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Seeing Into the Future Is Clouded in Mystery

August 3rd, 2011 | 1 Comment

Seeing Into the Future Is Clouded in Mystery

Can Future Disasters Be Predicted? - M.Rietze
The history of man’s world-end prophesies is littered with dates & events that failed to happen. However, many disasters have struck that nobody foresaw.

Most people are not gifted with 20/20 vision about the future. Some have hunches or gut feelings; others make educated/informed guesses based on current evidence. Despite this not knowing, people rely in large numbers on weather forecasts, horoscopes, palm reading or the received wisdom of political, religious or charismatic leaders.

Prophets Without Honour

In the Bible, Deuteronomy 18.20-22 defines a prophet: ‘If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken’. 100Prophesies.org publishes literally a hundred prophesies and foretellings from Israel and the old Testament lands to the end-times. Invariably only the passage of time reveals if something spoken has, is and was true. However, the natural river of disagreement between religious statements, from Christians to Muslims, from Buddhists to Baha’is, is wide and deep.

Over the centuries, some religious views have taught that the return of Jesus Christ will herald the rebirth of the dead for judgment and the raising to heaven of the saved, the rise of an Anti-Christ, a war on Armageddon scale, tribulation of seven years of suffering… it is possible to interpret continuing global-scale wars, disease and the rise of evil dictators as evidence these prophesies have come true.

Religioustolerance.org lists apparently failed prophecies, from the New Testament when indication that Jesus’ return would be in the lifetimes of many hearing those words was given, through every century since of his return, of the end of the world from some natural or man-made disaster. The world has suffered endless disasters including war, pestilence, famine, disease, volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, human failings, but so far only Hollywood has cashed in on the foreknowledge with apocalyptic movies.

Joseph Smith (1805-1844), founder of what is today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), was one of many religious leaders who were totally certain of hearing God’s voice. He was told that the coming of the Son of Man would occur when he was 85. Smith was assassinated by a mob when he was less than 40 years old. Jehovah’s Witnesses have worked around variations of end-times predictions for years.

In the Bible, it is recorded that Noah heard from God, and against all advice, wisdom and common sense prevalent at the time, built a great ark that saved his family and pairs of animals from a massive flood, to enable life to continue. New and Old Testaments are filled with prophets who warned, predicted, interpreted God’s laws to people

Nostradamus, Supreme Soothsayer

Judaism and Christianity share prophecies and cataclysmic events with other faiths and cultures. Nostradamus, the 16th century French astronomer, physician and astrologer made thousands of predictions, which supporters claim to have come true. They say he foretold the Great Fire of London in 1666, the French Revolution, the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the assassination of US President John Kennedy in 1963.

The quatrains he wrote in the French of his day are cryptic, yet still followers claim he foretold the annihilation of the space shuttle, Challenger, the death of Diana Princess of Wales and the Twin Towers destruction on September 11, 2001.He is commonly referred to as the ’Prophet of Doom’, but has a high success rate in prediction, if the interpretations are accurate.

Technological and Scientific Prognostications

Florentine painter, sculptor, draughtsman, musician, cartographer and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, (1452-1519), it could be argued, was also successful in the prediction business. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific enquiry and mechanical inventiveness ahead of his time. He imagined a helicopter, the tank, solar power, a calculator, the double ship hull, automated bobbin-winder and a machine for tensile strength testing of wire. The fields of anatomy, hydrodynamics, optics and civil engineering were all transformed by his visionary, futuristic thinking.

Most scientists fight shy of making detailed predictions, sheltering behind technology’s exponential growth, like Lloyd N Trefethen writing in the late 1990s for the Numerical Algorithms Group: ’in just about a century the world has created radio, television, light bulbs, telephones, phonographs, lasers, refrigeration, cars, airplanes, spacecraft, computers, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, plastics, antibiotics and genetic engineering’, so, his point is: how can anybody predict the future?

The magazine Wired promotes informed predictions about science, technology, engineering, culture, environment, psychology and computers. The viewpoints about the impact of global warming, floods, drought, imbalances largely chime with the received wisdoms of the early 21st century; others, such as active contact lenses stand out. The May 2009 edition said lenses will project words and images onto the eyes and people will download software to influence dreams and share them with others, by 2014.

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen-Eighty Four (1948) : “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” That is why the future matters so much today and will do tomorrow, as long as nobody forgets the lessons of history.

First published on Suite 101, 23 June 2010.

Photo: Can Future Disasters Be Predicted? – M.Rietze

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Weird and Wonderful Song Titles, Lyrics and Band Names

August 1st, 2011 | Add a Comment

Dylan's Lyrics: Sublime Lyrical Poetry? - Jean-Luc
Some big music hits have come from the most unlikely words, the strangest titles and by the oddest named groups; but if they strike a chord, who cares?

In 2009 self-confessed ‘failed musician’, Johnny Sharp, published Crap Lyrics, (Portico Books, Annova), dedicated to “thousands of songwriters over the years who’ve sweated blood in the pursuit of song writing excellence”. It’s catalogued “humour”, but raises serious issues about how lyrics are written, titles chosen and bands name themselves.

Where Do Those Lyrics Come From?

Lyrics.time identifies several thousand weird, out of left field or just plain bad lyrics. Words in the cold light of a printed page, may seem strange; but married to melody, bizarre words can make hits.

Johnny Sharp includes Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man in his “crap” definition: “Now you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word now/And you say for what reason? and he says how?/And you say what does that mean, and he screams back, you’re a cow/Give me some milk or else go home”. Deliberately unfathomable or pure poetic genius?

Rockers AC/DC used: “let me put my love into you babe/let me cut your cake with my knife” in Let Me Put My Love Into You; while The Killers took a more existentialist line in Human: “I’m down on my knees, searching for the answer/are we human or are we dancer?” Still obsessed with knees, Morrisey in King Leer cried: “Your boyfriend he went down on one knee/Well could it be, he’s only got one knee?”

Freddie Mercury explained Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, as “operatic parody”: “I see a little silhouetto of a man/Scaramouche! Scaramouche!/will you do the fandango?/Thunderbolt and lightning….” at one end of the scale, while Jennifer Lopez in Jenny From the Block urged listeners “Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got/I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block”.

Did They Think That Song Title Would Sell?

Best and Worst Song Titles suggest the “worst”, but others in the poetic/amusing category are country & western songs. Too Much Month At the End of the Money, written by DiPiero, Robbins and Sherrill, has appropriate lyrics too: “I paid the bank note, the car note and, yes, I paid the phone bill too/And then I turned around and I found that the house note’s due/Well I’d love to take you out like I said I would honey/But there’s too much month at the end of the money.”

Somebody Always Paints The Wall has lyrics that unravel the title: “If my old truck was a horse, I’d have to shoot it/Lord, the day my ship came in, I was waiting for a train/Every time I get some news there’s nothing to it/You’re my only pleasure from the pain….seems like every time I make my mark/Somebody always paints the wall.”

If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me? is the clever title of a country style song made by the Bellamy Brothers, which goes on, “If I swore you were an angel, would you treat me like a devil tonight?” Mickey Newbury wrote Kenny Rogers’ 1968 hit, Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In), reputedly set down as a warning against LSD experience and has been covered by other artists.

1971 Bubblegum pop, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep was an unexpected UK Number 1 for Scottish group Middle of the Road. Building on the inexplicable title, the lyrics shed little light: “Last night I heard my momma singing this song/ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep/Woke up this morning and my momma was gone/ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep…” and so on for several minutes.

The Small Faces had a hit with the Kenny Lynch/Mort Shuman penned Sha La La La Lee, while Manfred Mann took similarly titled Sha La La with the memorable refrain, “sha la la la la la la la sha la la la la la la la” and made it a hit in 1964. It was the follow-up to their R&B, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, that topped the charts either side of the Atlantic.

From the same year, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, written by Curtis Mayfield was first a hit by Major Lance, covered in Britain by Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders who took it to Number 5. In the early 2000s, Fontana faced bankruptcy, was imprisoned after an altercation with bailiffs and later sectioned under the Mental Health Act!

Who Would Listen to a Group Called ‘The Grateful Dead’?

Grateful Dead came from the rockier hippie 60s; The Lemon Pipers and The Lovin’ Spoonful from the gentler end, but The Dead Kennedys confirm a fascination with sickly tags. The Sex Pistols as the arch-voice of punk may have been deliberately provocative, while Rage Against the Coffee Machine and Rebel Without Applause are literary/amusing examples.

The clever/amusing part of the genre is exemplified by Telephone Bill and the Smooth Operators. A comprehensive list of strange group names is at the Canonical List of Weird Band Names, the Peculiar & the Profane.

There is even a website for generating random group names and a sample using “random” itself produced: Random Tsunami, Quad Random & The Shifty Stamp, Random Fellow, Random Jerk, Random Charcoal, Random Connection and Random Faith.

All potentially good, judging by a century of band names and song titles, and as valid as sitting round drinking waiting for inspiration to strike, randomly.

First published on Suite 101, 22 June 2010.

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Old Boy (and Girl) Networks Still Make the World Go Round

July 23rd, 2011 | Comments Off on Old Boy (and Girl) Networks Still Make the World Go Round

  • Freemasons Hall, London: One British Network - Arpingstone

Computer and social networks are now integral to daily lives, but “who knows who” still opens doors, influences, controls, decides and shapes business.

Networks in business, politics, the social world did not arrive with the internet age. The old, historical, personal and informal networks are what still create jobs, wealth, governments. From royal families and medieval knights & trades guilds, like-minded men in early politics and political clubs, certain schools, the military, the church, the law, the criminal fraternity, select businesses, private clubs & organisations, older universities, the world is an overlapping matrix of networks. These are also known as nods & winks, understandings, accommodations, handshakes, relatives, mafias, cartels, brother/sisterhoods, hierarchies, alliances and secrets.

Networks Serve Small Elites

In Britain, a particular expression, the “Old Boy Network”, evolved, understood implicitly by people in a society where everybody knew his/her place. “Stiff upper lip”, “that’s not cricket”, “fair play” were similarly unspoken, but authoritative phrases. Loyalties and allegiances run deep.

The class system was evident by opposites: upper class v lower, with the middle class variously leaning down or up. It was “toffs versus oiks” (from toffs’ perspective); chauffeur versus public transport; sophisticated versus humdrum; wealth versus poverty; health versus disease; private versus state education; ownership versus shop-floor, and Conservative versus Labour/trade union politics. In the past 30 years, such certainties have been blurred, if not swept away altogether.

Networks that serve small elites are not unique to Britain, all countries have them, from democracies to dictatorships. In the 2008 US Presidential elections, Republican candidate John McCain, reported on the free dictionary said: “The word’s going out, my friends: The old-boy network, the pork-barrelers, the earmarkers, the word is, `Change is coming'”.

Potent Membership Signals

In his 1983 UK published book, Networks, Tim Heald identified physical signs confirming networks of privilege, social elites. School, legal chambers, regimental or select organisations use men’s ties to denote membership and send what Heald called, “potent signals” that the wearers are party to special privileges, like a common memory/experience. School ties are usually worn by former, or ‘old boys’, often called alumni.

Heald said that with so many different layers of tie colouring, patterning and motif emblazoning, “no one except Britain has turned the necktie into such a precise form of communication… regarded by outsiders as unfathomably obscure.” Bowler hats once served much the same purpose in the City of London, banking quarter.

Suits and striped blazers, hunting pinks, jackets and top hats or boaters effectively communicate meaning, provided the observer understands the significance of the sartorial statement. Lapel badges of Rotary Clubs, societies and elite groupings are still popular. Indeed, the badge as a significant reminder of membership was abused by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, forcing Jewish people to wear the Star of David as if it were a badge of dishonour.

The Freemasons, Ultimate Networks

The Freemasons, or just masons, are probably the largest secret fraternity in the world, though they keep few secrets nowadays. Masonry was born in obscure 16th century beginnings, declaring belief in a Supreme Being and using allegorical imagery of King Soloman’s temple built in Old Testament times, with what they style, “the metaphors of stonemasons’ tools to convey a system of morality veiled in allegory.”

There may be as many as 5 million masons worldwide, with 2m in the USA and about half a million in the UK. They are self-governing under Grand Lodges, and although exclusively male, they raise large sums for charities besides their symbolic activities. Female lodges may be created eventually.

Masons wear dark suits, white shirts, black ties and specially-made aprons, in the style of ancient master craftsmen. They share handshakes and other signals to communicate to each other, sometimes requiring, sometimes offering particular help.

Periodically, the media concerns itself about masons in public office, the judiciary, the police and the media itself exerting undue influence and helping fellow masons to the detriment of others. There are organisations opposed to them, sometimes on the grounds that membership of a partly secret movement that uses codes & symbols and is very old, must be incompatible with public life.

One such, Masonicinfo.com keeps a comprehensive list of famous masons, and those famous people who are not, like Presidents Bill Clinton, both George Bushes and Barack Obama. Both Presidents Roosevelts and Harry S Truman were masons. It also states that US masonic membership is not secret, unlike the UK equivalent.

Modern Networking Is Online

June 2010, The Daily Telegraph reported Dr Ivan Misner of Business Network International, the world’s largest organisation in business networking and referral marketing, speaking out at “the premature solicitation for work on social media websites by people who hunt for contacts rather than cultivate relationships”.

His concern reflects a feeling that only networks built on trust, lengthy relationships and full understanding of cultural, historical and psychological angles, can lead to genuine business partnerships. Social media sites, he did admit, can be as effective at drumming up business as chambers of commerce or Rotary Clubs.

In other words, people don’t need the right tie, suit or handshake to trade on the web. But they still have to network.

First published on Suite 101, 21st June 2010.

Photo: Freemasons Hall, London: One British Network – Arpingstone

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Violence Makes Interesting Drama, But Is It Harmful Influence?

July 19th, 2011 | Add a Comment

The Bloodbath of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus - eigener Quelle
Many people find violent theatre, games & films entertaining, but they are also social reflections and present potential danger to the susceptible.

The notion that stage, TV, film or game violence desensitizes, is hardly new, but is given a fresh airing when shocking pictures of war, disaster and accident are streamed straight to screens. Sometimes people walk by; some help. Rubberneckers slowing to look at carnage on motorway/freeway pile-ups, are a danger to others.

Bloodbaths and Atrocities on Stage

Violence and theatre have always been partners. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is described by Sparknotes as “nonstop bloodbath of abomination with 14 killings, 9 on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or possibly 3), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism. That’s 5.2 atrocities per act, one every 97 lines”.

Sarah Kane’s 1995 Blasted was raw, shocking, earthy with rape, eye-gouging and cannibalism. The UK’s Sunday Telegraph condemned it as “gratuitous welter of carnage”. Four years later, after other plays that revealed what some critics described as creative but disturbing mental illness, but which also showed theatrical innovation and extreme emotional content, the 28-year old hanged herself.

Her work is “literature of despair”, a form of “In-Yer-Face theatre”. This largely British phenomena of the 1990s, saw young writers creating what Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph’s critic, described as, “sickening acts of sexual and physical violence, obscene language and a despairing view of contemporary society that seemed entirely nihilistic.”

It crossed into Germany, renamed as “Blood and Sperm” theatre, which is more unpleasant but accurate. In his 2000 book, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, Aleks Sierz dubbed it theatre of sensation, that “takes the audience by the neck and shakes it until it gets the message”. It’s an updating of techniques employed by both Brecht and Artaud.

Children Witness Murders

New Scientist magazine stated in 2007: “by the time the average US child reaches elementary school, he/she will have seen 8000 TV murders and 100,000 acts of violence”. The American Medical Association added: “by 18, the average US youngster witnesses 18,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders”. So, does TV/movie violence exacerbate real-life violence?

Cybercollege reckoned in 2003 there were 2500 articles and books on the subject. Some studies show that boys or girls exposed to TV violence regularly are more likely to commit crime. Equally, exposure to parents being violent to each other, naturally has negative effects on young minds. Canada introduced the “V-Chip” so parents could lock out violence on screen, later adapted to take out sexual content. This was criticised for linking sex with violence.

The 1993 UK murder of 2 year old toddler, James Bulger, by two 10 year-old boys was described by the judge as “an act of unparalleled evil and barbarity”. He noted the bad influence of numerous rented horror movies on the boys, that made violence seem normal. The Columbine High School shooting rampage of 1999 left 12 students dead and a teacher plus the two perpetrators. Media and videos were thought to have fed the killers’ minds. No direct link was proved, but cause-and-effect is an easily understood assumption: violence breeds violence in impressionable youngsters.

A study released in March 2002, reported by Ann Marie Seward Barry in Visual Intelligence-Perception, Image and Manipulation in Visual Communication, found links between media violence and social problems, and an attractiveness (entertainment, ratings and ticket sales) of such violence.

Sick, Violent, Cruel, Gruesome, Upsetting, Sadistic

TV Guide in 1992 in one typical 18 hour broadcasting day found acts of assault/attack featured in cartoons (471), promos (265), movies (221), toy commercials (188), music videos (123), commercials for films (121), news (62), TV drama (69), tabloid reality shows (58), sitcoms (52) and soaps (34).

Running With Scissors maintains the 100 top-rated amusing movies by torture, rape, bestiality, child brutality, mutilation. There’re further categories such as ‘The Top 100 Goriest Movies, head-explosion-filled splatterfests, including zombie and slasher films’. They make a movie like The Godfather seem almost tame by comparison.

Titles like Philosophy of a Knife, Cannibal Holocaust, 120 Days of Sodom, Tumbling Doll of Flesh, Laboratory of the Devil, Subconscious Cruelty, The Gateway Meat, Snuff Perversions, Grotesque, Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, Rigor Mortis, History of Women’s Torture, All Women Are Whores and My Sweet Satan, convey the story. Do they negatively impact on susceptible viewers?

Video, Simulation and Virtual Reality Games

From the early 1970s, technology invented video games, which is now an industry worth over $25 billion a year. Games, simulations and realities are played on PCs, hand-held devices and consoles, cells/mobiles. The exponential growth of technology makes this industry both powerful and cause for concern about loneliness and isolation.

Douglas A Gentile and Craig A Anderson in Psychology report that all ages spend increasing time playing games. Most popular games are designed to be entertaining, challenging and sometimes educational, but up to 89% have violent content; a high body-count marks success.

They identify four effects of violent video games: the aggressor (which makes partipants more aggressive); the bystander (which desensitises people witnessing violence), the victim (makes people more likely to carry weapons for protection)and the appetite effect (the more people watch, the more they want to).

There is also the genre of mind-games and thought-experiments, that give rise to new and often original creativity, but can also be disturbing, with little or no research on how people are affected by such activities.

Critics argue that screen violence is unrealistic: death, injury and fighting are different in real life. In response, the industry points out that only a small minority of viewing audiences act out extreme violence they have watched, though this doesn’t answer the question of whether repeat viewing desensitizes audiences and act as as a negative influence.

First published at Suite 101, 19 June 2010, deleted by them in a Google algorithm purge, January 12.

Photo: The Bloodbath of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus – eigener Quelle

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Rebellion as Adolescent Stage and Performance Stage Inspiration

July 18th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Treatment Scene in US Staged A Clockwork Orange - Peter Zuehike, Bradmays
While not as loud as earlier generations, youth rebels today are part of growing up and helping to create some great art works, just like their fathers.

Musicians, film makers, poets and writers have expressed rebellion against parents, governments and norms of the time, provoking outrage through their music, clothes, hair, tattoos, piercings and public behaviour. The Decadent Thirties, and Swinging Sixties with its “protest movement,” stand out. However, history is littered with parents and children falling out, each unable to understand the other. Accumulated wisdom and proffered advice is usually rejected. Each generation makes its own mistakes.

Historical Rebellions, Uprisings and Wars

There are shades of rebellion: from passive resistance via civil disobedience, through subversion to revolt, insurrection, mutiny, terrorism, revolution to war, civil or international. Rebellion means refusal to obey orders or systems, sometimes tolerated to preserve peace, but frequently opposed. Governments usually resist protest, like Tiananmen Square in China in 1989 or UK’s 1990 “Poll Tax” riots.

In medieval times, there were regular peasants revolts across Europe, against feudal tyranny. In England Wat Tyler led one in 1381. The English went into civil wars and executed their King, Charles I in 1649 as “tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy.” During the French Revolution (1789-99) the bourgeousie guillotined their king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1973.

The Jacobite Uprisings of 1688-1746 sought to re-establish Stuarts to English and Scottish thrones. American dissenters to British rule during the wars for independence 1775-1782 were called rebels, as were confederate southerners by the north during USA’s civil war 1861-65.

Generations of Angry Young Men

Historically prevalent and natural as adolescent dissension is, according to a 2006 survey about British identity reported in the Guardian, the youth of today are not in revolt. It found the majority of British 16-25 year olds were as interested in savings accounts, jobs, babies, home-ownership as their parents. 80% wanted marriage/children, 82% felt family is important and 92% wanted to own homes.

This image is miles from public perception and media portrayals. There, stereotypical teens behave badly, apparently bad ones ending up unlikely heroes. The 1967 movie Teenage Rebellion shows the youth of the day taking drugs, partying, hanging out. It’s a documentary, but many viewers didn’t believe the footage was of genuine hippies.

The website Fandango offers a top ten of troubled, rebellious movie teens. Dead End (1937) showed boys fighting in a poor neighbourhood, raging against their environment, and starred Humphrey Bogart.

Two movies from 1955 became cult classics. Rebel Without a Cause, featured James Dean as the ultimate misunderstood teenage rebel, released after he died at 24. The motto “Live Fast and Die Young” naturally got associated with him. The Blackboard Jungle added to teenage angst and rebellion, race relations and student-teacher tension, featuring early Sidney Poitier and rock & roll music from Bill Haley & the Comets, which caused cinema fights between youths when first released.

Imagining a future of teenage refusal to conform, Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 A Clockwork Orange focussed on a psychopathic, ultra-violent leader undergoing brutal shock treatment. Immediately controversial, banned for years, it studied rebellion and the system that contained it. Less well-known, Over the Edge (1979) was a realistic youth rebellion tale.

1980’s Foxes portrayed the female restless teenage angst angle. The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, both from Coppola in 1983, experimented with the teen genre to offer thoughtful, socially-relevant interpretations of growing up. Freeway (1996) was based on the Little Red Riding Hood tale, and portrayed a prostitute’s daughter’s hitchhiking trip to see grandma, facing dubious characters.

A young teenage pair go from bad to worse in thirteen (2003). The story was a warning to parents with gritty truth about what teens get up to. Brick (2005) was a mix of film-noire and teen rebellion, where dissent was inspired by insecurities, betrayal and power alliances.

Teenage Revolt in Songs and Words

From the same movie came Teenage Rebellion song by Glass Family. The following year, The Beatles produced their first overtly political song, John Lennon’s Revolution, chiming in with the 1968 unrest that spread across Europe.

In 1965 The Who produced My Generation: “Why don’t you all just fade away, stop trying to dig what we all say.” Twisted Sister came up with We’re Not Gonna Take It in 1984: “We’ll fight the powers that be, just don’t pick our destiny.” US band, Beastie Boys in 1986 created: “Your pops caught you smoking and he said ‘no way’, that hypocrite smokes two packs a day,” in the song (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party!).

UK punks, Sex Pistols, produced many rebellious songs, including Anarchy in the UK: “I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist.” Lyrics, music, costume, attitude – all designed to offend/outrage the establishment. That’s rebellion.

On stage, John Osborne’s classic 1956 play Look Back in Anger introduced Jimmy Porter, a young man railing against the world, boring & stupid people, his life, wife, frustrations, thwarted hopes and dreams. That is a feeling many young people can recognise. That Osborne created it when he was 30, shows how youthful hormones make real, lasting artistic inspiration.

First published on Suite 101,18 June 2010.

Photo: Treatment Scene in US Staged A Clockwork Orange – Peter Zuehike, Bradmays

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Driving on the Left is Natural or Just a Historical Hangover

July 16th, 2011 | Add a Comment

74 Countries Drive on the Left - Richard Webb
There appears to be no definitive answer as to why Great Britain and 73 other countries drive on the left-hand side of the road, while all others go right.

One theory is that it began with the Romans, who ordered horse-drawn chariots to travel on the left, so the whip hand, right for most men was away from pedestrians at the side. Cart ruts have been found in a former Roman quarry near Swindon, England which support the view – light carts going in on the left, heavy carts out the other side. However, that doesn’t explain why Britain kept left after the Romans went away, while other lands now drive right, including Italy.

History of Jousting Supports the Right-Hand Drive Theory

A variant theory is that most men on horseback, wagon or foot could meet hostility, so they’d naturally pass on the left, their right sword hand ready and left arm free to protect their heads. However, research into medieval jousting and tilting shows pictures indicating the opposite.

In those days, there would have been exacting rules, as there were for dress, armour, horses, weapons and chivalry. The UK’s Independent newspaper reported in April 2009 on a History Channel TV programme about a jousting accident when a horse falling on top of King Henry VIII caused brain damage which turned him into a ‘tyrant’.

The UK Camelot Theme Park in Chorley, stages historically accurate jousting. Their jousters hold reigns and shield in left hand for defence; lance in right to push opponent off his horse while passing on the right.

2pass, a driving test preparation website in Britain puts it succinctly: ‘Jousting knights with lances under their right arm naturally passed on each other’s right, but if you passed a stranger on a road you walked on the left to ensure your sword arm was between you’.

Driving Laws and Other Countries

In Britain, bustling London Bridge was subject to an order requiring left-hand traffic as early as 1756, and the Highway Act (1835) wrote it into English law everywhere. But in countries like the USA, unsubstantiated theory has it that teamsters pulling large wagons with teams of horses, got used to a postilion sitting on the left rear horse, better to whip with his right hand and passing others on his left to keep the whip away from their wheels. Thus, custom of wagons on the right, meant motor car right-hand driving was inevitable.

However, it’s only one possibility. Whatever the historical reasons, it’s perhaps easier to understand why India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Australia, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Bhutan, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Botswana, Brunei, Falkland Islands, Channel Islands, Hong Kong, Eire, Jamaica, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Maldives, South Africa, Tanzania, Singapore, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe drive on the left: because Britain exported that along with other attributes of military, trade and colonisation, such as law, parliamentary and education systems.

However, Japan is a different case. The theory about left-hand because of right-handed people applies to Japanese Samurai warriors too. That doesn’t explain why a feudal, non-Samurai society of farmers, merchants and craftsmen kept to it. A custom grew in Japan to put names on houses and bridges on the right side as people approached, which supports the left-hand-drive notion. A German naturalist, Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), wrote that the custom of travelling to and from the capital on the left had become a rule.

In the mid 19th century, the coming of western-style railways may have been the real instigator of left driving. French, American and British companies vied to sell systems to the Japanese, but it was the British model which prevailed in 1872 with the first tracks left-driven. Horse railways and then electric tram cars followed the railway pattern, and thus developed the left-hand drive for all vehicles which prevails today.

Changing Sides is a Rare Event

Holland drove left till Napoleon’s time, as did their colony Indonesia (Dutch East Indies). Portugal switched right in the 1920s, Canada in 1922 and when Hitler annexed Austria to Germany in 1938, and invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1939, their left-hand driving was ended. During the US occupation of Japan at the end of the war, Okinawa went right and there was discussion that all Japan should follow, but it never happened.

In 1967, Sweden switched from left-drive to right, partly because most of the markets for their Saab and Volvo cars were right-drivers, and they no longer wished to make separate editions, although they still do to sell to the UK, and partly to match their European neighbours. There were fewer accidents initially as people drove more carefully on an unfamiliar side of the road.

September 2009, Samoa switched the other way. They wanted to use more right-hand drive cars from Japan and New Zealand, so now use the left side of the road.

So, while anything is possible, it seems the drive to the right is more often than not, a one way street.

First published at Suite 101, 17 June 2010.

Photo: 74 Countries Drive on the Left – Richard Webb

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World Water Wars: Next Mega Conflict or Next Big Scare Story?

July 13th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Without Water There Is No Life On Earth - Juhanson
People can adapt without their earth-changing oil, plastic, gravel; but without water, there is no life. Concerted action is the next world challenge ahead.

Water as liquid, ice, vapour and steam occupies 71% of the earth’s surface. Virtually all forms of life depend on it. Every cultural, historical and human landscape is locked into it, either plentifully or in shortage. The earth’s entire economy is finally balanced on H20’s continuing supply: it’s essential in everything from manufacturing to power generation and cooling, food preparation, sewerage and agriculture.

History shows that whenever there is a shortage of an in-demand commodity, first the price goes up. Then the conflicts to own it start. That is the doomsday scenario occupying scientists, some politicians, and film-makers.

Demand Outstrips Supply

While mankind debates global warming, man’s destruction of his habitat and all the politically controversial measures to redress the balance, there is growing consensus round the notion that in the next three decades, parts of the world are facing a potentially devastating shortage of sufficient clean water and hygienic waste disposal

Amikam Nachmani, writing for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in March 1994, argued it is a growing problem because renewable water supplies are declining. He reckoned by 2025 the average net water resources in the Middle East are expected to be under 700 cubic meters per person a year, less than half now. Almost everywhere, growth in global population and development have depleted reserves.

Even if the world grows more food to feed more people, agriculture requires more water. Nachmani estimates agriculture absorbs 73% of the world’s fresh water. More transport, more houses, more technology – all have an insatiable appetite for water, with the added danger that the water available is deteriorating in quality.

Some estimates assume three and a half billion people live with less than 50 litres a day, which is less than a seventh what the average US citizen consumes daily. Where there is famine and drought, relief is frequently provided from existing food stocks, and there may be as little as 50 days of grain stocks currently available in the world. Eventually there is a hope that fresh crops will be grown, assuming time, expertise, no further disaster and water will allow. However, disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, winds and drastically changing temperatures can only exacerbate the problems.

There are already water conflicts around the world: India and its neighbours, Israel and its neighbours, Egypt/Ethiopia, Turkey/Syria, Turkey/Iraq. Scotland has more than it needs, while England may face shortages ahead. Enterprising Scottish people are already offering to sell water south of the border.

Man’s Ingenuity

Building canals and dams have been favoured ways of harnessing water and the energy from it since Roman times. Egypt’s Aswan Dams across the Nile started in the early 1900s and completed in 1970, have controlled the annual Nile flooding of the rich agricultural lands that gave ancient Egypt its wealth and power. Water storage for agriculture and hydroelectric power have been created. There are silt,nutrient, fishing problems down-steam and numbers of archaeological monuments were submerged.

In China, the Three Gorges Dam, finished in 2008, is currently the world’s largest electricity generating plant. The Chinese regard it as an engineering, political, social and economic success. However, it too flooded historic sites, increased landslide risk and displaced 1.3 million people from their homes.

North Wales has the Llyn Celyn reservoir built between1960-65, to supply the English city of Liverpool. Its construction meant the permanent submerging of Capel Celyn village and all its homes. Giant dams like the USA’s Hoover (formerly Boulder) Dam in Arizona/Nevada create massive reservoirs to store water and harness hydroelectric power.

Yet there is both a high price to pay in terms of what is lost in creating dams, energy spent constructing massive engineering projects, environmental damage, use of gravel and water for cement and a real limit on what man can actually achieve. Water is notoriously difficult to move great distances and is prone to evaporation en route. The polar ice caps are not viable water sources after being towed any distance. Cloud-seeding is not yet much more than an idea.

In a time of economic restriction, the commitment and political will for huge new schemes may not be forthcoming. Tapping water from rivers and drilling deeper wells in dry areas are all tried. Many scientists believe the answer is desalination plants. Recycling of waste-water is well advanced in the west. Use of chemicals and pesticides in farming, the deforestation of huge areas of the earth have had impacts on the ecological balance, but have not increased finite availability of fresh water.

The Global Policy Forum publishes journals highlighting the realities of global water shortage. An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) paper points out that when water is scarce, political, socio-economic and cultural factors fuel tensions, while international cooperation on rivers, basins and other sources can help diminish tension as they build trust and confidence as well as facilitating development.

To recognise a looming problem, to debate it and set up studies does not address it. The hope is that man’s inventiveness will solve it before it’s too late.

First published on Suite 101, 14th June 2010.

Photo: Without Water There Is No Life On Earth – Juhanson

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Soccer and Politics: The Beautiful Game is a Political Football

July 11th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Liverpool's Shankly Mixed Football & Politics - Stuart Frisby
English football and politics have always been closely aligned. Today, as football industry and market demographics change, they are still intermingled.

The 2010 Football World Cup has opened debates about the state and future of football in a global economy under pressure, the top echelons isolated from the lower, who should own clubs, all driven by the media in a time of cultural diversity, environmental change and new entertainment demands.

Barney Ronay writing in The Guardian in April 2007 2010 asked what happened to the workers’ game now football is awash with TV money; where are the old socialists? He cites Brian Clough and Bill Shankly, who were not only footballing legends, but known firebrands of left-wing politics.

Clough is best remembered as manager for Derby County, Nottingham Forest and briefly, Leeds, achieving unsurpassed back-to-back European Cups with Nottingham Forest. He never managed England, saying “I’d want to run the show”, so was not selected. He was a passionate socialist and activist, taking part in pickets, donating to trade union causes and was approached twice by the Labour Party to stand for Parliament.

Bill Shankly was a distinguished player (Preston North End, Scotland, Partick Thistle & Carlisle United) but is most remembered for managing Liverpool, winning the FA Cup twice and the UEFA cup once. His most famous remark was: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

His second one was: “The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life”. He happily linked football and politics.

Socialism versus Capitalism

Ronay also quoted one-time Scottish international & Labour Party supporter Gordon McQueen: “Football is all about money and greed and everyone’s involved in it”. McQueen explained his politics as what he was born to and brought up with, but did think that activity on the political field was incompatible with the football one, as modern players are ‘cosseted’, almost all apolitical.

However, the view from Premiership club boardrooms is different. It was in 1992 that BSkyB’s TV subscription money bought into football with sums that transformed it. Now, TV income is in hundreds of millions, players’ wages have reached levels that make them Britain’s highest spending celebrities, and to that extent, McQueen’s ‘cosseted’ jibe is borne out.

The history of early clubs was of keen amateurs, perhaps under the auspices of pubs, churches or local community focus, banding together to enjoy their sport. They built simple grounds, where almost exclusively male crowds would stand, not sit, on terraces, chant and sing bawdy, sexist or racist songs, drinking booze with a cameraderie absent from other aspects of their lives in largely working-class, Labour-supporting locales.

From these roots, have grown mighty clubs, buying/selling global players and merchandising in big-business leagues. Manchester United boss, Sir Alex Ferguson, recognised for his managerial skills and his ‘champagne socialist’ lifestyle, is one who supported Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party and then Prime Minister, but who enjoys wines, racehorses and other attributes of worlds occupied by capitalist bankers. Many socialists argue that everybody should have champagne lifestyles, so there’s no hypocrisy in a working-class man being part of it.

The arrival of Conservative Margaret Thatcher into Downing Street in 1979 inspired numbers of footballers to declare more right-wing views, according to Ronay. Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes visited Downing Street; Coventry’s Steve Ogrizovic and Keith Houchen canvassed for the Conservative 1987 election candidate, and Arsenal’s manager Terry Neill and striker Charlie Nicholas shared a platform with Mrs Thatcher at a Conservative rally.

Like many sportspeople, players get involved with political campaigns. Rio Ferdinand supported one against knife crime across London. He has written of ambition to inspire the nation’s youth. Robbie Fowler while owning a reported hundred houses for rental, has been spotted wearing a T-shirt encouraging striking Liverpool dockworkers. Gary Neville supported footballers giving a day’s wages to a nurses’ hardship fund. Dismissed by critics as gesture politics, these are public political expressions, nonetheless.

Where Is It Going?

Clubs’ buying power and the business of transfer markets means local players rare. Football’s evolution into mass TV-packaged entertainment (game timings are regularly altered to fit TV scheduling) means geographical fan-base loyalty is no longer easily defined. Renting grounds for concerts or religious meetings makes economic sense, but changes their nature. The corporate entertainment concept and ever-spiralling ticket prices show that football still evolves.

The film, Rollerball (1975, remade 2002) imagined a futuristic game that was a hybrid of football, roller-skating, motor-cross and martial arts to the death and had become the thrill-opium of the masses. Few fans would want that, but as the media now sets the entertainment agenda, could something similar evolve? Football has always been theatre, especially played under floodlights. Does it matter if it feels like attending a rock concert? Andrew Lloyd Webber even wrote a musical: The Beautiful Game!

First published at Suite 101, 14 June 2010.

Photo: Liverpool’s Shankly Mixed Football & Politics – Stuart Frisby

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Olympic Games and Politics: Two Sides of the Same Coin

July 9th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Olympic Flag, Motto, Creed, Political? - Sam, Vancouver, Canada
Inspirational, high-minded, competitive, controversial – sports and politics are not separate entities, but are in fact inextricably interwoven.

Former President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch, writing in Thesis, a Journal of Foreign Policy Issues in Autumn 1997, said the history of the Olympic movement provides examples of how “sport and politics influence each other, directly and indirectly”.

Diplomatic heights are often scaled in compromises, negotiating between factions, to get as many nations as possible to compete, leaving differences aside, albeit temporarily. This common interest, the IOC claims, enabled better relations between USA and China in the 70s, allowed People’s Republic of China and Chinese Taipei to be recognised equally; secured South Africa’s return to international sporting arena in Barcelona after 27 years of apartheid, and handled the team complexities of the states of the former Soviet Union.

The Olympic Ideal

The IOC point to other diplomatic successes: In Atlanta, a deal was struck allowing athletes US entry regardless of their countries-of-origin status with America. In 1992, they were more directly politically active by launching appeals for observance of the Olympic Truce – safe passage to and fro for all participants in the interests of global dialogue, reconciliation and peace.

These ideals have spread from the four-yearly big event into Winter Olympics and other sporting events in different world regions, frequently involving nations at odds with each other. Olympic organisers work with the United Nations, Organisation of African States, Organisation of American States, the European Union, among many intergovernmental organisations.

They can’t always achieve the ideal. At the 1972 Munich Games in Germany, a group of Palestinians infiltrated the Olympic Village and took hostage 11 Israeli athletes. A bungled rescue attempt led to the hostages being killed. It was an act of extreme political intensity that shocked the world, and is in the minds of international athletes to this day.

As the South African 2010 games opened, Israel’s Olympic Committee and Foreign Ministry organised their annual memorial service, this time in Beijing to recall the political price sportsmen and women paid. The IOC hasn’t officially absorbed the memorial into their calendar, and that’s a matter of continuing dispute: politics, in effect.

The event, acknowledged by Samaranch as ‘the blackest day in the long history of the Olympics’, was portrayed in a documentary film, One Day in September (1999). It was critical of German security services; and won the Academy Award 2000 for Best Documentary Feature.

City and Location Politics

There is fierce competition (with regular suggestions of bribery) to be chosen as an Olympic venue, as both society and sporting activities become ever more globalised. Media enables billions to watch events, so the rewards in prestige, infrastructure investment, tourism, promotion of healthy lifestyles, ridding sport of drugs, involvement of young people and the legacy of state-of-the-art sports facilities, are motives that make selection an Olympic event in itself.

When any winning host city is announced, the process began nine years earlier with a complex bid. If more than one city in a nation applies, the national committee must choose one to put forward. The building, planning, logistics, even the weather controversies gather increasing momentum until the two and a half weeks of Games, followed by the Paralympics. There is then a year’s debriefing.

Throughout all that time, politics local and national come into play. Compulsory purchase of land to build new facilities, roads, housing, sewerage, utilities, the environment, carbon footprints, how it will be funded, terrorism threats and general security. Every decision is fraught with difficulty and controversy: the very essence of politics.

Other Controversies

Nationalities competing in sports rather than war has always been contentious. Revolutionary France, used 1796’s to introduce the metric system into sports. The 1916 Berlin Games were cancelled because of the First World War; the 1944 London Games because of the Second World War. Between the two, in 1936 Berlin hosted again. Hitler’s governing Nazi Party saw the Games as an opportunity to showcase a peaceful Germany and Aryan (white) supremacy. This aim was destroyed when black US athlete Jesse Owens took four gold medals.

These same games were boycotted by Ireland as the IOC wanted teams from the Irish Free State rather than the whole island of Ireland. The former Soviet Union invented their own alternative, called Spartakiads, as they thought Olympics too capitalist. Not till Helsinki’s 1952 Summer Olympics did they enter, realising the propaganda potential to be exploited by winning medals.

Down the years, individual athletes have used Olympic appearances to make statements (like Black Power salutes, wearing badges or symbols, speaking to news-hungry media) to promote political views. Race relations, human rights, the Cold War and developing countries have been the main political issues given a platform by some Olympian aspect or other.

In English, the Olympic motto is: “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. The creed is: “The important thing is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle… essential… not to have conquered but to have fought well”.

Those are Olympic aspirations. In theory, politics shares them.

First published on Suite 101, 13 June 2010.

Photo: Olympic Flag, Motto, Creed, Political? – Sam, Vancouver, Canada

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Music Videos Make Claims to be Real Artistic Statements

July 7th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Michael Jackson: Master of Music Videos - White House Photo Office
Often derided as sales gimmicks for songs, music videos have become controversial, experimental and challenging. They are now a serious, accepted art form.

Popularised on MTV and elsewhere during the 1980s, music videos are short films that accompany songs. They are basically a marketing/promotional tool, designed to exhibit a song in a visually interesting way, in the hope that more copies will be sold. However, they are older than the 80s.

Music videos might contain a mini-narrative to parallel song lyrics or enact them. They can use animation, abstracts, still image sequences, surrealism or be unconnected with the song. They may be documentary, or docu-drama. Some are deliberately mysterious; a few set out to be provocative.

Some History

Historians reckon ‘an illustrated song’ was the first video, in 1894, when sheet music publishers publicised “The Little Child”. Still images were projected to a screen while the song played. When talking movies arrived in the 1920s, shorts were created to promote, using contemporary (art deco) imagery and backgrounds against recordings of the artists singing.

Gradually over the next decade and more, cartoons like Loony Tunes were fashioned around songs or music and were distributed in movie theatres alongside main features. These inspired film-makers and performers to experiment further with film/sound techniques in songs and musical shows.

By 1964, UK band The Animals promoted their version of the US blues song, “House of the Rising Sun”, with a high quality, studio-shot film incorporating lip-synch technology, a set and choreographed moves. In the same year, The Beatles starred in their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, a mockumentary with musical sequences, comedic interludes and a loose structure.

Their follow up, Help! (1965) was shot in differing locations, linking songs in a fantasy journey, using unusual camera angles, extensive musical cross-cutting and blurred focus to generate interest in the soundtrack itself.

It became a template for pop artists experimenting in different ways to package their music, most notably the manufactured US band The Monkees. Between 1966-68, their TV series was sequences of filmed clips accompanying a range of pop-songs. By then, it had become the norm for bands and solo artists (including, for example, Procol Harum, Bob Dylan, The Kinks, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Troggs, The Rolling Stones and The Doors) to make a pop-video to accompany the launch of a new single. In Britain, the BBC’s long running TV series, Top of the Pops gave frequent and extensive exposure to thousands of these new music videos.

The 1970s, 80s and Beyond

In the 1970s, David Bowie was a leading exponent of music video, using film directors and photographers. Swedish stars Abba realised from the outset how the short visual-imaged film matching the song could enhance the appeal, telling the story in a stronger way than music alone. This was also the time of increasing domination by television as the most pervasive medium in people’s lives.

Into more recent years, the way the arts feed off and influence each other, can be traced in music videos such as Michael Jackson’s 1983 14 minute “Thriller”. Voted all-time most influential pop video, it owes much to classic Hollywood dance/musicals. Film maestro Martin Scorsese directed Jackson’s “Bad” in 1987, said to be influenced by the Sharks and Jets fight in the 1955 film of West Side Story. Madonna’s 1985 promo video for “Material Girl” is based on staging of “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

Videos have become technically sophisticated, sometimes intercutting concert footage with stories with images with imaginative messages. In this sense, the music video has paralleled the development of the TV and cinema commercial in increasing complexity demanded by tech-savvy advertisers and viewers.

Michel Gondry

The current leading exponent of the art of music video is award-winning Frenchman, Michel Gondry. He is a prolific movie, music video and commercial director and imaginator, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) which cemented his position as the world’s most inventive film-creator.

He has worked with Bjork, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, Beck and Radiohead among others to produce song videos that stretch time and space. He has produced unique, non-derivative commercials for products from jeans to cigarettes.

He pioneered ‘bullet-time’ (now a registered term belonging to Warner Bros), or slow-mo, time-slicing, view-morphing and virtual cinematography. It’s digitally-enhanced simulation of variable speed, slow motion, accelerated time or time-lapse. It flexes space by using extreme camera angles.

For instance, in the music video of “Come Into My World” (2003), multiple Kylie Minogues are seen from the audience’s (camera) point of view simultaneously moving in a real-time street scene. Gondry’s transit of a slowed flying bullet and other previously impossible images have been developed in the Matrix film series (1999-2003) and in the video game genre.

Like photography, paintings, songs, films and plays, music videos are no different from other art forms. If they offend authority, sell a given product, are enjoyable as pieces of high-tech experiment, are mastering the power of the internet, then they have staked their claim as legitimate art in their own right.

First published at Suite 101, 12 June 2010.

Photo:  Michael Jackson: Master of Music Videos – White House Photo Office

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