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………………

PINK FLOYD’S DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Thirty nine years ago this month Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon and began to ascend up a unique, near gravity defying musical arc of fame, success and unique musical accomplishment, unlike any artist before or since.  

Where Floyd went with their music, others did not follow. For them, no lurid tales of rock star excess or well worn and formulaic songs about the normal tired old themes.  Pink Floyd were very, very different. With a near disdainful remoteness from the world of rock, pop and fandom, they inhabited a distant, cold and refined realm, quietly removed from Rock's vulgarities in a distinctly polite, slightly disapproving, rather English sort of way.  

Starting off in the late 1960s, Pink Floyd’s first 2 albums were a startling psychedelic juxtaposition between childhood nursery rhymes, madness and LSD; those 2 albums being more or less kaleidoscopic windows into Syd Barrett’s state of mind, even though by the second album he was almost out of the band, contributing only one song, the last two, whispered lines of which remain a haunting refrain to a life that went forever out of control

“and what exactly is a dream

And what exactly is a joke……”

Barrett never recovered from Pink Floyd or the 60s drug scene and after Floyd, was never able to perform as a serious artist again, dying a recluse, in Cambridge, in 2006.

Barrett was replaced by guitarist David Gilmour, whose arrival, with his lucid, soaring signature guitar sound, signalled the start of the endless rise of Pink Floyd. The first few Gilmour years saw a couple of good releases that foreshadowed what was to come; from the dreamy soundscapes of Meddle to the strange, semi disturbing images of More to the overlengthy, ramblings of Atom Heart Mother.

However, it was with 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon that Pink Floyd went from being just another really good rock band to something far greater.  Dark Side was the first of a series of almost unbelievable Pink Floyd releases that launched them on their own private trajectory across the rock ’n roll sky. Dark Side was a simply stunning soundtrack to the lurking madness within each of us, set against the thin transience of life and the quiet and measured pointlessness to it all.

 

Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Striking a magical balance between sleek yet pounding music and lyrical madness, and recorded almost 40 years ago now, Dark side, like its concepts, remains timeless, neither in nor out of vogue. Standing beyond the fickle tides of easy fashion and bland popularity, it marks the cold juncture between the simple yet comforting illusions we use to comfort our passage through this life with the cold starkness we must all ultimately face.

“For long you live and high you fly

But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave”

Quite simply, it is a remarkable piece of music and set an almost impossibly high standard for future Floyd releases. Floyd’s greatness is not just because of Dark Side, it’s also because of the music they then went on to create in its enormous wake. Dark Side was only the beginning of a journey unique to modern music….

It was followed by Wish You Were here in 1975.  For me, this album was icy in its remoteness, its haunted emptiness served as a soundtrack to the collective despair of the human condition, epitomised by its art work and title track. The stark isolation of each soul trapped in a harsh, jeering world, inhabits songs like Welcome to the Machine:

“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

Where have you been? it’s alright we know where you’ve been”.

 There was the mocking illusion of corporate success and the empty ambitions of society in “Have a Cigar”, where eventually all our dreams and achievements wither and fade. Ultimately, we are no more than pawns on someone else’s chess board. Wish You Were Here reminds us that, set against the tides of time, the mark we leave in this world is a small, vapourish thing of little worth.

From here Floyd moved on to Animals in 1977, an altogether heavier album, but which evolved the same themes of despair, but with a sharper, savager edge. Coming to the fore now was Waters lacerating cynicism and anger at the world, howling out of song like Dogs:

“You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to

So that when they turn their backs on you
You’ll get the chance to put the knife in.”

Elsewhere he turns on the fate of the mindless masses and the isolation of the individual in an overcrowded world. Each of us imprisoned in our small controlled and contrived lives, blinded, cajoled and manipulated by authority in all its forms. And, ultimately, led like sheep through the over-managed years of a short futile existence towards that final rendezvous with a blank cold doom.

“What do you get for pretending the dangers not real?
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well-trodden corridors into the valley of steel”.

After Animals it became more and more the Rogers Waters show. Yes, The Wall was great, but for me at least, it was not quite the same. After the Wall came “The Final Cut” practically a Waters’ solo piece. The Final Cut remains to this day quite possibly the world’s bleakest record, by the world’s most miserable man. A work of art? I guess so, yes, but a particularly unenjoyably 45 minute listen.

The rest is history – Floyd broke up, then were reformed by Gilmour a few years later (absent a furious Waters) , law suits, acrimony and disillusion followed as they lived out the lyrical cynicism of their past. Gilmour did manage  2 more (very good) albums before a final calling it of a day 1994 in the face of a still overwhelming demand for more of Floyd’s music, which is unabated to this day. There was a strangely uncomfortable one-off reunion in the mid 2000s that only served to taunt several trillion fans with the flashbacks of what was and the illusions of what might have been. Such is the ethereal, tantalising magic of Pink Floyd, which like its dark moon, is seemingly always, just, there, but out of reach….

Yet Floyd’s Dark Moon still casts its shadow down the decades and across the myriad landscapes of modern music. It’s very unlikely there will ever be another release that sends its incedible, echoing sonic shockwaves out so far and for so long. Likewise with the slowly distancing Floyd, of the five who at one time or another constituted the band, only three now remain alive. The ghosts of rumours of reformations surface from time to time. The London 2012 Olympics is perhaps last great chance, but as time continues and Waters and Gilmour age, so the likelihood recedes……and there are unlikely to be any pretenders to their frozen, shimmering crown.

“And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon................”

THE LONG SHADOW OF THE DARK AGES

In the Middle Ages, and long before that, certain “facts” held indisputable sway in the minds of our  ancestors.  It was taken as fact, for instance, that the earth was flat (and you could actually fall of it), devils really existed, as did witches who could fly and change shape (like the characters in True Blood). Our ancestors believed the stars and the sun all revolved around our planet and the northern lights, they were sure, were the spirits of their dead ancestors. The list goes on and on…..

Science has gradually rolled back most of these beliefs, with  demonstrable fact and proof replacing superstition and cult belief.  Whilst there was a certain delightful logic to the assumption that, if the earth was in fact as flat as a table, then you probably could have sailed off its edge, it is one of those hilariously quaint assumptions relegated to history. However, some of these equally implausible, yet more unpleasant beliefs from the dark ages have been curiously resistant to the tides of civilisation, logic and common sense.

In the USA, Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum really seems to believe, not only that a physical entity called Satan exists, but that he has taken a personal decision to attack America via its academics (one could be forgiven for wondering if Wall Street’s denizens might not have made a more plausible target of Mr Satan…). How Mr Santorum actually "knows" this is not clear, however its incongruous to hear such beliefs espoused from someone who would be expected to deal with incredibly complex economic, financial and international / diplomatic challenges if he became President and from whom a balanced, reasoned and enlighten outlook on the world is essential. Not so apparently with Mr Santorum.

In London witchcraft murders by children of children have taken place giving expression to beliefs of terrifying and primitive barbarity in the world’s capital of Finance. A grisly and blood curdling tale of torture and murder of a child emerged in court, followed by the police confirming that this sort of thing took place more often that generally acknowledged....

Elsewhere in the UK right now men of the cloth (no women please) are turning various bright and bilious hues at the thought of gay people getting married. Indeed, Archbishop Rowan Williams has hurried off, beard in tow, to see his counterpart in the Vatican to confer, amongst other things, about this dreadful state of affairs. Given the Vatican’s seeming near tolerance of child abuse amongst its own clergy, one might have assumed the good Archbishop could have found a more appropriate figure with which to confer over this delicate matter. Setting that to one side however, why is there this reluctance to finally let go of a mind-set of deeply ingrained prejudices that stretches back centuries.

Elsewhere, in the Middle East, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad believes that, a few years ago, he had a paranormal experience whilst addressing the United Nations, and that he was bathed in light from heaven whilst all the other leaders of the world were frozen before him during his speech (perhaps it was just incredibly dull, but, somehow, I doubt it). He is convinced his main mission in life is to pave the way for the return of his messiah. Ahmadinejad believes that when this happens it will be the end of the world – a sort of glorious conflagration.  This man is seeking to build a nuclear bomb. Along with the Mullahs and Ayatollahs, amongst whom he counts as a moderate, they harbour a world view (and sense of fashion) hardly changed since the time of the crusades and before. They are considerably less enlightened than Saladin who in fact battled the Crusaders about 900 years ago and who was much admired as a cultured and chivalrous man, which cannot be said for all his heirs. It’s as if we are regressing and we rush forward.

How is it in an era of near unbelievable progress where humans are making incredible and wonderful strides in science, medicine and technology, that the black shadow of these often near primitive and deeply unpleasant beliefs and prejudices still fall about us? Perhaps these and other belief systems run on some form of “ancient program” in the human mind that, having evolved with us over millennia, predisposes the human condition to this kind of way of thinking? That’s probably a question for someone like Steven Pinker (unless Satan’s got him), but how else is it explicable that obviously intelligent and well educated people hold onto beliefs that are as misplaced today as a belief in a flat earth was in the dark ages and before?