Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
Here’s a video taken by someone who works on radio transmission towers. You have to have a head for heights for that job.
At one point, the commentator says: “there’s no quick way down”. Well, there is, but it would be a one-way trip, I fear.
(hat tip to Richard Wiseman)
This is an interesting piece of semiotics/eye-candy from Armani. The advert showing Cristiano Ronaldo supposedly looking for his T-shirt in a hotel room, with the maid trying not to look.
While it clearly tries to do a bit of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, bit of role reversal (the maid eyeing the man, instead of the other way around), what I took away from it was the absolute laying down of who has the power here; i.e. the man. He does not acknowledge even the presence of the servant. So, close, but no cigar. As it were…
(hat tip: Mark Simpson)
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s verdict on the behaviour of the French government over the expulsion of the Roma. Quite right, it is appalling what the French government has done.
Nosemonkey has a good summary here. I just wish I could embed the video of Reding here. Please go to Nosemonkey’s post and watch it. Her obvious anger and disgust at the French government’s handling of this issue is well merited.
Last month I wrote about the geotagging disaster that the current beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery is causing. At the moment, I daren’t have it running on my PC because it wantonly writes garbage GPS coordinates into my photos.
While I’m waiting to see what Microsoft will do in the next beta of WLPG, I thought that I’d take a look at its closest rival, Google’s Picasa, to see how that’s shaping up.
While I found on past experience that there’s lots to like about Picasa, I’d ruled it out up until now because it did not support XMP-based metadata. That meant as I use metadata following the IPTC Core standard, which itself uses XMP, then Picasa just didn’t cut it.
However, things change, and the current version of Picasa, version 3.8 released last month, is being trumpeted by Google as now supporting XMP.
So I downloaded and installed this new version of Picasa. And while it certainly seems to display XMP-based metadata (see below), it doesn’t seem to support writing out all of this metadata into image files. I also came across a major bug in how Picasa handles Geotags.
It won’t display the correct GPS coordinates of many of my files on its map. Here’s an example, the contents of a folder containing images shot in the local area here in The Netherlands (click on the image to see it full-size in a new window).
Here’s a close-up of the map. As you can see, Picasa claims that many of the images have GPS coordinates corresponding to places outside of The Netherlands, in fact many of the images are literally out of this world, according to Picasa.
These files have all had GPS coordinates added to them using IDimager. (Note: IDimager is no longer available. Its successor is Photo Supreme, which I am now using) All these files will display correctly in IDimager itself, and also in the map interfaces of Microsoft’s Pro Photo tools and Geosetter. Here are the files being displayed correctly in the map interface of Geosetter:
Clearly, this is a bug in the current version (3.8) of Picasa. Fortunately, Google have acknowledged that there is a problem, and it should get fixed at some point in the future.
As to the XMP metadata support, it looks as though the following IPTC Core elements are at least read by Picasa for JPEG files:
Description
Description Writer
Headline
Keywords
Title/ObjectName
Job ID
Instructions
City
Location
State
Country
Creator
Creator’s Job Title
Provider
Source
Copyright Notice
In this version of Picasa, there doesn’t seem to be a way of writing data into all of these fields, but only a subset, so Picasa isn’t yet suitable for maintaining IPTC Core metadata. Picasa also doesn’t read and display these metadata fields at all from RAW files (at least for my Canon CR2 format). It only appears to display the Exif metadata from these RAW files. So, once again Picasa is getting closer, but it’s not good enough for what I’m looking for.
Geoff,
Just found your review of Picasa 3.8. Thank you for looking at the issues of metadata in your review – you’d be surprised how few reviews take the time. One would think that Google would get the mapping straight, considering the efforts they have expended on Earth and Maps.
[…] version 3.8 would not display my geotags correctly, as you can see from the examples I show in this blog post. And once Microsoft had corrected a horrendous geotagging bug in WLPG, I was still left with the […]
Hi Geoff….I’ve got a major concern about Picasa Face Tags. I’m using Picasa 3.9 now, on Google Chrome. I’ve got a ton of old pictures with a mega-ton of Face Tags. I understand that if I upgrade to Google Plus (which seems to being pushed at me), the face tags in Picasa WILL NOT TRANSFER !
Is that correct, and is there a work around?….much thanks!
Ross, I’m sorry, I don’t know how Google Plus handles face tags, and whether the metadata from Picasa is preserved. I don’t use Google Plus.
I also don’t know for sure what mechanism Google uses to connect face tag metadata between Picasa and Google Plus. They may just use the local Picasa database entries, rather than the XMP face region metadata which Picasa can embed in the images (but not by default).
Perhaps it’s best to ask your question on the Picasa Support forum?
Sorry that I’m not being of much help here…
thanks Geoff, for you quick response. It’s also good to know “where an answer doesn’t lay”. I can narrow my focus. I got reference to you from Vlad Georgesque?. I’ve posted a question on Google’s Picasa forum. We’ll see. Thanks again….Ross
Polly Toynbee is on rattling good form in this piece in the Guardian: Sex and death lie at the poisoned heart of religion.
I particularly like the nod to Ben Goldacre’s piece and the masterful riposte to the utterly witless article from Anne Widdecombe:
As Ben Goldacre pointed out in this paper on Saturday, while this pope claims condoms “aggravate the problem” of HIV/Aids, two million die a year. Ann Widdecombe’s riposte that the Catholic church runs more Aids clinics than any single nation was like suggesting the Spanish Inquisition ran the best rehab clinics for torture victims.
As Toynbee says:
Atheists are good haters, they claim, but feeble compared with the religious sects. Atheists have dried-up souls, without spiritual or visionary transcendentalism. To which we say: the human imagination is all we need to hold in awe. Live in optimism without fear of judgment and death. There is enough purpose and meaning in life, love and leaving a good legacy. Oppose the danger of religious zealotry with the liberating belief that life on earth is precious because this here and now is all there is, and our destiny is in our own hands
Amen to that.
I thought that I’d invest in a copy of Geoffrey Robertson QC’s new book The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse. I see that Amazon UK have it listed for £4.49. Not bad, but I always check out Amazon Marketplace in the hope of a better deal.
I quite often buy books from Aphrohead Books, because usually their prices are pretty competitive with Amazon, and often come in cheaper. Not in this case though. Erm, £1,176.64 for the book? Some mistake, surely? Or has the Vatican nobbled them?
Adam Curtis has a very thought-provoking piece up on his blog about the rise of the new Illuminati – the global terrorist conspiracy. And while terrorism clearly exists; just like the evidence for the fictitious Illuminati, there is little evidence for global puppetmasters pulling the strings of terror.
Curtis carefully documents the rise of this near-religious belief in a global terrorist conspiracy by beginning back in Vietnam in the 1960s with Alexander Haig. He takes in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by Mehmet Ali Agca, and traces how this became the unwitting seed of the flower that we have today, carefully nurtured along the way by various terrorist experts and governments.
As he says:
The problem with mass politics today is that we increasingly have no idea what is myth and theatre, and what is really true.
Paul Burston, over at his blog, pens an (autobiographical?) short story about a mother and son. In just a page of short sentences and short paragraphs, a whole life is conjured up. That’s talent.
Johann Hari addresses an appeal to British Catholics in the run up to the Pope’s visit. I suspect that most will be blinded by hero worship and not see the feet of clay in the red Prada shoes.
Here we go again, more bilge to wade through. This time it’s Jonathan Jones, whom I understand to be an art critic, claiming that in the area of writing about Natural selection: “Give me Darwin over Dawkins any day.“
Well, he’s every right to claim that of course, but his reasons don’t stand up to much scrutiny:
“Darwin is the finest fruit of English empiricism. His modest presentation of evidence contrasts, I am sorry to say, with the rhetorical stridency of Richard Dawkins. Visit the famous atheist’s website and you will see two causes being pushed. Dawkins is campaigning with other secular stars against the pope’s visit to Britain. Meanwhile he is touring the paperback of his book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. The trouble with this book is that it lacks Darwin’s empirical style. Where the Victorian writer presented masses of evidence, and let his astonishing, earth-shattering theory emerge from common-sense observations of nature, Dawkins lacks the patience, at this point in his career, to let natural history speak for itself. He has become the mirror image of the theological dogmatists he despises.
He just can’t separate science from the debate he has got into with religious people.”
Jones seems to have read a different version of The Greatest Show on Earth from the one that I did. Mine has Dawkins present and review the evidence, both that which Darwin saw and that which has become available in the 150 years since Darwin first published. As Jerry Coyne says, it’s “chapter after chapter of solid biology, natural history, genetics, evo-devo, and the like”.
And if Dawkins can’t resist slipping in the occasional jab at the idiocy of creationists in the face of the mountains of evidence, then I, for one, cannot blame him. If it were me, I’d be screaming in their faces to get in the fecking sack, yer fecking eejits.
It’s all I can do to refrain from saying the same to a certain Mr. Jonathan Jones, erstwhile art critic of the Guardian and jury member for the 2009 Turner Prize. As Jerry Coyne says:
“Jones is clearly out of his element here, which is writing about pictures of dogs playing poker. In his haste to defend faith against the depredations of Dawkins, he makes a complete fool of himself.”
Oh, bugger it; Get in the fecking sack, Mr. Jones…
I know I shouldn’t get irritated by it. I know that it is pointless to feel exasperated by twaddle. But when Lord (yup, Lord) Sacks starts heaping up strawmen, I really do feel like saying enough is enough, fer gawd’s sake.
Let’s just examine what he is reported to have said:
“There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.”
Erm, hello? The Bible simply isn’t interested, because it states how it happened. The fact that it’s nonsense seems to have passed by its readers who think they know how to interpret its fantasies. Its mind was made up by the original writers.
And Religion is about interpretation, eh? Tell that to those who think that the Bible is God’s inerrant law.
And of course, there’s a warning:
Sacks also said the mutual hostility between religion and science was one of “the curses of our age” and warned it would be equally damaging to both.
Enquiry is not a curse. The fact that your folklore feels under threat is not equally damaging to both..
And Lord Sacks rounds off with:
“But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science.”
Science is not masquerading as a religion, except in your worldview, Lord Sacks. And that is simply because the results of scientific enquiry are undermining the strawmen set up by your interpretation of sacred texts. Texts that were written by human beings trying to do the best (or the worst) that they could in less enlightened ages.
And of course, Moses speaks for Lord Sacks.
We have two Labradors: Kai, who is now over seven years old, and Watson, who is now 13 months, and heavily into puberty.
We became the owners of Kai when he was three, and he was already neutered when we got him. He has a gentle nature, and wins the hearts of everyone that meets him. Watson, on the other hand is a typical teenager, pushing the boundaries at every opportunity. He also pushes Kai around, while Kai just wants a quiet life.
So we decided to level the playing field by neutering Watson.
This morning he went for the chop. That was done without problem. Now he is coming to terms with the fact that something has changed. He’s feeling a bit sorry for himself, but I’m sure that will pass. He’s also being subjected to the indignity of wearing a one-piece garment at the moment in an attempt to stop him licking his wounds.
That’s how I’m feeling at the moment, having read, and had a shudder of revulsion at the content of, this piece by Pankaj Mishra in the Guardian. As Ophelia says, it’s ugly stuff.
A good rebuttal of Mishra’s tripe is this comment:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was mutilated as a child because of the patriachal religion of her homeland.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali received death threats after publishing her first book, detailing the treatment of women in Islamic society
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s colleague Theo Van Gogh was murdered. A letter threatening Ayaan Hirsi Ali was pinned to his dead body with a knife. As a result, she had to go into hiding.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali still regularly receives death threats.
And yet, according to you, a few criticisms of a planning application represent a tide of hatred, while Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the one to be vilified. It is people like you, Pankaj, the apologists and appeasers, that allow islamists operating in the west to think they can murder and threaten with impunity.
Now are you going to come down below the line and answer our points, or do you think you’ve done enough damage with your witless blathering?
For a longer and more in-depth background on why Mishra is talking shite, then I would point you to this piece by Clive James, penned in September 2009.
Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne muses on the concept of Free Will. His musings were prompted by reading Dan Dennett’s book: Freedom Evolves.
His post is followed by a discussion by commenters batting the ideas back and forth. I’m no philosopher, and reading some of this stuff makes my brain hurt, but it’s enjoyable all the same to explore the ideas.
When it comes down to it, I think I’m pretty much in the camp that believes that free will is an illusion, albeit an exceedingly strong one. I think Ophelia pretty much sums it up for me:
This subject doesn’t fret me the way it does some people, and I suspect that’s because I’m lazy about it. I’m lazy about a lot of things. It doesn’t fret me because I always end up thinking “but it feels as if I choose and in a way that feeling amounts to the same thing as really choosing.” That’s probably lazy because of the “in a way” or the “amounts to” or both. It’s woolly. And yet –
And yet if we all do live that way, feeling all the time as if we choose various things, then for the purposes of living that way, it does amount to the same thing. Or at least it seems to. It’s like the self, and other such illusions. We can agree that they’re illusions, and yet in everyday life, we go on living and thinking as if they’re not, and we can’t really do anything else.
It’s like vision, too – we don’t really see what we see; what we see is a confabulation – we fill in all kinds of missing bits with our brains to make a seamless whole that our eyes don’t in fact see. I’m aware of that, but I certainly can’t refrain from doing it.
Perhaps I should go back and re-read Freedom Evolves again. Now, is that a decision taken of my own free will?
Future Perfect is a blog written by Jan Chipchase, who used to work for Nokia, and who now works for a design and innovation company. He specialises in in taking teams of concept/industrial designers, psychologists, usability experts, sociologists, and ethnographers into the field and, after a fair bit of work, getting them home safely.
He’s currently working in Afghanistan. His blog entries are fascinating, and worth reading. Start here, and then explore some of the other entries.
Colm Tóibín has a very good article in the London Review of Books looking at the issue of homosexuality and the Catholic Church. It’s long and it’s worth reading.
I didn’t know who Wallace Stevens was until I listened to A. S. Byatt. In this interview, her thoughts and ideas are simply scintillating. Well worth watching. What I want to know is, what is the significance of the roll of sellotape?
Keiichi Matsuda has created a short film to illustrate the idea of the real world augmented by fully 3D computer interfaces. Think of Minority Report, and you’ll get some idea.
http://player.vimeo.com/video/14294054
Augmented City 3D from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
The thing that struck me the most was the idea of wading through a mass of adverts clustered around your feet. I think it’s going to be much, much worse – we’re going to be swimming through them, and they’re all going to be saying, in tinny little voices, “Pick me! Pick me!”
Get out your old red and green 3D specs, and watch the video…
I’ve always had this inkling feeling that the Transhumanist singularity is nothing much more than a rather daft idea peddled by the likes of Ray Kurzweil.
It’s a topic that comes up for regular chewing over in the science blogosphere, particularly around the time when the proponents of transhumanism hold a shindig.
I came across something today that triggered a faint memory. Over at Pharyngula, there’s a post today that contains a comment by Ye Olde Blacksmith that nails the flaw for me.
To summarise the idea of the singularity, it is that at some point in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to copy the consciousness of a human person into another, perhaps non-biological, substrate, such that the consciousness lives on in the new vessel.
In a way, it’s what lies at the heart of the Star Trek transporter, but the idea was explored even earlier in Science Fiction in the 1964 book by Clifford D. Simak: Way Station. The central idea of the book is that what appears to be a remote rural farmstead in Earth is in fact a galactic way station that travellers are passing through. As Simak envisages it, travellers arrive at the way station by having their bodies and their consciousness replicated from the blueprints taken at the previous station. When they leave, the process begins with their complete blueprint, body, consciousness and all being transmitted to the next station. It is completed when the traveller on earth is killed and its body flushed into the underground tanks of acid that lie beneath the way station. That image has stayed with me.
The comment on the Pharyngula thread rather brought the memory of that book back to me:
Dr. Nick: Good evening, Mr. Anderson. Are you ready for the procedure?
MeatbagMe: Hi. Um, yeah, I guess. Are you sure this will work? I’m really going to be in the machine?
Dr. Nick: Yes, you will be in the machine and will no longer be biologically mortal.
MeatbagMe: Oh, OK, let’s get this party started.
*Dr. Nick admininstering sedative via I.V.*
Dr. Nick: Ok, start counting backwards from 100.
MeatbagMe: 99…98…97…9…..
Dr. Nick: Are you there? Can you hear me, Mr. Anderson?
DigiMe: Hey, yeah, I’m here! SWEET! I’m in a computer. The interfaces are awesome! I can’t even tell I’m not still in my body. So what happens now?
Dr. Nick: Well, now that we have established that the procedure was successful, we will dispose of the body.
DigiMe: Wait, what? So my original body is dead?
Dr. Nick: No, it isn’t dead, but you have no use for it anymore. Now that you are digital, that is, you have not need for a biological carrier.
*MeatbagMe comes to*
MeatbagMe: Hey, what happened? Did it work? I don’t feel any different.
Dr. Nick: Nurse, please begin the body disposal procudures.
*Nurse begins administering something via I.V.*
MeatbagMe: What? Hey, I’m still alive here! You can’t do this!
Nurse: The body is prepping now, Dr.
MeatbagMe: Hey! HEY! Stop this! I’m still here! I’m still here goddamm……………..
Nurse: I will arrange for the transport of the remains.
Dr. Nick: Thank you. Mr. Anderson, will you be requiring anything else?
DigiMe: Nope, I’m good.
Or, in devastating summary (comment #46):
“As you can see, this new duplicate of you is an exact replica in every way, down to every last memory, down to every last arm hair. Now please step into the disintegration chamber.”
This seems to me to be the fatal flaw. If I am a non-dualist, then I have to believe that “I” will cease to exist once I step into the disintegration chamber. The fact that a replica of me, carrying a perfect copy of my consciousness will carry on is of little comfort to the me that existed up until that point…
The acid tanks await…
I never fail to admire the barmaid’s ability to cut through nonsense to the heart of the matter.
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