Say It Like You Mean It

A nice little piece from Drum. In this specific context, I can actually see Somerby's point to some small extent, but in general Drum is bang on. One of the things that bug me about people in general, and internet discourse in particular, is how extraordinarily rare it is to see someone apologise for anything, [1] but Drum is entirely right that there isn't much motivation to do it if anyone on the receiving end is going to be a prick about it. Apologies don't have to be automatically accepted any more than they need to be automatically given, of course, but fessing up is tough enough without the impression you're just gonna get nibbled to death by the piranhas of the internet. Feeling that apologies are tremendously exposing and an admission of weakness is fairly ridiculous, but plenty of our brains work that way, mine included. Enhancing that feeling, either by demanding ever greater levels of prostration, or crowing about ones "victory", is just going to make the next apology less likely, in addition to frequently revealing onseself to be a dick. [2]

Learning how to accept an apology is as important as learning how to give one.

Absolutely.

Anyway. Disengage old man mode. Normal service resumed, etc.

[1] A phenomenon from which I am not trying to exempt myself.

[2] There also seems to me to be ample anecdotal evidence that on top of everything else, the grace with which a given person accepts an apology is directly proportional to the grace with which they give them.

Weighing The Options

George Monbiot's latest attempt to pin down smoke made me remember a half-formed thought experiment I toyed with a couple of months ago but never finished. Partially this was because I had no values to work with, but having swiped some, I thought I'd give it a spin, since maths doesn't really seem to be happening this afternoon.

Suppose you decide to go in for a full body scan. You're not sure if there's anything wrong, but other people have suggesting to you there might be, so you figure it's worth checking things out. At the end of the scan, you go to collect your results, and find to your surprise that there a fully one hundred doctors waiting for you. It's a slow day at the hospital, so they've all looked at your scan data, and they all wanted to pitch in. Providing second through to one-hundredth opinions, if you like.

Ninety-seven of them tell you that you have cancer. The other three say you don't, either claiming that no cancer symptoms are present, or that while the symptoms are cancer are there, it's far more likely that you have a combination of several other diseases that combine to look like cancer, so it isn't worth worrying about.

Let's say you go with the majority, and thank the three dissenting doctors for their time. With them gone, you ask what you should do. Seventy four of those doctors remaining tell you that they have a drug that has been proven to alleviate your condition, and though curing it is close to impossible, the drug will significantly reduce your chance of serious symptoms up to and including death. Ten of them say that their professional opinion is that the drug will alleviate your condition as claimed, but that they are cannot state with certainty that it will. Eight more claim the drug may or may not be useful. Five tell you it's a placebo.

This is the part that always confuses me about a lot of people who argue we shouldn't do anything about global warming. The argument that science hasn't "proven" anything is equivalent to telling the eighty four doctors recommending the drug that until they convince their thirteen colleagues to recommend it as well (with only five of them arguing it isn't useful), you won't be taking the drug, thanks. A lot of crap gets thrown around at this point, comments like "this isn't science, it's an opinion survey" (copyright Sean Hannity), and "statistics isn't science because it cannot predict with 100% accuracy" (copyright at least one poster in any internet discussion about global warming ever), but none of it seems particularly convincing here.

There is an alternative tack taken by those arguing for inaction is more sympathetic, of course. If the drug being discussed is massively expensive, there's a risk assessment calculation to be made between the chance of dying of cancer, and taking a useless drug whilst having no money. Even that doesn't work too well in this context, though, because once you've been diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness, I think the amount of money people would spend on medication is liable to be a fairly high percentage of their income. Perhaps the more of the dozen or so nay-sayers in the group change their mind, the more money you'd be prepared to risk, but refusing to spend anything until you can be persuaded to go all-in seems counter to human nature. Even if you can't be persuaded to buy the whole course of treatment, people are liable to at least get hold of some of it (and there is certainly evidence that this happens).

I'd guess that the main argument against all of this is that medical doctors are seen to be more reliable than climate scientists. One wonders how much of that opinion is based on truly understanding the way climate science works, and how much is down to the fact that we have to trust doctors as an alternative to getting really, really sick, combined with the mercy of never having to watch doctors argue about the best treatment for your condition (certainty is much easier to fake if you're the only one talking). If you saw a choir of doctors each time you were handed test results, things might be very different. Certainly, diagnosing illnesses and recommending treatments is, generally speaking, an exercise in statistics as well [1], and I would suggest that responding to a cancer diagnosis (along with a bill for the necessary treatment) by seeking alternative opinions until you find someone to tell you that you're well is behaviour that seems far more odd in the context of a personal diagnosis than it does for a diagnosis for the planet in general.

[1] Let us not forget the standard probability question: if you take a 95% accurate test for a disease carried by 0.01% of the population (so if you have the disease the test will be positive 95% of the time, and if you don't have, the test will be negative 95% of the time) , what is the chance you have the disease given your test comes back positive? Medicine is not an exact science, but pretty much everyone pretends it is so as not to totally freak out.

(The answer, by the way, is 0.19%. Some people find this hard to believe; one way to think about it is that statistically speaking for every 10 000 who go take the test only one of them will have the disease, and about 500 of the 9 999 healthy people will get false positives.)

The Shake Experiment: Here Are The Facts

Since there is apparently literally nothing interesting brewing in my head today, it's about time to get back to drawing pointless graphs to visually demonstrate how much time I waste thinking about milkshakes. First up, I've updated the previous "total score" pie chart to include more data.

As we can see, cakes are doing much better now, and sweets have improved a little as well, now challenging fruit for the number two spot behind chocolate. Biscuits now seem to be firmly at the back of the pack (no pun intended).

I have also created a chart demonstrating the spread between the best and the worst shake in each category (since I've tried exactly two shakes per category, I acknowledge that "best" and "worst" are somewhat shaky terms here, but never mind).

As can clearly be seen, although biscuits is the category from which the Worst Ever Shake was chosen, it can be argued that due to its poor performance and lack of range, breakfast cereal might in fact be an even worse category from which to sample. On the other hand, it seems that fruit for now dominates sweets, having the same upper bound but less variation, and chocolate remains in a league all of its own. Cake is the the most consistent category at this point.

Conclusions: avoid breakfast cereal and biscuits, and go for chocolate instead. With shakes, just as in life,[1] chocolate reigns supreme.

[1] Or at least in situations where alcohol does not feature.

The Space Squids Part 3: Three Chaplains I

“The Scales Of The Emperor Protect Us!”
“His Venom Blind Our Foes!”

Battle-prayer of the Steel Cobras Legion (declared Excommunicate Traitoris)

Consider almost any conceivable method of worship or image of masculine divinity, and the chances are exceptionally high that either one of the millions of cultures and societies of the Imperium currently pays homage to the Emperor in such a manner, or that such was once the case, before an outraged Inquisition declared the variation heretical and swept it aside in a wave of purifying flame.

As endlessly varied as the encouraged (and tolerated) declensions of the Church of the Emperor are amongst the Imperial citizenry in general, the Chaplains of the Adeptus Astartes frequently extol their Battle Brothers to worship images of the Emperor far stranger. A combination of tradition, a respect for the separation of powers, and (most importantly by some distance) the sheer insanity of declaring war on an entire Chapter absent any other alternative (even declaring the Steel Cobras heretical has meant nothing more than unsuccessfully attempting to quarantine their system) means that there are a number of Space Marine forces that espouse beliefs and practice rituals that could condemn whole words to Exterminatus.

Even within this ludicrously large range of doctrine and zealotry, however, the Krakens of Greyjoy stand out. Not for any specific outlying idea or method (though every Chapter has its idiosyncrasies), but because of the unique complications brought about by the Three Chaplains.

These records have already touched upon the destruction of the Emperor’ Shields fleet at Raxos, and of the solitary Thunderhawk that survived the massacre. Included amongst the handful of survivors were two Chaplains, Tolosson and Orfirsson, all that remained to teach the new recruits from Four Feathers the ways of venerating the Emperor through prayer and through battle.

Before that tale can be told, however, we must consider the histories of two worlds. The first is Krinngrim, the homeworld of the Emperor’s Shields. Krinngrim is one of the most beautiful worlds in the Imperium. Wide expanses of pale crystal plains terminate at ranges of sapphire mountains. Deep valleys cut from jewels score the landscape, their shining walls reflecting each other to infinity. Inquisitor Hermans once remarked “Could the High Lords but sell Krinngrim, they could buy themselves afford a second Imperium.”

With the beauty, however, come danger. The fiercest sandstorm of ruined Tallarn is but a gentle shower compared to a Krinngrim Shardwind. Tiny pieces of razor-sharp crystal are blown to hurricane speeds as they travel across the smooth land. Indeed, this is the very method by which the plains are levelled and the valleys cut, but a force that can polish diamond will cut a man into particles before he can take in enough breath to scream. A tank, if it can find shelter, and is particularly-well armoured, could perhaps last just long enough to vox for help. Maybe.

Worse than the Shardwind, though, is the Glitter Rain. A Shardwind is highly visible, the swirling tower of particles reflects enough light to be visible at great distance, and the sound it makes audible from almost as far. Glitter Rain begins high in the atmosphere, and the first sign of the tiny jewel fragments falling is the occasional spark of light in the surrounding air, before they begin to bite. If the Shardwind is certain, immediate destruction, then the Glitter Rain is maddening agony. A person can survive a Rain for an hour or so, longer if they have been caught short before and have enough scar tissue to delay their deaths, but with a third of that time what staggers into the caves the Krinngrimmi use for shelter will no longer be easy to identify. Much longer, and the natives are liable to put their unfortunate comrade to death, for the sake of easing their pain.

As dangerous as the surface is, the inhabitants of Krinngrim cannot stay underground forever. Once, generations ago, the caverns were home to many native species; and perhaps that is where life began on the world, but the colonists consumed those scattered ecosystems long ago. Now, nothing moves in the caves except for humans, and whatever surface life wanders in, searching for tender flesh.

Out on the Diamond Plains what life there is unfolds from giant, almost indestructible shells, foraging for food in-between Shardwinds, laying rock-hard eggs in deep pools of gem-dust, or inside other creatures using long, spear-sharp ovipositors. Most of these creatures are good to eat, but difficult to kill, given their impenetrable shells, and their possession of a vicious temperament borne of a constant life of borderline starvation.

The combination of insanely dangerous weather and rampaging fauna makes life on Krinngrim exceptionally difficult, which in turn makes the tribes of the Krinngrimmi ideal candidates for Space Marine recruits. The Emperor’ Shields used the planet as a recruitment ground since their initial Founding, building their fortress monastery on the nearby moon of Orinoi. As so often happens, the beliefs of the culture from with initiates were chosen bled into the teachings of the Chapter’s Chaplains. To the Krinngrimmi, and hence ultimately the Emperor’s Shields, the Emperor was a master sculptor. Whilst mortal man might carve the decorations on a domicile, the Emperor carved the Imperium. Where others would sculpt a statue, the Emperor manipulates the very realm of space itself. The legends of the Krinngrimmi state the Emperor himself carved their planet, for no other reason than to prove the task did not lie beyond him, and because he found it beautiful, and for the tribesmen of the Diamond Plains, beauty is always the same thing as the threat of destruction.

Naturally, when Tolosson and Orfirsson began to preach to the first recruits from Four Feathers, they told them of the Emperor’s skill with the chisel, how he carved the world on which the last survivors of the Emperor’s Shields had been born, how he had created the Imperium as the greatest work of art in the galaxy, and how he brought the gift of beautiful death to his enemies, so as to carve their bones into the shapes that pleased him most.

It was a creed unrecognisable to those from Four Feathers, and not one accepted easily. The Chaplains had preached for centuries, though, and the recruits had received sufficient mental conditioning for the transition to be made essentially smoothly. For a time, it seemed as though the Krakens of Greyjoy would be differentiable from the Emperor's Shields only by the colour of their armour.

Then, a brother marine born of Four Feathers became the first Chaplain to join the ranks of the Space Squids since the Battle of Raxos, and everything changed.

His tale, though, and that of the strange world of Four Feathers, must wait for some other time.

Dicing With Death (Of Your Free Time)

Remember the good old days when you didn't waste your time playing hideously addictive colour-code dice games?

Those days are gone!

h/t, as usual, to MGK. At this point he's pretty much a cross-continental electro-crack dealer.

Fat Fighters

Given the various brief conversations I've had with various people (including my esteemed flatmate) about people who are overweight, I found these two items of great interest. The first argues that neither are people in as much control of their body weights as is commonly suggested, nor is the link between weight and more general health inversely proportional until one gets into statistical outliers. [1] The second makes the (much more controversial) claim that one can draw some pretty good parallels between the way the public viewed homosexuality thirty years ago, and the way it views the fat today (in terms of defining the two states, and how they could be dealt with, rather than implying equivalency in the degree of hatred each group suffers). It's by no way a perfect fit, but a lot of the specifics line up quite well.

For further reading, the update to this post is pretty good. No way to piss a liberal off more than to point out they're acting like Ayn Rand.

[1] As a quick preemption, remember that "making one's lifestyle more healthy" and "losing weight" are NOT equivalent. The former can often lead to the former, but weight is a dependant variable, and not nearly so well correlated as many people think.

Saturday 40K Blogging: Blood And Fire Part 2

Damn! So close to getting this up on Friday. Ah well, that'll teach me to wander the streets of Durham imbibing alcohol essentially at random.

In any event, let's get onto the miniatures. Last Friday, I got through my HQ and Elite choices. Next up, the GROPOS:


Two squads of Tactical Marines, about which I have very little to say, beyond being happy to have finally gotten past the Second Edition plug-in-bolter models.

My Assault Marines, mainly notable in this series of pictures for looking less like a well-disciplined squad of highly trained killers, and more like a gang of drunken idiots. Still, they've killed their fair share of enemies, so I'm prepared to let their lack of discipline slide a little. Think of them as Sharpe's Space Regiment, only without the floozies or the shitty later episodes.

My pair of Attack Bikes. Not much to say about these two, aside from the fact that in most battles, one gets destroyed on the first turn, and then the second messes up the prettiest enemy tank on the battlefield. Hours of fun.

A slightly blurred shot of my Devastators. Few things in the world filled me with more pleasure than the day I opened the White Dwarf re-write of the Blood Angel rules and found they no longer had a 1 in 6 chance of running pointlessly towards the enemy. It wasn't perhaps the worst handicap in the world for the army as a whole (though if there is one thing the GW development team need to learn, it's that they long ago passed the point where more randomness equals more fun, as oppose to greater irritation), but for the Devastators it was entirely nonsensical and endlessly annoying.

Lastly, my Whirlwind. This got painted up in the summer of 2001, and is one of the older Rhino versions, but aside from the fact that it looks a bit like it has Max Rebo for a gunner, I think it manages to hold its own.