Monthly Archives: January 2004

Of Macs and Mars

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There’s been some groping for superlatives in the Mac community of late.

Seasoned Apple evangelist Bob LeVitus reviews Apple’s new iLife app GarageBand and calls it “one of the best computing experiences I’ve had in the 17+ years I’ve been having computing experiences on my Mac.”

Inside Mac Games unashamedly lauds Bungie’s Halo as “the most advanced, the best produced, the most amazing first-person shooter to have ever graced my Mac’s screen.I would agree, though my tricked-out PowerBook is proving barely able to keep up at minimal settings.”

Meanwhile, Apple’s free beta of Xgrid, reviewed here, now allows any network of Macs to work together as a grid supercomputer to solve complex problems such as number factoring or gene sequencing. Installation is simple, and it comes with a few sample applications, such as a beautiful Mandelbrot set renderer.

Even if you have only one Mac in the house, this is worth giving a run, because it hints at how very differently we will perceive computers in the future. I would not be surprised, for example, if eventually you will be able to buy Gigahertz-hours from Apple server farms when it’s time to render your latest creation using the next iApp, iAnimate“Pixar for the rest of us.” Warning: Although I am speculating, Apple has a knack for never leaving my creative urges unsated for long: Would I love to make my own short film populated with predefined characters from Finding Nemo? Oh yes, and so would everyone with my mental age and below. Soon, 8-year olds will be demanding Terahertz-hours for Christmas.. Or perhaps future Final Cut Pros will let you speed up your rendering when a deadline looms, using the Macs of the advertising department, who have already left for the day. “Grid supercomputing for the rest of us” is perhaps too obvious a slogan, but that won’t stop Steve Jobs from using it when this goes mainstream.

But I reserve my own superlatives for Maestro, software that will forever change how we approach space exploration. You will have heard of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission; Maestro is the software that allows scientists to interact with either of the two rovers, Spirit (already in operation on the Martian surface) and Opportunity (almost there). It takes a rover’s raw data and displays it in a variety of ways, the most impressive of which is an accurate three-dimensional world of its surroundings rendered from stereoscopic cameras at human height. Scientists can then “walk” through this virtual world to decide what the rover should explore next, and then build a task list of simple commands that are sent back to the rover, which executes these autonomously (there is a 10 minute delay at present, because lightspeed is not infinite).

All this amounts to a revolution in remote imaging, command and control. But that’s just the beginning. The software is a free download for the general public, and so is the data the rovers beam back to EarthYes, it works especially well on OS X 10.3. Here is Apple touting it.. Anyone with a late-model computer and broadband now has pretty much the same tools at their disposition as the scientists running the mission. We too can now walk around Spirit’s surroundings, notice items of interest, name them, measure distances between them, then tell the rover to take a closer look. The one piece missing is the actual ability to beam intructions back to the roverThat would be the ultimate hack, though: Taking control of the rover and defacing Martian soil with tyre tracks in the shape of your tagline. M3M3#1!. But that’s a privilege NASA paid $850 million for.

You really need to try this. It’s not optional. If schoolkids in middle-income countries can master this, you better as well or else watch your job leave for Mexico even sooner than you thought. Yes, there is a 80-page manual, but the casual user needn’t read it at all. The application, and each subsequent data module, comes with its own built-in automated tour conductor. Your involvement can be as little as clicking “Next” whenever the fancy hits you and you will get 80% of the wow-factor.

In all likelihood, curiosity will eventually get the better of you and you will want to venture out for a spin on Mars, as I did. I went and found myself two interesting rocks and named them Blog@StefanGeens.com and MemeFirst, respectively:

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When they are named, Maestro gives them coordinates, so it now knows where they are in relation to the rover, and to each other. I then built a task list, instructing Spirit to first drive up to MemeFirst, inspect it, and then to drive up to my blog. Once there, I took this snapshot:

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And this just with the first data set. Data will be rolling in for at least 3 more months, as Spirit wends its way to a nearby crater and then to the top of some hills. And Opportunity hasn’t even started yet.

The high level of user experience that Maestro provides should influence the debate over whether we should send men to Mars. We get 2 such rovers for $850 million. We’d be able to seed mars with over 600 rovers now for the price of a few fragile men on Mars 20 years from now. Or a smaller number of far larger, speedier and more robust rovers — mobile labs atop vehicles resembling remote-controlled moon buggies, perhaps. Or teams of such vehicles triangulating a region in tandem.

I have always been for manned planetary exploration. It is our destiny, and I wish we could do it again in my lifetime. With our present technology, however, it may just cost far too much for the scientific knowledge we’d gain in return. Ironically, robotics was not far enough advanced when men were put on the moon in 1969. Men were needed to do the kind of science they did then. Today, you cannot make that argument — humans are far too valuable and fragile, and are being replaced on Earthly battlefields with remote systems for precisely this reason. In other words, do spend the money on Mars, but leave that planet to the robots for now. Humans will get there in due time.

Whining and dying in NYC

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There is, of course, little sympathy from these quarters for complaints from New York about how damn cold it is. Why exactly kids can’t go to school when it’s -17°C or two feet of snow falls is a mystery to me. But the weather in New York City was cause for another interesting little debate with Anna about societal differences between the US and SwedenWhat else did you expect? You will also find gross overgeneralizations, but I think there is an interesting point to be made here nonetheless..

The thesis: That there is an inverse correlation between the level of social services provided by a society and the average minimum winter temperature.

The argument: Let us assume that both Sweden and New York, as societies, have the same tolerance for homeless death rates. It’s probably a very low number, near zero. Any spree of deaths would result in an immediate uproar.

Let us also assume that there is an exponential rise in homeless deaths as the temperature drops. Far more homeless are at risk at -20°C than -10°C, say.

New York rarely reaches -20°C, so being homeless in NYC rarely means you are at risk of dying from the cold. Not so in Sweden. If you were truly homeless in Sweden, good luck surviving the winter.

There are two possible solutions: The first is an ad hoc one, as implemented by Mayor Bloomberg: Go hunting for the homeless and bring them in from the cold, so they do not have to withstand these extremes in temperature. This is probably the cheapest and most efficient way to prevent homeless deaths if it is rarely this coldAnna recoils at my use off the word “efficient” in the context of managing human suffering..

Not so if you know it always gets this cold. In that case, it is more efficient to institute a system that alleviates homelessness in the first place instead of permanently treating the symptoms of homelessness on an ad hoc basis. In other words, both American homelessness and the Nordic welfare system are perfect examples of climatic adaptation. It explains why Canada has a more generous welfare system than the US. And it explains why the communist revolution happened in Russia. How’s that for a theory?

I’ve seen this kind of macro-economic measuring of opportunity costs elsewhere: In Washington DC, the one snowstorm that hits every three years completely paralyzes the city for a week, because there are no snowplows to speak of. The cost: a week’s worth of man hours. In Sweden, that cost is paid upfront. Highway driving in a snowstorm leads to an awesome sight: Huge snowplows, driving in tight formation at high speed (think chopper scene in Apocalypse Now, with the Ride of the Valkyries at full volume) scream through the falling snow, followed by a peloton of cars. Last year, I actually managed to drive from Norway (where it was damn cold) back to Sweden at near the speed limit in just this kind of weather.

Homework question: Why is the inverse not true? Why does the likelihood of extremely hot summers causing elderly deaths through heat exposure not seem to affect the level of social services? For the same reason that freak heat waves do not spur (French) authorities to create ad hoc cooling solutions for the elderly?

For a secular Israel (dream on)

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Sometimes posts I read bug me longer than expected. This tells me I should have blogged them to begin with. Here is a recent example: David Volokh Bernstein’s defense of ethnic/religion-based states, specifically Israel. Where to begin? With Bernstein’s semantic bait-and-switch:

Supporting Ethnic-Religion Based States: I occasionally get email from readers suggesting that Israel is unworthy of support, or even existence, because it is an ethnic/religion-based state.

Naturally, the rest of the post concerns itself with Israel’s right to exist, instead of what would be justifiable levels of support. Not interesting, especially if the argument, in a nutshell, goes like this: A) Poland is a ethnic/religion-based state. B) Israel is a ethnic/religion-based state. C) Poland has a right to exist. Therefore D) Israel has a right to exist. Basically, because A = B, if C then also D. And C is certainly the case. Hence D. Brilliant, that.

This rather truncheons nuanced argument from the likes of me, who support the right of Israel (and Poland) to exist, but think it indefensible for one religion and/or ethnic group to be elevated by law over others. If it’s deplorable when it happens in Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, we should deplore it in our midst too, whether that be the Vatican, Italy, Israel, Ireland, France, Bavaria, Apartheid South Africa or segregation Southern USA.

My reason: In an ideal world, a polity exists to create a level playing field for its constituent population. In the economic sphere, innovation and competition is assured by guarding against market failures such as monopolies; similarly, a free market of religious or cultural ideas cannot thrive if one religion or culture is granted monopolistic powers by law. Such monopolies might be stable, but at the expense of ethical and cultural innovation. Witness the stagnation of both the Catholic Church (in those areas where it is entrenched) and of societies that have implemented Islamic law.

Bernstein would probably sit impatiently through that last paragraph and now testily point out that all this is good an well, but that in Israel’s case, if you support taking the word “Jewish” out of “Jewish state”, you are de facto against Israel’s existence. That is not true: There would still be a majority of ethnic Jews living together with a minority of ethnic Arabs in a secular democracy, at least for its citizensPointedly not a democracy for Palestinians, but let’s just assume we can fast-forward to an independent but defanged Palestine, which is the inevitable solution and both sides know it.. One homeland with room enough for both Jews and Arabs is, believe it or not, quite compatible with the original mandate granted by the British to the Zionist movement in the Balfour Declaration of 1917:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other countryWriting it was a mess of negotiations; clarifying it wasn’t any easier..

Ethnic Jews lose no freedoms in transferring to a secular arrangement, while Israeli Arabs gain a stake in the state as legal equals. Now that the state guarantees a free market of ideas, cultural and ethical innovation is worth exploring again. You only lose out if you subscribe to an orthodoxy. Which suits me fine.

In fatta

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It’s linguistic deja vu all over again: After embarrassing episodes with mores and awry it now turns out I’ve been making arguments in Swedish all over the place using the Swedish term “in fatta” whenever I want to say “in fact”. But in fact it turns out “in fatta” is pure fiction on my part. I must have used it once, nobody complained, and it soon became a standard argumentative technique.
 
Which, again, leads to the question, what were people thinking I was saying? Problem is, there does not seem to be a exact conceptual translation into Swedish for this rethorical shortcut. OK, nu vet jag äntligen att “in fatta” inte betyder “in fact”. In fatta, det betyder ingenting på svenska, även om jag använde det varje dag tills Fredagskväll, då en vän frågade vad egentligen jag betydde.

Men jag tycker om att använda “in fact” på engelska, därför att jag vanligen argumenterar med en struktur som behöver ge specifika exemplar av en motsats. Nu har jag ingen översättning av detta mentala begrepp på svenska. “Faktum är?” “Egentligen?” Det verkar inte vara samma sak. Kan ni inte börja använda “in fatta”, för min skull?

Ingrid Thulin

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WildStrawberries.jpgA free rag on the subway to work this morning carried the news in a few grafs: Ingrid Thulin, who so memorably played Marianne, the melancholy daughter-in-law to Victor Sjöström’s Professor Isak Borg in Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries), had died. Despite the distractions of an overful rush-hour carriage, this piece of news triggered an introspective mood. That movie was a revelation to me. I try to watch it at least once a year (and recently more often, now that I understand what they are actually saying to each other).

Ingrid Thulin is perhaps less well known than the rest of the Swedish “rätt pack”, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Liv Ullmann (and also Ingrid Bergman and Pernilla August — who am I forgetting?), but she was certainly their equal in every way. She may well have been Sweden’s best-ever actress.

Her death underscores the inevitable passing of a great era in Swedish film. Ingmar Bergman hasn’t left us yet; the wiley ol’ bastard is likely to outlive us all. But one day the greatest living director will die, so I sometimes entertain myself by asking who would replace him by default? Woody Allen for his early stuff? My only problem is that I forget who is alive and who dead, so I fear I am missing somebody obvious.

Then there is the separate question of who is the greatest working director today: I don’t feel either Bergman or Allen have had the lock on this category for a while. For this latter category, I nominate Ridley Scott, though with an audience (of one) award to Lukas Moodysson.

Backdoor into Europe

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It happened very quietly, but as of Jan 1, 2004, Turkey is a full participant in the Socrates/Erasmus Europe-wide educational cooperation and exchange programmes. Turkish students can now go study anywhere in Europe for up to a year, much as European students have been doing for years. European students, of course, can now go hang out in Istanbul. Will it become the new Prague?

This is the kind of subtle tectonic shift that will eventually make Turkey’s entry into the EU inevitable, and I applaud heartily.

Mijailo Mijailovic confesses

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Mijailo Mijailovic confesses he murdered Anna Lindh. The specter of the botched Palme police investigation lifts; and with lots of false courage Aftonbladet finally names Mijailo Mijailovic, hitherto “the 25-year old.” It must have been his birthday sometime in December. He used to be “the 24-year old.”

Now, on to the motive. Was there a political component? Apparently not, according to Aftonbladet. Instead, it seems Sweden’s social services proved inadequate to the task of noticing and acting upon various clear signs Mijailovic was unstable and a threat to society. Whether these actions should have been more punitive or more caring, or both, will be an interesting debate.

Tvungen eller förbjuden

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In the wake of that digraceful ruling by the French, the debate concerning the acceptability of the muslim headscarf in Swedish schools heats up. Two opinion pieces in Sweden’s largest dailies are in favor of banning “the veil,” and I’m just doing my bit to make sure they do not go unchallenged.
 
I was pointed to statsvetare (“political science expert”) Lisbeth Lindeborg’s piece in Dagens Nyheter by new Swedish blogger Gudmundson. He also links to a Lisbeth Lindeborg pictorial in the Jan 1974 issue of Mayfair. Is it relevant to know that somebody who argues the Muslim headscarf demeans womens was once splayed across a British lad mag as “Sweden’s rising sex star”? Certainly.Nu börjar det i Sverige: Debatt om huruvida man ska förbjuda muslimska sjaletter i svenska skolor. DN har en debatt här, och Aftonbladet har en debattartikel här. Båda är emot slöjor i skolor, men argumenten är lika felaktiga som användandes i Frankrike.

Jag hoppas at vi kan vara överens att religionsfrihet är viktigt, och om man vill begränsa den, borde vi ha en ännu viktigare orsak. Men Lisbeth Lindeborg i DN påstår att förbjuda sjaletter utgör inte alls en begränsning, eftersom sjaletten/slöjan inte är en islamisk symbol. Kanske det enligt henne, och kanske det enligt många människor, men det betyder inte att det inte är symbol enligt dem som vill bär sjalett. Alltså tycker jag att det är Lindeborgs tolerans som är falsk, eftersom hon vill påtvinga andra sina religiösa åsikter.

Lindeborg erkänner att påtvinga religiösa åsikter är orätt, därför att hon skriver hur orätt slöjtvång är i Iran och Saudiarabien. Fundamentalisterna påstår att slöjtvång skyddar kvinnans värdighet. Lindeborg påstår att sjalettförbjud skyddar kvinnans värdighet. Jag påstår bara att båda slöjtvång och sjalettförbjud förnedrar kvinnor.

Och Lindeborg är inkorrekt när hon antyder att muslimska kvinnor bär slöja bara var man har slöjtvång:

Däremot är det en missuppfattning att tro att slöjtvång existerar i alla muslimska stater. Faktum är att de flesta muslimska kvinnor inte bär slöja, varken i Väst- och Nordafrika eller i Sydostasien.

Faktum är att flesta muslimska kvinnor som bär slöjan gör det utan slöjtvång. När jag reste några månaden i Pakistan bar många kvinnor sjaletter, utom dem kristna och dem Ismaili muslimer på Hunza dalen. I Indonesien bär fler och fler kvinnor slöjor, nu att dem få.

Intressant också är att Lindeborg inte försöker att skilja på de olika muslimska traditionerna rörande slöjor. Inte så många kvinnor bär den kompletta burka/purdah, som bekläder ansikten. Flera bär sjaletten som bekläder helt hår. Men flesta bär sjaletten som symbol, utan att det vore dölja hår. Linderborg försöker att förvirra begreppen. Jag har bara ett problem med kompletta burkar i svenska skolor, eftersom så är det omöjlig att kontrollera kvinnans identitet och att delta i skolklasser. Det är naturligtvist en begränsning av religionsfrihet, men jag tycker att det är viktigare att en kvinna få delta i svenska samhällan. Men det är också klart att bara bära sjaletten hindrar inte att delta. Inte alls.

Ayse Sungur i Aftonbladet är en bättre debattör. In fatta, jag tycker att hon argumenterar inte så mycket för sjalettförbjud men emot kvarvarande kristna traditioner i skolor. Men jag skulle fortfarande skilja mellan skolans/statens plikt att vara neutral, och människors rätt till religionsfrihet.

Vad vi behöver i Sverige och Europa inte är lagar som begränsar religionsfrihet av alla muslimska kvinnor, bara för att kunna skydda de några kvinnor som är tvungen att bär slöjan av släktingar. Vi behöver lagar som förbjuda att man få tvinga kvinnor att bär slöjan. Men vi redan har sån lagar. Vi måste använda dem bättre.

New Year's in Stockholm

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On New Year’s eve, while I am packing for an early move on Jan 1, my friend E— calls. Her Polish cleaner is all alone in Stockholm and wants to go see the traditional fireworks display at Skansen, but has nobody to go with. Would I go with her? “I’d rather not.”

My friend calls back 10 minutes later. Her voice is strained. “She really, really wants someone to go with her. She’s here with me now. Can she call you when she’s done working?” This brings out a measure of noblesse oblige in me. If I can stop this person from thinking suicidal thoughts on New Year’s eve just by taking her to Skansen, of course I will. Besides, I’ve never seen it myself. “She’s young and pretty and she speaks a little English,” assures E—.

Beata, we’ll name her, calls me. We agree to meet at Medborgarplatsen. It’s too early to go to Skansen, so I suggest we get a drink at Kvarnen. She appears shy, or maybe just quizzical? She’s not sure she’ll get into the bar. “Why not?” She’s only 19. But it’s too early for those rules, so we sit at the bar and I have some wine, while she has an orange juice, and the conversation begins, in halting English.

She is from Krakow. She has 4 brothers and a sister. She shares an apartment with 3 other Polish girls, all cleaners. They have the same boss, a Polish immigrant who hired them in Poland and is somewhat of a father-figure to them, having promised their parents to take good care of them. She works 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, in offices and in the homes of Swedes. She worked on Christmas and will work on New Year’s day. She goes to church on Sundays — there are 2 Polish churches in Stockholm. She doesn’t have a computer, internet access or even an email address, and neither do any of her friends — but they do SMS each other. She has no plans to go to university but she wants to have three children. And she likes to cook. Polish food.

She doesn’t like Swedes — they ignore her when she works for themBe nice to your cleaners, Swedes!. She does like Americans, however. The ones she works for, like my friend E—, talk to her like she is a normal person.

The next day, I will discuss this with E—’s husband, a Swede. He thinks the reason is twofold. First, Swedes are naturally more restrained. Second, domestic help is a relatively new phenomenon in Sweden, after having disappeared for half a century. Swedes will tend to see this kind of work as demeaning, goes his theory, and hence they will feel ashamed on behalf of the help. Americans, on the other hand, see an enterprising young Pole taking deft advantage of economic opportunities abroad and who is willing to work hard to make her dreams come true. And Beata does have a dream: With her savings, she wants to go to Italy next year, for the first time. She’s already taking Italian lessons at a language school here in Stockholm, in return for her cleaning services.

We walk all the way to Skansen. As we approach the gate, I ask her, offhand, what made her want to see this. After all, even Swedes think twice about spending hours outside in the bitter cold. “But you wanted to, E— said.” “No, you did, she said.” Two pennies drop. We’ve been trying to save each other’s soulsThe next day, E— comes clean, and all is forgiven. Nevertheless, I make a mental note to set her up with Henry Kissinger sometime.. The nerve! But it’s hard to be angry; Beata and I are having fun, and it is a typical E— thing to do. At midnight, under the fireworks, we share a bottle of champagne — all courtesy of a fortunate ruse. Later, she will be delivered home, chastely.