Deskilling society

There will be many legacies of this Labour government in the UK and around the world whether that is a legacy of peace in Northern Ireland or war in the near and the middle east. On a more local level I would argue that there is a legacy of deskilling or deprofessionalising of key public service roles for what can only be economic reasons.

Deskilling is usually associated with the introduction of technology into a profession that usurps many of the skilled tasks rendering jobs simple tasks that can be performed by an unskilled or semi-skilled workforce. Deprofessionalisation works in a similar way in which skilled tasks are passed to semi-skilled workers because they cost far less and can be employed in greater numbers. In the UK the instances of deprofessionalisation have grown greatly under Labour. In schools we see the growing use of teaching assistants which by 2005 had grown in number to 95,460, twice the number as there were when Labour came to power, whereas the numbers of teachers has fallen. Teaching assistants are not trained teachers, they are paid considerably less and yet they cover teachers in periods of absence and have powers of discipline over students; they are teachers on the cheap, teachers lite if you will.

In the police we have 'community supports officers', that is to say members of the public working in uniformed roles. They don't have any powers of arrest over that which any member of the public has but they do have statutory powers of stop and search, to seize property, issue fixed penalty notices for traffic or public order offences. Once again they have a fraction of the training and receive far less money for their work. In healthcare we have the growth in the powers of nurses including their movement into the field of diagnosis. With the NHS direct phone service and the new NHS walk-in centres you see or speak to a nurse alone for a diagnostic session, there is the possibility to speak to a doctor further down the line and only if you get a referral from the nurse but most people are dealt with by someone who has had yet again a fraction of the training or medical knowledge, and of course receives a fraction of the pay of a fully qualified doctor.

This weekend has seen the story hit the news that nurses will be given the power to decide whether or not a patient should receive a resuscitation attempt. In a typical media way the story has been blown totally out of proportion and people are scared and confused which is what the news does best. That particular story is probably more of a power play between some doctors who would like to have complete medical control and NHS managers who are trying to bring down the costs of a debt-ridden health system but what is the bigger story is that it is endemic of a growing trend. I simply don't trust a nurse to properly diagnose me, a teaching assistant to properly educate a child or a community support officer to police a street and these are just examples because there are many more in the social services and pharmacology for instance. We are heading towards an age of profound mediocrity in which we are not willing to pay to have skilled public services.

No news is no news.

I don't watch much television these days, my time away from work is too precious but in my time I've seen a lot of news programmes and I'm always struck by the redundancy exhibited, especially on rolling news station. Charlie Brooker can probably better tell you about the problems of rolling news including the paradox of live reporting in which the journalist on the scene knows less about what they're reporting on than the people in the studio:



Redundancy, that is something that gets up my nose and you see it all over the news. As an arbitrary example whenever a child of school age dies in a tragic circumstance we are told that they were very popular and that always struck me as odd and it's not because it's not true because it might be but it's said because that's what is said in these circumstances - it's lazy journalism and it adds nothing to our understanding of what has happened, it is verbal diarrhoea. This, I must admit, is a minor complaint when compared to pointlessness and news do that in spades. News about the royal family, about the lives of celebrities, pathetic "awww" stories like the skateboarding poodle who rescues a family of four from a house fire by smashing down the door with the help of a co-operative movement of farmyard animals -- okay I might have made that one up but you get the idea.

Things could be worse and Fox news shows why. In England at least the news shies away from opinionated and overtly politicised presentation of news but what agencies like Fox do is blend the lines between reporting and politics. Seeing the O'Reilly Factor is the most spine-chilling experience I've ever had and the thought that anyone would turn to him to inform them on what happens in the world is a scary thought. When news attempted to enter the sphere of entertainment it went wrong as there is the pressure to fill every hour with drama, gossip and scandal to keep people watching.

On Good Friday in 1930 something incredible happened -- nothing. In a BBC news bulletin it was announced that nothing newsworthy had happened that day so they played ten minutes of classical music instead. I want that, I want a news organisation unafraid to say that there really isn't anything worth talking about, who hire journalists capable of thinking and presenting the news in a balanced way -- would it be entertaining? I bloody well hope not.

Razors and detergents

I think I've entered a stage of profound nihilism. I didn't begin that way, I mean who does? There aren't many newborns out there questioning whether they really are, as their parents (well, anyone remotely genetically linked to the thing) will undoubtedly put it, 'the prettiest child on the planet' ignoring the fact that they look like either Winston Churchill or Paul Daniels, or even worse some perverse hybrid of the two). No, life does this to you, it starts as malingering doubts, you hear that santa stuff isn't true, the bible stuff doesn't hold much water and you find yourself being manipulated from day one. Manipulated? 'Stories' on how to share toys with your friends, how to eat all your greens, all that arse gravy that is fed to children in the name of a bedtime story, if that's not a cynical ploy to manipulate behaviour through the medium of entertainment then I don't know what is.

Anywho, I digress, as tautologous as it sounds life lead to cynicism and that is the surest path to nihilism where all 'knowledge' seems unfathomable because nothing is ever as it seems. Now to the subject in hand, razors and detergents. I dislike shaving, show me someone who doesn't (okay, other than a xyrophiliac -- smart arse) but there is a holy grail in the razor world which is the 'close shave' in which after shaving it appears as if the continuity of your skin has yet to be breached by the merest nanometre of hair. For a number of years I used the Gillette 'Sensor Excel' which when it came out was 'the closest shave a man can get'. Since this product hit the market there has been the 'Mach 3', the 'Mach 3 Turbo', the 'Mach 3 Power', the 'Fusion', the 'Fusion Power' and most recently the 'Fusion Power Stealth' which still claims to give the closest shave a man can get -- why on earth should we believe them? Compare:



With:



With soap powder it is the same, the key message is that they shall get your clothes the whitest white. Well if that is true why would there ever be the need for any other product? If the pinnacle in dirt removal has been achieved where else can you go? I do not deny that products get better but in claiming that whatever they sell at any given point as being the closest thing there is to perfection they make any future product seem redundant or make any future claim of a similar kind seem untrue. Also compare:



with:



Language is a strange beast, 26 characters, hundreds of thousands of possible words, frillions of new and conceivable ideas and yet we see the same ridiculous verbal detritus rehashed in some new form with every new product selling an idea they know is false and we know is false. We live a life of mutual bullshit -- this is why I am a nihilist, or am I?

Threads

If you have ever wondered what the fallout would be, so to speak, of a nuclear weapon on a urban area then you must watch this film. Despite being over twenty years old it is chilling and certainly puts Britain's recent decision to renew Trident into some sort of context.

Hilbert's Hotel

I've written about a few eccentrics on this blog and David Hilbert is another one. Hilbert was a German mathematician and geometrician and heavily involved in number theory. One of his students committed suicide after struggling with a problem set by Hilbert and he was invited to speak at the student's funeral. At the side of the grave he addressed the crowd and explained that the problem he set was actually quite simple, the student simply looked at it the wrong way. Hilbert's Hotel or Hotel Infinity was an illustration created by the mathematician to highlight the problems created by dealing with infinity as a number and I shall try and describe it to the best of my abilities.

Imagine, though don't worry if you can't, an infinite hotel with an infinite number of rooms numbered 1,2,3,4... and so on ad infinitum, and when you get there to check-in you find out that it's full despite the fact that the neon 'rooms available' sign is flashing outside. So you call for the manager and he reassures you that despite being full, he can still accommodate you all that is required is that the guest in room 1 moves to room 2, the guest from room 2 moves to room 3 and so on leaving everyone with a room and room 1 vacant for you. An infinite hotel is quite impressive so using the wireless internet in your room you log onto myspace or facebook and spread the word. The next day a thousand people arrive at reception eager to see this amazing hotel and again the manager has no problem in fitting everyone in. Everyone is shifted a thousand rooms, so you in room 1 are now moved into room 1001.

The next day an unexpected party arrives, an infinite number of holiday makers stop off at the hotel on their way to Legoland Windsor, it is frightfully popular. To fit this rather large number of new guests, the manager moves the person from room 1 to room 2, room 2 to room 4 and room 3 to room six and so on leaving an infinite amount of odd numbered rooms available for the infinite number of new arrivals. Now can you imagine staying at an infinite hotel, the queues for the lifts are, well infinite, room service is lamentable and you are sharing the bandwidth of the wireless broadband with an infinite number of other computers so you can appreciate that many guests are rather disgruntled and the next day all the guests in the even numbered rooms pack their bags and leave though despite going down to 50% capacity, the hotel still has infinite guests.

The last twist of the plot is that the chain who own the hotel close down an infinite number of infinite hotels and send all their guests to the Hotel infinity for accommodation. The manager becomes desperate for a solution, how do you accommodate an infinite number of infinite numbers of guests? So he asks his guests for some help, since you've observed everything that has gone on from the beginning you propose a solution. Remembering that you've only got people staying in the odd numbered rooms you move them into the even rooms, then the first person from the first hotel goes into the first empty room, room 1, the second person from the first hotel and the first person from the second hotel get the next two empty rooms, rooms 3 and 5 and the third person from the first hotel, the second person from the second hotel and the first person from the third hotel get the next three empty rooms and so on until everyone has a room.

Despite having 100% capacity in an infinite hotel with infinite turnover, costs are infinite and despite the accountant's good work at securing a low rate of tax, the liability is still infinite. The manager brings in his accountant to explain the situation and comes away reassured because even paying infinite costs and an infinite tax bills, he'll still be left over with infinite profits. David Hilbert's illustration leaves you with the question of whether there is an infinity which is bigger than another infinity. The answer to this question came from another German mathematician, Georg Cantor whose diagonal theorem apparently proves the existence of larger infinities but you can research that one for yourself. The Open University did a film of Hilbert's Hotel with Susannah Doyle (the scary black haired one from 'Drop the Dead Donkey') as the lead and it is well worth watching if you ever get the chance.

The Golden Ratio

When I studied Philosophy at A-Level we were given a talk by a composer and he brought the golden ratio to my attention and it is one of those things, like pi for instance, that just blow your mind away. The ratio, 1:1.61803, is not just a mathematical constant but is a ratio that can be found in nature and art with such frequency that the Romans titled it 'sectio divina' or 'the divine section' and it is one of the supposed proofs put forwards for the teleological argument for the existence of God (otherwise known as the argument from design).

The golden ratio, also known as phi after the Ancient Greek mathematician who seems to have discovered it and applied it in the construction of the Parthenon, can be found everywhere. Take your fingers for instance, the ratio from the largest bone to the middle bone is phi, so is the ratio between the middle bone and the smallest bone. You also find phi in the arrangement of branches on the stem of a plant, in the growing points in a plant (the distance the shoot grows before it is strong enough to support another branch), in the replication of patterns in leaves, it has been found in the proportions of chemical compounds in crystals. It has even been found as the proportion of drones to the population of bees in a beehive.

The reason it was a composer who lectured on this subject was because phi has been found in Mozart. His piano sonatas which are often conveniently split into two parts can be found to contain phi in the proportion from from one movement to the other. Phi can also be found in the ratio between key changes in Debussy's 'Image, Reflections in Water'. More recently Shostakovich applied the golden ration to his music though from memory it seems to have not produced that pleasant a piece. Leonardo da Vinci incorporated phi into his work, the Mona Lisa being being a prime example of its exercise. The golden ratio, for many, is the key to beauty. Leon Battista Alberti, the fifteenth century Italian architect, believed that beauty was a matter of proportion and that if a body was divided up into 600 parts beauty would be ‘a Harmony of all the Parts, in whatsoever Subject it appears, fitted together with such proportion and connection, that nothing could be added, diminished or altered, but for the worse’. The proportion which he believed would secure a harmony of all the parts was phi.

We humans have an incredible ability to see patterns everywhere, phi really could just be another example of this talent at making order of chaos or it could be one of the keys to unlocking our understanding of the universe. As an aside, Pythagoras was evidently spooked by the discovery of the golden ratio because he worked to keep it secret, its discovery was punishable by death.

Irrepressible.info

I haven't written any especially political entries on this blog partially so that I don't alienate any potential readers but also simply because there are enough political blogs on the net at the moment that adding another doesn't seem a worthwhile exercise. Nevertheless I feel it is important to highlight the joint campaign by the Amnesty International and the Observer Newspaper against censorship on the internet. I've been aware of this campaign for some time now but the reason I've decided to blog on it now is because I was particularly incensed to learn the news last month about Youtube banning videos that mocked the King of Thailand. Lèse majesté laws are of themselves a shocking abuse of power and are the last resort of pathetic despots and egomaniac dictators, but that Youtube acted to support them is particularly atrocious.

You can join the campaign by doing any or all of three things. You can sign the petition at the Irrepressible.info website, you can also publish fragments of censored information onto your website or blog as I have done on the right hand side of this blog, or you can blog on the subject of internet censorship and highlight the campaign. I'm sorry if that sounds preachy.