The four of us who had dinner on Sunday in Les Halles plunged into a very serious discussion by the time our pizzas arrived. I can't remember how it started (my colleague Nigel would tell me that if I had blogged in real-time from one of the gadgets he loves so much, like an iPhone, I wouldn't have let this memory slip), but we ended up talking about the relative understandings of freedom of speech in different countries and cultures.
One of the first things that was mentioned was how denial of the Holocaust is a crime in France and in some other European countries. I pointed out that while I find the denials both abhorrent and ridiculous, in the U.S. people would have the right to express those opinions — and let the public be the judge.
(I didn't think of Scientology as another example of this. While it is certainly a cult in my opinion, and a harmful one by most accounts, the U.S. protects their expression even to the debatable point of recognizing them as a church, while at the other end of the spectrum Germany, I think, has banned their activity and gone after their financial empire and the way they relieve credulous people of their money).
Back to what we did discuss. I made the point, without actually taking sides, that a tenet of what Americans consider freedom of speech is that it protects even expression with which most reasonable people disagree to the point of finding the ideas objectionable and pernicious. The U.S. constitution still gives the proponents of those ideas the right to express themselves, as long as they do not directly incite illegal action. In that sense, the Bill of Rights follows the position expressed by Voltaire a few decades earlier, when he wrote to someone, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write it." And today, the American Civil Liberties Union (of which I am a card-carrying member) also takes that position, although some bloggers have complained about a trend toward a form of "political correctness" among the ACLU's national board, leading it to accept some restrictions on objectionable speech — but I am not sure if those bloggers are correct or are crying wolf on the basis of scant evidence in cases whose complexities should be further scrutinized.
One should note, by the way, that in practice the American principle of protecting objectionable speech unless it directly incites lawless actions is not consistently followed, or at least not without fighting. Professors have been disciplined for expressing objectionable opinions (including Holocaust denial, or the opinion that the state of Israel was illegitimate). Facebook has banned a group called "WP forever" where "WP" stood for "White Power." If you Google "freedom of speech objectionable opinions" you will find multiple examples, as well as many thoughtful discussions of this issue by other bloggers.
Being all computer professionals of one form or another, we touched on the issue of banning the sale of some items, such as nazi memorabilia, on the Intenet, especially on eBay. If this is illegal in France but not in the U.S., and given the difficulty of ascertaining on the Internet where the seller and the buyer actually are, it is not obvious for the intermediary to police these restrictions. As a result, the safe thing for them to do may be to ban such items everywhere, thus arguably denying someone, in a country like the US, the ability to do something that is legal there because of another country's law. And one might argue, in this case, that trading nazi memorabilia is not necessarily a sign of adherence to the ideology (this may be somewhat more credible on the seller's part than on the buyer's...).
When we were discussing whether Holocaust denial should be one of the "objectionable but permitted" expressions in the U.S. sense, one of my new friends mentioned that some of the prohibitions in European countries could "prevent historians from doing their work." I replied that surely, there is a lot of serious work that historians can do without infringing on the restrictions in question. No one is talking about preventing research into how fascism arose, how it was sustained for so many years, etc. One could even study the resurgence of extreme-right groups in various countries without violating the laws against promoting or defending the deniers. So I didn't buy that argument... but the question remained whole.
Another controversy that exposed differences in national attitudes, my friends pointed out, was the issue of the Armenian genocide. This issue has been raised by several countries, including France and the U.S., while the Turkish government seems to essentially prohibit discussing this historic event, and considered the various actions in western parliaments regarding the recognition of that genocide to be meddling in its internal affairs.
Now one could accuse me of steering away from trouble in discussions, and since my companions were all Algerian, I had to say something like, "for a similar situation, look at the controversy about the Danish cartoons." The reaction, while muted and friendly, showed me that "objectionable" is quite relative, and that I still have much to learn. Of course, my acceptance of a cartoon that makes fun of another group's divinity is in part based on my atheism. I can truthfully claim that it wouldn't make any difference to me if it was a cartoon of Jesus, the Buddha, or Mohammad. But my friends thought that while the Iranian or Saudi fatwahs against the catoonist and the publishers were unjustifiable, the negative reaction in the Muslim world was understandable. Of course, based on the earlier discussion, we could all agree that saying that something should be protected free speech doesn't mean that you can't find it objectionable, but I sensed that my friends wouldn't have minded if this particular expression had been judged illegal. And I wouldn't be surprised if one could find something (perhaps along the lines of homophobic opinions) that I would find so abhorrent that my heart would wish it outlawed, while my brain would calculate that it should be protected free speech.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
"You Write Too Much!"
"Claude, you write too much," said Mohamed as we were walking from the RER exit at Les Halles toward the Fountain of the Innocents (which, incidentally, is a rendezvous point for so many people who intend to become guilty of something or another). He was talking about something he had read in this blog.
I wasn't sure how to take it, and our other two companions had a good chuckle over this statement, which made Mo spend the next ten minutes backpedaling furiously. Of course, we didn't cut him any slack. "I meant it in a good way: you write a lot!" he said, having a hard time convincing us, and probably even himself.
Last week, one of my bosses called me and said, "since you write well, I wonder if you could help me with a small task." The small task has since become a big project, but I knew that when I accepted to help her. Now, even if you're only asked to write the report for a working group, the writing doesn't just reflect the thinking — it influences it. If it is written at the very end of the project, it will only influence the thinking of the audience to whom the report is destined; but if it is written iteratively, and the working group members see some of the interim versions before they're completely done, these versions can help frame the priorities they give to different positions. That may not be exactly what Ben Franklin had meant, but there is a definite if subtle "power of the pen"!
Notwithstanding this clear opportunity to have more influence than was perhaps meant to be granted, it was diplomatic to hesitate before telling the boss that I would accept, and since she was referring specifically to another report I had recently issued, I was able to repeat a common but always serviceable and self-deprecating aphorism: "so, no good deed goes unpunished, right?"
She also asked me if this was a "hidden literary talent" of mine. I was actually not amused by that question. The extent of my writing, at least in a professional context, is easily known of anyone who cares to look at my online internal CV (we post them on a company Web site), which includes two books and a number of articles and conference papers. "Hidden" talent"? I could have replied "how about 'clearly known but not by you'?" but I actually like my boss, so I made a much more agreeable repartee and we went on with our business.
Now the interesting thing to me is that when I write, and especially in French, I adopt a much more formal style than I would normally use in speech or in letters to friends and family. And I have found that this respect for stylistic levels (which are more pronounced in French than in English) is very important when it comes to getting the reader to respect the writer. Call it "style over substance" if you wish, but it is a way to command attention.
Truth be told, I am a royal pain when I review other people's writing. But then I give myself the same amount of grief. And some people who have been through the ordeal have actually come back later and asked for more, not because they are masochists, but because they found that they had learned something useful.
I've been asked, "how did you learn to write?" I can't really tell. I think I have simply synthesized everything I've heard and read over the years, from teachers and role models and good writers, and I was perhaps more prone to find it important than the average student. But I can't tell what form of brain wiring it takes to have this inclination. And I should hasten to say that not everyone was appreciative: a French professor in 10th grade annotated a piece of homework, which consisted of writing a sonnet, with something like "some people hide their lack of artistic capability behind linguistic pirouettes." He was right, but it may not have hurt me as much as he thought.
I wasn't sure how to take it, and our other two companions had a good chuckle over this statement, which made Mo spend the next ten minutes backpedaling furiously. Of course, we didn't cut him any slack. "I meant it in a good way: you write a lot!" he said, having a hard time convincing us, and probably even himself.
Last week, one of my bosses called me and said, "since you write well, I wonder if you could help me with a small task." The small task has since become a big project, but I knew that when I accepted to help her. Now, even if you're only asked to write the report for a working group, the writing doesn't just reflect the thinking — it influences it. If it is written at the very end of the project, it will only influence the thinking of the audience to whom the report is destined; but if it is written iteratively, and the working group members see some of the interim versions before they're completely done, these versions can help frame the priorities they give to different positions. That may not be exactly what Ben Franklin had meant, but there is a definite if subtle "power of the pen"!
Notwithstanding this clear opportunity to have more influence than was perhaps meant to be granted, it was diplomatic to hesitate before telling the boss that I would accept, and since she was referring specifically to another report I had recently issued, I was able to repeat a common but always serviceable and self-deprecating aphorism: "so, no good deed goes unpunished, right?"
She also asked me if this was a "hidden literary talent" of mine. I was actually not amused by that question. The extent of my writing, at least in a professional context, is easily known of anyone who cares to look at my online internal CV (we post them on a company Web site), which includes two books and a number of articles and conference papers. "Hidden" talent"? I could have replied "how about 'clearly known but not by you'?" but I actually like my boss, so I made a much more agreeable repartee and we went on with our business.
Now the interesting thing to me is that when I write, and especially in French, I adopt a much more formal style than I would normally use in speech or in letters to friends and family. And I have found that this respect for stylistic levels (which are more pronounced in French than in English) is very important when it comes to getting the reader to respect the writer. Call it "style over substance" if you wish, but it is a way to command attention.
Truth be told, I am a royal pain when I review other people's writing. But then I give myself the same amount of grief. And some people who have been through the ordeal have actually come back later and asked for more, not because they are masochists, but because they found that they had learned something useful.
I've been asked, "how did you learn to write?" I can't really tell. I think I have simply synthesized everything I've heard and read over the years, from teachers and role models and good writers, and I was perhaps more prone to find it important than the average student. But I can't tell what form of brain wiring it takes to have this inclination. And I should hasten to say that not everyone was appreciative: a French professor in 10th grade annotated a piece of homework, which consisted of writing a sonnet, with something like "some people hide their lack of artistic capability behind linguistic pirouettes." He was right, but it may not have hurt me as much as he thought.
Holding a Hand
I saw three very pretty and well-attired girls on the métro on Monday (Line 6, Etoile-Nation), and I heard part of their conversation. At one point, they were discussing their preferred brands of nail polish. One of them casually picked up another one's fingers, held them up to look at her friend's nails, then let go of her hand.
This was perfectly natural. No one looking would have found this strange, or indicative of a potential same-sex attraction. But if two young men made a similar "intimate" gesture (let's assume they were not talking about nail polish, but they might compare their earrings, for example, and one would touch the other one's ear lobe to have a closer look), don't you think that people would find it uncommon? I think some people would wince, and many would certainly suspect them of being gay. Even gay people would probably think those two guys were gay, and some of them would be uncomfortable about such a gesture in public, even if they were gay themselves.
I am still a bit puzzled at the double standard. Is there something about our assumptions of how differently men and women interact, that causes us to have such different levels of interpretation and acceptance of similar gestures between the two sexes?
This was perfectly natural. No one looking would have found this strange, or indicative of a potential same-sex attraction. But if two young men made a similar "intimate" gesture (let's assume they were not talking about nail polish, but they might compare their earrings, for example, and one would touch the other one's ear lobe to have a closer look), don't you think that people would find it uncommon? I think some people would wince, and many would certainly suspect them of being gay. Even gay people would probably think those two guys were gay, and some of them would be uncomfortable about such a gesture in public, even if they were gay themselves.
I am still a bit puzzled at the double standard. Is there something about our assumptions of how differently men and women interact, that causes us to have such different levels of interpretation and acceptance of similar gestures between the two sexes?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Supertitles
The Houston Symphony's home, the Jones Auditorium in downtown Houston, has two screens above the stage, far left and far right, that are normally used to project close-ups of the musicians. I don't mind this, because otherwise it is pretty hard to see the woodwind and brass players from an orchestra seat. There are two cameras, apparently placed in front of the first balcony on each side, so they have a "plunging view" that allows you to see much better what's going on behind the strings.
(Actually, depending who is at the controls, you sometimes get something similar to the quality that filmed concerts may reach: that's when the video person cues a camera on a player who's going to have a particular "moment of fame" in the piece being played, and cuts to that camera at the right moment. Of course, for a concert that's filmed and then edited, it's easy to do this after the fact; but here, we're talking "real-time" camera changes, and that would be impossible if you didn't know the music. I'd like to know who does this work.)
Tonight's concert opened with the Four Seasons, for which Vivaldi wrote some cheesy sonnets that he obligingly transcribed on the score itself so you would have no doubt when the birds are signing (or even which birds they are). Well, the Symphony decided that this was important enough to project these words on the screens during the playing of the four concerti. Please don't do that again: it was distracting, and it left nothing to the imagination any more. Yes, since I first heard the Pastorale, I can recognize when the music imitates a thunderstorm, thank you. And if I hadn't been told that the notes played on the cello at some point represent the barking of the shepherd's dog, I might have missed it, but I don't think that it would have marred my enjoyment of the music. At least not more than the occasional false notes by the solo violinist, who wasn't the one announced on the program and might therefore have had too little time to rehearse properly, who knows?
The second part of the concert consisted of Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony, Italian, and Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino. Both excellent in my opinion.
I didn't expect to be disappointed by Vivaldi — but I will always remember a performance I attended in the millennium-old church of Saint Germain des Prés in Paris a few years ago. I was in the third or fourth row, the chairs were hard as usual in those churches, it was cold in there... but it was pure bliss.
(Actually, depending who is at the controls, you sometimes get something similar to the quality that filmed concerts may reach: that's when the video person cues a camera on a player who's going to have a particular "moment of fame" in the piece being played, and cuts to that camera at the right moment. Of course, for a concert that's filmed and then edited, it's easy to do this after the fact; but here, we're talking "real-time" camera changes, and that would be impossible if you didn't know the music. I'd like to know who does this work.)
Tonight's concert opened with the Four Seasons, for which Vivaldi wrote some cheesy sonnets that he obligingly transcribed on the score itself so you would have no doubt when the birds are signing (or even which birds they are). Well, the Symphony decided that this was important enough to project these words on the screens during the playing of the four concerti. Please don't do that again: it was distracting, and it left nothing to the imagination any more. Yes, since I first heard the Pastorale, I can recognize when the music imitates a thunderstorm, thank you. And if I hadn't been told that the notes played on the cello at some point represent the barking of the shepherd's dog, I might have missed it, but I don't think that it would have marred my enjoyment of the music. At least not more than the occasional false notes by the solo violinist, who wasn't the one announced on the program and might therefore have had too little time to rehearse properly, who knows?
The second part of the concert consisted of Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony, Italian, and Verdi's Overture to La Forza del Destino. Both excellent in my opinion.
I didn't expect to be disappointed by Vivaldi — but I will always remember a performance I attended in the millennium-old church of Saint Germain des Prés in Paris a few years ago. I was in the third or fourth row, the chairs were hard as usual in those churches, it was cold in there... but it was pure bliss.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Fair Science
I was a judge at the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston on Friday. Sounds grand, but it's pretty simple, really: you go around with a clipboard, talk to the kids, try to ask some meaningful questions, then you rate their projects according to a bunch of boilerplate questions that don't sound all that different, and where you have to put a mark between 0 and 10, even though you'd be hard-pressed to explain the difference between a 6 or a 7. Then you add up your marks, normalize, combine with the other judges... and then the fun starts: you're discussing why you thought project A was better than B, or the opposite, and you learn from the other judges and come to a consensus. In reality, most of the projects are good, and you end up wishing that you could make everyone win.
I saw twelve computer science projects, all done by senior students individually (for those of you not used to the US school system, this means last-year students, so they would be about 18 years old at this point).
One guy built an FTIR multi-touch interaction table, just like the one some people working for me built in the summer of 2006 at our lab in Boston. "My guys" are about 25, but this kid is 18 and in high school, and did pretty much the same thing. True, he mostly focused on the construction of the device rather than on the computer part... but that's exactly what we had found to be the challenge ourselves.
Another guy (there were a couple of young women in the group, but only a couple, as usual most of the engineering or computer science projects were presented by male students) had done a simulation of the growth of a colony of cells — inspired by Stephen Wolfram's book that claims that all complex systems in nature can be described accurately by simple computational systems. This was of course reminiscent of Conway's "Game of Life" from a Scientific American article published in 1970, which those of us who learned computer science in the 1970s were all crazy about.
Another young man presented as his science project something he's worked on for two years: a chess-playing program in which he combines several sophisticated algorithms to prune search trees (starting with the α-β procedure I learned 34 years ago...) and got his program to apparently play at grand master level.
And a fourth candidate simulated the flow of traffic through a city grid, including the fact that some drivers are more aggressive than others, comparing what happens when traffic lights are on the same cycle, as opposed to the "green wave" where the lights turn progressively green along some routes, so that in theory traffic can flow uninterrupted once released from a red light. He found that, counter-intuitively, the "green wave" method is usually not effective, unless the timing of the greens is within a very narrow range, and that it is very sensitive to how heavy traffic is: if traffic is heavy, for example, people may be slowed down just enough that they get to the next light just as it is turning red, and this repeats itself, so in fact you hit all red lights instead of all green ones.
Altogether, this was rather impressive. What fascinates me about any sort of poster sessions, science fairs, and the like, is that they ask me to judge, when in fact I feel that I am learning from the students. It's humbling to see so much talent at such an early age.
I saw twelve computer science projects, all done by senior students individually (for those of you not used to the US school system, this means last-year students, so they would be about 18 years old at this point).
One guy built an FTIR multi-touch interaction table, just like the one some people working for me built in the summer of 2006 at our lab in Boston. "My guys" are about 25, but this kid is 18 and in high school, and did pretty much the same thing. True, he mostly focused on the construction of the device rather than on the computer part... but that's exactly what we had found to be the challenge ourselves.
Another guy (there were a couple of young women in the group, but only a couple, as usual most of the engineering or computer science projects were presented by male students) had done a simulation of the growth of a colony of cells — inspired by Stephen Wolfram's book that claims that all complex systems in nature can be described accurately by simple computational systems. This was of course reminiscent of Conway's "Game of Life" from a Scientific American article published in 1970, which those of us who learned computer science in the 1970s were all crazy about.
Another young man presented as his science project something he's worked on for two years: a chess-playing program in which he combines several sophisticated algorithms to prune search trees (starting with the α-β procedure I learned 34 years ago...) and got his program to apparently play at grand master level.
And a fourth candidate simulated the flow of traffic through a city grid, including the fact that some drivers are more aggressive than others, comparing what happens when traffic lights are on the same cycle, as opposed to the "green wave" where the lights turn progressively green along some routes, so that in theory traffic can flow uninterrupted once released from a red light. He found that, counter-intuitively, the "green wave" method is usually not effective, unless the timing of the greens is within a very narrow range, and that it is very sensitive to how heavy traffic is: if traffic is heavy, for example, people may be slowed down just enough that they get to the next light just as it is turning red, and this repeats itself, so in fact you hit all red lights instead of all green ones.
Altogether, this was rather impressive. What fascinates me about any sort of poster sessions, science fairs, and the like, is that they ask me to judge, when in fact I feel that I am learning from the students. It's humbling to see so much talent at such an early age.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Some Men
On Sunday afternoon, I went to see "Some Men," a play by Terrence McNally, at the BCA in Boston. This was a last-minute decision, but I am glad I made it. The play was very well acted, and I found it good, even though the reviews pretty much dismissed it. I'm a bit confused as to why.
The reviews say the play is formulaic — that it uses every cliché in the book about the lives of gay men in the 20th century. Well, unless you've lived at Castro and 18th all your life, I don't really find those things cliché. The play has the "obligatory" scene with the dying AIDS patient in the hospital, whose friends come and visit and say pathetically hopeful and unrealistic statements about his improbable recovery. I'm sorry, but while we may have seen that same scene, in one form or another, in several books and plays and movies ("Longtime Companion" comes to mind), I defy a normal person (by "normal," I mean emotionally competent, not straight, in case there was any doubt) not to feel something move deep inside them when they watch that scene.
The play talks about the meaning of gay marriage, and how many gay people have changed their minds about it — from "who cares?" to "goddammit, yes I should be able to, so I will"; about people who led a happy life even though they weren't "out"; about internalized homophobia; about the dishonesty of the men who were married and fooling with other men on the side, but who felt they had no other choice at the time; about stereotypes and prejudices of all kinds; about the disconnect between young gays and old gays; about the wrong assumption that the younger generation has it easier across the board (ever heard of Laramie, Wyoming?); about what is and isn't courage. These may all be common themes in "gay literature," you could even say that "Some Men" is in a sense a collage of previous work by McNally (such as "Love, Valour, Compassion") and others, like novelist Ethan Mordden. But it's unfair to dismiss any work that makes you think as much as it makes you laugh... and sometimes cry.
The reviews say the play is formulaic — that it uses every cliché in the book about the lives of gay men in the 20th century. Well, unless you've lived at Castro and 18th all your life, I don't really find those things cliché. The play has the "obligatory" scene with the dying AIDS patient in the hospital, whose friends come and visit and say pathetically hopeful and unrealistic statements about his improbable recovery. I'm sorry, but while we may have seen that same scene, in one form or another, in several books and plays and movies ("Longtime Companion" comes to mind), I defy a normal person (by "normal," I mean emotionally competent, not straight, in case there was any doubt) not to feel something move deep inside them when they watch that scene.
The play talks about the meaning of gay marriage, and how many gay people have changed their minds about it — from "who cares?" to "goddammit, yes I should be able to, so I will"; about people who led a happy life even though they weren't "out"; about internalized homophobia; about the dishonesty of the men who were married and fooling with other men on the side, but who felt they had no other choice at the time; about stereotypes and prejudices of all kinds; about the disconnect between young gays and old gays; about the wrong assumption that the younger generation has it easier across the board (ever heard of Laramie, Wyoming?); about what is and isn't courage. These may all be common themes in "gay literature," you could even say that "Some Men" is in a sense a collage of previous work by McNally (such as "Love, Valour, Compassion") and others, like novelist Ethan Mordden. But it's unfair to dismiss any work that makes you think as much as it makes you laugh... and sometimes cry.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était
I was in Boston all last week, interviewing students at MIT and hosting some colleagues who were visiting from Europe, looking at some of our research work as well as that of the MIT Media Lab. The week ended with a deluge on Saturday and a brilliant day on Sunday, lots of things didn't go as planned (a ski trip to New Hampshire and a dinner with a friend both fell apart), yet the week ended well.
This was the longest time (one full week) I had spent in Boston since I left six months ago. I often fear those visits back to places where I lived. I was ambivalent about moving back to Houston in the first place. While that city has matured since I left in 2002, it's still a "wannabe" big city compared to a venerable place of both scientific and cultural excellence like Boston. But more generally, I've always faced an emotional challenge when leaving a city I love, and it seems to be related to the fear that it may be the last time. I remember feeling this in Montréal, in Madrid, in Quito, among others.
And then, some time back, I can't remember exactly when, this feeling went away. Sure, there will be a last time in every city I visited, and some of those last times must have already happened. Simone Signoret, the French actress, titled her memoirs, published in 1976, "La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était." Nostalgia is no longer what it used to be. When I realized on several occasions that I was back in a place that I had mentally said a sad "goodbye" to earlier, and so I was able to push that feeling away and replace it with a more optimistic, or perhaps just fatalistic, "until next time!"
This was the longest time (one full week) I had spent in Boston since I left six months ago. I often fear those visits back to places where I lived. I was ambivalent about moving back to Houston in the first place. While that city has matured since I left in 2002, it's still a "wannabe" big city compared to a venerable place of both scientific and cultural excellence like Boston. But more generally, I've always faced an emotional challenge when leaving a city I love, and it seems to be related to the fear that it may be the last time. I remember feeling this in Montréal, in Madrid, in Quito, among others.
And then, some time back, I can't remember exactly when, this feeling went away. Sure, there will be a last time in every city I visited, and some of those last times must have already happened. Simone Signoret, the French actress, titled her memoirs, published in 1976, "La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était." Nostalgia is no longer what it used to be. When I realized on several occasions that I was back in a place that I had mentally said a sad "goodbye" to earlier, and so I was able to push that feeling away and replace it with a more optimistic, or perhaps just fatalistic, "until next time!"
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