Development FTW?

Readapting to being in your home country again on holiday is a slow, torturous process involving progress, setbacks, withdrawal symptoms and overcoming dependence. And that's just for my parents. As I leave behind the last of the drowsiness and realise it's 3 in the afternoon, I realise how much of a pain I've been to my family, who've rebuilt their schedule around NOT having to babysit me 24-7. Oh well, I'm only here for two more weeks.

Penang hasn't changed, despite the new politicians in charge, the church arsonry in KL, and the fact that I've been away from it all for so long. Part of me demands an explanation why the island hasn't fallen apart without my leadership, but the rest of me knows that I'm not actually Batman despite whatever childhood fantasies I may have had.

But despite the apparent similarities, Penang has changed for me - the good shops aren't where I remember anymore, I'm still not used to to now-massive (and soulless) Gurney Plaza, and they're renovating the shops at the bottom of the hill. In fact, they seem to be tearing down everything. Housing complexes are growing like mushrooms on the Batu Feringghi hills, as well as pretty much everywhere else in the state. Marinas stick into the sea like pseudopodia. Penang is multiplying, and sooner or later I swear the island is going to split in two to accomodate the population.

Which begs the question, when people talk about development, what do they really mean? For the businessmen development means new roads, new factories, new workplaces. But speak to the everymen and their answers differ. They want an end to the traffic jams, the dirty streets. The youth want more (but cheaper) nightlife and shopping complexes. In uni I learned that development wasn't just about building things - it was about providing opportunities to people. Things like having an art gallery for artists, or better schools for children. Penang, however, disagrees with me - everywhere I go, I realise just how lacking the island is in public, government-provided amenities.

In Leicester, there are two massive parks within 20 minutes walk of my house. Public toilets are fairly common. There's a museum in New Walk, a public footpath which has little gardens built into it. Even some of the shops (the co-operative) are publicly owned, and the hospital has a really decent cafeteria which gives you good value for money. If you're broke or intend not to splurge any money, you can spend your time in a field just enjoying nature or playing frisbee, or pop into the free museum to dabble in a bit of culture. There are so many free art galleries and museums in the London city centre that you can spend more than a week exploring them. Penang is rather different. Our public amenities seem to be places where builders haven't reached, like Penang Hill, or Keracut (although i'm sure they're trying). Even the public beaches seem are the ones which they can't build hotels around. How many public places are there in town? Along any one street, how many buildings can you casually walk into without intending to spend money? Government amenities simply don't seem to exist, or are aimed to serve certain groups in particular (such as businessmen) instead of the public.

I'm not aware of how we intend to address this, or even whether we intend to. But something feels wrong about where we're heading, and the least we could do is to stop calling it development.

Movie Review Time!

Before I begin the actual post, I need you guys to be my witnesses for something. I hereby declare that “I shall not download any more films before I finish watching at least ¾ of the ones I’ve already downloaded”. However, I’ve decided to make some exceptions. Technically, I watched them already on the flight back home and am simply adding them onto my list of greats, so they don’t really count. I’ve omitted reviewing Surrogates and Transformers 2, simply because I don’t really think they’re worth discussing. Anyways, the first of these films is...

Moon

“…What?” you ask. You may or may not have heard of Moon, starring Sam Rockwell. It’s a quietly intelligent sci-fi, minimalist in design but punching far above its weight. The premise is simple: Sam Bell is the only man on the moon, overseeing the automated mining station that provides the world with clean energy. Home is 40 minutes away by videophone, thanks to old tech that isn’t going to be upgraded anytime soon, and Sam’s only company is GERTY (an AI with the disembodied voice of Kevin Spacey) and delayed video transmissions from Sam’s wife and his employers. At the end of his three-year contract, he’s just about ready to go home, when things take a turn for the bizarre.

Now lets’ stop and think about this. The film has so far intelligently stuck with exploring ideas that are so-often left out of sci-fi (or glanced over to add pseudo-emotion before tossing in more fight scenes), ideas like how isolation affects the mind, GERTY’s uncanny valley effect which affects us but which Sam has grown immune to, and what happens to people after three years in an automated space station.

At this point, the plot could go anywhere, from the usual sci-fi stuff like aliens and the man-versus-machine battle, to the save-the-world (space station?) disaster movie, or, Lord forbid, the Sunshine-esque horror hack-and-slash. We’ve seen promising films collapse at this plot point, but cleverly Moon avoids this by making Sam have an accident while driving out to fix a roving miner, and waking up back at base. But hang on, how did he get back in from outside the base? Why is he looking healthier than before even though he had a major accident? How come he doesn’t seem to remember anything? And is GERTY really the calm mechanical butler he appears to be, or is he (it?) up to something else?

To elaborate further would be to give away the plot, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ll tell you that Moon explores even more ideas, like what it means to be human, and how people change over time. GERTY’s true role is revealed, leaving the audience simultaneously relieved, disappointed, and curious. Whether or not you spot the plot twist (after all it’s been used before), Moon is so well-directed and well-acted that the twist becomes secondary to the ideas that it conveys to the audience. And that’s the hallmark of good sci-fi.


(500) Days of Summer

This is a surprisingly good film, despite it being a romantic comedy (At this point the more macho of my readers may call me gay, shoot me in the back several times over, and then dump my blog address in the recycling bin and my body into a ditch somewhere). But hear me out, because this one is different.

Right at the start of the film, you’re warned straight up that it doesn’t end with the guy getting the girl, which on its own would make the film stand out against all the other rom-coms. You’re then told what happens, but you’re never told why. In fact, you get the feeling that nobody really know why, another one-up against the Freudian cause-and-effect approach of other rom-coms. Zooey Deschanel’s leading lady Summer remains complex, mysterious, and inaccessible to the main man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the audience. Even as the relationship evolves and grows, Summer declares that she’s interested only in friendship; Tom, who’s a classical romantic, struggles against the contradicting signs she gives him.

The film flits back and forth from good times to bad, not in the slow unstoppable spiral of a crashing relationship, but in the manner of a man desperately trying to understand why everything fell to pieces, and getting no answers. Eventually, we watch as the main man stops asking why the jigsaw is incomplete, accepts it as it is, and moves on with his life. And we can relate to that.

News Recap

Wow, it's been more than a month since I made my last post. Exams have left me thoroughly washed out, which I hope will disappate soon because I want to enjoy learning again, especially about non-medical stuff which i've neglected for a long while. So, in light of the pursuit of new knowledge, I thought it was time to look back at what managed to catch my eye over the past few months:

Bhopal, India, 1984: A chemical factory spewed tonnes of toxic gas into the air, killing thousands and exposing half a million to chronic diseases. A quarter of a century later, villagers say they still feel the effects. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8388355.stm

In 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled its contents into the Alaskan ocean, wiping out thousands of miles of coastland. In recent news, oil has been detected just under the surface of these gravel beaches. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8465607.stm

These stories are reminders that the environment is more delicate than we think.

In other news, animals are smarter than we think, using tools (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8181233.stm), mind control (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm) and disinfectant (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8152000/8152574.stm), and even being picky in their mates (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1248872466/html/1.stm), although some get a bit confused about the species barrier (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8281382.stm). Some mating battles are simply more titanic than others, as proven by the filming of these humpback whales (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8318000/8318182.stm). And just because nature is cool, here are some pretty pictures: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1256135662/html/1.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8364761.stm

And we still keep learning from nature, in less desirable (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8237691.stm) and more desirable (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8286500.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8279194.stm) and some bizarre (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8302903.stm) ways.

To round it off, a few articles that which we so desire, choice:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8280564.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8395780.stm

I'll not say much this time, because if you follow up on all these articles it'll be enough to make your head spin. It's time for you guys to decide what to read, and what to believe.

Late Night Insomniac Rant

First of all I think Hean really managed to express my thoughts of proper conduct here:

http://hean.whatthetoot.com/toot/a-liberal-decalogue-bertrand-russell

And secondly, a guide to expression, formation and discarding of opinions.

1. When expressing your opinion, do so in the most polite manner, rather than the most agressive one. Examples include:

"I believe the way to salvation is by believing in our Holy Lord the Flying Spaghetti Monster",

Instead of:

"If you've ever done something wrong (which you have!) then you're going to spend a really really long time being drowned alive in a scorpion-filled vat of rotting animals while having a painful discharge from an embarrasing orifice".

2. If your opinion cannot be disproven, it doesn't necessarily mean it's absoulte truth. Examples include:

"I believe that a benevolent green lobster floats magically and stealthily above the heads of every third person but that these lobsters cannot be detected using any form of technology."

3. Always respect the opinions of others and consider whether they may actually be correct. This may save a future potential Galileo a lot of grief.

4. If you really cannot change someone's mind about something, and suspect there are other things to do like save your neighbour's cat from being eaten alive by a very confused and possibly psycopathic child, then it would be wiser to walk away from a disagreement and do something useful.

5. Don't stop someone from doing anything unless it's something that they'll regret, or makes life difficult for other people who are just trying to make ends meet. If someone of sound mind really wants to walk into the back of their cupboard to see if Narnia exists, then really that is up to them.

Tide of Endless Information

We seem to be approaching a critical point. Advances in printing technology, then digital storage, have left us with an almost endless ability to record, store, and view data. Prior to this, libraries had to decide which records to keep and which not to, because storing literally everything they came across was simply impossible. On the upside, the ability to store endless amounts of data mean that we can record practically everything with practically no effort, saving the world incredible amounts of work. The problem now is what exactly we do with that data.

In the past, walking into a good library almost guaranteed that you wouldn’t find a bad book. In the process of selecting, libraries had to discard what they felt wasn’t important or interesting, meaning that every book would interest at least one reader, no matter how obscure or specialist it was. The internet has no such qualms. In its power to store vast amounts of information, some problems emerge.

The first problem is the fact that as we store more of the useless, we have watered down the useful. Imagine a library dedicated to your favourite genre of books (let’s say sci-fi/fantasy). Now imagine that the library has every sci-fi/fantasy book ever written, and we begin to see the scale of the problem. At best, walking into a library like this would mean spending your time in the “most popular” section, with books that everyone likes. At worst, you will have to spend ages running between sections looking for the books that you like. But then, what if you’re looking for a good book to borrow? Whether you go at it in an orderly fashion, or pick and choose at random, you may have to read through a thousand books before you find a good one. When you have almost infinite data, even the best sorting system in the world can’t differentiate what is interesting from what isn’t, and you are left with a homogenous ghoulash from which to pick your meat.

Now, imagine what happens if you were a writer, with the daunting task of creating a book that will stand out among the others. You look into this library and see walls of books stretching into infinity, covering every kind of sci-fi/fantasy from every possible angle. Your fingers start to tremble, and as you stare into the abyss you find yourself asking two questions: “Will what I write ever be discovered? And worse, has someone already written what I wanted to?” These questions bring up the next two problems.

As the library grows ever larger, each book, no matter how good on its own, begins to lose its significance – even seminal works like Lord of the Rings fade into the darkness as readers wander confused between shelves. As you bring in more data, readers may spend their entire lives in the library without ever discovering the truly excellent books. And this is a depressing thought.

The next problem is how an author can leave their mark on a vast library like this. How do they know their fresh ideas haven’t already been explored by others, making the new work redundant? Will the new author’s works forever be compared against that of others? Imagine writing what you thought was a fresh new book and having reviewers calling it “a cross between Huxley’s Brave New World and Adams's Mostly Harmless”. Even though those may be two excellent books in the author’s mind, will he really be happy when he realises that his idea was covering old ground? Even more disturbing, does he have any new ground on which to work?

Referencing and quotation are some things I'm also guilty of. In that sense, I have undermined the originality of my own work by comparing it to something already established - If what I wrote was truly original, I'd never have to compare it with anything else, simply because I wouldn't be able to. Referring to past works is an easy way of establishing a landmark in the shifting desert that is our history, and a truly original writer should ideally start with a blank slate, with nothing to compare against so as not to be influenced - so perhaps our most creative works were when we first picked up a crayon as a child.

As a casual blogger, I feel a twinge of concern when I think a post isn’t fresh enough or won't be read by enough people, and I can only imagine how bad it is for someone who makes a living out of making things new and original. But some are compelled to write, simply because the path they take to compose means they can look deeper into themselves. If all else fails, Marcus Aurelius always has something practical to say:

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

Perhaps the best way to approach writing then, is not to make sure what you write is unique, but to make sure it is beautiful. And perhaps that will save us from being overwhelmed by the oncoming tide of endless information.

Bumper crop of a fortnight

...or a fortnight of bumper crops?

At long last, a proper blogpost befitting the Insomniac Caffeine Addict. Like they say, when it rains it pours, and this fortnight was a thunderstorm.

First there was a friend's 21st birthday party in Nottingham last week. Much drinking, surrealness and general fun ensued, as well as some rather strange (but in retrospect very funny) moments. As I intend to keep this post a thoughtful one, and drunken nights out usually don't go well with thoughfulness (even though I met a Wiccan who discussed religion with me and quoted Marcus Aurelius), I shall leave out the details of said night.

Secondly, much time was spent on some intense training for a dance battle that took place culminating this very evening. We spent two weeks making up a 5-minute routine, and despite the challenges we made it into the finals. One personal record for which I can be proud, but as is often the case, the journey to the dance floor was more important than the competition itself. (We didn't win by the way, but we were damned close.)

In training there is patience. We spent hours and hours perfecting a routine that we would only use for a single event and never again. We waited for late team members, we tolerated quirky characters and general human nature. We schedule rehearsal on late nights because one member can't turn up in the day. Many people demand hard work from others and even more from themselves, but there is a fine line between being demanding and impatient, a line which we can only truly define by walking it. Kudos to the team leader who managed to bring it all together, despite the issues that she and the group were facing.

This year, I was in a different team from before, and what a relief it was! Last year everyone in the team hated everyone else, and I as the only guy (and therefore insulated) had to constantly dodge the catfights. This time, it was an absolute pleasure choreographing with everyone. We had massive differences between our members, but we always ironed it out because we respected each other's opinions. Clichéd as it sounds, we actually managed to have fun, and in a sense that mattered more than winning.

We may not have won, but we didn't cheat either. The team who won had a professional dancer who choreographed their event and then danced with them, which was strictly not allowed, but they got in by a loophole. They were really, really good - and I will admit that. Still, the choice between getting what you want and giving up what you care about will always be a clear one for me - I'd rather get second place rather than win by cheating. I may not be sure that God exists, but as I shall point out now, not believing in God doesn't mean you can't believe in something.

Thirdly, it's my birthday! Woop woop! In reality I'm not celebrating it much, but I think a simple meal would suffice this time. What's it like being 21? Well, about the same as being 20. Your birthday marks a time period at which you measure change, but in reality change takes place over time and space. I may not be the person I was at 20, but you'd be hard pressed to pin down a day when you could say I no longer was "me". On that note, it's time to get back to work. All this dance practice has thrown me off doing lectures, and even though we do have a week off, other distractions will doubtlessly appear. After all, it's only Murphy's Law.

Social Experiment

What would you do if you had a disagreement with someone, to the point that you aren't on speaking terms and there is no chance of reconciliation?

Now this is actually an interesting one because it opens up all sorts of possibilities. Obviously, if people aren't speaking to you it usually can't get much worse (NOTE: does not apply to people who have access to your property, your parents, your employers, or sensitive information about you), and so technically you could do quite a lot to them. If they retaliate, they break the cold war and the battle moves into Phase II, and if they don't, then you could push it even further. Also a plus is when you share a lot of friends with this person, so that you frequently appear at the same events.

Here are a few suggestions of what you could do to turn the tables a little bit:

When you are in the same room, look intently at their face as if you were trying to work out a very complex puzzle. When they notice you, look even more intently at them. Follow up by shouting "Eureka!" excitedly, then return to normal as if nothing had happened.

Smile widely at everyone in the room including your opponent. If they respond, immediately frown and look away.

When alone in a room with your opponent, sniff loudly as if a strange odour is present, and look around the room trying to identify it.

Accidentally step on their toe and don't apologise.

Look intently at whatever they may be reading.

When you bump into each other, suddenly become very quiet, as if you were caught talking about them.

Text them at 4am as if you were drunk-texting your best friend and accidentally sent it to them.

Arrange a surprise birthday party with all your mutual friends and make sure that everything is terrible (venue, music, drinks, food). Then get all your mutual friends to say that they enjoyed it very much and make sure your opponent knows you arranged it.

At the same party, stand just behind your opponent throughout the party and pull funny faces when someone takes a photo. Inappropriate noises are a plus.

On a social, buy everyone a round of drinks including your opponent. See if they accept the drink.

Spill said drink on your opponent, then carry on as if nothing happened.

Come in one day and speak to them happily as if nothing had happened. If they respond, say that you have temporary amnesia but that doctors expect you to recover your memory at any time.

Shout "ALL HAIL BEELZEBUB!" loudly everytime your opponent opens their mouth to say something.

When they finish a sentence, applaud loudly as if it were the most moving speech you heard. Follow up with an enthusiastic “you really fooled them this time Beelzebub!”.

Talk to your mutual friends about all the good times you once had with your now-opponent whilst completely ignoring them.

Approach your opponent menacingly while brandishing a sharp object. When you get too close for comfort, drop said object, look confused, and apologise profusely while explaining that you are on a new form of anti-schizophrenic medication and that you haven't gotten the dosage right.

Talk about TV shows or movies with characters who share your opponent's name. Bonus points if said character is a porn star.

Spam their account with random emails all starting with the words "YOUR MOMMA!".

Follow them around the room while blowing a trumpet and singing the national anthem of the former USSR.

Every time they stand up, do the MC Hammer dance, complete with lyrics and tune.

Loudly hum the Darth Vader theme each time they enter the room.

Each time they leave, hum the funereal dirge.

Get a pet and name it after your opponent, then show it off to all your mutual friends.

Custard pie them in the face.

On a more serious note, a friend of mine has recently been abandoned by her "friends" when she needed them most. This post is dedicated to those whom we would call weasels, if only the weasels didn't protest on the grounds that they didn't want to be associated with these people.