The Student 14/02/2012

Tuesday February 14 2012 | Week 4

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Candidates won’t campaign as Defend Edinburgh Referendum results mean election candidates will not be able to run as a group

Alasdair Drennan & Mia FlorinSefton DEFEND EDINBURGH will be unable to campaign at this year’s EUSA General Election, following the online referendum held last week.

Defend Edinburgh is a group of campaigners for free education that have run together in the last two EUSA elections.

Other outcomes from Edinburgh University Students’ Association’s (EUSA) first online referendum mean that SABMiller products will be banned from sale in all EUSA outlets, and EUSA policy is now to work towards the introduction of a living wage for all EUSA staff.

The referendum also demonstrated support from the student body for the

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introduction of a free Easter Bush bus campaign and the strategy for improving accommodation introduced by new rector Peter McColl.

Motions not carried included introducing quotas for the election of female delegates to the National Union of Students (NUS) and a motion to allow EUSA sabbatical officers to stand for re-election.

Motions which could have a financial impact on EUSA will also have to be passed by the board of trustees before becoming the policy of the association.

There were some initial difficulties with the voting but these were resolved. Andrew Burnie, Undergraduate Representative for the School of Informatics told The Student, “I don’t believe results will be affected and I’m sure things will be much more clear from the start in future referenda.”

He also hoped that the success of the election this year would yield better results next year.

He said, “Now people have seen how this works I’m really hopeful we’ll get even more questions from outside

of those already elected in EUSA.” Matt McPherson, EUSA President, told The Student that the referendum had been a great success.

He said, “Our turnout was really good. This was a huge achievement for Edinburgh and is an exciting new chapter in our democracy.”

“

This was a huge achievement for Edinburgh and is an exciting new chapter in our democracy” Matt McPherson, EUSA President McPherson also acknowledged that there was a lot to learn from the referendum and that there would be changes made next year.

He said, “The Campaigns and Accountability forum, which isn’t up and running yet, will play a much more proactive role in overlooking the questions that come to the student body.

“This will make them much more tailored, much more appropriate and much more clear but for a first start it was fantastic and I’m very pleased.”

The passing of question 10 (“Should candidates in EUSA elections be banned from running in a group, under a common name with collective publicity designs and sharing funding?”) will prevent students in the up-coming elections running as a group claiming shared values and under a shared name; commonly known as a ‘slate.’

This will have a direct impact on the Edinburgh University Students’ Association general elections taking place at the end of March.

Gabi Jones, member of the EUSA Student Council, proposed the question and told The Student, “This question was preemptive more than anything. I’d heard talk about people setting up rival slates to try and emulate the success of Defend Edinburgh, and I just did not want to see EUSA go down that path.

“It’s off-putting to people that want to stand in elections, and it’s off-put-

ting to the students that EUSA is supposed to be representing.

“Nobody wants EUSA to turn into a mini-parliament with mini-parties vying for the biggest number of seats on Student Council.”

However, members of Defend Edinburgh criticised the wording of the referendum question as being misleading. Aurora Adams, EUSA representative and member of Defend Edinburgh told The Student defended the group stating, “EUSA has never allowed candidates to share funding - it would be outrageous if it did.”

Those who campaigned against ‘question 10’ further argued that in actual fact many students on the Student Council run together in groups, but it is only those in a slate who are open and clear about the principles they share.

Continued on page three »

News: The Student offers a guide to the referendum results p3 Comment: Dan Heap discusses the value of a referendum vote p8

13/02/2012 03:05:08

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

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@EdStudentNews

Derren Brown, dancing brains and fire

»

NEWS »p1-6

DO YOU BON-GO? p1-6

It doesn't matter, as Bongo is closing in September.

COMMENT »p8-10

CAN YOU REPEAT THE QUESTION? p 8

Dan Heap thinks referendums have value in a democracy, just not when EUSA holds one.

FEATURES »p12-14

LEAN, MEAN, FAT-REDUCING MACHINE p12

Cameron Taylor asks whether we still care about the Olympics.

PUT ON YOUR LASHMINA p13

Rachael McKeown argues that students shouldn't yield to the peer pressure of binge drinking

SCIENCE &ENVIRONMENT»p16-17 ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON p16

Zack O'Leary discusses Watson, the computer that can diagnose your health problems. When will the Will Smith film come out?

CROSSWORD & HOROSCOPES »p19

MY LITTLE PONY, WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD p19

Vulva-vostok predicts that you'll die alone. Oh and there's a mindmelting crossword too.

CULTURE »p22-23

THE SCOTSMAN DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH p22 Melissa Geere debates whether the Bard can fit in with Burns.

MUSIC »p26-28

THE GYRATING PRINCE p26 We're talking about Bonnie Prince Billy. Get your mind out of the gutter!

SPORT »p30-31

GRABBING THE BULL BY THE HORNS p30 Phil Leonard claims Red Bull are the racing team to beat.

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THE PROGRAMME for the 24th Edinburgh International Science Festival programme was launched last Tuesday at the National Museum of Scotland.

The science festival aims to appeal to a wide audience, with activities appropriate for people of all ages and varying scientific interests.

Events will include visitors to the festival walking across hot coals and comedians performing alongside world-renowned scientists.

The festival will also feature a rare appearance from the psychological illusionist Derren Brown, who will be in conversation with Richard Wiseman about his trade.

As well as talks and lectures, the festival sees science explored through dance, comedy and music.

“The Dancing Brain” will provide a light-hearted look at the science of dance, taking place every day in the National Museum of Scotland.

The physics of DJing and computer animation will also be explored as well as a whole range of activities looking at the science of food.

Children will have the opportunity

IT’S SCIENCE: Simon Gage and Richard Wiseman discuss fire to benefit educationally from scientific stories, trails and exhibitions, including the activity “Visual-Eyes” where a giant eye teaches how the eye functions; and adventurous adults will be invited to enjoy the delights of “Fire walking” and to challenge their senses in “Sensory Dining” with comedian and broadcaster Steve Mould.

The BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory team will also be presenting free live shows in the Usher Hall and offering drop in activities on the Mound Precinct.

Among the many sport-related events, a project called InMotion will explore and celebrate the science of human motion, in recognition of this year’s Olympic Games.

The Cabinet Secretary for Culture & External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop said of the project, “This year’s Expo-funded

EISF

What’s in this issue

Sarah Mitchell

project, InMotion, examines the science of human movement in new and innovative ways and is sure to inspire young and old alike in 2012, the Year of Creative Scotland and the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

Dr. Simon Gage, director of the festival, said, “Laugh about it, dance about it, dream about it or simply talk about it; we’ve never had such a variety of ways of soaking up hundreds of new ideas that spin from the birth of stars via dad dancing to maths comedy.

“For two weeks in April Edinburgh will become one of the world’s greatest playgrounds for the restlessly curious.”

The festival is due to run from March 30 to April 15.

Science and Environment: The Student's newest section p16&17

Desperate graduate sells himself on eBay

Zoe Tautz-Davis

AFTER SUBMITTING over 150 job applications, Edinburgh Napier University graduate Ross Laing has fallen back on an unusual job hunting technique - putting himself up for auction on the Internet bidding site eBay. Tired of rejections and a lack of job interviews, Ross is hoping that the auction will attract the attention of employers, as he felt he had ‘run out of conventional methods’ to get a job.

With a 2:1 in market management honours from Edinburgh Napier University, Ross has been applying to jobs in the field of marketing since the summer of 2011 with no luck. By auctioning himself off he says, “It is an interview with myself… If I can’t market myself, how am I meant to market a product or service for a customer?”

Currently working at Laing the Jeweller in Edinburgh, he has not been able to earn enough money to begin paying off his large student debts. He says, “I owe over £10,000, which I hoped I would be paying off by now.”

The auction, which closed on 11 February, had three bids placed at the time of going to print, with the leading bidder willing to pay £11.50 for the ‘Marketing Management Graduate’.

There is also no need for the winning bidder to pay for postage and packaging, as Ross needs to be collected in person.

The money raised from the auction is not for Ross’ personal gain. The prof-

LAST RESORT: Graduate Laing has struggled to find a job its from the auction will go to the charity of the highest bidder’s choosing.

He says; “This is a really good cause and it gives me an opportunity to impress. If nothing else, a local Edinburgh charity will hopefully benefit from some cash.”

He hopes that advertising himself in such a unique way will draw the attention of Edinburgh’s top businesses, as well as making him available on a national scale.

Some students have been inspired

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Edinburgh International Science Festival announces lineup

by Ross’s creativity, though they are anxious of the situation that brought him to create the auction.

“I think that despite less people applying to university this year, there still won’t be a great availability of graduate jobs, and having higher student loans to pay back is a bit daunting,” says prospective student Clementine Maas. “In the end, you will still be at an advantage to those who don’t get a degree, so that’s what’s important.

13/02/2012 02:34:01

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

news@studentnewspaper.org

News 3 News Editor Alasdair Drennan explains what some of the EUSA referendum results may mean for future policy EUSA should work with the Vet School Council (VSC) and staff to campaign for the University of Edinburgh to provide a free shuttle bus to the Easter Bush Vet School, because all students have a right to fair and free access to their campus.

It will become EUSA policy to pressure the university to fund a free bus to the Easter Bush campus. This campaign is already supported

by EUSA but the referendum result demonstrates the campaign has the backing of the student body.

ONLINE VOTING: Teething problems were quickly ironed out

Defend Edinburgh respect referendum mandate < Continued from page one

Adams told The Student that the motion is “a blow to the transparency at EUSA” and suggested that it will not actually stop students running for election collectively but that “now we will not be able to make this clear.”

Furthermore, Max Crema, third year Economics student, insisted that the wording of the question had been misleading.

He told The Student, “I’m disappointed that a question that was factually incorrect was allowed. However, it passed and we shall of course respect the student body’s decision.”

James McAsh, EUSA Undergraduate Representative also said, “Defend Edinburgh fully respects the mandate from the referendum and will comply with it 100 per cent.

“However, the reasons why Defend Edinburgh exists still stand and we will continue to work towards a more democratic, transparent and relevant EUSA.”

EMILY JARRETT

In the interests of strengthening our twinning, should EUSA organise an annual visit from a delegation of students from Birzeit University?

It is not clear what level of funding will be expected from EUSA to organise the trip, and if it will involve a significant financial burden, then EUSA trustees can veto the decision.

Defend Edinburgh is currently represented in EUSA by the Vice President of Academic Affairs, Mike Williamson, and seven undergraduate representatives.

“

I'm disappointed that a question that was factually incorrect was allowed. However, it passed and we shall of course respect the student body's decision.”

James McAsh, Undergraduate Representative They are also represented at the NUS by four of their members.

It is not yet clear how the group plans to operate in the future.

Should candidates in EUSA elections be banned from running in a group, under a common name with collective publicity designs and sharing funding?

This will prevent Defend Edinburgh and other ‘slates’ from campaigning in EUSA elections as a group. This will impact upon the upcoming EUSA general elections.

Should EUSA ban all SABMiller products sold from Union outlets within the university due to the unethical tax practices of this brewer, until the company incorporates tax justice principles into its corporate responsibility policy?

SABMiller products, such as Miller and Peroni will not be able to be sold in EUSA outlets. As it impacts upon the business side of EUSA it will be subject to approval by the board of trustees.

Should EUSA be reorganised so as to give the greatest number of students direct democratic control and meaningful participation, through a system of nested councils?

Not exactly clear what change will come of this motion as no constitutional amendment was submitted, but it could see the introduction of school councils like those that exist for vet students, medics and law students.

Should EUSA pay all of its staff a Living Wage of £7.20 an hour?

Unlikely to be introduced immediately given that for some this would amount to an 18 per cent pay rise which in the short term wouldn’t be manageable financially. Will also need to be approved by trustees. Furthermore, EUSA cannot discriminate who it employs based on whether or not they are a student, and paying such a wage would increase competition for jobs and may see fewer jobs at EUSA. Working towards a living wage has been a EUSA policy for some time.

Should EUSA reserve at least 40% of places for women when electing delegates to NUS UK and NUS Scotland Conferences?

Motion fell and no changes will be made.

Should EUSA retain both of the current two Undergraduate School Representative positions for each School?

Workload of undergraduate representatives was deemed to be enough to have two representatives for each school.

Should EUSA stand against ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)?

EUSA will stand against ACTA and will probably encourage the University to do the same.

Should EUSA support the Edinburgh Rector, Peter McColl, in his strategy for improving accommodation?

EUSA will support Peter McColl’s strategy for improving accommodation in the university, primarily ensuring that all students will be housed within University of Edinburgh accommodation that they are able to afford.

Should the elections for Undergraduate School Representatives be held in the main election during the second semester?

Concerns were raised that October elections for Undergraduate School Representatives would mean that new students would not have the opportunity to engage with representatives when they started at university.

Should the university make students aware of any additional costs they are going to face on their course (textbooks, travel, lab equipment, etc.) and should they minimise these additional costs?

Reasonably self-explanatory. EUSA will pressure the university to publish known course costs.

The law limits Sabbaticals to two years. Should EUSA’s Sabbaticals be eligible to stand for reelection for a second year, effective from the EUSA General Election of 2013?

Motion fell, no changes will be made.

Volunteering as a special constable creates a conflict of interest as a sabbatical officer. Yes or No. Motion fell. Matt McPherson, EUSA President will be able to continue to volunteer as a special constable. He told The Student he felt that the motion had been an attempt to “derail” him. He said, “There’s a huge amount of work that needs to be done and this issue is now in the past.”

Log on to www.studentnewspaper.org for a full interview with EUSA president Matt McPherson on the referendum results

Katie Cunningham

THE UNIVERSITY of Edinburgh has made a controversial move to choose to end their lease to popular nightclub ‘The Bongo Club’ a year early.

The club is being forced to look for new premises to avoid closing permanently.

Having being issued with the demand in November 2011, they are required to leave their current premises inside of Moray House by September this year.

The University has stated that it is acting within its rights, and that it has given the club an additional four months to move from the building and to allow them to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Ronnie Kerr, University of Edinburgh Press and PR manager, has issued a statement saying that Moray House is for the Office of Life Long Learning (OLL), a service providing

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evening and daytime classes to approximately 15,000 people annually.

The OLL’s lease has also expired, and using Moray House will grant it a single, central location.

Kerr also said that they are willing to provide support in find a replacement location, and that they “wish the Bongo Club all the best for the future.”

However, their efforts so far, including meeting with the club in December, were unsuccessful.

Many people, both students and nonstudents, have expressed anger at the decision.

Max Crema, creator of the Save Bongo Facebook page, is involved in the club’s own campaign to prevent the move.

Crema believes the decision is a threat to Edinburgh’s history, social makeup and the University’s student experience.

Having occupied the Moray House site on the Royal Mile since 2003, the Bongo Club has existed in other Ed-

inburgh venues since 1996.

However, the current site has become what Crema referred to as a “cultural centre.”

It is part of the Out of the Blue arts charity movement, the end of which Crema believes would change “the fabric of the city.”

The Club is a location for poetry and theatre during the day, and has also allowed new musicians and bands to reach an audience.

Many local artists are rallying in support of the movement.

The announced lease end follows a week after Cabaret Voltaire released plans for extensive refurbishment and management change.

Various sites owned by the University of Edinburgh, including The Forest Café, GRV and the Roxy Art House, have closed in the last two years.

Many of the sites closed, the Bongo Club among them, are financially viable, leading to greater confusion over the proposed closure.

ALAASDAIR DRENNAN/EMILY JARRET

University decision leaves Bongo club homeless

LAST DANCE: Bongo is due to close in September Crema referred to this as the “gentrification of the Old Town“, which is becoming a “homogenous tourist trap.”

The first Facebook petition collected 4000 signatures between the 4th and the 9th.

Various local entertainers, including Electrikal Sound System’s Richard Ince, The OK Social Club, Sean

Grierson, the organisers of Trouble’s Wonky and Devil Disco night, and Xplict have endorsed the campaign.

With this high level of public support, Crema is hopeful, believing that, “we can do something about this.”

The movement plans to present a petition to a Vice Principle in the near future.

13/02/2012 02:35:39

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4 News IN

Brief

More suicides north than south of the border RESEARCHERS FROM the universities of Edinburgh and Manchester have completed a long-running study that indicates an increase in Scottish suicides since the 1960s.

The study, which ran from 1960 to 2008, saw that suicide rates in Scotland overtook those in England and Wales in 1968.

This gap continued to widen as Scotland’s suicide rate stayed largely constant over time, while those in England and Wales began to decrease at the start of the 1990s.

Scottish suicide rates are 80 per cent higher than in England and Wales, and occur mostly among men aged 25-54.

Dr Roger Webb, of the University of Manchester’s Centre for Suicide Prevention, said, “one of the key changes in methods used during the study period, was the marked increase in suicide by hanging, particularly among young men in Scotland.”

Professor Stephen Platt, from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Population Health Sciences, added, “in a future companion paper we will suggest explanations for the persisting higher rate of suicide in Scotland.”

The study was published in the British Journal of Psychiatry on 9 February.

LM

Mummies scanned

by Edinburgh researchers for exhibition UNIVERSITY OF Edinburgh researchers have been instrumental in a new exhibition of Egyptian mummies at the National Museum of Scotland.

Staff at the university’s Clinical Research Imaging Centre scanned mummies from the museum’s collection, revealing what lay beneath the linen wrappings.

One of the highlights of the exhibition that was treated to a CT scan was the mummy of Ankhhor; a high priest of Thebes who lived more than 600 years before the birth of Christ.

Another 2,000 year-old mummy, which was brought to Scotland in 1857 by Egyptologist Alexander Rhind, was found to contain the skeleton of a woman in her late twenties.

In addition, examination of animal mummies turned up a few surprises as a mummy of what was previously thought to be a baboon was found to contain a mummified ibis, a bird sacred to the Ancient Egyptians.

The exhibition opened on 11 February, and showcases the collections of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden in the Netherlands and the Musée de la civilisation in Québec in Canada, as well that of the National Museum of Scotland.

LM

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Health secretary faces protests at Surgeon's Hall

NICK DOWSON

s

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

MAKING A SORTIE: Lansley came and left Surgeon's Hall via Drummond Street as protestors congregated on Nicolson Street Nick Dowson & Hannah Dowe Standring HEALTH SECRETARY Andrew Lansley’s lecture at Edinburgh’s Royal of College of Surgeons last Friday was marred by protests against proposed reforms to the NHS. Around 60 Edinburgh students and residents gathered outside Surgeon’s Hall on Nicolson Street to voice their anger at Lansley’s Health and Social Care bill.

Demonstrators claimed that the bill would lead to the health service’s privatisation and eventual collapse.

The bill will introduce significant changes to the NHS, including putting GPs in charge of commissioning care, and giving a regulator the power to promote competition within the health service.

Caitlin Douglas, a fourth year medical student at the University of

Edinburgh, and protestor on Friday, explained her reservations over the bill to The Student.

She said, “privatising the NHS is a terrible idea, it encourages cutting corners and profits are put above doing what is best for people” “The changes will detract from patient care time…and may encourage a situation where it is not possible to trust doctors because of the financial interests involved.”

There have also been concerns over whether the bill has removed the secretary of state’s responsibility to provide a health service at all, as the original white paper replaced the duty to “provide” services with a duty to “promote” them.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have recently come out calling for the bill’s complete withdrawal.

The presence of protestors meant that the health secretary opted to

arrive via a back entrance on Drummond Street to deliver his speech, and demonstrators remained outside the building until he left at around 3.30 pm.

At one point, protestors managed to enter Symposium Hall, the venue for Lansley’s lecture. This resulted in a lockdown of the building and a delay to Lansley and the audience by over an hour.

Protestors chanted at those entering the building, with various slogans, “public health before private wealth,” “Andrew Lansley get out, we know what you’re all about” and “no ifs, no buts, no healthcare sector cuts.”

Leaving the building after the lecture the health secretary was ushered into a waiting car while protesters shouted “shame on you” and “scum”.

Speculation has been mounting as to whether David Cameron will drop the health bill, with some tipping Lansley to be the next cabinet exit.

During his lecture, Lansley re-

sponded to the criticism, saying, “as some of you may have heard, we’re making a few changes south of the border. Giving patients more control of their own healthcare will embody the principle of shared decision making.”

Asked afterwards if it was time he resigned he said, “no, it is not; because we as a government have committed to supporting the NHS. This legislation has been supported by the House of Commons, by the House of Lords.”

Those who disagree with the bill, such as protester Rachael, a medical student, offered The Student a different view, saying, “change[s] affecting public health are easy to disguise under the guise of protecting public choice… but the reality is it will lead to a rise in inequality.”

The bill is currently being reviewed in the House of Lords having lost key votes last Wednesday.

Occupy Edinburgh leaves the Meadows Nina Seale

OCCUPY EDINBURGH has left the Meadows, narrowly avoiding another eviction notice from the Edinburgh City Council.

Their voluntary departure followed negotiations with the council about finding a more permanent place to stage the Occupy movement.

Despite being the first governmental body to pledge support for the movement, the council have not opposed the actual occupation and Occupy Edinburgh moved to the Meadows to avoid a forced eviction.

However, the council continued to try to remove the occupation as Environment Leader, Cllr Robert Aldridge, said, “The Council’s position is quite clear - we do not allow camping on the Meadows and we have asked the Occupy Edinburgh protesters to leave.”

Peter Nicholson, supporter of Occupy Edinburgh, explained the move to The Student, “we don’t want public money spent on kicking us out of places. We’ve been working with the council to try and organise a permanent space for the movement, but they’ve been fairly unwilling to do so.”

The occupation in the Meadows went on for just over a week, but Nicholson insisted it was still successful, saying, “we maintained that we needed to have that focal point on the movement. A lot of people came up and spoke to us.

“The support was really nice. We’re perfectly open-minded and willing to talk to anyone; that is what it’s all about really, getting the messages across and letting people know what we’re about.”

Occupy protesters implemented a no-alcohol policy on moving to the Meadows in the hope of preventing some of the trouble that had marred the camp’s time at St Andrew’s

Square.

Nicholson added that their presence and the extra security made the Meadows a safer place, saying, “We had our usual security teams, 24 hour security to make sure people were awake and safe, but we also had the council security and at some point, a private security firm and we have no idea who hired them!”

The protestors are currently discussing the possibility of a permanent base for the movement with the council, with the goal being somewhere to organise ideas and projects to present a united front of information about their causes.

The main concern of the Occupy demonstrators currently is the AntiCounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which could affect their ability to spread information through Twitter and Youtube.

But despite the absence of a camp for demonstrators, some locals continue to support the movement.

Iain Barrie, an Edinburgh IT con-

sultant, is a long-time supporter of the Occupy movement who brought protesters food and tenting equipment throughout their encampment.

Barrie told The Student, “I’ve been supportive of their causes for a very long time, its been very clear to me for a very long time that the world and the way it works at the moment is not working for everyone.

“There is a great difference between the rich and the poor, there are huge environmental problems, and on top of that we have corrupt businesses and governments working hand-inhand to line their own pockets at the cost of the planet and everyone else.

“If they managed to get premises to work from or occupy another piece of land, I would help. I like the way we’re trying to work with the council, a lot of Occupy movements have been forced off violently from the places they are occupying and Edinburgh is doing it differently, we’re doing it differently.”

13/02/2012 02:36:47

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Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

News 5

“Likes Edinburgh Uni memes on Facebook, fails degree” Anna Brand Last Monday, the “Edinburgh Uni Memes” page was created on Facebook and attracted several thousand ‘likes’ in just a few hours.

Similar pages have sprung up in universities all over the UK, including Stirling, Glasgow, Dundee, and St. Andrews, all of which have several thousand ‘likes’.

The page jokes about the quirks of Edinburgh student life, and now has over 7,800 'likes'.

Common memes such as “courage wolf ” and “victory baby” have been transformed into Edinburgh-related in-jokes, poking fun at everything from not getting a seat in the library to the Pollock Halls experience.

Some of the memes make fun of other Edinburgh universities such as Heriot-Watt and Napier, prompting the administrators of the page to request, “Enough of the Napier hate please. Sure we’d get better banter back from Glasgow Uni since they’ve got a similar page.”

EUSA president Matt McPherson told The Student, “I think the memes thing tells us a lot about some things that aren’t a great culture at Edinburgh: the exclusivity of it and the digs at Napier, but I also think it tells us a lot of good things about students as well. It’s an amazing sign of strength.

“Students might say about themselves and each other that they’re apathetic to things and that they’re not part of a community and actually,

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within 24 hours, Edinburgh memes had 6000 likes on Facebook and they were all shared around collective identity, collective jokes, collective forms of understanding who they are, and that is a real sign that there’s a strong community at Edinburgh.”

Many students agree that the page is harmless fun, and one student commented, “I think they are really funny and show how much banter there is between Edinburgh and other universities.

"The fact that Heriot Watt and Napier are in on it too shows that we’re all up for a laugh.”

The line “one does not simply walk into Mordor,” originally delivered by Sean Bean in the 2001 film The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had been made into many Edinburgh related memes - for example “One does not simply get a seat in the library,” and “one does not simply know when the KB bus leaves.”

Other film-themed memes have also made it on to the page, such as a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka sarcastically leans in and asks “you wear a tie to the Big Cheese? You must be so sophisticated”; a row of Harry Potters has been dubbed a “Potterrow”.

Over the past week, many students have found that procrastination can reach new hights with Edinburgh Uni Memes, leading one meme to be created saying, “Likes Edinburgh Uni Memes on Facebook, fails degree.”

Facebook

Facebook page aimed at University of Edinburgh students goes viral

Y U no get memes? Sam Bradley explains the internet phenomenon As we all know by now, the internet can be a strange place. The ‘meme’ has become one of the most iconic comedic innovations the web has given birth to in recent years (apart from the many, many videos of cats) - but where the hell did it come from?

To start with, the word meme is thought to be derived vaguely from mimeme, ancient Greek for ‘that which is imitated.’ The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tells us that the first recorded usage was by Richard Dawkins (the very same) in his 1975 book The Selfish Gene, long before 4chan and

YouTube ran off with it into the distance.

Broadly, a meme is an image with a slogan or catchphrase that can be adapted for the author’s own purposes; usually they’re centred around either a ‘rage face’ (the Y U NO guy), a pop culture reference (Sean Bean in Lord of the Rings), a misspelling or just a screenshot – though the variation and combination of these factors is vast.

Memes can grow from the most obscure of origins – one of the most popular was based on a poor translation to English of sci-fi video game

Zero Wing, resulting in the 'all your base are belong to us’ meme. I know, I don’t get it either.

The website KnowYourMeme.com, which attempts to track, explain and archive memes, lists 1,143 separate memes – though by the time you read this, that number will probably be out of date – they’re known for going viral in days.

So next time someone asks you, “Y U no get memes?”, you can cheerfully reply, “I don’t always get memes, but when I do, I own all your memes.”

13/02/2012 02:38:50

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

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6 News

ECA student designs Bombay Bicycle Club music video

UP WE GO: A screen shot from the music video

BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB/ANNA GINSBURG/VEVO

Roisin McKelvey

CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED indie band Bombay Bicycle Club have tapped into local talent for the making of their new music video.

The video for the song “How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep” was designed and directed by Anna Ginsburg, a fourth year Animation student at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).

Ginsburg, a member of the Animation department at ECA, spent the past six months working on the stop-motion animation sequence, which is 3 minutes and 44 seconds long.

The intricate nature of the design process required a huge amount of work. Her dedication paid off however; within one week of the video’s online release it had received over 70,000 hits on YouTube.

Ginsburg had known the band’s bassist Ed Nash since sixth-form college and wished to design an animation for the band after receiving positive responses from Nash and

vocalist Jack Steadman to her first film three years ago.

She proposed two different concepts for the video to a panel of record label representatives from Island Records and their parent company Universal, which chose her secondby-second framework for the dream sequence now viewable online.

The animation explores the dreamscape of a man as he falls asleep and then rows across a sea to reach a ladder to the moon. Ginsburg explains on her website that the work was inspired by Italo Calvino’s short story The Distance of the Moon, which is the first story in the author’s Cosmicomics collection.

Fellow students at ECA assisted Ginsburg with costuming and model-making for the film. Anna Pearson constructed the patchwork quilt seen at the beginning and end of the video, which was a monthand-a-half long task.

The process was so elaborate that, as Pearson related to The Scotsman, “I had to call her every day saying ‘Please don’t give up!” The finished piece was made up of approximately

300 separate knitted triangles, threaded onto surgical wire.

Ginsburg then began painstaking job of filming the sequence in which the quilt unravels.

As she wrote on her Tumblr account, “It is a one take shot, the quilt took a month the [sic] made and remaking it is not an option. The quilt’s 300 or so tiny triangles need to be separated and each individually unravelled.”

This was such an intricate task that each second of filming required about 16 hours work.

The finished animation, as well as its online success, has been praised

by Ginsberg’s Programme Director at ECA, Jared Taylor, who told The Scotsman, “Animation is a labourintensive process at the best of times but Ginsburg was working all the hours that God sends to make this, so we’re very proud of her. I think she’s going to go a long way.”

Indeed, since the video release, Ginsburg has been offered the opportunity of work experience with the Bafta-award winning animator Mikey Please.

Material Girl will perform in Murrayfield Stadium on July 21 Zoe Blah

MADONNA WILL be performing in Murrayfield stadium on July 21 as part of her 2012 World Tour.

The show will be Madonna’s first in Scotland, and is one of only two UK shows to be performed by the well-known singer, although the singer did marry director Guy Richie at Skibo Castle in the Highlands in 2000.

Helen O’Leary, a fourth year psychology student, described her excitement at the announcement to The Student, saying, “I think it’s fantastic she’s coming to Scotland.

Hopefully lots of people who will have wanted to see her will finally get the chance.”

The tour officially begins in Tel Aviv, Israel, on May 29 and will stop in 26 European countries as well as return visits to South America and Australia, where she has not performed in 20 years.

06_News.indd 1

Tickets went on sale last Friday February 10, with prices ranging from £45 to £125.

Arthur Fogel, CEO of the company responsible for promoting Madonna’s World Tour, has spoken of his excitement at the announcement, saying, “Madonna’s track record as a world class entertainer and touring artist speaks for itself.

“We are thrilled to have her back on the road and know that her fans feel the same.”

Madonna recently performed at the Super Bowl on February 5, in front of an estimated audience of 114 million viewers on NBC, for a 20 minute set.

After the show, Madonna released the full dates of her World Tour as well as the release date for her album MDNA, available from March 26.

Her halftime show also sparked controversy as one of her co-performers, M.I.A., used a crude hand gesture while they sang their new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin”.

The gesture has provoked complaints and even allegations of a breach of contract.

Madonna has since told Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview, “I wasn’t happy about it… it seemed out of place.”

PREPPY: Madonna performs the half-time show at the Bridgestone Super Bowl

PHOTO COURTESY BEACON RADIO FLIKR, PHOTO BY AL BELLO/GETT Y

Madonna to perform in Scotland for first time

13/02/2012 03:52:22

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Editorial 7

Editorial

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The Student was launched by Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson in 1887 as an independent voice for Edinburgh's literati. It is Britain's oldest student newspaper and is an independent publication, reaching more than 10,000 University of Edinburgh students every week.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Kitchener, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill are a few of the famous people who have been associated with the paper. In the early 1970s, Gordon Brown worked as a news editor and diary columnist, working alongside Robin Cook who at the time was in charge of film and concert reviews.

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Editors Tess Malone/Ali Quaile

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Student Newspaper, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ. Tel: 0131 650 9189. The Student lists links to third party websites, but does not endorse them or guarantee their authenticity or accuracy. © Student Newspaper Society. All rights reserved. No section in whole or part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmited in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher. The Student is published by the Student Newspaper Society, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9TJ. Distributed by Lothian Couriers, 3 John Muir Place, Dunbar EH42 1GD. Tel: 01368 860115. Printed

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07_Editorial.indd 1

Letter to the Editors [Regarding the comment article A Not So Damaging Downfall [The Student, January 24] Dear Sir or Madam, In a recent comment column, you accused me of “rabble rousing” behaviour over remarks I made in the Scottish Parliament chamber on January 12.

You also repeated the untrue and malicious Labour and Tory claim that I have questioned people’s Scottishness and patriotism and said anyone who didn’t support the SNP or independence was anti-Scottish.

I have at no time engaged in rabble rousing and, as the official record shows clearly, this is not what I said.

My comments criticised the leadership of the Tory, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties in their refusal to accept the democratic mandate of the Scottish government to hold a referendum on our country’s future.

[Regarding the comment article There is an alternative [The Student, February 7] Dear Editors, I must protest at the partiality I discovered when reading The Student (February 7th).

Alistair Grant put forth the idea of a wealth tax: a mere 20% tax on the net worth of the richest 10% in the population. Is he aware that this top 10% includes most doctors? The statistics used by The Glasgow Media Group are misleading. Most of this money is held in pension funds and assets that cannot be retrieved by going down to the local ATM. Not only this, but he seems to have forgotten that 'the rich' have already paid a heavy price for solidarity.' With

I also criticised their refusal to discuss meaningful powers for our parliament within the UK - a refusal that goes against popular opinion and many respected views in civic society.

My views reflect those of former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish who said in The Herald earlier this year that the actions of the Tories at Westminster were against Scotland. Labour’s Cathy Jamieson MP just last year said the Tories were “anti-Scottish” - a term also repeatedly used by Labour during the Conservative era from 1979 to 1997.

Labour politicians have recently lined up to congratulate David Cameron’s arrogant intervention in Scottish democracy - an own goal that will cost their party dear.

Your colourful misrepresentation of my comments attacks my personal integrity and serves only to distract attention from this pact with the Tories. The people, however, are not fooled. income tax at 50% and the staggering amount of VAT they would end up paying when spending their hard earned money means that they will likely have only a fraction of income to themselves. This has been earned, in many cases, through a lot of hard work.

I assume Mr. Grant has never actually started his own business or paid tax at 50%. If he had, I imagine he would not be so cavalier in requiring those who have really made it to pay for the ineptitude of others.

What happened to the idea of individual responsibility? If this tax were to be imposed, I daresay that the majority of people that it hit would need to sell their houses. But hey, it?s their fault for having been successful isn?t it?

Turning to the next page, I discovered that Tess Malone had written a

Yours faithfully Joan McAlpine MSP Note: this is an extract from the Scottish Parliament’s official record Joan McAlpine: “As for the Conservative group leader’s assertion that those who suggest that what is happening is anti-Scottish are somehow narrow in their politics, I make absolutely no apology for saying that the Liberals, the Labour Party and the Tories are anti-Scottish in coming together to defy the will of the Scottish people and the democratic mandate that they gave us to hold a referendum at a time of our choosing, which, as the First Minister said, would be the latter half of the parliamentary session.

The sight of those parties cosying up on the sofas of various Scottish television studios will really alarm the people of Scotland.”

The Scottish Parliament Edinburgh EH99 1SP charming section devoted to, what can only be described as, slagging Mitt Romney. What was his crime? How much has she given in taxation to those less well off? I cannot understand why you find it fashionable to harangue those facing a situation that you have not.

It is to be expected that a student paper would be left leaning, but not superficial. Why is it that these writers seem to dislike achievement? If I graduate and make lots of money, I want to keep it. I am very glad to not live in The Soviet Socialist Republic of Students.

Yours faithfully, Matthew McBryan

13/02/2012 03:00:17

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8 Comment

EUSA-less Plebishite

If our student politicians don’t take EUSA referendums seriously, then why should students? asks Dan Heap incoherence. The question on allowing sabs to stand for two terms was incredibly confusing: starting “the law limits Sabbaticals to two years” and then asking, “should EUSA’s Sabbaticals be eligible to stand for reelection for a second year?”making you wonder why the question was being asked in the first place. The ‘For’ campaign’s clarification of the present situation - “at present it is the status quo for sabbatical officers to hold office for just one year, this means that they cannot stand for re-election for a second year, which is the maximum allowed under the law.” - just made things worse.

It took a full viewing of the out-of-focus debate video to work out what was going on, and even then I wasn’t 100% sure. It also didn’t help that the three options kept switching themselves into different orders, making choosing your preferred answer akin to a Whack-a-Mole game and that some of the questions phrased in a ‘Yes/No’ format were logically inconsistent with the ‘For’/'Against’/'Abstain’ answers.

It must be clear to the voters what happens if they say ‘Yes,' but EUSA didn’t bother to put the questions in any kind of constitutional context. Were they supposed to be advisory, or binding? How would EUSA be required to respond to the results and how could voters hold it to account? The EUSA referenda website does say that “referenda are the sovereign decision making mechanism of your Students’ Association” and guarantees “that EUSA will act on the results.” So, given the successful passage of question eight on the proposal for direct democracy,

I take it that the four sabs, the Student Council Executive, the Committee of Management and the Board of Trustees will, as per the resolution, now all dissolve themselves in the face of overwhelming support for government by soviet? Oh, maybe not, then.

“

Some of the questions that were asked were approaching 'Don't Do What Donny Don't Does' levels of incoherence" What would have happened if the voters had passed the Matt McPherson motion? Would he have had to resign as a special constable or as President, or both; or make an apology, or what? It had no clear implication and was simply motivated by whatever petty animus the proposers had towards the EUSA President. Some of the other questions were clearer, but lacked the information the voters needed to make a properly informed decision: you can’t ask students to take the drastic step of banning slates from contesting elections without making clear who would be making the decision, how it would be enforced and with what definition they would be making the distinction.

And so to the arguments, rammed to bursting with logical fallacies, non-sequiturs, straw men, flimsy evidence and a whole host of other sins that would have

ALASDAIR DRENNAN

AS THE Scottish political class whips itself into a frenzy over the content, wording and timing of a future independence referendum, this week Edinburgh students were faced with fourteen questions of their own- ranging from banning a beer company’s products from union bars to censuring the EUSA President.

Referenda are a very useful tool for representative democracies and it is a shame that, unlike Ireland, Switzerland and a number of other countries, the UK doesn’t make much use of them.

They help confer legitimacy on decisions that are too big for legislatures to handle alone and where they can be proposed by the voters - as in the USA and with the EUSA referenda - they offer voters a chance to make a more direct impact on the decision making process than is otherwise possible. None of this happens as if by magic, though: referendum questions need to be written carefully; both sides need to be prepared to make their cases based on evidence; and it should be made very clear what will happen in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote. Not all referenda meet these criteria - last year’s AV referendum was particularly frustrating to endure - but slogging my way through the questions on Wednesday was a very depressing experience indeed.

First, the questions. If you’re going to ask the electorate a question and if a significant policy change is going to hang on the answer, then you have to be pretty bloody sure that they understand the question. Some of the questions that were asked though, were approaching ‘Don’t Do What Donny Don’t Does’ levels of

REFERENDA: Not quite good enough

condemned them to a poor third if submitted as an essay. Again, the McPherson bashers were the biggest offenders here. After treating us to an extended, largely irrelevant and poorly expressed aria on “political policing,” they ask that EUSA give a guarantee of anonymity for legal direct action in the part of students.

This is, in fact, a very reasonable request and one which has nothing to do with what Matt does in his spare time. At no point do they provide any evidence that any student union representative in any university has been asked to pass information to police that would help them disrupt legal student protests. The proposers then piss on their chips spectacularly by concluding the opponents’ case for them;

The future looks Merky

“As a special constable is a volunteer role set out to run concurrently with a job or other commitment, it is compatible with a sabbatical position.” You might want to proofread next time, guys.

Referenda are a great way to draw students into the heart of the democratic process, but unless our representatives are going to bother to present us with clear, understandable questions which propose detailed policy options that they will guarantee to follow up. Unless they give decent, well-thought out cases on which to base our decisions, then, frankly, why should we bother to vote?

Dan Heap is a former Editor-In-Chief of The Student

Merkel and Sarkozy's cosy relationship may not be as mutually beneficial as they think, argues Nick Green THE PHRASE ‘getting on like a house on fire’ is one of those filler clichés that journalism is too often drenched in. But the thing about clichés is that they are usually very apt. For example, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy do indeed get on like a house on fire; with the house in question being the European economy, and the fire being an unfeeling right-wing austerity agenda. They have even joined such cultural royalty as Brangelina and Jedward by having the ultimate relationship accreditation with their own portmanteau.

But the Merkozys may not be destined for a long and happy marriage.

Polls for the April/May French presidential election consistently show that Sarkozy is far behind his Socialist opponent, François Hollande. Breaking with convention, the German chancellor has confirmed that she will be campaigning for the French president’s re-election and, recently, the two leaders gave an unprecedented joint interview on prime

08_Comment.indd 1

time television. And yet, Sarkozy’s ratings have not improved. What will happen if, after this, Merkel has to face a new president of France?

Further political integration in Europe is necessary, as much as it is unpopular. We live in an increasingly globalised world where decisions need to be taken on a multinational scale and these decisions can only be legitimate when they are made by fully democratic, accountable institutions. In order for the EU to be accountable, closer cooperation is needed and our euro-politicians should be grouped primarily by ideas rather than nationalities. In a way, therefore, it seems sensible that Merkel should campaign for her fellow conservative. She is right to say that she and her Gallic counterpart are part of the same political family, and so should work closely together. Indeed, such cross-border integration should be seen as a step in the right direction.

But this is a domestic election in tempestuous times, and Merkel will have to

work on an equal footing with whoever wins. Adopting a juvenile and hostile attitude towards Hollande is unhelpful and endangers the future of Europe, crucially the efforts to resolve the euro crisis. The chancellor has said she is in no hurry to meet the socialist nominee - apparently he is not her type - but she needs reminding that we still live in a multi-nation Europe. Diplomacy is necessary. Foreign governments should not meddle in elections of other states, regardless of what interests they might have in doing so.

I am sure that, as adults, Merkel and Hollande would be able to work together fruitfully; just as I am sure that no politician has ever strayed from the pursuit of the common good. Personal relationships do matter in politics, but they are not the basis for good decisions, nor do they aid democracy. Hollande is keen to advocate a strong working relationship with Germany - after all it would be silly not to when 82% of French opinion

believes in close ties - although his cooperative philosophy extends further to widening the informal circle of decision making, including other EU nations and their parliaments. This is clearly the better option and shows a maturity that Sarko lacks. .

“

Personal relationships do matter in politics, but they are not the basis for good decisions, nor do they aid democracy" Commentators have highlighted the fact that Sarkozy and Merkel did not immediately have a particularly good relationship. In the early years of his term, Merkel’s advisers put together a “cultural package” so that she might better understand Monsieur le Président.

It included a collection of comic films featuring a hot-headed, diminutive power freak. Perhaps there is no reason why Hollande and Merkel should not ultimately form a healthy partnership.

After all, they are both naturally calm and cautious, which cannot be said for Sarkozy. However, where there are already deep political differences, it is hard to see a close relationship as tomorrow’s outcome to today’s hostility. Maybe it is better that way.

Sarkozy’s motives for using Merkel are short-sighted. He is lampooned throughout the European media as her lap dog and his actions imply that France is somehow less than Germany.

Economically, this is undeniable, but politically, it needn’t be. A more balanced relationship as an equal duo, as well as a complete move away from diarchic rule of the EU, would be better for France. A less direct involvement in the affairs of other countries would ultimately prove to be better for Merkel too.

13/02/2012 03:55:22

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Comment 9

Kill the bill

As Andrew Lansley is hounded out of Edinburgh, Nick Dowson explores the implications of his Health and Social Care Bill

321NODNOLT ERCES :RKCILF

DOESN'T FIT THE BILL: A universal healthcare system is paramount to our society THE BRITISH Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was greeted on his arrival in Edinburgh on Friday by a crowd of angry protesters outside the Surgeon’s Hall where he was due to speak in support of his controversial Health and Social Care Bill.

Both Lansley’s presence in Edinburgh and the vehemence of the opposition were strange for an issue which will only affect the NHS in England. But this is an issue which strikes to the heart of the fight over what sort of society we wish to live in; and as we’ve seen with tuition fees, decisions made for England by Westminster often have knock-on effects north of the border.

Lansley’s plans mean nothing less than the end of the NHS as we know it, and despite a coalition agreement promise for ‘no more top-down reforms,’ this government is forcing it through in disregard of widespread

opposition. This includes calls from almost all professional health organisations for its complete withdrawal.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have formed a united front against the danger this reorganisation poses within the last weeks.

“

Lansley's plans mean nothing less than the end of the NHS as we know it...the government is forcing it through in disregard of widespread opposition."

One key fact in the bill should be

enough for widespread suspicion: the government is refusing to publish the ‘risk register,’ a report commissioned by the civil service into the dangers of the bill. It’s easy to suspect that the Department of Health’s failure to publish this risk register is because it fears even more widespread opposition to the bill if its dangers were made public. At the very least, it is fundamentally undemocratic to hide this information from MPs and the public at a time when important decisions are being made on the future of our health service.So what will the bill do? For starters, it changes the Secretary of State’s duty to ‘provide’ a universal health service to a duty to ‘promote’ one. Think of the difference between providing free dinners for all school pupils and ‘promoting’ free dinners for school pupils.

Why has Lansley seen it necessary to make this change, except so that

he can cease to provide the universal healthcare, free at the point of need, which has been so fundamental to the NHS since its creation by Aneurin Bevan in 1946?

What else? Key to the changes is that GPs are being put in charge of ‘commissioning’ health care and services- a process which has already begun even without legislative approval. Essentially, this means the NHS’s budget will be turned over to doctors with little interest, knowledge or time to manage it. Forcing this extra responsibility on GPs would not lead to more ‘choice’ or a patient-centred NHS, but would leave many of them with little option but to pay private companies to take this extra chore off their hands.

This pressure towards privatisation will be bolstered by giving Monitor, a regulator, power to enforce competition within the NHS,

Bonuses of contention

Jessie Renton & Alice Randle respond to Lewis Dunne's defence of Britain's bonus culture

Over the last few years following the financial crisis, the banking profession has become a public obsession and a constant topic of discussion in both politics and the media, particularly with regard to the culture of high pay and bonuses. While politicians gain political capital arguing for an end to ‘rewards for failure,’ the right continues to perpetuate the myth that anyone critical of the high-pay culture is anti-business, misguided and failing to understand the complexities of the financial sector and the economy at large. It is easy to see why this argument is difficult to swallow in an age when we are being constantly reminded to ‘tighten our belts.’

The tendency over the past few weeks has been to focus on individual cases. Stephen Hester’s proposed near

09_Comment.indd 1

million pound bonus caused an uproar, which poses the question as to whether individuals have the responsibility to consider the morality of their pay. The argument supporting bonuses asserts that higher pay enhances performance, and attracts the crème-de-la-crème to the profession. Is it not reasonable for us to assume that such ‘pillars of intellectualism’ would have the ability to successfully self-regulate and consider the moral difficulties of such high pay, particularly in a time of austerity?

Currently, it seems we cannot rely on those at the top to make such decisions. But we must also consider that they are a product of a culture of greed that pervades not only within the banking sector, but across the FTSE 100 and beyond. If David Cameron is so willing to label ‘pockets’ of the

country that have supposedly lost all personal morality as “Broken Britain”- particularly in his vilification of participants in the 2011 riots - then why does he not draw parallels in this instance? Is it assumed that the financial contribution of the banking sector exempts it from the social responsibility Cameron expects from the rest of us?

The continued avoidance of debate regarding increasing executive pay by our government illustrates a growing culture of measuring the success of individuals based on their professional career and how much money one makes. The New Labour government chose to tackle poverty rather than inequality, but this is a mistake. We are now in a situation where even a wage in the 10th percentile (£45,000) pales

in comparison to the salaries of the highest echelons of society.

“

If we teach people to measure their own success in terms of their monetary reward we foster a culture of selfishness and greed."

Unequal societies are worse societies for all. Aspiration towards material gain is encouraged above anything and satisfaction is condemned. If we teach people to measure their own success in terms of their monetary reward

while an EU competiton law will also become enforceable. In the Netherlands, where a similar change was made, the GP Association was fined €7.7 million for trying to ensure all areas of the country were adequately provided with GP services.

A further government amendment to the bill will take this privatisation even further; NHS hospitals will be allowed to earn up to 49 per cent of their income from private patients.

Exactly what it says on the tin. This creates priority for those who can afford to go private, and means less beds and less urgency in treatment for the rest of us.

This bill could mean the end of a service that has received high levels of public support, and has provided high standards of universal healthcare for lower levels of spending than in most other European countries (only 8.4 per cent of GDP), and for vastly less than the cost of healthcare in America (16 percent). Why move towards their more expensive privatised healthcare system when it is so much less effective?

Leaving aside those in this government who stand to profit handsomely from expanded private healthcare (as shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley received £21,000 from John Nash, chairman of private healthcare firm Care UK), the NHS is a central ideological target for the Conservatives. A public and universal healthcare system that treats all equally is fundamental to a society where all can fulfill their individual potential.

Ideologies like that of the millionaire Westminster government, which promote private greed and minority interests at the expense of society as a whole, can only be opposed to such an idealistic, yet practical vision, as that embodied in the NHS. The NHS is not perfect, but it does not need fixing. Parliament’s Select Committee for health has come out against the bill and now even elements within the Conservative party are worried about its effects. But fortunately, the success of this bill is looking ever more fragile by the day.

we foster a culture of selfishness and greed; where want is ever increasing, but satisfaction is never achieved.

This paints an extremely pessimistic picture. It is undeniable that we have seen a shift in public opinion in openly criticising bonuses, but merely condemning the actions of an individual executive creates a superficial and short-lived argument. Preventing Hester from receiving his bonus has certainly been a desirable outcome, but is a drop in the metaphorical ocean, as he continues to maintain that proportional rewards for success are necessary in his industry. Until the argument is made by our policy-makers that these rewards are not proportional in the context of society, and that fundamental change is needed, we should not shy away from an ideological argument.

13/02/2012 03:59:50

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Driven out of cabinet

Thomas Colson examines what impact Chris Huhne's resignation will have on the coalition

NOT EASY BEING GREEN: As an embattled energy secretary, Huhne championed an environmental agenda TWO HIGH-PROFILE departures have hit the Liberal Democrats in recent weeks. The most recent was Daniel Radcliffe, better known as Harry Potter, with his thundering condemnation of Nick Clegg as a Tory “whipping boy” and subsequent withdrawal of support for the party.

Quite how this entirely underwhelming piece of information was deemed newsworthy hasn’t yet been fully explained. It is the loss of Chris Huhne, who resigned earlier this month after a criminal charge relating to a speeding offence, that is likely to have a greater impact, both on the party and on the stability of the coalition as a whole.

Even those people who readily condemn Nick Clegg and other Liberal Democrats for selling out to the Tories

- and there are an increasing number found it hard to tar Chris Huhne with the same brush. Partly, this must be attributed to his track record as a robust and determined energy secretary.

Green campaigners have lamented his departure, pointing to the not-so-secret skepticism with which prominent Conservatives treat green issues. In December, while David Cameron was busy vetoing European treaties to the delight of some and the dismay of others, the news quietly trickled through that a last-gasp climate change agreement had been reached at Durban, the first truly comprehensive agreement of its kind. Chris Huhne had played a pivotal part, just as he had done the year before at the UN climate change talks in Mexico. Frequently, Huhne

could be found pushing his green agenda as far as possible, much to the chagrin of George Osborne and Tory backbenchers, many of whom appear to see any form of environmental protection as a grave threat to British business and livelihood.

It is hard to see quite how the Coalition would even begin to try and stake a claim to being ‘the greenest government ever’ were it not for Huhne’s gritty determination to champion an eco-friendly agenda, but the importance of his ministerial role went beyond green issues. As a constant thorn in the side of the Tories, he provided some degree of balance to a government which the Liberal Democrats have otherwise struggled to maintain. While Nick Clegg has

FLICKR: UNITED NATIONS PHOTO

struggled to work out whether his priority was presenting a united front with David Cameron or speaking out against the Tories in the name of his party’s interests, Huhne displayed no such qualms, and was cherished by the grassroots of his party for just that reason. His experience and vocality was invaluable to a party which needs above all else to invigorate and reassert its values, a challenge which would always be a difficult one for a minority party in an ideologically conflicting Coalition. Such a loss to the Liberal Democrats, along with the prospect of a very public trial involving an embittered ex-wife, will do little to help the already struggling Liberal Democrat brand.

Can classical be cool?

“

As a constant thorn in the side of the Tories, Huhne provided some degree of balance to a government which the Liberal Democrats have otherwise struggled to maintain."

Not all is lost, of course: there is hope that Ed Davey can follow in Chris Huhne’s green footsteps, and he is widely regarded to have performed well as Business Secretary. He faces the challenge of pushing on with the reforms laid out by his predecessor, including the controversial roll-out of wind energy. Whether he will assume the Tory-bashing role vacated by Chris Huhne, or indeed if any of his colleagues will, remains an interesting question, the answer to which is sure to affect the balance of power in Westminster this year.

Yasmin Morgan-Griffifths argues recent attempts to make classical music relevant are inadequate

A DEBATE between intellectual and TV personality Stephen Fry and Radio 1 DJ Kissy Sellout was aired online on 12th May 2011, on the topic of classical music and its relevance to young people in modern society. In approaching the question, perhaps the first point to consider is the term ‘relevance’ itself; if used in relation to young people and their artistic tastes, it becomes problematic, as it then leads to over-generalisation. The boundless diversity and multitude of tastes and opinions amongst the youth of today is thrust into plain view, especially with the proliferation of technology now at our disposal.

However, classical music is often seen as dated, and could be in danger of fading into obscurity.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have begun playing the works of composers such as Haydn and Purcell in pubs, in order to demonstrate the potential of classical music to create a social atmosphere. The genius of their act lies in the fact that they encourage people to socialise as they listen, in the same way as you would during a live acoustic act in a pub. They even teach Purcell’s drinking songs on placards as they play, encouraging audience interaction. What they’re

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doing is turning around peoples’ perceptions of the way classical music is experienced, showing that the hushed and formal atmosphere of the concert hall is not the only way to connect with the composers of the past. Considering the success of their fresh, modern approach at drawing in listeners, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the trend catching on.

Unfortunately, despite its beauty and intricacy, classical music has always carried with it connotations of upper class exclusivity and wealth. Opera tickets are generally far more expensive than tickets to a rock concert, hardly a viable option for a poor student who can barely afford to buy CDs. While companies are making an effort to discount prices of classical concert tickets, it remains that the impression many people have of classical music in performance is that it is outdated, targeted at a narrow, upper class audience, and that it lacks all the excitement and adrenaline of a rock or dubstep gig, for example.

Despite all of this, it is important to keep certain traditions alive, while bringing them up to date to meet modernity and today’s customs. There is a certain fascination with reconstructing or repro-

ducing aspects of a bygone era, whether it be throwing a 18th century costume party, attending a medieval banquet in a castle, or even watching a costume drama. In the same way that people study history, or archaeology, there is an importance in preserving such customs. It is the principle of not forgetting why such things were enjoyable for our ancestors, and understanding how the art, fashion and music of today has evolved to become what it is.

“

Despite its beauty and intricacy, classical music has always carried with it connotations of upper class exclusivity."

Making an intellectual effort to understand musical origins is not a topic which concerns the majority of young people today. DJ Kissy Sellout, who argues that classical music is irrelevant to young people, states that with the aid of

new technology, teenagers can “be done making their smash hit before it’s even time for binge-drinking on the field.” I certainly don’t disdain genres which rely on computer technology, such as electro, dubstep and dance music, but I take issue with the fact that the workmanship and dedication can often be neglected in modern-day attitudes towards making music. The traditional arts of learning and playing an instrument should always be appreciated, and while there are many fine musicians on the modern music scene, it’s a shame that may young people would rather opt for a computerised, synthetic approach to making music which requires no practice or knowledge.

It is overly simplistic to stereotype the tastes of today’s youth, as there are many young people who enjoy listening to classical music, attend and even play at concerts. However, it is going to take more than a few enthusiasts and cheap concert tickets to capture the attention of the majority of teenagers. While the recent attempts to change classical music’s reputation, such as the live pub gigs, have been well received, there is still a long way to go before it is embraced as a popular genre amongst young people.

The Capello Conspiracy To anyone reading the headlines last Wednesday night, everything became blindingly clear. What seemed like a series of ill-advised deeds by a few stupid men became the unravelling of a masterful plan: Soon after appointing Fabio Capello in 2008, the big dogs at the FA regretted appointing a new manager based purely on CV applications rather than interviews, when an illiterate, too easily-cartoonable yet expressionless Italian turned up in the manager’s chair.

Immediately, a secret splinter cell was created, tasked with finding a way to win Euro 2012 without counting on leadership from the new boy. After 4 years of planning, the plot unravelled beautifully.

First to be brought to the fore was lovable dickhead John Terry. His task was to cause some controversy by blurting some casual racism at the smallest stadium in the Premier League (coincidence? Unlikely).

This would get him into trouble, but it was only QPR, so the damage was limited. This first stage went swimmingly, and the FA made a phone call to Mr Terry to inform him of his fate at the suspiciously accurate time of 10:00 on a Friday morning.

With Terry’s mission completed, all that was needed was for Capello to conduct an interview in any language which wasn’t English, so that the FA could intentionally mistranslate the transcript and tell the press that he had disagreed with the decision to steal Terry’s elastic armband. Because the interview had been in Italian, the British media believed whatever they were told. (As the government keeps telling us, Italian speakers are few and far between in an economic downturn). Finally the FA dons could dump the foreigner on the roadside, and continue with their plan to actually win a trophy.

Meanwhile, it was Harry Redknapp’s job to commit some mild tax evasion (accused of shipping a modest £189,000 away from our Robin Hood Island); enough to get him onto the front pages, but not enough to put him in real danger of actually being brought to justice.

His acquittal would be perfectly timed to coincide with the downfall of his Italian nemesis, and the FA would triumphantly name the saviour of English football. The man who would lead the three lions to the trophy in June.

The final two stages are still to be completed, but they seem inevitable given the precision of the FA in concocting such a plot.

Daniel Kraemer

13/02/2012 03:06:17

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12 Features

"Swifter, Higher, Stronger"?

Cameron Taylor discusses whether or not the modern Olympic Games can maintain its reputation

THE MODERN Olympic Games was reintroduced by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin in 1896 and aptly staged in Athens, the home of the ancient games. In the last 116 years, the Games have changed considerably.

No longer are the tug of war and onearmed weightlifting events, whilst BMX and synchronized swimming are now included, amongst many others.

The motto for the modern Olympics is ‘Swifter, higher, stronger.’ The Games are meant to be the peak of any competitor’s career. To win is to be crowned undisputed champion of the world.

The 2012 Olympics in London later this year will be contested by the 10,500 finest athletes from 204 countries of the world. Aside from worries about the escalating cost, the public’s appetite for the Games has been clearly demonstrated through the huge demand for tickets.

However, the question that gets more important with every passing Olympics is how important are the Games to the people who take part? Is it still the zenith of every athlete’s career, or has it sadly become a less important trophy than prizes on offer elsewhere in individual sports?

Pierre de Coubertin wanted the Olympics to showcase contest between amateur athletes. Though professionalisation has increased sport as a spectacle for the viewer, has it, combined with the commercialisation of sport, taken away from the ethos of the games in being the highest honour achievable in a sporting career?

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Swimming, athletics and gymnastics are some of the most popular sports and winning can elevate athletes to global celebrity" Olympic football is a prime example. The men’s competition is an age restricted tournament, with squads limited to only players aged under 23, with three over 23 exceptions allowed.

The women’s competition curiously has no age restrictions.

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Due to an awkward scheduling clash, the Olympics always takes place in the same summer that the men’s European Championships take place. As well as limiting the attention that the Olympics gets in comparison to this more keenly contested event, it also rules out many top name players.

Any English players taking part in the Euros this summer are automatically ruled out of the Olympic squad.

This means that top name overage players, such as Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard, who would have presumably been picked on terms of talent, and top eligible young players, such as Theo Walcott and Jack Wilshere, cannot figure in the Olympics.

The Great Britain squad will therefore be made up of eligible players from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, who did not qualify for the Euros, alongside eligible English

players who were not considered good enough to be in the Euro squad. Even with a couple of well known over-aged players such as David Beckham and Ryan Giggs likely to feature, there is no denying that the Great Britain squad will not contain the best players it could.

International football, especially in England, has struggled to live up to the glory days of the past in recent years. The Spain squad, current European and World champions, perform well because of a nucleus of players that plays week in, week out at the same club: Barcelona.

The English national team is always criticised for the lack of cohesion that its top name stars display because they play for different clubs, for which they are highly paid.

If international footballers struggle for motivation at the highest international competitions, then they will certainly struggle at the less important Olympics.

The truth is that the Olympics ranks very low on the priority list for any top f o o t b a l l e r.

The domestic club championships, domestic cups and continental club competitions, the Copa Libertadores being the South American equivalent of the Champions League, rank much higher in terms of prestige.

Sadly, the importance of club football over international football is a result of the vast sums of money footballers earn. When footballers garner tens of millions of pounds in transfer fees and hundreds of thousands of pounds a week in wages, they are incentivised to work only for that employer. Players are often dissuaded from participating in anything but the highest international competitions as managers and chairmen do not want to see their prized assets injured.

Boxing is an event with a long and proud history at the Olympics. As with football, the nature of the competition and the lucrative nature of life outside of the Olympics, means that it is simply not the zenith of a boxer’s career any more.

All boxers at the Olympics have to be amateurs, meaning that the biggest names are not eligible to compete. This means that the Games are a showcase for boxers who are starting their ca-

reers, not the best in the business.

It is also not as exciting a spectacle as profession fights. Competitors have to wear headguards and coloured vests, and bouts are typically limited to three rounds, meaning knock-outs and flamboyance are not often on show.

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How important are the Games to the people who take part?

Is it still the zenith of every athlete's career, or has it sadly become a less important trophy than prizes on offer elsewhere in individual sports?"

There have been many great fighters who have fought at the Olympics. Previous heavyweight champions Lennox Lewis, George Foreman, and perhaps the greatest ever fighter, Mohammed Ali, all won gold medals. Current world champions Vladimir Kiltschko and Andre Ward have previously won gold medals too.

As with football, the riches of boxing outside the Olympics reduce any winner’s medal to an interesting footnote to the greats’ careers. Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson each earnt $30 million for a 1997 fight. The Oscar de la Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather fight in 2007 generated $120 million in worldwide revenue. De la Hoya’s fights have been watched by a combined 12.6 million people, generating $610.6 million in revenue.

For a sport that offers such riches, the amateur level of boxing at the Olympics can simply not compete.

A gold medal can be the launch of a career, but the honour of becoming undisputed world champion is a lot greater.

It is not just boxing and football that have outgrown the Olympics.

The tennis competition, though keenly contested, cannot be said to be as important as the four majors held every year. With increasingly busy schedules, a requirement to play a fixed number of tour events each season, and the huge physical demands in the modern game, top name players have to decide whether the Olympics are worth it.

The risk of picking up an injury and missing the majors, where millions of pounds of prize money is on offer, is often of greater importance than winning a gold medal.

Road cycling at the Olympics lives in the shadow of the classic races in the sports yearly calendar.

The Tour de France, Giro D’Italia

and Vuelta D’Espana have an insurmountable history and prestige in the sport, demonstrated by the fact that only five riders have won all three events in their careers.

The physical and mental endurance needed to win these ‘grand tours’ goes far beyond that of the single event road races at the Olympics. Although an Olympic gold medal is no mean feat, it cannot be considered the pinnacle of road cycling.

Basketball’s inclusion in the Olympics often comes under scrutiny. Since being introduced in 1936, the US has only lost three games. It was used as a political tool against the USSR when it existed, asserting US dominance over the Soviets on the court. With the National Basketball Association league in America so much bigger, more popular and profitable than the rest of the world leagues combined, the Olympics is a relatively unimportant event, especially for American players.

Although Basketball in Europe and China continues to gain popularity, the sport is totally dominated by America and stars such as Kobe Bryant, who earns $53 million a year.

The intense rivalries in the NBA are simply not replicated at Olympic level and few players would trade in a championship ring for an Olympic gold medal.

All of this paints a rather gloomy picture of the Olympics. However, these sports aside, the Olympics is truly the pinnacle for the majority of sports. Swimming, athletics and gymnastics are some of the most popular sports and winning can elevate athletes to global celebrity. Minority sports such as archery, shooting and BMX gain greater legitimacy through being at the Olympics, and winning a gold can be the highlight of any competitor’s career.

It is obvious that sports need competition outside of the Olympics and the International Olympics Committee are not in the slightest bit interested in pulling events from the games.

However, it would not be admitting defeat to concede that some sports simply have outgrown the Olympics.

What the IOC would be concerned about, however, is the loss of ticket sales.

The London Olympics later this year will be a spectacle watched the world over. Growing commercialisation, both inside and outside of the Olympics, is the sad reason for some Games events diminishing in importance in the context of their sport as a whole.

However, in the events where the athletes truly perform ‘swifter, higher, stronger’ and truly reach the top of their sport, shown by their gold medals, the true spirit of the Olympics can still be found.

13/02/2012 03:08:36

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Features 13

Just one more?

Students must make their own decisions about binge drinking, writes Rachael McKeown

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round, or a birthday celebration are all part of being sociable. Basically, a lot of the reasons underlying binge drinking are cultural. The current increase in binge drinking in the UK is thought to be due to the greater and more targeted publicity for alcoholic drinks, which make the drinks more appealing. The idea of intoxication thus becomes more fashionable, and alcoholic drinks are seen as psychoactive drugs and part of a student lifestyle. Although, as much as alcohol is associated with having a good time, it is ironically a depressant and its effects on your body are not always good; in fact, emotions are not necessarily heightened as desired when drinking.

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The government and health services are here to inform your choices, but not to make them. You can choose how you drink, not the health posters in Potterrow, not your parents, and especially not your friends"

KAPUNGO

WHAT DID you do last Friday night?

The most popular Monday morning conversation, alcohol is a recurring feature in student tales, whether its consumption takes place in a flat, club, bar, pub, or let’s be honest, anywhere. In these stories, Friday afternoon usually involves stopping by Tesco’s to stock up on some cheap booze for the night ahead, as it will obviously be more economical to drink this in quantity and avoid the extortionate prices of actually buying drinks when going out. However these typical student antics have different outcomes to them: hilarious Monday gossip, humiliating Facebook tags, and even maybe an A&E experience- one of the more widespread consequences of binge drinking.

Before I go on, let us establish complete transparency - this is not an article that aims to wag the finger at student drinkers. The intention is to give some awareness and clarity to the shadowy topic of binge drinking, not to inspire guilt, regret, scorn or hate.

The fact is there are many different kinds of drinkers, nine according to the government guidelines, but for our purposes most student drinkers fit into the ‘binge drinker’ category.

While this seems like a shocking statement, it is not as bizarre as it sounds. A binge drinker can be defined in several different ways, but its probably easiest to just look around you; or even in the mirror. Most students would probably not think of themselves as binge drinkers- that might imply a lifestyle of break-downs, relapses and huge quantities of alcohol in one go.

In fact if we look at a couple of Friday night student drinkers’ habits, it might help to contextualise the drinking habits of students going out.

I began by speaking to a male student, 18, about a big night out. He said “I drank an entire bottle of wine... two treble vodka and cokes, and a JD and coke later on... I would say I am quite a lightweight compared to other men my age... when I drink, I tend to go to excess”. So around nine units of wine, six of vodka and one and a half of whiskey adds up to a total of approximately 16.5 units. The student had to be looked after by a friend while out, and was hungover the next morning, but according to him it was definitely a “good night out”. However, by government definitions, more than eight units at a time (for men) is binge drinking.

Next a female student, 19, spoke to me about how she just drinks at the weekend “to get drunk” and “to feel the effects”. She describes her typical consumption as a mixer in a plastic bottle, filled up about five centimetres high with vodka then a couple of double vodka and cokes while out. This she would follow with a bottle of water and a piece of toast when she returns home in order to prevent a hangover.

Estimating the units is necessary in this case, as pre-drinking can make it a lot more difficult to be accurate, this sounds like at least seven units. The NHS definition of binge drinking is “drinking heavily in a short space of time to get drunk or feel the effects of alcohol”, and for women binge drinking is technically more than six units.

So these are two examples of textbook definition binge drinking, but other drinking related issues exist. In another guideline, the government

A SHOT TOO MANY? Only you can decide how many to take advises, “People should not regularly drink more than the daily guidelines” (i.e. 3-4 units for men and 2-3 for women), and “regularly means every day or most days of the week”. These students were not regulars, but they were bingers.

So why do these students drink?

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A lot of young people drink because their friends do, and behave in certain ways because of peer pressure; whether it be a drinking game or your turn to buy a round" Part of it is to be sociable; maybe some of the girls have fun getting dressed up and going out together- with a little tipple to make them that much more giggly. Or a group of lads might go out

together and conclude that the banter is just much better when everyone laughs that much more easily. It might make a group more relaxed, and transform a few funny mishaps into something a bit more memorable. Some people might drink to escape from the hustle and bustle of a working day, just having a glass to relax.

A common suggestion when the topic of binge drinking is brought up is: “we should be more like the French and Italians”. Generally the reasoning is that children are taught to drink sociably with meals from an early age, a glass of wine is good for the heart, and it just sounds a whole lot classier. The common comeback would then be to cite the liver cirrhosis figures in France, which are through the roof. Neither argument is entirely right, and both are becoming a bit outdated because there is, quite simply, always more to it.

Firstly, to burst a few bubbles, adolescent binge drinking in France is in fact on the rise, a phenomenon thought to be associated with more drinking outside of the family home and more vodka shots at parties. It is also diffi-

cult for parents to discourage drinking when it is actively celebrated as part of the culture and lifestyle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the apparent benefits to your heart from some wine may be down to correlation, not causation.

Nevertheless, in recent decades French alcohol consumption has decreased dramatically, along with rates of liver cirrhosis and other alcohol related problems. This is where the UK could learn from France. There have been more restrictions on the media’s presentation of alcohol, especially in regards to young people, as well as increasing the minimum legal age for buying alcohol to 18, and an increase in its price. The main factor from which Britain could draw inspiration is, however, the cultural attitude to alcohol. In Southern European countries, acting in a drunken way is looked down upon, whereas in countries such as the UK it is encouraged to a certain degree, and expected.

A lot of young people drink and then behave in certain ways due to the negative effects of peer pressure; whether it be a drinking game, your turn to buy a

So having established what binge drinking is, why we do it and where it happens, it is now time to address when it becomes dangerous. Starting on the dramatic end of the spectrum, it is not uncommon to hear about a Friday night trip to A&E due to an accident, or even acute alcohol poisoning. Acute alcohol poisoning occurs when levels of blood alcohol get so high that they can suppress the central nervous system; leading you to pass out, have trouble breathing, fall into a coma, vomit, run a temperature, or even result in death.

All of this runs along the risk of making impulsive decisions, increasing the likelihood of unprotected sex and risk of STI transmission.

Long term, binge drinking can lead to chronic drinking problems, increase your risk of cancer, social problems, psychiatric problems, cardiovascular problems and more. Not to mention the extremely high price paid by the NHS in all departments relating to these symptoms, as well as A&E costs. Considering the cost cutting the government is doing at the moment, squeezing students’ pockets and cutting back funding to the NHS puts things in a little bit more into perspective.

Finally, what we need to remember is that students shape culture through discussion, trends, the media, and networks they create and use, so the power to change social norms is in our hands.

The government and health services are here to inform your choices but not to make them. You can choose how you drink, not the health posters in Potterrow, not your parents and especially not your friends. If you are reading this article to learn how to drink responsibly: count your units, keep to the recommendations, drink water, eat food and do all this over a long period of time. So drink or don’t drink: you’re a student and old enough to decide for yourself- just keep yourself informed.

13/02/2012 03:10:32

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14 12 Features

Future for the Falklands

CONTROVERSIAL: Many Argentinians still believe the islands belong to them

JUSTIN OTTO

Alice McGurran looks at the escalating tensions between Britain and Argentina ON THE 2nd April 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, seeking to repossess what they had inherited from Spain upon their independence in 1816. Britain, however, also claims ownership of the Islands, based on having controlled their continuous administration since 1833. In an undeclared two month long war, over 900 people died, more than 600 of which were Argentinian.

It seems that this has not been forgotten, and as the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War approaches, the Island’s sovereignty has become a point of contention once again. Tensions have risen further since Britain deployed the destroyer HMS Dauntless to the Falklands.

Argentina has declared this as an act of militarisation. The Argentinian President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claims that the ship sent by Britain has nuclear weapons on board, a fact that the Ministry of Defence will neither confirm nor deny.

Latin American and Caribbean waters were declared an area off limites to nuclear arms in the 1960s, and Argentina accuses Britain of flouting this important treaty. The British Navy insists that its ships are carrying out routine operations in international waters. The Argentinians are perhaps even more so riled by the time Prince William is now forecast to spend on the Islands carrying out helicopter rescue work.

Whilst the British Government claims its actions are “entirely routine,”

can this really be accepted as innocently coincidental timing or is it a passive aggressive patriotic display?

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Whilst Argentina wants to discuss the future of the Falklands, Britain is sticking firm to its belief in the selfdetermination of the Islands" Whilst Argentina wants to discuss the future of the Falklands, Britain is sticking firm to its belief in the selfdetermination of the Islands; the right for the Islands to stay British, if the inhabitants so choose.

This raises a not so simple question: in this age is it not correct to return what is essentially a colonised land to its rightful owner? Or indeed, are the rightful owners now the Islanders themselves and therefore is it the decision of, the largely British, islanders?

Since the Islanders claim to be happy under British rule and wish to continue in their allegiance to the UK, should Argentina resign herself to having lost her land?

Whether self-determination can be justly applied to inhabitants who are not native to the land is a difficult question to satisfy. Whilst the major-

ity of the Falkland’s population is British, it is hard to ignore that this is a population which was introduced to replace the Argentinian natives, who, it is claimed, were removed ‘by force’ in 1833. It does indeed all seem like remnants of an oppressive, colonial past.

As we are seeing with the current debates over Scottish independence, any arguments involving legitimacy and power are not easy to settle. It is interesting to note how England argues against Scottish independence in part due to the geographical nature of our nation being stronger united as one mass.Yet the continued ownership of the geographically-separate Falkland Islands is seen as extremely important and it is convenient to base this on the British Islander’s ideas of self-determination. It doesn’t always seem that the Scottish nationalists are receiving the same treatment.

On the other hand, of course, when scaled down to take into account the feelings of individual people, in asking for the Falkland’s to become Argentinian once more, it is effectively asking people to change their established nationality.

From both sides, it is clear to see that a lot of the issue is a matter of pride. Whilst this may be the case, should the British national pride of the Islanders, rather than historical past, be of primary importance in deciding the fate of the Falklands? It all seems a question of nature vs. nurture, and only time will tell which one will prevail.

Helping those in need

Victoria McCormick looks at the merits of student run charities at the University

BY NOW, most people are very familiar with the bake sales that take place around the university. Implemented by various charities, it can be hard to attract people to the stall on a freezing cold January morning, no matter how enticing the cakes are.

As part of student run charity, bake sales are common. But it is not the only activity that is used as part of the fundraising process; others include club nights, pub quizzes, running the Meadows Marathon, a bungee jump and even a 10,000 ft skydive.

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Benefits for the volunteer include the usual 'looks good on your C.V." You might be asking why volunteers go through all this. With organising and planning, fundraising events eat up a person’s free time, which can already be quite limited if you are a full time student. If it's all

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just hard work for very little material reward, is volunteering actually worth it?

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If it's all just hard work for very little material reward, is volunteering actually worth it?"

Benefits for the volunteer include the usual ‘looks good on your C.V.’ To some it may sound selfish that you are volunteering for career prospects, but in an environment in which graduates are facing unemployment, volunteering really does look good on your job application form.

It shows commitment, the ability to work in a team and the willingness to help others for nothing. In addition to this, personal advantages of volunteering include an improvement in your confidence, meeting new people in different environments, as well as the whole experience being fun.

The main deal clincher for many volunteers is the difference projects can make to the people directly affected. Communities that charities help are being given the opportunity to improve the quality of daily life for very little cost on their part.

All of the projects organized by one such student run charity, Edinburgh Global Partnerships, or E.G.P., are ideas and goals brought forward by the community themselves. This way, E.G.P creates a mutual beneficial relationship between volunteers and locals; the volunteers are there to provide financial and physical assistance to people who actually need it.

The Kenyan Orphan Project (KOP) has a similar aim, with their motto being “teach a man to fish and he’ll feed himself for life”. KOP is a UK registered charity, and although the society itself is a small, members raise money throughout the year to assist projects in Kenya, paying for materials to construct a school or provide food for Kenyan Orphans, so that the charity can continue to offer health and education to vulner-

able children in Kenya.

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Aside from the expenses, it is important to research your chosen charity and make sure that whatever you're doing will truly benefit the local community" However, there is nothing that comes without its disadvantages.

Volunteering takes up a lot of time, and if you already have a lot of commitments, then it can be hard to fit it in. Depending on where you travel and whom you travel with, volunteering abroad can be expensive, however you don’t have to travel across the world to be able to make a difference.

For example, a charity closer to home can be found at the Teddy

Bear Hospital Edinburgh. Also run by students, the Teddy Bear Hospital seeks to teach local children about health and healthcare through play, aiming to ensure that visiting the doctor or hospital need not be a scary experience.

If its adventure you want, then be prepared to dig deep so you can pay for flights, living costs and the all important injections. Aside from the expenses, it is important to research your chosen charity and make sure that whatever you’re doing will truly benefit the local community; there is no point spending your summer building a school when the government can’t afford teachers.

Volunteering is not for everyone, but charities do an amazing job in helping those who are less fortunate than us, and for most people, that is what matters most.

So next time you walk past a charity bake sale, think of the people benefiting from the money being raised and buy a cake. This little gesture can contribute to a much larger project that can go a long way.

13/02/2012 03:18:57

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Lifestyle 15 Viennese Whirls

JOANNA LISIOVEC

Home Sweetie Home

What's love got to do with it?

Valentine's Day: It's all just a bit awkward as far as Alistair Grant is concerned

A

h, Valentine’s Day: a limp, sugarsoaked feast of vacuity devoted to drowning the unwary in a sea of tacky, cards-and-sequence romance.

Its meaning, if it ever had one, has been slowly dissolved in an acidic bath of capitalist, money-hoarding greed.

I’m exaggerating, sort of - although the point still stands. I don’t like Valentine’s Day, and being male this has often been attributed to my sex. "Most guys don’t do romance," someone once said to me. "Valentine’s Day is more of a girly thing." And, indeed, a quick poll of my male friends does prove this point. Whether in a relationship or single, they just didn’t really get it.

The same applied, admittedly, when I asked many of my female friends, although the indifference was more unanimous amongst males.

So why is this? After much meditation, I’ve come to the conclusion that the thing about Valentine’s Day is not so much that it’s a corporate rip-off, but rather that it’s all just a bit… well, a bit awkward- especially so for guys.

Think about it. Most of us live

out our day-to-day routines normally – there might be a bit of romance here and there, but nothing too overboard or saccharine. Then Valentine’s Day comes along, and suddenly guys are expected to turn into rose-wielding Casanovas, whisking their partners away to fancy restaurants or, more realistically, Pizza Express on a Wednesday to catch the good deals.

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Valentine's Day comes along, and suddenly guys are expected to turn into rose-wielding Casanovas" It’s a bit like waking up really hung-over and someone insisting you eat some cake; "Eat the cake!" they insist. "Please, it’s my birthday!" You just don’t really expect it, or particularly

want it, much like Valentine’s Day. It’s too much unwanted sugar; you’re not used to it. And yet refusing it just seems a bit… well, a bit awkward.

Then there are the memories of Valentine’s Day growing up and the awkward associations it forms. I’m going to tentatively suggest that these might be particularly painful for guys, as they are the ones who are usually expected to do the ‘chasing’ – at least, in school anyway. For most teenage males, romance isn’t exactly blossoming in their formative years, so to have a day devoted to it is just plain cruel.

It would probably be more apt at that age to have a day devoted to the frustrated wet dream; I mean, that would be awkward, but at least it would be relatable.

And the awkwardness continues.

When I first started going out with my girlfriend in our last year of school, I bought her a card for Valentine’s Day and she, tragically, didn’t get me one.

To be fair to her, we had only just started going out and were at that stage when you don’t really know how

serious the whole thing is, and our relationship survived regardless. But still, it was just a bit… well, a bit awkward. Can you imagine if I had bought flowers, or some kind of cheesy gift?

The potential for tragedy is endless.

So if we are all, including girls, so supposedly indifferent to it, if we can all admit it’s just corporate moneyhoarding, then why do we lap it up each year? There is nothing wrong with a bit of romance, but you don’t need a day devoted to it. After all, romance is said to be better when it’s spontaneous. Perhaps we really are all just desperate consumers, destined to lap up whatever crap the corporate companies think we want; like dogs, morosely attracted to whatever poo happens to be lying on the pavement.

But we don’t have to be. This Valentine’s Day, let’s all just do nothing. Sit in and order pizza. Save the romance for another night. It would be less awkward - and if nothing else, roses are bloody expensive.

Processed prints and processed food

This season's fashion trends evoke the fun McLovin spirit of 1950s America, by Ben Hoare

his 2012, in late spring/early summer, McDonald's will bring back familiar seasonal additions to its UK menu. The few of us well accustomed to said cyclic changes welcome the golden arches’ Deep Fried Mozzarella Bites as the first of the vitally important cultural choices one usually makes in a time temporarily full of light and optimism.

However, the pleasure of guzzling this processed chow is likely to be more common than ever, as the £1.19 price tag will offer purchasable positivity for all. We’ll be united in a time of hardship and pennilessness. McDonald's was born in a particular period; it was a new, prosperous decade that celebrated America’s escape from the tight clutches of the previous Great Depression.

It was an era of conformity, in which a vast and varied community shared more security and stability than they had done before. If we believe what we’re told, then we are soon to battle our way out of the bad times. Through withdrawing public funding and cutting cultural cash flow, the men in charge predict we’ll (eventually) cruise into the new 1950s America!

Although it may be hard to really believe this at the moment, you must find a way of having faith. Prada’s Menswear collection for the Spring/ Summer in a way embodies this enthusiasm, with most of the items following a middling smart-sports theme based on the cuts of golfing clothes. Yet one detail particularly stood out. It's their use, on certain items, of 50s cartoon-

15_Lifestyle.indd 1

styled prints that I want to glorify, as this gets the upbeat outlook spot on.

The hand drawn motif draws influence from formal designs of the day: showing stylized figures eating, dancing and letting it all hang out in kitsch cars, diners and music halls. Men sport coiffed pompadours and women jive in the ‘New Look’ silhouette. They’re completely subsumed in amusement, enjoyment and entertainment. It’s a loud and wonderfully vulgar keynote, yet when ornamenting wide sleeved thin-cotton shirts it clearly has a certain levelheaded quality, too. It's an uncouth conformist.

The patterned button-up on the right is surprisingly intriguing. It's bold, blatant and stands up on its own while managing to escape a purely revivalist or retro air. This desirable look is achievable as any screen-printed shirt could work. Original 50s and 60s shirts are affordable and very much the finest choice for the coming time. They can be slouchy and un-tucked or worn formally and even-tempered with a smart jacket. Such a shirt would work worn with an open neck and high rolled sleeves, clashing wonderfully with any new fifties fabric – corduroy, leather accents or chinos. The decade laid the subtle tartan foundations that would go on to influence the style visionaries and seamstresses of the 70s punk scene, and jarring such a checkered statement with a slack decorated shirt could be an energising façade.

Prada’s promo shoot for the season featuring Michael Pitt is naïve and

simple, though it does explore how some of these possible textural contrasts could work on a daily basis. Attempting to insinuate a modern man who plays while he works, and works while he plays, it does prove that in addition to the cocksure open collared Elvis approach, one can also fasten one of these decorative numbers to the top of the neckline for acceptable profes-

sional attire.

It's a versatile, honest and straightforward approach to everyday wearing: a brazen compliance to an optimistic group effort. Forget about this long, boring winter - when the days get longer and life starts to look a little brighter let us unite with repeated patterns and fast food! Try to have solace in the solstice.

COMIC STRIP: drawing inspiration from retro cartoon print

DANSKMAGAZINESS2012

T

OVER FIVE months gone, less than half the way to go. Arriving in Vienna in August to a 40+ heat wave, dying under the weight of my life in two oversized suitcases, I had no idea what to expect. Last night was the Erasmus incoming party stroke two, when the city and students wave hello to the newbies- plying them with shots, giving them name badges and encouraging all possible crossnationality debauchery.

Looking back from the half way line, everything has seemed to have gone like a kind of dream. Not only is my life here fantastic, but it has become so much my life that time and space and distance have become somewhat indeterminable. I know I am far away, I know the city and the language and the apartment are not truly my own, but it is often easy to forget.

The photos on my wall remind me of the great friends at home and the cards from well-wishing relatives and loves lost sit safely on shelves; looked at and loved, but never indulged in.

Freshers Week passed, as did Halloween, Bonfire Night and finally Christmas, all happy and without the pangs of longing for Edinburgh, friends and feeling at home. Strangely, however, Valentine’s Day has set in me an unexpected yearning for the things that aren’t here. Stumbling across an English supermarket the other day, I was reminded how much of home was, in some ways, so within reach; with great whacking tubs of marmite, drumstick lollipops and even scampi and chips to go. Suckling on my rare sweetie finds and heading for warmth, positively stomping to try and avoid any slippage in the -17 temperatures, I suddenly felt very far away.

Perhaps it was the ungodly cold, perhaps the several looming essay deadlines, but Edinburgh and its easy living was something I greatly missed.

February: second semester, cheap cups of library coffee and dashes across the Meadows to turn on the heating and sit on the radiator; and Valentine’s Day, of course. They do not celebrate the Hallmark holiday here, you will not see ‘I love you’ teddy bears, reduced perfume sets or amorous bunches of flowers hiding the heads of proud suitors. Valentine’s Day in Austria simply doesn’t exist. Single for the first time in a while, this is, for me, perhaps a good thing. Nonetheless, I will undoubtedly spend the day thinking about my February 14ths pre-Vienna: of sweet gifts, nice kisses and walks back to a red Marchmont door. Living in the past is dangerous and my present is wonderful, but maybe, just maybe, this Valentine’s will take me home.

Francesca Larcombe

13/02/2012 03:20:00

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LISA LANGE

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

A cadaverous collection DEEP IN the heart of the Medical School, beyond the pillars and winding corridors, you will find a mysterious set of double doors, guarded by the skeletons of two elephants that gaze lifelessly over your head. Should you steel your nerves, and should it happen to be the last Saturday in the month, you will be allowed to pass beneath them and enter into the Anatomical Museum - land of the curious, the anachronous, and the grotesque.

“

Previously the realm only of anatomy students, and now open to the public just one day in every month, the university’s century-old Anatomical Museum contains items you will never see in a modern exhibition hall.

Among the hodgepodge of skeletons, carefully polished brass instruments and preserved body bits in jars, you will find a distillation of the very spirit of Enlightenment Edinburgh.

The university has a long-established tradition of excellence in teaching medicine. People have been coming here to watch (sometimes dubiously procured) bodies get cut up since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Over the years, a long line of fathers and sons called Monro held the position of professor of anatomy, each

DEATHLY STARE : George Buchanan attracts visitors to the Anatomical Museum with his dashing looks building on their father’s collection of interesting and educational exhibits. It was Sir William Turner, professor from 1867-1903, who expanded the collection to reflect his interest in evolution and comparative anatomy. In 1884, he opened the new Medical School at Teviot Row, which featured a three-storey gallery containing elephants, whales, gorillas and tiny bat skeletons jostling for attention in the tremendous room.

Though a fraction of its former size today, the museum still contains an amazingly representative collection of

animal skeletons. They are there as a visual demonstration of Darwin’s great idea - the elephants in the hall are made up of exactly the same bones as you are, except for the clavicle.

And animal skeletons aren’t the only attractions. The star exhibit is the skeleton of William Burke - murderer, bodysnatcher and scourge of the Cowgate, whose body, in a satisfying conclusion to events, was donated to the Anatomy School to which he had provided his ill-gotten cadavers. Another celebrity is the skull of George

ANATOMICAL MUSEUM

The star exhibit is the skeleton of William Burke – murderer, bodysnatcher, and scourge of the Cowgate"

Buchanan, the famous humanist and poet who tutored James VI. The rest of the collection consists of old-fashioned medical instruments and bizarre educational models, plenty of death masks and busts, and an awe-inspiring selection of preserved human body parts.

Five minutes in this museum, and you will find yourself marvelling at the gritty reality, the undeniable meatiness of the human condition.

There are some truly fascinating treasures to be stumbled upon. In one corner you will find a human head

which has been cut in half. Look at it from one angle and you will see a man’s face, complete with nostril hair and eyebrows. Take half a step to your right and suddenly you can see a cross-section of his spinal cord, vocal tract and brain; reminding you of what lies milimetres beneath your own skin.

Over by the elephants is a display case containing the pelvises of women who have died in childbirth. Attached to each is a typewritten label detailing the complications and grisly ends of the various mothers. And hanging jauntily, grinning across at Burke, is the skeleton of Bowed Joseph: a local celebrity regretfully forgotten by most of Edinburgh’s residents. Bowed Joseph was a dwarf with rickets and a local vigilante, who exerted such a power over the rabble of the town in the eighteenth century, that he was said to be able to raise a mob of thousands at the hint of an injustice and at the beat of his drum.

In this place, science and history are jumbled together in a way which allows for discoveries and connections you just don’t experience from the neat labels and well-ordered exhibitions of a modern, tasteful museum. You can look at an interactive screen showing the human body modelled by stateof-the-art technologies, but it won’t give you that shiver, that pioneering thirst for unravelling the mysteries of anatomy, that you will get from viewing the real thing, lovingly carved up and preserved for posterity by the pioneers of modern science themselves.

The Anatomical Museum, Medical School, Teviot Place. Last Saturday in every month, 10am-5pm, admission free.

Artificial intelligence

Zack O'Leary examines the future of digital doctors and the rise of IBM's Watson computer system

IMAGINE YOURSELF in a hospital, describing your symptoms to a doctor who not only knows your full medical record, but the entire collection of digitised human knowledge. Crazy, right?

Maybe not. Don’t bet against it in any trivia competitions.

Just about a year ago, IBM’s Watson computer system defeated two champions and won what may be one of the more significant matches of Jeopardy! in the show’s history. At the heart of Watson’s artificial intelligence is a whole lot of powerful computer hardware and DeepQA, what IBM refers to as “a massively parallel probabilistic evidencebased architecture.”

What Watson did a year ago and how it did it is less interesting than what IBM hopes the system will do in the near future, though, and that’s diagnosing patients. Within the realm of

16_Science.indd 1

healthcare technologies, this sort of idea has been kicked around quite a bit. These tools even have a name: clinical decision support systems (CDSs). With a lot of support and demand for healthcare technologies, why not toss a little artificial intelligence into the mix?

A few studies have been done on CDSs in the field already, and the results have been loosely positive, even with technologies that clinicians have widely deemed hard to work with. A lack of standardisation and access to data makes them slow and awkward. IBM hopes to revolutionise the field with Watson, MD, always up-to-date on medical records, drug trials, journal articles, and epidemic reports. For fans of the show House, it would make for a dull ‘consult’, but for doctors and patients it could be a major boon.

Admittedly, that is a utopian vision

for the technology. What happens if Watson assigns significant weight to controversial theories during diagnosis, begins to assimilate top ten lists as medical data, or simply begins to associate common symptoms with rare diseases?

Problems of handling all this data aside, where would Doctor Watson get this data from?

The amount of data theoretically available for CDSs is astounding. And what is relevant can grow exponentially.

Why look just at a person’s medical record when all data on them could potentially be useful? Why just one person when the whole demographic might display a pattern? The whole world, even. Watson winning Jeopardy! isn’t the equivalent of getting through medical school, but designing algorithms is the least of our worries. The real problem is privacy.

To understand this better, look at the

debate surrounding Universal Patient Identifiers (UPIs). Within a UPI-enabled system, medical records would be standardised and centralised for the sake of access by healthcare professionals.

Additionally, the record for each of the three John Smiths in a hospital would be hard to mix up. On the other hand, this bank of information would be ripe for abuse.

If the development of social media has taught its users anything, it is that digital data gets used, often in unexpected ways. So what happens when we start getting advertisements from pharmaceutical companies with their own CDSs suggesting that we should try out Drug Z for symptom X? What happens when the protocol for handling a particular disease is forced? Do we just cross our fingers and hope that the worst side effects don’t happen?

But then, if we do restrict access to data, needless lives and quality of life may be lost. Mistakes happen, that’s human. It’s computer, too, but maybe the two will make different mistakes and call each other out on them. It isn’t an easy question, but based on the ever-increasing willingness that users of social media seem to display about sharing information, we could be headed toward a Watson-inhabited world.

We need to think about what CDSs and UPIs could mean for humanity. On the plus side, healthier lives - a strong argument. On the other hand, one giant leap for dystopia. Can humanity trust artificial intelligence with life-or-death decisions? If only to a certain extent, are CDSs actually worth the financial cost? Is it worth sacrificing our privacy?

Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, we’re well on the way to finding out.

13/02/2012 03:21:01

whe past"

Melissa Geere visits the Anatomical Museum and is awed by the grisly sights on display

Mad about molecules? Follow us on twitter @TheStudentPaper or on Facebook at facebook.com/TheStudentNewspaper science.studentnewspaper@gmail.com

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Science & Environment 17

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

Who's the greatest at testing Einstein's theory of relativity of them all? Nina Seale investigates. curious manner in which rotating masses can ‘drag’ spacetime around with them, distorting the path of light. This means that light travelling in the direction of an object’s rotation will move past it faster than light moving against the rotation.

Professor Flamini, LARES Program

and a bubble in the external part will start to rotate in the same direction.

“It is a very crude example, but can help to figure out why a satellite rotating in the empty space around the Earth, may be found in a position slightly different to the one we could obtain using only the

GREAT BALLS OF TUNGSTEN: The sphere will be launched February 13 Manager, explained this to The Student, “think of the space-time as a liquid in a bowl and a rotating object in the centre.

The rotation will drag the liquid around

ASI

ALBERT EINSTEIN is the go-to mastermind for every genius metaphor we make today. But his theory of general relativity is being put to the test by a shiny Italian sphere only 36cm across, which will be projected into space from the launcher Vega’s maiden flight on Monday, February 13.

The LARES (Laser Relativity Satellite) will be tracked by laser pulses beamed out from ground stations that will measure the time it takes for the light to reach the sky-bound orb.

These laser beams will be caught by the 92 ‘retroreflectors’ embedded on the satellite, which are made of a special surface that reflects light back to its source with minimal scattering.

So how will this mirror ball question Einstein’s theories? His theory of general relativity defines the way most scientists understand the Universe, but as with most important theories, it continues to be put to the test by researchers.

It is a theory that combines light, time and gravity. Without going into the mathematical details that only physicists can understand, it describes that objects in a state of accelerated motion (for example, a falling skydiver before their parachute opens) and those at rest in a field of gravity (when your skydiver is safely back on the ground) are physically identical.

Therefore, free fall is an example of how objects move when no force is being exerted on them.

Even when Einstein came up with this theory, there were problems. This idea disagrees with the theories of classical mechanics and special relativity, so Einstein concluded that spacetime (a model that folds the two dimensions of space and time into one) was curved.

One of the effects of general relativity is what the tungsten sphere LARES will be testing. The ‘frame-dragging’ effect is the

Newton/Kepler laws.”

As a perfect sphere of pure tungsten, LARES weighs 380 kilograms and this makes it the densest object in the Solar

System, so it will hopefully be able to obtain precision of 1 per cent for the framedragging effect. So far, scientists have only achieved precision of 10 per cent.

The frame-dragging effect is very small for animals like us on Earth to worry about, but Flamini explained its significance for technology and objects of bigger masses, “it has a relevance for high precision applications like the new generation of GPS, where the exact knowledge of the position of the satellites of the constellation plays an important role.

“It becomes even more important if the mass of the rotating body is billions of times that of the Earth like for the neutron stars or black holes.”

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) behind the LARES mission is one to watch.

They helped with one of the most complicated planetary quests ever undertaken, the launch and research done by the space probe Cassini in 2008.

Cassini circled the enigmatic Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, with radio waves that penetrated the foggy atmosphere to illuminate the terrain and used Titan’s rotation to deduce the existence of a global ocean hidden beneath its icy surface.

Cassini’s success caused its mission to be extended two years, which allowed it to fly by several of Saturn’s other moons.

Due to the discoveries on Titan, the moon Enceladus was also believed to have liquid water beneath its surface, but Cassini’s journey revealed something better. Geysers of water-ice were shooting out from Enceladus’ surface, throwing particles into Saturn’s biggest ring.

In 2013, the Vega launcher that is releasing LARES into space will be launching ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle that will test a range of technologies, including a heat shield that could be used in future manned missions.

Straight from the source

Ignore the headlines, says Dave Bell, get your climate change news from the science itself

CLIMATE CHANGE is one of those issues that invokes strong feelings of passion, anger and frustration. Even those that choose a middle of the road attitude run the risk of being hounded for either not realising that the world is going to end, or that it’s all just a big hoax. The irony is, while scientific understanding of climate has increased dramatically over the last few decades, public understanding has fallen. Groups and individuals most vocal on the issue tend to fall into either the ‘it’s a non-problem’ or ‘it’s the end of the world’ camps. The real science lies somewhere in between.

“

Most people don't realise the level to which the climate science community agrees" Why, then, do we disagree about climate change with such ferocity? The media certainly haven’t helped matters. They like to present a “balanced” view as one opinion against another. It’s all too easy for the facts to be skewed and misrepresented– sometimes out of ignorance, and sometimes to make headlines and serve personal in-

17_Science.indd 1

terests. We often hear in the media of the risk of thousands of people dying due to increased heat waves, while little mention is made of the lives saved due to reduced cold related deaths in the winter.

The point is not to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of climate change (it is a change we have to prepare for, regardless), but such omissive representations are characteristic of the media’s cherry-picking attitude to covering the climate change issue. Similarly, some people claim that global warming has recently stopped. This is a misunderstanding of short term climate variability. It also neglects to take into account the fact that ocean temperatures, sea levels and ice melt have all continued on the same trend. Climate change is more than just decade long changes in the surface temperature record.

Of course, none of this means that we should halt debate. After all, it is misguided to state that the science is settled, if only because science is never settled. To claim that it is will only give the public a wrong impression of the scientific method, whilst leaving scientists open to being accused of arrogance. At the same time, it is crucial not to misrepresent the level of current scientific understanding. A fair and balanced debate would be to cram 97-98 climate scientists, who agree on the impact that

humans are having on climate, into the TV studio with 2-3 who disagree. It’s a silly image, but important none the less. Most people don’t realise the level to which the climate science community agrees on the basics. The cutting edge of the debate lies in understanding exactly what changes to expect and where.

“

Ultimately, we need to separate scientific evidence from personal value judgments" So where does the truth, or rather, our best approximation of the truth, lie? No one piece of evidence proves anything. If anyone ever tells you that one or two facts either prove or disprove climate change, they are either ignorant or lying.

The big picture, however, is pretty clear.

The warming effect of carbon dioxide is a physical property, easily demonstrated and studied in the lab. Doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, something which we are well on the way to doing, is calculated to have a warming effect

of about 1.2oC, excluding the amplifying or dampening effect the climate may have.

The tricky question is: how sensitive is the climate to an initial warming? The climate science community has spent a great deal of time looking into this, through direct empirical observations, records of past climate change and a multitude of different climate models. Current understanding suggests that the most likely outcome is that the climate would amplify an initial 1.2oC warming to somewhere between 2oC and 4.5oC with a best guess of 3oC. The chance that warming would be less than 1.5oC is very low, but warming greater than 4.5oC is harder to rule out. Records of past climate change have shown that there are certain tipping points in the climate system. So we know they exist, we just don’t know what a 'safe' threshold will be or when we’ll realise that we’ve gone past it.

Ultimately, we need to separate scientific evidence from personal value judgments.

It’s a case of risk assessment; the magnitude of the potential losses multiplied by the probability of the loss occurring. How much do you value the current climate range that 7 billion people have adapted to? How comfortable are you with the diminishing chance that change won’t be that bad? Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, just not their own facts.

SCIENCE FOR DUMMIES (BY DUMMIES) #1: SMELL THIS PERHAPS ONE of the most common myths about science is the notion that the answers are all there, definitive and unproblematic, for you to tap into whenever you need them– say, to write a science column for a student newspaper.

The reality of the situation actually involves a lot more debate and speculation, which is heartening. Uncertainty encourages curiosity.

But, that's neither here nor there.

What I actually want to talk about is pheromones in humans. Do they exist?

Are you attracted to the girl across the table from you because of her cascading tresses and charming smile, or because she skimped on the deodorant this morning? Conundrum. Why, just the other day, I had a conversation with somebody who claimed that you could smell 'good genes' in your potential mates. In a way, it's a romantic sentiment, the idea that you just know when you've found your sweetheart, you can smell that it's right. The weight of the evidence provided by a handful of semireputable websites instead suggest that your darling might just be hygienically challenged, and you, delusional.

The arguments against the existence of human pheromones are actually not that interesting to report– they basically just point to a lack of evidence, condemning the occasional breakthrough experiment as not being reproducible.

No, it's much more fun to talk about all the things people claim we can do.

Attracting a mate is not the only purpose of the pheromone. While some animals use signaller pheromones to communicate - and it certainly would be cool to exchange the day's happenings via smellophone - it is primer pheromones, linked to physiological changes, that have occupied the minds of scientists and media alike. This can largely be attributed to the research carried out at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, in which head researcher Martha McClintock claimed to have found evidence of menstrual synchrony in humans. These findings filtered down into the realm of the collective consciousness, in which it could almost be called common belief that women who live together for extended periods of time synchronise their menstrual cycles. However, since then, doubt about McClintock's research methods have suggested that this common belief might actually be common myth.

And then there's the somewhat creepy claim that you can smell someone's sexual intentions. The research behind the claim was carried out at the Rice University in Houston, and involved monitoring women's brain activity when exposed to the sweat of men in both aroused and non-aroused states (I've only got 350 words, but suffice to say, porn was involved). The findings revealed that the 'aroused' sweat activated parts of the brain that deal with perception and recognising emotions.

So, even if we are not able to find our ideal mates by sniffing alone, we might at least be able to expose the lecherous among us. Although, if it smells anything like sexual intention on the Cowgate, I think I'll pass on that, thanks.

Rebecca Chan

13/02/2012 03:21:47

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OLIVER NINNIS

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Colonial expansion

Tom Hasler

18_Tech.indd 1

PARADOX INTERACTIVE PC £14.95

 VICTORIA 2 was released by Paradox Interactive back in August of 2010.

For those who don’t know, Victoria 2 is a grand strategy wargame where you manage the economy, military and politics of any country of your choosing through the Victorian era and into the prelude to WWII – spanning from 1836 to 1936. The objective of the game is to try and get your country ending up as powerful as possible. Last week Paradox released an expansion pack, A House Divided, for Victoria 2, with a focus on refining and deepening certain aspects of the game. Paradox seem to have developed something of a reputation for releasing games which are heavily bugged upon release, but A House Divided seems to be one of the exceptions to this rule.

A House Divided builds on the solid foundations that Victoria 2 left us with.

The biggest new features are the new American Civil War starting point, a new process whereby uncivilised countries can become civilised, lots of new map modes and general reworking of the way the economy, people and countries of the game work. This fixes a great deal of the problems that existed

in Victoria 2.

The countries in the game are divided into civilised and uncivilised countries. Uncivilised countries are countries which European standards in 1836 deemed uncivilised, such as Thailand or Japan. The overhaul to the process by which uncivilised countries become civilised has to be the most impressive new feature and it definitely makes these respective countries more of a challenge. The old system, in which you had to reach a certain military and prestige score, is replaced with an entirely new system in which there are many different types of reforms to choose- from hiring foreign naval officers to training your navy or instigating land reform- which all contribute towards a “civilising score.” When that score reaches 100 – voila, you are civilised. Not only do you now have to worry about being conquered by a neighbouring empire, but you also have the problem of internal reactionary revolts that might seek to reverse these reforms you have pushed.

“

For Civil War buffs, it's good to know you can basically jump right into the fray" The 1860 starting point is also a lot of fun. For Civil War buffs, it’s good to know you can jump right into the fray.

PARADOX

WELL, IT’S official – Call of Duty: Black Ops features the best ending for a video game in the history of the medium. Recently Guinness World Records compiled a list of the 50 best video game endings by polling 13,000 ‘gamers’ with Call of Duty beating the likes of Red Dead Redemption, The Legend of Zelda and Halo: Combat Evolved.

While it might be elitist to say this is simply incorrect, well, it’s simply incorrect, sorry.

Guinness must be running out of ideas if they are asking the question in the first place. Typically, Guinness is associated with hard numbers that result in clear records to be broken. For example, the Call of Duty franchise is objectively the highest selling of all time because more people bought it than any other game – this is easy to understand. Meanwhile, asking 13,000 individuals for their opinion is dubious at best; none of them will have played all the games ever made and thus cannot make an informed decision. The fact that Call of Duty and Halo were the top two games on the list demonstrates a direct correlation between sales numbers and the results. The results might have been slightly more objective if they had asked a group of experts, but really, it seems rather frivolous to declare an official best ending in the first place; endings can’t really be independently qualified without the rest of the story to give it context. It’s the kind of thing you would expect a cheap Channel 4 clip show to be made about, but not an official award from Guinness World Records.

Despite how silly this whole fiasco is, simply looking at the list is troubling. I can’t really say to my friends that video games are a legitimate art form now, because clearly no one playing games appreciates them as such. Super Mario Bros is ranked at number 11 and that game doesn’t have any goddamn ending at all. It’s nice to know that if mainstream culture wants to undermine video games that the community is going to shoot itself in the foot like this. The more vocal and passionate elements of the internet are crying out in protest, but it seems the people have spoken and declared video games shallow entertainment rather than something with more potential. Maybe they are right.

VICTORIA 2: AHD

EXCITING: This game really is for history buffs.

The new starting point also offers the possibility to play a recently unified Italy or a resurgent Prussia, both of which give the player new challenges to deal with.

That isn’t to say the game is flawless.

There still seems to be over-assimilation of certain populations; it wasn’t unusual to see an Austrian Empire where nearly every province had a South German majority by 1900, and given it’s the age of imperialism, the various computer controlled nations seem to be rather restrained in their colonisation of Africa, meaning that an aggressive player can quickly gobble up the continent. It may be true, however, that you’d have to be

pretty anal about historical plausibility for some of these issues to really irk you, but then, considering the focus of the game, that’s exactly the sort of people that Victoria 2 attracts.

Without a doubt, A House Divided adds a lot to the game, and for Victoria 2 players, it’s definitely worth the extra money. The expansion deepens and enhances the game, but leaves the fundamentals intact. This is good for people who like Victoria 2, but it will probably fail to attract many new players. For the foreseeable future, Victoria 2 will probably remain the marmite of gaming; you either love it or you hate it.

Get your Star Trek outfits ready Alasdair MacLeod orders his friends around in Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator ARTEMIS SBS THOM ROBERTSON PC $40

 "I WANT a jump - 235 degrees, 15km." "That’s not a good idea," announces Flatmate Engineering, "our shields are still down from the last fight." "There’s only one hostile..." I reply tersely, "and if we lose the station he’s attacking we’ll have nowhere to go back to anyway, 235 degrees," I repeat in my best captainy voice, trying to suppress a grin, "15km. Now." Flatmate Helmsman plots his course and starts the countdown. On the other side of the table, Ex-Flatmate Science puts his head in his hands, muttering darkly, "you realise this is just going to read like bad fanfic, right?"

Our laptop screens flicker and go black as we jump. They light up again to a mess of damage readouts and alarms.

On the main screen the hostile ship floats menacingly over our exploding wreckage.

"Well, that could have gone better..." I

admit after a pause, "want to try again?"

While its basic premise is hardly original: you are a spaceship. There are other spaceships. Make with the fighting already - its interface is what makes Artemis special. Unlike other similar-themed games, the players aren’t in charge of an armada or even an entire ship. Instead, they each play a single officer on the bridge of a single vessel. And they have to work together. Oh, boy.

Essentially, Artemis is a jury-rigged collection of five mini-games and a one people management meta-game. Helm controls heading and speed, weapons aims a selection of beams and missiles, science scans for weaknesses, engineering rations power to the other players and comms trades insults with passing enemies. Then there’s the captain. The captain has no direct interaction with the game at all - doesn’t even have a computer to use - and instead struts around the room, issuing orders and trying to keep everyone focused on the ever-changing 'plan.'

What makes Artemis so engaging is that to be successful, the players must all be in near constant communication.

In space, no man is an island, after all.

Without the correct facing, weapons is

EXCITING: This game really is for SCI-FI fans impotent. Without feedback from science, helm is flying blind. And without constantly badgering, engineering for more power, no one can do much of anything.

Being an indie game with somewhat less than AAA production values, Artemis should run comfortably on even the most decrepit of word processors.

The only really demanding requirement is that - being a multiplayer only game (unless you’re an ungodly multitasker) you’re going to need to shanghai four or

GAMESPRESS

OLIVER NINNIS

Lewis Dunne gets anal about his history in Victoria 2: A House Divided

five friends who’re happy to sit around, taking orders and being showered with a mixture of nautical oaths and sci-fi jargon.

At $40, the full version is somewhat pricey for an indie game. Luckily, there is a reasonably well-featured demo to give you a feel for the game. Also, if an entertaining video of your crew playing the demo happens to make its way onto YouTube, creator Thom Robertson will be happy to send a free copy your way.

13/02/2012 03:23:14

Contact: editors.studentnewspaper@gmail.com

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

19 Crossword

Across 1 Paid the reckoning price out of agreed raise (7, 2) 6 Horrify a friend, eating core of

apple (5) 9 Drill cut short by a military boss to make this sort of acid (7) 10 Extra money (about time) for dead (7) 11 Chap dressing always in artificial fibre (5) 13 Wrecked ship is covered in mould - all neat and tidy (9) 16 Heroine said ‘Go away’ we hear. It may be lucky (9) 18 Poetic girl in New York - on

speed ? (5) 21 Extra military duty causing

tiredness (7) 23 In which bombs are dropped to

reveal attack (3, 4) 24 Hi there Derek ! Sing a funny song ! (5) 25 Greek goddess employs a quiet hour on poem about sex appeal (9)

Down 1 Therefore be right, like a judge (5) 2 Hang about, Jack’s on the line ! (5) 3 Landlord has creepy-crawlies seen hopping about (8) 4 Aid Ed and the witch to prance

around and play with fire (4, 4, 5) 5 A bit separate (4) 7 Pippa’s first and last letters describe cuddly-looking animal (5) 8 The French and the English combine to produce machine tool (5) 12 Hairstyle sported by Oklahoma

frogmen (4) 14 Situation involving arson and headless mice (8) 15 Take a quick look up and down,

making little noise (4) 16 Big and strong, they may get

confused around female (5) 17 Highly-thought-of editor supports deserter (5) 19 I am buried by first motorway in foreign resort (5) 20 Height advantage provides

protection (5) 22 Girl casually joins a Scottish rugby club (4) Across 5 CONSTELLATION (Lancelot is not)* 9 RANCH contained clue disenfranchised 10 GRADUAL Gr + a + dual 11 HOPSCOTCH h + op + scotch 13 SET 2 definitions (6 games) : set (adj) 14 PUN n + up (all rev) 15 LIE IN WAIT [Tail Win(n)ie]* 17 ANGLING (w) angling 19 HAITI h + (A1 round it) 20 UNDERSTANDING 2 definitions (adj, noun) Down 1 SCORCH sc (scilicet) above o + R, + ch 2 UTAH (a hut)* 3 MARATHON M + a rat + Hon 4 ANKLET le (Fr) inside tank* 6 NINEPIN nine (8 +1) + pin (half a firkin) life isn’t all beer and skittles 7 LIGHTWEIGHT 2 definitions 8 IOU contained Devious 12 COLLIERY collie + ry 13 SWAHILI [His 1 law]* 14 PLAGUE P (i) l (l) + ague 16 TWIGGY twig + y g (rev) 18 GOD go (work) + d 19 HINT h + int. * = anagram of the preceding material (rev) = reverse the preceding material

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CONCISE CLUES (same answers) Across 1 Paid the bill (7, 2) 6 Horrify (5) 9 Name of an antiseptic acid (7) 10 No longer existing (7) 11 Artificial fibre (5) 13 In very good order (9) 16 Symbol of good luck (9) 18 Exotic maiden (5) 21 Tiredness (7) 23 Part of the Blitz (3, 4) 24 Sing, the Swiss way (5) 25 Greek goddess of love (9)

Down 1 Not drunk (5) 2 Dilly-dally (5) 3 Publican (8) 4 Take enormous risks (4, 4, 5) 5 Acting role (4) 7 World Wildlife Fund mascot (5) 8 Machine tool (5) 12 Bushy hairstyle (4) 14 Postulated situation (8) 15 A quick look (4) 16 Big and bulky (5) 17 Esteemed (5) 19 Florida resort (5) 20 Boundary of field (5) 22 Festival, jamboree (4)

The Chambers Dictionary (2008) is recommended

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celestial minx. Originally from the former Soviet Union, she is widely credited with bringing down the Berlin Wall with nothing but her steely Eastern Bloc thighs. Don’t go making any 5 year plans without Vulva-vostok’s advice.

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This week you finally watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. You like it but are left feeling very vaguely unsatisfied: Colin Firth is far too big and manlike to play a mole. It wasn’t at all convincing. His paws aren't suitable for digging, and he lacks the short shiny fur of your 'textbook' mole.

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Libra

This week, you go camping in the Meadows. Your bold action brings capitalism to a swift end and the Western world as we know it. You’re off to Skegness next weekend - who knows what could happen?!

Scorpio

This week, as cocky as Mars, you stroll naked down Nicolson Street singing “have a banana.” Fortunately, Uranus intervenes, and the immature horoscope comes to a premature end.

Sagittarius

Gemini

This week you are EUSA President - it's kind of like Being John Malkovich but just really, really terribly shitty shit.

Cancer

Solutions to Dual Crossword No. 4 C

Vulva-vostok is a

This week you hear that Elijah Wood was apparently in line to play Iggy Pop in a now shelved biographical film.

You are puzzled and not a little bit confused. In fact, you are considerably confused. Did Iggy Pop wear recreational felt and have hairy feet?

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This week, at all costs (even over 1.30 GBP), avoid the 41 to King's Buildings- it will not end well. Brian the bus driver has long taken a fancy to your crown jewels. This week, under the cover of 'Valentine's Day,' he plots to lure them on board, and imprison them in his bussy pie.

Leo

Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, this week you decide to burn down your restaurant and invite the world’s media to come and watch.

Pleased with the publicity, but eager to make it look like a terrible accident with a Jerusalem artichoke; you retreat to your River Cottage for tea and an array of short and long bread with your otter friends.

Virgo

For no apparent reason, this week you talk Cockney and “hav’ a bit of a ding dong with Dave dahn the boozer.”

Dave is not at all impressed by your ding, or your dong. In fact, he is verging on distressed. You try and rescue things by offering him a ‘hand shandy.’

He takes his leave, gets up and leaves.

Capricorn

This week you make silly internet memes on Facebook and die alone.

Did someone mention Valentine’s day?! You didn’t notice: you were too busy capturing screenshots of My Little Pony and adding hipster fonts.

Aquarius

So you think Sagittarius was a cop out, eh?

Well, that's not what your mother said. Last night. In bed. (Having sex).

[With me].

Pisces

This week, you unwittingly fall in love with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Unfortunately, you are an otter.

You try to tell Hugh of your undying love: there is no otter love like ours, you otter know how much I love you, will you be my significant otter? He mumbles something about Jerusalem artichokes then fries you in a delicious woody casserole.

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13/02/2012 03:27:11

rEVIEW

COMMISSION #17: darren duddy

Darren Duddy is a 4th Year BA Drawing and Painting student. Having grown up in edinburgh his whole life, Duddy finds constant inspiration in an ever changing city. His work is based on childhood, and a nostalgic view of the past. He attempts to document the world as he witnesses it changing from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

For Duddy, Edinburgh city centre is a naturally beautiful place surrounded by history. However, he feels the picturesque postcard image we have created doesn’t tell the whole story. He tries to capture the ‘real Edinburgh’ that tourists tend not to discover, through a presentation of current news stories, song lyrics and personal experiences. By choosing mundane scenes which are generally considered to be ugly, Duddy provokes the viewer to consider the time he applies to painting such environments, thus provoking a further questioning of the world around us.

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13/02/2012 03:28:17

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Follow us on twitter @TheStudentPaper or on Facebook at facebook.com/TheStudentNewspaper culture.thestudent@gmail.com

HOLLY JAMESON

22Culture 22

A thistle by any other word Melissa Geere considers the bard from a Scottish perspective at the National Library of Scotland o the Scots feel Shakespeare is a part of their heritage? Though born a citizen of England, Shakespeare died a subject of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, so technically he belongs to Scottish heritage as well.

Beyond Macbeth, a new exhibition at the National Library of Scotland, emphasises the part played by individual Scots in the preservation and analysis of the works of Shakespeare, from his contemporaries to modern professors.

“Most people think of Shakespeare in an English context,” said Helen Vincent, senior curator at the library.

“But we hope to highlight the wealth of Shakespeare material available in Scotland and his importance in Scottish literary life.”

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In the guestbook at the exhibition I found such comments as: “a pity more people know of Macbeth through Shakespeare than actually knowing the real story."

However, Scotland has Robert Burns as its own bard, and some believe the Shakespeare cult overshadows Scottish authors who ought to be more lauded in their own country. In the

guestbook at the exhibition, I found such comments as: “a pity more people know of Macbeth through Shakespeare than actually know the real story,” and the abrupt “what about Scottish writers?”

Alasdair MacLeod, a student native to Edinburgh, denied feeling any link with the playwright. When I explained that Scots played a role in preserving his work, he muttered, “so we helped him more than he helped us.”

But such opinions seem to be a minority; most Scots feel proud of their connection – “I like to think of Shakespeare as a British author so that I can lay some claim to him,” said Amelia Sanders, an English Literature student from Aberdeen. As the exhibition demonstrates, it is thanks to a string of Scottish fanatics that several early editions of his works were collected, and later made accessible to a wider audience, that may have otherwise been lost forever.

Some saw Shakespeare as an inspiration to greatness. In 1756, Scottish playwright John Home’s play Douglas became the first ever public theatre performance in Edinburgh.

During the show, an audience member proudly called out, “whaur’s your Wullie Shakespeare noo?” He needn’t have worried. Just 13 years later, the Theatre Royal opened in Edinburgh on the newly constructed Shakespeare Square, off Princes Street. The square was dominated by a statue of the bard;

lies and William Johnstone, but while the latter’s abstract style allowed for a number of rather striking, bold pieces, I nevertheless found Gillies’ work more accessible.

WILLIAM GILLIES The Scottish Gallery 'Til March 3

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he current exhibition at The Scottish Gallery displays the works of two artists who were both greatly inspired by the landscape of the Scottish Borders, yet explore this muse through vastly different styles.

Certainly, a sense of affection for the Borders landscape is clear in the selected works of both William Gil-

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His use of impasto in other pieces – including several still lifes – adds great texture, breathing life into the scenes."

His landscapes, in particular, which possess an almost pastoral

THE ANGEL ESMERALDA Picador £16.99

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DANIELLE MALINEN

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he Angel Esmeralda is a curious book. It is DeLillo’s first collection of short stories, yet is by no means an exhaustive account of his experiments with this form, and does not – as we may have expected – begin with his earliest stories. Rather, the collection’s first story, Creation, is from 1979, at which time DeLillo had already published six novels. One possible reason for this is DeLillo’s feeling that some of his work in the 1970s was somewhat “off-the-cuff,”unlike the work that would follow, such as White Noise and Underworld.

Taken in this light, the title of

as healthy a tradition of reinventing him. The Scots have gotten involved here too. At the exhibition you can see two translations of Macbeth into Scots (though not Gaelic, which would have been the Thane’s native tongue), and some fantastic poems by Tom Leonard mocking Shakespeare’s verbosity. Meanwhile at the interactive area, someone had drawn what they titled “Scottish funky Juliet:” a maiden holding a rose, dressed in a kilt and fishnets and tattooed all down her arms.

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Most Scots feel proud of their connection – “I like to think of Shakespeare as a British author so that I can lay some claim to him,” says Amelia Sanders."

OUT, DAMNED SCOT: An tartan clad Wullie Shakespeare

JULIE RITCHIE

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Shakespeare’s work is often thought to transcend nations and genres.

Among the visitors’ illustrations, I saw Juliets, not just of Scotland, but of many cultures and subcultures. Each visitor had made the character identify with their own heritage. Perhaps then, due to his universal themes and range of settings, from Cawdor to Verona, Shakespeare is not the property of one nation – he belongs to everyone, English speaking or not.

Scotland proudly displayed that its new theatrical tradition was built on the foundations laid by literary heroes

across the border.

As much as there is a tradition of preserving Shakespeare, there is a just

quality, stood out. This style is very evocative, conveying an almost wistful affection for the Borders; as described by the gallery, his work is “a distillation of love and knowledge” of that landscape.

Gillies exhibited at The Scottish Gallery seven times during his lifetime and posthumous showings of his works are a regular feature. The selected landscapes display the Borders through a range of mediums: ink and pencil drawings, oil paintings and watercolours. The black and white style of drawings, such as Kippford and Anstruther Harbour, lends an arresting clarity and simplicity to the

pieces. While his use of impasto in other pieces – including several stilllifes – adds great texture, breathing life into the scenes.

The sepia tones of certain ink drawings, for example Trees near Temple, reinforce the sense of nostalgic affection conveyed in his work. I found the colour harmonies in Gillies’ watercolours quite stunning in the way they depict the seasons and the landscape; the use of natural shades is very eye-catching, particularly in pieces such as Rockcliffe and Spring Landscape.

The gallery itself is pleasant; a modern, bright space with plenty

of natural light, the white décor not competing with the works displayed.

Alongside the pieces exhibited, the gallery provides footage of each artist, which adds an extra dimension to the showcase. The simultaneous exhibitions of their work provides an interesting contrast of two artists' personal connections with a landscape. Yet for me, it is Gillies’ work that stands out and manages to draw the viewer in to his fond depictions of his beloved Borders.

Creation gains a wider significance: it heralds the arrival of the mature DeLillo, a voice finally capable of articulating the cultural hysteria of contemporary America. The succeeding eight stories allow the reader to experience the development of this voice. We witness the disjunction between innocuous everyday experience (jogging, visiting an art-gallery, going to the movies) and the cultural fault-lines above which such experiences take-place becoming inexorably wider; DeLillo forever making a simple moment complex. As such, the collection forms a highly effective introduction to DeLillo’s work and would be a suitable starting point for any new reader.

The final story in the collection, 2011’s The Starveling, serves as a suitable representative for the previous eight tales, working through themes that are perennial concerns in DeLil-

lo’s work. It follows Leo Zhelezniak, a movie obsessive, whose life consists of perpetual transit from one movie theatre to another – the mechanical, fanatic repetitions of this action echoing the earlier Baader-Meinhof.

inexplicable shifts resonate with The Ivory Acrobat and Midnight in Dostoyevsky.

The story is a microcosm of DeLillo’s style and purpose: he undermines the secular world we find ourselves in, revealing the hitherto unknown significance of our actions. In so doing he, like Leo Zhelezniak with his notes, creates “one man’s eccentric history of an entire era’”– just the chronicle that is needed for such absurd times.

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Creation ...heralds the arrival of the mature DeLillo, a voice finally capable of articulating the cultural hysteria of contemporary America."

Leo used to make notes about the movies, notes that were “building into a cultural chronicle to be discovered a hundred years from now,” but then one day he just stopped; such abrupt,

Roisin Rhiannon McKelvey

Daniel Davies Our next Book Club read will be Trackman, by Catriona Child.

If you have any thoughts on it, or The Angel Esmeralda, email culture. thestudent@gmail.com and let us know!

13/02/2012 03:29:22

Theatre buff? Review it! Follow us on twitter @TheStudentPaper or on Facebook at facebook.com/TheStudentNewspaper culture.thestudent@gmail.com

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Culture 23 STAR RATING Doc Happy Dopey 

Sleepy Grumpy

A Grimm fairy tale

ROYGBIV This week's cultural spectrum.

Rebecca Brown finds Snow White decidedly dark in Bedlam Theatre's Snow, Glass, Apples

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The effectiveness of this production lies largly in its emphasis on the story-telling element and, much to Gaiman's credit, it is the story itself that really hooks the audience."

The effectiveness of this production lies largely in its emphasis on the story-telling element and, much to Gaiman’s credit, it is the story itself that really hooks the audience.

Against a minimal setting, a backdrop of black, this is reminiscent of a bedtime story gone horribly wrong.

HYPOLIX Whitespace Gallery Run Ended

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he layout of this ECA student exhibition- which takes ‘alchemy’ as its central theme - is simple: three walls, three artists. The journey across them, however, is rather more complex.

The room invites the viewer to stroll through beginning at on one end with the rich works of Sara Oskarsson, moving through the reflexive paintings of Cate Smith, and ending with Justine King’s meticulous graphite filigree- a vast spectrum of differing styles. Then you can view the spectrum the other

MIHAELA BODLOVIC

nce upon a time, there was a girl as white as snow and a wicked old witch. So the story goes, but stories are so often composed of lies.

Based on Neil Gaiman’s short story, Snow, Glass, Apples is an intriguingly dark and often alarming production which re-tells the Snow White story we think we know so well, incorporating a good bit of vampirism and necrophilia into the mix. As the Queen awaits her death at the hands of her vampiric stepdaughter, it’s time for her to re-write history and put the story straight.

LIPS AS RED AS THE ROSE: A vampiric Snow White falls into a deep deep sleep Venice van Someren is unnerving as the eerily sweet vampire princess.

Though, admittedly, she’s polite about her blood-sucking antics: she may bite her stepmother’s hand, but she does say ‘thank you’ afterwards. This uneasy balance between innocent sweetness and deadly monstrosity is very well portrayed. Similarly, Ailis Duff does a good job as the sympathetic and notso-wicked-after-all Queen.

The tone of the play, though sometimes relieved by awkward laughter, is notably dark. The traditionally sentimental ‘true love's kiss’ is replaced by a necrophilic rape scene that makes the audience squirm. To be fair, this

is probably the desired effect and representing this act on stage is a brave decision.

way, and reverse the whole experience.

Oskarsson’s large-format works are alive in a particular way. Her experimentation with non-traditional materials and mixed media sets up painting which evolves by itself; allowing chemical reactions to take over the fertile canvases, which grow crystals, rusts, saturated pigments, and metallic reflections. The paintings are organic, undergoing unpredictable processes that deliver stunning results.

Hung on the opposite wall are King’s four works in pencil on paper. It takes awhile for the eyes to recover from Oskarsson’s explosive work, but soon they can be stimulated by the delicate landscape that appears in King’s work.

King attempts to challenge the concept of ‘painting’ by a bold use of brush-

stroke like pencil, which sketches with movement and rhythm; now standing out in full volume, now sinking into the paper. The intricate graphite topography acts like negatives of a painting.

Smith’s two oil on board paintings resonate on the furthest wall, atomizing figures that are at once abstract yet very spatially present. The paintings fulfill the artist’s interest of connecting adjacent spaces and there are interesting relationships not only within her own paintings, but with the the gallery space itself. They provide a vanishing point in which colour meets greys, density meets transparency, exuberance meets sharpness and spontaneity meets control.

The exhibition could have used more information about the processes

“

The traditionally sentimental 'true loves kiss' is replaced by a nercrophilic rape scene that makes the audience squirm."

This is not to say that the play doesn’t have its faults. Sometimes the emotional scenes feel a bit strained

and there are a few clumsy scene changes in which characters who have just died get straight up and toddle off stage, dispelling the magic somewhat.

The sound effects of a running stream and chirping birds may be a good idea in concept, but in reality, they drown the cast members’ speech and become a bit annoying.

That is nit-picking though as overall this was an entertaining, bizarre and often disturbing production that recaptured the magic of those age old stories that are so compulsively retold. But can we trust this story any more than the one we already know?

That depends, it’s really up to us... used because they were so fascinating.

The studio should have been more like a laboratory; these artists experimenters, their creative process a brilliant chemical reaction. Their approach to art certainly would have meritted this.

Visually, the exhibition works beautifully. Each wall is transformed by the distinctive style of its artist. Together, the result is an equilibrium, playing different styles of art against each other.

When we step back to consider them, the works transform continually.

The three interacting elements, in the purity of materials and style, succeed in catalysing a reaction in the viewer. This art is like alchemy, but it takes time and consideration to turn it to gold.

Zoe Valery

THE ART DOCTOR with Anna Feintuck This week: career paths, moving back home and Japanese Mick Jagger concerts

I’m about to graduate and I have no idea what to do. I have no job lined up and I really don’t want to move home (mostly because I’m from Hull and every time I go home, I’m faced with friends who graduated last year and decided to move back “for a few months” but never managed to get out). But I don’t think I can afford to stay in Edinburgh and anyway, as much as I love it here, I just keep feeling like there’s a whole world out there. What should I do?

I fear this is an all-too common problem at the moment. My usual impulse would be to tackle the problem with a mix of excessive organisation and calming breathing techniques. Unfortunately, however, I have a friend who has

23_Culture.indd 1

been keeping a spreadsheet of potential post-university options (it is terrifying) and even she still hasn’t managed to pin down anything definite yet. I think this may just be a matter of acceptance and willingness to be flexible for the time being. Perhaps you should widen your scope of possibilities and consider moving out of Britain altogether.

As for art, I’d like to suggest a few things that might encourage wanderlust.

There’s all the usual stunning landscapes to turn to, of course, but you could also have a look at Andy Warhol’s series of posters for Mick Jagger concerts in Japan in the late 1960s. The images of Jagger have something uncharacteristically soft about them compared to much of Warhol’s work – the overall effect is of a wide-eyed boy seeing things for the

first time (certainly not the drug-addled rock star we know he was). So maybe go to Japan; maybe go to New York; but really this is a question of outlook.

Gaze instead of staring fearfully and you’ll that find things start to look better

pretty quickly.

Got a problem? We can cure you! All problems will be treated confidentially. And ever so seriously. Email us at artdoctor.thestudent@gmail.com.

aving the opportunity last weekend to visit the current exhibition by Grayson Perry at the British Museum, I considered how we look at art objects and what we regard as works of art. Titled The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, you are taken into Perry’s world and his reflections on craftsmanship- placing his artworks amongst a variety of artefacts from the British Museum. There are two things at play here: crafted objects, simply recognised for their historical status, being placed within the context of contemporary artistic vision and contemporary artworks being placed within a time-honoured institution. Perry encourages recognition of artistic skill where we might not otherwise have seen it. Similarly, the contemporary and modern art worlds are recognised in the light of the longestablished human capacity for artistic creation.

This led me to question how we feel when something is placed within an unfamiliar environment. It can sometimes produce unease; watching viewers frown, puzzled with Ruth Ewan’s placement of a playing jukebox in the gallery corner of her Brank and Heckle exhibition, provides a memorable example. At other times, it can be compelling, as is the case for Perry’s fusion.

Through context comes the projection of new perspective onto objects we could overlook. We should remember to contemplate the settings in which we view art as much as the art itself.

The other stand-out idea is the feeling we have created a distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft.’ ‘Craft’ carries ideas of rusticity and history, prompting question on its place within contemporary institutions. The Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh shows how art forms such as tapestry can be comfortably thriving in the art scene. I’m not claiming that people don’t consider craft as part of art today; works of craft constitute much contemporary art – Emin’s quilts come to mind. Contemplating the term ‘craftsmanship,’ however, provides a reminder of how easy it is for us in white, cube-like spaces to forget the time-honoured roots of artistic creation. We must consider all art within a long and expansive creative timeline.

So next time you’re wandering round a gallery, museum or otherwise, why not consider both the context and the history of human creativity; something I have taken from the enlightenment provided by Grayson Perry. Now, when I visit a gallery, I will think of the craftsmen, known and unknown, and of the shrines where we have placed their work.

Catherine Johnson

Look oot for...

LISA LIND

Dear Art Doctor,

Up Perry-scope!

The Scotland-Russia institute are exhibiting Byzantium until 17th March The Lyceum are starting their run of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men on the 17th of February until the 17 of March.

13/02/2012 04:06:04

Love film? Let us know! Follow us on twitter @TheStudentPaper or on Facebook at facebook.com/TheStudentNewspaper film.studentnewspaper@gmail.com

JOANNA LISOWIEC

24

Technological Warfare

Daniel Scott Lintott looks at the ongoing battle for visual superiority between 3D and IMAX films n the beginning of time, when the Ithere world was silent and monochrome, were two big advancements on

“

There is also a danger with 3D that the medium itself will take over the entire film, often at the expense of reasonably important things like, say, scripting or plot."

Star Wars: Does the 3D release of The Phantom Menace really add anything to the classic saga? most famously used in James Cameron’s Avatar- creating a sensation with its newfangled graphics and computergenerated images. Although the idea is pretty nifty and the films can be fun to watch, the use of the third dimension can often feel gimmicky and unnecessary. And there’s the added problem that when you take the glasses off to inevitably rest your weak human eyes, you're left with a slightly grey and es-

3D became popular in the 80s and 90s, but this version of the red and blue-lensed 3D arguably died a grim death early in the 21st century. The medium has undergone something of a revival in recent years, in the form of the new Real 3D. Real 3D, as opposed to the apparently ‘fake’ old 3D, was

sentially worse film. It’s also possible to feel a bit cheated if the film doesn’t ‘jump right out at you!’ every other minute, which is after all what everyone’s interested in. However, when there are scenes dedicated to fulfilling this desire, it often feels contrived, put in merely to pander to the expectation of flashy visuals. These two factors lead to a, if you will, catch-3D. It seems a waste if there aren’t pointless gimmick

scenes, and, if there are, it seems just that, pointless.

On the other side of the coin is IMAX, which is essentially a normal film but bigger, better and with more HD. Although it seems like a simpler idea, it can be more effective than 3D in its presentation of upgraded visuals.

The benefit of a giant screen is that everything just seems more epic. In a sense, films in this format take advan-

THE PHANTOM MENACE 3D

THE WOMAN IN BLACK DIRECTED BY JAMES WATKINS 

DIRECTED BY GEORGE LUCAS 

nevitably, one question has hung over this release: how will Daniel Radcliffe perform in his first post-Potter film role?

Regrettably, this question is a demon that will probably haunt him for quite some time. However, judging by this performance, Radcliffe may step out of the shadow of ‘the boy who lived’ sooner than expected.

He plays Arthur Kipps, a young widower employed by a law firm to handle the estate of a recently deceased client.

Upon arriving at the client’s house in a small rural village in northeast England, Kipps begins to have a series of paranormal encounters involving the eponymous woman in black. It doesn’t take long to establish that the whole village is haunted, as Kipps becomes increasingly entangled in the supernatural mystery.

Director James Watkins is spearheading the recent revival of Hammer Film Productions. And it seems he may have breathed a new lease of life into this traditional British horror franchise that disappeared in the 1970s. The film is genuinely scary and will have the whole audience on edge throughout – so much so that it brings into question the suitability of a

ith The Lion King 3D recently in W cinemas and Titanic 3D coming later this year, stereoscopy seems set

I

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AVADA KEDAVRA: Radcliffe's career survives the killing curse.

12A certificate. Vomiting blood, children burning themselves to death, creaking floorboards and more are all part of relentless out-of-your-seat frights. Perhaps most affecting is the film’s opening scene, the supernaturally-induced suicide of three young girls, who simultaneously jump from a top floor window. With the exception of their mother’s anguished screams, Watkins spares us any further details. This sets the tone for the following 135 minutes; it's what we don’t see that is truly chilling – the tense anticipation leading to the inevitable shock.

The Edwardian setting lends to the film the trademark Gothic appearance of

old-fashioned Hammer movies. However, the film essentially feels like a very modern horror and there is definitely a slickness to the proceedings.

Any plot weaknesses fade into inconsequentiality in the face of the film’s energy and intensity. Watkins has created a refreshingly British horror movie. It’s frightening, it’s fun and it seems there really is life after Harry Potter for Daniel Radcliffe – a prospect that looks increasingly promising.

Jonathan Drake Reviewed at Cineworld

MTV MOVIES BLOG

the horizon unbeknown to the lowly people of black and white, namely the ‘talkies’ and Technicolour. Now as cinema looks to the future, possibly through the tinted lenses of 3D glasses, there are two new technologies, 3D and IMAX, that could potentially be as influential as either the advent of sound or colour. However, these cinematic features are not brand new technologies, particularly in the case of 3D, which has been around in some form or another for most of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the question remains: which of these technologies will be the most influential? Can theycoexist in peace and harmony?

EATSLEEPLOVEFILM

ts

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

to be the gateway (or should that be that excuse?) for re-watching our old favourites. Now with George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace in theatres, and the other five installments in the pipeline, the 3D re-boot doesn’t look as if it’s going anywhere soon.

Unfortunately, converting a movie into 3D looks messy enough on more recent films, let alone one that was made over ten years ago. As with The Lion King, the grafted-on 3D does nothing for The Phantom Menace which, to be honest, was quite poor to begin with.

For one thing, it’s dreadfully dark in the literal sense of the word.

Take a peek over the top of your glasses and you can see just how much colour and light you’re losing.

This is particularly noticeable during the underwater sequences at Naboo, when you can hardly make out what is going on. The 3D looks cheap and certainly doesn’t enhance what visual

tage of the medium’s pros in every shot.

With 3D only certain shots and scenes get fully upgraded, but with IMAX you can improve the quality of the entire film. There is also a danger with 3D that the medium itself will take over the entire film, often at the expense of reasonably important things like, say, scripting or plot. Avatar and Journey 2 look like prime culprits of prioritising visuals. Similarly, the recent rehash of Star Wars Episode I appears to be just George Lucas putting 3D glasses on the already overused cash cow.

One of the biggest directors in Hollywood at the moment, Christopher Nolan, has recently announced that the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, will be in IMAX, not 3D. Similarly with Inception, Nolan toyed with the idea of 3D but decided against it, saying that it was too limiting. In a Q&A in April 2010, he claimed that 3D, “on a technical level, [is] fascinating,” but “on an experiential level,” he finds “the dimness of the image extremely alienating.”It's interesting that such a big director has made the decision to completely avoid 3D, despite recently filming the big budget and visually grandiose films it is known for. Arguably, his comments reveal the limitations of 3D and the benefits of IMAX. Although not quite as impressive and flamboyant, IMAX can still deliver incredible visuals without the constraints of 3D. Ultimately, in the battle between 3D and IMAX, the best bet is to go with the guy who made The Dark Knight and Inception.

There’s no arguing with that.

quality the film has to begin with.

If anything, it feels harder to keep things in focus.

The most anticipated scene to be enjoyed in 3D is young Anakin Skywalker’s podracing on Tatooine, but the race doesn't feel noticeably different and is no more exciting than it always has been. It's testament, perhaps, that it's the films themselves and not the stereoscopy knocked on afterwards that are memorable.

Star Wars is extremely popular, with a large and dedicated fan base – such a series doesn't need 3D to get bums on seats. Nostalgia, which even those who aren’t Star Wars obsessives will feel after the opening bars of John Williams’s memorable score, is more than enough for the job. This is true despite the film’s clunky pacing, overly long running time and a few scenes which are laughable for all the wrong reasons. The 3D, however, seems a bit of a waste of time and money.

It's certain, however, that seeing the film again on the big screen will indulge the fan-boys and girls in all of us.

Sarah Rundell Reviewed at Cineworld

13/02/2012 03:30:51

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Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Film 25

STAR RATING Gone with the Wind  Roman HolidayPretty Woman The Notebook Valentine's Day

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S

ometimes going to the cinema can be a thoroughly depressing experience. With overpriced snacks, apathetic audiences and an ever-increasing number of lazy, forgettable blockbusters it is often hard to remember why we ever enjoyed movies in the first place.

Every now and then, however, a film comes along that reminds us why we fell in love with cinema. The Muppets is one of those films.

The film tells the story of naive Muppet Walter and his human brother Gary ( Jason Segel), who with the help of Gary’s girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), embark on a mission to get the Muppets back together for a fundraising telethon. The purpose of this telethon is to save the Muppet Theatre from the evil clutches of super villain Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), who plans to demolish the theatre in order to drill for oil.

Peppered with terrific songs by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie, the film is a riotously funny watch that will keep both children and adults en-

DIRECTED BY MICHAEL SUCSY  he Vow works, but for all the T wrong reasons. It’s supposed to be a tearjerker, but Rachel McAdams cries more than you probably will. It’s one of those films whose trailer doesn’t reflect the final product, but this is what saves it from being another hackneyed romance that keeps Kleenex in business.

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There may be a nice shot of Tatum's butt, but he's far from smooth otherwise. His bumbling awkwardness and off kilter jokes are a welcome reprieve..."

Initially, we think we’re in for The Notebook’s sequel. Rich girl Paige (McAdams) has shucked her suburban upbringing for Chicago’s artistic riffraff embodied in Channing Tatum’s Leo and her career as a sculptor. Before you can finish your ironic eye-roll, their hipster fairytale is brought to a halt when they get into a car accident that causes Paige to lose her memory.

She has no idea who Leo is and only remembers her life five years before,

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WHALES: Don't you just love them?

BIG MIRACLE DIRECTED BY KEN KWAPIS  can be hard to stay open-minded Iis tabout a film when the audience made up of youngsters and their

Reviewed at Cineworld

REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE: Not wearing their seatbelts.

THE VOW

hinking about it, it’s pretty T ironic that the most iconic films of the most quintessentially

when she was a budding lawyer and sweater-set aficionado. She finds she can’t even understand her life, let alone fall back into it. At this point, the film struggles with cheesy voiceovers that Leo appears to have stolen from a chocolate wrapper. Leo must woo her back into his toned arms (there is a mild incredulity to this idea, he’s Channing Tatum after all).

This has all the familiarity of a Nicholas Sparks novel, except McAdams and Tatum rescue it from its cliché-ridden premise. It takes a talented actress to reject the winsome Tatum yet retain sympathy, but McAdams turns her character into more than just a love-addled amnesiac. Paige initially wants to fall back into the privileged complacency she remembers, but finds herself retracing the steps that led her to the boho lifestyle in the first place. Paige gets a do-over, only to realise she doesn’t need one. While McAdams gives emotional depth to her character, Tatum doesn’t take his too seriously. There may be a nice shot of Tatum’s butt, but he’s far from smooth otherwise.

His bumbling awkwardness and off kilter jokes are a welcome reprieve from the tortured lover usually in this genre.

The Vow fails as the sappy romance it’s advertised as, but is better for it.

Tess Malone Reviewed at Cineworld

ENTERTAIN UNLIMITED

DIRECTED BY JAMES BOBIN

Classic Cult

tertained throughout. The film’s script

by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller cleverly finds the perfect balance between nostalgia and fresh, modern humour and therefore will appeal both to long-standing fans of the Muppets and to those who are new to the characters.

In addition to the songs and excellent script, a series of increasingly funny celebrity cameos add a lot of humour to the film.

There is a scene in The Muppets when villainous Tex Richman sneers at the gang’s attempt to reunite and states that these days people don’t want silliness and laughter, but want "a hard, cynical act for a hard, cynical world."There may be some critics who agree with this statement and these reviewers are bound to scoff at the film’s relentless optimism and unapologetically upbeat tone. These critics are misguided, however, as what we are in desperate need of in this ‘hard, cynical world’ is not gritty realism, but escapist cinema that makes us smile, laugh and forget our problems. The Muppets is a feast of pure unadulterated joy and is the perfect antidote to a rather pessimistic world.

Sally Pugh

A CHILD GROWS

THE MUPPETS

parents, both unexcited. The trailer doesn’t really help out, and that’s unfortunate because, very surprisingly, this is a sweet movie. And, surely, everybody loves whales.

‘At the edge of the world’ in small town Alaska, Adam ( John Krasinski) is a newscaster stuck covering fluff pieces when the story of his life surfaces right in front of him. Three whales are trapped by a hole in the ever-thickening ice with no hope of getting to the open ocean. When the story goes national, serendipity sets very different people on a path to help.

In the same way that Nickelback release the same hit over and over, it seems that this creative team could do some damage in the industry. It’s Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, the

JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND DIRECTED BY BRAD PEYTON  One of the journeys of this film is at its beginning, to a mysterious three-dimensional island. The other is evidently in its declining stages, namely Dwayne Johnson’s acting career. Apparently his original flirtation with the idea of the big screen in The Mummy Returns was not enough.

He didn’t even have a proper speaking role and arguably one could pinpoint the pinnacle of his career there.

His journey has culminated in this film based on the novel of the same name, which incidentally becomes like a bible to them, as they quote it in order to navigate the narrative.

“

...an adventure story with all the pleasingly predictable elements: the drama, the troubled teenager, the love interest..."

Johnson and his son, Sean, accompanied by an inhabitant of a nearby island and his daughter, embark on a journey based on the novel’s teachings. They reach an island full of wonder and CGI in

writing duo that already brought you The Prince and Me and Raising Helen.

And helming is Ken Kwapis, director of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and He’s Just Not That Into You. This is the stuff of family movie nights and playful dates - exactly what people buy on DVD. However, it’s not all sunshine and high star ratings. There are familiar and ultimately boring tropes abound: Tradition versus progress. People from Greenpeace are irredeemably annoying. Love prevails. But then you see a shot of some gray whales swimming around underwater and, dammit, we love whales.

This movie can turn a hockey rink into a swimming pool faster than you can say Minnesota North Stars.

Sometimes it’s hilarious and sometimes you want to strangle Drew Barrymore, but by the time someone has to lick someone else’s eyelids to unfreeze them you’re pretty much invested. Bet you a pack of bubble gum, you’ll be glad you watched.

Zack O'Leary Reviewed at Cineworld which all large animals are small and all small animals are large whilst the Rock remains enormous.

After finding Sean’s grandfather, they soon learn the island is the underwater city of Atlantis that is due to sink back into the deepest reaches of the ocean, meaning they have to immediately leave the island they travelled so arduously to reach.

What follows is an adventure story with all the pleasingly predictable elements: the drama, the troubled teenager, the love interest and the strained, yet comical, relationship between grandfather and stepfather.

If that wasn’t enough it's also packed full of shots of Johnson’s biceps and pecs, which are high budget visuals in themselves.

The film is for kids, acted by kids and evidently written by kids too; so it’s obviously targeting a family friendly audience. But even by those criteria it's not up to the standard of any of the recent Pixar or Dreamworks animations. The film is another fine example that 3D and special effects are no substitute for story and dialogue, even though the makers clearly tried their hardest to disprove this fact.

Although some of the 3D and effects are quite impressive, they're nothing more than a façade that fails to cover up the inadequacies of the rest of the film.

American genre were made, not

by Americans, but by Europeans.

The Spaghetti Westerns provide us with some of the celebrated films of the western genre, but what might be considered cliché today was once revolutionary.

The backdrop of the American wilderness provided fertile ground for storytelling. Filmmakers were able to utilise historical narratives such as the Gold Rush, the birth of the railroads and the Mexican and Civil Wars – as well as treating the era as a blank canvas where, narratively, anything could happen. But by the 1960s, the Western genre was saturated and hackneyed; tales of courageous lawmen preserving the Manifest Destiny way out west had become routine.

Out of the hundreds of Western films made in the 50s and 60s, only a few truly stand out – The Tall Men, The Searchers and Rio Bravo.

The Spaghetti Westerns revived the Western genre – turning the archetypal characters upside down and experimenting with new cinematic techniques.

The term itself comes from the Italian filmmakers who created the movement, in particular Sergio Leone – director of the Dollars trilogy. Inspired in part by Japanese samurai flicks such as Yojimbo and Seven Samurai – the phenomenon of the ‘man with no name’, is now a staple part of the gunslinger’s diet thanks to the performances of Clint Eastwood in the Dollars trilogy and Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time In The West, Leone’s most famous works.

The righteous sheriffs and demonic apaches were replaced by merciless bounty hunters and vengeant drifters. Whilst the addition of the anti-hero added a new dimension to characters, it also came from a desire to show what a gritty, bloodthirsty and savage arena the Old West could be. Leone’s finest films – For a Fistful of Dollars, For Few Dollars More and the epic The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – explored scenarios forged by rapacious capitalist overlords, brutal desert bandit kings and endless civil war. The protagonists circling each other with bared revolvers are driven by greed and hatred, not some abstract desire for justice. Hell, at one point Eastwood kills six guys just for insulting his donkey.

Scored by Ennio Morricone’s instantly recognisable soundtracks, the Spaghetti Westerns tore away the patriotic veil draped around the stories of the Old West and replaced it with a darker, truer, blood-stained vision. Or as the narrator for the trailer of For A Few Dollars More put it: “a land where life has no value, but death might have a price”.

Sam Bradley

Daniel Scott Lintott Reviewed at Cineworld

13/02/2012 03:31:37

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

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26 Music 26

From Glasgow with love

Joel White gets the train across the Clyde to experience the city’s Celtic Connections festival, now in its eighteenth year

beards and spittle-stung voices of the Shetlands give way to Malian, Middle Eastern and Latin lilts. Yet it is an event renowned for its collaborations, for finding the shared musical grammar amongst supposed contrasts. Bonnie Prince Billy is a modern Johnny Cash, a man who seems to not so much write songs as summon them, full of darkness, sex, dust and fear; channelled through a wavering, cracked voice which never quite settles, never quite strains. Orchestra Baobab are arguably the most influential and widely celebrated Senegalese dance band of the last 40 years: an 11 piece lesson in musicianship, in West African riffs, Wolof Griot vocal magic and Cuban rhythms. Both bands have a rare mastery and appreciation of the musical histories they exist in. They both ply their trade in a slightly under-theradar fashion and for two consecutive nights on a brisk weekend in January, they both grace the stages of Glasgow’s gorgeous Fruit Market.

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Bonnie gyrates around the stage like some huge daddy long-legs, all flailing feet and flowing beard” Will Oldham, or “Steamboat Willie Bonnie Prince of All This Shit” as Jeffrey Lewis once termed him, is a man of few spoken words and many monikers. Last time I saw him live, in a cramped tent in Denmark while a hailstorm raged all around, he played a set of almost entirely jaunty country tunes from his early 1990s Palace

Singles

BONNIE BOY: The Celtic Connections headliner is an aural delight for Glasgow's alt-rock crowd Music days; for this gig he sticks largely to the sparse, vocal beauty of recent album Wolfroy Goes to Town and slightly less recent records with Emmett Kelly’s Cairo Gang. This is stuff which will only ever exist in the dreams of the Mumfords of this world, and probably in their nightmares too.

There’s a peculiarly English feel to the harmonising and slight-sheen of the arrangements, something Oldham references in his proclamations of awe at having seen June Tabor, Martin Simpson and Dick Gaughan play at the festival the previous night. He even performs the folk staple “I Never Thought My Love Would Leave Me” in a tribute. A few songs in, as the almost Burt Bacharach-esque piano reverberates around the hall, I wonder if things are getting too safe, too clean. Yet a droning harmonium-and-

C

ONE BEAR: That's all.

26_Music.indd 1

voice rendition of glorious new ballad “Black Captain,” followed by the wonderful lilting Americana of “New Partner,” the only Palace-era tune of the set, pulls me back from the brink.

The silent captivation of the audience attests similarly, through two hours, featuring songs from nine different albums, and is punctuated only by the creaking floorboards of the Fruit Market balcony and the occasional well timed heckle, “Cheer Up Billy!” Cheer up he does, lending a surprisingly upbeat jangle to undisputed classic “I See a Darkness” and a redemptive encore of “Easy Does It” and Merle Haggard’s “Because of Your Eyes.” “Loretta Lynn always said to finish on an up,” he says in way of a goodbye, “and who am I to argue?”

Bonnie gyrates around the stage like some huge daddy long-legs, all flail-

ing feet and flowing beard. I’m struck by how similar his prancing is to that of the Orchestra Baobab boys who’d stood in his place the night before, each of their solos peppered by a selection of dance-offs, a remarkable contorting of surely sexagenarian knees. There’s an infectious joy to the whole of Baobab’s set: singers come and go, instruments are swapped, smiles abound, the relentless Afro-Cuban rhythms keep the audience in a steady, exuberant sway.

Guitarist Barthelemy Attisso, apparently a part-time lawyer and certainly looking like one, is a genuinely incredible player; one of the best I’ve ever seen. Each of the four vocalists have the kind of effortlessly resonating, rich, vast voices that can only be honed by years of having to stand out in a tenpiece club band. The ska upstrokes of “Bul Ma Miin” and mournful swagger

CHILDISH GAMBINO

WILL.I.AM

THE 2 BEARS

All the Shine Glassnote Records

T.H.E Interscope

Be Strong Southern Fried

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omedian-by-day Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, is a pretty divisive name in rap these days. While many have fallen for his often-hilarious barrage of cultural references alongside surprisingly complex emotional themes, some remain skeptical about his Lil’ Wayne beats and Kanye-level douchiness. "All The Shine," taken from last year’s Camp, sees Glover take on a huge R&B hook while bringing the trademark impassioned delivery that made his Freaks and Geeks EP such a runaway success in 2010.

Opening up with a slow-burning beat that reveals a stadium-sized guitar hook, Gambino goes in with conflicting lyrics about his rise to fame and childhood. He takes digs at Pitchfork, Curren$y and Ashton Kutcher and displaying impressive vocal chops on the chorus. Working within the context of a radio single, Gambino shows again and again why he’s such a unique performer- constantly putting down tracks that prove him to be one of the most interesting rappers in the game.

Emmett Cruddas

P

otential winner of ‘Most bizarre cameo of 2012’ award: how could rock god Mick Jagger complement the electro stylings of the Black Eyed Peas’ front man? Bluntly put, he doesn’t. Despite ditching his bandmates, “T.H.E.” covers no new territory in terms of the disposable ‘club anthems’ that Black Eyed Peas have been churning out over the past few years. Will.I.Am’s rapping is embarrassingly crude, rhyming ‘thesis’ with ‘faeces’, and his lyrics are certainly more suited to the latter of these categories. J.Lo fares no better: her voice is so heavily butchered by autotune that she loses any vocal identity. The much-hyped Jagger cameo is anticlimactic and cringe-inducingly incongruous to the song’s generic electro beat, coming across gimmicky and equally as nonsensical as Will.I.Am’s rapping efforts. The saving grace of this song is the catchy chorus; it will undoubtedly do well in clubs, conjuring images of chanting lairy boys’ sports clubs- ‘hardly’ the image intended.

Mairi Innes

RICHARD BULL, BBC

eltic Connections has a beguilC ingly diverse 18 days, 300 events and 2,100 musicians. The biggest

I

f you go down to the woods today, you’ll be a bit surprised to find Raf Rundell and Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard turning their paws to some exuberant 80s house. The self-proclaimed ursine enthusiasts have joined forces to form The 2 Bears - pioneering the genre’s revival, grizzly-style. Be Strong invites you to hold hands with these two cubs as they frolic off on a musical dance adventure spanning hip hop, bass, 2step and UK garage.

Packed with amusing little growly vocals, the tracks have a light-hearted quality but take the musical element seriously. “Ghosts and Zombies” has an eeriness that feels like you’ve stepped into a haunted mansion, while “Time in Mind” plugs a curiously pleasant country & western vibe. Embracing the ears is “Bear Hug,” in which Raf ’s charmingly geezerish vocals will leave a smile on your face ("I ain’t here to chirpse / just wanna give you a bear hug.") With its synthy, dreamy chorus, “Warm and Easy” could be some sort of psychedelic 2-step garage, whereas “Be

of “Dee Moo Woor,” both from 2001’s triumphant comeback record Specialists in all Styles, serve as highlights; as does the stripped back rumba of “Coumba,” a song apparently written by front-man Rudy Gomis in dedication to his first wife, on the day of their divorce. There’s an engaging sense of soap opera to the whole thing, a trio of younger guys occasionally burst out for a dance and each time Attisso politely storms off stage, only to return for another euphoric solo a few minutes later. Virtuoso tenor saxophonist Issa Cissoko veers from beaming encouragement to an almost menacingly intense scowl. Yet the sound never falters: crisp, clear and tight, brilliantly captured by the vast wooden walls and roof of the old Fruit Market. Throughout the two hours of Baobab’s set, I find myself inadvertently dancing with Shaun The Sheep, albeit in rucksack form, strapped to the back of the woman ahead of me. His head never once stops bobbing.

There’s no such woolly fashion in the trim beards and plaid shirts of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s cool alt-folk crowd, but a similar sense of reverence, of people appreciating musicians with decades of great output behind them. Whereas Bonnie absorbs his audience through the dark corners of their conscious, Baobab go straight for the hips. Both fit perfectly into the brilliant Celtic Connections program and are worth routing out and discovering if you have not yet. This is a festival which offers contrast; a weekend of dancing sheep, dapper Senegalese legends, brooding American beard-baiting; yet proves a wonderful common ground, however geographically disparate. Even the post-gig wailing buskers and flying chips of a late night in Glasgow can’t dislodge the sense of something quite special.

Strong” endorses full-on fist-pumping house with unashamedly ecstatic lyrics ("give the music all your loving.")

“Work” gives a wry nod to the very same genre ("You gotta work!") whilst the melody spirals downwards, giving an ironic reminder of current economic hardships. Although the tracks pertain from a variety of genres, what unifies this album is the crowd-friendly nature of the songs; they conjure up the collective euphoria experienced towards the end of a night.

"I believe that house can be a secular spiritual experience when it’s done right," Goddard stated in an interview, and final track “Church” undeniably verifies this claim. Like a gospel chorus, the refrain “Hey now hey now / Let’s get up together” evokes a religiousness that promotes optimism and togetherness. That’s essentially what this album is all about – escapism and unity through music, but worked through in a novel and jokey manner. At the risk of sounding like some arbitrary house lyrics, The 2 Bears transform the dancefloor into the new place of worship.

Felicity Martin

13/02/2012 03:32:18

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Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Music 27

STAR RATING  Alison Goldfrapp as a wolf Joe Goddard in a bear suitBjork's swan dressDanger MouseJustin Timberlake as a bass-playing dolphin

Albums

CLOUD NOTHINGS Attack On Memory CARPARK

GOLDFRAPP

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Singles MUTE PARLOPHONE

hat was once Dylan Baldi’s W bedroom recording project has evolved fully into the dynamic three-

 oldfrapp’s new album Singles G showcases the best of their work so far. Somehow Alison Goldfrapp’s

sultry voice smoothes over her partner Will Gregory’s dance beats and multilayered synthesiser to give the ultimate in ambient simplicity.

“Strict Machine” was released as a single almost ten years ago, a revolving disco rhythm cutting under Alison’s intensely S&M lyrics that are a confusion of sex and machines, love and commands. The band have since experimented with a lot of genres; mixing them with Gregory’s synthesiser to inject their own style into synthpop, disco, glam rock and dance music.

The vocals in “Ooh la la” are the sexiest to be heard, wanton words being whispered sulkily into the rising electric guitar. The way Alison's voice can transform from the soprano in “Strict Machine” to the sultry deep tones in this single can only be compared with one lead singer before her: Deborah Harry of Blondie.

The playful lyrics on the spacey track “Rocket” jump around on the

AKRON/FAMILY JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW Early In The Morning VAGRANT

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W

ith this debut album, James Vincent McMorrow gives Justin Vernon a run for his money as king of the alternative folk scene. “Early In The Morning” boasts the same catchy melodies and open spaces as Vernon’s

GOLDEN SKIES: Matching her hair colour to the horizon synthpop beats that could have leapt straight out of the eighties. This song champions the scorned woman kicking her scoundrel lover out the door- her confidence an uplifting complement to the rest of the track.

Most of the songs in Singles have already been tested in the decade that Goldfrapp have been on and off the radio waves, but the album has two new tracks that do not disappoint. “Yellow Halo” is slow to start, but warms up when the bass speeds up and high, breathy vocals disappear into the wistfulness of Alison's voice and lyrics.

The new track “Melancholy Sky” triumphs as the best song on the album, beating all their time-tested classics.

It's a husky ballad where the quivering keyboard synths and tambourine taps build up to swell into a strong chorus that is somehow optimistic through the moody lyrical feel.

Singles proves why Goldfrapp are now celebrating a decade of musical success, providing a retrospective of the best of their beats-infused music complemented by Alison’s unique whispering vocals.

Nina Seale

debut For Emma, Forever Ago, but it possesses one element that was largely absent from that album: spirit.

Vernon’s voice, in all its falsetto beauty, cannot manage anything quite like the cathartic finale of “If Had A Boat.” McMorrow’s opening track starts off quietly, but slowly build to a whirlwind of guitar as he earnestly sings, “If I had a boat, I would sail to you / hold you in my arms, ask you to be true.” The slight grit that creeps into his voice is reminiscent of gravelly

folk-rocker Ray LaMontagne; both singers latch onto that slight edge in their voice and employ it to build emotional highs and lows.

The best track on the album is another slow-burner, “We Don’t Eat,” which ends with a similarly cathartic release. The other aspect of McMorrow’s work that this tune highlights is his knack for details. Rippling over and under the mix is a single piano note, which lays triplets over the common time of the song. Those notes, which feel like slight missteps, provide the perfect uneasy detail for the beginning of the song.

McMorrow nails the pause towards the end of “From The Woods,” before he catapults into the outro, shouting— as if it were a real warning call—“From the woods / from the woods / they are coming from the woods!”

Although there is some real dynamic difference between a rollicking track like “Sparrow And The Wolf ” and a slower one like “Early In The Morning, I’ll Come Calling,” the only problem with the album is that the sound palette used by McMorrow is not as extensive as it could be. Looking to the variety on Bon Iver’s sophomore album, McMorrow could certainly incorporate more diverse instrumentation.

IRISH FIELDS: McMorrow shows off the rugged rural look

VAN HALEN A Different Kind of Truth INTERSCOPE

 hen Van Halen announced last W year that they were working on an album with David Lee Roth for the

first time in 28 years, there were a lot of critics who said it wouldn’t work – suggesting that they would fall out again, they wouldn’t have any new material, they wouldn’t ever finish it and so on.

A year later, the band has defied the doubters to bring out A Different Kind of Truth.

Fortunately, the album moves away from the Sammy Hagar version of Van Halen and is largely based on the

27_Music.indd 1

band’s early material from the 1970s.

Gone are the days of power ballads and synthesisers: this is an album of good, old fashioned hard rock.

This isn’t just a rip-off of their own past though, with “You and Your Blues,” “Honeybabysweetiedoll,” “Stay Frosty” and the new single “Tattoo” all a bit different, showing some originality with a different tempo or style to them. The problem though is that these are probably the weakest tracks on the album as they just don’t match the high level of energy which makes the rest of the album so enjoyable. The band’s return to the original (winning) formula is best exemplified by “Blood and Fire,” which combines Roth’s wailing vocals over the band’s backing, the crashing of cymbals before a typically ear melting solo. The riffs keep coming

(with a one minute-plus solo on each track), with an intense, metal edge to them and Roth’s vocals at their best.

The album ends very strongly with “Big River” and “Beats Workin," both of which borrow especially heavily from the band’s old demo tracks, making you completely forget about the slightly disappointing opening.

A Different Kind of Truth is not perfect and it is hard to imagine they will ever hit the heights of 1984 again.

That doesn’t mean that this is a bad album though. The better tracks clearly play to the band’s strengths of screeching vocals, brain-winkling guitar solos and more energy than a nuclear power plant. Hopefully, they can build on this album which exceeds expectations overall.

Sean Douglass

piece of Cloud Nothings. Earlier releases showcased Baldi’s knack for an indie rock melody, but coupled with the production of grunge pioneer Steve Albini, Cloud Nothings have put together a snappy yet exploratory rock record with all the hallmarks of a classic.

Baldi’s vocals are the element that makes the band's sound instantly recognisable, switching between Stephen Malkmus-esque half-singing and the most vicious howls this side of the Pixies’ Doolittle. While his vocals may not to be everyone’s taste, they certainly make for an unforgettable listen, hearing someone barely 20 years old unleashing such savage punk songs.

The album’s lead single, "Stay Useless," is one to truly stick in your head with a classic fist-pumping chorus and shoutalong melody matched with great breezy guitar riffs and chugging bass.

Albini’s presence is definitely felt on songs like this, with all the instruments not necessarily playing at full volume, but with the threat that they could get monstrously loud at any moment hanging in the air throughout the record.

OF MONTREAL Paralytic Stalks POLYVINYL

 e’ve all, at some point, used a W word in an essay we don't know the meaning of- we just decided to

stick it in because it sounded good.

In Of Montreal’s overwordy Paralytic Stalks, songster Kevin Barnes uses the same technique, and the result is a host of songs with names like "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff " and "Exorcismic Breeding Knife." They serve the double purpose of causing Barnes to sound like he’s swallowed a thesaurus and making absolutely no sense.

A dream for indie kids who want to confuse anyone who has the audacity to glance over at their ipod’s screen, Of Montreal’s eleventh album is populated by over-long, formless songs whose lyrics are just as difficult to parse as their titles. Although, having accepted this as progressive ‘noise band’ music, we can perhaps ignore the slow wind-up of each track, the odd section with a rhythm completely alien to the remainder of the song, we can even for-

This is true of its power-pop tunes like this and closer "Cut You" (think Dinosaur Jr fronted by Michael Stipe), one of the strongest songs in a relentlessly muscular album.

“

A snappy yet exploratory rock record with all the hallmarks of a classic” Lyrically, Attack on Memory addresses themes always present in this style of indie rock, from Nirvana to Yuck, but the biggest departure from Cloud Nothings’ previous records is definitely a musical progression. Albini’s perfect production defies their lo-fi label, while the extension of the band’s lineup makes for some truly astonishing jams. Drums, bass and guitars lock into a great punky groove on nearly every song, and when they don’t, something far more exciting is going on. The instrumental "Separation" and the 8 minute "Wasted Days" have the moments that really make this record, showcasing some incredible guitar playing and a perfect execution of a style pioneered by bands like Hüsker Dü. Not only have Cloud Nothings come on leaps and bounds with Albini in tow, they’ve also written one of the most impressive rock albums of recent memory that always packs a punch.

Emmett Cruddas give the bagpipes on the closing track.

BON IVER a thir"Authentic Pyrrhic Remission," teen-minute rock-opera of a song, supposedly addresses aspects of Barnes’s bipolar mental state. This, once fed into the seven-piece rock band’s rehearsal space, has produced an album with as many endings as Lord of the Rings and nearly as many characters.

Amongst all of this are some surprisingly insightful lyrics and very danceable beats. "Dour Percentage," for example, opens with a horde of echoing drums and flute music, which leads into a Beegees falsetto and a chorus of “You inhabit your own personal ghetto.” Elsewhere in "Malefic Dowry," we’re told “love is not a debtor’s prison; you don’t have to serve a sentence to pay back what you’ve been given.” Unhappy relationships and mental fragility are themes which stumble through the maze of noise and rhythm offered by the remainder of the album, and a second or third listen will make them easier to find. But until this point, genuine feeling is lost in experimentalism and the listener’s need to rush to dictionary. com to understand a word that's said.

Jenni Adjerian

O-F-M-O-N-T-R...: That's enough of the Village People reference

13/02/2012 03:33:13

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Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

28 Music A classic romance

latmates out? Check. Table for F two set? Check. Mood lighting? Check. One thing’s missing: music. This Valentine's Day have a listen to this selection of the very best of classical romantic gems.

Prelude in D Major (Richter) – Sergei Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no.2, Movement II (Larghetto) – Frederic Chopin Aprés un Rêve (for cello) – Gabriel Fauré Un Sospiro – Franz Liszt Le Cygne (Carnival of the Animals) – Camille Saint-Saens Piano Concerto no. 2, movement II (Andante) – Dmitri Shostakovich Serenade For Strings, Elegie: Larghetto Elegiac – Pytor Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Movement 2 (Adagio) – Felix Mendelssohn E Lucevan Le Stelle (from Tosca, sung by Jonas Kaufmann) – Giacomo Puccini Piano Sonata in B flat (Brendel) – Franz Schubert Heidi Lough

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Live FRIGHTENED RABBIT Avalanche Record Shop Friday 10th February

 n a usual day, visitors to AvaO lanche Records will notice a lowlevel buzz about the place; nonchalant

customers flicking through vinyls, eagle-eyed EP hunters rifling through racks of CDs and the band of the week playing on the sound-system. Last Friday though, Avalanche went up a few decibels.

The murmur of the shop floor was replaced with the excited conversations of around 300 Frightened Rabbit fans, who’d come down to the west end of the Grassmarket to catch one of Scotland’s best and most underrated acts play in its capital city’s best and most underrated record store.

“

There's an unguarded, raw quality to Frightened Rabbit's songs” They were modest about it though, introducing themselves with a quick “hello, we’re three fifths of Frightened Rabbit.” Although the band was depleted for this performance, the full complement would be present for their show later that night at the HMV Picturehouse.

Whilst the tickets were free, donations were encouraged to the Cystinosis Foundation, a charity that the band supports.

WARMING UP: Frightened Rabbit play Avalanche before their evening show There’s an unguarded, raw quality to Frightened Rabbit’s songs even when polished up and recorded; when heard live and acoustic, Scott Hutchinson’s wavering, frail voice sounds like it’s near to cracking. There’s an element of confession in Hutchinson’s songwriting – almost uncomfortably evident when he introduced a new song by telling the audience “…well, I wrote this last Boxing Day, pretty soon after she left me.” But hearing tracks like “Modern Leper” and “Square 9” played with such emotion is a special thing to experience, and something you just

wouldn’t get at a bigger venue.

The band were more talkative with the audience there too, chatting idly whilst they tuned up in the breaks. In an age when musicians are split between the twin camps of hyper-cool standoffishness and gushing sentiment, it was refreshing to listen to a set from some actual human beings.

Intimate venues tend to lose their charm when overcrowded, though, and Avalanche was pretty packed on Friday. For most of the set, I found myself wanting to grievously assault the idiotic 17-year old in front of me for talking

over the music, but I refrained whilst surrounded by polite company. All that fades away though when you hear “Living In Colour,” “My Backwards Walk” or “The Loneliness” hurled out with such verve and passion. When they play, it’s as though Frightened Rabbit have forgotten there’s an audience in the room, like they’re just playing for themselves, like the oxygen might run out any second and there’s no better way to breathe it then singing. Not a performance you can forget easily.

Sam Bradley

13/02/2012 03:40:19

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Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

29

STAR RATING Queen VictoriaQueen Elizabeth IIQueen Elizabeth IQueen Mary Queen Empress Matilda

10 0'Clock Dive

LOST

&

FOUND

Alistair Grant sees no improvement following recent developments on 10 O'Clock Live

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1

0 O’Clock Live brings together four well-known talents at the top of their game (Lauren Laverne, David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr and Charlie Brooker), allows them to roam freely through the latest news and current affairs in a live setting and yet still somehow manages to disappoint.

Riding on the success of the Alternative Election Night in 2010, Channel 4 decided to run with the format and introduced 10 O’Clock Live as a weekly satirical look at the vital issues playing out in the media in early 2011. While ambitious, with the talent attached the show seemed set for success – and to be fair to 10 O’Clock Live, its viewing figures have remained steady despite open criticism from many quarters.

All the basic ingredients are there - spirited debate, farcical comedy, scathing one-liners, and yet the finished product feels somehow deflated and a bit awkward. The live format gives a strained, tense atmosphere to proceedings; with presenters such as Carr, whose act is particularly reliant

THE DIAMOND QUEEN BBC 1 Mondays, 9pm

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I

t does not seem unreasonable to expect that as prominent a political journalist as Andrew Marr to have more sense than to present a 60-minute documentary praising every possible aspect of the Queen and her career. The Diamond Queen is hardly the balanced, opinionated piece of work we’d expect from a former Independent editor and BBC political correspondent.

Marr takes a look at Elizabeth II’s life and responsibilities, spanning from her birth in the tumultuous twenties to her modern day role as “grandmother of the state.”

When Marr approaches the Queen’s life as a piece of history, his skill at narration and passing comment serves him well- providing a fascinating journalistic documentary.

This is supplemented by some of the footage Marr has gotten hold of, which really is quite fascinating; particularly, those showing Elizabeth and Margaret as children- playing games in the palace and the harrowing clips of her father, King George V, before and after World War II, that demonstrate the toll it took on him.

However, this historical majesty is interspersed with a ridiculous amount of bullshit. The phrase “she is taken for granted” is used so often as to lose all meaning, which is unfortunate.

If Marr had simply shown us all the work the Queen does without ramming it down our throats, the message would have had a far greater impact.

In all, the documentary was just

29_TV.indd 1

so close to being a lovely, interesting account of the life of a woman. As Marr aptly pointed out, Elizabeth II enables a sense of continuity within Britain, by being able to remember all the “come and go politicians” and the various events and scandals which have been dealt with and in many cases forgotten about.

“

However, this historical majesty is interspersed with a ridiculous amount of bullshit."

However, Marr offers us very little to actually sink our teeth into, presenting a completely one-sided argument. Various historians, biographers, members of the royal family chat to Marr, but essentially they’re all saying the same thing. The criticisms of the royal family, which are certainly prominent and relevant today, are not addressed and treated as if they don’t exist.

There is no doubt that as an 85year old great-grandmother, Elizabeth II, is a trooper. She is excellent at what she does (fake smiles, small talk, chatting to the Prime Minister every week), and Marr shows this effectively and entertainingly; supported by the fantastic production values that are customary for BBC documentaries.

Yet The Diamond Queen misses the opportunity to address a topical and fascinating debate; getting lost in its own self-importance and unfortunately losing much of its appeal along the way.

Zoe Blah

bate about the cult of football. It turns out to be a genuinely entertaining, spirited and insightful confrontation.

Gone is the stilted, under-rehearsed atmosphere of the rest of the show; replaced instead by Mitchell, the best thing on the show, at his spluttering best tackling his two guests with characteristic harassed bemusement.

The main problem with 10 O’Clock Live is that it has the clear potential to

be so much more. With such obvious talent attached - many of them adept at prising apart the ridiculous in contemporary life - it should really be a lot more funny and natural than it is.

The producers admitted the first series was flawed and promised to address these issues; yet, if this first episode is anything to go by, not much seems to have changed at all really. This is a genuine, crying shame.

BBC

Channel 4 Wednesdays, 10pm

on fluid delivery, susceptible to awkward stumbles and breathy pauses.

Even just little details, such as the way the presenters walk to different areas of the stage to give individual diatribes to the camera, seem forced and artificial.

However, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the show's two elephantine problems: Carr’s dress-up sequences and Laverne. Carr’s dressup ‘comedy’ routines are some of the most asinine, childish and pathetic displays of writing on television. They are often borderline offensive and the notion that they share a platform with Brooker and Mitchell is downright insulting.

Laverne, on the other hand, is still noticeably out of her depth. She simply can’t keep up with the other comedians and seems out of place and a bit lost. She often coming across as weirdly condescending, such as in her attack on the RBS bosses.

The programme achieves some sort of redemption, however, when it brings on guests to interact with the presenters. In the latest episode, the first of the second series, Alastair Campbell and chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Clark Carlisle, engage with Mitchell in a de-

SNUFFBOX BBC2 (2006) BBC iPlayer

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I

style of Judge Judy. But these moments were, thankfully, few and far between.

It perhaps isn’t a good show to watch if you’re squeamish. There’s nothing shown, but it’s almost worse hearing the descriptions (like the corpse invading mouse) or catching a glimpse of the healed scars on a self-harmer’s arms.

Overall, though, Death Unexplained is tragic and often oddly hilarious.

n a London gentlemen’s club, Rich Fulcher and Matt Berry drink whisky and read newspapers.

So far, so average British comedy.

They’re also, however, hangmen, deranged therapists, deaf vocalists, and time travellers. They’re also people who don’t seem to know who David Bowie is. WEIRD, RIGHT? Snuff Box is a dark sketch comedy just six episodes long, born from a friendship that blossomed on the set of the Mighty Boosh. Berry, who surely possesses one of the most hilarious voices on TV, writes and sings all of the music – and there’s a lot of it.

From the inspired theme tune, which gets stuck in your head for days, to the heavy and emotional ‘live sessions’ presented by Richard Ayoade, musical comedy is at the core of the show- showcasing the absurdity in its not-so-cryptic lyrics and ‘haunting’ synths.

They work seamlessly as a double act: Berry taking the reigns with his stern expressions and sociopathic tendencies; Fulcher as his uncertain assistant, prone to outbursts of rebellion. Recurring sketches include Matt being beaten up as he hunts for the perfect pair of silver cowboy boots (we’ve all been there), kicking dogs and dropping fish tanks because their pretty owners happen to have boyfriends.

There is not much point to this show beyond sheer ridiculousnessbut if that’s what you like from your telly, it’s perfect. Its two brilliantly funny friends having a laugh together; you can tell these half-baked ideas have been cooked up between takes for their more polished BBC productions, and that’s part of its charm. In episode 2, Rich finds Matt’s diary and reads chunks of it out, much to the amusement of the other club members. There is unfiltered, surreal, sexually bizarre imagery: “What about that time you got caught in your Dad’s study jerking off over a map of Scotland?” If you’re easily offended, Snuff Box may not be right for you. There are a couple of jokes that go too far; I still can’t come round to the idea that anal rape can be funny, so depending on whether you can overlook a few which might make your eyebrows raise- well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Overall though, despite Berry singing “You thought it was gold, but it was bronze,” Snuff Box is most definitely the former.

Katie Cunningham

Kirsty Wareing

ADMIRATION: Would you say we 're the best people on this show?

DEATH UNEXPLAINED BBC 1 Tuedays, 10:35pm

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D

eath is one of the most popular documentary subjects because it’s universal and thus fascinating to all. Police procedural drama (think Dexter, CSI or Bones) has long focused on the more gruesome and sadistic sides of death. BBC’s new show, Death Unexplained, combines these two genres - documentary and police procedural - and somehow makes it work.

Following the work of Alison Thompson, coroner for the busy West London district, the first episode deals with the stories behind three bodies: Fred, a man found dead in his flat weeks after dying; Petra, a woman who was poisoned by potassium cyanide; and Jessica, who overdosed on anti-depressants. It veers between explaining the technique behind forensic science and the more human side of the coroner business.

Each story is told kindly without becoming gratuitous or sentimental. On the pedestrian side, we hear jokes being told at funerals and the interviews with the relatives and friends of the deceased are sharp and honest. At its heart though, this is about the many, many people involved in processing the dead.

It’s amazing how strangely wonderful some of them are: there’s Olaf, the dissecting surgeon who loves his work, kind hearted, devoted morgue workers Dave and Lenny, and at the centre of it all, Alison Thompson- who’s pretty extraordinary. Caring, determined and filled with compassion, she is exactly the sort of person you’d want to talk to

during a crisis or after a tragedy.

It's these people who make the show - in particular, that they’re shown as nuanced enough to be appealing without becoming insincere. Olaf has amusing stories to tell about mice inside corpses. Alison laughs about what a shame it is that the court hearings aren’t public anymore. A morgue worker smiles about her daughter’s belief that she sends people to heaven.

They’re strangely funny, managing to smile despite the tragedy surrounding them.

The problems were stylistic: when it broke the sombre, straight-faced tone in favour of crime-show style, blue tinted zoom-in shots, it looked and felt too much like it was trying to be a drama - or worse, faux-drama in the

“

On the pedestrian side, we hear jokes being told at funerals and the interviews with the realtives and friends of the deceased are sharp and honest"

BBC

10 O'CLOCK LIVE

13/02/2012 03:41:07

Tuesday February 14 2012 studentnewspaper.org

Sport fan? Write for us! sport@studentnewspaper.org

30 Sport

Captaincy saga forces Fabio out

Injury Time

hypocrisy which threatened to take the English game back into its 80s nadir.

Terry should have faced a similar committee immediately, in order to reach a swift and satisfactory conclusion. In stripping him of the captaincy now, four months before he faces trial, the FA have put themselves in the awkward position of abandoning the “innocent until proven guilty” doctrine that supposedly underpins British Justice. Nevertheless, it was the only option available, even if it should have been taken months ago.

Bernstein said the FA “had to step up to the plate when strong leadership was required,” and he surely was right.

“

Disgraceful is the only word to describe the FA's complete lack of direction and leadership when its own captain faced charges of racism."

As for Capello, this was a job which he clearly no longer had any enthusiasm for. Given that the FA clearly had no enthusiasm for him in the job this was the logical decision, even if the timing is somewhat bizarre. Communication between his players and his employers were already strained, but had almost completely collapsed since right hand man Franco Baldini, fluent in English, had left for Roma. Clearly, he had seen

the writing on the wall. Performances at Wembley have been uninspiring, while the side has seemingly played without passion.

In the Italian’s defence, the last two years – since the catastrophe in South Africa – have given grounds for cautious optimism. Promising youngsters such as Phil Jones, Jack Wilshere and Kyle Walker have been successfully assimilated into the side, whilst the victory over Spain was the kind of tactical master class Capello was paid £6 million a year to provide.

Yet none of this can hide his stubbornness and autocratic tendencies both on and off the pitch that have proved so destructive. His reluctance to switch from his beloved 4-4-2 during the World Cup stifled his team and its most inspirational

player, (and surely, surely its next captain) Steven Gerrard, whilst his refusal to accept the FA’s stance on Terry threw the the English game into disrepute.

Ultimately, English football can now breathe a sigh of relief. It has nothing to lose at Euro 2012, as for once, no one expects anything. The line has finally been drawn under a turbulent regime and an even more turbulent race scandal, allowing the focus to revert to footballing matters. If Bernstein can continue to show such strong leadership and appoint a manager able to instil passion back into the shirt, English football, with its talented crop of youngsters and its impressive national football centre about to open, may be about to experience some ever so slightly brighter days.

ENGLAND JOB: Capello has left a vacancy after his resignation

PAULBLANK

THE FA doesn’t have a motto, but if it did, you would assume it would be something along the lines of “Madness, Utter Madness,” such is the way it conducts its affairs. It is almost impossible to imagine another nation on the planet which would allow its manager to leave his post three months before the beginning of a major tournament, having topped their qualifying group and recently beaten the current World and European Champions.

Nevertheless, this week appears to have been something of a watershed moment, when after months of embarrassing dithering, the FA, under the firm hand of chairman David Bernstein, has finally taken control of the racism scandal that had thrown preparations for Euro 2012 into a state of complete chaos. What on the surface appears to be a crisis has actually left England in, as Bernstein put it, “a much better place than we appear to be.”

One of English football’s finest hours was its determination and conviction in eradicating racism from the game, and when it reared its ugly head again in the Luis Suarez scandal, it was quick to act.

The committee set up to investigate those fateful moments in the Kop goalmouth was remarkably thorough and sensitive to the cultural nuances of the case. The verdict, however, sent out a refreshingly clear message: “‘Not on our pitches.”

Disgraceful is the only word, then, to describe its complete lack of direction and leadership when its own captain faced the same charges. While Suarez twiddled his thumbs for eight games, Terry retained the national armband and his place at the heart of Chelsea’s defence. It was utter

Ice Man looking cool on return to F1

Phil Leonard believes Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus impressed at pre-season testing in Jerez is much data gathering and cars are put through certain tests. However, there is an opportunity for drivers to really open up and push the car to its limits. It is at this point that we can have a glimpse of how the season might unfold. And there are good stories all round.

Having suffered a torrid 2011, Ferrari were fastest on the last day of Practice in Jerez. Only a day after Felipe Massa said that the car needed a lot of

ICE MAN: Raikkonen is performing well on his return to F1

30_Sport.indd 1

MATTHIAS V.D. ELBE

THE FORMULA One season is upon us again and, on paper, it looks extremely exciting. There is the return of the Ice Man, Kimi Raikkonen, in a field containing six other world champions and more new rules that will, in theory, make the season more exciting.

Testing is not a place where definitive assumptions about the season can be made. Teams are seeing how their cars will behave away from computer simulations and wind tunnels. There

work, Fernando Alonso went round in 1:18.887. The car is quick, but if Ferrari are to return to the heights of the Michael Schumacher era they need to ensure that they do not succumb to the technical difficulties thatplagued them throughout last season.

For Lotus, testing was also good.

On the first day, Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap; showing that two years of rallying have not affected the former world champion’s cool head and his raw pace. But it remains to be seen whether he can set continuously quick lap times under race day pressure. If the previously impervious Michael Schumacher struggled, you may expect Raikkonen to as well.

The news got better for Lotus though; as, not only did they complete more laps than any other team on the fourth day of testing, but their rookie, Romain Grosjean, was quick and consistent. Lotus have potentially got a very potent mixture of a well designed car, the experience of a former world champion and a rookie who is seemingly comfortable with the pace and pressure of an F1 car. However, the arrival of the season proper in March and the pressures that brings will truly tell whether Lotus have what it takes.

McLaren have gone for a design that is totally different from the other cars this year and with Lewis Hamilton having, supposedly, sorted out his head- they could also enjoy a profitable season. Hamilton and Button seem to have fixed their early difficulties and if they work together as a close team, they could improve upon last season and really challenge Red Bull. Their testing went well. Nothing spectacular,

but enough to show that McLaren will once again challenge for the top spot.

“

If anyone is going to beat Vettel to the world title then they need to find the pace, quality and consistency that Red Bull have - and more."

However, the team to beat, once again, will be Red Bull. They have the lethal combination of two top class drivers, a superb team around them and, the most important thing, pure pace. They tested very well and although there were no quickest times or exceptional runs, they have clearly put together another superb package for the 2012 season. The whole feeling around Red Bull is that they are a team that is completely synchronised.

They work well together and it shows in their victory in the past two world championships. If anyone is going to beat Vettel to the world title and Red Bull to the constructors championship then they need to find the pace, quality and consistency that Red Bull have – and more.

People will once again ask if winning world titles is more about the car or the driver. There is no definitive answer to that question. But the 2012 season is set to be closer and more exciting than ever before with Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Lotus all looking good.

It is going to go right to the wire.

TAKES A WRY LOOK AT THE WORLD OF SPORT

“Only Englishmen need apply”was the message for managers this week as the FA were once again searching for a coach after Don Fabio upped sticks and rushed back to Italia jobless. John Terry’s removal as England Captain was the final straw for Capello who could no longer work under the tortuous £6 million-a-year conditions the FA had imposed upon him.

‘Arry “Can’t Write My Own Name” Redknapp was immediately installed as bookie’s favourite; it was no wonder after the prominent Jamie Redknapp quickly offered his support.

The London media flooded the back pages with joyous headlines riddled with xenophobia in an attempt to persuade the FA that any non-English candidate was simply not welcome: being Blighty born and bred, ‘Arry was naturally the people’s choice.

The people had seemingly listened to the highly influential voice of Michael Owen who took time out of his busy horse-racing schedule to tweet: “Surely we will stick to an Englishman as our next manager.

And that should run right through the squad from players to the tea lady IMO.” Michael is of course absolutely right – I mean foreigners can’t make a good old English cuppa. Cast out those wretched aliens who are ruining the teas at Wembley for a pittance and instead replace them with some lazy Englishmen, but pay them double because they speak the queen’s and they can make a damn good brew!

I don’t want the best candidate for any job, I want an Englishman. Tell Guus Hiddink and Jose Mourinho to piss off and manage their own countries; we just don’t need their lot here.

Capello’s inability to learn some basic English swearwords, as well as his decisions as manager, rightly created this resentment of foreigners. A 67% win ratio, the best ever for the national team manager, was a terrible return for a man who had been asked to win 100% of games. Maybes his win percentage would have improved had the infamous Capello Index survived just a little bit longer.

The tabloids publish stories about which slapper Ryan Giggs has managed to coax back to his sister-in-law’s flat and which granny Wayne Rooney has his sights set upon, but I’ll be damned if Capello can make it public knowledge how he believes our players are playing. How dare he try and rate OUR English – not HIS Italian – but OUR English players on their on-field performances. It’s only their job for Christ sake Fabio – why don’t you give them a break? It’s not like they get paid shitloads a week is it.

Barry Fry summed up the English public’s views by venting his fury at foreigners live on TV, singing the praises of English candidates and shouting at any foreigner who dare apply. If ‘Arry doesn’t get the job then Barry should get it, or proud Englishman Davie Boy Cameron (he could double-up on jobs, plus make it easier for 'Arry to get more into his offshore accounts). Or even give it to a nice strong cup of breakfast tea – I mean that’s about as English as you can get.

So goodbye and good riddance Don Fabio. [Clenches fist in an angry and provocative manner and shouts:] “Typical bloody foreigner!”

Chris Waugh

13/02/2012 03:42:24

“

a b is ."

Phil Smith is dismayed by the FA's inconsistent approach to racism issues

Sport

studentnewspaper.org

Tuesday February 14 2012

No captain, no coach, no leadership.

Phil Smith unpicks the FA's role in the departure of John Terry and Fabio Capello �30

Volleyballers maintain faultless form

TALLER, FASTER, STRONGER: The firsts continue their perfect run Women's Volleyball BUCS Scottish 2A Edinburgh 1st Edinburgh 2nd

25 25 25 6 15 20

NO SURPRISES were sprung in the all-Edinburgh volleyball encounter between the women’s first and second teams on Sunday – with the favourites overwhelming their understudies to maintain their perfect BUCS record

CHARLES CUTTERIDGE

Edinburgh women's firsts too strong for their understudies as they march towards the top flight

this season.

The win makes it eight out of eight for the University’s most in-form team, who have already guaranteed a swift return to the top division after a tumultuous campaign lead to relegation last season.

They sit a massive 15 points clear of second-placed Stirling with just two games to play, and captain Eilidh Anderson believes they are once again ready to take on top-class opposition.

“We’re a different team this year,

much improved from last season,” she said.

“We lost our coach and our captain last year and the team just fell apart, but we’ve got some new players and a settled side now.

“It’s great that we’re undefeated and at the top of the league, our aim now is to win the Scottish Universities Cup. I think we can do it.”

The Scottish Volleyball Association-run competition continues on Sunday and pits first and second division teams across Scotland against each other – providing Edinburgh with a real yardstick against which to measure their progress after an unchallenging spell in division two.

They wasted little time in dismantling the seconds in straight sets, although the scoreline looked like becoming truly embarrassing when the first set was wrapped up for the loss of just six points.

Seconds coach Janahan Bala was disappointed with the disastrous start, calling his first time-out early on after the firsts rattled off eight unanswered points before his side could get off the

mark.

“We started badly, but that can happen in this situation,” he said.

“It’s a strange one because this is the only team in this division we know are better than us but we gave them far too

BUCS Scottish 2A 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

“

Our aim is to win the Scottish Universities Cup. I really think we can do it."

Edinburgh 1st Stirling 1st Edinburgh 2nd St Andrews 2nd Heriot-Watt 1st

P 8 7 6 5 6

Pts 24 9 9 6 0

Edinburgh 1st Perfect Run St Andrews 2nd 0-3 Edinburgh 1st (16th October) Edinburgh 1st 3-0 Stirling 1st (23rd October) Heriot-Watt 1st 0-3 Edinburgh 1st (30th October) Edinburgh 2nd 0-3 Edinburgh 1st (6th November) Edinburgh 1st 3-2 St Andrews 2nd (20th November) Stirling 1st 0-3 Edinburgh 1st (27th November) Edinburgh 1st 3-0 Heriot-Watt 1st (4th December) Edinburgh 1st 3-0 Edinburgh 2nd (12th February)

Eilidh Anderson, Edinburgh 1st Captain

many easy points with our mistakes in the first half.

“But we did well to come back. The second set was better, and in the third one we really started to relax and play our volleyball – I think we could have sneaked it.”

Bala’s team are in the hunt to achieve their aim of finishing second, sitting level on points with Stirling but with a game in hand.

Rugby weekend marred by weather

Sports Editor Chris Waugh explains his frustration at the handling of the France-Ireland call-off in Paris

“

The IRB must ensure that referees are able to avoid such ridiculous scenes in the future."

The majority of the 80,000 fans who were expected to attend the game had already made their way to their seats and were preparing for the national anthems, to be performed by the bands and singers out in the middle of the pitch, only to be told by the stadium announcer that the game was now not going to go

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ahead.

For the fans who travelled to the game, the postponement was a massive dissappointment. For fans in general, however, there is a silver lining – there is now the opportunity to watch the re-scheduled match during one of the normally international-free rest weekends, perhaps the 17th-19th, or March 2nd-4th.

Player safety is paramount and although a postponement was the correct decision, it is bizarre that it took until five minutes before kick-off for the final verdict to be given. Surely conditions could not have changed much from a couple of hours before the game? And with the weather predicted to only get colder as the evening progressed, the match should have been called off earlier.

Many may criticise the French for not having under-soil heating, but Paris rarely sees temperatures below zero. The State de France is not expected to have to deal with consistent temperatures of -5ºC; brought by in by last week's freak cold front drifting from Eastern to Western Europe.

The IRB must ensure that referees are able to avoid such ridiculous

scenes in the future by making brave calls on conditions in advance.

ROME SAW similarly unusual scenes earlier on in the day as persistent snowfall brought the Italy-England fixture into doubt. This fixture went ahead, however, and England

battled the elements, as well as their own demons, to eventually run out 19-15 winners. The game was able to be played on a white pitch at the Stadio Olympico as the snow worked as an insulator to keep the ground soft enough to be safe.

Overall BUCS Standings 8th Manchester 9th Edinburgh 10th Oxford

1482 1473 1272

Edinburgh BUCS Points 1st Hockey 2nd Fencing 3rd Swimming 4th Squash 5th Lacrosse 5th Table Tennis

139 128 117 111 108 108

Wed 8th Februaru Results

GAME OFF: Groundstaff cover the Stade de France pitch

GEORGE BARCLAY

FARCICAL SCENES occurred in Paris on Saturday evening as the Six Nations match between France and Ireland was called off just five minutes before kick-off. The much anticipated encounter at the Stade de France looked set to go ahead despite concerns surrounding the state of the pitch as a result of the lingering sub-zero temperatures, but just moments before the start of the match referee Dave Pearson decided that patches of the surface were unsafe.

Edinburgh 2nd 69-58 WoS 1st 58 (Men's Basketball) Strathclyde 2nd 5-0 Edinburgh 4th (Men's Hockey) RGU 1st 1-2 Edinburgh 4th (Women's Hockey) Edinburgh 1st 26-72 L'borough 1st (Women's Hockey) Edinburgh1st 19-7 Warwick 1st (Women's Lacrosse) Edinburgh 1st 127-103 Man'1st (Women's Fencing) Edinburgh 3rd 1-1 Glasgow 2nd (Women's Hockey) Edinburgh 1st 135-88 St And' 1st (Men's Fencing)

13/02/2012 04:10:03

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13/02/2012 03:44:40