On A Day Spent Reading

It's been a good day so far, and it hasn't finished yet. I spent a couple of hours polishing off Mark Brandon Read's "Chopper," his autobiography; rubbish book (though I've read worse) though the film with Eric Bana's worth a look.

Having finished that, I went into town to browse the various booksellers, and then came home via the pub and a glass of raspberry beer. Ah, Frambozen. It's expensive and arguably a little gay but for a mid-afternoon beer there's nothing finer. Whilst I was at the pub, I started reading my next book (I know, I know, I haven't finished Sophie's World yet), this one by Janet Malcolm, called Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. It's not bad so far, and with my previous post On Relationships in mind, I'd like to quote from the first chapter:

The phenomenon of transference - how we all invent each other according to early blueprints - was Freud's most original and radical discovery. The idea of infant sexuality and of the Oedipus complex can be accepted with a good deal more equanimity than the idea that the most precious and inviolate of entities - personal relations - is actually a messy jangle of misapprehensions, at best an uneasy truce between powerful solitary fantasy systems. Even (or especially) romantic love is fundamentally solitary, and has at its core a profound impersonality. The concept of transference at once destroys faith in personal relations and explains why they are tragic: we cannot know each other. We must grope around for each other through a dense thicket of absent others. We cannot see each other plain. A horrible kind of predestination hovers over each new attachment we form. "Only connect," E. M. Forster proposed. "Only we can't," the psychoanalyst knows. (Emphasis mine)

On Relationships

A very good friend of mine, Ola, recently sent a book to me: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I'm working slowly through it; slowly, because it's really a brief history of philosophy more than a fictional story, and I've always had to read philosophy slowly to make sure I understood it. At the start of the story, a mysterious philosopher sends Sophie little envelopes with riddles written inside, like "Why is Lego the perfect toy?" and so forth. These questions prepare Sophie for what follows; in this example, the philosopher then introduces her (and us) to Democritus and the atomic theory.

Well, now I feel a lot like Sophie myself. At the end of a recent email, Ola wrote

"Do you believe in a once-in-a-lifetime love or do you rather think that a happy relationship is a matter of goodwill?"

Email has taken the place of the envelope, but the theory is the same, and I've been stuck on this question all day. I'm going to try and answer it now, but since I've been brought up to believe in the power and necessity of empirical evidence, I'm not simply going to give you my gut reaction.

On Love
I would love to believe in the power of love, and that for every single one of us, there is a matching partner in the world; all that we have to do is find this one special person, our soulmate, and then the rest of our lives will be spent in perpetual bliss. It is a reassuring story we tell ourselves, much like we tell children that there's an Easter Bunny and Father Christmas. As we grow older, we find that the chances of finding this special person have diminished greatly. But some people do genuinely seem very happy in their relationships. When both partners in a couple can honestly say that they love the other, then that is exactly what Ola's talking about. So how does it happen? Can it last, and can it overcome all difficulties?

One theory doing the rounds is the idea that love is an addiction. Two scientists at UCL scanned the brains of people in love, and found that the areas most active didn't correspond to the areas active during other emotions, such as anger and fear. In fact, the closest similarity is to a person doing drugs. In her book, Why We Love, Helen Fisher concludes that

"[R]omantic passion is... hardwired into our brains by millions of years of evolution. It is not an emotion; it is a drive as powerful as hunger."

Scientific research, then, would seem to suggest that this once-in-a-lifetime kind of love does exist, and exists for a reason. Fisher goes into more detail than I can here, obviously, and also talks about the different forms that 'love' can take. The original article linked to above is well worth reading; it is, I think, reprinted from The Economist magazine.

On the happy relationship
I'm sure that science can go a long way towards explaining why love is possible in the first place - how it happens, and why - but human beings are far too complex for a simple chemical analysis to determine what will happen for the rest of the relationship. For those of us who, in the first place, don't find that special someone, and perhaps decide to settle for a person we merely 'like', then how likely is the relationship to succeed?

My reading suggests that a good relationship, perhaps one based on goodwill as much as love, has as much of a chance to succeed as one based on romantic love, going on Dr Fisher's definition. My search for information led me to The Gottman Institute.

Dr John Gottman has been studying human relationships for longer than I have been alive, and he's now quite good at it. The website describes his means of operation:

"By examining partners’ heart rates, facial expressions, and how they talk about their relationship to each other and to other people, Dr. Gottman is able to predict with more than 90% accuracy which couples will make it, and which will not."

If a relationship can be studied, it makes sense to say that a relationship can be managed and made to work.

On the answer to Ola's question

I don't think I've answered Ola's question here at all. I've looked at some of the evidence that suggests that romantic love is primarily all about chemistry, and how all relationships need management to survive, whether they are based on love or not. But I think Ola is also asking another pair of questions that need to be answered before any of this other discussion can take place: is it possible to find and fall in love with someone who also falls in love with you? If not, is it possible to find someone you can imagine managing a relationship with, to the general benefit of both partners?

For the latter situation, I really can't say. I'm hoping that it is possible, because I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone. I am looking for someone to share my life with, but I have very few expectations about falling in love and having that love returned to me. I have fallen in love before (I think romantically, but I'll have to re-examine my feelings in light of today's reading), but only a handful of women have found me attractive, and part of falling in love is, chemically and from an evolutionary standpoint, concerned with attractiveness.

We'll have to see. I'm very glad that Ola has put this question to me. I've had to think very hard about my reaction, and I've had a reason to do some reading outside of my usual interests; plus, it's been a while since I wrote anything that was actually meant to make sense.

Further Reading
If you're interested, here's a review of Helen Fisher's book. For more about Dr Gottman in the context I originally discovered him, read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink

On a return to the old school

I haven't blogged in ages; not properly at least. So today, having grown tired of facebook, I've gone old school. I've returned.

Blogger has improved since I was last here; not a lot, mind you, but in some interesting areas. For instance, I like the idea of adding 'labels' to your posts, to better organise them. This is a lot better than simple archives of all blog posts according to date. It's not a new idea by any means - how many sites have tags, and even tag clouds to go with them? - but it's a step in the right direction. When one considers just how much one can do on facebook with the applications there, blogger seems mildly pedestrian in comparison - unless you know a little html and adopt more of a do-it-yourself attitude.

The worst thing about not blogging is that I always used to use my blog as a way of keeping track of interesting things online. I haven't been doing that much lately. I'm behind in my internet browsing too. I only discovered video sift the other day, and now love it; and I'm coming across great blogs all the time, like The Book Design Review right here on blogger. I'm sure if I had my own computer I'd do a lot more linking, and would probably do what I've done in the past, and buy webspace. But that hasn't been the case for a long time.

I've started writing again too. I need to find a place online to publish my work, and hopefully get some feedback. My good friend Ola has agreed to critique my latest effort, which is something I'm looking forward to reading. She tells me she's going to be merciless, which sounds both wonderful and frightening.

Finally, I've decided to go back to my scientific paper method of naming blog entries - I kind of like everything beginning with the word "on."

On Darwinism and Wondir

If a change to an organism is to be successful, it must serve some purpose and it must allow the organism to survive in preference to its natural competition. Wondir has evolved, bit by bit, since long before I took any notice of it, but for it to survive without becoming no more than a niche animal - too specialised, like the sabre-tooth, to survive once its prey has gone - the next couple of evolutionary steps will prove to be most important.

I've written about the problems I see with the Wondir model, and I've written about the joys of being a Wondir contributor. Now that I've had time to reflect on what I've seen and thought, I can predict.

Wondir's main rival in the cannibalistic interactive knowledge market seems to be Google Answers, but I would proffer Wikipedia as just as big a threat. Many of the answers to questions I've seen on Wondir have linked to the wiki, or quoted from it or at least plagiarised from it; the best ones have been informed by wikipedia. This is certainly true of many of my own answers. To do justice to the question asker, I often read up on a given subject at wikipedia. I use it to confirm what I knew, to check facts and get the names of important theories, and often I use it as inspiration.

But what does this mean for Wondir? Is it competition? Returning to my initial speculation, suggesting the niche nature of the board, then yes. There is a great danger that those question askers arriving at Wondir because it offers something that Google Answers charges for will leave disappointed, because Wondir is not the same animal. Is Wondir a suitable place to ask in-depth questions? Is it reasonable to post a question that would require an investment of time of the answerer, or in these cases would it be better for that person to head over to wikipedia and leave the board to those who use it in its true spirit?

What then do I think is the true spirit of the Wondir board? Simply put, its existence is based upon its reactiveness, its spontaneity. Wondir contributors pride themselves on replying to a question as quickly as possible (ironically, the Hawaiian translation of 'wiki wiki'), often getting in an answer within minutes. What happens to a question that cannot be answered so quickly? It moves down the board, lost and forgotten as other questions arrive that demand attention. A question that moves past page 5, say, of the board is as good as lost. I've looked for myself - there are some damned fine questions in the deeper reaches of the system that I would like to answer but is there any point? Will anyone read it? Is the question asker still listening, or has he or she looked elsewhere at this point?

Arguably (and I'm hoping to generate an argument - or at least a debate), Wondir is a reflection of modernity, a mirror into which we gaze. Its short-comings highlight our own, and its illumination to outside observers on the zeitgeist is more valuable than the throw-away questions one sees asked time and again. The bad grammar, the incomprehensible questions, the requests for information that could have been found with a copy and a paste into Google's search engine, the replacement of depth and consideration by speed and efficiency - all this could be describing the world in general, and not just a question and answer board.

Praise be to those whose hard work rewards the unworthy. At the time of writing, a dog breeder by the username of jevette has contributed more than 11,300 answers to the community, and it would be irresponsible and inaccurate to say her efforts have all been in vain. I have now answered over 100, and some have proved memorable, directing my thoughts away from where they usually reside. But what has become of my time? Have I provoked a discussion with my words? Have my answers been challenged? Has anyone else noticed the questions I've taken so long to answer, now that they're as far away in Internet terms as the Moon is from London? Has anyone else had their thoughts moved elsewhere, in new and exciting directions?

I hope so. For, if Wondir is the zeitgeist posing as an online answers board, it would be depressing if the answer to this question was no.

On The Frailty of Wondir

The biggest strength of a community is also its biggest weakness - its contributors. There have been some excellent questions on Wondir recently - a particularly thought-provoking one on the subject of language marginalisation had me sitting in silence for minutes contemplating my answer (which surely made it a huge benefit for those around me) - but now it seems to have been discovered by high-school students, and has finally begun to suffer from the deadweight of question spamming.

Take for instance the sudden proliferation of questions about radiation and atomic chemistry; the questions are even numbered and are all multiple choice. It is obvious that this is just someone's homework, and it is fairly depressing that I have to battle my way through so many to get to the juicier questions.

The staff at Wondir are now faced with a difficult decision: to moderate or not? Moderation of the boards would be useful for people such as myself - keen to help but put-off by spam and horrendous grammar - and for teachers who might want to use the board as an educational aid. Moderation, though, could be the death of the board; it would remove the spontaneity that is the life blood of the community. If you make someone jump through hoops in order to ask a question, will that person bother at all?

On Giving an Answer

Why do I answer questions posed on Wondir? What's the point? What's in it for me?

I've thought about this a lot recently - I've had the time to do so, and this is what happens when all you have is time. I answer questions posed on Wondir because: it is something to do - a hobby of sorts; it is a chance for me to participate in something that other people are involved with; it gives me the opportunity to demonstrate my learning; it highlights the gaps in my knowledge and gives me the motivation to fill them; it makes me better at succinctly answering sometimes difficult or open-ended questions; it gives me pause for thought as I frame what I want to say, and make sure that I'm saying the right thing, rather than just jumping straight in, as I am sometimes wont to do.

That's why I do it: so that I learn through answering just as others learn through questioning; I learn about myself.

On Darkness At Night

Fire in the Sky
Originally uploaded by Greco.

Why is it dark at night? This question was posed over at Wondir in the middle of last year, and more recently by myself here. Unfortunately, as you can see, I didn't get the answer I was looking for.

So why does it get dark at night? Is it as simple as the Sun being on the other side of the Earth? No. The real question is: how old is the universe? Is it infinitely old, as some assume? Since the sky is dark at night, it can't be.

The sky is dark at night because the universe has a finite age. It has a finite age because there are a finite number of stars, and the light from these stars is only just reaching us. If the universe was infinite and infinitely old, there would be an infinite number of stars in the sky, and there would have been an infinite amount of time for the light from all of them to reach us; the sky would never go dark. There would always be enough light.

Embarrassingly, this was the first question I've asked of the wondir community, and I forgot to correctly set its category - it now resides in the Beauty and Fashion section, so perhaps I should not have been surprised by the answers I got. It was great to see such a rapid response though - four replies in as many minutes.

On The Education System of Japan

IMG_3896
Originally uploaded by shio.

For six months I lived in Japan, in the city of Nagano, a great sprawling mess of a place in the foothills of the Japanese Alps. I taught English conversation, as one does, and spent many a great lesson talking with my students about things that mattered.

Or rather, I didn't.

Perhaps the most enlightening conversation I had was with a stranger on the streets near my school. I was heading home one night, when this balding slob of a Japanese man lurched my way and started talking. His English was excellent, and I could tell from his gesticulations that he had spent time abroad (I could tell, because none of my students gesticulated, even when that was the focus of the lesson).

I was anxious to get away from him, though I don't know why. I suppose I don't take kindly to unwanted or unasked for companions, and as he leaned over me spitting the words out, I look around for an escape.

He went on and on as though he hadn't spoken English in so long that he was like a drunk who had travelled too long looking for a toilet. He went from one topic to another, with barely a pause for breath; he talked about the fine sporting venues in Nagano, once the host of the Winter Olympics, and he encouraged me to join one of the swimming clubs. "I will, I will," I reassured him, lying with a weak smile.

But then, all of a sudden, he became interesting. "What do you think of Japanese students?" he asked me. Instantly I thought back to my studies of Japanese culture, and responded politely as I thought he expected me to: "They work very hard and are good students." Or something similarly void of sentiment. "They're ignorant!" he said, practically shouting at me. I was taken aback by what he said, and couldn't believe it. The Japanese youth of today - ignorant? It seemed absurd. Look at what modern Japan produces: Sony, Toshiba, Fuji, Kitano Takeshi-san. How could one possibly suggest ignorance in such a society? The man looked at me, and for the first time I looked at him, and there was a silence that was at once uncomfortable and dearly welcome. I took my leave of him, shaking his hand and memorising his features so I could avoid him better in the future.

I've dwelt on that conversation often, and I regret not having paid more attention. I realise what the mistake was that I made: I've always considered "ignorance" and "intelligence" to be polar opposites on the same scale. That isn't true. Whilst it is wonderful to possess a little intelligence, it is possible at the same time to be greatly ignorant. It is a variant of the nature versus nurture debate; one can surely be born intelligent (and this intelligence can be developed with help, so it straddles nature and nurture), but the only cure of ignorance is good education, either delivered by a teacher or a parent or personally through reading and exposure to culture.

The educational system employed by Japan is not one that I would wish on any future children of mine. The Japanese work ethic is formidable, and learnt well at an early age, but despite all the lessons and hours spent at "cram school" Japanese students are not encouraged to think critically. And if you are unable to think critically, then you are not able to evaluate the information being supplied to you, and so if this information is useless or false you remain ignorant.

This practice has gained world attention recently, with the the release of a new set of Japanese textbooks. These books gloss over Japan's war years, making light of such atrocities as the "Rape of Nanjing," and have caused a major diplomatic storm between Japan and its neighbours China and South Korea.

If this is what is being taught in Japanese schools, perhaps it will be a long time before the pervading culture of ignorance comes to an end.

Three interesting asides. One: I had one student in particular who attended these "cram schools," and whenever she came in and apologised for being late (though she never was), because of her trouble with pronunciation, it always sounded like she had come straight from "clown school."

Two: I once tested my students on their general knowledge as part of a lesson: they were each given a map of the world, and a set of pictures of major landmarks, such as the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower. The lesson taught communication skills - they had to tell each other where to place each landmark on the map - but although their English was effectively spot on, their guesses were not. One student even placed The White House in Mongolia, which was quite amusing.

Three: a serious consequence of the early years of schooling in Japan, where students are pushed harder than anywhere else I know (most don't stop studying until ten at night), is that university is seen as a prize awarded on admittance, and once reached no further work must be done to secure it. There are parallels with the English system, but I've seen my brother studying at university, and he works very hard, much harder even than at his A-Levels, and he's going to be a great success. That doesn't appear to be the attitude shared by many in Japan.

On Wondir

Recently Boing Boing reported on the launch of a new service, operating in competition with Google Answers. It's called Wondir, and differs most importantly in that it is a free service, and questions can be answered by anyone.

So how does it compare with Google Answers? The google variant asks for a price upfront: if you want a question answering then you have to pay for it. The beauty of this sweeps both ways: the person answering the question is rewarded for their efforts, and the person asking the question makes for damn sure it can't be answered with a two-second search on Wikipedia.

I haven't spent much time on google's site, but I'm keen to; soon I'll have a lot more free time and I want to put it to some good use. I don't what the vetting process is for becoming a researcher; I get the feeling from the "over 500 carefully screened researchers" statement on the front page that it's fairly stringent. I've signed up with Wondir already, and answered some questions, but a lot of them are phrased so badly as to be wholly unintelligible, and others are a plain waste of time.

However, the good questions are the kind you won't see on google. They're generally more personal, or personable, questions, such as this one on Donnie Darko. Answering this question is a totally different experience to researching a question on a specialist or niche topic. These questions are one of wondir's redeeming features; the other is the tip jar.

Like the answer you've been given? As a way of saying thank you, you can give the respondent a cash tip, or just provide some peer-review feedback, similar to Amazon's reviewer ratings. I doubt anyone is going to get money out of the site (but that may change as it grows) but I like the feeling I get when I see that my peer rating has improved (these are the green stars that show how well received your responses are; the gold ones show how many posts you've made, relative to the peer group in general).

Wondir has a lot of work to do if it wants to seriously compete with the likes of Google Answers. Sure, it's a free service, but to survive it will need to attract a lot of repeat custom. I would suggest that in time the number of inane questions will diminish, since these are posted by people who have been led to the site by some link or other and decided to have a laugh by asking "Does Jeeves like men?" Getting people to come back is enormously difficult (attracting them in the first place is only slightly easier, of course), but by instilling a sense of community it has a good chance, and I don't mind putting the hours in until the site either matures or dies.

Oh, and the name: Wondir. Reminds me of the Oneders from "That Thing You Do." Hardly the finest name...

On Yahoo! Mail Plus

After much deliberation, this week I went ahead and upgraded my Yahoo! email to the premium account. I've used the same email address since practically my first year online, circa 1998. Yahoo! has been good to me - very little in the way of spam gets past the filters I've set up and the ones it automatically generates, and so I didn't feel too bad in investing £11.99 on an annual upgrade.

As the adverts proclaim, that's less than a pound per month, and considering the junk I often buy, money well spent. I now have 2Gb of storage space, no adverts, and an all-round better feel to the application. Already I have spent some time organising my emails properly, sorting them into folders and saving the important ones; I could have done this ages ago but strangely, now that I'm paying for the service and the adverts have gone, I feel more motivated to do so.

It could be that I feel as though I own this email address - it's finally mine, belongs only to me.

However, no subscription is without its disappointments; otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered commenting on Plus. Two things I'm annoyed with. Firstly, the stationery service that comes with the upgraded service only works in IE, and I use Firefox, exclusively. Surely if Blogger can handle inline web applications like this, surely Yahoo! could do so too?

The second problem is with the "free" gift that comes with the subscription: £20 of vouchers for Virgin wine. I don't drink wine, but that's not a problem, it can make for a good gift. What is terribly, terribly disappointing is that the vouchers can only be redeemed when you spend £45 or more! They don't publicise this fact on the advertising! Effectively, I'll never use the vouchers: to me they are worthless, and I would preferred not to have been offered them at all if that was the proviso.

But am I content with my purchase? Overall, yes. I could have continued with the free account, but the adverts were a pain and I was running out of spam filters. I could have changed to a different email supplier; I was kindly given a gmail invitation some time ago. But I have had my Yahoo! email address for so long it's practically etched into my memory, and any attempt to replace it would have proven flawed.

The vouchers are a loss, but I didn't sign up for what they were giving away - I wanted the premium email service, first and foremost. If Yahoo! can fix the problem they seem to be having with non-IE browsers, then I'll be much happier. I've a funny feeling that in the coming months and years, Yahoo! will invest in the premium services they offer (including email - and I expect to see wider integration with the other Yahoo! services), and I will be ready to benefit when they do.

On How Minesweeper is a Metaphor for Women

Minesweeper
Originally uploaded by soylentgreen23.

I've played Minesweeper a lot recently - arguably too much, but now that my scores are as good as I'll ever get them, I'll stop before my boss catches me - and I'm startled to discover just how much it says about how to deal with women.

Bearing in mind this is all just theory, here are some rules:

• If you go too quickly you'll make a silly mistake and have to start again.


• If you go too slowly you'll never score.


• A good start is essential.


• You'll get knocked back more times than you care to remember, but just click the happy face and start again each time.


• Trust your instincts, but be wary of guesswork - your guesses are wrong more times than they are right.


• Nobody's interested in your fastest times, no matter what you think.


• Playing with cold hands is no good at all.


• Often you'll find yourself losing for no good reason. The game can be unfair and totally unjust - exactly like Minesweeper.


• If you start with a bad hand it's better to give up and end on good terms, whilst the face is still smiling.


• Winning once does not mean that you will win again the next time you play.


• The harder levels are more satisfying than the easy level, and last longer. However, you'll get knocked back more often.


• You can get in trouble with little more than a slip of your finger.


• You have to concentrate hard all the time, and the moment you stop concentrating is the moment you lose. Having said that, concentrate too hard and you might take longer than is generally considered acceptable, especially on the easy level.


• People will feel uncomfortable if you sit and stare, with your mouth open and your tongue sticking out (even if it's just because you're concentrating hard).


• When you guess and you're right, or you don't immediately lose, it can feel terrific.


• Minesweeper suggests monogamy - one game at a time is enough for any man. Also, 1 is the best number in Minesweeper; sixes and sevens are uncommon but curiously they're quite exciting so maybe Minesweeper is really suggesting that you become a swinger whilst remaining faithful to your partner.


• Practicing on your own is healthy - but will it make you blind if you do it too much?


• Eventually you will tire of Minesweeper and take up a different hobby. Alternatively, you will start looking for more extreme versions of Minesweeper - be wary of this fetishisation, as it could get creepy.

The right person could quite easily pad this out to thesis level - any takers?