Saturday, May 24, 2025
Blog Page 1728

Speaking up for science

Adam Jordan
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Speaking up for science

Little more than ten years ago, “media” meant the future. People who studied it would be les grands savants of the 21st century. The industry conjured up images of fast technology, fast cars and fast money. Then the mid-decade recession hit and the world of media was brought crashing back down to reality.

In Spain, where, despite a high rate of university graduates, youth unemployment stands at nearly 40%, newspapers are awash with pictures of glum Spaniards, their Latin passion replaced by economic despair, perplexed as to why they can’t find a job. When one reads the adjoining captions however, the reason becomes immediately apparent. They are almost always arts graduates. After all, who ever heard of an unemployed doctor or biochemist?

In the West, many dismissed the importance of enrolling in science courses. Instead, we would take pretty pictures and write fashion blogs. The aspirations of immigrant mothers for their children to be doctors, long the butt of jokes, are founded on perfectly legitimate grounds. Degrees in the sciences lead to employment, the development of new ideas, improvements in living standards, and put food on the table.

That’s not to say degrees in the arts are any less challenging or worthwhile, but there are only so many art historians a society can realistically support. Many philosophers of the 20th century – Marx, Freud and Russel to name but a few – were scientifically educated. It was arguably their expertise in science that allowed them to develop new social theories and political viewpoints. Germany, one of the few Western powers to have seen its manufacturing sector expand since 2005, is renowned for its large number of science graduates. German culture still punches above its weight in the arts, having created some of the most prominent writers, artists and philosophers of the modern age.

With the introduction of the £1 million Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering, the government has recognised the need for more science graduates, and is clearly keen to avoid the errors of past governments who siphoned thousands of state school children into “soft subjects” in a bid to artificially inflate grades. The introduction of engineering scholarships available to children from disadvantaged backgrounds should also aid social mobility, given the top science courses are so often dominated by students from the independent sector.

In today’s world, where China and India’s highly competitive education systems churn out millions of highly qualified, but often artistically numb graduates, our ability to compete undoubtedly lies in being both scientists and artists, however hard that may be.

5 Minute Tute: Darfur

Sebastian Leape
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5 Minute Tute: Darfur

What happened in Darfur?

What happened in Darfur was symptomatic of all the wider problems in Sudan. Sudan has suffered many regional revolutions over the past few decades as a result of bad central governance from Khartoum. Darfur was just one of those rebellions. Darfur, in the West, was a relatively wealthy part of Sudan but saw its wealth extracted by Khartoum through taxation and yet received nothing in exchange. Over the same period the region suffered a series of escalating terrible droughts which reduced the amount of land available for pasture. This put the Fur and other black African tribes in direct conflict with the nomadic Arab tribes favoured by Khartoum. Traditional reconciliation mechanisms broke down in the 1980s and 1990s when the Arab tribes were armed by the government in Khartoum and so felt less need to bargain.  After years of pent up anger, conflict broke out in 2003.

Was Colin Powell right to call it a genocide?

I don’t think so. In fact, the UN issued a report in 2004 which decided it wasn’t genocide either. I would call it a counter-insurgency exercise which got terribly out of control. Women and children were systematically killed much like in a genocide, but the government’s aim was to supress the rebels rather than eliminate entire ethnic groups. It was a brutal and nasty Maoist strategy of trying to drain the water to kill the fish.

How did the conflict end?

It didn’t! The conflict is on-going. There have been endless rounds of peace conferences, but people continue to get killed. The rate of displacement and killing is certainly less than in 2005, but the basic causes of the conflict have not been addressed and neither has either side been able to prevail militarily. It is a low level military stalemate.

Why did it receive so much attention from western celebrities?

There are three main reasons for this. Firstly, after it was labelled a genocide by Colin Powell, many important constituencies rallied around the Darfur cause. The Jewish element was also important, as prominent Jews reacted very strongly to this. Secondly, the crisis happened at a time when humanitarian interventionism was enjoying a renaissance. Tony Blair gave a famous speech in Chicago in 1999 and claimed the West has a moral duty to intervene when awful regimes commit mass atrocities. Particularly in America, there was a strong sense the USA had screwed up over Rwanda and Yugoslavia and that the West should not be caught napping again. The timing was important too as it was almost exactly the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Thirdly, for a lot of the celebrities, it seemed like a cut and dry issue: a nasty Muslim regime killing innocent civilians in Africa. For them, it was obvious what should be done.  I would say they were seriously wrong in seeing it in such black and white terms.

In 2010, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan for genocide committed in Darfur. Why has he still not been brought to trial?

Firstly, we must remember that the ICC has no enforcement mechanism at all and is solely depended on the actions of its member countries. Sudan is not a subscribing member of the ICC.  So for President Bashir avoiding capture is really not that hard, he just stays at home and only visits countries that are not subscribing members of the ICC.

The bigger answer here is that a lot of African and Middle Eastern governments view the ICC as an agency of Western repression and Western white superiority against Africans and Arabs. The West is considered hypocritical to set up a court to enforce justice on their terms when they are the same nasty colonial people who plundered their lands only one or two generations ago.

 

 

 

 

India suffers for Rushdie’s silence

Sammy Talalay
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India suffers for Rushdie’s silence

It was with heavy hearts that the coordinators of the Jaipur Literary Festival cancelled the web link planned for Salman Rushdie, who was set to address an audience of thousands for the festival’s finale last Tuesday. Rushdie had initially been invited to speak at the festival, but, following threats to assassinate him in the event that he went, the author opted to stay away. It was only on the afternoon of the  final day, however, just hours before an interview in a London studio with Rushdie was due to be broadcast live in Jaipur, that protesters, intimidation, and the promise of bloodshed if the interview went ahead, caused the festival organisers to capitulate to the browbeating of those intent on silencing the writer’s voice.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of free speech as a part of the bedrock of society. Freedom of expression is a crucial ingredient in any of the recipes that societies might follow in order to create the conditions for a good life. Radical opinion is softened as people are exposed to others and their ideas, and not the straw men they imagined them to be. Authority is (better) kept on the straight and narrow, and in the interests of those over whom it is exerted. Progress is made, in all fields, as creativity is fostered and ideas shared. The miasma of conformity is averted, as individuality is given a free reign to express itself and differentiate itself from others. Most importantly, people are granted the fundamental freedom to say what they want without fear of reprisal.

The recent curtailment of Salman Rushdie’s right to self-expression is worth noting because it is symptomatic of a political and cultural disposition towards a lack of respect for the importance of basic freedoms. Rushdie arrived unannounced, in 2007, at the then comparatively anonymous Jaipur festival, without any entourage or security. He talked freely, signed books, and doled out advice to an admiring host of relatively unproven authors. But this time, politicians were loath to speak out in defence of Rushdie’s right to return to his home country to talk about his work, in the wake of calls for the author to be banned from India altogether. This is to some extent a result of the fact that Rajasthan, the Indian state in which Jaipur is the largest city, will soon hold elections, the result of which is expected to be largely determined by the Muslim population – the group most offended by Rushdie’s provocative novel, The Satanic Verses.

Groups monitoring censorship are generally agreed that India is reasonably free. But the events at the Jaipur Literary Festival bring into focus the widespread perception of freedom of expression as expendable, and lightly traded away. The ease with which political expediency led to curtailment of freedoms is what is distressing in this episode. Rushdie conveyed this idea himself in the aftermath of the cancellation of his speech, bemoaning religious extremists’ power to suppress free speech, and politicians, who he says are “in bed with these groups… for narrow electoral reasons.”

That freedom of speech, and the State’s built-in reluctance to curtail it, is of paramount importance to a flourishing society, is not at odds with the fact that people shouldn’t be free to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Falsely pronouncing a fire in the Oxford Playhouse is not something that I am, or should be, free to do. Nor does ‘Free Speech’ entitle me to preach words of incitement outside a mosque.  There are instances in which we value an individual’s freedom to express himself less than we do something else: say, the safety and wellbeing of those who have come somewhere to worship. The most recent and pertinent example of this is that of the British press. British culture is so irrevocably imbued with the value of freedom of expression that any contravention of that freedom is met with a healthy dose of wariness, lest any initial step in the direction of censorship take us plunging down an irretrievably slippery slope. Such is our aversion to limitations on what the papers can say that it took the hacking of a murdered girl’s voicemail to make us look somewhat askance at the press. But there is reason to be more quizzical of its activities. Why is it so important, in any given instance, for an individual’s sexual indiscretions to be aired publically and his life thrown into turmoil? Why do we balk more at the thought of stipulating what can and can’t be published, than at the notion that a news-hungry reporter is at leave to disrupt another human being’s life for the sake of a story? ‘The public interest’ is an ephemeral and often meaningless reason proffered in defence of stories whose aim is malicious. Why shouldn’t someone be awarded a super-injunction if it might really preserve their quality of life, at the expense of a scandal that will, at best, be of mild interest to people for a few weeks?

The problem with all this is that, while it may be that individuals’ wellbeing trumps freedom of expression in a lot of one off cases, any regulatory system or cultural backdrop which has this censorship as a feature is a bad one. If one footballer’s anonymity could have been preserved, with no wider ramifications for what papers can report when it really matters, then give the man a super-injunction. But it’s doubtful that things work like this. Cultural norms and practices are fluid. Right now we recoil from constraining people’s right to speak freely. And how much any one instance of censorship sends us down a slippery slope is debatable. All I know is that I’d prefer that the default approach was tolerance of people’s words and their right to say them, rather than a climate in which an author can’t even appear via a web link to air his views.

 

Wise-ing Up

Christy Edwall
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Wise-ing Up

The Sarah Wiseman gallery is centrally located in Summertown, on the same happy block as the wine bar. A small space which uses its white walls resourcefully, the gallery intentionally supports young artists and showcases – alongside the traditional mediums of paintings and bronze sculptures – the oft-neglected applied arts: ceramics, collage, silk prints, and jewellery.

Sarah Wiseman, the owner of the gallery, is an energetic and warm woman. When talking about the paintings at her gallery, she becomes the docent of an elegant house showing visitors items of interest, flavoured with slivers of gossip and tit-bits of curiosity. Despite the fact that her familiarity with the pieces is due to the frequency with which she must be required to give such a talk, Wiseman seems to truly enjoy herself.

Wiseman developed a love of art at school when an inadequate art teacher on sick leave was replaced by a supply teacher who suddenly inflamed her interest in Art History. After taking an extra year to do Art History A-levels, Wiseman studied History of Art with History of Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her course required a museum placement, and growing up in Oxford made the Ashmolean an obvious choice. Instead of a single placement, Wiseman worked in the Department of Western Art with curator Timothy Wilson for two placements and three months following her graduation.

She started the gallery in 1998 at the tender age of 24. She had worked at the Oxford Branch of the prominent London CCA gallery but it when it closed she spotted a gap in the market, wanting to work with young artists, with ceramics and applied arts and painting.

‘The least prepared to start a business the better,’ Wiseman says wryly. The small business will never conform to a standard business model. Fortunately, the gallery is well-situated. ‘Summertown is a hugely cultured area,’ explains Wiseman. She attributes her visually and culturally aware customers to the flux of creative people living in the area. BBC Oxford is just across the street from the gallery, and people in film and television, writers and musicians flock to the area. The gallery doesn’t struggle to ‘educate’ its clientele. Instead, she finds that her customers are people passionate about art, who regularly attend exhibitions and gallery openings.

Still, despite the gallery’s location, it is an impressive feat for the gallery to be thriving amidst the belt-tightening post-2008 years. ‘2008 was nail-biting,’ Wiseman admits. Small businesses don’t have big reserves to fall back on. Fortunately for the gallery it was largely a harmless recession. ‘Art is a good place to spend your money,’ says Wiseman. Buying art – which should come from totally disposable income – is an intentional alternative play to spend your money. People who come to the gallery are passionate about buying art and purposefully put money aside to do so.

Wiseman is honest enough to admit she constantly questions whether or not an item is art. ‘That’s the beauty of art,’ she says, ‘it should constantly challenge you. It’d be disappointing if it never did.’ The true challenges are the best journeys. When your mind shuts down, you must force it to re-open and reconsider.’

The essential character of a person wanting to go into a career of art-dealing, Wiseman says, is self-sufficiency. ‘You shape and mould your own career. There is no set plan. You create opportunities and make the most of them. There are no natural progressions.’ This career path evidently flatters Wiseman’s own personable skills: you can change your course by connecting with artists, meeting people, and finding opportunities where you can succeed and contribute.

In addition to running the gallery, Wiseman also privately collects art. ‘When you run a gallery,’ she says, ‘art is your life. You are continually introduced to artists and visit studios; it’s impossible not to walk out with something. You never sell a work of art; it sells itself.’

During the interview a customer comes into the gallery to find an item for her mantelpiece. Wiseman dissuades her from a large piece that looked like it might ‘perch’. The customer collides into a piece with which she feels much more affinity, a Stanley Dove sculpture of a donkey and rider, and buys it. And Sarah Wiseman’s instinct is proved right once again.  

 

Women at Work

Rebecca Loxton
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Women at Work

After Never Mind the Botox: Rachel – Oxford graduate Joanna Berry’s latest book in the four-part Never Mind the Botox series, written with friend and fellow author Penny Avis – was published mid-January, I spoke to Berry about her latest book, her professional plans for the new year, and her career as a writer.

What made her want to take a break from her high-flying legal career to start penning novels? Berry hadn’t wanted to be a writer from a young age. Instead, Berry and Avis, who worked for Deloitte, happened to decide simultaneously to take a career break. ‘We were chatting over Sunday lunch. We were both at a break in our careers, and both of us had accrued plenty of material over our professional careers that we would be able to draw on while writing,’ explains Berry. ‘In my twenties, I was working in the City and there were lots of interesting characters and scenarios. I ear-marked them because I thought one day they would make good stories.’

Berry’s time at Oxford and subsequent career in the City led her gradually into writing. ‘I knew I wanted to do something which involved words when I arrived at Oxford. I dabbled in journalism, I did a bit of work with BBC Radio Oxford, but in hindsight I lacked confidence and didn’t do enough,’ reflects the St Hilda’s graduate. ‘My job was very much about working with words – communicating, drafting letters, articulating, using language – so the leap from lawyer to author wasn’t as great it as it might seem.’ 
 
Berry describes her work as ‘unashamed contemporary women’s fiction’, citing Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones and novels by Alison Pearson and Marian Keyes as her inspirations. ‘I didn’t seek to emulate these authors, but rather to draw on their heritage. We write about an area that has not yet been fully explored: young women starting out in the City. There were a lot of contemporary novels about very loveable but rather hapless female characters. Our protagonists are a bit less hapless and a bit more ‘together’ than the average chick-lit protagonist. They are successful, career-minded women although they do have to face career dilemmas. In most contemporary women’s fiction, we found ‘work’ was under-represented. Our novels are about young women striving to succeed in their careers. For them, life isn’t all about handbags and finding Mr Right.’  

2012 is set to be a busy year for this literary double-act, as Berry and Avis have signed a deal with production company Future Films to create a six-part television drama based on their books. Rachel is the second of four books; the first, Alex, was published last June and the two that will complete the series, Stella and Meredith, will be published this spring and summer respectively. Berry and Avis are currently busy writing books three and four, and are already planning a future series.     

Berry explains how the writing process works, emphasizing the social aspect of being part of a literary double-act: ‘We have a long lunch and plan the book and things like characterisation, and continue to meet up every four to five months as the books develop. It’s quite nice working with another writer; it’s a bit like having a job in an office with lots of people. We write chapters and send them to each other. Getting feedback from your co-author is a good way to build your confidence, and inspires you to keep writing. You learn not to be precious; you need to know how to take criticism in this business and it’s good to learn to take it on the chin when your co-author tells you it’s not working. By the editing stage we’re already used to criticism.’

Berry doesn’t miss giving up her legal career. ‘I’ve not practised law for five years and I have no inclination to go back. I’m busy with my book and doing some work for Children in Need. But I do miss other lawyers and the banter of the office.’  

I ask Berry if she has any tips for budding young authors. ‘The key is planning,’ she stresses. ‘Without any planning it would be a very long process. Penny and I knew what was going to happen to each character once we sat down to write.’ Berry mentions that she and Avis spend time writing a four to five thousand-word back story for each of their characters which will never appear in the books themselves but help the authors form an idea of their characters’ personalities in their minds. ‘We even cut out pictures from magazines of how we think the characters would look, pictures of how their flat might look, what might be in their fridge if you open the door,’ laughs Berry. ‘You’ve got to feel confident you know your character well enough.’ 

For all ambitious authors who want to try writing their own bestsellers, Berry recommends reading Stephen King’s On Writing’. Finally, Berry emphasises the need for an aspiring author to write about something he or she enjoys. ‘If you don’t write about something you enjoy, it becomes miserable and a chore. You’ve got to write about something that engages you.’ 

Speaking in Tongues – Part 3

Rob Williams
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Speaking in Tongues – Part 3

You can download the podcast of Speaking in Tongues in full here: http://soundcloud.com/moyser89/speaking-in-tongues-mp3

Look out for the next Radio Play coming to cherwell.org soon: Amphibians by Tom Moyser. 

 

Speaking in Tongues was written by Rob Williams and produced by Loveday Wright and Tom Moyser. 

The Cast, in order of appearance, are:

The Apologist – Dave Ralf 
Micheal – Richard O’Brien 
Louise – Charlotte Geater 
David – Rob Williams 
Jennifer – Sarah Whitehouse 
Terry – Jack Hackett 
Billy – Tom Moyser 

Slim when you’re winning

Helen Pye
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Slim when you’re winning

Rosemary Conley is currently starring on the latest series of ITV’s Dancing on Ice. Although some of the other contestants’ claim to the title of ‘celebrity’ is more dubious, Conley has been a household name since the 80s when her lycra-clad body burst onto the scene through her popular diet and fitness clubs. 2,000 franchise clubs now span the country with nearly 80,000 members and the inimitably perky Conley has had success with best-selling books and videos ever since.

What I want to know is why anyone would choose a job that depends entirely on leading exercise clubs when you just want to slob in front of the TV and say yes to that second slice of cake? ‘I went to slimming clubs when I was 21; I’d just got married and was overweight. After learning about calories, I decided I wanted to start my own club because I felt I could do it better. So I started my own with a few neighbours initially, then moved onto a local village hall and then it grew from there until it was 50-strong classes in Leicestershire.’

Conley says she faced no opposition when setting up her clubs from bigger competitors who didn’t want her muscling in on their business, but her journey to success was not a smooth one. Fighting hard to resurrect her business when it folded under the ownership of IPC, a magazine publishing company who first took Conley’s classes national, characterises the determination that has now made Conley a stalwart of the diet and fitness industry.

‘I was at a point when one business had failed, and you go from being on a salary and company car to thinking how am I going to survive. The only thing I could do was continue with my own classes, then I was hit by a gallstone problem and went into hospital and was put on a low-fat diet. With that changing my body shape I became a devotee of low-fat eating and published The Hip and Thigh Diet in 1988 which went on to become a massive seller. At the same time I became Christian and I also got married for the second time so I was a pretty important year for me. I had reached a low point in my life and then when The Hip and Thigh Diet came out I found myself with the opportunity to do something hugely exciting. I’d been in the business for 17 years and suddenly I was catapulted into the headlines and could command a fee for serialisation of my book. I just seemed to be so much in demand.’

Considering the incredible reversal in her fortunes, it’s understandable why Conley credits finding God as the turning point in her life. ‘When I became a Christian I was at a very big crossroad. I had made a mess of my life: I had a broken marriage, broken relationships, my business had gone down and I really didn’t know what the future held. When I became a Christian I just felt God was saying, “I’ll be the chairman of your life; follow me and I’ll take you forward”, and from that moment He did. He opened doors and I walked through them and my life was transformed; my whole focus of how I lived my life changed as a result of that. It just seems quite amazing how the same person can live their life in such a different way when God’s in it.’

Having established her weight loss business as one of the ‘big three’ in the country, alongside Slimming World and Weight Watchers, Conley’s next big challenge is of course remaining in the Dancing on Ice competition. Conley has been so committed to the programme that since first being approached five years ago, and having never skated before, she jumped at the challenge and for the past two years has had skating lessons to prepare herself. Despite admitting it’s ‘potentially completely dangerous’ for someone of 65 to take to the ice, Conley is exuberant about the whole experience.

‘It’s the most unbelievable experience of a lifetime, insofar as it’s a huge privilege to be one of 15 people out of a 60 million population who’s given the chance to skate every day and be taught by the top professionals in Britain. Each year they audition about 80 people to go on and from that make their selection. I have to say they’re very clever the way they do it because the mix of people we’ve got is quite amazing. Nobody wants anyone to leave the show and we all are really genuinely fond of each other and very much want to go out and do our best and let the viewers and the judges make their decisions.’

Even Chico? ‘They’re all such nice people. As a group we’re hugely supportive of each other. I’ve been delighted and surprised at how the other competitors have embraced me; they’ve treated me with enormous respect, and they’ve been genuinely kind and loving towards me which is really very unexpected for somebody like me, because I don’t consider myself to be a celebrity. These are actors and singers, people who are really in the public eye, and I’m just a dieting expert who’s made a career out of teaching people how to lose weight. It’s been such an added bonus.’

Conley is the equally enthusiastic about dance partner Mark Hanretty, who first appeared on the show last year and partnered Nadia Sawalha, only to be eliminated in the first week. But that probably shouldn’t be taken as a reflection of Hanretty’s skills as skater or teacher: Conley calls working with him an ‘amazing privilege’ and, despite their 39 year age gap, credits progressing to the fifth week on getting on excellently as both friends and in their working relationship.

Surely as no stranger to lurid leotards and leg-warmers, she must also feel at home in the spangly costumes? ‘The costumes are gorgeous, they cost between £1500 and 2000 pounds each; they’re basically a leotard with a skirt attached and then adorned with these beautiful crystals. It’s like a second skin, they’re skin tight, very, very secure and beautifully made. I wear two pairs of normal tights and a pair of fishnets over the top — It definitely holds the flesh in! And when you’ve got it all on and your hair’s all done and your make-up’s all done, you do feel pretty damn good.’

It’s a ‘wholly consuming’ training schedule, she comments, but with a career built on keeping fit, Conley is used to her job taking over her life. She admits that she feels constant pressure because ‘people are judging me on my choices and look at what I eat.’ While it might be tiring always having to choose the salad, Conley wants to keep going with her business as long as she can. Her first step: winning this series of Dancing on Ice. And at the moment, it’s looking like a pretty promising plan.

Visit Rosemary’s website www.rosemaryconley.com and follow her progress on facebook.com/voterosemary or on twitter @RosemaryConley

How Facebook stole my life

Siobhan Morgan
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How Facebook stole my life

In a university environment where procrastination dominates life and pretending an essay deadline doesn’t exist until a couple of hours beforehand is commonplace, Facebook rules supreme. The other day I told my friend about a couple that had recently started seeing each other; her response was just one word: ‘Facebook?’ She was deducing how serious a real life relationship was based on whether or not the girl had updated her status on a website. At that point it seemed to me that this cultural phenomenon of virtual living had gone too far.

With the rise of Twitter as well as Facebook it seems you can’t escape the cult of social media. We are bombarded with updates on our friend’s every activity, from going for a coffee to personal family drama that you really don’t need to know about. Even worse is when names pop up on your newsfeed that you definitely don’t know, or haven’t spoken to in five years, or the random friend requests from weirdly-named fake accounts with no traceable way of knowing how they found you.

The easy solution would be to not partake in the madness: delete your Facebook account. Well, it’s not that easy, is it? Because I decided to try just that; live without any form of social media for a week. The scariest thing was that I found it impossible. You can’t actually delete your Facebook account, you can only ‘suspend’ it, safe in the knowledge that at a click of a button your virtual existence is still perfectly in tact. And now that every smart phone going seems to have a Twitter and Facebook app built in, they’re unavoidable. Then there’s the question of the other forms of technological communication such as BBM and WhatsApp. Do they count? And, if they do, how on earth do you escape them? I still can’t quite get my head around BBM but it seems to bleep continuously, and the other day I managed to ‘‘PING!!!’’ someone while drunk without even knowing I was doing it. So, seeing as I am completely incapable of resisting the urge to log on every time I open my laptop I decided to highlight the top reasons why I really, really should…

Virtual Harassment

It’s bad enough trying to avoid talking to people you don’t want to in real life let alone in the comfort of your own room. Yes, we all love Varsity Events (and, of course, don’t forget the new Shuffle Nights) but five invitations a week?! If you’re like me and are bitterly regretting installing Facebook notifications on your phone but have no idea how to remove them, you’ll be familiar with the depression of opening a message only to be reminded that Toby ‘Beers’ Baker is the only person contacting you. It only took one week until my Babyloving friend felt it necessary to devote an entire day to discover how to block these invitations.

The Embarrassing Tag

The phone notification meltdown occurs again in the middle of hall/the street/the library when ‘______ has tagged you in a photo’ appears on the screen. It seems inappropriate to flee from wherever you are to get to either a computer or enough wireless coverage to view the evidence of just how embarassing you were the other night. It will undoubtedly be so awful you have to detag. For some unbeknown reason, Zuckerberg has now made it ridiculously difficult to do this: you untag and yet you’re still tagged; you ‘unfollow the post’ which you weren’t aware of following in the first place, you’re still tagged; you finally ‘remove tag’ and have to list the reasons why. ‘I look like a sweaty mess’ is not an option.

Stalking

We all do it and some of us are scarily good at it. I thought finding the fit guy from Balliol Tuesdays based on a first name and college alone was bad, or amazing, depending on how strict you are about invasions of privacy. However, my friend’s more disturbing story put me to shame. Driving past a girl every day on their bus route, him and his prepubescent pals discerned her school from the logo on her uniform and proceeded to trawl that entire school’s network to discover her name. They then went as far as to display banners adorned with her name and various sexual invitations in the bus window. There has to be a harassment case in that one somewhere.

The inevitably unwanted Facebook Chat

Instant messaging is a genius invention; it’s free, quick and simple for the technologically retarded among us. It’s genius when you actually want to speak to people, not when it acts as a gateway for the multitude of online nutters you have accumulated over the years to randomly ask you ‘How’s life?’ Less awkward before you popped up, thanks. And now we have ‘video chat’ as well, aka just another version of Skype. I was slightly disturbed when ‘researching’ this article (seen anything weird on Facebook recently?) my friend told me a very persistent stalker once hacked her webcam through her account. I found this hard to believe but then again I wouldn’t know an IP address if it hit me in the face so I am slightly scared now. Especially since the same guy has just ‘random add’-ed me.

Do I want to know what you’re reading/listening to/feeding your stupid Farmville creatures? No.

The trend of reading the newspapers online is positive in many ways, mainly that it makes news more accessible and appealing to a wider range of people, especially students. However, as an English undergrad it is quite daunting that the future of printed journalism looks increasingly short lived; our employability going down yet another notch. I’ve also realised how much weird shit my friends are interested in. Nothing truly newsworthy ever seems to be read by anyone on The Guardian app; just a lot of interest in betting on how deranged Beyonce’s baby’s name will be, why eating carrots now gives you cancer or yet another article about she-who-must-not-be-named giving Magdalen the thumbs down. I also read the other day that Boris Johnson had been kicked out of the Conservative Party. I got inordinately excited and then realised it was three years out of date, as half the articles I come across seem to be. I have to say, Spotify updates are slightly more entertaining as people never seem to realise that the music they’re listening to is being seen and subsequently judged by the entire Facebook community. Discovering the rugby playing ‘lad’ you live next door to listens to Joni Mitchell, on loop, is worth a laugh at least.

Status Warrior

Facebook can be divided into two groups of people; those who stalk to their heart’s content but rarely post anything personal or incriminating about themselves for fear of embarrassment, and those who just don’t care. I have a strange, scornful respect for these people; I cannot imagine being so secure in my own ego to think that anyone would want to see a picture of ‘what I cooked for tea tonight’ or care how many packets of crisps I’ve got through during my essay crisis. That being said, I have kept a Facebook friend purely for the inane quality of his incessant status updates such as sharing Megan Fox’s tweet, ‘We live in a world where losing your phone is more dramatic than losing your virginity’. FYI, if I wanted to hear from Fox, I’d strike up a conversation with a crumpet.

I realise coming to the end of this, that Facebook may not be designed for misanthropes like me with disdain for any form of sharing emotional expression with the world. However, while the voyeuristic nature of social media is worryingly addictive I’m still not going to make the effort to learn how to remove the apps from my Blackberry or go to the lengths of personally setting my server to restrict the amount of time I can access these websites. I would be far more efficient in the amount of work I get done and reclaim hours of my life, but then I wouldn’t have seen the latest viral video of that weird kid expressing his perverse love for ‘Briona’, which would be a real shame.

First Night Review: The Hothouse

Pollyanna Marsden
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0
First Night Review: The Hothouse

The play itself is about a broken system, but this production, is a smooth-running machine.

The system is founded in rules; in Lush’s words – “We’re all in this game together.” So when staff sleep with patients, boundaries are crossed, rules are broken and punishment is necessary. The torture of Lamb (William Thatcher), in room 1A, tampers with the audience’s senses, to create a visceral disturbance. MacDonagh and his team successfully play with anaesthesia; our sight is obfuscated by a cloudy curtain and red lighting. This sudden deficit of perception is even more acute having become accustomed to a wider, Big Brother visual field, thanks to the CCTV footage. Our hearing is corrupted throughout by an eerie musical motif and intermittent emissions from the intercom. These sounds and the constant twitching of interference on one of the videos disrupt the backdrop, acting as an emblem of unease of the establishment and its more fundamental foundations.

The “rest home” embodies a world that operates under a caste system. The tiered staging beautifully asserts the preoccupation with hierarchy within this institutional sphere.  The feudalism of Staff, Understaff and Patients demonstrates the divide between, “him who is to be treated and him who is to treat.” Competitive forces hold the Hothouse galaxy in place; the most palpable contest between Lush (Jordan Waller) and Gibbs (Ziad Samaha) who mirror one another in their battle for power. Yet at the same time these two flunkies are polar opposites. Waller does hot; a plosive tirade of “barbequed bore by the lake” ignites the audience, while Samaha does icy; his chilling cold-bloodedness successfully marks him out as the other, the only rock left standing after the collapse of the structure.

Although the play does not ooze scope for theatricality, various dramatic genres are played with. Patterns of repetition, synonymous with absurdist theatre, pervade the action – the symmetry of head snapping from Cutts (Ruby Thomas) and Gibbs projects a powerful tableau , while cycles within the language –“small? Not tall, sir” create, in the first act especially, a lovely chiasmic form. Farce shines in Waller’s moments of brilliance – the harlequin of the Commedia del Arte, he is dancelike in his gestures, addressing his rival’s chest, not his head and twice receiving a glass of whisky to the face. Roote (Matt Gavan), as centrifugal force, is the tribal elder, whose versatility of oration draws out nicely the conflict between authority and megalomania. Thomas imbues her performance with comic irony – questioning her ranking on the femininity scale while juggling with histrionics. The addition of “hmm?” at the end of utterances gives her voice a lilting rhythm, lulling the audience with her magnetism. 

This production casts a carnivalesque light on Pinter, turning the world upside down to create confusion. The problem of amnesia defines the comic side of Roote and creates lacunae in the narrative – evidence of the demise of order. Yet Roote is simultaneously ignorant and omniscient. His “I SHALL KNOW” makes him oracle- his clairvoyance predicting that Lush will indeed repeat “the snow has turned to slush” five times. This supernatural force is reinforced by his absence on the CCTV footage; he stays fixed while the others are split between their concrete and virtual selves. His image escapes surveillance confirming the elusiveness of his role.  Identity is a slippery substance in the Hothouse, with characters having multiple epithets and the patients being identified only by numbers. There is a sense that individualism cannot exist within an institution. A powerful image of the individual sacrificed to the collective was the glowing mass of numbers revealed on the stage during the massacre. Patients 6459 and 6457, heavily discussed throughout the play, suddenly become insignificant in the myriad numerals. This weaving-in of the plays central theme into the actual material of the set is a testament to the innovation of its creators.

4 STARS

Pulling Power

Aleks Klosok
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Pulling Power

There used to be a time when Brazilian footballers were being shipped off to Europe by the barrel load at bargain prices. When European football was seen as the gateway to making fortunes. But with Europe in stagnation, the Brazilian economy blossoming and sponsorship and TV revenue levels on the rise, could the financial football tables be on the turn?

Aided by the strength of the Real and the weakness of the British pound and the Euro, the Brazilian economy, declared in December 2011 as the sixth largest in the world, has had a positive effect on the financial standing of domestic clubs. With multi-million-pound deals effectively cheaper, 2010 saw spending on new players in Brazil increase by 63% compared to 29% witnessed in Europe. Although some of the nation’s renowned names, including Adriano and Ronaldo, have seemingly flocked back to their homeland for their last big paydays, the recent high-profile arrivals of Vágner Love and Jádson from Russia and Ukraine respectively in last month’s Transfer Window, both at important stages in their respective careers, suggests that the appeal of the Brazilian game is widening. 

Whilst some players have cited personal problems or pushing for a place in the Brazilian National Team Squad for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Finals as reasons for their return, financial motives are never too far away. The increased levels of sponsorship that have gone hand in hand with the country’s economic progress have become integral. The sports marketing company Traffic is understood to pay around 80% of Ronaldinho Gaúcho’s R$1,000,000 monthly salary at Flamengo CF whilst the large pharmaceutical company, Neo Quimica, who sponsor last season’s Campeonato Brasileiro Série A champions Corinthians, are thought to contribute significantly to the R$1100,000 wages of striker Liédson. But the exploration of clubs as brands, fuelled through the mediums of advertising and especially TV, has become equally important.

Up until 2010, Brazilian clubs were negotiating TV rights deals collectively as part of the Clube dos 13 organisation. But now with the license to pursue these rights on an individual basis, some clubs are already reaping the rewards. According to their financial statements, under the collective agreement Corinthians received €10,300,000 in 2007 and €24,700,000 in 2010. An agreement with TV Globo last year will see the club receive in the region of €40,500,000 per annum until 2015. According to Marcos Motta, a partner at the law firm RBMF Advogados, it is estimated that the total revenue across the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A will rise to above the €400,000,000 mark – putting it on a par with the current TV rights deal in France’s Ligue 1.

Despite the import-export cycle appearing to be reversing, the primary challenge now facing Brazilian clubs is being able to hold on to their most coveted stars and thus stopping the haemorrhaging of talent to, amongst other regions, Europe, as in previous years. And the clubs renewed confidence and stance would suggest that they are currently winning the battle. In 2010 Santos rejected a £20,000,000 bid from Chelsea for wonderkid Neymar who has subsequently signed a contract that will see him stay at Peixe until 2014, Internacional have turned down several bids from European clubs to hold on to their 22-year-old striker Leandro Damião and São Paulo have gone the extra mile by placing a mind-blowing £70,000,000 price tag on their teenage midfield sensation Lucas Moura.

And whilst there is no denying that the Brazilian football market has benefited from strong economic growth in the last decade, there is a fear that with only a handful of Brazilian clubs, namely the likes of Corinthians, Flamengo CF and São Paulo, being able to afford high wages and transfer fees, in some cases equivalent to those offered in the European game, that a gap may soon begin to develop between the aforementioned and the rest in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A. Furthermore, with a number of clubs finding themselves increasingly relying on sponsors due to being unable to manage their debts, further doubts will undoubtedly be raised as to whether this particular structure is sustainable in the short and, in particular, long term.

Although the value of the Brazilian player may now appear to be greater off as opposed to on the field, the next high profile signing could prove to be the catalyst for a renaissance in the domestic game. It’s premature to suggest that the powers in world football are shifting but the football and financial world will be eagerly anticipating Brazilian football’s next big move.

Twitter: @aleksklosok

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