Month: February 2010

Symphony of Science

Posted by mjjzf – February 27, 2010

I must admit to having some difficulty in choosing the category for this post, for this is a unique mashup of science, technology, music and, in a sense, poetry.

The Symphony of Science project is a creative effort to promote the interest in or, perhaps more precisely, the fascination with science.
The project has taken old scientific educational TV programs and put them through Auto-Tune, a software application for adjusting voice recording. Mashing them up with music, the musings of Carl Sagan, Richard P. Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye form a tapestry of quotations which are presented lovingly, in a tribute to scientific research, experimentation and debate.

What makes this work so well is partly that the enthusiasm of the featured scientists and people behind the project is very real, partly that this kind of science is poetic in its very nature.

Carl Sagan in particular has a talent for putting it in poetic terms:

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

Is this not beautiful? These people seem almost bold in their willingness to tackle the thought of infinity of space and time, stubbornly insistant in asking how long this reality has existed and tackling, well, creation.

A fascinating passage by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

- and his devotion to the question and his insistance that this must be of real interest to every human out there:

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

Scientists of this kind are always getting harsh words for the way they try to zoom the microscope, provide the full explanation, which to some means taking the poetry out of the elements in nature – the sunrise, the stars, light and darkness, the world, the life that surrounds us. But the scientists insist on the beauty and the fascinating nature of it all.
Again, Sagan on the artful construction of natural reality:

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

My last quote shall be by Richard Dawkins, who puts it like this:

There’s real poetry in the real world
Science is the poetry of reality

In my life, I am immersed in technology and development. We are all working on progress within the things we devote our lives to.
But I must admit that these musical scientific mashups -  along with the fact that I am currently reading Surely you’re joking, mr. Feynman!, the autobiography of Richard P. Feynman – have infused me with an enthusiasm towards the inquisitive, the appreciation of looking at the world around us and taking it in.

I leave you for now with the video I have begun listening to at the beginning of every day. Fascinating.

the featured scientists

The Russian Liberation Movement

Posted by mjjzf – February 18, 2010

The Russian liberation movement/The Russian liberation army (Русское Освободительное Движение/Русская Освободительная Армия) was a group of Soviet soldiers who fought on the side of Nazi Germany during World War II.
This is fairly well-documented. The interpretation, however, is not. The following is an entry I wrote for Citizendium – which was, of course, immediately criticised as an interpretation and debate material rather than an encyclopedia entry – and of course there was a request for documentation, leading into yet another discussion about original research – and I could hardly to my Danish BA thesis for documentation.
Anyway you slice it, there is certainly a place for it here.

Declared foundation of the Russian liberation movement:
Proponent angle

A large group of Soviet soldiers wanted to fight for the liberation of Russia or the nations of the Soviet Union from the existing system lead by Iosif Stalin.
An opportunity to achieve this goal was presented with the German invasion. In June 1942, leaflets encouraging Soviet soldiers to lay down their arms and welcome Adolf Hitler as the liberator were dropped at the front and in the areas being occupied. As a counter-move, the Soviet leadership attempted to paint a picture of the German as an evil enemy – the Germans, who were allies a short time ago. As Soviet citizens were accustomed to reading between the lines in the official statements, this campaign made little impression on the population. Part of the Soviet soldiers and civilians had had contact with Germans in the 1st World War and could not match their personal impression with the one offered in official publications.
Also, this alliance gone sour produced another alliance with the former (and later) arch enemies Great Britain and USA. This strengthened the impression that the priorities of the Soviet leadership were not in reality what they were officially.
And so, there was an interest in an alliance with the German state. This because it was impossible to imagine that it could be the intention of German leadership to conquer and continually occupy all of the Soviet Union, due to its massive size – not to mention the experience with the Russian geography done by Napoleon. Ergo, it would be in the interest of Nazi Germany to cooperate with a group interested in creating an alliance, in which the Soviet Union – or Russia, depending on which interest group was consulted – would exist as a democratic republic – or, as some suggested, a monarchy again – which would be a supportive military and trade ally of Germany.
Germany was seen as a nation with positive associations, because it was part of a European traditionally shared cultural community. It also had a certain effect that it was a practising Christian society, as opposed to the Soviet Union, in which the state had made a substantial and rather heavy-handed effort to eliminate religious practice.
The figurehead of the movement was Lieutenant General Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov, a decorated war hero, who had made his way up through the ranks of the Red Army, based on merit. In the autobiography of one of the leaders of the Southern Front, responsible for the defence of Kiev – and later General Secretary Nikika S. Khrushchev, Vlasov is mentioned as an able commander.
After the defeat of his 2nd Shock Army in the summer of 1942, Vlasov is captured by German forces. He offers to fight in an established Russian liberation army.
While working on this, he stresses some good things with the Soviet system as opposed to Imperial Russia, but he also stresses that which is unacceptable in the new system – that the system is not, what it is pretending to be. The German army responded positively to the idea, but postponed taking full advantage of it due to the scepticism of the political leadership, based on ideological issues. Vlasov was allowed to travel to POW camps and occupied areas, where he presented his cause – which was popular, and the soldiers already active in the Wehrmacht, albeit not as part of a common coordinated force, started wearing the ROA insignia, as they saw themselves as part of a shared cause – a liberation army.

The Soviet official position:
Critical angle

A minor group of Soviet citizens cooperated with the German occupation force. The collaborators were either former prisoners of war or soldiers and civilians, who changed sides during the war.
Having surrendered to the invaders, the prisoners of war were already counted as traitors by Soviet definition, as these were considered people, who were not willing to make an effort and sacrifice to defend their country – who had let themselves get surrounded on the battlefield and taken the easy way out by surrendering instead of fighting to the end. Volunteering for the liberation movement after capture demonstrates their weakness, either by making the choice based on threats of physical abuse, or allowing themselves to be bribed with pay, food and relative freedom.
The soldiers and civilians, who changed sides, were perceived as cowards and opportunists in the same fashion, as people willing to sacrifice the future of their homeland to be on the (apparently) winning side, where it was possible to gain something for oneself. It was seen as typical for the kind of people who are weak and deceitful by nature – or as a variation of this, people who had lost land, fortune and privileges with the people’s revolution, well-off families and large-scale farmers (kulaki), who had no interest in the preservation of the Soviet Union. Vlasov had allowed the defeat of the 2nd Shock Army and surrendered to the German army in order to live comfortably and benefit. He, too, was a chameleon, who made his alliances, where he found a winning side. Upon capture, he let the Wehrmacht use him as a propaganda marionet, partly to weaken the moral of the soldiers of the Red Army, partly to keep the prisoners of war passive and partly to recruit troops, that could be used for various purposes of use to the Wehrmacht. This treason was compounded by the establishment of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), where he not only let his German masters lead him, but actively took control in the campaign against his homeland.
The assumptions about Vlasov are confirmed by the circumstances around his capture by Soviet soldiers; he was captured on the way to the American sector, where he was found to be in possession of a large amount of money. This is interpreted as meaning that he had gained what he could and was searching for a new winning master – yet another capitalist state, which the USSR had allied with temporarily, but which should be treated with caution. During the final trial in 1946, he admitted to having lost heart, that he was offended by his country, and admitted to his treason. So, when he and his inner circle were hanged, they got the punishment which was to be expected and deserved for traitors of such a caliber.

References

There is a lot of material on the topic – as you may suspect from the view expressed above, it is a challenge to find balanced material on this.
I have found the following two to be the most comprehensive:

  • Catherine Andreyev: Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories. Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, 1990. (Openlibrary entry)
  • Joachim Hoffmann: Wlassow gegen Stalin. Die Tragödie der Russischen Befreiungsarmee 1944/45. Herbig, 2003. (OpenLibrary entry)

There are also interesting memoirs:

  • Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt: Against Stalin and Hitler. Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement 1941-5. Translation by David Footman. London: Macmillan, 1970. (OpenLibrary entry).
    Translated from: Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt: Gegen Stalin und Hitler. General Wlassow und die russische Freiheitsbewegung. 2. Aufl. 1970. (OpenLibrary entry)
    On Strik-Strikfeldt’s experiences as an interpreter for the German army, ending up as a contact officer between the German leadership and Vlasov and his group.
  • Артемьев В.П.: Первая дивизия РОА. London: Издательство Союза Борьбы за Освобождение Народов России (СБОНР), 1974.
    About the activity of the 1st KONR division, which Artem’iev was in.
  • Казанцев А. С.: Третья Сила. История одной попытки. Изд. Посев. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1974.
    Mr. Kazantsev was a journalist and writer who was with the press department of the Russian liberation movement.

Also, a couple of additional articles of interest:

  • Катусев А. Ф., Оппоков В. Г.: Иуды (Власовцы на службе у фашизма). Военно-Исторический Журнал 6/1990, p. 68-81. Москва: Изд-во “Красная Звезда”, 1990.
    About the trial and motives of the KONR leadership.
  • Кринько Е. Ф.: Коллаборационизм в СССР в годы Великой Отечественной Войны и его изучение в российской историографии. Вопросы Истории 11/2004, Moscow. P. 153-164

The Library is Open: The genetic librarian

Posted by mjjzf – February 18, 2010

It is hardly a secret that there are certain areas I focus on which could be explained by genetic disposition – with me being the son of a librarian and a school teacher. A university education was sort of in the cards, and it seemed likely that literature would be a part of it.

A somewhat less expected side effect (although that might also have been spotted on the horizon) was a fetish for… metadata. This has popped up occasionally – from time to time I have written about bibliography applications like OOo’s Bibliographer, JabRef, KBibTeX and the like – but it was my discovery of The Open Library that got me thinking.

Open Library is a website with an ambitious goal: To have a page representing every book in existence – with a picture, description, search tags and library categories for the most common library systems. The goal is to have a high quality source which libraries can access and use to have as exact metadata as possible. I have made a few contributions, among others the page on Catherine Andreyev: Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement. Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories, where I added some additional information and a table of contents.

A worthy goal. This is not a project anyone can disagree with. Though it is a hugely ambitious task, it is not a hugely complex one, and adding and editing new entries is actually easier than adding to Wikipedia (even if lacking knowledge never kept anyone from posting there).
Considering how to deal with data like that will naturally bring up a longer discussion, and voila, enter a new, fascinating element: The professionalism of librarians. Looking at the OpenLibrary discussion mailing lists (powered by GNU MailMan, of course), you come across debates like a long discussion on how to deal with doubles in the entries, is a different version of a publication a new book and, by extension, how should a book be uniquely identified in the system, how should OL interact with Google Book Search in a fashion that would make usable, non-amputated metadata available, if a text is freely available, should it be linked/inkluded – and so on. And on.

The entire material is published under a Public Domain license, so under all circumstances it is freely accessible. I would routinely prefer to use Creative Commons licenses, but public domain offers a different level of freedom… perhaps. Well, that is another discussion for you there. I would assume the licensing is chosen to to sync it with the rest of the Internet Archive.

In conclusion: This is an interesting project which I will be keeping an eye on and contributing to. A highly qualified professional discussion of how to deal with this kind of data makes it even more appealing.
The project has also made me aware of the technical implications of the registration of library data, and though it will hardly be interesting to everyone, I have found some interesting articles in the Code4Lib magazine – mostly articles on principle, since I am hardly a library hacker – and the website of Karen Coyle, the OL metadata guru, came to my attention. She has some interesting observations – also of interest for those who are into the copyright discussions going on at the moment.

Jeff Lindsay: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Posted by mjjzf – February 11, 2010

I have been looking forward to writing about the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.
Many will probably be familiar with the TV series of the same name based on the Dexter books. While the series are not too far off the mark, the book has it’s own supply of Dexterisms which make it worthwhile.

The plot is quite original. Dexter, the main character, has some very serious flaws in his personality; he is what one in another setting would call a homicidal maniac. Dexter experiences practically no human emotions and finds it difficult to understand people around him, since he is, essentially, without empathy. There is a side of him which compels him to kill – his Dark Passenger, as he calls it – which comes to him with great temptation. Dexter enjoys killing and doing it well, with meticulous preparation and flawless execution.

Now, that makes him elegible for the role of Bad Guy in thousands of books already written and read, but – there is a twist to this one, because Dexter was adopted as a child by Harry Morgan, or as Dexter refers to him in his internal monologue, The Good Cop. And at an early stage in Dexter’s life, Harry pulls him aside and tells him that – yes, he knows that Dexter is different. And he knows what Dexter did to the neighbour’s dog, which disappeared. And Harry explains to him that sometimes, being a policeman doesn’t make the necessary difference, sometimes one simply can not stay within the lines and still get the job done. So maybe there is something to be said for someone like Dexter if he can learn to control his urges and direct his focus in the right direction since – “There are plenty of people, who deserve it, Dexter”.

This advice sets Dexter in the direction where we find him in this book – as a forensic investigator in Miami, a scientist specialised in blood spatter. He follows his everyday work and comes into contact with those that need the kind of attention that the police force can not provide. Dexter examines the situation carefully and deals with it – cleans it up, so to speak – in accordance with the code of Harry. His step sister Deborah, who is an officer in the Vice department but hates it and hopes to find a place for herself in Homicide, comes to Dexter from time to time to seek his advice, since he seems to understand the killers’ minds quite well. Dexter has learned to act normal and charming – and he has his place and does a good job without raising anyone’s attention.

What makes the book interesting – especially compared to the TV series – are the ongoing debates Dexter has with himself. A good example of this and the language used in the book is the reflection he has on having caught the attention of detective LaGuerta, an extremely ambitious woman in the Homicide department:

LaGuerta is very very good at kissing ass, a world-class ass kisser. She kissed ass all the way up to the lofty rank of homicide investigator. Unfortunately, it is a job where her skills at posterior smooching were never called for, and she was a terrible detective.
It happens; incompetence is rewarded more often than not. I have to work with her anyway. So I have used my considerable charm to make her like me. Easier than you might think. Anybody can be charming if they don’t mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don’t have a conscience. I say them.

Now, who wouldn’t like to have written that? It is a very good image of Dexter’s charming pragmatism and pragmatic charm. The case which Dexter works with LaGuerta on is an important theme of the story. As the story progresses, Dexter becomes increasingly fascinated with the way the murders are carried out – the killer’s neatness and cleanliness affect him deeply. I shall spare you you the spoilers.

However unlikely it seems, Dexter has a girlfriend, or what one should call it – Rita, a woman he goes out with, who has an emotionally very rough background and has remained reluctant to get more deeply involved, which, if not for the same reasons, echoes how Dexter likes it. They are not without conflict, however, and once again, Dexter tries to handle it the way a normal person would, even if he does not entirely understand what is going on:

I stopped once more, at a small dark park almost to Rita’s house, and washed off carefully. I had to be neat and presentable; getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.
But imagine my surprise when I rang her doorbell a few minutes later. She did not fling wide the door and begin to hurl furniture and abuse at me. In fact, she opened the door very slowly and carefully, half hiding behind it, as if badly frightened of what might be waiting on the other side. And considering that it was me waiting, this showed rare common sense.

The last sentence goes a long way to show Dexter’s perception of himself as powerful and monstrous. The author does a good job with keeping up Dexter’s internal debate through the book, although it also seems he sometimes gets a little carried away with the concept and premise of the book. There are a few short passages, where Dexter’s preoccupation with killing people becomes almost whimsical, a flimsy gag, like in the following passage:

While the coffee brewed, I checked for the newspaper, more out of hope than expectation. It was rare for the paper to arrive before six-thirty, and on Sundays it often came after eight. It was another clear example of the disintegration of society that had so worried Harry. Really, now: If you can’t get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?

I trust you see my point.

In closing: Darkly Dreaming Dexter is a good thriller based on an interesting idea. Using the Dexter character means a lot of unexpected changes of focus and pace through the book, and this dynamic works quite well. Dexter’s distanced observations are very descriptive and sometimes very funny. As this is only the first book in a still-growing series, it will be interesting to see if Jeff Lindsay can keep up the unique tone in the books to come. I suspect it will either become overly forced or develop into a more distrinct and clearly established style – one can feel in this first book that the author is experimenting with the Dexterverse.

Effort and purposes of the open source and free software movement

Posted by mjjzf – February 11, 2010

This article is a piece from a previous website I had, called The Technographer.
This site is now no longer active, but the article still makes me think deeper about this issue, so it might as well find a home here.

There is a thing which has been orbiting inside my head (inside orbiting makes sense if you have read or, as I did, listened to Singularity by Bill DeSmedt), which I would like to talk a little about here. The obvious question rarely asked: Why?

What triggered this question (and yes, I shall elaborate) was reading Hackers by Steven Levy (more about it in the Wikipedia article). In this classic, Levy tells the story about the original hackers and their love of technology, hacker ethics – the open access to create elegant solutions. It is also the tale of people obsessed by technology for the sake of technology.
I consider myself a part of the open source & free software community. I am not a programmer – and judging from my programming abilities, it is for the best if I don’t try to contribute – but I have written documentation, reviews, helped people use the software and translated both software and the accompanying documents.
Now, reading this book brings up a question, which is surprisingly rarely asked: Why are we doing what we do?

I mean, obviously people get jobs where they write software. Nothing strange about a developer writing server software being employed by IBM, Novell or for that matter Red Hat itself. But that is the people who do it for a living. How about the rest of us? Personally, I am a geek of office software (also often referred to by the unholy misnomer “productivity software), which is due to my profession, but there is a wide gap between this interest and the concrete tasks I use such software for.
In a recent discussion thread in the Linux Outlaws Forum it was brought up what people find most positive about the FLOSS world. As always, the answers were divided into technical merits and community. If one was to ask Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon, I have no doubt from the opinions he voiced on numerous Lugradio broadcasts that it is the personal relations, the community feel, that makes the difference. I recognize that the community makes it interesting, that you build up a network of people with similar interest. But you would experience the same with model railroad enthusiasts, and they would never attach the level of importance to model railroads that the open source and free software movements attach to development. If any of you have ever taken part in a discussion about software licensing or people marketing the software simply as cost-free, you will know what I mean.

So why is software development important? Again, there are straightforward reasons for that – it is useful. I like to send email, that is handy. As I write this, I am using an open source operating system (Slackware) based on a free software (Linux) kernel to access the open source (Apache) server running a free software operating system (Debian Linux). As you see, this is WordPress, released under similar conditions. So it is nice to have. But important?
If one stops to see the more philosophical approaches to the topic, it is impossible to get around Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. If you look at the GNU Philosophy page, you will see what RMS is about. A classic text is The Free Software Definition. This text will outline how proprietary software is ethically wrong – in other words, Stallman raises the question as a moral one. The authorized Stallman biography is aptly named Free As In Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software. But he is a remnant of the culture described in the abovementioned Hackers – Stallman is mentioned in the book – for whom software and technology have an intrinsic purpose and point, and the focus on releasing source code is a product of his academic upbringing: A mental excersize, an accomplishment should be published for peer scrutiny.
Another important piece of literature is The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond. This other classic defines open source, but more as a methodology and an economic model. The economic model is elaborated in greater detail in The Magic Cauldron. To summarize, the point is to redefine the production of software from a product model to a service model. The logic is that since only a very small part of the industry is engaged in developing software for publication and packaged sale, it makes more sense to engage in creating a collective software infrastructure and selling support and services instead. It is a logical extrapolation of the hacker ethic that it should not be necessary to invent things more than once. And so, after building or extending a piece of software, the code of the program or the changes should be released as well.
One of the interesting aspects of Raymond’s model is that he is quite vocally a capitalist. Stallman has also from time to time had to stress that giving away code is not based on left-wing ideals; but Raymond argues for liberty, and one of the main points of the Cathedral and the Bazaar is how a society based on a bazaar model is more rational than the top-down controlled administration.as examplified by the building of a cathedral. Raymond’s approach is based on a meritocracy, that the more efficient and competent service provider will be the successful one.

As I said, this is methodology. It answers the question Why do it like this, if you are doing it – but not Why do it?

Of course, it is tempting to look to socialist ideology for an answer to this. In traditional socialist productivity, the problem is that the amount produced is usually smaller than the amount needed, and the distribution calculation is complex. If one is talking about code and software development, nothing is lost, nothing is wasted and everything can be replicated as needed. If one was to apply a parallel, it would be like everyone contributed only a single brick, but everyone would receive a house. So in software development, a socialist collective approach may be more efficient than when it comes to manufacturing produce.
While it seems less than likely that the open source and free software movements are a huge group of left-wingers, this model at least suggests a motive for putting in the effort.

An interesting suggestion is the philosophical approach suggested by Danish philosopher and technology commentator Tor Nørretranders. In his 2005 book The Generous Man (Det generøse menneske), Nørretranders suggests a darwinistic model for generosity and art. His often-mentioned example is that of the peacock, which has a huge tail which seems to serve no particular purpose and is, in fact, a hindrance for survival. The point is signalling a superior level of strength and surplus of resources, a display of creativity simply for the purpose of doing so.
Now, this seems like a viable explanation, particularly since software development requires a level of craftsmanship which would allow a developer to – dare I say: Show off the size of his tail?