Mafia ‘dumped nuclear waste’ into Mediterranean
Interesting article in Nature today. It is alleged that a manager at ENEA Trisaia conspired with the mafia to dispose of at least a hundred drums of nuclear and toxic waste into, amongst other places, the Med.
The Queen likes DIAMONDs
The Queen will visit DIAMOND tomorrow. Although the facility was commissioned some time ago and has been operational for users for a few months, the official opening ceremony is today (even though it’s not listed on the website).
Brings a tear to my eye (sniff)…
Decoding Donnie Darko
I watched Donnie Darko again last night - it’s a very interesting movie, which uses a teen-movie basis to explore many interesting themes, including those of destiny and death. However, it has been somewhat of a victim of its own cult success, and many people have written pieces interpreting the story in various ways. More than a few of these interpretations have tried to reconcile the theme of time travel with real scientific theory, whilst others try to explain the surface plot elements themselves - in other words, ‘who does what’ in the movie. I thought it would be interesting in this post to describe some of the symbolic references that abound in the film, and show how their use link the movie to general symbolic themes in Western culture; it is these links that capture the imagination of many viewers, sometimes unconsciously, and are part of what makes the film so compelling for many people.
Links to cultural themes in our society is a well-trodden path in literature and film. One of the most well-known examples is J.R.R. Tolkein’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, which makes use of numerous folk culture themes such as dwarves, elves, wizards and more, and whose narrative is based on medieval and pre-medieval tales from Europe. Tolkein was of course a Professor of Old English, and had at his disposal a large corpus of work from which to derive his stories. More simply, he used what the really rather simple formula tale of good versus evil, whereby a young acolyte is guided by a wise elder, and uses his knowledge to battle and conquer evil. Any student of literature or film will immediately recognise the parallels between this story and any number of modern derivatives. Obvious examples are The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. Whilst the individual characters may take on one or more Jungian archetypes, the same archetypes are present in all these stories. These parallels have been pointed out in countless pieces, so I will just summarise the two obvious ones - the apprentice and the teacher:
- Frodo = Harry Potter = Luke Skywalker = Dorothy
- Gandalf = Dumbledore = Obi-Wan Kenobi = Witch of the East
The point here is not to point out that such parallels exist, or even that one story may be simply derived from another. What’s important to note is that they all call on pre-existing archetypes that are evocative in our culture, and which therefore produce a lure which catches the reader or viewer’s attention.
It is not only characters and archetypes which are used in these stories, which are basically sorts of folk tales. Many elements are also inserted into these stories which have symbolic meaning. Donnie Darko uses many such symbols. First and foremost is the obvious motif of the Rabbit - the ‘Frank’ character - that guides Donnie through his story. The rabbit is a nocturnal creature, and of course in the film Donnie only meets the rabbit at night. In mythology the rabbit is very often associated with the moon, and is why the shapes on the moon’s surface have often been interpreted as a rabbit. The association with the moon links the symbol of the rabbit with the phases of the moon, and the rabbit’s reputation for fertility (like the hare’s) adds to this so that the rabbit comes to symbolise death and rebirth. Easter is based around the ‘death’ during the new moon, and its subsequent rebirth after three days (hence the Christian idea of raising the temple in 3 days) is basically why we have an Easter bunny. Also, the moon dies each morning to be born again in the evening, like the rabbit was once thought to. The rabbit motif clearly then links to the idea in Donnie Darko of death (and hence rebirth?). It is curious that the time that Donnie has to live - or really to learn - during the film is about the length of a lunar cycle, 28 days. It is also worth noting that at the end of the film, Donnie’s youngest sister sits on the aeroplane holding a toy rabbit - this is the same aeroplane that is the operative cause for Donnie’s death.
A secondary rabbit motif is the ‘path to knowledge’, a theme that occurs across many folk stories. Animals are often helpers in folk tales, and in more modern stories the rabbit is often a guide to knowledge. One need only think of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, who guides Alice down the hole and thence into a wider world; in Donnie Darko the rabbit also leads Donnie to a golf course with its own holes. The Alice in Wonderland rabbit motif is basically copied wholesale in the recent film The Matrix, and we can therefore strongly suspect that the same is true in Donnie Darko (whether it is also true in ‘Harvey’ is more tenuous!).
The journey into knowledge parallels the theme of death and rebirth, and the links to Christian practice is clear: physical death and rebirth are linked with spiritual rebirth (this is why converted Christians are often called ‘twice-born’). The first thing that the rabbit says to Donnie is ‘wake up’, linking it to spiritual awakening. By the way, the rabbit also appears in the form of a car (a Volkswagen Rabbit) to guide Gretchen.
Another symbol in the film is that of water. Water, or being underwater, is a symbol of the unconscious, and rising out of the water is related to coming into consciousness in some way. The first act in Genesis (the book, not the band!) is moving over the face of the waters, and the first act that Donnie makes is the releasing of water in the school, symbolising a release from the unconscious. Water is also the sustainer of life, so the release of water may also symbolise the giving of life (physical or spiritual). And of course, water symbolises cleansing and regeneration, hence baptism being both cleansing and a symbolic rising from the unconscious. The rabbit is also often seen next to water in the film, by the way.
At the same time as Donnie releases the water, he embeds an axe into the head of a bronze dog in the school grounds. The dog has an ambiguous role in symbology, often referring to fidelity, but also to ignorance in the sense that the dog follows blindly. The symbolic defeating of the dog can therefore refer to the overcoming of ignorance in the journey into knowledge. This is a symbol that has been used in medieval illustrations, where a knight defeats the dog.
With regard to guidance and knowledge, Donnie Darko makes use of the almost universal motif of the bird spirit guide. Where, you may ask? Roberta Sparrow, of course! Birds are often symbols of higher guidance: we only have to think of the Spirit descending onto Christ in the form of a dove, or the animistic shaman associated with his eagle guide. Roberta Sparrow acts as Donnie’s spirit guide, through her first words (’all living things die alone’) and through her book.
There are plenty of other references in the film, and they are described in many other websites. I will finish with a few of them.
- Cherita is a guardian angel. In all her scenes she is near to Donnie (often behind), except when she explicitly plays an angel in the school play.
- Donnie wears a skeleton T-shirt at his party, referring to his own (imminent) mortality. This is a very obvious one.
- Seth = Satan.
- The school in the film is a religious one (Robert Sparrow, a former teacher, was also a former nun), so there is a link to religious and spiritual belief in several ways.
- There is a recurrent use of the number 8 throughout the movie (you will find where if you look!), which is a reference to ‘on the Eighth day’ - a Christian motif - and to Freemasonry. Also take a look at Wisdom 8:8.
- The are lots of little clever references to other films: ET, Back to the Future, Lolita, Dark City, Blade Runner, Bonanza, Stephen King’s It.
- Cellar Door is an anagram of Celar Dolor, Spanish for ‘watch for suffering’.
- Only the characters watching the Evil Dead eventually die.
- The opening song is by Echo and the Bunnymen (ha ha!).
- Donnie is of course the Apprentice, and Jesus. He does of course watch ‘Last Temptation of Christ’.
- Animus and anima figures abound in the film.
- 28, 06, 42, 12 are used in many contexts.
- The film is not actually about time travel.
Just one more thought: 24 hours in a day, 24 cans in a crate of beer. Coincidence? You decide…
International Linear Collider - not anytime soon
The DOE and Ray Orbach today released their updated interim report on future facility funding. This is important as US funding policy has a big influence on whether big accelerator projects get funded, wherever in the world they are sited. Unfortunately, ILC has not made it onto the ‘Near-Term’ list, but is at the top of the ‘Mid-Term’ list, or 13th overall. This means ‘not building it any time soon, but keep going on the design work’. Actually, this is not too unusual, especially for a project of this size. When we worked on DIAMOND, we started out in 1993 with the Woolfson Review and the machine was only commissioned in 2006.
You can just imagine a call centre at DOE: ‘You are thirteenth in the list. Please continue to hold. Your project is very important to us. We are sorry for the continued delay in funding your project.’
You can read the updated interim report here. It’s interesting to see the order of priority they’ve put the accelerator projects in:
- LCLS - under construction, so not surprising it’s at the top.
- Rare Isotope Accelerator - not yet being built
- CEBAF upgrade - been on the cards for a while, and to be built by our good friends at JLab.
- ILC
- SNS power upgrade (What an amazing machine that is - the target chamber is something else).
- SNS second target station
- RHIC II
- NSLS upgrade
- Super Neutrinos
- ALS upgrade
- APS upgrade
- eRHIC/eLIC
The perceptive among you will notice that ‘multi-user’ facilities feature highly (i.e. those facilities where multiple experiments may happen simultaneously); well over half are facilities of this sort.
Floating-point round-off errors - MS Excel example
I was looking for an Excel spreadsheet the other day that showed how easy it is to come unstuck doing floating-point arithmetic, due to rounding errors. I couldn’t find one easily, so I ended up writing my own. Basically, it shows the cumulative round-off error when iteratively calculating:
s(i+1) = [s(i)-0.9]/0.1
It also shows what happens for 0.99, 0.999 etc. You get the idea. s(1) is 1, obviously. There are plenty of other ways of showing this problem.
Here’s also a nice comic strip on rounding errors.
Country music makes you want to kill yourself
This is the abstract from an article published in 1992 in Social Forces, for a study showing that listening to Country music increases your chances of suicide. But then you knew that….
The Effect of Country Music on Suicide
STEVEN STACK, Wayne State University JIM GUNDLACH, Auburn University
Abstract
This article assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates.
Sociological work on the relationship between art and society has been largely restricted to speculative, sociohistorical theories that are often mutually opposed. Some theorists see art as creating social structure ( Adorno 1973), while Sorokin ( 1937 ) suggests that society and art are manifested in cyclical autonomous spheres; and still others contend that art is a reflection of social structure ( Albrecht 1954). Little empirical work has been done on the impact of music on social problems. While some research has linked music to criminal behavior ( Singer, Levine & Jou 1990), the relationship between music and suicide remains largely unexplored. Music is not mentioned in reviews of the literature on suicide ( Lester 1983; Stack 1982, 1990b); instead, the impact of art on suicide has been largely restricted to analyses of television movies and soap operas (for a review, see Stack 1990b).
In this article, we explore the link between a particular form of popular music (country music) and metropolitan suicide rates. We contend that the themes found in country music foster a suicidal mood among people already at risk of suicide and that it is thereby associated with a high suicide rate. The effect is buttressed by the country subculture and a link between this subculture and a racial status related to an increased suicide risk.
The case of the missing minister
Many of us know the story of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man fingered by the US government as the guy who assassinated John F. Kennedy, and the theory that a photo of him holding Marxist newspapers and a rifle were faked. More recently, another suspected left-winger, James Purnell, has been inserted into an image to make people think he is interested in the NHS. It seems pretty well established that the photo is a fake - even a cursory close-up shows the tell-tale Photoshop jagged edge from an inexperienced cut-and-paste. The exposure is all wrong too, and the composition is good without him and bad with him, but the latter could just be bad photographer (I’m really laying into them today, aren’t I?). The question now seems to be: did he arrange for his post-event inclusion into the photo, or was it just a public-sector publicity section who thought it would do no harm? Whilst it could easily have been the second, it seems that Mr. Purnell has been doing a bit of Orwell. And well he might, since those of a Socialist persuasion have been doctoring history since Socialism was itself invented; something that comes out of the ‘we know best’ ideology that marks out much left-wing thinking (by the way, I am sometimes a left-winger myself).
The sad thing about this event is that it was expected that Purnell would be getting up to this sort of thing. Spin is de rigeur nowadays, and the media are fond of being outraged about it. But hang on a second: how do we know that spin is being perpetrated in the first place? After all, we only learn about these events from the media in the first place. Everything we learn that is not from our own senses must come from someone else, and therefore is subject to their agenda rather than our own: an obvious statement, maybe, but one that bears repeating. When judging such material, therefore, we must use some of our critical faculties. What is the purpose of the story? Why does it matter to the presenter (the journalist or newspaper in this instance) and to the reader (you or I)?
Incentives are a good way to look at this. Generally, there is an incentive for each of the players in this game. Firstly, the NHS want to associate themselves with a rising ministerial star (perhaps something like money or influence will rub off - good luck with that…), so they want to have the photo doctored but not seen to be so. James Purnell clearly wants to be seen as a ‘man of the people’ supporting health care, so he’s in with the NHS - no surprise there if he knew about the doctoring beforehand. But what about the whistleblowing journo? He’s probably just in it for the money, but the guy paying for it (ultimately the newspaper owner) is looking for an angle with which to sell newspapers, but also to bias public opinion to his own personal benefit. It’s well-known that newspapers are generally right-wing since right-wing policies benefit newspaper owners (who therefore influence newspaper content).
But what about you, dear (newspaper) reader? Why did you want to read about it? Perhaps because of the vicarious pleasure gained from seeing someone ‘caught out’. That’s a powerful incentive for buying things: witness those womens’ magazine sections showing picture after picture of celebrities not looking their best (sweat patches, bad hair days, no make-up). People like reading that sort of thing because they feel they have scored points off people they thing are doing better than them in the game. But are they? Think about this game, the one about Purnell and the picture. Who was the winner of that game?
The Purnell story made me think about how hard it is to ascertain any truth about anything you read; so much editing occurs in the media anyway, that it is to be expected that manipulation is to take place. ‘There is no such thing as unbiased history’, as I was told by my history teacher (or did he really say that to me? I might be just saying that). An example of this is rather trivial maybe, but also maybe illustrates some important things, one of which is that you can only really be sure if you are there yourself.
Last Christmas, Daresbury Church was the one featured on the ITV Xmas service, as it had been the previous year. ITV has a commitment to religious programming, it needs a church, Daresbury is well-known because of Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland, is fairly photogenic (with good lighting) and has a similarly photogenic vicar. So far so good. Also, not so surprisingly, with the prospect of being on the telly, quite a few rarely (if ever) seen locals turn up to be the bums on seats in the front rows, plus there are a few actors and singers from ITV to give it a bit of glamour. Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe for example turned up and did a turn, and then jetted of just as quickly - fair enough, they’re just in it for the money. Wendi Peters was great, by the way: she really went up in my estimation.
But what were all the politicians doing there? I sat through the service (a bum on a seat!), and then saw it a few days later (’look Mum, there I am!’). And there are the politicos again: David Blunkett, Ann Widdicombe, and Hazel Blears? Hang on a second: Hazel Blears? She wasn’t there at the service, I am sure of that, ‘cos I was there myself (see above). But yet there she is, edited into the footage as if she had been there. It clicked straight away, of course: she had been there earlier in the day, and had done some readings. Presumably, like Purnell, she had another ‘important’ appointment to be at. Now I dislike David Blunkett intensely (a more obvious ‘man on the make’ I can’t think of right now), and Ann Widdicombe is not my cup of tea (although she obviously has convictions) - but at least they turned up. Even the rather starry Jenkins was actually there in the room with us. And the Duchess of Kent sat through all the takes you need to get sufficient footage for what is apparently a continuous service on the telly. If Royalty can turn up and stick it out, why can’t Ms. Blears? A very Stalinist attitude, if you ask me…
Local coverage of this televisual feast was bizarre, and missed the good story above. Instead, our local rag complained about how the event was pre-recorded and edited before transmission. Really? You don’t say! You mean, East Enders isn’t broadcast live from the set? Local journos were ‘outraged’ - a common emotion in newspapers these days, along with ‘fury’ - implying that the reader ought to be outraged too. A little secret - the service was recorded in November… as was the Easter service, recorded a day later and done without all the bums on seats and politicos, probably because it wasn’t on prime time. It’s amazing what you can do just by changing the lighting and taking out the Xmas tree in the corner of the church.
Does all this matter? Does it matter that James Purnell wasn’t really in the photograph? Some might say that it’s all just performance, just presenting a picture designed to satisfy the viewer in some way. But people have a desire for ‘reality’ rather than scripting, because they don’t wish to be manipulated, or at least to think they are not being manipulated. Hence we have the desire for soap operas rather than drama, because it appears ‘more real’, and then to have ‘reality TV’ shows like Big Brother, because they appear unscripted. Wait a minute: you thought they were spontaneous? The recent TV competition voting scandal should teach you otherwise. The only way round this is not to believe anything that’s presented to you as ‘fact’. It probably isn’t.
Postscript: photo manipulation is getting more sophisticated that just cut-and-paste. Seam carving is entering the mainstream. Now you won’t be able to believe any image you see in the paper.