The Hawk-faced Man

Hawk-faced man in old suit

At the bar stands mute.

His thousand-yard stare

Is an unfocussed glare.

What does he see?

To ask I'm not free:

His eye meets no-one.

He wears photo badge,

Why I can't judge.

All night he won't budge;

Only his arm moves,

Up and then down.

Beer is his friend.

Science Park Leicester

Inspired by the new Science Park on Abbey Lane. And perhaps by the withering of engineering in Leicester during my time here.

The Science Park is nowt but weeds,

Mute testament to Leicester's greed;

Hard study isn't our way today,

Sly cunning's how they make it pay.

In charge are crafty businessmen,

Science is quite beyond their ken;

Brown envelope's the fashion way,

Skill's the style of yesterday.

Roads dug up in every place,

No worker does these diggings grace;

For these ever-lasting mounds of dirt,

Trousers were rolled instead of shirt.

Interloper at Richmond

I recently attended a computer seminar in London, concerned with ecommerce, which is my current employer's business. It was located in the HQ of Paypal UK at Richmond-upon-Thames.

      I found Richmond to be similar to a small English country town, but one desperately overdue for a bypass. At 9 am, the traffic was shockingly intense. I followed my map, and found myself entering a narrow, dark alleyway. Just as I was beginning to doubt my directions, it opened out onto the bank of the Thames in brilliant sunlight, and I approached an office building which looked like a Greek temple. It was part of a thin layer of grandiose buildings facing the water, which seemed oddly disconnected from the rest of the town.

      An actual receptionist issued me with a badge after some humming and hawing. The seminar room was huge, with hard seats set auditorium style. There weren't many people there. A man approached me and shook hands. He was tieless, wearing a sport coat and a worn-looking pair of jeans. This struck me as odd. His jeans didn't seem quite like old pairs of jeans that I had owned. They didn't have baggy knees or those ineradicable creases at the groin. I twigged that they were fakes, like the old farm implements on the walls of restaurants. It was clear that styles had changed since my last glancing encounter with the world of big biz, seven years before. He told me his name and company, but not his job title, from which I concluded he was the gaffer. He seemed a remarkably relaxed character.

      A row of display screens along the front wall showed that Windows XP was still in use at Paypal. The screens weren't quite big enough or sharp enough to see them clearly from where I was sitting. I saw some food sitting at the side of the room, and scarfed down a croissant and some rather luxurious yoghurt. Why not? I abandoned an empty water bottle under my chair. Somebody has to help the cleaners cling on to their jobs in a bad economy.

      There were quite a few people standing about, who gave the impression they were with the presentation, rather than being presented to. As people filed in and sat down, it became clear that the two teams had evenly balanced numbers. No-one seemed to be wearing a tie, and quite a few had newish-looking jeans.

      Eventually we were shuffled over to one side of the room, and the show started. It was being hosted by multiple companies. A young lady led off on behalf of Magento, the Internet shopping cart company. She had a big smile and hadn't bothered to iron her blouse. She explained that her nearest colleague was in L.A. and proceeded to read her presentation off a stack of cue cards. It was a lot of ill-considered bizspeak. She told us that Magento would allow us to control and drive the users as they visited our site. She changed cards and said that the users would be liberated and empowered by the software, which would allow them to customise their experience. I stopped listening.

      The next person up was the man who had welcomed me. He turned out to be the sales manager for Crimsonwing, a Magento 'solutions provider'. He frankly told us that the seminar would focus on B2B (business-to-business) using Magento Enterprise Edition. We gaped. There had been no mention of this in the promotional guff for the seminar. I was only interested in the free of charge Community Edition, and in selling to the general public. I realised that I was at the wrong talk. He explained that his company helped people integrate Magento with back-end office systems such as SAP, on a custom basis. His whole talk was a sales pitch for his employer. The text on the display screens was illegible, as the screens were too small. The product was obviously valueless, since if you already have a back-end order-processing system, what do you need a shopping cart application for? At some point he held a show of hands to see who was from a plc. It turned out only the 'tame customer' supplied by Crimsonwing was. I guessed I wasn't the only person attending the wrong seminar.

      He handed over to a bald chap who worked for a company which did website personalisation, using tracking cookies and advanced maths. The kind of guy we are always being warned against, out to destroy privacy. He wanted to help us to destroy privacy, for a fat fee. He had stats to prove he was worth it, he could reduce 'cart abandonment'.

      They finished off with a lady from Paypal telling us about their products. She was obviously bored, and told us all the info was on the web anyway, she was just reading it off the company website.

      In the Q&A session someone asked how much the Magento Enterprise Edition cost. $14,000 p.a.! A great indrawing of breath.

      Then the Crimsonwing guy sent us off for a free lunch. He seemed quite aware that this would be the highlight of the day for many of us. It was quite pleasant, a buffet lunch where I had more of the yummy yoghurt. By strange coincidence, I met someone who knew my boss and had visited our HQ! He explained that Magento had recently abolished the Professional Edition which his company had been using, which had been more moderately priced. It seemed clear that this had left them in a quandary.

      I got outside, into a blinding glare. I had forgotten to bring sunglasses. I was determined to make something of the day, so I tried to do a bit of sightseeing, though I was struggling to see. I noticed that the people streaming past often wore these mysterious creaseless jeans, which looked as though they had been carefully pressed. My boss later told me that these would be 'designer jeans', and they cost more than a suit.

      The Thamesside scene was a curious mix of very expensive and elite with very ordinary. The boats and those aboard were obviously on a budget. The bank itself was wild with weeds, including saplings which threatened to eventually cause collapse. The offices and restaurants were quite grand. Luxury and dilapidation were oddly intermingled.
     Though the seminar was a washout from the practical point of view, the whole day was quite fascinating, a window into a different world.

Winos in Command!

On my way home tonight, I encountered a road accident. Ambulances were at the scene, where an elderly pedestrian had been knocked over on London Road. There was a big dent in the windscreen of the car involved. The old man was lying in the road surrounded by paramedics. Meanwhile, his fellow winos were directing the traffic, getting the vehicles to take turns using the other side of the road. Police were nowhere to be seen. Quite some time had elapsed since the accident. I had had time to eat a chicken pie in the fish and chip shop. No coppers at all.
     Is this the PM's Big Society in action?

Drunkards of the Dosshouse

On and on they curse,

Foul spiralling rage,

Shrieking 'shut the fuck up!'

'No you shut the fuck up!'

Too slow to tire,

They scream and swear for hours,

Fuelled by demon energy.

Wild fury beyond limit,

Almost tearing their throats;

Desperate to outshout.

A bare hour since they pledged love,

Sharing with the whole street;

No volume control,

Intrusively intimate.

Now flows surging hate,

A foaming malice.

The neighbours wince

And cover young ears.

Is there no end?

Strained prayers ascend,

Yet comes no relief.

Ernest Laing and the meaning of things.

The only one of my lecturers at University who made any lasting impression was Dr Ernest Laing,a Highlander. There were a few Highlanders in the Glasgow University Dept of Natural Philosophy, mostly cold people. I didn't particularly warm to Laing, but I learnt from him, which is unusual at Uni.

     I first encountered him in person at the Staff-Student Committee. For some daft reason, I had volunteered to be First Year Rep. God knows why. I can recall only one meeting of this toothless committee. I tried to persuade the committee of some minor point, details long forgotten. Laing disagreed. I tried again, making the point a different way. Laing reiterated his counter-argument, using exactly the same words. I foolishly continued. Laing continued to repeat his refutation, calmly, logically, using exactly the same words. No matter what I said, he replied in exactly the same words over and over, like the speaking clock, until I fell silent. I have never forgotten this moment of humiliation, or his display of iron will.

     The second occasion he made an impression was at the Demonstrations Day. This was a light-hearted occasion, at which the staff and research students tried to entertain us with physics and a bit of jiggery-pokery. The research students seemed to have a thinly-veiled agenda of taking the mickey out of the staff. They had erected a huge pendulum, which is known as a Foucault pendulum after the French scientist who invented it to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. (Google is your friend). The students played a trick on the assembled profs. They asked them if they really believed in the Laws of Physics. Some poor sap said he did, and was ushered up front. The pendulum was drawn back a long way from the vertical, and the prof was stood with his nose against it. The pendulum was released. Now the laws of physics say that the pendulum can never rise quite so high again, it must progressively lose energy and amplitude of swing due to the effect of friction. So we all knew it could not touch the prof. Nevertheless, when he saw it hurtling toward his face, he leapt out of the way. How we laughed! The smart-arse graduate student then challenged the other staff members to prove they really believed in the Laws of Physics. Perhaps he didn't really want a Ph.D.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. Then Ernie stepped up. We knew he was a hard man, but I admit to being awed. He took his place. Once the pendulum was in motion, he closed his eyes! Crafty old Ernie! He stood his ground with ease. Foolishly the student accused him of cheating. He couldn't stand being robbed of his prey. Ernie calmly explained that there was no need to keep his eyes open to demonstrate that he believed in the Law of Conservation of Energy, he merely had to stand there.

     The third occasion when Ernie impressed me was at a peculiar seminar which he organised. It was given by an odd man in scruffy clothes, who produced a strange telescope of his own devising, which he said allowed him to see creatures moving about on Mars. It was of modest size, and had far too many lenses in it, of very dubious quality. It was obviously a piece of junk. The calm way in which this eccentric fellow explained his mad 'scientific discoveries' made an eerie impression on me. He seemed completely out of touch with reality, yet he did not gibber or rave, but coolly explained his ideas just like other visiting scientists had done at the weekly seminars. We waited for Ernie to explain to this man what a nutter he was. He simply said that he had no way to refute this man's ideas, but that he didn't think his research had enough in common with the work of the department for a meaningful exchange of views to take place, and wished him the best of luck. He obviously had a soft spot for the guy, who was in his own way quite heroic. It was a powerful lesson on the true meaning of science.

On the Nature of Science, and the Beginning of Things.

I have been reading with interest Stephen Hawking's book, 'A Brief History of Time'. I was surprised to see it was first published in 1988. It seems like only yesterday when everyone was reading it, except me. Now I have caught up, it seems oddly relevant.

     Is this because not much has happened since in the world of high-energy physics? He seems to think that a great breakthrough might be imminent, starring string theory. It hasn't happened, and doubters are growing. Some of Hawking's remarks suggest an ambivalence, as though he was never convinced.

    A pattern had been established in the quantum theory, where a new piece of exotic maths was developed, and immediately was the key to a great breakthrough in theoretical physics. Some may have wrongly concluded that this was an inevitability, and so string theory would unlock doors just like complex numbers and matrix algebra had done. It hasn't happened. And why should it? You have to be using the right piece of maths.

     Tragically, public understanding of science seems to be in decline, largely as a result of the mischievous efforts of a few noisy persons. The quantum theory, particularly the Uncertainty Principle, gave rise to a new, more accurate and more humble understanding of what science was. You can't measure anything about a fundamental particle without bashing it with another one, affecting its properties. The realisation that measurement was meaningless in the abstract, that it was impossible to separate the observer from the observed, made people think more clearly about what science was all about.

     Hawking neatly summarises the new understanding in the first chapter: “..a scientific theory...is just a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality...it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.”

     This gives a realistic and rather humble view of what science is. Yet later on he also states: “..our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

     Isn't there a tension between these two statements? The first one reflects a widely-held understanding (originally due to Karl Popper) of what we really do when we do science. The second may be more peculiar to cosmologists.

     What Hawking doesn't discuss, is what one may call the Hamlet Effect: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Yet this impacts what actually happens in science as much as in other walks of life, and deeply undermines the objective view expressed in my first quotation from Prof Hawking. People don't want approximate models of restricted applicability, they want to understand the fundamental workings of the universe, and the conflict between this desire and the true understanding runs throughout the book. The history of physics is replete with instances of people declaring it a finished subject, even before the atomic nucleus had been discovered! Why are they obsessed with announcing that they know everything? Ask Hamlet.

     The general public is rarely treated to a realistic view of science, rather it is presented in an absolutist fashion, with disputes and differences of emphasis suppressed. Hawking makes many references to the role of God in the text of his book, often of a tentative nature, but saying things like “this leaves little for God to do”. Yet were he to stick strictly to his definition of science, he should rather have remained silent on the subject of God altogether. How can you “make definite predictions about the results of future observations” concerning the creator of the whole universe? An entity which necessarily would have some kind of existence outside of space and time themselves? If God exists, his properties as a totality are inconceivable to the human mind, almost by definition. In order to critique a concept as a scientific theory, it needs to be well-defined, or else it lacks the qualities of a scientific theory, and hence falls outwith the ambit of science. It is the tragic vanity of some scientists that they do not want to see this, almost seeming unable to grasp the idea that many ideas are simply not a science, and that does not mean they are wrong or inferior. It is impossible to incorporate an idea into science unless it can be subjected to systematic and precise observation. Sneering at other people's unscientific notions is not a part of science, rather it is a manifestation of the Hamlet Effect. Science consists of constructing models and comparing the results of observations with them, and that is all. There is neither necessity nor possibility to incorporate everything into a scientific model.

     Hawking mentioned that a scientific model exists only in our minds. Psychology is beginning to grasp that the human mind has certain in-built patterns of thought, in much the same way that a computer operating system has a limited library of system calls, and all programs runnable on that computer are some combination of this vocabulary. Other analogous situations include the fact that all DNA is some combination of chains of four amino-acids; all written words are a combination of a limited alphabet. What if the true nature of reality cannot be adequately modelled by the limited set of routines available to the human mind? Science would perforce remain incomplete. Why should an evolutionary process comprised of chasing animals about and throwing things at them give rise to a mental process capable of understanding the fundamental laws of nature? If we can do so, isn't that a bit of a miracle?

     Will cosmologists ever really succeed in writing an accurate history of time? I am sceptical. I suspect there are fundamental limitations on what can be detected from within the Solar System. Recent improvements in space technology have revealed how tentative and fluid our knowledge is. The public has been bombarded with enthusiastic propaganda about 'dark matter', a new form of matter postulated by astronomers which gives off no detectable radiation, and does not interact with ordinary matter. A recent space-based telescope of unprecedented sensitivity revealed that huge numbers of dim stars exist that had previously not been suspected. A significant proportion of the “dark matter” was instantaneously transformed into “dim matter”. I won't be surprised if much of the rest of it progressively goes the same way. Yet surely there can be ordinary matter too dim for even the most sensitive detector? Astronomers estimates of this are based on the vaguest of theories.

     Similarly, as the Voyager space probe has reached the edge of the Solar System, it has produced surprises about the nature of the stuff that lies between the stars.

     Isn't there a degree of vanity, never mind over-optimism, in trying to take an inventory of the entire cosmos? Yet without this, cosmology is impractical. Observations of such things as the cosmic background microwave radiation will always be subjected to multi-layered theoretical interpretation. The link between theory and the directly observable is unusually tenuous in cosmology, especially as it is historical rather than contemporary in character. Its deep problems and tentative nature are rarely mentioned in popular accounts which claim that science has somehow done away with God.

     An analogy popular with physicists considers the case of a race of hyper-intelligent ants trapped on the inside of a football. Their science may well conclude that the cosmos is curved, finite and has existed only for a limited time. They may consider the possibility of something outside of it, but will have no way of imagining what it might be, never mind detecting it. Unless someone starts kicking the ball.