Student Protest pondering

I was at the student protest in London this past Wednesday. It was not only did it stir up some passion within me about education, but it was also a brilliantly fun day, despite the ludicrous amount of time it took to get back to Southampton.

Talking to other students, reading journalism and getting into squabbles on the Guardian's comment sections has been revealing, and even though I was right there at the foot of 30 Millbank I wasn't fully convinced that the raise in tuition fees was entirely unjustified - yes, people should have the right to be able to study what they want regardless of cost, but on the other hand cuts have to happen, and no one seems to be able to offer any other valid suggestions.

However, something crossed my mind (or at least I think so; it might have been someone else's point) which is this: the tuition fee rise is a result of the recession, the government needs a quick buck so let's make the students pay. Fair? Maybe, but not the point. The thing is, we are not paying cash up front, but recieving loans. Degrees take a minimum of three years, combined with the fact that it won't affect anyone until the 2012 batch, means that that the government won't be seeing any return until 2015. That's not even taking into account that a graduate has to be earning more than £21k p.a. before it gets payed back, and even then it will only be a trickle. I can't see how this will help the UK emerge from the recession; as a long-term investment I would imagine it is financially sound (presuming the number of students remain the same), but in the short-term it seems it would have a negative impact on the economy.

Moreover, the loans themselves come from the government so in between now and 2015 the university system will be an even greater financial burden than it already is. Perhaps I'm missing something here - this point seems too obvious to have been overlooked by messrs Osbourne and Cable - but I can't see it. Enlighten me in the comments.


P.S. Anybody reading this that hasn't been to a large-scale protest before, I highly recommend it, even if you don't have any particular allegiance to a cause. It's so much fun, and something of an eye-opener - seeing 50'000 people getting fired up made me realise that things actually do matter, and it's worth fighting for the people that are getting hit the worst.

A Critical Analysis of 'Eh Marine!'

As part and parcel with my new Film & English degree, I've been exposed to a lot of great films in the past few weeks - we're talking Casablanca, Rear Window and Singin' In The Rain - but one stand head and shoulders above the rest. What's amazing about this film is the sheer amount of brilliance encapsulated within just six short seconds. You'll laugh, you'll cry (with laughter), you'll press replay umpteen times. What is this film? It is, of course, Eh Marine!

Eh Marine! exhibits some deceptively complex mise-en-scene. Notice the stark contrast of our two protagonists; one so manic and energetic - undoubtedly a parody the gurning and goofy Cosmo Brown - and the other so unsuspecting, so mundane. Caliboss99 is clearly a skilful manipulator of his audience. We automatically favour our anti-hero over Marine: he looks like a guy that really knows how to party...check out that killer jiggle/head-wobble combination and tell me he wouldn't give Andrew WK a run for his money in the party stakes. Marine is such a drab character, we relish her getting one smartly upside the head. Her clothes: drab; her expression: dull; her repsonse: a grunt - everything about her is asking for a whipping.

It's all about context though, really. What causes the bouncy guy to strike down upon her with great vengeance (though not so much furious anger)? Why is he so bouncy? How did he get that slap so damn right? As for the latter, I would suggest it lies in the follow-through: that was a proper pimp-slap and make no mistake. The guy clearly has experience; p'raps Marine's a whore and she's been skimming some hoe money off the top. What better way to punish a girl than by brutally smacking her on camera? Don't answer that question.

Jamie Oliver

You may remember back in 2005 Jamie Oliver tackled the awful school meals served to our nations primary school children, epitomised by the now infamous Turkey Twizzlers. It made great television: the aim was laudable but the obstacles considerable, but by the end he had Greenwich schools eating well.

Now he's back, but this time in America, specifically Huntington, the fattest town in the fattest state in the fattest nation on Earth. As a challenge it's a whole new kettle of fish. Also, it's even more entertaining than before. Despite being what would probably be called a reality show, Jamie's American Food Revolution has all the ingredients of a great drama. Jamie is undoubtedly the underdog, faced with an array of set-in-their-way adversaries, from grizzled "cook" Alice, the American school culinary system, the kids' comfort zones and best of all, radio DJ Rod the Dawg.

Rod is a brilliant antagonist: he is immediately unrelentingly opposed to anything Jamie says or does, he's thick, regressive and agressive. 'I don't want to go around eating lettuce all day' neatly summed up his, and the wider American population's, sentiments.

Oliver gets a lot of stick from (stupid) people for being rich and egotistical, but frankly anyone that continues to hold this belief after watching not just this show, but all his other shows too, is a moron. That Jamie is tackling a serious problem only makes it more compelling, and also allows us to forgive his often cringeworthy adopted Americanisms. Why he feels he has to call everyone 'brother' I don't know, in fact it's a little bit creepy.

ONE HUNDRED HITS

IMPORTANT EDIT: I completely misunderstood the hit-counter: the one I was looking at was in fact profile views, a very different beast to blog views. Rather than a poxy 100 views, I actually have 1600+, which I'm rather chuffed about. There's a really neat feature that breaks down page views in more or less every way you can think of, and while I won't go into much detail - I don't have enough time and I can't imagine it interests anyone but me - I'll still put a few of the most noteworthy down.

My most popular blog post by far is the castle blog, with 450 or so, a fair way ahead of number 2, my Everything Everything review (that said, the Everything Everything review is much younger). It's nice that the two that I consider to be my strongest have garnered the most attention.

The UK and US are exactly tied for most views at 484.

Erm, that's pretty much it. Ignore everything hereafter.

YES!


Twenty months after my first blog post, way back in February 2009, I have hit the big 100 blog views. That's one every six days, how amazing!


Okay, that is pretty pathetic. I herby declare I will embark upon an extensive campaign of blog-plugging, i.e. linking to it in all my online profiles. Let's aim for 200 by this time next year.


Blog Breakdown:


Duration: 20 months
Posts: 54
Monthly Average: 2.7 posts
Monthly High: June 2010, 9 posts
Monthly Low: April May 2009, 0 posts; August 2009, 1 post.

By genre:
Music: 18 posts
Sport: 13 posts
Film: 5 posts
Other stuff: the rest

Trends: Over the course of my blog random pieces about random things have become far more scarce, with the focus now being on music, sport or film. They are also longer and more coherent. My best one? The most fun to write was the first one about the Tour de France, but looking back on it now my writing is pretty poor. In that case, the recent review of Man Alive must be the best, and is actually the only review on the reasonably highly-trafficked SputnikMusic.

Other thoughts: Sport is really easy to write about. Weighty issues are far harder. I should write about literature more.

The Long-Lost Art of the Guitar Solo

In a time now sadly passed, any rock act worth its salt had a guitarist with some serious chops. We're talking Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, AC/DC - all bands with great guitarists that knew the difference between tasteful licks and self-indulgence, who didn't rely on pure speed in their solos, as many guitarists do nowadays. (Why did I accidentally put so many food-related words in those two sentences? I just ate an' everything). But barring the few survivors from those better times (Iron Maiden, Mark Knopfler) there has been nothing in the past ten years with anything to the aforementioned guitar Gods, except The Darkness.

Despite scooping four Brit awards in 2004, The Darkness were a band that few people could take seriously. They saw the spandex, the castrato, the high-camp, and for a glorious few month everybody embraced rock, and make no mistake, Permission To Land is rock at its best. Not since Back In Black had a band wielded distortion as capably as Justin Hawkins and brother Dan. But then people began to feel a bit guilty about it all. Did we really like this lot? They are sooo unfashionable! The Darkness were swept under the carpet, and the (admittedly inferior) follow-up album, One Way Ticket To Hell sold poorly in comparision, and unlike other artists and bands that rose to prominence in the early 00s, such as the Libertines and Franz Ferdinand, The Darkness spawned no immitators. They were abandoned and left to plow their own lonely furrow until they disbanded.

I think there is also a case to be made for the guitar solo being replaced by a rap break. In the 70s and 80s many pop acts featured (bad) guitar solos, just because it was the done thing: verse chorus verse solo verse outro. Nowadays a good percentage of pop releases have some sort of rap breakdown, but there are musical and not juststructural similarites. Both are largely self-indulgent, not brilliantly skillful and often incongruous to the style of the song. Now while I don't particularly miss the fashion for songs with bad solos, it is indicative of the shift away from the use of electric guitars in mainstream music.
Okay, I'm not entirely telling the truth when I say there has been no other great guitar work. Early Muse albums dripped with Matt Bellamy's signature guitar playing, though it was less soloing and more excellent rhythm playing. Then there are the metal bands, though despite being a genre that relies entirely on the guitar, bands have tended to descend into the drop D chug of, say, Meshuggah or the aimless tragic wankery of Dream Theater. The only one that springs to mind is Opeth, and while metal isn't my forte, I know enough about it to make sweeping statements that disregard the whole genre of metal. Er...

Shredding, the art of playing a stupid amount of notes in as short a space as possible, has become the dominant form of the guitar solo. It is crap. Shredding is the guitar equivalent of X Factor melismatic, gymnastic singing that people seem to think is good nowadays. It might seem a strange comparison, but it holds water. Take Alexandra Burke. She has a good voice: it's powerful and she can hit notes accurately, but has absolutely no concept of melody. Instead of finding a note and sticking with it she blasts up and down the scales, leaving you unsure as to what tune she is supposed to be singing. This approach exists on the guitar also, for instance wank-King Steve Vai and his equally bad mentor Joe Satriani. Look them up on YouTube and it won't take long to see what I mean. When Vai tries to give his playing some space à la Pink Floyd, it just sounds dreadful: see For The Love Of God. Put it this way: I can shred. Not very well, but once you know a few scales, and have quick fingers it doesn't take much imagination to play like these guys. However writing solos like the two in Comfortably Numb, both of which are fairly easy to play, takes more than just speed.

Is good guitar playing a thing of the past? Are the likes of the Hawkins brothers, Tom Morello of RATM and Absolution era Muse the last of the old guard? I really hope not.


EDIT: Just looked up For The Love Of God on Youtube and the first video is a perfect example of what I'm talking. Fret-wankage made literal at 4:30, so bad.

Everything Everything - Man Alive

After watching from afar for far too long, I joined SputnikMusic, a music reviews site where users can post their own reviews. I blogged about Everything Everything a few months ago, and their debut album is now out, and it's pretty decent. Find my review here.


Like a comic who chains complex pun after complex pun, leaving the brain scrambling to catch up, so goes Man Alive, the debut album from Everything Everything. It is an album unlike anything you've ever heard before, a true original, and at times, to borrow a lyric from Two For Nero, will leave you as "giddy as a baby in a centrifuge". What sets Everything Everything apart from the crowd is Jonathan Higgins' sugary falsetto: he delivers frequently baffling lines, "And I wanna know what happened to your boyfriend because he was looking at me like 'Whoah!'" at speed with constant octave-leaps. It can be quite bewildering.

Full disclosure: if the lyrics actually mean anything coherent it is beyond me. That isn't to say they are bad, far from it, in fact as little sense as they make Higgins has the power of an arresting turn of phrase, juxtaposing 1980s videogame nostalgia, "It's like Sega never died" with echoes of Nazi Germany, "You goosestep around the garden" in Two For Nero. He also on occasion plays with verbal jokes; decide for yourself whether the refrain in album highlight Suffraggette Suffraggette scans "Who's gonna sit on your fence", or "Who's gonna sit on your face".

The vocal hi-jinx does begin to grate by the start of Come Alive Diana. It's one falsetto-leap too far and feels like an attempt to inject some life into an otherwise stale song. Indeed, the last four songs are largely forgettable affairs, with the exception of NASA Is On Your Side, showing refreshing restrain in a slow-burning build-up over solemn keys, before peaking with an exultant chorus.

The focus of this review has been thus-far on the vocals, but there is some really excellent musicianship on display. Guitarist Alex Robertshow is reminiscent of Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood: it's unobtrusive, varied and deft, and also provides one of Man Alive's highpoints. From nowhere Suffraggette Suffragette is illuminated by a dirty great slab of driving distortion, an isolated moment of untempered rawk. It's a fabulous addition, but it's something of a double-edged sword: the other tracks are diminished ever so slightly. Their highly polished arty and intelligent exteriors, particularly Final Form and the closing duo of Tin (The Manhole) and Weights, have their lack of fire and warmth exaggerated.

That said, with such boundless invention it was always likely that Everything Everything would take a few mis-steps, but successes outweigh weaknesses in this superb first effort.

7/10

Psychology Experiments and Facebook

Earlier today I came across the excellent website http://youarenotsosmart.com, which de-bunks a whole range of mental processes and thoughts that the majority of us hold. Conditioning is the main thrust of the articles; for the unitiated all animals, human or otherwise, can be trained to follow certain thought-paths by using rewards to strengthen mental connections between actions and consequences. Perhaps the most famous example is Pavlov and his dogs: after ringing a bell and giving them food the dogs began to associate the bell with food, and as a result Pavlov was able to make the dogs salivate whenever they heard the bell, whether food was given to them or not.

However, that is not the experiment I am most interested in. In the twentieth century a famous - possibly the most famous - psychologist was a man called Skinner, who became famous for what were later known as Skinner's Boxes, in which he conducted various experiments on animals, not to mention his own daughter. He trained mice to push a lever, which resulted in food from a chute.

The mice cottoned-on pretty quickly to this, so Skinner gradually changed the frequency of the food, but the mice were able to understand what changes had occured. Food every third push was achieved, then up to fourty and sixty pushes; if the mice knew there would be a reward they would keep pushing. Skinner then set the food to be delivered at random intervals, resulting in the mice pushing it ceaselessly until they were rewarded by their efforts with food.

Skinner also tried to work out how long the mice would take to stop pushing the lever after the food-supply had been cut off. The mice with regular food deliveries realised fairly quickly, but the mice with random distributions of food took much longer to cease with the lever-pushing.

I have come to realise that Facebook has had this effect over me. In my case, notifications are the food equivalent. I check for them several times daily, and far more often than not I am not rewarded. I do, however, get notifications occasionally, and it is this that keeps me coming back. The distribution of notifications is effectively random; my friends post statuses and comments whenver they want with no thought for me personally. I know I will get a notification eventually, just as the mice knew they would get food, so I continue to check Facebook, despite the fact that usually there is nothing of interest.

I wonder if these studies passed through the mind of Mark Zuckerberg and the other feller as they were designing Facebook. My knowledge of psychology is only a day old, but I'm fairly sure that my conclusions are correct.

***

Another web-related phenomena within the established fields of psychology that I think applies to me is the theory of the 'extinction burst'. The extinction burst occurs when one tries to quit cold-turkey on a long-standing habit, be it smoking, daily schedule, or in my case, Internet use. The theory follows thus: once we quit said habit our need for it diminishes steadily, until a point not long after the initial quit-date, a few days or so. At this point our need for the vice in question abruptly spikes drastically in our body's attempt to keep hold it. Think of it like death throes, a last cry for help. The effect causes millions of people world-wide to resort to their previous behaviour, and unless you see it coming it is very hard to overcome. 

At the start of this year I made a concerted effort to cut-down on my internet use. The time I wasted on the Internet could have been spent doing things far more constructive and engaging: studying, reading, playing the guitar etc. I had some success, but at some point I reverted to my old ways: the questionable lure of Facebook, the Guardian and IGN proved too strong. (In fact, my previous hypothesis could be applied to the latter two; I browse both daily hoping for updates, though with better results than Facebook.) Whether it was the combination of three conditionings (?) or the extinction burst, or both, that drew me back I am not sure, but here I am, writing a blog that no one reads.