Britney Spears

I heard Ms. Spears say this on an MTV program a few years ago.

"I wanna go University, you know - get knowledge"

At the risk of sounding snobbish I decided to post on this simply because the quote shows an interesting attitude to learning, one that I had not considered before: learning is a product, something you pick up and take away.

I always think of learning as discovering how little I can know, and how arbitrary human explanations of the world are. I think I would benefit from Britney's more 'simple' outlook.

If I wanted to define the University product perhaps it is maintaining an environment that allows people to learn to be creative with a system of representation - music, mathematics, experimentation, computation, prose etc. To credit BS, I'd say she's managed to learn to a fairly high level how to dance, sing and manipulate the media Moguls to semi-mutual effect.

Anyway, nice quote. Perhaps if B had gone to University when she said this she might have held it together a bit better...

The biological imperitive

Watch groups choose tools ( in modern day this is often software ). Look at the choices of tool, and ask, where is the locus of control e.g. who will have power when the system is rolled out. 90s software has given extraordinary power to the "system administrator". Today the wiki dominates which essentially removes any hierarchy but its amusing to watch the 'gatekeepers' baulk at this idea e.g. news corporations, academics, governments, NGOs, charities etc .

...the moneyless society, where everyone gets a resource quota, and people are not forced to compete against their will.

This sounds depressing, against human nature, we love the fight, surely?

The Cheap Round

Ask them questions, gather the data, and siphon off the results for your own glory. They wouldn't understand anyway, and we don't want to risk upsetting them.

Food for thought

The CABDYN seminar series most definitely deserves a blog entry on brainsplurge. The presentation on Physics and Complexity by Professor David Sherrington in particular stimulated the writing of this post. In fact it was one slide that really stuck in my head (which I'v been cheeky and copied).

First of all it seems physicists live in a weird and wonderful world. They are apparently searching for u = 0, a theory that defines everything, and have a license to think extremely big.

How I understand this slide is that if you're try solve a problem, and you have all the tools known to man at your fingertips, then you could say you're sitting on a optimisation curve where the green dot is on the graph. But, despite best efforts there might be a red point that is a far better solution to the problem, but with a huge branch of missing mathematics in the way.
Well, as I heard things, it seems physicists are happy to draw graphs that say that point red exists, and even assign a probability to its existence (second graphic).

Is this delving into cogntive science, and saying that mathematical truth is a function of cognition, and by optimising the problem solver, we can optimise the problem.

No idea how to conclude this blog post apart from giving my apologies to my undoubted mistranslation of a great talk on 'simulated annealing' in ferrous metals, the brain, and the stock market.

Laser's edge

The more you think through an idea, the closer it comes to a peak where it seems many answers are equally likely. I guess we can only think through an idea until we run out of information, so the process feels like we've reached a summit, but we've actually just arrived at the limit of our knowledge (or our ability to think).

This morning I was thinking:

(1) how convenient it is to be religious (believe in 'god'), because this helps people fail to recognise that their fate is in their hands, or instead for the religious people, its in the hands of the people that control them, (or brain-washed them in their youth). of course their is no such thing as a god helping us out, we shape our own lives, or it is shaped for us by our environment (including more rational people).

but this afternoon, this thought turned to:

(2) how necessary it is to believe in god, since we cannot know everything, and can never be in complete charge of our destiny, and if we try we'll become too tight in our thinking, so unhappy and unproductive.

these observations in themselves are moot, what is interesting is that a single belief (in god) can be arrived at for entirely different reasons. the ignorant and the learned will end up requiring faith, hope and all other human frailties to maintain their sanity.

of course there is a big difference between 1 and 2 in practical terms, 1 will not strive to understand why they need faith, they just do what they are told. 2 will walk a more painful and elegant path, but they will know why they ended up where they did.

i guess it all goes back to our animal ancestry, where we are constantly striving to spread our genes through shaping social structures around our own phenotypic needs. science is the new religious order, and tries to introduce a more egalitarian process to creating and analysing knowledge. before it was all about forcing people to memorise words, and live by them, now its about appreciating process and engaging in it.

there is one common theme, we create games (religions) to battle our egos from self-certainty and megalomania. its never healthy for self to become to sure. like mr Sidhartta and Pirsig said, zen and quality are only experienced when part of the flux (well they didn't use these words, but this is a brainsplurge). to look after our brains, so think, and be part of the global brain, this is how we have to live. and to complete an almost circular argument; it seems that we have to slow our brains down with illogical concepts to be part of the flow. we have to believe in faith and even god, even though we know this is nonsense, just to cope, because we are frail human beings.

but robots and genetic engineering are coming, maybe we can create a self that doesn't suffer so. but maybe there is no limit, and tomorrow's fundamentalists will be the people that say, even if you enhance you'll end up with the same issues: be back at point 1.

what will be next? is there any way to jump to another more satisfying train of though, an entirely different hillock?

How to be a customer

Capitalism is a beautiful system, but
Customers need education otherwise the average person is too easy to exploit,
Intelligent customers will shape a better market.

Mental models

How aware are we of the mental models that shape our point of view. I've started to realise recently that we are all carrying a huge bag of assumptions that relate to models of reality, and we'll act on these without questioning. There are certain models that once witnessed, are so compelling we take them as religious truths. Selfish capitalism is one of these. It is reinforced everyday and we find it harder and harder to see past it.

By allowing people to create and de-construct models they will be able to challenge these assumptions, and generate new possibilities. They'll be able to carry new models around with them, and act in new ways. Its important for as many people to construct their own understanding as possible, and opposed to receiving knowledge passively.

Simulation is the new literacy that will give people the skills to challenge received mental models, rather than merely act on them. Written understanding is no longer sufficient.

Green economics and consumerism

The trouble with being green, at root, is that capitalism has become synonymous with consumerism. There is no incentive for people to be green, because everytime an individual makes an effort to reduce their personal effect on the environment, they just make it cheaper for the people who don't make an effort. In other words the eco-warriors are just making the lives of the oilers easier.

It would be interesting to model this.

So a business idea. Create tariffs for eco-warriors that are the reverse of what we see today e.g. electricity should be offered at a cheaper than the market average price if an individuals keeps under a specific amount, but more expensive if they exceed this limit.

This would allow eco-warriors to oust the oilers from the market. Eco-warriors would become fitter members of the market eco-system.

This same principle could apply to all commodities if we had credit cards that scored purchases against a sustainable index of products. Flights, gas, everything.

Basically, to ensure equality in the fight against environmental degradation, nobody should be allowed to benefit from another's sacrifice. Eco-warriors should not be the suckers.

definition: oilers = greedy selfish ignorant b'stards

Dignified collective action

Why, so often does change only happen after people have gone through ridiculous levels of personal sacrifice. We've all heard stories of people jumping under a racehorse, hunger striking, marching outside parliament etc. but my point is, why do we the proles admire this so much. Surely we should be asking why we seem to have to make such catastrophic or plain undignified efforts to bring about change.

It seems obvious that we're not organised enough, we're prone to admire emotional gestures above reason, and prone to make change only when emotional pleas have been made.

Maybe a wave of reason will sweep through and we will make better thought out plans, more justified changes, and these acts will seem like grunts in our Neanderthal past.

I look forward to a day when we don't admire marching, we think of it as a kind of oppression by the political elite. Why should we have to march to get our opinion across, I can do that through an open online survey for instance. I'd get more from the results too, and I'd be more prepared to listen to the movement.

Are we all bound to our primitive tribal instincts, not really wanting to live in an enlightened society.

Change of emphasis for news corps

When you look at the news papers and the broadcasters struggling and bumbling their little heads around user generated content, you're lead to wonder what is the point of these multi-billion organisations. Well imagine a news story stripped of all the opinion, what have we left? The answer: data.

Seems to me a logical and rationalised progression. News corps should be representing their customers in asserting FOI on organisations their size, then being ingenious with the way they represent this information. That would be a days work.

With the data, we the populace would provide the opinion, and learn from the data. We'd be generating the hypotheses, and the news corps would learn from this, and then gather more data, and provide us with the tools to re-present the data. And so the knowledge supply chain continues onwards. The organisation enabling the individual. Money for a service, rather than the disservice we currently receive.

The Peter Principle

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence," Dr Laurence Peter, 1919-90, Canadian academic, from the 1969 book, The Peter Principle, written by Dr Peter and Raymond Hull - Peter was the academic, Hull the writer.

This is not meant to be a cheap stab at people, but a stab at the organisations people tend to make to establish 'order'. As I see it people do good work, burn out, get promoted then construct ivory towers so that people 'under' them cannot see the quality of their 'work'.

So why do these static hierarchies exist? Some ideas:

1. As people get older they loose interest in what they do but cannot be paid less
2. There is some primitive desire to dominate and be dominated
3. Fresh ideas must be suppressed, too many would become unmanageable (now there's a circular argument)

Well this list could go on forever, indeed it could have to end up becoming a treatise on the human condition. I like the ideas Pirsig put forward with his discussion of Quality. I see this relating to the topic of management because in the end hierarchies exist because we're still living the patterns of our ancient past. We are organised by social not intellectual considerations. Its like watching chimps scratching, fighting, mating, preening, displaying. Of course there is a certain attractiveness to the noble savage, the innocence of instinctual living, but we have nuclear bombs now...

It always amazes me how short human history is. Was it really only 150 000 years ago that we emerged as a species? Was it only 9000 years ago that we started 'writing'. Its incredible, I knew my great-grandmother fairly well, I could talk to her about her great-grandmother, and the stories she'd been told about her great grand-mother. That could have been a conversation that took place only 20 years ago about stories from 9 generations ago, so perhaps 200 years in the past. That's the end of the 17th century!

Nevertheless we are carrying a lot of baggage. In the 17th century people had huge families, disease was rife, medicine primitive, and we were 'tied' to the land. The point being, that if we get past the next major hurdles, namely energy scarcity, over-population, and pollution then we stand a good chance of getting beyond our lament to medieval society, and might be able to move onto a way of living that would keep the trekkies happy :-)

Footnote:

Of course there are some inspirational people who can provide leadership that helps the people around them. What do we do with these people though, put them in an institutional hierarchy?

Communicating understanding

You know that feeling when you experience something (film, writing, music an event) and the information seems to construct something terribly meaningful. Well the interesting thing to me is how no matter how hard an artist tries to communicate their ideas, they only seem to be able to communicate the surface directly. Its like its only possible to describe the topography of an idea, the textures across the form, and maybe even with a little movement. The viewer is left with this tantalising shape, so intriguing, so deliciously interesting, but that's it. The artist omitted the process, so the shape just floats away from the moment, down the stream of consciousness.

Now I think children see this as adults strutting their stuff, maintaining their market, but I am not sure it is this anymore. I think we generally don't know more than the shape, we can't hold more than the form, and some textures, the idea of holding the methodology or describing the process of realisation is beyond capability.

But of course any academic will tell you, it is the process that is the truth, because there is no truth, just more effective process.

So the artist just gives you the shape, and you are left to construct your own path, which may lead to, if you are lucky, another expression, a work, a moment of reflection on the turmoil that we know is out there but cannot bear to look at for too long.

So the artist is merely someone who carries the tools of thought capture with them at all times. There is no perfect process, nor absolute truth, each mind is fully equipped for perfect expression at any one moment. So carry your tools.

A business dynamic

Outsourcing is talked about as a way to cut costs. The trouble with this approach is that the bigger the operation the more business it must attract. Bigger operations may be less agile, and if they fail to adapt they may fall. Therefor big operations may pose a greater risk to customers over the long term.

I think the trick is for customers to get the most from big operators when the time is right, then have good exit strategies for when change is needed.

The bigger they are the harder they fall.

Of course well planned big operations can offer economies of scale.

Gustav Flaubert (1821-80)

"Le bon Dieu est dans le detail" - Gustav Flaubert.

This quote is also attributed to Michelangelo, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Aby Warburg.

Confusingly it is a variation of "The Devil is in the details", which was apparently the maxim of the German pop singer Blixa Bargeld.

Anyway, god or devil, this expression catches my attention because it is so obviously true. Too often our lazy minds love to over-simplify, ignore things to suite our prejudices or convenience. I think I prefer to believe that god is in the details, as it encourages me to keep looking.

Maybe its was a lazy docrine that recast god into the devil, people who don't want you to find out that reality is beautifully complex.

PS. I was alerted to this quote by the masterful series called Spooks. It took me ages to find anything out about Flaubert, mostly because I didn't know how to spell his name, (miserable researcher and ignoramous that I am).

Jack Johnson

Oh, but everybody thinks
That everybody knows
About everybody else
Nobody knows anything about themselves
'Cause they're all worried about everybody else
Yea, mmhmm, aw

Opticon

The unit of information that causes imbalance within a relationship, through one partner consciously delaying the release of information until a favorable time in the future.

Cyncism

Cynicism (Greek: Kυνισμός) was originally the philosophy of a group of ancient Greeks called the Cynics, founded by Antisthenes.^{[citation needed]} The Cynics rejected all conventions, whether of religion, manners, housing, dress, or decency, advocating the pursuit of virtue in a simple and unmaterialistic lifestyle.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, the word 'cynicism' generally describes the opinions of those who maintain that self-interest is the primary motive of human behaviour, and are disinclined to rely upon sincerity, human virtue, or altruism as motivations

The Rise of the Meritocracy - Michael Young

With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before.

The Guardian, 29th June 2001.

As energy flows through society, the young will exert themselves, be rewarded then seek to build ivory towers...so they can nurture their young.

Education systems need:

1. To control access to information (CAM, OED etc)
   
2. To define the metrics of success (examination, review)
   

Office politics

Here's a list of rule for dealing with office politics:

1. Keep it professional at all times.
2. Play the game being played, not the one you want or think should be played.
3. Don't make enemies. Don't burn bridges.
4. Don't whine and complain.
5. Don't intimidate superiors. Try to avoid going over your superior's head.
6. Don't make others look bad.
7. Don't criticize employees or bosses.
8. Couch criticism in terms of employer's interests, not personal.
9. Help others get what they want.
10. Establish affiliations of mutual advantage with important people.
11. Find common ground with others.
12. Don't discuss personal problems.
13. Selectively self-disclose.
14. Don't assume anything will stay secret.
15. Create win/win solutions.
16. Keep employer's perspective in mind.
17. Cultivate a positive, simple, accurate image.
18. Force yourself to do difficult, uncomfortable or scary things.
19. Be pleasant. Laugh and smile.
20. Be assertive and tough when required, not aggressive.
21. Don't oversell. Be natural. Develop your own style.

And my thoughts on each:

1. Bit vague, surely professional people would never play politics
2. But this is a self perpetuating rule, one that can only lead to social decline
3. Yes, I agree here in principle but this should be a long term view, it might be necessary to make short-term enemies
4. Never, totally agree
5. Hmmm, you have to believe in social hierarchies, which I can do if the hierarchy grew through strict compliance with reason e.g. within a meritocracy
6. So if you work hard and create something great, and this makes a comparison with a colleagues work look poor, this is a fault?
7. Constructive criticism is important. But I think the author is thinking of a link to point 4.
8. Yes, be constructive
9. If it relates to what I want from my work. Selflessness is not a currency in a commercial world. Sad but true.
   
10. Yes, just said this in different words.
11. Again, work within SIGs...
    
12. Okay okay
13. Yes, big difference between friend and colleague.
14. Yes
15. Yep. But counteract this with knowing rights, should be judged on your work
    
16. This is a good one, thinking strategically is very important.
17. But what about the employer doesn't seem to know what direction it is going
18. Positive, that's fallen off, perhaps why I am writing this blog
19. Totally agree, this is very important
20. See 18
21. Yes, never show anger
22. Understated is a good brand.

While sensible, this is a list for creeps. This list smacks of faking human relationships...is there anything worse that a false laugh.

There should be only one rule for dealing with office politics, rise above them, focus on what you are creating, and do what you judge to be best. Be optimistic for relationships, don't write anyone off. (As opposed to views held by Yeung:

claims colleagues can be divided into four types — bigwigs, rising stars, no-hopers and has-beens — depending on their level of influence and seniority in an organisation. He suggests the ambitious should cultivate relationships with influential bigwigs and rising stars, but waste no time on no-hopers and has-beens.") - Times online, A Faker's Guide to Office Politics, 15th October 2005.

In the long term this gamesmanship will catch up on everyone: see the U. S. of A's.

Betrand Russell

'..is in fact to be sought in its very uncertainty...While diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be.'

Dom Anthony Sutch

'..we seem to believe you can fatten a pig just by weighing it'

The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker

It is certainly reassuring that there are authors out there with razor-sharp intellects ready and willing to rip to pieces the scientific charlatans, the people that weasel their way into our affections only to transplant false ideas of identity through exploiting the science brand to ill effect.

We see this exploitation of science a lot these days. I think science is suffering from its own success. We're at a juncture now, as science overtakes religion as the route to and root of truth, then the layman gets increasingly impatient where answers are not forthcoming. I am ashamed to admit that I did not continue with genetics for precisely this reason: a page in a University-level biology textbook is typically the result of several people's life work. I was in too much of a rush to understand that in terms of achievement, this is immense. Science is slow, and our lust for knowledge corrupts this process and allows scientific charlatans to make claims that put them in the lime light, and probably in the money too.

Having said this I do have some doubts about Pinker's argument. He's basically arguing for a sensible position on the nurture-nature debate, one where genes and the environment shape our evolution, both personal and historical. Nothing controversial here you might think, but Pinker's shows how many scientists have got it wrong, skewing 'reason' to align with their own political beliefs. So for instance, if you're 'right wing' then you'll believe in the determinism of the genes so the need to expunge those with bad inheritance. If you're 'left wing' you'll believe that the mind and culture are separate from biology so we just have to organise our environment in the most civilised way (- oh dear, perhaps this is a good sign that I find it hard to describe the link between politics and science).

When I studied genetics however it was the way that statistics was used that bothered me. The debate hinges on studies of twins. We are told that twins have remarkable similarities even when they are separated at birth and grow in different environments. What's more, when adopted children are treated exactly the same, they invariably turn out very different. This is evidence to the idea that there is a strong causal link between our genetic makeup and behavior. My suspicions rise because of three main points:

1. There are not many identical twins in the world and fewer that have been raised in very different environments
2. The way that similarities and differences are characterised - I am just very skeptical about putting objective properties on something as abstract as human behavior
   
3. The studies tend to be short and cross sectional (as far as I know) and people do not react in the same way to an environment each time. Humans are not like chemicals in a test tube, we can very easily play with the minds of the scientists making the observations.

Of course biologists use other techniques aside from twin studies. In general they will look up and down the stack in terms of genes, proteins, cells, organs, tissues, ecosystem to try to explain observations at many levels, and describe causal links between the stack of biological units.

Even writing these down makes me suspect my own suspicions. Perhaps these doubts stem from having seen so much flaky psychology, and not having met many identical twins. But more worryingly, perhaps I hold a mental model of human nature that is not well informed. Despite having a degree in genetics my mind holds out to to a set of values that wants to believe that genes play little part in shaping our lives.

Its funny, writing this down feels ridiculous. Of course our genes play an enormous role in shaping our lives. I think my pigheadedness stems from a belief that once we understand a system, then we can control it, so re-gain free will.

Perhaps in the future we will go to school, put our genetic map into a computer, some software will then tell us how we are likely to live our lives, and we can then formulate the necessary learning schedule to mitigate against an unhappy life.

But, having said this we're faced with the question, how deep does the rabbit hole go. Also we have no idea how much we should use our ability to solve problems as opposed to just going with the flow e.g. does vaccination solve problems, or store them up for future generations? Will genetic manipulation give grief to civilisation in 5 years. I suppose you have to have faith in 'progress' and man's ingenuity.

The Machine Stops - E.M. Forster

She had never known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed her - it did kill many thousands of people outright. Ever since her birth she had been surrounded by the steady hum. It was to the ear what artificial air was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head. And scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and pressed the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door of her cell. E.M. Forster, first published in 1909

So-silly moral question

Why is it so bad to, say, spit on a car, and yet perfectly fine to belch exhaust into other people's lungs?

Exhaust is invisible
Damage caused by exhaust is not well understood
Long historical stigma associated with spitting
Cars are believed to be key to economic progress
The love affair with cars e.g. status symbol and key to comfort
Complaining about exhaust is too soft
Cars are necessary but spitting is not

Why do other people's health take such a low priority.
Why is the morality of the masses so impoverished.

Normal distribution

What does it feel like to experience things as they are, without conditioning, just as yourself, a unique individual? With all considerations balanced, poised perfectly on the peak of the Gaussian distribution.

Where Will's naivety leaves him (Pullman), he transcends religious control and becomes a complete adult. It might be sad to leave childhood behind, but an illuminating moment nonetheless, white light, all colours merge, all memories collide and one look flows from his mind, to meet at The Retina.

What happens when theories are not there to prop up ideas that attack personal peace? When there is no neurological order, no structures, what happens then. When all mental units are free but dissociated, all biological, social, intellectual (Pirsig) substance is finely balanced but at the mercy of the next moment. How robust is the individual to managing this dT.

When science meets art, when we live empiricism, what does this human look like. Can this branch of the evolutionary tree cope, with the genetic historical baggage it must drag along.

How free is spirit from form? Can a scan look at thoughts or are we monumentally connected to the path we have walked over the millennia. Are we infinitely connected or more robust than might be apparent?

And back to source, what then happens when this yin is balanced?

Why is there air pollution

Its like smoking in pubs and all the other anti-social things we do. Our own pleasure principle will for most people override morality. So climate scientist and policy makers are still flying round the world preaching, its so much easier to tell other people what to do, rather than change yourself. In an agent-based model this would be individuals with relative levels of ability in moderating their own comfort levels.

Instead of getting angry and full of dismay, just see the fundamental lesson - humans are not rationale, and made of weak morale fiber.

Only point in writing this clumbsy post is because its dawned on me, there's no political conspiracy (by for instance Oxford County Council), its just 'people'. Sure the most selfish polluting group is the English HillBilly (you know who I mean) but its not their fault, they are just weak...

Go meta :-)

Jacob Burkhardt

"The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt

We have to clean up our arguments, but never believe we are absolutely right. Its all a process, never ending, and we'd do well to lift just one grain of sand onto the pile during our whole life.

"That same human mind is at a crucial point in its evolution. We can consciously think abstractly. But not very well. The part of our mind we're conscious of, and that we usually identify with as "me", typically has an extremely inflated idea of its own worth and its own independent existence. That despite that it can only solve extremely simple problems, and it doesn't even know how. It over-simplifies everything, and it tends to think it is in charge."

http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001853.htm

The Science of Sleep

Without happiness, when reality is too complex, the mind works overtime in sleep. Stephan meets Stephanie, and like jigsaw pieces they fall together and ride off together on a horse, then sail off into the sunset.

The 'critics' say its all disorientating, but I think they are concentrating too hard. Like Mulholland Drive it is what it is. And all that can ever be is what the watcher makes of it.

Good luck to the dream state, let's just hope these minds were still pliable enough, and the world was kind.

Emergence of instituions through game playing - Csikszentmihalyi on Huizinga

as paraphrased by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi :

the 'serious' institutions that constitute society - science, the law, the arts, religion and even the armed forces - all started out as games, as contexts in which people could play and experience the enjoyment of goal-directed action. Science, for instance, Huizinga claimed, has spontaneously evolved in every culture as games of riddling in which individuals test their memory, their knowledge of facts and relationships, in public contests against other riddlers - a perhaps primitive, but highly enjoyable, display of knowledge.

Motivation - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.

Julien Donkey-Boy

Another Dogma film using the wobbly camera and extreme editing to bring together a dizzying narrative. I have no idea if this really gets into the head of a schizophrenic but it certainly shows a terrifying existence, or set of existences as the case is with this family. Dogma films tend to be harrowing, glib and avoid sensation and this succeeds in following the tradition (the idiots, mi fune etc). I enjoyed this film but would really need to build up to watching it again, the more I concentrate on it the more disturbing it would become. When you dare to burst your own bubble and really see life from other people's perspective it can be horrific - when the other people are this extreme its hard to resist withdrawing forever.

What-a-day

Well, as the news is plastered with an every-second account of the current floods, myself and a friend decided to go see what's happening first hand. I hope it isn't Schadenfreude that brings such glee to my face when these type of things happen - it all seems so exciting. I think it is more the fact that I love water. In fact it seems I love water so much that I took a nose dive over my handlebars into the Thames.Anyway, 6am tomorrow will be the peak flow of water through Oxford, so let's see what happens.

The Ring of Nibelungs

This is the film based on the Germanic myth "Das Nibelungenlied" and the Nordic "Volsunga Saga" that inspired both Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and an opera by Wagner. Okay, this is not a great directing or acting showcase but the story is epic and rousing. There's an old gods being taken over by Christianity theme (I think) but not well done. Nevertheless, a good attempt, I just wish these epics could be done better. I love the lack of 'hollywood-ending', the playfulness and the way the story is not dressed.

Beautiful Boxer

What a touching true tale. Unbelievable in some ways, but then you have to ask yourself why would this not happen. The picture shows Asanee Suwan playing Nong Toom or Parinya Charoenphol as she is now known. Nong was the thai boxing champion, Parinya is now a famous acress. This is a tocuhingly innocent account of the tortures faced by a boy who since childhood wanted to be a girl and how the Thai sense of destiny let this happen without too much hatred and pride spilling over.

Douglas Adams in Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

300

This is a film about creating a myth about the myth about the Spartans. They were a pretty tough bunch of warrior men who could the knock the arses of those namby pamby slightly camp Persians (see Xerxes left!) In battle they could see off armies, elephants, and strange hunchback giants with their swords, shields and big shiny teeth.

This is a film of comic book genre, think Sin City stroked with a smattering of Apocalypto. Its for teenage boy who likes video games and to feel harder than he really is. I loved it! I did flinch a bit at the Neo-Conservative mindset on parade and my paranoid mind wondered if the republican party or the US army might have funded its production.

I think there was a little bit of history in there with the Spartans holding off the Persians until the other Greek city-states joined forces to open the can of whip-ass (again, George Bush?) those marauders from the East deserve.

Uninspired

Almost empty blog.

Kangaku

Probably the best part of my intellectual life in Oxford are my kangaku lunches with three others who love thinking about the future of education. Okay we have a strong bias towards the application of technology but its all sincere and based on our love of learning. Of late its been about so-called MMOs or software that promotes mass participation e.g. Flickr, World of Warcraft and Second Life.

We are four in Kangaku and we are equally divided between two positions (probably based on our backgrounds: hard and soft sciences). When we look at technology we can focus on (a) its effects on society (b) the quality it gives to our ability to represent or explain. I am in the latter, I tend to tune out when we hypothesize about how a blog entry gets into a national newspaper; wow I think, so what. So knowledge is moving with new dynamics, maybe faster, maybe through new social networks. There is no paradigm shift, just more of the similar.

For me its about re-representation as they taught me at Sussex, and specifically it is our ability to explain with more than natural language. What I dream of is a language of graphical simulation, a language that is easy to learn and tuned for the understanding of complex systems. In fact I will be bolder, it is a language that moves the zeitgeist towards a 'common sense' that understands everything is a complex system - there are no simple solutions, no black and white heuristics just a world that we can only strive to understand and represent but will of course never get there.

The more we learn the less we know we understand. The rate limiting step in our education system is our ability to represent and so explain. Society is dying to tear itself away from the paper and pen, we are at a juncture, a time when we will enter the simulation and begin the complete representation of knowledge, the rationalisation of words into properties, algorithms and graphics. After a librarian stage we'll then pass through into a period of great experimentation as a feeling meaningless consumes us - once we've re-represented everything we'll have a game that won't take very long to play. This is the time when we'll re-surface from the halting machine and open our eyes again to take a large new batch of empirical information.

Into Great Silence

A Christian monastery is the home of a great many love affairs with god. A couple of extremely funny scenes punctuate the solemnity of the strange habits that dress the inner walls. Its a little clearer why people do this religion thing - they are in love with the god sensation. If I think with tradition in mind then the concept scares me, with wanting to hide from the world then its a little more like disgust, if I think these people are getting out there too and spreading a little more humanity and reminding us all about heart...then I am okay with it. I don't understand how cutting yourself off and worshipping an old text can ever help do this.

I see the point of silence though. We live in an ever-more distracting world, messages everywhere.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring Again

This is a gentle film about a boy growing up with a Buddhist Monk. They live on a floating island in a tranquil lake. It is a meditation on cruelty, lust, revenge, repentance and then much more aside. Snakes, fish, a frog, a cat, and a statue of Buddha all intermingle with calligraphy and mantras. A veritable soup of spiritual charm.

Cohort manager

In a special Kangaku group at Oxford we've been fielding ideas around the ideas of the University in society. What are educational organisations for? To me a central tenet must be to facilitating dialogue that at least maintains a culture, and perhaps even refines and generates new horizons.

To do this every mind is precious, cohort management is central. To explore the problem space we need every brain to connect in some way.

Specialisation, a lack of interdisciplinary research is rotting our our schools. Paranoia is being created by examination authorities and funding bodies (answering to (tabloid) voters). These create academic hierarchies and break down the levels of coordination we need to explore problems efficiently, and to do this we must be creative.

So back to practicalities. Groups are being formed on the Internet where people are collaborating. These groups and not formed according to any rules or constitution. This means the optimal social dynamic cannot be formed. The web despite intuition is extremely selective and discriminatory. This is the idea of a new web tool, to apply rules to cohort creation that allows people to create groups according to well-understood rules. Groups will be inclusive.

The stumbling block: we never know who anyone is on the web...this is a detail, something that can be ameliorated fairly easily. Trust can be established on the web.

Technology Paradigm Shift

It seems to me we are at the cusp of a technology revolution. For a long time we have been making digital equivalents of the postal service + filing cabinet + telephone. Things have become significantly faster but essentially very little has really changed. We're doing the same things faster.

A paradigm shift will happen when we begin to represent and re-represent knowledge in qualitatively new ways. It seems to me there is a big difference between 100 people writing a 100 articles on a theme compared to 100 people creating one simulation that efficiently represents the complexity of a system.

The paradigm shift will come when intellect overtakes (once again) ego and pictorial representation re-gains ground from sentential systems of explanation.

The diagram is becoming worth many millions of words.

The Ultimate in Project Management

I am on a management course at work, I am managing loads of project deliverable-s, and writing many proposals...but all this is superficial compared to the project of turning a house into a home. At work the meaning of milestones, tasks and sub-tasks, budgeting and delivering all have some resonance but hardly feature when compared to turning an old Georgian build into something more modern (perhaps?) Architecture effects us in complex ways, I know what I like but visualising what would work at number 42 is just about the most difficult task I have known. I've been here two months now and I am basically paralysed by the enormity of the effort. Where to start, how to deal with the unknowns, which bits to do myself, how to get help, budgeting, scale, scope - oh my word!

But all the books say wait a year, build up ideas and then off you go; and it will be enjoyable. I certainly think I should wait because I have had loads of convincing ideas that I known think of as stupid. The main downside though, like relationships, homes have the unavoidable side-effect of making you think long term - never a nice feeling. What will I like in 5, 10, 30 years? Indeed! One thing is for certain, I cannot believe I am mature and rich enough to actually own enough space that I could, if I chose to indulge, have my own table tennis table!

Emerging

Weather and climate

About 15 years ago Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect entered into the public consciousness. The crux of it to me was the idea behind sensitive dependence, how a small change in one part of the system can cause a large change in another. One of the stories told was that the flutter of a butterfly wing in europe could trigger a hurricane in the US Gulf.

These ideas entered my head again at a climate modelling talk this week. Modelling climate is about creating heuristics that realistic describe the climate in the past and so can then be used to extrapolate to climate in the future.

Climate is the net result of many weather systems interacting. Cloud cover, ocean currents, gaseous sulphates and so on. Hundreds of parameters producing billions of possibilities producing these kinds of graphs.

Alexander Pope

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, 'Whatever is, is right.'

From An Essay on Man, Epistle 1

Another reminder that the truth is all there is, and we should be too proud to admit we have been deluded.

And of course this is in rhyme one of those, iambic pentameter,
How clever of Pope, to say it so in meter long lineage heroic.

Kung Fu Hustle

Now this film was a startling surprise. Without much thought I'd written it off as some kind of cheap Jacky Chan nonsense, but no, its hilarious, dramatic, with great fights, myths and even a love story to boot. I think there are a few Asian motifs at play which I obviously haven't grown up with i.e. the significance of the toad but it doesn't matter. Its like a don't take yourself so seriously Matrix in gangster-land.

Life and the mean

From early maths lessons I remember there are three ways of measuring averages: mean, mode and median. I also remember upper and lower quartiles and have a vague recollection of standard deviation. I am no mathematician.

But I have done a lot of biology and one thing I am certain of is that life systems care very little about averages. Life is about maintaining equilibrium, and uses extremes to regulate and perform control operations between systems. I am referring to systems like hormone, nervous or immune regulation, where triggering happens when thresholds of chemicals are breached so invoking a response.

In the current debate on climate change the politicians are constantly referring to average temperature rises. Like in the body, this is largely irrelevant. It is the extremes we need to be worried about. We may well be able to survive a summer where the mean rise in temperature is 3 Celsius but what will happen if 1 of those days is 10 Celsius above the mean. The most recent heat waves have killed hundreds of thousands, and climate change seems to be promising even greater extremes.

The climatologists are under-egging the problem we face. Predictive models of future mean temperatures are not taking into account the seriousness of extreme cases. Life systems are extremely fragile, ecosystems are easily disrupted. Maybe there is a bacteria in the soil that is only just managing to out-compete a much more deadly one, a 10 Celsius rise on one day could wipe it out and an epidemic break out that kills all adults between 25-50. Then we'd be really screwed.

Edge cases are the most revealing when looking to the future. We're lacking imagination.

The Last King of Scotland

Beautifully shot, something akin to old grainy archive footage, this is a film about Idi Amin from the perspective of a naive recently graduated medical student. Amin is played superbly by Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy plays Nicholas Garrigan a young man out for fun and adventure but with small-town blinkers on with regards to the Africa he lands, fatefully right into the center of. Amin adopts Garrigan as his son and sets him up as his chief advisor and personal doctor. Garrigan lives in the lap of luxury while Amin sets about massacring his opposition.

Thankfully this certificate 15 does not save our sensibilities when it comes to portraying the brutality of Uganda in the 1970s. This aspect of censorship seems to have become more enlightened recently with Pan's Labyrinth and Apocolypto both showing us some horrific scenes. I am all for us being allowed to witness, from the comfort of our seats how sadistic the Atzecs, Nazis and here this corrupt African regime actually were. I believe in our tuning our minds to reality and in the case of art, our being reminded how ignorant and brutal we are all capable of being.

I am not sure how true an account of history this film is and with tone being so important in film then I am sure I have come away with a perverse sensation of the reality. With film being about good and bad too often this did at least allude to the idea that Amin was one of a long line of dictators in a bloodthirsty country. He died in Saudi Arabia, that is fact, and an interesting place to seek exile (from wikipedia entry):

In October 1978, Amin ordered the invasion of Tanzania while at the same time attempting to cover up an army mutiny. With the help of Libyan troops, Amin tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of Kagera. Tanzania, under President Julius Nyerere, declared war on Uganda, then began a counterattack, enlisting the country's population of Ugandan exiles.

On 11 April 1979, Amin was forced to flee the capital, Kampala, when the Tanzanian army, aided by Ugandan exiles who had united as the Uganda National Liberation Army, took the city. Amin fled to exile, first to Libya, departing Uganda in a Bell UH-1 registered 5X-UWG, where sources are divided on whether he remained until December 1979 or early 1980, before finding final asylum in Saudi Arabia. He opened a bank account in Jeddah and resided there, subsisting on a government stipend. The new Ugandan government chose to keep him exiled, saying that Amin would face war crimes charges if he ever returned. The Saudi motive was to silence him because of the harm they believed he was doing to Islam.^{[citation needed]}

In 1989, Amin, who had always held that Uganda needed him, and who never expressed remorse for the abuses of his regime,^[9] attempted to return to Uganda, apparently to lead an armed group organised by Col. Juma Oris. He went as far as Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where Zairian President Mobutu forced him to return to Saudi Arabia.

On 20 July 2003, one of his wives, Madina, reported that he was near death in a coma at the King Faisal specialist hospital in Jeddah. She pleaded with Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni that he might return to die in Uganda. The reply was that if he returned, he would have to "answer for his sins."

Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia on 16 August 2003, and was buried in Ruwais cemetery in Jeddah. On 17 August 2003, David Owen told an interviewer for BBC Radio 4 that while he was the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary (1977–1979), he had suggested to have Amin assassinated. His idea was directly rejected. Owen said: "Amin's regime was the worst of all. It's a shame that we allowed him to keep in power for so long."

Babel

It seems as though we've been treated to some incredible films lately: King Kong, Pan's Labyrinth, The Last King of Scotland and now this latest film by the director of Amores Perros, Alejandro González Iñárritu.

This is a rich tapestry of themes, never made too explicit, with stunning acting, powerful screenwriting and a wonderful soundtrack. Brad Pitt was good again but the star for me was Rinko Kikuchi whose portrayal of loneliness's is perfect.

On the themes then the obvious one is communication and the ways different cultures (including deaf communities) have evolved to express themselves, and hence the biblical reference in the film title. But for me this didn't stand out as very important. Globalisation is there, with the seemingly insignificant effect of the gift of a gun to a Moroccan guide triggering an international event where the Yanks over-react in the false-paternalistic Way as usual (American Dad). There's the trauma to a couple caused by a still-birth. There's the tear-your-hair out frustration of political borders, namely the US-Mexican (another one of Bush's favourite vote winners).

Although I think it cheating to make a film incredible with music, this film certainly did, and here we have Gustavo Santaolalla to thank.

I don't know if I am changing in the way I see films but this is another treat I feel I could just keep watching.

Cyberdisinhibition

According to Daniel Goleman the Internet degrades human interaction because it allows us to communicate in a way that bypasses normal communication protocols that control 'flaming' or losing ones temper.

This may account for my rant about Tony Blair earlier this week.

I was aware when writing I was going over the top but it felt good to do it. I am doing no harm (except perhaps to my own credibility) and it felt good to write in a 'disinhibited' way. Most of my rationale thoughts are in this post they are just not dressed up in neutral emotional language (words that disguise my anger).

Anyway, according to Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence) the Internet and my mind cannot be in tune because humans have evolved to expect face-to-face feedback that regulates
emotional and social well-being.

I stand corrected. (Blair, I still think you are a tosser :-) ) Tourettes, shit, fukk, w******

Letter

Dear L Sanders,

I am writing to see if you can help me raise my concerns effectively regarding the Oxfordshire Transport Plan. I have been following the issue of air pollution in Oxford for a number of years and made enquiries (or tried to at least - a good 80% of local and national government officials seem to ignore emails) with members of the city council, county council, DEFRA and the local health organisations. This has all come to no avail.

The present situation regarding levels of Nitrogen Oxides and Ozone in Oxford are completely unacceptable. There is a proven severe health risk and the objectives that are supposed to be followed (as set by the EU and DEFRA) are being flagrantly ignored.

I would ask if you have not already to read the 2006 survey here which states that air quality is a top priority for residents of Oxford:

http://www.oxford.gov.uk/community/talkback-panel-reports.cfm

Then to read chapter 15 of the Oxfordshire County Transport Strategy amounts to Oxford's response to this requirement, EU and National government directives.

The first thing about the transport strategy you could notice is the poor spelling, quality of writing and the way that the authors have tucked away dealing with air quality to the last parts of each chapter throughout the report. Big words about the environment are used throughout but when you finally find some words that should amount to something more concrete there is nothing. What's more the language used ('may be a problem') flies in the face of the evidence on Oxford City Council's own web site:

http://www.oxford.gov.uk/environment/air-pollution.cfm

And according to National Statistics Oxford has some of the worst air quality in the UK (which can't leave it being one of the worst places anywhere).

Oxford is denying it has a problem. It is refusing to deal with it because it is stuck in some 1980s vision of the economy. It is still being ignorant enough to do what is right on some antiquated and frankly corrupt view of 'the economy'.

There is not a single economy, it is not a static concept. What the report is saying is that the version of 'the economy' which we subscribe to, our current vested interests considered is one where we feel we must continue polluting. And if you are wondering why I use the word corrupt it is simply because there is absolutely no indication of the cost to the NHS of the air pollution in the budget model, neither is their reference to macro-economic models such as the Stern report.

I would ask you as my representative within the local government to help me take these issues further. I regard this transport plan utterly unacceptable. I am determined that these bogus arguments are not allowed to come part of a strategy that fails to deal with real issues, and what's more costs residents of Oxford millions of pounds.

In short, I would like to organise a meeting with yourself or someone you feel better suited to deal with these concerns. I also stress that time is of the essence as far as I can work out this document is currently being reviewed by the national transport department. If my concerns are to have any effect then they will need to be raised with the right people at the earliest opportunity.

Yours sincerely,

Howard Noble

The true value of flying

We have to stop talking about economic growth and talk about something else, maybe product value. Why is it good to let the state sponsor flights? How did this form of transport gain such a high perceived value that it is seen almost as a service like the NHS?

TBC later...

"Economic growth" justifies everything

Take this for example:

"But the prime minister's approach has always been that you can't address the problem of climate change by harming the domestic or world economy."

The spokesman stressed that: "The best thing to do is to have a world economy which can afford to invest in research and development for new technology.

It just seems to be complete nonsense. What do these people think 'economy' means. In this case we're talking about air flight. How would stopping flying harm the economy? It makes no sense. If we can't fly and movement is essential to maintain innovation (the real source of economic growth) then we'd find new ways to move, and perhaps focus more on the transfer of ideas.

It seems we are at an impass. The world needs a new vision for what we think economy means but we're being totally unimaginative or stubborn to explore the possibilities. I am sure there are libraries full of such ideas but maybe an ethical and accountable economy is the next thing we can move towards?

Mr Blair: Why you, like the rest of us should moderate your flying habit

Tony Blair's comments today about why he does not plan to change his flying habits just about sum up the idiot. I mean do we ever expect a politician to show conviction, to believe their own rhetoric and act accordingly. I am ashamed at myself for not having a better word for people like this but Bitch just about says it all. These are the people who are pure mouth, who just weazel their way through life, taking as much as possible putting all forms of self-reflection way beneath their egos. Blair of course is a religious nut, living his life on a heavy coctail of faith and hope. Ignoring all the science, although he knows he still has to appear to be listening to the evidence because this noble class is still managing to prop his bitch set up. So you're carbon off-setting are you - with whose money?

Anyway, why is his argument flawed. Sure we have to keep innovating but its the scientist who are going to be doing this, and the scientist are telling us to stop flying. This is his wing-on-a-prayer lifestyle again.

And why long term is flying bad - its to do with the rate of consumption. Planes embody a type of human activity that is so far from the Earth's ability to replenish. The planet has an energy clock, it ebbs and flows with the grander motions (tides, seasons, earthquakes, volcanoes, life itself) releasing and trapping energy, that in the end originates from the sun (minus the chemical energy locked in the chemicals that formed this mighty rock). So while Hawkins is telling us we have to colonise other planets, (and I would love to be around when this happens) it does not mean that bitches like Blair should be telling us what pace to live at. There is practically no science to suggest our consumption rates are even close to being sustainable. We have to jam on the breaks in a serious way. It does not help when The Big Grinning Idiot goes and says stuff like he did today. It negates all the conviction sane people are demonstrating. All the scientist working on nuclear fission, wind and solar power, all the people looking for ways to consume less while still getting essential jobs done. All the positive energy in society mocked by the one we pay to coordinate problem resolution from the center. (He of course also started a war to secure oil supplies - there will be no doubt of this when history knocks on your door Mr T).

Sometimes I wonder if the new style of politics aims to gain mind space by pissing reasonable people off. Are Bush and Blair really this stupid. Either they have a genius I cannot even begin to comprehend or they are the village idiots they appear to be. Eureka, maybe that's how it works - they appeal to religious nuts by enfuriating rational people.

Bush, I am sure belongs in some cesspit and should be left their to rot. Blair needs the good hiding his prefect chums would have dished out to his public school arse. Of course the bat would be applied in Baghdad by the millions of hearts and minds he's won over with his well planned invasion.

There is a simple political reason why Blair said what he did today. Its politcal balancing. A junior minister dared to criticize Ryanair yesterday so he has to pull things back the other way. It becomes clearer and clearer we live in an American plutocracy; we have ourselves to blame.

Anyway, its good to end missives like this on a crisp note, so I'll hedge my bets and say that the current UK Prime Minister is a total dick head. A bitch, egomaniac, who I cannot wait for some rational leadership to replace. I am tired of his tricks, grin, self-centered mission of personal agrandiosement. I will celebrate when he is removed and watch closely as his career nosedives as we all get time to realise what a depressing mess he has created.

Poodle boy, your time is up, history will not be your friend - you can play with your cronies (read Murdoch) and spin your yarns but there are millions of bloggers now who find it very easy to see past the facade.

[Seems other people have put this argument more eloquently].

Apocalypto

This film focuses on tone, that of the brutal oppression of a 'peaceful' Amazonian tribe by the Aztecs. The brutality is stunning, you really feel part of the film. Its 18 rated because of the gore, ripping still beating hearts out of human sacrifices and then throwing their severed heads and bodies down temple steps are just part of the blood bath. With the director being Mel Gibson I was suspicious of some religious undertone, or Christian historical interpretation. If it was there I could not spot it. There might have been an environmental message with the end of an empire being caused by failing crops and over consumption.

But wait, yes there was a religious message. A major theme was about fear and how it is a disease. If a society lives in fear with becomes self-destructive. Only our running man pictured above develops the self belief to continue his culture. True he gets lucky being saved by a series of highly improbable events (won't give them away - he is fulfilling a prophecy).

This brought me back to my Tarzan days, and knowing the format I could predict the next scene pretty easily. It got all the old apeman juices flowing though, and Mr Gibson I thank you for that.

I have to say I loved it. I can't see it being a box office hit simple because the sensibilities against the violence will possible be too great. Stomach it, its likely this time was as violent as portrayed so we should see that. Of course the destruction the indigenous were inflicting on each other is nothing compared to what the Spanish subjected them to.

And perhaps if we were really hunting for a message it could be about conquering powers and possible US and UK antics in our current times. Shameful stuff. At least the leaders of these armies had the guts to see the destruction they were causing. I doubt whether Mr Blair's grin would survive him seeing the damage he's sent UK troops to inflict.

Shopping. Oh Joy.

Ah, shopping, always been my favourite activity. Aside from the consumerism that I try to stay on the humble side of, there is the decision-making.

Physical shopping, i.e. shops on High Streets and out-of-town parks; well if I were to draw hell that would be my personal incarnation. I have found recently that I am practically blind in a crowd, I see no one. I stare at feet and hair simple to avoid collisions. Every advert I see I analyse to find the specific weakness a particular company is preying on.

And the Internet, well I though we would have arrived at a more metric-like system by now...and to a certain extent we are arriving at some semblance of this. It is complicated though.

At the top of the stack (the trust layer) there are three forms of web site:

1. Those that gather user feedback or reviews. Amazon, Kelkoo etc seem to be ahead of the game in this aspect
2. Then there is the professional 'watch dog' type sites like Which? I quickly found that this approach is seriously flawed - everything recommended in 'Best buys' is out of stock. Still it helps find the respectable brands (and hopefully keeps them on their toes).
3. The independent reviews. Not many of these but sites like Washerhelp are very informative when it comes to washing machines.
   

Next in the stack are the aggregators like Pricerunner and Kelkoo. These sites scrape prices and product details from suppliers and also importantly provide pretty advanced search engines. In fact the search facilities provided at this level are normally better than the supplier web sites. For example suppliers like KitchenScience don't allow you to find only appliances that are A+ energy efficiency rated.

Then there are the suppliers. You've found what you want and just need to pay for it and arrange delivery or pickup.

So you to-and-fro between these sites. Back and forth. The conscientious trying to buy sustainably, minimise transport, not use non-eco materials etc. You are also checking sizes, weights, costs, delivery times, arggghhhhhh!

One thing that is pretty spectacular is Amazon-like recommendation and category browsing. It happened so many times that I think I know what I want but then their engine shows me something better. Hours of fun putting things in your basket only to take them out.

And don't even mention eBay complications! Do I trust the vendor, what am I not thinking about with this product i.e. from the image and description. How much to bid.

These sites do seem to missing a few tricks and be harbouring a few annoyances:

• The image tells you so much, so few sites have good pictures
• Most of the specification provided about products is gobbledygook. What's the point of telling people that a washing machine is 42db? Is this good, bad, how does it compare to other machines, what is the average across all products. Perspective is missing. Too many parameters just confuses. This is especially true for audio-visual equipment
• Some key word searches are not well factored in the systems e.g. soap holder finds little in Amazon but Soap Dish finds loads.
  

The main thing I see is that consumer lead reviews need to be abstracted from suppliers. There needs to be one place to catch all reviews. Consumers would benefit as would the less paranoid suppliers.

Anyway, this is a blog so I'll keep it converted. Shopping on the Internet can actually be pleasurable. For myself I found the process quite technical but I am very picky and hate being ripped off. The killer will be when it all arrives (yes, delivery is the next hassle as I am bound to have to traipse through Oxford gangland to the pathetic post office returned goods stinky room to get the stuff. We'll see though. All in all I am pretty excited by what should be arriving in the near future(ish).

(And not to forget the mother of all web sites - the online bank and your balance.)