Slingshot

One of the interesting things that happen when you browse stuff on websites like Slate is that they bring up a bunch of links at the bottom that are engineered to drive traffis to other parts of their network.  Being smart, they train you to think that the stuff at the bottom of the screen is well-selected.  They do this by – most of the time – selecting fairly well the kinds of articles you’re likely to enjoy based on what you’re reading at the moment.

Then they abuse that trust completely by mixing in some articles that you have absolutely no interest in at all, which are fundamentally misleading, and which were sponsored for publication in the first place.

I came across one of these articles recently, over here.  But before you click, I must warn you not to believe anything you read.

This article is sponsored by a site that claims to have found an amazing way to sell you cheap stuff and totally knock-down prices.

Sounds too good to be true?  Oh this is so much worse than you think! Read the rest of this entry »

The NRA have issued a new video on the web that positions it for the coming fight over firearms regulations in the US.

The NRA have a fair reason to be worried given the US President’s position on gun regulation following the shootings at a school in Connecticut.

In short, the President is advocating a number of measures controlling the checks performed prior to the sale of a firearm and the capacity of ammunition magazines.  These may seem to be benign, reasonable and commonsense reforms to you and me, but to gun advocates they are an unbridled attack on the very freedoms that make America a seven-letter word. Or a country. Anyway, their argument uses the words freedom and liberty a lot.

The video gives particular prominence to an argument at the mid-way point of the video.  It presents it with the sort of dramatic montage that indicates the lobby believes this to be a slam-dunk argument that will win them the debate.

This argument goes as follows:  The President’s kids go to a school that has a significant number of armed guards.  The President is against an increase in the number of armed guards in schools nationally.  This is therefore hypocritical.

The NRA are anything but stupid. The success of their attempts to influence public policy over the years is a testament to their ability to read public opinion and the political chessboard and then intelligently target arguments towards both national opinion and those parts of it that have direct influence over decisions taken in the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

They are a staggeringly effective lobby group.

It is therefore curious at first glance that the core argument should be so transparently wrongheaded.

It’s clear to anyone with a head on their shoulders that the President’s children are not protected in the way that they are because they are children, or because they are in a school, but specifically because they are the President’s Children, and that this exposes them to very specific and particular risks that must be mitigated.  They are therefore not surrounded by armed guards for the same reasons as there are gates around schools in general, in their case we are not afraid of a random lunatic. They do not face the same risks as ordinary schoolchildren.

It is therefore completely nonsensical to draw a parallel between the security measures around the school attended by the President’s children and all the other schools in the country.

The NRA are well aware of this.  So why did they make the argument in their video?

Because the individuals this argument is targeted at are not careful with their logic, and such distinctions matter little to them because they care more about the conclusion (I want a gun) than the argument.  These people will happily latch on to such an accusation (“the President is a hypocrite”), without taking the time to wonder if it makes any sense at all.  The NRA is speaking to them, and giving them a mantra.  ”Hypocrite”. It wants them to repeat it. A lot.

I can disagree with the NRA without bearing a grudge, and I can accept their point of view as based on a different premise than my own.  I can do this with no ill-will and no loss of respect for the integrity or intelligence of its members or its leadership, even as I disagree with them on every level.

However, when these same people start making arguments that they absolutely know to be wrong, when they lower their level to the point at which they preach to the fanatical and the ignorant using the language of propaganda, I can’t help but be shocked.

The power of that lobby group without any moral, ethical or intellectual duty to reason and sense is a frightening prospect, and an abuse of another amendement than the one they claim to defend.

The problem is that it only reveals what I feared all along :

To them, guns are more important than logic, than honesty, or than the Constitution.  These are just arguments recruited for the cause.

Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in the Souks of Tehran

Argo is the name of a film that was never made, because it was created only as a cover story for the exfiltration of a group of US embassy workers in Tehran during the Iranian revolution.  Ben Affleck’s creation is based on this remarkable operation.

Without letting himself get tempted by the excesses of overly-heroic individuals with capabilities bordering on superpowers, we get a glimpse here of what extraordinary people are like in real life. Taking risks that beggar belief but without the advantage of looking heroic in the process, Tony Mendez takes his six reluctant escapees into a game of make-believe that is the only thing between them and the barrel of a gun.

While the dramatisation takes liberties with the facts (and how could it not, since the original operation went off almost without a hitch, providing little of the dramatic tension required in a two-hour movie), both in terms of how close the Iranians came to uncovering the subterfuge as well as the roles played by the various agencies (the Canadians had a much bigger role than the one they are given in the movie), the film provides nonetheless a raw and real feeling of what it much be like to carry out such an operation.

The imagery, on film degraded by various cinematographic tricks to look more coherent with the timeframe of the events depicted, never panders to hyperbole to make its point, and prefers to re-enact exact scenes from footage taken at the time with an almost obsessive eye for detail. Somehow, this results in a sense that the danger, while being less spectacular than in more overtly dramatic movies, is far more real. The characters in this movie feel like real people in real danger.

I enjoyed this film very much, and think it deserves every award and nomination is has received.

The Paris half-marathon is on the 3rd March 2012.  I signed up very early and am now officially a contestant.

This will be my first ever timed race. It’s only a half-marathon so I can’t say I have any reason to be overly concerned or worried about my performance, but I’m not exactly in the best shape ever and there’s a certain amount of preparation that needs to go into an event like this.

I’m a competitive spirit by nature. It’s hard to say if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it does mean that I find myself setting the bar  little higher than might be reasonable. I hear myself coming up with arguments like, if someone else could do it at about my age, surely there’s no reason why I should set my own standards any lower.

I’m aiming for a time between 1h45 and 2h00.  I think that’s reasonable.  Secretly, deep inside, I want to do much better, but I’m trying to resist that urge because I’m most likely to either fail or hurt myself.

I have eight weeks to prepare.  I’ve gone running twice.  I can currently finish 6km in 32 minutes.  I need to finish 21km in 2 hours so the minimum standard I have to set myself right now is quadrupling the distance with no loss of speed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Piscine Monitor Patel and his Bengal Tiger, Richard Parker

When I was told that Life of Pi was going to be made into a movie, my initial reaction was “How?”.  This was, after all, a Booker Prize Winning novel.

The book provides the reader with a parallel between religions (several of them) and what happens to Pi Patel that raises the level of the story well above the fairy tale adventure that it could otherwise have been.  I was afraid that the conversion would be a flop.

When I saw the trailer, I decided that if Ang Lee was to make images that beautiful, perhaps it mattered little how he butchered the story – even if he was using the book as a pretext or a backdrop for some masterful imagery, if the imagery was this good, I could deal with it.

I saw the film this afternoon, and my opinion has evolved further.  With only a little adjustment to the story (the method of narration in particular), Ang Lee has managed to maintain not only the spirit and intentions of the book, but also the promise made in the trailer of images that belong framed and on a wall, not just for a passing moment on a screen.

I am in awe of the cinematography of the movie, from the opening scenes of animals in the zoo to the fine art of the seascapes.

This is a film worth seeing.

If I told you about the following quote is attributed to the Dalai Lama, what would it make you think? Apparently it was in response to the question, “What surprises you the most about humanity?”

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having not really lived.

What does it do to your perception of the lesson inherent in the quote when I tell you that the Dalai Lama never said this, and in fact the quote was misattributed to him in an image that went around Facebook a long time ago, but that since it went around so fast and spread so far, this quote has since been misattributed to the Dalai Lama ever since?

From what I’ve read of the Dalai Lama’s thoughts, I don’t believe that he would allow himself to be so critical of man.  He constantly surprises by seeing the positive in things, and I think he would have wrongfooted the asker of any such question far more comprehensively than this particular answer manages to do.

Nevertheless, the answer above outstrips the question in terms of insight.  There’s something to be gained from it, and although the lesson is not particularly subtle, depending on who you are, it can remind you to stop and open your eyes from time to time.  There’s real value in the message being communicated.

So my thought for the day, for you to meditate on, is whether a piece of insight or knowledge is more or less valuable depending on its source.  To what extent are we able to see insight or wisdom for what it is, and benefit from it, and to what extent are we distracted by the cult of personality that surrounds certain individuals, imbuing their public thoughts with more weight than they occasionally deserve, and in counterpart reducing our ability to benefit from the wisdom that might come from the mouth of a child, or a colleague, or – to give a better example – a representative of a political party we would never vote for?

Surely the Dalai Lama would hear the wisdom in the words of even those who would oppress him, if that wisdom was there to be found.  How hard is it to keep an open mind?

Read any newspaper article about the environment we’re living in today and you will most likely find a conclusion defended by anecdotal evidence, or worse, irrelevant statistical evidence providing the false comfort of academic certainty.

The more condensed the article, or the more mainstream the media it is published in, and the bigger the gap between the issues underlying the article’s main premise, and the information provided to give the reader an illusion of understanding the subject matter.

The result is a population of people who consider themselves well-read and informed, who have no more than a very weak appreciation of the complexity of the subjects they are discussing, but who are convinced – due to their extensive reading of the journalistic output on the subject – that they have a thorough understanding of the subject and a defendable position in the debate at hand. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent issue of Fortune magazine, an opinion piece suggests that we call time on the Euro and break up the monetary union.  While I’m the first to agree that when something’s broken, it needs to be fixed or replaced, I was rather hoping for some coherent economic analysis to get my teeth into, rather than the usual whitewash.  I was to be disappointed.  It’s all too easy to look at the current problems facing Europe’s economies and claim that the fundamental problem facing the currency is its very existence.  If it weren’t there, we could no longer blame it, but the problems would get no better, the currency is not the cause.

There’s a rational debate to be had, in financial and economic terms, about the relative merits of the options available to Europe now that the scale of the crisis is understood. The debate as characterised in the article in Fortune, however, relies on anecdotal observations of a US news anchor during summer trips to Europe, and struck me as so completely missing the point that I found myself shaking my head in disbelief as I reached the end of the page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Calvi harbour

We wanted to come back to Corsica for a holiday since we had such good memories of the island from our first trip. Only there’s always the risk of finding things less interesting when you see them for the second time, so we mixed it up a little.

Instead of coming in the Summer, we aimed for Spring. The downside here is that you risk inclement weather (and we got our fair share of that), but the advantage is that the island is more or less devoid of tourists. Since you’re in advance of the summer, everyone appreciated your custom in the same way that we look for the arrival of swallows to herald the coming summer.

A lone tree in abandoned Occi

Of course in spring you can’t really go swimming in the ocean unless you were brought up in Iceland and had your entire nervous system desensitised during your frozen childhood. On the other hand, generally warm weather during the day allows you to take advantage of one of the best places in France to go walking.

We were lucky enough to pick the right days to go for long walks when the sun was with us.  We went to the abandoned village of Occi, a modest 30 minute walk above the village of Lumio, but had to beat a hasty retreat when the sky threatened a downpour (which never occurred).  A few days later we walked from Calvi all the way to the tip of the “almost-island of Revellata”, which is a long spit of land at the northeastern tip of the island.  The walk is complicated by many luxury villas being built along the path, but the views are sometimes spectacular, even without the summer sun.

Images of Revellata

We also visited a vineyard, and I regret not having the time to visit several.  Perhaps this is something to do next time we go.  The reception at the Orsini Vineyard was very warm, and while I find Corsican red wines far too rich and thick with fruit for my palate (and their whites somewhat too mineral), their new rosé (Gris Fruité) was excellent and very affordable, and I ordered two cases for delivery to Paris in the coming weeks.

You can see selected images from the holiday over at the photoblog : Accidental Cliches.

I’ve always disliked the concept of telling people how they ought to be. This includes their shape as well as their ideas.

I think most people agree with me, and when I say this I sometimes get choruses of encouragement about “the media telling us how we should look”. Unfortunately, that’s not what I mean.

I consider the media to be a demand-driven environment. We consume what we want, and if we spend all our time obsessing over stick-thin models, we only have ourselves to blame when our perception of attractiveness alters as a consequence. I don’t buy into the “media conspiracy to make us all insecure in our bodies”.

So when I say that I don’t like the idea of telling people how they ought to be, what I’m actually referring to is the new trend in countries that tend towards nanny-statism to regulate what size models are allowed to be if they’re going to model clothes. I’m astonished that elected or appointed officials think they have a role in deciding the shape and size of people on catwalks.

While the debate about what a “healthy” weight is and what we mean by “healthy” in the first place is probably valuable in its own right, I think that it crosses the line into an infringement of people’s free expression when authorities start mandating what weight or BMI a model is allowed to have it they’re going to be seen by the public.

Monitoring them for eating disorders is a great idea, I’m all for it – the models themselves are often young and under immense pressure to appear perfect, and sometimes that degree of body-consciousness can lead to skewed behaviours, just don’t cross the line into saying that because someone has a high metabolism and therefore appears very tall and thin, they’re no longer employable as a model. That’s not an appropriate area for the law to start regulating – to my mind.

We appear very concerned with the possibility of making people anorexic by displaying extremely thin people in the media. I understand the concern. I’m more concerned with obesity as it is statistically a much more significant problem. I would be personally very happy to see a change in our body-shape preferences towards a very “healthy” (by which I mean fit) look. If we could admire and aspire to looking like people who look good because they do lots of sport, rather than exercise huge discipline over their eating habits, that would be good, and we might get over this concept that thin is bad or good, because that’s a function of the person. But that’s probably just my personal tastes getting in the way of my reasoning.

I certainly wouldn’t advocate regulation to push the trend one way or the other – that usually backfires – you change tastes and preferences by influencing, educating and informing people, not telling them what it is permissible to look at or to believe.