Lunch conversations

0:00 It's Mike. Hang on a second. Let me do a quick hands-free so I can talk to you at the same time as... Hang on. No, I can actually get up and walk around. Is this a good time to talk? Because I wanted to chat to you a little bit about the... Because we were just taking the kids out... Oh, okay. No, my apologies. In that case, give me a time to ring you back later. Are you at home now? Okay, so I can call you back also. Whatever you prefer, but... We'll be back for lunch in an hour or so. That'll be perfect. OK. Talk to you then. Cheers. Cheers. Take care. Have a great time. OK. Enjoy your time with the kids. OK. Speak to you later. Cheers. OK. Bye. Oh, so I'm so glad. I'm sorry. I only just got back in and just got your message. I was just on the point of giving you a ring. Sorry to have been out. Yeah. I do apologize for missing you. No, no, not at all, because I was out when you called back. So anyway, right, go ahead. You said that there were some things you needed to talk to me about. Several things. Yeah, sure.

2:30 You asked about the connections between Boston and Buffalo. Sorted already. I found out about them. Oh, you did? Yeah, I understand. Well, Continental seems to be very reliable and have about five flights a day. Yeah. That's right, and they're all $180, at least all the ones that I looked at were. Oh, I see. Well, it says as low as $138. Well, that's probably if you book it on, you know, the internet, like about three months. All the ones I looked at were $180, but, I mean, if I can find one cheaper, then obviously I'll book it. I haven't booked it already because I wanted to talk to you first to check to check which were going to be the best dates from your point of view for me to come over and do all this that was my suggestion okay since I sent that email I've done quite a little bit more digging And in fact, it shouldn't take as long because what is definitely going to be the quickest way of doing it, I've sorted out all of the hardware and software. ...that is needed in terms of connectors and converters for transferring recordings from audio to digital, and also the additional software that's needed for cleaning them up and, you know, for taking out any background hits and all of that, which I knew about anyway because I knew all about the CEDA software, which we need to... ...but there's a much kind of less fancy version of that which you can download from the net, which is... Well, it is commercially available. It's not free, but it's very reasonable. It's not expensive. So I've done all the homework on that, but it looks to me as if the quickest way of doing this, because there's definitely no way, as far as I've been able to find out, of converting the audio to the digital other than in real time. So the sensible strategy, I think, rather than my cluttering up Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to seeing you again next week.

5:00 And just with the two of those, both of which will copy tapes very quickly indeed, just simply to copy the whole archive to audio tape and then take those back and convert it to digital over here because the guy who's been assisting me, helping me, Benoit Duval, has got all of the software that we need already loaded onto his computer. And it's just a question of picking up about five or six pieces of hardware, which I could order, which in fact it looks as if it's much easier to order them actually in the USA, but which possibly I could order before I come, pick up while I'm over there. I could order them, pay for them on my credit card and ask them to ship them to your address, and then take them back with me. And I think we could do the whole thing easily before Christmas. Yeah, in fact, probably, you know, sooner than that, just as soon as he's... We make two copies of the tapes as planned. Exactly, we make two complete sets of copies of the tapes. I have already my own tape deck. I have, plus the one that you've ordered, which is rather faster than my tape deck, but still, two is better than one. Mine converts at about six times the speed, and that one converts at 16. And there are about a hundred and, I think you said, about 130 of these tapes. Well, actually, you can look at it again, they aren't quite certain. Okay, well, still, let's call it 100. Let's call it 100 to be on the safe side. Yeah, okay, well, the more the better as far as I'm concerned. If it's all gross and dick, it's incredible. I wish they were 130 or 140. I don't imagine for a second you've had a chance to listen to them all yet, of course, but... No, but you have listened to some, haven't you? Because you told me when we spoke in Mecklen that you had listened to some, so you know that the actual recording quality is reasonably good.

7:30 I mean, the software to do that when we digitize it is there, and that's no problem at all. I mean, there's fantastic software for restoring audio recordings now. I mean, it will just recover almost anything. No, that's true. Well, it's very, very kind of you. So, I mean, obviously, I'm happy to, I'm happy, I jump at the chance. And, of course, just to be able to spend a few days with you and Fatima would be wonderful anyway. So, okay, let's go for it in that case. I will go ahead. Oh, that would be perfect, yes. That's great. But yes, of course, as you know, I don't drive, unfortunately, but I mean, we can organize a shuttle, yes. Fantastic, yeah. Well, of course, it goes without saying, once we digitized everything, then obviously I'd offer the whole thing to Buffalo as a matter of course to put on a website. The only thing I'd ask is that we be allowed to put it also on a mirror website over here on the archive. But I hope as long as Jack and your department head wouldn't have any problem with that, I'm sure they wouldn't. Jack and Don, what Don proposed was that we could have a... That would be fantastic, yes. I mean, what I would suggest, these are things which we could talk about when we get over there. Certainly a website called Groton Digger Buffalo, which would be fantastic, and then a link...

10:00 Exactly, as long as we could link into that from the archive site, and maybe the Groton-Deek Circle could also link into it, and the IHES and people, that would be absolutely fantastic. Yes, that was exactly the proposal I had in mind. Right, I was going to ask you about Thanksgiving, if we were going... Of course, I've been invited several times at international category conferences, in fact with you on the boat when we were going around Lake Como, and indeed in Haute Bordeaux at Francis Bosseur's topos theory thing. No, no, sure, sure. In fact, I recall having an extremely interesting conversation with him about the subject of, you know, are the natural numbers the root of all evil? In fact, I'd love to see him again. He's one of the people I particularly wanted to interview, in fact, for the archive, interviews on the history of category theory. Well, he's not the only one who makes a good interviewee. Flashier, but perhaps not quite so scientifically important, but still, still important. No, no, no, no, no, no comment there. Of course, yes, you sent it to me. You sent me a copy of it. I certainly have, yes. It's a marvellous interview. Extremely good. By the way, I don't want to go off on a tangent, but since in the course of that interview, amongst many other very important things, in passing... You ran the alarm bell on the subject of Templeton. Have you seen what has happened in the last week concerning Templeton and the Royal Society? Oh, there is an absolutely massive public row in Britain now, which is extremely timely.

12:30 Were persuaded to take a whole load of Templeton money about a year ago and in return Well, I don't know how much was they took but they did take they took they took a Templeton grant and in return They were required to appoint an information fellow a fellow whose remit was extraordinary fellow Whose remit was the public understanding of science And this person was, well, it's not clear from the reports whether this person was actually nominated by Templeton or whether it was all just done by the usual nods and winks and, you know, here's your cheque and, of course, could we possibly, not obviously trying to impose a decision or anything, but could we possibly suggest this candidate, blah, blah. Anyway, they appointed this guy and there was a lot of opposition from some of the fellows. Particularly interestingly, the biologists, but also some of the mathematicians, and there were about a dozen fellows who wrote a letter, a very strong letter of protest. To the president of the Royal Society at the time, to Rees, saying that this whole thing was very, you know, well, Templeton basically has a religious agenda and the whole thing is absolutely pernicious and anti-scientific and no good will come of it. And Rees poo-pooed the whole thing and said, oh, of course, Templeton hasn't got a hidden agenda, blah, blah. Anyway, to cut a long story short, this guy, the guy they appointed as the information fellow, came out about a month ago. With a pronouncement in some article that he wrote saying that he thought that intelligent design ought to be taught in schools as an alternative to evolution. Well this immediately of course caused an uproar and there are now about 200 fellows of the Royal Society who have called an extraordinary... General meeting of the Royal Society. The first time that this has happened in about a hundred years to demand a complete severance of any connection with Templeton and the resignation of Rees as president.

15:00 Yes, so there is a huge public row about it. The only bad thing is it's being led by Dawkins. You probably know Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, who is, well, I mean, in principle he's a good thing, but he's a bit of, you know, he's a kind of, you know, mechanist, materialist, village atheist, you know, who tends to let himself let in a few unnecessary goals from the opposition. But nonetheless, he has a lot of very good people on his side. And anyway, Penrose was asked, literally rang me up about three days ago to say, what do you think about this? I mean, maybe I was wrong about Templeton after all. They do seem, I mean, really, it is awful. Do they really believe in intelligent design? Well, yes. Well, yes, Roger, I'm sorry, but, you know, yes, Virginia. So anyway, I'll bring the news cuttings when I come over. In fact, if you Google, well, I don't know. He's playing innocent now, let's put it that way. He was a clergyman. He was actually a religious minister. No, I've got his name. I mean, I can't put my hand on the newspaper reports from where I'm sitting now, but I could send you in the next five minutes a link to the news stories. But it's caused a tremendous rouse, I say. Some 200 fellows have now demanded an extraordinary meeting and demanded this man be made to resign. They've also demanded Rees resign, and that there should be absolutely no further connection with Templeton. So, at last, the toxin seems to be running, ringing, I should say. Well, I'll bring any further information that I have. But anyway, to get to the point, so this gentleman, whose name I'm afraid I've gone and forgotten, your former head of department. Yes? The chap who wants to celebrate Thanksgiving with Peter Fryde. H-C-H-A-C-K. You've got that, okay. We'll call him Don for short. Don, that makes a lot. That makes it easier. Don, from that point of view, it would be easier if I came over a little bit later. Yes, he explicitly said that he wanted to invite you. Well, it was extremely kind of him.

17:30 Now, Thanksgiving is what, the 27th? 24th, I think. 27, that's what I thought, yeah. So, because I'm thinking that if I can do everything, which I really think is by far and away the quickest way, just on the tape decks, and then process everything digitally over here. And I can obviously, once it's all converted into MP3 files, I can send it across to you. I can just send it straight across to you on the internet. I don't even have to physically transmit. I can send files for your people just to burn copies of and put them on the website. I think that's the quickest way of doing it. I don't think it should take more than two days to make... Well, if we make two sets of copies, perhaps it might take three days, but certainly no more. Because the thing that you're getting from... Which means that I should probably fly about a week later. So, in other words, I should probably fly about the 22nd or 23rd. Let, let, let, let me, let me check. That's right, it might be more expensive. Especially when you get to the US, especially going from... Yes, you're quite right, going from Boston to Buffalo might be more expensive. Let, let me check that out and find out what would be the best date. Okay, well I think you're right, continental would be the best date. The Sunday, the Thanksgiving is the Thursday. The Sunday, the Saturday or Sunday before sounds perfect to me. Let me just check up on both the Aer Lingus link to Boston and the connecting flights, and I'll get back to you sometime in the next... Well, the only thing is I'm supposed to go off to Egypt tomorrow, don't laugh, for this Russian thing, this differential geometry conference. No, no, no, no, no. I was, well, in fact, I was supposed to, I was supposed to fly today, but because of a snafu, which I won't go into, a colossal snafu, which was actually the Russian snafu, not mine, I now can't fly until Tuesday. I'm now not able to fly until Tuesday. Basically, they screwed up. They, they, they, the air, the flight that they thought they booked me on didn't in fact exist. It had been cancelled. So I can't now fly until Tuesday. So, which is actually good because I...

20:00 Well, yes, exactly. I have two extra days to work here. I missed two days of the conference, but the conference has all been recorded anyway. Right. Now, there's also some things I need to order, including, of course, there's a very good deal, which unfortunately expired today on the 2nd, but I think that similar deals are out there, to buy a job lot of tapes. Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to working with you again in the future. And then there's some of the equipment. Now, the $64 question, you mentioned, I think, when we were in Mecklen, that you'd spoken to Jack and that Jack might be able to come up with some funds for this. Is that still the position? No, okay. I don't know that I... No, we'll wait until it gets there, but at the same time, I don't want you to be out of pocket, but I feel very guilty about asking for money, but the problem is I will need to ask for some, because I don't have enough to cover my airfare or, you know, well, not just the airfare, but also I've got to get to Dublin, because the cheap, the really cheap airfare is the one from Dublin to Boston, and obviously I've got to get from Boston to Buffalo, and then we've got to order... The tapes, and we've also got to order some additional equipment for converting them to CDs, to MP3 files afterwards, so they can be put online. I've done a few back of the envelope calculations. I mean, it's a difficult thing to ask, but what kind of funds do you think Jack can come up with?

22:30 It's very difficult, very embarrassing to ask. No, please don't. I'm fretting about that, yes. Of the finance capital, yes. Well, we're probably, I mean, to be quite honest, by the time we've done everything, by the time, I mean, traveling over there, this is obviously not. This is obviously not charging anything at all for my time or meals or anything or, you know, living expenses or anything, just simply for travel, plus the equipment we're going to need, plus what I'm going to have to order for Benoit to do everything when we get back here, to have to put everything into digital form and then, you know, so it can be put on the Buffalo website. I think we're probably looking at a total of about... I mean, do you think that is realistic to ask Jack or Don for that kind of funding? It wouldn't all be up front, of course, but I think that's what it's going to come to by the time we're finished. Well, so am I, so that's good news. Okay, well, just as long as we know, you know, so it doesn't come as a shock to anybody, the problem is, of course, that as well as finance capital screwing up your retirement fund, they've also, of course, as you must have known, since Paulson has had to reduce interest rates to one percent, the dollar has now, having actually recovered quite strongly in the last three or four months, has now, of course, been turned back into confetti again. And fell about, you know, 9% on the exchanges two days ago. So, again, I think we're probably looking at about $2,000 altogether.

25:00 Yeah. Okay. Well, we can come back on that. As I say, I will need to ask him to send something for me just to cover my airfare, but it wouldn't be $2,000. It would just be the airfare, which is, well, I have to check with the extension to Buffalo and getting to Dublin. Actually, I hate to say it, but it's probably getting on for a $900 or $1,000 by the time here, because it's 400 euros, plus getting to Dublin, plus getting to Boston. Yeah, I'll have the exact figures. Okay, I'll let you know, but I'll pencil in the Saturday before Thanksgiving as the day of travel, and I'll get back to you as soon as I check fares. I'll try and get one or two of the pieces of equipment over here, I mean, for converting the audio to digital before I leave. Okay. And the most important thing that we do pre-order, of course, is the tapes, because we don't want to be sitting around for a week before they arrive. So, again, I'll check on eBay, but if I order them on eBay, they should certainly, they say the delivery is normally about five or six days, so I can order those in good time before coming. Looking forward to it, Bill. It's a very exciting project. Oh yes, I'll send you any information I can pull down about Reith and the revolt of the Royal Society against Templeton. But I certainly regard that as a very important development. Master, yeah. Absolutely bullseye.

27:30 Which in fact they're now discovering has got all sorts of flaws in it. I mean not just ceteris paribus clauses but... I was going to say, I think there have been some changes since he wrote that. I'm going to stay around just to listen to that call. You know, the Nuremberg offense was either just that we didn't know what was happening or we were only obeying orders.

30:00 But I suppose we just have to modify the equations, of course, is the inversion. We just needed to modify the equations, yes. To our former foreign secretary. We had a foreign secretary here under Thatcher with that name, Tom Hurt. Well, that certainly gave me some changes. Yes, I agree, absolutely. Well, a more perfect exponent of fideism than Greenspan one couldn't hope to find. Well, I mean, no, no, he, well, he's repentant, but only in the passive, only in the passive case. He doesn't admit to making mistakes. He admits that mistakes were made. A bit like the Nazi generals, you know, blaming it all. Mistakes were made. No, no, the use of the passive case. Just screwed your pension fund for, you know, 50% of its value, amongst other things, I assume. Yeah, one of the people, yeah.

32:30 The cartoonists are having, of course, an absolute field day with the bailout. I will send you some of their offerings. They are pretty good, yes. They certainly are. Oh, by the way, on the subject of developments that I need to ask you about, did you have any contact with John Mayberry? Because I was speaking to him earlier this evening. Did you know about this workshop which he and his doctoral student Richard Pettigrew have put together in Bristol in April, which they've got some funds to invite you? And Colin, and possibly a couple of other people. We were thinking maybe Alberto. He hasn't informed me precisely. I mean, we had agreed that my visit should be... Right, but of course you're coming over for Peter's. We're up to something. Well they have got the funding now and I got an email from Richard and then I spoke to John Elway this evening. He said if I was going to speak to you could I let you know. Really what they wanted to know is what would be your preferred dates. It will be over a weekend and I see that the PSSL, the thing in honour of Peter Johnston and Martin Hyland's 60th birthdays is on the 4th and the 5th. So, presumably, from your point of view, unless you're planning to stay over here for a bit longer and maybe go down to visit Albert or come here to Fougere or whatever, I assume the best time would probably be pretty close to those dates. Let them know because they want to pencil it in and they obviously want to ask Colin and Alberto and one or two other people as well. Possibly Pierre Cartier. That's an absolute disaster. I haven't spoken to Colin, I spoke to Ober-Wolfack, there's really nothing that can be, well I spoke to Ober-Wolfack, but the trouble is there's nothing that can be done because they have now invited these people on the grounds that they're the people that Cromer told them to invite. Apart from Cartier, Jean-Pierre Marquis and Colin himself, they all seem to me to be, well…

35:00 I shouldn't prejudge the issue. There are a couple of people there, like Erhard Schultz, who I think are actually pretty good historians of mathematics. But I actually had a go. I remonstrated with Comer about the whole thing, and I was told the following, which was, first of all, Well, yes, I suppose I should have consulted with you and Colin, but I understood that I had discretion in the matter because I am the principal organizer. Well, there's absolutely nothing, you know, as far as Bobovolfak is concerned, to distinguish, you know, one organizer from another. I mean, he just seems to have got that into his head. It's supposed to be a history of mathematics workshop, so I thought it appropriate that the majority of invitations should be to historians of mathematics rather than to actual research mathematicians. And don't you think you're in danger? I know you wanted to invite Lorvier and Johnston and all these people, but the problem with you and Colin is that you see the whole history of category theory through the distorting lens of topos theory. Distorting prism, sorry, is exact words. You see the whole history of the subject through the distorting prism of topos theory. We see everything through the distorting prism of topos theory, and your list is just too heavy. You just obsess about topos theory, that's your problem. It's a problem of perception here. Look, I'm trying to explain to Colin that someone who actually so strongly supports certain theories... Well, I must admit, when Colin told me that, I thought that was Bill being over-ideological, but now, once again, I'm completely convinced that you're right. I mean, once again, I'm afraid your analysis has been completely vindicated.

37:30 But I was certainly taken aback to be told that Colin's problem and mine was that we saw everything through the distorting prism of topos theory. We didn't have a sufficiently broad view of category theory. I asked him what he meant by that. And of course, sooner or later, as Dinae did turn down, what he meant was that we should be much more concerned with things like N categories and the things that people like Myers and Dolan do. Categorification, surprise, surprise. So I really don't know at the moment whether to... I don't think I will, because there are still some good people who are going to be there, I mean Cartier and Schultz, and I think it could still be of some scientific value, but it would certainly have been of far greater scientific value if we had been able to get you and Peter there, and if the thing hadn't been made. Sorry, top-heavy, with these various French self-appointed and so-called Grotendieck experts, who Colin says, in his opinion, know absolutely nothing about Grotendieck. No, I think it's just a nightmare. I try to make allowances for the fact that Cromer is... Well, that he's young and that he hasn't had a, you know, very much guidance. And also, of course, he's recently lost his job, which means that he's feeling a little bit, you know, depressed. But I still think his behavior is pretty inexcusable. Anyway, never mind about that. Let me know what would be the best dates for you in April, and I'll give you a call back as soon as I've sorted out the fares to come to Buffalo. But I'll aim at the weekend before Thanksgiving. But if that's going to be awkward because the fair's going to be more expensive, then obviously I'll do it a day or two before or a day or two after. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry, what were you going to say?

40:00 I was cutting it. Fine. Oh, yes, I don't think I want to leave it as late as that, though. No, no, no. Yeah. No, the best time would be to get there, to do the copying, to do the work, and to have, you know, two or three days to talk to you and Fatima and then have an enjoyable Thanksgiving dinner and then go. I did promise John Stachel I'd visit him for a couple of, a day or two in Boston, probably on the way back, so, okay. Anyway, I'll check him out. Okay, Bill, I'll give you a ring as soon as I'm back from Egypt, which will probably be about the 10th. Take care. Thanks, Edward, and you. Lots of love to Fatima. See you soon. Well, one thing I really hope is that it brings a lot of them scurrying back, so whether there'll be any jobs for them when they come scurrying back is of course another matter, but I can certainly see it bringing quite a number, well, certainly financial, so financial maths are certainly going to be a far less sexy point of attraction for people than they were in the recent past, I think that's... Pretty, well, culturally certain. And no bad thing either, because... But Bill's point was one of just how many of the people in financial maths had come out of mathematical physics, and particularly out of the bits of mathematical physics that he, for various reasons, regards as particularly suspect, which, often, in string theory is... Look, here, it's, well, it's... It's less his bête noire than it is of the bête noire of some other people I know, but he's probably the most mathematically powerful mind that I know that has got a particular axe to grind against the string theory.

42:30 But no, the consequences of this sort of thing are obviously going to be with us for the rest of our lives. It's absolutely massive. Well, and look what happened, well, going back, going back a generation now to Black Wednesday, when, you know, power was driven out of the exchange rate, by Soros. Yes. Oh, sorry, it was Soros we were talking about, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, well, it was just the volume of funds available to these people. Oh, yes, yes, there was absolutely no way at all that they could ever beat the markets. Whereas in the 60s, in the days of Harold Wilson, there was still... Because they were all Keynesians, they did think that there was some, I remember Wilson talking about the names of Zurich, you know, they really thought there was a level playing field, but you're right. Globalization, and actually the communication revolution had a lot to do with it, the fact that it's just simply so easy to move. The exchange controls were not abolished because, really, because of some ideological, well, actually they were abolished because of an ideological fixation on part of that, but they were abolished also because they had become effectively inoperable. They had simply become of no serious value. And in terms of efficient allocation of capital, you know, the neoclassical theorists would say a jolly good thing, too, which is exactly how it should be. But the problem is neoclassical theorists built on the extraordinary supposition, which has just exploded, that we do actually have perfect information and that values are transparent. And, uh, who doesn't? As the lady said, Oseid ain't a soldier. Yes, exactly, if you believe everything they say, but we're not. But then, I mean, Galileo worked that out long ago. There are, in fact, no perfect inclined planes or frictionless surfaces. They're just an absolutely necessary amount of... Sorry, who am I speaking to? I should need to say this to you. But it is a little bit strange that people as clever as, you know, people who get Nobel prizes in economics should have seemed to have blinded themselves to this rather obvious fact. This is, this whole, you know, this whole discipline is built on mathematical idealizations of an extraordinary...

45:00 You know, I looked into this once to see if there was any data, which I was interested in, say, equilibrium theory. I mean, this is just basically elementary variation. Yeah, yes. It's hinged, of course, on the symmetry of partial derivatives, in other words, it's the last of its kind. Anyone ever checked this? There was a check, apparently couples shopping in Canadian supermarkets. There was no doubt at all. That's incredible, isn't it? I agree, I agree. And the thing is, it's an open secret amongst the economists themselves that this, of course, is absolute fiction. This whole thing is just... It's just metaphors. ...complete metaphors. Yes, it's just metaphors. If you actually go back to the 19th century, it's very interesting when classical or neoclassical economics came together, when marginal utility got off the ground, and they were obviously really borrowing the concepts rather directly from physics and, as you say, from variational principles, and particularly obviously from conservation of energy relations. They were just looking at, I mean, essentially, utility was just... Mathematically, it was functioning almost exactly in the way that energy did in classical physics, but all of the conceptual issues concerning how one should think of energy, conceptually, mathematically, which the physicists were addressing The economists didn't address, they just seem to assume that we have this perfectly transparent notion of utility, which, because it gives us a nice set of equations and makes our subject mathematically respectable, we shall henceforth, yes, that seems to be crudely, very crudely, how classical economics got started, and remain trapped in that. You know, that all agents act with perfect information, markets are transparent, is obviously so crazy.

47:30 Yes, absolutely. But the consequences of the derivatives meltdown is just absolutely incredible and we haven't even heard anything about the credit default swaps market which in theory, because it was even more of a leveraged inverted pyramid than other derivatives, was worth not just a few trillions but something like 66 trillion, notionally, which obviously is actually overwhelmingly greater than the total value of the world GDP, of world output. And that's become completely unraveled. And I think that the answer to that is that people have just decided, agreed to just abandon belief in the fiction, you know. They're not even going to ask for a bailout on that one, they're just going to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. But at a crude policy level, and one of the things which obviously has to be done, if there is going to be a massive redistribution of resources in favour of the state, which I think is inevitable now, because nothing else will save us from a massive miseration, and indeed from social and political catastrophe, these bloody tax havens like Liechtenstein and Monaco and the Channel Islands and all the rest of them have really just got to be closed down. And I would go further, I would say places like Switzerland. I'm not going to be so insulting as to say Switzerland's not a real country, but I refuse to treat Liechtenstein or Monaco or the Isle of Man or the Cayman Islands. These places just simply have been taken out long ago. Well, presumably it will make the European Bank much more important than the obvious example. Well, provided it can be recapitalized on a necessary scale. A necessary thing, is it? That could be a big time. That, of course, is why the French are wetting, you know, drooling over the prospect. The whole crisis might yet be turned to progressive advantage. It will be interesting to see what Obama's policies are. Assuming he's been elected, which Peter here tells me he has in fact. Yes, he's told me. He definitely was a clear result, wasn't there, Peter? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, okay. It seemed to be, certainly on course for it in the small hours of the morning, didn't seem to be anything that looked like it could upset it. The exit polls in California showed him with a massive lead there, although they hadn't actually called California at that point because of the time difference, and he only needed California to carry him over the majority of the Electoral College, and he was expected to get several other states as well, so small states.

50:00 There's no reason why they should understand that there's a special order of matter called the elements. No, I see the point. I say there's no reason why they should understand that. The early so-called chemists were really kind of ephesians. Yes, well, yeah, surely. Well, look at Boyle. Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. They had no idea there were such subjects of chemistry. No, no, well, that's my very point, yeah. Not should they, yeah. Yeah, I think you're singing to the choir. Oh! What's the hold-up now? Do we know? I don't know. In terms of showing the difference in outlook and eyesight, on the subject of the royal family, and in this case, one good clergy on the other side. I'd be very interested because I think I'm sharing a session I'm not sure which one tomorrow yes I think it's tomorrow afternoon it's probably on Friday I'll just check Well, apart from being an archivist, it's category theory. I don't think that I have much to say to Pinsley, John Witten, or Smith, at all. But they have actually got a very broad basis. Oh yes, they have. They have. And that's really interesting. And not that I followed the talks, but I realise that they're not just, you know, dedicated. Well, as I was saying, the last time we were here in 2006, Lou Kaufman, who is a very celebrated American topologist and not theorist, came. This work is about as far away from Finsdale geometry as you can get in math, really no

52:30 points of connection with Finsdale geometry at all, but Dimitri invited him just because he had met Lou and was very impressed with his work, interested and wanted to hear him talk. So he came along and gave a talk about knot theory and in fact he gave two talks, one on knot theory and one on quantum logic gates from a topological standpoint, and both nice talks. Except a little bit. No, that's true, because you're going to talk about your Dirac nilpotent algebra stuff. But if he invites me, he knows that I'm not going to talk about it. In the unlikely event he ever made the mistake of asking me, he'd get us off on category theory, so it would not be, again, much use of it. You could show that if Finsley geometry can be developed from category theory, because that's the sort of thing category theories claim, isn't it? Well, the whole point is that anything can be developed from category theory. Yeah, exactly. If you choose the appropriate category. Yeah. Everything from studies of liver function to algebraic logic. Actually, I'm being quite serious. One of the most interesting talks in category theory I ever heard at the International Category Theory Conference in 1990 was in fact a talk about the study of liver function modelled in terms of limits and co-limits in the appropriate category diagrams. Yeah, so why should we be able to discuss your liver? Some of yesterday's talks are only vaguely related to Pinsler geometry, H2s and H4s and so on. I'm a bit sorry that Mark Lachey didn't come in the end, because he's really a differential geometer. He is very knowledgeable about cosmology, and so he has interesting things to report on, like mining, the Covey danger.

55:00 Anyhow, so he was interested in higher dimensional physics and he called friends of his and I called him Slave. Who was this, the German? Zollner. Okay, no, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with him. Yeah, so this guy went along and was clearly able to find some sort of class. Oh, I see, the table-wrapping stuff, yeah. Oh, dear. Oh, Pearson, yeah, of course. Thank you for watching. There was an awful, there was a whole industry wasn't there at the time, obviously people like Oliver Lodge and Ken and Doyle and other people were into spirits and table wrapping. As a public respect, Kelvin and with his vortex atoms being a case in point, there was considerable carryover to some of these. The lot of a lot. This is something that Lou also mentioned. The history is very interesting. No, indeed, indeed. I think one of the things that's coming clearer and clearer is that there's tremendous amount of very interesting work in what I might call the broadest algebraic tradition in logic, which was rather lost sight of after, say, around the turn of the century. Because the Frege-Russell tradition in logic became the one which was followed, certainly consistently, by the philosophers, by the philosophy department. And it wasn't just Boole and Schroeder, but there were also quite a number of other people out there, Peirce as well, who were working much more broadly, well, essentially viewing logic as a form of algebra. And there are some very interesting ideas, diagrammatically, which connected also with some of these ideas in proto-physics, like the vortex atom, and those connections have almost been entirely lost sight of, except by the real specialists in that part of the history of mathematics.

57:30 And it interests me because I think, in fact, what I call the algebraic. The Frega-Russell take on logical structure is actually the central and broad tradition, and the Frega-Russell tradition is actually a side stream, and has actually turned out to be pretty much a blind alley. And it's the tradition that runs through Tarski to present-day catalytic theory to functorial semantics for algebraic theories, and indeed to ideas of people like Grotenbeek and Troppelsteiner that really provides the... The deep connection between logic as a fragment of mathematics rather than logic as providing in any sense a foundation to be placed underneath mathematics, which is obviously the viewpoint that people like Treger and Russell took, does seem to me to have been broadly a blind alley, a cul-de-sac in the history of thought. There's one splendid remark by John Myhill, who has long gone now, Cambridge set theorist, ZFC is obviously an adequate foundation for the whole of mathematics, except of course for set theory! Which is a good joke to a bad end, because in fact it's not even that. By the way, I'm sure you know that CMS is having a... A little celebration in April next year for Peter Johnston and Martin Hyland for their 60th birthday, coming to PSSL and going to the Gowans. How do you get on with him today? Very well indeed, yes, oh yes, yes. We're almost, we're not quite contemporaries, he's a little older than me, but we were, we did know each other even as undergraduates and yes, I get on very well with him indeed. In fact, I saw him just last month in Brussels, this meeting with, in honour of Francis Bourser and Dominic Vaughan.

1:00:00 It's actually Martin Hyland who's the chap I really know. Martin and I were, well, we go back a very long way. That's delightful, man. Not long ago, he was spending some time in Paris, in fact... He was indeed! I saw quite a bit of him, in fact, while he was there, yes. Are we referring to Lord Lovelace? Lord Rees. No, no, no, we're talking about Martin Hyland, Cambridge mathematician. No, Martin Hyland, Cambridge algebraist, topos-theorist, no, category-theorist, mathematician. Is he related to Gerard Hyland? I don't think so. Well, I don't know because I have no idea who Gerard Hyland is. He's a friend of mine from Warwick. I'm afraid I don't know, but not to my knowledge. It's H-Y-L-A-N-D, it's the same spelling, yes, yes, he's a, he developed a splendid thing called the effective topos, which is the first link really between computer science amongst many other achievements, interesting guy. Peter is, Very difficult chap, difficult to get to know well, but when you do get to know him well, he's actually very likeable, very, very shy. Well, he's really more or less given his life to Thomas there. He's written the two massive books on the subject. Well, I must say I'm very impressed with his sort of general attitude. I was examined at once for, I think I might even mention him, but I must say he's very intelligent and very sharp, always has been. Chris Isham, Jeremy Buckfield, and Chris's student, Andrew Dorey, have now got very interested in applications for topos. So obviously they've got the visa because they're now invited to all the conferences.

1:02:30 So I think, rightly, I'm dissuaded that topos theory does have all that much relevance to physics, but I'll be on the house when it gets on very well with Chris. Well, Chris is a great one. Exactly. Whereas, well, yes, Peter, of course, tends to be, well, certainly in my experience... It's not that he turns his nose up at me, he's very, very leery of... Any kind of broad speculation on conceptual issues. He will do it if he's pushed hard enough and if he's in the right company, but he'll only do it very reluctantly in time. Otherwise, his official line tends to be, look, I am, you know, I am, you know, I am a machine for turning copy of a theorem. It's like any good, especially any good candidate for a position. That tends to be his official position, although it's hard to pass, I know he doesn't. It tends to be his official position. Yes, but I have huge admiration for Peter more and more. He's the only mathematician in the world who is able to put Bill Laubier in his place and if you've ever met Bill Laubier that's quite something. He's the only person in category theory, but with the exception of Alexander Grosbeak, he's not in mathematics any longer. But he's quite capable of turning to Bill and saying, Bill, you're talking absolutely... Shut up. And nobody else would dare do that. And Peter, as I say, is a mathematician who both does and can, and who has Bill's qualified respect for doing it. This is a very good thing for both the Bill and the mathematician. I mean one of the things I've been doing with this archive for 20 years now, literally 20 years, since 1989, has been recording hours and hours of all these seminars and conversations and interviews with him, so of course he's, amongst I think mathematicians of absolute first rank in terms of conceptual importance of the work, he's probably published less than almost anybody else. And so I think it is quite a disrespect to science fiction to try and do as much of this stuff as possible. This group we've discovered is really a turn-up because it's going to persuade Bill to sit down and long-last and write a really serious monograph-length introduction to this material.

1:05:00 Since he's one of these people who's really qualified to understand what's bounding us, clearly. Do you know Miles Reed? Miles? I've come across the name, but I don't know the person. You know, I've shown people a picture of him. Oh, interesting. Oh, I'd like to read that. I've taken my mic off. Miles Green. Oh, Reid, I'm so sorry. R-E-I-D. R-E-I-D. No, actually, come to think of it, I've heard, I think I've heard a bit about it, but it's, I haven't, I haven't looked at it, I should have. Colin McLarty, who is quite a, was actually going to write a book about it. I had to abandon the project after it was about two thirds of the way through, because I just hadn't seen any other things. IHES was obviously an extraordinary place in those days. I talk a lot to Pierre Cartier, who is still there as an American, and who is easily the most approachable French mathematician of his generation, and also obviously one of the very best. He came across to Boston last year, in fact in December last year, in New York, at a conference for the 50th anniversary of the East Oakland Press, with him, and about half an hour before that, and he was in great form last year. Yes, he has all sorts of fascinating stories. But he said that the bus stop was going to be broken and the Russian guy was the founder of the IHS. It's a strange name. The vast numbers between Grote and Deacon and Mokshana was a very strange business of Peter Cartier, who was very close to Grote, but who I think is far, far better adjusted than he is now, massively, being better adjusted than Grote and Deacon, which is setting the bar all the way high.

1:07:30 We know him, so we know how well adjusted he is. But he said he thought that Crepey was looking for a pretext to blow up, to storm out, to flounce out, and that the row with Montana was just the pretext he was looking for, it was... I mean the business about... For his discovery that the IHS was receiving this secret graph that he said was, we were flying across the Atlantic to this conference in Boston. And the movie, you had a selection of them, one of them was Casablanca. So I said, well, can we watch Casablanca? And he said, of course, it's one of my favourite movies, so of course it's one of my favourite too. And when he came to the page, you see, you know, where Claude Rheims is ordered to close the cafe, right, and the staffer says, I'd shonk, I'd shonk if I had those gambling taking place on these premises. And so you're in your winter. Consequently, you know, that's exactly how he was. He was shocked to find that the French Air Force was funny. He obviously knew it for 10 years that they were funny. I mean, nobody believed that. He may have been naïve, but he wasn't that naïve, that it was just like that. Except I don't think he had much else in common with Claude Reyes. He's only got one result so far, but he's got some... Oh yeah, I mean, it's... It's very, very strange. Really, he really did get... Well, he still continues to produce private pieces. I was also struck by an idea that L'Orveille still thinks that it's just possible that, you know, even that... That's right. This is exactly what Cartier told me about. About a little over a year ago, back in July or August last year, they suddenly got a letter. Bourguignon, to be correct, received a letter from Grosvenor, and they had had no communication at all for a while.

1:10:00 And something out of the blue, they got a letter asking if you could borrow some books from the library, one of which was the third edition of the collection. So, Bourguignon, I swear, again, I can't say exactly what the story is, I think it should be a wrong person. This one can't be told. Bourguignon, of course, is one of the worst things. Get the books down here straight away. You're not able to write it in person. The notes are safe. It does have a place where you can actually read them. We'd like to hear from you further. Send them down to this kind of post-Hirastante address and he's just going to release them from there and you're going to collect them. There's no way that he wants anyone to visit him, he's made that very, very clear. But let's send books down to him straight away. And sure enough, you know, the library was imputed into somebody else who took it from somebody else, because, of course, it was the least that they could do. It's rare to actually attend to anything as near as actually sending out books to people. And a month later, a second rather irate lecture, a rather sad one, a small one, and so on. You might remember that I did once have something to do with your institution. On the other hand, I can understand why you would do things that couldn't be done. So at that point you need to probably pull those things out. If you correct the books down, you've got them about two years later. And since then, although I don't know what's happened since April, since the last time I've gone there, he's made three or four other contacts. The two of which were better than the great directors, and which, correctly said, were a lot more sane than the previous committee. They didn't contain any of this stuff about the devil and the fine stuff at the concert, other crazy stuff that was better than the people of a few years ago. And he's also spoken to his daughter, who he's in contact with, and who does get the visit in the meantime, and says that he's actually physically in better shape than he was a couple of years ago, because he's kicked the kind of crazy, crazy crack dives.

1:12:30 And of course, he's having such a strenuous talk about his dear existence. We'll have ourselves a fine talk after the parody. I think it's completely different because I don't think that Goethe just has certainly governing obsessions, which is going back to his involvement with soliloquy, ecology, Buddhism, these things are very much in line with his fundamental outlook. Thank you for your attention. Although some of the things that he has written do suggest a borderline... No, I think we're okay. We're okay for the moment. Thanks. And Curtis said to me he's never been quite sure, reading these letters that we do write about, whether there isn't some complex metaphor. So, that he expects to detect in all of this, rather than it should be taken literally. No, well, it's interesting that you should say that. If it was just straightforward. He also says that he has the mathematician's weird blindness to the obvious when it comes to thinking about physics. I mean, the mathematician is great. The more blind they are to simple-minded considerations. For instance, he obviously could get his head around. Did I mention Alaskan? Alaskan is what he wants to do. But for half the time he just can't be bothered. He kind of thinks that... Because these things about the construction concept make absolutely no physical sense, whatever. Crazy numerology. Grotendieck. Grotendieck. Grotendieck. Alexander Grotendieck. Well, nor does anybody else. Nobody has done it for over 20 years now. That's the problem.

1:15:00 It's not exactly 360,000 metres. Exactly. Well, that is what Carter explained to him. It's not something that you can explain normally to anybody doing A-level. He does not give the greatest amount of attention for the last half century, at least, but Carter had an uphill struggle explaining that, didn't he? There's some other chap, actually, which is Laurent... Oh, Schwarz, yes, Laurent Schwarz, that's another... No, no, no, not Laurent Schwarz, the young Phil Spendlitz. Oh, which one, though? The one who... Oh, I think I know the guy you mean, the Russian. There's a bit of a French tradition there, isn't there. And Cartier said it was absolutely weird when he was an undergraduate in Paris in the late 1940s. They still wouldn't even teach them. I mean, of course, this was after the Rothberg, but he was still told that atoms, that is a very strange hypothesis. That is a very, very strange hypothesis. What have we thought of doing the Whitman? Well, literally, I mean, I think that's a bit extreme, isn't it? No, no, I don't think it actually deserves being... No, I'm teasing you, I thought you meant actually getting out a kind of rhino Whitman. No, no, no, they've done their best, I agree. As long as we're sure it goes to the staff, that's all. Yes, I'd be quite happy to do that, of course I would. Yes, sure, sure, sure. I mean, but we'd have to decide by tomorrow morning, because... Yeah, because unfortunately, some of them have already left, haven't they? Yeah, but I mean, now the Russian term may be before a long time. Well, I suggest one of us just simply mentions it on the coach on the way into the... Well, it's too late now, so...

1:17:30 Well, we'll give you... we'll leave you out. Well, the trouble is, when are we going to have everybody together before that? I'm just not quite sure what other time that we get everybody together before that. Well, the person to ask is Sergey. Yes, Sergey's the man to ask. To ask him tomorrow morning at breakfast. Yes, good idea, let's do that. He's the one guy who's absolutely put his head straight and screwed on. He's the totally westernised one out of all those questions. And easily the nicest guys. Well, Vladimir. Vladimir is equally nice. Yeah, sure, sure, you're Vladimir, yeah. Don't think. Don't think. Don't think. I can imagine China, I can't imagine Chinese actually being as mercenary as it comes. They're really not. They're really not. They're China, gosh, that does surprise me. No, not these guys, but the people in the taxis and things like that. No, this is the thing, the problem is that in a country like Egypt they are totally dependent on us. That's the problem. They are totally, and this is why they, you know, because... Thank you very much for your time. No, I know. It must be about 200 a day that ask you for a $1. No, I know. That's the problem. That's the awful thing about, you know, about poverty. No, I mean, it's very depressing. But the one thing about the passage that does sound, I think, depressing is that... I think we're still okay for the time being. Yeah, thank you.

1:20:00 No, that's perfectly all right. You don't actually see... I'm so sorry. No damage, no damage. Oh dear, I am sorry. No damage. That's okay, that was my fault entirely. That's okay, it's on your paper. Thank you. Sorry about that. Not significant damage there. It didn't go up in your papers I heard. No, only the ones that don't matter like the program. Oh God, I'm sorry. I've actually now got 200s and 250s, that's all I've got left. You're a 50? Yeah. Yeah, those are 50s. You're a 50? Yeah, yeah. Which is all right, go on. Excuse me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, hang on, don't worry, we're going to work this out, don't worry, be patient. Please be patient. Oh no, that's so quickly cancelled, that's no good news. Excuse me. Hang on, I've got to change. Yeah, hang on, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, please give us a moment, we'll sort it out for you, don't worry. One minute, one minute, one minute. One minute. What you need? Yeah. One microphone. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. What was that? I've no idea, but what was that? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, except now we can sort it out. Yes, sure. Yes, I hate to say, I'm rather... Okay, never mind. That's not the way we normally do things, however... Okay, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. What do I owe you? Not very much. Could I ever put in ten? Okay, well, four. If you'd rather be five. I don't know who I would watch. Actually, you owe Peter five. Okay, well I've got a 20, can you just hold on until tomorrow morning, I'll change it. I'm not going to ask him to change it.

1:22:30 I suppose I could do with a change. Thank you. Anyway, I'm sorry I nearly kicked the tabler. Typical. Typical klutz. I think he's put it away, and we can come with it tomorrow. So you're going to head off down to Luxor. I ran into a very nice young English couple in fact in the coffee shop in the soup this morning who were on their way down to Luxor tomorrow as well. Murder on the Nile is a story. Well, it is, actually. Probably you should mention that because they would just say to me, no, I just mentioned, they would just say to me, do you know anybody going down to Luxor? So I go, well, seriously? No. So I said, where's my friend? They said, I do. For Belgium with a moustache. No, no, no. Very distinguished professor from Cambridge and his good lady, they went out there for a second, because what we did, they really were a very delightful couple, they said, well, because we've got this. Plan. We'd like to try and pile up with two or three or four other people. We have a cunning plan. No, in fact, it says this in my Dora Kindler's The Guide, so it seems to make lovely good sense. Apparently, you won't have time to do this, I know, but it struck me as one of these things in advance. It might have been something to attend to. You get a fantastic deal, apparently. If you go down to Aswadi water and so on and then negotiate directly with the Fawaka proprietors, provided that you make absolutely sure you inspect the boat and that it's got all of the facilities and you know exactly what's going to be included in the price, you can actually put together your own off-the-peg, your own bespoke denial troops. Because the falakas sleep about five, anything from five to seven people, and some of them in very comfortable cabins. And the nice thing, of course, is if you negotiate for a cruise, an hour cruise, with the falakas that you can't do locally, not only does it obviously cost you a fraction of what it costs if you book one of the big cruise ships, but also you have total flexibility. You can decide whether you want to put in a fly-by or any of the other places.

1:25:00 For two or three hours or for the whole day or, you know, you're not confined to the timetable which the big birds follow, it's the fraction of the times. Just struck me as a rather good idea but you need to put together the time, four or five people to do it. Anyway, that was what they were proposing to do, like they got down there. No, no, that's why I didn't want to do it. Yeah, yeah. You've got to belly the kings and all that. I'm sure you'll do that, won't you? Oh gosh, all in, yeah, that's, it's just in two days. That would be absolutely fantastic, I'd love to see this, or I really would. Yeah. Are you flying down or going on a train? You're flying down, because they were going on a train. It's about a 14-hour ride. I wouldn't have recommended it. But they're on their honeymoon, so they're probably going to want to take it. Well, I think they're at the end of their honeymoon. They were quite happy. I wasn't seriously proposing that you should call them. I didn't even bother to get their phone number or anything. It just sort of was a coincidence that they... Coincidence that they should be... For his sake. Oh, has he done the arrangement? The representative has to get here. He picks up here. Oh, he has to get to this place. He had no tickets. They were going to do it for him. You want to do it for the girl? No, no, no. But I mean, what we realized... You bet, it's extremely difficult to find. Well at least we can say it's on the night, near a bridge. I would think that the local rep at Cox and Kings has probably got to be pretty good at his job.

1:27:30 Well, for my pains, I've worked as a tour director for, not for Cox and Kings, but for several companies like that, and I've acclaimed it. And Jules Verne, and people like that, on and off for about 15 years. It's a nice job. I was running my own tours, in fact, for about seven years, but not in Egypt. They specialised in literature here. My uncle and I went to Afghanistan when he was still a tourist. Before the Soviet invasion and anything later. We did that for almost 20 years. We did all of the mainly, obviously North West Europe mainly, North of Europe, Germany, also Alsace, but we did quite a few in Italy as well. Of course that's, they literally faded away, and that's why I won't be coming up after the night. Oh yes, that was about the first time, if I only ever went to Moscow three times, that was the... Well, in the communist period, that's a little bit more difficult than this is. That was in Moscow, which was supposed to, of course, have the rest of the country strict in order that Moscow should be a showcase for the living standards on communism. So what the hell it was like for the poor devils in Tomsk and Onsk? We found there was an arrow window about three in the afternoon, I guess, for this sort of lunch. Thank you for your attention.

1:30:00 Was the International, I think the International, was the International the huge one that was just on the corner of Great Square but set back a little bit the other side of the subway. It's been pulled down in some huge post-modernist gym palace as we've built this place now. I can't remember, was that a big museum and then it was... Yes, which is still there of course, the National Museum. No, in fact, that is the one I first stayed in when I went to Portugal. Yes, it was behind the museum and you went down through an underpass and came up into Red Square. In fact, where the Red Square Metro still is. That's all been pulled down. In fact, the whole of that block has been totally demolished and completely redeveloped. You wouldn't recognise it now. It's just this very flash. All glitzy, and chrome, and steel, and post-mortem, and all, you know, well, when I last went over there a year ago, it was like, okay, oil fields were as tight as they're supposed to be, or a bit obnoxious, and oil industry types were all on expense accounts, and, you know, glass was not going to be about a hundred dollars, and, you know, it was a place of sort, and I was afraid that people would put my nose inside it. The only place I discovered that there was one place where you could still get very easy to do an internship was the French school in Scotland where they had a club. It was never actually a club. It was the place where all the French students and musketeers would go. And it was a couple of, it was a cellar bar, but it was five rows, and two of them were actually a bookshop. It was the only place in Moscow where we didn't get one. If you could drink a little bit and still be a reasonable person, it would be nice to stand with you tonight, more in the way that might get quarters for the rest of your time out here tonight. I've said that to students who say, oh yeah, I'm happy with my mother, I'm happy with my husband, and now we'll be at the university.

1:32:30 But I imagine the facilities for the academics were always pretty, or they may not be particularly luxurious, but they were, so I'd rather imagine they were. Thank you very much for your time, and I hope to see you again soon. Thank you for your attention. I can't imagine somehow the KGBs have mentioned Tom Henn as their initial partner. It's funny you should know him, because I never knew him, but my housemaster at school had been supervised by him, and I remember him using a copy of that with a spectroscope in my hand when I was about 15. No, this was written by my old teacher, David. I don't expect him to enjoy reading it, but I did. Do you know the Leavis story? Leavis came into the house and I was holding all the flowers for him. No, I don't know the story. His opening sentence was, the hill was our room. Well, I suppose for Leavis that's remarkably witty. I don't think it was one of mine. I saw a sort of paper block across the room. I don't think it's mine, but we've got that. I didn't see any papers or paper, I'm afraid. It looked all right.

1:35:00 I don't think anything blew away. I'm sure we would have noticed if it had. No, I don't think so. Oh, tin? Yes, I suppose it was tin.