Achilles – Page 9 – Achilles & Aristotle

spEak You’re bRanes

I retweeted someone’s prescription for modern times a few months ago:

‘Dance like the photo isn’t being tagged, love like you’ve never been unfriended and tweet like nobody is following.’

My basic social media motto is write what’s right for me and worry not (too much) about the reception. It’s my own form of spEak You’re bRanes, the website dedicated to bizarre ranting.

And on the topic of ranting, I got my first ever proper negative comment last week. Someone wrote “What a load of old B……….s!!!” under one of my posts.

When I read it, I laughed – it was funny. Looked at through a more sceptical eye, my blog was indeed a bit earnest. But it made me think…

There is something about Twitter and blogs which – absent a real person – can make us feel like ranting. It’s a bit like shouting at the telly. But as recent lawsuits in the UK have shown, tweeting what you wouldn’t dare shout at the person in real life, can now cost you big.

A healthy disregard for insults is perhaps the carrying cost of a ‘social’ life. I’m still working on being less thin-skinned. A life’s work I suspect. Good old Montaigne to the rescue, with a motto from 400 odd years ago. And not a bad one for for the modern day:

‘I write my book for few men and for few years.’

Before taking myself and any rude comments too seriously, it’s worth remembering – as Montaigne suggests – that almost all of what’s written will soon mulch into the digital biosphere. Maybe digital rantings – like writings – find the audience they deserve.

Achilles, Life, Work

Ground Control to Major Tom

This week’s song is Bowie’s Space Oddity. Having had to take to the airwaves – and take on the national news media – at times I’ve felt a bit like Major Tom.

Small stuff really – Monocle 24 a boutique radio station, a few letters to the papers and the Huffington Post an Internet newspaper. But high enough stakes for me.

On Wednesday, as I sat staring through the glass into a radio studio control room, there was a pang of what Bowie sang. “Here am I sitting in my tin can, far above the world. Planet Earth is blue. And there’s nothing I can do.”

Earlier, ‘Ground Control’ had contacted Major Tom. “You’ve [nearly] made the grade”, I learned on the back of my rapid letter and blog writing endeavours. Then Ground Control moved swiftly on to another far bigger beast: “the papers want[ing] to know whose shirts [he] wears”.

But the weirdest experience for me, was taking part in a four way radio debate. To my surprise it was fun. I enjoyed it and I came out feeling less tired than when I went in – the opposite of what I’d assumed.

I’d certainly found myself “floating in a most peculiar way.” But as for Major Tom, “the stars look very different today”. A thing I have often feared, turns out to be fine – even fun.

Perhaps – like Major Tom my “spaceship knows which way to go” better than I do. Could this be lift-off for a bit more self-confidence in ‘fronting-up’ on the media? I might even enjoy it.

Only time will tell.

Achilles, Children, Life, Music, Odysseus

Lights Down

Months back – having discovered ‘relevant complexity’ in Saint Saëns Organ Symphony no 3 – I booked two tickets for the Royal Albert Hall.

After a long old week, neither me or the missus fancied it much. I tried to offload the tickets to my folks – nothing doing. So I asked my daughter if she wanted to go? ‘Why yes’ she said brightly.

Pace 6pm. And smartly dressed, armed with a bag of sweets, we set off. After a nice vanilla ice, we took our seats and had a good look at the splendid scene. Huge dome, red plush, gold fittings – and the enormous great organ which massively towers at one end of the Royal Albert Hall.

We reckoned that organ was about the size of our house; the illuminated organ ‘loft’ about the size of her bedroom. But a good deal tidier I pointed out to her; and a good job too or the organist would never find his music. She was not amused.

Then lights down, orchestra in, conductor up and away we went. Berlioz to get the players warmed up, then onto Saint Saëns. But my little one was nodding. A pale face, tired eyes, fiddling with her little shoulder purse – she was knackered.

A whisper: ‘How long to the organ?’ 12 minutes I said. A minute later ‘how long to the organ Dad?’ Five minutes I lied. Five minutes later: ‘how long to the organ?’ Two minutes I gestured silently.

And her eyes gently closed and she was asleep. Moments later BAHHHM! And the roof of the Albert Hall nearly blew off. Her eyes snapped open. ‘That’s the organ’ I said.

She stared wide eyed. And then the lead in her eyelids weighed them down again. And silently she slept through one of the loudest crescendos – on one of the largest organs in the world. Just a twitch of her brow at the final booming finale which made your tripes vibrate.

Proud of her. She did great. A memorable night out and a good chuckle. We were both shattered. But sometimes you have to dig deep to get the best from life. A night out with my big brave girl was a performance I’ll remember forever.

Achilles, Life, Psychology, Science

Crystal Ball

What if the purpose of memory is not to remember things?

We generally judge our memory on accuracy and completeness – and we are generally disappointed. Memory is jumbled, retouched and unreliable as a definitive record of the past. But a recent New Scientist suggests perhaps that’s because remembering is not what it’s for.

Thinking in evolutionary terms, what use is a perfect record of your entire past on the Serengeti plains? Not much. There would have been precious little time for introspection with four-legged food to chase and four-legged death to avoid. Not to mention increasingly cunning two-legged competition alongside.

Memory must have conferred a survival advantage – so it seems reasonable to think it developed from what other mammals probably have: recall of close shaves, sources of food and – if elephants are anything to go by – key life events: births, deaths and marriages.

And this is why dates get jumbled, memories get intertwined and autobiographical narratives develop in our heads – to guide us on what to do next, not produce a perfect historical record. Memory exists to better predict and guide our future.

Memory tells us who to trust, how to act and what might happen. Yes it’s flawed by inductive logic. Past performance is stricto sensu no guide to the future. But we remember what we need to remember – what’s useful for our future.

This difference in purpose is the big difference between computer memory and ours. Ours is constantly shuffled, refined and selected for its Bayesian predictive power, not its precision.

No wonder it’s sometimes cloudy; human memory isn’t a time capsule, it’s our crystal ball.

Achilles, Children, Life, Science

Plus ça change

An article in the New Scientist suggests that the pace of human innovation may appear rapid for short periods, but over the longer term is generally quite slow. Why? Simple, we keep on forgetting things.

Apparently technological innovations are as prone to extinction as woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers. More innovations and technical advances have been lost than kept through history – forcing the proverbial wheel to be re-invented many times.

Scattered populations, expertise confined to a few and lost records mean great ideas go missing. Indeed science has yet to find a way of ensuring everything we know today isn’t lost, when today’s digital memories and readers become obsolete.

There is evidence though, that the pace of discovery and innovation has indeed increased in recent centuries – due to words, books and libraries. Ideas are saved more easily thanks to greater population density and stronger networks for knowledge transfer – the Internet just being the latest and greatest.

But in recent decades it seems that some forms of innovation might actually be slowing down. How could that be?

One reason is young people have to spend so much time learning what has already been discovered, they have no time to think of anything new. Most schoolchildren will never get beyond 19th century physics and chemistry, as that’s what they’ll be tested on. But maybe a grounding in the ‘Great experiments’ isn’t such a bad idea. It’s certainly fun.

On a strangely reassuring trip down memory lane this morning, we went to look at a school for my son. A charming older boy showed us round a large campus with a nice well used, ‘lived in’ feel.

And memories of my own school days were reignited by the whiff of a Bunsen burner and two boys messing about in goggles with a tripod, gauze and beaker, setting fire to things in the chemistry lab.

Happy days. I remember Russell Cross’s wooden pencil case being surreptitiously filled with sulphuric acid and his pens and pencils dissolving nicely before he and the teacher could save them.

Then the occasion that entire back lab bench managed to change into their P.E. kit and retake their places – apparently attentive for a good five minutes – before being rumbled.

Finally the bungled experiment where nitric acid went in the beaker instead of hydrochloric, generating thick brown vapours and an evacuation – to general delight – as the potion was stuffed in the fume cupboard to boil off poisonously.

Each generation needs its turn at dissecting bull’s eyes, making hair stand on end with the van de Graaf generator and of course setting fire to things with Bunsen burners.

There may not be much scientific innovation but messing about in the lab is an important rite of childhood passage. In this safety conscious age many schools don’t let kids get ‘hands on’ with the old science favourites. I liked today’s school all the more for still letting them.