Stories¶
Some writings to help me fire test and solidify concepts with friends.
“It’s about the white spaces between the paragraphs, which I think are more important than any of the text, because it allows you to think about what’s just been said.” -Mr. Rogers
BFS vs DFS
Once there was an adventurer who had traveled thousands of miles. Everyday he traveled from one village to the next. One day he met a miner in a mining town who did nothing but mine all day, everyday. The adventurer was so shocked that the miner did nothing but mine his entire life, that he tried to figure out why. The miner explained how everyday he got to be at home. But he added, everyday he also got to go on an adventure, because he never dug in the same place twice, because where he dug was different just by him digging there. For every new village the adventurer visited, he found how although the villagers seemed to have been in the same place for so long, they too, were adventurers traveling thousands of miles.
Once there was a miner who had mined in his home mining village. Everyday he mined from one coal shaft to the next. One day he met an adventurer who happened on his mining town, and had traveled thousands of miles, traveled everyday from one village to the next. The miner was so shocked that the adventurer did nothing but travel his entire life, that he tried to figure out why. The adventurer explained how everyday he got to see something new. But he added, everyday he also got to be at home, because no matter where he traveled, the way the moon reflected off the morning dew drops never changed. For every new visitor that came by the miners village, he found how although the visitors seemed to have been traveling for so long, they too, were miners in their home village.
All the shining things are (Author: H. Dreyfus, S. Kelly)
Two students had studied for many years with a wise old master. One day the master said to them, “Students, the time has come for you to go out into the world. Your life there will be felicitous if you find in it all things shining.”
The students left the master with a mixture of sadness and excitement, and each of them went a separate way. Many years later they met up by chance. They were happy to see one another again, and each was excited to learn how the other’s life had gone.
Said the first to the second, glumly, “I have learned to see many shining things in the world, but alas I remain unhappy. For I also find many sad and disappointing things, and I feel I have failed to heed the master’s advice. Perhaps I will never be filled with happiness and joy, because I am simply unable to find all things shining.”
Said the second to the first, radiant with happiness, “All things are not shining, but all the shining things are.”
Questioning the Authenticity of Data
The last, traditional, literary, essay I wrote in college turns out be decently relevant to my current interests in data science.
German R5B Final Essay, May 12th, 2014
Set during the Weimar Republic in Berlin, Fritz Lang’s ‘M’ shows investigations aimed at alleged child murderer, Hanz Beckert. Unlike typical depictions of evidence as supporting claims, the film depicts evidence as suggesting claims. The audience is made to view evidence in in a suggestive role immediately as paranoid people restlessly accuse each other of being child murderers. Within the first ten minutes of the film we are shown adults arguing, almost embarrassingly, on whose recollection of what they saw is more accurate: adults yell at each other in regards to the color of a little girls hat: Red! Green! Red! Green! In this way the efficacy of visual memory as an objective medium to gathering evidence, and even what counts as being evidence, is questioned. In this paper I will explore the question: “What constitutes evidence?” by focusing on the coalescence and manipulation of evidence through sight in ‘M’.
Despite the apparent validity of fingerprint evidence, and the objectivity police seemingly have, police in the film are clouded by subjectivity, which hampers their ability to evaluate this evidence. The film portrays this manipulation of data by showing how police inspection, by seeing, creates a sense of control over how things are seen, and the impending problems with controlling how things are seen. Police commissioner, Lohmann, is shown seated at a desk as a line files past him one by one. He inspects their paperwork for them to identify and thereby prove their identities. One person has no paperwork, another is inspected to have fake paperwork, and a newspaper article overrides valid paperwork. He constantly dismisses their evidence as not being sufficient to prove their identity, and thereby brings into question the ability for such paperwork to fulfill a job such as proving identity, or simply acting as a form of evidence. Lohmann values his self-inspection over their supposed evidence and thereby invalidates evidence. By depicting inspection of paperwork in this way, the film emphasizes how much authority, inspection and therefore sight, hold over the validity of evidence. ‘M’ hosts a reoccurring theme of evidence as gathered through sight, and emphasizes the problems that lay with believing sight, just as police, to be objective.
Police, who are supposedly highly objective, are shown having no problem collecting an abundance of data, however they struggle to find data that actually help their investigations, often missing or misinterpreting leads. A policeman states: “Obviously, it is most impossible that a paper touched by so many hands, can still contain useful fingerprints.” “However we will spare no effort to compare them with our files” … “We might find something useful that approaches a solution for this problem.” This mindset of gathering any and all data in hopes of finding a connection sets the tone for how evidence is coalesced. The film shows the fingerprints side by side on paper and then a single fingerprint projected on a large screen. This approach to inspection, where they gather a series of evidence then focus in on small details of the series largely resembles human processes’ with sight.
A wide-range of approaches for inspections is emphasized in the film, as the film shows the physical radius police encompass on a map; meanwhile a policeman speaks to the fact that they have inspected every plot of land, bush, and forest. Yet the film makes a point to show how all this inspection is ineffective. They find a candy wrapper in a bush and, as though the candy wrapper were inherently associated with children, they spend an abundance of their power investigating candy vendors and increasing their radii by making circles with a compass on a map. Much like their eyes are widening on this map and thereby their sight over what they see is increased. By mimicking visionary processes, biases are shown to lead people to look for evidence they want to see, therefore closing people’s scope of possible results. For example, when the inspector goes in Beckert’s home, and his inspection drives him to look at more obvious, more suggestive pieces of evidence: a table as a source of wood, a trashcan as holding things that someone may want to hide. As a result he misses the less explicit and crucial piece of evidence: the windowsill, which is only discovered as a result of circumstantial thought much later in the film. By showing how the police constantly misinterpret leads, the film builds a rhythm of constant commentary on the errant nature of sight, primarily because of the strong suggestiveness of evidence.
To further highlight how sight on its own causes interpretive problems, ‘M’ shows Beckert’s maid as near-completely deaf, and thereby heavily reliant on her sight. This indicates that the reason she was able to live with Beckert and not suspect his wrongdoings is because of her relying on sight. By heavily relying on vision the maid was fully susceptible to Beckert’s appearance as a rather unthreatening character. Beckert’s overall childlike appearance, as made by his fat fingers, stubby stature, and bulging eyes, indicate a child than a predator. In this way the film shows how, because of the maid’s relying only on seeing his suggestive apparent character, she faultily misses his being child murderer.
Comparatively, the film supports the claim that sight alone causes problematic interpretations by showing how effective pure listening is. Commissioner Lohmann is being read a list of objects found at Beckert’s place, the policeman reads off the list, and finally gets to an item: Ariston cigarettes. This triggers in Lohmann an epiphanic moment that enables him to form a connection with a past case. By showing Lohmann as successful upon purely listening to evidence, the film encourages the idea that not relying on sight reaps better results as one can interpret more effectively. In parallel, the aforementioned police hire a graphologist, who is ironically meant to be able to make more of their evidence, yet fails to because of his inherent nature to look and interpret evidence. He dictates to a typist: “The upper-convex feature abovementioned or the speed of the stroke, open brackets, clearer in the word ‘bald.’ Underlined three times, closed brackets, do you follow me?” Here dictation is ineffective because the process is in reverse: the dictator has already interpreted the evidence by looking at it and therefore is imposing his subjectivity. He states: “[The letter] indicates a strong pathological sexuality in this impulsive criminal, period.” … “The uneven writing of many other letters is, by the way those letters are represented a theatrical expression that can be expressed as indolence or laziness. (cue scene of Beckert pulling skin) In all the handwriting lie features of madness that are hardly demonstrable but strongly perceptible.” The real reason the writing is static is because it was written on wood, yet the film portrays graphologists as trying to make sense of data, and as so confident, that they instead provide dreadfully wrong, and ineffective information. This scene further highlights two main problems with evidence: the suggestiveness of it, and the tendency for eyes to manipulate it.
In addition to inefficiently interpreting evidence, the graphologist is shown wearing sunglasses, just as all the other blind people in the film do, thereby implying that his eyes will not taint the evidence. However, this creates a feigned impression of objectivity, which the film makes a point of: fake blindness, just as fake objectivity in police, lacks efficiency, perpetuates wrong information, and does not develop investigations. In a later scene a man sitting on the sidewalk wearing sunglasses and a necklace stating “Blind,” lifts his sunglasses to see a man with a young girl, as he is suspicious of the man’s being with a young girl. But, in fact, his suspicions were unfounded, and his false-objectivity as built by his false-blindness is shown to be wrong: the adult kisses the young girl like she’s his daughter and she goes off to school. The film presents a connection between sight and objectivity, and how by seeing we lose objectivity and are susceptible to the suggestiveness of evidence.
At last we are given a real blind man, a blind man who acts as the first form of truly objective medium that is not susceptible to evidence’s suggestive power over sight. He acts as the most reliable witness to Beckert’s company with Elsie, despite his blindness as potentially limiting him from being an effective witness. He hears her talking to Beckert as he whistles “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” The film goes on a series of scenes in which this leads the criminals to capture Beckert. The film’s portrayal of the blind man as the most damning piece of evidence to Beckert states how the blind mans inability to misinterpret evidence is advantageous. The most significant piece of evidence is presented in a rather unexpected fashion, unlike police inspective efforts, without procedure, without much effort, and also entirely circumstantial. By not seeing, he cannot impose his own biases as easily, and, in fact, by not seeing his view becomes a more reliable form of evidence.
The film goes beyond its plot and into how it presents elements and information, in order to make its point on the problems with seeing. German and Media Studies professor, Anton Kaes, states in his analysis of ‘M’: ‘From a strictly legal point of view, Beckert is prosecuted for a crime for which there is no conclusive evidence. We never see him commit a crime, there are no witnesses, and we do not even see a victim.’ (Kaes, 72) The fact that we never see the actual murder, and that instead we interpret a murder from visual cues further emphasizes the film’s desire to highlight the suggestive power of evidence. The film asks us to gather evidence and creates a suggestive pathway to the murder, as opposed to blatantly showing us the murder. Elsie’s ball bounces on a poster about murder, foreboding the murderer’s proximity and interaction he will have with her. Soon after, that same ball rolls on the ground, with no one there to pick it up, a clear indication that she is no longer playing. Rather, she has disappeared. Finally, a balloon, translucent with small legs and arms and a big head and body – eerily similar to a child, floats up, away, until it gets tangled in utility pole wires. All the while Beckert whistles “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” a song about prey being in a predator’s trap. ‘M’ suggests to us Elsie’s murder, despite never directly seeing her death, the film effectively suggests to us her death by how we see the ball, how the balloon is portrayed and how the relationship between predator and prey exists. The film continues to emphasize its own suggestiveness as a piece of evidence to its point by showing how we as an audience watching the film are susceptible to suggestive cues the film presents: both in what we see and what we hear.
Further control of sight and sound to indicate the film’s point is indicates as the graphologist speaks of insanity as per his interpretation of the murderer’s writing, and how this syncs with scenes wavering simultaneously between the graphologist’s words and Beckert looking at a mirror as he pulls downward on the corners of his mouth, his eyes fixate on his distorted reflection. We see him pulling on his expressionless face as we listen to the specialist comment on his insanity. The film influences the viewers interpretation by controlling what we see (Beckert distorting his face) with what we hear (commentary on insanity). Near the very end we are again exposed to the aforementioned balloon. It stares at the audience empathetically, being held by the blind balloon seller who provided damning evidence about Beckert earlier on. The child-like appearance, white face, and floating body are now tied down, held by the blind man, as though he holds the spirit of a dead child to damn he who killed said child. Meanwhile, parents scream in agony in response to Beckert’s insanity plea, yet the film chooses not to show the parents screaming at Beckert or his lawyer. Rather, their faces are shown up close. Every detail of their face spears at the audience just as their agonizing voices do. ‘M,’ blatantly controls what the audience sees and hears in order to evoke empathy, while questioning our ability to remain objective, and to therefore be undeceived.
‘M,’ creates a strong case against people’s ability to succumb to the suggestiveness of evidence. In its suggestive nature, the film leaves an open-ended question on Beckert’s insanity plea by not providing us with a verdict. However it is neither for nor against, rather the suggestive nature itself causes this question to come up. By showing the strong suggestive power of evidence, and the facility to manipulate evidence, purposely or not, the film suggests that it is important to remain skeptical of the validity of evidence. What matters most is not the evidence itself, but the way in which it is presented and the bias the presenter has. Thereby manipulation and bias of evidence is shown to be more significant than evidence itself. In this way, we are led to believe that what constitutes evidence is its protean nature: in manipulating and being manipulated by those who see it.
Kaes, Anton. M. London: BFI Publ., 2000. Print.
M. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Peter Lorre. Criterion Collection, 2004. Film.