what we've got

Is there a text in this class?

It seems self-evident to think that our tastes in literature and our interpretation of texts is grounded in our unique selves. The meaning and effect we find in reading is the sum of our parts, or even more so, created and sustained through an unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated configuration of our individual personality, experiences and background.

I remember hearing as a child that each snowflake had a unique design, and later seeing that most wonderfully demonstrated in those unforgettable photos of microscopically-enhanced individual snowflakes, their geometric, symmetrical details organised into mind-boggingly endless possibilities. And then being told – you’re as unique as that snowflake, beautiful and individual.

Thinking more broadly, such beliefs are probably sustained through a necessity of considering ourselves as individuals, a sign of how far our ego protects us by identifying us as special amongst a morass of different, sometimes competing, external forces, including other people. Whatever the reason, it’s permeated our culture for some time, and we may remember finding it illustrated in the snowflake example from our shared cultural heritage.*

You might reasonably think that as a unique snowflake (leaving the beauty aside) that there would be very little consensus when it comes to interpretation. Following this through, as individuals, we experience meaning and effect as relative to our persona. Extended logically, we should all generate different interpretations, have different tastes, given that we have uniquely individual lives.

But we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes (at least when it comes to interpretation of literary texts).

Some time ago, the literary critic and theorist Stanley Fish ran some experiments with his class to see the extent to which they agreed on details of the texts they read. (His experiment and results can be read in his work, Interpreting the Variorum and the brilliantly titled, Is There a Text in this Class?). What he found, in brief, was that there was a large degree of consensus within what became known as ‘interpretative communities‘. These communities shared common ideas, backgrounds, experiences: they might, for example, have taken a class on Romantic Poets before they read Blake; or their economic and social circumstances may have been similar; they may also be aware of the authorial intent (although the usefulness of this is another matter). Fish’s work is quite old now, but it’s still relevant, and highly influential.

Despite the division of people into communities, his work shows us that our interpretations and tastes are largely a product of the social groups in which we sit – our ‘uniqueness’ does not, at least in these terms, extend to an indivisible relativistic singular – a person, a ‘unique and beautiful snowflake’. This helps explain why some books become classics, or even that some are published at all – because an agent or publisher will decide what they think the market will like. That market is just another interpretative community. What is more, those books, when published, are no less subject to the writer’s own contract with his or her interpretative community; ideas, inspiration and so on are a product too of the community in which the writer belongs (the notion of intertextuality is useful here).

It doesn’t mean that our take on books and our reading is not valuable, not least to ourselves. Rather, it means that your reading in a broader sense is a product of the interpretative communities – for there will be more than one – in which you reside. Reading (and writing), far from being a solitary endeavour, might be more social than we first think.

* In this case I mean, a Western one; I suspect but don’t know for sure if this idea exists elsewhere in quite the same way.

Back to Black

I remember recently reading a sniffy article on the use of lyrics from an Amy Winehouse song, ‘Love is a Losing Game’ as a way of introducing accessible and commonplace ‘poetry’ to novices, undergraduates in this case, embarking upon a close reading of poetry for an exam. Untypically outmoded for The Guardian, it suggested that these lyrics would compare unfavourably with the other poets on the syllabus, including Walter Raleigh.

Have you heard her lyrics? – I thought. Have you reckoned at their poetry? Her lyrics are not always as good as ‘Love is a Losing Game’ – in some cases, they are better. In ‘Back to Black’ we find in its lyrics many of the elements of poetry clearly identifiable, employed with sophistication – and they’re beautifully effective, too. Here are the lyrics in full, and then I’ll do a quick close reading of some of the most salient bits as I see them:

Back to Black – Amy Winehouse

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
Me and my head high
And my tears dry
Get on without my guy
You went back to what you knew
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I’ll go back to black

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to…

I go back to…
us

I love you much
It’s not enough
You love blow and I love puff
And life is like a pipe
And I’m a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to (x2)

Black
Black
Black
Black
Black
Black
Black
I go back to…
I go back to…

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to…

We only said good-bye with words
I died a hundred times
You go back to her
And I go back to black

First of all, there are local instances of poetic language. In the second verse/stanza we find: ‘And I tread a troubled track’. The repeated use of the sounds ‘tr…’ at the beginning of more or less successive words is a sound equivalent of the steps she takes, an aural approximation of her path of recurring steps, one after the other, that lead her ‘back to black’. (Important for the undergraduate, it’s called ‘alliteration’ and along with assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds, often at the beginning of works – and a technique best used sparingly.)

What precisely does ‘black’ mean in this song? An advanced paper might argue whether this is an example of metonym or metaphor (do we literally go back to ‘black’?) but we understand that ‘black’ represents or stands in for depression, bleakness and unhappiness. And widening the poem’s use of poetic language, we find that Winehouse rhymes ‘black’ with ‘back’ in that recurrent motif, suggestive of the monotony, inevitability even, of her return to darkness as a result of the loss of her lover. The verbal nearness of ‘back’ and ‘black’ echo the tired movement from happiness to sadness as he returns to his ‘old safe bet’.

But this is not just a poem, it’s a lyric, and just as theatre loses some of its power when not performed, so this song is diminished when read solely as poetry divorced from its music. (If you can use Spotify, the link is at the bottom). When Winehouse sings: ‘And I’m a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside’ much of the power is lost without its vocal incarnation, her intonation reminiscent of the path a penny might take as it rolls around the sides of the pipe, like a water drop gradually slipping down a drain, or one of those circus motorcyclists that trace an ever decreasing circle around a turning wall as they brake and slowly come to a halt. In another example, present in the doleful repetition of the single word ‘black’ several times in the middle eight, perhaps more obvious in the way it achieves its effect, but no less powerful for it.

I’m not the first to discuss the matter and the whole idea that song lyrics represent some of our most vibrant poetry is an oldie, and a goodie. I could have written this for a number of songs – the lyrics to Elvis Costello’s ‘Beyond Belief’ are astonishing, and I’m a fan of Midlake’s lyrics on their new album, too. No doubt you’ve your own examples. Which all goes to show – we’re lucky in our post-modern age that we are not limited by the genre and perceived seriousness of the artform when we consider what is, and what isn’t, art – and poetry.

Link via Spotify: Amy Winehouse – Back To Black

Me in a silly hat: first day on the slope

I’ve never been snowboarding before until recently – but I can already tell that it’s going to be a central part of wintersports out here in Haute-Savoie. I loved it!

With my educationalist cap on (a little dusty and frayed at the edges, but still usable) its learning curve at these early stages has a pleasing simplicity to it. You start learning on one edge (either the toe or heel edge) and then the other. When you’re competent at this (that is, you don’t fall down every single time you get up on the board) you are ready to turn.

When you turn, you begin on one edge and when you are past the turn you switch to the other. This three step process – from (say) toe edge, heel edge, then using both during a turn – has an obviousness about it, an inevitability in the linear transition from one stage to the next. At least in theory. Doing it is another matter. I can tell you it’s a steep learning curve but once I’m past the stage of turning more than falling over, I’m on my way to becoming a ‘boarder’. That means I’m allowed to comment upon the quality of the ‘powder’ – but you won’t find me saying ‘gnarly’.

Even from my short time on the board, I can say it’s a sport that depends upon confidence. Take the turn, again. On a board you’re used to using the edges for control, of direction and speed. But at one point on the turn you need to accept the fact that the board will be – albeit momentarily – facing down the slope and going faster than you might like (for a noob like me, anyway).

What you realise quickly is that it’s about confidence. You need to let go. It’s a bit like sleep; you can’t forcibly will yourself there, you have to wait and let it wash over you. In those tiny moments when it all fits into place on the board, it’s unforgettable. You’ve just got to try not to want it too much, lest it doesn’t come again easy. In that, it feels just like the rest of life.

Jennie Lee building, home of ed-tech at the OU

I’ve just finished the final of three courses in my masters in online and distance education (MAODE) from The Open University (pending failure and resit, which right now seems horribly pessimistic). It feels good to finish, especially as I got married half-way through the first course and moved from the UK to Switzerland and then France at the beginning of the third course. My background is in American short story minimalism, so learning the approach, methods and practices – immersing myself in the new discourse, one might say – was in itself fascinating, before I even got started on the subject-related stuff.

Study can become addictive, so I’m wondering what I can study next. Perhaps a geology course might interest me, since I’ve become a bit obsessed by mountains; or there’s always photography? Or perhaps abandon formal study altogether. I’ve certainly decided to do this for the subjects that are central to my academic and work life. Not that there isn’t any more to learn: but I want to write and research independently. Shorter courses can broaden my learning in those areas that I’m inexperienced in. I might even doth some maths.

But for now, I’m weaning myself off study with the lighter but by no means less interesting The Great Courses ‘Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre’ DVD set, which discusses a selection of some of the great artists and their work. Then I’ve got their ‘How to Listen to and Understand Great Music’. And there’s French, too – and… well, almost everything I do seems to involve learning at some level.

I’ve my peers on H800 to thank for making it such a happy, interesting and useful experience. Many of us used Twitter for sharing ideas, tips and support. Now it’s a bittersweet feeling to symbolically close the Tweetdeck tab where I had kept a search for the hashtag ‘H800′ so I could follow what people were writing about it. Bye bye MAODE, hello everything else.

A perceived weakness of the social bookmarking tool Delicious might otherwise be considered a strength. It may be criticized for failing to encourage the kind of participation or sense of community that alternatives such as Digg or StumbleUpon facilitate, but this has its benefits: Delicious might just be the right tool for those learners who struggle with active participation and collaboration.

Collecting and sharing links, perhaps with a common purpose in mind – an assignment, or project – is a more neutral activity than, say, contributing to an article on a wiki or discussing a topic in a forum. As such, this might be helpful in controlling the anxiety that is often associated with participation online – that our point might be undermined by our would-be ‘smarter’, better-informed peers. Sharing links requires no carefully expressed validation, no editing of others’ work or the offering of an opinion which may be gainsayed. The user is offering little more than ‘I found this useful, and you might, too’ when they share the link, yet their participation is tangible and calls for a direct engagement with the activity.

Paradoxically, it’s Delicious’ paucity of collaborative features, combined with its ability to do its task well, that makes it a good place to start to collaborate. As a tool primarily dedicated to the collection of shared links, Delicious does not have the functionality to discuss the idea further: the user can use ‘comments’ to add notes, but there need be nothing more than the kinds of metadata that make the links more specifically focussed, and it can’t sustain a complex dialogue.

That said, finding and sharing links is not entirely free from value: no choice is, no matter how innocent we may think of it. Even tags are an evaluation of sorts. As a result, those concerned with their choice of tags may be anxious that they’re finding the right bookmarks and tagging them in the ‘correct’ way. Here, the idiosyncratic nature of folksonomies could be positively employed. The learner can tag their bookmark with a word or phrase grounded in their personal way of organising links, but which also might be useful for others, helping offsetting arguments about which are the ‘correct’ tags. If it works for you, it might work for others. What’s more, there are often suggested tags when bookmarking, which is instructive in helping the learner understand how bookmarks might be classified. This could be usefully accompanied by a set of agreed tags for the group, a process that so often brings order to the potential chaos.

There’s a limit to how far this might be called a rich collaborative activity and such a process does not capture the flavour of much meaningful online participation we find elsewhere. However, using Delicious to encourage participation in those learners reticent to engage might not be an end to online collaboration, but it might be a beginning.

Men and women, I should say

How did people emigrate before the web? With difficulty, surely. It’s been useful for almost every step and some of our move would have been impossible I feel without it, at least in the time we had. Of course, underpinning all the technology were two people filling boxes, completing forms, driving miles and pulling the levers and pressing the buttons. But the web has been outstandingly useful for several particular reasons. Here’s a quick fire list in no particular order – I’m certain I’ve left some things out – but like Kane’s gang (as if you’ve forgotten!) it’s what we’ve got:

Interviewed for job online. Without Jennie getting a job for the UN none of this would have happened. In her application she sent all documents online; underwent a test that was performed over the net; was interviewed via web-based video conferencing; and finally sent the medical / admin documents in PDF form to Kuala Lumpar for processing.

Google Docs for a to-do/resources list. This was invaluable and still is. It’s not as complex as something like specific to-do collaborative tools like RemembertheMilk, but it worked beautifully. Simple crossing things out with strikethrough was enough to say they’ve been done. We also collected resources, figures, phone numbers and so on here and worked on independently and together.

Synchronising weblinks using FoxMarks. We independently found various links as we browsed the web, hungry for a fix on our new country. I set up all computers with the favourites tool Foxmarks, regardless of operating system, to synchronise the links we dropped into a ‘Moving on’ folder in our browser. Worked well when Google Docs (eventually) became swamped. Sometimes we used Delicious, but not as often as I thought we would.

Sign-up service for moving. There are a handful of agencies online who make it easier to move by you entering some details and they doing some work for you, like letting the gas company know you need a meter reading and so on. We used these with partial success – sometimes the manual way is best.

Royal Mail’s redirection service. We have mail redirected and using this service meant we didn’t need to trundle down to the post office and take our identity documents, they check details online. We’d need the legs for the thousands of times we climbed the ladder to the loft to pack its contents.

Skype telephony. We bought a UK online number, so our friends and family in the UK would only need to call a local (to them) phone number. Skype has worked really well so far and since we’re not settled for a few months, goes where we go. It also works nicely on my iPhone, which saves us a fortune. We were able to stay in touch with our regi (estate agent) easily and without incurring further mobile phone costs.

Keeping the social network alive. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, this blog – all are things we use to share our experiences here and keep in contact with others. This is important when you’re away from home, and I’ve found it really useful to have some sense of continuity in terms of who I’m speaking with (especially when discussing the cricket, which is only available online here via the BBC’s wonderful TMS – this feels like I’ve never left!).

Transferring money. We now have to work with several currencies – US dollar, Swiss francs, Euro and GB sterling – and so being able to transfer them quickly online (and often without charge) helped us enormously. Of course, this isn’t just something you need when you move. What’s more, currency conversion rates online are always up-to-date.

Checking in online when flying. You’ve used this already, maybe, but printing out a boarding pass for flying seems novel still, and helped get things going when we were a rush: Jennie flew to Geneva and back the same day to secure our place in France.

Google chat. Sometimes email isn’t enough, and you need to make decisions through synchronous discussion. Google’s online chat, via GoogleMail, was vital for the hundreds of discussions we had when not together.

Removal quotes online. You enter your details and you get quotes from multiple removal companies. This helps get the best price of course, and is also a necessary part of claiming for expenses.

Google Maps and Google Earth. Knowing where you’re going to live and its local amenities used to something you needed to find out when you turn up. And although it’s still a thrill to find new restaurants and bars, knowing where the bank or petrol station is not so much fun. What’s more, we used Google Maps to find directions. If only it plugged into…

Satellite navigation. We bought a TomTom One XL, and this has the advantage of connecting to the web and downloading changes that users have made to the maps. In short, it corrects the errors that sat navs are annoyingly prone to, especially in areas under construction. Worked like a dream, although I wouldn’t say that it’s perfect even now.

It has helped me learn a new language. There is an embarrassment of excellent online resources for learning French. Some of the best are About.com‘s guide (with the inaptly named – for a grammarian at least – Laura Lawless); and the BBC comes up trumps again. Although not an online app per se, Genius (for the Mac, free download) helped with remembering verbs.

The web helped us find a place to live. We searched a variety of sites to find somewhere temporary in Geneva, and later, more permanent in France. In the case of the temporary accommodation, the website came with an interactive 3D tour of the apartment. Whilst this is pretty advanced I admit, all the websites we used to find a home had pictures. The difference was that we could save time and money using this process.

Hi-resolution floor plans. Houses in many European countries – alas, but excluding the UK it seems – come with detailed architectural plans, even those you just plan to rent. They locate plug sockets, light switches and so on and give precise details of every measurement both interior and exterior. Not sure if your sofa is going to fit? The plans will help tell you. These took seconds to send over email and illustrate how the communication between people in different countries is made so much easier.

Shopping. Inevitably we had to buy several things, oddments which we’d never got before or those things we needed to replace and pack. Ikea figured heavily in equipping our new place. Their website – intuitive, well-organised and with clear illustrations, it’s a good example of how we saved hours browsing online rather than visiting stores. What’s more, it provides real-time stock levels, is an example of how you can use the web to plan your deliveries or visits.

Freecycle. Even if you’re moving up the road you’ll still have a lot of stuff you’ll want to recycle. We used Freecycle online to invite people to collect some of the stuff we didn’t need or couldn’t find room for. They came in the night and collected, as if whisked away by recycling fairies, without us even knowing.

It would be no surprise to learn that one of the first things we did in Geneva was buy a 3G USB dongle to get us online (expensive but very fast).

Do you only use these things when emigrating? No, we use them now for a variety of reasons. It’s only together that they make sense as vital tools for moving country. Did we still print stuff out? Sure we did. Somewhere we’ve got a file with print outs of architectural plans, photos and the like. But this was as much as habit and security than anything: some lay untouched and unread. Is there anything I’ve missed – I expect so – even as I write I think of all the music and podcasts I’ve downloaded, some of which are about Geneva, or local news programmes and such. And booking tickets and… well, all those things we use the web for all of the time.

Now, if the BBC can get iPlayer available outside of the UK I’d pay the licence fee happily…

un pantouflard

I’m supplementing my French language learning through a combination of audio and print (ie, through television and newspapers). This occasionally culminates in exposing the locals to my awkward grasp of their beautiful language. I enjoy learning, but it can be quite formal and detached.

But it isn’t always learning how to say: I want to take their book to them tomorrow evening. Today I came across a new word which comically sums up what some accuse me of doing all day in Geneva since I have left my day job and my part-time lecturing.

The term un pantouflard means a ‘slipper wearer’ and metaphorically one who stays at home or leads an uneventful life. An uneventful life it isn’t, but I do work from home and slippers are occasionally involved.

Here’s a definition from About.com:

Definition: (inf adj) – uneventful, quiet

Nous avons passé une journée pantouflarde. – We spent an uneventful day.

un pantouflard – stay-at-home person.

Related: une pantoufle – slipper; pantoufler – (inf) to laze/lounge around at home

I understand that it’s terms like this that mean you’re really getting to grips with the intricacies of commonplace language – although I’m far from that – and a reminder that a new language will bring its idiosyncrasies and new expressions. I’m looking forward to learning more.

As well as learning French and finish my Masters degree in educational technology, I hope to work in Geneva as a freelance consultant working with the web, education, and editing and writing. So I could hardly be called un pantouflard but if some people persist, well, I’m too busy loafing to care.

Myself and Mary Thorpe gave a presentation to the Arts Faculty at The Open University this week, on social networking. We began with an overview of what social networking means and how it works, and discussed the specific applications of social networking to education, using the Social Networking for Practice Learning (SNPL) project as a focus.

Giving this kind of presentation raised some interesting questions. Our role, I think, was to outline the potential benefits of social networking – but stopped short of ‘selling’ the idea. I encourage healthy scepticism when considering these tools (and indeed most ideas) but there’s a thin line between being an evangelist for some of the tools you think could make a difference; and offering some objective, informative outlines which could then be picked up by those actually teaching using the tools. Anyway, I hope we got the balance right – here’s the presentation, some of which has been culled from the recent Learn About Fair presentation I wrote about earlier.

They say you should never go back, but I was dismayed to find my old alma mater (a phrase you’d never hear around those parts) had become dishevelled, unkempt. Some of windows of Sir Frank Markham School were smashed and boarded up; a hideous bright blue paint slapped on to cover the graffiti and damage; and, worse, it was covered in high fences, more a prison camp, it appears, than place for learning and making friends.

The balcony of Woughton Campus

And what a school it once was! I was sporty and smart-ish, so I fell into both camps and enjoyed my time there. The campus was clean and new and, compared to the North London home that I had left to live in Milton Keynes, full of green spaces and fresh air.

A field to you, the scene of footballing triumphs for me

But seeing them again – well, those spaces that had witnessed some of my most pivotal teenage moments now felt desecrated. Although I was powerless to stop the memories from washing over me, it felt a mistake to sully them with an atmosphere that I’d rather forget. Maybe it’s me – the field where we once played football every lunchtime looked bare and uncared for and the wall – where we’d meet – seemed smaller than before, less imposing.

A new Academy nearby, still a building site but with construction well under way, puts my old school in the shade, quite literally; and metaphorically, too, since it’s hard to imagine how young people can be happy and learn in such an environment. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m just being old and sentimental and being old I shouldn’t be surprise that things change, and sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.         Donald Rumsfeld

Another world is possible

Martin Weller has written a though provoking blog post on the possibility that sometimes it’s detrimental to have too much information. It builds on the work of James Surowiecki on the wisdom of crowds and applies to Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq. Martin argues that many people were opposed to the war because they had too little information. Blair, on the other hand, had too much and faltered under its weight. To quote Martin’s post:

Blair had an excess of information, while the crowd, deprived of all the intelligence reports he was privy to, had been forced to see the salient features of the war, and had instinctively judged it to be ‘wrong’. […] In short, Blair suffered from a deficit of ignorance, which enabled the crowd, lacking the vast quantity of (meaningless) intelligence to isolate the significant factors in the build up to the war.

One way of approaching this is to think of what happens when we don’t have too much information. One suggestion raised in Martin’s post, implicitly perhaps, is the role instinct, and its bedfellow intuition, play in decision making. It’s implied that an absence of information leads to an action based upon instinct and intuition rather than rational consideration: the people “instinctively judged it to be ‘wrong’”. Despite an acknowledgement that instinct plays a part in our daily life, there are clear problems with the irrational approach it creates; and I don’t think anyone would suggest that a war could be waged on a ‘hunch’. So clearly we need some information.

So how do we know when we’ve got too much? Perhaps the answer is that you can only have too much information when a decision is wrongly made because there was too much information… ah, hold on, that’s circular and won’t do. There will never be a case when it’s not true.

This tempts us to try to quantify the amount of information at which a mistake is inevitable. This is difficult. Try answering this kind of question: when does a man become bald? Is their a tipping point at which what’s recognised as a head full of hair suddenly becomes bald? Probably not, just as we can’t say Blair reading 99 documents is fine, as long as he doesn’t read 100. So we can’t put a number on it. But that’s ok, because we can often speak about things that we can’t quantify or define: we still have baldness and we still have art, respectively.

What’s more problematic is how far the idea of having too much information isn’t so much the product of deduction but of induction. In other words, it’s not a repeatable, observable phenomenon that based upon a rational investigative process. We can’t possibly hope to know even some of the many variables involved in the journey to war and so we can’t possibly suggest with any certainty that too much information is a root or central cause of Blair’s mistake. In a recent elaboration on the problem, Martin suggests that having too little information may sometimes lead to innovation because some are stifled by rules and expectations. (This is a different kind of information from that in the Blair example; I haven’t touched upon that difference here, despite its importance.)

But we can’t be sure that is the cause because we haven’t… got enough information. Besides, innovation has taken place in areas where a great deal of information is present (just as innovation doesn’t take place where there is too little information, too). The problem is when we’re finding out information is that there are things that we know; things that we don’t; things that we know we know and things that we don’t know we don’t know. We will never know some things and other things we’ll never know that we never knew them. This is why Rumsfeld, for all his faults, is on to something.

It is the job of politicians, aided by their public staff, to pursue the ends of knowledge in order that the effect of the unknowns does not unduly affect the result of the decision making process. So, Blair can’t leave it to chance that the thing he doesn’t know might tip the scales (what he knows he doesn’t know); or that there is an avenue he’s yet to pursue of which he’s so far unaware (what he doesn’t know he doesn’t know).

We could therefore argue is that Blair had too little information, for if he knew what the crowd knew then he wouldn’t have acted as he did. More probably is that he knew but ignored it, and that’s where individual judgement comes in. But in order to learn this doesn’t mean that he needed to unlearn everything else. The motives, thoughts and feelings of the crowd, like everything else, can be distilled and presented as evidence amongst a store of other evidence – which he can choose to listen to or ignore.

It’s implied that ignorance – in Martin’s case, the absence of exposure of the crowd to military intelligence – inculcates a more straightforward process of decision making, one that, unfettered by the complexities of competing paths, is somehow more authentically engaged with the truth. But I don’t think that such simplicity is true or desirable, not least because it will give ill-informed politicians a chance to wriggle out of uncomfortable questions about the decisions they make. Ignorance might be bliss but it’s not a firm footing for political decisions.

I’m clearly doing Martin’s post a disservice when I take issue with a number of points a short blog post like his cannot possibly deal with. I might be guilty, too, of focussing too intently on the idea of instinct, which wasn’t the point of Martin’s post I don’t think. In another blog discussion on Martin’s ideas which claims that lack of an adequate filter is the problem, not the information itself (but which amounts to the same thing – too much information) he suggest he might ‘expand on this in a blog post’ and maybe even a book. There is certainly room for one.