positronic-reinforcement

The New Yorker has a nice, succinct piece on the recent demonstration of the artificial intelligence DeepMind, whose talents draw from two sources, a deductive network of filters and positive-reinforcement.
The program—instructed with only the protocol that winning was good and losing bad—dazzled the human audience with a stellar progression on a platform of classic arcade games with some very masterful and unexpected strokes. It is not that DeepMind is inside the game, like when one challenges the game, but separated like a human player, and quickly devised a sure strategy. The program, however, did not perform quite so well with certain games—like Ms. Pac-Man, and the handlers weren’t quite sure why. Some disparaging voices checked their enthusiasm, as milestones like Deep Blue beating a chess grand-master or Watson winning against Jeopardy! quiz-masters. These achievements, though not coddled and not insignificant, came about, however, through extensive coaching, whereas DeepMind is learning on its own. What do you think? Is growth going to be exponential and get very quickly out of human hands?

five-by-five

neat, petite: Agent Scully posing as Morticia Addams

dog and butterfly: some beautiful photography of an unlikely pairing

geisterstadt: there is a growing website of abandoned places and ghosts towns all over the world

de stiji: a print or tee-shirt of the TARDIS in the style of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian

a great rodd of birch: a character called Whipping Tom (with several copy-cats) terrorised Londoners in the 1600s, beating their hinders and shouting, “Spanko!”

howling fantods

The inexhaustibly fascinating Dangerous Minds features a look at the major arcana of a suite of tarot cards conceived by the brilliant artist Edward Gorey, who gave us the lovable in the macabre.
The cards are not properly prognosticating ones, however, as they all represent different aspects of our internal fantods, a word more than for the nonce, that describes our worries and anxieties and irritations and bode no hope for a bright and uplifting fortune. For instance, drawing the Feather can be interpreted to forecast obstacles of a most pernicious nature—including, rather specifically, blackmail, a forged passport, intestinal discomfort, and loss of eyelashes (which is called madarosis). The horror. Be sure to check out the link for more backstory and augury, and Dangerous Minds in general for some veteran discoveries.

cowboys and indians: home-stretch

After the long, violent delay in Antioch, the Crusader army found itself on the last short leg through the Levant and onto Jerusalem. Though diminished in numbers and supplies, they met little local resistance in blazing a trail across the wilderness towards the heart of the Holy Land.
While the intervening populations, Tripoli, Haifa, did not exactly roll over, the Crusaders’ dread reputation for ruthlessness proceeded them and communities decided prudently that it was easier to aid and abet the advancing army and send them on their merry way rather than suffer their wrath and wind up slaughtered and cooked for supper. That act of cannibalism during the siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan grew in people’s imaginations and echoed, along with a lot of other misdeeds, through the decades and contributed to the so-called Great Schism, when the Eastern Church asserted independence from Rome. Another rumour—or rather a realisation began to circulate regarding the Crusaders’ ultimate goal, conquest of Jerusalem. Byzantium and Fatimid Egypt, while not exactly fast-friends, did maintain diplomatic-relations, since after all they had a shared enemy and shared national-interests in the Seljuk Turks, who’d captured many Byzantine lands and until only a decade or so prior, held Palestine and Jerusalem. The Shia Egyptians had expelled the Sunni Turks at a great cost, but now were wise to the Crusaders designs and did not want their hard-earned gains to fall to Christian occupiers. Egyptian leaders appealed to Emperor Alexios, offering terms that all parties could live with—safe passage for pilgrimage, protection of the churches and freedom of worship. Alexios had to concede, however, that the army had gone rogue, after failing to restore Antioch to the Empire and founding their own Crusade States (Egypt was probably also smarting for having spilled so much blood and treasure expelling the Seljuk Turks, while if they had been patient, this army would have been sent down from Europe to do the dirty-work and Egypt would only have light-duties), and he would be powerless to stop them.
The Crusaders too had gotten a taste of the Holy Land not as pilgrims but as conquerers and were far from sated. Egypt resigned itself to raising an army to dispatch with this nuisance, but the Crusaders’ pace was too quick and they ended up taking Jerusalem and unleashed a terrible and unconstrained massacre of Muslim residents before falling to that familiar routine of deciding ownership of the prize. Out of humility, no one in the end claimed kingship over Jerusalem but rather Advocate-in-Chief. And scene—well, not quite. The noble families of Europe who’d sat out the first Crusade, dismissing it as a fool’s errand, hearing reports of the glory and plunder of these instigators were kicking themselves for not having gotten in on the ground-floor, launching successive waves of sloppy-seconds raising more ire and polarisation hoping to maintain that tenuous hold on the Holy Land and secure greater conquests.

five-by-five

brotherly-love: these two siblings have been exchanging a single birthday card for twenty-seven years

worrywart: the not so obvious benefits of anxieties

ewe-net: wifi-enabled sheep aim to create mobile access points for rural Wales

honourable mentions: some of the contenders from Sony’s World Photography Awards

tip of the iceberg: research suggests that the unconscious mind is capable of mental acrobatics we usually associate with conscious deliberation

curtain-call and cat-walk

Sometimes a reminder is far better than a discovery.

Dangerous Minds admonishes us how David Bowie, fresh from the release of his album “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” toured with the theatre company performing The Elephant Man, playing the principal role. Fellow-actors and the audience attested that he played the part perfectly, without make-up or prosthetics. Other artists, reportedly, only craved the Elephant Man’s bones. The mobarazzi by fans was really to much to bear at times, and David Bowie took measures to protect himself. During the production’s run on Broadway, several luminaries caught the show, including Yoko Ono and John Lennon—who was killed by a crazed fan shortly afterward. This tragic act must have surely turned Bowie away from the stage, given the grasping he’d already experienced despite his talent. Be sure to check out the link for more details and a performance.

soundscaper

The notion of treating customers put on hold to a cord or two of background music while on hold came about quite by accident, instead of being invented by some clever marketer or instrumental-musician, although it did take one to exploit all possible formats and venues (the waiting room, the elevator, restaurants). Musak, in the wilds and not contained just with a telephone receiver, is composed with a subtle technique called stimulus progression, meant to make waiting-times seem to pass by faster or make workers within earshot more productive and focused. In 1962, the metal girders of a factory’s reception offices turned the entire structure into an antenna that picked up the broadcast from a neighbouring radio station and piped in the sounds when the circuit was flipped and callers were placed on hold. Instead of being irritated with this glitch, both the factory owner and patient callers found it rather novel and pleasant.

cowboys and indians: parallel construction

Once our adventure got off to a start, more as Pope Urban II had envisioned it and under the sanctioned leadership of penitent princes of Latin Christendom, there were quite a few trials along the learning-curve to sort out first and throughout the interminably long and punishing siege of Antioch. To begin with, a large contingent that the Byzantine Emperor Alexios was welcoming into Constantinople—already being a little miffed by his previously ungracious guests in the peasants’ army, were Italo-Norman mercenaries, the same group that had been conducting raids on Byzantine lands in the Balkans. Much of the rest of the princes were either very ambitious or were impoverished, landless nobility who sought to make their fortunes in the Crusade, and whom, like the poor serfs that did not hesitate over-much in leaving their estates, didn’t have much to lose and a great deal to gain, but there was the universally-respected Bishop Adémar of Le Puy, the papal legate who was officially in charge, and a few excellent strategists to hopefully reign in these more dangerous elements. As Urban had in part sold the idea of retaking the Holy Lands to Byzantium, whose blessing was absolutely necessary for the venture to succeed, with the promise of helping the Eastern Empire regaining territory lost recently to the Seljuk Turks, the Crusaders deployed first to this task.
Although a safe corridor for resupply was also needed, admittedly, these first conquests were a bit half-hearted, as all conquests reverted to Byzantium and the Crusaders, though they surely gained in plunder and spoils, saw less out of the deal than they’d wished for. These lands in Anatolia, extending into the Levant to Syria, were only taken by the Turks about a decade prior and there was still a sizable population, if not an overwhelming majority of Greek citizens in the towns and villages, whom—while not exactly persecuted and yearning to be liberated—were happy to lend aid to this army on the march and help to overthrow the Seljuk Turks.  The apparent cake-walk towards the Holy Land could also be attributed to the political landscape of the region, which was not much different from that of contemporary Western Europe from whence the Crusaders were recruited—local rulers were on the defense and the offense. Powerful families were forever trying to wrest more lands from one another, an there were the same old intrigues, sectarianism, dynastic concerns and marriages of allegiance plus that new order of hashish smoking Assassins to contend with. The Turks, though not wanting their lands attacked, also had little sympathy for seeing rivals suffer, and they assumed that the Crusade was just another bunch of soldiers-of-fortune sent out to reclaim some of the territory of the Byzantine Empire, not suspecting a greater, holier goal since the Crusaders’ deportment did not indicate otherwise. A Shia embassy from Fatimid Egypt, in fact, even visited the encampment, pleased that the Crusaders were making life difficult for their Sunni enemies. Edessa (then called Justinopolis but now known as Şanlıurfa) came under Crusader control, as the native Armenians wanted to free themselves from both Seljuk or Byzantine rule—as did a number of important ports along the coast. The advance halted, however, before Antioch, with its impenetrable fortified walls. Knowing it was vital to take this city, a Christian stronghold and important nexus—not to mention a place of considerable wealth, the Crusaders, numbering some thirty to fifty-thousand souls, warriors and non-combatants, families and support personnel which made up the bulk of the army, encamped themselves in the orchards and fields that lie beneath the city-walls, with designs to starve out the population.
The siege went on for months and months, like the Achaeans before Troy with moodiness and fatigue—not to mention privation, and still Antioch held. Misgivings aside, two events managed to allow the Crusaders access: one was a relationship forged between one of the senior leaders and a tower guard and later the visions of a poor monk. A watchman named Firouz agreed, after much consultation, agreed to toss down a rope ladder to allow an advance group access to the city, who would throw open the city gates to the Crusader army. Just as the Crusaders took Antioch, however, a relief force had arrived from Aleppo, allied with the ruler of Antioch, and greatly outnumbered the Crusaders. After months on end of the Crusaders spent at the gates, Antioch was depleted and now the Crusaders, inside the city-walls, found themselves under siege, the Syrian army encamped on the same pitch that they’d recently left. The second event that brought about the egress came when a priest and servant of one of the wealthy nobles approached Adémar and others, saying that he’d been told by Christ that the Holy Lance was buried beneath a church in Antioch and should it be retrieved; the army bearing the standard of the spear that the gladiator Longius pierced the side of Jesus with would be invincible. Some were a bit skeptical, being as there was already a Holy Lance, enshrined in Constantinople, but no matter as there is a Spear of Destiny today in Saint Peter’s and also one in the Hofburg of Vienna, part of the imperial regalia of the Hapsburgs (which was hidden and kept safe from Hitler, as it was believed to possess the same potent powers), and as the Crusaders had truck with relics, genuine and supposed, which were important monetary-instruments to secure re-supply from the Genoese and Venetians, they let the excavation proceed.
When the sought-after evidence was produced, it became at-large an amazing morale-booster for those invaders now become captives, and the Crusaders successfully fought their way out of the city. Once at liberty to continue their mission, however, the Crusaders did not march straightaway to Jerusalem.  Instead, rather, the squabbling continued as to who should govern Antioch and surrounding lands—no one wanted to cede their conquests to Emperor Alexios, but there were quite a few claimants, chief rivals being the noble that had turned the loyalties of the watchman and the patron of the monk that found the Holy Lance. None were budging and the arrival of re-enforcements by ship—now that the ports were under Crusader control, brought a pestilence to the army, taking many lives, including Bishop Adémar. Now the Princes were not only bereft of a consensus and direction, they also had to nominate a new leader and there was no placating anyone. The undermining was despicable and it looked as if the Crusade would never make it further than Antioch, with no one willing to relinquish his stake. A particularly shameful and needless massacre on the neighbouring town of Ma’arrat al-Numan, whose unspeakable carnage included acts of cannibalism and the eventual total destruction of the settlement—which was only targeted, expressly, to keep the Principality of Antioch under-supplied and at the mercy of the princes who were not vested with that land, really revolted many of the knights who began to march off without their petty leaders and the princes finally agreed that one among them would remain behind to govern the territory and they’d march on.