Simple, Fast, Insightful. Pick Two.

There's a really neat presentation by the man with the coolest job in IT-town ("I'm Ira Hunt, I'm CTO of the CIA" and he says it real fast). It has many interesting points that shows he gets the whole Big Data thing, and yet, and yet... one of the things he wants is to reduce the dependance on expensive data scientists who are in short supply, and produce a piece of kit that lets regular analysts with degrees in History and Politics from Georgetown search their way through the databases.

Now where have I heard that before? How many times have I heard that before? And why does it never work? Well, here's how the Miracle Information System gets demo'd: "Let's say you want to look at all the e-mails sent by people who are one link removed from Hamid al Hamid to people who looked at the al Jazeera video on You Tube about the bombing in Katusk-al-Katusk and then Facebooked a Like? So all you'd do is (makes a few mouse movements) and there's your answer." Applause, coo-ing and million-dollar orders swiftly follow.

Except. How did the analyst know that those e-mails were there? How did they know how to click that box, then drag that? How did they work out the boolean conditions required for the search? How did Hamid-al-Hamid's name wind up on a drop-down menu? And so on and so forth. Of course when they get the system, the regular analysts won't learn all this stuff, and there will be a handful of guys who do, and they will have dead-end guru jobs for a decade being whizzes on the system.

To handle a data set, however small or large, you need a picture of it, and the way it gets fed from the outside world, and the hierarchy of tables within it, in your head. To be any good at all with it, you need to know the names of all the major identifying variables and categories (you'll need to tell the computer it's Hamid-al-aHamid the Iraqi terrorist you want, not Hamid-al-Hamid the second-generation US citizen and Queens Halal shop owner). That's often a task of scholarship in itself.

Even if you use a GUI to design the query and cut the SQL (or whatever) for you, you still need to know about join types, boolean operator precedence and lexicographical ordering. Nope, right there, that's lost everyone who doesn't have a STEM background. Seriously. Join types, operator precedence and lexicographical ordering. That's all it takes to stump ninety-five per cent of the population. FOR LIFE. (I am the only person on a floor of one hundred analytical people, including many well-paid SAS analysts who knows what operator precedence is. Everyone else instinctively keeps what they do simple enough so they don't have to. So that affects how insightful and complex the work is.)

There are only so many people who can do that, just as there are only so many people who learn the contents of Grey's Anatomy and a zillion other disconnected facts to become some kind of medic, or who can learn the endless VAT statutes and rulings. No-one suggests replacing surgeons with a nurse and a GUI, and everyone has given up trying to develop "expert systems" for tax legislation, so why do IT guys keep trying to get rid of their surgeon-equivalents, the data scientists (or whatever they get called these days)?

They don't of course, but they have software to sell, or buy, and projects to run, and promises to make, so they pretend that, yes, you can exploit data as complex as the CIA and NSA has with a neat GUI and a joint honours degree in International Relations and Farsi (I have nothing but respect for people who can learn Farsi or any other non-native language, it's just that it won't help you design the query you want.) No. You really can't. And unless you put the design of the databases in the hands of people who have an end-to-end appreciation of the issues, you will wind up with some contractor encoding everything in sight without asking anyone who will actually use the data, and then refusing to change anything because you can't demonstrate a business case for doing so. Maybe the CIA don't have that problem. Maybe they can just kill DBA's and Sysadmins who won't do as they're told. (Do you think so? Can I work there if they can?)

Nah. Until we can, we are all safe from Big Brother, because Big Bro simply doesn't have the technical chops. Actually, nobody does.

Simple, fast, insightful. Pick two.

A Year At Debtors Anonymous (DA)

I've been going to a D.A. meeting in Chelsea for a year now, and I should probably look at my progress. DA is good for dealing with a number of financial behaviours: debting - taking credit card or unsecured debts; under-earning - not charging enough or collecting money owing; over-spending; and under-spending - not spending enough to have a minimally enjoyable and provisioned life. Along the way it will also take care of your four-Starbucks-a-day habit, if you want it to.

Let's look at the under-earning part first. I've been interviewing this year, and basically I'm doing about right for the level of work I'm doing and the expertise I'm bringing to it. I could earn more gross income working somewhere else, but I wouldn't be able to work 8-4 and the post-tax value of that extra gross income against the full package would not be significant. I don't have invoices to collect on, as I'm on salary. I am fed up with losing three per cent of last year's salary to this year's sub-inflationary pay rise, but where am I going to go that doesn't do that?

How's my saving? Right now, saving is a joke with interest rates as they are. I am putting away money for my annual season ticket, and have silly amounts of money left at the end of the month that go into an account that pays as much interest as any instant access account will. I do need as of time of writing to review all that stuff about now.
Is my spending out of control? No. Which is not the same as asking: could I spend less? Sure I could. But that's not the point. Am I under-spending? That's a subtle one: there's a fine line between living austerely and not spending enough to provide a pleasant life. I have a budget, but I don't have a spending plan, which is a different idea. A spending plan is intended to make sure you do things you want or need to do, or enjoy doing. If what you like doing is going to the theatre, then not spending your intended amount because you stayed in gets a tickle across the wrist, because you're disappointing yourself. I don't think I underspend - I don't deny myself stuff because I shouldn't spend the money. Heck, I even bought a pair of Randolph Engineering sunglasses recently.

When I started going to DA, I had a ton of resentments about not being paid enough and not being able to do "cool stuff" at work. I don't have that now, and the steps I took around revising CV's, contacting agents, going to job interviews, and discussing the whole money vs quality-of-life thing with trusted colleagues were all steps I took because going to DA prompted me to do it. Re-arranging the exact location of my savings last August was also something I did because of DA. I keep my figures, though I don't write them up in a spreadsheet, and it's depressing doing so, as it's very repetitive, much like my life. So has it been worthwhile? I think so. Even just for the journey from the West End to the Kings Road of a Tuesday evening, and the exotic pleasure of the 170 bus from the Albert Bridge to Clapham Junction after the meeting.

I have stopped thinking that A Man Of My Talents should be making six-figures from royalties alone, going about with beautiful women and travelling the world over. Business class. Never was going to be me. (I know, I should have figured that our earlier? Maybe when I was thirty? Well, I kinda did. But there is a huge difference between knowing you're going to be a suburban drone for the rest of your life, and being comfortable with the idea. Actually, I'm not comfortable with it, but I have accepted that, given the fuck-up that I was, and the low energy level my mind and body run at, plus I cannot handle relationships with organisational superiors with any aplomb, and my general attraction to all all the wrong kinds of people, and it's pretty much a miracle I'm still employed and have a roof over my head.) I think being around people who really have made a mess of their financial situation has convinced me that I have actually managed my life reasonably well. I'll take something that makes me feel better about myself for actual good reasons.

Things The Trainers Say At The Gym I Believe As Well

My gym has profiles for all the trainers - all of whom are impressive - and each one has a little "philosophy" saying. A few hit me right between the eyes. Your body is the only thing you will ever truly own, look after it, and it will look after you.. Preach it brother! There have been two periods in my life when I didn't exercise regularly: about seven years between leaving secondary school and around the end of my first year working, and around three years in the Oughties when I started working in central London and stopped using a gym near my house. For a lot of that time I swam, and I started weight-training in the late… never you mind. I've been doing it a long time now. I have no idea how people can walk around with the bodies that most of them have. How can they tolerate the flabby arms and the soft muscles? Don't they know about the health advantages of training? It wouldn't be so bad if they were studying Aristotle and Sloterdijk instead, but they aren't. This also applies to the food we eat and what we drink. Says he currently eating the daily bar of chocolate and evening coffee. Which is what I do instead of what you do, which is booze.

Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself. Because this says that we are who we make ourselves, and we are responsible for that. "Finding yourself"? Suppose you find an arsonist? Or an asshole? Addict/ alcoholic / ACoA that I am, I've learned how to do some stuff that the Laundry List says I'm not good at. I've been creating myself since I was about eleven, every time I decided to read, listen to or do something new. The body I have comes from a gym, not my genes, because weight training really can re-shape how I look. We make ourselves in reaction to what others make of us, within the limits of the potential given by our genes. (That, by the way, is Nature vs Nurture vs Free Will wrapped up into one.) I am never going to be a distance runner - my breathing is awful but within the limits I can make choices.

Progress is made at those moments when, although your body says no, you will your mind to say YES!. Hell yeah. This is the difference between the Normals and Us. We show up when we would rather goof off and watch a DVD or a movie. I may do two sets instead of three, or lift a little lighter, or something else to make the session do-able. When I get back into the groove maybe a couple of weeks later - this current hot, humid weather is starting to take its toll - I'm at 90-95% of full performance. The Normals, who have been standing outside pubs drinking for the same time, are going to need at least a fortnight to get back up again. Assuming they make it back in, and don't stay dropped out way past the end of whatever it was that kept them away.

If you are strong mentally, the physical achievements are endless.. If you are training at all seriously, you will remember the first time the body was willing but the mind wasn't there. No-one knows what causes it, it has nothing to do with work, relationships, food or the weather, it might be the early stages of a virus that your immune system fights off… but your head ain't in it and you may as well quit and go home. It happens to everyone at least once a year. If my head is in the game, and my blood sugar is where it needs to be, I can train like a mofo. If I'm distracted or down, I'm weaker. If I'm angry, I'm strong.

Self-respect, self-discipline, perseverance, mental and physical strength. Sounds good to me.

Who Da Man? Alpha Beta Bollocks

Over in the Manosphere they talk a lot about Alphas, Betas, Sigmas and the like. Try this

http://alphagameplan.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/socio-sexual-hierarchy.html

as an example.

My first problem with the usual typologies is that it's all a little too much like High School: swaggering Alphas, detached Sigmas, wussy Deltas, mass-market Betas. These ideas are supposed to come from "science", but it all sounds like a systemisation of teenage, and perhaps academic, life to me. People are not bonobos: that's why people make documentary TV programmes about bonobos, not the other way around.

So, is there a hierarchy? Don't think too hard: it's a trick question. A hierarchy implies someone who's judging, and a Man's reply to that will be "who the fuck died and put you in charge?" Men recognise hierarchy in objective achievement - running faster, lifting heavier, earning more, cutting neater code, laying tile straighter and faster, whatever - but not in the estimate of manhood. You're either a Man or a Male: it's  binary. Of course it is: Men are binary. Women and diplomats go in for fifty shades of grey. 

So let's dump the high-school hierarchy. There. Doesn't that feel better? Now let's also dump the stereotypes and classifications, mostly because they aren't relevant to the problem. We don't need to know anything about that schlubby-looking suburban pram-pushing, cargo-shorts wearing Dad at the door of the restaurant, about to inflict two tired and disgruntled children and a woman who may very well soon be his ex-wife for all the pleasure she seems to take in their company. It doesn't matter how much he earns, where he volunteers, what education he had or what culture he consumes. His political views are irrelevant. He's a disgrace, from his choice of clothes, through his slack posture to his shrewish wife. That's all we need to know, and we can tell it pretty much at a glance. We're men, it's binary: you're a disgrace or not. More to the point, you're an exemplar or not.

Let's talk role-models. When I was an impressionable young man, we had real heroes: Simon Templar, John Steed, John Drake, James Bond, Napoleon Solo, Kojak, Harry O, plus any character played by John Wayne, Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood. Not a married man among them, all dashing bachelors without visible personal lives, capable, independent, tough, smart, cool and usually with neat cars. Only the great George Clooney carries on this tradition, and a young man could do a lot worse than model himself on Clooney's characters  - even if they are more ambiguous than the earlier ones.

By contrast with these admirable figures, married men tended to turn up in comedies and soap operas, and if they were the lead characters in serious dramas, their home life was a sketch, usually featuring a supportive wife and two children on their way to school. If a male character had a detailed home life, it was the same disaster we recognise today. He was an emotional klutz and his more in-tune-with-the-important-things wife was always explaining said important-stuff to him. And of course, the domestic, Peyton Place-style drama, is predicated on on everyone behaving like personality-disordered cliches. One reason that the media seems full of negative portrayals of men is that there are far fewer heroes and those few are more complicated. The airtime has been taken by advertiser-friendly series designed to deliver a large, high-spending female audience. 

So Who Da Man? Once it was John Wayne. Feminists hated him exactly because he was such a clear role model. Steve McQueen was the coolest white man that ever lived, no doubt. Miles Davis was cool, but he's a bad role model - maybe Arthur Ashe is better. My personal heroes (Socrates, Groucho Marx, Paul Feyerabend, Craig Murray) are all men who one way or another gave bureaucratic authority the finger, and were good at what they did. 

We're looking for outward confidence, self-respect, the ability to gain trust from other people, manners, taste, discretion, the competent exercise of whatever the appropriate life-skills are for the time and place, and the ability to know who to trust. And yes, psychopaths score highly on all those things, so we need to add in the usual requirements of consideration, co-operation and contribution. Princes used to be punctual and polite and, oh yes, they killed you if you dissed them. Since killing people is frowned on, a modern-day Prince is still punctual and polite, but dumps those who diss him. Autonomy is the central criterion. If you are running around after your girlfriend, wife, daughter, mother, alcoholic brother, best mate, boss, supervisor, clients or whoever else, then you are below the Man-Line.

Sure. I know. This excludes men who are pillars of their community who have loving wives and adorable children. I have agonised about this for a long while. Now I'm sure. Married men can do many wonderful things, but forty per cent of them get divorced, which leads to daughters becoming strippers and sons flaking college. 3:2 against with a limited upside and a lose-everything downside is not a bet any sensible person would make. If it's a dumb thing for you to do in your professional life, it's a dumb thing for you to do in your personal life. A man knows that if it isn't business, it's R&R, and doesn't make dumb decisions in the first place.

Does anyone exemplify these virtues today? Aside from George Clooney? I'm going to guess that Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Putin are pretty much their own men, but theirs is a hard act to emulate. I don't know where a young man looks now for a decent role model.

Images of June: London and Rome

Albert Bridge at 20:30 on a Tuesday evening (waiting for a 170 bus to Clapham Junction gets no more picturesque); the open roof girdering at Hammersmith Station (on my way into the gym Saturday morning); Weavers Fields, Bethnal Green; Hoxton Station (after suppering at Beagle); security queue at Stansted at midday; the Coyote club, Testaccio, Rome; jiu-jitsu at the Palazzetto dello Sport, Rome; the Spanish Steps; the crowds at the Trevi fountain, and the fountains.

June 2013 Review

If you had asked me, I would have said that June was the worst month yet. I was tired, very tired at the start of the month. So much so that I brought my first full week of annual leave forward to the week of the 3rd. Good choice! The first and so far only consistently sunny week of the year. I didn't do much, but it was a sheer pleasure just walking round central London or sitting in my garden.

I ended the month benching three sets of three reps of 75kgs (that's 165 lbs in old money) - which is some kind of lifetime personal best for me. The target is now 85 kgs, as that's what my trainer told me she had done (one rep+spot) a couple of days before. Can't be out-pushed by a girl, even if she is a blue-belt jiu-jitsu medallist. Not doing so well on the pull-ups, as I'm still on 50kg of assistance. Six months to go.

I attended the two-day SAS Analytics 2003 conference in Westminster. Excellent keynotes from Tim "Undercover Economist" Harford on Wednesday and Olympic rower Greg Searle on Thursday, followed by a series of half-hour talks covering everything from analytics for beginners, social networks and on to fraud and logistics. It brought together a lot of what I've been reading about on blogs and in articles. The event was refreshingly free of sales pitches and recruiters, though there were a lot of in-house SAS people there. An excellent way for The Bank to spend £900 (inc VAT) of its revenues. (Banks, by the way, don't have VAT-able outputs, so they can't reclaim VAT.)

I saw Fast and Furious 6 (because entertainment), Piercing Brightness at the ICA, Before Midnight and The Iceman at the Curzon. Sis and I suppered at Beagle in Hoxton and took the Overground to Clapham Junction. I read volume one of Prince of Thorns, Neville Shute's Ruined City, Gary Taubes' Bad Science, Dr Robert Lustig's excellent book on diets and food Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar, Ian Ironwood's book on the Manosphere, Jim Baggot's Farewell to Reality and William Bratton's The Turnaround. (Ah, so that's what I did in June: read!) Most of those on the Kindle. So far, I'm finding Kindle-reading is more absorbing than paper-reading, but I miss that symbolic act of putting the book up on the shelf after it's read.

I got into the swing of the Riemann-Roch essay, after spending way, way too long on the mysteries of one-forms on Riemann surfaces. I was starting to think I had severe brain rot and would never get it. 

The month ended with a weekend trip to Rome (Ryanair, Stansted) with some of the Lisbon gang. Friday night was supper in a random restaurant in Trastevere, followed by a long visit to the Coyote nightclub in Testaccio. We got back at 4 am the next morning, struggled up to the jiu-jitsu contest oat the Palazzetto dello Sport, had a very late lunch off the Corso and supper at AdHoc on the Via di Ripetta after getting a last-minute cancellation. Two of us went for the seafood tasting menu and pronounced it Yummy, with excellent service. Bed at 01:00. Sunday was a walk in the Villa Borghese and a quick lunch, followed by a ride to the airport. I promised to mention the moment when I walked into my bedroom and found a twenty-eight year old Russian blonde in my bed… but she's my trainer and we're friends. 

What made the month feel bad was a grinding project at work that simply would not go away and required endless reconciliations of this-run-with-the-last-run kind. I suck at those. I hate reconciliations. And it does not help when the IT people change the data codings under you. Once that got out of my hair, everything started to feel better. Also, I started to recruit an assistant analyst. Hard science postgrads with proven SQL ability only, please.

Coleville St W1 - Where I Would Live in London

Not Mayfair, Kensington or even off the back of Oxford Street. Coleville Place W1, hidden round the back of Goodge Street. 

It's about half a mile from Soho and my gym, which is just far enough to make it "going home" and restful, without actually being, you know, very far away. Charlotte Street is a hundred yards away. I have never, ever, seen a For Sale sign there. Ever. Maybe it's some kind of special estate and regular people can't live there.