Things I have noticed #2

Way back in the mid-1980s, BBC television broadcast an excellent six episode drama Edge of Darkness. The story surrounds an investigation by a Yorkshire police officer, brilliantly portrayed by Bob Peck, into the murder of his daughter, an anti-nuclear campaigner played by Joanne Whalley. I will not spoil any more of the plot, lest you get the chance to watch this tense political thriller.

The series' director, Martin Campbell, recently remade the story, giving it the full Hollywood treatment. This movie version stars Mel Gibson and is re-set in America. If only these were the only changes. Whereas the original was a gentle paced exploration of secret governments and government secrets, judging by the trailers and the movie poster, the remake is a gung-ho action thriller. Needless to say I will not be going to the local cineplex to see it; rather, I will watch the 1985 classic version, and I suggest that you do the same.

I have to wonder what we might see next, now that the Hollywood studios have completely run out of original ideas: a remake of The Beiderbecke Affair as a soporific romantic comedy set in Chicago, starring Ben Stiller and Sarah Silverman?

Environmentalism and space exploration

I must admit that I let out a cynical laugh when I heard about the failed launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory yesterday. Apparently a faring on the Taurus XL rocket failed to separate properly and the spacecraft failed to reach orbit. The launch vehicle and its payload landed in the Indian Ocean near Antarctica. The observatory was intended to gather data on atmospheric carbon dioxide and around the globe, but all the mission achieved was to further damage the environment.

While I am sure that there is value in an empirical analysis of the global carbon cycle to see whether there are any associated changes in climate, I do wonder whether that value outweighs the monetary cost of the project and the damage to the environment caused by rocket launches. Taking a Space Shuttle launch as a case in point, whereas only a small proportion of the exhaust from the rockets is made up of greenhouse gases, there is a significant release of carbon monoxide that may react in the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide. We could add to this the amount of greenhouse gas released as part of the construction and refurbishment processes.

I am sure that NASA and the other space agencies around the world are busy implementing green measures. Nevertheless, I do wonder why environmentalists do not question the need for space exploration as vocally as they question the need for jet air travel and the use of motor cars. Personally I would prefer that the money was spent dealing with diseases like malaria and ensuring that everyone on Earth had access to clean water.

Perhaps Marx was right after all

All this talk of an imminent financial crisis on an unprecedented scale has made me wonder whether Karl Marx might have been right all along. The financial meltdown certainly makes a change from that other popular discourse of the apocalypse - the melting ice-caps and other environmentalist doomsaying - but maybe it could be good news. Well, good news for anyone who would welcome the final collapse of capitalism due to the stresses caused by its own internal contradictions.

For those of you who like a challenge, here is an excerpt from Marx's Das Kapital, which strikes a chord with me when I come to look at the market shenanigans and economic hocus-pocus that has resulted in the vast majority of us having to tighten our belts (again).

The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the purpose of production; that production is only production for capital and not vice versa, the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers. The limits within which the preservation and self-expansion of the value of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperisation of the great mass of producers can alone move — these limits come continually into conflict with the methods of production employed by capital for its purposes, which drive towards unlimited extension of production, towards production as an end in itself, towards unconditional development of the social productivity of labour.

The means — unconditional development of the productive forces of society — comes continually into conflict with the limited purpose, the self-expansion of the existing capital. The capitalist mode of production is, for this reason, a historical means of developing the material forces of production and creating an appropriate world-market and is, at the same time, a continual conflict between this its historical task and its own corresponding relations of social production.

[Source: Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Part III, Ch. 15]

Some of you will no doubt point out that Marxism has been proven wrong by the Soviet venture and by other communist states, all of which could be seen as palpable failures. Nevertheless, I could make the case that each such regime deviated from Marx's vision in some way, or indeed that the required conditions were not in place for a global transition from capitalism to socialism as the mode of production.

Then again, perhaps Christmas has arrived just in time. After all, it is the annual consumer-hogfest during which we buy plastic tat that we don't need. A proportion of which we give to people we don't like in order to celebrate an event that many of us don't believe in. So if you want to contradict Marx and my good self, make sure that you spend lots of money over the next few weeks and boost the economy, or at least maintain its life support system.

Pedantry Top Three

Since I returned to higher education I have become something of a pedant or, as some people prefer to suggest, a language fascist. This may be because I am having to pay more attention to what I write, knowing that my compositions will be scrutinised, rather than merely read. Of course, if I am going to demand such high standards of myself then I am damn well going to treat my fellows in the same manner: a sort of perversion of the Golden Rule - 'do unto others as you do unto yourself.'

Consequently I have joined the legion of hand-wringers bemoaning the destruction of the English language. Above and beyond the increasing usage of SMS style language on the Internet, which has always been acronym heavy anyway, I get angry about the misuse of certain words. As such, I find the following five cases particularly annoying...

1) Less/Fewer
This is such a common mistake that it will probably not be seen as such in the near future. For those who don't know, you should use 'fewer' when you are talking about things that you count individually, such as apples, baboons or Californians; you should use 'less' for things that you measure or otherwise perceive as a continuum, like water, time and colours (as in 'less yellow').

2) Literally
Earlier this year, I was listening to a discussion about American policy towards Cuba on the radio. The presenter was interviewing a university professor about the subject during which the esteemed academic said something along the lines of "the American government literally has a strangle-hold on the Cuban people." Did he seriously expect us to believe that U.S. politicians and bureaucrats spent their time on that Caribbean island with hands clasped around the necks of the populace? I know some people accept that 'literally' can be used mean 'in effect' and to add emphasis to a statement, but that rather undermines the proper usage of the word.

3) Imply/Infer
This is something of an old chestnut and I include it because other language pedants would be let down had I not. So, for the record, the speaker/writer implies; the listener/reader infers. It really is as simple as that. As far as I know, this distinction is not being undermined in the same manner as the other two cases I mentioned, but it is surely only a matter of time.

C U SN 4 MR RNTS N STF

p.s. I realise that by posting this rant I have opened myself up to űber-pedants leaving comments correcting my grammar and punctuation. I look forward to seeing such criticisms because I am willing to learn and become a greater language fascist than I am already.

Rick Rolling

Stop it now!
It is not big and it is not clever - and it is certainly not ironic.

Please note that this site is going through a redesign again. I am playing with transparency at the moment. Watch this space.

Plagiarism

This is my first proper post (or should that be 'rant'?) on this blog since I decided to change its direction... and it is a doozy...

I have discovered the first case of what looks like plagiarism of one of my posts. Last week I wrote a post as part of my 'On this day in history' series on my Modern Historian blog about the launch of the fateful Apollo 13 mission to the Moon. While I was chain dropping entrecards I noticed a post on another blog that bore a striking resemblance to mine, but there was no link crediting me as the original writer. On closer inspection I noticed that the poster had made a few cosmetic changes to the text.

Here is the text of my post:
On April 11th 1970, A Saturn V rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the crew of the Apollo 13, James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise, on what was intended to be the third manned landing on the Moon.

Two days into the mission a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that damaged the spacecraft's oxygen supply and electrical systems. The astronauts and ground crew faced a race against time to find a solution to the life threatening situation and achieve a return to Earth.

By using the Lunar Module as a 'lifeboat', reducing energy consumption and making repairs to the oxygen supply system the spacecraft managed to splashdown safely on 17th April.

This is the text from the other blog:
April 11th 1970 — A Saturn V rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise, on what was meant to be the third manned landing on the Moon.

Two days into the mission a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that damaged the spacecraft’s oxygen supply and electrical systems. The astronauts and ground crew ran a race against time to find a solution to the life threatening situation.

By using the Lunar Excursion Module as a lifeboat and making repairs to the oxygen supply system, the crew managed to splashdown safely on April 17th.

The blogger has since changed their post so that it no longer resembles mine so much. This happened after I messaged them via entrecard (because I couldn't leave a comment on their post) to point out that it was customary to credit the original post with a link, otherwise it looks like plagiarism.

As it was, they decided to make a counter-accusation that I was the plagiarist in the amended post. They assert 'some sentences and sentence fragments in the complaining blogger’s post were lifted word for word from' the Case Western Reserve University astronomy site (their emphasis).

Of course, this is simply not the case. A quick read through my post and the information on the CWRU site will show the falsity of this claim. The fact is that I used the information on the NASA site that I mentioned within my post, and even then I composed original text and didn't copy and paste anything from it.

I had not seen the site that I am accused of plagiarising until today. Although, it is worth noting that if you search on the first paragraph of my post in Google then the site I am accused of plagiarising appears after my post at the top of the list.

It is also interesting to note that the blogger still hasn't included a link to my original post so that the readers of that site can judge the validity of the accusations for themselves. Admittedly, the blogger's failure to mention my blog means that the accusations are aimed at an anonymous party.

This whole episode has made me think about the business of authorship on the web. I have absolutely no problem with anyone quoting my sends verbatim, as long as I get some credit. There are many hard-working blog authors out there who share the fruits of their labour with the world, and there are many bloggers who simply regurgitate the work of others or just post the latest cool video they have found on YouTube.

So, I say a hats off to those bloggers who create original texts (you know who you are) and a salacious gesture to those that leech the work of others.