The nobel prize winning economist, Muhammad Yunus delivered this year’s Romanes Lectures at the Sheldonian this year.He gave lecture, entitled ‘A poverty-free world: When? How?’, to guests at the Sheldonian on Tuesday 2nd December.
He focused particularly on the current global financial crisis and spoke of his
vision of a world free from poverty.
Yunus, originally from Bangladesh, founded Grameen Bank, which provides credit to the poorest people in Bangladesh.
Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2006 “fortheir efforts to create economic and social development from below.”
The Romanes Lecture occurs annually at the University. The first was given in
1892. Past speakers have included William Gladstone, Winston Churchill and IrisMurdoch.
A copy of each year’s lecture can be found at the Bodleian library
Nobel economist addresses University
Infertile academic seeks Oxbridge donor
An infertile Oxford graduate has placed adverts at Oxford and Cambridge, asking for an egg donor.
Sally Adams has placed adverts in the Oxford Mail and its Cambridge counterpart, asking only for donors who are university graduates and under 32.
Adams, who studied zoology at Oxford, said she hoped to find a donor who is “educated, intellectual and possibly with connections with the colleges”.
She has been criticised by some for attempting to create a ‘designer baby.’ Experts have pointed out that intellect is only partly based on genetics and that using an egg from Oxbridge would not guarantee an intelligent child.
A second year Oxford student said, “I think it’s bit pathetic really. If she’s that desperate for a child surely she should be delighted to accept a donor regardless of their intellect. Andbesides, there’s no guarantee a clever mother means a clever child”.
Adams has already found an appropriate source of sperm.
Wadham elections violated constitution
Michaelmas elections in the Wadham College Student Union have been beset by problems. The online voting system did not work properly, and an unconstitutional voting method was used instead.
Wadham’s election, already delayed, was conducted using a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, instead of single transferable voting (STV), as mandated by the Union’s constitution. Under STV, votes are redistributed according to secondary preferences when there is no outright majority.
“Paper voting would be too difficult”
However, in these elections FPTP was used. Under this system the candidate with the most votes is immediately declared winner, and additional preferences are disregarded. FPTP was used because, according to one source: “doing multiple preference with paper voting would be too difficult.”
William McCallum, Wadham’s JCR president, explained that the lack of online voting was due to “problems with the web officer.” This position was to be elected in the 4th week, but “no one ran”.
Madeleine Pullen, a 2nd year student said: “I didn’t vote in any Wadham elections this term as they weren’t on the internet and I’m too busy in the daytime to make it to Wadham to vote. I’m not very well up on voting systems but i didn’t even realise it would be different to normal. Also elections being late caused confusion and affected me personally as I had a housing issue and don’t really know who to go to!”
McCallum added that elections were conducted using first-past-the-post system in order to save time, as “the majority of our officers are finalists and we have to be fair to them”.
“The election did not conform to SU regulations”
The heavily contested race for Food and Amenities Officers was most affected by the voting abnormalities. The election resulted in Graham Healy-Day and Cormac Sullivan winning by 3 votes. This meant that second preferences could have easily changed the outcome of the election. Michael Teckman, one of the runner-ups for the position, commented he was “certainly upset to lose by such a small margin, especially as the election did not conform to SU regulations.”
Teckman also pointed out that the elections would be more effective with the online voting system, “(I) feel the thing that really limited our power as candidates was the failure of the internet voting system. This meant we lost many valuable votes from people living out, and those too busy to make the allotted slots.”
“A perfectly reasonable job”
One student filled in a demand for the Election Tribunal to consider re-running of the election for the position. An Election Tribunal will be elected at the beginning of Hilary Term to decide whether to repeat the ballot.
Adrienne Joy, another candidate, commented: “Whilst the system used to run the elections wasn’t ideal, I think the first past the post system did a perfectly reasonable job to elect the candidates that people wanted. The fact that all this has to be rerun despite the best efforts of SU officers to get it done before the end of Michaelmas just seems like a complete waste of time.”
Returning Officer Charlotte Houldcroft declined to comment on the situation.
Omkar suspended from Union
Ex-Union Treasurer Krishna Omkar has had his membership of the Society suspended for three terms following an election tribunal that took place on Saturday and Sunday last week.
The tribunal was called after Omkar accused eight Union members, including an ex-President, the incoming President and the President Elect, of having violated Rule 33 of the Society’s rulebook which states that candidates must run independently and without systematic solicitation of votes.
“President Elect and ex-President accused”
The first charge was brought against ex-Librarian Leo Marcus Wan, Librarian Tom Hartley, Treasurer-Elect Nouri Verghese and Secretary Anna Williams who were accused of forming a slate in the Michaelmas Term elections.
Omkar also accused President Elect Corey Dixon and ex-Standing Committee member Stuart Cullen and stated that ex-President Luke Tryl had helped them by soliciting votes.
Union President Charlie Holt was also accused of ‘lining’ for candidates running on Friday of seventh week.
All of the above defendants were found innocent of the charges. The panel concluded that Omkar’s allegations against Tryl had been brought forward on “unfounded and malicious” grounds.
However, the candidate for Secretary’s Committee, Balliol PPEist Kanishka Narayan, was disqualified after being found guilty of electronic campaigning.
The Secretary’s Committee election will now be recounted.
“Evidence might have been obtained illegally”
Omkar had obtained evidence of an email conversation between Anna Williams and Nouri Verghase where the elections were discussed, but it was rejected by the tribunal on the grounds that it might have been obtained illegally.
The tribunal made no suggestion that it was Omkar himself who had illegally obtained the evidence.
Returning Officer Oliver Linch stated that the panel felt it to be an issue of “natural justice”, that it would “set a bad precedent” and might have a negative impact on future Union elections.
However, Omkar has attacked the panel for refusing to acknowledge “substantial and crucial evidence of a flagrant and open breach of the rules.”
He added, “this tribunal’s proceedings unfortunately only served to re-establish my belief that this is a Society which maintains one set of rules for certain individuals and another set of rules for others.”
He argued that he was found guilty of electoral malpractice following the elections of Michaelmas 2007, in which he was elected president, on the basis of “an email from an unidentified source”.
“Cullen claims to have been drunk”
It was thought that Cullen would be found guilty because Omkar had record of a facebook exchange between the two where they discussed the Michaelmas elections.
However, Cullen was able to successfully cast doubt as to whether the exchange accurately reflected the situation, claiming to have been drunk when the conversation took place.
One ex-Standing Committee member has said that the verdict of the tribunal was “against expectations”, whilst defendant Leo Marcus Wan suggested that Omkar had been “perfectly reasonable” in bringing the charges.
“He thought what had happened to him was unfair, and that everyone should be held to the same standard, which is perfectly reasonable”.
However, Tryl stated that Omkar “deserved to have his membership suspended”, adding “I don’t think that tribunals should be used as a political tool”.
“Assaulted by Union members”
Omkar has also made allegations that he was accosted outside the Union buildings on his way to make his complaint. He claimed to have been verbally assaulted by Holt, Williams, Verghese and Tryl.
He said, “Mr Holt pushed me out onto the street, I was surrounded by and verbally abused by the others, Mr Tryl calling me a ‘stupid bastard’, and threatening to call the police (eventually summoning the Union security guard on duty to threaten me further) if I attempted to submit my complaint.”
Holt has denied this claim, stating that “It is categorically untrue; it is also a reverse of the fact” adding that Omkar is banned from the Union buildings.
“Security escorted him out, we didn’t verbally abuse him, in fact quite the opposite; he got quite aggressive.”
Krishna Omkar now has 48 hours to appeal against the verdict of the tribunal. However Leo Marcus Wan has said, “I don’t think he would have a chance of being successful”.
It has been suggested that Omkar’s case may have been affected by the fact that he did not return to the tribunal after it broke for lunch.
Members present at the tribunal have suggested that he neglected to go back because he felt the tribunal would not go his way.
Fellow proposes all dons be made professors
An academic at Oxford University has proposed that all dons holding permanent posts should be given the title of “professor.”
Nicholas Bamforth, a fellow in law at Queens’ College, put forward the suggestion in response to a consultation by a university task force on an academics promotions scheme. He wants the term to operate as a job-description.
“Give everyone the title”
He claimed last month that “The simplest and fairest way forward, given that our major competitors in North America do so, may simply be to give everyone … the title professor.” He has suggested that statutory or personal chairs could be recognised as posts of special distinction within this title.
For decades academics at Oxford have complained about the promotions policy. The Task Force on Academic Employment has now suggested that personal promotions be introduced for small numbers of people.
However, Dr Bamforth argues that the promotion scheme suggested is too complicated as it results in three types of professor – statutory professors, professors promoted under the new scheme and “titular professors” – all with different teaching responsibilities.
He also asserts that the task force’s proposal is not fair to existing holders of titles, who have already undergone a stringent selection process, requiring them to depend on external referees.
“It is unclear whether his proposal is feasible”
In an article published in the Oxford Magazine last week, he said, “It does not seem fair to require them to reapply with the likelihood that many will be promoted to a grade below the title they currently hold (i.e. reader rather than professor) and many will receive no substantive promotion at all.”
Whilst his proposal has been acknowledged by colleagues, it has been contested. Dr Justine Pila, a University Lecturer in Intellectual Property at St Catherine’s College, said, “Nick Bamforth’s proposal has the principal merit of meeting colleagues’ desire for a system of recognition comprehensible to other institutions, while also reflecting the flat structure of our academic community. It is however unclear whether his proposal for distinguishing statutory/personal chairs (with reference, for example, to the named title of the chair) is feasible. Personally, I am happy as a ‘Dr’.”
The Task Force on Academic Employment’s briefing note says that it “notes with considerable interest” Dr Bamforth’s proposal.
Oxford’s Space Age
Oxford academics have helped create the Venus Express, a spacecraft devoted solely to studying planet Venus.
The probe came into action recently. It takes photos using ultraviolet and infrared cameras which provide data on the atmosphere of the planet. This allows scientists to compare what the planet looks like at different wavelengths, revealing the physical conditions of the planet.
“A puzzle for nearly a century”
Professor Fred Taylor, one of the Venus Express scientists and a researcher at Oxford University said, “The features seen on Venus in ultraviolet light have been a puzzle to astronomers for nearly a century. These new images have revealed the structure in the clouds that produces them and shows how they result from complex meteorological behaviour.”
Oxford’s relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA) is to be strengthened soon with the opening of a major research centre at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
“New models, techniques, equipment”
The new centre will focus on space robotics and the changing atmosphere of the Earth. These will help European scientific institutions develop advanced climate change models. It will also provide new techniques and equipment for improved planetary exploration.
Sharon Bowles, Lib Dem MEP for Oxfordshire commented, “This recognises the tremendous contribution that science in the UK has made to the European space effort. I’m confident also that the centre’s climate change focus will be bolstered by the UK’s acknowledged excellence in climate science.”
The Pillowman First Night Review
After the interval in this excellent production of The Pillowman (a grand-guignol style tale-telling spree steeped in Kafkaesque metafiction about the oeuvre of a writer whose theme is kids “getting fucked up”) a real live kid appears, barefoot, a girl called Beatrice King, very earnest, with a ski-jump nose. She carefully goes through the motions she’s rehearsed, which include for instance flinching and starting in time with the mimed blows aimed at her by the abusive foster parents, who are going about her crucifixion in the tale “The Little Jesus”. People sitting around you will go ‘aww’, as one does, it seems, for infants in performance.
It is screamingly detrimental to the play’s thus-far tonsil-turning tensions. I have no idea why, as a director, you would do this to yourself. Even ickle Bea’s grand final appearance (timidly daubed all over in green paint) isn’t worth it – though at that point it is vitally important, I presume, to convey the liveness of the untortured, miraculously happy little body. Ariel’s warmth (Jacob Lloyd) towards her is plausible and fairly touching, but apart from that there is nothing real or interesting about the interaction between the child-performer and the adult cast. Omkar betrays nervousness on-stage as he handles her; the context of cultish child protection wafts around the whole thing. Multimedia would have been useful here; or just a rag doll. Something you can really mutilate.
But this is my only real beef with Dan Wilner and Sabina Smitham’s production, with perhaps a murmur about Rory Fazan as a gifted, nuanced anti-hero who needed, however, on the first night at least, to polish some scene changes, articulate (or learn?) a number of lines, and remember not to drop character when a match refused to light. He gave a bitty performance, which, when beautiful, was so from tortured feet to accusatory lip (crumpling, yearningly so); when slipping up, it sapped a lot of the grotesquerie and horror’s energy. The shadow-play of the torture scene in ‘The Writer and the Writer’s Brother’ was also wasted, which was a shame. Yet vocal talent from the four actors carried the stories more than adequately, though the few strong physicalised moments (an embrace between the brothers in their cell; an eye-gouging assault from bad cop) called out for a generally less conservative, less static approach to the narrative.
The ‘Pillowman’ is the product of Katurian Katurian Katurian’s imagination (incidentally, I’m sure it’s not just Kafka but the KKK being referenced) – a dark relative of Peter Pan who helps children in the past to commit suicide, but only children whose adult futures hold in store depression, torture and… suicide. The fluffiness eases ones exit from “all the hassle” of living, a symbol sustained brilliantly by Wilner, who has orchestrated in echo the trope of pillows resting on sleeping bellies like cloud-babies or ectoplasm. (Before they’re seized from above to smother and annihilate breath.) The psychological toll of this profession pushes Pillowman to go back in time and snuff out his own, infant, self. The body of his work in future time is thus undone and hundreds of suicides have to thrash their miseries out as grown-ups.
Krishna Omkar’s acting is icily precise. One gets the terrifying feeling that this good-cop persona has been aired before on a Union carpet. He impressed relentlessly in the performance of camp uncanniness, having mastered a pretty 2-D kind of posh cruelty. But he moved me just once: in an egregiously inelegant and vulnerable moment he held the gaze of the condemned in the penultimate scene of the play, braved the silence, and admitted that he’d lost a son. “Drowned, out fishing alone. Silly, really”. ‘Really silly’ is the simple tack Lawrence Cochran has, commendably, adopted for Michal, rather than attempting to ape an inchoate madman or approximate a PTS sufferer. The effect is strikingly child-like, which creates unease at the moment when Ariel blurts in relief and comprehension: “but you never killed no children”. Killed no children, oh, has he not?
Under your mattress is your dead brother clutching a piece of writing better than any you’ve ever penned. You burn it. He was never tortured as a child anyway – that was all a trick, a series of sound-tracks designed to turn you into the genius you are today. And no again – THIS is the trick, the track, the rail-road you’re walking deaf in China, to use Tupolski’s improvised image from his strange tale. Maleficent, beneficent, or, more worryingly, uninterested – who, asks McDonagh maniacally, is this God governing the lives of so many beings raped and tortured? The policeman’s story is perhaps better than anything the prisoner ever wrote. In it, you’re walking oblivious in the path of a train, blind to the existence of the wise man in the tower ahead, who calculates the location of the collision and your death by processing relative speeds and so on; yawns, satisfied, and tosses the paper air-plane of his findings out of his window, without giving your death another thought. The paper sails towards you; you leap at it with pleasure and… escape danger. This, said Omkar, is the role of the detective. God, he had some good lines. McDonagh’s script is gold dust.
What is God? Everything points to the answer being weighted in favour of ‘the Pillowman’. Then the story of the Green Pig portrays a god willing to bring staining rain-showers down on everybody else, in response to one’s desire to remain differently hued and peculiar. The totalitarian dictatorship framing the action feels threadbare; like the play it is constructed on a series of lenses and paradigms, on the vindictive dischargement of deep-rooted trauma on the weak, the other, the mirror of the self, the object of paranoid envy. The social role of stories is scoured inside out, explicitly, and through all the fibres of this very un-Irish production of a play by an infamously un-Irish guy. An ego split is at the heart of every character here, not a national one as in McDonagh’s disgusted English Leenane trilogies, but a masculine one which Jacob Lloyd showed brilliantly in his simultaneous longing for and embarrassment over confessional. Then again, what you say is what goes, and the Law spouts “asinine nonsense” to bewilder and disorientate, at which Katurian beats never an eyelid.
The Pillowman is a perpetual and tricksy game of ‘this is true/untrue/true actually’ which culminates in charming, self-reflexive pathos (Fazan comes back from the dead to explain that the premature gun-shot prevented him from getting to the cynical twist of his mental ‘sequel’ in which his brother tells the Pillowman he’ll take seven years of torture for the sake of his, Katurian’s, poetic development.) Indeed the godliness of authorship, the freedom to write – or white out – death notices, identities, and entire childhoods was for me the main subject of this many-layered evening. Anybody creative will have been disturbed by the imagined complicity between teller and killer, brother and child. ‘In my story’, Katurian says to Mikhail, ‘you were the true author; I was merely the brother’. For the imbecile subjected to nightly torture that was itself a story motivated by a story competition, there can be no distinction between ‘you told me the story’ and ‘you told me to do it’.
And yet Michal lied about the stories he elected. 400 sick ones, but one ‘nice’ one about a non-pink pig. The shockingly happy dissolution of the third charge of child murder, the by-now wholly unfamiliar feeling of all-rightness, feels macabre, and the pastoral scene painted in our gore-weary imaginations of the wendy-houseful of piglets for the mute girl dyed bright green and undead becomes a testament to our thralldom to the storyteller. It seems not quite “in the spirit of the thing”, as the final monologue has it, that the lunatic brother should choose the innocent Green Pig story, and not the Jesus one, for his third reenactment. Before the “fashionably downbeat” interruption of the countdown to KKK’s much-deferred death, the one kind act towards a child in the entire show has occurred in ‘The Tale of the Town on the River’: here, the Pied Piper cuts off a boy’s toes with a meat cleaver. And this is a ‘gift’. The maiming means, we later learn, that he cannot hobble home to Hamlin to be piped away and killed – by the Pied Piper. “He was after the kids from the start, you see,” explains Katurian. “I never liked your stories,” says the cop.
8th Week
…and you’ll be delighted to know that I intend to continue during the vacation, mostly so as to inflict an albums/singles of the year list on you, my hypothetical ‘readers’ – easily the most horrifically self-important thing possible. For now, business as usual, save that all these singles are from ‘credible’ artists for a change.
Florence and the Machine – Dog Days Are Over *****
OK, she’s offensively cool right now and the NME’s obsequious sycophancy grates somewhat tautologically. But there’s a reason for all that. Energetic and eccentric live shows aside, the quality of the records is stunning. This track is joyous, propelled by the simplest of rhythms and the most mellifluous of ukuleles (they’re everywhere these days). ‘Happiness hit here like a bullet in the brain’, she hollers, sounding suspiciously like Joan Armatrading. ‘I never wanted anything from you’ she breathes, sounding deliciously like Stina Nordenstam or Allison Goldfrapp. The middle eight wrenches at your heart, the coda pulls you upwards by your ears to some higher place. Love this girl.
The Decemberists – Record Year For Rainfall ***
This band’s cult following is seriously scary, numbering a certain homeplate-possessor amongst them. These fans do a fine job of ignoring the more embarrassing/indulgent forays into the depths of prog, weakness of voice and general patchiness of quality that Colin Meloy et al inflict upon them. And the fact that they cancelled a gig in Oxford last year at the last minute. Not that I’m prejudiced: this B-side-cum-single is a cosy, slightly out of tune ramble that’d fit neatly on a ‘kooky’ film like Juno and the strings, unlike on most pop releases, actually add something. There’s genuine lo-fi depth and menace here, and the lyrics always help. Still, the melody’s virtually indistinguishable from some of their others.
Oasis – I’m Outta Time **
I felt we needed a contrast to Florence. Oasis might be her Luddite, antediluvian antithesis, were those words not somewhat out of their ken. OK, ‘Wonderwall’ was a great, great song for Ryan Adams to cover. But not for buskers. And didn’t Blur write ‘Out Of Time’ a few years ago so brilliantly that for this band of all bands to try something similar is deeply insulting. What does it sound like? It sounds like the Verve single I slated a while back, but with Liam Gallagher singing. Which makes it worse. And someone should point out that the way to honour John Lennon is not by murdering his songwriting techniques. Worst of all, unlike ‘Lyla’, which was obnoxious, this is a truly inoffensive ballad with some nice touches and I should really leave the poor sods alone.
Glasvegas – Please Come Back Home *
It’s very impressive that they recorded a six track Christmas EP in two weeks in Transylvania, if a little cynical. What’s less impressive is that they’ve gone from reinventing shoegaze to retreading U2. This song is exactly what ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ would sound like if sung by The Proclaimers in a karaoke contest. And aren’t we all a little grown up for this sort of rock anyway? Bored now.
Titus Andronicus – Titus Andronicus *
They’ve just signed to XL and some people might be fooled into thinking they’re cool. For the sake of the public interest, I’d best point out they sound like the scrawny spawn of The Others and Scouting For Girls. Punk pop at its most asinine, without a Shakespearean reference in sight. Still, they’ve got a good name, which may get them far.
The Shortwave Set – Glitches ‘N’ Bugs ****
Remember The Beta Band before they became The Aliens? They were really good. So’s this. A homely strum-and-chug approach to arrangements disguises one hell of a hook. This is horrifically catchy and the dual vocals work charmingly, reminiscent of The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Sticking With You’. It sounds about ten years old, but it’s great.
Top of the Ox: Local Tune of the Week
The blog may continue but this feature ends this week. I’m sure you’ll mourn its loss. The eighth and final band to showcase is Witches. Most of you will have heard of them, but some might still confuse them with the terrible and also local The Glitches, and we wouldn’t really want that. Anyhow, ‘B O K’ is dark and deranged and will creep you out if you’re under the influence of anything at all, and helpfully combines the principles of dance and hard rock in a palatable, infectious fashion. Well done them.
Next week – who knows? Or dares to dream? Enjoy the vacation. Stay in touch.