Poker Face

Joshua Foer was a well-connected 20-something science journalist who went, almost for a jape, to cover the annual Mr Memory Competition. Being there and talking to the punters, he figured I could be a contender. His book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything is the tale of his year of learning how memory could be trained sufficiently to win the competition the following year. I'm quite good at rote-learning: it's been key to such academic success as I've had. But I really couldn't be arsed to do memory well: to put in hundreds of hours training to be better the best in class (my ambition genes were shot off in the war).

My pal P sent me a book where Maria Konnikova appeared to go all me-too on "knock off some arcane skill in one year and write a book about the journey". The pic gives a clue as to the challenge documented in The Biggest Bluff her 2020 book about the world of million dollar poker. The subtitle How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win is a masterpiece in the made-for-the-chatterati trips-off-the-tongue triples genre: Eat Pray Love -- Heat Braise Shanks etc.). It is interesting to read because Konnikova is sufficiently self-aware to a) be good at poker b) be skeptical about what she experiences on her journey. But it is not a text-book about how to Win Big at Vegas. Not least because a rather large variety of types have mastered the craft; and you have to play to your strengths, not Konnikova's. Your strengths . . . and a little bit more!

One of her informants seems to have mastered a form [qigong + mindfulness] of non-attachment "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same" where winning and losing chunks of money on the turn of cards are seen as equal in the eyes of an implacable universe. Less woo-woo winners recognise the value of losing . . . as a learning experience. It's all about recognising that, although bad turns, bad luck, bad cards will do you in the eye sometimes; good players can turn crap cards into a Win because they are paying attention: it's not about card counting in poker; it's not even about 'tells'; it's paying attention to the way your opponents have behaved in the past (couple of hours often) and perking up at anomalous (in)actions.  NB: really top players have the ability and inclination to turn this attention scrutiny on themselves. 

Typical players, au contraire, get fixated about what has worked in the past, in similar circumstances. As current information blizzards down on them across the table and from the cards, only confirmation bias kicks in - making them more certain that what has worked will work. Bzzzt! wrong.

Konnikova didn't make the goal she set herself to achieve in one year from a "what's a full house?" start. But she did get in a lot of travel (Vegas, yes, but also Dublin, Barcelona, Monte Carlo and Macau) and win some $000 pots along the way. Wikipedia says she's a Poker Pro now. Good on her for facing down loadsa wannabe-alpha trash-talking males in the process . . . and cleaning them out. Still 97% of top level poker players are men: there's no physical reason why this should be.

Getting bitter NOT!

The Blob made passing ref to Michael Rosen's hypothyroidism a couple of years ago. In trying to track that link down, I find that The Blob has been quite the throw-knickers-on-stage groupie for the lugubrious English wordsmith [R].

My current earbook is Getting Better by the said same Michael Rosen. [Which may remind you* of Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux the mantra of Émile Coué (de La Châtaigneraie) 1857-1926, the doyen de personal development through the power of positive thunk. * if you aren't part of la francophonie try every day in every way I'm getting better and better with or without earworming Frank Spencer]. Getting Better is short and packs a lot of hurt.

His father and mother were intellectual Lefties from East London: their first date turned into The Battle of Cable Street an anti-fasch riot in 1936. Foter was never satisfied with academic progress of his sons in a cliché of ambition-by-proxy my-son-the-doctor. Sod that: so much unhappiness trying to tonk square pegs into round holes.

Young Rosen shrugged into the academic mantel, did well in school and went to Oxford, but in his early 20s his body was sapped by Hashimoto's thyroiditis, a progressive disease where the immune system declares that the thyroid in non-self and starts to destroy it. The thyroid produces thyroxine which is the 'metabolic hormone' and without it, everything slows down: bowels, heart-rate, s p e e c h. Because the effect are system wide, hypothyroid is hard of diagnosis and it wasn't until his mid-30s that Rosen got treatment. Added thyroxine is one of the miraculous cures of the 20thC and treatment made him better. 

It was unfortunate that, as his undiagnosed hypothyroidism was kicking in, Rosen was trying to progress a career (permanent + pension) at the BBC. Despite some creative successes, he was let go by the Corporation and thereafter had to dig his own channel as a free-lance. It is hard to be off the pay-roll, but for some it can be a stimulus. So many mediocrities were kept on the books [bloboprev last para] at the BBC. Years later it was revealed that his career at the BBC had been coshed by MI5 because The Man feared his leftist credentials.

Rosen developed as a children's writer, getting words down on paper at his desk allowed him to be agreeably absurdist and laughing quietly at his own jokes. But when a fan, a teacher at a large primary school, asked him to perform for a hall full of 400 kids, Rosen was a dull dull dull failure. The teacher kindly showed him the way to be better at playing a children's poet. I felt a rush of empathy because, when I worked at The Institute as a hack teacher of science, I consciously put on my happy face when I strode down the corridor to perform in class - learning was bound to be better if I left my mumbling, stumbling, diffident self at my desk.

In 1999, when he was 53, Rosen's son Eddie contracted meningitis [Neisseria meningitidis prev] and died at home in his bed.  He was only 19 but had already delivered a play into the late 20thC canon. So much potential, so sad. That kind of shit really knocks you back. But moping, let alone griping about life's unfairness won't bring the boy back. Rosen Sr. tried to follow a similar playbook to, similarly bereft, Mo Gawdat - stuff all that might-have-been; focus on the actual 20 decades worth of happy days.

In contrast to his chap, Rosen didn't die at home. He didn't die in hospital during the first Summer of Covid either. Tim Robinson (and 000s of other elderly Brits) was not so lucky. Rosen copped a 'Rona, went downhill and was taken to hospital. Between the jigs and reels he spent 40 days and 40 nights intubated in an induced coma and everyone was surprised (because the odds were against that eventuality) that he woke up. Another 50 days of physio and occupational therapy got him back on his feet and eventually he threw the final stick away and went home. He has some sensible, useful things to say about engagement with your own healing. Like my audiologist, OTs recognise that the major part of their job is putting it back on the client. Nobody gets better if the OTs do all the heavy lifting: ya gotta work for your own salvation. But, as with the other adversities visited upon him, Rosen got better from Covid because he didn't give up.

impersonation

Impersonation is a right regular pain in the arse of the internet: so many Nigerian Princes with spare cash and employees from the late-night bank security team. In Ireland it is a crime to impersonate a member of the Gardai.: you may be fined or spend 5 years in the slammer if convicted. In some circumstances pretending to be A.N. Other is harmless fun (Ms Veranda Porch) or positively protective (Ms Attracta Looney). That last link is also about the birth and naming of Gdau.II who, with her nucl.family, has been in Ireland for the month of August. They normally live in England but have been visiting the Crumblies and also travelling about seeing the sights, hanging out with peers and other scions of the family tree. 

It was arranged that The Parents have a two night quality time break together, while The Kids, now 8 and 12 y.o., go to Dublin with their Aunties. For such an adventure noms-de-plume were in order. Irish Rail has been getting better and better over the last 30 years. The provincial rail service is still absurdly light: there are only 7 trains a day between Dublin and Waterford. But you can book tickets on-line and change reservations ad lib until departure. The carriages are all wired up, not only with WiFi, but also little electronic seat IDs to match the booking number. Nobody remembers their booking number, so you may opt to have your name beside your assigned seat. GDPR requires that the naming of seats is opt-in rather than opt-out.

It would never occur to me to use another name in such circumstances but the Gdaus are more imaginative. Accordingly, yesterday Hérr Van De Guard and his diminutive and sassy assistant Murgle Turgle went to town in carriage B. This evening, after seeing the sights with "Auntie Perspirant" and "Auntie Climactic", they will be reunited with their freshly pampered parents. Lest State Security tries to follow the movements of the intrepid adventurers, they are returning as Bubble Tea and Plopper Suitcase . . . you'll never take them alive coppers!

Ness of Brodgar

For a hymn to the (voluptuous) Earth-mother, the matrix of The Ringstone is well 'ard. It is fine-grained igneous granite. Crude as the carving is, it is still clear after 5000 winters of weather. We have no idea whether and when the carved face was covered against the elements but we do know that they were buried in a wall (and so protected) for ~200 years up until 2007. With sedimentary rocks like limestone and sandstone it is fatal to be insouciant about the effects of weathering. Years ago we heard a story about how some neolithic works of such softer stone had been dug up and relocated to the edge of a municipal car-park in Tullamore? the Midlands - so that they were on display. Within a decade, or two at most, the 000 year old detailing had been done to death by acid rain and drunken urinators; all that remained was blobs.

The Ness of Brodgar was in the news this Summer because it is going under . . . again. This extensive (2.5 ha.) site adjacent to Skara Brae on Mainland Orkney was discovered in 2003 after being farmed and fished past for hundreds of years: ignored because it looked like a big oval hillock. In that year, a large notched stone was turned up by the plough and a geophysical survey showed a rich mess of anomalies suggesting the work of human hand. The following year a team of archaeologists turned up with their shovels and toothbrushes and dug some exploratory trenches to confirm the geophyical imaging.  A complex of walls, middens, buildings, 150,000 cattle bones and fabricated artifacts were revealed. No gold torcs, but for archaeologists it's not about treasure; it's about understanding how people lived and worked and had fun in the neolithic.

Silbury Hill [wch prev] a larger man-made hillock 1,000+ km due South in the middle of England is more-or-less the same age as the works at Brodgar. Crude digs over the last 250 years have made a hames of the archaeological strata and context making it much harder for us moderns to interpret the origins and functions of that massive structure. 

With commendable restraint and humility, it has been decided that Summer 2024 is the last excavation season: every winter more lamination of the top layers of stone occurs. It won't take long to reduce the whole precise structure to soft-focus of weathered rock revealing nothing about the past. Accordingly, this fall, the archaeologists intend to cover up their 2 decades of careful digging and write up their interpretive notes. As they affirm "The long-term survival of the archaeology is paramount. Our duty is to protect the site for future generations, who, armed with new techniques and technology, will be able to pick up where we left off".

Gach Treo Augo 2024

Poppy harvest is In. Poppy seeds go a long way and are A Gift to bread. There's a "dead" corner of the polytunnel between the potting bench (mostly filled with a clatter of crusty seed trays and wretched flower-pots) and the wonderful ever-giving rosemary bush. Because the corner is "dead", weeds come in and poppy is the quintessence of weed. Most years we get some poppies in that corner. This year three of the most successful started up out of the dirt adjacent to the block-faced bed. I build a little mud dam and have been carefully supplying these pioneers with water. Friday I topped them off and shook out the seed into a fine white pasta bowl. Very happy, me.

• 83 y.o. aces Leaving Cert Irish.
• Beau Miles deposits A Lot of cans at 10c a pop
• Climbers: how strong are your belay-loops?
• Alain Delon, un monument français, est mort
  
• Tancredi being sexi
• Jef on Le metro
• Jef prefers les Citroën DS
• Which DS?  2709 RR 75
• Directing early AirMail NYC to LA
• Alabama Paradox exposes the sketchy quality of historical data . . . not everything in Wikipedia is correct 
• Aural illusions exposes the fact that I've been wearing my LIDL-special headphones on the wrong ears.
• Irish seaweed = yum && can't be beat
• I'm yours Jason Mraz
  

graaassseeeddd

We make a lot of hay out of having a traditional hay meadow. Which means we get a modest stipend from Brussels to not cut / graze between 15 Apr and 01 Jul in any year. Which means we get very little hay because we are unmanaging our four largest fields to promote species other than Lolium perenne = perennial rye-grass. This un-grazing regime means that by the 1st of July the grass (and all the other trad meadow species) is too long for sheep to eat . . . but long enough to give a painful cut between the hoof-claws. Sooo we contract to have the grass cut and baled . . . and sold. 

Several years ago we foolishly agreed to allow the contractor to store the wrapped bales in the top corner of the Home Field until they were needed during the winter. When these bales were, in due course, loaded onto a trailer and carted off site, the ground was winter-wet and the tractor skidded about leaving troughs and ruts deep enough to hide a sleeping dog. Contractor promised to make good but never did; so that corner was too buckety to mow the following year, and the next year, and the next. Succession happened: nettles and brambles got footing, a hazel bush up-sprouted and the ruts were covered over with thatch to create a trip, ankle-turn and fall hazard.

Finally, we met up with Séan the Mow and he agreed to ① grub up the bushes, ② rotavate the sod and ③ roll it all flat. And I agreed to re-seed the area between ② and ③. Of course, a normal person would go down the creamery and buy certified-to-sprout grass-seed for this purpose. Except that a) the smallest quantity available is 12.5kg b) that cost €70! and c) it is all ryegrass with ~10% clover Trifolium repens as a token of sustainable nitrogen fixing. 

One of the several tasks which Séan carried out was "knocking the thatch" in the haggard, leaving large clots of cut grass-and-weeds to mulch in. In early July it was a bit early for grass-seed, but I found that dumping the drying clots into a wheelbarrow winnowed out a lot of grass-seed and eventually I had a bucket-full of bio-diverse grass-seed [as L] which I broadcast out to reseed the was-bucketty field corner. My seed weighed light because it was contaminated with stalks, husks, awns and other not-seed grass parts. But I finished up with 11 lt = 600g. Over the next several weeks I stripped off almost as much again from clumps of grass around the field edges. This was [probably, my grass chops are pretty weak nowadays] mostly Yorkshire fog Holcus lanatus which Hubbard damns with faint praise: regarded as a weed, but when young it has some value for grazing, especially on poor soils unsuitable for more desirable grasses.

It's nice that the area to treat was small ~600sq.m. which is 6% of a hectare or 15% of an acre. Teagasc advises that meadows should be re-seeded at 12.5kg / acre which must be one reason why that is the standard bag-size at the creamery. Calculation suggests that we need a bit under 2kg of seed for our modest corner. Also note that Teagasc advice also recommends that the field is "burned off" with round-up as part of the re-seeding process: damn the diversity full ryegrass ahead!!

In early August The Beloved and I were in a garden centre: a place I never go on my own.  I thought it would do no harm if I bought a small sack of lawn-seed because, whatever about diversity, at least the stuff was guaranteed to sprout. It was also appealing that at 1.75kg, it weighed exactly what was required according to my calculations. I feel, it's a bit like me adding a bit fresh yeast to my sourdough: not exactly a cheat but not a purists solution either. That was lurried out on top of my mixed bucket-o-seed and 'raked in'.  Raking in turns up stones and these have been picked out to fill the tuthree feed-sacks visible in the picture above.

Is it green? I think it's green. Tell me it's green!
Unsurprisingly, given that we missed out the RoundUp step, the rotavated lumps are now (a month later) sprouting up with fresh grass quite independent of my saved and bought seed. Although it is hard to swear that none of the seed has sprouted. A few nice showers in mid-August for sure helped bring things along. I hope and believe that the strewn seed will tilt the process towards productive grass without becoming a dreary mono-culture. The watch-word is 'good enough' - almost always a better outcome than 'perfect'.

Books about book-people

Que si j’eusse esté parmy ces nations qu’on dit vivre encore
souz la douce liberté des premieres loix de nature, je t’asseure
que je m’y fusse tres−volontiers peint tout entier, Et tout nud.
Ainsi, Lecteur, je suis moy−mesme la matiere de mon livre.
. . . Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (1533-1592)

If I had lived among those nations, which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature’s primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and quite naked. Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my blog. Bob the Scientist (1954 - not.yet).

Although The Blob has a tendency to range widely over time and space (including a glance at Michael de Montaigne), it might be said that its point is to record everything I can remember of my own life built up in 600 word blocks. Biography in metaphorical Lego. It is nit-pickingly detailed about the last 11 years (because recorded within a few hours of each event) and sparse indeed for earlier times. My family groan when I trot out one of my well rehearsed anecdotes for company. Jakers, Pa, did nothing else happen in 1971??

Thus, it's all about meee, but two recent ear-books have also been what do we talk about when we talk about readers [phrase tip Lanchester, Carver]. 

① The Secret Lives of Booksellers & Librarians : True stories of the magic of reading, ostensibly by James "Churn 'em out" Patterson and Matt Eversmann but actually a compendium of authentic voices of those who work in the book-trade. Several of these workers at the coal-face of literacy have a version of the Blue Book meme (Customer: "I wonder if you can help me re-find a book I enjoyed at a teenager? . . . it had a blue cover") and many of them have heart-warming tales of getting the dispossessed into the world of books. I'm guessing that the named authors thought up the idea and corralled the several dozen narrators into getting something about their lives down on paper. Probably bashed some of the less coherent tales (you can love books, read a lorra books, but still not be a natural writer) into shape.  And several have benefitted from Patterson's Page Turner scheme to use his million$ to support independent bookstores.

② Shannon Reed's Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out.. This is more cohesive and long-form because, like The Blob, it selectively samples the life and times of a single teacher of Lit at Pitt. If you're quick <link-rot, paywall alert> you can snag an excerpt of Reed's musings about Lincoln in the Bardo filtered through the lit-blog of George "Lincoln in the Bardo" Saunders. Which really is as recursively back-scratching louse-riffling as it sounds but nevertheless gives you, dear reader, an appetizer for the style of Why We Read - cw: can be larf out loud funny. As you should expect from a book by Reed about who / how to Read, it reads easy but offers insight into the hard graft involved in proper writing. Not the easy one-time-pass gab of The Blob, but something which has been drafted and copy-editted and redrafted . . . and redrafted [and shared and feed-backed] until the document is living its best life into posterity. One of the nice anecdotes is when students at a creative writing class get to realise that they are not cut out to be a writer but will so be a much better, more critical, less superficial, reader for having taken Reed's course.

I've returned both these books to the Borrowbox available bin; but you'll have to get in line behind Dau.I the Librarian who tag-teamed them after me.