Surrender etiquette

I surrender ..

"Please don't kill me - I have a wife and children back home!"

Good answer: 

"I accept your surrender. Private Smith, you don't look too busy - guard this captive till relieved."

Bad answers:

1. "She'll get over it - find someone new. They always do ..."  (opens fire).

2. "You should have thought about that before now ..."   (opens fire)

3. "Yep, if I had the resources to guard you, and if I trusted you ..."  (opens fire)

Avoiding atrocities is a logistical nightmare.

Solar panels are go ..-ish

Yes, the bounty of the sky! 30W!

It was all over by 2 pm. Twelve solar panels securely fixed to our roof ("if the wind takes 'em, they'll be taking yer roof off too!") and an electricity generator's worth of new dials, meters and weird Wi-Fi stuff in our pantry.

It's late afternoon before I've managed to get into the portal, dug out the requisite Wi-Fi OWL monitor MAC number, created an account and finally turned up the display above.

At the moment in question we're consuming on the left 0.885 kW and producing from the sky - well .. 30W. So that's half a lightbulb then. I trust from an overcast January afternoon we can only do better.

The Executioner

In response to our little mosquito problem, Clare has retrieved her Christmas present of The Executioner.

The Executioner

Powered by two AA batteries, this delivers of the order of 3,000 volts to any hapless flying insect and can also be used when they perch in casual fashion on the walls. A brief spark and they fry.

I wondered what would happen if you touched the grill yourself (it does say not to do this). Mindful of electroshock torture and tasers, I debated wimping out for a while before finally pressing the button and proceeding to zap the side of my hand (this guy was braver).

There was a bright blue spark and a sharp zapping noise - and I have to say it hurt a bit. More like a burn than an electric shock: but I wouldn't fancy prolonged contact.

Here's a guy ('Backyard Armory') showing you how to convert The Executioner into a stun gun.




This is illegal in the UK. Having watched the video I immediately noted some design improvements: the ends of the steel probes should be filed to points both to improve penetration and to increase the electric field (and therefore the applied voltage); also, his assembly is not very robust and would probably just break if used for real - the high-voltage circuitry should be embedded within a much more rigid container.

Well, we talk big but so far not a single flying thing has been harmed by The Executioner!

Mosquitoes in Somerset

Love that dopplered hum as you lie awake at 2 am. That intimate, penetrating whine as - invisible - it skims past your ear. Why doesn't it attack? There's an exposed wrist, an overheated ankle carelessly protruding from beneath the duvet. Surely it's hungry?

Silence now .. but you'll be woken again soon and it'll be lumps in the morning.

An unwanted house guest

A consequence of the mild weather and the flooded Somerset levels. The mosquito population has begun its exponential expansion and already here in the City of Wells our house has been invaded. Where's the spray?
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I managed to leave my mobile phone at my mother's house in Bristol yesterday. So no calls or texts for a week: email, skype or the fixed line work.
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UPDATE: 9.30 am this morning.

Splat! the flyswatter clobbers a big, juicy mosquito high up on our bedroom wall, leaving a blood-red smear. Clare's, not mine - and definitely not a room 101 situation ('do it to Julia, not me!!') ...

Weight Loss Ward (ITV)

ITV's Weight Loss Ward (about extremely fat people) has proved to be somewhat compulsive viewing. Take Doreen Thomas: age 56, height 4ft 11, and weight 31 stone. Doreen can barely move and has been living downstairs for ten months. Her glasses have been upstairs since March, apparently.

"She's tried losing weight in the past, but it's never really succeeded. If we don't do something now she probably will be dead," says her nurse.

Doreen Thomas orders treats (from Stoke Sentinel)

On-screen, Doreen comes across as crafty and manipulative. She lives on benefits, has a full-time paid-for carer and snacks incessantly on treats ordered online.

My puritan reaction is of course outrage: why are we paying this person to waste her life in this way? She even refuses an operation to insert a gastric balloon! What could possibly be the purpose of her parasitic life?

On reflection, how would it help if Doreen were transformed into a bland, everyday mediocrity? As a welfare monster she gives millions the pleasure of lip-curling moral superiority. In her own (thankfully) inimitable way she has entertained and instructed more people than many a C-list pop star.

Yes, "Weight Loss Ward" has entirely justified Doreen Thomas's life - short as it's likely to be.

Frack or Freeze!

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times today.

"... we are now being told by experts on solar physics that we are heading into a period of exceptional inactivity on the surface of our local star — and therefore one of exceptionally cold temperatures.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Richard Harrison, the head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory in Oxfordshire told the BBC. And Yuri Navogitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory is quoted along similar lines by Voice of Russia: “We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.” In other words, we need extra greenhouse effect if we are not to suffer countless more fatalities from hypothermia and permafrosted farms. It’s frack or freeze."

We're on the case for our little animal friends ...

Our house ...

Here's an excerpt from the BBC piece (emphasis added).

"During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum. Historical records reveal that sunspots virtually disappeared during this time. Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."

Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics, from the University of Reading, thinks there is a significant chance that the Sun could become increasingly quiet. An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.

"It's an unusually rapid decline," explains Prof Lockwood. "We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."

The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe. Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over - the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age. And Prof Lockwood believes that this regional effect could have been in part driven by the dearth of activity on the Sun, and may happen again if our star continues to wane.

"It's a very active research topic at the present time, but we do think there is a mechanism in Europe where we should expect more cold winters when solar activity is low," he says.

He believes this local effect happens because the amount of ultraviolet light radiating from the Sun dips when solar activity is low. This means that less UV radiation hits the stratosphere - the layer of air that sits high above the Earth. And this in turn feeds into the jet stream - the fast-flowing air current in the upper atmosphere that can drive the weather. The results of this are dominantly felt above Europe, says Prof Lockwood.

"These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia," he says.

"These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines."

Send your order in now :-)

With thanks to my sister (my mother was rooting for Roger!).

"The Light of Other Days" - Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (2000)

Just finished "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, first published in April 2000. Here's the review at The SF Site by Steven H. Silver.

"The Light of Other Days" was the title of a classic short story by Bob Shaw, one of the lesser known stars of science fiction. One of science fiction's biggest stars, Arthur C. Clarke, and one of its rising talents, Stephen Baxter, have combined forces to pay tribute to Shaw with their collaborative novel of the same title. One of the features of the Shaw story was the idea of "slow glass," which would transmit light so slowly that it could be used to view the past. The comparative device in the Clarke & Baxter novel is wormhole technology.

"Hiram Patterson, a latter-day Ted Turner/Bill Gates, has found a use for wormholes to broadcast news as it happens from remote locations without the time and expense of transporting a live reporter and camera crew.

"He can create a temporary wormhole, point a camera through it, and capture the images from a home office, no matter where it is located. Patterson's development team, headed by his son, David, continues to push the boundaries of this new technology while Clarke and Baxter begin to examine its social aspects.

"The spread of wormhole technology seems to be based on the internet. Like the internet, it spreads rapidly and reasonably inexpensively. There can be no interaction between the viewer and the subject of their spying. Most importantly, it completely alters the fabric of society and brings the world even closer together.

"The changes to society are continuous, especially since what can be done with wormhole technology and its cost keeps changing. Used to spy on individuals, particularly once the ability to look into the past is discovered, wormhole technology supplants the internet as the primary time-waster.

"People can now not only discover what their neighbours are doing at the moment, they can also see what their neighbours were doing at any time. Privacy has ceased to exist as anyone can spy on anyone else, at any time, without any chance of detection.

"Although there are some noble endeavours, such as the project to completely document the life of the historical Jesus, most people use the technology for more voyeuristic concerns. Given the attitude Clarke exhibited towards organized religion in such recent novels as 3001: The Final Odyssey, the irreverence paid to religion in The Light of Other Days is very understated.

"The Light of Other Days is definitely a novel of ideas. In addition to the primary concept of the wormhole, the story opens with the announcement of the discovery of an enormous asteroid, called the Wormwood, which will impact the earth in 2534, causing the destruction of all life on the planet. The knowledge of the Wormwood inflicts much of humanity with a sense of malaise, adding to the public's need for a diversion like wormhole technology. The authors have also inflicted water shortages on the world which have resulted in several water wars. Many countries have become balkanized and, perhaps the least likely situation, England has become the 52nd state of the US.

"With many interesting ideas, few of which are fully explored, and a dearth of exploration of the characters and their relationships, The Light of Other Days feels more like a work in progress than a finished novel. If the authors wanted to pay homage to Bob Shaw, producing a more complete work may have been the way to do it."

This review is spot on as regards the style of the novel: it reads to me like a very late pulp novel of the nineteen fifties and sixties - the golden age of Heinlein, Asimov and, of course, Clarke. Though by content I suspect Baxter did most of the writing - Clarke's main contribution seems to have been the overarching plot, a reprise of "Childhood's End".

Looking back fourteen years, the novel is remarkably prescient in technological terms. In the novel the dominant global corporation is called OurWorld (a version of Google) with a megalomaniac CEO called Hiram Patterson (father of main characters Bobby Patterson and David Curzon). The characters travel around in automated driverless cars and are surrounded by flying servitor-drones (the novel is set some decades in our present future).

There are some stunning set-pieces, such as where David Curzon programs the "wormcam" to follow his female ancestors back through time (via a 'mitochondrial DNA tracker') - the reader is taken on a dizzying ride across 4.5 billion years.

As with all pulp novels, dazzling sense of awe and wonder has to be set against pedestrian and unconvincing characterisation. One really has to struggle to believe the interpersonal dynamics - particularly the love interest between journalist Kate Manzoni and Bobby Patterson (Hiram Patterson's cloned son and heir apparent).

Quantum wormholes have recently become all the rage too, now linked by some researchers to quantum entanglement in theories of quantum gravity. I was not so impressed with the authors' model of our own physical reality as exhibiting a unique present: a boundary between a frozen block-universe past and a quantum-uncertain and mutable future. We already know that can't be right as our universe does not have a unique observer-independent present . Dr Baxter, of course, knows this consequence of special relativity.

So if you like SF from the golden age you'll enjoy this, but you are likely to share David Curzon's qualms as regards humanity's final fate.

Wikipedia entry for "The Light of Other Days"

Three Roads to Artificial Intelligence

AI pioneer Marvin Minsky once famously stated that “Artificial Intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men.”

Such an elegantly recursive cop-out!

I’m going to propose three, more operational models of intelligence: competence, search and creativity respectively. Which seems more plausible to you?

1. Competence

You meet an expert and watch them work at solving problems. A query comes in and instantly the correct answer rings out. You recall the old saying: “An expert is someone who doesn't have to think, because they know.”

This kind of intelligence is algorithmic. In principle you can write a program simulating the expert which delivers answers in a computationally well-behaved fashion (code for polynomial behaviour). In AI we call these programs Expert Systems.

This is intelligence-as-instinct: compiled, hard-wired expertise. I've met people like this and some I wouldn't call smart at all – the ones who are flummoxed by an unfamiliar problem.

2. Search

Some people have equated intelligence to controlled search. The paradigmatic example is playing games such as chess where there is no known well-behaved algorithm which can take an arbitrary game position and return the optimal next move. The best games programs create a look ahead tree using legal moves and assess the best of the future game-states. They then choose their next move as best-placed to get to that state despite the best attempts of their opponent.

A chess lookahead tree

Search can look quite intelligent because it’s flexible and adaptive. The AI program doesn’t know what you’re going to do next, but whatever you do it will adapt and continue “intelligently” towards its final goal of winning. I have the same feeling about my sat nav, which implacably directs me to my destination no matter what wrong turns and detours I make.

Search is powerful and adaptable (trading competence for bounds on space and time resources) but suffers from a fatal rigidity: it explores just the possibilities defined by the state-space and operations given to it. The chess program just plays chess.

Important as the distinction is in artificial intelligence, it’s not clear to me that in humans, search and competence are that much different. Humans are very bad at search, finding it almost impossible to hold a large number of possible future states simultaneously in mind. Trying to solve problems in such a way is pretty much the definition – in humans – of incompetence.

Experts differ from novices not by doing more search, but by having a more extensive, refined and sophisticated competency set (or ‘knowledge base’).

3. Creativity

The people I find truly, scarily intelligent are those who keep you off-balance by continually moving the goalposts in a way both surprising and opaque. You feel your every possible gambit has already been anticipated and that the activity you think you're conducting is actually embedded in a much more complex scenario being deftly manipulated by your opponent.

In “Tactics of Mistake’, Gordon R. Dickson describes an enemy force advancing down a river valley along its narrow flood plain; the friendly force is much smaller. A merely competent commander would presumably choose the best combat tactics commensurate with his poor hand – and would expect to lose. In fact Dickson’s hero places his troops in well-screened locations in the hills to the side of the valley, and then dams the river. As the water level rises, the flood plain floods and the enemy troops are forced into a killing zone. They are thus defeated.

How is this solution-approach different from competence and search?

The critical factor is that new elements have been brought in to create a larger ‘game’ – in particular the river, its flooding behaviour, the typography of the ground and the possibilities of damming.

Creativity thus requires an additional context, extra resources which can be brought to bear on the original goals of the game. In the real world, everything we do is embedded in layers of enveloping reality. For example, you might defeat the chess champion by doping his coffee so that he plays particularly poorly. You might thus win in the extended game where the player is also an active constituent, but a chess program has no access to this larger reality. More legitimate 'psychological tricks’ are regularly employed by human players.

This points to an important feature of creative intelligence. It requires a deep familiarity with the potential of embedding contexts of the proximate ‘game’ or problem – and the ability to select and refine additional operators which can be played back into a new kind of solution.

Most games are defined to explicitly abstract away all inessential contexts: you are allowed to do just what the rules say and no more (so no stealing your opponent’s king and declaring victory!). But this immediately rules out the kind of creativity we're discussing here, thereby impoverishing the model of intelligence which can be studied or deployed. I’m not sure AI research has sufficiently taken this into account.

In the real world there are no absolutely impermeable boundaries, so there are potentially no limits to the kinds of esoteric knowledge which can be brought to bear on a problem. And that’s what truly intelligent people do.

What is measured by IQ tests?

Test of crystallized intelligence (such as general knowledge) seem to be measuring competence which they hope correlates with ‘g’ as a proxy. However, the core of intelligence seems to be fluid intelligence, measured by test items such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices. These require the inference of new, compelling rules and patterns from presented data - which sounds a lot more like creative intelligence.

Let me make one more remark - about scientists and mathematicians. Some people are very good at rapidly and easily seeing the consequences of assumptions; they sign-up to the "shut up and calculate" school. Others seem more comfortable exploring different paradigms for situating a problem, other ways of thinking about it. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin called these two types "craftspeople and seers", while Freeman Dyson preferred "Frogs and Birds". Perhaps there is a connection here with the intelligence-as-search and intelligence-as-creativity distinction?

Psychologist Daniel Nettle observed that intelligence is a kind of whole-brain efficiency measure implicated across all areas of neural functioning.  High-scorers on the personality trait of Openness are artistic, creative people capable of making associations between different – and perhaps surprising – kinds of things (Smolin's "seers") while those with a more "craftsperson" style are perhaps exhibiting the effects of high IQ per se.

Disappearing accountants

The Economist this week has a feature on the changing nature of work. Just as machines displaced agricultural workers in the fields and craft-artisans in their homes, so a new generation of smart computer systems are displacing middle-class intellectual workers.

"Even after computers beat grandmasters at chess (once thought highly unlikely), nobody thought they could take on people at free-form games played in natural language. Then Watson, a pattern-recognising supercomputer developed by IBM, bested the best human competitors in America’s popular and syntactically tricksy general-knowledge quiz show “Jeopardy!” Versions of Watson are being marketed to firms across a range of industries to help with all sorts of pattern-recognition problems. Its acumen will grow, and its costs fall, as firms learn to harness its abilities.

"The machines are not just cleverer, they also have access to far more data. The combination of big data and smart machines will take over some occupations wholesale; in others it will allow firms to do more with fewer workers. Text-mining programs will displace professional jobs in legal services. Biopsies will be analysed more efficiently by image-processing software than lab technicians. Accountants may follow travel agents and tellers into the unemployment line as tax software improves. Machines are already turning basic sports results and financial data into good-enough news stories."

How likely is your job to be taken over by automation? The Economist article includes this chart.

Lose your job to a machine?

In previous rounds of automation, displaced workers were able to get an education and populate middle-class jobs (as clerks, and later as the famous 'computer programmers') which were pleasanter and better-paid than their previous jobs which automation had killed. But as the computers get smarter, perhaps a lot of people can't compete anymore - they're just not that smart or conscientious. And personal trainers, in general, are not fantastically remunerated.

The process of intellectual displacement is interesting. The machine systems are not, again in general, particularly good social actors (which explains the chart above). They can, however, automate large parts of the informational, computational and process-rich components of a middle-class job. A few highly skilled practitioners - expert accountants, if you like - can use these highly-capable tools to solve problems which used to be tackled by small armies of lesser-skilled accountants. Productivity has risen but those displaced 'average accountants' appear to have nowhere else to go. A life of benefits and endless video games beckons.

Oh, did I say automation hasn't produced good social actors? We progress one step at a time.



The elite of the Roman Empire didn't do a lot of work, manual or otherwise. They managed the great affairs of state, and slaves or lesser mortals did everything else. It raises a question of whether we should embrace or fear ubiquitous automation. The pessimists amongst us will recall 'bread and circuses'.