A history lesson

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

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

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!

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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?

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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.

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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

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

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 ...

WP_000111, a photo by Dr Yool on Flickr.

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

Just another America

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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

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

2011-12-30, 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

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.

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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.

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

Pulitzer Prize-winner

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?

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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.

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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 ...

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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

2011-12-27, 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

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

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? :-)

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[*] 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

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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

Smartphone revolution

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!