The Magpie Mine

It’s nice to be back. We spent a lovely week in the UK’s Peak District, a wonderland of rolling farmland, hills and dales criss-crossed with footpaths, exquisite drystone walls, ingenious stiles and gates. (And often devoid of even the feeblest of mobile network signals, so we were frequently off the grid’ and left to our thoughts as we walked.)

It is also a countryside of paradoxes. I spent a lot of time thinking about ‘Capability’ Brown, the great 18th-century English landscape architect who mastered the art of capturing that particular kind of rural vista and miniaturising it for the parkland surrounding England’s great stately homes. But even as one was entranced by it one also realised that this wonderful countryside is entirely man-made. The Peak District looks the way it is because of the way it is farmed: it’s dairy-farming and sheep—farming country. Without those agricultural industries it would rapidly return to wilderness, and one of the paradoxes of Brexit is that it may threaten those landscape-curating industries, or at any rate make them less economically sustainable.

Another paradox is that two centuries ago this bucolic paradise was a hive of less salubrious industry. Derbyshire is littered with the shafts and spoil-heaps of intensive lead mining, each of which is designated with the term ‘dis’ (for “disused”) on the Ordnance Survey maps by which we were navigating. Those ubiquitous and inexplicable grassy mounds — those “humps and bumps”, as one farmer put it — are in fact mining spoil heaps that nature has reclaimed and rendered picturesque.

Little of the overground infrastructure of this mining industry survives — which is why the buildings of the famous Magpie Mine shown in the photograph are now so striking.

But the lush grass that surrounds them is still contaminated by lead. So on the one hand, nature has reclaimed and obliterated the industry’s detritus, which is a metaphor for the way the planet doesn’t need us. But one the other hand, our poisonous effluent remains.

Quote of the Day

”Afghanistan provides a useful reminder that while we and our European allies might be tired of “forever wars,” the Taliban are not tired of wars at all. The Pakistanis who helped them are not tired of wars, either. Nor are the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regimes that hope to benefit from the change of power in Afghanistan; nor are al-Qaeda and the other groups who may make Afghanistan their home again in future.”

• Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic 

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Sharon Shannon and Gerry O’Connor | Mammy Shannon’s Jig

Link

Nice way to start a week.

Long Read of the Day

A Forgotten Prophet Whose Time Has Come

Wonderful review essay in Noema by Nathan Gardels on Ivan Illich, “a purveyor of impossible truths”:

truths so radical that they questioned the very foundations of modern certitudes — progress, economic growth, health, education, mobility. While he was not wrong, we had all been riding on a train going in the opposite direction for so long that it was hard to see how, in any practical sense, the momentum could ever be stalled. And that was his point. Now that “the shadow our future throws” of which Illich warned is darkening the skies of the present, it is time to reconsider his thought. Gardels is a deeply insightful thinker and this is as fine and generous a summary of Illich’s thinking as I’ve seen.

I loved Illich’s books when they came out in the 1970s, particularly his Tools for Conviviality and Energy and Equity. He was a radical counter-cultural thinker with a terrifically spare literary style.

Pearce Wright wrote an excellent profile of him in — of all places, The Lancet — which was remarkable given Illich’s full frontal assault on modern medicine.

Blog posts composed on the fly last week

From the online version of this blog…

•  So who’s really responsible for the Afghanistan fiasco? Link
•  On the sociopathy of organisations Link

 This blog is also available as a daily newsletter. If you think this might suit you better why not sign up? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-button unsubscribe if you conclude that your inbox is full enough already!

Quote of the Day

”Sir Walter Scott, when all is said and done, is an inspired butler.”

• William Hazlitt

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concerto in A | 3 Allegro assai

Link

Sprightly, n’est-ce pas?

Long Read of the Day

 Build competence, not literacy

How do you build a culture that emphasises solving problems rather than adhering to processes?

Nice blog post by Rob Miller, useful to anyone building a project team. ‘Literacy’ is about familiarity with processes; competence is about the ability to produce things.

Fusion dreams get a boost? Er, maybe

The NYT reported on an exciting experiment done by the Lawrence Livermore Lab in which 192 huge lasers were pointed at a tiny pellet of hydrogen (“the width of a human hair”) which they then annihilated, producing a burst of more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power (which is a non-negligible fraction of the 170 quadrillion watts the sun lavishes on the planet every day). There’s only one snag: the energy burst — “essentially a miniature hydrogen bomb”, says the Times — lasted only 100 trillionth of a second.

To this, Charles Arthur (Whom God Preserve) added his characteristically sardonic comment:

I love the principle of fusion, and I’ve written about it a few times (and stood inside the torus at JET in Oxfordshire – not while it was running), and I’m just as excited – possibly more – as the next person about it, but stories like this are absolute classics of the genre. Incredibly short duration? Check. Incredibly complex array required? Check. Didn’t achieve “ignition” (self-sustaining output)? Check. Excited scientists? Check. It might as well be a story in The Onion; you could, if you wanted, read it as emanating from that august publication, and they wouldn’t have to change a word.

Which is just perfect.

The fiasco in Kabul

An excoriating blast from Professor Paul Cornish, a friend and former colleague, now a distinguished defence and security analyst. Here’s an excerpt:

Instead of confronting this crisis of strategic credibility, too many in strategic leadership positions in the West indulge instead in wishful thinking, displacement activity and even rampant self-justification.

In the UK, with one or two notable exceptions such as James Heappey, the Minister for the Armed Forces, who manages to combine a sense of empathy with honest political realism and a soldier’s instincts for problem solving, we have had the embarrassing spectacle of high-level politicians, public officials and very senior military officers showing just how disconnected they are from this looming strategic reality. Keen to convince the media and the electorate that this is a temporary politico-military malfunction, from which ‘lessons will be learned’ before the normal service of strategic mastery is resumed, we are assured repeatedly that the Taliban surge was unexpected and unpredictable. Really? Ten years ago, following the second of two visits to Afghanistan, I made the following observation at a conference: ‘withdrawal – whenever it happens – should be seen not simply as the desperate ending of the intervention but as the most complex and dangerous part of the intervention. If this is mishandled or rushed, then we might be talking in five years’ time not just of the resurgence of some very unpleasant extremist and criminal groups, but of a regional conflagration.’ My sense of foreboding was premature by five years but if a visiting academic/think tank analyst could see things in this way then plenty of others, in more influential positions, will have come to a similar conclusion. And if the capture of Kabul was indeed so unexpected, why was there not only a ‘Plan A’ for the evacuation but also a ‘Plan B’? Was the capitulation unexpected, or were we preparing for it? As well as presenting a wholly confused, if not disingenuous analysis, the UK’s strategic leadership has also demonstrated an unbeatably inappropriate choice of actions and words: the Foreign Secretary remaining determinedly glued (some have alleged) to a sunbed in Crete while the crisis grew; or the UK Chief of Defence Staff insisting that the Taliban, an implacable enemy of Britain’s armed forces for many years, ‘has changed’ and that British troops are now ‘happy to collaborate’ with them.

The Taliban’s resumption of power in Afghanistan could have a very wide range of local, regional and international consequences, many of them incompatible with Western values and interests: the cancellation of human rights and liberties; the repression and maltreatment of women and girls; discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities; the dismantling of civic society; overreach by Pakistan and India’s reaction to it; the expansion of China’s geostrategic and political interests; and the recrudescence of state-sponsored, anti-Western, Sunni terrorism. In this dismal context, uncomfortable questions must be asked about the West’s reputation as a global strategic actor, about its ‘strategic ambition’ and about the relevance of its vision for the world. Both the US and the UK have presented themselves as expert in the high strategic art of combining ‘hard power’ (i.e., the power of coercion and compulsion) with ‘soft power’ (i.e., the power of attraction and persuasion). Does the Rout of Kabul suggest that either of these is functioning as it should, or is as convincing as is claimed? In the UK, the March 2021 review of national security and defence offered a vision of a post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’, finally achieving its destiny as a ‘force for good in the world’, a ‘soft power superpower’, and a country with globally deployable ‘hard power’. Broadly similar rhetoric was heard at the G7 and NATO summits in June 2021. After Kabul, are any of these promises, offers and assurances convincing? And who would rely upon them? Bells that ring as hollow as this should probably not be rung – at least not in public.

Chart of the Day

Looks like EV owners in lots of places will suffer from range anxiety.

Electrostatic headphones

The piece about electrostatic headphones yesterday prompted a nice email from Thomas Parkhill, who wrote that

Electrostatic headphones have been around since at least the 1970’s, but I think that they have always been a niche even in that rarefied world. Here is the very famous Jecklin Float, which sold for $300 in 1971 – worth looking up.

So I did look them up, and found a delicious review by J. Gordon Holt:

These are some of the most lusciously transparent-sounding headphones we’ve ever put on our ears, but we doubt that they will every enjoy much commercial success, for a couple of reasons.

First, and probably foremost, they are just downright uncomfortable for most people to wear. They feel as awkward as they look. Their width is not adjustable, so they either press uncomfortably against your head or flop loosely all over the place, depending on the fatness of your skull. Also, if you have a short neck, or like to sit hunched down in an easy chair while listening, the bottoms of the ‘phones or their protruding cable get hung on your shoulders.

Sonically, they are extraordinarily good (fig.1), except for two little hitches: They have virtually no deep-bass response; and they have a slightly vowel-like “eeh” coloration that seems to have something to do with the cavity between the headphones and the sides of your head.

The review also quoted the verdict of another audiophile, Bill Sommerwerck, who summed the Jecklin Floats up thus:

They are to hi-fi what a strapless bra is to undergarments.

This blog is also available as a daily newsletter. If you think this might suit you better why not sign up? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-button unsubscribe if you conclude that your inbox is full enough already!

Quote of the Day

”The first advice I am going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”

• Jack Kennedy

(Wisdom that kept him sane during the Cuban Missile Crisis when dealing with Curtis LeMay.)

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Eels | Beautiful Day

Link

Great way to start a sunny morning.

Long Read of the Day

What is aptitude? And how do we measure it?

Fascinating (and characteristically thoughtful) essay by Venkatesh Rao.

I once read a good definition of aptitude. Aptitude is how long it takes you to learn something. The idea is that everybody can learn anything, but if it takes you 200 years, you essentially have no aptitude for it. Useful aptitudes are in the \<10 years range. You have aptitude for a thing if the learning curve is short and steep for you. You don’t have aptitude if the learning curve is gentle and long for you.

How do you measure your aptitude though? Things like standardized aptitude tests only cover narrow aspects of a few things…

Do read on. It’s an insightful piece.

Apple’s and Google’s fight in Seoul poses an interesting problem for Biden’s antitrust corps back home

Fascinating story in the New York Times. The South Korean parliament is currently debating the first law in the world to require companies that operate app stores to let users in Korea pay for in-app purchases using a variety of payment systems — and also prohibiting app-store owners from preventing developers from listing their products on other app stores.

Apple and Google are, needless to say, really bothered by this.

The companies have appealed directly to South Korean lawmakers, government officials and the public to try to block the legislation, which is expected to face a crucial vote this week.

The companies have also turned to an unlikely ally, one that is also trying to quash their power: the United States government. A group funded by the companies has urged trade officials in Washington to push back on the legislation, arguing that targeting American firms could violate a joint trade agreement.

So here we have an interesting case study in what Joe Nye called “soft power”. Dominant US global companies have always been an important element in this power. And,

Washington has a longstanding practice of opposing foreign laws that discriminate against American firms, sometimes even when doing so conflicts with domestic policy debates. But President Biden wants a consistent approach to his concerns about the tech giants’ incredible power over commerce, communications and news. In July he signed an executive order to spur competition in the industry, and his top two antitrust appointees have long been vocal critics of the companies.

The approach the White House chooses, says the Times, “may have widespread implications for the industry”.

Now there’s a tactful understatement if ever I saw one.

$4,500 for a pair of headphones

They’re from Audeze, a boutique company that hand-assembles high-end headphones in California.

Sounds daft, doesn’t it — typical 0.001% stuff? But, according to the Bloomfield ‘Fully Charged’ newsletter, these new ones — called CRBN (pronounced “carbon”) — are based on technology developed for a pukka medical application. They’re electrostatic rather than magnetic, with diaphragms which have carbon nanotubes suspended within them.

The original medical problem they were designed to address is a longstanding one.

While MRI scans are an invaluable part of the modern diagnostic toolkit, they put the patient through a noisy ordeal with their thumping and throbbing machines. The sounds inside can stress people out, which, in turn, interferes with the medical reading. Simply eliminating the noise can make the process a lot smoother.

Traditional headphones all have magnets inside them, which cause all sorts of problems in an MRI machine. That’s where carbon nanotubes come in. Audeze uses them to create an ultra-thin diaphragm … that operates without needing magnets. The product is free of metal and also lacks the usual headphone band over the skull.

I guess this stuff never comes cheap, and (as a non-audiophile) I wonder if any human ear can really appreciate the super high-fidelity sound reproduction they can provide.

The Bloomberg reviewer, however, was clearly blown away by them.

I tested an early pair of these headphones for a few weeks, and they are exceptional. Most headphones in this price range are weighed down by magnets, but the CRBN feel almost like wearing a pair of fluffy earmuffs.

I sat, unmoving from my seat for hours, just admiring and appreciating every intricate detail of my favorite music. It’s the effortless accuracy and purity of their response—no distortions or dilutions added, no detail taken away—that just kept me transfixed. I had a less audio-obsessed friend try them out, and he was left with a goofy smile after the experience.

Like I said, yours for four and a half grand.

(Which, someone has just politely reminded this camera enthusiast, is about the same as a new Leica Q2.) Ouch!

This blog is also available as a daily newsletter. If you think this might suit you better why not sign up? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-button unsubscribe if you conclude that your inbox is full enough already!

Vint in full flow

Vint Cerf who, with Bob Kahn, led the project that designed the TCP/IP-based network we use today, sitting across from me at a dinner in Balliol a few years ago. He’s one of my heroes.

Quote of the Day

”Biography: voyeurism embellished with footnotes.”

• Robert Skidelsky (who wrote a fine biography of Keynes).

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Ralph Vaughan Williams | Fantasia on Greensleeves

Link

Soothing bedtime music for genteel Brexiteers puzzled by why some things are missing from their supermarket’s shelves.

Long Read of the Day

Elite Education

By Jonny Thakkar, who teaches at Swarthmore, a posh American liberal arts school, whose ‘mission statement’ reads:

“Swarthmore College provides learners of diverse backgrounds a transformative liberal arts education grounded in rigorous intellectual inquiry and empowers all who share in our community to flourish and contribute to a better world.”

Thakkar’s essay critically examines this portentous declaration.

What is the meaning of the first “and” in that sentence? How exactly is the goal of providing a rigorous education supposed to relate to that of building a better world? Are they simply parallel, or is one supposed to be subordinate to the other? This isn’t about uncovering the founders’ original intent, since this particular sequence of words was only recently introduced. It’s more that the statement captures an uncertainty that runs deep at Swarthmore—and, I surmise, at similar institutions, however democratically governed they are. What is our role in the world? To what extent is our institution a vehicle for political progress as opposed to academic excellence?

Great long read, not entirely comforting for those of us who work in these so-called ‘elite’ outfits.

When power thrives on unspoken fear, bravery is in saying ‘I am afraid’

Really perceptive column by my Observer colleague, Nick Cohen.

There is a cosmetically appealing argument that going along with the lies of the powerful is better for the human spirit than acknowledging your cowardice. Writing in 1978, when communist control of eastern Europe appeared as if it might last forever, Václav Havel described a greengrocer who places the party’s slogan “workers of the world unite!” in his shop window. (You can put any gormless modern alternative in its place.) The greengrocer wants to show that he is an obedient citizen the police should leave alone. But he will not acknowledge the truth by pinning a notice in his window that says “I am afraid of being singled out for punishment”. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window. He preserves his dignity by pretending to believe what the powerful want him to believe. His sense of self-worth would be destroyed by the admission “I am afraid”.

Francis Fukuyama was so impressed with Havel’s passage he used it in The End of History to argue that the unfolding demand for human dignity was pushing humanity towards liberal democracy.

“The flaw in the argument”, says Cohen,

is that those who refuse to acknowledge their cowardice are not the only ones whose dignity is preserved. Surprisingly few of those who exercise power want their subordinates to admit that fear keeps them from speaking out. Maybe mafia leaders are happy to hear their followers say that they are too frightened to contradict them. But most people with hierarchical or ideological power are like abusive men who hit a woman one minute and expect her to act as if nothing happened the next. They want everyone around them to pretend that the fear of punishment does not explain their obedience.

Censorship is at its most effective when no one admits it exists.

Spot on. I had always read Havel’s essay the same (optimistic) way that Fukuyama did. I’ve changed my mind as a result of reading Nick.

How Ghent controlled the car

Really interesting ten-minute video. Left me wondering whether Cambridge (another picturesque, ancient, historic city) could do something like this.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• Twitter thread on the Metaverse idea Link
• Josephine Baker becomes the first black women to be buried in the Pantheon Link
• Household surrealism by Helga Stentzel Wonderfully clever imagery. Link. (Via Kottke.org)

This blog is also available as a daily newsletter. If you think this might suit you better why not sign up? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-button unsubscribe if you conclude that your inbox is full enough already!