Honour the right to life
It is a constitutional right that sets South Africa apart from other murderous states. It also sets the rule-of-law-abiding state apart from the apartheid one.
The Lonmin mineworkers who were killed were entitled to their right to life.
The police officers who were killed were also entitled to their right to life.
But the killings happened because the right to life was demoted to a secondary right.
Freedom of association, the right to strike and the right for police officers to arm themselves reigned over the right to life.
The mineworkers had been toiling in the belly of the earth in an attempt to eke out a living. They went on strike in a bid to improve their lives.
In the process they were not entitled to engage in violence that resulted in the killing of other workers and police officers.
But there are remedies for those who threatened or kill others. Those remedies do not include killing.
You cannot enforce the right to life by taking another life. That's what the Constitutional Court established in the precedent-setting judgment in State vs Makwanyane. The police wantonly trampled on that principle when they became killing agents.
If this is entrenched as a new policing strategy the police will lose their legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and Marikana will repeat itself in different places and under various guises.
The right to life must regain its rightful place. It must neither be killed nor demoted.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
His ‘ridiculous’ life gives Robert Pattinson the giggles
His ‘ridiculous’ life gives Robert Pattinson the giggles
How does he deal with it?”
“It drives you nuts,” he says of all the hoopla. “It’s just nuts.
“I don’t know how I cope with it. I really don’t know,” he says in a good-natured voice.
“At times, I find the whole thing pretty funny. It is pretty funny. My life is kind of ridiculous to me. It’s so absurd at time.”
Last week he fended off countless questions about the scandal while making the media rounds to promote “Cosmopolis,” his new film with director David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”).
Through it all, he felt the love of his fans. The Twi-hards definitely have been Team Robert.
“I don’t credit that to myself,” Pattinson says. “It’s just that there is something elemental about the ‘Twilight’ books and the movies. The core story has connected to people.
“The fan love from that is kind of amazing. I guess it’s so much better than everyone hating you.”
By now he should have developed an attitude — if only he knew how.
“I want to change. I can’t make myself change. I can’t develop an attitude,” Pattinson says with a goofy giggle that is his trademark.
Adds Cronenberg, “I’ve seen him even try to change and it’s pathetic.”
In “Cosmopolis,” based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Pattinson plays a 28-year-old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager whose world is exploding. He gets into his stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber while wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. His trip across the city becomes a journey as he runs into city riots, various visitors and intimate encounters.
Filming in a limo for so long wasn’t claustrophobic.
“I actually kind of enjoyed it,” he says. “In the beginning, I wanted to stay in the car for the entire day. But it was so unbearably hot. I couldn’t really do this method.
“The car made me really concentrate.”
The London-born actor does an American accent in the movie. “I don’t even know what accent I was doing half of the time,” he admits. “I always found that the dialect was written in the lines.”
This fall, he plays vampire Edward Cullen in “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” meant to be the final installment of the “Twilight” franchise.
Fans of the series are about to enter the depression zone, and Pattinson offers some words of hope.
“I’m sure they’ll have a ‘Twilight’ TV series spinoff soon. They’ll do it again,” Pattinson says.
Would he ever play Edward Cullen again?
“Who knows?” he says. “The only thing that creates a little bit of a problem is that I’m supposed to be 17 forever.
“I’m not sure I can be 17 forever,” he says with another giggle.
He is excited to see what the future holds for him in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“Life is all about luck,” he says. “Getting to this point was lucky. I just hope that my luck holds out.”
Ask him what he knows about life at this point that he didn’t know when he was younger, and he giggles again.
“I basically have learned that I know absolutely nothing,” he says. “I thought I knew it all. Again, I knew absolutely nothing.”
How does he deal with it?”
“It drives you nuts,” he says of all the hoopla. “It’s just nuts.
“I don’t know how I cope with it. I really don’t know,” he says in a good-natured voice.
“At times, I find the whole thing pretty funny. It is pretty funny. My life is kind of ridiculous to me. It’s so absurd at time.”
Last week he fended off countless questions about the scandal while making the media rounds to promote “Cosmopolis,” his new film with director David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”).
Through it all, he felt the love of his fans. The Twi-hards definitely have been Team Robert.
“I don’t credit that to myself,” Pattinson says. “It’s just that there is something elemental about the ‘Twilight’ books and the movies. The core story has connected to people.
“The fan love from that is kind of amazing. I guess it’s so much better than everyone hating you.”
By now he should have developed an attitude — if only he knew how.
“I want to change. I can’t make myself change. I can’t develop an attitude,” Pattinson says with a goofy giggle that is his trademark.
Adds Cronenberg, “I’ve seen him even try to change and it’s pathetic.”
In “Cosmopolis,” based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Pattinson plays a 28-year-old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager whose world is exploding. He gets into his stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber while wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. His trip across the city becomes a journey as he runs into city riots, various visitors and intimate encounters.
Filming in a limo for so long wasn’t claustrophobic.
“I actually kind of enjoyed it,” he says. “In the beginning, I wanted to stay in the car for the entire day. But it was so unbearably hot. I couldn’t really do this method.
“The car made me really concentrate.”
The London-born actor does an American accent in the movie. “I don’t even know what accent I was doing half of the time,” he admits. “I always found that the dialect was written in the lines.”
This fall, he plays vampire Edward Cullen in “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” meant to be the final installment of the “Twilight” franchise.
Fans of the series are about to enter the depression zone, and Pattinson offers some words of hope.
“I’m sure they’ll have a ‘Twilight’ TV series spinoff soon. They’ll do it again,” Pattinson says.
Would he ever play Edward Cullen again?
“Who knows?” he says. “The only thing that creates a little bit of a problem is that I’m supposed to be 17 forever.
“I’m not sure I can be 17 forever,” he says with another giggle.
He is excited to see what the future holds for him in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“Life is all about luck,” he says. “Getting to this point was lucky. I just hope that my luck holds out.”
Ask him what he knows about life at this point that he didn’t know when he was younger, and he giggles again.
“I basically have learned that I know absolutely nothing,” he says. “I thought I knew it all. Again, I knew absolutely nothing.”
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Curiosity And The Search For Life On Mars
Curiosity And The Search For Life On Mars
Only those who were in deep hibernation or unconscious would have missed two recent amazing events: the London Olympics and the sensational feat in which NASA engineers and scientists managed to land a car-sized rover onto the Martian surface. Adam wrote about the mission last week.
Now that the dust has settled (in many ways, including around the rover), I'd like to revisit the mission and its promise of discovery.
After years of preparation and 8 ½ months of travel, Curiosity was deposited near Gale Crater, in an area that looks like the Arizona desert. (But it's not, so no deniers, please! Let's celebrate humanity's achievements for what they are.) That the rover landed safely and on target, after using an amazing-looking parachute and a "sky-crane" device to soften the touchdown, was nothing short of wonderful.
Remember, it was all done remotely, commanded by onboard computers following a 500,000 lines-long code. And I thought my 3,000 line-long codes were plenty long. Then there was the "seven minutes of terror," the time it took Curiosity to land. Since communications from the rover take about 14 minutes to reach the base on Earth, the landing had to be done automatically: A very sophisticated robot landed on Mars by itself.
Its main objective? To find life, present or past, on the Martian surface or below. The rover is an ultra-sophisticated moving chemical laboratory. Some of the first pictures can be seen here. You can get more up to date pictures by following the rover on Twitter, @MarsCuriosity, which had just under 1 million followers as of this writing.
Mars around Gale Crater is dry, cold, prohibitive. NASA images show small pebbles scattered around the surface. When Curiosity starts moving in about 10 days, it will collect samples from the soil and underneath, searching for traces of organic matter or any signature of metabolic processes typical of some kind of life, either present or from the past. One of its neat devices is the ChemCam, which uses a laser to vaporize bits of soil up to 23 feet away. The vapor can then be analyzed with a spectrograph to determine the composition of the zapped minerals.
The Mars of today, with a very sparse atmosphere mostly composed of carbon dioxide, is very different then it was billions of years ago. Studies of the Martian geology and the recorded movements of water across its surface — there are plenty of dried up canyons crisscrossing the landscape — suggest it's highly probable that while Earth was still a living hell of lava and volcanic eruptions, Mars was wetter and far friendlier to life.
The expectations are high that Curiosity will find a trace of life, even if long extinct. However, if results turn out negative, we will still learn a lot. After all, the question we are asking is whether life on Earth is the exception or the rule. If life is not found on Mars, it will be harder to justify that life is abundant in the universe.
Of course, life may be there or may have been there and completely escape our methods of detection. If finding life on Earth is easy, it may be much harder in other places. Not because life can be way too weird for us to even identify it. That can happen, of course, but it's a real long shot. Carbon-based life has a much richer biochemistry than any other possibility, including silicon, an often-mentioned alternative. Also, water is essential; ammonia as a solvent is far from being as efficient as water.
Even if there isn't a universally-agreed definition of life, and some argue quite forcibly that it's a mistake to try to define it, the one NASA adopts is very general: "Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution." Life is defined through its metabolism and ability to reproduce itself. It isn't perfect, but it's what is called an operational definition.
Time will tell if Curiosity's experiments will give us a hint of what the story is with Mars and life. Short of detection, there's always room for more search: Science works better at finding out what exists than at ruling out what doesn't. (As long as it satisfies the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, of course. But even so, the possibilities are amazing.) Meanwhile, the least we can do is realize how lucky we are to be living in an age when we can actually go to the Red Planet and see for ourselves — or through a worthy emissary — whether we are the only living creatures in our solar system.
Only those who were in deep hibernation or unconscious would have missed two recent amazing events: the London Olympics and the sensational feat in which NASA engineers and scientists managed to land a car-sized rover onto the Martian surface. Adam wrote about the mission last week.
Now that the dust has settled (in many ways, including around the rover), I'd like to revisit the mission and its promise of discovery.
After years of preparation and 8 ½ months of travel, Curiosity was deposited near Gale Crater, in an area that looks like the Arizona desert. (But it's not, so no deniers, please! Let's celebrate humanity's achievements for what they are.) That the rover landed safely and on target, after using an amazing-looking parachute and a "sky-crane" device to soften the touchdown, was nothing short of wonderful.
Remember, it was all done remotely, commanded by onboard computers following a 500,000 lines-long code. And I thought my 3,000 line-long codes were plenty long. Then there was the "seven minutes of terror," the time it took Curiosity to land. Since communications from the rover take about 14 minutes to reach the base on Earth, the landing had to be done automatically: A very sophisticated robot landed on Mars by itself.
Its main objective? To find life, present or past, on the Martian surface or below. The rover is an ultra-sophisticated moving chemical laboratory. Some of the first pictures can be seen here. You can get more up to date pictures by following the rover on Twitter, @MarsCuriosity, which had just under 1 million followers as of this writing.
Mars around Gale Crater is dry, cold, prohibitive. NASA images show small pebbles scattered around the surface. When Curiosity starts moving in about 10 days, it will collect samples from the soil and underneath, searching for traces of organic matter or any signature of metabolic processes typical of some kind of life, either present or from the past. One of its neat devices is the ChemCam, which uses a laser to vaporize bits of soil up to 23 feet away. The vapor can then be analyzed with a spectrograph to determine the composition of the zapped minerals.
The Mars of today, with a very sparse atmosphere mostly composed of carbon dioxide, is very different then it was billions of years ago. Studies of the Martian geology and the recorded movements of water across its surface — there are plenty of dried up canyons crisscrossing the landscape — suggest it's highly probable that while Earth was still a living hell of lava and volcanic eruptions, Mars was wetter and far friendlier to life.
The expectations are high that Curiosity will find a trace of life, even if long extinct. However, if results turn out negative, we will still learn a lot. After all, the question we are asking is whether life on Earth is the exception or the rule. If life is not found on Mars, it will be harder to justify that life is abundant in the universe.
Of course, life may be there or may have been there and completely escape our methods of detection. If finding life on Earth is easy, it may be much harder in other places. Not because life can be way too weird for us to even identify it. That can happen, of course, but it's a real long shot. Carbon-based life has a much richer biochemistry than any other possibility, including silicon, an often-mentioned alternative. Also, water is essential; ammonia as a solvent is far from being as efficient as water.
Even if there isn't a universally-agreed definition of life, and some argue quite forcibly that it's a mistake to try to define it, the one NASA adopts is very general: "Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution." Life is defined through its metabolism and ability to reproduce itself. It isn't perfect, but it's what is called an operational definition.
Time will tell if Curiosity's experiments will give us a hint of what the story is with Mars and life. Short of detection, there's always room for more search: Science works better at finding out what exists than at ruling out what doesn't. (As long as it satisfies the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, of course. But even so, the possibilities are amazing.) Meanwhile, the least we can do is realize how lucky we are to be living in an age when we can actually go to the Red Planet and see for ourselves — or through a worthy emissary — whether we are the only living creatures in our solar system.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Mike McCoy’s jet-lagged life as a Blue Jay
Mike McCoy’s jet-lagged life as a Blue Jay
The flight is always a round trip, and the suitcase is always packed the same: a hat, some shirts and jeans, a suit and a couple pairs of shoes.
Mike McCoy never knows how much he’ll need, or for how long he’ll be gone. The life of a utility player doesn’t allow for much certainty.
He understands his role and knows the Toronto Blue Jays will use him as they see fit. One game on the field, the next two on the bench. Up with the Jays for a homestand, sent back down to the minors minutes after a game ends.
It’s been a while now since McCoy allowed himself to think he might one day find a better place to sleep than the team hotel.
“I try to stay realistic. You always know someone’s coming off the (disabled list), we have to make a move, so you kind of understand the ins and outs of the game,” he says.
“I don’t have, like, false hope. I understand that it’s a business and I’m one of the guys that has options and I’m a utility player so if they need to send to send me down then they’re going to do that.”
Yet the 31-year-old McCoy is one of the Jays’ most valuable players. His career batting average, in only 297 at-bats and 147 games through three seasons, is a paltry .199. But what he lacks at the plate is made up for in an ability to play virtually every position. McCoy has played everywhere professionally except catcher and first base — although he says he could probably play those as well if he tried.
He can even pitch, if needed. During an ugly game last season that ended in a 16-4 loss to Boston, McCoy was asked to pitch the ninth. He says he “threw a lot of junk,” but McCoy still finished the game with a perfect inning.
McCoy grew up as a shortstop, but quickly figured out he would never make it to the majors without learning some new tricks.
“I was never a prospect and I was on the outskirts looking in,” he says. “There’s always a higher-round pick in front of me and just being on the field I had to show what I could do in other areas.”
Those tricks have helped him carve out a niche in Toronto’s lineup. McCoy was drafted in the 34th round by St. Louis in 2002. He made his major-league debut in 2009 with Colorado for 12 games, and in the off-season was claimed off waivers by the Blue Jays.
The 2011 season gave him hope for a regular gig. He was called up from triple-A Las Vegas six times, sometimes for just three days. The up-and-down life meant he had to get used to the constant jet lag, and spending time away from his wife and twin sons who reside in San Diego.
“I was up and down a lot. So it was a little more living out of a suitcase but this year I’ve settled in a little more,” says McCoy.
This year, McCoy has only been recalled twice as the Jays try to fill in the gaps of an injury-ravaged roster by developing younger prospects such as Anthony Gose, Moises Sierra and Adeiny Hechavarria. On Sunday, McCoy batted second in the lineup. The next day he was on the bench. Tomorrow he could be back in Las Vegas.
It’s still deflating for McCoy to be sent back to Nevada, but he’s not unhappy with his career. He gets a thrill out of playing different positions, and is now able to offer guidance to Blue Jays rookies who he watched develop in the minors.
“I was a 34th-round pick. I felt like I beat the odds and was able to make it to the big leagues and hopefully I can have a long big-league career in the next five, six, seven years, hopefully.”
And, if he’s lucky, the next flight north of the border will come with a one-way ticket.
The flight is always a round trip, and the suitcase is always packed the same: a hat, some shirts and jeans, a suit and a couple pairs of shoes.
Mike McCoy never knows how much he’ll need, or for how long he’ll be gone. The life of a utility player doesn’t allow for much certainty.
He understands his role and knows the Toronto Blue Jays will use him as they see fit. One game on the field, the next two on the bench. Up with the Jays for a homestand, sent back down to the minors minutes after a game ends.
It’s been a while now since McCoy allowed himself to think he might one day find a better place to sleep than the team hotel.
“I try to stay realistic. You always know someone’s coming off the (disabled list), we have to make a move, so you kind of understand the ins and outs of the game,” he says.
“I don’t have, like, false hope. I understand that it’s a business and I’m one of the guys that has options and I’m a utility player so if they need to send to send me down then they’re going to do that.”
Yet the 31-year-old McCoy is one of the Jays’ most valuable players. His career batting average, in only 297 at-bats and 147 games through three seasons, is a paltry .199. But what he lacks at the plate is made up for in an ability to play virtually every position. McCoy has played everywhere professionally except catcher and first base — although he says he could probably play those as well if he tried.
He can even pitch, if needed. During an ugly game last season that ended in a 16-4 loss to Boston, McCoy was asked to pitch the ninth. He says he “threw a lot of junk,” but McCoy still finished the game with a perfect inning.
McCoy grew up as a shortstop, but quickly figured out he would never make it to the majors without learning some new tricks.
“I was never a prospect and I was on the outskirts looking in,” he says. “There’s always a higher-round pick in front of me and just being on the field I had to show what I could do in other areas.”
Those tricks have helped him carve out a niche in Toronto’s lineup. McCoy was drafted in the 34th round by St. Louis in 2002. He made his major-league debut in 2009 with Colorado for 12 games, and in the off-season was claimed off waivers by the Blue Jays.
The 2011 season gave him hope for a regular gig. He was called up from triple-A Las Vegas six times, sometimes for just three days. The up-and-down life meant he had to get used to the constant jet lag, and spending time away from his wife and twin sons who reside in San Diego.
“I was up and down a lot. So it was a little more living out of a suitcase but this year I’ve settled in a little more,” says McCoy.
This year, McCoy has only been recalled twice as the Jays try to fill in the gaps of an injury-ravaged roster by developing younger prospects such as Anthony Gose, Moises Sierra and Adeiny Hechavarria. On Sunday, McCoy batted second in the lineup. The next day he was on the bench. Tomorrow he could be back in Las Vegas.
It’s still deflating for McCoy to be sent back to Nevada, but he’s not unhappy with his career. He gets a thrill out of playing different positions, and is now able to offer guidance to Blue Jays rookies who he watched develop in the minors.
“I was a 34th-round pick. I felt like I beat the odds and was able to make it to the big leagues and hopefully I can have a long big-league career in the next five, six, seven years, hopefully.”
And, if he’s lucky, the next flight north of the border will come with a one-way ticket.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Somali pirate negotiator receives 12 life sentences in U.S. court
Somali pirate negotiator receives 12 life sentences in U.S. court
A Somali man who acted as a ransom negotiator for pirates who seized an American yacht last year and killed four American hostages was sentenced on Monday by a U.S. federal judge to serve 12 life sentences.
Mohammad Shibin was convicted in April on 15 charges including piracy, hostage taking, kidnapping and conspiracy. He was paid $30,000 to $50,000 in cash for his negotiating services, according to a federal indictment.
In a courtroom in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar sentenced Shibin to serve 10 concurrent life sentences, two consecutive life sentences and two 20-year sentences and ordered him to pay $5.4 million in restitution.
"Mohammad Shibin was a key participant in two of the most heinous acts of piracy in modern memory," U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement.
Pirates commandeered an American yacht carrying Jean and Scott Adam of California and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle from Seattle in February 2011 off the coast of Somalia. All four hostages were killed despite attempts by the U.S. military to negotiate their release.
Prosecutors said Shibin was among an elite group whose skills were needed to negotiate ransoms.
According to evidence presented at trial, Shibin researched the background of the hostages over the Internet to determine how much ransom to demand and to find family members to contact for the payments, prosecutors said.
Shibin also served as a ransom negotiator for pirates who seized the M/V Marida Marguerite in 2010. The German-owned vessel had a crew of 22 men who were held hostage for seven months starting in May 2010 and reported being tortured.
In 2011 Somali piracy cost the world economy $7 billion and earned the pirates some $160 million in ransoms, according to a recent report by the International Maritime Bureau.
"(Shibin's) multiple life sentences should put all pirates on notice that the Justice Department will hold you accountable in a U.S. courtroom for crimes on the high seas," MacBride said.
A Somali man who acted as a ransom negotiator for pirates who seized an American yacht last year and killed four American hostages was sentenced on Monday by a U.S. federal judge to serve 12 life sentences.
Mohammad Shibin was convicted in April on 15 charges including piracy, hostage taking, kidnapping and conspiracy. He was paid $30,000 to $50,000 in cash for his negotiating services, according to a federal indictment.
In a courtroom in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar sentenced Shibin to serve 10 concurrent life sentences, two consecutive life sentences and two 20-year sentences and ordered him to pay $5.4 million in restitution.
"Mohammad Shibin was a key participant in two of the most heinous acts of piracy in modern memory," U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride said in a statement.
Pirates commandeered an American yacht carrying Jean and Scott Adam of California and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle from Seattle in February 2011 off the coast of Somalia. All four hostages were killed despite attempts by the U.S. military to negotiate their release.
Prosecutors said Shibin was among an elite group whose skills were needed to negotiate ransoms.
According to evidence presented at trial, Shibin researched the background of the hostages over the Internet to determine how much ransom to demand and to find family members to contact for the payments, prosecutors said.
Shibin also served as a ransom negotiator for pirates who seized the M/V Marida Marguerite in 2010. The German-owned vessel had a crew of 22 men who were held hostage for seven months starting in May 2010 and reported being tortured.
In 2011 Somali piracy cost the world economy $7 billion and earned the pirates some $160 million in ransoms, according to a recent report by the International Maritime Bureau.
"(Shibin's) multiple life sentences should put all pirates on notice that the Justice Department will hold you accountable in a U.S. courtroom for crimes on the high seas," MacBride said.
Monday, August 13, 2012
London Olympics: Finale shows the bright side of life
London Olympics: Finale shows the bright side of life
"These Games have gone so well. What are we going to do when they are all over? How will we distract the public from impending gloom?"
The bright idea must have been to refocus them with a gig. A celebration of British pop from the past 50 years.
Closing ceremony artistic director Kim Gavin made no bones about the fact he wanted to host the best ever after-show party.
The sport was the main event, he said, this slot was the celebration.
It had less lofty historical aspirations or scene-setting duties than its elder sibling, Danny Boyle's wonder creation, born two-and-a-bit weeks ago.
'Mosh pit'
Instead of the industrial revolution, workers' rights and quirky Britain, it was a riot of music and colour. Beginning in front of a constructed skyline of London that the roadies finished putting up only as the audience came in at the start of the evening.
It was less than 24 hours since sport had finished with its dramas here.
Big noises from One Direction, through Emeli Sande and the Pet Shop Boys and the Kaiser Chiefs to George Michael were rolled out in front of the athletes, who walked in to fill the "mosh pit" on the stadium floor.
They like a mosh pit front and centre stage, these London 2012 ceremony directors. And a smattering of Royals - Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge were here.
Did the ceremony do its job? To be honest, it felt a bit like elite sport, down one minute and up the next. Unlike the carefully scripted effect of the opener, at a time of national unity, you were sometimes left wondering how to feel.
One minute the ceremony rocked out to Brian May following the big screen ghost of Freddie Mercury. It was sombre with a lowered Olympic flag and Welsh male voice choir the next.
Muse's Olympics anthem Survival has played out in the last fortnight at moments of great sporting drama. Tonight it was tested to full stadium effect, with flames rushing up to the sky either side of the band.
But that immediately followed a comedy moment where a man was fired out of a cannon. During the Games we've seen great bravery in performance. This took real guts.
The Spice Girls reunion was memorable not necessarily for the five former music dominators on top of taxis. More for Boris Johnson pulling wild dance moves while standing next to the prime minister.
What was Annie Lennox doing on a skeletal boat? Was that a reference to the slender and beautiful super models near her in the running order, people asked?
It took the young guns, of the generation these Games have aimed to inspire, to really get the party started. A bold Jessie J, Tinie Tempah, Taio Cruz following Fat Boy Slim.
There were poignant parts, it's good ceremony territory this, poignancy.
Until now, Elbow's One Day Like This has always seemed to be the perfect song to end a festival. Who knew it would be a fitting soundtrack to the flood of athletes who swept into the stadium?
If Lord Coe had wanted to bottle the feel good factor from the Olympics and save it for the country, this would have been the moment to uncork all the bottles and scoop it up.
Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill makes the point that men and women cannot trade places. It was fitting at a Games where women have made up a greater percentage of the athletes than ever before, and been allowed to box. To gold medal-winning effect for Britain.
There were reminders that real, non-Olympic life was just around the corner too, with the most commercially successful bands garnering the biggest cheers; supermodels strutting stuff; traffic - albeit wrapped in newspaper - taking over the floor.
'Happy and glorious'
Like the end of the Olympics, the finish line of the ceremony rushed up to meet us.
International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge invoked the national anthem by saying the Games had been "happy and glorious".
Lord Coe's voice cracked either through exhaustion or emotion as he declared "When our time came, Britain, we did it right, thank you!"
His praise for the volunteers at the Games brought a speech-stopping ovation.
There was audience participation after such crowd support during the Olympics. A genuine "groan" from the country that gave the world panto when it was announced the cauldron would be extinguished.
And a hush of expectation ahead of Rio's segment. How would the Games look when passed over to another country's custody?
There was so much glitz you could hear it rustle. We have Beckham, let's be frank, they've got Pele. We have models, they have scanty Samba dancers. Whisper it, will Rio's Games have the sex factor, while London's had the XXXth Olympiad factor?
There were rousing performances from Take That and the Who to take our minds off the fact that the Olympic flame was about to go out. And to remind us that actually, worse things than the end of the Games do happen.
Before this all begins again for the Paralympic Games in a couple of weeks' time perhaps best then, to keep the words of Eric Idle in mind, as he bobbed back up through the Stadium floor, shortly before being bamboozled by Bhangra.
"If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
"Always look on the bright side of life."
"These Games have gone so well. What are we going to do when they are all over? How will we distract the public from impending gloom?"
The bright idea must have been to refocus them with a gig. A celebration of British pop from the past 50 years.
Closing ceremony artistic director Kim Gavin made no bones about the fact he wanted to host the best ever after-show party.
The sport was the main event, he said, this slot was the celebration.
It had less lofty historical aspirations or scene-setting duties than its elder sibling, Danny Boyle's wonder creation, born two-and-a-bit weeks ago.
'Mosh pit'
Instead of the industrial revolution, workers' rights and quirky Britain, it was a riot of music and colour. Beginning in front of a constructed skyline of London that the roadies finished putting up only as the audience came in at the start of the evening.
It was less than 24 hours since sport had finished with its dramas here.
Big noises from One Direction, through Emeli Sande and the Pet Shop Boys and the Kaiser Chiefs to George Michael were rolled out in front of the athletes, who walked in to fill the "mosh pit" on the stadium floor.
They like a mosh pit front and centre stage, these London 2012 ceremony directors. And a smattering of Royals - Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge were here.
Did the ceremony do its job? To be honest, it felt a bit like elite sport, down one minute and up the next. Unlike the carefully scripted effect of the opener, at a time of national unity, you were sometimes left wondering how to feel.
One minute the ceremony rocked out to Brian May following the big screen ghost of Freddie Mercury. It was sombre with a lowered Olympic flag and Welsh male voice choir the next.
Muse's Olympics anthem Survival has played out in the last fortnight at moments of great sporting drama. Tonight it was tested to full stadium effect, with flames rushing up to the sky either side of the band.
But that immediately followed a comedy moment where a man was fired out of a cannon. During the Games we've seen great bravery in performance. This took real guts.
The Spice Girls reunion was memorable not necessarily for the five former music dominators on top of taxis. More for Boris Johnson pulling wild dance moves while standing next to the prime minister.
What was Annie Lennox doing on a skeletal boat? Was that a reference to the slender and beautiful super models near her in the running order, people asked?
It took the young guns, of the generation these Games have aimed to inspire, to really get the party started. A bold Jessie J, Tinie Tempah, Taio Cruz following Fat Boy Slim.
There were poignant parts, it's good ceremony territory this, poignancy.
Until now, Elbow's One Day Like This has always seemed to be the perfect song to end a festival. Who knew it would be a fitting soundtrack to the flood of athletes who swept into the stadium?
If Lord Coe had wanted to bottle the feel good factor from the Olympics and save it for the country, this would have been the moment to uncork all the bottles and scoop it up.
Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill makes the point that men and women cannot trade places. It was fitting at a Games where women have made up a greater percentage of the athletes than ever before, and been allowed to box. To gold medal-winning effect for Britain.
There were reminders that real, non-Olympic life was just around the corner too, with the most commercially successful bands garnering the biggest cheers; supermodels strutting stuff; traffic - albeit wrapped in newspaper - taking over the floor.
'Happy and glorious'
Like the end of the Olympics, the finish line of the ceremony rushed up to meet us.
International Olympics Committee President Jacques Rogge invoked the national anthem by saying the Games had been "happy and glorious".
Lord Coe's voice cracked either through exhaustion or emotion as he declared "When our time came, Britain, we did it right, thank you!"
His praise for the volunteers at the Games brought a speech-stopping ovation.
There was audience participation after such crowd support during the Olympics. A genuine "groan" from the country that gave the world panto when it was announced the cauldron would be extinguished.
And a hush of expectation ahead of Rio's segment. How would the Games look when passed over to another country's custody?
There was so much glitz you could hear it rustle. We have Beckham, let's be frank, they've got Pele. We have models, they have scanty Samba dancers. Whisper it, will Rio's Games have the sex factor, while London's had the XXXth Olympiad factor?
There were rousing performances from Take That and the Who to take our minds off the fact that the Olympic flame was about to go out. And to remind us that actually, worse things than the end of the Games do happen.
Before this all begins again for the Paralympic Games in a couple of weeks' time perhaps best then, to keep the words of Eric Idle in mind, as he bobbed back up through the Stadium floor, shortly before being bamboozled by Bhangra.
"If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
"Always look on the bright side of life."
Friday, August 10, 2012
Student life: beyond academia - sports teams, volunteering and societies
Student life: beyond academia - sports teams, volunteering and societies
A baffling array of choices greets new university students. In Freshers’ Week alone, you will be plied with cheap alcohol, asked if you row, act, sing or play football, urged to join several political parties and will meet at least a dozen people who seem fun, interesting and different from your mates back home.
Visit our Student Life hub for tips on preparing for all aspects of university life, by experts who've been there, done that, and got the stash to prove it
The challenge is, of course, to choose wisely. Once the initial excitement has faded, a lot of first-year students find themselves juggling so many balls that they soon start to feel out of their depth. They can end up lurching from one mini-crisis to the next — an overdue essay, cash-flow problems, a relationship gone pear-shaped, meeting the demands of all those clubs they joined — all the while nagged by a vague fear that there is something vital they have forgotten.
The very nature of student life promises a dizzying sense of freedom, and achieving a sensible balance is something you must learn for yourself.
But you won’t be alone at a modern university that takes the welfare of its students seriously, and tries to put the right structures in place to create a happy, wholesome environment.
“We want to attract students who are not only bright but also well-rounded — willing to play hard as well as work hard,” says Prof Janice Kay, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter. “But that ideal cannot be imposed from above. Students need to be empowered to see themselves as partners in the learning process, not just as customers.”
With tuition fees due to soar this autumn, it will be more important than ever for students to use their time at university wisely if they want to get a decent degree, keep their finances under control and have the time of their lives. The days when an “organised” student was an oxymoron, at which we could all chuckle, are fast receding.
When graduate unemployment was virtually unknown, students were able to treat university as a time of innocent escapism before life got serious. Now, what you do at university outside your studies, and the subject you are reading, increasingly shapes your future career.
“I wish I had done more student journalism,” said a final-year undergraduate at Warwick University desperately searching for a job. “I was interested in working for the BBC, but that gap in my CV worked against me. I didn’t even get an interview.”
Employers will look at students in the round, not just make a note of their degree. Captaining a sports team, running a society, fundraising for charity or even organising a college ball will all help to enhance a CV.
At Lancaster University, where significant emphasis is placed on getting the work-play balance right, students are encouraged to apply for a special Lancaster Award. It is given to those who have successfully demonstrated an ability to make the necessary connection between their studies and their extracurricular activities.
“We have found that students consistently underestimate how much employers are likely to value the non-academic things they do at university,” says Prof Amanda Chetwynd, pro-vice- chancellor at Lancaster University. “By inviting them to make a written record of the life skills they have acquired through part-time jobs, or volunteering, we are helping them focus on their future careers.” Activities pursued by students who have gained the award include holding responsible positions in student societies and acting as student ambassadors, voluntary work in a homeless shelter and as a “reading buddy” in local primary schools, and summer jobs in a solicitor’s office and for a local authority.
Paid work is not only an income source for cash-strapped students, it’s also a chance to gain entrepreneurial skills – such as event management or setting up a website — rather than just working in a bar.
Striking the right balance is never easy, and, with so many competing demands on students, the importance of time-management skills can hardly be overstated. University is a great time to experiment and those with a flair for business will be able to hit the ground running when they graduate. But even friendships might need to be rationed. The famous advice to an Oxford freshman in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited — “You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off all the undesirable friends you made in your first” — still holds true today.
A baffling array of choices greets new university students. In Freshers’ Week alone, you will be plied with cheap alcohol, asked if you row, act, sing or play football, urged to join several political parties and will meet at least a dozen people who seem fun, interesting and different from your mates back home.
Visit our Student Life hub for tips on preparing for all aspects of university life, by experts who've been there, done that, and got the stash to prove it
The challenge is, of course, to choose wisely. Once the initial excitement has faded, a lot of first-year students find themselves juggling so many balls that they soon start to feel out of their depth. They can end up lurching from one mini-crisis to the next — an overdue essay, cash-flow problems, a relationship gone pear-shaped, meeting the demands of all those clubs they joined — all the while nagged by a vague fear that there is something vital they have forgotten.
The very nature of student life promises a dizzying sense of freedom, and achieving a sensible balance is something you must learn for yourself.
But you won’t be alone at a modern university that takes the welfare of its students seriously, and tries to put the right structures in place to create a happy, wholesome environment.
“We want to attract students who are not only bright but also well-rounded — willing to play hard as well as work hard,” says Prof Janice Kay, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Exeter. “But that ideal cannot be imposed from above. Students need to be empowered to see themselves as partners in the learning process, not just as customers.”
With tuition fees due to soar this autumn, it will be more important than ever for students to use their time at university wisely if they want to get a decent degree, keep their finances under control and have the time of their lives. The days when an “organised” student was an oxymoron, at which we could all chuckle, are fast receding.
When graduate unemployment was virtually unknown, students were able to treat university as a time of innocent escapism before life got serious. Now, what you do at university outside your studies, and the subject you are reading, increasingly shapes your future career.
“I wish I had done more student journalism,” said a final-year undergraduate at Warwick University desperately searching for a job. “I was interested in working for the BBC, but that gap in my CV worked against me. I didn’t even get an interview.”
Employers will look at students in the round, not just make a note of their degree. Captaining a sports team, running a society, fundraising for charity or even organising a college ball will all help to enhance a CV.
At Lancaster University, where significant emphasis is placed on getting the work-play balance right, students are encouraged to apply for a special Lancaster Award. It is given to those who have successfully demonstrated an ability to make the necessary connection between their studies and their extracurricular activities.
“We have found that students consistently underestimate how much employers are likely to value the non-academic things they do at university,” says Prof Amanda Chetwynd, pro-vice- chancellor at Lancaster University. “By inviting them to make a written record of the life skills they have acquired through part-time jobs, or volunteering, we are helping them focus on their future careers.” Activities pursued by students who have gained the award include holding responsible positions in student societies and acting as student ambassadors, voluntary work in a homeless shelter and as a “reading buddy” in local primary schools, and summer jobs in a solicitor’s office and for a local authority.
Paid work is not only an income source for cash-strapped students, it’s also a chance to gain entrepreneurial skills – such as event management or setting up a website — rather than just working in a bar.
Striking the right balance is never easy, and, with so many competing demands on students, the importance of time-management skills can hardly be overstated. University is a great time to experiment and those with a flair for business will be able to hit the ground running when they graduate. But even friendships might need to be rationed. The famous advice to an Oxford freshman in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited — “You’ll find you spend half your second year shaking off all the undesirable friends you made in your first” — still holds true today.
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