Wake Up Maggie, I Think I've Got Something to Say to You

(C) Agence France-Presse

Originally I was going to write back in April about Margaret Thatcher on account of her recent cessation of life, but the saturation of media coverage covered most of what could be said. I put the post back to November and planned to use some of the non-domestic events of her premiership as jumping off points for some discussion. That schedule slipped as per the pattern of neglecting to write when work is easy, so here I am in the midst of the Christmas workload (you know, that company that even Thatcher wouldn't privatise) writing two posts back to back. Fortuitously (and this is going to sound terrible), Nelson Mandela died last week. Perhaps this is a good time to follow on from my comparison of Zimbabwe and South Africa, Mugabe and Mandela.

The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Orbiting Your Living Room, Cashing in The Bill of Rights

Prism Demo [...], ubiquit23, 2013

Batman: Beautiful, isn't it?
Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
Lucius Fox: At what cost?
Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
- The Dark Knight, 2008

But Then Munitions Rain and We're The Epicentre

People. Are. Dying!

Perseid Meteor Seen From Space, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, 2011

For the most part I ignore Valentine's Day, though there was that one time I threw darts in lovers' eyes. I had in fact been planning to write something for said date, but at the New Year I decided to pursue a course of action that might not result in it being like every other year. Anyway, I was enjoying my day off work on the 15th by sleeping into the afternoon and being slightly disappointed by the previous day's apparent lack of progress. I eventually got up and refreshed the BBC News page before heading to the shop. I thought it had finally happened. I thought the opening of Rendezvous with Rama had come true sixty four years and 47° longitude early. In hindsight that would probably have been top story rather than the horse-meat scandal. Had the circumstances been different, Chelyabinsk could have been a real turning point. Time, size, mass, angle, speed - particular variations could have seen the city replaced with a crater. The thing about Earth is that it's mostly water, so even passing over a major population area makes it a landmark event. In a world that retroactively edits out the Twin Towers from films released in the quarter of a century before 2001, how often do you think Deep Impact or Armageddon would ever be broadcast again?

The Glass Road

DUNLOP Corner Le mans Sarthe, julien.reboulet, 2011

It's been years since I watched Formula One. I stumbled across it at the age of nine one Sunday morning and saw Martin Brundle do a barrel-roll at the start of the 1996 Australian Grand Prix. From then on I tuned in every race weekend supporting Damon Hill's championship run against the evil Darth Vader Michael Schumacher, even getting up at 5am for final race in Japan. I stayed with the sport through to about 2002 when my interest waned concurrent with Schumacher's domination. Contrast that with my favourite season of 1999 when Schumacher was absent with injury for several months and it looked like (almost) anyone could win - even the scrappy underdogs, Jordan. I was rooting for Heinz-Harald Frentzen that year. The era was also the last days of the privateer teams before they were all seemingly bought up by factory teams, or at least their grid spots were to avoid the costly registration process with the FIA (hence, Tyrrell became BAR became Honda became Brawn GP became Mercedes GP within the space of twelve years). Of the private teams, only McLaren and Williams have survived largely because Mercedes and BMW, respectively, turned them into semi-factory teams in the recent past. Interestingly, 1999 was also the year of the first Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit designed by one Herman Tilke.

Panic (Hang the DJ)

But the waters... receded

Sextant (NOAA), Public Domain

Predictions of the end-times are likely as old as creation myths as likely as old as history itself. The invention of cinema enabled the depiction of the ultimate dramatic scenario and so it began. The disaster movie as a genre emerged in the seventies (Towering Inferno, et al) as classically narrative compared to their modern antecedents - almost all stories are of characters facing an obstacle they must overcome; in the above case a fire in a skyscraper. They boasted highly popular actors in the lead roles which, like any other film of the era, drew audiences. After Jurassic Park demonstrated the sky was the limit with computer generated imagery the floodgates opened (a metaphor that could actually make an interesting post-modern disaster film about the effect of CGI on film-making). Now there was nothing that could not be depicted. A lot of the modern disaster films since the mid 90s can be attributed to one Roland Emmerich and his little known 1996 film Independence Day. Inevitably someone will chime in with the old adage about how any critique of 'low-brow' movies is a comment on how the critic cannot turn their brain off and just enjoy it. I enjoy Independence Day and I happen to own The Day After Tomorrow (which I last watched on October 30th) despite its ludicrous implausibility. I even have a Steven Seagal movie (Under Siege 2) amongst a home video collection that includes a number of foreign language films, but the film 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich) is just bad. Not enjoyably bad... and you already know why I'd bring that up three years after release.

As Heaven is Wide / Of One Skin

Utrecht Iconoclasm, 2003, Arktos

I haven't written about theology in some time. When I started this blog theological argument was something I was quite driven by. In fact, argument of any kind appealed to me when I was eighteen. I was interested in revolution but not so much the meaning of the revolution. My series of political essays over the past two years has attempted to explain how my ideas have matured and evolved, but the same is also true of my thoughts on theology. This is not coincidental as religion has historically been substantially entwined with politics - consider that the House of Lords is divided between secular and spiritual peers. My opposition to the emergence of elites from intermediary positions is as true of politicians as it is of the clergy. Just as I've come to develop an idea of political self-representation I find a parallel in the concept of the universal priesthood.

It's No Game

Beijing 2008 sponsors @ April 2007, xiaming

Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

-Juvenal, Satire X

I think it's about six years since I ditched television and I've even stopped watching the few shows that I used to keep up with by streaming or downloading (South Park, Top Gear, et al), so surely I needn't say I haven't watched the Olympics or the Paralympics. I'm aware that under new laws such action is now classed as treason (and you're not allowed to link to the IOC if you have critical words to say), but Benedict Arnold becomes a hero when you cross the right border. When the Arab Spring hit some of the Gulf States the monarchic governments decreed more bread for the people, not unlike Ceaușescu's ad-libbing mere days before his execution, but aren't they forgetting the circuses?

Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

Playstation 2 Collection, PseudoGil, 2007

When the PlayStation 2 was launched I had to wait a year before my parents could afford one for my birthday, and even then I had to go without a Christmas present that year because it was that expensive (around £250). Flash forward seven years and the old console had succumbed to drive failure. My parents bought me a replacement slim PS2 which cost only £80. With the release of the PS3 in 2006 I was hoping to follow a few series into the next generation: Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, et al. As always, the launch price was ridiculously expensive and none of the launch titles interested me, so I waited and saved - every year I put my Christmas tips into my 'PS3 fund' and every year there's a new reason not to buy one.

By last Christmas I made enough to afford one, not due to lack of tips over three seasons, but because the price has barely moved. At the time of writing it appears the cheapest model has finally dropped under £200. I imagine that won't last as Sony will employ the same trick they've been using for five years - halt production, swap out the hard drives for larger ones, restart production and slap the old price tag on them. Given how bloody long it has taken for the price point to decrease, adjusted for half a decade's inflation it probably hasn't at all.

Lose Control

Star Wars Collection, Brian Hathcock, 2007

When I was a child in the early 90s, Star Wars seemed to have faded from view. It was actually Muppet Babies that introduced me to it, though I had no idea at the time what it was they were parodying. It wasn't until one of my uncles who grew up with Star Wars got hold of a widescreen VHS of A New Hope that my brother and I were properly presented with the phenomenon. A year or two later the Special Editions were in cinemas and I recall a children's programme looking at the digital insertion of Jabba the Hutt into Episode IV. At the time I thought this was a good thing, bringing it closer to what was intended but couldn't be technologically achieved in 1976. If what we got was a compromised realisation of Lucas' vision then how could we not welcome improvement? But the changes kept coming, and not just the little visual and audio retouches that go unnoticed. Fans of a certain calibre are acutely aware of all the alterations that Lucas has made over the years, and they will certainly be aware of the incongruous modification to Return of the Jedi that will be imposed with the forthcoming Blu-Ray® release.

Great Times in Commotion

9/11 Flipbook, scott_bl8ke, 2011

When I was in Primary 7 we had to spend Wednesday afternoon doing drama. At one point this neatly crossed over with our study of the Second World War - in groups of three we had pretend it was 1939 and we had just heard Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war against Germany. I simply couldn't act as if I was shocked by the start of the war. It meant nothing to me and there was nothing in my own living memory at the age of 11 that came anywhere near that event that I could draw upon. To me, the war was documentaries looking back half a century and old Sunday afternoon films about heroic adventures (it hadn't yet been fully abused and commercialised by first person shooters) which was not the context the people of the real 1939 were living in. That drama class is over half my lifetime ago, so I can't remember what response I acted if any.

London's Burning With Boredom Now / This is England

London riots, Sean MacEntee, August 2011

London's Burning is an exaggeration, of course, but it seems everyone's invoking The Clash these days. So what's happening on the streets down South? Very likely the same thing that happened in France six years ago. It would be easier just to list the problems that exist: mutual hostility between police and youth, economic disparity, high unemployment, political neglect, racism. In return, at provocation the local adolescents take to the streets, burning everything in sight. Sounds a lot like the death of the social contract, but that's really been the case since the 1970s and the destruction of the post-war compromise.

Don't Steal Our Sun / The Past Inside The Present

under this clock..., paloetic, 2010

Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide.
-Mark Twain

For a few years in school I refused to set my watch according to Daylight Savings. The very idea of gaining and losing an hour each year was absurd. Noon is noon - the point of day when the Sun is directly overhead. Of course this is never actually the case in most places even within a perfect time zone system, never mind the absolute mess that passes for a system in practice, but it's accurate enough for common use. If DST irritates me (and it is as I write this at 1am 2am) then you can imagine what I think of the Daylight Savings Bil 2010.

The Times They Are...

The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular, 1995

...a-becoming quite different. One of the advantages of a long running television series is having the time to fully explore and develop the characters. One of the disadvantages of a popular long running television series is that it always passes its peak. Actually, that's a subjective call on my part and that of vocal fans. Objectively, a long running show changes.

The generally agreed point at which The Simpsons faltered lies between Seasons 9 and 10 (roughly 1998). By that measure the show, now in its twenty-second season, has been poorly-written for over half its existence. The common argument against criticism of the latter seasons is that viewers have become overly-familiar with the early episodes through heavy syndication/repeats. As the "bad" now outnumber the golden age ones, that can no longer be true. They can still put out what are good episodes, but they're thin on the ground. The decline must be borne from a change within the writing staff as it is the tone of the episodes that together define the series. In particular, certain writers may not have been familiar with the tone or the show at all.

Music is Math

Broken Record, Auntie P, 2005

Like a broken record [industry], people are constantly portending the death of the album. In an age when every released track is a potential chart entry the album is an obsolete collection of songs.

Originally the album was a collection of physical media containing a lengthy coherent piece. The limited length of a single record necessitated that something like Beethoven's Ninth be split across many records bound together like photographs in a photo album. With increasing storage and a commercial and cultural shift in the post-war era toward self-contained songs, the album came to be a compilation of a group's output.

That Was Then But This Is Now

A Complex Fractal Image, Public Domain

When I was in school I used to watch the BBC's Horizon, back when entertainment hadn't yet cross-bred with factual programming. Cosmology really interested me and I proceeded to loan A Brief History of Time from the school library. One thing that really irritated me was the way Hawking seemed to go out of his way to leave space for a god. Now, with his new book, he has closed the door on that - "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".

All Together Now

Alex Song: Cameroon 2010, tsevis, 2009

Before the South Africa finals, I hadn't watched any football since the 2006 World Cup. Somehow I managed to completely miss Euro 2008. As Scotland failed to qualify as usual, I wasn't hindered by great expectations, dreams of glory or any other kind of emotional high. Unlike England. Despite thirty-two teams competing in the 2010 tournament; the one we have to hear about again and again is of course, that team that won it once a very long time ago. Any time England qualifies for the World Cup the national media (being mostly based South of the border) will drop 1966 into every possible topic or story. Only the Welsh and maybe Northern Ireland could also understand how irritating that is. Though only one thing could be more annoying that having to hear about a missed penalty for a week - England winning.

Persuading You That Monochrome is Dayglo

NOPE, Tom Edwards, 2010

There is now a new government in Westminster, not that I can tell. I still find myself thinking Blair is Prime Minister and Bush is President. The climactic shift that these brief windows of participatory indirect democracy (elections) are supposed to produce never arise. Round we go, like a zoetrope: Labour in power, Conservatives in power; Democrats in power, Republicans in power. The illusion of movement. It's hypnotic.

I hate to be the cynic, but I guarantee the 'new politics' will come to remind you of the old politics. How many months was it before fresh-faced Tony was caught accepting money from F1 autocrat Bernie Ecclestone? I was ten at the time and I can remember hearing how the Labour landslide was the rebuke of Tory sleaze. Remember the icons of the mid nineties meeting Blair at No. 10? How many of them were in sight of Downing Street ten years later? Politicians have been heralding change more times than the boy who cried wolf, and yet even I was swept along by Obamamania.

I Wanted to Rub the Human Face in its Own Vomit

Fall of the Damned into Hell

The de rigueur moral outrage is predictable and contemptible. I ask, why is it we send people to prison? People out there consciously debase justice to revenge. Driven by tabloids with their head-on-pike photoshopped front page graphics. Vanguard of morality, continued on page 3 with tits. The eternal shreiking victims are never able to accept that anyone can reform. Did he paint a picture of the rape scene? They will never accept anything less than the death penalty because they cannot reform themselves. An eye for an eye, and still they'll be calling for a second hanging for a one-man murder.

In Scotland this hysteria typically results in yet another outcry against the 'not proven' verdict. Their motivation for its removal has nothing to do with fixing the legal system, but everything to do with gaining closure - regardless of who it's exacted on. Abandon your pretensions of morality. You're really not much better than they are. In the end, there will only be the guilty verdict.

[172]

He'll Build A Glass Asylum

Back in January I was originally going to write about Tommy Sheridan hitting rock bottom and appearing on prolefeed-contest "Celebrity" Big Brother. Instead the bilge-circus centred around a non-entity has enraged me. I'll refrain from mentioning who this non-entity is, though it should be obvious given the saturation of the non-story.

Pete Standing Alone

Sergeant Farrell's Theory, Prij, 2005

Back last May I read the story about an uncontacted tribe in Brazil. The picture of their show of force against the low flying plane still makes me laugh. How can they not know what a plane is?

Throughout the Amazon and New Guinea, isolated tribes are blissfully unaware of humanity-at-large. There are some tribes which reject continued-contact with the outside world, which is understandable since up to 90% of the Americas were killed off after 1492. Many are trying to stave off ethnocide and protect their culture from the inevitable assimilation that will occur.