Blog by Jon Mountjoy

Truth, alone, is not sufficient

Sun, 05 Feb 2017 22:10:47 GMT

This is a transcript of a New Member’s Speech, which I delivered at The Society’s Burns Supper in Edinburgh, 29 January 2017.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

When David invited me to deliver the New Member’s Speech, I asked him for some advice about content. I asked whether I should speak to current affairs, or limit it to the Society, or to the immortal bard, or perhaps to science, which I quite enjoy.

David’s reply was devastating and entirely unhelpful, even though it was couched in kind terms. “It need not be lengthy,” he wrote.

This, despite hearing me speak before. Or perhaps, because of hearing me speak before.

So I understand that to be an instruction to “keep it brief”

I have decided to follow David’s advice. Thank you very much. Good night!

Well, in truth, I will keep it short, but I will address all of those topics, looking for something that ties together:

Scotland’s national poet
Recent political events, here and abroad
Societies such as this one, tribes, and nations

There is something that does that binding, and the story starts many years ago, where man evolved on the savannas of Africa. Then, we lived in tiny communities of people — probably no more than 120 people.

Anthropologists, sociologists and other scientists are asking how mankind managed to cross this critical threshold, and create modern cities, and nations of millions of people.

After all, if you put a million monkeys together, you don’t get something pleasant emerging.

The answer, at least according to Yuval Harari, appears to be fiction. With fiction, “large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.”

Two examples serve:

Churches are grounded in common religious myths. Two Mormons who have never met could join together on a conversion, or a charity, because they both believe in the same mythical god, in the same narratives (more or less).
States and nations are grounded in common myths too. Two Nigerians who have never met could join each other on the battlefield to defend their country and flag. That feeling is based on the shared understanding of what their country is, and who they are in relation to that country.

Lines drawn on a map, do not create a country. As history has shown many times, those lines are often drawn in the wrong place — because it’s the people and their shared myths that create the country. Those shared stories, the shared narratives — are what shape cultures.

So where does this leave us? How does this end? When does this speech end?

Just a few days ago, I marched down Market Street in San Francisco, with millions across the world, surrounded by women and men who had come together around a shared story. That was the story of women’s rights, human rights.

It was a heartening experience, but it also a disquieting one — because that story was based on another, less pleasant story, created by the newly elected Trump.

This serves to remind us that, like evolution, stories are indifferent. The stories we tell each other are powerful engines — they can move millions of people to do good, or to do bad.

The rise of nationalism across Europe, the persistence of superstition and religion, the rise of “alternative facts” (the pillars of alternative stories), and recent events all around the world, show that only reporting facts is not enough.

Truth, alone, is not sufficient.

What we need, in addition to those truths, is more narrative .

What we need are more people telling the good stories, and telling them well.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to propose a toast: to Robert Burns, to The Society, and to all the good storytellers of the world.

Genetically modified: yoghurt and the beginning of CRISPR

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 18:09:30 GMT

I want to tell many stories about CRISPR, a technology that is at the heart of this new research, and I’ll start with the tasty stuff first.

Why we only get measles once

You and I have this amazing immunological memory. When we survive an encounter with a virus, say measles, then a representative signature of that virus is stored in our bodies so that when we encounter the pathogen again, we can produce a stronger immune response.

It’s why most of us only get measles once.

Mothers can pass on some immunity to their children via the placenta and breast milk, giving babies a temporary immunity to diseases its mother was exposed to.

Unfortunately our biological memory of these pathogens dies with us. Our children have to face the same fights that we had to, against the same diseases we did. Our victories are short lived.

However, the human species has developed an inter-generational immunological memory of sorts: vaccines. Most vaccines contain antigens — those representative signatures of viruses — allowing our natural immunity system to generate a response, and a memory, readying us for the real thing.

It turns out that some species go one step further — they modify their own genome, rewriting themselves, so that their disease-history, their scars, are carried with them, and their children.

E. coli by NIAID

Patterns in the genes

In the late 80’s, scientists exploring E. coli bacteria, found short, regularly spaced repeat patterns in its DNA. There was stuff between the repeat patterns, but nobody had any idea what it was all about.

Why would a bacteria have a string of repeated gene sequences, and why would the stuff between them be filled with seemingly random junk sequences?

The patterns were identified again in the early 90’s by Spanish scientist Francisco Mojica. The name given to these repeat structures in the DNA of bacteria was CRISPR.

CRISPR: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats

It took another 10 years or so before he, and two other research groups in 2005, found out what those bits between the repeats were — they were bits of DNA from phages, viruses that attack bacteria.

So while the repeats were interesting (after all, they lead curious scientists to the structure), it turns out that the bits between the repeats, the spacers, were even more interesting.

Aside: as often happens in science, more than one group came to the same conclusion. All of this was probably aided by the increased capacity for sequencing which resulted in whole virus genome sequences being deposited in public databases.

If the spacers contained fragments of viruses, it meant that the DNA of a bacteria contains bits of the DNA of its viruses. Moreover, the bacteria aren’t actually under attack from those viruses, they aren’t suffering any bad side effects of having a bit of a virus in it.

The proposal was that perhaps the spacers played a role in immunology.

Much like how we don’t get infected by measles again as we have an antibody floating about, ready to recognize it, perhaps the same applies to bacteria: perhaps the spacers were somehow connected to an immune system of the bacteria.

Tasty yoghurt confirms it

Yoghurt is made from milk and bacteria. Many years ago, companies were trying to figure out why some yoghurt batches didn’t quite taste right. It turns out that these were the batches that were infected by phages — those viruses that attack bacteria.

Aside: I remember the awe I felt when I first heard the word “phage” in an episode of Star Trek.

Scientists at Danisco discovered that they could create stronger starter cultures for their yoghurts and cheeses by repeatedly exposing a bacteria to a library of nasty phages, each time taking the successful bacteria (the ones who live), and exposing them to the next phage in the library. Evolution in action.

They also found that this modified the CRISPR sequences, and that the spacers did indeed contain snippets of DNA from the phages that they were exposed to.

The beginning of the future

The understanding of CRISPR and what it represents to bacteria, is remarkable. Nobody had guessed that bacteria have an adaptive immune system — one in which bacteria rewrite themselves, modify their own genome, so that they contains slices of genomes from invading phages.

Unlike our immunological memory, this one is written in the very DNA of the organism, and can be passed on when a bacteria replicates.

Aside: Actually, (some) human cells also modify their genome in a process of V(D)J recombination, which is how our body is able to recognise the different signatures of so many pathogens.

How bacteria create this “most-wanted gallery”, how those bits of phage DNA end up in the bacteria’s own DNA, is where our story will go next.

Stigmergy and The Soul of the Ant

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 21:24:58 GMT

When I was a kid, one of the books I read that stimulated my sense of awe and wonder in nature was “Die Siel van die Mier”, which in English is “The Soul of the Ant” — written by an important figure (I now realise) in ethology, Eugene Marais. I can still remember his descriptions of how magnificent a termite’s nest is, how comparatively small a termite is, and the questions he asked around how it was possible that such a stupendous, high structure with its intricate pathways and symmetries could be architected by these creatures.

Termite Mound by Razmataz

How did they communicate and agree on what to build and how to build it? How did they work together, and coordinate themselves?

I believe he attributed it to some invisible guiding force from the queen. Other people attribute it to some kind of innate intelligence. But another word describes it better: stigmergy.

Stigmergy

Stigmergy refers to how an animal modifies its environment as part of some action or stimulus — and how that environment modification can in turn influence other animals.

So for example an ant might detect some food, and then secrete a pheromone trail back to the nest. The ant has modified the environment — and now other ants will magically start trundling to the food. Presumably ants have some simple, default mechanism of “follow the pheromone lad” kind of behaviour — it’s a simple behaviour, but it’s queued on an environmental modification.

From Theraulaz and Bonabeau

Another example is given in a paper by A Brief History of Stigmergy (PDF) by Theraulaz and Bonabeau. These poor wasps are trying to build a funnel, but at some point, just before they’re finished, a researcher creates a little hole near the top of the funnel (S1). That’s the same stimulus that drove the wasps to create the funnel in the first place — so what do they do? Well, they go and create another one at that spot.

Stigmergy and algorithms

The behaviour is deviously simply, very mechanical, very algorithmic — with a lovely feedback mechanism. That same paper has a nice analysis of how a particular species of wasp coordinates to create a hive. The algorithm is something like: create a new piece of comb at some location that has the most walls. This will result in a nice comb being constructed, instead of a straight line of cells.

I find a deep beauty here — in how evolution has led to these creatures using simple, local rules to create vast and complex structures and behaviour. The behaviour emerges from the simple algorithm. That got me thinking about boids.

Other Emergent Behaviours

One way I look at this stigmergy is that the complexity behind the physical object arose from the interactions of individual agents. The behaviours accreted a physical manifestation. I suspect boids are another example of this — except the physical manifestation is absent, or rather it’s temporal.

Have you ever seen birds flocking? Or the amazing wheeling of a school of fish. How is it coordinated? It turns out that individuals need to do very little, perhaps just obey three simple and localised rules: separation, alignment and cohesion. If they do, the behaviour of flocking simply emerges out of the group.

Craig Reynolds developed an artificial life program (called boids), which demonstrates these simple laws in action. Here’s a look at a simple animation based on the algorithm.

How marvellous is this reverse engineering? The amazing swirling, whirling and acrobatic displays of swarm birds and bats can be reduced to three simple, local rules — that if any one individual obeys, will result in the collective whole taking on an incredibly beautiful behaviour.

Stigmergy and culture

I wonder how we, humans, are affected by these kinds of things. What kind of traces do we leave in our environment that causes us to perform certain behaviours which may in turn lead to….?

That question makes me think of culture — which increasingly I realise is the source of much of what we do and how we think.

Perhaps another way of looking at culture is simply that of a stigmergic trail that we leave behind us.

Originally published on January 15, 2013.

Detecting minds where there are none

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 20:49:13 GMT

You’re sitting in your bedroom and hear three sharp raps at your window. Rat tat tat. Ten seconds later, you hear it again. Rat tat tat. More than likely, you’re going to imagine an agent — a mind — is behind that rapping. That’s agency detection.

This happened to me a few years ago. It was, after investigation, just the wind — but the pattern was such that my mind assumed there was someone was there, rapping on the window. The branch had probably knocked against the window countless times — but my brain only said “oh hai Jon” when something (unconsciously) registered that there was something more than chance at play — a possible agent.

Humans are pretty good at agent detection, and probably lean towards detecting many false positives, as I did with the branch. It’s better to misinterpret the rustling leaves as an approaching lion and live to tell the tale, than to ignore them, and be eaten. (There are, I believe, many scientists examining this phenomenon, and just how sensitive we and other animals are to it.)

There’s a lovely term for this: Hyperactive Agent Detection Device (HADD). The determination of agency where there is none — can be seen as a symptom of HADD. Our brains are wired to be a little too sensitive, a little hyperactive. It’s probably to our advantage to be biased in this way — it’s better to be over sensitive and imagine that there is a lion in the bushes, than to not consider it at all.

As a result, we’re prone to see agency where there is none, a common human bias.

Some possible examples, based on my loose definition:

You can well imagine a host of gods being created to explain crop failures, rains, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
I wonder if this extends to fabricated constructions too. I once heard someone say “My company doesn’t like me” — somehow anthropomorphising 12000 people and processes — making a single agent out of them.
Spirits, ghosts fall into this category too. The evil spirit is especially interesting. People are imagining an agent inside another one.

We all have, and we’ve probably all experienced, agent detection. It’s interesting to pay attention to those around us, detecting HADD — fabricating agents where there are none.

Originally published on November 16, 2012.

Essentialism: Basing decisions on beliefs

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 15:19:46 GMT

“The pleasure we get from all sorts of everyday objects is related to our beliefs about their histories.” — that’s a line from Paul Bloom’s book, How Pleasure Works.

It’s so obvious, yet I’d never thought of it like that before — not so precisely. Our pleasure with respect to objects is tied to beliefs. Just imagine how much you appreciate a Van Gogh painting after finding it to be a forgery — no matter how accurate — no matter how beautiful you thought it was before you found out.

Or, say you lost the wedding ring (and imagine it’s a mass-produced variety) — you would probably find that both you and your partner wouldn’t go out and buy a duplicate and think of it as “the same ring”.

Why do we treat these duplicates differently to their originals? It’s because of those beliefs.

Intangible beliefs and essentialism

That intangible set of beliefs around objects has a name in some circles — its essence. It turns out humans are natural essentialists: essentialism can be shown to occur from early childhood.

Essentialism skews how we reason — it creates reasoning biases — and of course it determines how we categorise things.

For example:

Essences can be lost. When that wedding ring was lost, it wasn’t just the physical ring that was lost — its essence was last as well. That’s why a physical duplicate just won’t cut it.
People believe that there is some unobservable property that causes things to be the way they are. For example, the butterfly is a butterfly even through its pupal stage. I suppose people are people even through their baby stage too — and wonder if essentialism plays a role in some people’s objection to abortion and the concept of a soul.
Essences can be transferred. For example, people would pay for Robbie William’s clothing. They’d pay even more if he wore them, and even more if he sweated in them.

Essentialism and eating

Human history has many examples of people believing they can acquire the essence of something by eating its embodiment. Think:

Chinese “medicine” and the belief that eating tiger penis would help with erectile disfunction.
Catholics believe that the Eucharist physically changes into the body of their Christ. (I understand that if you’re Catholic and don’t believe that, you’re not really Catholic.)
Cannibals
“Natural foods” — people think they’ll be healthier, more vital, more “attach whatever belief you’ve attached to natural” when they eat natural foods.

There is also evidence that our beliefs, this essentialism, play a role in our experience of the sensation (when eating, say). If you believe Perrier water tastes better than tap water, it probably will. There’s a feedback loop there, based on your essentialist beliefs. If you believe the Van Gogh authentic, you’ll appreciate it more.

Effort contributes to history

How much effort you put into something (or someone else put into something) affects our essentialist beliefs about the object. The effort adds to that history, adds to whether we like them or not. Some examples:

The Joshua Bell experiment — here the violinist played without the context of a big hall and much applause — without the context that contributes the history.
Apparently 1950 cake mixes were unpopular, not because of taste, but because they didn’t require much work. Just add milk. When folk had to instead beat and add an egg — expend effort — they became better products. This is called the IKEA effect (PDF) — “… labor leads to increased valuation only when labor results in successful completion of tasks”. (The paper is a good read.)

Summary

Essentialism is pretty interesting — it appears that we’re all natural essentialists — and there is evidence that we gain this essentialism at a pretty young age (see The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought — I don’t have a copy, but it appears to be pretty interesting and relevant).

Thinking about how people construct histories of beliefs, and base their reasoning and even sensual pleasure on them, opens up doors to many human biases and behaviours.

Originally published on July 16, 2012.

What’s commonplace is unthinkingly right

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 15:14:20 GMT

Some parts of daily life seem so natural, benign, and commonplace that we don’t consider them to be as awful as they really are. Perhaps we so easily believe something is right, just because it has always been so. Take for example, circumcision.

Male circumcision

To be clear, I’m referring to male circumcision here, and circumcision performed outside of a medical necessity.

For many years, I considered being circumcised, and the act of circumcision, to be relatively benign. It’s ubiquitous, it’s commonplace. I’ve not heard a man complain, nor sue his parents, because of it.

Really though, circumcision is a form of genital mutilation forced upon children.

I read words to that effect a few years ago, and it made me stop in my tracks. Oh. I’d never thought of it like that.

It’s generally children that are circumcised, babies even. It’s forced — probably by a parent or church, carried out by the scalpel of a surgeon if you’re lucky. It’s forced in the sense that the child doesn’t have a say, is not informed or asked for consent. It’s a genital mutilation — an act that removes flesh from the body — yet one that doesn’t appear to be a mutilation because it’s so commonplace.

Years ago one of my friends expressed revulsion at an interesting fellow with a nose ring. I clearly remember thinking that my friend was a little confused — could he not see all the women around him that had earrings? Somehow the one piercing of flesh had become some commonplace that he no longer saw it for what it was.

Why

Why are parents so happy to have their children circumcised? There’s no malice. Rather, it’s probably because of what everyone else was doing, it’s what because of what their culture has led them to believe was the appropriate thing; recently perhaps because they thought there was a health benefit — though even that is in serious doubt.

Primarily though, it’s probably because of what a religion has ordained, for example the Jewish brit milah or the Muslim Khitan — or the cultural momentum of those religions.

The Germans

A German court has recently ruled that circumcision is grievous bodily harm. According to the ruling:

the fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighs the fundamental rights of the parents

It’s unfortunately not yet law, but it makes a lot of sense. It feels very much like the correct and moral stance to take. And it’s progressive — few countries, if any, ban circumcision because of the power of religious bodies.

Unsurprisingly, there are many religious parties that object, calling it an intrusion on religious freedom, believing that their culture, their beliefs, trump the bodily integrity of children.

Change

I wonder whether the average man on the street being exposed to thinking about circumcision as bodily harm would agree, would continue to condone it, or would simply move on? Or would they be swayed by their culture — unthinkingly — because it’s commonplace. Would they consider the truth, or would they simply take it as an affront on their identity, their tribe, their religion?

Or perhaps it’s just actually about thinking. We can’t consider everything, and we blindingly just take some things as accepted, as truths, based on cues, on actions of those around us. What’s commonplace is unthinkingly right.

Originally published on July 2, 2012.

Travels: France — Èze does it

Sat, 17 Oct 2015 10:44:42 GMT

Dear Friends,

I’m working from Nice this week! Today (Sunday) I woke up at 9:30, not having any plans. I went to bed last night failing to make any. I tried, but I was spoiled for choice. Do I go to Grasse and visit a perfume factory? Or try and get into the mountains near Italy? Or go to Italy itself? This morning I had better travel sense — just choose something, and go. No pre-judgement, no research. Someone once told me Eze was pretty — okay, that sounds like a plan. So, muesli for breakfast, a little filter coffee (there’s a machine in the apartment, and nothing near outside), and a little baguette with apricot jam. I presumed the bakery was closed, it being Sunday, and hope to improve on this breakfast tomorrow by throwing in a croissant and whatever else is going.

Digression: Even if there was coffee outside, it wouldn’t be any good. I’ve yet to have a good espresso in France. They’re lifeless, one dimensional, thin and insipid. Italy is marginally better.

Digression on the digression: Think of these digressions as footnotes. Emails and blogs are deprived of pages and hence footers, which is a shame really.

Next, a shower, and then outside into the bright sunlight (sunglasses on) to find the bus to the center of Nice.

Digression: Showering: Now this isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Airbnb apartment I’m living in certainly hasn’t got “bathroom” in the catalogue as a shining feature. The bath is tiny, with a shower curtain that manages to stretch half way around. It’s tiny in breadth and length — even sitting may be a challenge. I don’t want to try, as I don’t want to die wedged in a foreign bath. Nor do I wish my backside to touch the Eiffel Tower anti-slip mat. There’s also nothing against the wall to hold the shower head — so it’s really a juggle.

I’m staying on the outskirts of Nice — in a place called Carras. Three minutes walk away (depending on how well you play Frogger with the traffic) is the splendid sea. Now I’m not pulling the wool over your eyes here. It really is splendid. The following image doesn’t do it justice.

The sea is this bright blue azure ultramarine cerulean wonder. I took the photograph above at dusk on the day I arrived, so it’s a little subdued. You really have to fire up your cyan neurones to feel it. Or look here at this other photo I took a few years ago. There’s also something very curious about the beach. (Yes, they call it a beach even though it’s made of pebbles. In other words, stones.) The beach drops off steeply for at least half a meter before the sea — it’s almost as if the beach forms an embankment rather than a slope as you usually find. I suspect the sea is quite deep just a meter or two out, but really, I have no desire to find out. The blue is everything.

Digression: I Googled myself + Flickr to find that photo of mine, and one of the links that came up was this one. Some French tourist site. Note the name credit under the first photo :-)

I walked along the promenade a little — Promenade des Anglais — admiring the view and the smell of the sea, before crossing back and getting on a bus. 20 minutes later, and I’m in the middle of Nice, near the old town. I sort of know this area as I once got lost here. I know where old-town is, where Place Garibaldi is, where that restaurant that sells pissaladiere is, and where that damn hill I once climbed over in the blazing sun to take a photo is, and most importantly, where the bus stop is for the particular bus I want to take that leaves Nice, that heads east along the coast. I’ve taken busses in almost the same direction before, hugging the coast to the beautiful Villefranche-sur-mer. This time, I was up for a bus that traveled much higher up the coast — still following it — but right at the top. Èze is a hilltop village, perched up there somewhere.

Digression: Pissaladiere is awesome. Sort of like a pizza , but no tomatoes. Just fried onions, with a little anchovies and olives. I suppose I’m in France and should say “sautéed”?

The bus took about 25 minutes I’d say — not long at all. Most of it was spent climbing. Thankfully the full sun wasn’t baking down — these busses can be very sweaty affairs. I was surrounded by Germans, Dutch, Japanese, Americans and French.

Digression: For at least half the trip I drowned them out with Nina Simone in my ear — Sinnerman was the song. She once lived in Paris, I think, so it felt right. Besides, it’s an awesome song. The song feels like a journey too.

The bus trip really is fantastic. You get to see the magnificent coast, and if you sit on the right hand side, you’re practically hanging off the cliff faces. It’s a long winding road, with mostly green bushes on the left (with the odd mansion or two), and the wonderfully blue sea on the right. First, we went past Villefranche-sur-mer. I recognised it, even from so high up. All those magnificent yachts in the harbour, and a large ocean liner as well. Take a look at my photos of the area (taken just over a year ago) to really appreciate it.

There’s a particularly interesting colour scheme the entire journey. You have the azure blues on the one side, a grey blue in the sky (it wasn’t a clear day, nor was it overcast), and then this dark green, almost white rocks, and terracotta of the roofs. After Villefranche-sur-mer you have Beaulieu-sur-Mer, and far in the distance, the peninsula Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat. I’ve never been there, but it strikes me it that it must have some lovely views. Next time.

After arriving in Eze (I knew I was there as the bus had obviously reached a peek in its ascent. Also, everyone got off the bus.), you’re faced with this large hill that you have to climb. It was once a fortified stronghold, and it’s easy to see why. Having said that, while walking around the upper parts of what feels like ramparts, I found a gate that had a sign on it: “This is the gate used by the Turks when they invaded Eze.”

The place is about 430 metres high (says Wikipedia) — and you’ve got to pay an extra 6 euros to get right to the top — where you find a large garden of succulents. I found the succulents completely uninteresting, given the magnificent views all around.

While there, my stomach started to indicate that food and water would perhaps be a good idea. Besides, I had looked at my watch — about 12:15 — and knew that if I didn’t find something soon, I’d have to fight for cheap grub with sweaty tourists.

Now if you look at the photo above, looking down to the sea, what do you see on the left hand side? A little balcony, no? Well, that’s the balcony for the restaurant of Chateau Eza. I came across the place while trying to find the top — they make it difficult with multiple dead-ends everywhere. Each dead-end tends to have a great view, and some stall or other selling art or art-like goods. One of them had the hotel entrance. At the time, I swore and retraced my steps, trying to find the route.

Well, standing on the peak, overlooking the sea, with stomach grumbling and facing the humbling experience of having to dodge my way past at least 20 Japanese schoolgirls, I decided to eat there. Okay, I admit it, I did actually do a quick Google — it had 4.5 stars with over a hundred votes on some site or other, so it couldn’t be all that bad.

Digression: There’s something interesting when someone bows to me. I bow back. Or have a strong compulsion to do so. That must be simply from the cultural experience of having watched many movies of Japanese folk bowing to each other. Strong stuff — culture. Or empathy.

Well, I found the hotel quite quickly — it appears my compass works well when heading toward food — and found the delightful concierge who told me to attendre for a moment while she checked whether I could be seated, not having made a reservation and all. Some of this happened in French. Thankfully she switched to English for the important bits. “Une table pour un s’il vows plaît,” is about all I can manage. That, and “Malheureusement, je ne parle pas français”. Oh, and “C’est magnifique,” which is said after the starter. I kid you not.

Well, I was taken down some steps and led to a chair — on that very same balcony I saw earlier. My god, the view was amazing. A bottle of water appeared (“non-gazeuse”), and 10 minutes later, a plate of three skewered delights arrived, together with a menu. I have no idea what two of them were, I wasn’t paying attention (and sometimes the heavy French-accented English is a little difficult to understand). The third was a tiny goat’s cheese — which was surprisingly yummy. One of the skewers appeared to end with a marshmallow. I can’t be sure though — I was already inebriated on the experience. I then spent 5 minutes interpreting the French menu. No Anglais version here mate. Luckily I have a good dictionary on my iPhone, and the staff were friendly and helpful.

Digression: I have had a marshmallow before — at a posh place in Tel Aviv. I suspect this wasn’t a marshmallow.

After I placed my order, another waiter came along and ushered me to my seat inside the restaurant. The view was even more stunning from inside here.

So, here’s what I ate and smelled and gazed at. Recall that at this point I’ve already eaten a little snack while waiting outside.

First to come around, the amuse-bouche. This was really very very nice. Imagine a small glass vessel, perhaps the size of my cupped hand. Inside, lined along the edges, are julienned fresh beetroot. Inside, a beetroot mousse that just melts in your mouth, leaving a creamy beetroot flavour that’s just awesome. It’s somewhat pinkish, as you can imagine, but not as pink as you might think. And light. So light. Unbelievably light. It must be held up by the will power of the chef. Some crushed walnuts were on one side of the mousse, just a few, and on the other, some kind of parmesan chip. The glass bowl was served on a piece of slate, which also held a dollop (I’m sure there’s a better word for it) of fig chutney. Of my. And then artfully sprinkled over the fig chutney, and trailing a little like the tail of a comet, was some wonderfully salty salt. The fit chutney was amazing. Having it with a little of the salt was incredible — a little explosion of pleasure.

Staggering. Really, you don’t get better than this. Wonderful flavours, wonderful smells, wonderful textures.

Oh my, I forgot the wine! So, soon after I sat down the sommelier came over. I knew he was a sommelier as he had a white cloth hanging off one arm. He also had a sommelier lapel pin. He knew what I was going to eat — and when I asked him for a white — indicating a demi-boutelle (one glass was definitely not going to cut the mustard here) — we settled on a Pouilly-Fume (La Demoiselle de Bourgeois) from Henri Bourgeois. ZOMG. Apparently it would hold up to the Turbot, which I had ordered as my main meal. Lovely wine, really lovely. A lot of flavour (from gooseberry to, well, all sorts of interesting stuff) — and a heady aroma. It was lovely. I enjoyed every drop.

Where was I? Snacks, done. Wine, done. Amuse-bouche, done. Right, starter next.

I ordered (avoiding the foie-gras, so popular around here), the poached fig. Boom. Here it is in all of it’s glory:

So, that’s the poached fig in the middle. A lovely sweetish wine jus surrounds it. Fresh fig on the side, together with some Jamon Iberico. Those tiny grape-like items are quite surprising. They’re tomatoes. The red one, in particular, had a staggeringly peppery flavour. I asked — apparently they’re a speciality of Nice. Oh, and on top of it all, a dollop (yes, a dollop) of “sea-salt ice cream”. Or something like that. It was yummy.

Wonderful presentation, as you can see. Picturesque, is what it is. In fact, each dish was brought covered by an ornate silver cover (there must be a name for this — I don’t know what it is) — deftly removed with dramatic aplomb and a wide arc of the arm. I was always amazed at what was unveiled.

Well the starter was very tasty. If I had a complaint, it would be that it was a little too sweet for a starter. But just a little. A tiny smattering, a teensy weensy heavy handedness on the sweetness of the jus. But I’m not going to complain. It was gorgeous, and I ate it all. If I wasn’t surrounded by liveried waiters, I may have licked the plate.

Digression: A lady opposite had the ornate silver cover dish of her plate removed, and there, nestled upright amongst her food, was a tiny sprig of lavender, obviously just lit before delivery. It was a subtle and quite lovely smokey fragrance that emanated from her table for a few minutes.

The main was a speciality of the house — “wild turbot, cooked slowly”. It had a sort of crunch wild-hair topping — I couldn’t tell you what it was — and was served on a crushed tomato “Cœur de Bœuf” (heart beef). In other words, a slice of de-pipped beef tomato, somewhat crushed :-) Various other vegetables (and a cep or two) were on the plate as well. Oh, and a mussel or two. Blech! I enjoyed this, in particular it went well with the wine, but I found it lacked punch, lacked zazzzzzz. I found myself yearning after the amuse-bouche. It looked lovely though.

Dessert was delightful. Some reasonably traditional (at least, in its inspiration, pear dish). Poached pear on a kind of cake stuffed with a chestnut concoction.

Digression: The cake reminded me of a savarin I once ate. He’s a famous french gastronomic dude I know little about.

Afterwards, they served coffee together with a few bonbons, which were all absolutely yummy.

I think by the time I took this photo, I had already eaten one. That pretty plate on the left holds hemispheric sugar cubes….

That was my meal! I suspect I spent close to 3 hours in their company — all the while looking out at that wonderful view.

Afterwards, I sauntered down to the bus stop, waited 20 minutes with some lovely music in my ear (“A Song For You”, by Leon Russell, “Bowie”, by Flight of the Conchords, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies, “Lady D’Arbanville” by Cat Stevens”, and yes, “Build Me Up Buttercup” by The Foundations).

Digression: These songs are on my “happy list” which then turned into my “travel list” — songs I know I like that I ensure are downloaded before I travel. I thought the last song was a happy one — until I shared it with a friend who pointed out that the lyrics are actually sad. However, I find it’s sung with so joy, so I’ll pretend I don’t know that.

Now, the thing with old towns like Nice is that the streets aren’t built to drive tanks through. They’re narrow, and consequently often only one-way. This has consequences. In particular, the bus stop will be in a different place. The return trip had me get off quite near the old town — so close that I could actually see it. Now I remember there was a famous ice cream shop down there — it serves over a hundred flavours, from Cactus to good old Vanilla. It’s called Fenocchio, and it’s in a really quaint square, which is a little difficult to find when navigating the narrow streets. Needless to say, my food compass won. Here’s a look at the square itself:

At this point on was on a Facebook chat with a friend who instructed me to eat their house special, Le Comté de Nice. I stood in the queue for 10 minutes, wondering whether this is really something I want to do. No, it was not that I had just finished a gourmet delight 2 hours prior. It was the queueing itself. San Franciscans love to do this. I don’t like it as much. Well, I got to the head of the queue, ordered my ice cream, and was told (in English) that it’s not something you can just order — I had to sit down at a table. Thankfully, I was led (almost by hand) to an empty table, and told to wait.

The ice cream appeared 5 minutes later:

There’s no sense of scale here. As friend Jo has a tendency to say, without exaggeration I’m sure, it was the size of my head. Amazingly tasty. All sorts of flavours going on here, from honey to citrus to pine nuts to .. Oh, and those candied fruits. I could have sworn they were cumquats. Cumquats are amazing. Sweet & sour in one beautifully sized package.

Needless to say, dinner with a light affair tonight. I had bought some interesting looking apples yesterday, so I peeled them, put them in a pot with some water, and made an apple sauce. Now, I’ve only ever done this 3 times in my life — I have no idea what possessed me to do it today. It turned out rather well — the apples were really sweet — I added nothing. No cloves to be had though. I also dipped a piece of baguette into the apple — lovely!

Well, that was my day. I’m glad I went out in the end, and glad I had this experience. Now, back to work.

Love, Jon

PS. This was originally distributed as an email to my friends — who encouraged me to blog it as well. I will try and do so more often.

Originally published on September 16, 2012.

Signalling Theory, the Handicap Principle and Conspicuous Consumption

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 07:16:17 GMT

Gazelles, when pursued by a lion, sometimes stot or pronk — they jump straight up on all four legs — instead of running away.

Baby Nyala

The theory behind this is that they are signalling to the lion, effectively saying “look at me, I’m healthy — I can jump over a metre high — go chase someone else.”

This is an example of larger signalling theory that looks at communication between individuals. (In the above example, you can think of it as an interspecies communication.)

Honest and dishonest signals

One aspect of signalling theory is determining whether a signal is honest or dishonest. For example, a gazelle wouldn’t be able to jump straight up if seriously injured. Bench-pressing a heavy weight is an honest signal of strength — you can’t fake it.

Driving around in a Lamborghini Gallardo may be seen as an honest signal of wealth. Then again, the driver could just be a lackey taking it to the car wash — or perhaps the driver sold his house and is in debt on the repayments. It could well be a dishonest signal.

Conspicuous consumption and the handicap principle

You can take these example a little further when applied to humans with the delightfully named conspicuous consumption — spending wealth on luxury goods is not really for the sake of the luxury good, but rather as a signal to others that you have the wealth to do so. It’s a public display of wealth — probably for the sake of status. As an aside, folk have even proposed a luxury tax on such consumption.

Thorstein Veblen proposed this in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class — together with other terms like conspicuous leisure — here’s a nice quote that sums this up: “Time is consumed non-productively … as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness”

There’s a whole game-theoretic side to signalling theory, some of which you can find in the handicap principle, which proposes that honest signals must be costly to produce and send (they’re handicaps) — and looks at the evolutionary conditions for such a system.

In everyday life

Perhaps this explains, to some degree, why my neighbour drives that big car he does, why that woman buys her Louis Vuitton bag, and why some of my Twitter network do nothing other than retweet famous people. Perhaps they’re all signalling something — in this case status (either via wealth or association).

I’m sure it’s a little more complex (who you signal to is probably limited to those within your social class, close to yourself in the social hierarchy) — but nevertheless, it feels like a reasonable description for a lot of behavior that I see around me.

Originally published on December 13, 2012.