Auf Essen in Deutschland
I've spent the week in Germany, where I've been performing a safety audit on a device made by a German subsidiary of a Swiss company on behalf of an English subsidiary of a French company. I write this sitting in France, fifty metres from Switzerland, while waiting for a plane to fly me to the Netherlands and thence home to Scotland. It's all remarkably painless.
But let's talk about Germany. Lots of the things you thought you knew (or I thought I knew) about Germany turn out to be true — or at least, turn out to be true of small towns on the fringes of the Schwartzwald. My view might be slightly influenced by the company I was auditing, by the fact that that Swiss-owned engineering company was absolutely obsessive about quality in everything they did (including hospitality). It was engineering of the kind I associate with Germany: always up to a quality, never down to a price. Over-engineered rather than under-engineered; good and thoughtful design, but emphasising sturdiness and durability over style.
The taxis were spotlessly clean, their drivers unfailingly courteous. The factory was clean and efficient and all the staff positive, relaxed, confident and happy to explain their work. The hotel was extremely well fitted and comfortable (and clean), the rooms generous and luxurious, the staff helpful, friendly and welcoming. They were mostly middle aged, not young; I think almost entirely local; and the ratio of staff to guests higher than you'd find in anything but the most upmarket British hotel. Yet the cost of a room was exactly the same as in a grubby corporate flea-pit in East Kilbride — where you would not have got the delicious and varied breakfast.
Settling a game world
This essay is part of a series with 'Worlds and Flats' and 'The spread of knowledge in a large game world'; if you haven't read those you may want to read them before reading this. This essay describes how a large world can come into being and can evolve. I've written again on this subject since — see 'Populating a game world')
Microworld
Some twenty years ago I wrote a rather sophisticated cellular automaton which I called 'Microworld' which modelled the spread of human population over a landscape. It did this by first fractally folding a grid to assign elevations to cells. Then, cells below a critical elevation — the tree line — were assigned as forest. For each cycle — 'year' — a cell remained forest, its soil fertility would increase. Random events — 'lightning strikes' could change a cell from forest to clearing. Then the following transitions might take place, each with a probability, where each cell is considered to have eight neighbours:
When in Germany
I've spent the week in Germany, where I've been performing a safety audit on a device made by a German subsidiary of a Swiss company on behalf of an English subsidiary of a French company. I write this sitting in France, fifty metres from Switzerland, while waiting for a plane to fly me to the Netherlands and thence home to Scotland. It's all remarkably painless.
But let's talk about Germany. Lots of the things you thought you knew (or I thought I knew) about Germany turn out to be true — or at least, turn out to be true of small towns on the fringes of the Schwartzwald. My view might be slightly influenced by the company I was auditing, by the fact that that Swiss-owned engineering company was absolutely obsessive about quality in everything they did (including hospitality). It was engineering of the kind I associate with Germany: always up to a quality, never down to a price. Over-engineered rather than under-engineered; good and thoughtful design, but emphasising sturdiness and durability over style.
The taxis were spotlessly clean, their drivers unfailingly courteous. The factory was clean and efficient and all the staff positive, relaxed, confident and happy to explain their work. The hotel was extremely well fitted and comfortable (and clean), the rooms generous and luxurious, the staff helpful, friendly and welcoming. They were mostly middle aged, not young; I think almost entirely local; and the ratio of staff to guests higher than you'd find in anything but the most upmarket British hotel. Yet the cost of a room was exactly the same as in a grubby corporate flea-pit in East Kilbride — where you would not have got the delicious and varied breakfast.
The polemic, as detective story
If I'd met Steig Larsson, I'm pretty sure I'd have liked him. I like his values. And I absolutely agree with the thesis which I think caused him to write this book, which is that one of the most effective ways in which you can change the values of a society are through popular culture. Not through high culture, but through films people choose to watch, television programmes they stay home to follow, books they actually read.
This is a book to be read. It is, first of all, a ripping yarn. Its two protagonists are both well realised and interesting — Blomkvist, Larsson's own alter ego, is a warm, gentle, intelligent person of strong convictions and integrity. Salander — the girl with the dragon tattoo — is darker; profoundly damaged, severely autistic, desperately vulnerable, with ethics and values which don't mesh well with the society around her but which have an integrity of their own. Around them is a wider cast of characters, many of them interesting, most of them well drawn and realised.
It's a rattling good yarn. It's extremely well told — there are a series of clever misdirections early in the narrative which make you (made me) think you've seen a major clue to the mystery; in my case I was (mostly) wrong. The denoument, when it comes, is absolutely consequent on the evidence that has been presented — this is a whodunnit in that classic sense — but also profoundly surprising and shocking.
Days when I'm proud to be Scots
So, we released Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi yesterday. For the purposes of this note, let's simply assume that Megrahi was guilty as charged. Let's ignore the fact that the evidence in the case was clearly murky, and appears to have been manipulated by intelligence agencies, and by bribing witnesses. Let's ignore that al Megrahi consistently denied guilt.
A man has killed — in an appalling masacre — two hundred and seventy innocent people. Now he is in prison, in a land far from his home and family, and he is dying. Does he deserve to be released? No. Should he be released on compassionate grounds? That depends on whether those holding him have compassion.
Compassion is not deserved. Compassion is an act of grace, of mercy. An eye for an eye — justice, revenge, the law of vengeance, the obsessive levelling of scores — not only leaves everyone blind. It leaves everyone impoverished. It leaves a world devoid of moral values to look up to.