the final stretch

So, after three years of sleeplessness, Supervisor-Stockholm syndrome, paranoia, uncertainty over ever finishing and experiments on my supervisor, my thesis is submitted and I await its defense.

As with most universities and most countries*, the routine is that the thesis gets sent to two academics eminent in the field who read it through then come on a jolly visit to argue extensively with me.  As these folks are older, wiser and significantly more eminent than me, most phds worry themselves silly about their vivas.

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*Note that this is not the case in Australia, partly because there’s only about 20 people, but mainly because those people are strung out across a continent of about 3 million square miles and the trip probably isn’t worth it. I’m curious whether they’re planning on boosting modernity by undertaking Skype-vivas, but haven’t heard of this yet.

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So, following in the footsteps of the Guardian‘s magnificent minute-by-minute reports, I intend to give a comprehensive run down of the action as and when it happens. Hopefully it’ll be in the next couple of weeks.

Also, more hopefully, I’ll pass so this whole blog won’t finish on a distressing low.

Evidently I won’t be able to do a true minute-by-minute, given that I’ll be arguing with eminent academics and probably won’t be able to constantly update my laptop but I intend to (once it’s over and I’ve recovered and I’ve had a few drinks and then also recovered from those drinks) write a review of the day so that generations of future phd students will have some idea what goes on and won’t be so scared poopless as myself and my compatriots. Because frankly, nobody tells you what happens during a viva – it’s like a mystery – Scooby and the gang never solved this one, so I guess it’s a job for me.

Or actually, hey, it might be just as scary as young grad students fear.

Or I might just over-exaggerate the scariness in order to prevent more prospective phd students appearing and getting under my feet in the lab.

Anyway, watch this space.

Review: The King James Bible

So I must start this review by clarifying that this book is a pretty long read with plenty of variation, both in plot and prose, so do not  expect some neat novel you can rip through in an afternoon. It’s a slog and some may question whether it’s worth it at all. The fame of this book leads it to have many disciples and many detractors, both of whom can be alarming in their zealotry of defending or deriding it, so I shall attempt to give it a fair and even-handed review.

At some instance I must address the flagrant plagiarism of both plot and characters from the Torah in the beginning stages of this book. Indeed, fully the first five chapters seem to be lifted near-verbatim from the older work and I can’t imagine how that got through the editorial process without some query.

Which brings us neatly onto the editorial process itself: at some points it seems that the editors have let the authors free reign to say what they wanted and in the style they desired, the most blatant culprit being the ever so wild chapter, gnomically titled “Revelations” where the plot unravels almost entirely and the character-driven style of earlier chapters is abandoned in favour of bombastic set pieces coupled with attempted-epic global calamities that don’t quite ring true. At other times there appears to have been some fairly strident cuts in the editorial process, the best example perhaps soon after the introduction of the “Jesus” character whose plot, after arising as something of a child prodigy, is simply bisected with no indication of his actions between the age of 12 and 30. This may be a ploy by the authors to cash in on a surprise sequel that fills in the blanks, but I am not willing to speculate and, so long after first publication, it is unlikely that any sequel could really hold up to such a wild, varied, magnificent mess without decending into farce (an accusation that may indeed be leveled at some sections of this book, the worse offender being the four-time repetition of the whole “Jesus” saga without ever discussing these ‘lost years’).

I have to admit that this concept of internally progressing style is, at times, rather fascinating and is somewhat reminiscent of the wonderful chapter “Oxen of the Sun” in Joyce’s Ulysses wherein the entire history of English literature is obliquely recounted through varying prose style that, through the chapter progresses from latinate, through Anglo-Saxon all the way to 19th century realism and gothic and eventually decends into meaningless jibberish. The entire progression of the KJB reflects something similar, from Epic (with a capital E) world creating stuff, through those interminable descent lists, into those character-driven chapters (ultimately really hitting its stride during the marvellous David as shepard-King-adulterer plotline)  before falling away by trying to reinvent the character “God” with a rather maudlin father-son affair and eventually into Revelations where the author tried, but couldn’t seem to quite face the final leap of style and so overran his gothicesque chapter, piling in more dragons and more beasts and more flaming swords until it sounds like a 12-year old goth’s fanfic. This is one of the vulnerabilities that is inherent in any multi-authored work, that weaker authors who do not realise it may get carried away, or that without proper editorial control authors may repeat or contradict themselves, a flaw this book is eminently culpable for.

And so we must discuss the elephant in the room, the characterisation. In some chapters and scenes the humanity really shows through: from the primal struggle of Caan and Able, to Delilah’s magnificent control of the stupid lug Samson, to David’s glorious rise and adulterous ways. Unfortunately this vital and fascinating, personable storytelling was not extended to the protagonist character, variously referred to as “The word”, “God” “Yahweh”, “Jesus” and “Elohim” (among many others), who evades the authors’ attempts to define him, is described contradictorily and persistently remains angry, sulky and in no way relatable. If this were the character’s prerogative I might be more understanding, but then suddenly, midway through the book he stops with the fire, chucks the brimstone in the cupboard, puts the smiting lightning under the bed and becomes a pacifist hippy. I realise that people change when they have kids, but this much? Really? In the first half of the book the protagonist gleefully oversees the massacre of thousands of people by his “chosen people” and at one point even purposefully floods the entire world – killing all but eight people in a truly incomparable hissy-fit when his project wasn’t going how he wanted. Then, he’s suddenly all non-involvement and no-smiting and no appearances: I feel there is more to the story that hasn’t been written – perhaps a UN resolution imposed to stop his wholesale slaughter of, well, everyone on a whim – perhaps he broke a hip and didn’t want to go out so much – perhaps he got obsessed with Modern Warfare 3; whatever the case, he went from a confident, smiting alpha character who’d stroll around with Adam and chat with Moses to pretty much a basket case, it feels like poor storytelling to not so much as even acknowledge this. When finally he shows his face again, he’s going by the name “Jesus” and the snatches of action are so irritatingly bland that it’s rather difficult to reconcile that it’s even the same character at all.

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Overall, it’s a good book with parts that are a ripping yarn that has a tenancy to get bogged down with the characters we don’t care about. The protagonist is a contradictory mess whose deep seated psychological problems are scarcely addressed except with some vague references to the “three within one” that may indicate a fairly severe multiple personality disorder. The writing is ok but varied and the abrupt change of pace and scope midway leaves the reader a little disoriented. I’d recommend it as a decent read but as a pretty long one you might want to skip some of the duller more repetitive sections in favour of the character driven second quarter which on it’s own might justify the buy. Unfortunately after hitting it’s stride about a quarter in, it can’t quite maintain and loses the thread towards the end in favour of bombast and spectacle, which with all it’s excess serves to remind us that this is just a fun book that, although it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be, is written with its toungue firmly within its cheek.

things I have learnt during my doctorate

[NOTE: This has been sat in drafts a fair while because I was a little embarassed how little I claimed to have learnt that was of any value. Also it wasn't very funny. I'll just add the disclaimer that this (probably) isn't a comprehensive list.]

• that awesome trick where you spin a pen ’round your thumb
• how to tie a bow tie whilst cycling a bike (which may be the most quintessentially Oxford skill I’ve ever contemplated)
• that even eminent professors are susceptible to Pavlovian brainwashing
• nobody really knows what they are doing – success is just about pretending convincingly
• eventually though, pretending can actually lead to knowing what you’re doing
• if you make your field of expertise specific enough; yep, you’re a world expert (for example, this guy: http://www.peterrg.com/ a pal of mine, is one of the few non-Marshallese folks who can speak Marshallese.. as such, he knows the field far better than anybody who could possibly examine his DPhil.. which made his viva a little moot perhaps).. [horay, unexpected pun]
• how to distinguish a Canadian from an American. This is simultaneously easier and harder than it might seem, for example: Canadians do not actually say “aboot” instead of “about”, but they do say “eh” quite regularly. Best test: mention maple syrup quietly and offhandedly, any Canadian in a 100 metre radius will have heard you.
• that “studying for a doctorate in physics, specifically optoelectronics for application in photovoltaics with a mind to increased renewable energy uptake” doesn’t sound nearly as good in a bar as “basically, I’m saving the world”
• you only have to be respectable until you get tenure, then you can go right back to delivering lectures in shorts and writing said lectures in comic sans (yes, Supervisor is guilty of both of these – I actually have the completely sincere worry that maybe if I apply for some prestigious fellowship at any point he’ll send his reference in comic sans)
• probably some stuff about physics..

Reel Science: Thor

So, I should perhaps have made it more clear in the last post, but these reviews may contain spoilers and I’m almost certainly not going to think about it or make a note when they arise.

Now, I promise that not all these reviews are going to be about superhero movies and I’m slightly apologetic to follow a(n accidental) Superman review with a review for Thor. But I guess I don’t have to justify myself, I’m basically talking to the aether and anyone daft enough to be reading.
I’m not going to question the science of a magic hammer letting you fly or even the feasibility of a walking metal fella. I’m going to have a look at the bifrost and the intergalactic portal it suggests.
Norse myth tells of the Bifrost, a rainbow bridge that links the godly realm Asgard with the human world of Midgard (Earth). In the film (and, I assume, Marvel’s comic interpretation, but I’m not reviewing that so) the Bifrost is depicted as an extremely high-tech particle-cannon-looking thing that is just off the coast of Asgard reached (appropriately) by a literal rainbow bridge.
When Thor reaches Earth, he ends up having a bit of a chat with some physicists which is quite enjoyable as there aren’t nearly enough physicsts in films generally – except, as previously discussed, physicists who become supervillains.
The physicists suggest that the ‘rainbow bridge’ this burly lunatic is yammering on about could actually be an Einstein-Rosen bridge (the writers get bonus points here for actually using a flashy science sounding name instead of the ever-so-common ‘wormhole’). An Eistein-Rosen bridge is a theoretical distortion in the fabric of space-time that, through a fair deal of terrifying math and solving the Einstein field equations, is most easily expressed as a singularity that links two otherwise disparate points in space. Nearly as soon as this concept was theorised it led to the realisation that the spatial link between these points would be circumventing the ‘true’ distance between them otherwise indicated by standard Euclidean geometry. Technically you wouldn’t contravene the speed of light, but if you travel the shorter distance that the bridge enables you can travel between two points faster than light could travel between them in conventional space.
So actually, despite the faintly ridiculous source myth (and the ridiculously brilliant helmets appearing from time to time), the scientific grounding for that one concept is relatively solid. Now, if a civilisation were to develop the technology to actually create and control a bridge like this and then were to have it operated by a orange eyed black guy in gnarly gold armour and have a big sword act as the focal instrument.. well, that civilisation is just magnificently crazy.

In honesty though, the most unrealistic ‘scientific’ aspect of the film is asking the audience to believe that physicists look like this:

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Also have to note: scientific or not, Anthony Hopkins with a big beard makes a very believable god.

Reel Science:

So, given that I pretty often write about film and probably equally often write about science, I’ve decided that I’m going to combine the two. When I see a film (if I remember) I will make a note of the scientific merit of it and then try and write an (absolutely not comprehensive, but hopefully) interesting review of the science behind the film and whether it is reasonable or just complete idiocy and mumbo jumbo. I am not certain of the nature of this series as yet, however I suspect that I will be variably strict; for example: if I were to review any of the Superman films, I will likely take it as given that the flying and bullet-proof and laser eyes and the like are patently unscientific and concentrate on some other aspects.*

<The actual review was going to be here – but I got carried away with my Superman footnote. Read that, it’s interesting>

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* I’m not going to do a Superman review (at least not right now)  but, I wouldn’t be the physicist I am if I didn’t clarify a point from the original Christopher Reeve Superman film of 1978. Superman finds Lois is dead and (from memory) there are all sorts of other problems; so, like any half-decent gentleman, he flies around the Earth at super-light speeds, rotating it back on it’s axis and .. thus.. turns .. back .. time. ?

I do not wish to impune the scientific integrity of the writers and I am not really an expert in relativistic temporal effects, but I am fairly certain this is wrong. On just so many levels.

First, turning the earth back on it’s axis: by flying around it. If you look at the scene, he is clearly flying outside of Earth’s atmosphere, which means that even if he were flying at trans-light speed he wouldn’t be applying any force to the spin of the Earth. The Earth simply alters its own spin in.. what.. sympathy?

Now, I know what you’re (maybe) saying – the earth turning backwards is just a metaphor or a cinematic device to indicate that the big blue boyscout is turning back time. But no, because he actually flies back round the opposite way a little bit at the end to make the Earth spin the correct way again. So it definitely isn’t a metaphor. The point the film implies is that spining the earth backwards. turns. back. time.

(This definitely isn’t the case – but maybe it’s understandable. You spin the rolls on a cassette or vhs backwards and it rewinds the tape (if you don’t remember these, consult wikipedia: cassettes and vhs. If you don’t care, they are defunct technology just like the morning star,  the abacus, Microsoft Bob and the penny farthing).

So anyway, to the main point. Even ignoring the oddity of spinning the Earth backwards to turn back time, the concept is still outrageously flawed. Now, everyone knows that if you go fast enough (ie approaching the speed of light), temporal effects will begin to occur. Unfortunately, current (and very stable) interpretation of the laws of physics indicates that the speed of light is an absolute, is inviolable. Now, shy of rewriting the theory of relativity just to consider Superman, this means that when the chap in the red cape is approaching lightspeed his own reference frame encounters time dilation. This dilation occurs proportionately to the fraction of the speed of late, ie. the closer you get to the speed of light the more the temporal effect.

In simplest terms: when Superman is flying superfast, if he continues for a minute, the rest of the universe (the other reference frame) will have aged by.. say .. 10 minutes. This means that flying really, really fast (or “super fast”) simply allows you to travel into the future.. slightly faster than normal. So, unless the film is implicating that the universe is built on a continuous loop and that Superman is going all the way to the next loop and saving Lois in loop 2, the whole thing is just physically unsound. †

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Ok, so it did turn into a Superman film science review. Oops. Got a bit carried away with that. I’ll do the review I was actually planning in the next few days.

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† Honourable mention must go to a recentish episode of Futurama that accepts this “only forward time travel” notion and makes a rather lovely sequence out of the concept.

reasons 3d cinema is absolutely terrible

I saw Rise of the Planet of the apes yesterday with a friend of mine and, before agreeing to see it, made him confirm that it was definitely not going to be in 3d, given that I hate that ‘technology’ with a fiery venom. Why do I have such a vitriolic response to such a seemingly innocuous form of media? Lots of reasons:

Dimmness – because each eye is filtered by the glasses to show a slightly different image, the light flux through each is halved (and in reality reduced even further by the collimation of the glasses themselves). This means that when you go into a 3d film, the image appear hideously dim by comparison to normal 2d films or tv or your phone or, most importantly, reality. If the film is supposed to be a dreary horror picture or similar, sure, this isn’t a problem – but in a normal picture it just looks extremely washed out.

Depth confusion – fast cuts, common in modern cinema (especially action/visual oriented film, such as those that now champion 3d) mean that, unless the cinematographer is EXTRAORDINARILY competent, there are rapid and frequent changes in the depth of field. This requires the viewer (and more specifically, their eyes) to refocus constantly, which can result in noticeable difficulty following the motion when the cuts are fast (eg. sub 1-second cuts, which are pretty common in action scenes especially) and more importantly, a fairly significant strain on the eyes which has been seen in many viewers to cause headaches or nausea.

It just isn’t necessary to convey depth – cinematographers have, over the last 100 years absolutely mastered the art of conveying depth of field through the medium of film. In the first instance just filming two objects and having had any visual experience of similar objects allows a pretty cohesive production of perspective; a man who appears small on screen will either be far away (easily conveyed by differential focus between two objects) or actually a small man (if you have a flatter focus they can both be in focus and even trick the eye – this was used to outstanding effect in the Lord of the Rings films where forced perspective was used to make full grown men seem extremely small in comparison to others).

As an experiment – think of a scene, any scene, in which a character walks towards the camera; did you have a sudden panic that the character was growing impossibly or did you, logically and reasonably, infer that the character was getting closer?

3d reduces the ability of the director to suggest the viewers focus – because the whole shot is supposed to be in focus in 3d, the director cannot so easily use camera focusing to draw the viewer’s attention to certain objects or defocus something in an effort to make our experience resonate with the character.

Those damn plastic glasses – which seem to be made to the ever-popular specification of ‘one size fits nobody’. They’re uncomfortable and because they evidently haven’t been designed by anyone with any ergonomic understanding rub heavily on the nose and ears (also making them terrible for your skin). This is even before you consider the difficulty if you wear glasses beforehand..

 

 

CONFESSION: In the interests of honesty, I must admit there has been one solitary occasion where I have been almost appreciative of 3d: when I saw Toy Story 3 the glasses successfully hid the non-especially-manly tears that welled up towards the end.

ALSO: Rise of the Planet of the Apes is pretty great – easily the best film I’ve seen that includes a gorilla killing a helicopter.

gods, angels and superheroes

It’s a well-observed tenant of life that people constantly strive to become something greater than they are.

For some, this means educating themselves in an effort to expand their mind and gain greater intellectual insight into the world around them; for others going to the gym and attempting to make their body approach some ideal suggested by advertisements and pop culture. For still yet others, this might lead down the well-trod path of plans for world domination.. even if you only discuss it on 4chan with other would-be megalomaniacs.

And yet, the idea of power greater than man can achieve is a potent inspiration for so many..

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In ancient days men worships gods and told stories of the gods lives and interactions and in some cases told how they had bred with mortals to create such heroes as Hercules and Perseus, men who by their very nature exceeded the constraints of humanity.

Angels were a similar (and similarly religious) spin on the idea of great beings. When the power of gods (and indeed, God) was ramped up to Golden Age levels and ‘omnipotence’ was made vogue, a middle ground had to be struck. As God became ineffably powerful, man dreamt of another being who could be identified with.

JRR Tolkien spoke of mankind caught adrift in a metaphorical sea of humanoid creatures, some of whom greater and some lesser than the people of reality. He speaks of halflings and dwarves, short and stunted with comparison to man, yet longer lived and stronger and able to achieve great things. He devotes great attention to the elves who in all ways are greater than man and notes that the orcs were elves once, cruelly tortured into a barbaric parody of their former selves. But all are caricatures of man – many are far greater than any man could hope to be and in some cases the men are shown to be jealous and covetous of this greatness.

Towards the end of the recent film Hancock, there is passing talk of how the superheroes of the story had lived forever; in old times they had been called angels or gods, but now the name was superhero. In the 20th century, the concept of the superhero has exploded, first in comic books and then increasingly onto the big screen, with the number of superhero films being released year on year increasing steadily since their renaissance in the early 2000s with X-Men and Spiderman reinvigorating a genre made stale by the poor handling of Superman and the hyper-campification of Batman.

This has even been observed in the slow modification of the vampire. From the pathetic, evil creature Bram Stoker envisaged, the vampire has been given something of a makeover in the last 20 years, with the Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, most recently, Twilight all distorting the image of the vampire into a being less evil and more powerful and more admirable. People want to identify with the strength and longevity of vampires, without the nasty other parts (thought not to say, that in many cases the darkness isn’t also a factor in the attraction people seem to have to them). The idea of immortality teases people who are well aware of the fleeting nature of human life.

There seems to be a need, a yearning or an ambition, within man, that we can become greater than we are. This is forever observed in culture – previously in gods, angels, (even demons) and now with the advent of superheroes. In some, a character arises whose being is naturally greater than that of other men; in others, a man strives to become greater than his is – overruling the natural order in an attempt to be something better.

This dichotomy is most clearly typified by the twin bastions of the 20th century’s superhero genre: Superman and Batman. Superman is an alien whose origins gave him powers and a destiny beyond the scope of any real man, while Batman simply devoted himself, his whole being, to being better than he was.

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Is the obsession with angels and superheroes a facet of the evolutionary imperative to improve, or a more base psychological response to alpha leaders? Over and over throughout history there have been people who, through their words or actions became more than just men.

King Rameses II (the Great) lived for 93 years, three times the life expectancy of his people; it is therefore understandable that his subjects would deify him – a man who had reigned in the time of their great grandparents in a time when people would likely not see their children grown.

Alexander of Macedonia (again, the Great) who, by the age of thirty, had led conquests creating one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.

Joan of Arc at the age of 16 led the French army to victories in the hundred years war and has since been cannonised a saint, another version of raising someone beyond the confines of mere mortality.

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So, why do people so strive for this idea of greatness? For this unattainable version of themselves? For some a good education and a gym-honed body might be enough, and some may reconcile themselves with unattempted and unspoken plots for world domination, while others..  others dream of angels and superheroes.

london riots

[credit for the poster fabricator from the election must go to http://www.andybarefoot.com/politics/cameron.php]

Pavlov’s prof

I began my doctorate almost three years ago and soon after I started, I began an experiment. Now, being an experimental physicist, this may not seem like a particularly shocking revelation. The nature of the experiment is probably not what you’d expect though.

I have been performing a simple psychological experiment for three years on Supervisor

The experiment investigates whether simple subconsciously taught Pavlovian responses can be applied to professors as well as to dogs.

The results are really quite convincing. And worrying.

The initial stage was programming: since the beginning of my doctorate, every time I have showed Supervisor good results or displayed a distinctly good work ethic or fixed some problem, I have put on a necktie. This isn’t so odd, given that I wear shirts most days and Oxford is naturally a fairly smartly dressed place. I also made a point NEVER to wear a tie outside the context of what I would consider a ‘positive’ situation. After two years of this reinforcement, I decided it was time to test the level of uptake. I went in to a meeting (with no recent performance indications) wearing a tie and made no effort to be involved, made no comments and, in fact, said nothing at all. At the end of the meeting Supervisor comments that I’m doing a great job and to keep up the good work. This has since been repeated in several instances where no recent good work has been performed that would provide impetus for praise and yet, with the reveal of the tie, praise is forthcoming.

 

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Epilogue:

Unfortunately the last few months have seen me lax my investigation and the positive reinforcement has been neglected. A few weeks ago Supervisor strolled into my office to catch my with my feet on the desk, drinking a beer and watching the tennis. For a moment there was confusion, but this was resolved when the conditioning realised to ally itself with mild sarcasm to provide “really doing a great job today”.

a story I wrote (..quite a while a go, but just thought to put up)

Years later you would wake in the night remembering the lines so amateurishly marring the sketch, but when you first learnt to structure your pictures at the instruction of your father, you felt you’d been given a way to formalise the barrage of images projected behind your eyes by the mind you were yet to understand. You slowly managed to make sense of it all but often redrew the same image, a face frowning gently as if in recognition. Nobody you’d ever met, just maybe someone you’d like to.

I could never draw, nothing inspired me so I never tried. Art became the only subject I didn’t do, later exasperating the teachers who dreamt I could pull up their averages. A conscientious objector to art. Other classes held no inspiration for me either, but never needed to. Top grades flowed without effort and I registered I was inciting competition; I only found inspiration when I thought I might not win. Someone commented that perhaps I avoided art because I didn’t want to see myself, I didn’t respond and pretended not to hear the further suggestion that there might be nothing to see.