Strange News From The Plankton

Redundancy blues

2012-01-31T12:57:00.000Z

As of about two weeks ago, our institute has been staring down the barrel of some mandatory staff cuts. We've been expecting these for the better part of three years - most, in fact, of the time that I've been formally employed on the "government" side of things. But the scale of the cuts are larger than I think most of us expected (and all of those who I've spoken with). Of approximately 150 staff, around 35 are expected to be lost, around about one quarter.

The actual staff lost will be determined through a ranking exercise that will see about 60 staff (40% of the total) offered redundancy, with a view to reaching the desired target of 35 without resorting to compulsory redundancy. Which seems a reasonably sensible strategy except for certain provisions in the terms of voluntary/compulsory redundancy that differ between staff hired at different times. After about 1998, staff have been hired on terms that significantly favour the acceptance of voluntary redundancy over sitting it out and being made compulsorily redundant. So those staff, myself included, that were recruited "more recently" have something of an incentive to jump before being pushed.

Whether I'm one of those caught up in the downsizing (a euphemism I've actually yet to hear used in this specific context) is yet to be clear. The ranking criteria emphasise quantitative metrics such as papers, grants and the h-index, which, on the face of it, are important aspects of the modern scientist's life. But there are subjective elements to the weighting, and there may be further fudge factors yet to reveal themselves. While my publication record is far from stellar, I think that I do OK, more so in recent years than when I was slogging it out as a post-doc programmer. My grant record, however, is bad - though in part this stems from me being pointed in other directions.

Overall, with about 40% of staff getting an invitation to consider an alternative career, and with a strong impetus to accept said invitation should it be presented to me, I'm very far from feeling safe. Either way, life in my institute is going to look and feel very different in a few months time. Those who survive seem liable to be "gifted" new tasks whose previous "owners" are no longer around. So I'll either be busy looking for a new career (and it will be a career - niches for oceanographers are too thin on the ground), or busy picking up the pieces of tasks left incomplete by the purge.

Hence the blues.

Twin Peaks twenty years on

2012-01-29T18:28:00.002Z

Alarmingly, it's more than 20 years since David Lynch's acclaimed foray from the big screen onto television, Twin Peaks. Until then, the latter was easily the more conventional of the two media, down, in part, to its generally broader audiences and its significantly greater content restrictions. But Lynch clearly failed to read the memo that explained all of this when he created his Pacific Northwest-set surrealist-horror-comedy-drama.

Instead, he blended conventional elements - such as murder mystery and folksy Americana - with those less familiar to television audiences - such as dream interpretation and supernatural horror. And all, unpredictably, to great success, both critically and commercially. While it didn't attain quite the hold on popular imagination of, say, Who shot J.R.?, the murder of Laura Palmer became a massive mainstream phenomenon. And even after Twin Peaks ignominiously left television screens in 1991 (only to further disappoint cinema screens in 1992), its themes and style cast a long shadow over subsequent television series. For example, Northern Exposure amped up its quirky folksy elements, while The X-Files both played on its horrific aspects and even borrowed its central motif of a heroic, if unconventional, FBI agent.

After watching the more recent - and certainly more limp - series Carnivàle, which both plays on similar supernatural aspects and even borrows the Man from Another Place, we reflected on how, even now, Twin Peaks is still leaving its mark. Which led, seamlessly, to a glaringly obvious birthday present purchase when C's birthday rolled around last year. So, though it has remained emblematic in our memories over the past 20 years, how does Twin Peaks stand up to a second viewing?

The short answer is "yes". Though I've praised it above, going in I was concerned that its then-originality might since have translated to now-overfamiliarity, and that its unusual blend of genres would now seem positively stale given that a whole slew of subsequent shows have followed in its wake. But - with a few caveats - I think we both really enjoyed our second visit [*] to Twin Peaks, and I reckon that it still holds up despite the years.

In part, this is simply because there's never been anything quite like it since. As already mentioned, lots of subsequent series have adopted elements from it, but none - at least, none I've seen - have tried to be quite so ambitiously off-the-wall. Another aspect that still stands out for me is how expansive the cast is and how well-drawn the characters are. Sure, quirkiness is definitely valued above realism, but the principal characters - of which there really is no shortage - are pretty well fleshed out, and all are given time in the limelight. Even sporadic characters like Gordon and, especially, Albert are given enough screen-time to be discernibly more than scenery.

And one shouldn't underplay the central mystery. Though this apparently wasn't quite resolved in quite the way that Lynch and his co-writer Mark Frost originally intended - which is to say not resolved - it's still a satisfying tale. Which is a surprising thing for me to say given that it hinges on the show's strongly supernatural elements - not usually my favoured way to resolve, well, anything. The series does slip a bit coupling this storyline to that of Windom Earle, but I think it gets there by the end - well, what passes for "the end".

One thing I'd sort-of forgotten about, but which seemed much more noticeable on this repeat viewing, is how prevalent and effective the music is. For a TV series, especially one from two decades ago, it's got a great soundtrack, one that wouldn't be out of place in a film. Which, given Lynch's background, isn't too much of a surprise I suppose, but its presence does make the corresponding absence in successor series quite noticeable. It'll definitely be getting rotated back into my iPod listening.

All that said, there are a few places where I think Twin Peaks sags a bit. These were issues even back when the series was originally aired, but - being less "culturally experienced" - I just didn't register them then. For instance, it does, at times, run some fairly incompatible material back-to-back. So we have serious scenes concerning murder juxtaposed with broad (and sometimes flat) comedy scenes with the likes of Andy and Lucy. This comes across as tone-deaf and it tends to weaken the series' darker themes. A lesser flaw is a related juggling of "serious" characters with comic relief ones - which tends to work up to the point where they intersect in scenes. A case in point are the husband-and-wife characters of Pete and Catherine Martell, where the former uncomfortably straddles comic scenes with most characters but serious ones with his wife.

A more serious problem is the obvious one that the series was axed with a stack of plotlines left dangling on cliffhangers. There's no getting passed this, but it's still infuriating - even 20 years on - that we never get to find out the fates of any number of characters imperilled at the close of Season 2. Obviously, the plan was that the series would be picked up for a third season, but Lynch et al. put so many eggs in that basket that one can't help but be let down by the slew of incomplete storylines. More recent series, perhaps cognisant of Twin Peaks' fate (and what it might mean for DVD sales), tend not to leave quite so much at stake when a season ends. Of course, Lynch didn't do himself any favours by singularly failing to make the most of his cinematic follow-up, Fire Walk With Me, pick up the slack. But I'm going to overlook that - though we've got that to watch down the line if we can face it.

Anyhow, once again, it seems possible to "go back" to a classic, and have it still hold up. I am now left slightly deflated by the fact that, 20 years on, Twin Peaks is clearly never going to have a proper ending, but it's still a ride I'd definitely recommend.

[*] As it happens, we had something of an earlier second visit, technically to the setting rather than the series, back in 2002. After attending a conference in Victoria, we spent three weeks driving around Washington and Oregon, arriving in Snoqualmie for what we thought would be a quick tour of the pop cultural sights. But the area was so nice that we wound up spending three or four days in the vicinity. Among other sights, we visited the Salish Lodge - pictured left - which stands in for the Great Northern Hotel in Twin Peaks, and the town of Roslyn which stands in for Northern Exposure's setting, Cicely. Needless to say, there are a considerable number of photographs over at Flickr.

Silence is golden

2012-01-22T08:16:00.000Z

In the lead up to the Oscars, films sometimes inexplicably float to the fore of public consciousness, get into the running and build up a head of steam towards the finish line. There are many deserving examples - and then there is a more select group of wholly undeserving ones (of which, the strangest recent example for me is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a truly terrible film). Of late, the black-and-white, silent picture, The Artist, has been making some impressive running - and lots of friends among critics. But is it among the deserving?

This is an unqualified no-brainer - it totally is. It's simply excellent, both as a loving homage to early Hollywood (or "Hollywoodland", as the film correctly notes), and as an exceptionally enjoyable and well-realised comedy. The homage is brilliantly done, making choice nods to Hollywood clichés - and not just the positive ones - with so many clever "lifts" from early cinema. The details are spot on, with caption cards, framing, the aspect ratio, and even the fonts studiously reproduced. And the makers use all these aspects to perfection in service of a story that's in turns extremely funny and pitch-perfectly melodramatic. And, on top of all this, it has a scene-stealing dog - though it's not the only film this year to have this.

Overall, I'll be delighted if it wins at the Oscars (though, to be fair, we've yet to see what competition it faces). Focusing, as it does, on the cinematic past, it perhaps isn't the most resonant of films, but a film that so completely satisfies on so many other levels would make for a fine winner.

Grade: A (high +3 on the Leeper Scale)

Return to Liberty City

2012-01-21T08:33:00.001Z

After a recent interlude with one of its many imitators, it's time to return to, and drink deeply from, the wellspring of video game criminality, Grand Theft Auto. And no less than a double bill this time: The Lost and Damned (TLAD) and The Ballad of Gay Tony (TBOGT).

Both new "episodes" take the player back to the mean streets of Liberty City, and back to some of the familiar characters and events from the superlative GTA IV. But in both the action shifts sideways to new player characters (PCs) that come from different backgrounds and have different motivations to GTA IV's memorable Niko Bellic. He brought a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant's perspective to the byzantine metropolis, and a hope that "maybe here things will be different", but this time the PCs are a lot more familiar with Liberty City's heights ... and its depths.

In TLAD, the player takes the role of Johnny Klebitz, acting president of the Lost MC, a motorcycle gang with a sideline in drug dealing. Having brokered a truce with a rival motorcycle gang, and gotten the Lost MC onto a solid and safe criminal footing, Johnny finds himself having to deal with the fallout brought about by the release from prison of Billy, president of the club. Not content with the peaceful criminality that Johnny has carefully built up for the Lost MC, Billy quickly sets about re-establishing enmity between the gangs, threatening the livelihoods, and the lives, of Johnny's Lost MC brothers.

Meanwhile, in TBOGT, the player inhabits the designer shoes of Luis Lopez, right-hand man to Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince, owner of Liberty City's hottest straight and gay nightclubs. But the entertainment business isn't booming, and a series of bad decisions by a drug-addled Tony puts the clubs in hock to some less than pleasant gangsters keen to muscle Tony, and Luis, out of the picture. Further brushes with brutal Russian mobsters ups the ante, leaving Luis with a sizeable mess to clear up if he and Tony aren't to wind up whacked.

After quite a run of lesser GTA wannabe titles (Just Cause, Saints Row 2, The Saboteur; and also the FPS-fusion Far Cry 2), it's great to be back in Liberty City. And both TLAD and TBOGT are basically very enjoyable returns to it.

Bar an extended introduction to LC's motorcycle gang subculture, which previously just existed to serve up occasional, generic goons, TLAD doesn't introduce a whole lot of new material to the GTA universe. But it still tells an enjoyable story of conflict between (MC gang) brothers, one whose outcome has a predictable tragic arc, and it does so well - not that this comes as a huge surprise given GTA IV's storytelling. By giving Johnny a better grip on his handlebars than Niko seemed capable of managing, it does also - finally - make motorcycles a viable form of transport to travel across LC - in GTA IV they were basically deathtraps.

However, TBOGT is definitely the pick of the two episodes. While it benefits immediately from a somewhat longer campaign, it introduces a lot more new content - characters, storylines and weapons - and has much more variety in Luis' various missions. And it definitely captures some of the outlandish criminal fun that was present in (the epic) GTA San Andreas but which was strangely absent in GTA IV. So as well as having an assassination mission that includes base-jumping, an in-the-air theft of an armoured car, and an explosive final mission that culminates in jumping from a motorcycle onto a (soon-to-explode) plane, Luis even steals a moving subway train straight off the tracks. Ridiculous, but brilliant fun.

In passing, I just have to note that TBOGT, for all of the homophobic abuse that is hurled at its eponymous NPC, Gay Tony, is strangely progressive title. It presents a gay man in a major role as a successful, albeit currently drug-addled, nightclub owner and mover-and-shaker, one that inspires a lot of loyalty from his right-hand man, Luis. He is, to be sure, still a stereotype, but the game's writers bend over backwards to present him and, by extension, his lifestyle, as acceptable and normal. Well, at least relative to other titles. I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how sensitively the friendship between Tony and Luis is played out in what's usually a brash medium that's more comfortable confirming negative stereotypes. We're not talking a treatment here that's comparable to what occurs in novels, or even films, but TBOGT does a commendable job of realistically presenting both the homophobia of everyday life alongside a complete acceptance of so-called "alternative" lifestyles.

Changing tack completely, one jarring feature of both titles is how the storylines paint both player characters as essentially "good guys", but then insist on them committing acts that completely erode this perception. For instance, Johnny is shown as having actively reached out to rival gangs to calm things down and remove the violence from his drug dealing, an equilibrium that is upset by the reappearance of Billy. Similarly, Luis has had a spell in prison in his past which he regularly talks about as a formative experience and a significant turning point in his life. But both PCs seem to completely forget all about this when gameplay sets in, and both wind up doing things that are seriously at odds with the stories that Johnny and Luis tell about themselves in cutscenes and dialogue. I was actually disappointed that there wasn't any way of acting on either Johnny's or Luis' better impulses during play. That said, this is a failing that repeats from earlier GTA titles where characters who ostensibly appear principled still seem to wind up engaged in no end of sociopathic violence.

Another significant failing in both episodes, and, again, in GTA more generally, is that, no matter how sophisticated the overarching storyline or characters, the player is not allowed to resolve things in any way other than violently. GTA IV allowed the player a few binary decision points where a choice had to be made, but these only had minor consequences in terms of gameplay, even where they had quite significant consequences for in the wider storyline. Furthermore, there's just nothing like the openness of the storyline that's available in the likes of Fallout 3. While, yes, there are still some fundamental limitations there too, the developers have clearly gone out of their way to leave things as open as possible. For any given mission, there are usually numerous possible routes towards one of several outcomes - and violence is not the only solution. This widening gap between GTA's quite sophisticated storylines, which aspire to be realistic and open, and the actual lack of realism and openness, is something that the series needs to invest in to stay relevant.

To be fair, rival GTA titles (as well as the likes of the hallowed Half-Life) are similarly lacklustre in these departments. Their worlds are increasingly sophisticated and detailed, but the options available for players to navigate them are disappointingly thin on the ground. So for players that are familiar with more open worlds, such as that of Fallout (and, as I understand it, there are plenty of others), GTA is looking increasingly creaky - even if it is still a lot of fun. And I mean a lot of fun.

So, overall, I still love GTA. But I just wish it would spread its wings a bit more and give me more control in its worlds. Roll on Grand Theft Auto V ...

A Different Capitalism

2012-01-17T07:55:00.000Z

<rant>
I just about had it with politicians of all stripes (and I mean all stripes) wittering on about how all we need is some new kind of capitalism: "caring", "moral", "responsible". And how, on those occasions when blame is actually being doled out to neo-liberal capitalism, all of the problems are somehow down to the "casino" or "crony" varieties.

The implication, usually unstated but sometimes overt, is that with the right degree of moral fibre, capitalism can right itself and sail us all into a bright future. Even now after all that's happened in the world, the suggestion that it might perhaps need regulation, or some other form of oversight, is quickly dismissed, even by those politicians ostensibly in favour of "big government" (or painted as such).

Which, isn't perhaps entirely unrealistic given that it wasn't just a failure of the markets that got us to where we are today, but a wider failure of mechanisms that were in place - or were believed to be in place - to protect us. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to baulk before installing new control mechanisms, since the last set comprehensively failed to do what they were supposed to.

Arguably - and, boy, has it been argued by those at the lunatic end of the neo-liberal spectrum - the very intervention of government regulation in the markets makes them unstable by disrupting "natural" checks and balances that should otherwise allow plain sailing with nary a hand on the economic tiller. Wide-eyed, they baldly harangue that if only the markets had been left alone, none of this would have happened.

This line is superficially seductive, since it appeals to the idea of corporations being prudent - and therefore self-correcting - when there's no-one waiting to bail them out. But the necessary drive for constant (cancerous) growth constantly shoals vision to immediate, short-term gain at the expense of longer-term wisdom. And the propensity for businesses to conglomerate towards monopolies acts to destroy competition. Leaving businesses entirely to their own devices is simply not plausible.

More importantly - "caring", "moral", "responsible" - these are terms that don't even faintly match either the reality of business, or traits that are likely to prove successful in business. Businesses that adopt these will simply lose out to those businesses that don't. People can high-mindedly argue that the moral consumer will choose better behaved businesses, but the importance of the bottom line, especially in our currently stretched times, is difficult to overstate. How much more would you pay for the same service from a (more) moral corporation?

All of which is a round-about way of getting back to where I originally intended to come in here. Namely, businesses need regulation, if not to keep them in line then to keep their less scrupulous rivals in check. Obviously, such regulation needs careful tuning to avoid becoming needlessly onerous, and it should perpetually be open to revision, but its absence, or its trimming back, doesn't come cost-free.

The idea that it can be any other way, that we can rely on business having a moral sense that is aligned with our personal moral compasses, is flatly ridiculous. But this is the vision currently being articulated by the leaderships of our three main parties. Sure, they have their differences, but they're just subtle variants of the same message: business knows best. And while business does know best in many aspects of its operation, we should not be lulled into thinking that, if we really do wish morality and justice to be the outcome of its actions, that business can provide us with the solution.
</rant>

Pallant House and Chichester Cathedral

2012-01-15T17:47:00.044Z

Pallant House and Chichester Cathedral, a set on Flickr.

Travelled over to Chichester today to catch an exhibition by the UK artist Edward Burra (1905-1976) at the Pallant House Gallery (which we became members of last year for a Frieda Kahlo / Diego Rivera double-bill).

Burra isn't someone whose work I've hitherto been particularly familiar with. I did recognise one or two of the pieces on display at Pallant House, but it would be fair to say that I was mostly drawing a blank up until today. Which made it quite a pleasant surprise to discover how accomplished Burra was. The most obvious way to describe his work is "colourful", but that would seriously underplay the range of subjects from urban scenes to landscapes, and from heavily-stylised representational art through to surrealist musings on war and death. He apparently didn't favour the surrealist label, but it's hard not to see some of his work in this light. That said, much of the work on display dealt more directly with experiences of working life in Britain, France and Harlem, New York. Overall, he's easily the most interesting painter that I've come across in quite a while. No Picasso - but then, who is? - but well worth checking out.

Post-Pallant House, we sought out lunch in a converted church, before seeking out (needless to say) photo-opportunities in Chichester's (unconverted) cathedral. Another great, and cultural, day out.

A history lesson

2012-01-14T16:44:00.100Z

Netley Hospital Chapel, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Something of an education on the history of Southampton, specifically Netley, this afternoon courtesy of Royal Victoria Country Park and local author, Philip Hoare. The location is important since it was once the site of the world's largest hospital, Netley Hospital, in fact the world's largest building when it was completed back in 1863. All that remains now is the hospital's chapel, pictured above - and in many other photographs I've taken over years of visiting the park.

Anyway, Hoare's lecture took in the history of the hospital, and that of its site, from when it was originally commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1856, through its part in two World Wars, to its eventual demolition after more than a century of use (and, potentially, misuse) in 1966. It being somewhere that I've visited many times over the years, not least because it has a great war cemetery, I've picked up some basic history but, as Hoare uncovered, only the slimmest of slim fractions.

Some of the most interesting parts of Hoare's account were how familiar certain tales about the hospital are to the modern audience. So, we started with the NIMBYs who protested its construction, and who, apparently, even claimed the risk of malaria to patients as a reason for building elsewhere. Then there were were the complaints that the resulting hospital wouldn't be fit for purpose from, of all people, Florence Nightingale. And on top of all that, the massive cost overruns that construction incurred, with the hospital ultimately costing more than twice its original budget. The lecture certainly made the 19th century seem strangely resonant to ostensibly 21st century concerns about big government projects.

It was particularly striking to hear how ill-planned and poorly executed quite important aspects of the hospital and its rationale were. Few, if any, of the painfully-gained lessons that Nightingale learned during the Crimean War were adopted into its design, and poor decisions often came back to haunt the hospital. For instance, Nightingale noted that, should the hospital need expanding, its linear design (an impressive 1/4 mile in length) would mean that expansion would be very difficult. Which was subsequently borne out during WWI, when injured troops were housed, albeit with improved treatment, in a "shanty town" of tents behind in the main building. Victorian Britain certainly felt more a part of the continuum of history rather than the exceptional Golden Age that it's sometimes presented as.

Also alarming, though more from the standpoint of 21st century medicine, were some of the practices employed at the hospital. Hoare recounted one tale involving leeches, spoke of the level of training afforded to nurses (let's just say it wasn't degree-level), and showed contemporary video footage of some rather unconvincing physical therapies. He also spoke about Netley Hospital's military asylum which served, effectively, as a holding facility for victims of "shell shock", as well as a source of dark, if unconfirmed, tales of drug experiments (interestingly, it's now used by the Hampshire Constabulary for training). Much of this is understandable in terms of the evolution of medicine as a discipline, but at the same time it was clear that patients were also viewed as, and treated as, guinea pigs by the doctors.

Overall, it was excellent. Talking without notes, and using only 30 or so vintage photographs for illustration, Hoare did a great job tracing out the biography of the hospital, from construction to destruction. He's clearly done a lot of formal research on the subject, but has also spoken to quite a number of people who either worked at the hospital while it was still open, or who somehow have a family connection - including the grand-daughter of the builder, who revealed some details about the costings. And he also presented quite a few of the loose ends of his digging, hints of stories that he'd come across but been unable to finally resolve. Being a "local boy", one who actually used to break into the hospital's derelict asylum, he was well aware of the familiarity of the location to his listeners, and the resonance the old hospital still has for some of the more senior ones. As a way of dramatising this, he spoke of how, during dry summers, the foundations of the hospital can appear as a ghostly shadow on the lawns that now overlie them.

Definitely recommended should he talk on the subject again.

A small Microsoft victory

2012-01-12T15:52:00.000Z

Since Windows ditched any kind of visual representation in its disk fragmentation tool (at least on Vista and Windows 7), I've moved to a great freeware tool called Defraggler by the (generous) Piriform. As the pictures below show, this gives a handy pictorial overview of how well organised disk space on my various computers is.

However, in trying to defragment a persistent block island of discord on my laptop (Windows XP), I tested Defraggler against Microsoft's Disk Defragmenter. After a few rounds of Defraggler, there were a little more than 3000 files offering resistance, and Defraggler was unable to do anything about them. To see if it could do any better, I then let Disk Defragmenter have a go ...

... And, much to my surprise, it was able to lay waste to the rebelling files and decrease their number to a mere 58. So a small and rare victory to Microsoft. Of course, Windows possibly allows Disk Defragmenter access to fragments that are precluded by the default settings in Defraggler, but I can't see anything that immediately supports this hypothesis.

Still, given that I like pretty pictures of my hard disk, I think I'm going to keep using Defraggler, but with the hope that Microsoft wise up and reinstate a pictorial map.

Grand Theft Nazi

2012-01-08T16:20:00.001Z

Though an incipient sociopath, one of the things that's always perturbed me about the Grand Theft Auto series is that, away from missions involving (fellow) criminals, the only fun to be had involves mischief against innocents (including, obviously, murder). How much slower my transformation to suburban psychopath would be if there were targets that could condition more wholesome Pavlovian responses. Well, Pandemic Studios (RIP) clearly share my concerns, and have adapted the GTA formula to include enemies against whom mischief is not only condoned, but is practically encouraged: Nazis!

Set in occupied France during World War 2, The Saboteur pits Irish racing mechanic (and stereotype), Sean Devlin, against a blonde, Master Race archetype, Kurt Dierker. After the pair initially clash in a (flashback) race that takes place near the French border shortly before the invasion of France, the action picks up months later in a digital version of Paris crowded with entitled Nazis bullying the local populace. While Dierker now crushes Paris beneath his jackboot, Devlin now lives out of a cramped hidden room at the back of the Moulin Rouge (complete with windmill!), darkly bemoaning the turn of events that have ended his career, oh, and led to the oppression of the proud nation of France.

After a chance meeting with a philosopher-turned-resistance member, Luc, Devlin's career prospects take a turn for the better. Before long he's sent on a series of missions that aim to disrupt Nazi operations in Paris and, as the game progresses, the neighbouring countryside (including an unexpectedly nearby Le Harve). These begin with simple mischief, such as destroying hardware and fuel depots, but they ramp up to more daring escapades, such as assassination missions and prison breaks. They also bring Devlin to the attention of the UK's Special Operations Executive who know of more nefarious Nazi activities that need a stop putting to them. Once the SOE have gotten over Devlin's Irish indifference to British activities, they have him interfering in Nazi plans to build an atomic bomb. Disrupting these further weakens the Nazi hold on Paris, and the resistance spots an ideal opportunity to exact a crushing blow during a showcase racing event through the streets of Paris. Who, I wonder, could the resistance get to take part in that?

While I left The Saboteur with a generally good feeling, and certainly enjoyed large parts of it, I can't deny that it may strike others as something of a curate's egg. Overall, I think that its good points outweigh its flaws but, boy, does it have some flaws.

First, though, the good points. Most immediately, Pandemic have done a great job on the setting, both the streets of Paris and the idyllic rural hamlets. It's nowhere near as detailed as the likes of Liberty City, which is fully-realised from skyscrapers and parks to seedy flyovers and side alleys, but it does an excellent job on many of Paris' famous attractions (and rewards players with viewpoint achievements for scaling them). Another great point is that, in casting Devlin as an athletic Celt with a head for heights, The Saboteur opens up the play area by allowing climbing up and over buildings. This is fun in of itself, but it makes the arena a proper 3D environment, allowing the player a hiding place (Nazis never look up) from which sneak attacks can be mounted. Devlin's athleticism is a little unrealistic at times, but it's still a lot more convincing than the ineffectual relationship to vertical space that GTA protagonists usually have.

As already mentioned, it's certainly an enjoyable change to have an abundance of wholesome targets (= Nazis) at all times that one can imaginatively dispatch. There's a lot of entirely-defensible fun to be had taking out Hitler's goons, whether through "careless" pavement-driving, a silenced pistol shot to the back of the head or, more bluntly, by sneakily blowing up their sentry towers. And on the subject of enjoyment, there's a load to be had from the game's humour. It's broad, and not always politically correct, but there are a lot of quality lines from Devlin, often as he taunts a Nazi that he's just "taken care of". A particularly choice piece occurs in the settings menu where, when switching off the game's (limited) nudity, Devlin remarks that the player "can always go to confession later". Finally, and in keeping with other titles like GTA and, especially, Fallout, The Saboteur has a great period soundtrack (alongside an already good game soundtrack). Most of the tracks aren't immediately familiar, but they add greatly to the ambience (and there's an excellent, haunting rendition of "Feeling Good" played by a dying Nazi in the closing mission).

But, as I said above, it's not all good. The most immediately glaring problem lies with some buggy draw distance issues when driving. Frequently the road ahead of me would disappear, both allowing me to see objects below me, and causing cars in front of me to fall into empty space. Worse, the "fix" the game's authors appear to have instigated to resolve this boils down to the game freezing momentarily then restarting with the road in place. Talk about breaking the fourth wall! Another frequently annoying issue, which is in part a consequence of allowing 3D movement, lies with the controls when in fiddly, confined spaces. On more than a few occasions, after planting a bomb onto a target, I'd find Devlin jumping back onto said target, just in time to get wasted by the blast. One other disconcerting feature lies with the game's vehicles, which can absorb a truly ridiculous amount of damage before failing, at which point they do so suddenly and unpredictably.

Leaving aside the game's mechanics, there are also serious issues to do with its pacing, which is really rather haphazard. In the most glaring example, I actually completed the game by accident - I literally had no idea that I was on the last mission until I found myself face to face, and packing a pistol, with an insane Dierker. In retrospect, I should have worked it out - I was at the top of the Eiffel Tower after all! But the last mission (as it turned out) came at a point where there was still a big chunk of Paris that I'd not properly explored, and was so ridiculously easy and straightforward (and/or buggy), that the penny just didn't drop. These flaws probably have a lot to do with the developer, Pandemic, going belly-up shortly after "finishing" The Saboteur - I'm sure that they just ran out of time and money. But it's a crying shame that the publisher, Electronic Arts, didn't take the time to finish things up and make the most of the 85% or so of the game that Pandemic put in place.

By way of summary, for me The Saboteur is still a good diversion despite its numerous flaws. It's nowhere near as immersive or well-plotted as the GTA titles are, but equally it's much more impressive than the likes of that GTA-wannabe, Saints Row 2. It's certainly something of a pleasing change to play GTA-style against proper enemies, and to do so through against the novel backdrop of WW2 (clichés and all). It's just a shame that, largely because of Pandemic's collapse, The Saboteur is unable to live up to the promise that its setting (and art design) offers. Still, there are plenty worse games out there.

Finally, I note from the Wikipedia article on The Saboteur that it's inspired, albeit loosely, by a real-life figure, William Grover-Williams, an Irish racing driver who worked for the SOE and the French resistance. I can't see anything in his biography to suggest a shoot-out at the top of the Eiffel Tower, but I do notice that he didn't survive the war.

Sixty Thousand

2012-01-08T13:00:00.002Z

Sixty Thousand (2012-01-08 08.58), a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Another 3 months, another 10K hits. Slowing down a bit unless I'm mistaken. Still, it's not like this is a professional sport.

Hawking dodging

2012-01-06T07:58:00.003Z

Just heard Stephen Hawking answering questions for Radio 4's Today programme. In one he was asked whether there was a time (presumably pre-big bang) when there was nothing. Annoyingly, he answered in that traditional and unhelpful way, namely that since time as we experience it started with the big bang, it makes no sense to talk of "before" then. Thanks Stephen. He went on to illustrate his answer with the (also traditional) example of what's south of the South Pole, that is, nothing. How about he actually try to address the spirit of the question, namely discuss wider physical theories concerning pre-big bang "time" and extra-universe "space"? As it happens, he went on to answer another question with reference to multiple universes, but he was happy to answer this initial question with a trite put-down about the obvious limits of time.

It reminds me of when biologists, often eminent ones, respond dismissively to the suggestion that we are descended from chimpanzees by pointing out that both chimpanzees and humans are descended from an extinct precursor species. While, yes, this is obviously true, it obscures what the questioner was asking, namely were our ancestors hairy tree-dwellers, to which the answer is clearly yes. And they probably didn't look wildly different to chimpanzees to the untrained eye either.

Wrapping paper ...

2012-01-04T17:37:00.002Z

WP_000111, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

... burns with a green flame. That is all.

Just another America

2012-01-03T17:33:00.000Z

Another quick stab to decrease the size of "the pile": Cowboy Angels, by the UK author Paul McAuley.

Set across parallel "sheaves" of a Many-worlds universe, the eponymous Cowboy Angels are elite Company operatives from The Real, a sheaf in which America is unquestioningly the predominant power, and in which it controls the Turing Gates that allow travel between sheaves. Formerly tasked with restoring, by any means necessary, the status of ruined Americas across parallel sheaves, the Cowboy Angels have now been emasculated by the election of Jimmy Carter by a public tired of the endless wars in the sheaves and distrustful of the Company's methods. But some within its ranks view this change as a betrayal, and are ready to act to preserve their idea of America's Manifest Destiny. Adam Stone, a former operative "disgraced" by his whistle-blowing on Company activities, is brought back in from the cold in order to track down an old friend on a killing spree across the sheaves. As his mission proceeds, Stone gradually unfurls a far-reaching conspiracy that aims to tear up Carter's peacenik doctrine and to change all of the histories of all of the Americas across the sheaves.

While bemoaning my last visit to McAuley's bibliography, I remarked that I was reluctant to give up on him because of his past form, especially the fantastic Red Dust. I'm glad that I kept to this as I'm pleased to be able to report that Cowboy Angels finds him in more traditional good form. It's far from having no flaws, but it makes up for these by presenting a rather novel, political take on Everett's audacious solution to the measurement problem. McAuley has a lot of fun inventing plausible alternative "present-days" (actually, the 1980s) that differ because of some 20th century change, including an America ruled by the fascist Bund, many atomically-ruined Americas, and a curious (to the novel's protagonists) sheaf in which Richard Nixon was brought down by an incident in a Washington hotel. By making The Real so clearly not our universe and then presenting a number of alternatives, McAuley also makes the novel something of a spot-our-universe puzzle for the reader. All of which contributes to this being a definite step along the road to recovery for my opinion of McAuley - though, to be sure, both The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun are more recent novels.

But it's not all good news. While starting strong with an enjoyable first half that frames the multiverse setting, the novel does tend to devolve into a lot of confusing running around and double-crossing in the second half. To the point where this reader lost the plot a bit, and just let it wash over him instead. It's also rather slender on science fiction later on, instead becoming more like a generic thriller. It does keep introducing science fiction elements, including an inexplicably underdeveloped time travelling subplot, but these definitely take a backseat to a series of increasingly tortuous noir-ish switchbacks. As well as the time-travelling subplot, McAuley leaves a number of very obvious points, often directly alluded to, more-or-less completely unexplored. So while there are sheaves in which humans are completely absent and sheaves that are populated by ape-like semi-humans, there's very little about more plausible alternative worlds beloved of writers (e.g. Nazi victory in WW2; Europe destroyed by the Black Death).

And McAuley is also vague about how his multiverse actually works - taking Everett's Many-worlds seriously would imply that any "corrections" to the path a particular universe has taken would merely split that universe into "with" and "without" branches, and that the Cowboy Angels are effectively largely wasting their time. And that's even before one factors in what a human's decision to intervene in a particular way in a particular universe actually means - a conundrum that's probably best avoided by novelists (though Egan makes an excellently full-throated stab at a competing QM interpretation in his novel Quarantine). But, as illustrated by Iain (M.) Banks' recent foray into multiverses, McAuley is not alone in this sort of fudging.

Overall, for all of its flaws, Cowboy Angels is a much more edifying and enjoyable read from McAuley. It's no return to form (and even if it was, he's written worse afterwards!), but it'll more than enough to ensure my continuing loyalty. For now anyway. Writing something with more of the imagination on show in his early novels would be very much appreciated.

In passing, in reading so much about 20th century US politics in Cowboy Angels, I realise that, at times, I know a lot more about what's gone on west of the Atlantic than I do for corresponding periods in my own country. The pre-Thatcher UK political landscape is largely a mystery to me, but I know quite a lot about Roosevelt, LBJ and a certain Milhous. I guess that's fallout from the American Century.

Jolly Sailor

2012-01-02T17:26:00.000Z

WP_000100, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out to lunch at the Jolly Sailor with BR. Accidentally arrived early, but as well as ensuring we got a good table, that just made for an opportunity to take some photographs on my Windows Phone, and to catch some early-2012 rays. And, contrary to my previous experience of the JS, lunch was pretty good too.

New Years Eve

2012-01-01T17:41:00.000Z

DSC02580, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Mad dash to London this New Years Eve (pre-midnight). But we did get to catch up with Dr. M, Helen and Martin (+ family) in one fell swoop. Excellent as ever.

And then a mad dash back to Southampton for midnight. The train back was amazing: practically empty. So we got to experience the fireworks and ships' horns as per usual.

Calendar 2012

2011-12-31T23:59:00.001Z

Calendar 2012, a set on Flickr.

This year's set of photographs for my calendar (= my cheap and easy Christmas present). Not (quite) a stay-cation collection this time, but all UK.

Ants, Jane and Millie

2011-12-30T17:45:00.000Z

2011-12-30, Out with Millie a video by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out to Romsey for a night with Ants and Jane, then a morning with their dog Millie. The former was a curry in the town centre, the latter was a 4 mile (for us; Millie covered about 3 times as much as us) walk around the surrounding fields.

The movie shows Millie getting the most out of us on her walk.

No Life of Brian

2011-12-29T16:58:00.001Z

In an attempt to decrease the size of "the pile", a quick catch-up review of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by the UK author, and prominent atheist, Philip Pullman.

Very disappointing. The central idea, that the Biblical Jesus is a composite character of two very different people (an actual good man, Jesus; and a "scoundrel" responsible for the Church, Christ), is a good one, but Pullman largely stuffs up the execution. The writing is uniformly good, but from my perspective Pullman is inconsistent in his presentation of Jesus. A sensible approach for a polemicist like Pullman might have been to present Jesus as an ordinary man and the supernatural tales about him as simple exaggeration on the part of contemporaries, but the novel's Jesus jumps between being a good man and actually performing miracles [*]. So the reader, this one anyway, is left confused about what Pullman is trying to say. Life of Brian, to name one similar Messiah-questioning artwork, handles all of this much more clearly and self-consistently. The "scoundrel", Christ, is also nothing of the sort most of the time, which might, I guess, be part of Pullman's aim. Overall, I left with the feeling that the novel was a bit of a wasted opportunity, particularly so since Pullman had put so many of the pieces in place.

[*] Unless, of course, this is another novel that I've misread!

Pulitzer Prize-winner

2011-12-29T15:26:00.000Z

Not one from "the pile" this time, but one that I've actually just finished reading. A Visit From The Goon Squad, by the US writer Jennifer Egan, is the 2010 winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Not a prize for which I've read many winners before, the only one I can think of is Richard Ford's excellent 1995 novel Independence Day (for clarity: not the novelisation of the almost-concurrent film). So, is AVFTGS in the same league?

Spanning the 1970s to the 2020s, A Visit From The Goon Squad drops in and out of the lives of a loose group of friends and their families. Broadly centred around the characters of Bennie Salazar, a musician turned music industry executive, and his one-time PA, and kleptomaniac, Sasha, the novel's 13 chapters detail short but significant interludes that milestone their lives, with each told from the perspective of a different character. The first finds Sasha stealing a purse during a blind date with Alex, while the last closes several decades later with Alex astroturfing a word-of-mouth campaign for Bennie. In between, chapters include the breakdown of Bemnie's marriage from the perspective of his wife Stephanie, the death by drowning of a drug-addled college friend, a journey to Italy by Sasha's uncle, Ted, to find her when she goes "missing" as a teenager, and a PowerPoint presentation of her family's dynamics by Sasha's daughter, Alison.

By way of summary, this is one of those novels that, while both admirable and enjoyable, does leave you in head-scratching mode. It starts with the title itself, on which the novel offers only a single reference, and then rather late in the day. But leaving aside the fact that the novel leaves you to do all of the heavy-lifting when it comes to meaning and interpretation (unless, that is, it's just me), it's a well-written and highly entertaining read. And actually quite a lot of fun too. The novel's darkest, at least on one level, chapter involves a genocidal dictator, but tells it, lightly and deftly, from the perspective of the disgraced PR wizard hired to make him more presentable.

As the outline above probably already implies, at times it seems more a collection of connected stories involving the same characters rather than a straight novel, but it is possible to discern some thematic threads that link, rather than bind, Bennie and Sasha's misadventures. By rummaging over such a long time-frame, and dipping into a number of periods of recent (and still to come) US history, it's also clearly one of those "state-of-the-nation" novels so beloved of columnists and prize-awarding committees, though even on this point it's considerably more obtuse than other novels in this oeuvre.

One minor downside of the novel's constant chopping and changing of perspective (as well as its hopping backwards and forwards in time) is that it's very (very) easy to lose track of who various characters are. Sasha and Bennie act as anchors most of the time, but there are, I'm sure, many characters who bridge chapters but who I completely failed to link in. I think this is a weakness, one that contributes to the feeling that this is more a short story collection than a novel, but it's generally a minor one. But I can well believe that it'll annoy readers less prepared to roll with it than I am (having been conditioned by years of outlandish science fiction).

One of Egan's most interesting decisions, and one that I originally thought sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, is to tell Sasha's daughter's story through the medium of a PowerPoint presentation (one slide per page). Alison uses all of the conventional iconography of PowerPoint - shapes, arrows, graphs, speech bubbles - to describe each of the members of her family, and the dynamics that alternately antagonise and bind them. While it did seem like a pretty stupid gimmick when I started Alison's chapter, it didn't take me long to warm to it, and I found some of the slides, particularly those where she dissects her mother and father's demons, surprisingly affecting. In passing, I must add that I'm faintly disappointed that Egan beat the Great Geek God, Douglas Coupland, to this - it's totally the kind of thing one would expect him to do first.

Finally, on the themes that I discerned in the novel, the best I can do is that it's a meditation on how different life can be from the aspirations and idealism of one's youth. So we see Bennie turn from a modestly talented musician into a pretty sharp music executive, into a failed music executive, into a reborn music executive buoyed up by a fake word-of-mouth campaign. And, similarly, Sasha's transformation from a down-and-out petty thief in Naples, via a tragic death and stint as Bennie's PA, to a life as an artist and mother in the Californian desert. There's also something of a meditation on fame and celebrity going on, but nothing that I was able to get a good grip on. The closing chapter returns to this, via Alex's astroturfing, but here there seem to be much clearer messages about modern media-led norms. Specifically, how ubiquitous texting, lowered privacy and over-sharing, and corporate intrusion into the personal, are eroding/changing our relationships with one another. Or perhaps that's just my Web 1.0 attitudes feeling threatened by Web 2.0's openness?

In summary, most enjoyable. I'm not sure how it stacks up against other Pulitzer Prize winners, but I really liked it. I'd love to know what it's all about though ...

P.S. In tracking down a book cover image for this post, I came across this article which includes a number of diagrams of how the various characters in the novel connect (PowerPoint? how meta!). Per my remarks about keeping track of the characters in the novel, well worth a peek.

Rufus Stone

2011-12-27T17:32:00.000Z

2011-12-27, Subsurface water a video by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out today to the New Forest to get lost again on a walk we've done before. It's one of those which looks simple on the map but involves crossing an ill-defined region of forest guided only by markers which have long since disappeared. Still, it was fun in the end, and we got to see deer and wild pigs into the bargain.

C also found this rather bizarre water feature when we were crossing a boggy region. It was like a little "blister" of water trapped beneath a "skin" of turf strong enough to take our weights (yes, even mine).

Anyway, it also afforded an opportunity to test out my phone's GPS capabilities. Though it began to be useful by the end, it wasn't a whole lot of use when we needed it. More practise needed I think.

Brighton XL

2011-12-18T17:52:00.000Z

Brighton XL, a set on Flickr.

To commemorate the loss of my youth, C and I spent the weekend in the fair city of Brighton, West Sussex. Cue surprisingly good weather, lots of art, an appalling number of photographs, too much to eat and a brilliant time all round. If I had any youth left to lose, I'd do it all again.

Thanks to C for an excellent birthday present!

NOCS Christmas Quiz 2011

2011-12-16T22:41:00.004Z

NOCS Christmas Quiz 2011, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

One of the traditions that's grown up in NOCS in the past few years is the annual Christmas Quiz. And it's one that I've grudgingly commented on previously (here and here) when we've almost won but have fallen at the final hurdle.

Anyway, today was Christmas Quiz 2011, and while it didn't really feel like it during the quiz - in fact, we had a couple of pretty dodgy rounds - change was a-coming.

Despite what should have been a pretty middling score, 43 out of a possible 60, our team, Duncan Who [*], found itself in a three-way tie-break with last year's winners and a team captained by my student, HC.

And, bizarrely, the result depended on a question about, of all things, the radius of the planet ~~Neptune~~ Uranus. Ordinarily, this should have been a walk-over for me, but my pitch, 12,000 km, was much lower than that settled upon by my astronomically-minded team-mates (Simon and Joel), 30,000 km.

Fortunately (or was it destiny?), our rivals shot way too high, both guessing a radius 10 times that of the Earth, when the actual answer is a little less than 25,000 km. So, at last, long-denied triumph was ours to savour. And a prize of £100 - though we donated that straight back to the charity supported by the quiz (in a move subsequently questioned by the most tight-fisted members of our team!).

What a great start to my birthday weekend. But have I perhaps started a little too high? :-)

[*] Our team name, which may yet earn us unwelcome attention, refers to the recent appointment of a distinguished scientist - whose name may, or may not, be Duncan - to the head of our funding agency. An appointment that involved a bit of leap-frogging over our centre's director ... and usual quiz MC. Alas, a conflict of schedules meant that our friend, and former team member, RMA, got the job of hosting.

Magic + Tigers

2011-12-11T22:18:00.002Z

As a post-script to this morning's post, I had a long discussion with C about what I made of the The Tiger's Wife. During the course of this, I realised that I'd actually misread the one of the concluding chapters and, as a result, misinterpreted a key part of the book. At best, I can only blame my dimness on reading last thing before bedtime. At worst, I read on autopilot with my brain at least partially disengaged. Either way, duh.

The upshot of this is that my only objection about the book, namely that it shifted uncomfortably for me from allegory to magical realism, is actually completely misplaced (or arguably so; another outcome of our discussion was me realising how rigidly I interpret what I read). When I started reading the novel, this is actually what I thought was going on, but I shifted by the end when my brain gear-shifted into neutral. So much my fine reading and analytical skills (though I did only get a 'B' in Higher English). Anyway, all of which serves only to further elevate the book in my estimation. Whew, I got there in the end.

Changing the subject (and drawing a veil over my shame), one thing that C and I did agree on was a certain disconnectedness between the novel's tale of the Tiger's Wife from its other narrative strands. Natalia's story, as well as her grandfather's interludes with the deathless man, revolve around mortality and war. While the tale of the Tiger's Wife isn't devoid of these elements, it's a bit of a leap to tie it in so well. Which isn't to say that it's not an important part of the novel's strengths, just that neither of us entirely got it.

We did disagree somewhat on the novel's various detours. C (and some of her book group) thought these were a little too tangential to the main narratives, and almost seemed short story-like in their drifting away from Natalia and her grandfather. It's merely a matter of opinion, of course, but I didn't feel this way at all. Instead, I thought that what seem to be digressions (often lengthy ones) are actually quite important for setting up the characters prior to the roles they play in the main narratives. So knowing, for instance, of Luka's failures in a distant city makes his behaviour towards his wife comprehensible (if still repugnant).

Anyway, we had a great old discussion, and it was good to be set straight. I'll be sure to read more carefully in the future!

Magic + Tigers

2011-12-11T08:51:00.003Z

I'm getting seriously behind in writing up what I've read. The "stack", in plain view from our computer, is now high enough to require splitting into two piles. On that note, an overdue visit to this year's Orange Prize winner, The Tiger's Wife by the Balkan/American writer Téa Obreht.

Set in an unnamed Balkan state with events scattered through a war-torn 20th century, The Tiger's Wife is told firstly from the perspective of Natalia, a doctor delivering aid and expertise to communities shattered by the state's most recent bout of in-fighting. Out of her element with a humanitarian quest of her own to complete, Natalia hears of the death of her grandfather, a fellow doctor. As she juggles her medical responsibilities with an attempt to recover her grandfather's personal effects, she reminisces over his life and the stories that he told her of it, in particular, two prominent figures that feature in it, the Tiger's Wife and the deathless man. The Tiger's Wife, a deaf-mute girl who formed a bond with an escaped tiger from a bombed zoo, is a figure from his rural adolescence. The deathless man, first encountered on a medical errand to a superstitious village, has crossed Natalia's grandfather's path several times during his life. The tales of the deathless man convince Natalia that her grandfather may have crossed paths with him once more, and she sets out with an expectation that she, too, may meet him.

Much as with my last read, The Tiger's Wife treads in territory that I'm not usually comfortable with, but does so very enjoyably. On this occasion, rather than fantasy, we're in the realm of magical realism (which, when you think about it, is basically fiction with fantastical elements). All of which means that, though thoroughly enjoying myself, I can't ultimately take the novel quite as seriously as I probably should. It exists in a world tangential to that which we actually occupy, so the lessons proffered probably fall a little onto deaf ears in my case. I'm fine with allegory when it stays firmly as allegory, in fact, I love it, but when it is actually revealed as reality, as here, I'm less sure what to make of it. But I'm getting ahead of myself there, and (needlessly) applying the boot before singing praises.

Anyway, getting back to business ... The Tiger's Wife is a great read, with an engaging story and some just beautiful writing. The novel would be quite an achievement from an old-hand, but Obreht is a first-time novelist, but yet makes it all seem effortless. She juggles a number of narratives, and paces them all well, even managing to seamlessly slide in colourful personal histories of characters as they occur (including, memorably, the Tiger itself). On top of which, the novel communicates a comforting and humane vision of life even as it is set within, and explores, conflict and its fallout. Interestingly, though clearly set against the backdrop of the recent wars in the Balkans, Obreht eschews any attempt to tie her story to a particular place or conflict. I suspect someone more familiar with the geography and culture could make more of what she does say, but I quite liked her approach of making things simultaneously familiar but indistinct.

As hinted above, some of my favourite parts of the novel are its biographical asides. There are a number of passing characters, including the Tiger, for whom Obreht pauses and fills in the background history for the reader. While these should disrupt the narrative, instead they embellish it, adding little gems of extra texture and flavour (to mix my metaphors) to the novel. I suspect that these interludes work best because she uses them to fashion a self-contained story that relatively quickly shines a light over an unexpected section of Balkan society, as with Luka, husband to the Tiger's Wife, but also a composer of songs, wife-beater and closeted man in a macho culture.

(For full disclosure, I particularly enjoyed reading about the novel's various tigers, though it's a hard read at times. At most times in fact - the scenes set in the zoo during the novel's most recent conflict won't be leaving me any time soon. It's perhaps a sentimentalist view, one, I think, borne out the backfoot that animals finds themselves on in the modern world, but I find the plight of animals often more wrenching than that of the humans around them. Unable to see the bigger picture, unable to discern their dwindling future, and profoundly unable to do anything about it, I find their position in novels, and in the world, routinely more tragic than that of suffering people. Largely, I guess, because of my biologist training and appreciation of the (near) future oblivion that awaits most animal species, but it probably comes across as inhuman!)

By way of summary, a very enjoyable, and highly accomplished, first novel. Great central narratives and some excellent detours. I remain a little uncomprehending about the novel's treatment of certain elements, the deathless man foremost, but this didn't seriously dampen my appreciation. Curiously, I found the treatment of these elements more satisfying in The Tiger's Wife than in novels such as The Book Thief, where its dealt with in a more upfront manner. Perverse, I know. Anyway, to be recommended.

There's an important post-script to the above over here.

Smartphone revolution

2011-12-01T22:31:00.004Z

As of yesterday, I've finally joined the smartphone generation. This post was actually started from my new phone, but after inputting the title I stuffed it up, so I'm completing the usual way, au PC.

Anyway, so what did I go for? The main decision was, obviously, OS. As I've really enjoyed using our iPad the past year, iOS was the immediate front-runner. And not just for the operating system - iPhones are, indisputably, beautiful devices. Particularly the iPhone 4 (= iPhone 4S), but even the iPhone 3 has a certain desirable charm to it (much like, but much better than, my old iPod Classic). But it's not the only contender.

There is, of course, Google's Android OS. But I can't say that I've ever been drawn to this. Principally because it's just a great big iPhone rip-off. While the OS does come in a number of flavours, and is heavily customisable, the bottom line is that Google shamelessly stole its overall look and feel from the iPhone. And since it's clearly not an iPhone, the net effect is to look like a cheap rip-off. Sorry.

Blackberry? Who? Sorry, another non-starter.

Which leaves only the newest kid on the block, Windows Phone 7. Its predecessor, Windows Mobile, was sufficiently poorly executed and adopted that I wasn't even aware that it existed, but at a meeting earlier this year in Paris, I caught my first glimpse of its wholly re-designed successor. I had heard about it on and off since it was released in 2010, but it remained a largely unknown quantity to me until the appearance of some new, and pretty attractive, hardware in the past few months. In fact, when I first visited Carphone Warehouse a few months back, the sales assistant tried his darndest to divert me to iOS and Android.

So, we're back in Apple vs. Microsoft territory.

Anyway, for all of its beauty, both OS and hardware, dropping down from my "big screen" iPad experience, leaves the iPhone a little underwhelming. To be honest, I'm also just a little bit tired of the interface - it's actually slightly alarming how quickly its formerly stylish simplicity now just seems dull. And, for complete disclosure, I'm getting really quite fed up with Apple's smugness and the unquestioning idolatry of its (many) fans.

In fact, Apple has now claimed the place in my personal hell that was formerly occupied by Microsoft in the heyday of its war against Netscape. Which makes it quite troublingly ironic that Microsoft, through (the beautiful) Windows Phone 7, has been the victor in my personal smartphone war. Talk about turning the tables.

So far, I'm not disappointed. My Nokia Lumia 800, while not quite as luxurious as an iPhone, is a great platform for WP7. And the OS is a real joy to use. Possibly just because it's new, but I think it's got legs and I don't expect to tire of it anytime soon. But we'll see. I suspect I'll revisit it from time to time - possibly even more frequently if I work out how to post properly from it!

EAMG Reunion

2011-11-27T14:15:00.045Z

EAMG Reunion, a set on Flickr.

Out in London on Friday for an excellent evening of re-acquaintancing (assuming that's a word) with four of my EAMG colleagues: John, Martin, Alan and Chris (+ Chris' fellow-Canadian fiancée, Nicole). Much reminiscence followed with an appropriately (if childishly) high ribald quotient - I haven't laughed this much in years. Along the way, we took in a the cramped Princess of Wales (a subconscious nod to 1997?), an accommodating Thai restaurant (I don't like to think what the other patrons made of us) and John Snow's famous pump (as well as the pub that commemorates him). It was also an opportunity to share tales of absent friends and what they've been getting up to. Nothing (too) untoward, thankfully. Needless to say, it was all over much too quickly, but hopefully it won't be another 10+ years before we all get back together again.

As an aside, it was revealing to me how many japes and scrapes I'd forgotten about over the years. Even tales that involved me seem to have sometimes slipped from working memory. Equally, it's interesting to see what other people remember, or fail to remember. My old (and missing - where are you?) flatmate, Adam, left some people who should know better a little blank. For my part, I completely failed to remember (at first, anyway) a gape involving the insertion of pornography (I know, I know) onto Chris' prized PC's screensaver. Though I soon recalled the trouble that got him into when another student rightly hauled him up over it. But it was a lot of fun to be reminded - though I'm not entirely sure what Nicole made of such tales. Probably best not to dwell on that.

November cycle ride

2011-11-19T09:10:00.000Z

November cycle ride, a set on Flickr.

Out for a surprisingly nice 13.4 mile ride this morning. Not content with being sunny, the weather was also astonishingly warm (cue removal of gloves and hat). Definitely one of those days when global warming feels a bit more palpable.

The route was more or less my usual one, though finally there's a cycle path between Weston Shore and Netley that skips the hilly, narrow and dangerous main road. It's still hilly in part, but a huge improvement.

Needless to say, much photographing occurred.

FTL - WTF?

2011-11-18T09:26:00.000Z

Have I, like, totally missed something glaringly obvious in front of me? All this stuff (= attention in the popular press) about fast-than-light neutrinos seems to focus solely on its implications for the plausibility of time-travel (e.g. see today's offending item in the Grauniad). In an absolutely rigid, no-exceptions-allowed interpretation of GR, I can see why this might seem half-reasonable, but doesn't (the mainstream reading of) QM already point to FTL modes of "communication" between entangled particles? I appreciate, of course, that there are multiple interpretations of QM on this (and every other) point, but even leaving this aside, there appears to be no shortage of alternative explanations for this unexpected neutrino behaviour, none of which seem to involve time-travel. Then again, why engage with these ideas and be forced to have to explain them, when you can just fall back on a wildly implausible alternative that, thanks to decades of science fiction (d'oh!), requires no explanation whatsoever.

Day 10: Southampton

2011-11-06T23:00:00.000Z

No photographs today. The usual rush getting packed and getting down to Edinburgh. Did manage to spend an hour visiting Catherine and Colin, catching up with their year. And their cat, Poppy. We had a nice drive across Fife to the airport, again with excellent weather. I must try to visit there for walking sometime. A bit of a dash at the airport though as everything completely on time for once - I'm sure we left early in the end. Home.

Day 9: Carnoustie

2011-11-05T23:00:00.000Z

DSC02200, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out early for a walk along the woods, down through town and along the front. Great weather yet again (hence even more photographs). Interesting to see how things have, and haven't, changed. The high school's now largely "upgraded", the front dominated by new(-ish) buildings and paths, but there's still a lot completely the same. Including a surprising number of the small shops - though my old papershop is now a gallery. Spent the evening down in the flats with everyone. Didn't get to whip Caitlin on the Wii, however. Next time.

Day 8: Callum

2011-11-04T23:00:00.000Z

DSC02151, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Up to Dundee (or is it still Monifieth?) today to see Phil, Kate and (baby) Callum. Not quite as talkative as Ava and Abigail, but no surprise really as he's about a year younger. He's certainly as mobile and active though (especially on the subject of cars). Dinner in the evening with Ava in attendance.

Day 7: Carnoustie

2011-11-03T23:00:00.001Z

DSC02123, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Bit of a lazy day today, just pottering around the house and catching up with the ridiculous number of photographs taken so far (and taking some more; see Poppy above). I took a walk into town for some shopping, and dropped by a favourite old haunt, the library, to take in an exhibition of local artists. Was disappointed to see that the (same) copy of Use of Weapons I first read 20+ years ago hasn't been out much of late, but I found time for a bit of a re-read. Popped over the Monifieth in the afternoon to catch up with Sheena and Vic (Phil's mum and dad). Other than that, a super-quiet day.

Day 6: St. Cyrus

2011-11-02T23:00:00.000Z

DSC02082, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

After an early start (it's a school day for Iona and Cameron!), I headed down the coast road back towards Carnoustie, with a few stops off along the way. First was Dunnottar Castle which, while closed, is always nice to see (and photograph). Next was a longer stop for a beach walk at St. Cyrus (see above). It's always been one of my favourite beach walks, and it didn't disappoint today. Not least because, as usual, I practically had the place to myself (except when buzzed by two military jets). The last stop was Montrose cemetery to visit Granny A's grave, in part to check that the adjacent tree hadn't toppled it (it hadn't). Then home to more pottering around.

Day 5: Arbroath

2011-11-01T23:00:00.000Z

DSC02033, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Out early for a walk along the seashore from East Haven to Arbroath. I went further than usual this time to take in a new "feature" at the edge of the town: a transplanted lighthouse. Very nice. The walk was, again, very quiet, mostly I just had seagulls for company. In the afternoon I drove north to visit Graham, Teresa, Iona and Cameron up in Alford, Aberdeenshire. Took the cross-country route and saw some great autumnal colours. As I was (again) running against sunset, didn't have time to stop in the best places for photographs. The evening was a lot of fun, first with the kids, entertaining as ever, and then more breeze-shooting with G & T.

Day 4: Crombie

2011-10-31T23:00:00.000Z

DSC01884, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Mostly pottering around, catching up with my parents and fixing up their computer (usual msconfig and defrag tasks). Took a trip to (a very quiet) Crombie in the afternoon for a short walk and lot of photographs. Still not quite used to the changed clocks, so ran up against sunset in the latter part of the walk (see above photograph).

Day 3: Carnoustie

2011-10-30T23:00:00.000Z

DSC01820, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

After another late start (change of the clocks this time), and a long period watching children's TV with Jack and Harry, I left Lenzie behind and headed east by train to Arbroath and collection by my parents. Down to the flats in the evening to catch Stuart et al. Abigail is getting big, and mouthy!

Day 2: Lenzie

2011-10-29T23:00:00.001+01:00

DSC01803, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

After a slightly sluggish (= hangover) start, out with Dave, Suze, Jack and Harry to Summerlee, the "Museum of Scottish Industrial Life". It provides a nice (and, surprisingly, free) view of Scotland in the industrial period from the late-19th to the late-20th century. So there was a lot about heavy industry, including hulking great machines, dioramas of foundry life and even a working train. The picture above shows the "cinema" section of the exhibition. Anyway, it certainly gave Jack and Harry something to run around in (as well as the opportunity to dress up in women's clothes). We spent the evening shooting the breeze back in Lenzie.

Day 1: Dave

2011-10-28T23:00:00.003+01:00

DSC01800, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Post-meeting, out with Dave in the fair city of Edinburgh. Drinks, dinner, more drinks, a rambling discussion of photography, music and cinema with some of his workmates, then onto the last train to Lenzie. Most excellent.

We ran into someone who was very familiar-looking in our first pub, but I dismissed my suspicions only to subsequently find out we'd been sitting next to someone we went to high school with. D'oh.

Political Compass

2011-10-26T15:22:00.003+01:00

Political Compass (26 October 2011), a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

Just updated my map of the political persuasions of Flickr members. Looks like the website is still a haven for communist anarchists. It could be worse, I suppose.

Cephalopod fantasy

2011-10-23T08:27:00.001+01:00

A bit of a gear-change this time. A not-uncommon refrain at Strange News is me railing against the ghettoisation of science fiction by the gods of mainstream fiction. Nonetheless, at the same time my default stance is to look hypocritically downwards over the broad fantasy genre that usually shares the bookshelves with SF. As Margaret Atwood recently discussed, where fantasy ends and science fiction begins is not entirely unambiguous (though the presence of dwarves/elves is usually a pretty definitive sign), so it's not as if I'm on solid ground in my prejudices. Anyhow, to step down from my soapbox and embrace (if only for one book) a personal bête noire, I turned to a UK author, China Miéville, and his recent apocalyptic novel Kraken.

(For full disclosure: this isn't as big a step/concession as I'm making out. The novel is centred around my favourite invertebrate group, and begins in the sumptuous setting of a former employer.)

Billy Harrow, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London, is not having a good week. While conducting a public tour of the specimen collection he discovers that its prize entry, a 8.6 m Architeuthis that Billy himself curated, has completely vanished. Worse, a new "specimen" has appeared among the assembled preservation jars: a man folded neatly, if tightly, into a glass vessel. But Billy's troubles are only just beginning. The disappearance of one bottled animal, coupled with the appearance of another, attracts the attention of Baron and Collingwood, members of a specialist, and secretive, police unit that deals with less-than-natural occurrences. They reveal to Billy the existence of a Kraken cult that reveres the giant squid, a member of which, Dane Parnell, is also NHM staff. But Dane and his fellow worshippers aren't the only third parties interested in iconic giant molluscs, nor are they even remotely the most outlandish. Before long, Billy finds himself on a journey through a London that he barely recognises, where ancient spirits live in statues, where squirrels are unionised, and where the sea itself is a god.

Wow. While it would be fair to say that this novel hasn't won me over to fantasy, I was pretty entertained, and regularly astonished, by the imagination on display. It starts like a completely conventional, if somewhat bizarre, mystery story with a missing cephalopod for its McGuffin, but after only a few pages the more fantastical elements begin to creep in. By the end of the novel, it's wall-to-wall deviation-from-reality. What was most impressive was how consistently Miéville ups the ante on with his outlandish occurrences. At first, his Kraken cult alone seemed pretty off-the-wall, but this was trumped time and time again, with the late appearance of the Sea as an active force as a particular high point in outlandishness.

My favourite of Miéville's creations was probably Wati, an Egyptian spirit who was originally confined to a statue on a pharoh's whim, but is now free to roam all statues, including, enjoyably strangely, a Captain Kirk action figure. What made him even more appealing was that this otherworldliness was then combined with a more mundane role as a union leader, initially drawn into the action because of a strikebreaking squirrel. I also really liked the disrespectful, and slightly sultry, telepathic police officer, Collingwood, whose feigned disinterest and sharp, text-speak insults really brightened things up. Though I did think that, after giving her a great entrance, Miéville didn't really use her anywhere near enough in the latter two thirds of the book.

There's a "But" in all this, however. One that applies to all of the fantasy that I can remember reading, including classics like LotR. Namely that the underlying rules to which the novel is working are either flexible or completely absent. Characters die but can be brought back; inescapable situations suddenly have secret backdoors; mundane objects are revealed as powerful table-turners. Essentially, deus ex machina is the defining feature of the genre. After a certain point, the fun drains away when you realise that the corner into which the author has just painted his characters is probably something that can be (will be) got around with a few deft strokes of the pen. And, conversely, it can create situations where the reader might not unreasonably expect a reversal that never actually comes.

Here, Miéville gets passed this - in a way - by being so imaginative in his "cheating". I never really got anything like that sinking feeling I had in LotR when the Dead Men of Dunharrow were plucked out of thin air to turn the final battle in The Return of the King. While science fiction has its fair share of deus ex machina, it usually tries to play more fairly within its own rules, and often bends over backwards to retrospectively explain any "gods" that appear to have popped out from beneath the sofa cushions. Which, I guess, is why I prefer it as a fantastical genre: the real world conforms to rules, so I expect it of my fiction too. The wholesale abandonment of this in fantasy is what irks me, at least in part because I suspect that it's just lazy writing. A skilful author might very well construct an emotionally resonant scene in which the reader fears for characters they've come to love, but it seems slapdash when that's resolved by a cheap sleight of hand.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that, while I have my reservations, I really enjoyed Kraken. I don't know that I'll be visiting Miéville's fantasies again any time soon, but it's difficult not to recommend any novel so consistently innovative in its creations, especially one in which a cephalopod plays such a pivotal role.

Multidecadal variation

2011-10-21T12:00:00.012+01:00

As of today, my office at work contains someone who is 39, someone who is 49 and someone who is 59. Nice, pleasing symmetry. Of course, with cuts on their way, I wonder if 39 and 49 will make it to 59?

Winter is upon us

2011-10-20T10:24:00.032+01:00

While not as familiar, or astronomically-defined, as either the solstices or equinoxes, today is another special day in the calendar. It is the first day after the summer solstice on which I have worn trousers, rather than shorts, to cycle to work. As my choice of attire this morning was based on ambient air temperature, clearly winter is upon us.

Spring, defined here at Strange News as the first day that fingerless gloves are worn in preference to full gloves, is anticipated to arrive in late February or early March 2012.

Winkworth & Mottisfont

2011-10-17T09:00:00.000+01:00

Winkworth & Mottisfont, a set on Flickr.

We spent both days this passed weekend ticking off nearly-local National Trust sites. Got to make that membership pay for itself.

Our first stop was Winkworth Arboretum up in Surrey. It was pretty good, though not as bathed in autumn colours as we'd hoped. It was also somewhat lacking in the tearoom facilities that we've come to expect from the NT - no lemon drizzle cake (or decent sandwiches) here. Lunch was instead provided by nearby Godalming (home of the Nosmo King sign).

Sunday saw us out passed Romsey at Mottisfont Abbey. Not that you'd know it was a former abbey these days. The abbey, or parts of it anyway, have been almost entirely subsumed within a manor house exterior. It's quite something to see an arch or medieval wall hidden in a corner of an otherwise stately-seeming home. In a change from Saturday, dining was of a high standard (if matched by similarly high prices).

A week in films

2011-10-16T08:51:00.002+01:00

I seem to have seen a lot of films this past week ...

Easy A
Another enjoyable counter-example to my (ill-informed) no-films-for-girls observation from earlier this year. Emma Stone plays a funny (if somewhat unrealistically self-conscious) teenager whose white lie to avoid an undesirable camping trip takes on a life of its own in the gossip of her high school. Turning her new-found, and ill-founded, reputation as a tramp (US-sense) to her advantage, she becomes the go-to girl for boys keen to trade cash to "gain" sexual experience. But with consequences. Anyway, the film is played very well and is wry, witty and full of laughs, particularly when her super-liberal and super-supportive parents get screentime.

Grade: B+ (+2 on the Leeper Scale)

American History X
By contrast, and quite a surprising one, AHX is a badly acted, overly didactic, unrealistic mess of a film. It was well-received in some quarters when originally released (if subject to a hissy fit by its director), but it's difficult to see why, except in that it engages headlong with the theme of racism. But the film does so bluntly (dinner table discussions of racism) and artlessly (black-and-white for the past - I mean, really?), and wastes the talent on show. Very disappointing.

Grade: D+ (high -2 on the Leeper Scale)

His Girl Friday
I'd been waiting to see this film for years, in large part because a favoured author reverentially borrowed the name of its lead female character for his protagonist. It's a screwball comedy telling the story of a newspaper editor's nefarious scheming to win back his journalist ex-wife, played out alongside the events of one night in which a befuddled prisoner on death row escapes and unsettles the re-election prospects of a corrupt, incumbent mayor. But while fast-paced, and full of gallows humour, much of which is at the expense of the press, the film feels seriously dated and rather stagey (which, I've just discovered, is because it's a translated stage-play). It also has a few moments in it that disturb modern sensibilities, such as when the all-white cast nod along ("political correctness gone mad") to the suggestion that the prisoner only got the death penalty because he shot a black police officer. Disappointing, but not a waste.

Grade: C+ (high 0 on the Leeper Scale)

Midnight in Paris
Owen Wilson plays a Hollywood screenwriter, and Woody Allen proxy, who time-shifts to his idolised 1920s Paris, along the way discovering that so-called Golden Ages only appear that way when looked at in the rear mirror. While much of the press is presently gushing about this being a welcome return to past form for Woody Allen, I don't think that he's ever fully dropped the ball. To be fair, I haven't seen all of his films of the past decade, but I've probably seen most of them and none of those have been stinkers. To my mind, he's actually one of the most reliable of directors, even if his films aren't always (or ever?) cutting-edge "high art". Anyway, this was a very enjoyable, and gentle, love letter to Paris, with a central line on nostalgia that's difficult to disagree with, and a lot of good gags about figures of the time. It also made me remember how much I like wandering the streets of Paris - though, unlike the film, I prefer it sans pluie.

Grade: B+ (+2 on the Leeper Scale)

Tron: Legacy
A bit of a lazy delve into the past with this one. It doesn't do anything interesting in sequelising its fictional world, but unlike, say, The Matrix (which arguably borrowed a bit from the original Tron) it doesn't ruin it either (yes, I'm looking at you Reloaded / Revolutions). It's largely a superfluous if mildly entertaining retread of the original, which is only really engaging when Jeff Bridges does his Zen thing (though it does contain a surprising turn from Michael Sheen as an uber-camp entertainment program). The film does miss a trick, however, in failing to connect the real-world malevolence of corporate software giant ENCOM with that of Clu in the virtual-world, a theme that was more important in the original film. But the film isn't derailed by this, and just ambles along in a likeable enough fashion. Given that The Matrix more stylishly treads on similar ground, it's difficult to see what more could be done with Tron's world, but a bit more effort from the writers wouldn't have gone amiss. Amiably dull.

Grade: C (0 on the Leeper Scale)

"Least Concern"

2011-10-12T12:34:00.000+01:00

Today's Featured Picture over at Wikipedia shows a giraffe grazing, and discusses adaptations for consuming spiky plants. Not knowing an awful lot about giraffes, but wondering how they were doing extinction-wise, I moseyed on over to the article on them and was duly reassured that they are classified by the IUCN as "Least Concern". However, sticking around to read up on "the tallest of all extant land-living animal species", I discovered that, across the entirety of Africa, there are fewer giraffes (of all species combined) than there are people living in Southampton. In fact, given the uncertainties involved in counting them, there could be considerably fewer.

All of which got me thinking about how the classification of "Least Concern" seems, at best, pretty relative (i.e. of least concern compared to most other species), and may give an overly rosy view of their status to skim-readers such as (usually) myself. I can't establish from Wikipedia how many giraffes were roaming Africa, say, 10,000 years ago, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't an order of magnitude more (for loose comparison, I did discover that there were ~300,000 African Bush Elephants when I was born, but there are only 10,000 now). That said, and knowing next to nothing about it, I would imagine that population viability is probably pretty good at the ~100,000 level (hence, presumably, "Least Concern").

Leaving that genetic aspect aside, given that land-use changes (i.e. more for humans, less for everything else) show no sign of altering direction at any point in the foreseeable (and not-so-foreseeable) future, I seriously doubt that the current giraffe population level is even faintly secure. To be fair, the term "Least Concern" is accurate: relative to many other species, giraffes are not immediately on their way out so, yes, we should be less concerned about them. But given this low population plus likely future change, and given that humans (7,000,000,000 and counting) are also formally classified as "Least Concern", it doesn't strike me as a helpful categorisation.

Half-life

2011-10-09T22:28:00.000+01:00

Just finished watching a generally pleasing Horizon programme by Jim Al-Khalili about the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, its consequences to date and the likely effect on nuclear power more widely. It had a lot of interesting stuff about how minimal the radioactive effects of the disaster have been (and are likely to continue being). And there was a nice section on how the most deleterious effects of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 are, arguably, the psychological effects of worrying about radiation, rather than the radiation itself. Al-Khalili also made the same, oft-repeated point about how most of the socio-political problems faced by the nuclear industry can be traced back to its early association with the military.

It did, however, finish with a rather confusing item about a developing technology for dealing with nuclear waste that transmutes radioisotopes with long half-lives into others that decay much more quickly. This sounds like a good idea when you first hear it - get rid of pollution faster - but it doesn't quite make sense. Paradoxically, the longer a radioisotope takes to decay, the safer it is since it gives off less radiation per unit time. When one hears of nuclear waste that will take tens of thousands of years (or more) to decay, you're really hearing about something that's not very radioactive. By contrast, elements that decay in short periods of time - days, weeks, months - kick off a huge amount of potentially dangerous radiation in that time. Of course, if you store them safely during this period, this isn't a big problem, but they're still far from safe.

It may be that what Al-Khalili was getting at was this latter point, namely that one has to look after nuclear waste carefully for less time. Or that, in the case of radioactive elements that are also chemically toxic, they're quickly turned into elements with less conventionally undesirable properties. But it would help if he'd said, since I can't help but think that a shorter half-life isn't all sweetness and light.

Dr. M and Belfast

2011-10-07T12:52:00.001+01:00

Dr. M and Belfast, a set on Flickr.

Last weekend we flew out to Belfast for a weekend in the company of Dr. M, who, thanks to work commitments, has been out there for the past 9 months. Anyway, as I've never set foot on Irish soil (neither Nationalist nor Republican), and as we've not seen him for a while, we allowed ourselves to be stiffed by Flybe.

After spending Friday evening dining in his fancy docklands flat, we spent the whole of Saturday pacing the streets of central Belfast. Accompanied, unsurprisingly, by persistent rain. Among other sights, we took in the Salmon of Wisdom, the botanic gardens and Ulster Museum, before having a great meal out (inappropriately enough) in a Japanese restaurant.

Sunday saw us heading out of the city to the northern coast and to (quelle surprise!) the Giant's Causeway. Which, amazingly, we actually got some great weather for. The skies weren't exactly azure, but we had practically no rain, and it was great for photographs. We also took in a slightly shaky rope bridge, Carrick-a-Rede, to a nearshore island with views over to Scotland. The latter came as quite a surprise - despite looking at maps my whole life, it never occurred to me that the gap between N.I. and Scotland was narrow enough to see across.

In passing, in spite of the province's well-earned reputation, we didn't really come across anything (beyond an extensive museum exhibition) that reminded us of The Troubles. We did deviate slightly down a side street to see a few murals, but the ones we saw mostly referred to sportsmen rather than an armed struggle. This near-absence of any signs of sectarian strife was largely down to us avoiding areas where it was still (understandably; up to a point) contentious, but it also goes to show how normalised things have become. At least on the surface.

Anyway, needless to say, no end of photographs were taken. As well as a few movies - including one that documents our near-miss with the sea at the tip of the Giant's Causeway.

50K

2011-10-06T09:04:00.002+01:00

Another 10K milestone. This time "achieved" in 111 days (~90 per day). Again, since I'm always adding new pictures, there are necessarily always more to accumulate hits. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise. But it's still nice to know that they're interesting enough to attract viewers. Even if they are, in part, my Mum and Dad.

A transhumanist pauses

2011-10-05T13:37:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I last read something (or, more accurately, wrote about it) by the Australian writer Greg Egan. While I've still a collection of his stories to write about (in passing: they're uniformly excellent), I figure I'd better write-up his novel, Zendegi, before I forget all about it.

Iran, 2012. Martin, an Australian journalist, has travelled to Tehran to cover parliamentary elections, widely anticipated to be a stitched-up damp squib. They turn out as expected but a subsequent scandal involving the ruling elite restarts a flame thought extinguished by the crushing of the Green Movement in 2009. Attempting to document the scandal, Martin finds himself at its core and at some personal risk, but before long is reporting on the fall of the government. Meanwhile, Nasim, an Iranian exile working in the US, looks on at the changes in her homeland. Her continuing work as a computational neuroscientist depends on the successful funding of the Human Connectome Project, a vast effort that proposes to digitally describe the patterns of neuron connection in the human brain. But the HCP's faltering prospects, as well as unwanted overtures from a transhumanist entrepreneur keen to be "uploaded" first, convinces Nasim to quit academia and return to a changed Iran that appears to offer a bright, hopeful future.

15 years later. Martin has never left Iran, and has built a family and business in Tehran. Nasim has risen to the top of the Zendegi corporation, which serves up virtual reality adventures for all the family including, as it happens, Martin and his young son, Javeed. But the world-simulating business is fiercely competitive, and Zendegi is gradually losing ground to its rivals. To combat the slide, Nasim digs back into her past academic work to improve the process of side-loading, a method of "digitising" human experience. With this innovation, and the marketing coup of side-loading of a famous Iranian soccer star into virtual football matches, the fortunes of Zendegi begin to turn around. Meanwhile, a double tragedy strikes Martin's family, and threatens to leave Javeed an orphan, potentially raised by conservative Muslim relatives. Through a family connection, Martin contacts Nasim with a desperate request: can she create a side-loaded version of him to support and guide Javeed through a parentless future?

Of all of the novels of Egan's I've read to date, this is easily the one most likely to win him a wider readership. In part, because he gives it an almost-present setting that touches on a current political sore-point, but also because he eschews his traditional approach to novel-writing of laying on the physics with a trowel. Probably most importantly, however, is that Egan has invested the novel with characters that are considerably more developed, and much more easy to identify with, than his usual far future scientists or virtual reality consciousnesses. To be fair, he does still largely steer clear of Martin's marriage to Mahnoosh, and Nasim is given very little in her life away from her work, but even so they're far more fleshed out, and fleshy, than he's dealt with before. Especially as Martin's story takes on a desperate edge as he both tries to cope with his probable death, while arranging for a computer-generated proxy to help raise his son to share his values.

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit there though. First of all, I should say that Zendegi is an excellent read, whether one considers it in terms of its science fiction aspects, its take on Iranian politics or its humane central drama. Given my previous experience with Egan which, while positive, has not exactly been caveat-free, I was genuinely surprised where he went in this book. In the past, Egan's virtual realities and their electronic citizens appear fully formed (cf. Schild's Ladder), but here he takes a detailed (but thankfully physics-free) look at the beginnings of these technologies. His travels through the highways and byways of contemporary Iranian politics also came as something of surprise given his usual penchant for far future societies with only a tangential connection to present day concerns. But I was most surprised with the touching core of Martin's concern for his son's future. Egan has given his characters human circumstances and frailties before, but here they're much more front-and-centre, as well as credible.

One idea which, while raised, does get a little short-changed by the human drama, is the status of the virtual reality Proxies that exist in Zendegi. They are introduced as only initially convincing NPCs who play alongside Martin and Javeed in Zendegi's storybook worlds. But as the novel progresses, Nasim and her team develop ever more advanced Proxies that are side-loaded to tackle increasingly human-like activities, such as complex team games like football, or even serving to spot hacks and defend Zendegi against attacks that have circumvented its automatic checking software. Furthermore, the central strand of the second half of the novel is the creation of a Proxy side-loaded with Martin's emotional and intellectual responses, a Proxy whose responses even Martin finds unnerving. While it is implied, or at least suspected, that these advanced Proxies are conscious (albeit with goldfish memories), Egan only really focuses on the ethics of their use late in the novel, and then only quite lightly. So the reader only briefly considers the fates of potentially millions of intelligent and self-aware electronic slaves. Still, Egan's flipping of the novel from a tale about the aspiration to create perfect simulacra into one that imagines a future of exploited consciousnesses is laudable. And, given his previous novels which depict a Brave New World of digital selves, quite unexpected.

In passing, an interesting beyond-the-novel angle is how Egan is, essentially, pouring cold water over the dreams (fantasies?) of the transhumanists. Given his previous work, it would be very easy to categorise him as a leading member in the ranks of the Singularity-awaiting masses. Augmented humans? Check. Sliding slope between real- and virtual-life? Check. Fanatical faith in technology? Check. But, instead, he uses Zendegi to fire a shot across the metaphorical bows of the transhumanist project. First, by introducing an unpleasant (but not inaccurate) transhumanist character keen to subvert the HCP. Then by kicking their hopes of near-future digital salvation into the long grass by illustrating the incredible difficulties involved. And, finally, by observing that, in the event of its construction, the road to transhumanist paradise will most likely be paved by enslaved Proxies. Personal, technical and ethical snubs, and (seemingly) quite against the run of play in Egan's fiction. Most enjoyable.

Anyhow, by way of summary, an excellent read which shows that Egan is capable of far more than interesting science fiction ideas. However, it's not, to be honest, my favourite of his works. Though I appreciated all of the things that I rave about above, particularly his avoidance of heavy-duty physics, I missed the more out-there aspects of his earlier novels, like the multiverse of Diaspora, the new lifeforms of Schild's Ladder and the QM mind-bending of Quarantine. Admittedly, in all of those, the good bits came with far too much physics for me to unequivocally champion them. But I hope (and expect) that Zendegi will be able to win Egan more fans of his work. He deserves them.

P.S. A particular nice idea in Zendegi, one which may even be on the cards, is how the Iranian protesters circumvent the blocks put on their telecommunications by their rulers. Instead of relying on an infrastructure of mobile phone masts that can be centrally shut down, their "slightly smart" phones pass information between themselves, gradually "diffusing" messages outwards until a functioning mast is found. Very clever.

Newenden, day 7

2011-09-16T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 7, a set on Flickr.

Some photographs of The Oast after we'd tidied up to depart; plus a stop-off on the way home in "Pooh country" (Ashdown Forest, East Sussex).

(A great map of the walk we did can be found here)

Newenden, day 6

2011-09-15T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 6, a set on Flickr.

An unfinished walk around Winchelsea followed by a walk around our holiday town, Newenden.

Newenden, day 5

2011-09-14T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 5, a set on Flickr.

Out via Rye to Brookland, then off on a cross-marsh walk to isolated Fairfield Church; then snaking our way back via Appledore, Stone in Oxney and Wittersham to Small Hythe, where we visited Smallhythe Place.

Newenden, day 4

2011-09-13T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 4, a set on Flickr.

A trip out to Tudeley, Kent, to visit All Saints Church, all of whose windows were designed by the Belorussian/French artist Marc Chagall; then on for a walk around the grounds of Scotney Castle and the adjacent hop farm.

Newenden, day 3

2011-09-12T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 3, a set on Flickr.

After a brief visit to Rolvenden (and its church), we headed to Sissinghurst Castle, followed by a stop at a Sissinghurst church.

Newenden, day 2

2011-09-11T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 2, a set on Flickr.

Out for a walk around Bodiam Castle, East Sussex, then onto a church in nearby Sandhurst.

10 years

2011-09-11T09:11:00.087+01:00

The first thing that I think of now is how surprising it is that 10 years have passed. Back then, it was such a momentous event that it seemed like "10 years in the future" would take an age to arrive because of all of the intervening drama, score-settling and transnational upheavals that would need to take place first. But, here we are, 10 years later, and with a world that feels much more changed by 9/11 than, probably, it actually is.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I still remember much of the day quite clearly. It was just another late summer day, quite nice as I recall, but I was at work. We had MW staying with us that week because the ballet was in town, and we were due off on a two-week holiday to France at the end of the week. The first I heard of anything untoward was some remark in the corridor that a plane had hit the WTC. As I suspect many people did, I figured what was meant was some accident and didn't really give it a second thought. I don't think that I even looked online for information at that point. But an update a few minutes later, that a second plane had crashed into the WTC, got my attention and the penny dropped. Then, as the towers fell, and again probably unsurprisingly, one of my initial thoughts was of the closing scene of the 1999 film Fight Club, which I'd finally seen a few months previously. But it was immediately obvious that this was quite a different kind of event from that portrayed in the film (where empty towers are destroyed in anti-consumerist rage). I don't remember much else of that afternoon, just that it was probably the only occasion I've known where the whole internet was brought to a standstill by the jam of traffic on it.

I remember the evening better. MW's ballet was actually cancelled because of the unfolding events on the East Coast, and we spent the whole evening, until the early hours, watching the whole spectacle on television. And I say that without meaning to sound outrageously uncaring. Even then, before it had really sunk in, it was a pretty spectacular, if utterly appalling, event. And the repeated replay and analysis, both on television and in our living room discussions, made for a vivid and surreal evening. There wasn't a whole lot of doubt about who'd done it, the earlier attempted bombing made that pretty clear, but it was, and still is, pretty shocking about just how successful they'd been. Even today it still strikes me as an incredibly audacious attack, though I suspect it was considerably more successful than its idiotic planners dared to hope. And, on that evening, it pretty successfully shocked-and-awed us. It also, and this seems unspeakably callous, was singularly exciting. Out there in the world a Big Event was happening and, thanks to global media coverage, we all had ringside seats. That this event was so clearly, and so shockingly, directed at innocent people made retaliation and retribution both inevitable and justifiable. As such, there was a palpable frisson as one righteously (as it seemed then) contemplated justice.

Of course, things haven't exactly worked out anywhere near as black and white as they seemed 10 years ago. To say the least. But that's a whole other blog post.

In passing, I just wanted to plug what I still think of as some of the best coverage of 9/11 - the Onion's special issue two weeks after the event. It's satire, but for me it more clear-sightedly captures and contextualises 9/11 than most of what the mainstream media was doing. It nailed the conflicting emotions (horror, excitement, revenge, despair), and wasn't afraid to point out inconvenient truths about the attackers (e.g. who'd been bankrolling them throughout the 1980s).

Newenden, day 1

2011-09-10T22:00:00.001+01:00

Newenden, day 1, a set on Flickr.

Travelling to our holiday home in Newenden, Kent, via Rudyard Kipling's home in Burwash, Bateman's.

Confined to quarters

2011-09-04T12:44:00.000+01:00

Confined to quarters, a set on Flickr.

Thanks to the first cold of the season, I was stuck at home on Friday. Not altogether a bad thing, since the weather was really nice and I could still do quite a bit of work via SSH and a laggy Windows Live Mesh connection. But there was still a lot of moping going on.

However, bearing in mind aforementioned good weather, I did pop outside when my placebo of choice (generic Lemsip-equivalent) had dulled my symptoms sufficiently. Mostly to snap off shots of late runners in C's tomato crop.

Product idea of the day

2011-08-29T13:26:00.001+01:00

Despite its great convenience and speed, who among us doesn't think that e-mail represents a decline in the great art of human communication? Who doesn't look back with fondness to a time when letters arrived in physical form delivered by hand by a friendly postal worker, and when reading and writing letters was an exercise in anticipation and satisfaction? Our new service, e-Snail, can take you back to this halcyon time, while retaining the convenient aspects of e-mail such as font choices and spell-checking. Sign up with us, and all e-mails that you send will be swiftly channelled to our finest quality printers, printed in the style and on the paper that you choose, and then sent by First Class post to your intended recipient. And all for only a little more than the cost of a stamp. What's more, with only the slightest effort, your family member, friend or significant other can quickly and simply reply to you in the same way [*]. All you need to is register with us today, link the entries in your electronic address book with postcodes in the real, and then get back to a time when "slow communication" really meant careful, thought-through prose which alternately amused, charmed and delighted.

[*] Or even by e-mail if they've yet to embrace e-Smail. They will!

Down With ... The Fighter

2011-08-29T08:09:00.002+01:00

Finally caught up with The Fighter, the only one of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees that I missed but wanted to see. It's a relatively lo-fi "true story" that charts the rise of the boxer Micky Ward alongside both his brother-trainer Dicky Eklund's struggle with crack addiction, and his own struggle with an overbearing and highly combustible family. It's got some great angles, like the slow realisation that the film crew documenting Dicky are actually interested in his drug problems and not his earlier boxing career, but it really stands out in its performances. In particular Christian Bale, who delivers a pretty remarkable turn as the frazzled but talented Dicky (again in anorexic-method mode à la The Machinist). But the whole cast pulls together to make for a compelling and enjoyable tale, especially in gradually getting the viewer behind characters such as Micky and Dicky's harridan mother, who spends much of the film as a borderline monster. And it doesn't hurt to have another great turn from Amy Adams, though I do say that as someone who has nursed a crush on her since Enchanted.

Grade: B+ (high +2 on the Leeper Scale)

By contrast, I had practically no interest in the less well-received 2003 comedy, Down With Love. We recorded it quite a few months ago on a whim, and finding ourselves in-between DVD series last night, decided to give it the benefit of the doubt ... well, for 10 minutes or so. But how wrong could we be? While it's certainly no work of genius, it was considerably better than we'd expected. Extremely stylishly shot, it lies somewhere in-between a pastiche, a parody and a homage of the 1960s rom-coms of Doris Day and Rock Hudson that play with the rising status of women in society. Renée Zellweger plays a proto-feminist writer whose book, the eponymous Down With Love, aims to elevate the status of women by revealing their subservience to love and marriage, while Ewan McGregor plays a rakish journalist who sets out to seduce her and undermine her book's ethos. As noted above, the film both mocks and celebrates its sources, and it's not absolutely clear to what end (post-feminism?), but it's done pretty infectiously with some wry double entendre and great repartee between the leads. And it's more than ably supported by the likes of David Hyde Pierce (in full Niles-mode). So, I guess the lesson is: don't judge a book from its cover.

Grade: B- (high +1 on the Leeper Scale)

Another visitor ... [*]

2011-08-28T07:36:00.003+01:00

Had the unusual pleasure of a visiting student this week, one JH from Stockholm University. I'd hosted her PhD. supervisor, JN, for a Friday Seminar last year (on a somewhat arcane physical oceanographic subject), and at the time he mentioned a new student he had who was moving into what, for him, was new research territory: the carbon cycle. Anyway, said student finally came to NOC this past week, and TT and I tried to pass on some of our hard-earned "knowledge" on the topic.

Actually, it was travelling at least as much in the other direction at times. Building upon some rather theoretical work one of her PhD. co-supervisors did in the 1990s, J's work was largely based on a clever re-framing of the ocean's carbon cycle that throws out DIC and alkalinity, and replaces them with acidic-carbon (^aC) and basic-carbon (^bC). This originates, in part, from the somewhat strange nature of alkalinity as a concept, which sees it regulating DIC concentrations at the ocean's surface while itself being composed of a number of ionic species including bicarbonate and carbonate. I've never really liked its definition, and always struggle with it when I think of what changes to it result in.

A key upshot of J's model is that the organic carbon portion of the biological pump drives ^aC, while the inorganic portion drives ^bC, which nicely separates processes. It also makes the changes driven by riverine carbonate (to ^bC) and anthropogenic CO₂ (to ^aC) more straightforward to follow. Which, for her work on oceanic CO₂ storage, is pretty handy. To be honest, I didn't follow it at first, and I'm still not quite sure I've got the full measure of it yet, but I now see that it's a pretty clever way of framing things (rather than very strange as I first thought).

The rationale for J's work is to create a simplified ocean carbon submodel that can slot nicely and cheaply into an integrated assessment model (IAM) and outperform the existing decay term that's currently used. From what she showed us, her model's a definite improvement on this front - though it will now make the behaviour of this IAM a bit more complicated and time-dependent (the price of quasi-realism). And it'll hopefully make for a nice publication for her to boot.

Anyway, considering the rather narrow focus of this rationale, as well as the simplicity of her model's ocean biogeochemistry, I was pretty impressed at J's knowledge and grasp of wider issues in marine biology (DOM, acidification, PFTs, ect.). She pressed me pretty hard on most angles, and I found myself in arm-waving territory on more than one occasion. She even got me on the defensive and playing my "until-there's-a-complete-description,-I-refuse-to-add-your-process-to-my-model" card. Usually I manage to fob people off long before they get there.

I'm now half-thinking about trying to apply her model in my own work, though I'm less sure that it'll make quite as interesting an exercise as I first thought. Squeezing ^aC and ^bC out of my DIC and alkalinity terms is easy because of the assumptions involved, but that may also make it less interesting. Still, to demonstrate the utility of this approach in more complex, 3D frameworks, it's probably worth having a go. I just have to pull my finger out to find and plug the holes in MEDUSA's leaky oxygen cycle ...

Anyway, aside from the science, J was nice enough to chat about Swedish crime fiction (obviously), the highlights of Southampton, intra-UK politics, desirable conference destinations, nationalist parties in Sweden and the UK, Jane Austen and blue plaques, etc. I say "chat", but I'm not sure she got a word in edgeways. (Note to self: more listening, less pontificating)

^[*] ... stay awhile, stay forever

A bit more Culture

2011-08-27T12:59:00.002+01:00

It's been quite a while since Iain (M.) Banks last had an outing for (probably) his most famous creation, the Culture. But after a non-M. title that was patently science fiction, his book-writing cycle has definitively rolled back into M. territory with Surface Detail, novel number 8 in his Culture oeuvre (for those who're counting).

Opening with the murder, at his hands, of Y'breq, the indentured, and heavily tattooed, "companion" of the malevolent industrialist Veppers, the events of Surface Detail take place against the much grander backdrop of a "War in Heaven". For countless millennia, civilisations have constructed virtual realities in which to pleasurably immerse themselves, but a few have constructed virtual Hells in which punishment is meted out to those who are outcast, for whatever reason, by those societies. But the continued existence of these barbaric torture chambers is being challenged, and a virtual War is being bloodlessly fought to decide the outcome. But the War isn't going well for those who favour abolition and, contrary to the rules agreed upon by both sides, they are considering opening it out into a conflict in the real.

The Culture, who have grudgingly elected not to join the abolitionists, are watching the War from the sidelines with more than a passing interest. Their attention is focused by the unexpected resurrection of Y'breq in a distant Culture starship, and her unsurprising desire for revenge on Veppers, a player at the centre of the War. Meanwhile, Veppers is secretly finessing both sides in the War, promising to deliver destruction of the Hells to the abolitionists, and their continued secret operation to their owners. Alongside these (and other) strands in the real, several others play out in the virtual: academics Prin and Chay have hacked into their society's Hell in order to publicly expose its horrific purpose; meanwhile, Marshal Vatueil fights (and repeatedly dies) for the abolitionists through a series of radically different military campaigns.

As the Culture, as well as several other civilisations, become gradually aware of both Veppers' duplicity and of the plan to spread the War into the real, they are drawn into a quickly-evolving, and deadly, stream of events.

The first thing to say is that, as ever, this was a great read. I raced through its 600 pages, and more-or-less thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It's perhaps not quite as richly baroque a tale as his last Culture outing but, much as with that novel, it still manages to pleasingly embellish the Culture universe. So here we have a slew of new civilisations, Culture-level and below; a considerably fleshed out and detailed virtual plane of existence; and a vast, mothballed system of factories built by a now-absent elder civilisation. Some of these aspects have been touched on in earlier novels (or in Banks' A Few Notes on the Culture), but I certainly hadn't expected a deeper delve into virtual reality to do so via anything like simulated Hells and a "War in Heaven". Chay's journey through Hell stands out as particularly striking. Regular readers can be assured that Banks is still keeping his universe unpredictably fresh, quite a contrast with another blog regular (and Banks wannabe), Neal Asher, who seems, instead, be intent on tying up all of his universe's loose ends.

That said, it's difficult to discern any deep theme in this Culture novel. Previous books have dealt with more weighty issues that (as much as science fiction can) parallel some from our own world, but there's nothing here that seems to fulfil a similar role. Focusing on Y'breq's desire for simple revenge, the novel seems more straightforwardly personal. The portions that deal with wider politics either don't have analogues in our world (at least ones I can perceive), or are too weakly fleshed out for them to be taken seriously. On this latter point, I think Banks missed a trick a bit by so briefly dealing with the politics of the pro-Hell civilisations. That, I suspect, would have been worth pursuing for its parallels with contemporary religious societies (whether Islamic or Christian), and would be right up Banks' street as a card-carrying socialist atheist. But, surprisingly, it doesn't get nearly enough attention.

Also, I am getting a little tired of the degree of hyper-threading in Banks' Culture novels these days. While he's never really told things in an entirely linear or straightforward fashion (The Player of Games comes closest; Use of Weapons is where he uses threads best), his use of a large number of typically loosely connected strands is getting to the point where it over-stretches my memory. It still works here, but it can be quite troublesome remembering who, exactly, all of the strangely-named aliens are, and it's certainly getting difficult to keep track of all of the plot convolutions and political machinations. I certainly lost track of some of the more minor players this time around, and I certainly struggled working out the various allegiances by the end. Banks may just be trying to keep readers on their toes, or perhaps simply illustrating the real complexity of events, but at times I thought he was instead being wilfully obfuscating.

Another curious malaise is that, increasingly, Banks makes his visits to the Culture a little too flippant. In earlier novels, serious events occurred and were discussed seriously, if with dark humour, by serious characters. While this still occurs, I find the tone a lot more uneven. Particularly so with the Culture Minds, which are now often a bit too "blokey" for the kinds of characters that they are (= benevolent, god-like AIs). There were a few places in Surface Detail where I found Banks dawdling a little too close to the line that separates him from the likes of the aforementioned Asher. While it can be enjoyable to read, it mostly just comes across at Banks playing to the gallery, and undercuts any more interesting points that the novel is trying to make (which, being science fiction, it might not be).

There's also a couple of odd conclusions to the novel. The first has the Culture essentially engaging in revenge after steadfastly sticking throughout to its humanitarian position abhorring it. While the Culture has some form on retribution from earlier novels (Look To Windward closes spectacularly on this point), it's done with more purpose and justification than here. While Veppers is deeply unpleasant, and is responsible for quite a number of deaths (including, of course, Y'breq's), his crimes don't seem on quite the right scale. The second is Surface Detail's epilogue which, while pleasing (for reasons I won't go into), is a little bit too much of playing to the fanboys. I liked it, and in fact had suspected it, but I just thought it an unnecessary extra detail that felt like Banks was trying to appropriate some of the fame of a certain previous novel for this one. One of the more distinctive aspects of Banks is that, while revisiting the same universe, he has largely resisted the temptation to return to previously crowd-pleasing settings or characters - long may it continue.

Anyway, notwithstanding my criticisms, which serve mostly to quibble about Surface Detail's ranking in the Culture pantheon, I'd thoroughly recommend the novel to Banks fans. Not the best of introductions to the Culture, and certainly not the most significant of them, but a very enjoyable tale, solidly told.

Skyride, 2011

2011-08-14T23:01:00.002+01:00

Skyride, 2011, a set on Flickr.

Today's outing was on the Skyride around Southampton. Basically, parts of the city get coned off and cyclists get to roam the roads unmolested. Which sounds slightly more cyclist-friendly than it actually is. Much as with last year, the dilemma of annoying car drivers is resolved by routing cyclists through portions of the city that are largely unused anyway. Last year it was Southampton's extensive parks, this year it was the city's extensive docks. Which, actually, was pretty good, since the docks we went through today are ones that are usually completely off-limits to the public. So much photography of the unlikely-to-be-seen-again scenery resulted. Also as with last year, today's Skyride was a pretty fun and friendly thing to do, with heaps of families taking part.

Hillier Gardens

2011-08-13T22:45:00.000+01:00

Hillier Gardens, a set on Flickr.

Out to Romsey today to see Hillier Gardens' "Art in the Garden", their annual sculpture exhibition.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given Hillier's primary role in horticulture, the emphasis is firmly on the "garden" part, to the extent that we were hunting high and low for some of the sculptures. We got almost all of them in the end, and while we've seen much better sculpture exhibitions elsewhere, it was cool to see the gardens as well.

Overall, I think I prefer too see art in a nice place ahead of a nice place with some art in it.

The Infidel

2011-08-12T23:01:00.024+01:00

Summary: under-written and over-long. A potentially good idea (Muslim family man finds out that he was born Jewish then adopted), is all but ruined in its execution. Good jokes are thin on the ground, and the film is far too long for the material. Its "surprise" conclusion is quite ridiculously contrived, and its attempts to engage with more weighty issues (racism, Israel) are just fatuously lame. Very disappointing, particularly so given the talented names involved.

Grade: C- (low -1 on the Leeper Scale)

Trans-cosmic journey

2011-08-11T22:59:00.001+01:00

It wasn't that long since my last trip there, but it's time for another visit to (so-called) "classic" science fiction territory, on this occasion with Poul Anderson's epic 1970 novel, Tau Zero.

Beginning on Earth in a not-too-distant future when humanity has just begun to travel out to nearby stars, Tau Zero is the story of the crew of the Leonora Christine and their journey to a distant solar system. Fuelled by hydrogen from the near-vacuum of space, the ship's Bussard ramjet accelerates it towards light speed allowing it, through time dilation, to reach across the 30 light year journey in just a few years from the perspective of the crew. Chosen for their ability to both crew the ship and colonise the Earth-like planet discovered in the faraway system, the 25 women and 25 men aboard the Leonora Christine expect never to see the Earth again, but busy themselves with science and learning, and also with shipboard romances.

However, while the ship is still accelerating, it passes through a wandering nebula critically damaging its systems for deceleration. Initially shocked that the ship is still accelerating and that their original target is now completely unattainable, the crew rally around a plan to continue accelerating out of the Milky Way and to repair the damaged systems in intergalactic space, before decelerating into a new system. But on exiting the galaxy, the Leonora Christine finds the "empty" space still too rich in matter to safely switch off the ramjet, so the crew decide to press on, increasing the ship's speed and further dilating time. The setbacks continue, and before long the crew begin to fray as there appears to be no end in sight to their journey, and the passage of time exceeds the lifespan of Earth's solar system. Worse, the universe around the ship is changing, and the astronomers aboard belatedly realise that the Big Crunch is underway ...

This is one of those books that's better in theory than it is in practise. The set-up is great, and a really neat exercise in special relativity, but the execution is very patchy, and the novel is quite dull for long stretches. Largely, and perhaps unsurprisingly, because the characters don't quite work on the page. Much like the physics in the story, they appear something of an intellectual exercise, with personalities that serve primarily to just bump the plot along - not a good way to imbue a novel with human interest. To be fair, Anderson does well setting up a very existential dilemma for the crew (press on and simply hope for the best, or destroy the ship and end the journey with dignity and sanity), one that's interesting to ponder outside the novel, but one that's not nearly as satisfying within it.

All that said, it was still well worth reading. For all its flaws in characterisation, it never descended to the sexist farce of certain other "classic" novels. Sure, it wasn't really quite up to the giants of the era, but its good bits more than balanced out its more tedious sections. I particularly liked how, as the ship approaches light speed and "tau zero", the universe becomes akin to regularly-spaced speed bumps, as galaxy after galaxy are sped through in subjective seconds, and serve only to feed the maw of the ramjet. And while the physics at the end is now very much out of vogue, I still rather liked how Anderson concludes the journey of the Leonora Christine. In part, probably, because said eschatology still seems somewhat more satisfying than the more probable alternatives.

Overall, I won't be rushing out to raid Anderson's back catalogue, but I'm pleased to have finally knocked this "classic" off.

Random observation: riots and social media

2011-08-10T17:30:00.003+01:00

A common thread in reporting of the UK's current riots is how they appear to be organised in quite a sophisticated fashion using social media services and portable devices. That is pretty interesting, but is in keeping with the recent student protests (or were they riots?; depends who's reporting I guess).

One related aspect that I've found interesting is how people I know (and people who know people I know) have reported their views of the riots on social media services like Facebook. A swift perusal of my news feed on Facebook reveals a nice selection of Daily Hate viewpoints being expressed by (essentially uninvolved) people on the subject of the riots. For instance, that rioters should be shot, jailed, lose their benefits, be sent to Afghanistan, et cetera. My brother even advocates bringing on martial law (though, to be fair, he is in the military so has something of a vested interest there).

What I guess I find interesting is that these rather authoritarian views are expressed completely publicly, non-anonymously and rather stridently. Within limits, I can, of course, understand the views themselves - as the riots appear to be decoupled from the original public anger, it's difficult to empathise with the rioters. But it still seems fairly novel to me that people should record such views in so transparent (and checkable-by-employers) a forum. Then again, having occasionally seen racist and homophobic views bandied about on Facebook (thankfully friends-of-friends at closest approach), perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

Beginners

2011-08-09T17:27:00.002+01:00

A quick, easy report this one. What a great little film!

Centred around Oliver, a graphic artist catering to musicians in need of album art, Beginners at first appears to be focused instead on his father, Hal. After the death of his wife of 40 years, retired art historian Hal stuns Oliver with the successive revelations that he is 1. gay; 2. keen to pursue new sexual relationships; and 3. suffering with terminal cancer. The film picks up after Hal's death, but jumps back and forth over the immediately preceding years, and back to Oliver's childhood and relationship with his mother, Georgia. In the "present" (2003, according to Oliver's insistent narration), as well as tying up the loose ends of Hal's life, including adopting his dog, Arthur, Oliver begins a relationship with a French actress, Anna. His previous relationships, documented in his art, have all disintegrated because of his creeping disengagement, and as his romance with Anna blossoms, he begins to fear repetition. But Anna also has inhibitions that stretch back to her relationship with her parents, and, together, they hesitantly piece together a plausible future for themselves.

There's just so much to like about this relatively low-key film. It's played great (though Ewan McGregor still struggles with a US accent); it's not afraid to trust the viewer to follow its novel-like narrative (your hand is not held); it has some great moments of humour in it (e.g. psychoanalysis at a party; consciousness-expanding graffiti vandalism); it has a star-turn from a talking dog (you'll see); it's quietly didactic on the progress that's been made in gay rights (and artfully done too); and it is, ultimately, a crowd-pleasing, feel-good film that is still far from the predictable mainstream. Some might find that elements of the film's cuteness, for instance the talking dog (who's not really talking, just so we're clear), are a little too much, but it suited me just fine and, anyway, it totally earned any excess cuteness. Some might argue that it flatters liberal values too much, but, well, those are fine, progressive things to stand up and be proud of (even while there's still a long way to go). Anyway, to conclude this gush-fest: highly recommended.

Grade: A- (high +2 on the Leeper Scale)

West Dean Gardens

2011-08-07T21:00:00.000+01:00

West Dean Gardens, a set on Flickr.

Out to this year's chilli festival courtesy of Alex. As usual, lots of chilli-themed culinary experiences to be had, including some quite strange ones - chilli fudge anyone?

Anyway, as on previous occasions, the best bit was the chance to wander around West Dean's walled garden. As evidenced by the (inevitable) plethora of photographs.

2011-08-03T19:15:00.001+01:00

FGTH stitch-up

2011-08-01T17:39:00.001+01:00

For reasons exclusively related to the regular passage of time, this year's a big year for me and my cohort. As such, I had a bit of thinking to do for a present for my old friend DJLB. Fortunately, inspiration came from the baby samplers that C's been making for the various babies that her nieces keep popping out. Having tried knitting before, how hard could cross stitching be?

And, what with it being DJLB, what better subject than a blast from our collective pasts: Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Drawing on their elaborate mythology (i.e. drawing from the elaborate publicity machine that promoted them), an obvious source on which to base a cross stitch design was their "equation" ...

To wit:
[ lust + war + love + faith] x FGTH
The colours for the various elements I borrowed from the appearance of the equation in the (surprisingly excellent) computer game that was released in 1985 around the peak of FGTH's UK fame. Anyway, what with it being pretty simple and all, it stitched up pretty well ...

In no small part, of course, due to the (patient) help of cross stitching pro C, who tidied up quite a few of my early missteps. Although, that said, by the end I was more or less able to stitch on my own, even starting threads up and finishing them off all by myself (though having only a five colour design does make things pretty easy on this count). The final step was to turn the whole thing into something classy (and DJLB does do class) by taking it to the framers in Bedford Place ...

Who did, I think one would agree, a pretty grand job turning it into something classy. At the same time they did manage to vastly increase the total cost of the project but, as a special present, I was happy to push the boat out. The word on the street is that it now adorns DJLB's den, so I can't have gone too far off the mark. Anyway, last and least, a picture of the framed cross stitch together with me to provide an indication of scale ...

Product idea of the day

2011-07-31T09:06:00.000+01:00

I need something that analyses and remembers the tidying-up operations that I perform most commonly on photographs so that I don't have to faff around with GIMP's various menus. A nice subset of buttons triggering these operations would be just dandy. I'm getting a bit fed up manually selecting "-20% brightness" and "+10% contrast".

Product idea of the day

2011-07-30T16:47:00.007+01:00

What better gift than the chance to re-voice your partner's sat-nav so that it commands said loved one to and from their desired destination in your dulcet tones. All you need is a microphone for your computer and our list of sat-nav phrases that can be composited into full-length directions. Just mail us the resulting file, and we'll process it into something that your significant other will just love!

Final cheerio for Boris

2011-07-27T23:19:00.000+01:00

It feels like it's been off in the distant future for ages, but today was the last day for my friend Boris at NOCS. As of sometime tomorrow, he and his family are off to start a new chapter in their lives down under in Australia. It's a huge step for them all (including, particularly, Boris' parents - who are emigrating with them!), but it's one that they're all looking forwards too. Not least because it'll place them comfortably within the bosom of Tamaris' extended family in Melbourne.

Anyway, by way of one final "celebration", a small group of us from NOCS went out to lunch with Boris yesterday. Considering that almost every event we've ever attended together has involved serious, if not raucous, drinking, it was a surprisingly tee-total affair. Possibly, in part, because of the sombre undercurrent because of Boris' imminent absence. But the event was otherwise a highly enjoyable chance to shoot the breeze, poke gentle fun at one another (well, mostly at Boris), and to reminisce.

Part of the lunch involved presenting Boris with a gift that we'd devised to remind him specifically of, well, of us. Following up a sterling idea by Bablu and Simon, I cobbled together the design below in PowerPoint, and we managed to get an engraving company in Plymouth to both expertly create it in pewter, and to pony it to us in time for Boris' departure ...

The resulting object can be seen in the grasp of no less than Boris himself below. A close-up of the engraving itself can be found over here.

Anyway, it still feels a little odd today having seen Boris off. In part, I guess, because he's not completely left our academic world, and there's a chance that we'll bump into him at conferences, etc. So it doesn't feel like he's really headed over the horizon yet, and I don't feel quite as down as I thought that I might. I suspect things will be more pronounced when he doesn't make it to our next social events, especially the traditional Biomodellers Christmas Lunch.

Anyhow, as we've all reminded ourselves (and will doubtless do again over the coming months), we haven't so much lost a friend as gained cheap accommodation in a desirable, faraway locale.

Walking with Wolves

2011-07-25T22:47:00.001+01:00

Walking with Wolves, a set on Flickr.

In something of a break from the norm, this past weekend we travelled up to a place called Beenham in Berkshire to visit the Wolf Conservation Trust, an organisation that C is a member of. One of the perks of membership is the chance, once a year, to go on a "wolf walk" with several (three in our case) of the wolves that live at the Trust's centre.

We also got to see, usually pretty close up, all of the other nine wolves that the Trust currently has on site, including three new puppies bred there, and three Arctic wolves recently arrived from Canada (and given special quarantine dispensation to stay in the centre).

Anyway, the Trust did a really good job organising and filling our afternoon with the wolves, and we did learn a lot about them. It was particularly interesting to see that while they were somewhat more like dogs than I expected, they were also clearly a whole lot more than dogs at the same time. There was certainly no doubt that, though socialised with humans, they were still pretty switched on in a wild sort of way.

Dragon Tattoo, parts II and III

2011-07-20T22:49:00.005+01:00

As trailed previously, I've finally gotten around to polishing off the two remaining titles in Stieg Larsson's truncated-by-a-heart-attack Millennium series: The Girl Who Played with Fire and its hard-on-the-heels follow-up The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. As both novels are far more tightly coupled to one another in terms of plot line than they are to the original novel, it kind-of makes sense to do them at the same time. Hence the following double-act ...

TGWPWF opens with Salander enjoying the spoils of her hacking from the first novel in an extended holiday/ spending spree, and with Blomkvist collaborating with a young journalist, and his criminology-PhD girlfriend, on an exposé of people-smuggling and prostitution in Sweden. After digging a little too closely to authority figures, the charming, young, investigative couple are murdered, and the police are misdirected into labelling Salander as chief suspect. Separately at first, Blomkvist and Salander begin to investigate this turn of events, sharing information only when it suits the preternaturally suspicious Salander. Gradually the tortuous path of evidence leads back towards a figure from Salander's past, Zalachenko, her father and the man she once set fire to as a child, an act that initiated her life-long abuse at the hands of the Swedish authorities. Discovering the centre of his web in a remote rural location, Salander sets out to finish the job she started years earlier.

But that doesn't entirely work out to plan, and TGWKTHN begins with both Salander and Zalachenko nursing serious injuries in hospital. Eager to clear her name, and now more aware of the circumstances that led to Salander's institutionalisation as a child, Blomkvist begins to investigate how the Swedish state came to ride roughshod over her civil rights while at the same time protecting those of a Russian gangster. Meanwhile, the Section, the invisible branch of Sweden's Security Service that has handled Zalachenko since his original defection from Soviet Russia, swings back into action to covertly discredit Salander and to quietly spirit Zalachenko back into the shadows. However, Zalachenko refuses to conform with the Section's plans, forcing the old Cold Warriors that run the organisation to assassinate him, and to instigate surveillance of Blomkvist to find out what exactly he knows. Unfortunately for them, he has been surreptitiously working with the still-hospitalised Salander and has already pieced enough together to engage the help of friends, colleagues and similarly suspicious police officers to investigate the Section. And the trial of Salander provides an excellent opportunity to reveal and turn the tables on their activities, past and present.

Overall, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that my earlier fears of diminishing returns have largely turned out to be misplaced. The successor volumes, while less compelling than the original novel on a number of counts (see below), more or less maintain an even keel, and are about as page-turningly enjoyable as the first encounter with Blomkvist and Salander. They certainly didn't take me a whole lot of time (or pain) to plough through (which is more than can be said for me writing them up here), which is a lot more than can often be said about high-profile, high-page-count, sequels.

Much of the bad news is probably related to this conformity with the first novel. Namely that the actual writing still leaves a lot to be desired - chiefly an editor unafraid to pare Larsson's text down to something less egregiously grating. Much as with the first novel, there are extended descriptions of the utterly mundane, and a plethora of largely unnecessary characters and subplots. And, as before, I don't think that this aspect of the novels can be laid at the door of the translator - I suspect that they've just been too reverent to Larsson's original Swedish prose to wield the knife. All that said, the extraneous components of the novel are less deleterious here than in the first novel, largely because the plotlines are better suited to a broader tapestry of characters and perspectives.

If I can continue being critical, a major weakness is that the two books are co-dependent, and far less stand-alone than the original novel. Unlike that first jaunt, you simply can't just read one of them since the story is very much incomplete at the end of TGWPWF. More annoying still is that the novels commit what to me is the cardinal sin of crime fiction: the story revolves around the investigator. This is more a feature of television crime drama, but it does occur in novels too, including, disappointingly, the very first Rebus novel (as I've moaned on about before). Here, the core of both novels is built on the traumatic backstory of Salander, and while this is somewhat interesting, she was a more compelling character when she was investigating the affairs of others. There's also something more than a little bit silly in how Salander's family is at the focus of a decade-spanning, secretive cabal of spies that threatens the Swedish state. A little like how the galactic scale events of Star Wars revolve, in part, around the dysfunction of a single family. It would have been far more convincing if Blomkvist and Salander uncovered such a scheme while investigating someone else.

But I'm probably being too harsh. Overall I more or less enjoyed both books. I don't think they're as good as the first novel, but I certainly didn't find them a chore to get through. While Larsson may never have learned to write well (to be fair, probably just because he died before he got better at it), he did manage to create an interesting pair of central characters, and wove them into what are quite page-turningly enjoyable books. And, while he doesn't exactly do it with panache, it's pleasingly right-on that Larsson tries to shoehorn feminist themes into the books - though he'd have done much better if he'd eased up on the wish-fulfilment aspects of Blomkvist's love life. Anyhow, by way of summary, largely because of Larsson's clumsy prose and inability to delete redundant storylines, the novels aren't up there with the best of crime fiction, but they're eminently recommendable to genre fans.

Finally, what's a little sad is that TGWKTHN ends in a way that suggests that Salander has finally resolved her issues with Blomkvist, and that the future holds more adventures together for them. Particularly so since, in completing these latter two novels, Larsson has gotten Salander's backstory out of his system, potentially opening the way for more stand-alone and non-cardinal-sin-committing investigations. Tales that, unfortunately, will never be written because of Larsson's premature death. Ho-hum.

A reminder of risk

2011-07-20T17:30:00.032+01:00

From a piece co-authored by Ken Buesseler in this week's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ...

It is anticipated that for most locations the doses to humans from naturally occurring radionuclides, even for avid seafood consumers, will exceed those from the radionuclides released by the Fukushima accident. Near Sellafield, for example, doses to humans from naturally occurring radionuclides in seafood caught in the Irish Sea are about an order of magnitude higher than doses from artificial radionuclides. Total collective dose rates from natural radionuclides via marine pathways on a global basis are four orders of magnitude higher than collective doses from Chernobyl radionuclides. Even in the Baltic and Black Seas, the marine waters most contaminated by Chernobyl fallout, natural radionuclides provide a much larger collective dose to seafood consumers than do Chernobyl radionuclides.

Amid all of the justified concern about the meltdown at the reactors, it's been easy to lose sight of the context. While the piece argues for a full scientific assessment of the release of radionuclides (and is a nice summary of what they are, and what the expected risks are), the paragraph above is a particularly helpful reminder of the natural background, and its relationship - for most people and places - with the reactor release.

Not that such context seems to have calmed the leadership in Japan and Germany. If the alternative was plentiful green (or fusion) energy, that'd be one thing. But as the alternative is likely to be fossil fuel energy, the rush to shove in the control rods is dangerously misplaced. While the connection between nuclear power and harm to humans is far more direct than that between climate change and the harm it causes (and will cause), this easy attribution obscures the vast disparity in the total magnitude of harm from these power sources.

It's been almost 66 years since the power of atomic energy was first revealed to the general public. One might think that this would be long enough a period for people to get over their instinctive reaction to this first demonstration. It would seem not.

The Lacuna

2011-07-09T08:30:00.011+01:00

Largely because of the adulatory awe in which I hold her, I've been holding off reading Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, The Lacuna, which I actually received as a present from C at the end of 2009. Partly because its subject matter (of which, more below) didn't immediately grab me; partly because in my last post about her, I feared her work may peaked; and partly because I didn't want to exhaust her repertoire yet again. Irrational reasons for sure, but enough to stall me for a good while.

Beginning with a portion from an abandoned autobiography by a (fictional) historical novelist, Harrison Shepherd, The Lacuna is a chronological collage of diary entries, personal letters and newspaper clippings drawn from the life of the writer. Organised by his stenographer, Mrs. Violet Brown, and published 50 years after his disappearance, in part from material that he had ordered her to destroy, the book follows Shepherd's life as he travels back and forth between Mexico and the United States between the late 1920s and the 1950s.

His early years are somewhat itinerant, as he is trailed around an exotically tropical Mexico by a mother in thrall to her own heart's desires. Here, he first encounters the famous (and communist) painter Diego Rivera, and is drawn into Rivera's household because of his skill in preparing the plaster used in the painter's renowned frescos. This introduces him to Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he begins a lifelong friendship, and who encourages his own budding artistic interests. But as Rivera's fame spreads it draws him away to big-paying clients in the US, and Shepherd finds himself unemployed.

Before long he, too, is drawn to the US where his emotionally-distant father puts him through private school. Among other events, there Shepherd becomes a spectator to the brutal crushing of the Bonus Army, a Depression-era protest, by the authorities. Returning again to Mexico, he renews his friendship with Kahlo and Rivera, and becomes part of their household as a cook. Another guest of the artists is the noted revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, on the run from Stalin's tyrannical repression in Russia, and for whom Shepherd becomes secretary, and later a friend. But the persecution by Stalin's agents, which ultimately proves fatal, as well as Trotsky's ill-judged affair with Kahlo, makes for disruptive living, and before long Shepherd washes back up in the US.

There, after being denied a combat role in WW2 because of his "sexual indifference to the female of the species", he lands himself a government job moving valuable artwork during the conflict. He also finally begins work as a historical novelist, drawing on his knowledge of Mexico to craft swashbuckling novels that weave subversive modern themes into tales about the destruction of pre-Columbian civilisations. The success of these works, eagerly communicated with Kahlo, draws undesired attention, including a coterie of female fans eager to get to know this mysterious bachelor better. But this is the time of HUAC, and his public profile, and Red-tinged past, bring him to the attention of more significant figures. Though he acquits himself well in his appearance before HUAC, Shepherd's career is mortally wounded, and he finds both his friends and his publisher deserting him. Escaping the US with Mrs. Brown, he returns to Mexico and to a favoured coastal locale from his youth, where, in a seeming swimming accident, he finally disappears from view.

Oops. I wasn't intending traipsing through the entire plot of the novel there. But it does have a lot of back-and-forthing that makes summarising it in a few lines difficult. Particularly for someone obsessive about getting things down "right". And especially in a novel that stacks so much (political, artistic, historical) onto its plate. Anyway, The Lacuna is a difficult book to give a straight opinion of. Though it only really follows the life of a single character, Harrison Shepherd is something of a Zelig-like figure whose personal history is richly populated with fairly significant events in, and figures from, the 20th century. As such, there's a lot going on, and while some sections of the novel may not entirely appeal, it's difficult to not find something enjoyable or interesting within its pages.

It's certainly Kingsolver's most overtly political book. Previous novels have had America's less admirable actions in Central America and Africa as distant backdrops, but here Kingsolver puts real historical figures and ideas front of stage, and isn't in the least afraid to cast a favourable light on those that are viewed negatively by the establishment and large fractions of the public. So, we have quite an impassioned defence of Trotsky and the flavour of communism that he favoured, together with a critical take on Stalin's brutal and dictatorial communism, and one that isn't slow to point out that America's friends/enemies in one decade easily flip to enemies/friends in another depending upon what's currently most expedient. It helps, of course, that I largely share her view of history and ideology on these points.

Strangely, though the ideas in the novel are made more concrete by attaching them to the real historical figures with which they are associated, I found that this didn't work in its favour. For me, this made the novel too obviously didactic. Ordinarily in novels, fictional stand-ins for both real characters and situations are used, and the novelist can more gently slip thoughts into the reader's head. And, hitherto, this is exactly what Kingsolver has done in her earlier novels. But here the reader is left in no doubt in either the subjects that Kingsolver is addressing, or her opinions of them. I don't think this is necessarily a lesser approach, but it doesn't work as well for me.

Of course, by putting everything front and centre, the novel does have the advantage of leaving the reader in no doubt about Kingsolver's views of America's treatment of popular socialism. She is clearly, and justifiably, angry about the unyielding demonisation of socialist ideas in 20th century America, and about the deeply repellent consequences of unthinking support for such efforts as HUAC. As such, it's clear that one of the aims of The Lacuna is to get her readers to actually stop, think and re-evaluate socialism and other marginalised ideas, rather than simply lazily misremember them as their Red Scare caricatures. Along the way, she's careful to separate ideology from history, so she's no apologist for how socialism panned out in the Soviet Union, and through dramatising the Bonus Army is keen to remind readers of America's own socialist movements. Overall, it's an interesting message for an American novelist to try to sell in the US!

One aspect of the novel that I never got a definitive handle on was what the "lacuna" of the title actually refers to. It could be interpreted (or misinterpreted) in a number of quite different ways. For instance, the way in which Shepherd, though he is at the centre of the novel, largely eludes understanding. We largely see things through his eyes, but he preserves a degree of transparency throughout the novel. Alternatively, it could refer to the lacuna in our collective memory of socialism's role as a progressive force in 20th century politics. In the present day, socialism has been tightly bound to the evils of the Soviet Union and simply thrown over the side into the depths of history. The idea that it may represent, and at times did represent, a progressive force for good is largely viewed incredulously. Another more straightforward interpretation is merely that it's the literal lacuna into which Shepherd finally disappears. Most likely, all of these interpretations have something to them, but I'm still curious and would be interested to hear other theories.

By way of a passing observation, The Lacuna reminded me of William Boyd's not-dissimilar 20th century novel, Any Human Heart. That, too, followed a novelist character through his life, and inveigled him into being a participant or witness to major events. It's also interesting to contrast the two novels. While Kingsolver's novel is a patchwork of diary entries, newspaper clippings and an aborted biography, Boyd constrains his novel to the diary format, and uses this to (convincingly) convey the changing voice of the narrator throughout his life. A more significant departure is that Boyd's novel is largely apolitical (though favourable towards progressive movements), and instead focuses on the personal life of its narrator, Logan Mountstuart. As noted above, Shepherd's personal life is very much secondary to the political waters that carry it through the 20th century. I suspect that trying to tackle both the personal and the political in the same novel, at least to the degree that both of these novels have, is liable to end in a pompous, over-extended failure that satisfies no-one.

Overall, to wrap things up, an excellent read. But (and debasing things somewhat) much as with Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Kingsolver's earlier works cast a long and deep shadow over this one. The Lacuna is more significant than Kingsolver's earliest novels, but it's never going to be easy for her future works to stand proud of The Poisonwood Bible. But I'll still definitely be looking out for them!