Category: How the mind works

Surrey’s hot streak continues

Mark Church, the Surrey commentator-in-chief, tweets the gory or glorious (according to taste) details of Surrey’s recent run of triumphs in the Country Championship:

Surrey’s 5 straight wins:

Innings and 17 runs
Innings and 58 runs
Innings and 89 runs
7 wickets
Innings and 183 runs

6 wins in total this season

Good numbers those 🏏🏏

Very good. No surprise, then, that Surrey are way out in front and are hot favourites to win the whole thing.

I’ve been following all these wins, the scores via Cricinfo, and if I want to hear the actual fall of wickets being described by normally taciturn men who suddenly start shouting, then through the BBC commentaries, the ones that Mark Church does.

If you follow a sports team, you will know both how deeply satisfying this Surrey hot streak has been for me, a Surrey supporter, and also how impossible it is for me to explain to someone who doesn’t share such sports fan feelings why it is so satisfying.

With four day county cricket, keeping track of the progress of a steamroller team, like Surrey have been this year, means tracking your team for twenty solid days, six hours each day, minus the days you miss because Surrey have already won inside three days, like they did today. Imagine following your football team doing that, winning for twenty solid days!

Follow that link, and you will learn that the guy who made the difference for Surrey today was South African pace monster Morne Morkel. The word is that people around the counties hate Surrey a bit less than usual just now, on account of so many of Surrey’s good players these days being proper county cricketers that they have nurtured in their Academy or whatever, rather than bought in from The World. But Morkel is a classic throw-money-at-the-problem answer to a problem, the problem being that Surrey needed a bowler like Morkel to make their bowling attack the complete steamroller than it now is.

Morkel wasn’t just the difference today. On the first morning of this game, when Notts were just one wicket down and were groping towards a position of batting adequacy, Morkel got two quick wickets, and Notts never recovered. Instead of Notts batting in the second half of the day when batting was easier, Surrey got to bat then. Yesterday morning, Surrey batted on and lost four wickets for not a lot, but this wasn’t enough for Notts to get back into the game. The Surrey tail didn’t so much wag as flail. Rikki Clarke, who started his career at Surrey and is now finishing it there, got a century batting at eight, Burns having already scored a century batting at one, and that was pretty much that.

Okay, your eyes glazed during that last paragraph, but you are now here. The point is: Surrey are now really good.

This metaphorical hot streak of Surrey’s has been a great comfort to me, in these literally very hot times.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The City Big Things looking like a model

Indeed:

Taken from the top of the Tate Modern Extension, about one month ago.

I think the reason it looks (to me) like a model is the way the river looks. That doesn’t look like water. It looks more like some hardboard painted the colour of the river, and then covered in transparent glue, to make it look like it’s water. Something like this is how modelers do it. So if it looks like this, it makes everything else look like it must be a model too.

It’s also something to do with the lighting of the entire scene, at that time of the evening when it doesn’t know if it’s daylight or evening. Magic hour, I believe, is what the movie people call this time.

I already very much like the latest City Big Thing, the Scalpel. Very recognisable, no matter how far away you are.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Tim Harford at Think 2018

Here. Video, lasting just over twenty minutes. Just watched it. Good.

Particularly interested by what he says about how, without cheap paper, the revolutionary changes ushered in by the printing press could not have happened. Mass produced printed material printed on animal skins not economically doable.

Harford ends on what he thinks is a depressing note, about a woman who supplies the final bit of muscle to a huge warehouse system, by receiving verbal orders from an all-powerful robot, which she simply obeys, second by second. Go here, get this, this number, take it here, …

Well, it’s a job.

Personally, I think that having to think all the time about your work, when you are at work, is hugely overrated. Whenever I have had a “job”, I liked it when my job was my job, but my thoughts were my own. Best job? Driving a van, delivering number plates. Drove on autopilot most of the time. Thought my own thoughts. Didn’t “buy into the company vision”. Not “committed”. Wasn’t “invested” in the work. Just did it, mostly without having to think about it. Bliss.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Confessions of a preemptive pessimist

I was asleep when England got their first goal. My urban locality erupted with honking and shouting. I looked at my bedside clock, and it was just after 7pm, when the game was due to begin. Sure enough, when I cranked up the telly: CRO 0-1 ENG. (You don’t need any links. You surely know what I’m talking about.)

I recall this phenomenon happening before, this time right at the end of a game of this kind. It was 0-0 at the very end of extra time, and about to be a shoot-out. Against Belgium, I think it was. And then someone called Platt, I think it was, scored a goal for England, when I was in my toilet. The noises that I heard from my neighbours could only mean an England goal. So it was with Trippier’s early goal this evening.

I am and remain a preemptive pessimist about England’s chances in this tournament, because this will soften the blow when the blow does fall, as fall it surely must. An early goal, such as England have just scored, is often a mistake, because it gets the opposition stirred up. It makes them forget any nerves they feel and really play, because they have to really play. The early goal-scorers on the other hand, are tempted to defend too much and let the other fellows into the game. And then when the other fellows equalise, they are the ones with the momentum. Sure enough, as half time nears, England are getting sloppy and Croatia now have a chance. Well, it’s now half time, but I still back Croatia to win this.

Now, they’re saying that England had lots of chances and should be further ahead. Indeed. So when Croatia do equalise, England will be very depressed, and will lose.

Roy Keane, a fellow pre-emptive pessimist by the sound of it: “England got a bit sloppy.”

Oh, the torture of hope.

And the further torture of feeling like a idiot, for taking such events far, far more seriously than anyone should.

In particular, I feel the difference between someone like me, who refuses to get his hopes up, and “real” fans, who do get their hopes up. I “contribute” nothing to the success of any team I support, as in: like to see winning but don’t get hysterical about. Yet in truth, the hysterics contribute very little more than I do. Just the occasional encouraging bellow. But if England never do get eliminated from this World Cup (I shun the w word) I feel that I will not have deserved it, but that the hysterics and the bellowers will have deserved it. If you suffer, you deserve to succeed. If you shun suffering, you do not. Even if the suffering accomplishes nothing.

LATER:

A cleverly chosen name, wouldn’t you say?

For “first” at the start of this, read: early. And only.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Thumb out of glove

To comfort myself for the excessive warmth of the weather, here is a cold weather photo, from December 2012, on Westminster Bridge:

What intrigues me about this photo, aside from the fact that I like the colours and textures and whatnot, is what she is doing with her glove:

That’s the first (only) time I’ve ever seen (photoed) that done with a glove, by a photoer.  Just the thumb out.

I’m guessing that this only happens with smartphones, with that button at the bottom of that flat screen.  I never use my thumb to take the photo with my regular digital camera, only the forefinger.  So, if I’m wearing gloves, one glove has to come right off.

Just now, it is very hard to imagine weather so cold that you have to put sweaters on your hands.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

BMdotcom and email problems – now sorted

No posting here yesterday, because from mid afternoon onwards this site could not be reached, either by readers or by the writer, i.e. me. Sorry about that, but all seems to be sorted now, as it had to be for me to be able to post this.

I also had email problems, and just when I really did not need them. The Sunday evening before the last Friday of the month is when I do a mass(-ish) email about my forthcoming Last Friday of the Month meeting. (This time: Prof Tim Evans on Corbyn.) But, it would seem that the emails all got through, even if replies to them were only getting back to me at around midday today.

When you have problems like this, then as soon as they’re sorted the worrisomeness graph nosedives from VERY BAD!!!! to profound happiness:

Which is always a better feeling than, logically, it deserves to be, considering that all that happened was that something bad happened and then stopped. But when badness stops, that feels very good, even if, logically, it is only things getting back to normal.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Creature contrast in the City

On the day that England ruthlessly crushed Tunisia at football, with a very late goal, I was checking out the most recent Big Things of the City of London. But there are other things in the City of London besides Big Things, and this is, you sense, deliberate. They’re trying to make the City more than a place of work which becomes deserted when everyone buggers off to the suburbs early on Friday evening. They’re trying to make it stay alive at evenings and weekends. They’re trying to make it the sort of place that people might like to visit, as opposed merely to a place that lots of people find it profitable to work in.

One of the things that signals this effort is sculpture.

On the right is a photo I took of the first sculpture I encountered during my walkabout. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. The colours are quite nice, but the sculpture itself is too much like a miniature and pretend Big Thing. And why would you want that when you have real Big Things all around you? Standing as it does next to the Lloyds Building, this pile of coloured rectangles just looked feeble and sad.

I much preferred this carthorse:

And this goat:

Here is a link to information about the goat.

Strangely, I could find absolutely nothing on the www about the carthorse. This may be because, rather than being Art, it is merely a 3D advert for alcohol. Those big giant courgettes it is dragging along in its cart are for making booze of some sort, or such is my guess. Or, the silence of the internet may be because this carthorse has only very recently arrived at the spot where I encountered it. Or, the internet is full of stuff about this carthorse and I merely failed to find it, which is the most likely explanation for this not-link.

Whatever. The thing I liked about both the horse and the goat is that they are simulated biological entities, rather than man-made structures like that pile of coloured rectangles. They do not compete with the Big Things, because they are different from them. Instead, they make a welcome contrast to the Big Things.

Big Things on their own are very dull, I think, and little Big Things don’t change that. Sculpted creatures do change this, I also think.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Now you see it – now you don’t

Here is a recent Scott Adams Dilbert cartoon, although Dilbert himself is not involved in this particular one:

I’ve always thought that one of the many things that won the Cold War for Civilisation and doomed Bolshevik Barbarism to defeat was stealth stuff. By its nature, stealth stuff is undetectable, and the better it is, the more impossibly undetectable it is. So, if you cannot detect it at all, it could still be there, and really really good at being stealthy. Hell, it could be anywhere. It could be right outside the Politburo’s front window.

Of course, it probably isn’t this clever. But, how would you be sure?

This was why, when the Americans had got these contraptions working reasonably well, they revealed their existence. They took lots of spooky photos of these spooky things, and made sure the whole world could see them. Where, at any particular moment, they were, for you to photo, they did not reveal.

How can you defeat an enemy like that?

Same with Star Wars. Shooting down all incoming nuclear missiles with all-powerful death rays. Bollocks, right? But, again, how could you be sure?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Battersea Power Station plus train window reflections

More and more, I have come to think of the reflections to be seen in windows as interesting things to photo, alongside the things you see through the windows.

Thus:

That’s Battersea Power Station and its crane cluster, photoed from a train, about to cross the river into Victoria, earlier in the month.

I know, it has the lights inside the train reflected in the window, and that is considered bad. But why is this a problem? I think it makes a rather interesting combination of sights.

I also like very much how the above photo also includes a small mention of the Shard, towards the bottom on the right:

My camera sees more than I do.

What the above sentence really means is that when I looked at the actual scene, when photoing it, I saw one thing, but when I look at the photo that I took, I see different things.

I now get to see more of that one scene. At the time I saw the scene, complete with its reflected lights, but then the train carried on moving and immediately showed me another scene, and another, and … . No wonder I didn’t see as much of the original scene.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Ruthless boohoo man

Earlier this evening I was in the City, checking out the latest Big Things, but this posting isn’t about that.

I care just enough about England doing well in the World Cup to have to try not to care, as opposed to truly not caring. Countries like Tunisia are getting better at soccer, and countries like England are getting worse, so today’s game, Tunisia v England, was a banana skin almost guaranteed to embarrass England. I chose early this evening for my City walkabout because the weather forecast was good, but also because if I was photoing in the City, I could forget about this sure-to-be excruciating game.

Fat chance. For starters, I was constantly walking past pubs full of people crying out in unison and in frustration, at England’s evidently imperfect performance. Also, I had my mobile phone with me, and it was able to tell me what the shouting was all about. I tried not to mind when Tunisia equalised with a penalty. I tried not even to know. But I did, because I did.

Also, in one of those urban coincidences, I encountered two further soccer reminders, both involving Dele Alli, a Spurs player who also plays in this England side. These two photos were taken by me within a minute of one another, the first outside Liverpool Street tube, and the second down on the tube platform:

On the left, an Evening Standard headline, all about how ruthless England must be, against Tunisia. Sadly, they ruthlessly missed almost all of the many goal chances they created. Had that other Spurs player, Kane, not scored at the beginning, and then again right at the end in extra time, England would have been humiliated.

And on the right, an advertising campaign which Dele Alli was surely asking for trouble by agreeing to. He is fronting for clothing brand boohoo MAN. This is a photocaption waiting to happen. When England fail to win the World Cup, and they will, quite soon, fail to win the World Cup, Dele Alli will be photoed, a lot, looking unhappy. And the unhappiest photo of all will have the words “boohoo man” under it, in many media outlets. This will greatly benefit boohoo, by getting its name talked about, so I suppose, come to think of it, that the prospect of such coverage has already greatly benefited Del Alli. But I consider this very undignified, even if Dele Alli is already boohooing all the way to the bank.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog