The popularity of wrinkles and being online..or not..

What is it with all this angst about looks and the fading thereof?

What would be useful to know is how much of this anxiety about the loss of physical prowess and attractiveness has been consistent over time; and, whether in the twentieth century with the changes to social and economic structures in the developed world, this has increasingly become a publicly acceptable neurosis. Or, is it simply media hype, a means of tapping into people's fears that works rather effectively and sells rather well that this hits the public radar so regularly.

What is it about the appearance of youth as compared with age that seems to hold the advantage in people's minds (and the way they view their bodies)?

The stereotypes are obvious: youth = vigour = desirability whereas agedness = decrepitude = undesirability. Equally trotted out in response are: youth = naive = foolish whereas agedness = wisdom = smart. All of which strike as somewhat trite and meaningless when swung together, given that wisdom is not limited to age, though experience does offer an advantage. The only constant is that physical 'fitness' is different as a person ages. Why is there no discussion about how people don't 'revitalise' their minds? Perhaps minds are not something people worry about in the greater scheme of things.

On the flip side to this debate, regularly "the youth of today" are blamed for all manner of evils in comparison with their more virtuous parents or predecessors. In counterbalance to this the aged are often accused of hogging the power structures. What is it about this tension between youth and age that smacks of authority and freedom and power and control? It sometimes sounds like a squabble between a 'parent' and a 'child', that rarely seems to enter into the 'adult'.

Is some of this discussion about the worship of "youth" and the desperate need to retain (or rebuild) youthfulness in looks, that seems at an odd disconnect with no discussion about the attitudes and trends associated with this desired age group? Does someone who uses botox or some other type of bodily intervention that aims to reduce the assessment of their appearance by 10 years think about shifting their mental age too? Why is there this split between the way a person's body looks and yet no discussion about how people adjust their minds to being perceived of as 10 years younger. In except that their ability to feel good about themselves in the same way that they did when they were younger, is retained, through physical intervention.

Anyway, what prompted this thinking was a review by a Rory Cellan-Jones entry on the BBC dot.life blog about social networking sites and his opinion that they were settling down in terms of their community member 'types'.



Bebo for kids, MySpace for Music buffs, and Facebook for university students and young professionals. I wondered whether at any point social networking sites will emerge for the older generation (not withstanding that some older individuals may well be on MySpace in the community of music lovers - but I somehow doubt they are plentiful), Twitter for technophiles (there is another broader category that isn't limited to the youthful - but again I suspect its greater membership is under 40 presently). Perhaps this perceived disproportion of youth presented in the media, and most certainly in internet discussions, is relates the idea that internet technology is the tool of the youthful masses (or the technically savvy) and not for the 50+ for social networking or using. As these internet users get older perhaps the reflections of age might seem more evenly spread, or representative, in presence, attitude and in commentary online, and in effect.

This thought was generated by reading Steven Hodson's blog on Mashable that punctures the notion that social networking has some impact. It sounded, just as he described himself, like the kind of comment that comes from a 'cranky old fart' who has lost his faith in the power of opinion. But he does seem to poke in the direction of the division between those older folks 'in power' and those that are on the 'net and the real ability to effect social change within the current political and social systems. Maybe with greater ability to be mobile in one's computing, and have that integrated into these systems, irrespective of age, the ability to communicate this to the rest of the world quickly becomes more flexible and change perhaps more viable. Though I suspect significant amounts of information passed down social networking sites potentially isn't about effecting social change and more about fashion and expression; and that's nothing new to the realms of the media in print or online. Some things perhaps haven't changed?

The one nice aspect to the anonymity the internet can afford is that one can hide one's age quite easily, and that may or may not benefit young and old and older. Whether one can hide the attitudes, ideas or opinions that have shaped your mind in the generation you were born in is another matter. Begs the question whether some people can be perceived of as ageless in their thoughts expressed online. In this miasma of neurosis about the youthfulness of one's appearance (and ever presence online), isn't there some interesting irony in that coincidence?

Funding scientific research - survival of the fittest?

After reading several articles in the New Scientist (December 2007 & January 2008) on cuts in physics and astronomy funding in the UK and the US it made me ponder on some of the issues that arise in the debate over what should get researched and why. These are not piddling physics or astronomy projects they are multi-million pound/dollar international collaborations to build and use complex technologies to smash particles or gaze into the skies and gather vast amounts data to process and contemplate.

Aside the obvious issues that arise when plugs are pulled on ventures already committed to, the mass reorganisation and unemployment, etc, how on earth is it that this funding has been cut at this point in the proceedings? Did someone somewhere take a look at the funding to science per se in either country and finally look at what was sustainable or cost-effective or in the nation’s ‘interests’ and go ‘ah – no, we’re going to cut off the money to speculative ventures and focus on functional scientific research now - sorry guys, the funding ground has shifted’?

So, how AND why is research funded I guess are questions that came to mind. What science is being funded and why?

• Do policy makers take a functional approach? One of the arguments put forward for physics research is that particle smashing may help science figure out an alternative means of providing energy other than using fossil fuels or nuclear fission.
• Do policy makers take a speculative approach? If time is spent analysing the activity in the universe it may be possible to answer some of the questions about how the earth was formed and..?
• Do policy makers take a competitive approach? If time is spent looking at how space is formed it may prove an advantage in terms of new spaces or material resources to exploit?

If there is a return calculated into this, how is it measured? Does a tangible return need to be apparent within a certain timeframe, e.g. 5, 10, 20 or 50 years and some economic or social gain derived thereof or is it an intangible return, i.e. more scientific knowledge is of value per se? Who is balancing the ‘books’ and how?

Given there are issues with the privatisation of pharmaceutical, genetic or biotechnological research, i.e. the derivation of private and/or public good, how does the mishmash of private/public funding work to advance scientific knowledge overall?

No doubt there are economic models and theories that weigh the interests of private/public economic gain. When is it beneficial for an area of research and development to be publicly shared? Is it only when it is to solve a problem that once cracked everyone then gains (or scrabbles to market) when a solution is found? At the point it becomes beneficial for the intellectual property embedded in research and development to be locked down and thence exclusively privately funded and exploited. Not only does this strike as an economic debate it is conceivably a political and philosophical one. Sometimes benefits are not that easy to estimate let alone measure or value, i.e. only possible retrospectively so or in value laden statements, not numbers. It comes down to perceived risk and shared and competing interests potentially.

An example comes to mind with the cooperation between scientists in many countries to develop vaccines to immunise against virus epidemics (problem solved). These new vaccines are then packaged up (commoditised) and sold. The human genome project is another obvious recent example.

The human genome project underwent some wrestling of private and public interests, but ended up being a shared public venture. There are considerable spin offs commercially as a result of the public investment by public and private funded research institutes.

Every year researchers/experts/academics gnash their teeth over who has scored funding from the public purse. It is potentially a different experience to lose out to a competitor when pitching for private funds, the argument being very clearly and cleanly about return on investment in net profit terms. Whoever can demonstrate the better financial return is more likely to win the investment. It becomes more complex when the return on investment is less clearly defined and is a ‘public good’; unless of course, what follows on from that is further scientific development that might then provide economic return. When it comes to public funding though, there is ostensibly some balance of tangible and intangible returns to benefit the community.

So, back to physics: is this one of those areas of research that has just lost political favour; is it that the link between what is being researched and what benefits might come from it no longer hold their weight in comparison to other areas of science; or is it just that the return on investment hasn’t come quickly enough; is it that the funding is just too vast and seems frivolous when there is a rise in genetics or climate change research? Perhaps it is a combination of these factors and aspects of competition just as much as collaboration.

Does make one wonder though, that if there has been such strong international buy-in by the physics and astronomical research communities (and its funding bodies) why are two of the larger developed economies are stepping back from it? Is it because the “new frontiers” of genetics and climate change offer more immediate return (market opportunities and political support) or is has the attitude to the intangible benefits of expanding scientific horizons shifted and are physicists and astronomers being called to account?

What makes a search engine biased?

I have been thinking about the sensitivities surrounding China's growing internet culture with regard to censorship and freedom of speech. The Universities of Leiden and Heidelburg archive websites with a view to supporting Chinese studies - see Digital Archive for CHinese Studies (DACHS). A very strict control is kept on who gets to use that collection, no doubt for good reasons. Why? Political control and freedom of speech concerns in China. Might be worth taking a look at Nicolai Volland's PhD thesis The Control of the Media in the People's Republic of China.

This territory of censorship is not new or exclusive to China though - other countries around the world are looking to tighten their laws to 'control' the content viewable by its citizens, including France and Australia. Admittedly the reasons for control in China may well be different to that of other countries; but these governmental interventions beg questions. How much government control over publicly available content should be asserted? How much should people be allowed to determine that at their end, i.e. let the user drive?


What I find more intriguing, possibly because it is less obvious, is the underlying programming in the development of Baidu the search engine and its ability to enable effective information retrieval with Chinese characters and search strings. The fact Baidu indexes websites that search engines like Google don't have access to is an obvious advantage. An article I read in New Scientist (Beyond the great firewall, November 2007) refers to the fact that many Chinese people use Baidu also because it processes Chinese characters more effectively and indexes websites possibly not indexed by Google.

Aside the content bias (or constraints), I began to think a bit about the fact that a great deal of computer coding is done in English, a la, the lingua franca of computer programming is English. It made me wonder about the coding in Google, and how effectively Google handles diverse language content (in its alogrithms) and how much those linguistic calculations are based on an understanding (mostly) of English, or many languages? Is the lingua franca of coding English too with Baidu? Are their linguistic calculations for search different because of the nature of Chinese characters? I don't know, but it pays to look below the surface (i.e. content) too, to see how the internet is or isn't working for information retrieval irrespective of the political controls being asserted over the top of this.

How well have the world's Chinese speakers been served by Google? If they prefer Baidu, what is that about? Is it just better indexing and search results is there something else? How do Baidu and Google compare and what basis are they best compared on? Which is biased in what way and by what?

What changes a mind?

The Annual Question from the Edge website:

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

At first I liked these three statements as a simple means of distinguishing what seems to affect people's thinking: philosophical thinking, religious thinking and scientific thinking. But.. the more and more I thought about these statements the less satisfactory they became and the more superficial they appeared. Why?

In each of these statements there is a catalyst that effects the way people think.

- Philosophers - reasoning - process of rational argument or debate of ideas
- God - the higher power - ideas codified in ritual, prayer, and text
- Facts - evidence - repeatable, consistently observed and independently confirmed ideas

Without giving greater or lesser weight to any of these three sentences, what they are all talking is about belief, what people believe.

What seemed to be missing in this is any discussion of 'truth' (such a tricky concept that). Truth is examined by:

- who is proffering a truth
- how a truth is arrived at
- how that truth is evaluated and perceived
- who is perceiving this as a truth

Reasoning comes into this equation and so does context. In each of these statements the new belief is arrived at through one's own thought processes and through drawing upon other's thoughts, philosophical, religious or scientific.

Anyway, on reading a popular science book on psychiatric disorders* recently I happened upon various definitions the author offered for delusion and the identification of deluded thought. At one point the author talks about delusion being determined in the psychiatry community by the 'truth-value' and how many people can be convinced of this, i.e. content. This definition of delusion has a weakness, belief of truth may vary depending on the context. So, the next definition was how the idea (deluded or not) is arrived, that is, logical (or probable?) nature of the idea, i.e. form. Who gets to evaluate this, their interpretive skills, assumptions or prejudices perhaps is also a weakness unless there is some ability to gain consensus, with the aim of avoiding 'group think'.

What I found most interesting though was how those that maintain deluded thought often disregard or dispute counter evidence or actively avoid being confronted that evidence. I thought perhaps what could have been added to that was actively undermine the veracity of the counter evidence also. But I think that is a whole different discussion about security of position and defensiveness. So perhaps there are three variables in arriving at a truth-value potentially that all contribute in some way to ascertaining its veracity:

- how the idea is arrived at - reasoning
- how widely embraced and endorsed the idea is - context
- how this idea is negatively tested - fallibility
- how this idea stands up in the face of evidence to the contrary - contestability

*From the Edge of the Couch: Bizarre Psychiatric Cases and What They Teach Us About Ourselves, Bantam Books, Dr Raj Persaud, 2004 - see review by psychiatrist Dr Vaughan Bell.

I'm sure there are lots of far better qualified thinkers spending hours thinking about this and dispute this blog. It is a rough sketch of thoughts - but I do think that the expression of deluded ideas and the behaviours of the deluded do offer insight on thoughts about truth and belief and maybe why such clashes are occurring between religion adherents and scientists over evolution.

Maoist managers

Four key characteristics of a (Maoist) manager from an article in the Economist (19th December 2007, print edition):

*A powerful, mendacious slogan
*Ruthless media manipulation
*Sacrifice of friends and colleagues
*Activity substituting for achievement

I particularly 'enjoyed' the last point. I'm no expert on Mao but the idea that this type of leadership leads to cultural fracture and famine certainly didn't endear me to it.