Posting has been light this week because I’ve been on jury duty. Pretty interesting to be a part of the process. I won’t say too much about the trial, even though it’s over and all right to talk about.

But I noticed two things.

1) Law’s not a precise science, but it demands a high standard of evidence. It was interesting to see that principle being relied on so heavily in such an everyday, seemingly subjective profession.

2) Memory is really unreliable. In this case, the events happened over a year ago, and there were a couple of times where witnesses claimed to have no memory of an event, and then were shown statements they themselves had made about that event, and had to conclude that the event must have happened. This even happened with one of the police officers called to testify — someone presumably trained in that area. All of which suggests a problem with anecdotal evidence: anecdotes shift and acquire new meanings over time.

I call new rule: henceforth on Fridays I shall ‘Refresh’ the iTunes Party Shuffle, and talk you through whatever comes up. No sneaky manipulation; I give you the first five no matter how embarrassing, even if it’s 28 Days or something.

Ready? Here we go. [Click.]

Oh my gosh! What a cool set! This is the equivalent of having people drop by when you’ve just spent the whole day cleaning. It won’t always be this good, really.

Cherry Blossom Girl by Air Album: Talkie Walkie
I think this might be the finest album I have heard in a long time. I first heard Air when they had just put out “Moon Safari” and I thought it was funny, sort of eighties analogue throwback. But now they’ve really outgrown their original concept, and just made really beautiful music in the way they know how. There is not one ‘skip song’ on this entire album, and even my favourite albums have one. I would love to take Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin and lock them in a room and make them listen to nothing but Duruflé, and then see what they do.

Forever Young by Youth Group Album: Forever Young (Single)
You can tell I’m old because I remember when Alphaville did this song in 1983? 4? Okay, even if I can’t remember, it’s still a good song, and the kids from Youth Group have done a good job on it, keeping the drumbeats steady, letting loose the rockishness close to the end. Minus points for you if you only know about the song because it was on the O-friggin’-C.

The World is Sick by Machine Translations Album: Bad Shapes
I really like MT. This album’s an early one, and this copy contains a brief message to me from Mr J Walker himself. What a guy. Oh, the song. It’s okay. Acoustic guitar mixed with his trademark electronic touches. Strings add atmosphere. You should check it out.

Rotund For Success by Severed Heads Album: Rotund for Success
Severed Heads? you ask. That sounds pretty hardcore. No, I reassure you. They used to be industrial and experimental, but Tom Ellard has polished and honed that Severed Sound to what could perhaps be called a dancy sheen. This album is lost and wandering; Tom sings slantwise across the strange chords. Bonus lyric: Aircraft adorn my hair/Small boats adhere to my feet/I may be omnipotent, but/I can be discreet.

Hollywood Freaks by Beck Album: Midnite Vultures
I did not really get this album until I realised it was a goof; he’s doing a piss-take on soul/funk. But it’s a piss-take that sounds better than an actual soul album, and therein lies the genius. It’s a late-night party, and it’s hilarious. Fantastic bass riff. What the hell is that one guy shouting? Beck giggles at the end of the track so you know he’s just kidding.

Good job everyone! It’s a rap.

Does it make me more interesting if I tell you that number six was ‘The Way You Move’ from Outkast’s album Speakerboxxx?
No?

‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’ is so 2004. Zombies say it all. Or at least mumble it all.

About 100 undead lurched from the Sydney Town Hall to the Opera House today as part of the city’s inaugural Zombie Lurch.

Carrying banners that read ‘I crave the flesh of the living, and I vote’ and ‘What do we want? Brains!’, the ghouls shambled through the city, watched by police and wary onlookers, to raise awareness of zombie rights.

More photos here.

I would totally join in the Zombie Lurch if they had one in Perth.

Update: God damn it! Why does no one ever tell me when these things are on? I am so out of it. When is the next one?

I blogged about phantom cats recently. Well, now they’re coming to a movie theatre near you. And probably literally, not just in movie form.

The mystery big cat thought to prowl the Blue Mountains is set to star in a horror movie.

A Sydney-based team will start filming in the coming months, drawing inspiration from repeated sightings of the giant cat, whose existence has yet to be officially verified.

Yes, Australia’s own version of the Nottingham Lion.

I have a few questions.

1) When will people hold off believing in stuff until better-than-anecdotal evidence comes along?

2) Will the exposure from this movie help intelligent people realise that the phenomenon is fake (like ‘The X-Files’ did with UFOs), or will it cement the idea of phantom cats in the consciousness of more credulous people (like ‘The X-Files’ did with UFOs)?

3) What is it with cats?

Update: I do see that stories of phantom dogs are out there, too. Notice this quote from the page:

Phantom black dogs have been witnessed too frequently in modern times to parcel the phenomena as pure folklore and legend, but then folklore and legend often has origins in real events.

Uh, wrong. No matter how many anecdotes you get, it never equates to reliable data.

I’ve been teaching a class called “English: The World’s Language”, sort of a historical and linguistic look at English and why it is like it is. A very natural question: Why is English so popular? Why is there no other language that has so many learners?

I like to think of it like computer operating systems. Right now, Windows is the dominant OS. It’s not the easiest to use, or the nicest, but it does have a few advantages:

• It has a huge user base.
• There’s a lot of software written for it.
• It’s a pain to change platforms.
• Microsoft was in the right place at the right time, and made the right moves. It has been relentlessly aggressive in promoting Windows.

English is the same way. It has wonky orthography, and learners have a terrible time remembering the irregular verbs and nouns. But:

• It has a huge user base, 4th in the world in terms of native speakers.
• There’s a vast body of literature written in English, not to mention science, technology, and most of what’s on the Internet.
• Some historical accidents have placed English in the position it’s in. What if Americans had for some reason spoken something else? And British imperialism and American military might have spread English far beyond its pool of native users.

This ananlogy between computers and languages is apt because both areas involve the issue of standards. Communities need to agree on file format and language in order to get business done, and some standards will win the struggle.

I don’t know what’s stranger: that PETA has a Sexiest Vegetarian poll, or that Prince won it.

Also, I think we have to re-evaluate Morrissey’s sexiness in the light of the lyrics from his new album.

There are explosive kegs
Between my legs
Dear God, please help me

Prince over that? I mean, come on.

I’m trying to limit the religion posts to Sunday, but this one’s at least partly political. Here’s an article I found today (thanks to Billmon):

President Bush… has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States.

This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country.

Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.

Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho… hmm. There must be a connection somewhere… what could it be…?

Ah. There it is.

Top 10 U.S. States with Highest Proportion of Latter-day Saints in the Population, 1990

State	Number of congregations	Number of members	Percent of state population
Utah	2,924	1,236,242	71.76%
Idaho	662	268,060	26.63
Wyoming	128	45,793	10.10

The data’s a little old, but the patterns are stable — it’s a Mormon thing. Seriously, what could the possible reason be for this unquestioning sheeptitude among Latter-day Saints?

You could say a lot of things:

• authoritarian religions make people unlikely to question authority figures
• religions are by nature conservative, and there’s bound to be some political crossover
• the intermountain West is naturally conservative, Mormon or not

But I think it’s really this: very religious people are not well-trained to base opinions on evidence, and so when more evidence comes, they aren’t able to update. Mormons, especially, go by ‘personal revelation’ — feelings — not facts. And so they continue to live in slumber.

Bush not only won Utah’s electoral votes in 2004, but did so county for county — one of only three states to do so (other two: Nebraska and Oklahoma). I have to admit that for me this fact was a latter step toward realising that the members of the Church, far from being the most spiritually enlightened people in this wicked world, were in fact the most benighted by any standard of Christianity. As a liberal, I had always been a minority in a conservative church, but I’d always brushed it off. It’s just politics, I told myself. But the 2004 election showed me that it wasn’t; this went to the heart of who the Latter-day Saints are. I could see it, they never would, and I realised that the chasm was too wide.

Just when you think that Republicans couldn’t get any more craven and shabby. The US Senate has passed a bill making English the ‘national’ language of the USA. And in a related bill, oxygen is now the national gas.

[N]o one has “a right, entitlement or claim to have the government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services or provide materials in any language other than English.”

Hear that, Spanish speakers? You have no right to expect anything other than English. If the U.S. Government provides tax instructions, government documents, help with interpretation, or anything else, it’s because we’re being nice. More than you deserve. You’re welcome.

Why is this cowardly? Let’s consider the context. Republicans are currently battered by scandal and are historically unpopular. They need some victories. But not against anyone powerful. So instead, they take it up against the powerless, those who won’t be able to respond. And since they’ve chosen to align themselves with bigots, it’s a bonus if the target also has dark skin. Voila! A bill aimed against racial minorities that don’t speak English. This bill won’t actually change anything policy-wise. It doesn’t have to. It’s symbolic, see. Republicans get to look tough on immigration, and stand up for the language of the homeland.

Where’s the president in all of this? Where’s his keen acumen, his uncanny ability to judge the right side of an issue?

President Bush, speaking about immigration on Thursday on a trip to Arizona, reiterated that under his proposal illegal immigrants would have to learn English. “If you learn English, and you’re a hard worker, and you have a dream, you have the capacity from going from picking crops to owning the store, or from sweeping office floors to being an office manager,” Mr. Bush said.

Oh. And if you don’t learn English, well…

This has happened over and over again in history, and it’s always regrettable. Speakers of dominant language A forbid the use of minority language B in schools, government, and public life. If it goes on long enough, language B is lost, and with it a culture and a way of thinking. Spanish is not in danger of extinction anytime soon, but English is even less in danger. What’s the worry? Why pick this issue now? It’s just more target practice from the Republicans. It’s what makes them feel safe.

The library was selling discard books, and Oldest Boy picked out one called The Encyclopedia of Monsters. At first I thought it was just for kids, but then I was pleased to discover that it’s a well-researched, easy-to-read, and skeptical look at crypto-zoology. Entries include the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Spring-Heeled Jack, and even Gef the Talking Mongoose.

The article I found most interesting was that of the Nottingham Lion. In 1976, two workers in Nottingham thought they saw a lion, complete with tufty tail. They called the police, and the media got involved. Soon, everyone was phoning the police to report that they’d seen the lion. Police dutifully tracked the beast on a map until they realised that a) no zoos or private collections were missing a lion, and b) no lion could appear in so many places simultaneously. Police called off the search, and the mythical lion joined the list of ‘phantom cats‘ that people in the USA and England sometimes claim to have seen.

The Nottingham lion contains a useful lesson about perception and bias: we tend to see what we’re looking for. Exorcists see the devil everywhere, psychologists who work with (and generate) ‘repressed abuse’ cases are amazed at the extent of the problem, religious believers see the face of Jesus or Mary in everyday objects, and people with theories to protect see multitudes of evidence for their theory. Though science and statistics have tools to combat this kind of bias, it is well to remember that even people trained in these areas are not immune to suggestion.

Science is self correcting; that is, people with conflicting views will hammer out theories about some phenomenon or other, and thereby improve their theories. One implication of this is that over the long haul, whatever views are held by the ‘scientific community’ tend to be correct. (I’ve put two qualifiers in there; that should be enough.)

So I’m reading ‘Talking Heads‘ by Benjamin Lee, which is not about the band Talking Heads. It’s actually a demanding discussion of speech act theory, philosophy, and subjectivity. It contains the following paragraph about the 18th century intellectual luminary Charles Saunders Peirce:

Peirce defines reality as that which an ideal scientific community would come to agree upon as true, at least in part because of his belief that the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry would weed out competing theories and eventually hit upon what reality was.

This, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that turns amateur New Age metaphysicists turn into puddles of gibberish. “But… but… reality is what I perceive! My reality! How can we turn that over to an idealised band of scientists? After all, science is just another point of view! With its own biases! Just as subjective as any opinion! We create our own reality! I can be in two places at once, like a quantum!” And so on.

There’s actually some validity to this view for speaker-internal truths (e.g. ‘I hate lasagna.’). If a team of scientists wants to find out this kind of information, they’re going to have to ask you because you’re the authority on how you feel. Here we can have ‘true for me, but not for you’.

This view runs aground on speaker-external truths, however, like the age of the universe or questions about existence of this or that. In this domain, our personal experiences are inadequate and subject to bias and cognitive distortion. Here, the scientific method helps us, and here it is perfectly appropriate to rely provisionally on the consensus of scientists.

I haven’t gone back to see what Peirce actually said, but wow! what a brilliant view. Unapologetically scientific, with all the optimism of Peirce’s time. We need more of that.