text:
3-D Baseball
Dissecting Genius: examining Dave Duncan
Posted by Kincaid on Saturday, June 13, 2009
Dave Duncan has long been labeled a genius by many followers of the game. Tony LaRussa has frequently credited Duncan as a major contributor to his success. Cardinal fans often talk of his coaching skill as if he spins straw into pitchers. Broadcasters have been known to predict his election into the HOF, an institution that does not even induct coaches. Does the Duncan Effect really exist, though? Do pitchers really get better under the old catcher's tutelage?
Duncan's proponents will cite a few statistics supporting their claims, including his staffs' ERAs (they've led the league 4 times) and his 4 Cy Young winners. However, the answers here are not that simple. What we have just shown is mostly that over his long career, Dave Duncan has coached some very good pitchers. We have no idea how much of that is due to Dave Duncan. We can't use that as evidence much more than we can say Mike Piazza or Javy Lopez were brilliant catchers because their staffs had such success in L.A. and Atlanta. Additionally, we have anecdotal evidence of pitchers like Woody Williams or Jeff Suppan who were perceived to have grown much more successful thanks to pitching under Duncan. This approach also has it's problems and does not necessarily prove anything about Duncan.
None of this means, of course, that the claims about Duncan are unfounded. It just means we need to formulate a better approach if we are going to attempt to find evidence for or against the claims about Duncan. The primary issue here is that we have a premise (Dave Duncan is a genius), but no good way to go about seeing if that might be true. Most fans, broadcasters, analysts, writers, etc. have a relatively weak grasp on statistical meaning and, consequentially, return essentially meaningless statistical evidence when they feel such evidence is needed. It doesn't invalidate their claims, since they are usually based on some sort of intuitive or anecdotal understanding rather than the statistics, but it does fail to validate them.
In Duncan's case, we need to find a way to isolate as best we can his influence on pitchers. If we just look at everyone he coaches and compare them to the rest of the league, we can't tell what Duncan is changing in those pitchers. Instead, we take an approach similar to what Tom Tango calls WOWY (with or without you), meaning we look at what pitchers did under Dave Duncan and then compare that to what they did without him.
I decided to look at starting pitchers who had pitched three straight years away from Duncan before joining his staff, and then compare their performance in those three years to their performance in their first year with Duncan (for players traded for midseason, their first full year was used). This gives us a good sample to evaluate what we can expect from these pitchers without Duncan's influence as well as lets us focus on Duncan's perceived specialty: veteran starters. For this study, a starting pitcher was anyone who made at least 10 starts that year. There were 12 pitchers who were starters for all 3 years before joining the Cardinals and then starters in their first year with the Cardinals, plus 8 more who were relievers at some point in the three previous years who started for the Cardinals in their first year with the team.
The simplest approach would be to simply take each pitcher's ERA over the years leading up to learning from Duncan and compare that to his ERA under Duncan. This approach has several problems, which will be discussed presently, but it is a good place to start. Starting pitchers going to St. Louis during Duncan's tenure certainly have improved their ERAs. In the three years before joining Duncan, the 12 starters dropped their ERA from 4.48 to 4.12 in a bit over 2000 innings. Adding in the other 8 pitchers, their ERA dropped from 4.58 to 4.29 in about 3200 innings. This lends credence to the anecdotal evidence that pitchers do improve significantly under Duncan.
There are four major problems with this simple approach. One of them works against Duncan, two work in his favour, and the final one is mostly neutral. The first is that an aggregate of the past 3 years is not always a very good estimate of what a pitcher should be expected to do. We are looking mostly at veterans here (the average age of the 12 starters when they joined the Cardinals was 29.4, and Mark Mulder at 27 was the only one under 28). A pitcher hitting his 30s, in general, is not supposed to be as good as he was 3 years earlier, but our aggregate counts what he did 3 years ago as just as important to what he should be expected to do as last year. To illustrate this, look at how the ERAs of our sample rise in each successive year prior to joining the Cardinals:
3 years prior: 3.84 ERA
1 year prior: 4.97 ERA
Looking at the trend over the previous three years rather than lumping them all together shows how much our initial method diminished the Duncan Effect. Going just by the previous year, these pitchers dropped from a 4.97 ERA to a 4.12 ERA. Adding in the other 8 pitchers again, the ERA drops from 4.88 to 4.29.
This seems like a huge difference, but we still have to account for the other three differences. One, pitchers going to the Cardinals are always moving to the NL. Sometimes they are coming from the NL, and sometimes from the AL; in the former case, it doesn't matter, but in the latter, a league adjustment becomes necessary because ERAs are lower in the NL. A pitcher going from the AL to the NL should see his ERA drop even if he doesn't pitch any better. Two, the Cardinals have fielded very good defenses, on the whole, during Duncan's tenure. Again, a pitcher moving in front of a good defense should see his ERA drop even if he does not pitch any better. Three, we need to account for park factors. A pitcher coming from Coors should see his ERA drop, while a pitcher coming from Petco should see it rise. Both Busches have been pretty neutral, so this mostly matters when we look at pitchers coming from more extreme parks to Busch.
There is an additional problem that only applies to looking at the sample with the 8 converted relievers: a pitcher's ERA will generally be lower when he is used as a reliever than when he is used as a starter. So converting a pitcher to a starter is likely to boost his ERA a bit. There is also the issue of having fewer innings to project these pitchers' expected ERAs, which will create a minor issue in the next step (namely more regression when we project them). For these reasons, counting these pitchers will underrate the Duncan Effect to some degree, but they do increase our sample to a more comfortable level, and these pitchers are some of Duncan's most famous projects, so we can still look at them, keeping in mind that we are not exactly comparing apples to apples.
Now that we have our main problems outlined, we can refine our approach. The issues will be addressed in the following ways:
Use Marcel projections instead of a simple 3-year aggregate or the previous year's ERA alone to determine each pitcher's expected performance level
Park adjust each pitcher's ERA for each year we look at
Determine a league adjustment to apply for pitchers in the AL to put their stats on par with NL pitchers
Calculate FIP as well as ERA to account for the impact of fielders on ERA
The first thing I did was apply a park adjustment to each pitcher's stats for every team he played for in a given year. For example, if someone pitched for Baltimore and Houston in the same season, the Baltimore stats were adjusted to Camden and the Houston stats to Ex-ron. Separate stints with different teams were still left separate at this point so that the league adjustment could be applied only to the proper stint. The park adjustment figures I used were the same as the 1-year pitcher park factors published on Baseball-Reference.
Then I determined my league adjustments. This was done in traditional fashion, by looking at all pitchers who switched leagues from one year to the next and comparing how they did. To smooth out some of the noise, I looked at 5-year samples (2 years before and after each season), giving more weight to the season I was measuring in my aggregate. In recent years, this adjustment is about .92 (meaning you multiply a pitcher's ERA by .92 when he goes from the AL to the NL). In the mid-90s, it got as low as .80. Separate adjusments were done for FIP and ERA; the two adjustments are similar, but the FIP adjustments seem to be a bit more stable from year to year and didn't go quite as low at their lowest as the ERA adjustments.
The league adjustments were applied to all AL seasons. I did this because I ultimately want to look at what pitchers would do in a neutral environment, so I converted everyone's stats to a neutral NL park (hey, that sounds a lot like Busch Stadium). Once the adjustment was applied, I combined separate stints into full seasons (i.e. our previous Baltimore/Houston example is now simply counted as 1 season for the pitcher in a neutral environment rather than 2 stints in separate environments). These are the figures I plugged into the Marcel projections. I projected both ERA and FIP using this method.
This gives us a much better idea of how each pitcher should be expected to pitch free from any of the above influences. Our group of 12 starters now projects to a neutralized 4.61 ERA and 4.64 FIP entering Duncan's care and ends up with a 4.16 ERA and 4.44 FIP. With the other 8 pitchers, they project to 4.63/4.64 and end up at 4.29/4.53. As we would expect, the resulting ERAs are much lower than the FIPs. The Cardinals' team ERA over Duncan's tenure has been .25 points lower than its FIP due to consistently good defenses.
What about Oakland?
The same thing can be done with Duncan's pitchers in Oakland. This time, the group of pitchers dropped their ERAs by about .2 points, but again, that was in front of mostly good defenses. The FIPs stayed about the same.
What does this all say about the Duncan Effect? To be honest, nothing definitive. We aren't looking at all at young pitchers Duncan might have to develop who came up through his own organization. It doesn't include all pitchers who joined the Cardinals, only ones with a three year track record elsewhere. This means pitchers like Chris Carpenter, who was coming off missing extended time from injuries when he joined the Cardinals, are not counted here because our methods don't do much to isolate Duncan's effect. We don't have nearly as large a sample as we'd like to decide anything for sure. Our use of FIP downplays Duncan's pitch-to-contact philosophy where utilizing those good defenses was more effective than FIP can account for. We can, however, tell a couple important things. One, a pretty good chunk of the percieved Duncan Effect is due to other factors, probably most notably the defenses his teams have had. Two, those other effects don't cover all of the improvement we see in pitchers Duncan has coached, and they still did noticeably better than expected as a group. This does not prove a Duncan Effect, nor does it assign a real value to it, but it does support the claims and suggest that there is a good chance it does exist.
hostile postulate said...
nice article, although i was saddened to get all the way to the last paragraph and realize that the study didn't really say much about the duncan effect. i was wondering, though, if there would be a way to compare these pitchers' "stuff" by looking at pitch f/x data and seeing how it improved under duncan. pitch usage might also fit into this. and since duncan has a pitch-to-contact philosophy, i'm curious as to how each pitcher strike zone totals were affected.
Kincaid said...
The main reason for that at the end is that there is so much more to look at here (plus the sample is just too small to conclude anything without seeing a more significant change). I want to look at K/9, BB/9, and GB:FB ratios in particular, but it was a lot of work just getting to this point, and there's not really a good way to get everything you could write about this into one article. Going through the park and league adjustments for each individual stat is a pretty major pain as well. This is far from all-inclusive or final. I think ultimately it would be much more interesting to see what kind of profiles he affects or how he changes pitchers' approaches, and which types of pitchers, if any, he works best or worst with than to just look at it like this and try to see if pitchers improved or not.
Pitch F/X would be a great tool to use here, although it could only go back a couple years. The only Pitch F/X figures I have right now are from the first couple months or so of this season, though, because the data is so huge. I've also done very little experimenting with Pitch F/X and don't know how quickly I could pick it up well enough to start analyzing anything with it.
Javier Vazquez K-Watch
+9 Wednesday, September 27
2011 Total: 162
Career Total: 2536
Baseball Databank
Baseball Projection (home of CHONE)
Baseball-Reference
Broadcast KC
Brooks Baseball (Pitch F/X tool)
Hardball Times
Inside the Book
Lahman Database
TangoTiger blog
TangoTiger.net
Retrosheet Credit
Much of the information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.
Lahman Credit
Many of the standard statistics used here are obtained from the Lahman Database, which can be downloaded at the above links.
hostile postulate
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The Anti-Koufaxes
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Programme encouraging mainstream employers to take on people with mental health difficulties. Includes interviews between employers and employees with mental health problems.
Suggest ways in which young men can be encouraged to talk about their lives, feelings, attitudes and behaviour. Shows youth workers undertaking a range of activities with young men.
Video-based training for professionals whose work involves them in the use of the Care Programme Approach.
You are currently searching in Find DVD. Search all the BUFVC's collections for '"Mental Health Media"' in All fields.


Are you all tired from having Day Light Savings creep up on you? Did you remember to Spring forward your clocks last night?? Well we managed to turn most of them. This is the time of year that I rediscover that I have too many clocks in the house.
Anyway, I bet you want me to get onto this weeks inspiration from Olga and Sandy. Hope over to their blogs to see an explanation of how they made these incredible cards.
Our wonderful design team has done it again! Aren't these amazing creations? I just love how we have the same theme but everyone comes up with a different take while making their scene.
Don't be shy, we are waiting to see your wonderful work. There are still three weeks left in the challenge and we can't wait to see what you come up with. Your project must be new (no backlinking) and it must be of a moonlight scene. Don't forget, you may enter up to three times!
We will be back next Sunday with more inspiration from Shaz and Anja.
Wow!! LOVE the DT cards! You girls have outdone yourself!
Two gorgeous cards! Love how different they are. Those deer are wonderful. TFS!!


We have an absolutely fantastic evening planned. Join us for our "Tailgating Party". Finger food and libations served while you check out the opportunities at every tailgate. Come dressed in your favorite team spirit wear.


text:
Q: return django model property field in graphene graphql query How to add a @property field from a django model graphql results?:
class MyModel(...):
    ...
    @property
    def some_property(self):
        return 'property here'

class MyObject(DjangoObjectType):
    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        interfaces = (relay.Node,)
        filter_fields = []

query GetMyModel(id: ID!){
    getMyModel(id: $id){
        someProperty
    }
}

A: An example by adding the some_property field:
class MyObject(DjangoObjectType):

    some_property = graphene.String()

    class Meta:
        model = MyModel
        interfaces = (relay.Node,)
        filter_fields = []

query:
query GetMyModel(id: ID!){
    getMyModel(id: $id){
        someProperty
    }
}

input:
{"variables": {"id": btoa("MyObject:123")}}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The UK is pretty cold and miserable at this time of year, so why are some many American models coming over here?
First Lindsey Pelas flew over to Britain for a stunning photoshoot earlier this week, and now fitness model Abigail Ratchford has graced us with her presence too.
Is it our proud history and rich culture that attracts them? Or could they be taking a break from President Trump perhaps?
Whatever reason they are here and we're happy to have them. In fact, Abigail put on quite the show when she made a visit this week.
Sneak peek from @sixty6mag 's upcoming issue ; ) ? Shot in the UK ✈?? Photo by @gavinglave ? Latex lingerie by @elissapoppy ?
The 24-year-old Instagram sensation, who boasts an incredible 6.6m followers on the social media site, took part in a special UK-themed shoot for Sixty6 magazine recently.
Abigail looks stunning in the images, but the shoot wasn't quite as glamorous as it first appears.
Offering a behind the scenes insight into the shoot – which saw her cover herself with an American flag on a flight of steps – she admitted that she had a little help along the way.
The shoot comes just a day after Lindsey Pelas took part in a stunning shoot in a medieval English castle, and brought a touch of Hollywood glamour with her across the pond.
Abigail and Lindsey both loved their trips to the UK this week, and so did we. Come back and see us soon!


Land based mostly farmed Arctic char is a good option to make when searching for an oily fish. This farmed species natural habitat is medium to massive rivers in Asian nations akin to … Read extra Vietnam, the place they'll grow up to 44kg.There are omnivores, feeding on a weight loss plan of different fish, vegetable matter and crustacea.
Legendary Fish location: Flat Iron Lake, between the shore and the island to the south of Clemens Point. The Cantabrian Sea (Bay of Biscay) purse seine anchovy fishery is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as sustainable. Having already made it clear that she's extra considering following her heart than she is in repeating previous triumphs, Samantha Fish delivers a few of her most compelling music up to now with Belle of the West, her fifth studio album.
Many of the considerations of open water production are addressed by natural manufacturing requirements, making each organically and land based mostly farmed bream good seafood decisions. Though aquatic farms in a handful of countries, together with the UK and Norway, should observe humane slaughter guidelines, there aren't any requirements for contemplating the tens of thousands of wild fish caught every second.


text:
**Description**

Collection of utilities used while developing multi-threaded code ranging from time measuring routines to fast
allocators. We try to keep things header only so in order to use any of the provided solutions you usually
have to include the right header file in your code.

We have provided a `vagrant` file so testing can be performed easily.

# Allocator.h
Example client for DiskPool.h that performs object allocations (but not deallocations). This is intended
to be used as memory provider for sampling objects collected by the profiler.

# DiskPool.h
Memory allocator used quickly get memory from the system. It is lock free and backed by a file so anything you write to the memory will be saved.
The main purpose of this allocator is to provide memory to a profiler that needs to save data.

It does not support freeing memory as it does not make any sense in the context where it is used.

**Running with `vagrant`***

```
localhost:~$ vagrant up
localhost:~$ vagrant ssh
ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ cd ThreadProfiler/build/
ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~/ThreadProfiler/build$ ls -l test*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu 970856 Nov 30 17:01 test_allocator
-rwxr-xr-x 1 ubuntu ubuntu 976896 Nov 30 17:01 test_disk_pool
```

**Dependencies**

The headers do not have any dependencies but you do need to have `google-benchmark` in order to build and run the tests.

If you are using `vagrant` everything should be resolved for you automatically.

**Compile**
```
$ cd ThreadProfiler
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
```

**Run the benchmarks**
```
$ ./test_allocator
  Run on (8 X 2500 MHz CPU s)
  2016-11-30 18:16:04
  Benchmark                    Time           CPU Iterations
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  BM_ALLOC/threads:1           7 ns          7 ns   93923171
  BM_ALLOC/threads:2          34 ns         68 ns   10084348
  BM_ALLOC/threads:4          37 ns        147 ns    4461300
  BM_ALLOC/threads:8          28 ns        215 ns    3131464
  BM_ALLOC/threads:16         23 ns        220 ns    3607440
  BM_ALLOC/threads:32         19 ns        220 ns    3405920

$ ./test_disk_pool
  Run on (8 X 2500 MHz CPU s)
  2016-11-30 18:16:35
  Benchmark                                                         Time           CPU Iterations
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolRaw/SingleThreaded                    2 ns          2 ns  405083216
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:1              20 ns         20 ns   34006996
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:2            2841 ns       3026 ns     252904
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:4            3276 ns       3434 ns     199416
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:8            3127 ns       3295 ns     209504
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:16           3157 ns       3326 ns     205152
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolLock/Threaded/threads:32           3247 ns       3415 ns     203488
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:1           9 ns          9 ns   71797081
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:2          89 ns        178 ns    5713936
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:4         158 ns        633 ns    1206844
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:8         590 ns       4406 ns     187976
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:16        445 ns       4865 ns     183712
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolSpinLock/Threaded/threads:32       1504 ns      14955 ns     143168
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:1             7 ns          7 ns   89753946
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:2            20 ns         41 ns   17576898
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:4            24 ns         94 ns    7323056
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:8            24 ns        182 ns    3359448
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:16           21 ns        210 ns    4339472
  BM_MemoryAllocation_DiskPoolAtomic/Threaded/threads:32           16 ns        197 ns    3200000
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:1                             34 ns         34 ns   19975858
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:2                             17 ns         34 ns   20609754
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:4                             10 ns         38 ns   20154616
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:8                              7 ns         55 ns   12378616
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:16                             6 ns         57 ns   12634672
  BM_MemoryAllocation_malloc/threads:32                             3 ns         56 ns   12425888
```

# measure.h

Small wrapper to measure execution time of arbitrary functions.

**Usage**

* Just include `measure.h` in your source file and use it to wrap what you want to measure.
* You can specify the precision and the clock used, although I would not change the clock.
* If the function you want to measure returns void, you need to wrap it on a lambda and make
the lambda return a value.
* If the function to measure is a method, use a lambda and capture the object.

```
void io_thread(DiskPool_mt *memory_pool) {
    auto ret = measure<std::chrono::milliseconds>::execution(
        [memory_pool] {
            memory_pool->flush();
            return 0;
        }
    );

    printf("Took %ld ms.\n", ret.second);
}
```

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
It's More Fun to Be Jack of All Trades than Master of One
Reviews & recaps of media I've consumed
June 2014 in Review
This is an index and summary of the things I've talked about over the last month. Links for multi-post subjects go to the first post (even if it's before this month), you can follow the internal navigation links from there. (TV shows without full posts will not be linked, but will be listed.)
"Dust" Hugh Howey. Last part of Howey's post-apocalyptic trilogy. Library book.
"Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie. Really good space opera, with some interesting things to think about. New.
"Crown of Renewal" Elizabeth Moon. Last book of the Paladin's Legacy series. New.
"Plantagenet England 1225-1360" Michael Prestwich. Part of the New Oxford History of England.
Arcade Fire (Earls Court, 6 June 2014).
Warpaint (UEA, Norwich 4 June 2014).
Fragment.
The Parlour.
Shadow of His Former Glory.
Strike a Pose.
The Bluestockings. In Our Time episode about the Bluestockings, an 18th Century intellectual movement.
Robert Boyle. In Our Time episode about the 17th Century scientist Robert Boyle.
The Talmud. In Our Time episode about this important Jewish text.
"Music and Dance in Ancient Egypt" Suzanne Lax-Bojtos. Talk given at the June meeting of the EEG.
Churches: How to Read Them – series looking at symbolism and so on in British churches.
The Crusades – series presented by Thomas Asbridge about the Crusades.
Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures – Richard Fortey looking at three fossil sites that changed our idea of the past.
Hidden Histories: WW1's Forgotten Photographs – one-off programme about the photographs taken by ordinary soldiers during WWI. Particularly featuring two photographers, one German and one British, whose descendants met up as part of the programme.
How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears – a look at how the geography of the USA affected the colonisation and history of the Wild West.
Martin Amis' England – a one-off programme featuring Martin Amis talking about what he thinks it is to be English and about modern society. The BBC blurb for it sounds a lot more negative than I thought it actually was.
Mud, Sweat and Tractors – series about the history of farming in 20th Century Britain.
Secrets of Bones – series about bones, their biology & evolution.
The Spy Who Brought Down Mary Queen of Scots. Programme about Mary Queen of Scots, Francis Walsingham and the Babington Plot.
A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley – series about the popular fascination with murder in late Victorian & Edwardian times.
A Trip to Turin (October 2013). Overview post about our holiday in Turin last year.
Author MargaretPosted on June 30, 2014 Tags Admin
Monday Link Salad
A review of the British Museum Mummies exhibition that I enjoyed reading.
Something upsetting that's being talked about in the SFF world at the moment is to do with Marion Zimmer Bradley (author of "Mists of Avalon", and the Darkover series), her second husband and the sexual abuse of children. Jim Hines has a post that summarises it here – I've read several more posts on the subject including some of the ones that he links, I'm mostly linking to his because it has those links. In brief – MZB's second husband was a convicted child abuser both before & after she married him. She was aware of his continuing abuse of children, and didn't find it a problem. Her daughter has also stated that MZB abused her throughout her early childhood. Thoroughly unpleasant. I own several Darkover books, all bought 15-20 years ago & re-read several times since. I'm not quite sure what I'll do about them – on the one hand the art is not the artist and I liked those books a lot in the past, but on the other hand how much does knowing more context about the author change how I see the books? Not a question I currently have an answer to.
TV I'm recording this week:
Lost Land of the Tiger – three part series (from 2010) looking for tigers in Bhutan.
Tales from the Royal Wardrobe with Lucy Worsley – one-off programme about the last 400 years of the British monarchy, as seen through their clothes.
Author MargaretPosted on June 30, 2014 Tags Links
Author MargaretPosted on June 28, 2014 Tags Photo
"Ancillary Justice" Ann Leckie
I picked up Ancillary Justice when I saw it in the bookshop the other week. It's the debut novel by Ann Leckie, and it's gathering awards left, right & centre. I've seen quite a few reviews in the various blogs I read and I don't think I've seen one that didn't like it.
The story is set in the far future, when humans have colonised many many worlds across the galaxy. The narrative has two threads in alternating chapters – one is the "now" of the story and the other tells us the back story. The protagonist, Breq, was once an AI for a ship called Justice of Toren. Justice of Toren's mind and persona didn't just reside in the ship as a computer, but were also distributed across several (hundreds) of once-human bodies called ancillaries. When the story begins one of these ancillaries, calling herself Breq, is a long way from home and acting on her own. The backstory chapters reveal the world Breq came from, and what happened to get from Justice of Toren to Breq on her own. And the "present-day" plot is about what Breq is going to do about it. The action takes place on various worlds in the Radch's galaxy spanning empire, involving military action, intrigue & politics. To avoid spoilers, I shan't talk much more about the plot.
I liked the different cultures in this world. Leckie has done a good job of creating both a diversity of cultures, and cultures that aren't just carbon copies of historical cultures with -in-space appended. The one we see from the inside is the Radch, the large empire of many worlds who created Justice of Toren. There's something of the Romans about them, there's something of the Chinese, there's something of the British Empire. But these are resonances and flavours, the Radch is also uniquely itself.
Gender is the thing that most of the stuff I'd read about this book talked about. But it isn't gender itself that's a theme of the book, it's our cultural assumptions about gender and our cultural need to know someone's gender. The Radch language doesn't mark gender. I think it's clear that the humans (as opposed to AIs) are like people in our culture – most people have a gender, most people identify as either male or female. But there is no linguistic or social need to distinguish the genders. Justice of Toren/Breq hasn't got a gender (and the ancillary bodies are of both sexes), and has no reason to care about the gender of others – which causes Breq problems speaking foreign languages in the "now" strand of the story as she tries to read unfamiliar cues without the backing of memory & resources that she had as Justice of Toren.
What Leckie has done with this is clever: she's chosen to keep us in the Radch language perspective, and not mark gender except when Breq is speaking another language. Throughout the book the Radch pronoun is translated as "she", and other gendered words use the feminine form (like "sister" or "neice"). Which means we get sentences like "She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn't entirely certain.". Why I think it's particularly clever is that by using feminine pronouns throughout the reader frequently has their mental images shifted by a later piece of information. It makes one's cultural assumptions around gender suddenly snap into focus. Why has learning this character is actually male changed how you see things? Why is is so disconcerting not to know the gender of characters when it doesn't actually matter? One of my favourite characters of the people Breq interacts with I don't think we ever learn the gender of. I realised late on in the book that I had this person pegged in the "female" box, not just because it's always "her" & "she" but also because of all sorts of social cues that put this person in the "social inferior" box in both professional and personal situations. And that says a lot about my unconscious assumptions, doesn't it?
The Radch don't divide people up by gender, but they have a keen sense of social status – which family you belong to, how long your family have been "civilised", whether you have the right accent, the right colouring, whether or not you dress appropriately. There's a scene in the flashback section of two (human not ancillary) officers from the Justice of Toren having dinner with two high status locals – shown from Justice of Toren's point of view (as the whole book is) we end up with no idea of the genders of the four people but a very vivid picture of the relative social status of the various people. And the miscommunications of that status between cultures, and the unhappiness of the lower status Radch lieutenant with her obvious lower class markers of speech etc. Justice of Toren/Breq is outside this hierarchy – as a ship she is a tool not a person – but exquisitely aware of it. However she makes her own judgements of people based on their actions that don't necessarily match the heirarchy – which demonstrates how this obsession with birth & rank doesn't say anything about the person in question: "better breeding" doesn't necessarily mean a better person.
I mentioned in the last paragraph that Justice of Toren/Breq sees herself as a thing not a person. I think another thing that's going on in this book is exploration of what it means to be a person. Justice of Toren definitely isn't human, and doesn't experience the world in the same way as a human. The flashback chapters show some of the effect of being simultaneously in many bodies in many places, and the different perspective it gives. But I think it's equally clear that she (and Breq) is a person, despite her belief that she isn't. She has a personality and her own likes & dislikes. And she has a person's sense of self and of self-preservation. An example of this comes when Breq meets a doctor who knows what she is. Making ancillaries is now considered unethical, because you have to erase the memories & personality of the person who's body you've turned into a part of the ship. The doctor is fairly enthusiastic about how she might be able to restore Breq's body's memories, and is asking wouldn't Breq like to be free. But Breq is horrified – that would mean her death. The body might be free (and the person it used to be would be alive again), but she – Breq – would be dead.
There were other things I wanted to talk about, but I think I shall stop here – this review has got quite long. So did the book live up to the hype? Yes, it definitely did. As well as the things to think about that I've talked about above, it's also a really good story at the space opera end of the genre 🙂
Author MargaretPosted on June 26, 2014 Tags Book (Fiction), Leckie, Ann, science fiction
"Plantagenet England 1225-1360" Michael Prestwich (Part 10)
The last section of the book I'm reading about Plantagenet England is about the society and people of the era. Prestwich starts the first chapter in this section by noting that whilst society was very stratified in this period the boundaries weren't rigid and well defined (or least not in ways that historians can be sure of now). However, you can divide the society at this time into four rough groups – the great lords (both lay & church), the knights, the peasants and the merchants. This chapter deals with the first of those groups.
The Great Lords
The great lords were the higher nobility and there are a variety of phrases used in official documents of the time that can define them to one extent or another. The "prelates, earls and barons" is one, the "magnates and nobles" is another, or "earls, barons and magnates". Also "magnates" can be used on its own. It's easy to work out who the earls and the bishops are from the surviving documents, and they are well defined – it's a specific title generally relating to a place.
The earls were the elite of the nobility. There were 30 titles during this period (1225-1360) not all of which were in existence for the whole time, and some individuals could hold multiple earldoms. This means there were very few earls at any one time – for instance in 1300 there were 9. The title itself was mostly honourific – they had few special duties and not much extra income from earldom related sources. Because of their status they had to attend the king when required, and were always summoned to parliament whenever it met. Some earldoms came with ceremonial duties (like carrying a particular sword during the coronation), some had military ranks attached (i.e. the earls of Norfolk and Hereford held the office of Marshal and of Constable during this period). So being an earl was mostly about status – one of the things that so annoyed the earls about Gaveston was his habit of giving rude nicknames to (other) earls. So rather than talking about (the earl of) Lincoln he would refer to "Burstbelly".
Earls were wealthy – newly created earls were generally granted lands worth around 1,000 marks/year, which gives a feel for the minimum appropriate wealth (1 mark is 2/3 of a £). The title of an earl (which he was referred to by) related to a specific county, but that wasn't necessarily where the earl held most lands. They also had symbolic swords, granted along with the title. During the 14th Century they started to wear coronets, and they were permitted the most costly clothing (like cloth of gold trimmed in ermine). Generally they also made much of their heraldic symbols, and used them to decorate their possessions and clothing.
During this period there wasn't much continuity in the various titles. If there was no direct male heir, the family name died out and the lands (and titles) would be divided amongst the female heirs. That wrinkle in how inheritance worked was something I'd not learnt before – primogeniture for sons, but divided for daughters. Prestwich looks at the statistics for earldoms being extinguished (no valid heirs) and comes to the conclusion that whilst there seems to be an unusually high number of sonless and childless families, that's probably just by chance as it's such a small sample group rather than due to any underlying cause. Prestwich also spends a couple of pages considering the royal attitude towards extinguishing and granting earldoms. Events in Henry III's reign encouraged Edward I to be very conservative about creating new earldoms, and to be keen to control the power of those that existed. Edward II and Edward III had more need to create new earldoms, because they had family to provide for. It was also important for the King to have enough earls – being accompanied by several earls enhanced the prestige of the King's court, particularly important on foreign trips. And there was a general policy of granting earldoms to those related by blood to the royal family, in the hope this would keep them loyal.
There's not much in the sources about the countesses, but what there is tends to indicate that these high status & wealth women had some influence on the events of the day. Which is not surprising, but frustrating that we don't know more about them. Prestwich talks about several notable women. Most of what is known about them revolves around their marriages, as you'd expect in chronicles from this era. But widows (of men with no heirs) could live out their lives as the landowner & head of their estates – and their power in this area was as much as any man's, just they had much less power in politics.
Next down the social tree from earls were barons. Being a baron didn't confer any rights or powers, rather it imposed some requirements on you (like paying a particular tax) so it wasn't necessarily something people wanted. Barons did have a voice in parliament, which was formally recognised. For instance in the Ordinances of 1311 many matters were set down as requiring "the consent of the baronage". Inconveniently for the later historian not all barons were summoned individually to parliament, so there aren't complete lists surviving. The numbers who did get individual summons varied between a low point of around 30 to a high point of around 80. Generally Baron wasn't used as a title, those who were barons tended to go by "Lord" and can be hard to distinguish from knights. As a result it's difficult for the modern historian to be sure how many there were, or who exactly they were. Prestwich notes that one thorough survey (by a historian who published it in 1927) came up with 135 baronies, plus another 72 probables. So this is still a relatively small elite. Again the inheritance was by primogeniture for sons, but divided if there were only daughters – so sometimes baronies fractured into smaller pieces which may've all had the same baronial status. There was a reasonable amount of social mobility into the baronial class, with knights who distinguished themselves in battle or supported the right earl during a domestic conflict standing a chance of being granted lands that would confer that status.
Adjacent to the secular hierarchy was the clerical one. In the category of great lords we have the archbishops, the bishops and the greater abbots. Archbishops and bishops are well defined, but as with the barons the "greater abbots" are less clear. Not all of these men were of aristocratic birth, it was definitely possible to rise through the ranks as a clergyman. Bishoprics were often handed out as rewards to men who had held government posts. Some bishops were exceedingly wealthy, on a par with earls, others less so. The greater abbots were summoned to parliament, but otherwise their political role was relatively unimportant. Again they were often wealthy. The sources of the time judge abbots on their ability as manager of their monastic estates.
These great lords did not have a fixed address – the great lived in households which moved around between their various houses and court. The household comprised all the furnishing and so on that the lord moved with him, as well as his staff. Even a relatively low status member of the elite might have 25 staff in his household, spread throughout the various departments. This number doesn't include any knights or men-at-arms who were retained, nor people like huntsmen or carters. A large household plus other employees for an important magnate might run to 200 or more. As well as the size of the household depending on the status of the lord, over the time period that this book covers there was a general increase in the size of the magnates' households. Staff were generally provided with robes, and with food whilst at the household. They would also get wages, which might be paid by giving them the right to the rents from a particular estate.
Prestwich discusses in detail how this era had a mix of traditional feudalism and what's known as "bastard feudalism". In the first, the retainer holds lands from his lord and owes him service for them. In the latter, the retainer is rewarded for his service by cash (which may be rent from an estate). The two systems existed side by side during this period, and Prestwich is quite clear that he doesn't see it as a transition from one system to another.
The castles and manor houses that these great lords built & lived in were overt expressions of their power. Although there weren't any explicit restrictions on who could build a castle, it took wealth to do so. Generally the great lords built new fashionable residences when they could, but it wasn't seen as necessary – more something to do when one could afford it. During this period residences were becoming more comfortable and less defensive, although it's the military aspects that survive to the present day (being built from stone instead of wood).
The ceremonies surrounding death were another way for a magnate's family to indicate their status. Elaborate funerals were important, as were ostentatious memorials (such as gravestones and monuments). Families tended to be buried in the same church for generations, although this could lead to arguments particularly in the case of women who had married more than once. Prestwich gives the example of Isabella (daughter of William Marshal) who married three times, and ended up with her body buried in Beaulieu, her heart in Tewkesbury and her entrails in Missenden. Other people worried about the anticipated bodily resurrection at the Last Judgement – sometimes a person was buried in multiple places, then later their body would be gathered back up by a relative to be reburied in one place. Also important for religious reasons was to provide money for services to be held after death, to ensure a short stay in Purgatory.
Prestwich ends the chapter by being a little scathing about anyone either contemporary or modern who tries to draw conclusions about "all the great lords", because there's too much variance between the individuals. The stereotype is of boneheaded brawlers, and some do fit this characterisation. Others don't, in a variety of ways.
< Interlude | Next Chapter >
Author MargaretPosted on June 25, 2014 Tags Book (Non-fiction), Chapter by Chapter, england, history, plantagenet, Prestwich, Michael
Arcade Fire (Earls Court, 6 June 2014)
A couple of days after we saw Warpaint play in Norwich (post) we went to London to see Arcade Fire play. This was quite a different scale of gig – it was in the main venue at Earls Court, which is a really quite enormous space compared to the LCR at UEA. When we arrived to join the queue just after doors opened there was a Mariachi band playing in the front door – I think we must've just missed them arriving in a limo. They serenaded the audience as we walked into the venue.
Once we were inside we headed to the merch desk for a t-shirt each, and then off into the hall to try & get a good spot. We ended up not that far back, about 10-15 people from the front. I think we could've pushed further forward at that point, but it would've involved more pushing & shoving. First up was a set from Owen Pallett and his band – he played electric violin most of the time as well as singing. I didn't warm to his music much, it was very technically proficient but it felt rather like that was all it was if you see what I mean. After his set I popped out to the loos, so I apparently missed a piñata on stage and the start of the DJ set. At that point I was glad we hadn't pushed further forward as for the first time ever I was worried I wouldn't make it back through the crowd to where J was standing – I thought it was a fairly grumpy audience overall, not keen to let people through and very defensive about their personal space.
Arcade Fire were great! 🙂 There's quite a lot of people in their touring band (I think they're not all in the band per se) so there's always something to watch even if the people standing in front of you block the view of bits of the stage. The band also all look like they're enjoying themselves, one guy in particular runs about the stage playing drums and various bits of stage equipment as drums (always in time, despite the manic antics), but everyone seems to be having fun. There was a second stage in the middle that they used for bits of their show – dancers sometimes, and for one song Regine was singing from over there too. It wasn't overused, so it didn't feel like you had to watch two ways at once, but it made for a different dynamic for some of the songs. There was also a surprise special guest for one of the songs – Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen, and they did a cover of The Cutter.
Here's a video of one of the songs from the gig we were at – filmed from the seated bit so nothing like the view we got 🙂
Author MargaretPosted on June 24, 2014 Tags Arcade Fire, Concert, Owen Pallett
Awesome flowchart for who to support in the World Cup.
Cat shaming…
Only one new TV series I started recording – Majesty and Mortar: Britain's Great Palaces, which is Dan Cruickshank talking about royal palaces in Britain.
Shadow of His Former Glory
Mud Sweat and Tractors; Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures; The Crusades
Mud Sweat and Tractors is a four part series about the changes in farming in Britain over the last century or so. It split it up into four areas – milk, horticulture, wheat and beef – and treated each as a separate story, so each episode seemed quite self-contained. Each time there were two or three farming families chosen who had photographs and video footage stretching back to the 1930s. So they made good case studies and could talk about why they or their Dad or Grandad had made particular decisions at particular points. And the old videos were good for showing what the actual changes were. As well as this there were several social historians or experts in other parts of the farming/food production process who could talk about the wider trends that the individual farmers & their decisions fitted into.
Separating it out like that worked for telling the individual stories, but I think I might've like a bit more explicit drawing together of the themes that affected all the areas of farming. I could work some of them out, it just would've been nice to see more discussion of it in the actual programmes. Some of the commonalities were that the Second World War, and the aftermath of it, were a turning point – farming had been in decline before that, but during the war food imports were cut off and so increased production was important. After the war there was concern that Britain shouldn't return to the pre-war situation, so farmers were given financial incentives to stay farming and to increase food production. And a lot of effort put into scientifically improving the breeds and technology used in farming. And the common theme after that is of food production getting too high – too much that wasn't being eaten – so the subsidies go and it gets much harder for farmers economically. In addition some of the previous good ideas become seen as not such a good thing – things like the increase in chemicals used in horticulture in the post-war era (like DDT). Or things like breeding beef cattle for larger size & less fatty meat, but then it turns out that doesn't taste so good so you have to compensate and fatten them up a bit.
It was interesting watching this with J. I grew up in a town so it was just history for me, and someone else's history if that makes sense. But J grew up in a very rural area, right near farms. For a while his family rented a house on a farm, most of the rest of the time they lived in a 10 house village with working farms around them. So a lot of the 70s and 80s footage included things he remembered seeing as a child. I think we watched one bit of it three or four times in the last episode, because it included a hay baler that was exactly the sort he'd been fascinated by as a little boy. It had a robot arm, and somehow hay went in, was moved around by the arm then came out as square bales. Which was kinda fascinating to watch 🙂
In Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures Richard Fortey visited 3 particularly important and rich fossil beds, and talked about what they'd taught us about the evolution of life. One commonality of the three is that they have fossils with the soft body parts preserved, which means we know so much more about the animals than is generally possible from fossils.
First (and most obvious to me) was the Burgess Shale – a section of the Rockies where early multicellular organisms are well preserved. We'd just seen that on the David Attenborough programme we watched recently (post) so this wasn't new ground for us. Still nice to see tho, particularly as I remember reading about it when I was a teenager. The second episode took us to China and to some new fossil beds there which are re-writing our ideas of how birds evolved and what the differences between dinosaurs and birds actually are. This is because these recently discovered fossils include several feathered dinosaurs. And the last of the three fossil beds was in Germany, with many fossils from early in the explosion of mammalian diversity after the dinosaurs died out. These well preserved fossils include lots of bats (already looking very sophisticated), early horses, and the earliest known primate fossils.
This was an interesting series 🙂 I'm sure I've said before that I wanted to be a palaeontologist when I was in my early teens – until I worked out that it would mean lots of being outside grubbing about in the dirt & rocks! So I particularly like seeing these sorts of programmes, and all the cool stuff that's been discovered since I was reading so much about it.
We also finished watching a series about The Crusades this week. It was presented by Thomas Asbridge, and I'm pretty sure we've seen it before – but not during a period when I was blogging about the TV we watch so I can't be 100% sure (this is one incentive to keep writing up the programmes we see!). Sadly the reason we're pretty sure we've seen it is because the irritations seemed familiar. Some of that was the style – whenever there was a static image (like a painting from a manuscript) they'd tilt it or pan around on it in a particular irritating fashion. And there was a lot of over dramaticness to the script and the way Asbridge presented it. And for all it was billed as "groundbreaking" I didn't really have any "wow I didn't know that/remember that" moments (and I don't think that's just because I think I've seen it before).
It covered the Crusades in three chunks. First the start, and the initial successes (and their attendant brutalities). Next was Richard the Lionheart vs. Saladin. The final episode looked at the Muslim success in driving out the Christians, and at how it was actually the need to fight the encroaching Mongol Empire that drove this and the effects on the Christian Crusader Kingdoms were more of a side-effect.
Overall it was interesting enough to keep watching, but not as interesting as I'd hoped.
Other TV watched this week:
Episode 1 of How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears – a look at how the geography of the USA affected the colonisation and history of the Wild West.
Episode 1 of Secrets of Bones – series about bones, their biology & evolution.
Author MargaretPosted on June 20, 2014 Tags 20th Century, agriculture, Asbridge, Thomas, biology, britain, crusades, evolution, Fortey, Richard, history, palaeontology, science, Television (Non-fiction)
In Our Time: Robert Boyle
I know of Robert Boyle because of Boyle's Law (which I must've learnt in GCSE physics about 25 years ago although I couldn't give you the details now), but as In Our Time explained his part in developing the scientific method is probably the more important part of his legacy. And in his own time his piety and religious writings were also important. The three experts who discussed it were Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge), Michael Hunter (Birkbeck College, University of London) and Anna Marie Roos (University of Lincoln).
Robert Boyle was born in 1627 as the 14th child and 7th son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. The Boyles were fabulously wealthy. Not all of the children survived to adulthood, of those that did the daughters were married off advantageously (although not always happily) and the sons inherited their father's land. Robert Boyle as the youngest son probably had the least lands and income, but this still inclued lands in County Limerick and a manor in Dorset. And an income of around £3,000/year (if I remember right) which made him ludicrously wealthy at the time. An anecdote the experts used to illustrate this was that Boyle funded Hooke's telescope for the Royal Society, which was almost not built because it was too expensive and Hooke couldn't secure funds – Boyle stepped in and paid, and the programme gave the impression that this wasn't a stretch for him.
Boyle was educated at Eton for a few years starting when he was 8 years old, just after his mother died. Then in his mid-teens he went abroad, with a tutor, and spent several years in Continental Europe including France and Italy on a sort of Grand Tour. During that time he began to develop an interest in science, but more important to him he had the opportunity to debate religion with various scholars of the day. At some point in these years abroad he had a type of religious conversion experience during a thunderstorm in which he thought he might die. On his return to Ireland (and then England) in the 1640s he began to write essays about his understanding of religion, seeing this as his life's work. One of the experts, Hunter I think, said that if this was all Boyle had done then we probably wouldn't remember him – his style and his thinking weren't particularly novel or readable.
Boyle's practice of religion was a fairly practical matter. He was part of a school of thought that felt the best way to live a godly Christian life was to carefully examine your past to determine if you'd taken the actions most pleasing to God (and then presumably you have a pattern for the future). It's an ongoing process and would require meticulous attention to detail and thinking about other alternative things you could've done and so on. His scientific interests were also an outgrowth of his piety – a belief that the best way to learn about God was to learn about his creation. Bragg asked a few times if there had been a "scientific conversion" moment to match Boyle's religious turning point, but either Hunter or Schaffer pointed out that our division between religion and science as separate things with different spheres of relevance is anachronistic when thinking about the 17th Century.
During the 1650s and later Boyle became involved with a group of men who met regularly in Wadham College, Oxford and who would later form the nucleus of the Royal Society. They were mostly university educated, and so Boyle was a bit of an outlier (although I think not the only one) with his lack of formal education past his schooling at Eton. Whilst here he formed a close working partnership with Robert Hooke, who was particularly gifted at building apparatus and the practical side of chemistry & physics experimentation. The work Boyle is remembered for on air and gases was done in collaboration with Hooke. Boyle also corresponded with one of his sisters, Lady Ranelagh, about his work – and in later life he moved to London and lived in her household (which didn't include her husband, her marriage hadn't been a happy one).
Boyle was meticulous about writing down his experiments, and also wrote about how one should both carry out and record scientific experiments. Roos pointed out that modern day Materials and Methods sections in scientific papers are the direct descendants of Boyle's ideas about the scientific method. He said that one should write down exactly what had been done, so that another person could do the same experiment again. He also said that the experimenter should come to the experiment with an open mind, instead of already already decided what they expected to happen. Hunter finished up the discussion by saying that this initial development of the scientific method is Boyle's greatest legacy.
Boyle turns out to've been a much more interesting man than I'd expected from my half memory of his law about the relationship between gas volume & pressure!
Author MargaretPosted on June 19, 2014 Tags Bragg, Melvyn, britain, history, Hunter, Michael, physics, Radio, Roos, Anna Marie, Schaffer, Simon, science
About Me & About This Blog
This Blog is Now Two Blogs
July 2016 in Review
"The Middle East: The Cradle of Civilisation Revealed" Stephen Bourke (Part 9)
Celts: Art and Identity (British Museum Exhibition)
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Last week saw me kick a ball in two real sessions - the full 50 minutes of the Suffolk FA�s Monday Night Football League match, albeit playing for Playford�s opposition because they were short! Then again at a training session on Thursday.
The experiences made me realise how little football I have actually played in the last six months. The last time I completed 90 minutes was back in December for the First Team against The Feathers. By the end of January I was out for six weeks with a wrist injury and when I returned I managed just four appearances, the longest of which, my first, was 70 minutes again versus The Feathers and included a goal.
The two sessions showed that I can still chase around with the best of them, the stamina is still there, but match fitness, touch, speed of thought and positioning, all seems to have deserted me for the moment. In the Monday night game I couldn�t move the ball where I wanted or at times even manage some simple control. At training I felt like I never got out of first gear, which might have been alright if I was 26 or 27 and playing three times a week because it wouldn�t matter when it came to real games, but I�m 35 and barely getting above walking speed for exercise outside of football.
should easily hit 400 appearances with little trouble this season but if I want to keep going and push for 450 I will need to be more practiced during the close season. Indeed if I want to make a valuable contribution and not just be there to make up the numbers I have a lot of work still to do starting with another session tonight.


Your country needs……less moaning! I HAVE lost count of the number of times the newspapers, and more recently social media, have criticised the new designs as they appear on British coins, whether obverse or reverse. I remember when the £2 coin came in and people moaned that it wasn't in keeping with the rest of the heraldic UK designs. I remember when the Maklouf effigy was replaced by the current Rank-Broadley one and the chattering classes were out in force complaining that it made Her Majesty the Queen look too old and, dare one say it, slightly plump. I remember the debate as to whether the "three lions" on the 1997 £1 coin weren't in fact leopards and I have been involved with countless debates with collectors, and in the media, regarding the plethora of designs for the £2 coin and 50p coming out of Llantrisant these days. The latest furore surrounds the 2014 £2 coin to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. The coin, as shown in last month's COIN NEWS, depicts the iconic poster of Lord Kitchener pointing at the observer and insisting that their country needs them. Apparently there is an on-line petition calling for a coin design that more appropriately reflects the suffering and sacrifice of the average soldier rather than one that shows a man who, to many, represents the upper classes who are widely considered to have needlessly caused the deaths of thousands with their sheer bloody-mindedness and apparent inability to change tactics despite overwhelming evidence to suggest what they were doing wasn't working. To a certain extent I can see the point of those complaining—after all World War I was the bloodiest of conflicts and one where everyone, every family in the land and far beyond, felt the effects. This was the war to end all wars; it was unlike anything that had gone before and as it was the common man, not just the regular soldier, who was pushed to the fore isn't it right that what they did, what they sacrificed, should be remembered now? Well yes, but hold on a second, this is only the first year of the 100th anniversary commemorations; 2014 sees exactly 100 years since the British Empire declared war on the "evil Hun" and the "Contemptible little army" set off for France to push the Germans into the sea. It would, of course, be all over by Christmas and nobody expected the next four years of hell. The muck and mud of the trenches, the deadly "over the top" calls and the butcher's yards of the Somme etc. that are, to most people's minds, the archetypal image of World War I would come later. The war of 1914 featured some trench warfare, yes, but nothing like what was to come and even in the winter of that year the conditions were nowhere near as dreadful as they were to become. The army of 1914 was a reasonably mobile one of mainly regulars; there were some territorials and some volunteers but these were not the conscripts ripped from their homes and plunged into a nightmare with little or no experience or training that was to typify the army of 1916–18 and as such I would humbly suggest to those moaning about the £2 coin that they've rather missed the point (not to mention that they are trying to put modern day values onto history as so many of these people seem to do) and they would be better off waiting to see what the Royal Mint will come up with in the next few years rather than moaning now. The new coin's design shows an image familiar to many, then and now. It also shows an image very iconic to the age: this was still the age of Empire, still a time when the call from the upper classes was heeded by the lower orders, and whilst none knew what was to come, many happily answered Kitchener's call, proudly heading to recruiting stations to "do their duty". This is a perfect image to commemorate 1914, because whether the moaners like it or not, that's how things were. With this in mind I would say that the Royal Mint has got this one right—they don't always and the sheer number of different designs coming out of South Wales is sometimes bewildering, but on this occasion I don't see a problem. Those who are complaining have, I think, jumped too soon —we don't know what the designers have up their sleeves for 2015–18 and it is more than possible that the horrors of war and the sacrifice of ordinary men may well find itself on a UK coin at some point in the next four years. Of course, then what we will have is an on-line petition complaining about the subject being too graphic and not a suitable one for a coin . . . you know what they say: you can't please all of the people all of the time, and after years of hearing debates like this I can certainly confirm that!
Divided by a common history?


Ten years after Ito gained widespread attention with his design for the Sendai Mediatheque seems an opportune moment to examine what the architect has done since then. This up to date survey examines works, projects and competition entries – the overwhelming majority yet to be realised – through multiple models, technical drawings, sketches and complex structural plans. Accompanied by three insightful and wide-ranging interviews with Ito, the publication contains such works as his "Les Halles" competition entry, the BAM/PFM project for the University of California, the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House in Taiwan and the Za-Koenji Public Theatre in Tokyo.


Best Hooper has been an expert in the property and land sector areas of law for over a century. We understand there are significant cost burdens on a project from a planning perspective prior to achieving unit sales, as well as construction speed and holding costs. But effective and efficient conveyancing services are often overlooked; and these are just as critical to the profitability and cash flow of any development, large or small. As a result, we have partnered with a leading technology provider of electronic conveyancing to leverage this technology into our clients' businesses, with the goal to reduce costs and streamline property transactions.
Property Exchange Australia (PEXA) is a digital platform that facilitates secure online lodgment and financial settlements. It is relatively new to Victoria but inevitably the way of the future; having already handled more than 672,000 nationwide property transactions valued at almost $85 billion at the time of publication. In fact, from 1 October 2018 (less than a year away) all property transfers in Victoria will be required to be processed electronically. It has proven very advantageous for individual transactions and the PEXA platform is now adaptable for large-scale development use.
Many of Best Hooper's clients have been early adopters of this technology and are now enjoying the benefits of delivering their housing product quicker to their customers. When Best Hooper is engaged to provide legal services across the lifecycle of a development – from the early project planning and proposal – we will work with the financier of the development to ensure they are aware of all of the advantages of the e-conveyancing system and to assist them with PEXA registration and on-boarding, even before a single unit is sold! Our practice is also equipped to offer fully electronic contract execution, which means buyers can be signed up immediately, avoiding administrative delays.
The online platform allows the Best Hooper conveyancing team to take the project unit sales (lot numbers, price lists and purchasers details) and convert them into individual online workspaces; simultaneously inviting the purchaser's lawyers to access their respective space. Our conveyancers and lawyers working on the matters then generate transfers and supporting documents and execute them electronically with safe, encrypted signatures; avoiding the need for individual signing of each document.
By enabling this administrative work to be finalised swiftly with significantly less risk of human error allows our clients and lawyers to turn their attention to registration of the plan of subdivision as quickly as possible, to bring the project to completion on schedule, giving our developers the opportunity to achieve maximum financial benefit from each project. The portal allows for bulk notifications and settlement of matters online with speed, accuracy and efficiency.
These are the same advantages that are available to single lot vendors/purchasers but on a much larger scale. Accuracy means settlement extensions are avoided. Efficiency allows over 100 settlements to take place in one day. Speed with instant clearance of funds through the Reserve Bank of Australia means there is no three day wait for sale proceeds; on a single settlement this might save $200 of interest on your mortgage, on 200 settlements it could save over $40,000!
As a trusted partner of PEXA, Best Hooper is working with PEXA with the goal of creating a Developer portal which will allow our clients 24-hour access to view the progress of plan registration, access copies of all contracts, track deposit investments, settlement progress and final sale proceeds. The system will generate reports at all stages to keep our clients informed every step of the way and allow them as little or as much involvement as they prefer.
There is only one cost to use e-conveyancing for large scale development and this is the same one-off fee payable at settlement as an individual would pay. The fee (currently $110.55) is payable per settled transaction. However, the responsibility for payment of this fee can be deemed as part of the individual purchaser's settlement adjustment.
Our practice draws on experience from a wealth of property expert partners and we seek to pass on benefits through synergy of our resources to offer seasoned property developers a holistic service that they can trust, at a very competitive rate. To discuss your upcoming projects with our property team and obtain a fixed fee proposal tailored to your project's individual needs please contact Giancarlo Romano on (03) 9691 0220.


text:
old advertising posters - copyright and trademarks
Phil Shankland
Post by Phil Shankland » Thu Aug 27, 2015 10:41 am
I've read posts on this forum which have been very helpful - and I seem to straddle 2 separate issues - copyright and trademark permissions.
I have been offered access to a catalogue of scanned original old posters for advertising e.g. products, places, railways, shipping lines. To be clear - I do not own the original posters. I want to reproduce them on the lids of my cool Tinamps - portable speakers in 2oz tobacco tins.
Of course, I want to respect and where appropriate license the designs. Some of them advertise a brand e.g. 'Fry's' and even though the artist who designed the poster is long dead (we're talking about posters from the 1860's - 1930's) do I have to research copyright as well as trademarks?
If the poster advertises a now (as far as I know) defunct brand e.g. 'Swift cycles' and 'Brighton Biscuit Company' do I still have to go to the same research effort to establish if the defunct brand name is still a registered trade mark?
If the poster is an advert to visit say Scarborough do I still need to try and identify the copyright owner (the artist) and seek permission from Scarborough Tourist office, for example?
Post by AndyJ » Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:56 pm
I don't think you need worry about copyright for any posters from before about 1890. Copyright in them will almost certainly have expired. This is based on the reasonable assumption that an artist aged, say, 25 years when he created an poster in 1890 could have been expected to live the age of around 75 and so would have died in 1940, and as the post mortem copyright period then was 50 years, copyright would have expired no later than 31 December 1990, well before the increase to 70 years post mortem which occurred in 1995. By the same token, anything produced after about 1895 should therefore be treated on the assumption that there may still be copyright in existence, although it will usually be very hard to track down the individual artists in most cases. So unless there is a known artist, you can treat these post-1895 works as being by anonymous artists and so sub-sections (3) to (5) of section 12 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act apply:
(3) If the work is of unknown authorship, copyright expires—
(a) at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was made, or
(b) if during that period the work is made available to the public, at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is first so made available,
subject as follows.
(4) Subsection (2) applies if the identity of the author becomes known before the end of the period specified in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (3).
(5) For the purposes of subsection (3) making available to the public includes—
(a) in the case of a literary, dramatic or musical work—
(i) performance in public, or
(ii) communication to the public;
(b) in the case of an artistic work—
(i) exhibition in public,
(ii) a film including the work being shown in public, or
(iii) communication to the public;
but in determining generally for the purposes of that subsection whether a work has been made available to the public no account shall be taken of any unauthorised act.
Given that all these posters pre-date 1930, those where the artist is anonymous will now be out of copyright under this provision.
So really, the only copyright problems you face are those post-1895 posters where the artist has been identified. Since you will probably face great problems tracking down both the dates of death and any heirs to these artists, such works will probably be eligible to be treated as orphan works. Applying for licences to use such works is relatively cheap and straight forward, as explained on the Intellectual Property Office website.
As far as trade marks are concerned, it is possible that the odd one may still be registered, but if it hasn't been used in the course of trade in the past 5 years, the registration can be challenged. Thus, even if some company claims ownership of the trade mark, it is highly likely that any claim can be rebutted without things getting too serious, on the basis that the mark is likely to be declared invalid for lack of use. If in doubt, the IPO online trade mark database is relatively easy to use to check and see the status of any marks you are unsure about. I wouldn't worry about the possible trade mark issues with posters for resorts like Scarborough. Scarborough itself is not registered, and even if you came across a town which had registered its name for use on posters, your use of the name on tins for electronic items would be highly unlikely to infringe the trade mark because no-one is likely to be confused into thinking your product is somehow related to the resort of Blackpool or where ever.
Post by Phil Shankland » Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:37 am
AndyJ - this is an incredibly detailed and helpful answer. Thank you.
It helps me focus more on trademark protections where the poster includes a brand name e.g. Fry's or Rowntree's.
One follow on question then - where do I stand on using an image pre-1890 for 'nervous pills' which has already been used (in another format with different wording but its the same Baldwins brand) by Robert Opie to create a similar tin. I used to buy my tins with this design from them - and now they have discontinued them and I want to source my own design. Phil
Post by AndyJ » Fri Aug 28, 2015 2:17 pm
Assuming that the bit that you want to replicate is from the original pre-1890 item, I can't see this infringing a Robert Opie re-recreation because it would only be possible for the company to claim copyright in something they have specifically created which is original and not copied from the earlier packaging. You effectively wish to copy the idea of old branding/packaging and you are free to do so since this in the public domain.
I don't think there can be any trade mark implications from this. Nor do I think passing off is relevant here. Even though you wish to produce something which may well resemble an earlier Opie product, since both of them are replicating an even older design, it would be exceptionally hard to argue that Opies had built goodwill around their product range since most of the items relate to other earlier brands etc. To pursue a passing-off claim against anyone selling vintage-inspired goods would, to my mind, look like a restrictive and unfair trade practice.
I cannot find anything on the Robert Opie website concerning their intellectual property policy so it is hard to know what they might or might not wish to claim in this respect.


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"I am not worried," Adirondack said.
"You'll think of something, I have not a doubt.
There is no problem too big for your head.
Who for his friend's sake tried not to look glum.
Of the jing-jing-a-ling of sleighing bells.
"Oh, hark! Hear you that sound?" asked ape of moose.
"I do indeed, oh most sagacious one.
It is the sound that sleigh bells do produce.
'Twas Jason 'pon his shining sleigh, of course!
Abone and Pidget they are called by name.
And Pidget, a Dalmatian, does the same.
As Jason's voice did carry through the air.
Editor's Note: It appears reinforcements have arrived! Is Adirondack saved? Find out in tomorrow's edition of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review!


"Days of Our Lives" spoilers for the week of December 10-14 tease that some stunning showdowns are coming up in Salem. First, we should talk about Gabi (Camila Banus) and Abigail's (Kate Mansi) war. It's clear that they're both fierce competitors, but Abigail's moved into the lead. She managed to trick Stefan (Tyler Christopher) and score her release from Bayview, so Gabi's scheme is falling apart.
However, Gabi will at least hope she can make Stefan pay and get herself off the hook for paternity test tampering. Kate's (Lauren Koslow) breathing down her neck about telling Chad (Billy Flynn) the truth, so Gabi can't wait much longer. She needs to kick that part of all this in high gear.
Of course, it won't really matter in the end. Thanks to Abigail and Julie's (Susan Seaforth Hayes) team effort, Gabi's whole plot will be exposed eventually. For now, Abigail will unsettle Gabi with her threats. She'll plan to do whatever it takes to completely turn the tables and make Gabi wish she'd never messed with her.
Other "Days of Our Lives" spoilers say Ted's (Gilles Marini) lie will earn him a blow to the face. Rafe (Galen Gering) will punch Ted over his affair claims, so Hope (Kristian Alfonso) will have to set the record straight. She'll assure Rafe that this has never been about cheating. Hope's just been trying to lock Ben (Robert Scott Wilson) up with Ted's help and she's been providing protection from Stefan in return.
Rafe won't like all the lying, but he should be glad there wasn't a betrayal in the bedroom. Unfortunately, Rafe and Hope's problems are far from over. "Days" spoilers say Ted will become a real pain for "Rope," so don't be surprised if their trust issues get worse.
Over with Will (Chandler Massey) and Sonny (Freddie Smith), they'll come up with one final tactic to save their future together. When it fails, Sonny will have no choice but to marry Leo (Greg Rikaart). Justin (Wally Kurth) and Adrienne (Judi Evans) will be disgusted when they hear about Leo's latest round of blackmail. They'll wish they could help, but Sonny will argue that he's exhausted all options.
"Days of Our Lives" spoilers state that Sheila (Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins) will be on hand to officiate. The wedding will begin, but Victor (John Aniston) will quickly interrupt it. He'll wonder what in the world Sonny thinks he's doing. After Sonny provides an explanation, Victor will agree that the nuptials must proceed.
Sonny and Leo will officially become husbands, so that'll bring plenty of heartbreak for Will. He'll deck Leo in frustration this week, so Will's obviously in for a rough time. Let's hope Will and Sonny can score leverage at some point. DOOL spoilers they'll need to outsmart Leo and get the ball rolling on an annulment!
There are more twists and turns to come in this storyline, so "Days" fans won't want to miss all the action. We'll give you updates as other news and rumors emerge. Stick with DOOL and don't forget to check Soap Opera Spy often for the latest "Days of Our Lives" spoilers, rumors, updates and news.


AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - Atlantic Records SD 16033 - 1981 - First U.S. Press - Club Edition "Manufactured by Columbia House Under License" appears on the back of the jacket, in the area of the bottom right corner.
"CRC" appears on both labels. - NO BARCODE !! - DON'T be fooled by Ebay users saying that SD 16033 is a 1976 !! This album was not released in the U.S. until 1981.


Which interface innovation do you think has the most potential?
Surface Dial in action. Image source: Microsoft.
It's been a pretty busy week in the world of consumer tech. Both Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) hosted product events this week, showcasing a wide range of desktop and laptop PCs.
But the real storyline beneath the headliners were two subtle plays at improving user interfaces, each in their own way: the Surface Dial and the Touch Bar.
The importance of interface innovation cannot be overstated. Interfaces utterly and fundamentally define how we interact with our gadgets. Think about the original graphical user interfaces from the 1980s, or the modernization of touchscreen interfaces from the 2000s. These marked profound paradigm shifts in computing. While neither Surface Dial or Touch Bar will be as revolutionary, they are certainly incremental and have potential.
Surface Dial is very much catered toward creative use cases. It can be placed on a Surface device, and creates a contextual tool wheel or offers another way to physically interact with a touchscreen. When placed on a desktop, the uses seem more negligible. It's not like we're lacking for a way to scroll.
Touch Bar changes dynamically depending on the context. Image source: Apple.
Touch Bar, on the other hand, appears to be much more versatile in everyday use. It's the exact same idea that Apple had with the original iPhone. Instead of fixed physical buttons, virtual buttons on a touchscreen can be nearly infinitely adaptable depending on the context and the application -- and the developer's imagination.
Surface Dial has a cost advantage. The small puck-like device costs $100, and is compatible with a wide range of Surface devices. You don't necessarily have to buy the $3,000 Surface Studio to use it. On the other hand, Touch Bar comes at a $300 premium on the new MacBook Pro (compared with the model that includes standard function keys).
As we saw with Apple's initial push into Retina Macs in 2012, the cost of adoption is quite important. It wasn't until the premium fell that consumers began to adopt high-resolution displays en masse. The real coup would be if Microsoft expanded Surface Dial support throughout its broader OEM base. The software is already there, so it should just be a matter of including the necessary hardware.
Still, Touch Bar seems to have a lot more potential to improve utility across a wider range of use cases, and the cost will inevitably come down over time. Considering Apple's penchant for bringing new innovations to laptops before desktops, it will presumably work to somehow bring Touch Bar to desktop Macs eventually, perhaps in the form of a new stand-alone keyboard that includes a Touch Bar.
I'd bet on Touch Bar to emerge as the real winner over time.