genius, or chance?

Skeptics of EMH argue that there exists a small number of investors who have outperformed the market over long periods of time, in a way which is difficult to attribute to luck, including Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Miller. [...] Adherents to a stronger form of the EMH argue that the hypothesis does not preclude - indeed it predicts - the existence of unusually successful investors or funds occurring through chance.

—Wikipedia page for Efficient-market hypothesis.

During the “Manhattan project” (the making of nuclear bomb), Fermi asked Gen. Groves, the head of the project, what is the definition of a “great” general [1]. Groves replied that any general who had won five battles in a row might safely be called great. Fermi then asked how many generals are great. Groves said about three out of every hundred. Fermi conjectured that considering that opposing forces for most battles are roughly equal in strength, the chance of winning one battle is 1⁄2 and the chance of winning five battles in a row is 1/2^5 = 1/32 . “So you are right General, about three out of every hundred. Mathematical probability, not genius.” The existence of military genius was also questioned on basic philosophical grounds by Tolstoy [2].

—This paper on arXiv.

Almanzor en Galicia

Luego, el golpe de gracia en 997, Santiago de Compostela. El relato que de esta incursión hace Ibn Idhari, sobre otro texto del gran Ibn Hayyan, que ahora se puede leer con facilidad en el trabajo de Martínez Díez, resulta un óptimo documento para apreciar la mentalidad de aquella gente islámica, su extrañeza al adentrarse por primera vez en la tierra desconocida de Galicia, la lucha contra las selvas y los ríos, una naturaleza por completo extraña que hace a los guías perderse una y otra vez, y fuerza a los ingenieros a intervenr con el hierro abriendo caminos. Por un instante, el lector se sorprende pensando en los primeros viajeros en medio de las selvas de América.

—José Luis Villacañas Berlanga: La formación de los Reinos Hispánicos.

frequented routes

Varhely is conspicuous for its dirt even among Wallachian villages, yet once it was a royal town. It is built on the site of the famous Sarmisegethusa, the capital of ancient Dacia. In Trajan's second expedition against Decebalus, King of the Dacians, he came from Orsova on the Danube by the same route that forms the highroad of this day--the same I had traversed in my way hither. It is curious to reflect how nation succeeding nation tread in each other's footsteps, through the self-same valley, beneath the shadow of the old hills. Here they have trudged, old Dacian gold-seekers, returning from the daily labours of washing the auriferous sands of the mountain streams; here, too, have tramped victorious Roman soldiers--Avars, Tartars, Turks, and other intruders. A long and motley cavalcade has history marshalled along this route for two thousand years and more!

—Andrew F. Crosse: Round About the Carpathians.

Valleys, passes, and gorges which have served many times throughout history as routes of invasion hold a special fascination. Like the Khyber Pass:

George Molesworth, a member of the British force of 1919, summarised: "Every stone in the Khyber has been soaked in blood."

I would like to know the context of that quote. Was Molesworth just making an hyperbole about the particular war in which he participated, or was he actually referring to all the blood spilled there over the centuries?

In the latter sense, the quote conveys a certain sense of world-weariness, of the oppressive weight of an extended past, that wouldn't be out of place in a piece of Dying Earth fiction.

ways of reading

Devoted to the adquisition of knowledge, he cultivated retirement as a means of facilitating the attainment of his object. His thirst for learning was so intense, that it held him under absolute sway, and he found it necessary at a later period to offer a systematic resistance to its exclusive demands. [...] In taking up a work, he first looked at the table of contents, and when it suggested an idea or fact which seemed to open before him a new path, he read that part of the volume which developed this idea or fact; the rest was overlooked. In this way, he accumulated a rich store of varied erudition.

(from the "Notice of the Author" in Jaime Balme's European civilization : Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe [1844])

That kind of impatient, voracious scanning for relevant information while disregarding everything else in the text sounds surprisingly modern. I bet Balmes would have a ball browsing Wikipedia.

Here's an image of the guy:

He looks like a nerd. A Nerd of God, if you will. Drop those clerical garments, give him a t-shirt featuring some hilarious internet catchphrase, and he could pass a a hacker, a proponent of open source, or something of the sort.

fossil thoughts

Blogging is a geological process. Every post you make is like a little bit of sediment deposited by the stream of your thoughts. These sediments accumulate over the months and years; when you browse the archives, you are in fact inspecting ancient strata of your own mind.

In the archives, you may find the fossils of old opinions no longer extant in your mental ecosystem, and wonder at how such misshapen, ungainly mental constructs ever managed to thrive inside your skull.

musical occasions, merry and otherwise

A concert was going on, and I for the first time heard a gipsy band. Music is an instinct with these Hungarian gipsies. They play by ear, and with a marvellous precision, not surpassed by musicians who have been subject to the most careful training. Their principal instruments are the violin, the violoncello, and a sort of zither. The airs they play are most frequently compositions of their own, and are in character quite peculiar, though favourite pieces from Wagner and other composers are also given by them with great effect. I heard on this occasion one of the gipsy airs which made an indelible impression on my mind; it seemed to me the thrilling utterance of a people's history. There was the low wail of sorrow, of troubled passionate grief, stirring the heart to restlessness, then the sense of turmoil and defeat; but upon this breaks suddenly a wild burst of exultation, of rapturous joy--a triumph achieved, which hurries you along with it in resistless sympathy. The excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated with this music--and no wonder. You cannot reason upon it, or explain it, but its strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and excitement, as though under the influence of some potent charm.

—Andrew F. Crosse: Round About the Carpathians.

Reminds of a passage from Jack Vance's Trullion which describes a grisly and ritualistic public execution, with emphasis on the accompanying music provided by the gipsy-like Trevanyi:

Oh, the prutanshyr's a wicked place! And to hear the music! Sweet as flowers, strange and hoarse! It strikes through you as if your own nerves were being plucked for tones... Ah well, at any rate, a great pot of boiling oil was prepared, and a traveling-crane stood by. The music began; eight Trevanyi and all their horns and fiddles. How can such stern folk make such sweet music? It chills the bones and churns the bowels and puts the taste of blood in your mouth! Chief Constable Filidice was there, but First Agent Gerence was the executioner. One by one the starmenters were grappled by hooks, then lifted and dipped into the oil, then hung up on a great high frame; and I don't know which was more awful: the howls or the beautiful sad music. The people fell down on their knees; some fell into fits and cried out, for terror or joy I can't tell you; I don't know what to make of it...After about two hours all were dead."

—Jack Vance: Trullion.

Je veux apprendre le français (2)

In my last post, maybe I was too hash when I wrote "singularly bewildering and unproductive experience". Even without knowing what the words mean, the book has many things to recommend it. It produces agreeable sounds when read aloud, as I have already mentioned. The letters are all well arranged on the page, printed in an elegant and easy to read font. Paragraph organization is fine; not too short, not too long, and yet with some variety in size to spice things up.

I like the proper nouns I'm encountering, they have personality. It's a bit problematic to differentiate between places and persons, though. Maybe I'm getting the mountain and Mohammad mixed up, so to speak. That notwithstanding, I find myself getting attached to those characters. When their names do not recur for long stretches of prose, I worry that something bad has happened to them in the plot. Maybe they are even dead! My worst fear is that they are indeed dead, but their names keep reappearing like ghosts because other characters are remembering them. This is unlikely, however: introspective passages of that kind do not abound in science fiction.

Je veux apprendre le français

I'm currently reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in the original French, and I must say that so far it has been a singularly bewildering and unproductive experience. I think at least part of the reason is that I don't know a word of French.

It does sound like an interesting book, though. And I mean it literally: when I try to pronounce the words in the pages, the sounds are pleasant enough, even if I don't know what they mean. Again, learning the language may make me appreciate the work on more levels. And I'm a sucker for time-travel stories.

To people who have read the work in a language they understand: how does it compare to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, Asimov's The End of Eternity and Barrington J. Bayley's The Fall of Chronopolis?

A survivor of the Spanish Armada

I didn't know about Francisco de Cuellar's account until recently, when an article in a national newspaper brought it to my attention.

The account is available in English at the Internet Archive, and also here. See here for the untranslated Spanish text.

Avram Davidson

Here can be found an evocation of Avram Davidson by someone who knew him personally (spotted at sfsignal). Davidson seemed to be an interesting, if sometimes difficult, personality. His conversion from Judasim to Tenrikyo is somewhat unusual.

I've been meaning to read his works, especially the Peregrine novels, which are set in Late Antiquity. The first one was published in 1971, the same year as Peter Brown's seminal survey The World of Late Antiquity. Interest in that historical epoch was in the air at the time, it seems.

Then there are his Vergil novels. They are not about the historical Vergil, but about the medieval conception of him as a magician and wonder-worker.

And let's not forget his Dr. Esterhazy novels, set in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, the "waning fourth-largest empire in Europe", clearly an imaginary cousin to the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the nineteenth century.

Here is the page about Davidson in the Great SF & F site.

On Bullfighting

Bullfighting inhabits a place where two conflicting moral influences overlap: one linked to aesthetics (which also justifies us in killing animals for meat, which we eat mainly for taste in Britain rather than out of medical necessity), the other inspired by sympathy, a utilitarian ethic and a non-religious sense of piety, all of them inducing us not to cause suffering in animals for our pleasure.

(from Alexander Fiske-Harrison's article A Noble Death at Prospect Magazine)

Bullfighting could be justified on utilitarian terms, too. The suffering of the animal is weighted against the aesthetic pleasure induced in the audience, and the latter is found to be greater according to some measure. Maybe this could be used to justify some kind of Most Dangerous Game-Death Race-The Running Man-Hard Target kind of show, too. Or gladiatorial games.

Considering that somewhere in the region of 37,000 bulls die each year in Spanish bullrings, there must be hundreds of thousands of Iberian cattle living in idyllic conditions across Spain paid for by the bullfighting industry. Compare that with how British beef cattle are kept and the fact that they are all slaughtered aged between one and two years old, and one wonders if that 15 minutes in the ring is not a worthwhile price for the life the bulls have led before.

(ibid.)

If I were abducted by aliens, and given the choice of spending the rest of my life trapped in horribly cramped quarters before being sent to die anonymously in a featureless and aseptic gas chamber, or pass the time exploring a Barsoom-like world cavorting with beautiful green-skinned princesses along the way before dying in an epic if doomed battle with a bizarrely-clad alien warrior sporting futuristic weaponry, I know what my choice would be.

ciudades inmensas habitadas por cyborgs

El otro día en el curro a la hora del café, hablábamos sobre el timo de las energías renovables y la necesidad de construir nuevas centrales nucleares. Pregunté si les sonaba la canción Nuclear sí de Aviador Dro. Ni uno solo de ellos la conocía. ¡Pero qué incultura, por Dios!

"Nuclear sí" destila un ansia futurista de retirar la obsoleta humanidad del escenario de la Historia, y sobre sus ruinas construir una civilización de alta tecnología, mecánica, alienígena e impersonal.

(Aclaración: no estoy a favor de convertir la Tierra en un erial atómico, es sólo que quiero tener disponible electricidad abundante para que me funcione la PlayStation.)

En el vídeo al que enlazo no se pronuncia la línea "ciudades inmensas habitadas por cyborgs", que recuerdo haber oído en otras versiones de la canción. Esa línea siempre me recuerda a Moderan de David R. Bunch, originalísima distopía, injustamente olvidada, que precisamente trata sobre una civilización postapocalíptica formada por cyborgs empeñados en dejar sus orígenes atrás, muy atrás, en una huida hacia adelante de continua deshumanización.

Bunch no llegó a conocer las recientes esperanzas milenaristas en torno a la Singularidad, comedura de tarro también conocida como "the Rapture of the nerds". No creo que le sorprendiesen, la verdad. No cuesta mucho imaginarse a Ray Kurtzweil como uno de los cyborgs de Moderan.

give me a time machine

Some time ago I saw posters in my city announcing a Ladytron concert. They looked intriguing (lets be frank: I though the chick at the front was really hot). But since I hadn't listen to anything by them at that point, and was too lazy to search for a sample of their music, I let the concert slip.

How dumb was I! Turns out I totally dig their electropop. Like the song Destroy Everything You Touch from his latest album.

Band member Mira Aroyo seems to be a quite smart gal. Reminds me of Chromeo's David Macklovitch, who is currently earning his Ph.D in French Literature. Maybe electropop/funk musicians tend to be just plain smarter than other pop musicians?

mirrors are scary

So, that Kiefer Shuterland movie about mirrors is not exactly receiving glowing reviews from critics. Too reliant on played-out clichés they say, too derivative of Asian horror films.

And yet, the fictional tale which scared me the most features mirrors.

I once caught a dramatization of a horror story on the radio, already started. It was about a person standing in an room of a mysterious house, watching himself and his dog in a huge mirror that occupies the greater part of one of the walls. The dog loiters near the room's half-open door.

Suddenly, the man sees the reflection of a gnarled hand which darts from the doorstep, grabs the puppy, and disappears with him into the darkness! But as he, startled, turns away from the mirror and towards the door, he sees the puppy prancing around as before! The whole episode happened only in the mirror.

Such horror! I nearly fainted at that point^*.

Since I didn't catch the beginning of the story, I didn't got its title. I spent years trying to identify that tale. When at last I managed to do so, the author turned out to be someone decidedly unexpected: none other than animal-lover Gerald Durrell! The story is called The Entrance.

I have another terrifying story involving mirrors, this one culled from real life. In the bathroom this morning, when examining my drowsy and unshaven visage, I discovered two white hairs in my beard. What's worse, I suspect this is just the beginning of a terrible series of revelations my bathroom mirror is going to dispense throughout the coming years.

Talk about scary!

^*Hyperbole.

alien atmospheres

Edgar Atemiev's Meditation theme from Tarkovsky's Stalker.

György Ligeti's Lux Aeterna from Kubrick's 2001.

Cliff Martinez's First Sleep from Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.

Brian Eno's Prophecy theme from David Lynch's Dune.

concept ships

Fascinated as I am with the image of the science-fictional starship, it's no wonder that I subscribe to the blog concept ships.

Does anyone know of a similar blog that collects images of fantastic/futuristic cities, like the ones of this awesome post in BLDBLOG?

They are not terrorists

It’s striking that several people in the movie call him [the Joker] a terrorist, an appropriate term only in a very loose sense. He certainly terrorises people, in the movie and in the cinema. But terrorism, strictly, is a political weapon, and the Joker doesn’t have any politics, any more than he has any morals. In this respect he resembles the slouching killer of the Coen brothers’ recent No Country for Old Men.

(Michael Wood at The London Review of Books, discussing The Dark Knight)

Another strained comparison of a classic villain with a terrorist can be found in this New Yorker piece about Milton:

In America, where God and the Devil live alongside Western rationalism, Milton seems right at home. After the attacks of September 11th, it was possible to find Milton invoked to remind us of the nature of absolute evil—his Satan really is a model terrorist, who, having abandoned hope of a happy home, devotes his energy to destroying the lives of others—and at the same time quoted to uphold the rights of individuals whose distasteful views might be curtailed during a time of war.

In Paradise Lost, Satan doesn't employ terror to bring about the damnation of Adam and Eve, he uses temptation and deceit. That passage is a lazy attempt at making Milton's work resonate with current concerns.

Dubious Heaven

Indian Mahayanists conceived of the universe as consisting of an infinite number of spheres and as going through an infinite number of cosmic periods. In the present period there is, according to this belief, a sphere called Sukhavati, the beauties and excellences of which are described in the most extravagant terms by certain of the Mahayana scriptures. Among its advantages is the fact that it is free of the temptations and defilements which characterize the world inhabited by mortals (for example, the presence of women).

(William Theodore de Bary, editor: The Buddhist Tradition)

En qué se nota la crisis

• Fin de semana concurrido; camareros en la puerta de sus establecimientos.

• El arreglazapatos te comenta que últimamente tiene más clientes.

Where Dennet goes wrong

Centuries of ethical research and reflection, by philosophers, political theorists, economists, and other secular thinkers have not yet achieved a consensus on any Grand Unified Theory of ethics, but there is a broad, stable consensus on how to conduct such an inquiry, how to resolve ethical quandaries, and how to deal with as-yet unresolved differences.

(Daniel C. Dennet, interviewed here.)