Except for a few professional women, (police, DA, nurse, teacher)  the women in The Wire and The Corner are almost all basically evil – malignly manipulative – like the mothers of Di Angelo’s  baby and the kid who gets adopted by the saintly Bunny – or psychopathically murderous for fun –  Snoop

I should take some exception to this. It is certainly an example of the stereotyping of women as exemplifying pure good – nurturing –  or (im)pure viciousness – destroying or providing seriously bad nurturing. I also take exception to the fact that the Wire’s central female police officer is gay and acting as a male in relation to her “child” . Yes, it’s good to have positive gay characters. But couldn’t there have been an equally brave and intelligent  female police officer who was straight? Do all the “good” women have to be involved in caring? (Bloody hell, Cagney and Lacey were ahead on this one – thirty years ago.)

I’ll not press this point too far though. Because:

• Most of the evil females are fantastically evil – Lady-Macbeth style evil.
• They are truly manipulative and really forceful at using social expectations to get their own way, twisting “family values” to their own ends, using women’s people skills – promises, threats, violence, emotional blackmail and whatever it takes.  We all know people like that, which is a bit scary.
• They have some great lines.
• They are really funny.
• Thay are much watchable than the relatively pallid good characters.
• Snoop is in a class of her own, completely without any motivation except the pleasure of the killl and she seems only moderately uninterested in that. The banter between her and Method Man’s character is like a more true-to life version of the conversations of Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta, in Pulp Fiction . She has a magnificent but totally chilling contempt for human life –  shown best when she shoots someone more or less at random in an unfounded belief he is from New York. (Someone claims in a  Youtube  comment to know the real one. Argh)

Fran in The Corner has her own episode. It is her fault her husband has fallen from success (a good job, a house, a family) to the corners, according to her son. She is doing her best to send him down the same path, despite also wanting him to do better. She steals from everyone, including her son, then subtly tries to drop him in it when he brings the  owner of the monety to her – criticising him for saying it was her. The problem with this character is that the writesr have tried to give her some complexity – she wants to  better herself and tries to get into rehab – but there  is no character development. She swings from one approach to the other. You can’t care about her whether she is being  unscrupulous or seeking to improve. Which is a pity beacuse the actress is good and some of the things she does and says are very funny.

After three episodes of The Corner (I am trying to ration them a bit) I can report that it’s pretty good.

For The Wire fanatics, it’s the undeveloped low-budget version. It would probably seem really good if The Wire didn’t exist. This series allowed us to get The Wire in its full glory, so even if it was rubbish it would be worth watching.

Each episode in the series takes a Baltimore individual and shows his or her story, with a focus on the dissolution of the neighbourhoods. The actions and the dialogue can be as witty as parts of The Wire. Central concerns are the same, with a focus on how the family reproduces the fractured relationships of the neighbourhood, similar to the focus on the kids in Wire Series 4. The street shots are the same neighbourhoods used in the Wire. Lots of the action takes place in the Series 3 Hamsterdam area. Many of the same production team were also involved, and some stylistic marks of the Wire, such as the introductory quote and the good credits music are present in embryonic form

Most of the cast are the actors who appear in The Wire, often cast in diametrically opposed roles. Several Central Wire police are street addicts or dealers in The Corner. The Series 4 headmistress is a clam shop supervisor. Avon Barksdale is hustling for scrap to sell, and so on. This adds another level of entertainment value that can not have been foreseen by the original team. You can watch it, picking out actors and trying to remember who they were. For instance, I think I saw Method Man in there. I have a suspicion that one character is an unfeasibly young version of the main female police officer from the original team – the one who gets moved to Homicide in Series 5, as part of the first Mayor’s plan to sink the expanding investigation in the period leading up to an election.

The focus on individuals builds up into a composite picture, with each person forming a part of the others’ stories and each instalment sheds more light on the previous episodes.

When compared to the Wire, it is less than satisfying. The stories (so far) are unremittingly dismal, focusing only on those at the bottom of the heap, the moralising is too overt and the characters aren’t consistently strong enough to carry so much interest. The Wire has such an incredible array of fascinating morally complex characters from all social levels that this series can’t compete with its scope and complexity. However, it is brilliantly experimental televsion in itself.

Only a few days after 2.0.6 was released we are now on to 2.0.7. At least this time the security fixes seem somewhat trivial to put in place (only six files to upload). Hopefully this will be the last update before 2.1 comes out.

I wonder how much impact 2.1 will have? (I suspect this is a future rant in waiting)

Now, it seems I was a touch hasty with my last post on gun crime and statistics. If I had spent more time reading the comments on the Deltoid post even more comedy bad-statistical goodness would have come to light.

As someone living outside the US, I have no real concept of how this is an issue which creates such a furore. I am dimly aware of the constitutional issues, but as far as I can tell the right to bear arms was there because the founding fathers didn’t believe in a standing army. I don’t think they envisaged a future where both would happen, but who am I to know.

The main pro-gun comments seem to come from a guy called “ben” who proudly proclaims “I pack heat” and while superficially sound, they don’t seem to survive detailed analysis. For example, the numerous studies which have linked gun ownership to homicide are disproven by a the apparent fact that the homicide rate in gun-carrying Seattle is lower than in gun-banned Vancouver. Interesting. I think it is important to highlight that the debate is about “homicide” not “gun crime” which is a mistake I have made in the past.

While it is entirely possible that the apparently obvious more guns = more crime assumption is wrong, this leads to more questions which could have interesting conclusions. If more guns != more crime, then why does the nation with the highest incidence of gun ownership have more crimes per person than other nations? Are God-fearing Americans simply more criminally minded than (say) Canadians?

Further to the post on No winter, it seems that the Americans are currently getting the winter for 6 other countries.(Typical Americans, you might say.) There are some pictures on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6267273.stm showing beautiful snow scenes in unlikely locations.

Americans use even more resources than we do in Europe. They are responsible for a disproportionate share of the activities that are seen as responsible for climate change. They are also fairly forward in refusing to accept any responsibilty for restraining human impact on the climate.

Appalling as the impact of freak weather – such as the ice storm and last year’s New Orleans disaster, is on individual Americans, maybe some general good could come out of it. The US population might start applying some political pressure on its leaders to take the issue of climate change more seriously.

(No smugness, here. Europe is hardly blamefree or immune from the impact of changing weather patterns.)

Well, not really a bad science blog post but it seems some people are willing to go to all manner of lengths to avoid facing up to statistical analysis they don’t agree with.

Lurking on scienceblogs once more, I came across a post titled More guns, more homicide in which Ted Lambert discusses a study showing that American states with the highest incidence of gun ownership also have the highest incidence of homicides. Yes, I know that seems to be so self evidently obvious there is an urge to go “duh” but studies like this are required to ensure that what we assume is the case, is the case.

Anyway, it is not Ted’s post (as such) nor the study itself I am talking about now but the inevitable furore from the pro-gun lobby.

Take this little chestnut from Jeff Stoyer:

In the current study, they claim they’ve “controlled” for factors such as unemployment, etc. I’d be interested in seeing how they accomplished that statistical dance.

Well blow me down. Who would have thought that any statistical survey would have been able to carry out this sort of “statistical dance.” It is mind boggling and sadly pays testament to how little people learn about statistics and the methods involved.

Matters are certainly not helped by the old adages: “89% of all statistics are made up on the spot,” “Lies, damn lies and statistics” and “you can make statistics prove anything you want.”

Sadly, all this points towards the “general public” thinking that statistics is some odd combination of witchcraft and subtle dishonesty. Now, I know that public opinion is not science but it does influence policy much more than science or statistics will ever manage. The more that people are swayed by a simple lack of understanding about how statistics are collected and the implications they produce, the more governmental policy will veer away from the track marked “sensible” and towards the one marked “Insane – Faith Schools – Creationism – Flawed Criminal Policy [etc].”

I will leave a rant about crime statistics and how they are warped and misinterpreted for another day and hopefully there are those who are more statistically inclined than myself who can add more to this topic.

Flickr tags: Guns, Crime, America, Homocide

Recently there have been lots of problems with 1and1 and their mail servers. As a 1and1 customer (this site is hosted on a 1and1 server), I have been unable to get reliable email delivery for the last three days. I have tried sending an email to customer services (well…), I have tried using their online contact forms and I have scoured their home page for information on the outage. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to tell me if it is my problem or their problem, no idea of how long it wil last or any possible solutions.

Fortunately today I found an article on the Register where 1and1 make the following statement:

Yesterday, a number of UK customers experienced some delay in receiving inbound email. The delay was due to a surge in email volumes over our email servers. Our email system continued to receive all email during this time, with only its delivery to inboxes being delayed.

The email delay was handled according to set procedure, emails were queued and stored and no email was lost during this time.

The technical issue was resolved and all emails involved are being delivered safely. Only 1&1 email users were affected.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers due to the queuing of emails.

Today, 1&1’s UK Customer Control Panel was temporarily unavailable for a very short time whilst systems were maintained.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but are customers of 1and1 now expected to have to search the Register to find out about service outages and problems? Not only that, but the problem was certainly in place before yesterday and as of 1815 hours (GMT) today it was not fixed.

I am truly amazed that 1&1 thinks it can demonstrate such an appaling level of customer service. Why is there no server status or service information page?

Sadly, given the consumer apathy prevalent in the UK, I suspect they will still be “top webhost” this year.

Just some musings today – I am trying to hold off my attacks on the insane (Creationists, Alternative Medicine supporters etc.) which doesnt leave me much else 🙂

This led me on to wondering about quite a few things, one of which was the “Slippery Slope” logical fallacy. Now, I am often accused of being guilty of this – I frequently make doom and gloom predictions along the lines of if we dont prevent x then at some point in the future y will be terrible.

I am not sure that my useage is always a fallacy though.

There always will be times when allowing something to happen does actually mean that things will become worse and in an effort to silence any of my potential detractors I looked into the form of the fallacy some more.

The accepted form of the Slippery Slope goes:

1. Event x has taken place or is going to take place
2. As a result event y will happen.

Now as far as I can gather, this is only fallacious reasoning if it can not be demonstrated that y will follow x. Some farcial examples are, if I hit you in the head with a baseball bat unconsiousness will occur.

Surely that can not be a logical fallacy? Can anyone give me better examples of the fallacy in action and why it should be avoided?