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Next, sales tax. Okay, sales tax is not a problem itself, but slapping it on AFTER the listed value is just annoying. It's certainly weird to think you're going to pay a nice, neat, round figure of $6.00 and then find it's actually $6.72, and you've just earned yourself another load of those irritating little coins. Also irritating because at just upwards of 10% (as it was where I was) what appears like a decent deal compared to the UK turns into no bargain at all.
Otherwise, in Chicago I generally drank deep from the well of Neuroscientific knowledge, and also drank lots of beer.
So, interesting story. Apparently, there's a company called "Wowmine". It's a company that makes it's money by getting lots of Chinese dudes to play World of Warcraft (WoW) as a job and generate stuff, which they can then sell - for real money - to lazy, idiot Western powergamers who want to be great without the effort of actually getting there themselves. Wowmine is apparently just the most notable one of a huge cloud of related companies and domain names. From one site I read, trying to end a contract with Wowmine (and associated groups) results in a letter informing you that you can either pay them, or your name, address and so on are going to be sent to a debt collection company in your home country, and that they will inform Blizzard (who own and run WoW) how you have broken the terms of agreement for the game, and face your game account being deleted. I'm pretty sure that is blackmail. The owners of Wowmine are being sued by Microsoft for running a fraud system online. They were paid by insurance companies to click the ad banners of other auto companies, thereby exhausting those other companies' advertising revenues, causing the adverts to drop, and losing them business.
So anyway, Wowmine have apparently decided to just cut out the middleman and take money from punters directly, hence Evony. Firstly, despite the cheap appeal with the sexy lingerie models (in fact, eventually they pretty much even just gave up on the model and just showed a pair of breasts in a bra for a later advert) Evony is apparently pretty much just Sid Meier's Civilisation, maybe altered just enough to avoid a lawsuit. It's graphics are apparently an equally dubious near-theft from Age of Empires. Apparently it was originally called "Civony" (=civilisation + colony). They've got another game called "Empire Craft", which is another cack-handed attempt at ripping off the names of other, famous, good games. In fact, apparently even their lingerie model picture was illegally copied from some catalogue and photoshopped.
Wowmine, and hence Evony, are spammers. Apparently, the reason their adverts are ubiquitous is that they exploit some ad software to keep inserting their adverts from multiple urls into certain sites, and they're hard to block. Furthermore, they spam forums with waffle about their game, and spam blogs with comments advertising the game (in fact, I mighit well attract some for this).
So, what else? Firstly, Evony charges you to do stuff. A lot. Apparently, sending an in-game message costs you about 15p, and lots of things can charge you possibly without you realising. Wow (in the amazement sense, not the game). There's apparently some software you can install that appears to hand all the information in your email address book to the makers of Evony - called, in their oh-so-tedious rip off fashion, iEvony. Most people know many viruses try to get hold of your email and your address book. It takes spectacularly gullible people to voluntarily hand it over to a spam-happy company of dubious ethics. Visiting their webpage will dump a shedload of spyware onto your web browser too, it seems. Note that Evony is in beta (i.e. not entirely finished). Apparently it is severely bugged, and occasionally flips and wipes out everything you've done (and maybe paid for) - no refund, obviously.
First up, C. & I celebrated 7 years together yesterday. Although we didn't get much celebrating done because she had to work late and I also have had a very busy few days...
My contract here is up at the end of January, so I've been job hunting. Yesterday I attended the first interview at Warwick University. It's the first proper interview grilling I've had for about 9 years (the last two were informal, particularly as no other viable candidates had applied), and I can't say enough how much of a relief it was to have performed well, particularly as I expended about three months worth of adrenaline and stress in a period of about three days. Even worse, the interview was about 3pm, so I woke earlyish, my poor brain having about 4 millseconds of dozy wakefulness before it screamed "INTERVIEW!!!" and promptly kept me wired for the next 7-8 hours. I was relatively relaxed in the actual interview. When it was done and I travelled back to Birmingham, I had the expected crash and subsided to a near headachy languor.
At any rate, today at about 10.30am, they decided I was the best candidate and offered me the post, which I accepted. It's a really good project - good supervisor, state of the art technology, an exciting field of research, I'll learn some great new techniques which will be a godsend for my development, and should set me in great stead for independent research in three years. It's also a partial link to a US laboratory, a top guy in the field, so I'll probably be sent over to Boston a few times to mix and mingle there. I have, I think it's fair to say, hit the jackpot. Or more strictly, won gold, because I like to think I didn't fluke it. It's been a struggle to work today, as all I really want to do is run round waving my arms and shouting "Woo-hoo!" There is one downside - I'm damned if I'm moving out of Birmingham (<3 B'ham), but the public transport is far from ideal. There are two options: bus to B'ham centre, train to Coventry, bus to the university; then there's bus to B'ham centre, train to Canley, and the rest is just about walkable (1-2 miles) or bus otherwise, but either way I'm potentially looking at an hour or more with two changes for a journey of under 20 miles.
In other news, I'm off to Chicago next week, for the big Neuroscience conference. I spent a shitload of time in September not only preparing for my interview, but slogging away making a poster. I'm the second author and not presenting it, but it was my job to do it, and so it was done. Though I do say so myself, it looks fantastic, particularly because it's good science and has some great pictures thanks to the anatomical side (done by our colleagues at the Oxford end of the collaboration), but also I worked in a funky design scheme. I'm second author on another paper at Neuroscience, but that was all up to Naoki to compile, I just tweaked the diagrams and text. We're going Thursday, and heading home the next Thursday.
I've read plenty of books recently. I'm currently on "Fallen" by Tim Lebbon, but recently finished have been "Dust of Dreams" by Steven Erikson, "The Harlequin's Dance" and "The King and Queen of Swords" by Tom Arden (intriguing stuff: think fantasy with both literary styling and setting of the 18th century); and, er, other stuff by people like David Weber, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Eric Brown.
Bought "Wolfenstein" for PC. Thought the many-year prequel "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" rather superior. Joint PC/console developments do bad things to PC first-person shooters: the controls always seem slightly "off" which I suspect are the compensations made for the clumsier gamepad things consoles have. The other great beauty of the PC it seems to be able to readily manage large environments. Something about many console games seems to struggle with the great outdoors. I guess Fallout 3 probably did okay, but all too often you feel like you're in an artificial outside constructed of rooms and corridors, with inevitable "invisible walls" syndrome.
Did other stuff. Other stuff happened. Etc.
What's happened is that the Irish voted for the Lisbon Treaty, by a rather impressive 2:1 majority or thereabouts. Anyway, that leaves pretty much three countries who may yet kill it - the UK, Poland and Czech Republic. And what's David Cameron's bold opinion on it all? Let's wait and see. The excuse seems to be "let's not prejudice the votes of other countries". Eh? And double eh? That's the most stupid reason ever to not state an opinion on it. Well, stupid except in the sense that Cameron is a in a big bind here and desperately needs an excuse to keep quiet at home. What he appears to be doing is writing to other countries saying "Please, please, kill the Lisbon Treaty I'll be your best friend ever!"
Cameron wants to shut down the Lisbon treaty - and probably just about every other piece of EU business he can. However, he has to be sensitive to a tricky issue of international politics. The UK is not well liked in Europe. The Conservatives are almost universally despised. In order to get anything at all done, Cameron cannot let go of the last few shreds of goodwill his party hasn't yet alienated. Well, I say "goodwill" but what I really mean is the willingness of any European to manage the minimum requirements of cordial conversation or even answer his phone calls in the first place. Cameron desperately wants someone else to shoot down Lisbon to save him having to decide to do so. If it does come down to him, I will bet you my life savings he'll announce that Britain will accept it too - no referendum - because he's not so stupid and blinkered as to permit the catastrophic diplomatic disaster doing otherwise would entail. There's a good chance Tony Blair might be the first EU president. According to the BBC "shadow foreign secretary William Hague has warned that the Tories would be prepared to lobby European capitals to block Mr Blair's appointment". Haha! Who do they think they are kidding, that anyone cares what they say? That's like the smelly, ugly, stupid nerd in a classroom lobbying his classmates to not elect the football captain as Head Boy.
At any rate. Folks, don't vote Tory. Please, please, please, don't vote Tory. I mean, Gordon Brown and Blair before him have been a bit sucky in places, but they are still a far better option than swallowing the gobbet of posion and bile that is the Tory party.
I've been quite interested recently because I've been mixing with a forum of mostly Americans. They tend to have an... interesting outlook on life.
Let's take the first, which was basically complaining about the tax burden on the rich. They pointed out that the top 5% of earners pay 56% of the USA's tax. And indeed they do. In fact, the poorest 50% of Americans pay just 2.5-3% of the American tax bill. Of course, herein also is the reason that taxing the poor is pointless. To get an increase of just 1% in the USA's total tax income, you'd have to make a 33-40% increase on the total tax burden endured by the poor, which is a crushing sum to increase their taxes by. I might also point out that the wealthiest 5% of Americans own 60% of the USA, and the poorest 50% own virtually nothing of America. Do you notice how close those figures are to the tax payments? Whilst we must be clear that there is a difference between the most wealthy and the highest earners, there's a certain correlation between the two, and it kind of makes the tax payments look quite fair.
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But for major league bigots, you have to look at the debate about whether religious organisations should be entitled to refuse to employ gays, divorcees, and whoever else is unsuitable in the eyes of their religion.
Cue the batshit loopy US right wing. It really does give you a good idea what goes on in people's minds over there. You have to give the right wing some credit, they're great at packaging unethical conduct, prejudice, hate and greed as moral superiority. In fact, I think that is currently where 95% of the right wing's intellectual effort goes at the moment: framing their most objectionable traits in terms of positive ideology so they can be even more unethical, prejudiced, hate-filled and greedy.
Private organisations should apparently be quite free to employ whoever they like - if they feel like refusing jobs to blacks, gays, women (etc.), they should be free to. Freedom! Anti-discrimination laws are, in their mind, discrimination laws by forcing employers to employ minorities. The other argument is the anti-regulation argument. You see, government regulation impedes business. Instead of enacting anti-discrimination laws, the government should just look the other way, and companies that don't have open hiring policies will eventually do worse because they'll not hire minorities and not access those individuals with better skills. I mean, got to hand it to them, it's a beautifully constructed steaming pile of theoretical bullshit.
Then you get the amusing "gays shoving their sexuality in my face". Those people who aren't homophobes - oh no they're not, because they say they are not - who are OUTRAGED by the idea gay people talk about their sexuality in public, whilst they are in earshot. And how DARE it get mentioned in schools. And how DARE they kiss where people could see. But that's not homophobia, oh no. Apparently, it's not homophobic, in their view, to believe that it's okay if gays be gay only in the confines of their own home, whilst half-naked women fill billboards, men and women kiss heterosexually in the street, and their heterosexual mates talk to them about who they fucked last night and what it was like.
And then you get the people who hate "PC whiners". Yes, those annoying people who don't think it's okay to call black people n*****s, and so on. This always goes in two tedious lines. Firstly, there's the same old "Freedom of speech" angle, that nothing and no-one should constrain their right of expression. The second is the "it's just a word" argument. If it offends you, that's your problem for getting offended - which is a bit like punching someone in the face, and telling them it's their own fault that it hurts for having nociception. If they just didn't think about the pain, they'd be fine. Or the bizarre idea that you can say what you like, it's every listener's job to be responsible. Well, I'm sure when your average dictator tells his secret police "Kill me 10,000 political dissidents", those dissidents don't rest happy in their beds knowing they're just words, and that the secret police can just exercise the opportunity to not take those words seriously.
And for my final little rant on bigotted shits of the day, we get to the Tories. Note that the Sun pops up and declares its love for the Tories, smack bang over Gordon Brown's party conference speech. Then, half a week later, the Tory shadow culture minister comes up and says... pretty much what the head of Sky said a few weeks back that the BBC needs to be weakened, Sky of course being a big rival of the BBC and the head of Sky of course being the son of Rupert Murdoch who - purely coincidentally we must understand - owns the Sun.
Anyway, it's good to see that Labour have finally got around to tackling the Tories on their odious little Europarty with a bizarre collection of far-right Europeans. The Tories like to claim it's a coalition of Euroskeptics. More strictly, we've actually got a situation where the pompous old Etonians of the Conservative party make loud noises about how objectionable the BNP are, whilst forging a Euro-alliance with several countries' local versions of the BNP, hoping the public won't notice they're cuddling up to antisemites and xenophobes because Europe doesn't get into the news much.
The Tories may as well hate the Europeans, mind you. It's surely true that everyone in Europe hates the Tories. Not only are they despised by the Euro left wing, but they're even hated by the Euro right wing, thanks to Cameron's little stunt to form a jolly partnership with Euroloonies. Good luck persuading anyone there to do anything - the UK under the Tories is a nation with as much influence in Europe as a rat turd in Uruguay has on the migration patterns of Siberian tigers. Of course, you only need to hear what goes on with the Tories - loose comments by several MPs, the conservative party at Oxford Uni and so on, you know what is really simmering beneath the smiling faces and soupy accents.
And quite right too. I mean, let's face it, he screwed a 13 year old girl, then drugged her and sodomised her, just in case having sex with a minor wasn't quite enough. And you know, the trial was so unfair he copped a plea bargain that made him responsible only for the crime of sex with a minor, never mind the other stuff.
Frankly, I don't really give a damn whether he genuinely regrets what he did or not. That his victim thinks he should be forgiven is also irrelevant - the law can't sentence people depending on whether the victim is more or less upset. Nor do I care that half his family was annihliated by the Nazis, or that Charles Manson and his band of psychos killed his wife.
What amazes me are all the people lining up to say he should be let off. I can understand French politicians, and Woody Allen - I mean, one can't be entirely sure of the ethics of someone who married a woman who was effectively (if not technically) his stepdaughter. But for many others in the film world, it seems that it's fine to do that to a 13-year-old and we should just let it slide. If it were the local plumber, they'd neither notice, care, or much else. But make a few good movies (and some drivel like Bitter Moon), what's the odd spot of rape in the bigger picture? And Christ, you see the names of some of these people, we're talking not the usual bullshitters but people who really, really ought to know better.
Send him off to the US, dump him in a five-star hotel jail for his undoubtedly lenient sentence, and then when he comes out maybe he can make a prison drama film. Crime is crime and justice is justice. Art is not a mitigating factor.
Firstly, let's start with the Phoenix Four. They took over MG Rover during it's last painful gasping breaths, did very little to prevent it collapsing, and yet ripped millions and millions of pounds off it during their brief tenure. Firstly, their remuneration was far too high for a company of that size, especially as it lost money throughout their entire tenure. I think one of the most teeth-grinding little tricks revealed by the BBC was that BMW left Rover with a £500million loan to keep it going. This loan was held by a shell company owned by the Phoenix Four, which then loaned the money to Rover. Consequently, as Rover paid interest to this shell company, this shell company made a profit, which the owners could then claim. Way to put the company and the thousands of jobs dependent on it first.
Secondly, the fact that despite the fact that in the last year people are losing their jobs left, right and centre, and the stock market and corporate profits tanked some 30%, executive pay in top companies has risen about 10%. Big bonuses are, of course, also already back after the brief credit crunch pause.
Finally, another little gem from the Guardian. Apparently, some top execs get great little deals, which includes stuff like the company paying for their transport costs even for non-work related travel. I kid you not. As if, somehow, their £2million a year remuneration would struggle to cover a few flights and the petrol costs from driving around a bit.
Just makes you really feel like you know your place in the world, and that place is very near the bottom.
The nearest I could think of was to consider what my university was worth to the British economy. Again, roughly. I did it as follows.
The average graduate earns £220,000 more than the average non-graduate. My university has 7,000 undergraduates, with a course length of 3-4 years, so let's say 3.5 on average. This works out nicely for my quick estimation, as it means 2,000 students graduate every year. 2000 people per year who will earn £220,000 more means an increase of £440 million total worth per year. Some British and international students will go abroad to work, although most British and some international students will stay in the UK, so let's assume that the number of international students is equal to the number of students of any nationality that take their degrees out of Britain, and that's 15%. 85% of £440 million is about £375 million. Then we need to make another subtraction, which is that students learning are not doing jobs: a salary for someone fairly gifted, 18-21, without a degree would be about £15,000-£20,000 per year. Let's be harsh: £20,000 multiplied by 2000 students multiplied by 3.5 years is £140 million (assuming they could all get a job). Subtract that from £375 million, and you get £235 million.
The annual running costs of my university are apparently £97 million (2007/8). Consequently, I estimate that my university's worth to the British economy is approaching 2.5 times greater than its costs (235 divide by 97), which suggests a pretty good deal overall. In terms of government financing, the government will reclaim let's say about a quarter to a third in taxes, so of £235 million, they'd be getting about £60-80 million per year. Fees are £3,000 per British student (about 6000 of them) per year, £11,000 average for international (about 1000). That's then £18 million for the British, and about £11 million for international, for £29 million total. So I'd suggest the government would probably consider its funding about the same as what it gets out in the long run.
What I haven't calculated at all is the impact of postgraduates, which would change everything a fair bit. But it would take a lot of effort.
Q: So, all in all, am I paid what I'm worth?
A: I've no idea.
And so, Daniel Hannan. For the record, he's this Tory MEP who popped over the the USA to describe the NHS as a "60 year mistake" which is on the verge of total collapse, much to the glee of all the usual lamebrain rightwingers.
This is one of those things with MEPs. I mean, who the hell are half these overpaid goons we chuck over to Brussels? I think there are about 80 of them, and I'd struggle to name more than 5. They just buzz off and do whatever it is they do, and we've no idea who they are. Considering turnout and so on in EU elections, these jokers probably get their seat with barely more than 10% of their local electorate.
Consequently, I'm grabbing some help from Wikipedia for this. So, Mr. Hannan. Unsurprisingly for a Tory MP/MEP, we're talking about prestigious independent school education and Oxford University, which means he probably never has had to trobule himself with the hoi polloi like you and me. Let's look at a few of his achievements.
Hannan has opposed the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Apparently on some sort of basis that it defies national sovereignty, and thus no doubt Daniel Hannan is hugely in favour of people being able to slaughter innocent citizens of foreign nations just so long as their fellow countrymen are moderately okay with it.
Hannan is a big fan of Iceland. Apparently it's got a fair bit to do with the fact that they wouldn't join the EU, a stance he heartily believes in (as, I might point out, an MEP). He was very keen to congratulate them on their great economic miracle. Of course, that was pre- credit crunch, and now it turns out Iceland's economic miracle was very heavily dependent on the screwed up financial dealings that dropped us all in the muck. Iceland is now applying to join the EU, because their economy has collapsed.
Hannan has achieved two acts of superb arrogance. Firstly, he was so against the Lisbon Treaty, whenever he ended a speech in the European Parliament, he would say "Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est" (="The Lisbon Treaty must be voted on"). I can only imagine the horrnedous, self-aggrandising attitude of a barely-known upper class nit in the least regarded parliament in the developed world trying to ape the words of and thus identify himself with an indisputably great Senator of the mighty Roman Republic. Ah, that must have made him feel so special. And saying it in Latin too. The second was when, finally, he and few other caused so much irritation that the EU parliament decided to change their procedures to shut him and a few others up. He complained, and they turned his microphone off. Then he came out with the statement "It is only my regard for you Mr. Chairman and my personal affection for you that prevents me from likening it to the Ermachtigungsgesetz of 1933 which was also voted through by a parliamentary majority." You see, Hannan is so modest, so humble, he felt the need to compare himself to a victim of Hitler's siezure of power in Germany. And the fact he chose to say this to, of all people, a German. Yes, that's precisely how much of a prize twat Hannan is.
I think he does deserves a certain reward. It's important we all be reminded regularly that the Conservative party is chock-a-block full of smug, snotty scions of privilege, who use their cushions of inherited wealth and old school tie connections to wangle themselves influence, so that they can alter society so that they can stay sickeningly rich whilst the rest of us get buried under depressed wages and reduced public services.
The response of the UK government to all this is apparently to correct such individuals in private.
I can entirely understand how it is that the UK government does not wish to get involved an internal political wrangle in the US. However, it's one thing to let two sides battle it out over a policy, it's another entirely to let slide vicious mistruths from one side that amount to slander: I'm sure the British government would have a case for suing some people over some comments. What impression are some Americans going to get about Britain if these are not corrected? It's far from unreasonable for the government to stand up and see the country is portrayed fairly abroad.
I really hope that by talking to indivudals, what the government is actually saying to them is "If you say any such rubbish again, we'll start publicly correcting you". I think the US right-wing has nor respect for truth, and unless you wave a decent sized stick at them, they'll just blab any old grubby message across uncaring of who or what it damages, just so long as serves their purpose. I find it hard to tolerate people happy to let over 15% of their own population go without healthcare, doubly so when they smear other countries who do look after their most vulnerable.
This is a not uncommon belief amongst people who are both right wing and well-off. It is, however, a breathtaking mix of callousness, greed, arrogance and gross ignorance. One of the major problems for people who don't like paying taxes and supporting the poor is that they are accepting the moral low ground. Now, I can at least have some respect for someone prepared to accept that. However, the point of the "it's the fault of the poor that they are poor" is not just to position themselves on at least morally neutral ground - "nothing to do with me, mate", but to place the poor on the moral low ground. It's enthusiastically supported by right-wing media, which is forever telling us about benefit scroungers, layabouts and working-class criminals, as if that's the main reason why people are unemployed or in low salary jobs.
However, poverty has been paid an awful lot of attention over the years. The simple fact is that many people who have a disadvantaged life have not so much made bad decisions, they've had bad decisions thrust upon them. It's well established that to help children thrive, they need proper care, encouragement, education, and guidance. Unfortunately, many parents are negligent or abusive, and the general society attitude in the area is highly corrosive. In such situations, it can only really be the work of third persons to come in and try to sort the mess out, preferentially by government action, although charity may work. I think people have no clue about these things: they're people who grew up in good quality, supportive environments, who have little imagination and no knowledge of how hard it can be. Outside upbringing, there are issues like the grim reality that sometimes people work hard and honestly, and their company just makes them redundant. Some people work hard and honestly, but maybe just don't have the talent to be hugely successful.
The changes that can make fellow countrymen poorer by wage pressure or redundancy are also things that make the wealthy wealthier - cheaper goods, profits for companies that they have shares in. So getting sticky about paying a few percent in tax is even worse, essentially not only demanding more power for their pounds but deciding they should have yet more pounds by not supporting the victims of their gain.
I think you can make a lot of arguments about how a welfare state is bad for motivation, and you can make your case for lots of things on an intellectual level about not paying taxes, or just be an unrepentant selfish jerk. But the least anyone can do is appreciate the reality that the poor are often poor because they grew up with huge disadvantages, and that if society wants to change that it needs to stump up time, money and effort.
My sense of suspicion is somewhat heightened when it turns out Muslims of non-Pakistani/Afghan descent decide that of all the places in the very wide-ranging Islamic world to go (including Arabia, the place it started and with all those holy sites) to see Islam in action, they think hmm, let's go to the place where they train up large numbers of terrorists. Doubly so when said Muslim claims to be getting over a drug habit and wishes to visit the world's greatest opium producer. My cup of sympathy drains considerably towards empty when such people are caught at Karachi airport with a false passport, an item rarely held by people doing innocent sightseeing and very frequently by people up to stuff the authorities wouldn't approve of, such as attending terrorist training camps.
It's one of the best thing in the world to prevent the use of torture, and you'd have to agree there's a certain extra power that someone who had acted so suspiciously should cause the government (or secret services, or whoever is responsible) to be nailed. On the other hand, let's also consider he may not be a reliable witness, and rather than looking to see no-one gets tortured again, he could very well have a primary interest in embarrassing the British government and stoking up outrage to encourage a few more angry young men into extremism.
"Paracetamol is a brand name for Acetaminophin, or APAP. APAP is indeed an NSAID. NSAID stands for non-steroidal anti=inflammatory drugs, paracetamol is not an anti-inflammatory drug. But it has anti-pyoretic and analgesic properties."
Nice one, Einstein. Clear as mud.
Oh, more later, I might expand this, I've got a meeting to go to...
...and a good meeting it was. At last, my work and Anna's (my co-postdoc on the project who works in Oxford) has come together very well. We think it's got a good shot at J. Neurosci, which is one of the top specialist neuroscience journals. But back to the main event.
Anyway, this is an important advancement. 90% of doctors and I believe a similar number of lawyers come from middle class families. It is not just the top jobs in government and business, which are very few in number, that contribute dangerously to lack of social mobility, but that the far more numerous upper middle class jobs are massively colonised by people of middle class origin. And not just middle middle, but heavily the upper middle. Much of the lower middle class are now almost as sufficiently disadvantaged as the working class.
Quality needs to be defended, and it won't be achieved by reducing funding per student, and it won't be achieved without giving students good access to universities that will nurture their talent. So whilst I heartedly approve of giving encouragement to students of poorer backgrounds to get to university, I have grave doubts as to whether the system proposed here is a suitable way to do it.
3 to play. Fingers crossed and all that.
Fantasy doesn't get into TV often. That's something that is possibly odd as I'm pretty sure it outsells SF these days in book form, but not when you consider that SF has a longer and occasionally well respected tradition in TV and film to insulate it from the general disdain for SF&F amongst many literati. Consequently fantasy is generally relegated to crummy miniseries, and low-budget US trash series. However, if the awesome genre-breakout books of Terry Pratchett shows, fantasy can entertain people who normally consider anything with magic swords and dragons unsuitable for those over the age of 8. However, what the series Krod Mandoon and The Flaming Sword of Fire failed to learn from Terry Pratchett, is that is in order to be successful, comedy fantasy has to be funny.
Do you see the humour in the title? Do you? Flaming sword of fire, hahaha. And Krod - think about it - that's dork spelled backwards. And they are the best jokes in the whole six-part series. The evil provincial governor, Dongalor (Matt Lucas) and his crony Barnabus (Alexander MacQueen - Julius Nicholson from The Thick Of It) are the pick of the bunch, both putting a lot of comic acting talent into a gaping dearth of material. Thanks to their performances, Krod... manages to be amusing when they're on screen. After that, it's a laugh-free toil. Krod is a semi-competent semi-heroic buffoon with self-confidence issues. In the hands of a better writer, that could have been good. His companions are a slightly wooden-acted sexually liberal warrioress Aneka - source of much of Krod's jealous misery, who is basically the gang's straight-woman. Then there's some half-beast manservant for lame fart gags and the like, a gay jailer called Bruce minces around for camp humour as good as you'd find in the cutting room floor of particularly bad Graham Norton episodes, and a tiresome wizard who is all bluster and no talent. And they lead us on a whirlwind of fantasy plot cliches that are never as funny as they should be, making us endure some pathetic sexual and toilet humour and witless dialogue on the way. I'm pretty sure some events were outright stolen from other films and TV as well. For all that, Krod... is not entirely without merit. Which is to say, you can watch all six episodes without hating it as a waste of 3 hours of your life you'll never get back. Needless to say, that's not much of a recommendation either.
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I've been playing a computer game simulation of Operation Market Garden the other day. For the record, that was the amibitious Allied airborne attack in the southern Netherlands in order to cross the Rhine and break into Germany in 1944 in order to end the war early, mostly famous for the term "A bridge too far". It's creator, Field Marshall Montgomery, described it as "90% successful". Or to translate, it failed, because that 10% not successful was getting across the last river, the Rhine. I was reminded of this from watching Torchwood: Children of Earth.
So, the kids on Earth keep freezing as if having a petit-mal seizure. Then they start freezing and saying stuff, more each time, eventually saying they'll "We are coming back". It has something to do with the British specifically. A bunch of black-garbed special forces under orders from the government try to destroy Torchwood and Captain Jack. So the plucky heroes run around trying to figure out what's going on and evade capture, a mysterious alien race called "The 456" arrive and demand lots of Earth's kiddies, and the Torchwood team try to sort the mess out. It's five episodes. The first four vary from reasonable to good, and then the fifth makes you want to jam pins in your temporal lobe in the desperate hope you'll forget what an utter piece of garbage it was.
One of the things I like least about the resurrected Doctor Who is is the tedious hero-worship of The Doctor, all those little humans blabbing on "You're so great, oh spunky and all-knowing guardian and saviour of our most pitiful species", looking at him with wide-eyed unrequited love and deference. Consequently, I'm not entirely clear why Torchwood has to idolise Captain Jack in a similar way. I can only guess it's either because he's an avatar for Russell T. Davies' greatest desire, or that John Barrowman's ego needs to be stoked in case he feels like taking his talents elsewhere. There are weak contrivances and plot holes throughout, but to me and most people that's always forgivable as long as the whole is largely coherent, entertaining, and emotionally engaging. We get a prominent death and a conception, just to tick one and a half of the birth/marriage/death boxes of lazy emotional plot devices. In the last episode, however, the wheels come off.
I think Davies is trying to make a point about Real Life (TM) politicians, who are certainly not flavour of the year with expenses scandals, dodgy dossiers and so on. However, the uniformly shifty, slimy, callous, self-serving scum who make up the cabinet here are too strong in terms of lazy crowd-pleasing. They sacrifice people to save their skins, abandon and even victimise the working classes, exclude themselves from hardships, ho hum. There are questions about how expendable children are, what would people do to save their children? We have the counterpoint to the politicians of Cap'n Jack, who is - maybe - a hero because whilst he does essentially what the politicians do, sacrificing the few for the many, but puts his nearest and dearest into the firing line. And these are valid points.
However, the problem is that the ridiculous contrivances and plot holes explode all over the last episode: the realisation of the path to victory suddenly appears as an unacceptably abrupt deus ex machina when 270 or so minutes of story have been told. Furthermore, the emotional tone Davies has applied verges into manipulative. It's hard to appreciate points when you're gaping in astonishment and frustration at the retarded events transpiring before you whilst being bludgeoned by clumsy heart string pulling.
So there you go - an episode too far. 90% successful, and overall an operational failure.
I don't know whether the result was fixed, and unless the potential guilty parties own up, I don't think we ever will. This is quite a sad thing, as despite the theocratic nature of Iran, their democratic elements had seemed to be at least somewhat respectable, and this controversy will have done that no favours. Ahmedinejad, despite a few rebukes over the way he treated his opponents, certainly seems favoured by the theocracy - I would not put it past them ensuring that their democratic representative of choice won through, although the risk of being found out would be very painful, as it would tar the clerics badly.
I'm more suspicious of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. These are a sort of state within a state - they have their own military, are Iran's main intelligence service, run industries, and stick their fingers in all sorts of pies. Some claim they own about a third of Iran's economy; they run illegal smuggling operations; shut down competitors by raiding them for alleged security motivations; probably much more which is corrupt. They seem to run operations parallel to the state and in many cases possibly without oversight from the Iranian government (by which I mean the presidency but not necessarily the theocracy). Ahmedinejad apparently has some connections with the Revolutinary Guards, and there's evidence he has been handing juicy, expensive government contracts to businesses owned and operated by them. I suspect they certainly may not be above ensuring the right candiate for them is running the show.
Anyway, bit of a bummer for the West, as Ahmedinejad is an unliked and unhelpful leader of an already uncooperative nation. Mind you, Iran's hardly electing a leader for Western convenience. On the other hand, Ahmedinejad has plenty of incendiary things to say about Israel and other traditional Iranian dislikes (if far less severe than usually reported in the Western press - our media aren't above exaggeration and deliberate poor translation to make unpopular foreigners look worse), and doesn't appear to be doing Iran much good either.
However, there were two things about Necropath [by Eric Brown] that prevented me from loving this book as much as I wanted.
The first was the cover art. The cover art depicts an orbital space station where a giant spaceship shaped like a praying mantis is about to dock. The scene comes from one of the very first descriptions of the port in the book. The problem with this is that the station is not actually in orbit although the book does not explicitly say this until about two thirds of the way through. Thanks to this, I had 200 or so pages of being dragged out of the narrative to try and understand how a space station was being affected by a monsoon or how one of the characters was able to stand next to the ocean. It was very distracting.
Firstly, cover art schmover art. The number of books where the cover doesn't really match the insides are legion.
Secondly and rather more importantly, I might draw the reviewer's attention to the first page, indeed starting at the second sentence of the book he is reviewing: "He leaned against the enclosure rail and stared down at the Bay of Bengal a kilometre below. A dhow cut a shark's-fin shape through the darkness, its triangular sail illuminated by the watch-light burning on the deck. The crew... appeared silhouetted behind the canvas like figures in an Indonesian shadow play."
From which we can gather several things. Firstly, you can look down over the edge of an enclosure rail from Bengal Station to the sea. One might consider that an unusual thing to be able to do in an orbital space station - indeed, odd that space stations have enclosure rails at all. Secondly, the viewer is close enough to make out the shadows of people in the sails of a smallish sailing boat in the sea, which might also be an odd thing to manage from a space station. Of course, the real giveaway is the first sentence of the exerpt, which should instantly give the reader the extremely unsubtle hint that at least some point of Bengal station might be a mere one kilometre above sea level, which is considerably lower than the highest mountain in the UK. From which most people should be able to work out that Bengal Station could not possibly be in orbit.
