Dr Administrator

Author's posts

Mar 19 2023

Book review: The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya

von_neumannThe Man from The Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya has been sitting on my bedside table in the "to be read" pile for a little while. I was aware of Von Neumann largely through his work on computers, and game theory.

The book is organised thematically, firstly on Von Neumann’s early years then on the various fields in which he made contributions.

Neumann János Lajos was born in Budapest in 1903, the Hungary style was to put the family name first – his father was ennobled in 1903 – hence the "von" and he Anglicised his forename to John when he moved to America in 1930. Hungary, and Budapest, in Von Neumann’s time was a hot bed of intellectuals many of whom fled Europe to America with the rise of the Nazis. For someone with a background in physics it is a bit of a Who’s Who – Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Theodore von Kármán, Edward Teller, Dennis Gabor – were all his contemporaries and he seemed to know them personally.

Von Neumann’s first contributions to the academic world were in set theory, he published a paper on defining cardinal and ordinal numbers in 1921 which still stands today. This was at a time when maths was undergoing a foundational crisis, which Einstein described as "Froschmäusekreig" – a war of frogs and mice – a term I aim to use in future!

The set theory paper was written whilst he was still at school, he then moved on to study simultaneously a degree in Chemistry at Berlin, chemical engineering in Zurich at ETH and a doctorate in maths at Budapest – passing all with flying colours. He then moved on to Göttingen in about 1925 where Heisenberg was working. Von Neumann’s contribution was Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics published in 1932 – not translated into English for 20 years. His key contribution was demonstrating that Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics and Schrödinger’s wave equation theories of quantum mechanics were equivalent. To a degree I feel his contribution held back the field, backing as it did the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (i.e. "shut up and calculate") – it wasn’t until the late 1950’s that other started probing the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics in more depth.

It was during this period he was enticed to Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Studies. As German science declined under the Nazis due to their purges of "undesirables" from the civil service and universities, American science which had been in the doldrums rose – one at the cost of the other.

Von Neumann was clearly politically astute and had seen war coming in the early thirties, in the late thirties he was pro-actively trying to join the US army – fortunately redirected into the Manhattan Project (a project stuffed with scientists later to become Nobel Prize winners). His key contributions were in the simulations done for the implosion bomb (at a time when the idea of computer simulations was radical and new and not yet expressed). I hadn’t realised before was that airburst bomb are used because they are more destructive than the same explosives detonated at ground level, this is why the Trinity test was executed on a tower. Von Neumann was also on the committee that chose the targets for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the war.

Von Neumann’s work on the Bomb, and his mathematical interests led him naturally into computing. Prior to the war, as part of the fundamentals of mathematics, Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing and Alonzo Church had done work essential to the foundation of computing. Turing’s work in particular demonstrated that theoretically a machine could be built which could carry out any computation but Gödel had shown that not all problems were computable. Von Neumann met with Alan Turing in 1942, it is not clear what they talked about I imagine both the Bomb and Turing’s codebreaking work at the Bletchley Park were topics of conversation.

Von Neumann had worked with computing devices on implosion calculations, an activity in which his second wife Klára Dán von Neumann was heavily involved. After the war a number of groups were working on computers, and he was convinced that the computer would be more revolutionary than the atomic bomb. His key contribution was a draft report on the EDVAC computer being built at the Moore School of Engineering in the University of Pennsylvania. The significance of this report was that it described clearly the architecture of a modern computer with input and output units, a central processor, memory and so forth – previously computers had largely been designed for very specific tasks and appear to have been logically complex. Von Neumann’s report was widely circulated much to the chagrin of his collaborators who had hoped for lucrative patents on the design of computers.

Stepping back in time a bit, Von Neumann had started working on what would come to be known as "game theory" in the 1920s, publishing his first paper in this area in 1926, followed by another in 1937 and finally a book written with Oskat Morgenstern, Theory of Games in 1943. After the Second World War mathematicians started to infiltrate economics departments and apply game theory ideas to economic problems. This has resulted in some very lucrative public auctions (designed using ideas stemming from game theory), and a fair number of Nobel Prizes in economics.

After the Second World War the US government set up the RAND Corporation which was a think tank, possibly the original think tank. They undertook a wide range of research, trying to maintain the spirit that drove the development of the atomic bomb, radar, codebreaking during the Second World War but also operations research. Von Neumann acted as a consultant and was seen very much as the father of the organisation without necessarily holding an exalted formal position. It was at this time, when they had the only nuclear weapons that the US contemplated a first strike against the Soviets. Von Neumann started quite hawkish but become more dovish over time.

The final chapter of the book is on cellular automata, stimulated by Alan Turing’s universal machine, and also how life works – in the post-war period the structure and mechanism by which DNA works was being elucidated and a number of physicists were interested in both the structure of DNA and how it transmits information. Cellular automata are perhaps best know by John Conway’s Life game. His work was prompted by Von Neumann, although Von Neumann’s book on cellular automata was not published until 10 years after his death in 1957 from bone cancer.

I must admit the book made me think of the nature of a biography, this one is quite heavily focused on scientific themes – Von Neumann is usually introduced at the beginning of the chapter with an outline of his contributions but then a wider cast of characters are brought in. The alternative is more focussed on the minutiae of the central characters life.

From a personal point of view we find Von Neumann is a bit of party animal, married twice with one daughter. His wives found him rather absorbed in his work. His occasionally harsh exterior harboured a more caring private side.

The Man from the Future is an enjoyable read if you have some interest in computing and physics, although deep knowledge of those areas is not required.

Feb 28 2023

Book review: On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock

on_savage_shores.Another book from those I follow on Twitter, On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock which is about the Indigenous people who came to Europe in the early years of the invasion of the Americas.

The book is divided thematically into six chapters titled Slavery, Go-betweens (covering translators), Kith and Kin (the transport of families, and the adoption of Indigenous people – mainly boys – by Spanish men), the Stuff of Life (about products such as potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco and so forth), Diplomacy, and Spectacle and Curiosity (about Indigenous people as entertainment).

The focus is on Meso- and South America and the 16th century, when most of the interactions were with Spain and Portugal. There is some mention of colonisation of North America which was more related to Britain, and Brazil which was an interest to the French.

I think the thing that struck me most was the number of Indigenous people in Europe, particularly in Spain, from the very start of the 16th century. I had been aware from reading the history of various scientific expeditions that one or two Indigenous people were often brought back to show off in court. But On Savage Shores highlights that in fact thousands of people were brought, often crossing the Atlantic several times over a period of years. Many were brought explicitly as slaves but others came as diplomats, translators, companions although it is unclear in many cases how voluntary their travel was.

The second aspect which struck me was how active, and engaged in the Spanish legal systems and the Royal courts the Indigenous visitors often were, this was in part because Indigenous people were familiar with legal processes in their own countries. Furthermore courts both legal and Royal are an excellent source of primary documents, it is one of very few ways the Indigenous people were documented. Documents generated by Indigenous people are rather more sparse – there are a handful of pre-invasion codices, some spoken poetry captured in writing at a later date and legal-like documents created to support land claims and the like in Spanish courts. Many of the European records are of those seeking emancipation, quite often successfully. 

Columbus very clearly went to the New World with a view to capturing slaves – he had visited the Portuguese slaving fortress, Castle of Sao Jorge da Mina in Ghana prior to his visit and was evaluating the Indigenous people and their suitability for slavery from his first visits to the Americas. To the end of the 16th century something between 1 and 2 million Indigenous people were taken as slaves with most remaining in the Americas but some being brought back to Spain. In the same period about 300,000 Africans were enslaved and taken to the Americas. In theory Spain banned slavery in the mid-16th century, however it wrote itself a number of exceptions which meant the practice was to effectively continue in large volumes for many years.

As well as slaves the Europeans took people they saw as suitable as translators, they also took the children of important Indigenous leaders and some that acted as diplomats – taking their cases to the Spanish Court. For these people the level of coercion is difficult to ascertain. There were certainly a number who came to Europe voluntarily but others had little choice.

A recurring theme is the adoption of sons into the families of, for example Walter Raleigh, Christopher Columbus, and Hernando Cortés. This practice seems to have some basis in Indigenous practices and the adopted sons often gained relatively high social positions back in Europe. Similarly there is a Brazilian boy, Essomericq taken at age 15 by the French in 1504 who became a pillar of the community in France before dying at the age of 90 – although his story is somewhat in question having been recorded sometime after he died by a descendant with a point to prove.

There was a huge population collapse across the Americas due to European diseases in the fifty years after Columbus landed, the diseases travelled faster than the European invaders. The movements of Indigenous people need to be seen in this context, first of all the trans-Atlantic passage was a long grim voyage for all – taking in excess of 6 weeks in the 16th century. Added to this Indigenous people were vulnerable to European diseases, and frequently died in transit or within a few weeks of arriving in Europe. All Europe got in exchange was syphilis. Some of the Indigenous people travelling to Europe were looking for advantage from Spanish support back in their home countries which were in turmoil.

On Savage Shores was revelatory for me, it changed the way I thought about Indigenous people and, to a smaller degree, the Spanish invaders. The switch in viewpoint makes Indigenous people, just that – people – rather than exhibits. On Savage Shores is also an enjoyable read, the focus on one period and one region probably keeps it to a manageable length down a bit. It feels like there is scope for a second book focussed on North America.

Nov 12 2021

Book review: Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

empireA return to reading about race with Empireland by Sathnam, subtitled How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain. I think the best way of thinking about this book is as a perspective on the British Empire and its impact on present day Britain by a British Sikh. Although the coverage is global there is a focus on India, which reflects Sanghera’s background. I’m used to reading history by white British or American authors, so this is a refreshing change.

The signs of Empire are all around us, not least in the multicultural, multi-ethnic society we find in Britain which impacts our food, our religious observances and our art. A range of quintessentially British companies had their origins in the trade with India such as Shell who originally sold shells from India! Or Liberty original founded for the India trade. There are also a range of processed foods which were developed for the empire, to remind the colonists of home or taken up following colonial origins (rum, pale ale, madeira, gin and tonic). There is some argument that our welfare state had its origins in Empire, in providing "men fit to fight" which was a concern after the Boer War. We also borrowed a significant number of words into English from the empire: bungalow, shampoo, zombie, toboggan… 

The Empire, and Imperial history is not clear cut, there are two very broad phases – the American and contemporary phase and the 19th century India and Africa phase. The Empire was not the result of a strategic plan, or governed in a unified manner, in contrast to the Roman Empire. As John Robert Seeley said: "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind". It seems also that the Empire was not front of mind for the British public for almost its entire span, in the days before a global media with relatively few British people involved with the Empire in Britain or even in the Empire this is perhaps unsurprising.

A recurring theme is how British actions in the empire were criticised at the time, on issues like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the looting of Tibet. Key figures in the Empire, like Robert Clive and Cecil Rhodes were similarly criticised. The rehabilitation of Edward Colston is a case in point – he was not greatly celebrated during his life and the subscription to raise his statue some 200 years after his death was not filled. It is only with the recent en-harbouring of his statue that he has gained support. History that seeks an unalloyed positive view of the Empire just isn’t history. 

Looting gets a whole chapter of its own, it focuses on the case of Tibet which was invaded by the British in 1903/4 – interestingly the invasion was commonly referred to as the "British Expedition to Tibet" or the "Younghusband expedition to Tibet" – note the rather passive language. It is clear that looting was seen as part of military operations and was formalised. There is a degree of greyness in the process since troops were on occasion censured for looting, and there were budgets for the purchase of artefacts. However, there were clear processes for the handling of artefacts looted during invasions and the sums set aside for purchasing artefacts were completely incompatible with the amount of loot returned to Britain. In Africa human body parts were taken by British soldiers as trophies, something which caused disgust in Britain at the time.

The sad thing is that most of the looted artefacts in British museums are not actually on display, and in the more distant past they were scarcely valued at all. Sanghera points out that the British establishment finds it impossible to return looted artefacts from British museums to their rightful homes but has quite the opposite attitude to people with established lives and families, as long as their skin is dark.

Immigration was often at invitation, citizens of the British Empire were just that but whilst white members of the Commonwealth have always had a welcome in Britain, those of colour have not. Conversely Britain has a large emigrant – outbound – population. It is part of the deal. Sanghera writes a bit about Britons abroad, the Brit transplanting their lifestyle to Spain is seen as a continuation of the colonial times.

Sanghera talks about racism and white supremacy in the British Empire. This is pretty explicit, the leading figures in the Empire were very clear that they saw the white British as superior and indigenous populations as naturally inferior, in need of the firm hand of white rule. White rule, sometimes meant massacre or even genocide, as was the case for the indigenous Tasmanian population.

Sanghera ends on a somewhat positive note, although Britain is not at the forefront, countries like Germany, France and the US have started talking about the return of looted artefacts, reparations for slavery, and some degree of contrition for their actions during their colonial period. The British government is trailing in this, although the public Black Lives Matters protests, and private initiatives to return looted artefacts, and discuss more frankly our troublesome past are taking place.

I think this was a useful step on my journey in understanding my country, and all the people that live here.

Oct 17 2021

Book review: Much ado about mothing by James Lowen

mothingExcited by my recent purchase of a trail camera to observe the wildlife in our backgarden (mainly foxes), I was draw to moths (and mothing), like a moth to a flame or a pheromone lure (it’s the modern way). Much Ado about Mothing by James Lowen speaks of a similar attraction, structured into a book.

Much ado about mothing is based around the idea of finding 120 target months over the space of a year. It is divided into chapters that track through the seasons and through different ecosystems such as heaths, beaches, salt marshes, forests and so forth. I was pleased to see my home county of Dorset, particularly Portland and the heaths around Purbeck where I grew up, featuring heavily. Over the period of a year Lowen ran a light trap in his back garden in Norfolk on 151 nights, capturing 15,000 individuals from 466 species as well as travelling far and wide in Britain to find moths.

Moths are the super-group in which butterflies are a subset. They are more numerous in terms of species than butterflies by a large margin – perhaps 40 times as many moth species as butterflies. Many of the females are flightless (making them more difficult to find). 90% of moths are nocturnal.

Unlike butterflies, moths are quite docile when trapped and can be handled. The Victorians used sugar and wine mixtures on ropes ("roping") to trap their moths, as the 20th century progressed it became possible to use portable lights and most recently pheromone lures to trap moths. Pheromone lures are used in crop protection and are specific to a species, they mimic the pheromones that females emit to attract males.

As well as the moths with which we might be familiar there are innumerable micromoths typically with only a Latin name, there’s a discussion amongst moth-ers on how (and if) to give them "common" names.

It seems many moth-ers got there from birdwatching, and many RSPB centres double up as centres for mothing. Perhaps it is the easy abundance of moth species which attracts them and the rather better accessibility than birds – you can keep moths in your fridge to share with fellow moth-ers! Around the country there are a number of conservation projects focused on moths these seem to be coordinated by the charity, Butterfly Conservation.

The picture for moths as a group is mixed, many species are in decline as a result of habitat loss. In addition to draining of marshlands, agriculture and rising temperatures, many have very specific host plants, so the loss of the host plant leads the loss of the moth. I wonder why this specificity is favourable from an evolutionary point of view. There are new arrivals though, and territories expanding as temperatures rise.

I found myself Googling pictures of the moths mentioned, there are colour photos of some of the moths but they are all bundled together in the centre of the book. Lowen works hard to describe moths in many varied and interesting ways. You might want to follow the @BritishMoths twitter account for a regular fix of moth content. You can get an overview of British moth species on the Butterfly Conservation A-Z page, species mentioned in Much ado include Clifden Nonpareil, Elephant Hawk-moth, Kentish Glory, New Forest Burnet, Oak Eggar, Buff-tip and Merveille du Jour. I recommend this page as a perfect supplement to the book!

Much ado about mothing is more in the style of a travelogue than a nature book but I suspect this means it sneaks in many facts about moths which you wouldn’t find by reading a moth identification guide. I have learnt that Batesian mimics are those species that mimic other, toxic, species whilst Mullerian mimics are genuinely toxic. This I learnt in the discussion of Clearwing moths, a group of moths that mimic wasps.

The other prominent aspect of the travelogue style is the people he meets, mothing seems quite a sociable sport. Sometimes this is because the fellow moth-er is a warden at a nature reserve but other times it is a group of friends, or moth  enthusiasts who share sightings and information – as well as camping out in all manner of locations to look after moth lights.

I think Much ado has done its job since I’m now keen to start my own mothing. I bought a telescope as summer approached – it doesn’t get dark until really late and we had a small child – so observing the night sky was tricky. I’ll not make that mistake again! Moths are most common during the summer months, there is little point in buying a moth trap for Christmas so I will get mine in late Spring.

Oct 03 2021

Book review: Audio Production Basics with Ableton Live by Eric Kuehnl

abletonI started playing guitar a few years ago, and acquired an electronic drum kit a year or so later, as well as a keyboard and a ukulele. My wife has a bass guitar, and my son recently brought home a clarinet from school (in what can only be described as an act of war on the part of his teacher!).

I’ve been playing with computers for 40 years so it seemed natural to put the two things together, also I follow Paul David’s Guitar channel and when he came to talk about looping he skipped the whole looper pedal method and went straight to demonstrating looping in Ableton Live, a "digital audio workstation" (DAW). It turns out Ableton, and comparable products, are fearsomely complicated so being a bookish sort of person I bought Audio Production Basics with Ableton Live by Eric Kuehnl to work out how to use it.

The book starts with some introductory material on computers and storing files, which is a bit basic. Before talking a little bit about different DAWs, including selecting gear for your music studio. It turns out there are audio interfaces, MIDI instruments, MIDI control surfaces as well as microphones.

Next up are some words on the overall scheme for audio recording, here and elsewhere I was grateful for a background in physics since the physics of sound is a bit of a feature for audio production. It clearly isn’t a problem if you don’t have a background in physics.

The introduction to the MIDI standard for communicating between music devices brought back memories for me, MIDI was invented in the early eighties when I was avidly reading computer magazines where I witnessed its inception.

For a long time audio production software, like Ableton, was very expensive but now it is much cheaper. I’m currently in the evaluation period for Ableton Live (a generous 90 days) but the introductory version is only £69. I’ve spent similar sums on a little MIDI controller and audio interface. I should probably get a decent microphone and stand, and now I’m coveting blingy MIDI control surfaces.

Finally we get on to the specific features of Ableton Live, about half way into the book! This is slightly unfair, we do get some glimpses before this. I found the book was good for structuring wider enquiry, one of the issues with a complex system like Ableton Live is not having the words to investigate (Google) further, and to be honest the problem once you have googled you are often faced with a screen-full of videos to watch. Audio production Basics gives you some of the vocabulary to ask useful questions, and I found reading it led me to grasping some important concepts. Also I discovered the videos Ableton make are very good.

For a long time I was confused because I thought that the Session View and Arrangement Views in Ableton Live were just that, views onto the same piece of audio data, but that is not the case. The Session View allows you to organise clips, often loops, sequence sets of clips together which you can perform live, with the option to record into an Arrangement view. It seems the Session View was originally the unique feature of Ableton Live, and is used on stage by performers.

The second useful concept is the Return Track, accessed for each channel using the Sends area of the control panel – you can see why it is tricky to come across the concept – it is called one thing in one place and another elsewhere. I suspect for people with a background in audio production the idea of Sends and Returns is commonplace. For a guitarist a Return Track is a bit like a pedal, you can route sound from each of your Audio/MIDI tracks through Return Tracks like Delay and Reverb.

Finally, if you search around the internet you’ll find a lot of beginners worried about how loud individual tracks sound. This has a couple of causes, sometimes it is because audio sources have not been processed by the audio interface correctly but often it is a misapprehension as to what the DAW does – it is not really a playback device. Individual tracks may sound quiet because ultimately they are going to be combined with a number of other sources, and if they were all "loud" then it would be overwhelming.

I have mixed feelings about this book, it takes a while to get onto Ableton specifics, and it feels like it doesn’t provide complete coverage. On the other hand working through the examples (something I rarely do) has introduced me to a lot of functionality, and is easier to my mind, than following Youtube videos.