Street photography isn't really my thing, but I was sitting outside a cafe in Finsbury Park the other day, before taking a stroll along the Parkland Walk, and snapped a number of people walking by. This one came out well: she's greeting a woman who works at the restaurant next to the cafe, hence the smile.
here's a video by UpAndAtom about why the scientists seemed to make such a hash of dealing with Covid.
It's good stuff, until the end, when she lets them all off the hook. (See point Seven about this.)
With my former-philospher hat on, I want to add a few points.
First. Making policy decisions is not something that science can do. Facts can inform policy decisions, but not constrain them. This is Hume: facts cannot entail policies. Scientists and historians can dig out what studies there may be, what happened last time, and figure out if any of it is relevant to whatever they are dealing with. Those are facts. The leap to e.g. locking children up at home for months on end can only be made by a judgement that the bad effects of doing that are worth whatever the bad effects of letting them stay at school might be. That's not a "scientific" decision. It's a flat-out political one.
Second. Mathematical models are guesswork unless they are based on well-confirmed physical theories of the phenomenon. There is a textbook model of infection spread, based on a pair of coupled partial differential equations. It relies on some parameters that are specific to the disease, and if the disease is new, nobody will know what those parameters are until it has spread, and they have had time to collect and analyse the data. Which is already too late.
Third. Scientists are human, and some are more human than others. Neil Ferguson had long been known as the go-to forecaster for Government departments wanting to justify slaughtering vast herds of animals. That's how he keeps his job at Imperial. Nobody who knew about forecasting and Ferguson put any credibility in his announcements. Treating his forecasts as credible was either incredibly naive or incredibly cynical.
Fourth. When Governments quote a known scienziati di comodo, you know the decisions sono state fissate(*). Politicians and corporate managers decide what they are going to do first, and back-fill the facts and business plans to fit the decision. There is a very brief period between a problem appearing and the bad decision about handling it being made, when facts can sway the managers and politicians, and then only if the facts are presented by people they trust. And sometimes even the consiglieri has to accept that the wrong thing is going to be done. Because politics.
Fifth. There are no experts on pandemics. There haven't been enough pandemics to produce the conditions for expertise. See a very good video by Veristatium about this.
Sixth. Medicine and Public Health are not sciences, but technologies. Both make use of the products of scientific theories as filtered through technology and pharmaceutical companies. Doctors used leeches when that was the best theory, and they prescribe statins now that's the best theory. Most doctors have no idea about how PET scanners work (or Ibuprofen, for that matter), but they can follow the operating instructions and interpret the results. This is okay until something goes wrong or the results are atypical, when nobody can do anything about it. When diagnosing, if the symptoms don't add up to something they have a cure for, they tend to tell the patient there's nothing wrong with them, or resort to the current all-purpose explanation (diabetes, obesity, long Covid, and so on). Public health is even worse. It hasn't had another success on the scale of public sewers and water treatment plants, and that was nearly 170 years ago. See Ben Goldacre's Bad Science if you want to know just how dreadful pharmaceutical industry research is, and Dr James Le Fanu's The Rise And Fall Of Modern Medicine if you want to know just how medicine has stagnated in the past decades. (Unless it benefits from technological advances elsewhere, such as keyhole surgery.)
Seventh. Using extra-scientific criteria to justify one's decision to pursue one theory rather than another is okay, though you may risk being thought a little eccentric if the facts just aren't with you. Deciding on your personal line of research is not the same as deciding on public health policies that will mess up the lives of millions of children and young people, or consign a million or so vulnerable people to living in one room of their family home and avoiding everyone for months on end. It is not okay for scientists to add extra-scientific arguments to make life easier for the politicians. If the scientists have no relevant facts, they should say so and leave the room. I know they aren't going to, because holding an establishment post (Chief Medical Officer, say) means they are ambitious, and ambitious people please their political patrons. That's why, if you ever get to be a Minister, you should not listen too closely to the official experts.(**)
Eighth. The last of the old-fashioned experts died a while ago. What we have instead are true-believer activists. Whereas the old-fashioned experts said that they didn't know when they didn't, and weren't pushing any explicit agendas, activists know already what is wrong and what must be done, and facts are merely rhetorical devices. This is especially so in the fact-lite, speculation-heavy subjects where the systems, from the weather to the human body, are way more complex than any bunch of equations could describe. Major organisations from the Met Office to Public Health England facts are run by people who are pushing socio-economic agendas that are defended by repeated cries that "the science is in" or "the consensus is overwhelming". Facts can be publicised when it helps The Cause, and kept quiet otherwise. Which is why you never hear anything about climate change during a long spell of dull, mild weather.
Science, as the search for a better theory, did not fail us during the pandemic. If anything, the political establishment failed science, trying to impose a consensus that had no basis in fact.
Many scientists failed in their role as citizens, from the crowd that covered up the Wuhan Lab leak, to the deceitful and panic-mongering briefings of Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and others. They went along with policies, especially mask-wearing, that they knew had no basis in fact, and were proposed for political reasons. It doesn't matter why they did it, or even if they were sincere. They should have stayed out of the policy debate, and they should not have been on the rostrum in Press Briefings. As for Anthony Fauci, he has a special circle of Hell being dug for him even now.
The failings of some scientists were compounded by the failure of the mainstream and social media, most of which obligingly spewed out a stream of poisonous and misleading propaganda about the threat posed by Covid, and did everything they could to suppress dissent about Government policy, and to create an illusion that there was a factual basis for any of it. The real failures were and still are in Broadcasting House.
Every now and then I get the feeling that I just don't take music seriously enough if I don't have Roon, and I don't take photography seriously if I don't have Lightroom. I'm sure Roon Labs and Adobe will be pleased to hear that their PR is working.
Lightroom first.
There was an analogue equivalent of Lightroom. It was called 'the darkroom', and in it the professionals did things like cross-process, experiment with paper stock, dodge-and-shade, and many other things. Photoshop was developed so professional photographers could futz with digital photographs the same way they had been doing with film. We amateurs accepted that was for professionals: there was no shame in not knowing your way round a darkroom.
Lightroom is software, it doesn't need a dedicated room. There's no excuse for not learning the basics and beyond. It's a real tool used by serious hobbyists and professionals - and real pros use Capture One Pro (as well) to tether their camera to a Mac with a big screen. If you think the basic Lightroom + Photoshop subscription is expensive, wait until you see how much the monthly subscription to Capture One Pro is. (The commercial portrait photography pros will tell you it pays for itself in extra sales in no time.)
Photos is good enough to do the basic changes I need to make: a tweak to the alignment here, maybe a little touch on the colours, brightness and contrast. DxO Perspective if the angles are really off. We snap-shooters don't do filters and pre-sets. Those are for pros, and the pre-sets in Photos are, well, just not for me.
Adobe have got their hooks into me with Lightroom. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I feel I'm not taking my photography seriously if I don't have it. On the other days of the week, I know that the first thing I need to do to take photography seriously is a) travel more, b) do still lives. Using Lightroom for the occasional snaps I take at the moment would be close to "all the gear and no idea".
Now Roon.
I'll admit it, the only reason I want Roon is so I can stop feeling inferior every time John Darko or someone of that ilk mentions it. I said I get the feeling that I'm not taking music seriously enough if I don't have Roon, but that's not correct.
You're reading the gibberish of a man who has read Burkholder's History of Western Music, and the Oxford History of Music, plus a few more. I can read music (just) and play guitar and piano (after a fashion). My collection runs from Coltrane to Corelli. I have attended a performance of Opus Calivcumbalisticum and sat through the Ring Cycle. I saw Elton John before he had his first hit, and Miles Davis when he played the Festival Hall. I have been to Proms and the Wigmore Hall. I'm as serious about music as anyone can be who doesn't do it for a living, and still has a sense of proportion.
What I'm not so serious about is hi-fi aka "the hobby". I like my music to sound good. I've always had decent entry-level gear, and the step up to the next-level set-up I have now was well-worth it. I'm not a gear-head or a collector. I'm the guy who buys gear because it does a good job, not because I want to "own the brand". I have, however, read the Master Handbook of Acoustics, so I guess that counts.
I did try Roon, and wrote about it. It's a resource hog: you will not be rendering video and running Roon at the same time. I was impressed by its speed and ability to find album art when Apple Music couldn't. In the end it didn't make enough of a difference for the price. I can't help feeling that to some extent Roon is a status symbol: I have Roon, I'm a real audiophile with lots of spare cash (or do all audiophiles have spare cash?). I don't have a huge digital library: I rip music to transfer it to my phone for travelling. That's it.
What's really happening is that I feel I'm not taking something I'm doing seriously enough, and the part of the brain that is responsible for distraction and short-cuts throws this chaff about Lightroom, Roon or anything else out.
It's never about gear - except on the very rare occasions when it actually is.
The camera said it 07:58 on a Saturday morning, and it was going to be a really hot one. London is almost deserted on Saturday morning up to about 10:30. And here our intrepid tourists are, and probably getting a better view of the town without all the crowds. Or maybe they were coming out from an all-nighter (do those still happen?).
There is one major scale, also known as the Ionian mode. Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone.
There is a natural minor scale, which is where you move three times to the left on the Circle of Fifths and play the resulting major scale, but starting on the original tonic. Also known as the Aolian mode. Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone-Tone.
Then there is the harmonic minor scale: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Three SemiTones-Semitone.
It gets worse. The melodic minor scale: Tone-Semitone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Tone-Semitone (upwards) and play the notes of the natural minor scale on the way down. Hint: don't do trills or clever up-and-down phrases at the upper end of the scale.
Kids have to learn this stuff at Grades Three and Four for piano (but not in all keys).
It's in the book of clarinet scales I once thought would be a good idea to use for the guitar. (The two have a very similar range.)
There's never been a time when Gerald Plumbtones on Radio Three has said "and Mahler wrote this in E harmonic minor".
When something is written in (say) E-minor, it's the natural minor they use.
The only song I know in a harmonic minor is the Great Society version of White Rabbit. Even Derby Slick's solo is in the harmonic minor.
One of the ways of learning something is to extemporise around it. I may have grabbed A harmonic minor, noodled away, and thought on occasion "that sounds a bit Keith Jarrett-y". I suspect KJ used it from time to time.
Lower grade pianists also have to learn the whole-tone scales (both of them) and the chromatic scale (only one of them). No pentatonics, because this is Music Theory and they didn't do pentatonics in the Classical era. Bear in mind there are guitarists who barely do anything else.
So other than for practice, have you ever knowingly used the melodic or harmonic minor scales?
There's a scene in a wonderful movie called Dinner Rush...
(Not this scene, but it gives you an idea how good a film this is)
...where a pompous celebrity art critic says to Summer Phoenix's aspiring painter / waitress...
You're an artist if you say you are. You're a successful artist if....
...and then he's interrupted by his entourage.
I've often wondered how to finish that line.
It's subtle, because there's "being an artist" and being a writer, painter, sculptor, interior designer, architect, and all those other activities that fall under "the arts".
You're a writer if you sit down and write pretty much every day. You're a successful writer if you finish some of the stories or projects you start, (because you will waste time on bad ideas)
But then there's "being a writer" as a profession, as participation in a social / cultural scene.
You're an author if you've been published and paid for it. Once. That's what the Society of Authors says. You're a successful author if you keep being published. (Because almost nobody makes a living from writing.)
There are successful authors who are by no means artists. There are artists who write stories, who write little and don't spend much time schmoozing.
So what makes someone a successful artist?
It's not about being a successful practitioner, and it's not about being recognised by the in-crowd of agents, critics, editors, gallerists, academics, journalists, and other bureaucratic nabobs.
What I notice about people I call `artists' is that a) they can work and express themselves in multiple media; b) they are quick to experiment with new technology that may help them produce something; c) they have their own voice / tone / style. You can identify their work more or less immediately.
You're a famous artist if "everyone" knows your name.
You're a rich artist if you have lots of money.
You're a successful artist if you develop your own voice and use that voice to produce work in whatever media you can use.
And most probably you will be poor or working a day job. Those are the stats.
