ZOUT - Zandvoort

Spent the weekend over in the Netherlands, and have been Python-ing again. This was where I went after arriving at Schipol. When I arrived the sky was overcast, but I'm a believer, and within an hour it looked like this.

I like beaches. If only the good ones weren't so darn far away.

61

Is a house-number, not an age. It's a piece of arithmetic based on my date of birth and today's date. I never felt as old as I did when I was over-weight and in a dead-bedroom relationship in my mid-fifties. Then I joined my gym, and after my second boxing class recognised that I could either get my ass kicked, or kick ass. Getting old means you stop kicking ass. Growing older means that kicking ass takes more effort and has longer recovery times.

I don't expect to behave like a thirty-something. I don't have the hormones, I've sorted out the neuroses. I stay in more and do random stuff less. I used to walk in parks on weekend afternoons, but if I do that now, I almost pass out from the histamines from the pollen I get more sensitive to each year. I can go walking in winter, and then it's too cold. I read for intellectual challenge or entertainment: I've done my English Lit duty reading. I've seen Battleship Potemkin and Man With A Movie Camera, so I have no qualms watching Nikita just because Maggie Q. I leave Friday and Saturday nights to the kids, and Saturdays to the parents. I get older, I adjust. That's what smart people do. And me, even if I'm a little slow on the uptake.


If you're an able-bodied man, it is never too late to re-build your body and mind. I've done it twice: in my early-30's and late 50's. I couldn't do reasonable deadlifts (for an office worker) until six months ago. If you've had an education you can always pick up the books again. That's why I can give you a very simple explanation of why the spectrum of a cylinder has trivial higher co-homology, even though the cylinder itself has a non-trivial first group in the usual topology. I know. I wouldn't have understood a word of that ten years ago either.

In a couple of weeks I begin a year or more's worth of orthodonty. And I will after a bit more hesitation get some personal training sessions to change up the work I do in the gym. The trick is not minding that I have to re-build myself. And not minding that my social life is limited to a few good friends, and that my best sexual days are behind me. That's going to happen to you, and you can work with it or let it get you down.

62? Bring it on.

Why Evolution is an Easy Target for Fundamentalists

I read Wolpoff and Caspari’s Race and Evolution recently. It’s an biographical account of the various views about race in evolutionary theory. The overwhelming impression it left was that all those palaeontologists were and still are, making very large generalisations on the bases of very small amounts of highly interpreted evidence. That's a “feature" of the history-of-the-universe-and-mankind theories: just think of the recent BICEP2 hype-to-epic-fail incident.

To invent theories about the development of the human race on the basis of what are, let’s be blunt, a few scattered bits of bone that require years of training to “see” properly, is speculative science of the highest order. Wolpoff and Caspari acknowledge that the origin-of-humans theories that get the publicity are the ones that fit best with the dominant public political and moral views of the time. Hence the popularity of Out-of-Africa theories. Should anyone prove that Black Africans and White Europeans have significant genetic differences (whatever that might mean) they will be told to shut up or find another job. Should a lady biologist prove that the current human race consists of the males of one previous species and the females of another, the massed ranks of lady columnists would be asking why it took science so long to prove what everyone has always known. (It would be impossible for a male biologist to publish such a paper.)

Evolution is a process without a mechanism. I’m quite happy to accept that our present flora and fauna are the result of breeding and some as-yet-to-be-understood feedback mechanism between environment, phenotype and genotype. What is missing is an adequate explanation of the engineering of the DNA molecule.

The usual story of evolution is that it happens very gradually, taking thousands of years to develop even the smallest successful change to the phenotype, like a particularly inept Victorian experimental inventor. But this cannot be right. Complicated things, like knee joints and legs, have to be done entire, at once, or not at all. How does a animal exist with half a knee? Or a ball head for the lower leg but no socket (yet) on the upper leg? Or consider the development of vision. The first species able to see clearly would have such a competitive advantage over the others that it would simply wipe all the others out. It must have developed in all the relevant species at the same time. Or else there must have been a period of many millions years before predator-pray systems developed. And if Nature experiments, where are the six-fingered guitarists? Something seems to be keeping Nature’s experiments on most species within a tight pattern. (In case you think six-fingered guitarists are a silly idea, remember that horses and many other “four-legged” animals are actually “single-fingered” animals.)

When we understand the fine-structure dynamics of the DNA molecule, we will see that, just as there is only one way to design a knee, and a few to design an eyeball, there are only a limited number of ways a DNA molecule can be stably structured. (‘Limited’ meaning ‘a lot smaller than the number of possible chess games’. While the words that can be formed by the DNA alphabet are potentially limitless, all but a couple of million those combinations won’t lead to structurally stable molecules. Or something along those lines.)

An adequate theory of evolution would be based on an understanding of changes in DNA arising from a) sexual combination, b) environmental damage, c) the only-slightly-understood constructive feedback between environment, phenotype and genotype. When we understand how DNA works, the theory of evolution will be replaced by DNA technology and the history of climate, land mass movement, meteor strikes, large-scale volcanic eruptions and other such events. And all those Vulgar Evolutionist Just-So Stories trotted out to explain every little weirdness of animal behaviour or appearance? Consigned to the tactful forgetfulness of history.

So when I said that evolution doesn’t have a mechanism, I bet you said “sexual selection” under your breath.

Darwin suggested two methods: combat (lions, deer, wolves), when the male appoints himself after fighting with other males, and the females go along with it; and display (the peacock) where the one or both sexes attract the other with some bling or show-off tricks. Quite how otters and penguins fit into this is a stretch of anyone’s imagination - doesn’t it have something to do with pebbles?

A species that is able to survive significant changes to its environment, and even the odd forest fire or major earthquake, cannot be fine-tuned to its existing environment, must have a large set of variations in its genotype and a reasonably rapid environment - phenotype - genotype feedback system. (Otherwise, like smallpox, it can be eradicated. Common cold viruses have the variation and adaptation of the Devil.) That means one or both of the genders can’t be overly fussy in what they look for. In combat-selecting species, it would seem to make sense that the females are the major source of variation, and that the male lion lacks discrimination; and in display-selecting species, the variation and lack of discrimination needs to be in both genders. If males display, they have to be prepared to mate with dull-looking females, and vice-versa; if both do, or don’t, display, each has to be prepared to settle for whoever happens to handy at the time.

A robust species doesn’t actually go in for a lot of selection. It can’t, because it needs genetic variety to survive change. Females choose because “he made me laugh” or “I like bald men”, and accommodating pop-evolutionists tell them that both those reasons are excellent markers for evolutionary advantage. Yesterday they told some other women that long hair and a serious demeanour were also excellent markers for evolutionary advantage. The individual selects, but one individual’s turn-on is another’s turn-off. So a species-wide genetic change cannot be propagated by sexual selection, nor can a particular gene be de-selected by it, because there’s always going to be enough males and females who find the change unattractive, or take up the cause of genes that the majority wish would go away. Which is why women don’t all look like Behati Prinsloo and men don’t all look like Jake Gyllenhall.

Nope. Sexual selection is a crock. But that, and random mutations, are all the evolutionists have until they get a proper theory of DNA engineering. No wonder Evolution is such an easy target for fundamentalists.

April 2015 Review

I was ill. One the first day of the month I woke up and knew I shouldn’t leave the front door, less I fall over in the Cineworld car park on my way to the station and lie there unable to move. I had a cough, cold and fever all the way through Easter and the Thursday and Tuesday I took in addition. Monday 30th of March, I brought in two pairs of trousers for cleaning at Jeeves, and left them on the train. Never leave anything in a plastic bag on the trains that go through Richmond from Waterloo: you will never see it again. I even visited Lost Property in the grand tradition of Futile Gestures. I struggled through the two weeks after Easter, and then took a long weekend. When I returned to work, I felt a lot better, but was still moving slowly.

I emerged from that three-week illness and weakness with an understanding that I had let myself get into a rut over the last six months. I didn’t have a bunch of resolutions, but I did write down a number of things I needed to do and stop prevaricating about buying.

I saw exactly one film the whole month: John Wick, at the Cineworld. However, on the box sets, I went through Scandal, Elementary S2, The Bridge S2 and Fringe S1. I also saw a number of the Fake or Fortune programmes on You Tube.

I read Wolpoff and Caspari’s Race and Human Evolution, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s The Time Regulation Institute, Douglas Coupland’s Kitten Clone, and Philip Mould’s Sleuth.

Sis and I dined at The Providores on Marleybone High Street, and pronounce it excellent. So do the crowds of well-heeled Maylebonians.

I started the Thursday Yoga classes again. This is because I have decided to leave my car at Richmond and take the tube back from time to time. It works well for Yoga as I’m not thinking about rushing back to catch the trains immediately afterwards and the whole thing feels more relaxed. The Yoga itself? Ouch. I weigh a lot, and I cannot “float…into Plankassana”. When I do it, it’s called a press-up. Stop sniggering and knock out ten press-ups now. Thought so… not as easy as it sounds.

Plus the garden got its post-Winter cut. This is not an easy thing to do.

I started wearing a Fitbit Flex again. Was it co-incidence that I also resumed the alternate Waterloo-Holborn walk? I don’t think so. In the week I do 10,000=+ steps every day, but at the weekend, well, it’s Saturday, and I’m only going to put it on this evening to track my sleep. Turns out, I’m restless most nights, and about 15-20 minutes worth. That cuts into one’s beauty sleep. I’m not tracking calories. That might come later.

And it was also Hay Fever month. I pass out on the train on the return journey. Zonk. On the worst days, it really does feel like I’ve been injected with something.

This Post Delayed by a Python

One of the tasks in my sorting-out-the-photos project was putting all the files into directories according to the year-month. I could do this manually, but I turned it into a project involving a Python program. I’ll write about that later. I’ve been doing that, knocking the rust off what I did know and learning a bunch of new stuff. And also being reminded that the majority of the work in a program with a GUI is the GUI, not the core functionality. I’ll be back soon.

A War on Drug Makers, Not Drugs

The Economist had an editorial about drug policy this weekend. The article didn’t like existing policies, and felt that addicts should be treated as victims rather than perpetrators, but held off on what States should do about the perpetrators. Except to have a conference at the UN. That’s because what needs to be done is a little, well, not the sort of thing The Economist wants to be seen suggesting.

The First Rule of Futurology is that genies can’t be put back inside boxes. Which means that the West is stuck with a large-scale drug problem. The reason is that opiate-based, amphetamine-based and hallucinogenic drugs are absurdly cheap and easy to make, have a high value to the ultimate consumer, and therefore offer large and easy profits. If the State legalised these drugs, it would need to license their production and distribution, and it would inevitably tax the product. Those taxes would represent excess profits for criminals who continued to make and supply directly as they do now. To drive the criminals out, the prices would have to be low enough so that only large producers could get the economies of scale needed to reduce the unit costs of production and distribution low enough to still make profits. A tab of ecstasy would need to be priced at around the price of an economy aspirin. And that’s not going to happen.

A rule of any of the substance-recovery 12-Step movements is: “no mood-altering chemicals”. Exceptions can be made for prescriptions made for medical emergencies. The harm to the individual is that the drug prevents, one way of another, them from tackling the problems in their characters that make it hard for them to live contributing and considerate lives. The harm to the people around them is the trouble and drama they cause, and the harm to the taxpayer is the cost of the crime they cause, and the medical services they need and the welfare payments they receive.

Living without mood-altering chemicals, remembering that alcohol is one, requires some behavioural and psychological disciplines that are antithetical to what most people would consider a normal life. Banning all mood-altering chemicals would be inhuman: sobriety is for people for whom the alternative is death, not a hangover. Anyway, it’s been tried, and it failed in the 1920’s and it’s been failing since the 1980’s. For recreational drugs, I like the Dutch solution: use is okay, supply and manufacture isn’t. This stops the police and courts wasting time convicting users, when they should be after the manufacturers and distributers.

Mood-altering recreational drugs are one thing, but what opiates and cocaine do is another. What The Economist gets utterly wrong is that the important issue is not how we treat existing addicts (though that’s an issue), but how we prevent anyone else becoming addicted.

Manufacture and distribution of hard drugs (opiate- and cocaine- based) needs to be treated as an assault on the safety and dignity of the People, if I may use a hi-falutin’ term. It's chemical warfare conducted by terrorists. Following Lester Freamon’s Rule ("You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you”) we leave the addicts alone, and deal with the suppliers, importers and manufacturers. Governments, or at least their police and intelligence services, know who these people are, and who are their lawyers, accountants, bankers, doctors and other civilian-side support personnel.

These organisations need to be disabled from the top down, and from the outside in. Without their lawyers, accountants, bankers, corrupt judges, policemen, customs and immigration officers, the business has difficulty operating, and while the men at the top can always recruit mules and dealers, the mules and dealers can’t recruit the men at the top to do the organisation. Remove one cartel, and the others will expand, which means it will be a sustained campaign, and not a pretty one. This is why it needs to be seen, not as a “war on drugs”, but as defence of the realm. A war on drugs wants to stop people getting high, which has been proven not to work. Defending the borders of the realm, and the health and lives of many of its citizens, from non-State terrorists who have financial resources that dwarf those of all but the largest multi-nationals and States, is an altogether less questionable aim.

This must be done with public and legitimate use of the State’s armed forces and intelligence services, and that requires the jurists to develop the doctrines needed to legitimise the use of military force against non-State criminal organisations based in other States. The voters, soldiers and politicians need to understand that preventing the manufacture and distribution of opiate- and cocaine- based drugs (or artificial syntheses of these) that threaten the lives, health and well-being and morale of those who take them is the exact same aim as preventing pharmaceutical companies distributing and promoting drugs with vicious side-effects. The aim is prosecuted in a more vigorous manner different manner because drug carteliers don’t stop when they are asked, fined or imprisoned. Drug barons only stop when they are in a grave. Pharmaceutical company CEO’s give up a little sooner than that.

Why I'm Not Seeing As Many Films As I Used To

Even five years ago I used to see at least one movie a week and often two. Hollywood blockbusters; American indie movies and Dogwoof documentaries; French and Japanese art movies. However, now I think about it, I prefer my films to be set in a city, to be about independent and emotionally-uninvolved people, and to have that indefinable aura of cool. Hence Quo Vadis Baby, Hinterland, Electricity, Polisse and for thatr matter, the Denzel vehicle The Enforcer ((check)). Family dramas, especially if set in poor countries, horrors, invincible psychos, Northern Ireland, creep movies (Harry, He's Here To Help) and anything "gritty" involving the English underclass... thanks, I'll take a pass. I usually see the Oscar Worthies as well.

Anyway, now I barely see one a month. Weeks can go by and nothing takes my fancy. As I write, the last film I saw was John Wick. Before that was Appropriate Behaviour. The last one I thought was wonderful was Hinterland. But then I’m a sucker for imaginative and creative cinematography.

Some of this is simply that I’ve seen several thousand films, and a lot of movies are re-makes I don’t need, or want, to see. Some is that there are a lot of Marvel movies, and I have a limited appetite for superheros and large-scale CGI. I have, as I write, also burned through about thirteen episodes of Elementary S2. This is because it is a well-written series with good stories, photography, acting and Lucy Liu. For some time now, some of the best acting, stories, scripts, photography and set design has been on television, in the top-end series, some of which have per-episode budgets that would fund the entire British film industry for a year. I don’t need to go to the cinema to see good visual story-telling.

What’s happened to all those French and Japanese movies? Why do the Curzon’s, Everyman’s and the ICA all show the same films? Are they all owned by the same company? The ICA can't be, by definition, but they can all be staffed by the same generation of cool kids. It is a truth little recognised that when your life is less than ideal, you don't like movies about people whose lives are better than yours, unless it's fantasy or costume drama. Given the low standard of living of the current generation of cool kids, none of whom can afford an un-shared roof over theiir heads, they are going to be choosing, and even making, films about very poor people living in very hard circumstances. Hence the popularity of films set in favelas, Russian wastelands and countries with a lot of very poor soil, like Iran. For further proof, see the comments about the films playing at the Curzon Soho recently.

To make my points, let’s take a look at what was playing at the Curzon cinemas the week I first drafted this.

A LITTLE CHAOS (12A): Versailles gardens were the dream of Louis XIV (Alan Rickman), but were realised by landscape architect André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts). Charged by the king to design the most opulent gardens in history, the ordered Le Nôtre takes a chance on Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslett), a talented but chaotic gardener. Though their temperaments initially clash, arguments soon give way to something else in this lovely, sumptuously realised period drama, the second film directed by Alan Rickman. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. I don’t like costume dramas, and this lacks any historical veracity in the story. It sounds horribly self-indulgent. And I’m supposed to care about how Kate Winslet creates chaos doing gardens? Really?

HOME FROM HOME: CHRONICLE OF A VISION (15): Edgar Reitz (director of the Heimat Trilogy) continues his visionary journey through German history with a domestic drama and love story set against the backdrop of a forgotten tragedy. In the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of Europeans emigrated to faraway South America. It was a desperate bid to escape the famine, poverty and despotism that ruled at home. Verdict: PASS. Domestic drama and love story. Also Germany.

CHILD 44 (15): Tom Rob Smith's novel was inspired by the real-life case of serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, but moved the action back a couple of decades to the dark days of Stalin's Russia. Daniel Espinosa's faithful adaptation stars Tom Hardy as a disgraced army officer who takes it upon himself to hunt down the killer after a friend's child is one of his victims. The result is a top-notch thriller, capturing the spirit of Stalin's regime and featuring an impressive international cast. Verdict: MAYBE. I would have seen this as a matter of course ten years ago. Kinda not in the mood mostly for something this dark now.

FORCE MAJEURE (15): A model Swedish family - handsome businessman Tomas, his wife Ebba and their two beautiful children - are on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular, but during lunch at a mountainside restaurant an avalanche suddenly bears down on the happy diners. With people fleeing in all directions and his wife and children in a state of panic, Tomas makes a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as family patriarch. Verdict: NO. Family drama, I bet based on subtle mis-understandings. I can hear the words “How could you?” already. Sometimes I wonder if any of the people who write these stories have ever been involved in a serious incident. People in real life do not behave in a “dramatic” manner. But I could be wrong.

THE SALVATION (15): The European western, once a staple of 1960s and 1970s cinema, has been missing from the screen for some time, so it's great to welcome this thrilling, atmospheric film from one of the great original Dogme 95 directors, Kristian Levring (The King is Alive). Mads Mikkelsen is on spectacular form as a farmer who kills his family's murderer and finds himself battling a tyrannical gang, its psychotic leader and his enforcer, played by a gleeful malevolence by Eric Cantona. Verdict: MAYBE: Again, it’s a tad dark for me right now. I’ve seen enough psychotic revenge stories.

DARK HORSE: THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF DREAM ALLIANCE (PG): An inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men's club who decide to take on the elite 'sport of kings' and breed themselves a racehorse. Verdict: NO. JUST NO. “Inspirational”. “Working Men’s Club”.

COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (15): The lead singer of Nirvana and reluctant posterboy of a generation gets his first ever fully authorised documentary feature, blending Kurt Cobain’s personal archive of art, written word, music and never-before-seen home movies, with animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest confidantes. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, WA, through the height of his fame, it creates an intense and powerful cinematic insight into an artist who craved the spotlight even as he rejected the trappings of fame. Verdict: MAYBE. A couple of years ago I would have watched this. I thought Gus van Sant’s movie Last Days was haunting.

GLASSLAND (15): In a desperate bid to save his mother from addiction, and unite his broken family, a young taxi on the fringes of the criminal underworld is forced to take a job which will see him pushed further into its underbelly. But will John be prepared to act when the time comes - knowing that whatever he decides to do his and his family's lives will be changed forever? Verdict: NO. JUST NO. English underclass drama with a futile story. Anyone who tries to save someone from addiction is onto a losing fight. So either this film is unrealistic or has some silly denoument.

GENTE DE BIEN (12A): Eric lives with his handyman father in a poor district of Bogota. A client takes pity on them and invites the two to spend time in her county villa over the Christman holidays. Tensions rise during their stay and Eric witnesses the disparity between rich and poor for the first time. Bryan Santamaria (Eric) is outstanding as our guide through both worlds in Franco Lolli's sensitive drama. Verdict: NO: It’s a film about the economic and class differences in Bogota and the story has an implausible premise (“a cleint takes pity on them” indeed!). Fake drama and political posturing.

WOMAN IN GOLD (12A): The latest film by Simon Curtis (My Week with Marilyn) features an impressive all-star cast led by Helen Mirren. It tells the story of Maria Altmann (Mirren), a Holocaust survivor who fought the Austrian government to retrieve Gustav Klimt's painting of her aunt, 'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I', which was confiscated from her family by the Nazis. It was a battle that took her, along with her lawyer E. Randol Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), all the way to the US supreme court. PASS: I’m supposed to care about a rich woman getting back one of the most valuable paintings in the world? This relates to my life how? Exactly?

WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (15): Noah Baumbach's follow up to Frances Ha is an exploration of aging, ambition and success stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) enters their lives. Verdict: MAYBE. But only because Amanda Seyfried. And because Frances Ha was a neat little film.

JAUJA (15): Viggo Mortensen continues to balance his career between high-profile films and more intimate dramas, of which Jauja is an excellent example. In this metaphysical road movie set against the intoxicating landscape of Patagonia, Mortensen plays a desparate man searching for his young daughter, who eloped with her lover in the lack of night. With a jaw-drapping final act, it channels Herzog and Jarmusch's Dead Man whilst offering up breathtaking visuals. Verdict: PASS. But ten years ago, I would have seen this as a matter of course.

WILD TALES (15): Inequality, injustice and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Most face them on bended knee - but some of them explode. This is a film about those people. Comprising six stories of apocalyptic revenge, Wild Tales is a blackly comic series of vignettes on what it means to lose control. By turns shocking, hilarious, violent and preposterous this exhilarating thrill-ride produced by Pedro Almodóvar is one that you're never going to forget. Verdict: It’s always a cause for concern when they promote a film on the basis of the producer’s name. I saw the trailer, and it looked interesting.

DIOR AND I (12A): Frédéric Tcheng's documentary is behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons' first haute couture collection as the new artistic director of Christian Dior fashion house. Melding the everyday, pressure- filled components of fashion with mysterious echoes from the iconic brand's past, the film is also a colourful homage to the seamstresses who serve Simons' vision. Verdict: PASS. Seen enough fashion-world documentaries now, thanks.

CINDERELLA (U): In the age of revisionism and reboots, it's heartening that Kenneth Branagh has recognised the innate beauty of the story of Cinderella, one of the best-known fairtales. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.

HOME (U): When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganising the planet. But when one resourceful girl, Tip, (Rihanna) manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons). The two fugitives realise there's a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime. Verdict: NO. JUST NO.

You may love some of these. I’m not saying the films aren’t worth you watching. I’m explaining why I’m not hugely motivated to see them. I don’t read a lot of contemporary novels either. I don’t think this is about “contemporary”. I think this is about the stories today’s film-makers are telling.

So let me tell you about the Year I Didn't Buy A Shirt. It was a long time ago. I looked in the menswear windows and nothing caught my eye. I began to think there was something wrong with me. That I needed to change what I thought was worth wearing. However, the money did not leave my wallet. About half-way through the next year, I bought some more stuff for my wardrobe. My tastes hadn't changed, and still haven't. But they were selling stuff I wanted to buy. It happens. This lot of cool kids will get jobs somewhere else in the Arty sector, or even maybe just proper jobs, and the next lot will come in and choose something else.