About a month ago, our property agency was taken over by the estate agency who found us the apartment. A few days before our rent was due, the estate agent we originally dealt with contacted us to tell us about the new arrangements - basically, there weren't any, except that now we would pay the estate agency - let us call them company X, even though that's not their real name - instead of the property agency, company Y (our landlords).
Company Y, it seemed, was now either owned by or taken over by company X, and company X owned all their property. The agent herself (let's call her Jim, for no reason) would now be our contact for any problems with the apartment. And indeed she inquired as to any issues there might be, and suggested without prompting that the new company would try and install washing machines where possible. And various other details : the new company had an Italian owner, they regretted they wouldn't be able to do much about the graffiti on the outside of the building, etc.
For this one time, we should pay Jim in cash since the electronic banking facilities for the new company weren't set up yet. Everyone was still trying to get used to the new systems in place. The terms of the existing contracts would be honoured; essentially nothing would change except for who we paid the money to and contacted in the event of a problem.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but readers should understand a few things at this point. Firstly, this was the same agent who originally showed us the apartment, who arranged the contract with our property agency, who was present at the property agency office while we signed the contract and handed over the first month's rent and deposit. It was obvious that the two parties knew each other, at least to some degree, so the credentials seemed impeccable. Also, I spent the last two years paying my rent directly to my landlord, who was my next door neighbour - so I have zero previous experience with property and estate agencies.
So we parted with our cash and got a signed receipt (naturally) though no kind of new contract. I would have expected to have signed something regarding the new ownership and maybe a termination of the previous contract, even if the terms of the new one were identical except for the owner's names. I guess we expected something to be forthcoming. Jim left us her contact details (although we already had these). I really don't remember if she mentioned there would be anything else to sign or not.
Days went by. A week. Life went on. The only odd thing was that our neighbours hadn't heard anything about the new arrangements, and we were given to believe that the new agency owned the whole building. Weird. Perhaps we'd misunderstood something.
Two weeks passed. Any sort of doubt had now gone completely. If I don't pay rent for a few days, I would hope that the landlords wouldn't immediately shout at me, and might be courteous enough to give benefit of the doubt and not say anything at all. That would be perfectly legitimate in my view (on our contract, it says we should pay the rent no later than 5 days after the due date). After a week, I would expect to start hearing polite, "can you pay us some money, please ?" messages. After two weeks I would anticipate justifiably angry "Where is our money ?" demands.
Three weeks passed and still we heard nothing from anyone. I could not imagine that any company expecting to receive regular rent would wait a full three weeks and more before even saying anything to the tenants. Then one afternoon in work came a phone call.
"Hello, is this... William Taylor ?"
"Yes, this is Rhys Taylor, William is my middle name."
"Err... yes. You rent the apartment at... XXXX ?"
"Yes, that's me."
"We have not received any rent for March from you."
I then proceeded to describe the events to an utterly dumbfounded agent. More phone calls followed. The property agency was apparently completely and totally unaware of the new arrangement, quite convinced that they still owned the entire building (which is generally not something it's easy to be mistaken about). They seem surprised, naturally enough, that we would pay money into an account not stipulated in our contract* (I was surprised that they had taken over three weeks to ask for their rent, though I didn't tell them this).
* Silly though it sounds, this hadn't occurred to me. I guess I was imagining that if the ownership of the whole building had changed, and the PA had been taken over by another company, then this was a situation that couldn't be covered by the contract.
Of course I did tell them that it was Jim who told us all this and they tried to contact her. She wasn't responding to them, but when I phoned her a few minutes later she responded instantly. More phone calls followed. Almost surprisingly, the two parties did indeed establish direct contact - at this point I was half-expecting that Jim would simply lie and/or run away. Not so. Both seemed in agreement that Jim would bring the money she'd taken directly to the PA.
Since this happened just before 4pm, when the PA office closes, I waited until 10am the next morning to call and check what was going on. There hadn't been any progress, but half hour later they called me back. Everything had now been settled - Jim had delivered the money as promised. We should continue to pay our rent to the original property agency, as before, and if Jim contacted us again, we should ignore anything she said. Which seems entirely reasonable to me. Though it's hard to tell on the phone, they seemed as ignorant as to what the hell was going on as I was.
I haven't since tried to contact Jim again and I don't intend to. Having signed no property contract except with the original property agency, it seems pretty clear that they are still our landlords. What I can't understand is... well, anything else.
It's pretty much beyond the realms of possibility that our property agency could have been taken over by another company and their building swiped from under their noses without them knowing about it. That just doesn't make any sense at all. Yet, if Jim is trying to pull a fast one, she is both an accomplished liar and yet also curiously unintelligent. I mean, what kind of scam artist leaves a signed receipt, valid contact details and gives the money back when asked ?? And why on earth would anyone fake being a landlord ?
Moreover, a month's rent here isn't a huge sum of money. You could buy a very nice sofa with it, or perhaps a week's holiday somewhere not too expensive. Did Jim just need a short-term loan or something ? And what did she think would happen when the property agency noticed we hadn't paid our rent ?
I suspect this weird little debaclé isn't over. But I've got a contract telling me who my landlord is, and it isn't Jim, and no documents of any kind telling me I should do anything Jim says. Any further dealings will be handled face-to-face at the property office, so there won't be any doubt as to who owns the building and who's gone stark raving mad. Apparently it's quite easy to get those confused.
EDIT : The managing director of the company emailed me a notification that Jim is no longer working at said company and acted without authorization. I'm a little disappointed that I'll probably never understand what the heck Jim was trying to do, but the matter is apparently now closed.
The exiled life of an astrophysicist
Thursday, 20 March 2014
Tuesday, 25 February 2014
Hallelujah, It's Raining Moon
If you're one of the long-suffering followers who only signed on for the science outreach, fear not ! This week I present the thrilling sequel to Blue Marbles (actually this perfectly logical extrapolation wasn't my idea but was suggested to me by some dude calling himself "Joshua K"). "Blue marble", of course, refers to the photograph of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17. Fortuitously, treating the planets as marbles makes a convenient way to compare their sizes and masses. Scroll down to the bottom if you're after the video.
Having already done the gas giants, this time I'm looking at a more-or-less random selection of the Solar System's more solid worlds. Screw Venus - sure it's hot enough to melt lead all the frickin' time, the pressure from the atmosphere is the equivalent to being nearly a kilometre under water, and most of that atmosphere is carbon dioxide... but it's almost exactly the same size and mass of the Earth. This makes it incredibly boring. Let's move on.
Mars presents a more interesting comparison. About half the diameter of Earth, it would take about 9 times the mass of Mars to equal Earth. Mars is about the same distance away from us as Venus, but in the opposite direction - away from the Sun. While the temperature can be bloody cold, it can also be surprisingly warm. The thin atmosphere does not mean your eyes will pop out, no matter what Arnie says. He was right to demand that you be given "eeah" though, because you'd most likely die of oxygen starvation after a few minutes. Less dramatic than eye-sucking, and at least you'd enjoy the 1/3rd Earth gravity for a while.
Mercury isn't much to look at, but it's almost as hot as Venus and colder than Mars, constantly. It has no atmosphere to spread the heat around, so the side facing the Sun is roasting hot and the other side would make a taunton wish for thermal underwear. Mercury is just over a third the size of Earth, but you'd only need 18 of them to equal Earth's mass. This is pretty dense - in comparison you'd need 67 of the similar-sized Ganymede (Jupiter's largest moon) for the same mass. Mercury's high density could be because it's really just the core of a larger planet, with the lighter material having been blasted into space by a titanic collision billions of years ago.
Which brings us to the MOOOOOON ! Seriously, I don't care if you're at work, stand up and say the word, "Mooooooooon !" in a loud, dramatic voice. It'll make you feel better, I promise. If it doesn't, you probably have no soul and don't like the Indiana Jones movies. Err... anyway, the Moon, like Mercury, is a world of extremes. 120 C in the day, -150 C at night. But, like Mercury, it's really just a big rock, so let's move on to somewhere more interesting*.
* Don't misunderstand me. I would maim and injure innocent people by the dozen for a chance to go to the Moon. It's all relative.
Europa ! Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Jupiter has four moons that anyone cares about, and sixty-odd smaller ones that just generally faff about. The smallest of the moons worth paying attention to is Europa, which is fractionally smaller than our own Moon but quite a lot lighter... being partly made from water. Beneath its Hoth-like surface may lurk a liquid ocean. It's even spouting jets of water into space. This, to borrow from the great Bill Bryson again, is a "You must go at once, take my car !" discovery. Or it bloody well should be, anyway.
But I'm not here to blather on about alien fish. Let's skip over the methane oceans of Titan and the nitrogen volcanoes of Triton and head for the world best known for making the astronomy community look like a bunch of morons : Pluto. Even smaller and lighter than our Moon, the discovery of numerous similar objects lead to a redefinition of the world "planet"*. But Pluto is actually a pretty neat place in its own right. Cold, dark and incredibly lonely, it sometimes gets warm enough to thaw some of the frozen nitrogen and methane and produce a thin atmosphere. It also has a giant moon, Charon, which would appear at least seven times wider in the sky than out own Moon does.
*This was because astronomers felt it would be too difficult to cope with more than nine planets because they'd never remember all their names. And that's how we ended up with the world "planet" now having the most ridiculous definition possible. That's what you get for listening to Neil de Grasse Tyson.
We'll know a lot more about Pluto next year when the New Horizons probe whips past. A few months before that, we'll also get our first look at Ceres, the Solar System's largest asteroid. About 950 km across, this tiddly little world is roughly the size of Britain. Its surface gravity is over 30 times less than on Earth, so leaping 10 or 20 metres in the air would be no problem. A world-class bowler could throw a cricket ball about 5 miles, before realising that cricket would be even more boring in low gravity. Golf would be even more tedious, though pole-vaulting and basketball would become a lot more interesting.
Of course, you can also see all of this in animated form, because it's always fun to make it rain planetoids.
Having already done the gas giants, this time I'm looking at a more-or-less random selection of the Solar System's more solid worlds. Screw Venus - sure it's hot enough to melt lead all the frickin' time, the pressure from the atmosphere is the equivalent to being nearly a kilometre under water, and most of that atmosphere is carbon dioxide... but it's almost exactly the same size and mass of the Earth. This makes it incredibly boring. Let's move on.
Mars presents a more interesting comparison. About half the diameter of Earth, it would take about 9 times the mass of Mars to equal Earth. Mars is about the same distance away from us as Venus, but in the opposite direction - away from the Sun. While the temperature can be bloody cold, it can also be surprisingly warm. The thin atmosphere does not mean your eyes will pop out, no matter what Arnie says. He was right to demand that you be given "eeah" though, because you'd most likely die of oxygen starvation after a few minutes. Less dramatic than eye-sucking, and at least you'd enjoy the 1/3rd Earth gravity for a while.
Mercury isn't much to look at, but it's almost as hot as Venus and colder than Mars, constantly. It has no atmosphere to spread the heat around, so the side facing the Sun is roasting hot and the other side would make a taunton wish for thermal underwear. Mercury is just over a third the size of Earth, but you'd only need 18 of them to equal Earth's mass. This is pretty dense - in comparison you'd need 67 of the similar-sized Ganymede (Jupiter's largest moon) for the same mass. Mercury's high density could be because it's really just the core of a larger planet, with the lighter material having been blasted into space by a titanic collision billions of years ago.
Which brings us to the MOOOOOON ! Seriously, I don't care if you're at work, stand up and say the word, "Mooooooooon !" in a loud, dramatic voice. It'll make you feel better, I promise. If it doesn't, you probably have no soul and don't like the Indiana Jones movies. Err... anyway, the Moon, like Mercury, is a world of extremes. 120 C in the day, -150 C at night. But, like Mercury, it's really just a big rock, so let's move on to somewhere more interesting*.
* Don't misunderstand me. I would maim and injure innocent people by the dozen for a chance to go to the Moon. It's all relative.
Europa ! Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Jupiter has four moons that anyone cares about, and sixty-odd smaller ones that just generally faff about. The smallest of the moons worth paying attention to is Europa, which is fractionally smaller than our own Moon but quite a lot lighter... being partly made from water. Beneath its Hoth-like surface may lurk a liquid ocean. It's even spouting jets of water into space. This, to borrow from the great Bill Bryson again, is a "You must go at once, take my car !" discovery. Or it bloody well should be, anyway.
But I'm not here to blather on about alien fish. Let's skip over the methane oceans of Titan and the nitrogen volcanoes of Triton and head for the world best known for making the astronomy community look like a bunch of morons : Pluto. Even smaller and lighter than our Moon, the discovery of numerous similar objects lead to a redefinition of the world "planet"*. But Pluto is actually a pretty neat place in its own right. Cold, dark and incredibly lonely, it sometimes gets warm enough to thaw some of the frozen nitrogen and methane and produce a thin atmosphere. It also has a giant moon, Charon, which would appear at least seven times wider in the sky than out own Moon does.
*This was because astronomers felt it would be too difficult to cope with more than nine planets because they'd never remember all their names. And that's how we ended up with the world "planet" now having the most ridiculous definition possible. That's what you get for listening to Neil de Grasse Tyson.
We'll know a lot more about Pluto next year when the New Horizons probe whips past. A few months before that, we'll also get our first look at Ceres, the Solar System's largest asteroid. About 950 km across, this tiddly little world is roughly the size of Britain. Its surface gravity is over 30 times less than on Earth, so leaping 10 or 20 metres in the air would be no problem. A world-class bowler could throw a cricket ball about 5 miles, before realising that cricket would be even more boring in low gravity. Golf would be even more tedious, though pole-vaulting and basketball would become a lot more interesting.
Of course, you can also see all of this in animated form, because it's always fun to make it rain planetoids.
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Why Dr Who Shouldn't Be A Guilty Pleasure
I like Dr Who. There, I've said it. And now I'm going to justify that.
One of Battlestar Galactica's greatest features was that there was absolutely no reset button, ever. If something went wrong, it stayed wrong. Main character killed ? That's it, they're dead*. But BSG wasn't really sci-fi. In most genuine sci-fi, as in Star Trek, the rules of the fictional universe may not be quite the same as in the real world, and often they can be circumvented (albeit usually in an interesting way) when they become... inconvenient. Main character killed ? No problem ! Get them cloned, or travel back in time, or hop into a parallel universe where they're still alive, or bring them back as a hologram, or heck, just make them come back to life, etc. etc. etc.
* Except for certain killer robots.
Dr Who is at the very opposite end of the realism spectrum from BSG. There are no rules, only guidelines. Dr Who is to scientific plausibility what 300 is to historical accuracy - sure, there may be some occasional nods in that direction (even some very good ones), but they're nearly irrelevant. This is not a show where plausibility or even believability, let alone possibility, is much of a factor. And while that's what made 300 so stupid I wanted to vomit, somehow it's also what makes Doctor Who great.
Not giving two hoots about scientific accuracy gives the show tremendous creative freedom. The show can endlessly re-invent itself without fundamentally changing. Ghosts ? Planet-sized aliens ? Katherine Jenkins singing songs to flying sharks ? Anything goes. It's essentially an exploration of an infinite universe, where everything that can exist, no matter how ridiculously unlikely, does.
The thing is though, the real universe is full of giraffes, exploding stars, Scarlet Johannson, worlds covered in methane, pandas, stars so dense they slow down time, and cabbage. We can only survive in a minuscule region of space barely five miles thick, on top of a rock hurtling around an almost 100,000 mile-wide ball of plasma, and we think this is normal. Anyone who thinks science fiction is nothing but escapism should have their head shoved into a telescope until they realise just how dreadfully, pitiably small the so-called "real world" is.
And that's one of the principle themes of the show - the idea that exotic is a relative state. If you've lived on a world covered in methane, the idea of just walking to the shops to buy some milk would be unimaginably weird (I lived in a place without streets, which for me was akin to living without trousers - just not natural). Or, as the Doctor would say, "No other race in the galaxy would think to invent edible ball bearings !"
This is actually very important... no, not the edible ball bearings, I mean the morality of the show. Before Stephen Moffat got his hands on it, the Doctor's assistants were by and large ordinary, normal people. Rose is a complete chav. Martha is about as boring as anyone you'll ever meet And then there's the hugely underrated Donna Noble, a woman whose utter normality is best described by her luckless, reluctant, short-lived fiancé :
"And then I was stuck with a woman who thinks the height of excitement is a new flavour Pringle ! Oh, I had to sit there and listen to all that yap yap yap. Oh, Brad and Angelina, is Posh pregnant, X factor, Atkins diet, feng shui, split ends, text me, text me, text me - dear god, the never-ending fountain of fat, stupid trivia !"
With characteristic lack of subtlety, the Doctor puts it scarcely more politely :
Doctor : Weird. I mean, you're not special, you're not powerful, you're not connected, you're not clever.... you're not important.
Donna : This friend of yours, just before she left, did she punch you in the face ?
Compare this with Star Trek, where we rarely see anyone who isn't the best-of-the-best being allowed to have adventures.
With Donna in particular, we have a genuinely normal person who's not (unlike Martha or Rose) falling head-over-heels for the handsome stranger. Moreover, she's a very strong female character who's not stunningly attractive, something which is worryingly rare in mainstream sci-fi. Jenna Louise Coleman may be awfully nice to look at, but her character is pathetic compared to Donna, who's more than a match for our Gallifrean hero. For example, at her wedding :
Doctor : Hold on, what are you dressed like that for ?
Donna : I'm going tenpin bowling. WHY DO YOU THINK, DUMBO ?
Or, later on :
Doctor: The last time, with Martha, it got complicated. And that was all my fault. I just want a mate.
Donna : You just want to mate ?
Doctor: I just want a mate !
Donna : You're not matin' with me, sunshine !
(As an aside, for more on the Doctor's companions, this article is worth a read. It certainly has a point that too many of the companions are pretty girls, though personally I think most of the article is an overly-harsh assessment. Companions in the Moffat era, however, do have a worrying tendency to have their entire lives defined by the existence of the Doctor, and have almost nothing to offer by themselves. Which only ends up weakening both of them.)
But anyway, rather than being revealed to actually have some sort of uber-epic alter ego all along - as with later companions - Donna (like Rose and Martha and Mickey) becomes important through her own actions. Yes, it takes a little help from an alien in a magic box. The Master calls the Doctor, "the man who makes people better", but he doesn't do this by mystical forces or mind control. Rather, he does it by showing them that there's more to life than they thought, and giving them a chance to demonstrate their own innate abilities. Slowly, they realise that they're not normal and never have been, because there's no such thing - exotic is indeed a relative state.
Donna : What am I supposed to do ? I'm nothing special. I mean, I - I'm not... I'm nothing special. I'm a temp ! I'm not even that. I'm nothing.
Rose : Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation !
This tendency to treat the ordinary as extraordinary is complemented by the reliance on the principle that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As a result, Dr Who can often feel closer to magical fantasy iiiiinnnn spppppaaaaace than true sci-fi. Yet sci-fi it very much is, far more so than BSG. This is exemplified by the episode The Satan Pit. Our suit-wearing hero finds himself confronting a creature claiming to be Devil itself, originating from "before the Universe" :
"I believe, I believe I haven't seen everything, I don't know. It's funny, isn't it? The things you make up. The rules. If that thing had said it came from beyond the universe, I'd believe it, but before the universe? Impossible. Doesn't fit my rule. Still, that's why I keep travelling. To be proved wrong. "
Wow. Stuff like this is what makes up for the retarded episodes where the Doctor fights a giant wasp*. Seriously, this is a much misunderstood part of the scientific process. Proving existing theories wrong is what science is for (although this is present in many other si-fi's, it's rare to hear it stated so directly). Well... "wrong" is perhaps an unfair term. "Incomplete" might be better, because theories are by definition well-tested, and in a sense can't really be said to be "wrong", as such.
* Or the one with child acting so bad it'll give you a hernia. Or the one where people's faces get smoothed over but they're still able to breath. Or the ridiculous Slitheen. Sadly, it must be said that Doctor Who suffers from a high number of episodes which are just god-awful. As Donna says so the Doctor, so I say to the writers : "Sometimes you need someone to stop you."
To give an example, take Newton's theory of gravity. Works tremendously well for most aspects of everyday life, like dropping apples. Does a pretty dang good job in the Solar System too. But it's not quite good enough to describe the orbit of Mercury, and it's just not up to scratch for GPS satellites. Einstein's version doesn't have these little problems.
But relativity also does something far more profound than dotting the i's and crossing the t's of Newton's model. You can't use a few grams of matter to flatten a city in Newton's universe, but you can in Einstein's. Even more spectacular are the consequences that we haven't been able to explore yet - relativity allows - in fact, necessitates - time travel. And that's why being wrong can be the most wonderful and terrible thing in the world. Only when forced to let go of your old ideas can you begin to consider new ones.
The Doctor's attitude is resolutely scientific, even when things appear to be flat-out magical. Like any scientist, he's wrong at least as often as he's right, and delights in it. Being wrong doesn't make him give up and believe in magic - it makes him come up with new and better explanations. I contend that Dr Who is a science fiction show in the sense that it portrays a fictional scientist dealing with - and this is the important bit - fictional science. The Whovian universe may have rules hiding in it somewhere after all - they're just completely different to what we currently think the rules of the real universe are.
But there's more. Beyond the feel-good factor of treating ordinary mortals as important, the show has a morality-tale aspect that hasn't really been seen since Star Trek. The Doctor rarely carries a weapon, abhors guns, and - though he doesn't always succeed - will usually attempt a peaceful solution, sometimes at tremendous cost.
Dalek Emperor : "What are you, Doctor, coward or killer ?"
Doctor : "Coward ! Any day !"
He's also firmly anti-establishment, which I think is pretty darn important in a prime-time family show. The last thing we need is for children to grow up venerating politicians.
Doctor: Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones. 'Cause I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your Government with a single word.
Harriet Jones: You're the most remarkable man I've ever met. But I don't think you're quite capable of that.
Doctor: No, you're right. Not a single word. Just six.
Finally, it also fulfils another vital role that Star Trek pioneered : it challenges social taboos. Science fiction is the ideal vehicle for this, because the audience is already expecting to be shown new ways of living. Star Trek had a black, highly capable female communications officer and the first inter-racial kiss and a Russian at the helm during the Cold War. These are impressive achievements. But it somehow never quite managed to tackle homosexuality, even in Enterprise, which was much the most gung-ho sexy Trek show.
Dr Who features gay characters all the time. They're just thrown in there, being just as heroic and inept as everyone else. In a universe of flying sharks and werewolves, no-one in their right mind would judge anyone by their sexual orientation. Most importantly of all, this is a family show. And you know what's absolutely fantastic about that ? No-one cares !
That's what I call social progress. Bravo, Doctor. This is definitely something that deserves to be celebrated. And right now, this should be actively promoted in countries where such matters are still - in defiance of all rhyme and reason - considered taboo, like Russia and Uganda. Showing us in family-friendly way that all people, no matter how chavy, or boring, or feisty, or stunningly good-looking, or gay or straight or just generally all-round curious, or even if they're Kylie Mynogue, that none of these people are ordinary and all equally valuable - that's a message which still matters. Well done, BBC, well done.
One of Battlestar Galactica's greatest features was that there was absolutely no reset button, ever. If something went wrong, it stayed wrong. Main character killed ? That's it, they're dead*. But BSG wasn't really sci-fi. In most genuine sci-fi, as in Star Trek, the rules of the fictional universe may not be quite the same as in the real world, and often they can be circumvented (albeit usually in an interesting way) when they become... inconvenient. Main character killed ? No problem ! Get them cloned, or travel back in time, or hop into a parallel universe where they're still alive, or bring them back as a hologram, or heck, just make them come back to life, etc. etc. etc.
* Except for certain killer robots.
 |
| Sometimes, resurrecting characters can open up whole new storylines. Even if those characters are complete smeg-heads. |
 |
| Sci-fi realism spectrum |
 |
| Rarely have the words, "DEAL WITH IT" been more appropriate |
And that's one of the principle themes of the show - the idea that exotic is a relative state. If you've lived on a world covered in methane, the idea of just walking to the shops to buy some milk would be unimaginably weird (I lived in a place without streets, which for me was akin to living without trousers - just not natural). Or, as the Doctor would say, "No other race in the galaxy would think to invent edible ball bearings !"
This is actually very important... no, not the edible ball bearings, I mean the morality of the show. Before Stephen Moffat got his hands on it, the Doctor's assistants were by and large ordinary, normal people. Rose is a complete chav. Martha is about as boring as anyone you'll ever meet And then there's the hugely underrated Donna Noble, a woman whose utter normality is best described by her luckless, reluctant, short-lived fiancé :
"And then I was stuck with a woman who thinks the height of excitement is a new flavour Pringle ! Oh, I had to sit there and listen to all that yap yap yap. Oh, Brad and Angelina, is Posh pregnant, X factor, Atkins diet, feng shui, split ends, text me, text me, text me - dear god, the never-ending fountain of fat, stupid trivia !"
With characteristic lack of subtlety, the Doctor puts it scarcely more politely :
Doctor : Weird. I mean, you're not special, you're not powerful, you're not connected, you're not clever.... you're not important.
Donna : This friend of yours, just before she left, did she punch you in the face ?
Compare this with Star Trek, where we rarely see anyone who isn't the best-of-the-best being allowed to have adventures.
With Donna in particular, we have a genuinely normal person who's not (unlike Martha or Rose) falling head-over-heels for the handsome stranger. Moreover, she's a very strong female character who's not stunningly attractive, something which is worryingly rare in mainstream sci-fi. Jenna Louise Coleman may be awfully nice to look at, but her character is pathetic compared to Donna, who's more than a match for our Gallifrean hero. For example, at her wedding :
Doctor : Hold on, what are you dressed like that for ?
Donna : I'm going tenpin bowling. WHY DO YOU THINK, DUMBO ?
Or, later on :
Doctor: The last time, with Martha, it got complicated. And that was all my fault. I just want a mate.
Donna : You just want to mate ?
Doctor: I just want a mate !
Donna : You're not matin' with me, sunshine !
 |
| The writers apparently thought Clara was pretty enough that she didn't need much of a character. This is true, but it's still a terrible mistake. |
But anyway, rather than being revealed to actually have some sort of uber-epic alter ego all along - as with later companions - Donna (like Rose and Martha and Mickey) becomes important through her own actions. Yes, it takes a little help from an alien in a magic box. The Master calls the Doctor, "the man who makes people better", but he doesn't do this by mystical forces or mind control. Rather, he does it by showing them that there's more to life than they thought, and giving them a chance to demonstrate their own innate abilities. Slowly, they realise that they're not normal and never have been, because there's no such thing - exotic is indeed a relative state.
 |
| Mind you, some of them remain resolutely gormless. |
Rose : Donna Noble, you're the most important woman in the whole of creation !
This tendency to treat the ordinary as extraordinary is complemented by the reliance on the principle that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As a result, Dr Who can often feel closer to magical fantasy iiiiinnnn spppppaaaaace than true sci-fi. Yet sci-fi it very much is, far more so than BSG. This is exemplified by the episode The Satan Pit. Our suit-wearing hero finds himself confronting a creature claiming to be Devil itself, originating from "before the Universe" :
"I believe, I believe I haven't seen everything, I don't know. It's funny, isn't it? The things you make up. The rules. If that thing had said it came from beyond the universe, I'd believe it, but before the universe? Impossible. Doesn't fit my rule. Still, that's why I keep travelling. To be proved wrong. "
Wow. Stuff like this is what makes up for the retarded episodes where the Doctor fights a giant wasp*. Seriously, this is a much misunderstood part of the scientific process. Proving existing theories wrong is what science is for (although this is present in many other si-fi's, it's rare to hear it stated so directly). Well... "wrong" is perhaps an unfair term. "Incomplete" might be better, because theories are by definition well-tested, and in a sense can't really be said to be "wrong", as such.
* Or the one with child acting so bad it'll give you a hernia. Or the one where people's faces get smoothed over but they're still able to breath. Or the ridiculous Slitheen. Sadly, it must be said that Doctor Who suffers from a high number of episodes which are just god-awful. As Donna says so the Doctor, so I say to the writers : "Sometimes you need someone to stop you."
To give an example, take Newton's theory of gravity. Works tremendously well for most aspects of everyday life, like dropping apples. Does a pretty dang good job in the Solar System too. But it's not quite good enough to describe the orbit of Mercury, and it's just not up to scratch for GPS satellites. Einstein's version doesn't have these little problems.
But relativity also does something far more profound than dotting the i's and crossing the t's of Newton's model. You can't use a few grams of matter to flatten a city in Newton's universe, but you can in Einstein's. Even more spectacular are the consequences that we haven't been able to explore yet - relativity allows - in fact, necessitates - time travel. And that's why being wrong can be the most wonderful and terrible thing in the world. Only when forced to let go of your old ideas can you begin to consider new ones.
 |
| Err.... "Science, it works, bitches" ? |
But there's more. Beyond the feel-good factor of treating ordinary mortals as important, the show has a morality-tale aspect that hasn't really been seen since Star Trek. The Doctor rarely carries a weapon, abhors guns, and - though he doesn't always succeed - will usually attempt a peaceful solution, sometimes at tremendous cost.
Dalek Emperor : "What are you, Doctor, coward or killer ?"
Doctor : "Coward ! Any day !"
He's also firmly anti-establishment, which I think is pretty darn important in a prime-time family show. The last thing we need is for children to grow up venerating politicians.
Doctor: Don't challenge me, Harriet Jones. 'Cause I'm a completely new man. I could bring down your Government with a single word.
Harriet Jones: You're the most remarkable man I've ever met. But I don't think you're quite capable of that.
Doctor: No, you're right. Not a single word. Just six.
Finally, it also fulfils another vital role that Star Trek pioneered : it challenges social taboos. Science fiction is the ideal vehicle for this, because the audience is already expecting to be shown new ways of living. Star Trek had a black, highly capable female communications officer and the first inter-racial kiss and a Russian at the helm during the Cold War. These are impressive achievements. But it somehow never quite managed to tackle homosexuality, even in Enterprise, which was much the most gung-ho sexy Trek show.
 |
| Because this scene is sooo necessary to the plot. |
That's what I call social progress. Bravo, Doctor. This is definitely something that deserves to be celebrated. And right now, this should be actively promoted in countries where such matters are still - in defiance of all rhyme and reason - considered taboo, like Russia and Uganda. Showing us in family-friendly way that all people, no matter how chavy, or boring, or feisty, or stunningly good-looking, or gay or straight or just generally all-round curious, or even if they're Kylie Mynogue, that none of these people are ordinary and all equally valuable - that's a message which still matters. Well done, BBC, well done.
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
A Giant Horse, Some Freaky Babies, And A Post-Soviet Apocalyptic Wasteland
All are to be found within easy walking distance of my current abode. In fact, the wasteland is only a walk across the road. And it really is a wasteland. Aside from the occasional tree, only a low, distasteful scrub covers the ground. Muddy tracks and pathways criss-cross parts of this inner-city wilderness, although where they could possibly lead I've no idea. Welcome to a part of Prague where tourists fear to tread.
In many places, ruined factories and other buildings - some of which are now only low walls - break the monotonous brown with patches of monotonous grey. Only graffiti (which is sometimes, admittedly, really rather good) provides a splash of colour to this long-abandoned part of the city, barely 30 minutes walk from the glories of Old Town square. It reminds me of nothing so much as Day Z.
Carefully sneaking past the shuffling hordes of zombies* I found that much of this area is now a construction site. And it should be - go back across the road and you're in a perfectly respectable part of the city. Whatever the development plans might be though, they are clearly a few years away from making much of a difference.
* A.k.a. dog walkers. Praguers don't let a little thing like a post-soviet apocalyptic wasteland stop them from walking their beloved dogs. One night I ventured outside simply because it was -13 C, and I've never experienced -13 C before. What did I find ? Dog walkers - they're irrepressible.
Slightly further towards the city center I found this building. No idea what it is. I only point it out because the architect's brief must have read something like, "We want it to be really pointy. REALLY pointy. Yes, we know, there's plenty of space to make it bigger, but the important thing is that it be pointy as heck."
Onwards. then, away from the other-worldy wasteland and back into the city proper. A huge statute of a horse looms over the local area from the top of a nearby hill, and obviously demanded attention. This is reached via a tunnel about 300m long, followed by a steep ascent through some rather nice parkland. At the top, more dog-walkers (of course) and a national memorial (formely, I learned later, a Communist mausoleum, which is why it's one of the most architetcurally uninspiring buildings anywhere) and Tomb of the Unknown Solider.
Still, the horse is much more impressive. It is in reportedly the largest equestrian statue in the world, being 9m tall and weighing 16 tonnes, however, this is demonstrably completely wrong. Even so, it's well worth a look. There's very little else nearby, so there aren't any tourists. Certainly not in January when it's -9 C, at any rate.
Vitkov hill offers some impressive views of the city, and, like Vysherad, deserves to be more well-known, though I suppose war memorials aren't top of the tourist list. The skyline to the south is dominated by the massive, 216m tall TV tower.
The tower is quite a trek away, so I wandered up to it on another day. It's apparently also accessible by metro, but I'd have to use all 3 lines to get there (which would probably mean more time waiting for the trains than actually using them) and anyway, that just wouldn't be any fun. Neither are the hideous bronze babies that are attached to the sides.
I bought a book, "Xenephobe's Guide to the Czechs", which says:
"They have a deep desire and unwavering determination to better themselves... whatever the circumstances and through their own efforts. What saves them from being quite unbearably astute is that they have a unique knack for screwing up when it really matters. Which is why they are where they are, not where they know they ought to be."
Well then, here is a perfect example. Apparently, it is not as obvious as I thought, so please pay attention, good people of the Czech Republic :
Malformed babies are not suitable as decoration.
Not on a TV tower and not in an otherwise pleasant park in the city center. Not anywhere. They might be amusing for all of twenty seconds, but as something you'd look at every day they're the artistic equivalent of pugs : you wouldn't want to wake up to them with a hangover.
I continued onwards for a short while just for the heck of it, and was rewarded with the discovery of a bar which, for obvious reasons, I have literally no choice but to visit. It only opens after 4pm, otherwise I would have gone in there and then. And now it's -13 C and it's too far to walk in the cold. But as soon as it gets even just a little warmer, I promise you, dear readers, I shall investigate. I don't know whether their pina coladas will be any good and I doubt they'll serve rice and beans, but I'll be damned if I don't find out.
Still, the horse is much more impressive. It is in reportedly the largest equestrian statue in the world, being 9m tall and weighing 16 tonnes, however, this is demonstrably completely wrong. Even so, it's well worth a look. There's very little else nearby, so there aren't any tourists. Certainly not in January when it's -9 C, at any rate.
Vitkov hill offers some impressive views of the city, and, like Vysherad, deserves to be more well-known, though I suppose war memorials aren't top of the tourist list. The skyline to the south is dominated by the massive, 216m tall TV tower.
The tower is quite a trek away, so I wandered up to it on another day. It's apparently also accessible by metro, but I'd have to use all 3 lines to get there (which would probably mean more time waiting for the trains than actually using them) and anyway, that just wouldn't be any fun. Neither are the hideous bronze babies that are attached to the sides.
I bought a book, "Xenephobe's Guide to the Czechs", which says:
"They have a deep desire and unwavering determination to better themselves... whatever the circumstances and through their own efforts. What saves them from being quite unbearably astute is that they have a unique knack for screwing up when it really matters. Which is why they are where they are, not where they know they ought to be."
Well then, here is a perfect example. Apparently, it is not as obvious as I thought, so please pay attention, good people of the Czech Republic :
Malformed babies are not suitable as decoration.
Not on a TV tower and not in an otherwise pleasant park in the city center. Not anywhere. They might be amusing for all of twenty seconds, but as something you'd look at every day they're the artistic equivalent of pugs : you wouldn't want to wake up to them with a hangover.
I continued onwards for a short while just for the heck of it, and was rewarded with the discovery of a bar which, for obvious reasons, I have literally no choice but to visit. It only opens after 4pm, otherwise I would have gone in there and then. And now it's -13 C and it's too far to walk in the cold. But as soon as it gets even just a little warmer, I promise you, dear readers, I shall investigate. I don't know whether their pina coladas will be any good and I doubt they'll serve rice and beans, but I'll be damned if I don't find out.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
House Hunting
I was extremely lucky in Puerto Rico in that I basically fell into a house recently vacated by another postdoc, bought all her stuff, and lived happily ever after.* It was 10 minutes (drive) from work, had reliable electricity, internet** and - most unusually - water. It was all much simpler than it had any right to be.
* Metaphorically speaking.
** With one unfortunate exception.
Not so, it seems, in Prague. To save money, I opted to share with the even-newer postdoc. An undoubtedly sound economic decision, but one which does make things rather complicated. There's no shortage of places to live, but finding one which ticks all the boxes was damned hard. In the interval, I had to sleep rough on the streets, a.k.a. the very nice guest room at the institute.
Strangely, although the Academy of Sciences owns several apartments, they're not particularly cheap. Nor do they currently offer anywhere particularly suitable for singles. My 50 sq m house was considered tiny and/or cute in Puerto Rico, but having seen the 80 sq m place offered by the Academy, I can't imagine what I'd do with all that space. Set up an animal sanctuary ? A small opium farm, perhaps ? Run a very small brothel ? I think not.
In any case, the place was too far from the city center, and no-one's going to trek that far out to find a brothel. You don't need to. They're really rather unmissable* in the middle of town. Although one presumes such places must have fallen victim to the economic crisis as much as anyone else, since they explicitly advertise the availability of... free wi-fi. Fortunately, there's a meme for that.
* As in, "you can't fail to notice their existence" rather than, "they're the best thing in Prague, you must go at once, take my car !"
But I digress. What was I babbling about ? Oh, right, apartments ! We rejected the Academy's flat, because even a cursory Google search revealed many fully furnished apartments in better locations, for a similar price. But of course, the devil's in the details...
The second place we saw was absolutely great, apart from being on the 4th floor without a lift (5th if your're American). Actually that sounds awful already. There would also have been a furnished kitchen but not much more than that. Someone else - obviously an avid fitness fanatic - took it the next day.
The third place wasn't awful, but was overly-furnished. Converting the living room into a second bedroom would have been quite a bit of work, plus there was no fridge. And the landlady* had a "no parties" policy.
* Who was also the owner of the building. This seems very common in Prague that huge apartment blocks are owned by individuals, who live there, and not giant faceless corporations.
Number 4 was oh so very, very close. Again, lots of room, fully furnished. Owner definitely not one with a thing against parties. But here there was a single fatal flaw : one bedroom could only be accessed by going through another. Awkward !
We visited number 5 while it was still a building site, and talked directly with the owner of the building who was also the head of the construction company. It was gigantic - 96 sq m - and very reasonably priced, but unfurnished. Well, it had an oven, a dishwasher, and a bathroom, but that does not equate to being partrly furnished in my mind. "Oh, I don't have to fit my own shower ? How convenient !" - I think not.
Number 6 was crazy-expensive (price of utility bills isn't always advertised) box a few minutes from the castle. We wouldn't have saved anything by sharing at that price, plus we'd have had far less space each than renting separately.
Seventh time lucky - a large, 85 sq m flat in Karlin. Two large adjacent rooms, well soundproofed, a decent sized kitchen, about 20-30m walk from the city center. Fully-furnished kitchen and living/bedrooms room with all the basics : beds, wardrobes, sofas. Voilá.
Keen-eyed viewers may spot the Arecibo poster (signed by members of staff) which is given pride of place above the T.V. I still haven't worked out what to do with the amazon gift voucher, although maybe that will be easier now that I have an address. Unfortunately this is not a proper address, because the letterboxes aren't big enough for packages. One day I'll live somewhere so incredibly sophisticated that I can get boxes delivered to my door...
Also on display are my crossbow, hanging on the wall, and Swiss horn, in front of the T.V. I lost most of the ammunition for the crossbow at a pool party, but there's plenty left. The target on the wall comes from Prague Castle. The horn is epic, as we proved during the great Alpine expedition to Skyrim.
The downsides ? The bathroom is teeny-tiny and there's only a shower. There is only one toilet. The laundry room has only a rather small, extremely slow washing machine, no dryer. But since I'm not living in a sauna any more, the need for showering fifty-seven times a day is less pressing. Nor do I have some weird laundry fetish, so really there's nothing to complain about.
So far the property agency haven't given cause for complaint. The boiler broke on the first weekend, but it was fixed on the following Monday (which is good, because now it's -13 C outside). They found us some extra furniture and might have even more. Internet was installed by O2 within the space of a week. A trip to Tesco restored my British superpower of the ability to make tea (i.e. I bought a kettle), and thus all is well with the world.
* Metaphorically speaking.
** With one unfortunate exception.
Not so, it seems, in Prague. To save money, I opted to share with the even-newer postdoc. An undoubtedly sound economic decision, but one which does make things rather complicated. There's no shortage of places to live, but finding one which ticks all the boxes was damned hard. In the interval, I had to sleep rough on the streets, a.k.a. the very nice guest room at the institute.
Strangely, although the Academy of Sciences owns several apartments, they're not particularly cheap. Nor do they currently offer anywhere particularly suitable for singles. My 50 sq m house was considered tiny and/or cute in Puerto Rico, but having seen the 80 sq m place offered by the Academy, I can't imagine what I'd do with all that space. Set up an animal sanctuary ? A small opium farm, perhaps ? Run a very small brothel ? I think not.
 |
| Ask our hooker for heroin ! |
* As in, "you can't fail to notice their existence" rather than, "they're the best thing in Prague, you must go at once, take my car !"
The second place we saw was absolutely great, apart from being on the 4th floor without a lift (5th if your're American). Actually that sounds awful already. There would also have been a furnished kitchen but not much more than that. Someone else - obviously an avid fitness fanatic - took it the next day.
The third place wasn't awful, but was overly-furnished. Converting the living room into a second bedroom would have been quite a bit of work, plus there was no fridge. And the landlady* had a "no parties" policy.
* Who was also the owner of the building. This seems very common in Prague that huge apartment blocks are owned by individuals, who live there, and not giant faceless corporations.
Number 4 was oh so very, very close. Again, lots of room, fully furnished. Owner definitely not one with a thing against parties. But here there was a single fatal flaw : one bedroom could only be accessed by going through another. Awkward !
We visited number 5 while it was still a building site, and talked directly with the owner of the building who was also the head of the construction company. It was gigantic - 96 sq m - and very reasonably priced, but unfurnished. Well, it had an oven, a dishwasher, and a bathroom, but that does not equate to being partrly furnished in my mind. "Oh, I don't have to fit my own shower ? How convenient !" - I think not.
Number 6 was crazy-expensive (price of utility bills isn't always advertised) box a few minutes from the castle. We wouldn't have saved anything by sharing at that price, plus we'd have had far less space each than renting separately.
Seventh time lucky - a large, 85 sq m flat in Karlin. Two large adjacent rooms, well soundproofed, a decent sized kitchen, about 20-30m walk from the city center. Fully-furnished kitchen and living/bedrooms room with all the basics : beds, wardrobes, sofas. Voilá.
Keen-eyed viewers may spot the Arecibo poster (signed by members of staff) which is given pride of place above the T.V. I still haven't worked out what to do with the amazon gift voucher, although maybe that will be easier now that I have an address. Unfortunately this is not a proper address, because the letterboxes aren't big enough for packages. One day I'll live somewhere so incredibly sophisticated that I can get boxes delivered to my door...
Also on display are my crossbow, hanging on the wall, and Swiss horn, in front of the T.V. I lost most of the ammunition for the crossbow at a pool party, but there's plenty left. The target on the wall comes from Prague Castle. The horn is epic, as we proved during the great Alpine expedition to Skyrim.
The camera is held at a jaunty angle because the mountain is like, reallly steep.
There aren't any mountains on view here. Instead, a small balcony overlooks the utterly non-descript space between the apartment blocks. There's also a kitchen, because kitchens are generally reckoned to be a good thing.
The downsides ? The bathroom is teeny-tiny and there's only a shower. There is only one toilet. The laundry room has only a rather small, extremely slow washing machine, no dryer. But since I'm not living in a sauna any more, the need for showering fifty-seven times a day is less pressing. Nor do I have some weird laundry fetish, so really there's nothing to complain about.
So far the property agency haven't given cause for complaint. The boiler broke on the first weekend, but it was fixed on the following Monday (which is good, because now it's -13 C outside). They found us some extra furniture and might have even more. Internet was installed by O2 within the space of a week. A trip to Tesco restored my British superpower of the ability to make tea (i.e. I bought a kettle), and thus all is well with the world.
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