tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-131134332024-03-08T09:11:09.529+01:00The moving fingerJonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-21127917391805008942021-08-06T10:54:00.001+02:002021-08-06T10:56:00.010+02:00A new showrunner for Doctor Who<p>It's now official that Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker will be leaving <i>Doctor Who</i> in 2022, and a new showrunner should be appointed by then, in order to be consulted about the transition between one Doctor and the next.</p>
<p>What assets should the showrunner have?</p>
<ol>
<li>The ability to write good stories. The showrunner is the head writer, who writes the most important stories, and hires and supervises the other writers.</li>
<li>The ability to run a major television series.</li>
<li>A background of reading sf. Time travel is fairly fundamental to <i>Doctor Who</i>, and it's a complex subject, which has been explored in depth in sf. If you try to write about it without that background, you're likely to seem clumsy and ignorant. There was a time in the history of the show when the TARDIS was disabled for three seasons, but fans are likely to complain if that happens again.</li>
<li>Some basic understanding of science and technology. If you write about the future, you probably need to speculate about future technology, and it's hard to do that plausibly if you have no understanding of it.</li>
<li>A deep knowledge of the history of <i>Doctor Who</i>. Is this really necessary, or even helpful? Davies, Moffat, and Chibnall all had it, but it's done Chibnall no good, and I'm not sure how much it really helped Davies and Moffat. It seems to me that an obsession with the history of the show could lead to writing stories similar to past stories, most of which weren't good, to be honest. It may actually be better to come in with an uncluttered mind, and hire a continuity advisor to avoid gross conflicts with the show's history.</li>
</ol>
<p>There's a current unconfirmed rumour that Sally Wainwright will be appointed as the new showrunner. I don't know her work, but it seems that she has assets 1 and 2, which are the most important. It's unclear whether she has any of the others.</p>
Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-49163251439152945732021-04-21T16:19:00.008+02:002021-10-15T11:19:51.574+02:00My personal pick of 21st century fiction<p>Most of my favourite fiction was published in the late 20th century, but here I round up the 21st century fiction that I've discovered and liked so far. Of course, my taste in fiction is personal, and this is a tiny subset of all fiction published so far this century.</p>
<h3>The leading contenders</h3>
<ul>
<li><b>Lois McMaster Bujold</b> was first published in 1986, and became an award-winning American sf author in the 20th century, but branched out into fantasy mainly in the 21st century. I like some of her sf novels, but overall I prefer her (also award-winning) fantasy series set in the World of the Five Gods, starting with <i>The Curse of Chalion</i> (2001) and continuing in two more novels and nine novellas, with more to follow. These are all likeable and well written. The novellas start with <i>Penric's Demon</i> (2015); they're somewhat lighter and more cheerful than the novels, and entirely separate in plot and characters: set in the same world but in a different century.</li>
<li><b>Arkady Martine</b> is a 21st century American sf author, who won the Hugo award for her first novel, <i>A Memory Called Empire</i> (2019). She writes traditional sf in a modern style, and has published one sequel so far.</li>
<li><b>Suzanne Palmer</b> is a 21st century American sf author, who has won awards for short fiction, and published a series of three novels started with <i>Finder</i> (2019), which are fairly traditional fast-paced sf adventures, competently written and well plotted.</li>
<li><b>S. M. Stirling</b> was first published in 1985, and has written a lot, but his novel <i>The Peshawar Lancers</i> (2001) was the first I encountered from him, and it remains my favourite: a colourful alternative-history adventure set mainly in India and vaguely reminiscent of Kipling, with some spy/counterspy action. He specializes in alternative history, and puts a lot of research into it. Stirling is an Anglo-Canadian born in France, but lives in the USA and has US nationality.</li>
<li><b>Ben Aaronovitch</b> wrote for television in the late 20th century, but is now best known for the novels and novellas starting with <i>Rivers of London</i> (2011), in which the Metropolitan Police of London find themselves having to deal with crimes committed by magicians. I read this series for the writing style (amusing) and the characters (quite engaging); the stories are OK though not perfectly suited to my taste.</li>
<li><b>Jasper Fforde</b> is no youngster, but he's a 21st century English author, and his first novel <i>The Eyre Affair</i> (2001) possibly remains my favourite from him, although I also like the very different <i>Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron</i> (2009). He mainly writes bizarre fantasy, set in vaguely modern times without conventional magic, but with impossibilities. The Shades of Grey series may perhaps be sf: it's not clear yet. There's no connection at all with <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i> (E. L. James, 2011), which I haven't read.</li>
<li>The late <b>Sir Terry Pratchett</b>, an English author, was first published in 1971, but he was still writing well into the 21st century, including most notably <i>Night Watch</i> (2002) and <i>Going Postal</i> (2004), both part of his long-running Discworld fantasy series.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Also ran</h3>
<ul>
<li><b>Becky Chambers</b> is a 21st century American sf author. Her first novel <i>The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet</i> (2014) won various awards, and the Wayfarers series as a whole won a Hugo award in 2019. I find the first novel likeable and entertaining, though not really great fiction; the second novel is OK; but the third novel is so boring that I couldn't finish it, and I haven't yet tried any more of them.</li>
<li><b>John Birmingham</b> is a 21st century Australian sf author, though he published non-fiction in the 20th century. In fiction, he's best known for his Axis of Time series, starting with <i>Weapons of Choice</i> (2004), which is good in parts but misconceived. <i>A Girl In Time</i> (2016) is an unusual time-travel adventure with a rather silly title; I like the odd couple of protagonists, although the story is a bit out of my comfort zone. Reminds me slightly of the <i>Time Bandits</i> film.</li>
<li><b>Marshall Ryan Maresca</b> is a 21st century American author, who writes fantasy crime stories; probably his best series starts with <i>A Murder of Mages</i> (2015). He writes quite well, and his characters have appeal. However, he has a taste for bizarre, implausible crimes; his magic lacks rules and limitations; and his protagonists suffer an implausibly high level of stress and physical injury, which I find tiring. For me these are all demerits.</li>
<li><b>Ruth Downie</b> is almost as old as I am, but she's a 21st century English author, her first novel being <i>Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls</i> (2006), followed by a series of sequels. These are historical crime stories: Ruso is a military doctor in the Ancient Roman army, who marries a British barbarian called Tilla while stationed in her country, and finds himself reluctantly involved in trying to solve a series of crimes. I like Ruso and Tilla, but they seem perpetually broke and in trouble, which gets on my nerves; so after four novels I gave up and stopped reading.</li>
<li><b>David D. Friedman</b> is older than me and much better known for non-fiction, but he's a 21st century American author of fiction, having published <i>Harald</i> (2006) and <i>Salamander</i> (2011), both competent novels. The first is a military novel set on a fictional mediæval world, the second is fantasy with quite an interesting and original system of magic. There is also a sequel to <i>Salamander</i>.</li>
</ul>
<p>I have read 21st century fiction by more authors than these, but these are all I care to mention.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-36374071921058964422016-10-28T19:32:00.000+02:002016-10-28T19:32:35.970+02:00La Paradoja de Pacino<p>El capítulo 10 de <i>El Ministerio del Tiempo</i> es uno de los mejores capítulos, pero ilustra un problema con toda la serie: los guionistas no han desarrollado ninguna teoría consistente de cómo funcionan los viajes en el tiempo.</p>
<p>En el capítulo, Pacino descubre el Ministerio siguiendo un criminal, entonces viaja al pasado y le impide convertirse en un criminal, por lo que nunca se producen sus crímenes. Sin embargo, esto significa que Pacino nunca debe descubrir el Ministerio y nunca debe viajar al pasado. Tenemos una paradoja. Los guionistas ignoran la paradoja y esperan que los espectadores no se darán cuenta.</p>
<p>¿Cómo podemos resolver la paradoja? Por ejemplo, podemos decir que la alteración en la historia no cambia Pacino, porque él es el agente del cambio. En este caso, Pacino 1 del Universo 1 se convierte en un inmigrante en el Universo 2, que él ha creado. En el Universo 2, la gente del Ministerio no conocen Pacino, y existe un Pacino 2 que nunca descubre el Ministerio.</p>
<p>Pacino 1 es la única persona en el Universo 2 que conozca la historia del criminal y sus crímenes, que ocurrieron sólo en el Universo 1.</p>
<p>El tatuaje de Pacino se mantiene, porque Pacino 1 no se ha cambiado. Pero Pacino 2 nunca ha tenido el tatuaje.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-37754195819458630912015-11-15T16:10:00.000+01:002015-11-15T16:43:04.594+01:00A timeline of New Virginia<p>Here is a combined timeline of the two alternative worlds described in
S. M. Stirling's novel <i>Conquistador</i> (2003).
The timeline is intended as a summary for people who have read the book,
and therefore omits explanatory notes.</p>
<p><b>SPOILER ALERT:</b> If you haven't read the book yet, and would like to
be surprised by it, leave this page immediately!</p>
<p>356 BC: Birth of Alexander the Great (as in our history)</p>
<p>323 BC: Alexander the Great recovers from illness (died in our history)</p>
<p>280 BC: Death of Alexander the Great</p>
<p>000 AD: Alexandrian Empire starts to decline</p>
<p>300 AD: Alexandrian Empire no longer exists</p>
<p>1585: Birth of John Rolfe I (as in our history)</p>
<p>1622: Death of John Rolfe I and his wife Matoaka, also known as Pocahontas and Lady
Rebecca</p>
<p>1862: Colonel John Rolfe III, Stonewall Brigade, loses a leg in battle</p>
<p>1922: Birth of John Rolfe VI</p>
<p>1942: John Rolfe leaves the Virginia Military Institute</p>
<p>1944: John Rolfe is seriously wounded in the Battle of Okinawa
(1945 in our history)</p>
<p>1946-04-17: The Gate opens</p>
<p>1946-12-31: New Virginian population less than 200</p>
<p>1947: Birth of Charles Rolfe</p>
<p>1949: Import of animals begins via San Diego Zoo</p>
<p>1950-01-01: Settler population over 15,000</p>
<p>1950-06-07: John Rolfe first visits Sierra Consultants</p>
<p>1955: Import of animals stops</p>
<p>1962: Sorenson retires, Sierra Consultants closes</p>
<p>1962: Arrival of the Chumley and Devereaux families (29th and 30th)</p>
<p>1968: Hawaii added to New Virginia</p>
<p>1971: Kidnapping of Ralph Barnes</p>
<p>1990s: Arrival of the Batyushkov and Versfeld families (31st and 32nd)</p>
<p>1998: Kidnapping of Henry Villers</p>
<p>2001: Adrienne joins the Gate Security Force</p>
<p>2003: Arrival of Sergei Lermontov</p>
<p>2007: Secret recruitment begins for revolution</p>
<p>2009-06: Capture of condor, Tom meets Adrienne</p>
<p>2009-06: Kidnapping of Tom and Roy</p>
<p>2009-06: 150,000 Settlers, 3,000 in Families, 50,000 nahua</p>
<p>2009-07: Start of Owens Valley expedition</p>
<p>2009-08: Revolution; the Gate closes</p>
<p>2009-12: The Gate reopens, but there's a problem</p>
<p>The birth date of Adrienne Rolfe is indeterminate. In Chapter 3 she says
she inherited Seven Oaks in 2001 at the age of 18, but in Chapter 9 the author
himself locates that event in 1996. So, either she's lying about her age in
Chapter 3, or the author made a mistake in Chapter 9; both possibilities seem
rather uncharacteristic; take your pick.</p>
Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-75533276633899869122015-10-19T16:04:00.000+02:002015-11-28T14:30:37.610+01:00The Commonwealth of New Virginia<p>The Commonwealth of New Virginia is a country described in S. M. Stirling's novel <i>Conquistador</i> (2003). It exists in an alternative world (let's call it World 2) with a different history, in which Europeans are technologically retarded and never discover America. Instead, a young Virginian ex-soldier called John Rolfe accidentally creates a gateway between World 1 and World 2, in the basement of his rented house in California in 1946.</p>
<p>Rolfe decides to keep his gateway secret and turn it to his own advantage. Accordingly, he recruits trusted friends and relations, and later others, to start his own new country in World 2. Money is not a problem, because there's plenty of unmined gold and other resources in his new country. California in World 2 is still in much the same state as it was before European discovery in our history.</p>
<p>Stirling describes it all in considerable detail in the novel, and from here on I'll assume that you've read the novel and don't need more background from me. I'm writing this to give my own thoughts about the scenario.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Recruiting is a problem. The Gate and the existence of World 2 are top secret, so recruits can't be told about it until they're there. How can they be persuaded to come?</p><p>"Would you like to live in another country? No, we can't tell you where it is, and we can't tell you much about it."</p><p>Would anyone agree to this? Stirling suggests that people could be recruited who were keen to escape World 1 for some reason, but they'd have to be very keen to commit themselves to the unknown. I suspect that, in practice, New Virginia would have to look for people unlikely to be missed (but with useful skills), kidnap them, and hope that they accepted the situation on arrival. Of course, people can't be allowed ever to return to World 1 unless they're well trusted.</p></li>
<li><p>Some of the bad guys in the novel were clearly put there to make Rolfe look good by comparison: Stirling wanted to paint Rolfe as somewhat ruthless but relatively benign, and that comes over better if there are worse characters around.</p><p>However, New Virginia wasn't so desperate for warm bodies that it had to take people however bad they were. Rolfe already decided to avoid possible future conflicts by recruiting only white people; for the same reason, he could have avoided recruiting whole groups with a language other than English, he could have avoided recruiting people accustomed to political power, and recruiting a whole group of Nazis was just asking for trouble.</p></li>
<li><p>The novel doesn't say so, but money is used by New Virginians on World 1 and World 2, so I suppose currency conversion would be routine, and recruits could convert whatever cash they had into New Virginian money.</p></li>
<li><p>The novel doesn't say so, but I suppose all the creative works of World 1 would be public domain on World 2. New Virginia would have no interest in enforcing World 1 copyrights and patents, the stuff would be freely copyable; which would be helpful to the economy.</p></li>
<li><p>John Rolfe has a hobby: he imports from World 1 large animals not native to America (lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, etc.) and spreads them around on World 2. In the novel, all these animals have established themselves in the wild.</p><p>To do that successfully, I think he'd need to bring hundreds of animals of each species through the Gate, which would take a lot of manpower and surely attract attention on World 1. While he's building a new country with scarce recruits, it would be hard to spare the manpower, and it would be really inadvisable to attract attention. So, if he managed to do it at all, I think this expensive obsession would fatally damage his reputation with his companions. It might be feasible to do it very slowly, on the back burner, but that's not what the novel describes.</p></li>
<li><p>The device set off by Adrienne near the end of the book is dramatic, but poorly designed. It would have been almost impossible to install in secret; it's necessarily untested and very fallible; a simpler and more reliable method could have been used. It's activated from Nostradamus, which was already known to be insecure; it should have been activated by wireless transmission, independent of Nostradamus. And the five-minute delay is unnecessarily long.</p></li>
</ul>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-18083596714585175802015-03-05T21:41:00.004+01:002015-03-10T10:26:45.196+01:00El Ministerio del Tiempo<p>El Ministerio del Tiempo (the Ministry of Time) is the title of a new Spanish television series, of which two episodes have so far aired.</p>
<p>It's based on the familiar sf idea of a Time Patrol: time travel exists, and a police force of sorts is trying to stop rogue individuals from changing history.</p>
<p>In this series, there's no time machine. Instead, there are doors between different time periods, many of them existing (why?) in a cavern under a building in Madrid (?) belonging to the top-secret Spanish Ministry of Time. Other doors exist elsewhere and are sometimes found by random individuals.</p>
<p>The series concentrates on the adventures of three new recruits to the Ministry who are sent on missions into the past, to preserve history as we know it. The recruits are Julián from 2015, Amelia from 1880, and Alonso from 1569. The strange thing about it is that they don't seem obviously qualified or suitable for their role as intertemporal secret agents: they just seem to be people plucked at random from the time stream. Julián is some kind of medic, Amelia is a university student, and Alonso is a soldier. All of them have some reason to accept employment with the Ministry: Julián was depressed after losing his wife in a road accident, Amelia was an early feminist in a man's world, and Alonso was about to be executed for losing his temper and attacking his superior officer.</p>
<p>We don't see them undergoing any kind of ability test or training, they're just recruited and sent out on missions. What if they fail? I wonder whether some future episode will consider this possibility.</p>
<p>Apart from the strange business of using untrained amateurs for important missions, this is a high-quality series. The actors, the scripts, the sets, the costumes all suggest that no reasonable expense was spared to do a good job. Compared with watching Doctor Who, Blake's Seven, or Star Trek decades ago, this is a leap up in quality. Even the supporting actors are good.</p>
<p>The episodes that have been aired are all available on the Web at <a href="http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/el-ministerio-del-tiempo/">http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/el-ministerio-del-tiempo/</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the series is in Spanish with no translation at all. You can display a transcript of the dialogue in Spanish, and you can even copy it to Google Translate and auto-translate it if you like. There's also a little button for subtitles in Spanish. Subtitles in English would have been nice, but no, at least not at this stage.</p>
<p>If you have some Spanish, it's not difficult to follow. I'm not fluent, but I can follow it well enough, missing some details.</p>
<p>Of the three main characters, I'm most impressed by Alonso, who's fairly convincing as a patriotic 16th-century soldier doing his best for his country in unfamiliar circumstances. Julián is an experienced actor and an amiable fellow, he's fun to watch, but he seems surprisingly cheerful considering that he's supposed to be severely depressed about his dead wife. Both Julián and Amelia seem rather too self-confident, given that they've been suddenly recruited into a totally unfamiliar kind of job and repeatedly moved from one time period to another.</p>
<p>It's interesting to see what the characters contribute to the missions. Alonso is a soldier, capable of dealing with violence and connecting with ordinary people in the past. Julián knows 21st-century technology, has medical training, and seems adaptable. Amelia is presented as intelligent, and seems capable and self-possessed, but she's the youngest and least experienced of the team.</p>
<p>The first two missions are to 1808 and 1588 respectively. I suppose that all missions will be in Spain, which has a good deal of history to explore. I found it helpful to check out a little background info about the relevant parts of Spanish history in Wikipedia. I don't think there will be any missions to the future: we've already been told that there are no doors into the future. Which is rather odd, as years previous to 2015 clearly have doors into the future.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-50143506258229468262014-06-13T11:14:00.000+02:002014-06-13T11:16:53.388+02:00He walked around the horses<p>It was long ago that I first read H. Beam Piper's 1948 story with the above title, I've read it from time to time over the years, and I read it again with enjoyment recently. It was one of his first published stories, but he was already 44 at the time, and it seems to me higher in quality than much of his other output, although it takes the unusual form of an exchange of correspondence, rather than a conventional narrative.</p>
<p>It considers the well-known mysterious disappearance in 1809 of Benjamin Bathurst, a British diplomat passing through Prussia, who disappeared during a coach stop and wasn't seen again. This is a genuine event known to history, although the real Bathurst was 25 years old and was probably murdered and robbed, at a time and place when this wouldn't have been surprising or unusual.</p>
<p>Piper's Bathurst is in late middle age, for reasons known only to Piper, and finds himself transported to an alternative world, in which the American and French Revolutions both failed. The interaction between him and his new world is then described by means of letters between Prussian and British officials.</p>
<p>The point at which the alternative history diverged from our own occurred during the American Revolution, when Benedict Arnold was shot dead near Quebec, and was therefore not present at the Battle of Saratoga, where the British forces under Burgoyne went "through Gates' army like a hot knife through butter", and then went down the Hudson to join Howe.</p>
<p>I'm not a student of the American Revolution and have never before bothered to look up the Battle of Saratoga. Doing so now, I'm rather disappointed. There were probably tipping points in the American Revolution at which something small could have made a difference, but it seems to me that this battle wasn't one of them.</p>
<p>Burgoyne was simply too ambitious. He had already taken casualties and was facing a superior force in difficult terrain, but he decided to attack that superior force in a prepared defensive position. This is something that you just don't do, unless you have a death wish. I don't think it mattered whether Arnold was there or not, Burgoyne was doomed to lose. I don't know whether he was gravely misinformed about the opposing force, or just insane. As it happened, he survived the battle (unlike many of his officers, who were picked off by American riflemen), but his career was dead, and likewise British hopes of retaining control of the colonies.</p>
<p>Sadly, I think Piper's alternative history is a non-starter as given, although one could surely find more plausible ways for the American Revolution to fail. As for the French Revolution, I know even less about that, and couldn't say whether it might have been easily stopped.</p>
<p>In the alternative history, there's another Benjamin Bathurst who is the King's lieutenant governor for the Crown Colony of Georgia. Napoleon Bonaparte is a Colonel of Artillery and a brilliant military theoretician, whose loyalty to the French monarchy has never been questioned. Cardinal Talleyrand is regarded by Sir Arthur Wellesley as being "the sort of fellow who would land on his feet on top of any heap". I'm fond of alternative history; though I do like to see a well-chosen, elegant, and plausible point of divergence.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-3559532364909989612014-04-28T17:33:00.000+02:002014-04-28T18:03:30.441+02:00Crusader Kings II: How long it takes<p>I've just finished playing Crusader Kings II to completion for the first time, from 1066 to 1453 AD. It took me three weeks, during which my workload was relatively light, so I was able to spend plenty of hours on the game. This is a very long game.</p>
<p>Starting as the Duke of Barcelona, I worked my way up to Emperor of Hispania, playing as 16 different characters from the same Catalan dynasty, one after another: two dukes, ten kings, and four emperors. By the end, I ruled (a bit precariously) over the whole of modern Spain and Portugal, plus part of Morocco and the Balearic and Canary Islands. It was a lot of work, but much of it was absorbing and interesting, although some of the detailed work I could have done without.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that the game includes the whole of Europe plus northern Africa and a large chunk of Asia, all of which is playable area. Ruling the whole map is a fantasy, although I hear that some players have managed to rule quite a lot of it.</p>
<p>Arranging marriages is an interesting task, there are various factors to be considered, and the results are important. Educating children is a more mechanical chore; I can see why this is done manually, but I think it was a wrong decision: I don't think it adds enough to the game to justify the time spent on it. If I were designing this game, children would just inherit their parents' characteristics with some random variation, and that would be that.</p>
<p>I also find plots more trouble than they're worth, and some of the random events are tedious and could be better designed.</p>
<p>Warfare works quite well. It's not designed with the usual obsession with realism, which may offend some people; but from a game-player's point of view it's quite simple and straightforward to operate, and it's vaguely realistic in broad terms, compared with something like Sid Meier's Civilization. This is more of a royal role-playing game than a wargame.</p>
<p>It is frustrating, having played other wargames, to have to find an acceptable reason for war before you can attack someone; especially as this tends to be quite difficult and time-consuming. However, you can attack people of another religion whenever you like: free pass! This does of course mean that they can attack you, too.</p>
<p>At the end of this long and laborious game (2nd of January 1453) there was no fanfare or orgy of celebration: just a simple window announcing my score, with a list of the characters I'd played and a list of dynasties in real history and their scores as imagined by the game designers. I scored 80,893 points, narrowly ahead of the Rurikid dynasty at 80,000, but coming in behind the von Hapsburgs (90,000) and the Capets (100,000). The Plantagenets, I noticed, were assigned a score of 40,000.</p>
<p>I should note a couple of things, especially for people who are familiar with the game:</p>
<ul>
<li>If I make a bad mistake after investing many hours of work in the game, I don't scrap the game and start again from 1066: I go back to a saved game from before the mistake, and restart from there. Strictly speaking this is cheating, and it invalidates my final score, but I'm afraid I don't care. I play this game for my own amusement, not in competition with others, and it doesn't amuse me to have all my work wasted by a single mistake. If I make a lesser mistake that I can live with, I live with it.</li>
<li>Up to now I've been playing with the original game plus all the free patches. I haven't paid for any optional extras. In future, I think I'll pay for the Legacy of Rome DLC, because it provides the additional feature of retinues (standing armies), which are referenced in the patched game but unimplemented unless you buy the DLC. The game works well enough without them, but I feel I'd like to try them. I don't feel a need of the other DLCs so far, which mostly enable you to play as dynasties outside the European mainstream: most recently, the Rajas of India DLC enables you to play as an Indian ruler.</li>
</ul>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-58464603980639734602014-04-04T17:26:00.000+02:002014-04-04T17:26:05.919+02:00Crusader Kings II: The importance of being allied<p>Having had less work to do than usual for the last two weeks, I've accumulated more experience of the Crusader Kings II game, and I'm gradually learning more about it.</p>
<p>From the standard starting point of 1066 AD, I've played repeatedly as Murchad of Ireland and repeatedly as Harold of England, and I'm currently playing for the first time as Ramon-Berenguer of Catalonia: an obvious choice for me as I live in Catalonia, but I held off for a while because Ramon-Berenguer has a rather awkward strategic position: squeezed into a few provinces of north-east Catalonia, with south-west Catalonia and southern Spain occupied by the Arabs.</p>
<p>This is not an impossible situation, because what you have to do in this game is to get alliances. In Europe in the 11th century, the major power was the Holy Roman Empire, which (despite the name) consisted of just about all the German-speaking peoples put together. If you play as anyone else, you're a relatively minor power, and you have to watch your step. Anyone with allies can overwhelm you; conversely, with enough assistance from allies you can overwhelm anyone else.</p>
<p>I soon learned that rulers with no allies are easy prey. I learned later that I become easy prey myself if I inadvertently run out of allies. There are two good things about an ally:</p>
<ul>
<li>It won't attack you, as far as I know.</li>
<li>It may come to your aid if requested. However, it can refuse if it likes your opponent better than it likes you, or if it's too far away, or if it has more important business elsewhere.</li>
</ul>
<p>You get allies through arranged marriages. You can do this only if you and your intended ally have unmarried relations of opposite sex who are at least 16 years old, and if the intended ally is willing. The unmarried relations have no say in the matter, unless they have lands of their own, in which case they pass out of your control. (Of course, you can also get an alliance by marrying yourself.)</p>
<p>But arranging marriages is a rather tricky decision because you also want to arrange good marriages that will produce useful children. If you arrange marriages to idiots, you may get some useful alliances in the short term, but you'll raise a generation of idiots in the process, because the traits and abilities of a character are influenced by their genes.</p>
<p>When you pick a character to play at the start of the game, the game gives you an indication of the difficulty of playing as that character: usually a number in the range 40 to 60, with a comment such as "Hard" or "Relatively easy". When I tried picking the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, I found that the number is zero and the comment is "Pointless", which I take to mean that I'd be wasting my time because there's no challenge in winning with that character.</p>
<p>I find the game interesting, even absorbing, and it really has a flavour of playing your way through history. However, it has some drawbacks from my point of view:</p>
<ul>
<li>This is a very long, life-eating game: a single game can take up your life for days. To be sure, you can save the game and continue later, but I'd prefer a game that I could start and finish in one session.</li>
<li>Wars are fast and active, apart from sieges. Peace is static and rather slow, although things continue to happen in a rather slow and static way. You have to spend most of your time at peace because soldiers die in war (sadly) and it takes time to replace them. Furthermore, peace allows you to build up your economy, and you can't make war at all without some suitable excuse, which usually takes time to arrange; unless your neighbour is of a different religion, which is in itself a suitable excuse!</li>
<li>There are a number of random events, which are realistic enough but can be painful. In one game, I had a fairly mediocre character with a talented son, and I was looking forward to playing as the son. However, a random event intervened: the son got injured while training troops (not even in battle), and then died young, leaving me with a baby grandson as my heir. It's very useful to have plenty of legitimate children, but that's partly a matter of luck; unless of course you're unmarried, in which case you should be looking for a spouse.</li>
</ul>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-72934767121433808432014-03-26T21:02:00.001+01:002014-03-26T21:02:37.869+01:00Crusader Kings II: The Normans repulsed<p>Please see my previous post for an introduction to Crusader Kings II.</p>
<p>Rather cheekily, for my third game I decided to play as Harold II of England in 1066 AD, aged 44, defending against simultaneous invasions by King Harald of Norway and Duke William of Normandy. As any English child used to know, the real Harold II defeated the Norwegians emphatically and killed Harald, but then died himself losing the Battle of Hastings against William.</p>
<p>I see that the real Harold left a good chunk of his victorious forces behind in the north of England, presumably to defend against more incoming Norwegians, when he marched south to fight William. Harold under my direction ruthlessly took every man south, also recruiting further troops on the way, so that the English army usefully outnumbered the Normans when they came to battle in Somerset. Weirdly, the William in my game sailed his ships all the way around Cornwall and landed them in Somerset, so that's where the crucial battle was fought; though after winning that one I had to chase the Normans from one county to another in order to wipe them out completely.</p>
<p>That wasn't the end of it. The Norwegians landed more troops in the north; the Normans landed another much smaller army in the south. I went around with my one large army beating them all up in turn, and then made peace with both invaders. As I hadn't touched their home bases, I couldn't insist on reparations, but a simple peace agreement gave me a hefty gain in prestige at their expense. At the start of the game I had a prestige level of 40; after less than two years of successful war, this rose to 737. And it wasn't even particularly difficult. Perhaps I should have tried to invade Normandy or something; but I have little experience of the game, no experience of invading across water, and it seemed prudent not to push my luck. People tend to get fed up with long wars, even in this game, which has a war-weariness mechanism.</p>
<p>CKII isn't designed primarily as a wargame, and it shows. The warfare works quite well and isn't hard to manage, but a wargamer would regard it as over-simplified, and it's quite unrealistic in various ways. Here are some examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>Orders to my forces around the country apparently go by radio and are received instantly (I noticed this when recruiting fresh levies from various counties).</li>
<li>Orders are obeyed instantly and accurately without question. "I say to one, go, and he goeth; and to another, come, and he cometh."</li>
<li>My large army marched constantly here and there across the country from one battle to another, mainly between the north-east and the south-west, and must have worn out a good many pairs of shoes, but seemed to suffer no significant penalty in terms of slower movement, impaired combat ability, desertion, etc. No supply problems, either, although I believe that supply problems can arise in the game in some circumstances.</li>
</ul>
<p>The real Harold would truly have thought himself blessed by God if his forces had responded to his orders as mine did.</p>
<p>Harold's army at the start of the game was commanded by a strange assortment of military leaders, including one of his incompetent teenage sons; I took care to select the most skilled leaders available and put them in charge. As military skill gets a numerical rating in the game for all to see, selecting the best leaders was a good deal easier for me than it would have been for the real Harold. Furthermore, if I assign a leader to a force, he's right there and ready to go immediately, having apparently travelled at the speed of light from wherever he happened to be before.</p>
<p>So, if you want a truly realistic wargame, look elsewhere. This game is of course a good deal more realistic than Sid Meier's Civilization, but that's not saying much! CKII is a role-playing game of royal dynasties; warfare has to appear in it, but it's not what the game is about. Bear in mind that a truly realistic wargame is likely to be much more complicated, harder work to learn and to play.</p>
<p>However unrealistic my achievement, I do feel quite chuffed at having beaten off the Norwegians and the Normans all by myself. The game warned me in advance that Harold is more difficult to play than William. Really?</p>
<p>Three cheers for Jonathan the Conqueror!</p>
<p>Of course, having defeated the initial invaders in less than two years, I still have three and half centuries left to play in the same game, if I decide to finish it. This was just the beginning...</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-38233756521058819122014-03-26T10:42:00.001+01:002014-03-26T13:41:29.387+01:00Crusader Kings II: first impressions<p>Crusader Kings II is a computer game that was released two years ago, so it's not new, but I heard of it only recently, and ventured to buy it yesterday, as I have a temporary lull in work.</p>
<p>The game is a historical simulation running from 1066 to 1453 AD, in which you play the successive leaders of a royal (or at least aristocratic) dynasty, attempting to maintain and extend your dynasty and gain prestige points. Whenever the character you're playing dies or gets deposed, you continue playing as the successor, as long as the successor is a member of the same family. If you're succeeded by someone from outside the family, oops, game over.</p>
<p>For many years I've been playing Sid Meier's Civilization, a game loosely based on human history, but which isn't a genuine simulation and has little to do with reality. Crusader Kings II is very different: it makes a genuine attempt to model the situation in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa at the time, gives you all the real characters that were in play, and represents with some degree of accuracy the ways in which they interacted with each other.</p>
<p>At first sight the complexity of the game is intimidating, but playing it turns out to be feasible without excessive learning, although doubtless there's much I have yet to find out about it. There is a downloadable PDF manual that gives you the basics, plus a tutorial, and if you have particular questions you can Google them and get answers from the Web (some people have two years' experience by now). The game seems to have been popular, and the company (Paradox) continues to release expansions and patches for it.</p>
<p>I started my first game as Murchad, King of Munster in Ireland, having read that Murchad is a good choice for a beginner as he doesn't have any major problems to cope with. Murchad rules over a mere two Irish counties; with a bit of a struggle and by hiring foreign mercenaries I managed to conquer a third county, but any further military conquest would be difficult, as Munster is short of both money and soldiers, and in order to go to war you need some reasonable excuse. You can't just attack because you feel like it.</p>
<p>In any case warfare is merely one part of the game. Probably the more important part is juggling with your family relationships, making advantageous marriages, and coping with treachery. You and your heirs are all in danger of being murdered or deposed by some disgruntled relation. In my first game, the ruler of the county I conquered reluctantly agreed to become my vassal, but then started a faction to put my half-brother on the throne. The faction gained over 50% support and I decided to accept defeat rather than fight and probably lose a civil war over it. I could then continue the game, taking on the character of my half-brother. However, at that point the game automatically updated itself with the latest patch and refused to open my saved files from the previous version, so I was obliged to start a second game.</p>
<p>I started again as Murchad. In 1066 he's aged 39 and already has an 18-year-old son called Brian, but no wife. Oddly, the game doesn't reveal who Brian's mother was or what happened to her, although it does maintain family trees which could show that information. Presumably the real woman has gone unrecorded in history; Murchad himself is pretty obscure as historical figures go.</p>
<p>Of course I promptly married someone else, and found a wife for Brian as well: having plenty of children is useful to maintain your dynasty. However, it can also be dangerous, and six years later the ungrateful Brian poisoned me, so I had to continue playing as Brian; being a kinslayer, he was pretty unpopular with everyone. I was hoping that someone would get rid of him somehow, but no, he survived into fairly old age. In an effort to make him even more unpopular, I allowed him to convert from a Catholic to a Lollard, but what happened then was that the Pope excommunicated him, and later Munster was invaded by the Scots in overwhelming force.</p>
<p>King Duncan II of Scotland installed Artur (a much younger and inoffensive son of Murchad) as Duke of Munster, now a vassal of Scotland, and I could continue playing as Artur, but I paused the game then, at 1108 AD.</p>
<p>I see that Brian the Obnoxious survived the Scottish invasion and is listed as a mere courtier, aged 60, in the court of Duke Artur. He and Artur (who remained a respectable Catholic throughout) naturally have strongly negative opinions of each other.</p>
<p>So far, I find this a slow-moving game. Even with the speed cranked up high for most of the time, it took me hours to get through 42 years of play, and of course children take a realistic time to grow up, so managing your family is an activity for patient people. I suppose the King of Munster naturally doesn't have a lot to do, which is why he's suitable for beginners picking up the mechanics of the game. Doubtless it will be more exciting (though even more difficult) to play the ruler of some larger domain.</p>
<p>I should explain that CKII is a pausable accelerated-real-time game, so it runs continuously at a speed you can select, but you can also pause it at any time and take an unlimited number of decisions while time is stopped.</p>
<p>The idea of regenerating as your successor, almost in the manner of Dr Who, feels a bit weird and takes some getting used to. Brian poisons me, so I find myself playing as the nasty little ratbag.</p>
<p>Looking over the rest of the map in 1108 AD, it's a fascinating sight if you like alternative history. Duncan II of Scotland (son of Malcolm III) has managed to conquer the whole of Scotland, plus the Isle of Man, three counties in northern Ireland, and my three counties in the south of Ireland. England is united under an Anglo-Saxon King Osulf, so the Norman invasion evidently failed. In fact, Normandy is merely a duchy under the Queen of Brittany.</p>
<p>Christian Spain remains fragmented but has already begun to take land back from the Muslims. Much though not all of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Tyrol are united under the Holy Roman Empire; Venice is an independent republic. Topically, the Crimea is cut in half: northern Crimea and southern Ukraine belong to the Khanate of Pechenegs, and southern Crimea to the Byzantine Empire. Northern Egypt, eastern Libya, Palestine, and chunks of land further east are under the Fatimid Sultanate. The Kingdom of Rus is relatively limited in size and divided into two separate chunks by the Kingdom of Ruthenia in the middle. Sweden is eaten into on all sides; Denmark occupies southern Sweden and a bit of northern Germany.</p>
<p>In case you're wondering, yes, the game does include crusades, but I haven't been involved in one yet, and haven't found out how they work.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-88424589546046002892014-02-19T13:57:00.001+01:002014-02-19T13:57:10.529+01:00Political correctness<p>By chance, I just came across a Web page on which all people using the term <i>political correctness</i> were dismissed as sexists, racists, or otherwise unrespectable.</p>
<p>I don't use the term often myself, but I have probably used it occasionally. I'd define it as mindless adherence to political opinions and attitudes because they happen to be fashionable, whatever they are and whether they make sense or not.</p>
<p>Thus defined, the term is relative to current fashions. Whenever sexism and racism happen to be fashionable, as they often were in the past, sexists and racists may be described as politically correct.</p>
<p>When socialism is fashionable, people who adopt socialism unthinkingly may be described as politically correct. Likewise people who support dictators unthinkingly when dictators are fashionable. And so on and so forth.</p>
<p>If you support the current fashion because you've thought it out and and can explain why it makes sense, then in a literal sense you're politically correct, but you don't deserve the label as I've defined it.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-37256854882271836992014-01-03T16:37:00.000+01:002014-01-03T16:37:10.473+01:00Narnia<p>The other day I happened to see on television the beginning of the third Narnia film, <i>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader</i>, and found myself puzzling over what it is I don't like about these stories.</p>
<p>I normally like good children's stories and some fantasy stories, so I don't have a problem with the genre. Indeed, I rather like the sense-of-wonder aspect of suddenly travelling to a magical world through the back of a wardrobe (or the other methods used in later books). The problem is that I don't really like Lewis's stories.</p>
<p>I first read <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i> in childhood. When I read it as an adult in 1999, I commented that the children are less convincing than (say) Arthur Ransome's or Rudyard Kipling's, and seem more quaintly old-fashioned, even though the book is relatively recent, dating from 1950. I think Ransome and Kipling were drawing on vivid memories of their own childhoods, whereas Lewis seems to be looking at children only from an adult's point of view.</p>
<p>In 2008 I saw the film of <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i> on television, dubbed into Spanish, and then read the book again (in English!). I commented that the film was well made, but found it hard to think of anything about the story that I actually enjoyed.</p>
<p>My feeling is that these are stories written by a man trying and failing to remember what it was like to be a child. They come over as childish stories, and not in a good sense.</p>
<p>I really dislike the way most of the children outgrow Narnia by the end of the series, and Susan discards it as a childhood fantasy. How could anyone live through all that and then manage to suppress it all? I point out that, on their first visit, the children lived well into adulthood in Narnia: for fifteen years according to Wikipedia, though I don't find that specific figure mentioned in the book. You can't just dismiss fifteen years of your life as a childhood fantasy. If they didn't outgrow it then, why later?</p>
<p>Incidentally, having grown into adulthood as kings and queens in Narnia, they would surely have had massive problems trying to readjust to life as children in England. If I were thrown back into my schooldays from adulthood (even without having been Narnian royalty), I don't think I could tolerate going through all that again. As an ex-adult, I'd be a Problem Child with capital letters.</p>
<p>The only way to account for it would be if their memories of life in Narnia were mostly obliterated on return to England, as happens with dreams; and yet they do seem to remember at least to some extent. I don't think Lewis explained this adequately; and it strikes me as a bit of a cheat anyway. What happened to them wasn't a dream, and it lasted much longer than any dream.</p>
<p>Kipling, in <i>Puck of Pook's Hill</i>, used magic to make his children forget their adventures completely. Rather a shame, but at least he explained it explicitly, and it avoided any complications.</p>
<p>There are other problems with the stories that others have commented on, but I won't bother here.</p>
<p>If I liked the rest of it, I could probably tolerate the obvious parallel between Aslan and Jesus Christ, but I find it somewhat irritating. This is a fantasy story about Narnia: I don't want to find this kind of contrived analogy woven into it.</p>
<p>I read <i>Prince Caspian</i> for the first time recently, out of curiosity, and found it amiable enough, but a very slight novel with nothing much to it. In the end, the bad king's forces are defeated by Aslan, and nothing else that happens really matters. The Pevensie children are supposed to be important, but in fact their contribution to the plot is negligible. Lewis seems to have been a curiously amateurish novelist who was more interested in Christian fables than in telling good stories.</p>
<p>I like Tolkien better than Lewis, but even Tolkien, when writing <i>The Hobbit</i> for children, had a slightly patronizing tone that I find irritating. Fortunately, Tolkien didn't attempt to write <i>about</i> children (all of his characters are adults), and by the time of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> he wasn't even writing <i>for</i> children any more: it's a book for and about adults. It's not unsuitable for children, but it's not aimed at them.</p>
<p>Some people may regard the hobbits as child figures because they're physically small; but Bilbo is 50 years old at the start of <i>The Hobbit</i>. Frodo is 33 when we first meet him in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, but he's 50 by the time the real story starts.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-34958713556156004372013-12-22T19:12:00.000+01:002013-12-22T19:17:48.123+01:00Songs of death and jealousy<p>No, this is not about a previously undiscovered Leonard Cohen album.</p>
<p>I was letting iTunes play random music to me this afternoon and seemed to be feeling in a rather contrary mood, because I suddenly viewed in a new light two songs that I already knew well.</p>
<p>First up was <i>Don't fear the reaper</i> by Blue Öyster Cult (1976), which I normally like because of the music, although the lyrics are rather fanciful. This time, I heard it and thought of my mother lying dead on a hospital bed in March this year. She didn't look different, she just looked as though she'd been coshed on the back of the head. But she was quite still and not breathing, and I knew it was the end. My mother and I have never believed in an afterlife, but there was an awful finality to seeing her dead like that, and the lyrics of the song suddenly seemed today a fantasy in bad taste. Maybe this is a temporary reaction and I'll get over it.</p>
<p>A while later, iTunes threw up <i>Run for your life</i> by the Beatles (1965), which I've been hearing for most of my life; and I suddenly realized what a nasty song it is. Some people think a lot of John Lennon, and his character did go through major changes during his abbreviated life; but in his early adulthood he seems to have been a seriously unpleasant character.</p>
<p>To be fair, Wikipedia notes that “Lennon designated this song as his least favourite Beatles song in a 1973 interview and later said it was the song he most regretted writing.” It remains odd that I've listened to it for decades without really taking it in.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-41399557091198579962013-11-17T13:03:00.002+01:002021-07-15T23:50:31.878+02:00Fings ain't wot they used t'be<p>I tried looking on the Web for the original lyrics to the title song from the Cockney musical comedy <i>Fings ain't wot they used t'be</i>, by Lionel Bart, but all I could find were the different lyrics sung to the same tune by Max Bygraves. As I have on CD the original-cast recording of the show from 1960, here's my transcription from the sound, with some improvements added later from Chris's version below (with thanks to him). 'Wolfenden' refers to the Wolfenden Report on homosexuality and prostitution, published in 1957.</p>
<p>I used to lead a lovely life of sin<br>
(Dough! I charged a ton)<br>
Now it's become an undercover game<br>
Who wants to read a notice in a window, "Massaging done"?<br>
Somehow the business doesn't seem the same.</p>
<p>It's a very different scene<br>
Well, if you know what I mean<br>
There's toffs with toffee noses and<br>
Poofs in coffee houses and<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>
<p>There's short-time low-priced mysteries<br>
Without proper histories<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>
<p>There used to be class<br>
Doing the town<br>
Buying a bit of vice<br>
And that's when a brass<br>
Couldn't go down<br>
Under the union price<br>
Not likely!</p>
<p>Once in golden days of yore<br>
Ponces killed a lazy whore<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>
<p>Cops from universities<br>
Dropsy, what a curse it is<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>
<p>Big hoods now are little hoods<br>
Gamblers now do Littlewoods<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>
<p>There used to be schools<br>
Thousands of pounds<br>
Passing across the baize<br>
There used to be tools<br>
Flashing around<br>
Oh for the bad old days<br>
Remember...</p>
<p>How we used to [pull/fall] for them<br>
I've got news for Wolfenden<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be<br>
(Did their lot they used to)<br>
Fings ain't wot they used t'be.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-33273446013347500732013-09-12T20:31:00.001+02:002013-09-12T20:58:57.967+02:00Secession<p>The subject of secession is rather topical here at the moment, so here are my thoughts on it.</p>
<p>Firstly, I believe that in principle any group of people should be entitled to secede from a country. The principle being self-determination: the idea that you're not entitled to govern without the consent of the governed (as some early Americans once put it).</p>
<p>However, in practice, the smaller your group, the more important it becomes to negotiate an amicable separation from your country. If you declare unilateral independence, you have to consider various possibilities, including:</p>
<ol>
<li>Your ex-country declares war on you. In my view this is immoral, but it has happened repeatedly in the past.</li>
<li>Your ex-country closes its border with you. In my view this is distinctly unfriendly, but not immoral.</li>
</ol>
<p>Bearing this in mind, the idea of me declaring my house to be the independent country of Palfreyland is effectively ruled out for practical reasons, as are many other small secessions.</p>
<p>The secession of Catalonia from Spain (for example), would probably be infeasible only if Spain declared war as a result. The closing of the border would probably damage both sides without achieving anything.</p>
<p>In this case, Catalonia also has to consider the possibility of being refused admission to the EU, which seems not unlikely and would presumably cause some significant problems.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-87069053972309720682013-04-15T17:15:00.000+02:002013-04-15T17:15:41.001+02:00Reflections on Margaret Thatcher<p>I haven't thought about Margaret Thatcher for a long time, and would have allowed her death to pass without comment. However, as everyone else is making such a fuss about it, I suppose I may as well slip in my own two cents' worth.</p>
<p>I was 25 years old and living in England when Margaret Thatcher came to power in the election of 1979, but I abstained in that election and in the following one in 1983, not being persuaded by any of the parties. By the time of the 1987 election, I'd left the country; so Margaret Thatcher was the last prime minister I experienced as a UK resident.</p>
<p>Wikipedia sums her up as follows: "Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions."</p>
<p>As I agree now with all of these policies, and would probably have agreed with them then, it's rather odd that I didn't rush out and vote Conservative. However, I've never been in love with the Conservative Party, and perhaps what was on offer wasn't as clear then as it seems to commentators now in retrospect.</p>
<p>I believe quite simply in liberty, which is what you have when no-one is threatening to use force on you. I could never see Margaret Thatcher as a libertarian; she had some policies that were all very well, but she was too fond of getting her own way. I was offended, for instance, by the way she squelched local government. I believe in local autonomy, but she didn't.<p>
<p>The Community Charge (or poll tax) was introduced long after I left the country; from a distance, I viewed it with puzzlement. It seemed a curious political mistake and I wondered why she was so set on it. Perhaps, by then, she thought she could walk on water. Well, she couldn't; and I think it put an end to her career. I don't blame the Conservative Party for ousting her at that point; she seemed to have passed her sell-by date.</p>
<p>As far as I remember, I took little interest in her foreign policies, though they seem to have been partially successful. The Falklands War was pretty much an accident. Once Argentina had made the mistake of invading, to let it keep what it had rudely taken would have been humiliating and spineless, as a matter of principle; and yet in practice the Falklands were a small thing to fight a war over. It is a great pity that the world has no effective international law to settle such disputes once and for all.</p>
<p>Perhaps the great weakness of Margaret Thatcher, which still makes her own party rather embarrassed by her, is that she was so lacking in charm that she stirred up a large nest of furious enemies. <i>The Economist</i> comments that "Tony Blair won several elections by offering Thatcherism without the rough edges." It seems to me that being willing to antagonize people is not an asset in politics, in the long run. The most successful politicians are those who not only implement their policies but persuade people to like them.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-28684664059412140442013-03-17T10:26:00.000+01:002013-03-19T09:47:34.448+01:00What is the free market?<p>As a libertarian, in principle I'm keen on the free market, along with other forms of freedom. But this doesn't mean that I'm keen on the kind of economic system that we currently inhabit, or the results that it produces. As you may or may not have noticed, there is no such thing as a free market anywhere in the world: economic transactions are everywhere shaped, constrained, distorted by laws, regulations, taxes, tariffs, etc.</p>
<p>I don't mean to say that I'd abolish all laws, even if had the power. There is a such a thing as a 'bad freedom': for instance, the freedom to kill other people, which reduces their freedom to zero and thus depletes the total amount of freedom in society. Laws are necessary to constrain such behaviour, although it seems to me that the laws we have are too many and too complex.</p>
<p>It's common for opponents of free markets to point to the outcomes of our present system and blame "the free market" for them. The obvious reply is, "What free market?" There is no such thing in the world. We have markets constrained by law. If we want different outcomes, we can get different outcomes by changing the laws. And, indeed, I agree that the current system and its outcomes are not ideal and that some changes could be beneficial.</p>
<p>The basis of the free market is that someone grows apples and offers them for sale at a price; customers buy the apples if they want apples and find the price reasonable and competitive. Most people understand this system and accept it. The problem is that, these days, we have complications that people don't understand or accept so well. Such as the concept of the limited company, the concept of intellectual property, and the growth of financial transactions that enable people to make money by playing with money, without producing any goods themselves. These modern concepts are of course defined and shaped by laws, and I think these are the laws that should be considered for tweaking in order to produce outcomes that people like better. I don't think the present laws are really doing a good job; and of course they don't represent "the free market" in action, because no system constrained by laws is free.</p>
<p>Given that we have an unfree market anyway, and we are always likely to have, the question is in what ways should it be unfree? What minimal set of laws will permit a maximum feasible degree of freedom while being understandable and acceptable to ordinary people? I can't provide an answer to this question, but I think it's a question worth asking.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-76451421472993960262013-03-03T12:26:00.000+01:002013-03-03T12:26:44.806+01:00Why I'm not a vegetarian<p>First of all, I think we should probably all be vegetarians. The argument goes like this. Suppose that we're visited by aliens from outer space, who are significantly more intelligent and powerful than we are, and regard us as animals. They decide to start systematically farming, killing, and eating us. How could we regard them as wrong, or criticize their behaviour? It's merely what we've always done to others.</p>
<p>In practice, I think it's rather unlikely that aliens from outer space would find humans either tasty or nutritious, but it's possible, so we should take it into account.</p>
<p>So far, I haven't thought of any good answer to this argument, and I suspect that humanity will gradually turn vegetarian in the future. However, I list below an assortment of my personal excuses for not yet becoming a vegetarian myself.</p>
<ul>
<li>If the aliens turn up, they'll observe that humanity in general farms, kills, and eats animals. I don't suppose they'll distinguish between one human and another. So going vegetarian at this point wouldn't do me any good.</li>
<li>Having grown up in an omnivorous society, it's what I'm accustomed to, and it's the way society encourages me to live. Going against the grain of society is difficult in various ways.</li>
<li>If there were no humans on the planet, animals would rarely be able to die peacefully in their sleep. I think the normal ways would be to die painfully at the teeth and claws of some other animal, to die of disease, or to die of starvation when unable to get enough food. By killing and eating animals, humans aren't really introducing anything new to the situation: animals eat each other and most of them die painfully, one way or another.</li>
<li>On an ideal farm, animals may actually live better lives than in the wild. They're looked after, they get food and shelter in winter, their illnesses are treated, they're not usually attacked by carnivores, and in the end they're killed humanely. On a modern intensive farm, life probably isn't worth living, and they may die unpleasantly too; but that's the choice of the farmer. It can be done either way.</li>
<li>I'd be happy if all farms were ideal farms, although meat would then be much more expensive and most people would eat it only occasionally (which would probably be good for them). If farmers mistreat animals, that's on their conscience. It's not on my conscience, because I neither do it myself, nor do I force them to do it. If I buy their products, I give them a tiny encouragement, but it's so tiny as to be negligible. Whether I buy meat or not is not going to make any difference to any farmer's decisions.</li>
<li>In principle I should seek out ideal farms and buy only from them, but even if this is feasible it would involve considerable time, effort, and expense, and I have to balance it against the negligible practical effect that my efforts would have.</li>
<li>These days my wife buys the food, anyway!</li>
</ul>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-7168890508989296492012-05-02T08:26:00.000+02:002012-06-02T07:37:40.438+02:00Microsoft Outlook annoyances<p>I've been obliged to use Microsoft Outlook for years because my job requires it, although I use Mozilla Thunderbird for my personal mail and much prefer it. So what's wrong with Outlook?</p>
<ul>
<li>It keeps offering to remember my password although, whenever I accept the invitation, it never remembers it. This is gross incompetence: remembering a password is hardly rocket science. Furthermore, there's no error message: I ask Outlook to remember the password, and it just prompts me for it again next time. This has happened consistently using different computers and different versions of Windows.</li>
<li>When I tell Thunderbird to send a message, it sends the message immediately. When I tell Outlook to send a message, it does so when it feels like it, sometimes ten or fifteen minutes later. There seems no way of hurrying it up.</li>
<li>When I write a message, it normally displays people's names in the destination fields without displaying their e-mail addresses. This makes it easy to send a message to the wrong address, if someone has several addresses or changes his/her address.
<li>Sometimes, when I try to do something, it tells me that I have no connection to Microsoft Exchange, even though the status message says that I do have a connection. I don't know in any case why it ever loses the connection: my Internet connection is always there and works well. Recently I wrote a message and spent half an hour waiting while Outlook tried and failed to connect to Microsoft Exchange. Then I gave up and sent the message with Thunderbird, which of course sent it immediately with no trouble.</li>
<li>It takes a relatively long time to check for new messages after starting up: maybe about a minute.</li>
<li>It quite often hangs up so badly that I have to use the Task Manager to kill the process.</li>
<li>It saves messages in its own nasty format that only it can read. Most other e-mail programs save messages in a text file that can be read by any text editor if necessary.</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm currently using Microsoft Office 2007. I haven't upgraded to the latest version because, from what I've heard, it's no better and may even be worse.</p>
<p>If I ever stop having to use Outlook for work, I'll uninstall it immediately with no regrets.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-68464739205473628782011-09-09T11:53:00.004+02:002011-09-09T12:08:33.008+02:00Banking: stuck in the 19th century<p>For a very long time I've had a Co-operative Bank Visa card which has been paid off for years by direct debit from a bank account. Recently I asked the Co-operative Bank people to change the direct debit to a different bank.</p>
<p>I was first surprised that it took them several months to perform this simple operation, for which I had to fill in a form that they sent me by snail mail (in the 21st century!).</p>
<p>I then discovered after the event (they didn't warn me) that during the operation they first delete the old bank details, then weeks later they add the new bank details, so in the interim they have no bank details on file, and the card doesn't get paid off. This they regard as my fault. "You could have sent a manual payment." Well, yes, I could, if I'd had any reason to think it was necessary.</p>
<p>The whole thing is so incredibly slow and incompetent. They've got the old bank details and the new bank details, why should it take them more than a minute or two to replace the former with the latter? And, even if they insist on moving in slow motion, why remove the old bank details before they're ready to put in the new bank details?</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-22525762483277038222011-02-21T22:56:00.000+01:002015-10-05T16:59:32.319+02:00Annie get your gun<p>Quite a lot of people in the USA, and some in other countries, seem keen on the idea of carrying a gun for self-defence.</p>
<p>In principle, the idea that we should all have the means to defend ourselves is a good one. Unfortunately, a gun is inherently an offensive weapon that has no defensive capability. The only way of using it for defence is to “hit back first”, which is likely to work well only against an incompetent opponent; and tends to yield cases of innocent people being shot by mistake. A truly defensive weapon, such as Isaac Asimov's force shield, would be much better if available.</p>
<p>There are two situations in which you might consider carrying a gun (assuming that it's legal to do so).</p>
<ul>
<li>Violent crime is common in your area. In this case, a gun may be useful in some cases, although it will be either useless or worse than useless in other cases (someone holding a gun becomes a high-priority target for armed opponents). You can decide whether carrying a gun improves your chances or not. However, my personal preference would be to try to move out of the violent-crime area and settle down somewhere more peaceful.</li>
<li>Violent crime is uncommon in your area. In this case, a gun may be useful only in a low-probability event. If you decide to carry a gun, for consistency you should probably guard yourself against other low-probability events. For instance, you should wear a helmet in the street in case something falls on you; you should carry a lightning conductor in case of thunderstorms. You should ensure that your home has an air-raid shelter, and stock up with food and survival gear in case civilization collapses. If you live in the USA, you should move out, because the Yellowstone Supervolcano could blow at any time and devastate the country.</li>
</ul>
<p>It's a matter of opinion whether ordinary private individuals should be allowed to own guns freely, with restrictions, or not at all. I'm accustomed to live in countries in which gun ownership is heavily restricted, and I like it that way: I think countries with such restrictions are safer places to live. However, if most people in another country want guns to be freely available, that's fine with me; I'm not obliged to visit that country.</p>
<p>I'm aware that many American libertarians regard gun ownership as an essential liberty. I'm not completely sure of myself on this point, but I don't think it is. Even libertarians must accept some restrictions on liberty: we shouldn't be free to go around killing people, for instance. And, if we shouldn't be free to kill people, why should we be free to buy a tool whose primary purpose is to kill people? We should be entitled to defend ourselves, but I think we should all look for non-lethal methods of doing so. Some methods already exist; given more research, better methods would be found.</p>
<p>If guns are legal, I suggest that any innocent person who gets shot (or his next of kin) should be entitled to heavy compensation from the gun user or owner; even if the shooting is by accident or mistake. Gun owners, like car owners, should insure themselves so that they can pay up if required.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-66138301629125543382010-11-27T23:23:00.000+01:002010-11-27T23:22:39.023+01:00Beware of natural food<p>While recently rereading Reay Tannahill's awesomely informative <i>Food in history</i>, I came across the following paragraphs in Chapter 21, which I thought rather striking although not really surprising.</p>
<blockquote><p>In view ... of the extravagant publicity given to artificial additives, this is perhaps the place for a reminder that quite a number of natural, healthy, real foods would not be on the market today if they were subjected to the kind of tests that have to be undergone by the additives of commerce.</p>
<p>Caffeine, the natural stimulant in coffee, is fatal to humans at a dose of about one-third of an ounce. Nutmeg is hallucinogenic. Two pounds of onions a day are enough to cause anaemia. Rhubarb and spinach contain oxalic acid, which builds kidney stones. Carotene, which puts the colour in egg yolks, sweet potatoes, mangoes and carrots, can result in jaundice. Cabbage in excess can help to cause goitre. Bran, promoted in the high-fibre diet thought to help prevent coronary and colon diseases, can in excess prevent absorption of iron and calcium. Red kidney beans, inadequately boiled, can be toxic. Watermelon seeds are claimed to damage the liver and kidneys. People have been poisoned by the solanin in green potatoes, the prussic acid in bitter almonds, the cynanide in lima beans.</p></blockquote>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-17426812210258826902010-06-25T18:53:00.003+02:002010-06-25T19:40:24.184+02:00Dynamic range in digital photography<p>In photography, dynamic range is the difference in brightness between the darkest and the brightest part of a scene. There are two problems with dynamic range: capturing it in the camera's sensor, and reproducing it on screen for people to see.</p>
<p>It's useful to distinguish between three levels of dynamic range.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Low dynamic range:</b> the scene can easily be captured in one exposure, saved as an image with 8 bits per colour, and reproduced on a good monitor without any loss of dynamic range. A photo of such a scene doesn't need any special treatment. However, tone-mapping can still be useful to "improve the lighting".</li>
<li><b>Medium dynamic range:</b> the scene can be captured in one exposure and saved in a camera raw file with 12 or 14 bits per colour; but reducing it to 8 bits per colour would clip the dynamic range. In this case you can save the raw file as several different files with different exposure corrections, and then combine them using tone-mapping or exposure fusion. These techniques compress the original dynamic range in different ways to give a result that looks pleasing.</li>
<li><b>High dynamic range (HDR):</b> the scene can't be captured in one exposure without clipping the dynamic range. In this case, you can take multiple exposures with different shutter speeds, and then combine the exposures using tone-mapping, in order to compress the original dynamic range in a pleasing way.</li>
</ul>
<p>A problem with the use of multiple exposures for HDR photography is that there are often moving objects in the scene (people, cars, leaves, waves) that cause blurring or ghosting when the exposures are combined. Photomatix tone-mapping offers some degree of automatic correction for this problem, but Photomatix exposure fusion does not; so I wouldn't use exposure fusion for true HDR photos, because there are so many things in a scene that may move. Unless you take photos inside a building with no moving objects in sight.</p>
<p>Yes, you can use laborious manual methods to deal with ghosting in your HDR photos. If you want to spend that much time on each photo.</p>
<p>Most normal scenes have either low or medium dynamic range. Anyone who often takes photos of high-dynamic-range scenes is probably going out of his way to look for them. They might be scenes with bright sunshine and deep shadow (perhaps looking into the sun), or night scenes with bright artificial lighting.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13113433.post-44967966026750884842010-06-17T21:01:00.000+02:002010-06-17T21:01:21.527+02:00Small white hunter<p>A memory fragment from my mother, early 1940s:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hate to remember it now but on holidays in Wiltshire (aged around 9 to 11) I used to go out with my aunt Rhoda's husband Ted and shoot rabbits. Meat rations were stingy and my grandmother (she and Rhoda were staying in Wiltshire for the war) welcomed succulent rabbit to stew and feed us all.</p></blockquote>
<p>She adds later:</p>
<blockquote><p>... it's a good job my rabbit-shooting days were so long ago because, never mind it being illegal now, it was illegal then. We were trespassing on someone's land for starters and at my age I should never have been allowed to handle a gun, let alone use it. I don't know whether one needed a licence for a gun then but I'd bet my bottom dollar that Ted didn't have one.</p></blockquote>
<p>I understand from Wikipedia that a gun licence has been required in the UK since 1870; originally anyone could have a licence who paid for one, but from 1920 it became necessary to get approval from the police.</p>Jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15661031964537092605noreply@blogger.com0