Michael Moore is ac - The Cambridge Student

Martha Henriques
on the dating
website designed
for affairs
p.14
TCS looks at the
influential Internet
memes of the last
decade
p.18-19
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, 20th October 2011
Michaelmas Issue Four
“Michael Moore is a c***”
Zoah Hedges-Stocks
Co-Editor
Cambridge scientist makes a splash in world photo
competition
Water droplet containing a pair of mosquito larvae by
John Brackenbury of the Department of Physiology and
Neuroscience. Currently leading the popular vote for the
2011 Nikon Small World Competition.
500 ticket-holders have been left disappointed after the Festival of Ideas’
keynote speaker, Michael Moore, cancelled his Friday appearance with less
than two weeks’ notice.
Whilst the University is “disappointed” at the cancellation, not everyone
has reacted so calmly. Moore’s UK
representative David Johnson, who
arranged the rest of his nationwide
tour, launched into a foul-mouthed
tirade on his Facebook page, accusing
Moore of being an “ego-fuelled celeb”,
a “minor sleb” and “a complete and
utter cunt”: Johnson even went on to
ask readers to suggest ‘any other ways
that Michael Moore is a cunt’ and to
list them on his Facebook page. Johnson’s ire is understandable, given that
he stands to lose £28,000 from the
cancelled UK tour.
When asked for comment, Johnson
told TCS: “I think I’ve said MORE
than enough already!” but was keen
to stress that he was “very sorry”
that Moore was ill. “With live shows
these things sometimes do happen
and thousands of people are inconvenienced. I still have tremendous
respect for Mike and his work and I
hope he gets well soon - he just has
rather bad manners sometimes.”
The tour was to promote Moore’s
new book, Here Comes Trouble: Stories from my Life, but was cancelled
due to illness.
On 13th October, Moore publicly
apologised to his Twitter followers:
“Good friends & dear fans in the UK
& Ireland: I have to postpone my book
tour overseas. I am very, very sorry. I
promise to reschedule soon!”
The event was due to take place at
the West Road Concert Hall this Friday and was going to involve both a
talk about Here Comes Trouble and a
book-signing. A spokesperson for the
Festival of Ideas told TCS that ‘people
who booked tickets are eligible for a
refund via the ADC box office. The
proceeds would have covered the hire
of the venue and would have gone
towards speaker fees and marketing
costs for future Festivals’
The University Press Office added,
“It is very disappointing but there are
plenty of other very well-subscribed
exciting events in the UK’s biggest arts
and humanities festival.”
Michael Moore’s office was not available for comment.
driver were of a highly sexual nature and
made her feel incredibly uncomfortable.
The student has not since been
able to establish whether the taxi
was licensed.
The only licensed vehicles permitted
to be hailed by passengers from streets
are hackney carriages, owned by the
Cambridge City Council.
All licensed hackney carriage drivers
must undergo CRB checks, which must
be renewed on a regular basis.
They must also take a knowledge test
of the local area, a medical test and
the Driving Standards Agency test.
However, they receive no training
regarding etiquette towards passengers.
All licensed drivers are required to
prominently display their personalised
licence on the dashboard or hanging
from the car mirror.
If the licence is not displayed, and the
driver does not show their licence when
asked, the Council state there is reason
to believe the taxi is not licensed.
Following the spate of sex attacks on
women in Cambridge since August last
year, taxis have been recommended
as a safer alternative for students,
particularly females, walking alone after
dark. Many colleges have organised taxi
systems for students travelling alone late
at night.
Above: David Johnson’s Facebook rant. Below: Moore’s Twitter apology
Murray Edwards student sexually intimidated by taxi driver
Judith Welikala
News Editor
Students from Murray Edwards
College have been warned not to take
taxis alone, after an undergraduate was
sexually intimidated by a taxi driver on
her journey home alone.
In an email circulated on Wednesday
night to all Murray Edwards
undergraduates, Welfare Officer Jenny
Tollmann and Women’s Officer Alice
Gormley cautioned students: “where
possible, taking taxis in twos or threes
is advisable.”
The incident occurred last Thursday
around 3am. The student took the taxi
from Market Square beside Trailer Of
Life.
She was reluctant to comment on the
details of what was exchanged, but
revealed that remarks made by the
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
02| Editorial
THE CAMBRIDGE STUDENT
THIS WEEK
THE TEAM
Editors in Chief: Michael Yoganayagam & Zoah Hedges-Stocks - editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Design Editor: Linda Wang - design@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Magazine Editor: Abi See - magazine@tcs.cam.ac.uk;
Photography Editor: Devon Buchanan - photography@tcs.cam.ac.uk; News Editor: Judith Welikala - news@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Deputy News Editors: Tessa Evans, Alice Gormley, Charlotte Callinan &
Emily Loud - deputynews@tcs.cam.ac.uk; International Editors: Eleanor Dickinson & Ben Richardson - international@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Interviews Editor: Nicholas Tufnell - interviews@tcs.cam.ac.uk;
Comment Editor: Eleanor Dickinson - comment@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Satire Editor: Matt Lim - satire@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Features Editors: Lianna Francis, Alice Gormley & Nicholas Tufnell - features@tcs.cam.
ac.uk; Music Editors: David Moulder & Zoe Holder - music@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Film & TV Editors: Jess Stewart & Florence Smith Nicholls - film@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Theatre Editor: Laura Peatman - theatre@
tcs.cam.ac.uk; Sports Editor: Olivia Lee - sports@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Deputy Sports Editor: Ollie Guest - sports@tcs.cam.ac.uk; Illustrator: Clémentine Beauvais; Sub-Editors: Adam Clark, Connie Fisher,
Ken Meyer, Laurence Tidy; Web Editor: Mark Curtis; Board of Directors: Mark Curtis (Business), Dan Green, Harriet Flower, Zoah Hedges-Stocks, Michael Yoganayagam directors@tcs.cam.ac.uk.
INTERVIEW
EDITORIAL
Read the story below. Then get angry.
How can we be considering cuts to
CCTV when, in the last fortnight,
two women have been attacked,
another was intimidated by a taxi
driver, and a third was targetted by a
flasher. Add to this the fact that the
man who sexually assaulted nine
women earlier in the year has not yet
been caught, and it isn’t a great time
to be a woman in Cambridge. There
is a general air of unease. This is why
it is shocking that the council plans
to cut live monitoring of CCTV in
Cambridge.
This decision feels like a slap in the
face - not just to the women who have
been attacked, but to anyone at risk
in Cambridge. That includes anyone
who might be mugged or attacked
whilst walking home late at night.
That includes you. Apparently your
safety isn’t worth £150,000 a year to
the council. Are you angry yet?
In the early 1970s, Cambridge found
itself in a state of panic as a local man
forced his way into women’s homes
and raped them in their beds whilst
wearing a leather hood that said
‘RAPIST’ on it. In response to this,
the police set up road-blocks and
flooded the streets with extra officers.
The heightened uniformed presence
gave people a sense of reassurance,
and the knowledge that something
was actually being done to catch the
attacker. Whilst Operation Majesty
is still going on and police are still
stopping potential supsects in the
street, these widely-publicised cuts
to CCTV send out the impression
that no-one actually cares about the
current threat to Cambridge women.
Of course, one of the pieces of advice
that we are being given is to take taxis
rather than walking home alone at
night. The revelation that a Murray
Edwards student was left scared and
intimidated when a taxi driver made
inappropriate remarks to her has
revealed that this ‘safer’ option has its
own risks. After the incident, Murray
Edwards emailed students advising
them that taking taxis in twos or
threes is advisable.
The advice was well-meant, but soon
we could find ourselves in a situation
where women are told to stay
safely indoors during the hours of
darkness, with their doors locked and
the curtains drawn, to shut out that
flasher. We must refuse to fall into the
state of hysteria that happened in the
1970s when the Cambridge Rapist
was at large. Time for a Take Back
The Night march, anyone? We’ll be
right there with you.
At TCS, we always welcome your
views and letters. Feel free to get in
touch at editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk and
your letter may be printed in the
Comment section.
Alain de Botton on
philosophy, architecture
and The School of Life
p.10
MUSIC
CCTV cuts proceed despite renewed sex attacks
Cambridge City Council approved
the proposal to reduce the hours of
live CCTV camera surveying in the
city centre last Thursday.
In order to save £150,000 of the
camera scheme’s £850,000 budget,
round-the-clock
monitoring
will no longer take place. The
hours between 3am and 11am,
particularlyonMondays,Wednesdays
and Thursdays have been identified
as “significantly quieter” in terms of
crime.
Images will still be recorded for
future review if a crime occurs.
This decision comes after two
attacks on females in the city centre
were reported last week. Previous to
this, the past fifteen months have seen
a further nine sex attacks in the city.
Last week police warned students to
be ‘vigilant’ when out at night and to
travel in groups whenever possible.
“the cameras will
continue to act as a
deterrent”
The recent attacks, on Queen’s
Road and Parker’s Piece, both took
place in the early morning during
the hours in which CCTV live
watching will be stopped. Councillor
for the Trumpington area, Mr Al
Bandar, criticised the cuts. “We will
not deal with it as a preventative
measure and that’s why we value
the service,” he said. But Petersfield
counsellor Sarah Brown said the
cameras will continue to act as a
deterrent, their effect depending
on “whether somebody might be
watching, not whether somebody
actually is watching.”
Gwen Jing, a first year student at
Murray Edwards College described
the recent attacks as “worrying”
and said they intensify the need for
constant CCTV monitoring.
“The early hours are when attacks
are most likely and girls are most
vulnerable. In serious cases, just
having cameras isn’t even enough of
a precautionary measure.”
New monitoring hours are being
drawn up which will vary by day
and season according to crime level
records.
Jeremy Evans on hip-hop
and Cambridge
p.23
INTERNATIONAL
Jimmy Appleton
Connie Fisher
Morwenna Jones on ‘What
next for Egypt’?
p.8
NEWS BULLETIN News in Brief
Lord Sainsbury elected Chancellor
Ex-Cambridge students receive
anti-Semitic abuse over Dale Farm
Ending lap-dancing clubs in
Cambridge “would cost £30,000”
Lord Sainsbury of Turville has been
elected as the next Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge. Sainsbury
gained 2893 of the total 5558 votes
under the Single Transferable Vote.
Brian Blessed gained 1389 votes,
while Michael Mansfield QC came
third with 964 and Abdul Arain
came last with 312. However, not
all undergraduates were happy with
the result, with Cambridge Defend
Education stating Lord Sainsbury’s
election “represents a further intrusion of corporate interests into the
University”.
Former Cambridge students Natalie
Szarek and Jacob Wills, prominent
protesters in support of the residents
of controversial Travellers’ site Dale
Farm, have been the subject of antisemitic abuse on extreme right wing
internet forums. On one user wrote:
‘“Jews have been doing this for years”.
Another labelled them: “lefty pillocks or pikeys”. Szarek, head of the
Dale Farm Solidarity Group and former CUSU Women’s Officer, told the
BBC that Basildon Council had ‘no
regard for human rights’ and stated
her support for the travellers.
Getting rid of lap-dancing clubs in
Cambridge could cost taxpayers
£30,000, according to Jas Lally, Head
of Environmental Services for Cambridge City Council. The estimated
price for research to support Council proposals to stop the venues operating has provoked criticism from
the Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre.
Development officer Norah Al-Ani
stated research would be a waste and
that the policy could go through on
“existing protocol”. Cllr Pogonowski
said “a group to help women…That
would be a better use of £30,000.”
NEWSPAPERS
SUPPORT
RECYCLING
Recycled paper made up
80.6% of the raw material for
UK newspapers in 2006
Satchel competition winners
announced!
THEATRE
TCS is happy to announce
the winners of our satchel
giveaway in association with the
lovely people at retrosatchels.
com.
Congratulations to Thomasina
Ball (Girton) and Olimpia
Onelli (Murray Edwards) - two
leather satchels in a traditional
brown colour and a funky
fluorescent yellow respectively
are winging their way to you.
The Cambridge Student is published by Cambridge University Students’ Union. All copyright is the exclusive property of the Cambridge University Students’ Union. Although The Cambridge Student is affiliated to the University Students’ Union we are editorially independent and financially selfsufficient. No part of this publication is to be reproduced, stored on a retrieval system or submitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher.
Davina Moss on this week’s
ADC Mainshow, The
Lonesome West
p.26
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
News |03
Guess who?
Cambridge University
Recognition rate:
61%
Brian Blessed
Tessa Evans, Alice Gormley Emily
Loud and Judith Welikala
In the run up to the upcoming CUSU
referendum on the University’s links
with Veolia and after the high-profile chancellorship elections, The
Cambridge Student investigated the
extent to which Cambridge students
can recognize key University figures
in comparison to University ‘celebrities’.
A sample of student at New Museums Site, Sidgwick Site and various
colleges were shown photographs of
key figures Vice President Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, CUSU
President Gerard Tully, newly elected Chancellor Lord Sainsbury, and
Cambridge Union Society President
28%
Charlie
Gilmour
22%
Lord
Sainsbury
Calum MacDonald, as well as booming voiced actor and Chancellor
candidate Brian Blessed, and Girton
student Charlie Gilmour.
The least recognisable of our figures was Tully, who was referred to
as “that Irish one” and “John someone”, with only 11% of students
surveyed able to identify him correctly.
In a tied second place were Sir
Borysiewicz and MacDonald, who
were correctly named by just 17%
of students, with a variety of different identities being proffered for
the vice-chancellor (“he’s not our
DoS…” said one mature student)
and hasty character judgments being
made of the Union president (a Girton student commented: “He looks
17%
Calum
MacDonald
like a douche”).
Lord Sainsbury was the next most
commonly identified figure of the
six, though his newfound position of
power in the University did not stop
some students from stating assuredly
that he was “that Marks and Spencer
guy”, or even more confusingly “the
President of Germany”.
Following close behind was the
much-photographed Charlie Gilmour, whom one Murray Edwards
student said was “the one in Pink
Floyd.”
The most easily identifiable figure
by far was Brian Blessed, although
he was called both “Karl Marx” and
“that hobo from Kings’ Parade” by
a couple of baffled undergrads. He
was recognized by 61% of those sur-
17%
Leszek
Borysiewicz
veyed.
On a more serious note, the students questioned were asked to explain their impression of the role
CUSU plays in University. One common misconception was the conflation of The Cambridge Union Society with CUSU, with undergraduates
stating that they “held a ball” and
“have a termcard”.
However, among those who were
aware of the existence of CUSU, it
proved most famous for its bulletin,
frequently described as “those annoying e-mails”.
More critically still, one Girton
student claimed CUSU does “fuck
all”, and arranges the societies’ fair
“badly”. The more clued up among
those questioned, such as graduates
11%
Gerard Tully
and undergraduates involved in JCR
affairs, were fully aware of the welfare roles played by CUSU as well
as its shadowing scheme and access
roles.
The majority of students were
also unaware of the identities of the
CUSU Sabbatical Officers. Access
Officer Taz Rasul was the only officer students were able to name on
the rare occasion that students knew
anything about CUSU sabbatical officers.
Perhaps most strikingly of all, not
a single student asked knew about
the Veolia referendum beginning on
Friday, suggesting that issues which
strike CUSU as relevant may not resonate with the average Cambridge
student.
Flashers target students College development projects
and schoolchildren
planned while others face hardship
Emily Loud
Deputy News Editor
Alice Gormley
Deputy News Editor
A major refurbishment of
Jesus
College
has
been
announced alongside ambitious
redevelopment plans for Christ’s
College, with budgets that
could exceed £25mn, while
poorer colleges face financial
problems.
Construction
company
Morgan Sindall, set to work on
Jesus College, plans to renovate
the adjoining Morley Horder
and Grade II listed Carpenter
buildings and upgrade all
bedroom facilities to provide ensuite bathrooms, having clinched
£9bn to splurge on the scheme.
The construction of a three-storey
library along Christ’s Lane to
replace the dated Grillet library
is set for approval, Cambridge
News reports.
The proposal has been greeted
with both excitement and
skepticism. While proponents
of the scheme underline its high
quality and appropriateness
to the location for which it is
planned, heritage groups have
opposed the move for fear it may
break links to Cambridge’s older
buildings.
Prof Peter Landshoff, chairman
of the college development
committee,
optimistically
highlights the progressive nature
of the project, informing the
News: “We have got to prepare
for different ways of work so it’s
much more of a place for people
to study in, an information centre
and a place for people to meet
and work in.”
However, the plans provide
a sharp contrast with financial
hardship currently being faced
by other colleges. Murray
Edwards attempted to combat its
persistent budget deficit through
a spate of redundancies of Porters
and other staff this summer.
JCR President Katie Kibbler
told TCS: “The college is not
in a brilliant place financially
and cutting jobs is an inevitable
part of cutting costs; as long
as it doesn’t affect the student
experience too drastically I can’t
see it being a bad thing.”
qatsi
Police are investigating two flashing incidents which took place
earlier this week. The first occurred on Herschel Road, Newnham, while primary school children were walking along the road.
A witness reported that the man
appeared from within the grounds
of Robinson College and stood
“close to the pavement” half way
down the road.
In response to this account
Robinson College told The Cambridge Student that they were not
treating it as a college issue, saying “It appeared not to have taken
place within College grounds.
We assisted the police as far as
possible.” They added that “we
routinely have security patrols
during the day and at night. We
take the security of the our junior
members seriously.”
A police spokeswoman said:
“We were called at 4.34pm to reports that a man with blond hair
had exposed himself. We searched
the area but couldn’t find him. Investigations are under way.” Po-
lice have increased patrols in the
area as a result.
A similar crime took place on
Friday at Murray Edwards when
the flasher appeared at the window of the College’s Clover
House. Cambridgeshire Constabulary released a statement reporting, “police were called at about
10.30pm on Friday to reports of a
man indecently exposing himself
to passers-by at New Hall. On
police arrival the man had gone.
There is no description of him.”
JCR Women’s Officer Alice
Gormley told the members of
Murray Edwards, “such occurrences can be avoided through
caution and common sense. It is
important you’re all aware that
caution is required both within
and outside college grounds.
This sort of occurrence is rare,
but worth bearing in mind. Make
sure to close curtains, and limit
time spent outside alone in late
evening.”
These events are reminiscent
of those which took place in late
2008, when a flasher menaced
students in Selwyn Gardens. He
was never caught.
The
04| News
News in Brief
Private universities within six
months
Private ownership of British universities is likely to proliferate
with private acquisitions possible
“within six months”, according
to a Times HE analyst. The comments come as the government
consults on further HE reforms
with its White Paper ‘Students at
the Heart of the System’. The paper’s suggestions include allowing non-teaching bodies to award
degrees and making it easier for
universities to gain a charitable
legal status in order to attract
investment. The paper has been
condemned by 400 academics,
who have written their own.
Former LSE director warns of
university closures
Lord Giddens, former Director of
the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, has
criticised the increasing commercialisation of higher education as
ill-considered, radical and poorly
researched.
He warned the Government over
their utilitarian approach towards
higher education, adding that
whole departments, if not universities, could close due to decreasing student numbers.
He stated that instead of trebling
tuition fees he would have advocated a more modest and rather
progressive increase, securing
more state funding into the universities.
Anger grows over councillor’s
pay rise
Protests are being planned
amongst council workers in response to a proposal which could
see a 25 percent pay rise for
councillors.
Cambridgeshire County Council will
meet on Tuesday and consider
an increase to the allowances
budget of £165,000.
The Unison union has called for a
picket outside Shire Hall from 9am
to protest against the proposals.
Terry Parr, Unison’s county branch
secretary, called the idea “incredibly insensitive” in a climate
where “local government employees are losing their jobs, having
their pay frozen, and probably
having to work longer.”
Student crushed to death
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Anger over Erasmus Major changes to
English Tripos discussed
accusations
Emma Johnston
Staff and students from the
University’s MML department have
hit out at a recent report suggesting
that one in five Erasmus students fail
to gain full credit for courses taken
whilst studying
The findings were the result of
a survey of approximately 9,000
students who took part in the 201011 European Union exchange
programme.
About 25 per cent of students were
reported receiving only partial credit
for work done abroad, and three per
cent gained no credit when returning
home, according to the Erasmus
Student Network.
MML students can choose to
study at one of over 70 European
universities as one option for the
compulsory year abroad. There are
also places for up to twenty Law
Students to spend a year studying
abroad in between their second and
third years in Cambridge.
Current and former Erasmus
students stress that the Erasmus
experience is beneficial both
academically and personally.
Kikko Kawashima, a fourth year
MML student at Christ’s, who spent
her year abroad in Trier, Germany,
said: “Erasmus benefited me in many
ways. I became fluent in German
and the experience of being plunged
into a new country with a different
language and culture gave me a great
challenge”.
Victoria Mattinson, a fourth year
MML student at Jesus, who was an
Erasmus student at Wurzberg in
Germany, highlighted that the Year
Abroad is a unique opportunity to
experience a different culture: “What
I studied last year is not directly
relevant to the work I will be doing
for Part II Tripos, but I think that it
is an amazing opportunity to be able
to go and study in another country,
to experience another culture, and
see how different education systems
work.”
Dr Joachim Whaley, MML Year
Abroad Officer, explained that “All
Cambridge students who take courses
under the Erasmus scheme during
their Year Abroad get full credit for
them. The value of such courses can be
immense: students study in the foreign
language and gain a perspective on
the different approaches taken at
foreign universities.”
Tessa Evans
Deputy News Editor
Students have been given the
chance to discuss major changes to
the English Faculty Tripos. The ideas
were discussed on Wednesday at
a student consultative committee
and include plans to reduce
supervision hours and introduce a
University-wide Prelim exam. The
proposed changes have left student
opinion divided.
The planned changes are being
framed as an attempt to “reduce the
number of demands we place upon
Part I students” and emphasize “quality
over quantity”, in order to improve the
student experience.
However, the current system was
describedasfinancially“notsustainable”
and “undesirable” by the General Board
of Faculties last academic year, when
a reduction in the number of
lectures,
paper
choices
and
supervision hours was suggested as
the Faculty deliberated over how
to cope with proposed government
spending cuts.
The suggestions have angered some
students, who fear that the reduction
in supervision hours will adversely
affect students. Third year English
student Eleanor Penfold told The
Cambridge Student; “the cuts seem like
an attempt to save money masked as
an improvement to student life.”
However, third year Meera
Murali was open to the idea of
sharing supervisions; “I think
it’s
unfair
that
supervision
time should be cut when that’s what
we are supposedly paying for when we
come to Cambridge. “
“Having said that, I don’t think it
would be a big deal because it’s good to
have another student in supervisions
to bounce ideas off and debate with.”
The proposal to implement a
university wide Prelim structure
was
seen
more
positively.
Second
year
Katie
Kibbler
told TCS; “I think that university
wide
Prelims
could
be
a
really good thing; while it would
mean more exams for us in the long
run, it would also mean a proper
practice before Part 1, which I think
can seem a bit daunting to second
years with no formal Cambridge exam
practice.”
The plans will be discussed further
in a second consultative meeting in
November.
Academics support
‘Bin Veolia’ campaign
Emily Loud
Deputy News Editor
Thirty Cambridge academics
have put their name to a letter
supporting the ‘Bin Veolia’ campaign
which
aims
to
encourage
students to vote ‘yes’ on the
upcoming referendum. This will be
held by CUSU on the question of
whether student body should call
upon the University to terminate
its contract with the French
multi-national company Veolia.
The company, which presently
manages the University’s waste,
has been extensively criticised by
the ‘Bin Veolia’ campaign for the
involvement of its sister company,
Veolia Transportation, in the
Jerusalem Light Rail Transit system
in Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It argues that this makes the company
‘complicit in Israel’s crimes under
international law’.
The letter reads “in choosing
to employ Veolia for its waste
management, the University poses a
serious ‘reputational risk’ to itself. The
University’s employment of Veolia for
waste management makes dubious its
claims of being committed to ethical
conduct.”
However, the extent of Veolia’s
complicity in the Jerusalem Light Rail
Transit company has been contested
considerably. The ‘Bin Veolia’
campaign have quoted research from
‘Who Profits’ detailing that Veolia
Transport owns 80% of Connex
Jerusalem Ltd, which provides all
services of operation and maintenance
for the Light Rail.
Speaking exclusively to The
Cambridge
Student,
Robert
Hunt, Veolia UK’s executive
director, said that the company
is “a five per cent shareholder
of the City Pass Consortium,
which won the international
tender procedure launched for the
construction and operation of the
JLRT. Veolia Transport was not
consulted as to the route of the
JLRT, and did not participate in the
construction of the project.
He further added, in reference to
the rulings of the Nanterre Tribunal
de Grande Instance made in May of
this year, “no breach of International
Law had been committed by Veolia
Transport in entering in to the
Project and related contracts for the
procurement thereof”.
HewentontosaythatanIsraelipublic
transport company made a bid for the
contract for the operations of the
Jerusalem Light Rail Transit. By
their own admission this deal has not
gone through, since “the approval
of the Competition Authority is still
outstanding following a complaint by
an aggrieved prospective purchaser”,
leaving the company still involved
with the operations of the Light
Railway.
In response to the defences
voiced by Veolia, Owen Holland
reiterated that “UN Human
Rights Council last year declared
the establishment and operation of the
tramway to be illegal.” He added that
the attempt to sell the JLRT contract
“indicates that Veolia is planning to
further profit from this site by selling
it to a settlement, while de-facto
acknowledging the wrongdoing of
this activity.”
When asked about the referendum
in our survey (see page 3) none
of the students surveyed were
aware of its existence. The CUSU
referendum will be held online from
21st-24th October.
Students caged in
protest
Members of the Cambridge University Amnesty International group
occupied a cage on Kings’ Parade on Sunday as part of their campaign to
release the last British detainee in Guantanamo Bay.
Devon Buchanan
A student at the University of
Northampton was killed as she
attempted to leave a nightclub
in the early hours of Wednesday
morning. Nabila Nanfuka, 22, was
caught in a crush of revellers leaving the city’s Lava and Ignite club.
The crush was accounted to clubbers leaving the busy nightclub in
a rush to catch departing buses.
Nabila, studying in her third year
for a leisure and tourism degree,
suffered a cardiac arrest and was
pronounced dead upon arrival at
Northampton General Hospital.
CambridgeStudent
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9/30/11 11:16:47 AM
The
06| News
News in Brief
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
UCL plans to swap Firsts for points
Thermal imaging could expose
extramarital scandals
Worries were raised over a new survey of houses in Cambridge which
will use thermal imaging cameras.
Following approval from housing
chiefs, surveyors will tour the city
in the search for homes with poor
insulation, but there are concerns
the images could impose on personal privacy. The pictures, which
can be sent to households upon request, will show figures in windows
which could cause problems, particularly if the images were sent to
the wrong address or opened by the
wrong member of the household.
The genome of the world’s oldest
woman, who died at the age of 115,
has been mapped by scientists in
Amsterdam.
The woman, who donated her
body to medicine, showed no signs
of dementia or atherosclerosis and
had the mind of someone decades
younger.
Scientists believe that her sequenced genome will make a valuable contribution to the study of
DNA variation linked to ageing,
although the DNA sequences of
thousands of people will have to
be studied before any conclusions
about the underlying biology of
long life can be made.
Computer scientists map world
happiness on Twitter
With over 200 million users on
Twitter, University of Cambridge
researchers Alex Davies and Zoubin
Ghahrami linked Tweet sentiment
to global happiness.
The pair found that by determining the emotions shown in a sample of tweets they could map and
predict human behavior based on
the statuses users post to the social
network. The research examined
the use of sad or happy emoticons smiley faces – in individual tweets.
The two presented their findings at
the 5th International Workshop on
Social Network Mining and Analysis in California.
Historic Cambridge buildings at
risk
A notable increase in the price of
metal has led to a spate of thefts
throughout Cambridgeshire.
Cemeteries, an airport and numerous places of worship have
been targeted. A total of 253 offenders have been arrested, but police are clamping down even harder
on those suspected of illegally obtaining and trading metal. Since
2009, over 76 churches have been
affected. Nearly £4 million worth of
metal has been stolen.
Steve Cadman
Does the genome contain the
secret to a long and happy life?
Alex Jackman
University College London has
announced plans to replace the
traditional system of grading
degrees with an American-style
points system in an attempt to
combat grade inflation.
In an interview with The Daily
Telegraph
Provost
Professor
Malcolm Grant stated, “student
performance
[is]
essentially
recognised by classification into
only two main groups; first class
and upper second class honours.
It is a crude and undistinguished
model”. In 2010, for example, 61%
of students completing full-time
degrees obtained Firsts or Upper
Seconds. By contrast, this was just
under 50% in 1996.
Grant also claims the grade
points average system is better
recognized internationally. UCL’s
website already details a grade
conversion
chart
for
US
graduate applicants, where a First
in an undergraduate degree is
equivalent to a 4.00, while a 2:2
equates to a 3.00.
UCL will trial the system next
year but it is as yet unclear whether it
will affect undergraduates currently
studying. One UCL fresher, Alex,
was “not fussed” by the idea, and
fellow first year Cecilia Rossler
said, “Uni degrees are undervalued.
If this is what it takes for people
to see the value of a degree,
that’s better than the current
system. UCL could even use both
simultaneously”.
Cambridge Freshers were no
more perturbed. Oliver said,
“given that a degree means so
little nowadays, having a greater
distinction between grades could
be a good step forward as it rewards
those who actually achieve better
grades, though at the end of the
day, employers should look at more
than grades”.
Plans to rank A-Level Post-16 education hit
students
by reforms
Connie Fisher
Education secretary Michael Gove
said it was time to “open up the
debate” about changing the A-level
system at a conference in London
last Thursday. The conference
was arranged by examinations
watchdog Ofqual as part of
a forthcoming review of the
examination system.
Gove proposed that the A* grade
could be given to a fixed percentage
of candidates in each subject,
rather than to those achieving over
a certain score. He also suggested
that students could be ranked
according to their performance,
allowing the publication of national
league tables comparing top
students.
For students taking English
Literature, this year’s most popular
subject, the scheme would involve
giving each student a ranking from
one to 90,000, a difference of one
mark causing a jump of around
1000 places.
Gove said the UK’s exam system
must be “accurate, precise and
world-class” and quoted evidence
that recent exams have become less
demanding on students.
Following this year’s record high
A-level pass rate of 97.8%, with
27% of students achieving an A
or A*, ideas are being proposed to
enable universities and employers
to differentiate between the top
students.
Adrian Prandle, from the
Association of Teachers and
Lecturers said “we question the
fairness of putting arbitrary
limits on the number of pupils
who are allowed to achieve top
grades. Young people should be
fairly rewarded for their hard
work at school and college.” Kate
Marsden, an A-Level student,
also disagreed with the proposals,
saying “a student’s grades should
directly reflect their academic
abilities and should not be
dependent on another student’s
success.”
“Apparently, there are no depths
to which the government will not
sink,” commented the general
secretary of the NASUWT teaching
union.
A spokesperson for the University
of Cambridge said: “We would
want to evaluate carefully the detail
of any proposal in order to ensure
that there was no detrimental
effect on fair access or admissions
standards.”
Emma Johnston
The government’s education policies have been criticised amid reports that the number of students
enrolling in 16-19 education has
decreased this year.
Research by the Association of
Colleges has shown that half of the
182 sixth form and further education colleges surveyed reported a
fall in student numbers. In a quarter of the colleges, the drop was
between 5 and 15 per cent. The
abolition of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a weekly payment of between £10 and £30 given
to students from households earning less than £30,800 per year, was
blamed for this decline.
Rowan Johnson, Vice Principal
of Scarborough Sixth Form College, confirmed that the number
of students enrolling this year had
decreased. Whilst it is difficult to
attribute this to any one cause, she
stated that: “Connexions and the
College strongly believe that the
abolition of EMA is an important
and contributory factor”.
She also expressed concern that
the introduction of £9000 per year
university tuition fees may deter
students from low income families
from continuing in post-16 education.
The Educational Maintenance
Allowance has been replaced by the
16 to 19 bursary, with students in
care, people claiming income support, and disabled young people
who receive Employment Support
Allowance and Disability Living
Allowance receiving a guaranteed
annual bursary of £1200. Other students facing genuine hardship may
be awarded a discretionary bursary
by their school or college. However,
there are concerns that this may not
cover all students who would have
been eligible for EMA.
Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, claimed that “Under the
government’s new £180 million
bursary scheme, the poorest youngsters will receive more help to stay
in education than they used to get
under the EMA. .”
The fall in student numbers raises
implications for university access.
Taz Rasul, CUSU Access Officer,
emphasised the huge impact that
government policy has on young
people’s aspirations: “Imagine how
unattainable a University like Cambridge is if students from low income backgrounds don’t even feel
supported to go to sixth form.”
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
From India with Love: Bond director
shoots film on Cambridge alumus
Kenneth Meyer
The Cambridge mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan will be ordering his
martinis shaken, not stirred in the
upcoming film about his research as a
Fellow at Trinity College.
Roger Spottiswoode, director of the
James Bond film Tomorrow Never
Dies, told The Hindustan Times in
an interview that he plans to shoot
a movie written about Ramanujan’s
life, his invitation to research at Cambridge University and his friendship
with the English mathematician G. H.
Hardy.
Far from Bond’s world of luxury
armed cars, Ramanujan grew up in a
poor family in Kumbakonam, India.
He showed natural skill in mathematics from a young age, teaching himself
advanced trigonometry by age 12.
Between 1912 and 1913, Ramanujan sent samples of theorems he had
devised to mathematicians at Cambridge. Hardy alone recognized the
genius of his work and invited him to
come to Trinity to research with him.
Ramanujan contributed several
original theorems to the study of
mathematics before dying young in
1920 at the age of 32.
The script for the film, titled A First
Class Man, won its writer David Freeman the Tribeca-Sloan Award at the
2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New
York.
Shooting of the film has been delayed however over a lack of funds.
Spottiswoode had recruited a small
cast including the prominent Bollywood actor Siddharth Narayan to
start preproduction for the film when
he found out that the funding for the
project had been pulled.
Living to die another day, Spottiswood plans to pick up the film anew
once he gains new funds.
X Factor could predict the future
Louise Ashwell
it is “research
gold dust”
in-depth analysis of social networks.
Police had access to Facebook and
Twitter posts by rioters but they
could not identify their significance:
to them, “the numbers weren't
speaking, only shouting unintelligibly." Hertz is conducting research
which she hopes will shed some
Backs to the Future
Tessa Evans
Deputy News Editor
Thirty-five trees are to be felled
along Cambridge’s famous Backs, a
project aimed at transforming the
area for the next 100 years.
The proposals, which it is
estimated will cost tens of thousands
of pounds, also involve planting
fifty new trees with the aim of
creating a “less formal” landscape
around Queen’s Road. The plans
aim for a more mixed layout, with
horse chestnut and lime trees being
removed to make way for a wider
variety of foliage.
Donald Hearn, bursar of Clare
College and a former secretary of
the Royal Horticultural Society,
admitted that the plans could be
controversial, saying: “this is such an
important part of the landscape in
the heart of the city. We are making
sure the tree planting gives sufficient
robustness for the next 100 years
while encouraging wildlife.”
Keith Carne, bursar of King’s
College agreed; “we think it is
important that the colleges and the
city have a proper and imaginative
plan for replanting on the Backs so
that the attraction is maintained.”
Rod Cantrill, the city council’s
public places chief, reassured that
there would be “very extensive”
consultation before work is carried
out.
light on such data’s potential.
But where does the X Factor come
in? As one of the most talked about
shows on social networking sites, it
is “research gold dust” because it allows us to examine how representative the chatter we engage in on social networks is of true events. Her
site xfactortracker.com illustrates
her findings so far, but she notes that
her project is not exclusively about
the programme. Rather, it’s about
applying the techniques she develops to models such as polling, public disorder or even the state of the
financial markets. “Only when we
join social and computer”, she says,
“can we realise the full potential of
big data.”
Image: Chris Friese
The X Factor could predict the
future, according to a Professor of
Social Science at Cambridge University. Noreena Hertz has argued
that the programme’s platform on
social media sites has the potential
to predict trends and events which
could have been used to tackle last
summer’s riots.
Speaking at ‘Wired’ magazine’s
annual conference last weekend, she
argued that traditional methods of
forecasting change such as carrying
out focus groups are increasingly
outdated. Hertz’s proposal is to bring
together social and computer scientists to create the new discipline of
social media science, looking to social networks to answer these questions.
She claims events such as the recent London riots show a need for
News |07
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10/10/2011 4:15:17 PM
The
08| International
This Week
Francois Hollande to take on
Sarkozy in 2012
Francois Hollande was elected
as the Socialist Party’s candidate
for the 2012 French election.
Hollande’s campaign was boosted
after former front runner
Dominique Strauss Kahn bowed
out following a sex scandal.
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Comment: What next for Egypt?
The European Union rejected a
meeting with Ukranian president
Viktor Yanukovych after the jailing
of former Prime Minister and
political rival Yulia Tymoshenko.
The EU has repeatedly accused
the trial of being politically
motivated. The decision is likely
to dent Ukraine’s hope of joining
the EU.
“Mother of all strikes” buckles
Greece
Unions representing around two
million Greek workers called for a
48 hour strike, in protest at further
austerity measures. The strike is
expected to be the worst since the
financial crisis in 2008.
Shalit swap goes ahead
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit
returned to Israel after being held
captive for five years in the Gaza
Strip. In return, Israel has agreed
to the eventual amnesty of 1027
Palestinian prisoners - 477 have
already been released.
Jobs Act falters in Senate
Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs
package failed to pass the Senate.
Republicans blocked the bill which
proposes combining tax cuts with
new state spending.
Vietnam eyes oil deal
India agreed to work with Vietnam
to explore for oil in a disputed
part of the South China Sea.
China warned Vietnam that it was
“playing with fire” by infringing
its territorial claims over the area.
Apple and Goldman Sachs
underperform
Profits and revenues of US
technology giant Apple came
in below expectations, owing to
unexpectedly low iPhone sales.
Goldman Sachs also reported a
quarterly loss of $428m in the
third quarter - the second time it
has made a loss since its flotation
in 1999.
Authorities closed schools and
advised residents to stay at home
in Zanesville, eastern Ohio after
the release of 48 lions, tigers,
cheetahs and grizzly bears. The
owner of the animals, who kept
them on his farm, released them
before committing suicide. Most
have already been shot.
Scrabble strip
A Thai player demanded his
English opponent be stripsearched
after the “G” tile myseriously
disappeared during a match at the
World Scrabble Championship.
Officials decided against the probe
because of a lack of evidence.
Morwenna Jones
As winter brings more violence to
Egypt, it appears that behind the
apparent democratic principles of
the governing body, the Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces
(SCAF), lurk the continuing problems of corruption and conflict.
On 14th February, days after the
departure of President Hosni Mubarak lead to the Council coming
to power, a statement was issued
announcing the Council’s view of
“human freedom, the rule of law,
support for the value of equality,
pluralistic democracy, social justice,
and the uprooting of corruption,” as
essential to legitimate government.
After thirty years of one-party rule
in a continuous State of Emergency,
the new government and their new
values were welcomed by ecstatic
protestors in the streets of Cairo,
and seemed to mark the beginning
of Egypt’s transition with many
sharing Barak Obama’s belief that
“Egypt will never be the same.”
Key to these supporters’ enthusi-
asm was the hope that the Supreme
Council’s clear beliefs would lead
to the organization of free and fair
elections and bring an end to the
violence that had characterized the
previous18 days of protests, leaving
300 protestors dead.
However, after a mere eight
months, the Supreme Council’s
illusions of democracy and justice have been shattered. In the
same statement on 14th February,
the Council proclaimed that they
would only govern for a temporary period of six months or until
elections were held for the People’s
Assembly, Shura Council and the
Presidency. These elections were
originally forecast to be held in
September but amidst protests in
Cairo’s Tahrir Square and concerns
about the lack of a constitution and
the continuing influence of more
established parties (such as former
President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party) actual voting
has been postponed until the new
date of November 21st, raising significant questions as to the extent of
the Council’s commitment to creating a fair, lawful government.
There are also questions being
asked about the possibility of a new
government being virtually the
same as Mubarak’s National Democratic Party as a result of corruption
in the voting system. Since October
13th, nearly 60 former members of
Mubarak’s National Democratic
Party have registered to run for
parliament, either as independent
candidates or as members of new
political parties. If these were to
be elected, it could lead to a complete reversal of January’s election.
These candidates have a particularly high chance of success in the
less democratic region of Upper
Egypt where the patronage network that enabled them to dominate elections before January is still
strong, and revolutionary groups
are weak. The rejection of international requests to observe the elections by Egyptian officials, including Parliamentary Affairs Minister
Mufid Shebab, also raises suspicion that the SCAF are only giving
the pretence of democratic elections and are ignoring the
current corruption. This suspicion can be further justified
by the SCAF’s domination by
former NDP members such as Mubarak’s former Minister of Defence,
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein
Tantawi.
Given the likelihood that the
changes made in January and February will be reversed, it appears
that despite popular support for
democracy and change, Egypt has
failed to move forward. Protests
are being met with increasing government repression. Twenty-eight
people died last week alone as a result of a military attack on a Coptic
Christian protest, and promises of
democracy are not being fulfilled.
Indeed, as Egypt wallows in a state
of failed democracy and continuing
conflict, it becomes evident that the
claims made in the “Arab Spring”
by the Council to a country eager
for change were simply a disguise
for a regime of continuing powermongering and dishonesty.
News: Myanmar rejects Myitsone Dam
Johann Kamper
Recently
appointed
Burmese
president
Thein
Sein
has
announced his decision to suspend
the construction of a new dam on
the Irrawaddy river, despite heavy
Chinese investment in the project.
Reasons for the surprise decision
are as yet unclear. The president
made the announcement earlier
this week, following widespread
protest and political pressure.
Environmentalists,
political
commentators, and human rights
activists have all lent their voices
to the masses protesting the
construction of Myitsone Dam.
Their concerns stem from the
fact that the dam was planned to be
built at the head of the Irrawaddy,
or Ayeyarwaddy, River – Myanmar’s
largest river and most important
commercial waterway. Flowing
from Damphet in the centre of the
country all the way to the Andaman
sea in the very south, the Irrawaddy
is commonly known as the “lifeline”
of the Burmese people.
The area north of the dam,
which was due to be flooded, is
the state of Kachin, home to the
indigenous Kachin people. The
reservoir created by the dam would
have occupied almost 300 square
miles of this people’s native land,
inundating 47 villages and one of the
most biologically diverse rainforest
regions in south-east Asia.
There was further cause for
concern in that Myitsone’s location
would have lain within 100km
of the Saging fault line – where
the Eurasian tectonic plate met
the Indian plate. This would have
dramatically raised the risk of an
earthquake weakening the dam.
Construction of Myitsone Dam
has largely been seen as a Chinese
project, due to the involvement
of the China Power Investment
Corporation. Furthermore, it is
estimated that up to 90 percent of
the hydroelectric power generated
by the dam was to be fed back
into China. As such, Burmese
nationalists have commended
their
government
for
the
suspension and refusing to bow to
Chinese
economic
pressure.
Renowned democratic leader Aung
San Suu Kyi recently commented:
“I’ve heard that the president sent
a message about the suspension
of the Myitsone project on the
Irrawaddy River in response to the
public’s concerns. It’s very good that
the government listens to the voice
testing the water
Chris Roebuck
Lions on the loose in Ohio
Bahrain Ministry for Foreign Affairs
EU calls off meeting with
Ukranian President Viktor
Yanukovych
of the people, as that is what they
should do.”
President Thein Sein, Myanmar’s
first civilian president in almost fifty
years, has been under international
scrutiny since coming to power
in March earlier this year. His
predecessor, Than Shwe, under
whom Myanmar was considered
an “outpost of tyranny” (alongside
the likes of Belarus, Cuba, Iran,
North Korea and Zimbabwe),
was often considered to be one of
the world’s worst dictators. It was
Than Shwe who originally signed
the agreement with China to
build the Myitsone dam in 2007.
Sein, however, is being hailed as a
reformer, with the suspension of the
dam’s construction the most recent
in a long list of pro-democratic
reforms, such as agreeing to
talks with activist Aung San Suu
Kyi, and allowing labour unions to
strike.
This news comes alongside news
of another controversial dispute,
between China and other southeast Asian nations over territorial
rights in the South China Sea.
Straight talking from KPMG.
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Drinks, presentation and networking
with KPMG
6.30pm, Thursday 20th October
Museum of Zoology Cambridge
Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ
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© 2011 KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership, is a subsidiary of KPMG Europe LLP and a member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative, a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. The KPMG
name, logo and “cutting through complexity” are registered trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International.
No bull.
The
10|
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
INTERVIEW
Nicholas Tufnell talks to Alain de Botton about
philosophy, architecture and The School of Life.
my life. I wanted to be do something
creative and knew that I’d have very
little time after graduation to figure
out what. So I threw myself into lots
of reading (outside of my course)
and lots of writing too. I didn’t find
an enormous circle of friends keen to
discuss the great questions - but one
or two certainly. The teaching was often outstanding.
Vincent Starr
You have been quoted as saying you
hope your children never read a book
in their lives. What did you mean by
this?
Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1969 and now lives
in London. He is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a
‘philosophy of everyday life.’ He’s written on love, travel, architecture and
literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. Alain also started
and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a
new vision of education. Alain’s latest book is titled Religion for Atheists and
will be available in the UK, US and other territories in 2012.
Speaking at Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, Stephen Hawking recently claimed, “Philosophy
is dead”. What are your thoughts on
this?
For a long time, between the end of
the 19th and the 20th centuries, philosophy lost the interest of the general public. It became too abstract,
too much based on the analysis of
language and off beat metaphysical ideas. Previous to that, it had of
course been right at the centre of civilised enquiry. Philosophers told you
how to govern, how to be good - and
how to live. Only recently have these
wonderful ambitions re-entered the
public realm. Only recently have philosophers relearnt that their task may
(in part) be to analyse the problems
of everyday life and society - and arrive at answers that can motivate and
console us.
Perhaps surprisingly for some, you
studied History at Cambridge, not
Philosophy. Was your interest in philosophy something that only occurred
later in life?
Though I am sometimes thought of
as a philosopher, it’s not the way I see
myself. I’m a historian by training,
and my interests really circle around
the novel, art history, political theory
and psychoanalysis. What you study
at university rarely defines the pattern of your whole life and what I remember most about my course was
not a particular set of topics, but a
way of approaching learning: a rigour
and a thoroughness that continue to
inspire me. This said, I was particularly inspired in my course at Cambridge by the writings and teachings
of Quentin Skinner and other members of the history faculty focused on
political theory.
Did you enjoy your time at Cambridge?
Did you find it was conducive to intellectual curiosity, or did it mitigate
against this?
The further away I get from Cambridge, the more I enjoy it. It was a
fascinating time, I was often unhappy,
for my own reasons. I was deeply worried about what I’d do with the rest of
I was being playful, but like every
father, I hope to give my kids some
advice, and one particular lesson I
hope to impart is: never become a
writer. I have a deep admiration for
architecture and engineering, and as
I have two boys, am very keen that
one does one and the other the other.
I am leaving the choice up to them,
they are happy to work that one out
down the line. They are currently 4
and 6 and very keen on Lego.
You founded The School of Life in London. Could you describe it and explain
why you created it?
The harsh truth is that if you went to
any university in the country and said
that you had come to study ‘how to
live’ or ‘how to become a better and
wiser person’, you would be politely
shown the door - if not the way to an
asylum. Universities nowadays see it
as their job to train you either in a
very specific career (like law, medicine) or to give you a grounding in
arts subjects like literature or history - but for no identifiable reason,
beyond the vague and unexamined
notion that three years studying medieval literature may be a good idea.
“Why weep over parts
of life? The whole of it
calls for tears”
The contemporary university grew
out of religious institutions like monasteries and seminaries. These bodies
were actively concerned with making learning practical: they wanted to
save your soul, they wanted to teach
you to become wise and good. But as
we’ve become a more secular society,
so we’ve grown embarrassed about
wisdom or ideas of right and wrong,
good and bad. Elite opinion associates wisdom with self-indulgent
therapy and Oprah Winfrey (and
meanwhile, the streets are on fire). If
an academic ever appears on TV, his
colleagues will treat him like he has
‘sold out’. Doing your job properly in
the eyes of most academics generally
consists in writing books for a narrow group.
There are few places in the modern
world where people get protection
from the pressures of making money and can spend time reading and
thinking.
Universities are these places, they
receive massive subsidies from us,
the taxpayers - and should be idyllic
refuges from the harsh winds blowing up and down the country. But
modern universities have often betrayed such ideals.
“I don’t believe in
accessibility, I believe
in good writing.”
We live in a largely secular country, where the majority of people
find themselves unable to take the
teachings of the Church (or Mosque
or Synagogue) seriously. I believe it
should therefore should be the role of
culture to take up the slack. It is art,
philosophy, religion and history that
should be helping to guide us as the
biblical books once guided us.
To make this point in practical
terms, a few years ago, I came together with a group of similarly disaffected academics, artists and writers and
decided to start a new kind of center
of learning that we called plainly: The
School of Life. The place opened its
doors in a modest shop and teaching
space in central London near King’s
Cross.
On the menu of our school, you
won’t find subjects like ‘Philosophy’,
‘French’, ‘History’ and the Classics’.
You’ll find courses in ‘Death,’ ‘Marriage’, ‘Choosing a career’, ‘Ambition’,
‘Child Rearing’ or ‘Changing your
world’. Along the way, you will learn
about a lot of the books and ideas that
traditional universities serve up, but
angled towards greater relevance.
There’s even a bookshop in the
school which does away with the traditional categories in bookshops like
fiction or history and just sells books
according to particular problems. So
we’ve got a shelf titled ‘For those who
worry at night’ and another titled
‘How to be happy though married’.
We call the shop a ‘chemist for the
soul’.
It’s always tempting to stick at
standing on the sidelines complaining about a problem, but it’s perhaps
one better to try to make a change
yourself. The School of Life is our
modest attempt to alter the way that
learning gets done in this country
- and to remind us that culture, if
handled rightly, should actually feel
entirely relevant and exciting and always make life more manageable and
interesting.
You are occasionally both praised and
criticised for making your philosophy
‘accessible’. Is making your work accessible a conscious decision?
I don’t believe in accessibility, I believe in good writing. For me, the
ideals are the prose of Virginia Woolf
and Voltaire. They were both clear
writers, because they believed that
the greatest insult to the reader is to
bother them before you’ve worked
out what you want to say. I have
learnt from them.
Are there any philosophers whose
writing particularly rings true for you,
who touch a nerve or move you in a
way others do not?
I love the work of the philosopher
John Armstrong. He has written six
books, among them a terrific study of
the meaning of beauty entitled, The
Secret Power of Beauty. I recommend
it to anyone interested in design, art,
architecture and the meaning of life.
You wrote and presented a fascinating
TV series called “A Guide to Happiness” Are there any other series similar to this planned for the future?
I will be doing future work for Channel 4 and the BBC, but I think the
controllers are still recovering from
having allowed me to take up hours
of airtime discussing Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer. UK broadcasters generally allow one show about philosophy every 30 years.
Finally, do you have favourite philosophical quote?
Yes, from Seneca: ‘What need is there
to weep over parts of life? The whole
of it calls for tears.’
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19/10/11 17:24:13
The
12| Comment
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
Comment Do Higher Education rankings matter?
As Oxford trounces Cambridge in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we ask: is there any actual merit in these tables?
Higher Education rankings help
distinguish the quality of one
institution from another, argues
Ross Moody
Two summers ago I came to Cambridge, along with dozens of other
students from the University of
California system, to participate in
a summer term program run jointly
by Pembroke and King’s. The UC system runs study abroad programs all
over the world and thus the common
appeal seemed to be the opportunity
to study at a foreign institution at the
pinnacle of academia.
So how did we know Cambridge
was the best place to go for study
across the Atlantic? Other institutions on offer, such as Bologna in
Italy and Humboldt in Germany,
have been recognized as great centres
of knowledge. So why not try any of
them out?
The answer, of course, is that Cambridge is a powerhouse now, whereas
the others are not. But how can we
confirm this? How about through a
collection of data regarding characteristics that are seen as conducive to
accomplishing the goals of a university, arranged such that one can see
which institutions possess more of
such characteristics than others and
to what degree?
In other words, how about higher
education rankings? While university league tables are disparaged at one
time or another for their narrowness
of audience, bias or flaws in methodology, there can be no doubt that
taken together, the various university
rankings that exist today are useful in
distinguishing the quality of one institution from another, and the best
way to rectify their shortcomings is to
simply find and compile the desired
data that the status quo hasn’t yet.
The most respected rankings can
be thought of as somewhat akin to
the analysts participating in a round
table on a TV sport program. The
analysts are asked to make some
comparisons between and predictions about teams, and sometimes
even rank the teams at the outset of
the season based on which they think
will have the best season. Each analyst is not completely devoid of bias
and/or flaws in their methodology,
but taken together they are useful
in predicting what the results of the
competition will be on a fairly longterm basis.
Likewise, and to take one realworld example, the QS World University Rankings and the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities
(ARWU) rely arguably too heavily on
various surveys and various citation
metrics, respectively. However, taken together they account for a high
number of predictors of success.
This is true whether one thinks the
universities with the biggest impact
on their knowledge and future, or
that of the entire world, will be those
that have high quality of research
output and/or output which has cachet among fellow academics, or
those that produce graduates of high
employability. It is up to the reader to
decide which ranking or combination of ranking indicators would help
them best, based on their preferences
and goals.
Admittedly there are a couple basic
drawbacks and limitations among all
of the rankings that currently exist.
The most glaring error is inadequate
attention paid to the student perspective in the three main international
rankings (Times Higher Education
Supplement, QS and ARWU), as they
take student surveys or completion
rates into account. More fundamentally, the very existence of rankings
puts pressure on the ranked institutions to manipulate data in order to
get a leg up on other schools in the
rankings.
Yet these shortcomings can’t take
away the basic usefulness of comparing universities based on a wide
range of statistically sound measures
of research and educational performance. Hence those rankings that
have helped students the world over
and I figure out which university is
overall best for our professional and
intellectual goals, in the aggregate, do
matter.
Ross Moody is doing an MPhil
in Economic and Social History at
Pembroke
Jamie Mathieson
Vox Populi
They say Labour scandals are about
money, and Tory scandals are about
sex. This one was about both. That
shouldn’t surprise us: in the age
of coalition, party boundaries are
fluid. The Tories are now the party
that cares about getting people out
of poverty (well, some people).
Labour represents the ‘squeezed
middle’. (Squeezed by whom? The
aristocracy? The proletariat as well?)
And the Lib Dems raised tuition
fees, the most explicit, spectacular
and embarrassing U-turn in British
politics since Mr. Chamberlain told
Mr. Hitler, ‘Oi, Hitler. We’ve let
you have the Rhineland, Austria,
Cambridge ranked
4th in The 201112 Times Higher
Education
World University
Rankings.
32
UK universities made it
into the top 200.
60%
of total Times Higher
Education ranking scores
are taken up by teaching
and research
100%
Score given to
Cambridge by
by QS World
University
Rankings
C.K.H
the Sudetenland, and the rest of
Czechoslovakia. But Poland? Never!’
What are friends for? As wondered
by any of us who’ve ever been
victims of classic student pranks:
fraping, waffling, sectioning. It’s
usually impossible to explain why
we are friends with the people
we are friends with: coincidence
and happenstance tends to trump
actually having things in common,
particularly when you became
friends as kids. You might have
grown out of that Star Wars phase;
maybe he never did. Friendship, like
any relationship, requires time, effort
and patience. Maybe even now you
find yourself attending Star Wars
fanboy conferences just to feel that
sense of obligation pushed to the
Rankings are blunt, crass, AngloSaxon biased tools for determining
research quality - nothing more,
says Luke Fernandes
At some level we all value university
rankings. Despite being in supposedly the best and most prestigious
university in the world, I have a
sneaking suspicion that we’d all shift
across the green en masse to Anglia
Ruskin should it swap places with
Cambridge. Having owned up to this
fickle gullibility, it’s time to ask questions of the tables received from on
high whose meanings and methodologies are open to criticism, rather
than credulously accepting them.
University rankings are horribly
blunt, crass tools for determining research quality and quantity – particularly due to their Anglo-Saxon bias.
It is most amusing to look pitiably
upon one’s continental colleagues at
Cambridge as refugees from countries whose greatest performing institution comes about seven hundred
and second in the world. Yet are the
immense reservoirs of academic talent around the globe inferior to even
the smallest and most provincial of
British Universities as the tables suggest?
Rankings include research quality as a major component. Their fatal
flaw is that English language scholarship has a tendency to be referenced
more than that in other languages.
Due to the relatively larger volume
of English language universities, and
the dominance of English in international journals, German, Italian or
Japanese works (for instance) are far
less likely to be cited – their academic
merits notwithstanding. While the
EU is trying to develop a new ranking system to compensate, every
single league table now in existence
is marred by this problem. The recent
THES league table placed the Free
University of Berlin, one of best universities in the country, at 151st place
globally. The best French university
languishes at 169th place. Out of the
top 200 universities, 119 are from
English speaking countries. The top
14 are either American or British.
Who cares? Well, while there
might be some pride in British success here, the lack of congruency
between reality and the league tables
yields distortions. Though the Erasmus programme is claimed to be one
of the most notable success stories of
a united Europe, British take-up is
abysmally low, despite the UK itself
being the third most popular destination for Erasmus students. One of the
reasons is that when we look across
the Channel, we see universities with
no great cachet relative to our own.
Conversely the Erasmus students I
know all said that UK university reputations influenced their decision to
come here; the distasteful flip side is
our lack of interest in foreign higher
education. Cambridge and other top
universities bear a sufficient imprimatur of success, and the league tables allow us to do what seems most
comfortable: ignore Abroad.
The more fundamental question is
why do we care about research rankings anyway? Yes, being lectured and
supervised by the academic élite is
one of the staple advertisements for
Cambridge, but it is hardly essential
for either intellectual development or
career prospects. The value of good
teaching is actually ignored when research is over-emphasised; the cliché
that good academics are not necessarily good supervisors or lecturers still rings true. Here, we fetishise
research and research assessments
and turn our noses up at the North
American ‘liberal arts colleges’ which
focus solely on undergraduate teaching. Yet an interested and engaged
undergraduate there will probably
become only marginally less erudite
following his degree than his counterpart in a grand old research intensive university.
Because of their research focus,
higher education league tables don’t
really make a difference to the vast
majority of people at university –
undergraduates. And for those who
do care about research quality, it is
patently clear that these tables undervalue whole swathes of the world unlucky enough not to write in English.
Luke Fernandes is a 3rd year
Classicist from Christ’s
back of your mind for another six
months.
Here’s what happened with Dr. Fox.
(A real doctor, by the way. Not one of
these people with a Ph.D who expect
you to call them doctor. Cambridge
is full of them.) He hadn’t seen Adam
Werritty for a while: they’re both
busy. So he thought, ‘Hey, dude.’
(That is how Liam Fox speaks.) ‘Hey,
man, why don’t you just come along
on my trip to (name of emerging
market)? I’ll be free in the evenings,
bro. We can have a good meal, we
can do whatever we feel!’
And so they did. And they had a
whale of a time. (Japan, especially: it’s
a delicacy there.) And when the next
trip to a foreign land with a luxury
hotel came along, so did Adam. And
why not: he never has time to meet
up in London these days. And they
talked business – they were catching
up – and occasionally Adam
introduced Liam to the odd business
chum, and everyone showed off how
important they were and merrily
promised each other favours and
played drinking games. (Adam and
Liam constantly stitched each other
up: ‘Never have I ever…voted for
Iain Duncan Smith for the Tory
leadership!’)
And deep down, Liam knew
something was wrong. But what
could he do? They were friends. And
when it all unravelled, when he came
crashing down the greasy pole – at
least there’d be someone to turn to.
What are friends for?
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
The
CambridgeStudent
Want To See Your Name
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The
14| Comment
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Universities are not simply employment factories
Chris McKeon
One might be forgiven for thinking
that a focus on ‘academic skills’ is no
bad thing in an academic institution
like a university. One might even believe, quite reasonably, that it was a
vital part of that institution, its entire
reason for being perhaps.
Such views, while apparently perfectly reasonable, are misguided. Education is about business, and such a
focus is, according to Ian Smith of the
charity Young Enterprise, ‘alarmingly
narrow’.
Smith’s charity, reflecting the views
of such companies as HSBC, KPMG
and a number of other assorted acronyms, has shown us the problems
at the heart of this erroneous way of
thinking. It leaves graduates woefully
underprepared for the world of work
and leads to a lack of ‘vital employability skills’ – skills apparently too
many to list.
This is clearly a situation which cannot continue and must be corrected
immediately. Fortunately, Smith and
his acronyms have provided us with a
solution. It is ‘very important’ – perhaps even vitally so – that businesses
get involved in education and that
something called ‘entrepreneurship
education’ should be added at once
to the National Curriculum. After all,
education is about business.
A production
line building
graduates for
the world of
work
For the chief executives and chairmen of the acronyms which responded to Young Enterprise’s survey, education really is about business. It is
not about personal development, nor
knowledge for its own sake (or even
for what having educated people can
contribute to the the community).
No, it is about providing graduates
who are adequately prepared for
the world of work. Twenty years of
school and all in preparation for the
next forty years – probably more now
– and then only the hours between
nine and five on a weekday.
Maybe education in this country
is failing to prepare young people for
the world of work, but then that isn’t
the point of education – universities
are not simply employment factories.
James Appleton
Maybe UK
education is
failing young
people.
Except it would be difficult for
business to get any more involved
in education. They are consulted on
almost every aspect of it (including
tuition fees, an issue which has absolutely nothing to do with them).
Business leaders are able to establish their own schools in the shape
of academies. Even the government’s
higher education policy has been run
since 2008 out of the Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills rather
than the Department for Education
where it rightfully belongs.
And yet they want more.
But the result of all this extra involvement from businesses, all these ‘entrepreneurship’ classes (as if it were
something that could be taught out
of a textbook) would be something
much worse than a lack of ‘vital employability skills’.
Schools and universities would indeed become employment factories,
more than they are already – little
more than conveyor belts on a production line building graduates adequately prepared for the world of
work. Forget knowledge for its own
sake, forget thought and curiosity,
forget creating better human beings,
better members of the community
able to think and understand (people
this site’s aim is to get more people
into adulterous relationships. For
someone tempted to cheat on
their partner, the site makes the
possibility so easy and convenient
that Ashley Madison feels confident
to guarantee success to those who
seek it.
Despite
Biderman’s
earnest
assurances, the site’s slogan alone is
enough to undermine his precarious
moral defence. The portrayal of
adultery as a dangerous, exciting,
and acceptable addition to your love
life can only be read as an active
encouragement to indulge.
The suggestive adverts broadcast
on American TV channels do not
A screenshot of Ashley Madison’s homepage
seem to be publicising a neutral circumstances there are reasons why
provision of service for those already cheating is perhaps understandable if
committed to cheating. Instead, not acceptable.
to all intents and purposes the
Honesty and communication
advertising campaigns appear to be with a partner can undoubtedly
trying to persuade people dissatisfied be difficult at the best of times,
in their relationships that an but the wide-scale promotion of a
affair will fulfil them and make them non-confrontational yet deceitful
happier; and most importantly that ‘easy’ way out seems little more than
Ashley Madison is the place to find crass exploitation of a vulnerable
one.
audience.
Ashley
Madison’s
Marriages
and
relationships commercialisation of adultery can
don’t always work out, of that there only serve to exacerbate the problems
is no question. It’s also open to faced by its eleven million users, not
debate whether adultery is always solve them.
fundamentally apprehensible; people
don’t necessarily cheat because Martha Henriques is a 3rd year at
they are ‘bad people’. In certain Selwyn studying HPS
who would, incidentally, almost certainly be better employees, not that
that matters). What we want, say the
acronyms, are graduates adequately
prepared for the world of work. Because education is about business.
Chris McKeon is a 3rd year Historian
at Caius
Easy way to seek out an affair online is not acceptable
Martha Henriques
While most dating websites are
aimed at helping singletons hook up,
one website has taken it upon itself
to fill a different niche in the online
relationship marketplace. The Ashley
Madison online dating service
aims to encourage those already
in a relationship or marriage to
indulge in an extra bit on the side.
Although not the only site devoted
to this market, Ashley Madison is
by far the largest, currently boasting
well over eleven million members
globally.
Unsurprisingly but not altogether
unintentionally, the site has been
immersed in controversy since its
inception in the US in 2001. Largescale advertising proposals have been
rejected by various organisations
from Super Bowl to the Toronto
Transport Commission due to the
unconventional aims and content
of the site. The TTC advertising
campaign would have seen streetcars
throughout the Canadian city
emblazoned with the site’s provocative
slogan: “Life is short. Have an affair”.
The deal fell through because it was
deemed inappropriate to promote a
company for which dishonesty was
the “core fundamental value”, said a
TTC spokesperson.
The CEO of Ashley Madison,
Noel Biderman, defends the site on
the grounds that it alone can’t cause
someone to cheat on their partner.
He told the Tyra Banks Show that it
merely provides a service for those
who have already decided to “take
that path”. However, it is difficult to
imagine that the existence of such
a site does not increase the number
of people who have affairs; after
all, conventional dating websites
aim to get more people together,
BRIDGE
MAGAZINE
Yo dawg
I heard you liked bridges...
Internet Memes, p18-19
The
CambridgeStudent
SATIRE
Homosexuality is not a disease
Daniel Henry Kaes
The Edinburgh-based Employment
Research Institute this week has
confirmed reports that since 2007,
when the Archbishop of Canterbury
declared that homosexuality is not
a disease, the number of employees
phoning into work ‘gay’ has greatly
decreased. This decline has seen a
great boost in both the economy
and the self-esteem of many gay
young men. The Archbishop Dr.
Rowan Williams insisted: “I do not
assume that homosexual inclination
is a disease,” in a move that stunned
and divided many Church members
and laymen.
Calling in ‘homosexual’ to work
was listed as one of the top three
reasons for truancy in the early part
of the century, along with the even
vaguer complaint of ‘women’s
problems’ and euphemistic ‘migraine’
after a heavy night out. It is yet to be
seen whether students across the
country have adopted this particular
excuse as a reason for not having
completed their work. One lecturer
from Pembroke College, Cambridge
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Want to get involved in Satire?
Email satire@tcs.cam.ac.uk.
commented that “with supervisors
becoming increasingly wise to the
old clichés of the ‘my dog ate my
homework’ school it is perfectly
natural that students are coming
up with more inventive ways to
get round having not completed
their assignments. However, I for
one would not count being gay as
a valid excuse.” This represents a
huge blow to the current batch of
freshers, whose return to solid ground
after the turbulence of Freshers’ week
is imminent.
P U Z Z L E D
That’s What She Said
When I first arrived in Cambridge,
I was disillusioned by the warm
weather, not unlike my home, Los
Angeles. My first order of business
was to spend a desperate hour in
Boots looking for American-made
toothpaste (this really should not even
have to be explained- having a mouth
that resembles an archaeological dig
is just not a good look for me, but
each to their own). As I came out of
Boots the weather turned gloomy, a
state in which it seemed – ironically
– content to stay in.
As I wandered around the town,
contemplating getting a Segway to
of a decent meal. While the British
drank tea with their pinkies out,
we were still rolling around the dirt
trying to figure out the purpose of
all the palm trees. After 23 years the
best answer I could come up with is
that during inebriated adventures
one can pretend they are on Gilligan’s
Island.
I was excited to share my new
experiences with friends back home,
but I realised that Los Angeles has
eroded my frame of reference. The
best I could do was make Harry
Potter references and comparisons
to Disneyland. So thank you Goofy
(or, to use your full name, Ron
Weasley) for making my transition
somewhat easier, but on the whole
misinformed.
ACROSS
1) When he’s not responding to his
spinal pain, he’ll return your favour.
(13)
8) Novel game on the Serengeti (3)
9) A pit in which a potter plays a
pound (9)
10) Dipped, despite rumours of
having been instructed (8)
11) It may be sweet for Italians, but
for us it’s endlessly necessary. (4)
13) Loosed from hell, Jesus’ man
now roosts defiantly. (5)
14) Ms Windsor gets sharp if you
hit her right in the centre. (5)
17) Code lying undetected in a
funeral mound (4)
18) She’s from another place, but she
makes sorrowful noises here too. (8)
21) The war’s over when you reverse
the digits. (5-4)
22) Blade that may require
extraction (3)
23) ‘Calm’, ‘blander’ and two zeros
– strictly speaking, the judges gave
the performance a mixed response.
(8,5)
Set by Spearhafoc
HEADLINERS
Abby Jitendra and Daniel Henry Kaes
Graduate Open Evening
Wednesday 2 November 2011
Online booking is essential:
lse.ac.uk/Cambridge
11_0758 Student Ad CambridgeV2.indd 1
07/10/2011 15:57
‘Neil Diamond fan somersaults
across Lincolnshire’
‘Smoking gets you laid, says new
study from Benson & Hedges’
‘Bedfordshire pub found to be
made of cous cous’
‘64% of maps don’t know what the
time is’
‘Kitten found inside man’s carpal
tunnel’
‘Petty thief, injured in his escape,
sentenced to 36 months in an NHS
waiting list’
‘Freemasons announce plans to
admit women who look a bit like
men’
‘Clegg and Cameron launch new
condom: the Clam’
DOWN
1) Start by buying a good early
lunch, and you should fill the hole!
(5)
2) You don’t need to put your foot
down to be in charge of a shipshape holiday. (6,7)
3) A semblance of order formed
from flashing buttons (7)
4) A sea-tossed man expects higher
salaries. (6)
5) It could be in or out after Easter
or Whitsun. (4)
6) Using a blagger’s main
endowment to go up in the world.
(3,3,7)
7) With limited tea at the
playhouse, confusion reigns – we
need another warm-up! (6)
12) This coastal point is secluded,
so call and send for help. (5,3)
15) Quick bit of building before
Thunderbirds (6)
16) The occasion is wasted there
without a little company, but it’s
worth a gamble. (6)
19) The daring that’s taken to reach
the brain (5)
20) He kicks the bucket and leaves
a stain – sounds dreadful! (4)
Answers to last week’s
crossword
Across
1. At the heart, 7. Ex, 8. Tori, 9.
Ingrates. 10. Obfuscates, 11. Depart,
13. Let rip, 14. Out of habit, 17.
Terminal, 18. Amis, 19. P.S., 20.
Antagonist
Part 1: Adventures in Disneyland
preserve my useless collection of
suede boots (and if I actually walk
around then I will no longer have
an excuse to go to the gym and
wear spandex clothes I have no
business in) I realised something.
What Cambridge lacks in sunshine
and unnaturally white teeth, it
compensates with deep-rooted
history.
I passed Ede & Ravenscroft, which
claims to have been established in
1689, 87 years before the United States
declared themselves independent.
This supported my theory that the
British were wearing silk ascots and
fancy tights before my kind even
existed. Los Angeles is particularly
deprived of history, just as the
celebrities it houses are deprived
Down
2. Troublemakers, 3. Haiku, 4.
Haircut, 5. Argot, 6. Transit, 7.
Electricities, 12. Anosmia, 13. Left
Leg, 15. Tenet, 16. Again.
Julia Newnham
Front cover by Abi See
and Nicholas Tufnell
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
Features
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Email features@tcs.cam.ac.uk.
Gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamtkunstwerk
will provoke thought,
offer a unique
experience and derive
artistic inspiration
from the artefacts
themselves
Behind the grandiose façade of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Filthy Lucre
(consisting of Joe Bates and Anthony
Friend) will be exploring “new
ways of presenting and consuming
live music and art” while offering
a mixed-genre evening which has
been characterized as part jazz bar,
part concert and part club night.
In a world where the definition of
art has grown so wide as to include
both luxury yachts and thirty-yearold front pages from the Guardian,
Lucre will hopefully encourage
visitors to reflect on the role and
relevance of art in society.
In a similar vein, the suspended
skeletons of the Museum of Zoology
shall bear silent witness to an eclectic
club night featuring DJ sets and live
music.
The centrepiece
of the collection
is Cambridge’s
own replica of the
astronomical clock
A teaser playlist has been released
on Access All Archives’ Facebook
page, promising an eclectic mix
of music, from the genre-defying
sound of the Matthew Herbert Big
Band via Miles Davis and through
to Radiohead.
The Mesozoic majesty of the
Sedgwick Museum will play host to
the Cambridge Gamelan Group, who
will perform traditional Indonesian
music while visitors peruse the
museum’s rows of wooden drawers
containing the fossilised remnants
of Earth’s earliest inhabitants.
The Whipple Museum of the
History of Science whirs and
clicks with a clockwork chorus
as the scientific instruments of
centuries past effervesce in cases
of burnished bronze and lacquered
wood. The centrepiece of this
genial collection of gentlemanly
science is Cambridge’s own replica
of the 14th-century Wallingford
astronomical clock (the original,
sadly no longer in existence, was
installed at the abbey of St. Albans),
which is the main inspiration for
the treatment, in soundscape, of the
idea of mechanization.
The displays of antediluvian
optical and audio devices will be
complemented by a “sonorous, cyclic
automation” which will transform
the museum into a deconstruction
of a clockwork machine through
the medium of sound. Over the five
museum sites, Access All Archives
promises to be an intriguing
evening.
The event is being organised
by CaMEO, the Music Faculty’s
outreach programme, and so is
bound up in the noble goals of
increasing access to music, engaging
with the local community, and
promoting musicians to wider
audiences.
All of this raises interesting
questions about the nature of art,
education and how we approach
the idea of museums as repositories
of knowledge. In one sense, the
explicitly factual aspect of museums
as storehouses of physical evidence
from the past is subverted by the
presence of artistic installations
which are inspired by, and therefore
contain an interpretation of, those
historical artefacts. Hopefully
this will provoke thought on
the importance of historical
interpretation and the importance
of questioning received narratives.
From an artistic point of view,
the idea of locating performance in
a museum setting is interesting in
that it adds sensory experience to a
place which is usually experienced
visually and in silence. This serves to
totalise the audience’s involvement
in the evening and gives it a visceral
immediacy out of step with the
longevity and consistency of
museums as institutions. I’m not
suggesting it’ll make the skeletons
of long-dead creatures dance, but
I think it could be the next best
thing.
Considered as “performance art,”
the introduction of a programme of
“live music and cutting-edge sound
installations” into an environment of
quietude and solitary learning will
hopefully serve not only to redefine
accepted conventions about what
museums are ‘for’, but also cause
people to engage with questions
of history and interpretation, and
perhaps inhabit for the evening
that nebulous space where arts and
sciences overlap.
Regarding performance, Brecht
tells us that “sound-movementspace-voice do not accompany
(nor even parallel) each other,
but function as elements of equal
significance”. The museum, therefore,
is percieved as more than just a
venue or concert hall. It is an active
part of the performance and of the
evening as a whole, into which the
audience will become enwrapped in
total experience. The ambiance will
be incredibly powerful.
The exploration of the
relationship between
the intellectual and
aesthetic features
of art ought to be
welcomed
This thought-provoking event
stimulates an inquisitive approach
to the boundaries of historical
memory, and the role of museums
as protectors of that memory. The
exploration of the relationship
between the aesthetic and intellectual
features of art ought to be welcomed,
and the chance to experience it for
an evening should certainly not be
missed.
Davide Taviani
From 6:30pm on the 24th October,
the serene and studious atmosphere
of Cambridge’s museums will give
way to late-night debauchery.
Concert
and
performance
installations from various artists
will augment the academical, staid
and constant nature of historical
artefacts with the creative and
contemporary nature of art. How?
Why? According to the creators of
Access All Archives, an evening of
audio and visual exhibition at five
Cambridge museums as part of the
Festival of Ideas, it is to provoke
thought, offer a unique experience
and derive artistic inspiration from
the artefacts themselves.
At the Scott Polar Research
Institute, the expeditions of the
eponymous Robert Falcon will be
evoked in a composition by Sarah
McKee and Joe Snape, who “makes
things with sound” - a simple
explanation for a complex artform.
Snape is a prolific artist, whose
latest composition Lärmlicht #4
consists of an engrossing cacophony
of lightbulb, switch and circuit
noise – an effect both jarring and
beautiful. It promises to be quite
a show: a dark, dense soundscape
of “flickers, crackles and scrapes”
creating an ambient background
to the experience of the explorers
themselves. Locating the intense
personal tragedy of Scott’s final
expedition in the wider context
of polar research and exploration
should prove to be incredibly
compelling.
Loughlin Sweeney
Loughlin Sweeney on transforming museums into performance spaces
Access all
archives: sights
and
sounds
Monday 24th
October, 6.30pm 11pm
Museum of
Zoology, The
Polar Museum,
Sedgwick Museum
of Earth Sciences,
The Fitzwilliam
Museum, Whipple
Museum of the
History of Science
£5
Features |17
The
CambridgeStudent
FEATURES
W
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Email features@tcs.cam.ac.uk.
Oh Internet,
Do you know your meme? TCS looks at the influential Internet
hy is Keanu
Reeves
so
sad? Can I has
cheezburger?
What
does
the double rainbow mean? As
we all know, the internets is srs
bsns and these question are worth
considering. What do they all have
in common? They’re derived from
internet memes, a peculiarity that
can be best described as a cultural
virus. A meme is a phenomenon that
passes quickly from one individual
to another until it becomes an entity
in and of itself. The term was coined
by Richard Dawkins who stated
that a meme is “an idea, behaviour
2001
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
or style that spreads from person
to person within a culture.” The
correct pronunciation is “meem” to
rhyme with “cream”.
Internet memes usually consist of
jokes and are often spread in the form
of pictures or videos. For example,
a popular joke is a picture of Bear
Grylls with superimposed text,
which mocks his failsafe solution to
surviving in nature: drinking one’s
own piss. Alternatively memes
can be about something deemed
to be so particularly unusual as
to warrant special attention; for
instance, Trololololol Guy (or
Russian Rickroll) is a video of a
Russian man poorly lip-synching
2002
to a song that consists entirely of
vowel noises. This video is also
popular as a bait-and-switch
device in the sense that a user will
provide someone with a link that is
supposedly relevant to the topic at
hand, only to be presented with a
video that is completely irrelevant;
the classic example of this is to be
Rickrolled. Icanhascheezburger is
an example of a website dedicated
to the creation and procurement of
memes, specifically lolcats, which
are pictures of cats with humorous
captions. Most memes however
start life on forums or image boards,
such as 4chan or Reddit.
Whilst it may seem that memes
2003
are frivolous and senseless, they are
not to be underestimated. Beneath
the overt nonsense of this cultural
peculiarity lie subtle nuances that,
believe it or not, shape much of
our (particularly young) culture,
humour and language.
What’s more, memes have the
power to transform a nobody into
an international star in the space of
a day. This can be a force of good,
such as when Ted Williams (or The
Golden Voice), a homeless man
from the states, became famous
after being filmed on the streets by
Columbus Dispatch reporter Kevin
Joy. His fame arrived due to his
flawless ‘radio voice’, which Kevin
2004
asked Ted to perform for him on
camera. He was eventually offered
a job at a radio station and began
earning for the first time in years
(unfortunately Ted was unable to
overcome his drug addiction and
ultimately had to leave full time
employment to seek medical help).
Memes are not always so pleasant.
The random image board on 4chan
(/b/) is infamous for being regarded
as the cesspit of the internet. For
instance, the phrase “Consequences
will never be the same”, a seemingly
humorous malapropism unrelated
to anything malicious, originated
from a long and drawn out string of
insults and harassment from 4chan
2005
2006
“I Can Has Cheezburger” Cat
Arguably the forefather of
all lolcats, “Happy Cat” or “I
Can Has Cheezburger” Cat
as he was later known, is a
hopefully expectant grey
cat that asks in questionable
grammar
for
various
foodstuffs and other items,
the most common being
the “cheezburger”. Why a
cat should be interested
in eating a cheeseburger
is unknown, but the now
iconic image inspired the
website of the same name,
and a whole world of lolcat
grammar.
I CAN HAS
CHEEZBURGER?
Duckroll
Numa Numa
In 2004 Gary Brolsma (latterly “Numa Numa kid”)
filmed himself lip-synching to “Dragostea din tei”,
a Moldovan pop song by O-Zone. The video was
originally recorded as a joke for his friends but it
quickly went viral and has now been watched by well
over 43 million people, becoming one of the very first
viral videos to hit the web. Gary eventually appeared
on mainstream television (CNN, Today Show, VH1)
and was parodied in an episode of South Park.
The lesser-known precursor to the Rickroll
originates from 4chan, where a filter changing the
word “egg” to “duck” led to the phrase “duckroll”,
and with it the practice of tricking people into
viewing a video of a duck roll. Confused? So are
we. But Duckroll set a noble tradition of the “bait
and switch” technique that is used in many other
memes today.
Serious Cat
Russian Rickroll
Long Cat
18| Features
Professor Cat
Friday
Chocolate Rain
Rickroll
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
FEATURES
You So Funny
memes of the last decade, their origins and many derivatives
and Youtube users against a 13 year
old girl known as Jessi Slaughter
(real name Jessica Leonhardt). She
was targeted simply for being an
attention seeker and “for the lulz”,
that is, she was picked on simply
because people found it funny.
She eventually received hate mail
and threatening phone calls. In
response, her father made a video
claiming that he would “back trace”
the offenders and that, as a result,
“consequences will never be the
same”. However, it’s also important
to emphasise that a lot of good
has come out of 4chan. Many of
the internet’s most cherished and
beloved memes often originate on
2007
the random image board, such as
“Do a barrel roll”, “Caturday”, “Rage
Comics”, and “Rickroll”.
Memes also make good business
sense. If a meme can be cultivated
in such a way as to make it viral, the
profits made from what is generally
a very low budget endeavour can be
considerably high. Indeed, there are
companies created specifically for
the purpose of viral marketing. You
have no doubt been subjected to
viral marketing in the last few years,
such as Old Spice, The Awareness
Test and Cadbury’s Gorilla.
But how far can we lay claim to the
statement that memes are constructs
that affect us culturally and
2008
Bad Advice Puppy
socially? It depends entirely on how
seriously we wish to take the notion
of memeology. Indulge me for a
moment and consider that memes
can be analysed from a psycholinguistic standpoint. Jacques
Lacan was a French psychoanalyst
who came to prominence from the
1950s to the 1980s. He said a lot of
weird stuff. However, he also said a
lot of interesting things about the
psychology behind language and
communication.
For instance, from a Lacanian
point of view one could argue that
memes could be considered as an
example of the deferral of desire,
of the striving for the object cause
2009
of desire (objet petit a) manifesting
itself within the ‘language’ of
memes - the inability of attainment
arises because desire is a property
of language and therefore suffers
from its limitations, such as the
elementary limitation of the
fundamental representation of any
text (or code of signification, in this
case lolcats) becoming constrained
by the necessity of its representation
to be communicated on a signifierto-signifier basis via the medium of
the subject.
It seems that the subject is
both separated and joined by
language, including the language
of memes; it alienates subjects
2010
What are the cool kids doing these days?
Planking is a variant of the “Playing Dead”
meme that involves rigidly lying face down in
an uncomfortable, incongruous or dangerous
location. This week in the name of journalism
TCS planked on notable spots in Cambridge.
Unfortunately it seems that owling is the
new planking, storking the new owling and
batmanning the new black.
When Keanu Reeves was
snapped plaintively eating a
sandwich on a solitary park
bench, the internet exploded
with a mixture of sympathy
and mockery. Various bench
companions such as Forrest
Gump were photoshopped
beside Keanu. Keanuphilia
reached such heights that
a Cheer Up Keanu Day
was planned, prompting a
humourless response from his
agent: “Keanu Reeves would
like to thank all of his fans for
their concerns regarding his
happiness and wants to assure
everyone that all is well.”
LOSE RUSSIAN ROULETTE
2011
Planking
Sad Keanu
Behind Bad Advice
Puppy’s
rainbowframed innocent little
face lies a barrage of
helpful but disastrously
naive suggestions that
will leave you in prison,
debt, the sex offenders’
register and/or hell.
The highly customisable
format spawned many
other Advice Animals.
yet makes communities of them
- communities of alienated and
alienating individuals. It is this
limitation, binding and distancing
found within language and the
horror of realising that, as Lacan
put it, “man is a subject captured
and tortured by language”, which
could also be said to be present
in memes. The only difference is,
memes are bizarrely poetic; poetic
in the paradigmatic sense - they give
the subject a glimpse of jouissance...
However, let’s not forget we’re
talking about pictures of funny cats
and rabbits with pancakes on their
head. Sometimes a cigar is just a
cigar, right? Nicholas Tufnell
PLAY AGAIN
Courage Wolf
Socially Awkward
Penguin
Sad Don Draper
Insanity Wolf
Sad Keanu in Helmet
Leisure Diving
THE INTERNET IS DOWN
Owling
I’LL CALL GOOGLE
Philosoraptor
Technologically
Impaired Duck
Happy Keanu
Strutting Leo
Batmanning
Abi See
Features |19
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
opINION
FRESHER MEAT
With the delicious awkwardness
of Freshers’ Week behind me, this
week I decided it was time to make
the necessary steps towards full
integration with the Cambridge
world. And what better way to do
this than to spend some quality
time with my bike?
Yet this, I soon learned, is not a
quest for the faint-hearted. Like
Avatars, we must bond with our
Toruk before we can truly take flight
to the mystical realms of the sites
Sidgwick and Downing, and to do
this requires nothing less than the
retraining of the mind. In our dualprocessor society, any endeavour
which does not yield swift results
is soon discarded - never call when
a text message will do; why use a
hob when there’s a microwave oven
at your disposal? Not so with the
bond between man and bike. It
requires time, dedication, strength
– we must earn the right to ride.
On this journey to the highest level
of cycling proficiency, only the
valiant prevail.
And so, like Bambi on ice, I began
to ride my bicycle.
To the clay-footed among you,
who look upon cyclists as the
demi-gods of the city, I can only
concur, and tell you that cycling in
Cambridge feels like being an inch
LISTINGS
Thursday 20 Oct
For Fresher columnist Rosalind, Week 2 of her Cambridge experience sees her
examining the perks and pitfalls of riding both a bicycle and a stone bear...
away from death. All the time. Like
a NatSci on a swap in the Mahal,
any moment could be your last.
And as if having the Grim Reaper
strapped to your panniers wasn’t
bad enough, you are also haunted
by the spine-chilling knowledge
that not only are you on a fight
for your survival, but that you
look positively ridiculous in your
helmet and luminescent safety gear.
Especially if you’re a 5’2’’ Caucasian
with no sense of direction and a
fringe that makes you look like a
Rugrat.
I was lost, I
was alone, and
I wanted my
camel
Such was my plight last Tuesday,
when I cycled from a scintillating
two-hour lecture to The Cambridge
Student headquarters. Well, that
was where I was supposed to be
heading. I had heard talk of the
New Museums and Downing
site, and, naïve fool that I am,
naturally assumed that both must
be situated on Downing Street,
or better still, directly adjacent to
Downing College. I had, of course,
forgotten that the Cambridge town
planners like to play a little game
of
Let’s-Confuse-The-Freshers,
forcing them to prove their alleged
genius by making all streets AS
MISLEADING AS POSSIBLE. I
can still see their faces burned
in my imagination: blowing out
smoke rings from their cigars,
laughing
callously,
watching
gleefully as I followed my farcical
route from Fitzbillies to John
Lewis, from Parker’s Piece to the
Catholic Church, looking dazed
and panic-stricken as the time for
my appointment with the editor
came and went. Pulling up for a
moment outside Downing College,
I dismounted and caught my breath.
I was lost, I was alone, and I wanted
my camel.
Fortunately, I was able to ask
a string of equally oblivious
pedestrians to spoon-feed me
crumbs of their Cambridgeconsciousness. Like some pathetic
Gretel, I followed each clue until
I finally reached the gingerbread
house that is the New Museums
Site. Running in flustered and
ever so slightly travel sick, I shook
hands with one of the Editors-
in-Chief. She quickly put me at
ease and graciously allowed me to
go battle with my helmet-hair in
the neighbouring loos. When I
returned, she looked up from her
computer, smiling.
“I’m just thinking,” she beamed.
“As your column’s a bit kooky,
maybe we should do something
kooky with your photo, too.”
My heart sank. It’s hard enough
earning the respect of my peers
without publicising a photo of
me licking a bike tyre or trying to
befriend a squirrel. Fortunately,
the kookiest thing I was made to
do was sit side-saddle on a stone
bear, which, I don’t know about
you, but to my mind constitutes an
afternoon well spent.
After a brief photo session, I
shuffled back to my bike (which, I
should mention, by this point was
so laden with books it petulantly
refused to move from its parking
space until I rearranged its load).
As I refastened my desperately
attractive helmet, a thought struck
me, much like I imagine the thought
of abolitionism occurred to William
Wilberforce, or women’s suffrage
to Emilia Pankhurst. My motion:
bring back the scooter. Not the
achingly chic Lambrettas you see
in those Italian art house movies,
Not pictured: stone bear
but the kind you push with your
foot, the ones you played with in
primary school. Practical, speedy
and satisfyingly risk-free, they seem
a blindingly obvious solution to the
game of Russian Roulette that is
cycling in Cambridge. So if you see
a girl lighting a pyre of bicycle parts,
or chained to the railings of Parker’s
Piece, don’t be alarmed. It’s only
me, trying to make Cambridge a
safer place. One scooter at a time.
PICKS OF
THE WEEK
Friday 21 Oct
Saturday 22 Oct
Sunday 23 Oct
Monday 24 Oct
Tuesday 25 Oct
Wednesday 26 Oct
Theatre
Music
Academic
Academic
The Lonesome West
Set in a Galway
farmhouse, Martin
McDonagh’s (In Bruges)
black comedy about
the Connor brothers is
tragic, dark and absurd.
‘A play for people who
Theatre
don’t like plays’. Thu-Sat
£8. ADC.
Talking to Terorists:
The third lecture in
Academic
the Cambridge Public
Policy series hosts
Jonathan Powell, Former
Downing Street Chief of
Staff under Tony Blair.
Free. McCrum Lecture
Theatre. 6pm.
Oxjam Cambridge
‘Takeover’: ‘Local
Music, Global Impact’.
6 venues, 1 wristband.
Featuring film, comedy
and music, the event is
in aid of Oxfam.
Cambridge Science
Music
Xchange: Great Hall of
the Guildhall, Market
Square. 11am-4pm. Free Access All Archives:
Sights and Sounds:
entry. Christ’s College.
19:30 & 22:00 showings. Five of the University
museums host live
performances, sound
installations and DJs to
create a unique musical
experience. £5.
Sir Roger Moore. The
third and longest serving Comedy
James Bond actor speaks
at the Union. Cambridge Dave Gorman’s
Union Society. 8pm.
PowerPoint
Presentation:
The man behind Are You
Dave Gorman? returns
with a brand new show.
£20. Cambridge Corn
Exchange. 8pm.
Nightlife
A Conversation with
Declan Donnellan.
Theatre director and
joint founder of Cheek
by Jowl speaks at
Winstanley Theatre,
Trinity College. 5.307.30pm.
Underground Sound:
DJ Cryptix and DJ Lumi
take over Clare Cellars,
with music, a shots bar
and graffiti wall. Music
at 10pm, Happy Hour
from 9.30pm.
Music
Cambridge University
Musical Society:
Season launch concert.
Chamber Orchestra and
Consort of Voices, the
programme features
Mozart’s concerto
for two pianos and
Stravinsky’s Symphony
in C. £5. West Road
Concert Hall. 8pm.
Music
Miles Kane:
Ex-Rascals vocalist and
Last Shadow Puppets
frontman showcases
solo material from his
debut album Colour of
the Trap. £11.50. The
Junction 1. 7pm.
Music
Comedy
Les Mystere Des Voix
Bulgares:
Created in Bulgaria
by Philip Koutev,
the internationally
renowned vocal
ensemble combine
traditional sounds
with contemporary
arrangements. £20.
Cambridge Corn
Exchange. 19.30
Bryony Kimmings: 7
Day Drunk:
Kimmings’ new show
is created solely from
material made during
a 7 day experiment,
in which Bryony was
kept in various states of
scientific drunkenness.
Performed Sober. £8.
The Junction 2. 8pm.
Theatre
The Real Thing.
Pembroke Players
present Tom Stoppard’s
play of love, writing
and reality, winner of
the Tony Award and
Evening Standard Award
for Best play. Corpus
Christi Playroom. £5.
7pm.
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
opINION
Insantibridgians by Clementine Beauvais
V ET
c HAT
Post-grad tales of a
know-nothing exstudent, by Libby
Kemkaran-Thompson
Met up with my love-you-like-a-brother gay
best friend and fellow new vetgrad Dan this
weekend to dissect our progress as newly
fledged vets. Had a fabulous time bleating
‘ohmyGODit’sHORRIFIC’ at each other
in various venues with various liquids to
ease the pain. Also then later met Andrea,
another friend from our 6th yr rotation
group. We all sat in a pub and ranted at each
other about how bewildering the job is and
how unprepared we feel... This took approx.
3hrs. Turns out it’s not just me suffering the
pangs of inadequacy on a daily basis. Sounds
like ‘tis a malaise experienced by pretty much
most other grads. Reassuring, but not any
more pleasant to be blunt.
Funny thing is, this time last year when
we were together blindly entering the world
of Anaesthesia Rotation, none of us had
any idea how it would feel a year on trying
to actually do the job. You 6th yrs reading
this whilst wolfing your cold ready meal
(because who has the time to wait for a
microwave in the 3mins you get for lunch at
4.30pm before your client arrives to collect
their animal) – I feel your pain. 6th year
clinical rotations basically take your lecture
notes, piss all over them, and then write
‘Common Things are Common’ on them
in big sharpie block capitals. Whilst ripping
85% of the beautifully copied-by-hand notes
to smithereens. Out goes all your carefully
swotted knowledge of clinical presenting
signs of Distemper with one incredulous look
from a qualified clinician when you suggest it
in Evening Rounds and in comes ‘idiopathic’
which basically is a bucket diagnosis word
for ‘we don’t know what causes this’. If our
course consisted only of information that
was clinically useful, we’d be out the door
in 3yrs flat. Bosh. Instead they train us all,
over 6yrs, to be ready for the lab just in case
we wake up one day and feel like being a
research scientist. No. I just want to know
what to do as a normal bog-standard vet.
Realised this week, however, that I actually
DO know something. Some of the useless
crap they force feed you over 6 painful years
is, it turns out, NOT USELESS AFTERALL.
Had a glorious moment where I actually,
almost solved something. Had an RTA (cat vs
car – the cat lost) come in with an overflowing
bladder, and a limp tail. I knew this! I knew
immediately that it was er... something to
do with nerve damage, and that there were
er... one, no two (!!) drugs I could deploy to
help the cat to urinate... okay, so confession, I
still gave in to my neuroneuroses and just to
check, I quickly emailed John Parker. John is
God of Neuro at the vet school and my source
of all knowledge. (I now owe him about 12
beers, the number of times he helped me
out this last few weeks). Anyway, if you’re
interested, his email reply confirmed yes, use
Dantrolene as anti-spasmodic to relax the
bladder, and yes Prazosin as sympatholytic
to relax urethral pressure. Done. Then
promptly realised my practice didn’t carry
either drug so had to order both in specially –
boss was sort of impressed. Realised suddenly
the weight of my new shiny learning, and the
responsibility of up-to date knowledge. If I
hadn’t listened to that one tiny bit that came
up whilst working up a case in 6th yr – I just
wouldn’t have known those drugs existed,
and that cat may not have done so well. It’s
my job to learn and keep learning and then
actually have the guts to use my knowledge.
This was all a bit heavy so I went out that
Friday night and got wankered. Better.
Actually by the end of the first week of
consults it was beginning to suddenly make
a bit more sense. I got into the rhythm of
introduce, examine, prescribe or book in for
more tests. And I am beginning to know
more. I have now done my first ‘eye’ case, my
first ‘manky ears’ case (technical phrase) and
my first ‘God this client is just so annoying
I’m just going to get them out of my room’
case.
Talking of that, ‘10 minute consults’ are
still something of a dark art. As I’m sure
you can tell by now, I find it difficult to say
‘hello’ in under quarter of an hour. I’ve
tried everything, even nodding smiling and
holding the door open whilst making subtle
ushering gestures with my hands, and STILL
some clients want to chat on. I have too much
of a ‘listening’ face. Must learn to scowl and
be more dismissive.
But I am beginning to enjoy this job... it’s
sort of coming together.
Next week – Last column: How to argue with
a client and Not Get Sued
LOVE IN THE BUBBLE
A light-hearted column about love and
life from our enigmatic sex columnist
In which I get (un)romantic
Imagine the scene: a Saturday morning trip
into C-Town, walking hand in hand towards
the glistening beacon that is Tatties… I’m
pretty sure this is Cambridge love. At least
this prompts me to ask the question: what
is love? I’m feeling philosophical this week,
as I convalesce after my DELIGHTFUL long
illness.
First of all I thought I could help you all to
ascertain what is and is definitely not ‘love’
so you can avoid some of those awkward
‘er, I thought you liked me’ moments. The
following few scenarios represent situations
in which love is definitely not present. Well,
it might be on one side, but it takes two to
tango… and only one to crush your hopes
and dreams. I’m not bitter.
1) Stalking your ginger-haired history
teacher because he said you had ‘potential’
(he means at A Level, not in the bedroom)
is never advisable. Do not play hard to get,
especially when, in a Christmas game of
‘guess the song’, he innocently sings the
lyrics (never, ever to you) ‘Do I attract
you?’ and you, for some as yet unknown
reason, choose to reply with an emphatic
‘YES’. Your class comrades will disown
you and you will be forced to consume
all the cupcakes you ardently baked him
as a ‘seasonal gift’. Who are you fooling?
This scenario can be equally applied to
lecturers/supervisors/elders (in the Lord
of the Rings sense) and any other senior
figures in society. I heard Paxman’s in town
in a few weeks – definitely not a goer, he is
not interested in your picture round.
I do not know what that means.
2) Love takes many forms, but one form it
rarely assumes is that of the nightclub
snog. Everyone might talk about it the
next day over a tepid hall lunch, but does
that make it as interesting as you think
it is? The Killers, my firm friends, have
been shouting at us for years – “it was
only a kiss”. Yes, Brandon, it was – only a
fucking kiss. For him, it was a chance to
give his tongue an annual outing for the
first time since all the girls back in Surrey
learnt, in the beginning of a kind of cruel
sexual excommunication, to steer clear of
his crap kissing and sweaty lower back.
Just like the boys back home know you’re
a clinger, or a bit mad, or just a quiet girl
who thinks facebooking ‘a messy night all
round’ makes you ‘cool’. A match made in
heaven? Well, if heaven is place where the
walls sweat, or if it’s just a gay nightclub in
London, the answer is probably no.
3) Getting outrageously drunk and using
any form of telecommunication to express
your utmost desires is always or at least
should always be strictly forbidden. On
a fateful night in 2009, the WKD flowed,
just as the wicked forces in this world
conspired against my chances of obtaining
companionship. As I stumbled towards
the iPod dock, drink in hand, I was
gripped by such crippling emotion. The
most powerful feeling in the world rose
inside me, the most glorious compulsion
– only the power of song could express
such a feeling. My ears pricked up, like
a faithful hound hearing the clink of the
spoon against the food bowl, and before I
could control myself, I was belting out the
immortal lines to ‘Bleeding Love’ by Leona
Lewis. A small crowd gathered around me,
but like a rapidly expanding universe, the
crowd thickened, until most members of
the party were present to observe not my
mating patterns, no, but, like an encaged
exhibit in a Victorian travelling circus,
the crowd watched me unleashing hell on
the dance floor. To this day when people
ask why I don’t get drunk, I forward any
queries onto my friend Bekky who can
furnish them with the ‘I keep bleeding’
incident.
So following those few, I hope, helpful
examples of ways that are probably not going
to lead you to the person of your dreams,
this brings me neatly to what love really
is. Following the drum roll from a band of
trusty squirrels, I’m ashamed to say I am as
clueless as everybody else. I have no idea
what love is. It might be the feeling you get
when you eat a nice packet of crisps. It might
be that post-sex feeling. Or, it might just be
sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading
this column. Who knows.
|21
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
MUSIC
Want to get involved in Music?
Email music@tcs.cam.ac.uk
REVIEWS
RaDioheaD
TKOL RMX
Noel GallaGheR
HIgH FLYINg BIRDS
(XL Recordings/Ticker Tape)
(Sour Mash Records , 2011)
★★★☆☆
★★★★☆
JaMeS ViNCeNT
MCMoRRow
Download:
Separator, Bloom
Download:
The Death of You and Me
EARLY IN THE
MORNINg (Believe, 2010)
Radiohead’s eighth studio effort, The King of Limbs,
divided their fanbase. The record contained flashes of
brilliance in a sea of ethereal precision engineering,
but realistically the band were treading water. Perhaps
this is why the band has turned over their work to the
remixers. In many ways, the original album is the perfect remix material: a dense collage of restless rhythms
and tortured textures that seem to take on a life of
their own. Unfortunately most of the band’s collaborators seem too intimidated by the band’s reputation
to take risks. There are of course exceptions. Four Tet
deftly fuses his sounds perfectly with Separator and
if anything exposes the debt sometime collaborator
Thom Yorke pays to his beats. Mark Pritchard’s remix
of Bloom is a characteristically hypnotising highlight,
grabbing hold of the track’s emergence from nature
and creating a celestial lullaby that fits perfectly into
the original album’s motif. Ultimately, there were
enough inspired re-imaginations of the band’s work to
fill a single disc. There are highlights that will no doubt
bother indie clubs across the land, but one cannot help
but listen to this first foray into remixes and feel there
was potential for so much more. Dominic Kelly
After keeping quiet about his plans post-Oasisbreak-up, news began to surface of Noel’s solo project
earlier this year and now, finally, the album is here.
Without a doubt, the stand-out track is the first
single, The Death Of You And Me, with its beautifully
picked guitar intro flowing effortlessly into a laidback, Importance Of Being Idle-esque country vibe.
Tracks such as Dream On and (I Wanna Live In A
Dream) In My Record Machine were written in Noel’s
Oasis years but were never deemed good enough
for an album, and it’s easy to see why as they feel
weak and unambitious. However, the majority of the
album gives a clear sense that Noel has developed
his sound. It’s with songs like AKA… What A Life
that we really get a feel of a fresh vibe from Noel, as
he, surprisingly, experiments with a dance beat. The
song feels modern and exciting, with a hypnotic bass
line that’s present in other tracks. Another welcome
aspect is the instrumental experimentation which
Noel employs, with horns used and even bongo
drums featuring in AKA… Broken Arrow. Indeed the
album closer is by no means the album’s strongest,
yet bongo drums and a wild rhythm section provide
a rousing finish to a first-rate album. James Redburn
CLASSIC ALBUM
BRUCe SPRiNGSTeeN
THE WILD, THE
INNOCENT, & THE E
STREET SHUFFLE
Bruce’s first album is not very
good; the brilliance of Blinded
By The Light or Does This Bus
Stop at 82nd Street? offset by
ponderous sub-Dylan bullshit.
So for this Bruce and his backing
band cut the crap and pump
out seven blinders, whether
the good-time party music of
The E Street Shuffle or the highpowered jazz funk of Kitty’s Back,
with its filmic instrumental
sections (why weren’t they hired
for a Bond theme?) as David
Sancious batters wildly away
on his organ (ooh-er), and of
course Clarence Clemons is
fantastic on the saxophone
throughout in the same way
that the Pope is Catholic and
bears don’t bother to find the
WCs. And listen to how Incident
on 57th Street (isn’t there such a
sense of place with this music?)
merges Dylanesque desires (it’s
somewhat It’s All Over Now,
22| Music
aND YoU MaY haVe MiSSeD...
Baby Blue) with a restrained but
powerful guitar solo as it fades.
Even if those were all rubbish,
though, it wouldn’t matter,
because this album has Rosalita
(Come Out Tonight) on it. Bruce
& co. throw everything they can
at showing Rosalita just how
wanted she is, and if you can’t
scream yourself ragged trying
to get a girl to go out with you
what CAN you do that for? And
so we get blazing organ solos,
saxophone, shouting, cartoons,
seven minutes of sheer glory,
and if after the band collapse in
exhaustion Rosie is still in her
room humming and hawwing
then frankly I don’t know what’s
wrong with the girl.
Frederic Heath-Renn
Download:
we Don’t eat
If you are yet to hear of James Vincent McMorrow,
this is a good time to rectify that. Fresh from a tour of
the US and Canada, and with a growing following in
the British folk community, McMorrow is this month
kicking off a series of UK and European dates following the March release of his debut album, Early in the
Morning, a masterful and melodic offering that has
been thus far massively under-recognised outside his
native Ireland. Songs like From the Woods feel rooted
in a dense, woodsy mythology, while We Don’t Eat explores a culture steeped in patriarchy and religion. This
Old Dark Machine, the single from the album and one
of its loveliest tracks, seems to evoke an entire century
of history, breezy nostalgia for country lanes and men
in their Sunday best to a punchy, upbeat banjo soundtrack. This album defies its limitations. Where many
folk albums are thin and samey, Early in the Morning
is rich and varied. No morose introspection here, this
is one of the best albums of this year – and well worth
taking a chance on. Kirsty MacLeod
a Classical Divide?
Charlie Hubbard explores the geographical disparity of classical music
As you amble past the posterinfested railings of great St
Mary’s, it’s pretty obvious that
‘classical’ music is thriving in
Cambridge. Most evenings in
term time are catered for by one
or more performances, the best
church choirs in the world reside
amongst these colleges, and the
opportunities for performance
pump out a steady stream of
stars into the industry.
40 miles north, away from the
cultural galaxy of Cambridge,
we find Peterborough, a
bustling city with a spectacular
Cathedral nestled within. It
boasts good schools and good
business from its impressive
shopping district. But classical
music is a foreign country –
there are a few choirs that the
bubbling amateur can join and
the occasional visiting ensemble,
but anybody interested in
serious music making or regular
concerts would have to travel
to nearby Stamford. This small
town’s steeple spotted skyline
and thriving arts centre make
it feel very much like a ‘mini
Cambridge’. The same can be said
for Oundle, home of the famous
Oundle International Festival,
and of Oakham. All these
places in close proximity have
a thumping musical heartbeat,
but somehow Peterborough has
missed out.
Cambridge has
a thumping
musical
heartbeat
What gives places like Oundle
such a rich classical heritage? A
colossal public school (where
you are more likely to be involved
in some form of classical music)
certainly helps. This feeds
directly into Cambridge, a place
still dominated by privately
educated students. I don’t
think it’s terribly controversial
to suggest that a community
where more people have been
offered (or forced) some form
of education in classical music is
going to have a deeper embedded
culture of classical music.
The social health of the place
is an important factor as well;
Classical music in the form
of concerts and recitals has
an important social aspect
– the buzz of an audience in
anticipation is a much a part
of the spectacle of a concert as
the performance itself, along
with the heightened sensual
experience of listening as a body
rather than as an individual. If
nobody will come to concerts,
musicians will stop putting them
on, and try elsewhere.
So what does this brief,
localised
comparison
say
about the health of classical
music in this country? The
difference between geographical
locations is unforgivably big,
much like many other more
important factors like poverty
and education. This country as
a whole has a strong classical
tradition, but those of Cambridge
and Peterborough are polar
opposites. These contrasts echo
throughout the country.
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Straight Outta Homerton
CambridgeStudent
Illustration: Maleena Pone
MUSIC
Jeremy Evans on hip-hop and Cambridge
Hold on to your hats,
Cambridge: there’s a show
in town. Or there was, in
London town to be precise, and
the show in question was
none other than the 2011
B-Boy Championships World
Finals, which took place
over the weekend. Nope, I
hadn’t heard of it either – but
apparently it’s big, and what’s
more
the
national-award
winning crew Soul Mavericks
(you heard me, THE Soul
Mavericks) were there to
represent the UK.
Arguably the biggest event
of this entire page, the World
Finals featured the crème-de-lacrème of breakdancing artistry,
with all the subtle tenderness
that one would expect from
such an established expressive
medium. And the presence of
United Kingdom representatives
at such a prestigious world event
was little short of a national
miracle amidst the stinging
remains of shattered rugby
hopes (unless of course you’re
Welsh).
With but a week to go before
the internationally renowned
tournament reached its epic
conclusion,
its
marketing
department became a frenzy
of publicity, with breakdancing
propaganda spouting in all
directions. A citizen unaware
of the competition was a
citizen losing out, so the hiphop team – well known for
their philanthropy – knew
they had not a moment to lose.
And which market-tailored
organisation did they go to
first? Well, Cambridge’s TCS of
course.
One of the best (and, to many,
most surprising) things about
Cambridge is the way it supports
and embraces such a diverse
range of hobbies and interests.
Students can be interested in
pretty much anything and be
confident that there will already
be a society devoted towards
it, no matter how far-removed
from stereotypical Cambridgeesque
intellectualism
the
activity may seem. But trying
to extrapolate a small group of
B-Boy enthusiasts into an actual
hip-hop ‘scene’ is destined to
be about as successful as when
that-girl-who-was-into-horses
Is you gangsta?
Cambridge is so hippedy hop.
attempted to capture your year
five class’s interest with all the
rosettes she’d won.
Unfortunately,
though
Cambridge is an extremely good
place to be for all sorts of things,
the club scene isn’t one of them.
Cindies and its contemporaries
no longer even pretend to
provide an authentic night out;
instead we students see it as a
game that must be played in
order to feel like we might be in
the real world. London rapper
Franklyn Addo famously turned
down his offer from Cambridge
this year, with both The Sun
and the Daily Mail reporting that
his rejection was based on the
city having ‘no music scene’ – a
sure sign of little hope of release
for our inner breakdancer.
But, unsurprisingly, both
papers were wrong, having
misquoted the seventeen-yearold appallingly. Addo corrected
the
Guardian,
reminding
them that ‘with the growth in
online music collaboration
there is less need for a
physical “scene”’, before going
on to give his real reasons
for declining and say some
very
nice
things
about
Cambridge. In fact, when you’re
excelling in certain fields it’s
perfectly healthy to maintain
nothing more than a polite
interest for everything else, and
the university does just that.
After all, it would be asking
a lot to expect well-known
supermodel Daniel Radcliffe to
also be talented at something
like acting, right?
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
FILM
Want to get involved in Film & TV?
Email film@tcs.cam.ac.uk
Morgan Spurlock gives us the hard sell
advertising in the movies by using
product placement and advertising?
The film follows Spurlock as he
pitches the idea to advertisers with
tongue lodged firmly in cheek. The
grand prize is getting someone to
pay $1M for the naming rights of
the film – can you guess who paid
up? Spurlock has a serious point
though, which is to elucidate the
process and, in contrast to many
a big budget bruiser, have total
transparency on the role such deals
have in the financing of modern
cinema.
The constant and flagrant product
placement in Greatest is both
satirical and broadly humorous
enough to carry us through the
film on a wave of laughter – playing
to our own movie-going memories
of terrible marketing. However,
the most powerful points are made
when Spurlock remembers he is
making a documentary rather
than a parody of Michael Bay’s
filmography. A visit to Sao Paulo,
where outdoor advertising has
been banned, contains the film’s
most eye-opening sequences in a
quite literal sense. Buildings there
are eerily devoid of marketing, in
stark contrast to most major cities
of either the East or West. Anybody
who has driven through the
capitalist clutter of Dubai or strolled
in the ocular offence that is Times
Square (how it can be described as
a tourist ‘attraction’ is beyond me)
can appreciate the results.
However, can product placement
be a useful tool in a filmmaker’s
fiscal arsenal, rather than always
being viewed as some Faustian
financing deal sacrificing artistic
integrity? It is the very question that
Spurlock tries to ask and answer
simultaneously, succeeding with
something one might describe as
a metamovie. Through the mixture
of laughs and serious points, you
could argue that Spurlock puts
Sleeping Beauty
Julia Leigh
18
104 mins
I was quite surprised to learn that
this psycho-erotic drama was written
and directed by a woman. As far as
I am aware, previous films that dealt
with similar topics were directed by
★★★☆☆
men like Luis Buñuel and Stanley
Kubrick. I thought that a woman’s touch would mean that
Sleeping Beauty was going to be an interesting exploration of
sexual politics. Instead, what you get is a highly stylised work,
which attempts to give a fresh perspective on the psychology
behind sexual perversion.
The child-like Emily Browning plays Lucy, a young university
student who is struggling to make the ends meet. She has
several extremely dull part-time jobs and flatmates from hell.
It is insinuated that she occasionally dabbles in prostitution.
Her financial situation changes when she joins an exclusive
escort service for wealthy elderly gentlemen with various
interests, from bondage to necrophilia. Lucy’s own history is
unclear; she seems to have come from a troubled family, she
does not have many friends and is generally isolated from the
society. At first she finds her new job rather absurd, however
she slowly becomes obsessed with finding out what exactly
goes on in this gentlemen’s club.
Sleeping Beauty is both disturbing and tiresome to watch.
The lack of a soundtrack means that much of the film is in
complete silence. There are a number of very graphic scenes
that are designed to shock but the main message of the film is
indistinct. It does poke fun at the older, more powerful men
for using young women for personal retribution; however,
the plot development fails to satisfy. The protagonist remains
shrouded in mystery and her detachment from the real world
makes it hard to take it all seriously. The film leaves you with
an aftertaste from all the creepiness in it but fails to really
shake things up.
Sasha Brenton-Virt
Magnolia Pictures
Warner Bros
Paul W.S.Anderson
W. S. Anderson’s take on The Three
12A
Musketeers has all the elements of a
110 mins
big-budget swashbuckler - a talented
cast; beautiful cinematography; and so
many explosions the audience begins
★★☆☆☆
to wonder which century it’s set in. The
swordplay should be gripping. The lowbrow comedy should
inspire a couple of laughs. And the love subplot, as it draws to
its inevitable conclusion, should be oddly satisfying. But none
of them are. The movie feels both hollow and overwrought: the
3D is superfluous as ever, and the Matrixesque slow-motion
action scenes are disappointing.
As a reinterpretation of Dumas’ classic novel, this ‘Three
Musketeers’ is surprisingly faithful. Young D’Artagnan arrives
in Paris with little more than a horse and his ambition to
become a true musketeer. A fortunate turn of events causes
him to fight with, rather than against, the three musketeers he
slighted the day before, and soon he is so much one of them
that the title feels curiously wrong. The stakes are high: they
must retrieve the Queen’s jewellery from England in order
to prevent a war (as Matthew Macfayden remarks, “Only
[they] can prevent the coming apocalypse”). It is a testament
to the poverty of this movie’s script that Christoph Waltz,
in his role as the power-hungry Cardinal Richelieu, cannot
rescue it. Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan are pitted
against all of his military resources, as well as another familiar
face: Mads Mikkelsen (Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) playing
Count Rochefort. The climax of the movie is a siege on the
Tower of London from a flying ship (dubbed a War Machine,
supposedly built from a Da Vinci design), and there’s an
awkward moment when Athos admits the Queen’s necklace
isn’t in there at all.
My only question is this: if you’re shaking down the Pirates
of the Caribbean demographic, why leave Johnny Depp out?
Aron Penczu
24| Film
The Greatest Movie Ever
Sold is now showing at the Arts
Picturehouse
TV
REVIEWS
The Three Musketeers
corporate Hollywood under a soft
glow rather than a harsh spotlight.
Rather like Super Size Me, the
information delivered is not
revolutionary but the result is still
enjoyably illuminating.
Downton Abbey
Getty Imahes
Product placement is a fact of
the modern blockbuster and
has been since E.T. developed a
taste for Reese’s Pieces. Mostly,
one associates it with the most
egregious and cringing examples
– Will Smith’s trainers in I, Robot
(that whirring noise is Isaac Asimov
spinning in his grave), the General
Motors car-crash better known
as Transformers or Peter Parker
testing his web-slinging skills on a
Dr Pepper can. However, product
placement comes in many forms
– American Airlines and Hilton
Hotels, whilst not paying, approved
of Oscar contender Up in the Air
treading a fine line between negative
and positive portrayal of their
brands. Why do companies do this
and how do these deals get made?
That is what Morgan Spurlock, who
famously gorged himself in Super
Size Me, aims to throw some light
upon in (to give the full title) POM
Wonderful presents: The Greatest
Movie Ever Sold.
The high concept of Greatest is
thus: can you fund a documentary
about product placement and
Getty Images
Jim Ross on a documentary with a difference
Downton. This time last year, it was everywhere. And I missed
it. Somehow I missed it, despite my frankly questionable termtime TV diet (there’s rather a lack of programmes I actually
object to watching).
My loss.
The second series started last month. Accordingly, I decided
to grow up and see what I was missing, settling down in front
of the telly with my handy Downton Spotter’s Guide (a.k.a.
that bastion of reliability, Wikipedia). It didn’t matter that
it wasn’t exactly a sparkling episode; that I was thoroughly
confused; that I had no prior knowledge of Matthew/Mary,
Sybil/Branson or Anna/Bates; nor that I was unaware of the
villainy of Thomas the Evil Acting Sergeant (née Thomas the
Evil Footman). I fell completely in love with it.
And despite minor quibbles over the ridiculous time jumps
between episodes, the trench scenes, and The Great AdBreak Debacle, I still think it’s brilliant. The main storylines
are absorbing, and there’s so much detail to drink in that any
lulls matter little. The talented cast, including the (obviously)
wonderful Emmanuel alumnus Dan Stevens and the muchlauded Dame Professor McGonagall, pitch their performances
(and meaningful glances!) perfectly - the balance between the
serious, the camp and the dramatic is admirable. The period
costumes and set-dressings are beautiful. I aspire to produce
cutting one-liners as superb as the Dowager Countess’. Even
the schmaltzy sing-a-long from Episode 4 was actually quite
touching. There really is something for everyone to enjoy,
even if it’s just playing Downton cliché bingo (Mary throws
Matthew another longing look? HOUSE!).
Series Two has come under fire from some for not being as
absolutely amazing as last year, but it’s still quality television
that is, to idiom it up, not to be sniffed at. If you have a spare
hour, go and have a look - there’s too much goodness to be
missed! In the meantime, I’m off to buy Series One...
Christine Shute
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AS GOOD AS OUR WORD
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Want to get involved in Theatre?
Email theatre@tcs.cam.ac.uk
THEATRE
The Lonesome West
The Lonesome West
I
’d have to kill half me relatives to fit in this fecking
town”, a maudlin Father
Welsh (Arthur Kendrick)
bewails midway into Martin
McDonagh’s fantastic The Lonesome West. And, terrifyingly enough,
the audience falls about laughing.
W
The Acid Test
had signed up for was not a night of
comedy, but an institution of screaming and madness – much like a Greek
tragedy. But unlike a Greek tragedy, it
does not come crashing to an end. It
is as if the skydiver realised he has a
parachute at the last minute and slows
himself down just in time for a safe
landing. And thus, the play avoids an
excruciating death.
★★★★☆
Davina Moss finds food for thought in Martin McDonagh’s black comedy, brought to
life by a brilliant cast at the ADC this week
Described as a dark comedy, The
Lonesome West is a blackly hilarious rollercoaster through the minds
of a pair of Irish brothers at their very
lowest ebb. Coming home after the
funeral of their father, Valene (Jack
Hudson) and Coleman (Michael
Campbell) battle for supremacy, living in an insular world where everything is a way to one-up the other.
Three murders and two suicides may
occur outside these walls, but within
Sarah Fox’s deceptively simple set,
Tayto chips and poteen are the only
currencies that matter. McDonagh’s blend of comedy and tragedy
gives the play an energy and pace
that keep the audience hooked the
whole way through. We laugh and
know we shouldn’t. We’re troubled
and we don’t always quite know why.
It’s a bold choice by director
Charlie Risius – as well as the notinsignificant task of performing in
atching The Acid
Test is like skydiving. Its initial
wit and brilliance takes you
up to great heights, after which it lets
you plunge through what seems like
countless repetitive scenes of depression and anger. Towards the end of the
evening, I was convinced that what I
ADC Mainshow, 7.45pm
a strong Galway accent, the play
demands nuanced performances
from its four-person ensemble,
who are by turn frightening,
poignant and frankly bizarre. Yet
the risk paid off: each of the actors
manages, somehow, to find a
humanity and a truth in characters
who sometimes behave in wildly
unnatural ways. Hudson’s Valene
melds miserly with obsessive,
finding a childlike joy in collecting
figurines of saints to speed his way
to heaven. Filled with spite, he rails
bitterly at his brother, glorying
in his affluence - yet his tender
recollections of a childhood pet
brought a shiver down my spine. In
striking contrast, Coleman begins
as nothing more sinister than a
loveable rogue, but Campbell slowly
lets the audience into his sordid,
amoral world with little more than
a twist of the lip or glint of the eye.
But, perhaps most impressive of
all, however low he stooped and
however much he hurt his brother,
I couldn’t stop myself being tickled
by his Irish charm. As a duo these
two have fabulous theatrical
chemistry; the rage between
them builds and builds, but the
The Lonesome West runs until
Saturday 22nd October
Corpus Playroom Mainshow, 7pm
★★★☆☆
The Acid Test is a story about a group
of flatmates’ descent into an alcoholinduced stupor. The evening starts off
slow, as Dana relaxes in the bath after
a long day; but she is soon joined by
Ruth, Jessica and even Jessica’s father
Jim – each bringing with them a set of
terrible, yet hilarious personal drama.
The plot touches upon topics such as
sexual harassment, losing one’s vir-
ginity, relationship break-up, homosexuality and becoming an adult. And
for a play which really is so incredible
in its scope, it does a pretty good job
at giving insight into those issues in a
humorous way.
The set design is impressive: the
music, lighting, furniture, booze,
wall decorations, along with just
the right proportion of messiness,
resembled any student flat one
would stumble into on any given
TheAcid Test
In all honesty, any
cast - or audience
- member who can
emerge alive from
the extreme ups and
downs of this plot
should be praised
26| Theatre
palpable connection never breaks.
But for me, the standout
performance has to be Kendrick’s
self-loathing priest. It’s not easy
being the straight(er) man in a
sometimes farcical piece, and yet
Kendrick handles the job admirably.
He displays the character’s pain,
frustration and bitterness with a
lightness of touch which renders
him hugely likeable. Acting as a
doorway for the audience into this
chilling world, the good Father’s
horror at the goings-on is a cool
antidote to the hilarious depravity of
the brothers. And mention should
certainly be made of Genevieve
Gaunt – while struggling a little
with the accent to begin with,
she gives a tarty Irish schoolgirl a
beautiful degree of delicacy and
maturity, a disturbing reminder
of what might be at stake. As a
four they are universally strong.
A truly enjoyable evening, The
Lonesome West leaves you with
some pretty uncomfortable food
for thought. I’d call that a success.
night. As for the cast - they are
simply brilliant. The characters
are extremely well-acted and
developed, creating a tangible sense
of truth: you believe these are real
students with real problems. The
only difficulty in the casting was
perhaps giving the role of a middleaged man to Quentin Beroud, who
looks rather young for the part not that it became a huge problem
since Beroud is generally quite
convincing. However it just took
me a little while longer to get used
to thinking of him as a father figure.
Yet in some way this reflects the
character’s apparent immaturity.
In all honesty, any cast - or
audience - member who can
emerge alive from the extreme ups
and downs of this plot should be
praised. Pre-intermission, The Acid
Test is your good everyday student
comedy – very funny, real, and close
to heart. However immediately
after the interval, the action slowed
significantly; so much so that I
thought that they were going to have
a scene where the characters would
fall asleep on one another. Instead,
they just treaded on and on and on.
At times, somewhat inappropriate
kissing and nudity punctured the
onslaught of depression and anger.
Despite all of this, the play manages
to save itself by having an awesome
ending. A very post-modern
and surprising one – although
now that I have told you that, it
probably wouldn’t be as surprising
anymore. But do go see it, if only to
prove me wrong about the ending.
Dorothy Chen
The Acid Test runs until
Saturday 22nd October
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
THEATRE
Interview: Richard Keith
There are many great Greek
tragedies: what attracted you to
Antigone specifically for this project?
As far as the plays were concerned,
I didn’t know a great number, but
I’d read Antigone and I like the
conflict.
I like the fact that
it’s hard for the characters to
distinguish right from wrong,
and I think in the society which
we live in, that’s becoming more
of an issue. I think it’s brilliant in
terms of the poetry and drama,
but also in terms of relevance – it’s
still a story that should be told.
Tell us a bit about how you
went about adapting the play
from Sophocles to this version.
Well I don’t have any ancient
Greek! What I did have was direct
commentary
and
translation
so that helped enormously.
So I read as many different
adaptations as I could get my
hands on and looked at authors
who are better than I am and
thought, ‘well, what are the
important bits?’ And so I worked
out what I wanted to do with them.
I wanted to do two things: one
was to play with the self-referential
nature of it - the idea of it being
theatre and what that means,
particularly with something as old
as Antigone that’s been adapted so
many times. And the other thing
was to see what would happen if
you brought in things that weren’t
there at all; for example, to take a
character who’s already there, but
have them do something completely
different. In the second half we have
something like that which threatens
to take the play in a completely
different direction. It asks questions
about the nature of Fate and destiny
and free will, things that are being
asked of the characters and seem
to be asked of the play itself – can
this play have a life of its own?
Was your vision set in stone from
the start, or developed along the
way? How much do the cast get
involved with this side of things?
Was there a particular direction
which you wanted to head in?
There were bits that just didn’t
work, and I’m not precious about
them. There’s too much theatre
these days which is just concepts
– people cramming a play into a
concept. That doesn’t work for me
and I don’t think it works for the
Theoretically
Corpus Playroom, 9.30pm
Until Sat 22nd Oct
T
he newspaper articleadorned set of Theoretically would seem to give
its punters good reason
to brace themselves be
slapped repeatedly round the head
with the dead fish of student liberalism, but thankfully this comic farce
makes no such claim to sanctimony.
Instead, it offers a light-hearted lampooning of a lost and disoriented generation with pretensions to political
radicalism and only the vaguest idea
of what it’s protesting against. So far,
so promising.
Right from the opener (a sign
bearing the slogan ‘What would
Dumbledore do?’) the gags come
thick and fast, and the energy is
taken to dizzying heights by an
undeniably talented cast. The
jokes range from pure brilliance
to a sort of hackneyed quirkiness that renders the script a little
messy - a bizarre dead mouse episode and an inexplicable Father
Christmas outfit spring to mind.
The energy and frequent superb
comic timing of the cast, however,
succeeded in carrying the perfor-
★★★☆☆
mance. Despite this, anyone who
can take a step back from the
pacey performance will probably
find themselves wondering what,
if anything, it’s actually saying.
The characters are all variations
on a kind of hipster cliché that, although witty and well-observed,
lacks depth: the personalities become so caricatured that it grows
hard to identify them with anyone, even those they mock. As a
result, the manic humour, breakneck pace and claustrophobic
insanity of Footlight Lowell Belfield’s play evokes a kind of ‘Withnail and I’ for the 21st century,
but without its note of poignancy.
Theoretically offers little clarity or
insight in contrast to its comedic
heights. The relationship between
Lizzy and Max is chronically underdeveloped, so Max’s final declaration of love fails to pack the kind
of emotional punch that it presumably aims for. The sentiment of the
conclusion (wouldn’t it be nice if
everyone was a bit nicer to each
other) is perfectly true, but a little
underwhelming – farce though this
is, there is always room for a little
heart in comedy, and this failed
to take off. Theoretically treats the
concerns of a generation baffled
by too much information with a
light comic touch, and will leave its
audience exhausted and still hooting with laughter – but perhaps
ultimately a little underwhelmed.
Jess Moor
The director of next week’s ADC Mainshow, Sophocles’
Antigone, talks to Laura Peatman about the challenges and
excitement of adapting Greek tragedy for a modern audience
actors. So I was quite happy to cut
things and say ‘that didn’t work’. I
think with directing there’s that
fine balance between being able to
say, ‘right this is my vision, this is
the story I want to tell’, but at the
same time being open to new ideas
which are better than yours! I was
an actor first, and I love when I
can go to a director and say ‘What
about this?’ and he’ll say ‘Yes, let’s
try it’. I think it’s a lovely ambience
in the room. So yes, I was open
to suggestions although I had a
clear idea of what I wanted to do.
The Chrous is so specific to Greek
tragedy, and it’s something that
is open to lots of interpretation.
What is your take on it here?
What most people expect these
days from theatre is people doing
things to each other on stage and
affecting each other with words; to
me a lot of the Chorus’ relationship
with the audience isn’t actually
affecting them in a way that is
dramatic enough for us to call it
drama. It very often becomes a big
piece of poetry – beautiful poetry,
it can be very interesting poetry
– but the first thing I wanted to
do was to try to turn that into an
active part of the plot: how much
do they reflect things in the play,
how much can they create what
is happening? What influence
can they have on characters? We
played with that a lot. It’s the idea
that when you get to the odes, the
drama doesn’t stop. And I didn’t
want them to be old men! I didn’t
think that was helpful to anyone.
Given
your
professional
training and experience in acting
and directing, how do you find
the Cambridge theatre scene?
It’s great! I genuinely think there’s
a great deal of talent in Cambridge.
The brilliant thing is there’s so
much going on and so many
opportunities. I’ve been very lucky
with my cast who’ve been brilliant,
being both talented and really keen.
People here are sponges, everyone
just wants to learn and absorb
everything and be better. As soon
as they believe - rightly or wrongly!
- that they can learn something
from you, then they’re great to
work with. It’s a cliché because
it’s written all over the ADC walls,
but it’s a great training ground.
You’re an actor too, so do
you prefer being on the stage or
directing the action from behind it?
I genuinely I think that for me
they actually inform each other
enormously. I constantly remind
myself of the problems that actors
face and I try to speak an actor’s
language when I’m directing,
because I’ve worked with directors
who just don’t do that and it’s
incredibly frustrating! I love them
both. I think the good thing about
being an actor is that I still think
you need technique, to go to classes
and all that sort of stuff, but just
by being alive, you can get better.
Finally: three words that sum
up Antigone and tell people
why they should go and see it.
‘Powerful’,
‘provoking’,
and
‘enjoyable’. I think that a huge
part of it, I think you’ve got to get
pleasure from it, even when you’re
going to see something that’s a
tragedy. And I guess also ‘new’
[that’s four words…]. I’d like to
think that people will come along
and see something that they know,
and take away something new.
Antigone runs at the ADC from
Tues 25th to Sat 29th October at
7.45pm (Sat matinée, 2.30pm)
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SPORT
Thursday, 20th October, 2011
The
CambridgeStudent
Interview: Shaun Custis
Chief Football Writer for The Sun, Shaun Custis, talks to Olivia Lee about Fergie, Tevez and unpleasant emails
I confess, my knowledge of football
writing is limited. So when I
researched Shaun Custis, Chief
Football Writer at The Sun, whom I
was to interview, I was alarmed to find
some rather negative descriptions,
including the word ‘odious.’
Imagine my surprise when,
stepping off the train in trepidation,
fearing an encounter that would
put me off sports reporting for life,
I was met by a polite and charming
man, who took me to the first place
we could find a coffee and happily
sat down to chat. Having travelled
back from Montenegro only the day
before, where he had been covering
England’s Euro 2012 Qualifier match,
I expected Shaun to be tired and
perhaps unresponsive, but I could
not have been more wrong.
We start at his journey into football
writing. He admits it was not a route
he took by conscious effort.
“I don’t think anybody’s a football
or sports reporter to start with.” he
says. The list of papers he has worked
for is extensive, starting on a weekly
press in Leicestershire. When Shaun
pointed out to his editor that the sport
section of the paper was somewhat
below par he was put in charge of it,
at the tender age of 19.
Countless papers later, we come
to how he made his way onto the
nationals. “I was drunk in a nightclub
and fell over two blokes I knew, John
Richardson from the Sunday Express
and Bill Bradshaw from The Sunday
People (now known as The People)
and slurred something at them like
‘when are you going to get me a
decent job on a national newspaper.’
“Three weeks later Bill Bradshaw
contacted the football writer on my
paper.” Not the most conventional
route to a job then. I ask whether this
is how he advises I go about getting
into the nationals. Shaun laughs.
“No, but it does show that it’s a little
bit of an accident sometimes.”
After another long list of papers we
finally reach The Sun, where he moved
in 2002. Discussing the advantages
of tabloid versus broadsheet, Shaun
admits that there is ‘kudos’ in working
for the broadsheets, but having grown
up in the tabloid-heavy North East,
working at The Sun was a dream
come true. “It was like being centreforward for Manchester United.
There’s close to five million people
reading it per day.”
Moving on to contemporary
football, and Ferguson in particular,
Shaun comments that Fergie’s
complaints over the power of
broadcasters in match scheduling
are, in his opinion, somewhat halfhearted. “He always wants it Man
United’s way, but he wouldn’t earn
what he does if it wasn’t for TV and
deep down he knows that. He knows
its nonsense; he’s just trying it on.”
Shaun isn’t disparaging about
Fergie, in fact his tone borders on a
kind of dry fondness, despite the fact
that Ferguson has banned him from
conferences. Then again, at this point
who hasn’t he banned? He adds that
Sir Alex can be incredibly warm and
great company at times. “He hates the
press, basically. I think we’ve all got
used to it.”
Talking about the amount of
money floating around in football
today, Shaun thinks it’s natural, and
not necessarily a bad thing, that
players now chase the wages instead
of having loyalty to particular clubs.
“If it weren’t this way, this country
would never have had players like
Henri, Ronaldo, Aguero. We would
never have had the controversy over
people like Tevez. It gives a rich
tapestry to journalism.”
Funny he should mention Tevez.
That was the next question on my list.
Shaun believes that Mancini kept him
as punishment, to his own detriment.
At the same time he finds Tevez to
be ‘complicated.’ “I don’t know what
Tevez wants out of life. It’s difficult
to have sympathy with players who
refuse to play when he’s earning the
money he is. People who have lost
jobs are looking at that and thinking
‘what are you doing?’”
Does he think that football players
have a responsibility to behave in a
certain way, because of the media
attention? “Well I don’t think that
people become footballers and think
that it means you have to be a role
model as well. They don’t think that
way. They get a lot very quickly. I
love when players are men of the
people, the problem is that if you’re
not scoring goals, people make the
fact that you go out, have a drink
and enjoy life the reason why you’re
not.” Shaun does admit that players
that behave inappropriately, with the
awareness that all eyes are on them,
are “thick as bricks.” I’m not going to
disagree.
We move to Shaun’s latest big
scoop; the email, accidentally sent
by Manchester City chief executive
Garry Cook, to player Nedum
Onouha’s mother, ridiculing her
battle with cancer. It was exposed by
Shaun himself recently. I ask if there
is a dilemma over revealing an email
that is likely to lose someone their
job.
“No.” He answers immediately, but
then seems to reconsider. Frowning,
he ponders the question. “Do I have
a moral conscience about it? No, not
really. I spoke to the woman involved,
and she was really upset by it. She felt
like Garry Cook was taking the micky
out the fact that she had cancer. How
can we say she was wrong?
“Had he instantly apologised
instead of saying it was an employee
in the office, I think Mrs Onouha
would have accepted it. By the time
I reported the story, he had already
covered up what happened. He didn’t
really have anywhere go.”
Is there a moral dilemma about
selling out good contacts for a good
story? This one is harder for Shaun.
“A good journalist couldn’t deny
that if it is a really good contact of
yours you will try to avoid it. Why
turn over a contact that has helped
you out for 20 odd years? It doesn’t
make any sense.”
Debate: Is sport a breeding ground for racism?
Ollie Guest
YES
Robin Lamboll
NO
It’s unfair to blame sport for endemic racism in society. While racist abuse is a tragically common occurrence in sport, these arise from
pre-existing prejudices which, on
balance, sport does more to combat
than encourage.
Most football teams feature players with an astonishing range of
ethnicities and nationalities, to the
extent that in 2009 the premier
league was less than 40% English.
Ask a football fan to name anyone
from Belguim, Brazil or the Ivory
Coast: chances are they’ll only be
able to name footballers.
Now ask a non-fan and (ignoring fictional characters like Poirot)
there’s a good chance they can’t do
it at all. In other words, if it weren’t
for football, many of us would never
even see anyone from Ivory Coast,
much less have a source of information to counter any racist claims we
might hear about them.
Even with national teams, the
tendency for ethnic groups to live
together is overcome on the field.
Seeing a team of people chosen on
the basis of skill all working together should leave the viewers less racist rather than more.
It’s easy to underestimate how
widespread racism is in our society.
Racism isn’t just a few weird people
ranting in pubs or at the sidelines,
it’s a mostly subconscious stereotyping that to some extent we all
do. Shouting at matches is one way
fans can transmit or reinforce these
stereotypes, but this is no more the
case than with any given crowd
event.
A range of experiments have
found racial stereotyping in children from the age of three, and
though they may be taught not to
express this, to some extent it stays
with them for the rest of their lives.
Telling people racism is wrong,
while necessary, is not enough to
change this.
Throwing people out of games
because they have abused players
is not sufficient either, although it
gives a clear message that sporting
authorities will not stand for racist
behaviour.
This, along with anti-racism
charities like Show Racism the Red
Card, can help address the surface
problem of abuse and overt discrimination, but it will make little
headway against the more insidious
forms. To counter those we need
familiarity with people of other
ethnicities, heroes we cheer for, irrelevant of race.
John Blekinsopp
How many top black football managers can you name? Or how many
black rugby or cricket coaches
spring to mind? It is still evident
that black people simply don’t hold
the same positions of prestige as
their white counterparts.
Then there’s the consideration of
the fans’ actions. Anytime a Western football team heads to one of
the countries that formerly constituted the Communist Bloc, there
are concerns about what kind of
chanting that some players may endure.
UEFA are currently considering
what actions to take against Bulgarian supporters for their taunting of Manchester United’s Ashley
Young. Equally, Liverpool starlet
Suarez is in the spotlight after accusations that he racially abused
Patrice Evra.
Look a few years back and we can
recall spectators in the crowd at the
Spanish Formula One with faces
painted black in order to insult
Lewis Hamilton.
The worrying thing is that scenes
such as these are not reducing as
much we would like to believe.
Only on Monday did Henry Winter
write an article on ‘The Daily Telegraph’ website calling for racism to
be stamped out of football.
Perhaps actions are not as obvious as the banana throwing that
John Barnes endured, but ‘subtle’
racism still persists even if it is not
always highlighted.
Sport tends to group like minded
individuals. In some instances this
allows the fermentation of unjustified hatred and a feeling of ‘them
against us’.
When a sporting fixture is international, national pride can spill
over into disgraceful chanting. At
club level racism such as the abuse
suffered by Emmanuel Adebayor
at a recent match with Arsenal remains a deep concern.
The actions of fans combined
with the inequality of opportunities for black managers means that
whether we admit it or not, racism
in sport is still a great concern.
Chris Hughton: One of
only two black managers
in the Football League
The
CambridgeStudent
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
30| Sport
Cambridge United Cruise Past Toothless Alfreton College Football Round-Up: Division 1
Brendan Shepherd
Cambridge
3
Alfreton
Town
0
David Hardeman
defence, which has now conceded 36
goals in 16 league games this season.
The pace of Dunk was proving
especially difficult for the visitors
to counter, with Law picking up a
yellow card for a cynical obstruction
of the winger after he had played a
neat one-two with Jennings.
It was that left-sided combination
again who teamed up to double
United’s lead. Jennings again found
himself on the ball in an advanced
position with plenty of time to pick
a pass. His perfectly weighted ball
inside Law for Dunk to run on to saw
the wide man hold off two challenges
and bury a shot beyond the Keeper
from a tight angle.
A change early in the second half
inspired Alfreton to offer their best
spell of the game, yet still without
presenting any real danger.
Gash held the ball up in the centre
circle before turning and feeding the
whippet-like Carew down the inside
right channel. Carew squared the ball
to Berry, whose shot rebounded into
the path of Dunk – he slammed the
ball home, and at 3-0 the scoreline
reflected the balance of play.
Winn and Charles soon replaced
Carew and Dunk, who were rewarded
for their performances with standing
ovations. With all 3 points in the
bag, United were content to hold
Alfreton off for the remainder of the
afternoon, with only a few moments
of real incident.
Cambridge also put on a great
shaow against York on Tuesday night,
drawing 2-2 against an impressive
opposition.
Patrick Fee
Cambridge United ran out 3-0
winners at the Abbey Ground on
Saturday, moving up to within a point
of the play-off places. Jez George’s
good work since his arrival as
manager shows no signs of abating.
In bright sunshine, Cambridge
flew out of the blocks. Gash was a
particular early thorn in the side
of the Town defence, holding the
ball up well and instigating much of
Cambridge’s good early work.
However, the first real chance of
the match fell to the visitors after
Coulson could only deal with a long
ball by conceding a corner. Law
trotted across to take the set piece
from the left, and when his deep
cross was headed goalwards, United
Keeper Naisbitt had to make a sharp
save. However, Alfreton offered little
threat in the first half.
Cambridge looked more composed
on the ball, with Shaw working hard
in midfield and laying the foundations
for the dangerous wide play of Carew
and Dunk.
Jennings carried the ball deep into
the Alfreton half after 29 minutes
before playing in Dunk on the left
hand side of the penalty area, the
former Bromley man forcing Law
to put the ball behind. Carew lifted
the resulting corner into the six-yard
box, and Berry ghosted in unmarked
to head the opening goal.
Even with the presence of Streete
and Brown in midfield, Alfreton
struggled to protect their fragile
The opening round of matches of
College football pitted Trinity Hall
against Homerton. Maxwell served
up with the first goal of the game
only 10 minutes in.
Homerton’s first real opportunity
came on 20 minutes with Fletcher
missing an opening before Elliott
and Sayed spurned glorious chances. Evra displayed some sophisticated footwork, resulting in the equaliser via a calamitous error from
defender Bocaccini, who spooned
the ball past his goalkeeper.
Increasingly, Homerton’s dynamic midfield quartet of Elliott, Sayed,
Williams and O’Gara controlled the
game; Williams at the heart of every
Homerton attack
O’Gara was left unmarked in the
box for a tap in just past the hour
and on 79 minutes Dale eluded
the offside trap following Sayed’s
delightful ball before rounding the
keeper to put the game out of Trinity’s reach. The final score was 3-1
to Homerton.
James Jones
Christ’s twice came back from a
deficit against Downing, who took
the lead after a well executed corner. Downing’s centre-forward
then managed to slot past Christ’s
keeper, but Christ’s was swift to hit
back, Harrison celebrating his 50th
game for Christ’s with a 56th goal.
Christ’s second goal came from
a Morgan header. Downing retook the lead ten minutes later but
Christ’s drew level again, May’s
freekick evading everybody, including the Downing keeper.
The second half was a tense affair.
Cade was twice forced to produce
sharp saves, whilst at the other end
a free-flowing move was almost
rounded off by Beckwith. Unfortunately for the Christ’s winger, his
shot only clipped the bar.
Dominic Wong
Also in action this weekend were
Selwyn, who lost 3-0 to Fitz, Caius,
who thrashed Jesus convinvcingly at
4-0, and Trinity, who scraped a 3-2
victory against Emmanuel.
The
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
CambridgeStudent
Sport |31
Hockey Blues settle nerves to beat Holcombe Green Lions claw way to victory
Cambridge
2
Cambridge
46
Holcombe
1
Brunel
44
Olivia Lee
Sports Editor
Chris McKeon
Olivia Lee
another assault on the Holcombe
defence.
This time, although the initial
strike was halted by the Goalkeeper,
it was nipped in, taking the Blues to
a 1-0 lead.
Holcombe’s Osbourn was straight
back on the offensive, evidently
frustrated by the disadvantage, and
teased the Cambridge defence by
circling around the D. Rickman,
with some skillfull work under
pressure, forced Homcombe to play
some inspired hockey to keep the
ball away out of the goal.
Cambridge was using the width
of the pitch, Addy making great
clearances out to the wing. There
was a real chance for Cambridge
to go farther in front as Lee took a
reverse swipe that came excruciatingly close to a goal but ricocheted
off the post, eliciting groans from
the watching supporters.
Despite some skilful stick work
from the Blues, passes weren’t quite
hitting their targets, causing the
side to lose their momentum. Just
as Holcombe were starting to look
their most dangerous, the half-time
whistle blew, offering Cambridge a
reprieve.
Just minutes into the second half
the Holcombe Goalie was forced to
make an aggressive run out of the
goal in order to tackle. Cambridge
wanted to set the tone for the second half quickly, but Holcombe
were not intimidated. A fantastic
reverse strike by Osbourn saw the
ball go sailing over the Goalie’s outstretched arms, bringing Holcombe
level at 1-1.
An injury break seemed to rejuvenate the Blues, and it wasn’t long
before they earned their first short
corner. Giving it a strong strike,
they didn’t manage to make the
goal. Another short corner came to
nothing, but it was third time lucky
for Cambridge, with a great strike
by Becca Naylor rebounding behind the Goalie. It was 2-1 to Cambridge with five minutes to go.
Although the last few minutes
were tense, Holcombe earning their
own short corner and Whelehan
looking dangerous when the ball
found her in an clear D, the defence
never let up. Addy remained resolute and eventually carried the ball
up the pitch until the final whistle blew, securing victory for the
Blues.
A new coach, new players and one
kick at goal was all the difference between the Green Lions and Brunel
Rugby League as the Cambridge
side ground out a victory in a 16
try thriller, taking their first steps
towards exorcising the demons of
last season’s Varsity defeat.
Cambridge stated their intent for
the new season with a thunderous
first tackle, straight from the kick
off, ploughing the Brunel prop
back a good ten metres and then
forcing a knock on. Loose forward
and captain Commin picked up
the ball from the base of the scrum
and drove towards the line, leaving
hooker Bousher with the simple
task of diving over the line. First
blood to Cambridge.
The next try came minutes later
with Cambridge putting repeat set
after repeat set on Brunel before
Commin barged over the line to
bag the first of his hat-trick.
Chris McKeon
The women’s Blues put on an exciting display last weekend to defeat
the Holcombe Ladies 1st team.
Confidently coming off the back of
their first win of the season against
Ipswich, Cambridge was feeling optimistic.
Cambridge was imposing from
their first push-back, but Holcombe’s Osbourn managed to find
a way through the Cambridge defence and lined up for a strike. Although she missed, the Blues were
given a sharp reminder not to get
overconfident too quickly.
For the first few minutes, both
sides displayed some rather frantic tackling, but eventually the play
settled down into a much smoother
display. Cambridge was having a
hard time finding a way through
the Holcombe attack, who were
isolating players effectively.
It was the opposition taking the
strikes in the early stages and the
Blues were clearly under pressure,
Gibb moved the ball back up the
pitch for Grove to take a strike, but
it looped wide of the goal.
Cambridge looked panicked by
the confident Holcombe attack, but
instructions were being shouted
across the pitch. The girls seemed
to know what was going wrong and
were determined to fix it.
The team gradually started to
come together, with the midfield
and defence doing a great job of
preventing the ball from making it
through their ranks. The combination of Gibb and Grove soon made
However, before the game began
to look like an overly one-sided affair, the Brunel scrum-half fed his
left centre, who hit a near-perfect
line to puncture the Cambridge defence and score a breakaway try.
Well-worked Cambridge sets
forced Brunel back, resulting in
either a Cambridge forward forcing their way over or a breakaway
try for the visitors, who failed to
put together a set all match. Only
the fluctuating quality of the Cambridge defence allowed the Londoners into the game.
As a result of sticking to a simple
game, Cambridge was rather predictable, with the two half-backs
fairly anonymous in a forwardsdominated game. However, Orchard at stand-off was the more
involved of the pair, capping his
debut performance with a try and
the crucial conversion which saw
Cambridge over the line.
There is certainly still much to
improve on. Even so, it is clear
that with time and experience, the
Green Lions will become a force to
be reckoned with.
The memory of that first clattering hit will spur them on for the
rest of the season, especially on the
way to the Varsity showdown in
March.
Men’s Tennis Blues make solid start to their new season
Cambridge
6
Nottingham
6
Cameron Johnston
some uncharacteristically poor
serving. He made amends in game
eleven, stroking a forehand return
cross-court for a winner and the
crucial break. Apparently feeling
no nerves, Cohen served out to
take the match.
In the other doubles, Markides
and Sylvester immediately grabbed
the lead, the Cypriot’s consistent
groundstroke game complementing
the Aussie’s imposing presence
at the net. They took the
opening set 6-2 but their
concentration faltered at the
beginning of the second as they fell
a break behind.
Despite continuing to play
inventive tennis, they lost the
second set 6-3 and entered the
deciding super tie-break (first
to ten) as distinct underdogs.
With impressive composure, the
Cambridge pair seized the initiative
and raced to an unassailable lead.
Two matches down and Cambridge
looked in good shape.
At number one, Cameron took
three of the first four games and
looked the favourite to win the first
set when he went 30-0 up in the
fifth. But he let himself be distracted,
dropped his serve and thereafter
struggled to make inroads into
his opponent’s service games. He
continued to try to dominate play
with his forehand, but his opponent
consistently made him play an extra
ball. The Notts player squeezed
through a tight tie-break and took
the second set 6-3.
Constantine played assured
tennis at number two. Returning
from deep in the court, he drove
Gianluca Sidhu to tantrums with
Cameron Johnston
The Men’s Tennis Blues have
opened their BUCS (University
League) account with a nail-biting
six-all draw against Nottingham
University.
After being relegated from the
Northern Premier Division last
year, the Blues needed to be quick
out of the blocks for a chance of
promotion. While only two players
remain from the six-man team that
bagged its sixth consecutive Varsity
in June, they have benefited from an
influx of new talent. Charlie Cohen
and Constantine Markides both
made their debuts and paired up
with Cameron Johnston and Sven
Sylvester respectively.
In the opening doubles, Johnston
and Cohen made a hesitant start,
losing the first six points on the
bounce before steadying their
nerves and sending down some
strong first serves.
Trailing in the score, they hung
on at 4-5 down and ambushed
their opponents in the next game.
They were beginning to read their
opponent’s awkward lefty serve
and their low, dipping returns paid
dividends as they broke, and Cohen
served out emphatically to love.
The second set was much like
the first, except that Johnston
squandered the opportunity to
consolidate a break at 3-2 up with
his consistent groundstrokes off
both wings. He had tipped the
Nottingham player over the edge
with his stubborn refusal to give
up and merely had to wait for him
to go splat. He duly emerged the
victor, 6-4, 6-2.
The light Blues now needed one
more singles win to take the tie.
Sven transposed his good serving
from doubles to singles and lost
only three service points on the way
to taking the first set, 6-4. But after
a lapse in concentration gave hope
to an already invigorated opponent,
it went to a final set decider. Sven’s
fortunes ebbed and flowed and he
served for the match at 5-3, only to
lose it 7-5.
At number four, Charlie felt that
he played a good match and was
unlucky to face a better opponent
in Tom Vallance. Despite scrapping
hard, he lost 7-5, 6-3.
This nail-biting encounter left
both teams with one point out of a
possible three and gives Cambridge
a solid foundation on which to build
in the coming weeks and months.
Special plaudits go to Constantine
Markides who made a well-nigh
perfect debut.
The
CambridgeStudent
SPORT
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Men’s Blues outclass Heathens...
Cambridge
24
Blackheath 18
Ollie Guest and Stephanie Ware
Building some pressure of their
own, Stevens sped after a cross
field kick, harrying his opponent.
When the ball bounced uncertainly
he pounced and dashed over to
score the try, helping to establish
comfortable margin of 21-13.
Stevens then extended the lead by
three points after further good play
from the Blues resulted in a well
earned penalty.
Blackheath came storming back
but Cambridge were holding strong
with firm tackles. One particular
clearance brought winces from the
spectators after Blackheath’s Liston
suffered a full blooded kick to a
delicate area of his anatomy.
Cambridge had chances in the
last ten minutes, twice falling just
inches short of earning another try.
However, again their concentration
in the closing minutes let them down
as they permitted the Heathens to
break over the line with the last play of
the game. After battering the defence
in a series of assaults, Lindfield
eventually powered through for an
unconverted try, ending the game
24-18 to Cambridge.
When questioned about Stevens’
recent run of form, sidelined captain
Guinness-King was understandably
keen to stress the efforts of all the
squad. “He’s a fast guy who can do
damage and score tries, but it’s the
other guys are doing the grunt work
for him, so we can’t forget that those
guys are a big part in his success.”
but the bright October afternoon
eventually saw both teams assembled
and ready to kick off the BUCS season.
The Blues began confidently, quickly
asserting themselves as the dominant
team. Trent’s physically stronger pack
made life difficult for Cambridge in
the scrums, but the Blues reacted
sensibly by making the most of their
pacey and aggressive backs. Excellent support play meant that they had
plenty of runners available to gather
the offloads, enabling Cambridge to
retain possession keep attacking.
Inside centre Clapham was the first
to capitalise, crossing the line for two
tries in the first quarter. Windy conditions made the kicking tricky, but
second row Valade was able to convert the second of the tries and take
Cambridge into an early 12-0 lead.
Trent mustered some good periods
of attack, but they were fielding a
number of freshers playing their first
ever rugby match and it inevitably
showed against a considerably more
experienced Cambridge side.
Lacking both the clinical finishing or
the organised structure of the Blues,
Trent weren’t able to make anything
of their possession while Cambridge
were far more effective, taking the
ball on at pace and executing good
running lines.
Strong ball carriers including Omu
and McEvoy hammered away at the
Trent defence, with outside centre
Baker being the one to go over for
a try. A missed conversion kept the
score at 17-0, but it wasn’t to stay that
way for long.
A slicing run from fullback Jenny
Hawkin saw her cut in from the wing,
sidestepping the Trent defence for a
try which Valade was able to convert
to put Cambridge ahead 24-0. Trent
refused to lose their heads and they
responded by chasing their restart
with commitment, putting pressure
on the Blues’ receivers to earn the
visitors a line out just outside the
Cambridge 22.
However, Nottingham again failed
to play tight rugby and their inability to secure the ball effectively saw
Cambridge quickly back in possession. Omu took the opportunity
for another run at Trent, this time
charging through the opposition for
a full three quarters of the length of
the pitch, breaking several tackles to
acore an impressive solo try.
Valade couldn’t snatch the conversion, but this was no consolation for
Trent were downhearted as they went
into half time facing a 29-0 deficit.
Cambridge continued to have the
upper hand from the start of the sec-
ond half. Trent managed to steal a
spilled ball, but, failing to get enough
height when attempting to kick it
clear, found themselves immediately
back under pressure from Baker. Another Blues score looked inevitable
and this time it was scrumhalf Hill
who turned the pressure into points,
followed by a successful conversion
by Valade taking Cambridge 36-0
ahead.
Trent’s ability to remain positive
even on the even in the face of a disheartening score line was admirable,
and eventually they were rewarded
with a try from a powerful scrum in
the Cambridge 22.
However this was to be Trent’s only
score, while the Blues had still more
up their sleeve. Sustained counter
attack from Cambridge saw Trent
again scrambling to defend, this time
resulting in a nasty high tackle on
Hawkin as she crossed the line.
Hawkin came away unscathed and
with a penalty try awarded for her
efforts, successfully converted by Valade to stretch Cambridge’s lead still
further to 43-5. Cambridge continued to utilise their backs with good
running and smart offloading from
several players, including replacement Browning, leading up to one
last try for the Blues from Hill right
at the death. A successful conversion
by Valade was to be the last kick of
the game, and Cambridge were celebrating a decisive 50-5 victory at the
whistle.
David Hardeman
A star performance from Rob
Stevens ensured a second successive
win for the Blues on a nippy Tuesday
night. Two tries and a series of
penalties from the Jesus man meant
he earned the plaudits but it was the
efforts of all the team that secured a
hard fought 24-18 victory over the
Blackheath Heathens.
In the opening minutes, Cooke did
well to chase down a high kick and
earn a simple penalty for Stevens
to convert. The earlier exchanges
suggested that the match was going
to be a scrappy affair with both sides
employing a kicking game as they
struggled to gain the ascendancy.
The visitors were soon level when
Humphries converted a penalty.
This seemed to spark the Blues into
life and within moments they had
earned a penalty that put them back
into the lead.
However, the Heathens came
back strongly, Ellis slotting a ball
through towards the Cambridge
try line for his teammates to chase.
Despite a valiant effort from Hunt,
the referee and assistant adjudged
the Girtonian’s tackle illegal and a
penalty try was awarded. With the
conversion duly added, Blackheath
took a 10-6 lead into the interval.
Emerging from the break the Blues
were clearly fired up for a powerful
second half display. Just moments in
the impressive Allen forced his way
over the line to regain the lead for
Cambridge.
Driven by this early promise the
Blues quickly added to their total.
O’Toole burst through excellently
and offloaded to Stevens.
Fending off a last gasp tackle, he
touched down and took the score
to 16-10 after missing a difficult
conversion.
Cobb put in some big hits and
between them the team even held
back Blackheath’s Cleverly, who in
the opening half had threatened to
maraud like a possessed ‘Sideshow
Bob’.
A dubious penalty allowed the
Heathen’s to reduce the deficit to
16-13.
So far this season Cambridge have
shown an ability to react quickly
after conceding, something that
once more proved to be the case on
Tuesday.
... and Blues women thrash Nottingham Trent
Cambridge
50
Nottingham
Trent
5
Steph Ware
Cambridge University’s women
stamped their mark on the 2011-12
BUCS league in the opening match
with a decisive win over Nottingham
Trent on Wednesday.
The afternoon got off to a rather chaotic start with Trent’s coach dropping
them off at the wrong pitches and the
referee arriving thirty minutes late,