London Hostage drama

Tottenham Court road closed this afternoon due to a hostage drama,involving an apparently disgruntled student who didn't do so well in his exams. Never having been a particularly effective scholar, my expectations of exam success were never likely to be so slighted. Anyway, I was able to watch the drama unfolding from the 23rd floor of a building in Euston....another long afternoon in a long meeting. Occasionally we could see bits and piece being hurled out of windows as the disgruntled gent roamed through the college. Has now been arrested, excitement over, back to the meeting then.....

Does God Exist….and is anybody listening?

The eternal question “Does God exist or not” has of late been receiving another high volume airing. Although neither side can actually, really, categorically, hand-on-heart prove this statement one way or the other, this rather important point has not stopped the protagonists leaping in, and substituting any attempt at polite persuasion with high octane volume.  And everywhere its being talked about, it seems to be following a prepared sequence of events that goes something like this:

1.   Each side put forward a point of view that more or less requires that the other side accept without precondition that it is 100% totally irrevocably wrong;

2.   Both sides then profess amazement that the other has failed to see the scientific facts / divinely revealed truth whilst each becomes only more determined not to cede a nanometre of the bomb-cratered trench of its own view point;

3.   Each side then repeat their mutually exclusive arguments at ever increasing orders of volume;

4.   See step 2.

This is of course a very serious business, and the protagonists have spent years honing their arts and arguments. It’s almost becoming business-as-usual.  But to listen to these debates, or follow them on-line reveals how ridiculous the whole thing is becoming. Indeed recently we had the amusing spectacle of a very eminent scientist (Dawkins) and an important clergyman bickering at a near infantile level about who could recall the full title of Darwin’s “Origin of Species”. Apparently both saw such a test of recall as some kind of comparator measure for a non-believer, if it should be held, on the other hand that, to qualify as a (Christian) believer, a person should be able to recall some biblical tract or detail (can’t remember what is was – no pun intended).

Both sides are like neighbours, who trapped in uneasy yet by necessity close proximity to each other, spend their days at the proverbial garden fence. There, with throats raw and hoarse from enraged shouting, and nose to nose, mouths as open wide as ears are tightly shut, they hurl their arguments at each other about whose “poodle fouled the porch”.

These arguments no doubt are as old as religions itself (“Baal exists – no he doesn’t” – I guess the “He Doesn’t” crowd win that one) and will continue long into the future as religions, as they have always done, mutate to reflect changing societies and concepts. New religions have formed, often as hybrids of well-established ones. This is nothing new, just as Mormonism is an off-shoot of Christianity, so were the Roman Gods developed from the religion of Ancient Greece – perhaps the Greek’s felt it was an early form of intellectual property theft? Another thing that won’t change either is that this argument will continue to be characterised by collective deafness on all sides.

Perhaps Bertrand Russell got closest to summarising the situation with his theory of the cosmic tea pot – whilst you can’t prove it’s not there, how can you prove it is? In short, if you want to claim something, then you need the scientific rigour and arising facts,  not to mention the courage to welcome challenge, to support your theory…..there is no basis to claim something exists solely because it can’t be proven not to.

MR KIM’S EXPENSIVE FIREWORK: THE UNHA 3

On Thursday 12 April North Korea launched a much hyped rocket, the Unha-3, which, so we are told, was part of their planning to be able to launch and orbit intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. 

In the days before the launch various “lucky” foreign journalists were allowed into North Korea, and had been given a train trip out to the site of the rocket launch in the north west of the country.  Snapshots of the train trip revealed despairing landscapes with peasants toiling in distant fields in a grim eastern dystopia. Journalists were chaperoned around by robotically crisp and expressionless guards in sharp green uniforms no doubt selected to convey an impression of ruthless efficiency and order. Unfortunately for the North Koreans, such displays of efficiency and obedience are easier to ensure in soldiers than annoying and expensive missiles.

The brief film clips of the launch site itself suggested it was in a remote location, well away from prying eyes or concentrations of starving, desperate people. The rocket gantry hardly inspired much confidence – not quite tomato boxes and chicken wire – but a rather odd looking contraption that looked like something out of laughably bad 1960’s sci-fi.

The launch represented the latest Kim’s first club-footed foray into international diplomacy and induced the predictable hand wringing and protests from his neighbours, save for his loyal ally, China.  The rocket and launch were also in part to honour the memory of Kim’s grandfather Kim ll-sung’s 100^th birthday and who remains their “eternal” president (see 3 Kims for the price of 1).

Predictably, the whole thing was over almost as quickly as it began. Between 90 seconds and 3 minutes after launch the wretched thing plopped harmlessly down into the Yellow Sea without even getting into orbit. This is acutely embarrassing for North Korea, particularly since Unha means Milky Way, and, for all intents and purposes, it could hardly have got any closer to the Milky way if it had instead saved us all the bother and politely fallen out of its gantry. Japan added to the indignity by referring to the mighty Unha’s fate  as “some kind of flying object from North Korea….fell down into the ocean”, just as if it were an oversized, misbehaving Roman Candle; just a very expensive firework then....

 Laughable though all this may be, its consequences may be much more serious. A humiliated dictator is an unpredictable and dangerous beast. Will he now press ahead with more missile testing or underground testing of his bombs? China too will have been, privately, seething – an unreliable rocket could easily come down on its heavily populated lands. Is there now a risk that China will help Kim No 3 build a more reliable rocket, if only to ensure it’s not the unintended recipient of such a rocket’s payload in future?

For the moment though, Mr Kim’s temper will hardly be improved by the thought that the only place he can detonate one of his nuclear bombs with any certainty is in his own country. Even still, that’s hardly a comforting thought for people ruled over by a madman…..

ALASKA…

Everyone has a favourite place, that one place that calls them back, that is like no other, that gets its hooks into your heart and your mind.  For me that place is Alaska. After a holiday there in 2008, it is a part of the world I cannot forget.

Yet Alaska is not hospitable or a gentle, pretty place. It’s not warm and welcoming, or civilised with nice hotels, big roads and entertainment on tap.

But, the English language’s overused superlatives were fashioned for Alaska. Alaska is wild. Its beauty is of a place that is vast, overwhelming in scale and savage in splendour. It is like going back in time to a world before modern man littered its landscapes with the cement and metal trappings of his ways. Set against its scale and timeless landscapes, unaltered from eon to eon, you feel how small and temporary we are; momentary in our presence on its vast stage. In most places it is undisturbed by our intrusions, its mighty mountain ranges and tundra’s wielding the weather as a natural weapon to keep at bay the dirty tides of encroaching human life.

Its beauty can be cruel though, angry, and unsurpassed, like its mighty frozen blue glaciers that calve and crash building sized shards of ice into the sea. Its ferocious seasons bring long black winters. Its lush, wild rain forests, wrapped in their skirts of swirling mists, are strange and mystical, twisted dank eerie places unchanged through the millennia.

Alaska is primordial. Its landscapes are harsh and hostile, its towering mountain ranges rise like great motionless waves of rock and stone, with their hidden ice fields and creeping glaciers, reaching out to the cold shores of the distant and icy Arctic Ocean. Yet its lands abound with wild bears and moose. Ever distant wolves howl against the night. If you are lucky you can spot its bald eagles, no more than dots set against the vast vaults of its sky.

Alaskans will tell you how it is all changing, how there are now too many people there (almost 700 000) in an area that is larger than any other state in the US (more than twice the size of Texas), larger than far away South Africa or Iran. Yes, it has it oil wells and industries in the far north on its bleak arctic shores. Yet, by anyone else’s standards, along perhaps with places like Kamchatka in far eastern Russia and of course the Antarctic, Alaska is still one of the earth’s last frontiers.

Alaska is like a place you might visit in a dream; you know your visit is brief, tantalisingly so, for although you may have just arrived, you know your time there is short, like its summer, and rushing by. Its heart is the beat of the seasons, its passage measured in the long, even footsteps of the centuries. It has no need for the transience of our scurrying, rushing, so called civilised world.

And long so may it remain…..

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY

I can remember when April Fool’s day passed with a stream of spoof headlines and news reports, which inevitably suckered most people in – no harm was done and everybody (well mostly everybody) had a bit of a laugh on at least 1 morning a year.

This morning I did my bit – and told my wife, Susan, it was going to snow tomorrow. “Well, she said, fixing me with a one of her steely glances, “you had better go and grit the drive then…”

“I’m joking I said, “It’s April Fool’s day.

“I know” she said.

Whilst out this morning I scanned the newspapers. Nothing particularly April foolish to note. Lots of the normal nonsense though, guaranteed to avoid any outbreak of good cheer. There was the ever reliable Mail on Sunday, just about asphyxiating itself with fury over something or other. At the other end of the political scale there was the cheerless Guardian, in its humourless, politically correct po-faced, sanctimonious way, making sure Sunday morning was a proper guilt fest for its tortured readers.

Well, here are a few April fool headlines they could have gone with….

·         “Robert Plant to re-join Zeppelin – Olympic tour planned and tickets to go on sale”. That would have got ‘em going. And people thought there was a panic over the petrol shortage in the UK. It would have been nothing by way of comparison in the rush for non existent tickets. Who knows, the consequent public outrage might well have pressured the eternaly uncoperative Plant to change his mind.

·         “Pontiff asks police to arrest Catholic priests who abused children”. Well, that’s probably a bit too much to expect, after all they may have already confessed their sins and been forgiven. Besides, it’s a case of one rule for some, and another rule for the rest.

·         “Gordon Brown says sorry for his part in the UK’s economic woes”.  A politician apologising – on April fool’s day – that would have been surreal. In reality, there is probably more chance of a glacier being found on the sun than Gordon Brown admitting that he was in any way even remotely connected to the unspeakable mess he created.

·         “French Presidential hopeful, François Hollande, says he believes in UFOs”. This could have been quite plausible – not least because his proposed solutions to the economic crisis quietly waiting to engulf France suggest he might only very recently have beamed down from another planet.

·         “South African President Jacob Zuma vows to resign if found guilty of corruption”. This would have generated much hollow laughter, imagine that, a corrupt politician resigning. I doubt his peers would have seen the joke though – whatever next, letting the side down like that. However, they can all rest easy – it’s very unlikely to happen and Mr Zuma will probably take another wife (or a shower) instead to take his mind of his woes.

·         “Scientists prove global warming is a myth”. That would have thrown the world’s climatology experts a great curved ball. Just imagine all those woolly academic spluttering over their morning coffee, getting their toast and marmalade caught in their beards before rushing off to denounce the report in bulging eyed, outraged tones…..

But there was none of it. Perhaps the world has lost its sense of humour and all of us our courage to laugh along with it. Perhaps we are all too politically correct and laughing at someone else is now deemed socially unacceptable. Or perhaps all that bothersome Health and Safety legislation has made it just too darn risky to have a bit of fun.  

Who knows, I just hope it doesn’t snow tomorrow………………