Das Kapital [not a book review]

A rather bland article by Gareth Stedman Jones in Nature reminded me that the first volume of Karl Marx’ Das Kapital is 150 years old this year. Which makes it appear quite close in historical terms [just before the Franco-German war of 1870] and rather remote in scientific terms. I remember going painstakingly through the books in 1982 and 1983, mostly during weekly train trips between Paris and Caen, and not getting much out of it! Even with the help of a cartoon introduction I had received as a 1982 Xmas gift! I had no difficulty in reading the text per se, as opposed to my attempt of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason the previous summer [along with the other attempt to windsurf!], as the discourse was definitely grounded in economics and not in philosophy. But the heavy prose did not deliver a convincing theory of the evolution of capitalism [and of its ineluctable demise]. While the fundamental argument of workers’ labour being an essential balance to investors’ capital for profitable production was clearly if extensively stated, the extrapolations on diminishing profits associated with decreasing labour input [and the resulting collapse] were murkier and sounded more ideological than scientific. Not that I claim any competence in the matter: my attempts at getting the concepts behind Marxist economics stopped at this point and I have not been seriously thinking about it since! But it still seems to me that the theory did age very well, missing the increasing power of financial agents in running companies. And of course [unsurprisingly] the numerical revolution and its impact on the (des)organisation of work and the disintegration of proletariat as Marx envisioned it. For instance turning former workers into forced and poor entrepreneurs (Uber, anyone?!). Not that the working conditions are particularly rosy for many, from a scarsity of low-skill jobs, to a nurtured competition between workers for existing jobs (leading to extremes like the scandalous zero hour contracts!), to minimum wages turned useless by the fragmentation of the working space and the explosion of housing costs in major cities, to the hopelessness of social democracies to get back some leverage on international companies…

London calling

London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, you can go it alone
London calling to the zombies of death
Quit holding out and draw another breath
London calling and I don’t want to shout

The Clash, 1979

Russell Maliphant Company

Last weekend, the Russell Maliphant Company from London was performing in a theatre nearby (in our backyard!) and we managed to get tickets at the last minute. While I am not at all versed in modern dance, this was a fantastic experience, with very moving performances from (guest) dancers like Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino above, a very elaborate impact of lighting that managed to duplicate or cancel depth, space, and time, great musical tracks, and a unique quality in the movements of the dancers.

the long way to a small angry planet [book review]

When leaving London last week, I went through the (very nice) bookstore in St Pancras International and saw this book by Becky Chambers. And bought it as I had read nice criticisms and liked both the title and the cover. I have been reading it at every free minute since then and eventually finished it last night. It is a very enjoyable novel, very homey despite it taking place mostly in interstellar space, as it goes through the personal stories of the members of a tunneller crew (tunnels meaning shortcuts between distant points in space, the astrophysics being a bit vague on how those are possible!). It is far from a masterpiece but the succession of scenes and characters is enjoyable enough to be enjoyable, with a final twist of a larger magnitude. Nothing profoundly innovative like Ancillary Justice [except for the openness about interspecies sex, this could have been written in the 50’s] or era-defining like Ender’s Game, or The Road, but a pleasant read by all means!

London snapshot [jatp]

beyond objectivity, subjectivity, and other ‘bjectivities

Here is my discussion of Gelman and Hennig at the Royal Statistical Society, which I am about to deliver!

objective and subjective RSS Read Paper next week

Andrew Gelman and Christian Hennig will give a Read Paper presentation next Wednesday, April 12, 5pm, at the Royal Statistical Society, London, on their paper “Beyond subjective and objective in statistics“. Which I hope to attend and else to write a discussion. Since the discussion (to published in Series A) is open to everyone, I strongly encourage ‘Og’s readers to take a look at the paper and the “radical” views therein to hopefully contribute to this discussion. Either as a written discussion or as comments on this very post.