The University of Big Disappointments

During a recent visit to the University of East Anglia (UEA) I recalled my first sight of it in 1966 when I was 14. I remember it well: I was cycling with a friend along Colney lane one spring day. This lane overlooks the Yare valley in which the university is situated. As we cycled along the lane a gap opened up in the hedge and revealed a vista across the valley and a panoramic view of the huge university complex spread out below us. At that stage no news of its construction had reached me and so it was a complete surprise. Nearby Norwich, where I lived, is a medieval town with an unsystematic warren of ancient narrow streets lined, by and large, with a hodge-podge of old and traditional looking buildings. The sudden and unexpected appearance of this radically modern building was the shock of the new. With raised walkways and its clean unusual elemental architecture it could have been a scene from 60s sci-fi: Perhaps I was looking at some precognitive vision of Norwich as it would look in the centuries to come, or perhaps aliens had come to Earth and started building a city in the rural hinter land of Norwich. For a teenager who was well into science, technology and progress this building was like seeing the future now. It was an exciting place; an ultra modern factory of knowledge and science, the cutting edge of progress.

But now whenever I visit the University with its streaked and stained concrete surfaces a slightly somber mood hangs over the place, a mood very similar to that which I associate with my visits to Sizewell ‘A’ nuclear power station. Just like Sizewell ‘A’ power station UEA is symbolic of many of my childhood hopes and dreams connected with 60s modernism. I was in my teens in the second half of the sixties so perhaps I can be excused of a youthful optimism that bought into the modernist dreams of the sixties. In particular I was convinced that when I got older:

1. Everything would be atomic powered and electricity would be too cheap to meter. In any case I believed practical fusion power to be just round the corner.

2. There would be regular tourist flights to the moon. The American moon program was well under way and gave credence to such a notion.

3. Artificial intelligence would be on a par with human intelligence.

4. Physicists would have discovered a theory of everything.

Of course, none of these dreams have been fulfilled: Atomic power has many hidden costs and has been dogged by an almost superstitious dread that nuclear energy is akin to promethean fire. The problems with fusion power have and remain very difficult to crack. Space travel is an enormously expensive investment and (unlike the Columbian frontier) holds little prospect of an economic payback. Marvin Minski’s AI triumphalism has been replaced by a successor who says that our attempts to emulate human level AI may resemble an ape climbing a tree and thinking he has made the first steps to the moon. Human beings may not be bright enough to solve the problems needed to implement human level AI. That may also go for a Theory of Everything: as the quip goes, String Theory seems to be smarter than we are.

The modernist optimism of the sixties is understandable: Given the enormous strides in flight, transport, electronics, space travel, computers, warfare, biochemistry and physics that had been made in my father’s life time between 1912 and 2004 it is easy to forget that an unexpected law of diminishing returns can kick in anytime. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb rightly warns us, straight extrapolation is always a dangerous thing in the face of non-linearities and the utterly unforeseeable. The hidden costs of atomic power could never have been guessed at and who would have anticipated the postmodern diffidence associated with science and hi-tech. The distances between the staging posts of outer-space increases exponentially and defies the divide and conquer strategy of incremental space hopping. Human level AI may be up against staggering complexities that we have little hope of emulating. And is there any a priori reason why the fundamental physics of the cosmos should prove scientifically and intellectually tractable?

All good reason, then, to throw oneself on the providence of God you might think, a providence encoded perhaps in the apparently random. Well yes, I agree, but then don’t forget what religion has offered us recently: the Toronto blessing, gold fillings, Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, bullying authoritarianism, religious cults, spiritual spin, crowd hysterics, Young Earth Creationism, dogmatic theological casuistry, an assortment of conspiracy theorists, Barry Smith’s failed millennium prognostications, failed prophecies, failed healings, gnosto-dualism, legalism, fideism…. Religion has no grounds to crow.

Ross-well

I wouldn’t normally comment on the furor over the recent school boy antics of Ross and Brand (But did I laugh – like a good schoolboy myself I laughed AT Ross and Brand as they merrily got themselves into trouble. So carried away were they by their mischief making that they never saw the visit to headmaster’s office coming!). However, the incident has brought to my mind an interview some years ago on one of Jonathan Ross’ shows when his guest was a UFO abductee. Heck! I thought, Mr. Ross is going to have a field day here with some very cruel humor. Well, I didn’t turn out like that at all.

I was already familiar with abduction case in question and I could probably find it in my “Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters”: Two young men are travelling in car at night on a country road. They briefly see a strange illuminated object in the sky which disappears behind a shoulder of land. They round a corner and there it is right in front of them dropping a curtain of light onto the road. Too late to stop they pass into the curtain. They seem to come straight out the other side, except that whilst passing through the curtain, the interior of the car appeared to momentarily drop away into a silent blackness. Later they find they have ‘lost time’ and hypnotic regression reveals an abduction experience..blah.. blah..blah. The two men are deeply disturbed, sometimes returning to the site, taking measurements as they attempt to unravel the mystery of their experience and try to come to terms with what has happened.

So, Mr. Jonathan Ross now steps onto the stage of this mysterious drama. True to form Ross started with some rather jocular comment. However, from the demeanor of the abductee Ross was very quick to pick up that this was a man whose experience had left a very deep impression and was in state of extreme disquiet. Ross changed tack quickly and questioned his guest thoughtfully and sensitively. Ross' own demeanor suggested that he was now taking the man seriously, a man who perhaps needed help. Gone was Ross’ sly and knowing looks into the camera. In this instance Ross showed great sensitivity to the man’s plight. Whatever the nature of the experience it was clear that it was real in the sense that it was very real to Ross’ guest. It may not have been ‘real’ real, but the man didn’t look as though he was lying and Ross understood that. Ross as a presenter has, no doubt, very good person to person skills when he wants to, and his quick change of tack is a sign of Ross' ability to quickly size up a person . In this case his assessment is evidence of the genuineness of his interviewee. Perhaps Ross himself was taken aback by the gravitas of his guest.

This story does suggest that at heart Ross isn’t a cruel man; and does he need someone to put a good word in for him at the moment! However, more disturbing is the import of the story brought to us by Jonathan Ross’ guest. It is an apt Halloween story containing a dark warning that the demonic still marches on the edge of human consciousness and dreams, if in an altered garb matching the culture of our day. What is the nature of this mysterious world, this archetypical reality? If I could answer that one I’d know the difference between noumnena, cognita and dreams.

As Authur C Clarke once said in one of his books. “There are forces in the universe of which we know nothing ....such knowledge is not meant for man”*. If an atheist can say that, then on this Halloween evening the take home lesson is: stay well clear of the occult in whatever guise it is found.

*This was said by Clarke in connection with spontaneous human combustion in his chronicles of the strange and the mysterious.

A Visit to Fountains Abbey

We arrived at Fountains Abbey in the late afternoon of a cool damp autumn day. A somber brooding mood pervaded the ruin. To me these atmospheric relics of past human activity seem to be the clues in a cosmic puzzle, almost as if I were in some total emersion game punctuated with provocative cryptic pointers here and there as to the meaning of the human predicament: “Here is your next clue….”

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This vast derelict monastery was occupied for nearly four hundred years; the monks must have thought it would go on until kingdom come, but as with so many human endeavors they had no hope of foreseeing the vicissitudes of change. We look on the Abbey now and listen to the audio guide, barely able to connect with the motives and thinking of the men (yes all men) who built and maintained a community in a culture whose world and raison d’etre was so different from our own: in fact today we have all but lost the concept of a civic raison d’etre. Even a ‘believer’ like me finds it difficult to understand the highly civic manifestation of Christianity of the middle ages, although perhaps we can see the beginings of it in religious cults like the Mormons.

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The ruin of the Fountains Abbey is perhaps the nearest medieval equivalent of Stonehenge and Karnak, all being the product of a priestly class, a sign of a labour surplus, a sign of social wealth, but not just wealth, but also evidence of a civic weltanschauung. The monks of Fountains abbey started in a small way after a spat with the clergy of York minister. Like so many before them and many after them, these devout rebels wanted to clear the ground of the religious elaborations subverted by secular wealth and cares, and make a space for themselves to think and worship in simple rustic austerity. They yearned to get back to how they thought things should be, and in order to do so they imposed the time honoured monastic solution to worldly corruption: that of separation and, initially at least, asceticism. And so the Cistercian Abbey of Fountains got started in 1132. The monks lived following the monastic community Rule of St. Benedict. This rule was authoritarian and article driven, as has been the way of many Christian communities before and after Fountains. However, a successful disciplined community ethic is often the road to wealth and a subsequent and necessary involvement in economics and politics as a result. Fountains Abbey became an economic powerhouse and grew rich with the proceeds of the wool trade; ironically in this very material way they blessed the medieval world, increasing its wealth and standard of living; for themselves at least

It is ironic that the disciplined monastic separation of the monks at Fountains in time confronted them with the real challenge that a life of grace faces: grace is not expressed in some ethereal contemplative realm divorced from material reality but in the way we handle secular affairs and cope with the temptations these affairs throw up. Riches are not in themselves wrong and a naïve faith thinks abstinence and separation to be the way of salvation. In the uneasy relation between social riches and spirituality the fault is not in the riches per se, but in a wise and detached handling of them. But as a potential channel of temptation, they too easily become our master and idol.

A Visit to Hatfield House

Hatfield house (1611) is the sister house of Blickling Hall (1624). Both were designed by the same architect and have many common architectural features; most notably the very characteristic “Tower of London” style lead domed turrets. However unlike Blickling Hall, a National Trust property, Hatfield House is still owned by its hereditary peerage. It does, moreover have a very significant place in British history; tradition has it that in the grounds of Hatfield house Elizabeth I received news of her accession to the throne.

Entry to the hall for touring visitors is literally by the backdoor. Naturally enough the back of the house, although not unattractive, is not as grand as the front. In fact the rear of the building with its sheer plain sides presents a rather forbidding impersonal aspect, an aspect that makes few concessions to the eye and a restrained conscious boast to the visitor. We were not, unfortunately, shown the front of the house and so I could only imagine the view of the privileged visitor who approaches from this side. As with Blickling the frontal façade of Hatfield was clearly designed to speak silently about the wealth, status and taste of the owner.

When approached from their fronts both halls have the shock effect of making a sudden appearance as if revealed by magic, heightening the drama of the approach. Not to be upstaged by a huge surrounding landscape seen at a distance Blickling shields itself with a bank of trees until a turn in the road suddenly reveals the hall in all its glory. Likewise, the very long drive of Hatfield House goes over the horizon of a gentle hill whose crest when mounted has the same effect of providing a sudden shock appearance*. As the visitor continues to draw closer to the front of both houses they find themselves ultimately surrounded and embraced by the wings thus filling their vision on three sides.

The builder of Blickling hall had the disadvantage of being limited by the moated footprint of the previous structure it replaced and was thus unable to present its long side to the visitor; unlike Hatfield house whose long gallery is perpendicular to the line of approach and joins together two large wings. The immediate impression of Hatfield is that it is bigger than Blickling, although I don’t think it is as big as it looks. However, unlike Hatfield house the Blickling visitor is privileged to enter via its main door and thus can experience all the fanfare intended in the traversal of a succession of carefully partitioned spaces. In times past this was reserved only of a rich peer group; they were the people the owners of the house were trying to impress – the servants, who used the back way, weren’t worth impressing.

The people you were trying to impress – yes, that’s what made a place like Hatfield House tick and in fact, because it is owner occupied, it still does. During our tour of Hatfield House I thought of other owner occupied mansions I have visited – Holkam, Athelhampton, Somerlayton: some grand, some less grand. Strange to think that even in these days when the mystique of social position has lessened somewhat, the heredity aristocracy who go back to Norman times along with the Yeomen Gentry who rose to prominence after the back death are still amongst us. They are now a hidden class of people whose signifiers of social status, even today, take the average man into an entirely unimaginable scale of wealth. Most of us compare differences in our houses, estates, vehicles and employment, if only unconsciously, but these differences are absolutely minute compared to the scale the remnant aristocratic and gentry class are still working with. The differences in the estates of say Althelhampton and Hatfield are measured in hundreds of acres and millions of pounds. These estates have no need for strenuous genealogical research because that information is probably in the public domain anyway, sometimes embedded with characters of historical significance. To survive however, the great estates have often had to forge links (perhaps through marriage) with the owners of capital and production. Moreover, they have moved from the exalted position of an institution claiming a divine right to be served to one that assumes a more egalitarian position in the economic nexus of the nation by become a service provider; mostly through tourism.

During our tour of Hatfield House I was struck by the atmosphere of belonging, collection and ownership that pervaded the place, an atmosphere that needless to say is entirely absent in a National Trust property. Being owner occupied the stewards seem less nervous and far more relaxed about their charges than the staff of a National Trust property who do not own the property. Moreover, there is perhaps less evidence of visitor control. Even so the interior of Hatfield house is trove of priceless treasure – not least the original rainbow painting of Queen Elizabeth. But the collection is alive as it changes and grows under its owners. The owner occupied estates have a living and dynamic feel that the NT, almost by definition, cannot easily achieve. In fact chief exhibit in these owner occupied homes are the aristocrats themselves; a remnant who connect us with a bygone age thus giving us a sense of what things used to be like.

The National Trust performs a kind of house clearance service for aristocrats and gentry who are strapped for cash and decide to sell up. But the original owners are inclined to take away or sell the best pieces of their collection, as did the Marquis of Lothian at Blickling when he sold his copy of the ‘Blickling Homilies’, a book that now resides at Princeton University in America. When it comes to artifacts the job of the NT is rightfully described as preservation, preservation, preservation; that and Tourism. In contrast an owner-occupier still has an active interest in his collection in a way that only an owner can have – this gives the heredity estates a going concern and less fossilized feel about them. However, what else can the NT do but hold a priceless collection in suspended animation for the nation?

What role do the treasured artifacts in our stately homes play in the economy? Unlike assets such as an oil field or a factory they don’t appear to do anything. They don’t assist production in anyway, so whence comes their value? One role seems to be that of acting as a kind of currency. Looking at them is like looking at a million dollar bill and just like currency their value is in what people agree and believe they represent. But they are more than just the representation of wealth. They are less a paper money stash than a gold reserve, an end in themselves. It is wrong to think that valued things only have a value by virtue of the end they serve. There are some objects that we regard as an end in their own right rather than a means. The end of the production line has been reached when we value an object for its own sake.

So why do we value historical artifacts so much? Being beautiful one-offs they are, of course, a demand in short supply. But why is it so breathtaking to come close to an artifact like the rainbow picture of Queen Elizabeth? She herself would have seen and commented on the picture and so it is an artifact with which we can connect with the past, a means by which we can come within one link of a prestigious character from history. And history Matters. Why? Because we care about and work for futures that will ultimately become history. We will be judged by the history we create. The passing of all human doings into the resin block of history is part of the human predicament.

Footnotes
* I'm not sure if this is correct as it is a conclusion is based on a half remembered observation.

Wedding Photos

The photos of my daughter's wedding are now available on
http://www.ashtonlamont.co.uk/client-area/amy-po/index.html
Some samples:

Family History

My mother (seen above with my father, many, many years ago) has recently moved into a residential care home for the elderly. Whilst clearing her house of stuff I found an employer's reference (pictured below) given to her when she finished her work as an operator on a decoding machine at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre during World War II. The reference intriguingly reads:

Foreign Office S.W.1
30th August, 1945

I have pleasure in stating that Miss M. J. Coby was employed in this Department from 22.11.43 to the present time when her services were no longer required owing to the termination of the work for which she had been engaged.

At the conclusion of her employment her grade was temporary assistant at a salary of £3:8:0 a week (exclusive of war bonus).

During service with the Department she performed her duties in a very satisfactory manner.

During her service she was employed in important and highly specialized work of a secret nature. The Official Secrets Acts preclude giving any information in connection with these duties.

At the end of the War in Europe my mother was offered work in Japanese decoding, but she wanted to get back to Norwich and her family and took the reference instead. Prior to 1974 she always referred to her time at Bletchley as “At the Foreign Office”. It was nearly 30 years after 1945 with the publication of F.W. Winterbotham’s 1974 book “The Ultra Secret” that the true significance of being “At Foreign Office” started to emerge. Even now many people who passed through World War II have never heard of Bletchley Park and its role in revealing the military secrets of Nazi Germany. On the whole German military equipment and preparation was much better than that of the Western Allies and Allied military hardware took time to catch up. Quality hardware like the Lancaster Bomber, the Flying Fortress, the Mustang, and the Spitfire Mk IX (and later Marks) were not immediately available. In fact, only right at the end of the war did Britain and America achieve tank parity with the Comet and General Pershing tanks. In the face of this lack of preparedness Bletchley Park, along with the invention of Radar, provided the Allies with a much-needed advantage in the information war. In one sense the Park was the portent of a revolutionary new power, not the power of brute force but the power of information and the ability to process it; it was ushering in the age of the computer with theoretical geniuses like Alan Turing in the vanguard. Bletchley hosted the world’s first programmable electronic computer built by Tommy Flowers – The Colossus. This computer was specially designed to find the keys needed to decode the scrambled text produced by the German's 'enigma' enciphering machine.

My mother’s time at the “Foreign Office” started with an interview in London accompanied by her mother. Even though she went as a mere short hand typist she was nevertheless asked the standard question put to potential codebreakers: Did she do crosswords? The answer to that question was 'yes' but what really mystified her was why she was given a sheet of random text and told to type it out. Presumably she reproduced it with sufficient accuracy and speed to satisfy her interviewers and was offered the job of temporary assistant. She moved to a billet in Wolverton near Bletchley (a billet she hated) and began work in Hut 8, Naval Section, on a decoding machine. The decoding machine required the keys provided by Colossus to set them up, but once set up they would turn enigma enciphered text into readable German.
Her boss was somebody she referred to as “Willy” Alexander. I not sure where the name “Willy” came from: perhaps it was nickname because it seems that the Alexander concerned was none other than Colonel Hugh O’Donel Alexander whose Wiki entry reads as follows:

In February 1940 Alexander arrived at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre during World War II. He joined Hut 6, the section tasked with breaking German Army and Air Force Enigma messages. In 1941, he transferred to Hut 8, the corresponding hut working on Naval Enigma. He became deputy head of Hut 8 under Alan Turing. Alexander was more involved with the day-to-day operations of the hut than Turing, and, while Turing was visiting the United States, Alexander formally became the head of Hut 8 around November 1942.

In October 1944, Alexander was transferred to work on the Japanese JN-25 code.

In mid-1946, Alexander joined GCHQ, which was the post-war successor organisation to the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park. By 1949, he had been promoted to the head of "Section H" (cryptanalysis), a post he retained until his retirement in 1971.

So, my mother may have even had contact with the great Alan Turing whose face she says is familiar.


During her work she frequently saw references to U boat numbers embedded in the decoded text her machine was generating and understood enough about the tactical consequences of what she was doing to realize that they were now revealed and their number was up, so to speak. Even so I don’t think even she was fully aware of the strategic importance of the messages passing through her machine. Only in retrospect, and that only with slowly dawning realization, did she understand how her apparently humble job fitted in the great scheme of things. A lesson there for us all perhaps.

Bletchley park is the historic site of secret British codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of the modern computer. It is open to the general public as a museum.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

Hut 8 has been refurbished is also open to visitors.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/489740

Getting to the Church on Time

My daughter's fiancee was obviously worried about his bride being late for the wedding service, so he ordered a Maserati Quattroporte to do the job - see above: just another excuse to publish a picture of a fast car, with glamorous blonde, on my blog.

The scheme worked because she arrived a few minutes early. Only one problem: the Bride's maids arrived ten minutes late - in a Jaguar. If Jaguar speak to me nicely I will consider erasing this post. The administration costs for removal of entries on Noumena, Cognita and Dreams is £1499.50