obama

america is voting. within the last couple of hours, the state of alaska has opened its polling stations, the last of the united states to do so; it will also be the last one to close them tonight. by then, we should have a fairly clear idea of who will be the 44th president. every indication suggests it will be barack obama: history is being made. 

clearly, the american people do not need me or anybody else to tell them how to vote. which is one of the reasons i'm writing this on the actual day of the election. (although i don't in all earnest believe that this blog is read by so many people stateside that it could be of any significance to the outcome of the election in any way. my delusions of grandeur are way more subtle than that...)  

but for the sake of history, we - those five and a half to six billion of us who do not get to vote in this election, but who will nevertheless live with the consequences of the outcome every day for the next four years and possibly long into the future - must hope and trust that today america is making the right decision, by chosing change.  it's a mantra obama and his team have been repeating for as long as their campaign has been going, and it's one i'm prepared to have faith in.  

america stands very literally at a crossroads: one way is embracing a new politics, a new type of politician and a new language of politics; the other is effectively more of the same, in a somewhat changed dressing. one way points towards restoring the united states' standing in the world as a country that possesses both democratic and ethical authority, the other points towards a country that is becoming introspect, wrapping itself in patriotism and self-interest. one way promises a road towards harmonisation externally and domestic unity, the other will bring about more alienation from the rest of the world and a pronounced rift in american society.  

the latter not because john mccain is an inherently divisive figure - i don't think he is - but because by now the hope and promise of a new departure is so strong and so real in those who long for that change, that mccain pipping obama to the post would be nothing short of catastrophic. whether or not obama will in fact make a better president than mccain is by now almost no longer entirely relevant. i personally believe he would. but then i'm inclined to say so, because my politics, such as they are, are naturally at home on the liberal social democrat end of the spectrum.  

but at stake today is not a simple, straightforward trade-off between republicans and democrats. between slightly left of centre or slightly right of centre policy. what's at stake today is the heart and soul of the most powerful nation on this planet, and still the only superpower. what's at stake is how america will understand itself over the next generation, present itself, how it will behave and how it will feature within the fabric of the community of nations. and indeed how it will be understood. how the world will see and relate to this giant in its midst. 

obama, as the first african american president, as a young man with a young family, as an intelligent, educated and articulate leader, will restore our faith in america as a country leading the way: the nation that has made such a pivotal contribution to the twentieth century will regain its position as a land that - no matter how 'conservative' in many respects much of its people are - looks forward, shines a light on the road ahead and then strides there, courageously. a land, essentially, of progress. a country where hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to hear a civil rights leader declare 'i have a dream' may mean that barely two generations later, that dream can actually be fulfilled. 

a president obama will embody, personify and represent to us, the rest of the world, much, if not all, of what we have either forgotten or, in the course of the 'with us or against us' rhetoric of the bush era, over years of swagger and posturing by a man incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together, over the staggering offences against democracy, international law and human rights that are the iraq war, guantanamo bay, extraordinary rendition and sanctioned torture, over the jaw-dropping agonies of pregnant chads and broken voting machines, we have been forced to push out of our minds altogether: that america has the potential to be a credible force for good in the world. that america is - at heart - our friend. 

and a president mccain? well: a president mccain, by now, would drive home no message so clearly as this: that america is afraid, that america would rather have a rest from its role of responsibility in the world than a change, that america does not have the confidence to vote for a black president even though it has been telling its pollsters that it was willing to do so, that america is no longer ready to look forward and outward, but is focusing inward and backward. that america has - alas - had its day.

that, to my mind, is what's at stake.

apparently, the bookies in england make obama a 16:1 favourite to win this election. the bookies in england are fairly astute. i hope, i so hope that they're right. not because i have a tenner riding on him - i don't - but because the world has an entire version of its future riding on him.  

and my prediction: i go with the bookies. i predict barack obama will win this election, more narrowly than expected. i predict he will be the next president of the united states. he won't solve all of the country's problems, let alone those of the world. but he'll make his country a much, much better place, for the fact alone that it has elected him. and if the strongest country in the world is a better place, then consequently, by definition, so is the world.

good luck and - if you believe in him - god bless america.

 

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andrew sachs

what with the US elections, the country sliding into recession, and the ongoing general climate angst, it was only a matter of time before something truly noteworthy would happen.

and it's happened. this week, our little island has finally been shaken to its core. what two world wars, the suez crisis, the thatcher years and a decade of new labour couldn't achieve has suddenly come about, all by itself and without warning: we've suffered a collective sense of humour failure.  

it's a truly apocalyptic state of affairs: we've started to take ourselves seriously.  

if you don't know what this is about and have - like the vast majority of people, including myself - not heard the original broadcast on radio 2, here it is. 

be warned: it's funny.  it's also mildly rude, very puerile, somewhat ill-judged maybe, and largely unnecessary. but it's funny. even if you don't find it funny, it's fun. fun in bad taste? absolutely. so is an awful lot of good comedy. but it's not malicious and it's not cruel and it's not anything really even worth writing about. the fact i'm writing about it here is already giving it far too much significance. it's two blokes making phone pranks. granted, they're doing it on public sector radio, they're extremely famous and they're paid excessive amounts of money for it. but it's still two blokes being silly on somebody's answerphone. using the word 'fuck'. it's hardly the end of the world as we know it.

yet a martian landing in britain today might think the country is in its greatest crisis since the norman invasion. the prime minister has spoken on the matter, and the director general of the BBC is conducting, and awaiting the result of, an investigation. meanwhile brand has resigned from his radio show and ross remains suspended. tens of thousands of people are complaining to the beeb and presumably to the broadcasting standards authority, voicing their 'outrage' at roughly eight minutes of air time they would know nothing about if the daily mail hadn't picked it up and turned it into a 'story'. now the story is running, it's gone out of all proportion, and it is truly shocking. not because of what brand and ross did, but because of how many people are over-reacting to it, and just to what degree.

but most shocking of all is that nobody - at least nobody 'important' - has yet stood up and said: get a grip: it's russell brand and jonathan ross. it's jest. it's what this, our great nation, is supposed to be famous for and proud of: our ability to have a laugh.

yes, for andrew sachs it was unpleasant and offensive.  for this russell and jonathan apologised both privately and in public, and the apology was accepted.  end of the matter.

ah, but there's the 'issue' of sachs's granddaughter, georgina baillie. is it fair on her to be telling her grandfather via his answerphone - and letting the whole nation know in the process - that one has had sex with her. wearing a condom. well: i haven't slept with russell brand. after a couple of guinness and with an hour to kill i would probably think nothing of it. but i would know it was russell brand. i would accept that even just going by my extremely limited knowledge of the gentleman, i should anticipate that his behaviour post encounter may potentially be less than gentlemanly and maybe not altogether discreet. i would not come over all surprised and indignant if he was seen the next day on the rooftop of broadcasting house, shouting it from there loud and proud, with a live-relay to a worldwide webcast. (and i would, in truth and in spite of myself, be ever so slightly chuffed that he felt it was worth shouting about). but it's russell brand. it goes with the territory. or so i would assume. 

so no, maybe it isn't fair on georgina. but please: was it the romans who said, if you lie with dogs you must love fleas? or the greeks? no matter: you know what you're letting yourself in for when you get into bed with russell brand. the man is not a cad. he may be a clown and a braggart, he may be infuriatingly entertaining and willfully sub-iconic, but neither is he evil nor is he devious nor does he leave you - or the rest of the world - in any doubt what he's mostly about: himself. 

and why shouldn't he be? make of him what you will, at least he and his mate jonathan still have what the rest of the country on far too vast a scale appears to have abandoned altogether: a sense of humour.    

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titians

to be perfectly honest, i'm not a great fan of titian. this sounds like an obstinately philistine statement to make, but obviously i'm neither speaking as an art historian nor as an artist. nor in fact as an expert of any description. i'm not giving you my assessment of the quality of titian's work, i'm just telling you where he fits into my personal taste. and the answer is hardly at all.  

so if it were purely a question of whether i like these paintings or not, i'd see very little reason for getting in the least bit interested in the case of the two titians. but of course it has nothing to do with personal taste (least of all my personal taste) and everything to do with civilisation.

if you haven't been following the case of the two titians, it's remarkably simple: the duke of sutherland, his name is francis ronald egerton, owns two famous paintings by the italian renaissance master titian. the paintings are called diana and actaeon and diana and callisto, and they form part of the 'bridgewater' collection which has been with the national galleries of scotland for just under sixty years. so far so good.  

diana and callisto

diana and actaeon

now, for reasons of his own, the duke as decided he wants to sell these two paintings. on the open market, it is estimated, they are worth a cool £150m. each. £300m in total. he'll let the national galleries of scotland and the national gallery (london) jointly have them both for £100m: fifty million a throw. but the galleries have to raise the first fifty million by new year's eve (about four months after the offer) and the second within another four years.  

and this is where it gets fascinating. how are these two galleries going to raise a hundred million pounds for two pictures that the vast majority of people have probably never heard about until now. (the highest sum the national gallery has so far paid for the acquisition of a painting is £22m, back in 2004.) the consensus in the art world, not surprisingly, is that if the two paintings should end up being sold on the open market they would almost certainly be lost to the nation, which would constitute a major catastrophe. outside the art world, opinions vary a great deal and what pops up regularly in debates of this nature has predictably popped up here too: the 'how many hospitals' argument.  

it's not so much of an argument as a price comparison that goes along the lines: how many hospitals could you build for (in this case) a hundred million, implying that this would be a far better use of the money. (this is often then accompanied by the number of premier league footballers you could have for the same amount, though this largely for entertainment value: i've never heard anybody seriously suggest that public funds be spent to purchase premier league footballers for the nation, though who knows that may not be such a terrible idea either...) the answer, as it happens, is about 3 (and 30 respectively), though obviously that depends largely on the nature, size and location of the hospitals you want (and the current career status of your preferred footballers).

and of course the argument doesn't hold, because it really isn't one, certainly not for a country that ranks among the wealthiest in the world. if you are a household with a reasonable income you do not say to yourself, every time you go to the cinema or the theatre or buy a book or, most particularly, if and when you buy a painting to hang on the wall: ah but think how many aspirins that would pay for. you certainly don't look at the heirloom (if you're privileged enough to have one) and work out how many days in physio it would pay for. not unless you're seriously ill and really have absolutely no other sources of funding.  

if we were an impoverished nation on the brink of collapse with people dying for want of health provision and a large segment of the population illiterate, we would be looking at a different proposition. but we're not. we're a highly evolved sophisticated society that knows - even if sometimes it pretends that it doesn't - the value of heritage, art and culture. and here is the opportunity - you could call it the imposed necessity - to buy, for the nation, two works which practically everybody in the know agrees are in actual fact priceless: the colours titian used, the composition, the artistry, the allegorical references, even the history of their commission make them, as a pair, unique: they are a treasure. 

a nation needs treasures. and in this country - and this is something we can and should be extremely proud of and happy about - these treasures are freely accessible to all. you don't pay any admission, you don't have to belong to a club, you don't have to book. you just walk into any museum and enjoy them. so really: £100 million is a snip. it's about one fifty a head of the population. less than a cappuccino. about the price of a simple burger (if you're that way inclined). for something that, if you allow it to, can do you more good than a lifetime supply of prozac. art is good you: it nurtures the mind and nourishes the soul. falling in love with a painting is like, well, falling in love. it releases endorphins in your body and makes you feel good. feeling good heals. never underestimate the power of art. 

i'm not about to suggest that we should do away with hospitals altogether and simply rely on art for our healthcare but everybody knows that money spent on prevention goes a whole lot further than money spent on cure. and taking care of our national treasures helps us take care of ourselves. it's the bigger picture we're after: how things fit together in a civilised world.  

so i say: yes go ahead and spend the money. buy these paintings, take it from the taxes. it'll be money well spent. 

the bbc news q&a page on the titians

the save the titians! group on facebook

 

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hasbro

i'm wondering whether this is a 'complex issue' or really very simple.

in a nutshell, the situation as i understand it is this: scrabble is a trade mark owned in the united states and in canada by hasbro, and everywhere else in the world by mattel. scrabulous is the online version of scrabble developed by indian brothers rajat and jayant agarwalla, and as a facebook application it has acquired in the region of 600,000 regular users worldwide. some of them devoted, like myself: i love scrabulous. it replicates the scrabble board, allows you to maintain multiple games with your facebook friends, it has a clean, simple interface, it keeps track of your games statistics, and it adds a little joy to your online existence every day.

currently i have three games going: one with one of my oldest friends, whom i've been in ongoing competition with ever since we've known each other (be it in real-life knockout whist, a 'tournament' that has been going for well over ten years, or in virtual scrabble); one with a new friend who i don't really know all that well yet, but whom i have the greatest esteem and respect for as an actor; and one with a friend who at the moment lives in dubai and whom i would not, otherwise, probably be in contact with at all. so scrabulous, as far as i'm concerned, is a good thing, and no doubt about it.

but, as you've guessed (you may already know) there's a problem. hasbro and mattel are, not altogether surprisingly, deeply unhappy. because you don't need to be a particularly sharp copyright lawyer to hazard a guess that the agarwalla brothers' venture - spirited as it is - seriously treads on their toes. i had long wondered how rajat and jayant had squared their game with the copyright owners of scrabble, and soon enough it turned out: they hadn't. 

so hasbro and mattel both announced they would take legal action and indeed in january 2008, hasbro filed a lawsuit against scrabulous for copyright infringement. as a result, facebook shut off scrabulous in july 2008. for about 48 hours or so, no matter where you were, you couldn't play scrabulous. then it started to work again anywhere outside north america. but as of last night (22 august 2008), it was shut down everywhere in the world except india, apparently in response to a letter from mattel to the indian high court.  (the logic of this is not entirely clear to me either, but the effect is the same: scrabulous has gone.)

now, it's fair to say that rajat and jayant were maybe a touch naive to think they could simply appropriate a board game - design, tile distribution, scoring system and all - allude to it in the name of their online version, and get away with it. i'm not an expert, but in legal terms i should imagine this is pretty straightforward.

but otherwise, it isn't. not any more.  because the world has changed. and in this changed world, the rules are rapidly unravelling, and have to therefore be rewritten. in the music industry, this has now been recognised. youtube is awash with videos that use tracks which the people posting the videos most certainly don't have the 'rights' to. but the artists and record labels not only allow this, they encourage it. and it's not a bad strategy: if using online communities to freely disseminate content popularises what you offer and creates devotees, you can fairly much bank on a commercial pay-back at the other end of your operation. the ting tings are a perfect example of how to use youtube and free music downloads to generate support and then hit the number one spot with paid-for downloads and singles sales in the slipstream of their own popularity. 

applied to scrabulous and facebook, there is no reason why this principle shouldn't work: scrabulous, with its vast and extremely enthusiastic supporter base, is brazenly infringing on copyright, but in doing so it is also advertising the game and concept of scrabble daily, for free, to a captive, receptive, audience, many of whom probably would never before have thought about playing - let alone buying - scrabble.  

sadly, at hasbro and mattel, this new reality has not, it would appear, been recognised. i don't know how the conversations between them and the agarwalla brothers went, what was on offer and what wasn't. i know that mattel has since launched its own online version on facebook, but as mattel doesn't own scrabble in north america, theirs can't be a global platform, and so it hasn't caught the imagination of facebook users. mattel, it seems, much as hasbro, has fairly missed the boat. but that doesn't mean that they can't benefit from all the exposure their real-life game is getting through scrabulous. but instead of working with scrabulous, they are both now determinedly pursuing its creators and driving it off facebook. 

and that, i think, is stupidity supreme. because no matter how much they are within their rights to do this, they are most categorically out of their minds: by knocking scrabulous off facebook, they have in one fell swoop alienated, disappointed and angered half a million people worldwide. and not just a little: scrabulous is a part of its users lives; people who - like i - have built scrabulous into their day: a few minutes at the top or the tail of each one is given to making a couple of moves on scrabulous. and that simple, honest pleasure has been taken away, by hasbro and mattel. 

so in actual fact, i do think it's all very straightforward. hasbro and mattel are applying old thinking in a new world and they are making a gigantic mistake. which is why i support the idea of sending a message to them, by calling for a boycott. bit of consumer pressure: if a large enough number of people say they will simply not buy any hasbro or mattel products - and their brands include most of the best known toys and games, so there's a lot of xmas trade on the cards - until they have resolved their issue with scrabulous and allow it back on facebook in its original form, then maybe hasbro and mattel will learn to adapt to the changed reality. and that will help them too, in the long term, because in business, as surely as in life and nature, you do, over time, adapt or die.


join the 'save scrabulous' group on facebook

join the 'boycott hasbro till scrabulous is back group' on facebook

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birmingham

it's an easy mistake to make.  

you're tasked with putting together a little leaflet (print run roughly 720,000) celebrating the successes of your city's recycling scheme and congratulating everyone for doing so well with it. you go to the picture library and choose a lovely skyline to illustrate the city you're addressing, and hand it over to your client, the city council. 

the council signs it off, prints it and starts distributing it. not, by the looks of it, because your leaflet is a particularly great design, nor is the picture all that lovely for that matter, but because it seems to do the job. and what more do you want.

well... it would be nice, of course, if the picture you've used showed the right city. sadly though, it doesn't. you've mistaken birmingham, alabama, usa for birmingham, uk. it sounds ludicrous, i know. 

until you look at the two birminghams:

i mean: can you tell the difference? of course you can, but: really? do you even know which is which? i didn't.

  

first is birmingham, uk and on reflection it looks a little greener and a little bluer. but that could just be the framing and the light. second is birmingham, alabama. which, let's face it, could so easily be birmingham, uk. 

i've been to birmingham, uk, and far be it from me to cast any aspersions over britain's 'second' city. but it is ugly, there are hardly two or more ways about it. and it's not ugly because it's modern, it's ugly because it lacks any real aesthetic of any description. 

even further be it from me to cast any aspersions on birmingham, alabama, a place i only know from song (it seems to have been rather more sung about than birmingham, uk, which to me suggests that if it isn't any more beautiful it has at least some character worth making a song, if not necessarily a dance, about, though for all i know there may well be a dance about it too).

so the problem with this leaflet lies not with the hapless designer who mistook one charmless 'skyline' for another. that genuinely is an easy mistake, i was not being facetious. nor is it with the councillors who signed off the job. the fact that the duly elected representatives of birmingham, uk, can't tell their own city from a place some four thousand miles away on a different continent: you can't hold it against them. if the place looks so bland that the only appropriate response to it is indifference, then really, so be it. and refreshingly, birmingham's city council seems to be taking just that attitude. there are no plans of pulping, recycling or reprinting the 'offending' leaflet, which indeed would be complete waste of money and resources. and in truth the leaflet probably hardly offends anyone at all. not even, apparently, the mayor of birmingham, alabama, who reportedly feels 'flattered' by the mix-up (he clearly hasn't been to birmingham, uk).  

no the problem, to the extent that there is one - and i have a feeling that in fact there truly is one - lies with the city planners who have foisted upon the british midlands an urbanscape that is exactly as inspiring as a drive-thru burger joint, spelt without the o-gh. if anybody is to take responsibility - and i have a feeling that perhaps somebody ought to take responsibility - for the second largest city in a country awash with culture, heritage, design, architecture, engineering and conceptual genius looking as individual as a shopping mall, it most probably is the people who planned and built it, and those who allowed it to be planned and built. 

and that has nothing to do with modernity. new york, shanghai, dubai - they are all inherently modern cities, modern certainly in the sense that they are forward looking, dynamic entities that are not tied to their past or revel in antiquity. yet they're all individual. they have a character that, even on a comparatively dull picture, comes across immediately as distinct. they have features.

you might say that birmingham, uk has features: that little tower there, for example, right in the middle. and the lego-shaped buildings around it. but half the cities in the world have those. not every city in the world has the gherkin. or the eiffel tower. or the burj. not every city has a st paul's or a st peter's and not every city has a leaning tower. not every city has canals and clearly not every city has a bird's nest stadium. the cities that do are those that have an identity, and pride themselves in it. cultivate it. the tower and the tower bridge, the millennium wheel: that kind of thing doesn't come about by accident. the centre pompidou. the guggenheim, the tate. you might say the birmingham bull ring, that doesn't come about by accident either.  

and that's precisely my point.

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奥林匹克

 

i am in beijing.  

sadly, not literally, although that had absolutely been an intention of mine, which then didn't quite work out for timing and practical reasons, but in spirit. i love the olympics. as a concept. as an idea. as an event. always have done. always, i imagine, will do. i love everything about it: the drama, the spectacle, the sheer magnitude of it all. i love the fact that it brings everybody together, in peaceful contest, and i love the way it makes heroes not only out of those who go swiftest, fly highest, and are strongest, but also of those who have the courage to hang on in there, come what may, for their own private victory. i love the fact that we celebrate an eric the eel or an eddie the eagle almost as much as a sir steve redgrave. i love the way the olympic movement calls itself a 'movement' and the way it's rooted in ancient greek civilisation, and i love it for giving cities and countries the opportunity to stage the greatest show on earth. so yes: i'm all for the olympics.   

and say about china what you will: they know how to stage an olympics. that opening ceremony: well nigh perfect.  and, now we learn, also a little fake.  which is a pity, because it was impressive enough as it is; faking fireworks or substituting a pretty girl for a slightly less pretty one (is she really?) was hardly necessary.  but in any case, how london is going to follow that is, at the moment, anyone's guess. for my money (which, to a very small proportion, it after all is) the thing to do, most likely, is to go in the opposite direction. obviously, what beijing put together in terms of precision, mass choreography, scale and discipline is not going to be matched here. we don't have the numbers, the money or, for want of a better word, the homogeneity in society to come up with that level of visual impact created by performers. i doubt we have the skill, even. and sarah brightman, well... in a way it's probably best she's done her bit now for the olympics. that should put the idea of using her again in the next twenty to thirty years right out of anybody's mind. 

of course, the ceremony made a point, at some stage, of representing the 50-odd ethnic groups that make up today's peope's republic of china, but it is still fair to say that one of london's greatest strengths as a city is its genuinely global cultural and ethnic diversity. so london 2012 won't be the same as beijing. and nor should it be. beijing was well nigh perfect, for beijing. for london, a whole different approach will be right. one that plays to london and britain's strengths just in the way that the beijing ceremony played wholeheartedly to the strengths of china. and if that results in a smaller, quirkier, perhaps less bombastic but no less engaging show, that maybe even displays a sense of humour, then so much the better. but in terms of what we wanted from beijing in an opening ceremony, 08 08 08 has delivered. and then some.

settling down now in front of the TV (and - thank you, thank you BBC for the iplayer - at the computer) to absorb wall-to-wall coverage, i realise that here is one thing that has clean dropped off the 'things to do before i die' list: winning the 100m gold. on track or in the pool. in fact, winning any type of medal in any kind of sport for me is now so unlikely as to be considered impossible. and i'm not somebody who uses the word 'impossible' lightly. i really never say never. but the opportunity, i believe i can now concede, for me to represent my country (either of my two countries) at an olympic games (any olympic games, winter or summer) in any sport at all has now, with likelihood bordering on certainty, gone. 

but before you start feeling sorry for me: this really is no great loss, seeing that i've never had the slightest ambition to be an athlete of any description, ever. i quit school sports in more or less mutual agreement with my PE teacher (it was more mutual attrition, but i won) by the age of about fifteen, and at the last school i went to for the last eighteen months of my secondary education i set foot in the sports centre precisely once: to tell the teacher there that i wouldn't be coming to any of his classes. (i had, to make this less of a suggestion and more of a non-negotiable statement of intent, brought along a certificate attesting to the dubious usability of my left knee, issued by a sympathetic GP even though the x-ray had shown up nothing of the sort...) 

when i and my three best friends at school decided, at one stage, to take tennis lessons, it took us no more than about four weeks to find out that quite as much fun could be had by going for the ice cream not after the class, but during it, and the effort involved was substantially less exhausting.

so really: a sportsman was not lost in me. which makes my admiration for athletes all the greater. i really genuinely wish each and every one of them all the best. for me, just that fact that they've made it there, and are there now, in beijing, not as spectators, commentators or volunteers - all of whom we also couldn't do without, i know - but as participants, makes them little heroes in their own right. some of them become great big heroes, or are such already, and some may in the course of the next two weeks be toppled from their pedestal. but they are all olympians and that, to my mind, makes them great people, and i salute them from afar. 

there's one though who i have a particular admiration for. consider this: some eleven thousand men and women compete in this year's olympic games. out of these, exactly ten are publicly, openly, known to be gay: nine women and one man. his name is matthew mitcham, and he's a twenty-year old australian diver. he is, in beijing 2008, the 'only' gay man competing. 

now obviously, everybody's sexuality is their own business and i've never subscribed to the view that public figures should be 'outed'. but to think that in the year 2008 there are likely to be in the region of five hundred to a thousand sportsmen and women at world class level who, for reasons of their own, find it necessary or preferable not to come out in public, seems a touch retrograde. and it brings back that old question that was so much on people's minds during the era of 'gay liberation', right into the late eighties and early nineties, and that in almost any other field of excellence - the arts, music, even politics for the most of it, though it's questionable whether politics can be seriously counted as a field of excellence any more - has now been effectively answered: are there any positive role models? is it all right to be young, talented and gay? matthew mitcham says yes. and for that alone he commands my respect. 

of course, i can't put his medal hopes above those of our own tom daley, for example; but in any event, in any discipline of any sport: may the best man win. or woman. or team. (or, as in the case of tom daley, youngster...)

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π

 

tucked away in the 'news & curiosities' column of this month's prospect magazine (in itself not what you'd call the frothiest of entertainment rags) is a nugget, a little gem of a fact that makes you feel that maybe it is all worthwhile after all: perhaps there is a point, some sort of order or at least an underlying principle in this most chaotic, random world of ours, that is also astonishingly beautiful:  

"The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi." credited as he source of this reassuring insight is fermat's enigma by simon singh, a book i haven't read, and i surmise that simon singh probably has his own fount of knowledge, credited or otherwise, from whence it stems. in any case i have no reason to doubt it.

now i am not a scientist. my maths teachers despaired over me. one of them, one memorable day, after i'd slouched from my seat to the blackboard (we had blackboards in our school) glanced underwhelmed at the the 'problem' on it (i could never quite see what the 'problem' was with any of his questions, they seemed to me so hypothetical as to be irrelevant), shrugged my shoulders and painted, with the chalk he'd handed me most probably not to this specific purpose, a question mark in the place where his expectant face foresaw some sort of 'solution', uttered these words which have stayed with me ever since: 'es ist schade wenn intelligenz brach liegt.' which roughly translates as 'it's a pity when intelligence lies barren', the implication being that i, as its ostensible owner, should till that soil, plant in it seeds and nurture them. even back then i couldn't agree with him more, it's just that the seeds he offered were ill suited to my climate and have remained so to this day.

but π is an altogether different proposition. π to me is philosophy. i have a feeling some scientists (especially mathematicians) would argue that all science (especially all maths) is philosophy. and i would neither have the cause nor the resources to argue with them.  but π in itself to me is a symbol of perfection, more potent, more elegant and far more interesting than the circle, part of whose nature it describes:

π is perfect because it remains forever incomplete. which in turn makes it absolute; it is absolutely infinite, at least as far as we know, as far as reason allows us to understand. and there's no end in sight and no pattern - it is pure: no repetitions, no symmetries, not even an approximate way to predict how the sequence will continue, not one hint of certainty, other than that it is.

this is a wonderful, wonderful thing: it tells us more about the nature of our existence than we find in volumes of philosophical treatises.

we can easily grasp the underlying principle and basic character of it, we can apply sophisticated technology and thinking of the highest order to understand its workings in detail, and we can never come to a finite conclusion about it nor can we ever foretell what's in store. we don't even know what the next digit is after the last one we've just calculated, let alone the next few thousand. it's impossible and will remain impossible and that's the way things are. and yet: it's anything but random. it's just that we don't have the capacity to think or to express ourselves in a way that would allow us to know more than that which we can see. and we can see it just fine: the first million digits are right here, for example. but when it comes to the 'big questions' why? for how long, really? according to what rule? we barely have the vocabulary, let alone the answers. yet. who knows, maybe we'll develop that too. over time.  

the level of insight we have incidentally is impressive: apparently the value of π has been calculated, so far, to an exactness of more than 1 trillion decimal places. set this against the quaint observation that a value of π 'truncated' to just 39 decimal places (not even a scratch off the trillion or so we have available) will allow us to compute the circumference of any circle so vast that would just about fit into our observable universe with a level of accuracy that corresponds to the size of a hydrogen atom. so you could say we know more than enough. and rational thinking would say yes. human nature though says no. which is why we keep searching.

and the fact that this is all mirrored, played out in natural rivers across the planet, that it's not just mental gymnastics and the pastime of geometers and theorists but that water the way it flows over the surface of the earth follows that precise principle all of its own accord: that is a thing of absolute beauty.  

and it has made my day.     

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08080000133

i have a secret admirer.  

he - it could be a she but i prefer to think of him as a he, it sits well with my penchant for irony - calls me four times a day, sometimes five.  i'm sure there have been days when he got to six. 

adam - i like to think of him as an adam, it's a nice name and i'm convinced he's a lovely guy really, when you get to know him, and all the adams i've ever met have been nothing short of adorable - sits wired into his headset in front of a computer at vodafone headquarters in newbury and every two or three hours of every working day (and that includes saturdays!) he thinks of me and feels the urge to give me a call.  

clearly an urge that he can't resist.   

probably because he's got one of his bosses glowering over his shoulders and a target to reach.  because adam's admiration for me is - alas! - narrowly founded.  the narrow foundation adam's admiration rests on is a list on his computer screen of subscribers who have recently requested their pac code because they want to take their phone number elsewhere.  so something tells me it isn't admiration at all that's prompting young adam to phone me.  something is telling me that his boss, probably his boss fairly high up, possibly mr vodafone himself, has decided that people taking their pac and going elsewhere is something that can't be allowed to happen.  not without a fight.  not without an all-out assault.  not without a full-on campaign.  not without tackling them, wrestling them to the ground and if necessary beating them into submission.

i got my pac a bit over a week ago and to be honest i'm in no hurry.  so far, adam, or maybe he and his friend eric, or maybe there's a whole team of them taking it in turns, well, they've phoned me about sixty times.  could be seventy by now.  they never leave a message.  and i never answer the phone.  because i don't know who it is.  because they never leave a message.  

i started to worry and wonder whether i was being harassed by a stalker.  or by my ex.  (it's not likely, seeing my ex has been my ex for about eight years now, i know, but you can't rule it out, as you'd know if you knew my ex...) but it turns out it's not a nuisance caller at all, it's my own mobile service provider.  what joy.

how in the communication god's name they can imagine that bludgeoning their customers will endear us to them is not entirely obvious to me.  i have no cavil with vodafone.  and certainly not with adam.  (in fact, i almost have something of a quiet admiration for adam personally myself.  his tenacity is impressive.  if he goes about wooing his lovers the way he goes about wooing me he may well get himself killed by them in the process but his determination will never have been in doubt.  and for that alone he deserves some respect.)  no, i just want to try the iphone now, having waited for it since about 2002.  and i would have seen no reason not to at least consider staying or coming back at a later date when maybe O2 no longer have the exclusive.

but i reckon vodafone have gone and done it now.  i reckon they've pushed me over the edge.  and it's not an edge that's going to be easy to climb back up.  because let's face it: there are only two reasons why somebody would do this to you, relentlessly, systematically grind you down: either they are completely totally irrationally and - even if annoyingly then still, in essence, forgivably - in love with you.  and much as i like adam (in abstract terms: i've never met or spoken to him) i don't think somehow that that is the case.  which leaves me with the other explanation: they hold you in utter contempt: 'he wants to leave? keep phoning the bastard, ultimately he'll crack.'

seems vodafone (like my ex really) doesn't know me at all... 

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the sebastianator

i used to have a blog before they were called blogs.

mine was called 'dear dan' and it irritated the hell out of my then partner.

which isn't the reason i stopped it.  the reason i stopped it was that dan broke down (my old desktop pc, after which it was named) and i couldn't bring myself to write a webdiary under the title 'salut sweet satellite' (my then new laptop pc), or anything similar, and also there weren't any ready-made blog platforms, at least not to my knowledge, so the process of blogging was tedious, slow, and not very interactive. 

also i wasn't sure i had anything much to say.

rephrase that perhaps.  perhaps i felt i may have something to say but it made more sense saying it in other formats.  so i said it in other formats.

and is there a good reason now for starting a blog, for starting it up again so to speak?  in all seriousness, not really.  there are more than enough blogs out there already and as somebody who loves writing plays and screenplays, and having now reworked and finished 'the novel' and therefore coming to the point of possibly commencing work on another one, i suppose i don't really need a blog. 

does the world need another blog?  from me?  hardly.

then again, why do you need a reason?  that's effectively been my 'motto' and the strapline of my website ever since i first went online, some ten years ago.  which is also when i first started 'dear dan'.  and i suppose the answer remains exactly the same: i don't, do i?  practically anything you can put the question 'why?' to, you can with equal validity ask about 'why not?' 

and so, as of today, here, as if it were needed, is another blog.  i'm calling it the sebastianator. it's what happens when you put the world through my perspective.  nothing more, nothing less. 

enjoy. 

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