tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4130795219477424902024-03-13T06:11:38.132+01:00Concert notesStuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-54239277198126601352014-11-20T17:57:00.001+01:002014-11-20T17:57:20.984+01:00MELIORA LATENT: Dios escondido<a href="http://melioralatent.blogspot.de/2014/11/dios-escondido.html?m=1#comment-form">MELIORA LATENT: Dios escondido</a>Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-48204999303208653222014-01-16T08:50:00.000+01:002014-01-17T14:31:58.836+01:00LifesaverMy efforts over recent years to improve my French have now paid dividends on the street, or rather the platform. <br />
<br />
The scene: in the very early morning I am waiting for a train on a platform of the Cologne train station, smoking a cigarette, walking meditatively around in the smoking area and near it. At one point I was at the edge of the platform next to the rails, which are a few feet below the platform.<br />
<br />
Suddenly a young woman seated a few feet away in the middle of the platform jumps up, runs at and kicks out at me as if to knock me down on the rails, and says something in French. I didn't understand exactly what she said, but aggressive as I am (especially when surprised), I reacted accordingly and she backed away. <br />
<br />
Because she spoke in French, I figured quickly that I should reply in French. The first sentences that rushed out of me: <i>Tu es folle ? Qu'est-ce que tu veux de moi ?</i>. She answered (in translation, I can't remember the exact words): "You're walking up and down in front of me". I replied, thinking very fast ("Can you say <i>conne</i> ?"): <i>Qu'est-ce que ca te regarde ? Sale conne, je te casse le nez ?</i><br />
<br />
She was subdued now and shut up, so I moved away. A bit later she got up and vanished down the platform. I got to thinking: she may have been annoyed at my smoking just outside the smoking area. There was no smoke in her direction (I checked), so she was just playing citizen policeman. But what a way to do it ! My physical reaction was justified, but what a way for me to react verbally ! Where did all those disobliging phrases come from ??<br />
<br />
Very satisfactory, all things told (marie-lucie will be scandalized, but that's only because she's a nice lady). My linguistic skills are moving into line with my moods. It's good that I watch French TV and read not only Sartre, but also less edifying authors. It's a lifesaver. Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-33061989907207059542013-12-30T08:04:00.001+01:002014-01-18T09:34:49.778+01:00Changing your mindTo learn is to change your mind.<br />
<br />
This is a paraphrase of a remark by Luhmann. It may seem paradoxical to those who think of learning as the accumulation of knowledge. On this line of thinking, each new piece of knowledge lines up more or less neatly next to the old pieces, as in a well-organized warehouse. Flashes of insight merely illuminate the goods from different angles. Learning in this sense requires no ability to take stock. <br />
<br />
But learning can be looked at in another, additional way. By the definition of "new", when you run into something new it can't be an extension of what you already knew. To incorporate it into what you already know, you must change your mind about its being new, or change your mind about what you thought you knew. Learning in this sense requires an ability to take stock and reevaluate. <br />
<br />
If these considerations are new to you, you may have learned something - depending on how you look at it. Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-39055604891049779572013-12-17T19:07:00.004+01:002013-12-17T19:07:25.721+01:00Short storyOnce upon a time they lived happily ever after.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-16269353597438686902013-05-12T09:12:00.000+02:002015-09-09T03:58:50.851+02:00A folly of praiseIn a section called <a href="http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/advice-on-gifted-education/">"Advice on gifted education"</a> at the website of the mathematician <a href="http://terrytao.wordpress.com/about/">Terry Tao</a>, there is a link to a well-written, convincingly documented 2007 article <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/">"How not to talk to your kids"</a> in the New York magazine. It shows that praising children for their intelligence, instead of for the efforts they make, tends to make them lazy and supercilious - at best.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort.
Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you
can’t cut it on your natural gifts</i>. </blockquote>
As it happens, I had left America around the time that force-feeding of self-esteem came into fashion in education there:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in
which Nathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single most
important facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever he can
to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad
societal effects. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was
axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting
goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red
pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved,
praise.</i></blockquote>
The psychologist Carol Dweck was one of the first to shake up this complacent fawning:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they
are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey
conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think
it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the
New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the
number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually.
The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring
that children do not sell their talents short.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But a growing body of research—and a new study from the
trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might
be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not
prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team
at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on
students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of
experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York
fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of
the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of
puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well.
Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his
score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into
groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.” </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Why just a single line of praise? “We wanted to see how
sensitive children were,” Dweck explained. “We had a hunch that one line
might be enough to see an effect.”</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Then the students were given a choice of test for the second
round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the
first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from
attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an
easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90
percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out. </i></blockquote>
<br />Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-9738330493325163232013-04-20T13:21:00.003+02:002013-04-21T07:29:49.929+02:00Party of oneFor several years now tv commentators and bloggers have been using the expression "I celebrate" in an unusual way: "Tonight I celebrate the new book by Professor Suzy Q on the fight against FGM". All who use the word in this way, so far as I have heard it, are women who hold no ecclesiastic position. That may or may not be relevant to understanding the career of the locution.<br />
<br />
The speakers are not having fun, at least not so's you notice. They are merely stating that they are doing something in the decorous, responsible way suggested by the simple present "I celebrate X", rather than the progressive form "I am celebrating X [, whoopee !]"<br />
<br />
"Celebrate" has been a word for what you do at a party, or at high mass. Is "I celebrate" now like "I promise", a speech act in which the saying is already the doing ? Has someone celebrated who says "I celebrate", even though they are holding neither a drink nor a monstrance ?<br />
<br />
It's a kind of stateliness scam, I think, more to do with priests than pretzels: "Tonight I will be treating an important topic with all due ritual". It is cheaper than the real thing, since you don't have to buy cases of vino, and you don't actually have to invite anyone nor even sweep out the pews. So whatever you've already got, you have it all for yourself.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-3046371327496227912013-03-23T20:25:00.000+01:002013-04-20T13:29:35.322+02:00Let's be fairIn <i>Selbstversuch</i>, Sloterdijk mentions the European religious wars of 400 years ago: "In the 16th and 17th centuries, all of Europe was a battlefield for confessional armies. In psychoanalytical terms: hysterics and obsessional neurotics, armed to the teeth, were beating each other over the head in an attempt to force their symptoms on their opponents." Somewhere Luhmann wonders why philosophers of ethics do not conclude that one cannot, in good conscience, allow all questions to be decided by a bad conscience - nor by a good conscience. He says that they never address these matters. Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-48415854177243429032013-02-16T09:59:00.002+01:002013-02-17T05:56:57.848+01:00I before me, except after pSelf-referentiality is often confused with egotism. But egotism is self-preferentiality. Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-26662458273483034702012-01-13T06:32:00.001+01:002013-02-16T13:18:25.826+01:00Chili powder or a history of Europe ?I'm in the doghouse with the in-laws of a friend of mine, Ralf, because of their dope-crazed dog. Being pumped full of cortisone for an incurable skin disease, it rushes around like a mad thing, panting so fast you'd think it's about to hyperventilate, jumping up on things and down again, and generally making a nuisance of itself. <br />
<br />
The in-laws brought it along to a barbecue dinner at Ralf's house. I was eating at a low table, fending off the dog who wanted to share the grilled goodies on my plate. I kept pushing it away with my foot, and several times asked the in-laws to restrain it. They refused because "it would make him unhappy". So I finally kicked the dog (not hard) away from my table. He got the message, but the in-laws didn't.<br />
<br />
I recently gave Ralf a bag of chipotle powder (dried smoked jalapeños) to pass on as a gesture of appeasement to his stepfather-in-law, who comes from Rumania and appreciates chilis. The bag was from a precious consignment of Mexican chili powders that my sister sends me occasionally from Texas. She asked me yesterday by email what I needed, so I specified chipotle powder, telling her the dog story in explanation of my low stocks.<br />
<br />
This was her reply:<blockquote><i>What??!! Kicking dogs away from the table is a great tradition of millenia. The Romans, the Angles, the Saxons--I would venture to say all civilizations (and certainly man in pre-history)--have wisely participated. One can't pass on one's genes if one dies of starvation because the fucking dogs are getting all the best food. Better give the family a history of Europe than a bag of chili powder. It might do more good.</i></blockquote>Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-28656263652964006632011-12-26T01:28:00.007+01:002012-01-01T14:16:15.214+01:00Visualization in philosophyWhile spring-cleaning my archive of weblinks, I rediscovered Walter Whiteley on <a href="http://www.math.yorku.ca/%7Ewhiteley/Visualization.pdf">Visualization in Mathematics: Claims and Questions towards a Research Program</a>. I'm merely going to quote a few passages from that paper, on the principle that a link to the wise does not sate, but only stimulates the appetite.<br />
<br />
There is a connection here with my readings of Luhmann, Nassehi and other German sociologists/philosophers of the "radical constructivist" type. I find that their ideas are easy to understand when understood as schematic, visualizable scripts. But more on that mysterious remark in later posts. Whiteley's suggestions are straightforward enough:<br />
<blockquote><i><b>Context</b>:<br />
I am a research mathematician, working in discrete applied geometry. My own practice of mathematics is deeply visual: the problems I pose; the methods I use; the ways I find solutions; the way I communicate my results. The visual is central to mathematics as I experience it. It is not central to mathematics as many teachers present it nor as students witness it. This contrast is striking.<br />
<br />
I also work with future and in-service teachers of mathematics: elementary, secondary and post-secondary. They are surprised to learn that modern abstract and applied mathematics can be intensely visual, combining a very high level of reasoning with a solid grounding in the senses. They wonder how good visual work in elementary school connects to their own experiences with algebraic and formula centric (but visually meager) presentations of mathematics in courses. They wonder how any of these approaches connect to students’ future work that might use mathematics. They suspect that visual and hands-on work is not the ‘real math’ but is a crutch or bridge to be left behind as one matures. They are surprised at distinct and varied forms of visual reasoning within mathematics. They are surprised that what their students see is not what they see. We cannot just show a visual and say ‘behold’. Learning to effectively use visuals takes as much teaching and time as algebraic and symbolic reasoning [7,31]. The challenge is that visual representation and thinking skills can be as important to students’ futures as the symbolic and language based reasoning.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i><b>...</b></i></blockquote><blockquote><i><b>Claim 5</b>:<br />
We create what we see. Visual reasoning or ‘seeing to think’ is learned. It can also be taught and it is important to teach it.<br />
<br />
<b>Comments</b>:<br />
As cognitive science reports, we learn to see [13,21,23,24,26]. We learn what to notice and what to ignore, and how to interpret ambiguous cues. We work with images in the brain, as wholes and as parts, with symmetry, and with transformations at many levels [15]. In mathematics, what the expert sees and does with an image is not what the novice sees, even with the same diagrams. What the teacher sees is not what the students see. What one student sees is not what their neighbor sees. All of these differences impact our classroom work with diagrams and visuals. Since we create what we see, we can change what we see. Consciousness of alternative ways to see, and of the value of seeing differently, is one step. It takes ongoing guidance (cognitive apprenticeship), practice and evolving imaging (and imagination) to ‘learn to see like a mathematician’[7,31]. A well-known book on learning to draw says: “I will change how you see and the rest will be easy” [9]. Something analogous can be true for the learning of mathematics.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i><b>...</b></i></blockquote><blockquote><i><b>Claim 6</b>:<br />
Visual and diagrammatic reasoning is cognitively distinct from verbal reasoning.<br />
<br />
<b>Comments</b>: <br />
Brain imaging, neuroscience, and anecdotal evidence confirm this distinction, in the brain and in functional problem solving. Imaging suggests connections of mathematical reasoning with brain areas for eye-hand coordination, and an association of visual and kinesthetic reasoning. For example, we do proportional reasoning in this area of the brain, appearing to use a logarithmic number line associated with eye-hand coordination [1,5,16,17]. Studies of the brain during problem solving show distinct paths and forms for visual reasoning and verbal reasoning. Symbolic reasoning appears to be a distinct amalgam of these, with parallel paths dependent on parallel representations. To quote C.S. Pierce: "Diagrammatic reasoning is the only really fertile reasoning."</i></blockquote>Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-89792211760553104212011-12-23T09:27:00.014+01:002011-12-26T10:47:38.005+01:00Peek-a-boo<a href="http://mauricianismes.wordpress.com/">Sig on Mars</a> reports that certain passages quoted from a NY Times book review discussed in my <a href="http://concertnotes.blogspot.com/2011/11/boredom-and-charity.html">last post</a> here have been deleted from the newspaper's site.<br />
<br />
I have on various occasions noticed that happening at newspaper sites, not just that of the NY Times. In the present case, I assume it was because a number of people wrote to the editors complaining that the passages made them "uncomfortable". So these were removed, allowing everyone to settle down in their couches and pull the blanket back up over their knees. <br />
<br />
Intelligent life-forms are always torn between comfort and curiosity - it's part of the definition. Techniques have been found to meet these conflicting demands, but they are not equally fine-tunable. Since text as a medium is technically more primitive than film, it is not easy to prick a text into a teasing shape, concealing offensive passages in a way that still allows a prurient glimpse. You pretty much have to castrate it.<br />
<br />
Of course the old practice of replacing letters by "*" is still available. However, due to the deterioration of reading skills in many of the formerly industrialized countries of the West, America in particular, to use "*" would make it difficult for readers to get that prurient glimpse. To reconstruct an outrageous original text from asterisks, you must know how to spell.<br />
<br />
The film medium is more flexible - software can blur parts of the image, or overlay them with rectangular black areas just that little bit too small. The basic approach is that of the pastie, that 100% American juridical invention: it is legal to show female breasts in all their gory, on condition that form-fitting, light-reflecting pieces of paper have been pasted over the nipples. <br />
<br />
The same peek-a-boo techniques are used in films, for body parts as well as for advertising. In a sequel of the American TV series "Jackass", which is currently being re-run here in Germany on one of the prole channels, I noticed that even naked male butts are overlaid with see-through blur boxes. So now buttilation is on the Index, in addition to titillation.<br />
<br />
In MTV reports on famous whatevers, advertising slogans on the t-shirts worn by the whatevers are so blurred that you can't guess what is being flogged. I assume MTV would restore the focus if they could get the advertising revenue. Unfortunately there is no money to be made flogging male butts on TV, so you never get to see much. Male nipples may be shown without any restrictions, because the monitors of morals apparently do not know the naughty things that can be done with them.<br />
<br />
Today's lesson was: cringe-making puns are more injurious to comfort than is curiosity.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-84537145029433238772011-11-06T09:04:00.007+01:002012-04-04T18:17:09.778+02:00Boredom, spuds and charityIn this post I will be discussing cats, concepts, Mr. Potato Head and "being difficult".<br />
<br />
In an email discussion recently, the possible merits of a new book by Stephen Pinker were being weighed on the basis of a review entitled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html?_r=1&ref=books&pagewanted=all">"Is Violence History ?"</a>. In discussing the book the reviewer, Peter Singer, employs notions such as reason, ethics, justice, repression, mind, morality, cognitive and emotional faculties, hunter-gatherers and so on. He comes to the conclusion that Pinker's book is "supremely important". I have quoted some passages at the end of this post. <br />
<br />
My reaction to this review was very different from that of the other participants in the discussion. So different, in fact, that I thought I had better not say it straight out, but only remarked: "This is kaleidoscope thinking: round and round go the same old notions, flashing and rattling. Morality, reason, violence ... I got tired of reading such stuff decades ago." Having thought over all this later, including my decision to hold back, I identified boredom and charity as essential components.<br />
<br />
1. Boredom<br />
<br />
It was around the age of 15 or so that I first encountered books and articles about reason, ethics and so on. I was particularly taken by Gilbert Ryle's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Concept-Mind-Gilbert-Ryle/dp/1436716233/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320565801&sr=1-1">The Concept of Mind</a>. This led me to the British analytic school of moral philosophy and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._M._Hare">R.M. Hare</a>, all of whose books I read that I could get my hands on in Texas (I see in the Wipe article that the reviewer, Peter Singer, studied under Hare). For a long time I read with particular interest the TLS reviews of books of philosophy. <br />
<br />
Over the last forty years, however, I have lived in Germany, reading Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Plessner, Gadamer, Sloterdijk, Deleuze, Rheinberger, Rorty, Atlan, Morin, Bachelard ... As a result I seem to have lost my ability to make much sense of those TLS reviews (even the fretfully humorous ones by Fodor !) or the Singer review. This is where the trouble starts with my American and British acquaintances - where I find myself being charged with being difficult, cynical, insecure ...<br />
<br />
The image that sprang immediately to mind when I read the Singer review was Mr. Potato Head. The words "reason", "ethics" etc. seemed to be bits of plastic being rearranged yet again to produce a striking result. Now whether or not an Anglophone person has read any of the German and French writers I mentioned above, surely - I feel - he/she must have tired of all those inconclusive but insistent Anglophone discussions over the years: reason is a component of morality (or not), violence is natured (or nurtured), mind is a neural epiphenomenon (or not), justice is positive (or natural), cognition and emotion are separate (or bound together in our hunter-gatherer natures) ...<br />
<br />
The fact that I find all this worthless - does it imply cynicism, a belief that "there is no such thing as reason and justice" ? It does not. It implies that I believe (at the very least) that the <b>words</b>, the conceptual cut-lines, are worthless. Exercise: try to formulate what you want to say without using the words "reason", "justice" and the rest of 'em. Do you find it difficult to break that habit ? It is rather reminiscent of addiction, isn't it ? And that potato - is it not "the neutral subject" surveying the world of ideas without a clue as to how it constructs that world, and is constructed by it ?<br />
<br />
I am not trying to create the impression that I know-it-all and that these are easy-peasy issues - far from it. What I am trying to do is bring attention to how difficult they are. Glibly, skillfully shuffling traditional words around won't hack it. Boredom, though, is the mother of invention, a state of mind conducive to finding different approaches.<br />
<br />
2. Charity<br />
<br />
Dogs easily learn to look in the direction a person points with his index finger. Cats never learn this, but always look at the finger. I myself will look in the direction pointed when there's something there worth looking at. Otherwise I tend to stare at the finger, trying to figure out the point of pointing at such a pointless thing.<br />
<br />
At first glance, it seems that I am being rather uncharitable, to put it mildly, to dismiss a serious discussion of Singer's/Pinker's ideas as a game of Mr. Potato Head. I'm sure the participants would not thank me for suggesting in this way that they are wasting their time. But do I find it uncharitable to be dismissed as "cynical" ? No, I find it frustrating, since my interventions are equally serious.<br />
<br />
Maybe the problem is the analogy with Mr. Potato Head. This image may seem offensive, but I found it apposite and funny. And this is, I think, the core of the problem: I tend to be serious and make jokes at the same time. Many people interpret that as cynical frivolity, whereas I expect it to be taken as a token of self-deprecation and open-mindedness.<br />
<br />
It seems there is more seriousness in the world than I had expected, and charity is not going to fix it. Thank God for books and blogsites, where one can speak one's mind without immediate reprisals.<br />
<br />
<b>Quotes from the review</b>: <blockquote><i>When you heard that a gunman had slaughtered scores of Norwegian teenagers on a holiday island earlier this summer, did you think that here was another symptom of our sick and violent world? So did I, until I read Steven Pinker's brilliant, mind-altering book about the decline of violence.</i></blockquote><blockquote><i>The real fascination of this book is how we got from being a species that enjoyed the spectacle of roasting each other alive to one that believes child-killers have the same rights as everyone else. As Pinker shows, it is both a long story and a relatively recent one. The first thing that had to happen was the move from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence (where your chances of meeting a violent end could be as high as 50:50) to settled communities. The trouble was that early governments showed themselves at least as capable of cruelty as anyone else: most of the truly horrific instruments of torture Pinker describes were designed and employed by servants of the state. </i></blockquote><blockquote><i>To readers familiar with the literature in evolutionary psychology and its tendency to denigrate the role reason plays in human behavior, the most striking aspect of Pinker’s account is that the last of his “better angels” is reason. Here he draws on a metaphor I used in my 1981 book “The Expanding Circle.” To indicate that reason can take us to places that we might not expect to reach, I wrote of an “escalator of reason” that can take us to a vantage point from which we see that our own interests are similar to, and from the point of view of the universe do not matter more than, the interests of others. Pinker quotes this passage, and then goes on to develop the argument much more thoroughly than I ever did. (Disclosure: Pinker wrote an endorsement for a recent reissue of “The Expanding Circle.”)</i><br />
[The escalator of reason appears to be a cautious intellectual version of the Rapture]</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PNkrsQvcPrGBcS1x7mJwD0BpCnFqOdw2wl3yBG9O2QOJNhsx19OrlZgypyAXId1JH24CS0IyZIApR9mbizdT9tKZ0DhvuzGrgNnkr0VJ5LP_fwYIZXBEc3mMSenFQvJJKLTmxQE_pBY/s1600/smiley.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="123" width="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PNkrsQvcPrGBcS1x7mJwD0BpCnFqOdw2wl3yBG9O2QOJNhsx19OrlZgypyAXId1JH24CS0IyZIApR9mbizdT9tKZ0DhvuzGrgNnkr0VJ5LP_fwYIZXBEc3mMSenFQvJJKLTmxQE_pBY/s320/smiley.png" /></a></div>Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-52015122683976100442011-09-17T03:49:00.007+02:002011-09-17T04:40:47.793+02:00More to the pointI have renamed this blog to "concertnotes" because it gives a better sense of the kind of posts I do. It used to be called "grumbleby", but grumbling is only an amusing sideline. My basic disposition is that of a spectator at concerts that do not seize his attention. As a result, I find myself examining the ceiling, riffling the program notes and in general not so much watching the show as considering the circumstances of its production. <br /><br />This is what Luhmann calls "second-order observation". To be clear: engaging in this does <b>not</b> grant "objectivity", or privileged access to "the truth". It is merely a technique of attention to attentiveness - looking at the finger instead of what it's pointing to, studying the window display without buying anything (possibly for lack of money). The Little Match Girl was a second-order observer, and so was Wilde.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-88568090006850477292011-04-24T18:52:00.004+02:002011-04-25T11:17:00.785+02:00No more ugly makeup !<a href="http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/">John Cowan</a> has pointed out a "bookmark resource" for tarting down the websites I complained about in my last post. As he explains <a href="http://www.languagehat.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=4221">here</a>:<blockquote><i>The Readability bookmarklet helps a lot with pages like that. Go to <a href="https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets">this webpage</a> and drag the "Read Now" button to your browser's bookmarks bar. Then click on it whenever you want to make a page more easily readable. It deals with bad colors, annoying formats, etc.</i></blockquote>People should take a look at Readability's <a href="https://www.readability.com/faq">FAQ</a>, which answers the questions "What <i>is</i> Readability?" and "What happened to the free version of Readability?".<br /><br />In short: the bookmark resource is "still free", and <a href="http://blog.readability.com/page/2/">this</a> is what it's all about: <blockquote><i>We’re turning Readability into a monthly subscription service with a unique twist: the great majority of your fees (70%) will go directly to the writers and publishers you enjoy. We’re tethering a small, passive transaction to the reading decisions you make through the platform. You can even publicly share the top domains you’re enjoying through Readability. It’s a new type of badge: “I support these writers & publishers.”</i></blockquote>In other words, this is another scheme to keep track of where you go with your browser - but only when you actually use the bookmark. Clicking it merely takes you to another website (Readability), and there is not even a cookie involved. Exactly the same happens when you point to any link. You'll have to decide if you want to live with that. It seems reasonable enough to me. <br /><br />The make-it-more-readable feature appears to work as follows (I've inspected the page sources, but am not a browser/javascript expert):<br /><br />1. Let's say you are positioned on some web page "x.com" in your browser. That is, the "page frame" showing the contents of that page is in the foreground of your browser.<br /><br />2. You click on the "Read now" bookmark. This is a "widget" containing javascript activated by your click.<br /><br />3. The bookmark javascript is called with the "x.com" address as parameter, causing the browser to call another piece of javascript at blog.readability.com. This other javascript technically reads the HTML page at the parameter value "x.com" (the stuff which your browser had rendered in the original, hard-to-read form). It converts that original page into a "more readable" HTML page at blog.readability.com, which is then the final page that is actually rendered in your browser (no longer the one at "x.com").Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-32974146531167099582011-04-23T08:52:00.004+02:002011-04-23T11:08:40.608+02:00Relatively speakingRecently, a commenter on a blog post at another site complained bitterly that he could not read the yellow-mauve-and-white-on-black presentation of a <a href="http://afterallitcouldbeworse.blogspot.com/2011/04/interview-john-emerson-ex-doctor-ex.html?">web page</a> to which the post had linked. I myself could make out the text, but reading it was hard on the eyes. There are a lot of websites in the internet that are tarted up in this way.<br /><br />One could speculate about the motives of the authors of such websites, and whether they are at all aware that there are "accessibility" aspects to web design. But over time I have found it more efficient and productive to take unreadable things at face value, and simply not read them. Given the amount of text in the world that is clamoring for attention, I rejoice at every badly designed website I encounter, and every badly written book - in each case one less thing to deal with ! <br /><br />It is an extravagance to posit that there must be substance behind appearances. The principle I apply here is: if less is more, than nothing is most to be desired. In terms of biological evolution, rejection is just the flip side of selection, but it's algorithmically simpler. How to weigh the criteria for selection from a large set of alternatives is a difficult problem, and requires goal-directed intelligence. In contrast, all you need to reject something is a garbage can (in case you need it later on after all).Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-1878227836629064752010-07-25T13:51:00.008+02:002010-10-15T08:45:39.183+02:00Disgusting but memorableWatching the DVD of Deleuze interviews called <i>L'Abécédaire</i>, in the "C comme Culture" section I suddenly noticed a disgusting detail: Deleuze's fingernails are uncommonly long, wide, and misshapen - as if on a Mandarin <i>manqué</i>. They look too long for plucking guitar strings, but I may be wrong about that. <br /><br />Anyway, since today is one of my be-nice practice days, I felt obliged to call myself on this one: "What do you mean, disgusting ? Deleuze will have had his reasons for keeping his fingernails like that. What do you care about Deleuze's fingernails ?" etc. etc. <br /><br />With my eyes right up to the screen to check the fingernails, I replayed over and over a section where they can be seen. I heard this over and over:<blockquote><i>Dès qu'on fait une chose, il s'agit d'en sortir. [pause] Il se faut aussi d'y rester dans le sortir. Alors, rester dans la philosophie, c'est aussi comme en sortir de la philosophie. Oui ... [pause] sortir de la philosophie, ca veut pas dire faire autre chose. C'est pour ça qu'il faut sortir en restant là-dedans. [pause] C'est pas faire autre chose, c'est pas en faire un rebond.</i></blockquote>With this curious mantra in my ears, I sunk deep into program-notes mode* and arrived at the following considerations. I think I now understand better how structuralism and deconstructionism came into fashion - all that "death of the author" and <i>il n'y a pas de hors-texte</i> crap. <br /><br />It happened when critics decided they should be ashamed of peering at the personalities and personal habits of authors. They wanted to become more objective by dealing only with the texts. But these critics were now devoting the same over-expectant attention to words as they previously had to ambience, substituting one fetish for another. They were still interpreting, associating, reading things in, and wondering "why this, why that ?".<br /><br />Suddenly I got a good look at the fingernails, and dropped the program notes. It was now clear that no matter what engages your attention as a writer or speaker, it can pay off to pay attention to your performance as well. An amusing or disgusting detail, although initially distracting, may ultimately help the audience to remember what you said, or reconstruct it. I had figured out what Deleuze meant by <i>Dès qu'on fait une chose, il s'agit d'en sortir. Il se faut aussi d'y rester dans le sortir.</i>. Back in the sixties, we called it "keep on truckin'". <br /><br />* When you're attending a concert, there are occasionally boring stretches. That's when you turn your attention to the program notes, in search of something more interesting.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-13074833894054668922010-07-12T21:40:00.004+02:002010-08-24T14:41:11.537+02:00Wanderer between worlds ?Recently I ran across the familiar German expression <i>Wanderer zwischen den Welten</i> in several different contexts. I would go so far as to say that it's a rather hackneyed expression, used to attribute cross-cultural moxie to anybody and everybody who has owned a passport. <br /><br />Be that as it may, where does it come from ? Is there a "wanderer between worlds" original ? The expression is now so trite that any internet sites that might identify its origin are swamped by the ones where it is merely used.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-6368787188251914082010-07-07T23:32:00.004+02:002010-08-24T14:40:58.740+02:00Babies sign upOn the German <a href="http://www.stern.de/tv/sterntv/baby-gebaerdensprache-wie-eltern-ihre-kinder-auch-ohne-worte-verstehen-1512022.html">sternTV</a> program just now I saw a remarkable documentary about children communicating with their hands, as in sign language for the deaf. But these children were not deaf. <br /><br />Already at the age of 10 months, children are able to use simple structured gestures in interacting with their parents - for instance to "signal" recognition of situations in which the gestures were learned, as when they hear background music again in a store when they revisit it. It was said that an American working with deaf children had noticed that they learned to deploy signs at a much earlier age than hearing children usually learn to speak. <br /><br />Mothers who had been trying this out with their children were in the studio with their kids, talking about it with the moderator Günther Jauch. One woman said that in the course of six weeks there had been so many opportunities to learn signs that her child had learned 60 of them. The film had shown a small girl with her parents in a zoo. The child was about 1.5 years old. She had learned simple signs for different animals on previous visits. On this visit, every time she came to an animal she knew she would make the special sign for it. I remember that she made the ones for bear, rabbit, and giraffe. <br /><br />One explanation for the phenomenon was that gross motor skills are acquired in the hands much earlier than are the fine motor skills needed for speech. The film explicitly warned against imagining that this signing is a prefiguration of unusual intelligence, or that it might accelerate or hinder speech learning at a later age. I took this as intended to put a damper on the kind of parents who want to discover black gold in their kids, and are prepared to drill for it if necessary. The commentator also warned against trying to force this signing on children. <a href="http://deafness.about.com/cs/signfeats1/a/babysigning.htm">Here</a> is an American website I found about the subject.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-78302242453264221972010-07-06T12:53:00.015+02:002011-07-01T07:52:05.047+02:00Lord of the fliesThe estival of flies is upon us again, and the number of the beasts is legion. Since occasions for effective swatting are intermittent, I have decided to observe their behavior more closely than usual. Leaving out of account the torpor caused by occasional cold weather, I have come to the preliminary conclusion that the survival of house flies in the presence of predators and temperate conditions is primarily a function of their unpredictable behavior. Their strategy is to have no strategy as to where they will land, how long they will rest, whither they go and when they come. <br /><br />This is an interesting idea, whether or not it could be demonstrated by mathematical means that flies exhibit random behavior. It suggests that 1] what may seem to be an absence of goal-directed action can, by changing the frame of reference, be interpreted as serving a purpose, even without anything resembling a circumscribed goal or deliberation. Changing the frame again, we hit on the idea that 2] motives can be effectively concealed by erratic behavior.<br /><br />I suppose that 1] is more or less the idea of biological evolution. But there is a supernatural fly in the ointment. Its buzz is audible in 2] and the words of P.T. Barnum. who supposedly described the secret of his success thus: "Keep'em guessing". <br /><br />Conclusio: even though we free our minds from the notions of up-front determinism and progress, we are still at the mercy of crafty ephemera. Walk softly, and hedge your bets. The meek will inherit the earth because they play their cards close to their chests.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-56447604629067763842010-07-04T07:13:00.003+02:002010-08-24T14:40:36.724+02:00The birth of bossinessExperts, experts everywhere, and not a moment's rest. They tell us to speak one language instead of another, eat these substances instead of those, act this way instead of that ... A disposition to urge other people to change their behavior could be an Anthropological Constant. If this turns out to be a momentous discovery, remember to mention my name when you pass it along.<br /><br />What can we imagine to be the evolutionary advantages of this imperious meliorism ? Perhaps there aren't any. The only offhand explanation I can think of for the phenomenon itself is longevity overhang. By that I mean this. We may assume that fathers and mothers have always told their kids how to behave. Over many millenia, the average lifespan was only 35 or so. By the time parents were no longer able to tell their kids what do to - when the kids became adolescent and would no longer listen - the parents just died. But as life expectancy increased, there were more and more parents left with time and wisdom on their hands, since the captive audience had flown the coop. This was the birth of bossiness. <br /><br />Of course this tendency expresses itself in different ways. Some old people get a pet, others get a license to practice psychological counselling, still others learn Esperanto.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-30863665765279670702010-06-30T12:08:00.006+02:002010-08-24T14:40:16.780+02:00DecuplationI thought the French <i>décupler</i> meant "decouple". But no, <i>mes enfants</i>, that's <i>découpler</i> we were thinking of. Here, at the latest, the gentle but ambitious American must face up to the difference between the French <i>u</i> and <i>ou</i>. <i>Décupler</i> means to multiply by ten, and derives from the Latin <i>decuplus</i> and <i>decem</i>. The OED even gives "decuplation" for use on home territory. But I don't think it will catch on, since it sounds like "decopulation" and the related "depopulation". Perhaps it's just as well if it doesn't catch on, since the meaning would soon start to sag, as happened with "decimate".Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-57181280423235220112010-06-29T18:43:00.020+02:002010-08-24T14:40:06.477+02:00Loads, shoots, and spoils ThanksgivingIt's peculiar that so many writers in the 18th and 19th centuries (but before that and later on too, of course) spent their time discoursing about "logic" in book after book - Hegel, Mill <i>et alii</i>. Each of them was pushing his own "logic", as if there were more than one to choose from. They kicked around notions such as induction, deduction, abduction (Pierce) - and, of all things, causation - and arrived at various conclusions and claims. But I find it all completely useless. Of course I am aware that my position is post-Hegel, post-Mill <i>et alii</i>, that is, parasitic on what has gone before. No one can accuse me of being ungrateful, although an action for frivolousness might lie.<br /><br />I feel that there is only one kind of logic for everyday and scientific purposes, and not much worth saying about that. What used to be known as books on logic might be more accurately described as pedantic exercises in how to be convincing. Pedantry aside, that is what used to be called the arts of rhetoric. But these writers seem to be intent on persuasion by new-fangled means, without the traditional training and practice. To me, their writings carry the conviction of Butt-head playing air guitar. <br /><br />I find that a little Barbara <i>pour ouvrir l'estomac</i>, an <i>amuse-gueule</i> of first-order logic to be followed by Cantor, Gödel, Cohen or Robinson <i>à la meunière</i>, is more easily appropriated by the vegetative system. Mathematical ideas can be conveyed without fancy sauces, and with a minimum of verbiage and ballast. Having acquired familiarity over time with certain mathematical styles, you can peruse recipes in those traditions with profit, even though not yourself a chef. <br /><br />As an adolescent I had the idea that mathematical logic must have put paid to judicious waffling, but I now know better. I just happened across something that gave me serious indigestion: a description of the so-called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_shooting_problem">Yale shooting problem</a>. Here is how the WiPe article begins:<blockquote><i>The Yale shooting problem is a conundrum or scenario in formal situational logic on which early logical solutions to the frame problem fail. The name of this problem derives from its inventors, Steve Hanks and Drew McDermott, working at Yale University when they proposed it. In this scenario, Fred (later identified as a turkey) is initially alive and a gun is initially unloaded. Loading the gun, waiting for a moment, and then shooting the gun at Fred is expected to kill Fred. However, if inertia is formalized in logic by minimizing the changes in this situation, then it cannot be uniquely proved that Fred is dead after loading, waiting, and shooting. In one solution, Fred indeed dies; in another (also logically correct) solution, the gun becomes mysteriously unloaded and Fred survives.<br><br>Technically, this scenario is described by two fluents (a fluent is a condition that can change truth value over time): alive and loaded. ...</i></blockquote>For Pete's sake ! Where is the conundrum ? It is sufficient to note that the word "shoot" is being used ambiguously here. Apart from that, "a condition that can change truth value over time" used to be called a variable (or predicate, here), and I see no reason to call it anything else. "A fluent" is a preciosity worthy of Molière's <i>médecins</i>.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-75211690116835263982010-06-29T09:47:00.013+02:002010-08-24T14:39:56.170+02:00Daß Narrenschyff ad NarragoniamLiz Hartnett, in her <a href="http://www.open2.Liz Hartnettnet/blogs/money/index.php/2010/06/23/woolly_it_aspirations?blog=5">blog</a> on the BBC's open2.net site, reports on a recent edition of <a href="http://www.open2.net/bottomline/index.html">The Bottom Line</a> devoted to aspiration, optimism and enthusiasm:<blockquote><i>... that the IT customer needs to know what they want - and that their wants are, in many cases, “woolly and aspirational”.<br><br>Woolly and aspirational wants lead to over-ambitious and poorly defined systems that take longer to design and implement, and they go over budget.<br><br>But it’s not just the customer who’s aspirational. In one public sector IT project, optimistic and enthusiastic IT staff thought, “Yes, an online payment - that’s what they really need, surely.”<br><br>But when they engaged in discussion, they discovered that the client was less enthusiastic about the IT department’s suggestion, and didn’t expect much take up or benefit. But what the client thought would really be of benefit was a telephone payment service.<br><br>The system, consequentially implemented, brought in a significantly larger sum of money to the public organisation.</i></blockquote>One of my recent IT projects overran its budget after only four months. Not only were the specifications overambitious, but there was also an assumption that the programming work did not need to be organized, nor the programmers to be directed. In theory all processes were documented and in line with company standards, and hardly any work got done. <br /><br />There are at least three topics linked together here: capitalism, competition and waste. I don't see how effective competition is possible without a free-market base. But competition can be considered to be inherently wasteful, since it would be more effective to join forces. <br /><br />These notions are so jumbled together in texts on political economy I have read, that I have concluded they are all useless. I suspect that wastefulness may not only be Not A Bad Thing, but also an essential ingredient in change, along with stabs at efficiency. Attempts to obtain complete control over a process are doomed to failure, just as are attempts to do without any kind of control or planning. <br /><br />These are mushy conclusions to arrive at, but they seem to apply to the IT projects I have worked in. And yet I firmly believe the best way to measure progress is to measure it often, and shift elsewhere those who don't measure up. Theory cannot replace practice, especially not in a competitive and wasteful economy. <br /><br />People are essential, but they must be directed. Heads must occasionally be shifted or chopped, especially those of management. At the company whose IT project I mentioned above, everyone had some kind of job title like "responsible for ...", but no brief to actually do anything they would have to answer for. I suspect this was a marine safety measure to prevent rocking the boat, so that no one could fall overboard.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-86741403573477893152010-06-12T08:58:00.006+02:002010-08-24T14:39:45.522+02:00The dividends of ignoranceI have often meditated on the sociological advantages of ignorance. How easy it is to live a good life without knowledge of large swatches of knowable stuff ! Moreover, I am continually discovering new ways to harmlessly squeeze cash value out of ignorance, or rather my knowledge that it exists. Ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing. <br /><br />Here's a recent example. Commuting between Cologne and Frankfurt, I have found the trains often overcrowded, so I ended up sitting on the floor. I was annoyed at passengers who would occupy a seat and put a bag, rucksack, coat, laptop carrier etc. on the adjacent seat, thus taking both seats out of service. But I didn't realize at first that they were doing this - all I saw was apparently occupied seats. Then, from my vantage point on the floor, I observed other passengers looking for a place to sit as I had done - passing by encumbered seats as if they were occupied. The assumption was that someone was sitting there, and had left their things to signal "occupied" until they returned from, say, the restroom or restaurant car. <br /><br />I noticed that the people who encumbered seats in that way were mostly women. My first reaction was "bloody impertinence". Then I remembered positive thinking, and turning sow's ears into silk purses, and being fair even to women. So I thought: how can I turn their behavior to my advantage ? I tried stopping in the aisle by such seats and asking, in an ever so slightly stern voice: "Is that seat taken ?" The women would look annoyed, but remove their things without comment, and so I acquired a place to sit.<br /><br />I have gotten bolder as time goes on, and now say <i>Wollen Sie den Sitz bitte freiräumen ?</i> in a neutral tone. The nice thing about that construction - not <i>würden Sie</i>, but <i>wollen Sie ... bitte</i> - is that it is a combination of request and imperative. It conveys a hint of annoyance, as the Lady Bracknell intonation does in "<i>would</i> you be so good as to clear the seat ?". In other words, now <i>I</i> am bloody impertinent, and grateful that these women reserve seats for me. They don't know they are doing it, nor do other people apart from me who are looking for a seat. <br /><br />That is what I meant by harmlessly profiting from ignorance. I wouldn't have it any other way.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-413079521947742490.post-87175761388613564952010-04-02T08:00:00.010+02:002011-12-26T02:39:04.242+01:00The wagers of charityNosing about in various articles on the statistical notion of standard deviation, I happened on a <a href="http://www.probability.ca/jeff/ftpdir/mcfadyenreviews.pdf">"review"</a> of the mid-16th century <i>Liber de ludo aleae</i> by Cardano (this is the dude who, among other things, invented the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_number">imaginary number</a>). It contains the following quotes from the book:<blockquote><i>...in times of great anxiety and grief, [playing games of chance] is considered to be not only allowable, but even beneficial.<br><br />..in times of great fear or sorrow, when even the greatest minds are much disturbed, gambling is far more efficacious in counteracting anxiety than a game like chess, since there is the continual expectation of what fortune will bring.<br><br />In my own case, when it seemed to me after a long illness that death was close at hand, I found no little solace in playing constantly at dice.</i></blockquote>Cardano's life-style throws some light on this: <blockquote>Cardano was notoriously short of money and kept himself solvent by being an accomplished gambler and chess player.</blockquote>I myself have never understood the interest so many people have in dice games and slot machines, for instance. Such things bore the pants off me. My attitude is: if good luck wants to come to me, I won't shut the door in its face, but nor do I want to spend time running back and forth in the road, trying to meet up with luck before the neighbors do.<br /><br />Recently, Sloterdijk has been putting the idea about that possibly "greed" is not the most accurate description of what motivates bankers who blow away other people's money in speculation. He suggests that the motive may instead be "to get something for nothing". Greed, in contrast, is a drive to get more and more, and more than enough. To want to get something for nothing is more akin to gambling. I could add that Pascal, in proposing his wager, revealed himself to be both intellectually lazy and morally calculating - a gambler, in fact.<br /><br />As I remember, the passage in which Sloterdijk mentions that idea is in <i>Du mußt dein Leben ändern</i>. Unfortunately, I made the mistake yesterday of lending my copy to someone over Easter - and of course one day later I need it in order to double-check a reference. Though I rarely lend out a book important to me, I usually regret it for the reason given. Curiously, this appears to be a case of getting nothing for something. The something is that I have introduced someone to Sloterdijk, the nothing is what I now have in place of the book. <br /><br />I experience this kind of thing not infrequently, it seems to me - doing good, then regretting it. But then I don't really expect to do something for nothing. It just may be that the wages of charity is mutual resentment. A <i>pari mutuel</i>, where if anyone wins everyone wins, and contrariwise.Stuart Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13707750452117583297noreply@blogger.com3