What is this American actress trying to get across?
Performed by Anna Popplewell
Blog Page 1979
Interview: Zoe Hallam
Name: Zoe Hallam
Course: PPE, St John’s, Second Year
Spare Time: Campaigner for Muscular Dystrophy
Zoe Hallam and I quickly establish that we have several important things in common: both disorganised second year PPEists, both have already racked up an impressive array of last minute all-night essays this term and both regularly indulge in our guilty love of Glee, the US TV series based on an all-singing all-dancing high school choir.
However, while I wile away my free hours checking spellings in Cherwell‘s charming offices, Hallam spends her time as regional ambassador for ‘Trailblazers’ the youth branch of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, planning campaigns, co-ordinating information gathering and presenting the findings to Parliament, where last December she delivered a speech for the 18 month anniversary of the campaign.
While the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign is heavily geared towards fund-raising, Trailblazers focuses on campaigning for issues relevant to the 14-25s, explains Hallam. Since its establishment in July 2008, the organisation has run three broad information gathering campaigns on Higher Education, transport and leisure activities, and are now in the process of using the information collected to tackle the specific problems raised and propose solutions.
I ask how she balances the workload attached to her role with Oxford-centred activities. ‘It’s busier during the campaigns’, says Hallam, ‘publicity work and dealing with the press takes up time, and it can be up to twenty-five hours a week, but I’m in a bit of a lull at the moment.’ She explains that, for her, the most important part of the campaign is getting organisations to think harder about the practical details of provisions for the disabled: there tends to be a ‘shallow conception’ of accessibility, where people think that installing a ramp is enough. Often, she says, organisations claim to be accessible, but in fact the facilities haven’t been tested or thought through properly.
The transport campaign revealed the cost implications for disabled travellers: in London, for example, the Tube is inaccessible for wheelchair users, and while taxis are expensive, subsidies are only available for those living inside London. Other problems include inadequate training for the correct use of ramps on public transport and the varied quality of staff assistance – Hallam smiles ironically as she points out that while train staff are often there to help with getting on at the start of the journey, ‘they sometimes forget you also need to get off’.
The main concern with Higher Education, says Hallam, is the difficulties associated with entering the clearing procedure for those with additional requirements. Checking the University you are going to has everything you need is a pain for everyone, but approaching the clearing process with a disability means you are ‘severely disadvantaged’, Hallam explains, ‘there is a lot of information to find out in such a short amount of time’. Hallam manned a Trailblazers helpline on A-Level results day to offer advice and guidance to those going through clearing.
Raising awareness and getting people to pay more attention to detail is a key element of the campaign, for many people with disabilities practical considerations mean that extra organisation and planning is required for every outing. In the café, she points out the difference little things can make. ‘The height of the counter when you want to get your change, the space between tables’, things owners often don’t think twice about.
Hallam is due to attend the Annual General Meeting of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) in February, where she will consider the changes that companies have been making over the last year, and suggest improvements for the future. She emphasises the difference between the transport campaign and the investigation into leisure activities: Trailblazers can influence services by presenting their findings to bodies such as ATOC, but since most businesses are not accountable to a higher body, there is a limit to the direct impact the campaign can have. That the campaign can, however, encourage individuals to approach the organisations is important in itself, argues Hallam. ‘We want to give people the confidence to actually go out and talk to people about their concerns – part of what we do is supposed to be empowering.’
Interview: Josh Lospinoso
Name: Josh Lospinoso
Course: PRS in Statistics, Magdalen, Graduate
Spare time: Military Intelligence Officer
It’s not every day you get to meet a military intelligence officer who works for the National Security Agency (NSA), a cryptologic intelligence bureau of the US Department of Defense. Needless to say I was rather excited and intrigued to meet Joshua Lospinoso, a visiting American DPhil student from New Jersey who is studying statistics, specifically analysing actor-orientated social networks, in order to enhance his military intelligence work.
Lospinoso is far from the sinister and elusive government spy official that films and novels would have us believe. Warm, friendly and very open to my numerous questions, he chats with enthusiasm about his chosen career path. He explains that he was driven to join the army by the national crisis that America experienced as a result of the September 11 bombings.’I saw the army as a potential way to serve my country and do my duty.’ After a year’s worth of training with the National Guard, he enlisted in the army at the age of seventeen and since then has never looked back.
I ask him how he managed to choose between physical combat and the more technical military intelligence work. He smiles as he acknowledges that this decision is an ‘internal fissure’ for many army recruits. He explains how military intelligence was an opportunity for him to combine his two passions: academia and the army. He says, ‘I joined as a rifle man and it definitely appealed to me as seventeen-year-old coming out of high school with full energy. However, as I got more engaged with broader academia, engaged in understanding concepts and numbers and worked for the NSA and the military intelligence agencies, I realised that this was probably a better way to apply myself.’
With mention of the NSA, I press him for further details on what exactly his work for the agency involves. Here he pauses for a moment, saying that he needs a bit of thinking time before he answers as he has to be careful about NSA privacy concerns. At this point, I suddenly remember that I am talking to an intelligence officer privy to a wealth of top secret information that the ordinary citizen will never have access to, let alone even be aware of. He explains that his research on social network analysis is ‘very related’ to the work he does for the NSA. ‘If you think about the most pertinent issues a soldier is facing in Afghanistan or Iraq right now, what’s causing casualties, what’s causing major destruction and instability in the region – those problems are the ones we’re tackling.’ He highlights the importance of analysing social network data in order to help the army improve strategies. He explains that it is crucial for army leaders to know with whom to communicate when they enter a new region, especially in a country like Afghanistan where there is a huge amount of tribalism and thus enormous cultural differences from region to region. He says, ‘We’d like to be able to know when we go into an area how to quickly assess social relationships and ideologies so that we can understand who the powerbrokers are.’
However, Lospinoso, who won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship enabling him to study at Oxford, is using his time here to experience a very different lifestyle to that of a military intelligence officer. He is full of enthusiasm for the University, describing it as ‘a wonderful contrast to being in the army’ and ‘a bit of a culture shock’. Indeed, he explains that while one of the best things about the army is the structure, which ‘cuts a lot of clutter out of your life’, it does also ‘make it difficult to be creative and innovative.’
As he tells me about his plans to take his first trip to Afghanistan to train division analysts, it becomes clear that passion for military intelligence and loyalty to the army are the key forces driving the life of this far from ordinary twenty-three-year-old student.
Interview: Jennifer Pike
Name: Jennifer Pike
Course: Music, LMH, First Year
Spare time: Professional solo violinist
I was apprehensive about our meeting. A precocious talent who, at twelve, became the youngest winner of BBC Young Musician of the Year, whose meteoric rise has seen concerts with the major British orchestras, as well as a Times Breakthrough Award, Jennifer Pike has a CV more like that of a well-heeled industry veteran than the youthful twenty-year old I was about to meet.
She seemed full of energy, having spent the weekend at home ‘just relaxing’ and, without time to dump her suitcase, had come straight to the café after a brief stop at the library for books. After tea, however, she settled down and we talked music. She talks music rather well.
The impression Jennifer gives is of someone genuinely in love with the art, but whose success was never moulded by pressure. She describes quite honestly how music ‘was always just a hobby…getting the violin out as sort of chill-out at the end of the day’. Would she say that she always wanted to be a musician? ‘I never channelled all my efforts into being a
soloist, although I always loved the idea of it for sure, and it was so natural. I always knew I wanted to become a musician, and that it would never leave me. Going in for BBC Young Musician… wasn’t like being plunged into deep water which, I think, can be the danger of those sorts of competitions.’
Pike divides her time between studying and playing in various concerts: a balancing act she describes as ‘a bit tricky’. ‘I have to be really good about writing up notes on a missed lecture. I’m really serious about Oxford.’ Yet one can’t help wondering why a person who played a solo Bach concert in the middle of the Albert Hall at fifteen has decided to come and study, rather than pursue a career that in many ways is achieving lift off.
‘I know it’s a path that not many concert musicians take. But I love university life and the learning environment…to have a grounding, a place to develop my musical boundaries whilst kind of taking more historically-informed interpretations onto the concert platform. That’s what Oxford, for me, is about: discovering all sorts of areas of music which I can’t do.’ It seems that the opportunity for exploration is paying off, having confirmed a concert in London of work by female composers, something she was inspired to do by studying such composers here.
I ask her about performing and to what extent personal interpretation comes into it. She smiles and answers intelligently. ‘The most important thing is to be a vessel for the composer’s intentions. It’s not the performer who everyone should come to see, it’s the composer’s music.’ There is a seriousness about Pike which shines through. Celebrity comes second to music. ‘The thing that’s a bit sad – or rather challenging – for women is that often people are coming just to see a brand, a performer, a dress, the whole package. It’s very difficult because, for me, the very important thing about performing should be remaining versatile, making sure that you change your style and way of playing to suit the composer.’
We talk for a while about the invasion of pop into classical music, which she calls ‘quite scary’. It turns out she was recently offered a lucrative recording contract which she rejected. I press her for details. ‘It was exciting, but it was crossover, a lot of film music – which I like – but I think they wanted Strictly Come Dancing music too; immediately the alarm bells started ringing…I’d need to go to confession afterward. That’s not what I want to be.’
Looking ahead to the future, the tour dates are already piling up, with a special BBC concert replaying her competition-winning Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and a stint in Japan doing the same piece. (‘I do know other pieces’, she laughs.) I am struck at times by how young she still seems. For all the concerts, for all the ball gowns and garlands and recording contracts, she is still a fresher, cramming in the essays, trying to fit in.
Interview: Emily Middleton
Name: Emily Middleton
Course: PPE, Wadham, Second Year
Spare Time: Adviser to UNICEF UK
My meeting with Emily Middleton, double winner of Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award and Youth Advisor to the board of UNICEF, started on a light note, when she enlightened me as to the benefits of reading CosmoGirl. This publication is what inspired the 14-year-old Emily to become involved with charity work. ‘I just saw a little bit about the National Children’s Bureau in CosmoGirl. It was the summer holidays and I just googled it. They have the YNCB, which is their Youth-led wing and they were looking for advisory group members so I applied and that’s where it all started, really.’
Since then, Middleton has tirelessly championed a multitude of causes through her work with National Children’s Bureau, Amnesty International UK and UNICEF. But it would be a grave mistake to treat Middleton as another enthusiastic yet ultimately naive charity worker. She does campaign and fundraise as part of student groups, but she also occupies an important position on the board of one of Britain’s leading aid organisations, fulfilling tasks as diverse as devising national strategy and scrutinising UNICEF’s accounts alongside Lord Ashdown and Sue MacGregor.
Very articulately, she draws parallels between her engagement in student charity offshoots and the work she does on a national level. ‘I suppose it’s the scale that is the major difference. I’ve been involved in the Amnesty branches in Oxford and it’s the same organisation fighting for the same broad aims, but the main difference is that whereas you’re involved in the main student charity at Oxford, doing mainly campaigning and fundraising…At a national level, you’re looking at a much bigger picture. You’re looking at how to involve students and other groups and societies. It’s a lot more strategic, you’re looking at finances overall. It’s a totally different set of skills. But it doesn’t mean that student charities are any less important, because they’re vital.’
I’m in no way surprised to find Middleton highly eloquent in conversation, considering the impressive list of accolades her other big area of interest -poetry – has won her. She gathered media attention when, in 2006, she was awarded her second Foyle prize for writing a poem from the perspective of a suicide bomber. The poem beginning, ‘Other people live in fear of gun massacres, heart attacks, car smashes, plane crashes, horrific back street slaughters. / But me? I can tell you my future: All two hours and twenty-six minutes of it.’, earned her a slot on Radio 4 alongside Gordon Ramsay and Ronnie Corbett. She admits she is not writing ‘as much as I’d like it to be’ nowadays, but she is ‘definitely going to apply to various courses and hopefully I’ll get back into it’. Middleton also wrote a short film script based on the poem which was adapted for a Wadham cuppers entry last Michaelmas.
What is most striking about Middleton, however, is her incredible humility. Speaking about her role in UNICEF, her words are heartfelt, her sentiment genuinely selfless. ‘I’m really, really honoured to be chosen for this role, it is the first time that UNICEF UK has had young people at a higher level, so I feel under a lot of pressure to make it work,’ she says. Judging by her record so far, the young could have no better representative.
How to Cook… Chilli Chocolate Mousse
Marc Kidson shows you how to make the perfect aphrodisiac dessert for your Valentine.
Recipe re-cap:
Chilli Chocolate Mousse, makes 4 servings
200g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)
150ml double cream
Half a red chilli
5 eggs
4tsp caster sugar
A few squares of white chocolate
1. In a bain-marie (heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, or equivalent) melt broken dark chocolate gently, without stirring.
2. Put the double cream in a pan and add the roughly chopped chilli to infuse, bring to the boil slowly before removing.
3. Meanwhile, separate the egg whites from the egg yolks, setting aside the yolks and adding the whites to a large mixing bowl.
4. Beat the egg whites until they are beginning to turn fluffly, then add the caster sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
5. Strain the cream into a bowl to remove pieces of chilli, then add the melted chocolate and stir until combined.
6. Add a spoonful of the egg whites to the chocolate-cream mixture to lighten it, stir in well.
7. Add the chocolate-cream to the egg whites in batches, folding (not stirring) it in with a metal spoon, continue until it is all combined.
8. Dish up into ramekins, coffee cups or a single bowl (depending on preference) and chill for an hour minimum.
9. Before serving garnish with grated white chocolate.
Palin’s Tea Party
Sarah Palin has always been something of an unquantifiable entity in US politics. Partly that’s a result of her newness: I often forget that we’ve only really known of her for 18 months, since John McCain picked her as his running mate. In a short time she’s become one of the leading figures in US politics; perhaps the most important conservative in America.
In a sense, it’s no surprise she’s achieved this status. Aside from her novelty as a young, electorally-successful Republican woman, the appeal of Sarah Palin lies in her relatively ‘pure’ version of conservatism, which, in emphasising tax cuts, limited government, and social conservatism, appeals strongly to the less moderate elements of the American right. And Palin’s main narrative — that she’s an insurgent against the ‘liberal’ mainstream media and political culture — surely resonates with many who feel disenfranchised, who honestly believe the political process does not stand for them. She is not a popular candidate for nothing; people are swayed by what she is and stands for.
But Palin has made — and continues to make — significant strategic errors. We know all the old ones: the Katie Couric interview, the attack on Levi Johnson, her resignation as Alaska Governor (“I am not a quitter”). The excuse for all this was always that Palin is, as a political strategist, totally inept. A lot of candidates are, which is why they hire professional strategists. Relatively recently, Palin has. But they’re doing a pretty average job. Or rather, they’re only doing a good job within very narrow bands, and failing in all other senses.
Let me explain. First, Palin’s approach seems always to go on the attack. She’s good at that, so in some sense it’s a sensible strategy. But she’s not very good at targeting her attacks tightly enough, and it tends to make her look hyper-partisan, kneejerk, and uncontemplative — she looks and sounds like an opportunist. See this week’s latest back-and-forth: Rahm Emanuel should resign for saying “retarded”, but Rush Limbaugh should not even be criticised for saying the same thing; here Palin comes off as a cheap hack. Second, she’s undermined a key part of her appeal — her outsider status — by taking the corporate buck in the shape of a Fox News contract. This makes her less credible as an independent, insurgent force, even if Fox News is the least ‘mainstream’ of the US channels. Third — and most importantly — she’s becoming too connected to the more radical right. This hurts her not just among moderate Democrats and independents, but also among most Republicans.
Palin’s latest big strategic move is to align herself with the Tea Party movement. The movement is best described as organised anger. The Tea Partiers are, at their core, anti-tax pro-small-government protesters. But their opinions also frequently extend into the bizarre memes of right-wing extremism — my personal favourite being that the economic crisis was an event precipitated by Democrats to enable them to turn the US into a socialist paradise. These are Glenn Beck’s guys. Most Americans genuinely don’t find the movement appealing, and the many that do probably already were with Palin. Moderate Republicans think of it as the black sheep of their family, and the source of many of the party’s divisions. But this week it became pretty clear that Palin is keen to become the de facto head of the movement — she headlined their convention at the weekend, and has offered support to several tea party-supported ‘conservative party’ candidates running against moderate Republicans.
This strategy is bad for Palin, because whilst she can win the Republican primary in 2012 as the Tea Party candidate, she can’t then win the general — she’s doing a good job of hardening her base (and that’s important), but she’s doing a spectacularly bad job at reaching outside her comfort zone; this is a poor electoral strategy, because you need significantly more than the base to win.
It’s bad for Republicans, because if she puts her weight behind the Tea Party, the Republican Party will be pulled to the right in the midterms by the serious threat of conservative challenges against moderate Republicans in primaries and general elections (just as in NY-22 House race last year). This will make the party less electable in the long-term, and in the short term gives the Democrats the opportunity to play merry hell (even with their current difficulties) in the face of a divided opposition.
And it’s bad for the country. A more polarized Republican Party means a more polarized Congress. American government is inefficient right now. Compromise is near impossible at the moment, even with the presence of moderate Republican elements. Try and get anything done when those moderates are gone.
Student screams "Kill the Jews" at Israeli minister
An Oxford student yelled “Kill the Jews” at Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, when he spoke at the Oxford Union on Monday night.
The student was removed by security after he shouted the Arabic phrase, “IdhbaH al-Yahud”, which means “Slaughter the Jews”. The incident has been reported to the Proctors’ Office. It was also mentioned in an Israeli Embassy press release on Mr Ayalon’s speech.
There was a great deal of protest during the speech, which was disrupted on many occasions by anti-Israeli protesters criticising Israel’s recent conduct in relation to the Palestinian people.
The first interruption was only a few minutes into the speech, when a woman stood up and read from the Goldstone Report, a critical UN report on Israel’s conduct during the recent Gaza war, to a mixed reaction from the crowd – many supportive, but others’ critical. One person shouted, “I didn’t come to hear you talk.”
In reaction to the interruption, Mr Ayalon criticised the protester for just reading out someone else’s work, saying “I’m not sure she even understood what she said.”
She was soon followed by a woman from southern Lebanon who heckled Mr Ayalon and stood holding pictures throughout the rest of the talk.
Other interruptions included a man holding a Palestinian flag shouting “You are a racist,” “You are a war criminal” and “You will be tried”, to applause from much of the crowd, before being ejected.
Danny Ayalon represents Yisrael Beitenu, a nationalist party, and is a controversial figure even among supporters of Israel. Whilst his talk was frequently interrupted, he managed to convey a combination of moderate and hardline views on the subject of the Middle East in his speech, he blamed Iran for “everything bad going on in the Middle East at the moment”; and claimed that instead of meeting the Israelis halfway on the subject of peace, Israel is giving 95% and Palestine 5%.
However, he also admitted that Israel has to make some concessions to the Palestinians. Arguing that “I do feel for the Palestinians”, he said that he blames successive Palestinian leaderships for their present plight.
Meanwhile, even within the chamber the shouts of the protesters outside the Union gates could be heard. Many were shouting slogans, which ranged from “occupation no more”, to “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in support of Palestine.
The protests were organised by PalSoc. They were joined by members of Oxford Anti-War Action group.
How well do you know your Big Issue seller?
An in-depth look at who the homeless are, how they live, shelters in the city, and what you can do to help.
Five Minute Tute: Spotify
This is simply not true. Go to most University web sites and search under ‘P2P’ and you will see that some form of ban is in place. Warwick, for example, list 24 applications which ‘must not be used’ (though they do not mention Spotify specifically). It was also odd that your spokesperson from Newnham College in Cambridge asked ‘Why would anyone ban it?’. I suggest they read the Cambridge Computing Services guidelines illustrating the pitfalls of P2P, and maybe talk to their colleagues at Darwin College (http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/computers/conditions.shtml).
n in touch), as we did in the past with Skype (which is allowed and Oxford set the pace in devising a way to allow its use without damaging the network). If there is a way of controlling the bandwidth use by the ‘node’, or turning file sharing off, or similar, then we may get somewhere.