice their firstborn to Tetragrammaton, vote for the Republicans or Democrats, etc.

2. Ants use pheromones to regulate their behavior (although this pushes the mystery of consciousness back just a little further: we say an ant releases "happy-ant" pheromones when it finds a juicy corpse, but what exactly makes it decide it's happy? I don't even know what makes a *girl* happy).

3. Emergent behavior is not of course necessarily "good" behavior. That's certainly true of the mob at a soccer match in England.

My own observation is that the ants in my apartment seem pretty stupid individually. I'm not sure they can even see, at any rate in the sense of recognizing their surroundings. Possibly their visual system tells them stuff which is useful for navigation (on the left is more like this; on the right is something new). But if some unlucky bug dies on the floor, the ants find it before I do.

Actually it's amazing that they can find enough food to power their relentless activity.

I've started to wonder about the rats' visual acuity too. The other night I was walking along Sihanouk and a rat for some reason decided to dash out of the pile of garbage he was having rat heaven in and scurry back to his haven at the side of a metal roll-up door.

He dashed back perpendicularly to the sidewalk, which was all very well except he hit his little noggin with an audible "thwonk" against the tiled wall six inches or so away from the cranny he was aiming for. Pausing only to say "D'oh!" in a tiny squeak (I'm making that part up) he scrabbled around into his hidey hole.

I suppose it's quite possible that this was a visually-handicapped rat (PETA has sent me nasty email about referring to animals as "blind") (ok I'm making that up too) as a result of the godawful conditions even the humans live in here, but I wonder whether rats depend a lot on scent too.

A recent article in the Cambodia Daily suggested that jaw-dropping cruelty was common in Khmer society even before Pol Pot. If that's really true, isn't it ghastly that something like that could survive in a culture despite all the upheavals of the period? It reminds me of my feeling about the Japanese: that their culture should have been deliberately destroyed after WW2, along with their entire ruling class and everyone important to their culture like musicians. Of course, in order to take that step, we would have had to become Japanese.

2004 Dec 16 [ Thu ]

The nomarriage.com website -- "men should never get married"

www.nomarriage.com [http://www.nomarriage.com/]

He's pushing his book which goes through all the tedious detail, but the basic argument is the same as I think Rob Lowe once gave for why he used prostitutes when as a sexy glamorous filmstar he could have sex with plenty of women for free: "it's actually cheaper this way". No Christmas presents, child support, alimony, furniture, dating.

And no complaints, arguments, relatives, PMS...

I suppose there's no easy way to have a child, but a) how many men really want one? and b) if men really wanted children there would already be a service which allowed you to impregnate some poverty-stricken Asian woman. I've never heard of such a thing so QED.

2004 Dec 07 [ Tue ]

Are humans actually multiform like bees?

Many insects have, in addition to male and female forms, several additional forms which to the untrained eye do not resemble the "normal" forms in any way. For instance, bees have the "queen form" in addition to the male and female-worker forms.

Many fish also have a juvenile form which does not resemble the adult at all. Likewise, amphibians have the newt stage. However, I am not aware of such a feature in mammals.

As I have mentioned before, it seems to me that human evolution is no longer primarily physical, because effective evolution can take place much more rapidly and efficiently at the society level. Because humans are born with so little instinctual programming, they can rapidly be reprogrammed at every generation. This allows a new form of human society to be tried out (and probably discarded) millions of times faster than bees can laboriously reprogram their DNA.

On the other hand, I want to speculate here as to the actual mechanism by which humans create these new prototype societies. I was thinking about the new (and incidentally, widely panned) movie "Alexander". I don't think the reviews mentioned this, but in previous stories of Alexander that I have read much is made of his magnetic quality and the extraordinary run of "luck" that he had in his conquests.

Likewise, many people have speculated about Hitler's rise to power. It seems amazing that the most advanced culture on earth succumbed to tyranny so easily, so many have painted him as some sort of magician, while others try to stress that any nutcase might have achieved absolute power in the conditions at that time.

I want to speculate that the mechanism by which the human genome creates new social structures at suitable intervals is by intermittently creating a physically different type of human, seemingly normal but actually with some sort of strange power of persuasion and genius. If too few are produced then societal evolution languishes; if too many are produced we have chaos and war.

I was also thinking of an R. A. Lafferty story whose title I have forgotten, in which the characters muse over the biological fact that some species can reproduce both in a normal adult form *and* in a quite different juvenile form, and idly remark on the peculiar burst of interest in the opposite sex and pairing that occurs in 5-6-year-old human children. Still idly, the characters muse on what environmental conditions trigger the "tipping point" between adult and juvenile reproduction. In the distance, their children are playing doctor... or something.

2004 Nov 23 [ Tue ]

Mating choices and society

Moving from the US to SE Asia – from a totally female-dominated society to a more equal one – certainly allows you to "compare and contrast" how women behave when faced with very different options.

In the course of a discussion on a Senate anti-pornography hearing, a Slashdot user made a very good comment:

No, that's how it is in human society (Score:4, Insightful) by rsilvergun (571051) on Saturday November 20, @12:46AM (#10872754) yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130317&cid=10872754]

The reason women were treated like property is that the only way to get a human male to stay with the wife and kids was to give him a sense of ownership. In the wild, in most cases the strongest male has all the women, and no responsibilty for the children. In society, men where made to 'own' the women so that they'd f eel like they where losing something by leaving. Now that this sense of ownershi p is gone (and has been replaced by a new breed of woman who have all the privil eges and none of the responsiblites of marriage), men are leaving in droves. Hen ce the high devorice rate and number of fathers who won't support their children .

Furthermore, women don't make choices to shift power around, but instead follow existing power. 90% of women marry up. That sexual freedom is a practical if not actual illusion. This is why societies need monogomous relationships. There's n othing more dangerous than a poor, desparate and horny guy with no family. Peopl e like that crash planes into buildings.

It's worth reading the whole thread, too: yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/236254]

Another point I would make is that the very consistently-observed fall in reproduction rates in more advanced societies is probably largely due to the fact that such societies also have strict laws against child labor, child prostitution, child mistreatment etc, which make children just a very bad investment in money terms. With contraception, the man gets sex – which he is programmed to want – and a woman gets a man – which she is programmed to want – and society defines a child as a child till it's 21, so the woman thinks a single child can satisfy her childrearing urges for her entire childbearing years.

Once you're stuck with *irrational* reasons for having children, it's not surprising the birthrate plummets.

In fact, it occurs to me that as you remove rational reasons for having children the kind of people who *still* want children is probably getting weirder and weirder.

2004 Sep 04 [ Sat ]

Counterfeiting by governments

I had always wondered why the bad guys, for example Libya, or North Korea, don't go into counterfeiting bigtime. Some currencies are, or at least were very easy (US), and even the most difficult ones are no problem for a government. And you have plenty of plausible deniability if you're a government.

This Slashdot poster has a similar idea: yro.slashdot.org [http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=120551&cid=10156521]

Of course, the biggest counterfeiter of dollar bills is the US Treasury. If you're shovelling trillions into the US economy every year North Korea's counterfeiting is probably irrelevant. And if they stopped N. Korea getting money their nuclear program would collapse, and then how could one justify the defense budget?

Oh, waitaminute.

2004 Jul 19 [ Mon ]

Why is most advertising aimed at *selling* you stuff, not *buying*?

It just occurred to me that most advertising is aimed at selling people stuff. Clearly in the long run the buying and selling balance out, so it isn't obvious that there should be more ads for one end of the transactions than the other.

You could certainly say that most people buy a bazillion things but only sell their labour, so maybe that's the reason. On the other hand, the value of their labor is clearly equal to the value of their purchases (more or less) so why aren't there as many ads looking to *buy* that very valuable labor?

Then it occurred to me: individuals are not organized to use mass media of course to sell themselves, but employers *are* organized to use mass media to *buy* the labor. So there *is* marketing effort but it's not *visible* – because it's aimed not at making people believe that a product is valuable, but at making them believe their *own* product – their labor – is *not* valuable. And clearly it would be unwise for employers to try and make that point explicitly. Instead, they sponsor programs and channels which create shows which sponsor helplessness and feelings of inadequacy and loneliness.

That explains "Married with Children" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" at a stroke.

Even "The Simpsons". Homer is a drunken fool who doesn't deserve his job or his home; Mr Burns is an evil exploiter who controls the town and nobody ever opposes him. When (in one actual episode) the clever people take charge, they just mess it up worse. Who *decides* when things like that happen on a show?

2004 Jul 02 [ Fri ]

The evolution of how we see

Cringely has an article about a video compression system that has some interesting ideas on how our visual system works: www.pbs.org [http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040701.html]

What blows me away, if I am understanding this correctly, is that what we "see" isn't the scene itself so much as an error map of the scene. We map the cliffs and potholes then paint the rest of the scene in our minds from stored image data.

This seems to relate to my ideas about our perceptual system and data compression.

2004 Jun 27 [ Sun ]

Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11"

Christopher Hitchens has espoused several conspiracy theories that I'm fond of myself. Now however he seems to have written an article which is sharply critical of "Fahrenheit 9-11": slate.msn.com [http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/]

Perhaps Microsoft – who own "slate", the online magazine for which Hitchens is writing, have kidnapped his mother. (I often wonder that about William Safire.)

I find Moore unappealing somehow. I avoided seeing his movies previously (mainly because I'm pro-gun). Still, Hitchens' arguments seem a little strange. My own objections to the movie – at least based on the published reports, as I haven't seen it yet and am unlikely to get the opportunity – would be that Moore seems to attack what I feel to be Bush's *cover stories*:

1. Cover: Iraq was about oil. Actually: it was about destroying the USA.

To non-paranoids: what does the *result* of the Iraq war seem to be?

2. Cover: Bush is an idiot. Actually: he and his family and buddies benefit from all this.

3. Cover: Bush linked to and protecting Saudis. Actually: by demonizing Arabs, Bush and his buddies can grab Saudi Arabian oil.

4. Cover: Bush and Rummy screwed up the invasion of Iraq. Actually: they don't care any more about US servicemen than Ho Chi Minh cared about the bicycle riders on the HCM trail. They want war, and hatred, and repression, and death.

So overall, my worry is that Moore is a paid agent of Bush. And you didn't think I could get any more paranoid!

2004 Jun 26 [ Sat ]

What does "consciousness" mean?

A couple of weeks ago BBC World had a programme about consciousness, which was quite interesting – by describing various unfortunates who had lost weird parts of their mental abilities due to accident or illness – but seemed to me to beg the question.

To me there seems to be no logical connection between the ability of an organism, or robot, or whatever, to come up with strategy and tactics to reach its goals, and the fact of whether its mind has self-awareness. (Logically, of course, it is not sufficient to ask it. I could make a "robot" consisting of a tape recorder which could *say* it was self-aware.) But these two attributes were conflated repeatedly during the programme.

When people ask "how do we know animals are not self-aware?" I respond "how do we know people are?"

It's importnat to see that *only the former ability* (to create strategy etc) is important for survival. So evolution would select organisms *only* for that and *never* for self-awareness.

The likelihood is then that the majority of the human race is *not* self-aware. It may appear to be, may claim to be, but is highly unlikely to be.

2004 Jun 24 [ Thu ]

Why are people who use cellphones so disturbing?

People have been comlaining more and more that cellphone users in public places are highly disturbing. For instance, there is an article in today's IHT by Joe Sharkey "Can you hear me?..."

What the article hints at but does not address is that people talking *together* in such places are *not* disturbing. Why should that be?

The very title of the story gives the clue. Modern – ie digital – cellphones give no feedback on the condition of the line. So *everyone automatically* speaks as loud as he comfortably can.

This does not happen with ordinary landline phones because ofa feature few people know about called "sidetone". Thanks to the system of transformers which allows both your outgoing sound and the incoming sound to be fed into a single pair of conductors, it's easy to feed a fraction of your own voice – as received back from the callee! – back into your ear. (This is why on long-distance calls one, at least till recently, would often hear a delayed echo of one's own voice.) Thus unconsciously you would detect how well your voice was being received, and would speak up as necessary.

But cellphones, at any rate digital ones, do not do this. To save power, and transmission bandwidth, they do not transmit at all unless the sound level is above a threshold, ie the user is speaking (hopefully). The designers of these systems have the excuse that the signal level in these systems is already massively compressed and normalized, so the signal level does not really correspond to the quality of the call.

On the other hand, why can't one's own voice be fed back into the earphone *locally*? I wonder if there are phones that do that.

Privacy endangered in Canada says Commissioner

Canada is sometimes cited as a country with relatively high regard for privacy, at least compared with the USA. However, in making his report to the Camadian Parliament for 2001-2002, the Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski cited many serious and urgent problems:

www.privcom.gc.ca [http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/02_04_10_e.asp]

Of course since then everything has become much worse.

2004 Jun 23 [ Wed ]

Why predators are grouchy about their territory

A successful predator needs a *thriving* prey population. Most predators have probably only a weak understanding of this, so one imagines that various precautions are hardcoded in their genes. For instance, as I've referred to before, *playfulness*: the predator wastes some time – perhaps a lot of time – playing, so that he (his kind) doesn't eradicate the prey. Laziness, an oft-remarked-on feature of predators, may also come into this: if the predator is reasonably happy it doesn't charge off trying to bring down *every* gazelle for its cubs.

It just occurred to me that *territory* is another way that the genes can use to modulate reproductive efficiency below maximum. If a predator establishes a territory which is *several times larger* than the territory needed to support one predator, then the predators who would otherwise use those parts of his territory, and impose pressure on the prey population, starve.

So populations with genes which encourage grouchiness have sufficient *slack* in their overall predation load on prey populations to withstand the occasional population crash in the prey species without disaster.

Clearly this principle also applies to nations – unfortunately – and rich men – slightly less unfortunately. A rich man who can afford an underground bunker with 600 nubile maidens may one day allow the human race to survive. Or at any rate, the principle that some humans have massively unequal property will do so.

2004 Jun 22 [ Tue ]

Why do we put up with bad video quality?

Last night, in a sober stupor, I was randomly flipping channels into the small hours. After a while I realized that one channel had been stuck on a DVD intro screen for *over an hour*.

What usually happens is that there's a bad spot on the disk, and the player's default behavior is to go back to the main menu. Many times, I've watched the technician try to deal with that: he clicks "play", but the default of the player is to try to restart from the last position, so it fails again. So he clicks on "play" again. Sometimes he thinks unloading and reinserting the disk might help. So you see "eject" appear, and then the Sony DVD splash screen, then "loading disk", then the trailers...

I guess in this case the technician was off getting or giving an enjoyable display of affection for an hour, while all over Cambodia farangs were thinking "wtf?".

In some ways it's even funnier when they play a screener, which has the pleading threat "anyone seeing this can call 1-800... for a reward!!" For some reason you can't dial 800 numbers in Cambodia, I've just found out (not because I decided to drop a dime, I might add).

And then there are the movies where the image is distorted, as if it had been filmed in the movie theater at a funny angle. And the movies where the subtitles, in English, were apparently written by someone who knows as much English as I know Cambodian. And the movies where the subtitles belong to *a totally different movie*. And the movies where *you can see someone get up from the audience in front of the picture. I've seen all of these on Cambodian cable TV.

I don't really know why this doesn't happen in Europe or America. My guess is that the movie is pre-mastered to high-quality tape, along with commercial breaks: I've sometimes seen the picture break up in a way suggesting videotape, and I've sometimes seen a long pause at the end of a commercial break before the movie starts up again, as if there's a preset commercial gap that the technician doesn't want to mess with.

So there I was smugly congratulating myself on being a member of the master race, and then I thought about focus. A year or so ago I started realizing that location shots of talking heads were *usually* out of focus. That is, the *background* is in sharp focus but the subject is blurry. This is true on BBC World; somewhat less true on CNN; sometimes true on DW. I haven't noticed it on Channel 5 (because I usually watch their programmes with subtitles, which excludes their news programmes).

Now I know perfectly well *why* this happens – in one way. Almost everybody is using digital camcorders with LCD screens which have inadequate resolution for showing accurate focus (even with respect to TV resolution). So they do the shot and everything looks OK when they check the recording; then when they get back to the studio and look at it on the monitor they think "oh well".

And it's the "oh well" that I don't understand. Seemingly the broadcast companies have just *given up* the idea of accurate focus. This would have been just unimaginable a few years ago, and if anyone had warned that using digital cameras would lead to this he would have been laughed at.

But where's the *end point* of this trendline?

2004 Jun 19 [ Sat ]

Michael Jackson and Cambodians

I have no idea whether Jackson is guilty of the pedophile charges, but few people would disagree that his ostensible excuse for his public behavior – that he feels affection for young boys and wants to be aound them – is something pretty weird and a sign of his very strange showbiz childhood.

Still, it does seem to be a very *real* need. Whether it's connected to something sexual or not, his unusual upbringing does seem to have left him with an *insatiable* longing for the companionship of boys. Presumably Jackson never had a chance to play with other boys in his formative years, and that left him with an irresistible drive to experience that play today. I say "insatiable" because Jackson really wants to relieve the pain of his *eight-year-old* self, which can never be done.

It reminds me of a flat and unreadable novel by Heinrich Boell, "The Bread of the Early Years" (Das Brot der fruehen Jahre). It was about something important, even though it was badly written. The hero is a young West German who grew up at the end of WW2 at a time of privation and hunger: *his* formative memory was presing his nose against the window of the bakery, smelling the bread and being unable to buy it. When he gets older and the economy improves, he cannot respond by moving his aspirations up the scale of values promoted by Veblen: ie from "physiological" through "safety" and "love" to "esteem" and "self-actualization". He can *never* assuage the hunger of his eight-year-old self, and that hunger will always drive him. (Had I written that novel, the hero would have realized this in the first chapter. In the second chapter he would have met a beautiful, mysterious girl, who turned out to be a spy, and then there would be a lot of car chases and explosions.)

Dragging this posting back to Cambodia, my point is that Jackson, and the hero of the Boell novel, were seriously injured psychologically for the rest of their lives, by a relatively *minor* privation. In Jackson's case, his lack of a normal childhood would probably not be considered actionable child abuse even in today's climate. And many, many children go to bed hungry. www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/vega01.html]

In Cambodia, *most* people in their forties or so underwent years of horrible privation and fear. And guilt. Perhaps they were ordered to beat their grandparents to death. Or perhaps they just stole food from their grandparents, and their grandparents knew, and the they knew that their grandparents knew. And their grandparents quietly grew thinner and died. But they survived, and sometimes they see an old beggar in the street and they think "Grandfather!"

But they survived... or did they?

2004 Jun 18 [ Fri ]

Why do Cambodians pay money to go to school?

This morning I was talking to someone who is putting together a K-5 school in Phnom Penh. I told him I was thinking of putting together a school, initially on-line, for people to learn SQL, then maybe electronics.

The problem with my plan is that I am not sure there is *any* employer in Phnom Penh for my putative hopeful graduates.

A more general problem is that I don't know what employment there is in Cambodia for *any* graduates. I wonder why people in Cambodia pay so much for education? So few educational institutions here have any verifiable connection to external standards, and those that may appear to may be simply fraudulent. But young people are paying a dollar an hour – probably twice what they can earn – for a slice of hope.

Here's a Washington post article about the situation in America: www.washingtonpost.com [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26458-2004Jun8?language=printer]

Here's an article with sympathy for Lynndie England (the "girl with a leash" in the Abu Ghraib torture shots) and insight for what *her* educational and career opportunities were (she figured the Army would be a better job than killing chickens): www.counterpunch.org [http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant06132004.html]

In 1975, few young people in England needed a job during their university education, but many poor people did in the USA. I thought that was appalling. My girlfriend in 1982 was the daughter of an MIT graduate, but he couldn't afford to pay for her to go to college. The last time I heard from her, she was working in a laundry and playing in a rock band. Oh, no, I remember: she was preparing people's income tax returns. Well, maybe her rock band made it. Anybody heard of Lizzit?

Now almost everybody but the very rich needs a job during his studies in the USA. And most do in England, now, too. Where's the end point of that trend line?

Of course, a university education has been utterly devalued over this period in the West. Still, there are some standards, and actually fraudulent educational institutions in the USA are often unmasked. But there is no protection at all in Cambodia. The Ministry of Education is *run* by people with no or fraudulent qualifications. (Any similarity between that statement and actual living persons is purely coincidental. This article is a work of fiction.)

2004 Jun 16 [ Wed ]

Why I still think I'm a right-winger

I've several times seen leftists complaining that they thought of themselves as centrists, but as the climate in the uSA has moved to the right they have become labelled as ultraleftists.

I feel almost the same way. Actually, I think the current US Republican Party is not right-wing at all: it's actually state fascism, like Mussolini's Italy without the ideology. The relevance to the feelings of, say, gun owners, or veterans, or small business owners, or any of the other traditional right-wing interest groups, has vanished; but the Democrats have not responded by reaching out to those groups, probably because there is no significant difference between the people in charge of the Republicans and those in charge of the Democrats.

The following Slashdot posting represents my standard argument now on the general issue of free enterprise: "it's a nice theory".

Re:Yeah, and what's that going to cost in the U. S. (Score:4, Informative) by JamieF (16832) on Tuesday June 15, @12:40AM (#9426972) (www.white-mountain.org [http://www.white-mountain.org/jamie/)] slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=111064&cid=9426972]

The phenomenon you are experiencing is called "deregulation". It's what happens when monopoly telco lobbyists write the legislation that creates a fair competitive environment for other companies to compete with said telcos. Of course, the actual legislation is anything but fair. See also: Covad vs. the "baby bells".

This is sort of like the power "deregulation" that took place in California and led to rolling blackouts and ultra high electricity and gas prices, and required a statewide bailout of the monopoly power company, Pacific Gas and Electric.

When anybody in a suit starts to wax romantic about free markets, competition, and deregulation, look for the crossed fingers behind their back and wads of dollar bills sticking out of their pockets. What they really want is to replace a regulated monopoly with an unregulated monopoly, and an inefficient government bureacracy with an unaccountable corporate pyramid scheme that leads to offshore accounts, unprecedented executive payouts, and bankruptcy (followed by an emergency government bailout). See also: Enron, Worldcom.

Real competition would be great, but that's not what we've got. What we have is legislated, goverment-subsidized monopolies paying protection money to Congress with one hand and waving a "Free markets now!" sign with the other.

Of course, the bold new twist on this scheme is to first announce that you're going to replace a government bureaucracy with an efficient outsourcing contract, and then just award the contract to your friends with no bidding process (or a secret bidding process), claiming that national security (or the interest of fair competition) forced the bidding process to be secret or to be skipped altogether. Then you can sidestep all sorts of rules and laws and replace huge sections of the government with unaccountable private corporations, and you get deniability even if you own stock in said corporation. See also: Halliburton, Bechtel.

P. S. Welcome to the USA!

2004 Jun 11 [ Fri ]

How to make money by controlling both sides of a deal

I've written articles several times before about ways governments can profit by secretly controlling both sides of a matter, eg:

www.panix.com [http://www.panix.com/~dannyw/weblog/Asia/Thailand/corruption01.html]

Here's a Slashdot poster (as part of a thread on SCO) pointing out how this works in the field of business:

The worst, slimiest, crookedest bit (Score:5, Informative) by rewt66 (738525) on Thursday June 10, @04:23PM (#9391677) slashdot.org [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=110652&cid=9391677]

The "loss of goodwill" means that a company they bought didn't do as well as they thought it would, as others have pointed out here. But near the bottom of this story on Groklaw [groklaw.net], somebody anonymous points out the real dirt. The company that didn't do so well was Vultus. SCO bought Vultus from Canopy, which is the private outfit that owns almost half of SCO.

This sure smells like the minority owners (Canopy) are bleeding cash out of a publicly-traded company (SCO) by selling it a loser.

Canopy has done stuff like this before. When one of their companies goes bankrupt, they (Canopy) wind up with the assets that matter, whether or not the company was publicly traded. They do this by making sure that the company that is going under owes Canopy money, so that Canopy is a creditor at bankruptcy time.

In other words:

1. Create a private company (company A).

2. Take company A public. Company A now has lots of money.

3. Create another private company (company B).

4. Sell company B to company A.

5. Profit!

But wait, there's more...

6. Make sure company A owes you money.

7. Let company A go bankrupt.

8. Using the assets that you get back from the bankruptcy, go to step 1!

Incidentally, when I saw the nam