Andy's Glasses

There was a motor race in Buenos Aires the other day. Just two cars, neither of them with a driver. The ‘Roborace’ was for electric driverless cars. One was fine, the other driver(less) crashed early on.

But this crash wasn’t because the cameras broke or the sensors failed or some technical glitch. The car crashed because, according to the scientists, it ‘lost its temper’. Had a tantrum. Got too aggressive, overly competitive and lost it on a bend, hitting the barrier at speed.

I mean, ‘driverless car crashes’ is no big headline, no major news item, the more they test them the more crashes they have. Its new technology, a paradigm shift, there’s much to learn.

But its why this particular car crashed that is rather interesting. And that was because it was basically too human. Too aggressive. Too much (digital) testosterone. Angry. That driverless was me!!!!

They take two identical cars, same engines, bodies, lasers, cameras, everything. But the different teams program the softwear themselves. And thus they each use reactive algorithms to emulate the ‘perfect’ driver’s response. These cars are programmed to take the racing line, when to accelerate to best advantage, when to use ‘drift’, all kinds of Formula Onery that is known. But then you need an ‘edge’. An advantage. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a race, just a procession. Bit like Formula 1 before Mercedes took it over completely. And that ‘advantage’ is when to push a little harder, when to just go for the lower percentage shot, to take a risk. Calculated risk, of course. Everything they do is fucking calculated, they’re computers. And this car crashed because they’d programmed it to be a little too human. It saw its chance, got pissed off with the other driver(less) and pushed a touch too hard.

The computer must have known that at such a speed on such a bend (think ‘bionic man with that heads-up, green digital display shit’) would just know that the centripetal forces in conjunction with the co-efficient of friction from the tyres, coupled with the added acceleration (or whateverrrrrr) would cause a problem. But ‘he’ did it anyway. (I have a convention; driverless cars are ‘he’, robots wot do cleaning are ‘she’. I see nothing paternalistic or chauvinistic in that at all.) Because ‘he’ was overly aggressive.

You know when you take out an ISA or a pension and they ask you your ‘risk exposure’? I want that with driverless cars, when they arrive. You want ‘the old lady with a hat’ model (20mph all the way, cautious, kind and considerate), or the ‘Andy’ version (shouts incessantly, always pushing, never fast enough, overtakes on the inside, ignores amber-ish lights…) that’ll get you there much more quickly, but you might die on the way.

Ahhhhh, changing world.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Sutton United began their FA Cup campaign in October, beating Forest Green Rovers in front of 751 fans and a dog named Keanu. They ended it last night against Arsenal in front of 5,000. And four dogs. Don’t know their names. Sutton’s ground, Gander Green Lane, only holds that number, even though they could have filled it 6 times last night. Oh, and Sutton are a million pounds richer for the trouble. A simply massive amount of money for that level of the game. While most of us Premier League fans wouldn’t get out of bed for less than 75 million (of other people’s money that we never see and generally resent), a million quid for Sutton is a once-in-a-lifetime event that will enable so many things that ‘big clubs’ simply don’t even think about. Things that just become minor, petty-cash type things that appear at the end of the annual financial statements. Like repairing the roof in the dressing room. Cleaning the artificial pitch. Getting some hot water in the showers.

Oddly, had Sutton won (if only) despite the massive kudos and pride and wonder of such an event, it would, ironically, have set up a meeting against the only other non-league team still in the competition, Lincoln City. Which, financially, and in terms of glamour, would have been something of a disaster. You get to the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time in a hundred years and play a team no-one wants to see. However, didn’t happen. Even though Sutton were quite brilliant on the night.

What happened was that Arsenal won. Even though I didn’t want them to. I never want them to. But Sutton aren’t Bayern Munich. Not even close. Yet as everybody seemed to imply, that ‘anything less than 5 or 6 nil isn’t really good enough for Arsenal’, the mere 2-0 win they actually produced can in fact be viewed as ‘losing 3-0 to Sutton’. If you apply a kind of ‘handicapping’ system and, generally, wish to view anything Arsenal do as bad.

So now Arsenal get to play Lincoln City. And ya know what; its hard. Because the pressure on Arsenal is simply so massive its just an assumption of ‘by how many’. And teams, particularly lowly teams with absolutely nothing to lose nor fear, can play their little, darned and holey socks off for those 90 minutes (plus extra time and penalties if necessary. No replays now). Because its a ‘funny ole game’. And Lincoln will be thrilled to be playing it at the Emirates. Who cares about home advantage when you get a hot shower after the game?

Spurs saw off Fulham on Sunday. Wonderfully. Harry Kane recovered sufficiently well from last week’s scare that he scored 3. And we now face Millwall in the next round. Everyone hates them and they don’t care. And there’s actually no reason to hate Millwall. They’re just a nice bunch of neanderthal south London thugs with swastika tattoos and Stanley Knives. What’s to hate?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’ve seen two movies this week. Its pre-Oscar time so all the good films come out together. What are you gonna do? So in the week we saw Lion and last night, Hidden Numbers. Both are ‘true stories’. Ish. Both are great films, good to watch, well acted. The main difference is that Lion is, so you believe (and its a movie; its all about what the watcher believes, not what the reality was. You watch Terminator, you have to ‘believe’), pretty much the story of what happened to a little Indian kid who gets lost, and Hidden Numbers is the ‘based on true story’ of the group of previously unheralded black women who were scientists actively involved in the NASA space race (no pun) in the early ’60s.

But really the main difference was that Lion was a British film, or maybe an Aussie one, I’m not sure, and thus let’s the story speak for itself. Because it is a remarkable story of remarkable people and (so I ‘believe’) needs no additional or extra drama or distortion or ‘alternative truths’ to embellish it. Whereas Hidden Treasures is Hollywood. Its their tribute to these quite amazing women who stuck two fingers up to the prevailing sexism and massive racism (NASA was in Virginia where segregation didn’t end til the post-Kennedy years) inherent in their society, to firstly achieve academic excellence and then to actually get employed in such a white (in all senses) collared world. Its a heart-warming and wonderful tale of, here, three brilliant and wonderful women. But Hollywood is never content with mere facts, even when they often bring tears to your eyes or a flutter down your spine. Hollywood wants schmaltz. And it wants to spread it on really thick.

And thus creates certain scenes that you just know are embellishments to some degree. Bits that as well as making you go ‘oh wow!’ also make you think ‘oh, really??’

What’s even more interesting is that throughout the 50s and 60s a lot of America practised ‘segregation’, in which blacks and whites had different schools, different buses and, as they made a point so great about in the movie; different toilets. Enforced by law. Different restaurants and, the inevitable consequence, way different opportunities in education and employment. Yet I remember nothing much spoken against this in Britain. Whereas South Africa, who employed exactly the same system but called it Apartheit instead of segregation, were banned from international sports, boycotted by all trade partners, made a pariah state. As well they deserved to be. But the Americans we overlooked.

Go see both movies. They’re good. Really good.

Happy Sunday. Spurs just beat Fulham 3-0 in the Cup and I’m happy as Larry. Whoever he is.

A xxxx

I have issues with property developers riding roughshod (a strange and bizarre expression that I’ve never previously used, but may indeed use again) over planning departments, ignoring the wishes of the communities they’re so ‘benevolently’ re-building, those who really don’t want to move out, to be rebuilt, to be involuntarily ‘up-graded’. Because ‘old world’ has a charm. It generally has character, it has some history, it is comfortable and hence comforting.

And sometimes, as in the case of Manchester, that ‘old world’ is just a shit-hole that really wants burning to the ground and starting all over again. Which is precisely what Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs are trying to do. They’ve arranged funding for a fantastic new project, hotels, loads of flats, an upmarket area of bars and restaurants, all around two massive towers. Looks fab. Looks modern, affluent, charming and somewhere you’d want to go. Unless you’re from greater Manchester in which case it looks like ‘hell’. Or like ‘London’. Same difference. Who wants clean and functional when you can have Coronation Street?

The project, should it proceed, will knock down the Manchester Reform Synagogue. Oh My God. And it is my God. Except my God’s not the reform one, he’s more traditional. But they’ll build another, better, bigger, brighter one. For those who care. And they have to knock down some dirty old sleazy pub, called The Sir Ralph Abercromby. And people get really funny about pubs. Really protective and disproportionately sensitive. In an area that probably boasts 55 other drinkeries within a 3-minute walk. “Ahhhh”, they say, them locals, “but this pooob was featured in’t tv progrum, wunnit? ‘Bout them 1970s coppers”. As if being a back-drop for a third-rate drama gives you a blue plaque status. They used that particular pub because it was so shitty and hadn’t been cleaned since 1970, hence the authenticity.

We had all this when they first proposed the redevelopment of White Hart Lane. In my beloved Tottenham. And quite frankly you absolute HAVE to be a Spurs fan to have any positive feelings about the Tottenham area. Because its just horrible. No redeeming value in the entire high road. Just nasty, dingy slums. But at a mention of changing things, all of a sudden that kebab shop (one of 43), the one that was shut down by the health inspectors 17 times last year, was suddenly a ‘national heritage site’ and couldn’t be demolished. The half shop selling mouldy fruit was once visited by Barbara Windsor, hence has a Royal Appointment protection order. And so on.

Sometimes change is a bad thing, and sometimes, its really really good and positive. Start the demolition of Manchester today. All of it, preferably.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I love science. And most of what happens under that rather large and disjointed umbrella generally gets my approval. Because science works to understand the physical world, to explain it and, where possible, to harness it for our benefit. Hence the motor car, space travel, replacement hips, IVF and cling-film. And I realise that, particularly in the genetics field, there are many and great moral issues that come about. Frozen embryos, stem cell research and, the old favourite, animal testing. Not sitting a giraffe down to answer questions on geometry, but using animals to test products. But morality aside, science expands our knowledge and our world. Hence the ipad upon which these words are writ. And if a dozen lab-rats died so that my new smartphone holds its battery charge for an extra 14 minutes, then God bless those dead rats. But…

They want to build a mammoth. A wooly mammoth. Extinct for 4000 years, this massive (size of a small house/large shed), hairy elephantine thing is to be (new word alert!!!!) “de-extincted” by scientists. They’re gonna make one. Not with Lego. There’s barely enough Lego in Scandinavia to build a full-size mammoth, so there gonna use the DNA they have from old fossils plus, and this is the important bit, stuff from an elephant. You can’t build a dinosaur because although there’s loads of fossils, the DNA is degraded over time and there’s no close relative still living. Other than in the metaphorical sense of ‘dinosaur’ and Westminster is full of them. But you need the real thing. So an elephant, 99% mammoth, is used and the other 1% tweaked for extra mammothness. Fantastic. Order one now!!

And as I read this I thought: why the fuck would you do that? To watch it die? After a particularly fruitless life (well, unless you count the 87 tons of fruit a day you’d have to feed it) of loneliness and having (literally) no mates, in any sense of the word. It would be an exhibit. A freak. Or it would be hunted by ivory poachers. Its nothing but a vanity project for the geezer in charge to show it can be done. At least the lab-rats died for a cause. Animals die to feed us; I have no issue with that either. But just to make one because you can?

Whereas the Dodo was, apparently, exceedingly tasty. Which is why it became extinct in the first place. Make me one’a them. Roasted with shallots and mushrooms.

SAVE THE MAMMOTH… or, rather, DON’T SAVE THE MAMMOTH… you know what I mean.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’m not a bad person. I don’t rob old ladies, mainly because I don’t want to get hit with a swinging handbag, I can be kind and considerate, loving even, and try to always do the right thing. Honest. I do. Its my nature.

But I have a ‘red line’. In fact its not so much a red line as a red shirt. An Arsenal shirt. For there, at that specific point, my niceness ends. Its not even a conscious thing; it just is. Its hard-wired, almost since birth (can you blame ‘genetics’ for such a thing?), an inherent nastiness towards the Gunners and everything they do. Almost spite. Ok, its probably based in part on jealousy of their various successes, its a ‘chip-on-the-shoulder’ thing, but its also revenge on the smugness of the average Arsenal fan. Because hard-wired into ‘them’ is an arrogance that transcends all other football fans.

So if you search the word ‘schadenfreude’ on the Spurs website, the result comes up as ‘Arsenal’. Its simple.

Thus when Manchester United go on a winning run in Europe, or Liverpool beat Barcelona, I can enjoy it. From a ‘British’ perspective. ‘Us’ against ‘them’. Especially post-Brexit. Temporary brothers under a flag. They may normally be a bunch of obnoxious northerners, but today they represent England so they are momentarily ‘my team’. I never feel that way about Arsenal. Even when they go to Serbia and play some racist, white-supremacist, monkey-chanting pogrom-descendents, I’ll join the KKK for the night. For one night only.

Don’t hate me. Its not considered or subject to debate. Its just a feeling.

Last night as Tory Boy was leaving after dinner, he told me that it was 1-all in Munich. Arsenal had just scored that ‘vital away goal’. Bummer. He’s a Spurs-Tory boy and thus feels as I do. That’s why we allowed him to marry number 1 daughter. It was in the terms and conditions.

‘Never mind’, I said, ‘the 1 away goal won’t matter if it ends 5-1’. I honestly did. Bad, evil person that I am.

An hour later, during a particularly taxing defence of a 2-clubs contract (zzzz) at the bridge table, I received a message from him. 5-1, final score.

If only I could have such influence on Spurs results.

Don’t hate me.

Happy Thursday. For some.

A xxxx

Kim Jong-nam is dead. That’s not ‘our’ Kim Jong, he’s Kim Jong-un. There are loads of them. Come in all different flavours. Kim Jong-nam is the bastard half-brother of the current lunatic-in-chief of North Korea. Sorry, WAS the half-brother. He died yesterday. Mysteriously died of almost natural causes. After two women at Kuala Lumpur airport sprayed poison into his face. So really, he died from exceedingly unnatural causes. They haven’t identified the mystery liquid yet. Nor the women involved. Police are looking for two, slight, black-haired women with slanting eyes. How hard can that be to trace? They’re either in Malaysia or Korea. Possibly China.

Kim Jong-nam didn’t like his half brother. There again; who does? What’s to like?? So lived his life as a playboy-in-exile, criticising the North Korean leader at every opportunity. Which is why he couldn’t set foot in North Korea. Didn’t even go to his father’s funeral. So North Korea went and found him. With the inevitable consequences.

I’m gonna miss him.

The only other totalitarian regime in the world currently, is America. Just like North Korea it is governed by a megalomaniac tyrant with funny hair, who (thinks he-) has total power and rules mercilessly. Particularly where his team is concerned. As Mike Flynn, the National Security Advisor, ‘resigned’ yesterday. This is what his cv will look like:

December 2016: employed by incoming president as Security Advisor
December 2016: had secret chat with Russian ambassador talking about sanctions being lifted.
December 2016: told the Vice President ‘we never spoke about sanctions’
January 2017: Someone found a recording of the conversation
February 2017: ‘resigned’ to… errr… spend more time with the family, play some golf…

Of course, the more interesting question (for the rest of the world) is whether Trump was told of the conversation, which is believed to be the case, adding the adjective ‘duplicitous’ to the ongoing stream of applicable terms.

The more interesting question for Donald Trump is ‘why all these leaks???’ As it would be. Always the victim.

Happy Wednesday

Be careful out there

A xxxx

There’s a by-election coming up next week. In Stoke. Up north. Fairly. I’ve only been there twice, both times to see Spurs, would have no reason to go any other time. Its hardly up there with Machu Pichu on anyone’s bucket-list. Certainly not mine. Stoke is like its football team; rough, ready and fairly industrial. And is a Labour ‘stronghold’. Tristram Hunt, who just resigned to go and run the V&A, had a majority of 5000. He pooled 35% of the vote last time as a Labour Candidate. He could stand as a Historian this time, but there’s no mileage in it.

And UKIP want that seat. Ok, having just one member of parliament currently, safe to say, UKIP want any fucking seat they can muster. Even a folding chair in the corner. So they’ve put Paul Nuttall, their leader, as their candidate and, with the ‘Corbyn effect’ (the slow, inexorable ruination of a once fine political party by stupidity, communism and incessant use of the word ‘workers’ every 9 seconds, whether appropriate or not) UKIP have as good a chance as ever to win their second seat in parliament.

The Conservatives, at the last election, in Stoke, polled almost the same as UKIP, but although its the Tories who’ll take us out of Europe, they’re seen, correctly really, as ‘the pro-Europe party’ as Labour have remained equivocal (posh way of saying ‘fucking clueless’) and UKIP… Europe… yeah. Stoke was the highest Brexit vote in the nation. 70% of those fine Stoke-ites wanted out. So becomes a natural fit for UKIP’s xenophobic nonsense and working class racism.

Labour’s candidate, Gareth Snell, is a good one. A good man. Or, rather, a ‘bit of a lad’. Likes tweeting abusive things, particularly about women. Always a good way for any parliamentary candidate to behave. Didn’t do Trump any harm, election-wise. And although I want UKIP to win that by-election, purely as another great big ‘FUCK OFF!!!!’ to the truly hateful Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t want the country slipping ‘to the right’, any more than I want it rolling to the left. I like it in the middle. Dead centre.

Its award season. The time of year when red carpets are rolled out and superstar billionaires make a big fuss about receiving worthless trinkets in the shape of Oscars and Grammies and Baftas. I’d cry if I was nominated and lost. Adele cries because she won. As she does every year. Not only because she’s the best singer and songwriter in the world, but because she’s a Spurs fan. And they need to win something, even if its only a few Grammies, rather than the League. She ‘gave’ her best album Grammy to Beyonce. Who joined in the tears. Everyone was crying.

There’ll be tears in Stoke next week too. But different ones. Working Class ones.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I play tennis. But I don’t serve. Ooooh, that’s contentious. Or rather, non-contentious; how can you play if you don’t serve??? If you don’t score?? Well, due to long-term shoulder-fuckage, I stopped serving about 15 years ago when, as a keen statistician, I noted the subtle correlation between serving, overhead, four times, and the agonising pain emanating from my right shoulder. No serve; no pain. Let me just crunch those numbers…

The answer was ’42’. So I stopped serving. And started, essentially, ‘just knocking up’. And purists find this odd, bizarre, un-worthwhile and faintly amusing. Like ‘what’s the point of that then??’ Competitive types simply can’t understand why you’d ever do anything in which you can’t WIN!!!!

So, to put things in perspective, I want you to consider what happens when you watch tennis on tv, or play ‘a tournament’ or whatever it is that enables you to score lots of winning points.

You play an amazing rally, a Federer/Nadal kind’a thing, 15 shots, running round, amazing, incredible, HOW DID HE GET THAT????? Then they stop. They sit down. They drink a glass of Ribena, eat half a banana, chew half a dozen salt tablets whilst towelling themselves off. Then they stroll back to the court, bounce a ball 28 times and hit it into the net. Then they bounce another 28 times and play another point.

In my peculiar, unserving, non-scoring tennis its different. We play an amazing rally, but, if the ball is going well out, we play it anyway, we volley from the base-line, if its way short, we let it bounce twice then hit it back into play, and finally, when it goes into the net, we immediately throw another in and start playing again. Or keep playing again. No pauses, no breaks, no changing ends, none of those effeminate affectations that plague the more princessy verion of the game. We just keep playing. Its hard, fast, non-stop and relentless.

And I love it. And so does Spurs Paul, and others. Who just want to play for play’s sake. In the snow (yesterday), in the rain (today; though not too much rain), whenever.

Its what I like to do. Don’t like running, hate swimming (unless its 85 degrees and a marguerita involved), get bored on a bike after 5 minutes, I just want to chase a ball around. Like a Labrador puppy.

I certainly don’t want to watch football, though the rugby was totally outstanding. Totally.

Have a lovely (cold, wet) Sunday

A xxxx

What’s wrong with eating meat? Whilst so many cry out that vegetarianism will make you live forever, that vegan is the path to physical and moral purity, I’ve decided that carnivores need to take a stance. We must harness the inner tyrannosaurus and ensure that loads of animals end up on my dinner plate. Well, assorted bits of them anyway.

We were taken to the Goucho Grill the other night. In Hampstead. There are others. Well, I say ‘Hampstead’ but really, whatever the satnav says, Goucho Grills are all in Argentina. They’re like embassies, sovereign territory of their parent nation. So we stepped from Hampstead High Street into Buenos Aires and into another world. A meaty world where, when it comes to eating flesh, they really don’t fuck about. Ok, the place is rather gorgeous, the atmosphere relaxed and the staff Hispanic, but its about the meat. The beef. Argentinian beef. Which is like Waitrose but much more betterer. Because rather than having it in little plastic covered eco-unfriendly polystyrene plates, they bring you a board to show you what meat looks like. A fucking great big wooden board with about 6 different ‘cuts’ on it. Big ones. Some of them actually humungous. They tell you what they’re like, how they’re best cooked, what they’ll be like.

They don’t tell you so much about the chips. Though they do 2 different types. Nor the spinach, broccoli or caulflower. They’re just there to make up the numbers. And the bill.

We drank Malbec. As you do in Argentina. And the combination of that wine and that meat is rather sublime. Though by the third glass McDonalds would have probably done it for me.

But most reassuringly, the place was more than busy. It was rammed, choc full of dedicated, unapologetic carnivores. With blood dripping down their chins (they mainly have more than one chin, that is a bit of an issue, but we’ll address that another time, in a more salady frame of mind).

Eat meat! Kill an animal today!!!

Happy Friday

A xxxx