Singularity University
Author: administrator
A fascinating feature article in The Observer 29/4/12 put together by a Carole Cadwalladr nearly gets us believing that in the very near future everything is going to be rosy on Planet Earth all thanks to an exponential growth in science and technology. To achieve this remarkable feat of human engineering, many of the top brains in computing and science plus a liberal sprinkling of forward thinking entrepreneurs and philanthropic billionaires have gathered together in a high powered, can-do think tank, enigmatically called the Singularity University, in order to brain storm all those stubborn earthly problems like poverty, hunger, disease and environmental degradation. Throw in a huge dollop of blue-sky thinking and hey-presto – all those nasty little obstacles to human progress can be dealt a terminal blow. Cadwalladr is not entirely convinced and neither am I.
Jeremy Paxman: Imperialism- Your starter for ten. Author: administrator
In one short piercing piece in The Guardian 24/4/12, George Monbiot has all but KO’d Niall Ferguson, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr and all the other legions of self-satisfied, over-paid, pro-establishment apologists for British Imperialism that swan around the corridors of the BBC imagining they are presenting a fair, objective, balanced view of the British Empire. What all these learned gentlemen have in common is their inability to come to terms with the systematic and institutionalised brutality of the recently departed but little mourned planet-wide British Raj. All these gentlemen, while constructing elaborate, sophisticated veneers of impartiality and so-called vigorous historical examination, fail to grasp the blindingly obvious – that the British empire, like all the empires before and the ones that have followed, come dripping with blood and human misery. It’s not for nothing that those countless millions of citizens at the receiving end of Britain’s ‘civilising mission’ refer to the Union Jack as the ‘butchers apron’. The Unethical Games in an Unethical World Author: administrator
Three half decent articles recently popped up in the mainstream media last week each detailing the ‘unethical’ nature of some of the key Olympic sponsors. In the immediate firing line were McDonalds and Coca Cola for their obesity producing junk food, Dow Chemicals for its refusal to compensate for the victims of the Bhopal chemical explosion, mining giant, Rio Tinto, makers of Olympic medals, for its economic and environmental destruction in developing countries and of course, Adidas, makers of Team GB kits, for the slave labour conditions in their Asian sweat shops.
It’s good that these issues are being aired in some sections of the national media. But by highlighting these few easy targets it prompts its readers to imagine that there are responsible, ethical corporate sponsors out there. This is an obvious falsity that allows us to be seduced by Will Hutton’s and Ed Milliband’s notion of a ‘good capitalism’, a ‘responsible capitalism’, an ‘ethical capitalism’. It’s all a mirage. It doesn’t exist. Capitalism simply cannot operate other than the way it currently does. To do otherwise would invite bankruptcy at the hands of its global competitors. That is the nature of global capitalism and right now, despite some heroic resistance from the likes of Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina and Bolivia, it is the only game in town. Capitalism in the 21st century is, by definition, global monopoly capitalism, and those companies and corporations that don’t play by the rules will quickly go under. Ed Milliband and Co cannot wish that reality away. I’m damn sure Ed’s old man would agree with me on this one hundred percent.
Let’s have a closer look what these articles have to say. Richard Godwin, writing in The London Evening Standard 18/4/12 is particularly sharp in his journalism. He writes; Capital, John Lanchester, Faber & Faber, 20 Author: administrator
A point of clarification to begin with. Lanchester’s book has nothing directly to do with Das Capital, though indirectly it could be argued it has everything in common with that mighty nineteenth century tome. The Capital being referred to here by Lanchester is our very own capital city, dear old London Town, and despite reading some rather luke-warm reviews, I actually consider this a minor classic in its own right. Lanchester has conjured up a fictitious street in South London and then proceeds to follow the lives of its inhabitants through their various trials and tribulations, and by some clever plot devices links all the key characters together creating a compelling tension throughout. Lanchester offers us some twenty central characters and then at least another twenty or so minor ones, and for me, every one of these characters rings true. That is some achievement in itself. The dialogue is matter of fact-ish but highly convincing and through these characters Lanchester is able to make dozens of very perceptive observations both about London in particular and human nature in general. But it is the development of the underlying theme of winners and losers in our much heralded global city that is Lanchester’s real achievement, a territory that has not been so successfully explored since Zadie Smith’s towering White Teeth some twelve years earlier. Ping London Goes National Author: administrator
So perhaps there is a God after all. At least someone up there or out there is starting to answer my daily prayers. It’s a simple prayer to the Almighty One:
‘ Dear Creator of all things, please tell Lord Coe, Cameron, Boris and the rest of the self satisfied Old Etonians to stop fluffing about pretending there will be a sporting legacy from the London Olympics and instead spend a few quid on community sports and leisure, because there won’t be a sporting legacy from the Olympics – there never is. There wasn’t one in Sydney or Athens, Los Angeles or Moscow and I doubt if there will be much of one from Beijing. Just big ugly stadia that nobody wants and nobody needs. In fact, Oh Lord, the truth is that rather than motivate people to get fit and active, there is a greater propensity for us to sit on our collective big fat arses and watch the entire Olympic Games on our new plasma TV’s from the comfort of our sofas while McShit and Coca Cola attempt to make us even more obese than when the whole thing started.’
I say this little prayer every night before I go to my bed and sure enough the Omniscient One answered. And what did the Almighty One say to me?
‘You must understand my son that the Olympic Games are nothing but a corporate jamboree to take your mind off the ever worsening global recession, the wholesale network of corporate tax evasion and the mass unemployment that is sweeping your planet, and all of it paid for by your ever growing taxes. My advice to you my son is to give the whole thing a big thumbs-down and get on and enjoy some free local exercise.’
Ok I reply, but what do you suggest? Football’s Wage Old Problem written by Nick Munday – 15/12/11 Author: administrator
Something must be done about the amount of money footballer’s earn
In 1981, Bryan Robson became the first £1,000-a-week footballer. People were outraged. Now, the average salary for a top flight player in England is around £100,000. A week, remember. Whilst all of us are feeling the squeeze, looking to save money and avoid finding ourselves in another economic crisis, Wayne Rooney is on approximately £250k-a-week, adding up to 12 million pounds a year for you non-mathematicians. No wonder Manchester United are in debt! My question is, isn’t it time to introduce a wage cap to stop these footballers from earning obscene amounts of money? Before you ask, I love football. I have done so since my first kick of a ball, but I still can’t quite understand why these men can earn more in a single week than what an NHS nurse would be paid for up to six years of life-saving work or what an Army private would expect to receive for serving almost 7 years on the front lines of Iraq or Afghanistan. Rio Ferdinand stated in an interview with a tabloid newspaper that he believed that our troops should be paid the same amount of money that footballer’s earn, "These guys are the real heroes. They should definitely be on the wages we're on." Before you say, ‘That Rio, he’s such a hero!’ you don’t actually see him donating any of his wages to the British Legion or offering to pay more in taxes to support his beloved ‘heroes’ do you? Chelsea and AVB: The Wrong Project Author: administrator
Andre Villas-Boas, freshly departed Chelsea manager, kept repeating, like a religious mantra, that he was working on a project and needed more time. To be very cynical I suspect his real project was not so much to revamp an aging Chelsea side, but to model himself as the next Jose Mourinho, complete with multi-million pound sponsorship deals and a host of top football clubs tripping over themselves for the services of the Special One Mark Two. If football was his real passion why not stay at Porto and create a whole new era of Portuguese footballing success rather than just one fruitful season? Adbusters: The Big Ideas of 2012 Author: administrator
I used to be given back-copies of ‘Adbusters’, the counter-culture magazine, which I think is Canadian based. Many of the articles drifted off into a new-age feel but there was, nevertheless, a distinct undercurrent of anti-capitalist sentiment. Even some of the more way-out articles had a link, however tenuous, to the real world. The general themes were about the alienating affect of capitalist advertising and commercial culture. Some of the graphics were truly challenging. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the read. Sometimes it’s useful to read stuff out of the box, or at least out of your own comfort zone. The Spirit Of The Game, Mihir Bose, London , 2011 Author: administrator
Don’t rush out to buy a copy of Mihir Bose’s new book inappropriately entitled, ‘The Spirit of the Game: How Sport Made the Modern World’. It is dull. Deathly dull. Dull as dirty dish water. It is also highly unoriginal. It covers, over its 570 odd pages, all that has been covered countless times before, only with considerably less insight and considerably less literary verve. It rehashes the old story of the original Corinthian sporting spirit, one supposedly full of honour and fair play. It retells yet again the tired old story of how the modern Olympics were reborn by the Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin. He then drags up the Victorian classic, Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, as a way of creating an opposite pole to the commercial juggernaut that sport has become today. But it’s all so familiar, all so safe and unoriginal. Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, Paul Mason Author: administrator
Paul Mason’s blog turned book is definitely the read of the moment. It’s compelling reading and its explosive content is being updated and underlined by the minute. At the time of writing there is a forty eight hour general strike rolling out in Greece. Once again Athens is the scene of angry rioting and police attack. Syria is collapsing into civil war and Egypt shows no signs of quietly settling into a new military dictatorship. The Eurozone still hovers on the edge of implosion and the world economy shows little sign of dragging itself out of recession. The debt mountains grow ever higher and the government imposed austerity measures are imposing misery on those who can least afford it. And they don’t work. In short, the rich are getting obscenely richer and the poor are left in desperation and destitution. No wonder it’s kicking off everywhere.
The King of the World: Muhammad Ali, David Remnick, Picador, 1999 Author: administrator
The King of the World: Muhammad Ali, David Remnick, Picador, 1999
It’s been somewhat remise of Sporting Polemics not to have touched on the mighty Muhammad Ali, and his recent 70th birthday gave me the necessary prod. And I struck lucky. For all the mountains of literature on the great man, I stumbled across what is often considered the best of the best; David Remnick’s, ‘King of the World’. It’s not only cleverly constructed but it sets American boxing in the fuller social context of slavery and the subsequent rise of the civil rights movement of which Ali, despite his affiliations to the separatist Nation Of Islam, became an iconic figure then and still to this day. The way Remnick weaves the story of Afro-American oppression at the hands of white racist America lifts the Ali story well beyond a sporting tale and into the realm of social history. Remnick’s perceptiveness with regards to the many strands of the civil rights movement including the tensions and eventual split of Malcolm X from the Nation of Islam makes this an historical text to go along side the Malcolm X autobiography. Remnick’s knowledge of the pre-Ali American boxing scene and its treacherous links to organised crime, along with the newspaper industry and the sporting hacks that leeched off the boxing world, do full justice to the Ali story, enriching our understanding of what made Cassius Marcellus Clay a contender for the greatest sportsman of the 20th century. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, Forth Estate, London, 2010 Author: administrator
Christmas 2010 and Wolf Hall turns up as a stocking-filler. But the moment the word ‘Tudor’ loomed up from the back cover, the hefty tome was promptly consigned to the bottom shelf. The BBC had well and truly destroyed any residual curiosity I may have had in that infamous Welsh clan. But this Christmas, with time on my hands and nothing looking to match or better Arundhati Roy’s ‘God of Small Things’, I opted for Wolf Hall, Mantel’s 2009 Booker prize winner. What a Christmas it turned out to be. From the opening sentence through to the very last some six hundred and fifty pages later I was mesmerised. Caught as they say, hook, line and sinker. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, 1997, Flamingo Author: administrator
Fourteen years after the publication of Roy’s first and only novel, I found the time and space to give it a read. And, with job completed, I must say without the slightest hesitation, that all the accumulated superlatives that this book has attracted are fully merited. Very few novelists are cable of intertwining the particular, the historical and the universal with such ease and with such profound effect. How dare Ms Roy not devote her life to churning out more of the same. How dare she fritter her life away battling this injustice and that. But she dares, and now Arundhati Roy is as recognised as a champion of the downtrodden and oppressed as she is for her contribution to literature. The Arms Trade, New Internationalist, Dec 2011 Author: administrator
Christmas time and the usual stampede of mindless consumerism, the majority of stuff we neither need nor want. Spurred on by an advertising industry that starts to badger and bully the senses as early as October, the relentless onslaught builds up into a crazed frenzy by mid and late December. The Government plays it part, all but suggesting that it is our patriotic duty to spend, spend, spend in order to pump prime our sick and wasting economy. The joke is, in order to rescue the dying patient we will likely plunge ourselves even further into personal debt. Help, get me out of here! The Best of Times, the Worst of Times. (In memory of Christopher Hitchens) Author: administrator
That damn dialectic just keeps grinding on. Relentless would be a fitting adjective. From the humble atom with its feuding sub-atomic particles right through to the whole crazy mixed-up universe itself, forever expanding and contracting as it will, till the end of time and beyond. There’s just no way of escaping the ubiquitousness of the thing. Contradictory forces bound together in mutual rivalry, interpenetrating each others domain, pushing and shoving in a never-ending battle for supremacy; harmony and equilibrium only momentary, fleeting states. It seems it is only change that is permanent. ‘Nothing is eternal but eternally changing’ Gigantic, unseen centrifugal and centripetal forces tearing at the universe day and night from every conceivable direction; positive and negative impulses locked in eternal struggle; the ‘old’ forever being usurped by the ‘new’ until low and behold, the ‘new’ soon becomes the new ‘old’. Quantity eventually, always and everywhere, giving rise to qualitative change. Every thesis inevitably producing its own antithesis with the ensuing struggle certain to produce a synthesis – a new thesis in its own right. ‘The negation of the negation’, as Frederick Engels would have it. A universe consisting of nothing but contradictions everywhere you care to look. What a carry on! Surface to Air Missiles to protect Olympics ( Olympic Notes No11) Author: administrator
So it has come to this. The much proclaimed ‘Greatest Show on Earth’, a sporting jamboree to celebrate extreme human endeavour and to lift the spirits of a planet ground down by recession and poverty will now, we learn, be protected by surface to air missiles. This has to be the final Olympic joke. Already the much heralded promises of an Olympic legacy are in the gutter. Grassroots and community sports have been savagely slashed in order to pay for grandiose stadia, the largest of which will be handed over to a couple of seedy pornographers under the cynical auspices of giving West Ham Football Club a new home. Corporate sponsors, the likes of McDonalds and Coca Cola, will stuff their bank balances even further by monopolising the advertising rights of the Olympics while the general populous grows ever more obese with extra large portions of McShite and the rest of their poisoned merchandise. And then there is Dow Chemicals, sponsor of the main stadium wrap-around. Dow is a chemicals giant bestrides the planet with a devil-may-care attitude second to none. Just ask the residents of Bhopal for their references if you want to get a feel for the real corporate nature of London 2012. |
