CONTENTS: LOOKING BACK THROUGH THE FIREBALL by Tom Leonard

                                        LOOKING  BACK THROUGH THE FIREBALL   

                                                           Tom Leonard

                                      Copyright Tom Leonard, Edinburgh Scotland, April 2021

                                     

                                                                          

                                                                Planer Earth AD 2593

While exploring such themes as eugenics, mental health, gender and sexuality, two teenagers on a faraway planet come into contact, during the twentieth-eighth century, with a mysterious cult.

                                                                    SYNOPSIS

                                                                     CONTENTS                                                                      

                                               

                                                                  AUTHOR'S NOTES

                                                       1. TRIANGLE OF FRIENDSHIP

   

2. STRANGE HAPPENINGS

                                                                3.JANIANS AT LARGE

                                                                                   

4. THE ISLE OF MAINAU

                                                              5. LIFE MOVES ON

                                                                             

                                                                  6.TO THE PLANETS

                                                                                

                                                                  7.TO THE CONVENT

                                                                                   

                                      

                                                           8. A YEAR AND A BIT LATER

                                                                            

                                                     9. ACTION IN THE ARCHIPELAGO

                                                                             

                                                             10. REVOLUTION

                                                                             

                                                                     11.COUNTERPLAY

                                                                                 

     

                                                                      12.. AD  2715

                                                                          

AUTHOR'S NOTES; LOOKING BACK THROUGH THE FIREBALL

 

                                    Looking back through the Fireball

                                                  by Tom Leonard

                                                        

                                                   CONTENTS

                                                    SYNOPSIS

                                                                    Author's Notes

This novel is about transgender issues, mental health and the reality of eugenics.

The story is set in the Red Trojan Universe of the early twenty-eighth century, and looks back on topical events on Mother Earth, from Qinsatorix and other planets in the Aton solar system.

During July 2019, Scott Forster and I gave verbal and written expert witness testimony in Bloomsbury, London, to the Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL. We were particularly impressed by the responses by the UCL museum curator Subhadra Das, statistician Professor Tom Fearn, evolutionary geneticist Professor Mark Thomas, and Joe Cain, the UCL Professor of Science and Technology.

Much of the History of Eugenics and of the UCL inquiry is summarised in our blogpost

https://thomashoskynsleonardblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-leonard-forster-research-on.html

During late November 2019, I attended a Candlelight Vigil for Transgender People outside the Scottish Parliament, amidst furore regarding the proposed Gender Recognition Act, During that evening, I talked at length with Jo Clifford and Joanne Alice Brown. I then decided to stop attending the Quakers, because of their unexpected failure at a local and national level to adequately support the cause of their transgender members.

I started writing my story about Pippa and her teenage friends Slim and Dreyfus during January 2020, primarily as a way of criticizing the present from a hypothetical future.

My concerns surrounding eugenics, socio-political control, transgender issues, neurodiversity, mental health, and group spirituality are addressed. I believe that spirituality is much more important than institutionally imposed religion within our caring secular societies

I completed a draft version of this novel (13 chapters, 66000 words) during May 2020 after two months of self-isolation with my forbearing flat-mate while taking daily strolls down Leith Walk and London Road, though not quite making it to Lochend Park.

By April 2021, I'd streamlined the book, with the help of Scott Forster to under 30000 words. This followed the announcement by UCL, during January 2021and consequent to the 2019 inquiry, that the names of the now disgraced statistical eugenicists Sir Francis Galton and Karl Pearson would, be removed from the buildings and lecture theatres at UCL

I would to like to thank Scott Forster for all his splendid historical and literary advice, and Julie McGarvey and Rev. Bill Taylor for commenting on the manuscript.

I gratefully acknowledge Kiera Calzini, Jen Crook, Kris Townley, Gareth Rae, Tamzin, Thomas Tallis, Nicola Romanski, Julie McGarvey, Lindsay Oliver, Subhadra Das, Eystein Thanisch, Rufus Reade, Neil Turner, Anu Chandra, Jim Liddle, the late George E.P. Box, Joan Fisher-Box, Steve Stigler, Sue McDermott and various members of the Open Book reading group and Broughton St. Mary Parish Church for their helpful input. Any similarity between the fictional characters in this novel and real-life humanoids is entirely coincidental, and none is intended.

DORNOCH, AND BRORA VILLAGE, COUNTY OF SUTHERLAND

 

                                                                              

                                                                                  

                                                       DORNOCH WIKIPEDIA

Dornoch (/ˈdɔːrnɒx/; Scottish Gaelic: Dòrnach [ˈt̪ɔːrˠn̪ˠəx]; Scots: Dornach) is a town, seaside resort, parish and former royal burgh in the county of Sutherland in the Highlands of Scotland. It lies on the north shore of the Dornoch Firth, near to where it opens into the Moray Firth to the east.

The name 'Dornoch' is derived from the Gaelic for 'pebbly place', suggesting that the area contained pebbles the size of a fist (dorn) which could therefore be used as weapons.^[4] Dornoch has the thirteenth-century Dornoch Cathedral, the Old Town Jail, and the previous Bishop's Palace which is now the well-known hotel, Dornoch Castle and a notable golf course, the Royal Dornoch Golf Club, named the 5th best golf course outside the United States in 2005 by Golf Digest.

It is also notable as the last place a witch was burnt in Scotland. Her name was reported as Janet Horne; she was tried and condemned to death in 1727. There is a stone, the Witch's Stone, commemorating her death, inscribed with the year 1722.^[5] The golf course designer Donald Ross began his career as a greenkeeper on the Royal Dornoch links. The golf course is next to the award-winning blue flag beach.

                                                                Visit DORNOCH

                                                               THINGS TO DO

                                                                          

                                                           HISTORY LINKS

                                                                       

                                                BRORA VILLAGE WEBSITE

                                                                     

                                                    BRORA WIKIPEDIA                     

Brora is a small industrial village, having at one time a coal pit, boat building, salt pans, fish curing, lemonade factory, the new Clynelish Distillery (as well as the old Clynelish distillery which is now called the Brora distillery ^[3]), wool mill, bricks and a stone quarry. The white sandstone in the Clynelish quarry belongs to the Brora Formation, of the Callovian and Oxfordian stages (formerly Middle Oolite) of the Mid-Late Jurassic. Stone from the quarry was used in the construction of London Bridge, Liverpool Cathedral and Dunrobin Castle. When in operation, the coalmine was the most northerly coalmine in the UK. Brora was the first place in the north of Scotland to have electricity thanks to its wool industry. This distinction gave rise to the local nickname of "Electric City" at the time. Brora also houses a baronial style clock tower which is a war memorial

REVIEW OF UCL EUGENICS INQUIRY (Joe Cain)

 

                                                              

                                                                        Joe Cain's Review

                                                              Legacies of Eugenics at UCL

                                         Sir Ronald Fisher, Highly Negative Eugenicist

                                                                              

                                                                 David Finney,  Eugenicist

                                                                                  

LEGACIES OF EUGENICS AT UCL

 

                                             

                                                       LEGACIES OF EUGENICS

                                                    

Rare Books and Archives on Eugenics at UCL

What archive materials related to Eugenics does UCL hold? Where can these be found? What is open for inspection? Which parts of UCL collections are digitised? How does UCL’s ‘Galton Papers’ differ from the digitised Galton material available online through the Wellcome Collection?

I’ve spent the past two years researching the history and legacy of eugenics at UCL. In this video, I am in conversation with some of the specialists from UCL Special Collections who are experts on answering research questions in this area. They are:

• Ms Erika Delbecque, Head of Rare Books
• Ms Katy Makin, Archivist (Katy was also responsible for cataloguing the bulk of the material relating to eugenics at UCL)
• Mr Colin Penman, Head of UCL Records Office

We discuss collections held at UCL relating to eugenics in each of the areas they oversee.

You can find our UCL Archives catalogue here and explore our Digital Collections here.

To find the Galton Laboratory Books in our Catalogues at UCL, visit our Explore Catalogue, and search using the string GALTONLABORATORY. Choose ‘Special Collections’ from the Library option to narrow down results.

BAYESIAN HISTORY: 8.OVERVIEW

 

Alan Turing O.B.E, F.R.S (1912-1954)                                          Founder of Modern Practical Bayesian Statistics     Every discipline needs its Purveyors of the Word, prominent, extrovert figures who are prepared to stand on a pedestal and project its concepts and ideas across other disciplines, throughout Society, and around the world, at the risk of appearing to be peering down their noses at the children on the pavement.         George Tiao, Carlos Pereira, Pilar Iglesias, and Jose Bernardo popularised Bayesian concepts in the Far East, Chile, Brazil, and Spain. Meanwhile, P. Jeffrey Harrison and Michael West purveyed the wonderful advantages of Kalman-style forecasting around the world,      In America, the key Purveyors of the Word included Jimmie Savage, Arnold Zellner, Jay Kadane and Rob Kass, and the quintessence of Yankee and immigrant academia. In Britain they included Jack Good, Dennis Lindley, and Sir Adrian Smith, .       The purveyors of the Bayesian cause have sometimes got it wrong too. When a ‘child on the sidewalk’ once inquired about the frequency coverage of his 95% Bayesian interval, Arnold replied to the effect that he didn’t given a toss.  And Jay Kadane still overemphasises the importance of the Expected Utility Hypothesis, as ever faithful to the memory of Jimmie Savage his stern adherence to the glaringly fallacious Sure Thing Principle and his over-formalisation of the key conceptual ideas of utility of the eighteenth century Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, which were published in St. Petersburg in 1738.     Sir Adrian Smith got it triumphantly  "right", with Alan Gelfand, when he popularised MCMC during the 1990s, and he blinked in joy when the simulations eventually seemed to converge..     In response to MCMC and the early 21 st. century development by Spiegelhalter et al of the model comparison criterion DIC, a pragmatic rather than a quasi-religious view of Bayesianism has emerged. Bayes theorem and DIC are nowadays regarded as useful parts of many statisticians’ toolkits. But they’re not the be all and end all, in particular in situations where the choice of sampling model is unclear.     Sir Adrian has more recently taken the concepts of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based performance indicators into the widely-influential area of evidence-based public policy making. But beware poorly collected or skilfully reshuffled data, lest the conclusions be spuriously evidence-based.      In Britain, the Rising of the Bayesian Paradigm, like a phoenix from the ashes, began at Bletchley Park and the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge during the 1940s and 50s, continued in Aberystwyth during the 1960s, and led to a resurgence at University College London which almost flew out of control. In the 1970s, the now multi-lingual Bayesians at the University of Warwick took up the cudgel and they currently lead the rest of Europe     The development of Bayesianism in the United States was subjected to some not inconsiderable post-birth traumas during the McCarthy era.     But the paradigm soared majestically towards its Seventh Heaven at the Harvard and Chicago Business Schools, and notably at Carnegie-Mellon, aided and abetted by the adventurous ‘people’ in Wisconsin and the small all-Bayesian team at Duke. Nowadays, Bayes is alive and kicking in every state in the USA, and in almost every country around the globe.     Meanwhile, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis has enhanced the links to other disciplines with a plethora of electronic communications. And new, at times highly eminent, scientific and socio-economic Bayesians are springing out of the woodwork from all directions NOTE ADDED APRIL 2021' I HAVE RECENTLY EXPRESSED ON-LINE CONCERN ABOUT SOME OF THE HIGHLY COMPLEX DEVELOPMENTS IN BAYESIAN NON-PARAMETRICS e.g. by DUNSON ET AL (2021), WHICH APPEAR TO SEEK EVER MORE COMPLEX WHEN CONVERGENT SIMULATION PROCEDURES BECOME LESS AND LESS FEASIBLE. IN MORE GENERAL TERMS, I OFTEN WONDER WHAT THESE GUYS ARE ABOUT e.g. IN THE AREA OF NEUROLOGICAL IMAGING WHERE THE RELEVANT MODELS CAN BE MUCH TOO COMPLEX TO EVER HOPE TO ANALYSE PROPERLY.. THEY SEEM TO BE EXAGGERATING THE SCOPE OF THE BAYESIAN PARADIGM TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IN A MANNER WHICH COULD BE TAKEN TO BE BOTH ARROGANT AND ACADEMICALLY ELITE.      Moreover, many generalisations of the conditional Laplacian approximations of the 1980s have now been well computer-packaged in INLA by Håvard Rue and his colleagues, and they provide extremely valid alternatives, in a great many situations, to the wild and woolly ramifications of MCMC, MMCMC, Particle MCMC, reversible jump MCMC, arty smarty crafty MCMC and so on and so forth.     The pendulum has already swung, as various high quality applications of INLA begin to trickle in, and some of the old theoretical arts of Bayesianism from the Halcyon days are being restored.     Perhaps the pendulum will swing even more, and maybe Le Marquis Pierre-Simon de Laplace will have the last laugh. He was of course the guy way across the Channel who had the cheek to develop the general forms of our ridiculously named "Bayes Theorem" following the 17th. development of conditional probability, by the pioneering Frenchman Blaise Pascal and Pierre Fermat,.     A potentially debilitating mote has nevertheless been cast into our eyes by the gross misrepresentations and misuses of Bayes theorem in Courts of Law, for example when evaluating DNA evidence, and these have stained our profession for many years to come. If our cynical Establishments do not put a quick end to them, the ancient Greek Goddess Themis may perchance find it necessary to fry a token forensic scientist or Bayes factorist or two on her scales of justice.     As evidenced by the material critiqued in my Ch. 7, the kaleidoscope of Bayesian discovery has now fully blossomed into an enrichment of many areas of science, medicine, and socio-economics. While the practical advantages of the Bayesian contributions to Genomics and Economics have yet to be completely clarified, the beneficial influences in Medicine, the Environment, Social Progress, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning have been ginormous, to the point where the creative research within some of these areas has itself been rejuvenated. Both Alan Turing and Allan Birnbaum would have been proud. I believe that most statistical investigations are inherently subjective in nature, and that statisticians should no longer attempt to achieve ‘false objectivity’. Rather than attempting to educate the public in a possibly misleading manner, I think that our leading statistical societies should focus on encouraging their members to invariably insist on fairness, professionalism, and impartial honesty, while acknowledging the subjective nature of their conclusions. It is only then that we can hope to properly educate the public regarding the real benefits that can be gained from statistical investigations. Note added 8th April 2021. THE MISTREATMENT AND EXPLOITATION OF BAYESIAN WOMEN: I have recently become quite disillusioned by the ISBA sex scandal, and a scandal at Berkeley starting in 2002 and involving the alleged attempted exploitation of a young woman trying to make a start in academia,.As a gay person on the receiving end of endless homophobia and ableism in academia, I am appalled by this mistreatment and abuse of many Bayesian women.. I now realise that the apparent cosiness and bonhomie at many early Bayesian conferences, including Valencia 1 and Valencia 6 which I attended, may have concealed dark undertones, with which several of my male contemporaries may have been associated. I however feel reassured by the ongoing renewal of ISBA. More women and people from all countries are involved. I think that I can perceive precisely where the sexist attitudes originated in European Bayesian academia. I am completely dismayed about those situations in which power seems to have prevailed, particularly when some Bayesian women may have started their careers by being inappropriately treated at Mediterranean conferences or by their male mentors..                                                                                                               Tom Leonard in his flat in central Edinburgh