Thursday 9th April 2026
Blog Page 976

Head to Head: blues OURLFC captain and Pembroke captain of boats

George Mason and Karl Frey
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Head to Head: blues OURLFC captain and Pembroke captain of boats

George Mason interviews Jordan Ayling OURLFC captain

Can you outline the basic differences of Rugby League from Rugby Union?

The most fundamental differences between the two codes stem from the breakdown. Not only is there a finite tackle limit in league but the ruck is not a competitive chance to recover the ball but a more restricted ‘play the ball’ where a player rolls it behind themselves with their foot to restart play. The other major differences include the number of players, with League fielding only 13 compared to Union’s 15, and the scoring system where tries are worth four points and drop goals one point, compared to Union where tries are worth five points and drop goals three points.

How do you feel about this year’s squad and its chances in the Varsity match this year?

The Blues have had a particularly strong year, losing only one game in the league and an impressive cup run that has seen us progress to the quarter finals with hopes of going all the way. The consistency of performance at such a high level is revealing of the squad depth and talent in the player pool, which ultimately leaves me in little doubt as to the outcome of the Varsity match—it looks likely to be an all dark blue affair.
If you could pick one player to watch out for and why, who would it be?

I think Marco Hiscox is one of the most exciting prospects of the club, Only joining us this season he has made a swift code transition from Union and has found himself a regular in the Blues squad this side of Christmas. Beyond being an all-round athlete, content to grind out the full 80 minutes with a negligible drop in performance, he has developed a real aptitude for finding the space around markers at the breakdown. Cambridge need to be particularly disciplined in that area come Varsity or he’ll be certain to break their line all game long, much as he has done all season.

What do you think the strengths of Cambridge’s team will be?

The Cambridge team have always been resilient in my experience. Their determination to maintain the fight throughout the match is their biggest asset and one that we’d do
well to remember so as not to lose momentum at any point in the 80 minutes.

What do you think this year’s team must focus hard on to ensure success this year?

Domination of the contact area on the floor will be where we look to control the game—slowing Cambridge attacks whilst quickening the tempo of our own will be crucial to keeping the momentum swinging in Oxford’s favour.

What is your game-day choice of breakfast and why?

I’m without doubt a creature of habit, and albeit almost certainly a psychological effect, I take great strength from an oversized bowl of porridge on game day, swiftly followed up by a banana.

What’s your highlight of the season so far?

My highlight of the season would have to be the last 16 fixture of the cup against Northumbria 2nd XIII. Underdogs on the way in, the Blues fi red out of the blocks taking a deserved 20-4 lead into the break, seemingly in control. A lapse in concentration however saw a delayed comeback from the northern side. Ominous signs afoot for the aspirations of an Oxford cup run, the Blues rallied together with an unmatched resilience that had us see the game out in a thrilling fashion with only one score to separate both sides. Edging a more experienced side in a gritty performance made the victory all the more sweet and one that I certainly won’t forget for a long time.

Why do you play rugby league, and why should prospective players get involved?

I was drawn to the club by what I believe is an unparalleled sense of brotherhood amongst the players—everyone trains and attends socials together, which builds a better togetherness and sees more effective player improvement across the course of the season. All teams are as accessible to a newcomer as they are to the veterans of the club so the only limit to individual achievement is the amount of work you’re willing to put in. The ‘one club’ mentality of OURLFC is certainly the biggest draw for any prospective players looking to try their hand at a new sport.

If you could sum up Rugby League in three words, what would they be?

Exciting, punishing and rewarding.

 

Karl Frey interviews Chris Liang, Pembroke captain of boats

Did you row before you came to Oxford? What makes you so passionate about the sport?

Nope—started out as an ex-novice, and not a very good one at that. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better but that’s for everyone else to judge! The squad spirit definitely helps with enjoying the sports: the simple things like all eight guys training together in the boathouse then going out for a crew meal really make the early morning and the late evenings worth it. PCBC M1 was headship at Torpids last year.

How does this years first men’s boat differ from last year’s? Do you back the team to win again?

There have been a couple of changes in personnel to our M1 boat, but if anything the boat has gone from strength to strength in recent times. Our fitness has improved massively and we’re making some serious technical gains on the water. We’ve recently won medals at Henley fours and eights with some astounding times, and the crew has really come together this year.

What other boats in PCBC have good chances to do well at Torpids?

M2 are doing extremely well despite an almost complete overhaul of last year’s legendary crew. We definitely stand a fighting chance against everyone else’s M1 crews. M3 and M4 look in good shape to qualify this year following disappointing results last year, so they’ll be looking to put those memories to bed. On the women’s side, W1 are in a good position to challenge for Torpids, sitting at third on the river. W2 have a really strong crew this year, so blades isn’t out of the question, but we’ll take that one step at a time. W3 also have a really good crew, and W4 are coming along quite nicely, so those two crews should be able to qualify along with M3 and M4.

What has the team done in preparation for Seventh week?

Train, and train hard. Not giving anything else away though—can’t let the opposition know.

Who is the scariest cox you have witnessed in your time at Pembroke?

Not actually experienced any scary coxes as of yet. I hope I never have to.

What is the hardest part about being a boat club captain?

Sometimes you can end up spending days doing admin which really messes up your week. I haven’t done any work in the last 3 days. It’s less the actual admin itself, but more the unexpectedness of when it’ll turn up – you can find yourself

Who in the team has the best/worst banter?

Best: loudest jokers are probably Carl Gergs and Khalid Mohsen, but there are some sly ones out there like Andy Saul who are more than capable of holding their own. Kieran Wachsmuth doesn’t have the worst banter, but some of his chat is truly horrific. Sorry mate. Rowers need a lot of food to complement their many hours of training.

Who in the team has the greatest calorie intake?

Willem de Bruijn. He calls four pints of whole milk, a large triangle of brie, a pack of Babybels and a meal deal “a light snack”. I watched him eat all of it in 20 minutes. It was disgusting. What is your favourite cuisine? Steak. What’s your favorite song at the moment? Uptown Funk. Always the one that gets M2 going on the ergs.

Rowing chat. Yes or no?

Yes. #RIPRowchat

“Young, classy and capable of mischief”

Jacob Greenhouse
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“Young, classy and capable of mischief”

Consortium Novum is not a new name on the Oxford music scene and after their successful production of Cosi Fan Tutti last year, it was no surprise that their production of The Marriage of Figaro sold out on all three nights in the New College Antichapel. The producers made good use of the space available, balancing the demand for seating with a full orchestra and a stage. The minimalist layout worked well with the space, a tall black cuboid in the middle acting as various props. Moreover, the clever staging of the opera as a modern office space made it more relatable to a modern audience. Through a few small changes to the 1930s translation, the script dealt with new issues such as feminism and class divide.

It was clear from the first aria that the director’s choice to pair Elspeth Piggot (Susannah) and George Robarts (Figaro) together was an excellent decision, their witty and often comic double act working well to reveal a couple young, classy, and capable of mischief . The high standard of music never faltered throughout the performance, an especially impressive feat with a cast of mainly undergraduates. Furthermore, the orchestra provided a strong accompaniment, always in time with the singers (a rarity in student productions!) with William Fox doing a fine job of conducting.

There is also something to be said for the excellent costume designs. The upturned collar and casual chinos of Basilio (Alexander Gebhard) contributed to the slimy nature of the character. Director Liz Jones’ ability to weave in clever nuances such as splitting the stage into good and evil characters during various important plot points kept the audience constantly engaged with their heads forever rotating side to side. This, combined with a modern comedic twist, made the entire performance particularly enjoyable, cementing Consortium Novum as one of Oxford Universities’ finest companies.

A word from the stalls

Miriam Nemmaoui
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A word from the stalls

What were you expecting from this production?

A musical with a Russian flavour. A gifted cast of student musicians and actors. Something that would take me back to my student days.

Has it delivered?

Enthusiastically!

Highlight of the production?

The Russian song and dance were amazing, and the song ‘That Is What’s Expected from a Woman’.

Describe the production in 3 words.

Enjoyable night out!

What would you change?

More passion was needed in some of the dancing pieces.

Fittest cast member?

The guy playing the old man was adorable (Matthew Jackson).

Marks out of 10?

A solid 8.

Sixth week news summary

Cherwell Broadcasting
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Sixth week news summary

 

University responds as Iffley Open House claim former power station

John Maier
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University responds as Iffley Open House claim former power station

Oxford University has said it hopes to obtain a possession order on the former power station in Osney “as soon as possible”, due to safety concerns after the Iffley Open House (IOH) project moved into the building on Sunday.

Around 20 homeless people, accompanied by ten volunteers, claimed squatter’s rights on the property upon their arrival, following their eviction from the Volkswagen garage owned by Wadham College in which they had been living.

The group stated that they wanted to “open up a dialogue” with the Said Business School, which, according to reports, is seeking to develop the former power station. The building was previously part of the Physics Faculty at Oxford, and has been described by the group as having been left “unutilized” during the seven years for which it has been derelict.

In a statement given yesterday the University of Oxford said: “The Old Power Station is used to store thousands of items from the collections of the Museum of the History of Science and the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a project team has been working on these collections in a separate part of the building.

“For some time we have prevented our staff from entering the part of the building which has been occupied by Iffley Open House because of a number of safety concerns, including the risk of falling masonry.

“We will therefore be seeking an interim possession order as soon as possible, out of concern for the safety of the members of Iffley Open House.

“We are very sympathetic to the plight of these homeless people who need somewhere safe to live and we will continue to speak to their representatives about how to resolve the situation.”

In a press release IOH said they hoped “to stay for two months, and work with local residents to create a safe space which is just as successful as the original Iffley Open House”.

IOH squatters were given notice from Wadham two weeks ago to the effect that they would have to leave the old VW garage owned by the college. This notice came despite the group’s claim that in January the leaseholders of the ground floor of the building, the Mid-Counties Co-Operative, had negotiated a lease to allow the squatters to stay until 10 April.

Sandra Phillips, an IOH volunteer, said: “Ultimately, this is about providing housing for those who need it most – and we truly believe that the residents of Oxford believe in this cause as much as we do”

 

Life Divided: drinking societies

Jamie Onslow and Emma Leech
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Life Divided: drinking societies

For (Jamie Onslow):

Drinking societies sporadically feature in the national press as stories emerge of students committing variously offensive acts in the name of tradition. Ronald Coyne’s recent display of burning a fifty pound note in front of a homeless man comes straight out of the national anthology of horrible things that rich children can do for their own amusement.

Similar stories concerning the Bullingdon Club, perhaps the most famous drinking society in the world, also proliferate. What most people don’t realise is that the club doesn’t actually exist. The photos of David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson are, of course, unsatisfactory. After all, it is now common knowledge that these men do not exist either; they were invented by Russians as fake news to utterly destroy any faith in the British political system.

The reality of student drinking societies however is somewhat different to the horror stories. As a proud member of thirty three top-secret drinking societies, I am eager to share this rewarding side to student life.

Every Tuesday sees me don my handmade shrimp costume to attend the weekly gathering of the Crustacean Society. We gather at various rowing lakes, and drink huge amounts of pond water, extracting nutrients using our bristly setose legs as a sort of sieve.

The last Friday of every term is traditionally reserved for the Carbonated Drinks Drinking Society. Members are distinguished by their large and colourful foil hats, modelled after those of the legendary San Pellegrino soft drinks, and the gatherings are held in the President’s fridge freezer.

The highlight of my year, however, is the annual Piers Morgan Ball. Shady-looking individuals sell contraband Piers Morgan memorabilia from a small pavilion, and the evening ends with the appearance of the man himself. In an act of unparalleled debauchery, a brave young piglet is invited to insert itself into the former Mirror editor’s vile mouth, thus concluding the Oxford year in high style.

Against (Emma Leech):

To the untrained eye they might be hard to spot, but they’re always there. Lurking in smoking areas in garishly loud blazers or hiring out rooms to discuss port & privilege. You might see a photo of people at an unspecified event looking thoroughly high on life. Suddenly, they become glaringly obvious and, for secret societies, they do like to tell you about it.

If you study at Oxford and haven’t watched The Riot Club then don’t. I watched it during one vacation and it nearly took a team of wild horses to drag me back here. Although the violence and debauchery may well be exaggerated—let’s all take a moment to pray that it is—the figures represented are hauntingly familiar.

Sam Claflin’s character is somewhat akin to that boy who brings crystal glasses to pre-drinks (although he is resoundingly better looking), and Douglas Booth reminds you of that someone who you have definitely seen drunkenly breaking into college rooms to trash them, egged on by his signet ring wielding friends.

It seems to me, an unworthy outsider, that the reality just a bit tragic. Inviting girls to follow you around silently is so nineteenth century it’s almost laughable, if you can swallow down the vomit of repulsion. Similarly, initiations remind me of when, in primary school, we made one girl do the playground obstacle course in order to be our friend. We were eight.

People regularly insist that drinking societies are simply harmless fun, but if that’s simply the case then surely I could just draw a logo with Sharpie on some T-shirts and give my squad a name and it would be much the same thing?

Perhaps I sound slightly bitter about the fact that I haven’t been considered for one of these prestigious positions—investigations are still underway to find out whether this is due to my gender or bank balance. But, my grandma has a sideboard full of ‘special’ cutlery, and she doesn’t have to drink piss to earn the right to use it.

No, I would not like to be your pub golf caddy, and, no, I won’t be impressed by your naked lap of the quad. I’m sorry

Single of the week: Lana Del Rey’s ‘Love’

Natalia Bus
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Single of the week: Lana Del Rey’s ‘Love’

“Look at you kids with your vintage music” croons Lana Del Rey’s gentle voice over a muted intro. The queen of wistful ballads and dark instrumentals is back with a track stunning in its simplicity.

With every release Lana reiterates that she is wise beyond her years and this one is no different, as she paints a picture dripping with nostalgia for the days of a reckless youth. She simultaneously positions herself, however, both as detached and in the midst of it all, making for a much more interesting perspective.

Tinged with a sadness that permeates through most of her work, the single is carried entirely by her voice—it brightens and ascends in sync with the fluctuating patterns of the melody.

A handful of posters appearing around the world the day before release merely added to the mystery and allure of an artist who has become so much more than the “gangster Nancy Sinatra”.

Del Rey is an icon of love and loss in an increasingly more superficial and meaningless pop industry and this new release is a promising taste of what is to come.

Blind Date: John and Bessie

Cherwell Life
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Blind Date: John and Bessie

John Maier (Second year, PPE, Balliol)

Bessie looked shorter in her photos, much shorter. This made for a deeply disconcerting start to the evening.

She tried to sidestep all the initial awkwardness by giving me a stern dressing down—and not in a good way—lecturing me with her school mistress’s eyes about my lateness and my appearance. In particular, she seemed quite bemused by my glasses, which she insisted were not real, and proceeded to rip from my face, suggesting a rather over-literal understanding of what makes the date blind. I interpreted this as an act of violence, and hid behind my menu.

This aside, Bessie proved arresting company, commenting at regular intervals about how well the date was going, as if providing director’s commentary on the evening. Fully absorbed in her self-appointed role as director of our date, she also acquired a rather frustrating habit of flouncing away from our table, often cutting me off mid sent-

Out of 10? 2

Looks? Subjective

Personality? Mostly present

2nd date? I don’t see why not

 

Bessie Sorsby (Second year, French, Jesus)

John looked taller in his photos, and less remorseful. Clearly flustered by his own tardiness, his lengthy apology was accompanied by a sequence of rather erratic hand gestures. All the bartenders within a metre radius of us clenched their glasses a little tighter, looking at me with a mixture of alarm and sympathy.

Yet, post this cyclone pantomime, we said hello in an ordinary fashion. My first impression of John was one of great skepticism; I quickly realised that he was the kind of person who chooses to wear see-through glasses. Not the actually useful sight-enhancing ones, but those with frames made from the same colourless plastic of disposable cutlery, the kind you find at weddings. Eye contact proved rather intense, as the lenses make his eyes resemble those of a bird of prey with vision eight times sharper then humans.

Saying that, John’s effervescent personality, wit and charm meant time flew by.

Out of 10? 3

Looks? Like wedding cutlery

Personality? Better than soggy Weetabix

2nd date? Dubious

The female artist: speaking truth to power

Tilly Nevin
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The female artist: speaking truth to power

Last week I went to the Ashmolean to see the exhibition Degas to Picasso: Creating Modernism in France, from 1800 to the mid-twentieth century. There was one mention of a female painter, Berthe Morisot, and an almost overwhelming focus on the female body. The female form was undeniably a preoccupation for the Impressionists and for the Picasso. But the exhibition made me wonder, as I do after seeing most exhibitions, why is art history still overwhelmingly about white male artists and their concerns? Where was even a passing reference to a painting by and not of a woman?

The Ecole des Beaux-Arts didn’t admit women in until 1897. But this didn’t mean that they had no impact on the creation of ‘Modernism’. The exhibition reminded me of the Guerrilla Girls poster, made in 1989, which reads “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5 per cent of artists in the Modern Art sections are women but 85 per cent are nudes of them.” The statistic might have changed but only infinitesimally: in 2011 the National Gallery held 2,300 works of art, eleven of which were made by women.

Guerrilla Girls rephrased the question ‘why haven’t there been more great women artists in Western history?’ as ‘why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western history?’. I still ask myself that question—and it’s not only of Western history. Most people have heard of Michelangelo but who knows anything about Sonfonisba Anguissola? Who has read about Lygia Pape or Mary Cassatt?

The majority of art graduates are female but that is in no way reflected by the presence of female artists in galleries. It also becomes more specific than just gender: the art world still patronises women who have children, for example. Female art museum directors earn less than their male counterparts and although they run 42.6 per cent of museums in the US, these are most usually the ones with smaller budgets.

A painting by Georgia O’Keeffe—known, incidentally, as ‘the mother of American modernism’—entitled ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1’ (1932) sold for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014, breaking the record for the most expensive art work by a female artist ever sold. The most expensive art work by a male artist ever sold was over double that price.

Female art is worth less, not just economically, but culturally. It’s not important enough to devote solo exhibitions to, and is often not even entrusted to female hands. Carmen Herrera wasn’t seen as comparable to Ellsworth Kelly or Barnett Newman when she was painting as part of the US School. The work of Plautilla Nelli has never been comparable to Caravaggio’s.

The art world seems to be changing: the Uffizi Gallery is exhibiting Nelli’s work in a solo exhibition this year, as well as showing Maria Lassnig in the Pitti Palace from March. The Prado in Madrid is for the first time holding a solo show for a female artist, Clara Peeters, this year. Suddenly, maybe, you could dare to think that a painting by a female is worth as much as a male’s.

In 2015 the Tate Modern held three solo exhibitions by women: Sonia Delaunay, Agnes Martin and Marlene Dumas. Somehow, I managed to see them all. The bold black print announcing their names on the walls of the gallery and the vibrancy of Delaunay’s paintings held infinite promise. Yet artists such as Eileen Cooper and Phoebe Boswell (speaking on Radio 4 this week) still stress the importance of all-female or all-female and all-black exhibitions, emphasising the importance of spaces in which art can be valued for its own sake, and not be reduced by the fact that it wasn’t painted by a man.

Some of my favourite artists just happen to be female: Frida Kahlo, Cornelia Parker, Rose Wylie, Louise Bourgeois, Sonia Delauney, Zarina Bhimji, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye, for example. Their work is not less worthy of gallery space, but should be seen as having inestimable value, as they do for me. “Museums in general mirror the power structures in our society, structures that in the arts for example privilege the history of white men’s achievements”, argues Susan Fisher Sterling: they act as microcosms for our divided society. But they are also structures that continually show art that speaks truth to power, that create new spaces for the unsaid, the forgotten, the overlooked.

They should question the narratives we have been taught: the narrative that women can’t create art that holds any value next to the art of a man, the narrative that women weren’t there while the world was changing, that they had no role to play in its transformation.

Shedding light on the star of cell biology

Calum Stephenson
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Shedding light on the star of cell biology

In the twilight depths off the west coast of North America lives a small and graceful jellyfish floating apparently aimlessly through the void. Who would have known that this humble jelly—Aequorea victoria—was set to revolutionise cellular biology in the latter half of the twentieth century. Along the rim of the jellyfish’s bell (the propulsive body) lies a ring of light-emitting organs which, in the blackness, produce an electric green glow that wouldn’t be out place in a Ghostbusters film. This luminescence can be attributed to a chemical mechanism based around the molecule known as the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), synthesised by the jellyfish. Earning those involved in its discovery the Nobel Prize in 2008, GFP has been the key to unlocking the potential of biological imaging over the last 25 years.

The light organ houses two molecules essential for the light reaction: aequorin and GFP, working in conjunction. By catalyzing the degradation of the protein luciferin, aequorin causes blue light to be released. Rather than emitting this blue light, the photons are instead used an as energy source to activate the fluorescence of GFP. GFP has an excitation peak at the wavelengths of 395 nm and 475 nm—corresponding to blue and UV light. This means that it will most efficiency absorb light in this range of the spectrum. Absorbing this light leaves GFP in an unstable state with ‘too much’ energy, being described as excited. Emission of green light at the wavelength of 508 nm, energetically lower than that it absorbed, returns it to its stable state.

Green light is rare in the ocean depths, meaning that an organism that can luminesce in such a way will be more obvious in its surroundings, allowing it to attract prey and confuse predators. But how is this relevant to cell biology in the laboratory? In 1992, American scientist Douglas Prasher sequenced and cloned the wild-type GFP gene. Over the following few years GFP became the darling of molecular genetics, a result of our ability to fuse the gene onto the beginning or the end of any other gene in any organism.

If inserted into an embryo, every cell in the body can inherit the GFP tagged protein. When the resulting organism is exposed to UV light it then glows green. This allows scientists to track both the distribution and the concentration of the protein throughout individual cells or through the organism as a whole, depending on which protein is tagged with GFP. We can see the trafficking of the proteins through the cell in real time, highlighting a host of cellular processes from protein packaging to the structure of the nuclear membrane.

Over the course of its history GFP has been constantly engineered and modified, transforming it into an increasingly more effective and versatile tool. A whole spectrum of different colours of fluorescent proteins have now been engineered. By using a red-producing variant of GFP, scientists have found success in diagnosing cancer since, due to its longer wavelength, red light can travel further through intervening tissue.

On a grander scale, one couldn’t discuss GFP without bringing up the glow-in the dark rats, cats, rabbits, pigs, monkeys…you name it. Due to its obvious but relatively benign nature, GFP serves as one of the earliest genes used when trialling an organism with genetic modification, as a proof of the technology before more complex manipulation is attempted, with wide implications especially within medicine. We will soon reach the point where we can easily extract vaccines from cow’s milk, and produce disease resistant pigs.

The story of a simple jellyfish that has gone onto transform the very nature of molecular biology and medicine is a testament to the resourcefulness of science and humanity as a whole. It proves that the most useful of tools can have the most unlikely of origins, and should serve as a needed reality check. With every extinction, we say goodbye to another jewel in the biological crown, the vast wealth of unique genetic information that the organism possessed vanishing often forever. Who knows how many ‘GFP’s’ we’ve already lost.

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