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Tag Archives: Liam Trim
Battle of the Summer Blockbusters: Rise of the Planet of the Apes vs. Super 8
It's been a while since I went to the cinema. But it feels much longer than it actually is. That's because it's summer blockbuster season and every week a new big gun toting production swaggers into town. Stay away from the saloon for too long and you'll have nothing to talk about with your fellow drinkers because they're engrossed in conversation about things you haven't seen or experienced. Sure you can try to chip in with your recycled opinions but you feel like a cheat. And most of all you feel jealous.
Some films I would have liked to have seen had already been EXPELLIARMUSED! from multiplexes by a certain boy wizard's refusal to die quietly and works of art like The Smurfs and Mr Popper's Penguins. I know that later in August I want to see Cowboys and Aliens, One Day and the film of the TV series that defined my generation, The Inbetweeners Movie, so I figured I better catch up before then.
At the time of writing Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Super 8 have exactly the same score on Rotten Tomatoes, with 82% each. They also have identical ratings from numerous respected reviewers, including four stars apiece from Empire Magazine. Because of this it was completely logical of me to decide to watch both films and report back with absolute certainty on which is the best blockbuster of the summer, as clearly the others and those yet to be released, can be discounted.
First up then at 11.30 in Screen 10 was Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I couldn't quite believe I'd paid to see this as I walked in. I'd never really enjoyed the previous films from what I could remember of them. I was also genuinely baffled by the growing chorus of support for the motion capture technology used to create the rebellious cheeky monkeys. The first trailer I saw for the film helped me decide in a nanosecond not to make the effort to see it. It looked like a naff CGI fest with a ridiculous concept and some awful lines of dialogue. And there was the sickening clumsiness of that double "of the" in the title.
I was persuaded to give Rise a watch by the film reviewing community online and I now have a newfound trust in them. There's no doubt that this will be the runaway surprise success, at least critically, of the summer, if not the whole year. It's not what you expect it to be and yet it delivers what summer audiences are after. By the end of its 105 minute runtime I was converted from a suspicious sceptic into someone salivating at the thought of the sequels.
It's hardly a spoiler to say that the apes rise up in this film and that events begin to take place that will lead to the "Planet of the Apes". As other reviewers have pointed out though, what's really interesting and remarkable about this film is how we get to the final twenty minutes of solidly entertaining, action packed revolt. The climax is explosive and plays out on a hugely impressive scale, with stunning special effects and fresh ideas for set pieces. But the drama of this action comes from the build-up in the rest of the film.
It charts the life of Caesar, an ape played via motion capture by Andy Serkis, a veteran of the technology after his iconic roles as Gollum and King Kong. Serkis is unquestionably the real star of this production, despite other big names like James Franco, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto and Harry Potter's Tom Felton orbiting Caesar's central story. The effects are vastly improved from the initial trailer that underwhelmed me. Facial expressions and movements are so lifelike that despite the lack of dialogue, indeed perhaps partly because of its absence, the scenes amongst the apes with no human interference are some of the most intense and engaging in the entire movie, well handled by director Rupert Wyatt.
Caesar is the offspring of an ape called Brighteyes that responded to an experimental cure to Alzheimer's. However she was killed when she rampaged, in a maternal rage, around the headquarters of the pharmaceutical company James Franco's character, Will, works for. Will took the baby ape home so it could avoid the cull ordered by his profit minded superior played by David Oyelowo. He cares for Caesar, practically as a son, for a number of years at home, where he notices increasing signs of a heightened intelligence passed
on from the effects of Will's drug on his mother.
I make it all sound dull. But a bizarrely convincing and charming family dynamic, which just happens to feature an ape, begins to form. Conveniently, for plot purposes at least, Will's Dad has Alzheimer's. Encouraged by Caesar's progress Will treats his father with the drug, which cures him in the blink of an eye; for a while at least.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is carefully constructed. It helps its structure that the conclusion is clearly defined from the off but it could still have been a flop. Instead a movie with some ludicrous components and some walking pace, stereotypical acting from most of the humans, including Franco at times, manages to be clever, funny and incredibly involving. The apes really are the key pieces of the puzzle, with Caesar a complex character in his own right who looks certain to remain compelling as he tackles rival apes (introduced here) in a power struggle in the sequels. There are so many interesting directions this series could follow, after ditching all the bad aspects of the original franchise, in favour of character based thrills with some genuinely insightful social commentary on big themes.
After a pause for a Greggs baguette and sausage roll, I was back at the cinema by 14.45 for Super 8 in Screen 1. I invested in popcorn because I'd been told for months now that Super 8 was getting back to what movies should be about, so I thought I'd better go the whole hog and sit back in anticipation. If I'd enjoyed Planet of the Apes I was going to love this.
In case you've been living in a secret underwater kingdom for ages, Super 8 follows a group of friends making a zombie film who witness a train derailing in spectacular fashion. They are then embroiled in weird goings on and Air Force conspiracies in their local sleepy town, as something appears to run wild. Oh and it's pretty much a Steven Spielberg film, executive produced by the man himself and helmed by JJ Abrams.
The start works well, as most critics have said. Well at least it makes sense. You can't help but be sucked in by the young cast and fascinated by their relationships. Joe is the focus of the story. His mother has died in an industrial accident and he barely sees his father, the Deputy Sheriff. His fat friend is making a zombie movie for a film festival with the help of a kid who likes fireworks, a shy and lanky lead and Joe's makeup skills. Joe begins to fall for the beautiful Alice when they manage to recruit her to act in their masterpiece.
Then there's that gigantic train crash. It was jaw dropping stuff at times but did anyone else think there were a few too many random explosions and balls of flame? I'm not complaining…well I am actually. Aspects of the crash didn't feel that real. And as for the rest of the film, JJ's trademark mystery is teased out too long, and when we finally see the monster it is a disappointment. The threat of the alien is never powerful enough to match the fabulous group dynamic between the friends.
Super 8 feels like the film Abrams wanted to make when he was younger. It's sharply executed but more than a little messy and dare I say a tad immature? For all its influences it feels as though a particularly talented youngster is behind the camera at points, with a huge budget to burn compared to the DIY methods of the kids. Just like the kids making their own project, it's as if JJ thought of the premise and the lives of the characters in detail but couldn't decide where to take them.
So let's compare and contrast. Both Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Super 8 have creatures (irrelevant) and post-credit sequences (even more irrelevant). In one film the humans disappoint and in the other the beast. If Rise had the human heart of Super 8 it would be the film of the summer. If Super 8 had the coherent structure of Rise to go with its incredibly moving moments, it too could have been one of the year's best films. As it is they are both simply very good and worth seeing.
Sorry to end so abruptly, rather like Super 8. But if I had to choose one I'd go Apes.
Tagged Andy Serkis, article, blockbuster, cinema, comparison, experience, feature, Flickering Myth, heart, hype, James Franco, JJ Abrams, Liam Trim, motion capture, Review, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, summer, Super 8, surprise, Twitter
Mrt'sblog: A progress report
It's about a year since I fully embraced blog writing. I was waiting to start a Gap Year and intended to travel. My friends were about to leave for university. I needed a distraction and I wanted to concentrate on doing something I loved. Hence the growth of this blog.
I didn't manage to travel. I still intend to and desperately want to. Perhaps I'll take another Gap Year a few years down the line or have a truly adventurous and globetrotting summer. There are so many places I'm yet to see, from European capitals to America and Tokyo. I'll get there one day. That's what everyone says I know but hopefully I mean what I say. If I won the EuroMillions I'd go tomorrow. But I might need to start entering first.
Travel writing would certainly be a new challenge and the idea excites me. Capturing the personalities of people in the crowds, as well as the places themselves, is an appealing task. It requires great skills which I would have to develop. Even if my academic brain has been neglected, I do feel as though I have learnt some things, acquired some skills, over the past twelve months.
I'm not sure how I stumbled into reviewing so regularly. I suppose I followed the old saying about taking opportunities that present themselves to you. Reviewing films, sometimes TV or books, is certainly not all I want to do. I want to create my own stories and sketches, perhaps scripts or plays. I haven't focused enough on that desire.
If I take a glass half full view though, I have immersed myself in storytelling. Hopefully this has taught me more about it, as I absorb the bad, the mediocre and exemplary films that I review. Some of this may well rub off beneficially when I do come back to seriously contemplating my own writing. And of course I have written a sketch that will be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in a few weeks. I could never have imagined such a satisfying and exciting end to my year of writing development.
The Fringe sketch is a good example of how much I have achieved.
But it's probably just human nature that I dwell more often on the negatives. I
have not read enough, of either new fiction or classics I should've read, in
philosophy, history or literature. I feel that I have not improved enough as a
writer. I have learned that there are deadlines to meet, even with the room of
freelance work, but too often I make do with something I know isn't my best
work. I still finish pieces knowing I could have done so much better. I do not
have enough of a personal stamp or brand either.
This probably accounts for the poor viewing figures of Mrt'sblog. Despite the increasing success of sites like Flickering Myth, which I write for, my personal blog continues to remain unseen by most. There was a period when figures rocketed but then they sunk rapidly back to depressing levels. I have over a hundred Twitter followers these days and Twitter certainly has its networking benefits. But it has not had an impact on my blog stats. I can't help being frustrated by this.
I remain torn between serious articles and funny articles, pieces about film and pieces about literature, opinions on football and opinions on politics. I have struggled to link my interests and to continue all of them separately, resulting probably in average output in terms of quality and frequency in every department. I have, as I've mentioned, enjoyed some success writing elsewhere though.
On political issues I have written some of my highest quality pieces, in my view, for Demo Critic. On film I have settled into contributing regularly for Flickering Myth, helping the site's strong grow in a small way. Football pieces I have written have done tremendously well for Caught Offside and brought in the most traffic to this site. And this week I have started writing for Blog Critics (all of these sites are linked in my Blog Roll).
I couldn't have imagined doing that well a year ago. But now I want to do better, just as time is running out. I will not be able to write as regularly as I finally head off myself to university. I know I have to get some serious reading done, simply to get back in the groove of devouring books and to exercise intelligent muscles, before the end of September. I will not stop blogging but it may at times have to take a backseat. I certainly won't stop writing for Flickering Myth but again, it might be less frequent.
Despite my niggling regrets this saddens me. Writing can be incredibly lonely and daunting and disheartening. It often goes without praise or reward, unlike when you do well at school or on a pitch. But I enjoy it more than anything. Watching films and sharing my thoughts on them would be an amazing way to make a living, or even just a fantastic sideline. I've experienced the reality of writing and I still love it. I might have failed to achieve certain things on this year out but I have a vague plan for the future. Write, write, write. Move to London, eventually get a satisfying and interesting job. But keep writing. Write articles and all sorts of other stuff. Combine the lot.
This post is not a goodbye but simply a heads up. It will also serve as a reminder to myself. If you do read regularly I thank you wholeheartedly, it means a great deal. Things will wind down here as I head off to read, study and be a student menace to society ( yup don't worry I will have fun too). But Mrt'sblog isn't going anywhere and it will still archive everything I write elsewhere.
Tagged blogging, Flickering Myth, Gap Year, Liam Trim, Mrt'sblog, read, reflection, Twitter, writer, writing
Cameron's crafted call to arms lacked clarity and substance
David Cameron's speech to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham yesterday was an accomplished rallying cry and an impassioned response to his critics. Of all the party leader's speeches during this conference season there is no doubt that Cameron's was the most polished and technically the best. He stood out as a Prime Minister and appeared like a leader, completing a transformation from head of the Opposition to the most experienced politician in Britain. He sought to counter Ed Miliband's claim that Labour were the optimists now with his own stirring note of idealism. However in doing so he once again missed an opportunity to spell out his message clearly to the country, opting instead for reams of empty rhetoric that made excellent sound bites but often contradicted each other.
Most strikingly Cameron again tried to explain what he meant by the "Big Society" and again failed catastrophically to render it a reality accessible to voters. In his haste to counter the new Labour leader's charge of pessimism, Cameron swung dangerously into the realms of wild over optimism. In the speech he simultaneously claimed that his coalition government was both realistic about what it could achieve in power and optimistic about what government could achieve in partnership with the people. In principle this all sounds lovely of course. Of course government should concede it cannot solve everything by decree and ask cooperation from its people, whilst also setting high standards of achievement. In reality though Cameron has no credible claim to the titles of both realist and optimist. He must choose one or the other to define his leadership. He let the tone of his speech tip into an unrealistic optimism, probably due to that desire to stop the Labour revolution in its tracks. He blasted the "cynics" who would pour scorn on his "Big Society" rhetoric and indeed it was a clever ploy from the Prime Minister to call on the people to come to the aid of the nation, with grand, fluffy, empty rhetoric, and offer nothing concrete. Those who criticise Cameron's speech for its lack of substance will be easily labelled as non-believers, as statists who do not trust the brilliance of the British people. Cameron therefore tried to lay a trap for opponents of the "Big Society". But there is a reason I continue to put the "Big Society" in inverted commas, and it's the same reason voters and indeed Conservatives distrust the policy; good idea in principle, but it'll never work in practice.
Again Cameron failed to articulate what the "Big Society" would actually mean in terms of government policy, besides him praising voluntary organisations in speeches and urging everyone to go out and get involved. Rhetoric and the lifting of restrictions alone will not drastically change people's behaviour and therefore the country. The kind of society Cameron claims to want, one that rewards contribution and discourages excessive consumption, simply cannot happen without at least some prompting by central government. It is also confusing that Cameron should place such an emphasis on contribution and consumption, areas that would be better suited to alterations in tax policy, when his government has vowed to tackle the deficit predominantly through spending cuts. On the other hand Cameron did make it clear he wanted a state that was better run, more powerful and within the means of government. Again this is sensible in principle, but shockingly for a government claiming to be the "greenest ever", Cameron simply refused to utter the word "sustainability".
To have made sustainability a key theme of the speech would have given it greater direction and purpose and clarity. It should also be made a more important plank of his government's policy agenda. At the moment it is an area that lies wide open for Ed Miliband's "new generation" to seize upon and exploit. Cameron's deficit slashing philosophy, he was at pains to point out, was not simply ideological but a necessity. However the public is already convinced that the cuts, whichever party implements them, will be in some way driven by that party's ideology. An ideology containing the idea of sustainability would be far easier to justify than the abstract notion of the "Big Society".
Cameron also hinted at a promise that after the pain there will be rewards. He should have placed much greater emphasis on his long term goals and how action now would lead to sustainable rewards in future, but he was perhaps deterred by the short term nature of the coalition. He was also perhaps put off of any mention of "sustainability" because a truly sustainable recovery, that really could end "boom and bust" as Gordon Brown once rashly promised, would require substantial investment now to ensure growth, energy supplies and long lasting jobs. Cameron is simply not prepared to take the gambles required of the "greenest government ever". His brush with the backlash of child benefits cuts this week has reinforced to him that it is difficult to justify changes of policy, particularly from those promised in manifestos, to the media and electorate. He will therefore not be seen to spend now, even if that spending is necessary because of what he has previously said. So despite the obvious passion and idealism of his speech, his actions as Prime Minister suggest that Cameron is happy for the "Big Society" to remain a vague enigma, which will inspire some, baffle many and prove largely immune to damaging criticism, as critics will remain unsure as to what it is they object to. And if the Prime Minister was truly serious about lifting the burden of debt from our children then he would also use the shield of coalition to act in the "national interest" now to avert a legacy of unalterable climate change for them to inherit.
Tagged 6th October 2010, abstract, accomplished, benefit, Big, Birmingham, British, call to arms, Cameron, Chancellor, change, child, clarity, class, Climate, Coalition, Conference, Conservative, crafted, crisis, cut, cynic, debt, deficit, Democrat, DemoCritic, Ed, electorate, Energy, fluffy, generation, idealism, interest, Labour, Liam Trim, Liberal, long, middle, Miliband, national, new, optimism, Parliament, Party, pessimism, policy, polish, Politics, Prime Minister, realism, reduction, revolution, rhetoric, seize, Slogan, Society, speech, statist, style, substance, sustainability, term, together, Tory, UK, voters, Wednesday
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
This is a truly fantastic book full of profound, witty, clever and exciting musings. Each tale lasts around a couple of pages and every one offers an incredibly concise exploration of huge questions and ideas that have always concerned humanity and some raised specifically by the modern age. The brilliance of some of the ideas here warrant novels and series of films in themselves but Eagleman deftly crafts them in so few words that the debate will continue in your mind for hours afterward, filling in the gaps. I need say little else except buy this book, it's the sort of writing that feels so true that it must have been said before, but here is said originally and skilfully in a way that can really affect your life. It's also possible to read again and again and turn to any page and it will simultaneously be comprehensible and unfathomable. Stephen Fry's endorsement is on the cover if mine is rightly doubted! But needless to say it's the best thing I've read so far this summer. Below is my own attempt at an interpretation of a possible afterlife, in the style of Sum, but written with less enthralling and concise expression. Enjoy, but do not let it put you off the book!
When we die there is a Heaven. There is also a Hell, but you'll be glad to know God is understanding and compassionate enough to hand out the punishments and rewards based upon a morality close to our own. Therefore the odd impure thought and vindictive act are overlooked and the ultimate punishment, refined over eternity, is reserved for the murderers and rapists. All of this is gently explained to you in the soft tones of a wise old sailor, moments after you are plucked from a perfectly calm indigo sea.
You felt many pairs of hands on you as you were rescued from the depths but now only you and he sit on deck, quite alone. All around vast swathes of blue reach in every direction, interrupted only by what must be distant land masses. You listen as an invisible sun's tropical gaze warms, boils and snatches the beads of water from your skin. The Almighty, he says, feels He made a mistake during creation. Humanity was crafted in God's image but His decision to encase us in physical bodies without adequate means of interaction was effectively torture for minds of divine form. The process could not be undone but a means of satisfactory compensation was devised and placed here in the afterlife in the space between death and paradise.
In mortal life, the sailor concludes, you may have felt isolated and distant, even from those you loved and who professed love in return. Trapped in their tombs of bone and flesh people were islands and could never truly touch. Before passing on through the gates of Heaven the sailor may grant you the opportunity to explore one island representing a person you knew; containing everything they ever were or could have been.
The vast majority of the recently deceased think this a marvellous idea and believer or not in their mortal lives, praise the empathy and wisdom of God. Most people also know exactly whose island they wish to explore, although some change their mind several times during the course of the journey. Some spend a great deal of time, there is no limit set, wondering whether to discover the truths of their wife, their friend, their father or their teenage love. The wise however react less positively, recoiling in fear, trembling, shedding tears fuelled by dangerous unknowns not happy, grateful emotional release. None choose to proceed directly to the gates of paradise though, even those that fear the worst. No one makes them pick an island but to enter eternity with regrets, paradise or not, would be to unleash demons upon the bliss.
So the sailor drops you at your chosen destination and you dash ashore free to explore, while the boat waits patiently to transport you to eternal happiness. Much of what you find you may already know but there are also surprises, good and bad. You may weep at their unfulfilled dreams at the foot of a palm tree, smile at memories too hazy for them to share with you glimpsed in a rock pool and bawl in betrayal as their true, unblemished view of you is uncovered in the sand. You might glow inside as you see the essence of them carried away by a monkey in the shape of a banana or feel totally alive and wanted as you wade in the stream of their passions. You'll hack your way through thick undergrowths of superficial details only to stop now and then, caught off guard by an obvious one you overlooked or temporarily forgot. You'll come to know each and every track and memorise vividly each detail of the clearing dedicated to you; its light, shadow, flowers and mud. There is no rush, eternity will always be there.
And yet no matter how complete the exploration no one leaves their chosen island. The gates of Heaven are glued shut and behind them God despairs in lonely squalor. His creations, not content with the total truth granted them, seek again and again the truth they wanted to find. The Angels, unemployed and wasting away, urge the Lord to erase the ocean of islands, to simply take souls as He used to and still does so for Hell. But the chorus of voices reaching Him daily convince Him that to undo the islands would be pointless, as without them He cannot claim to provide paradise.
Tagged after, Afterlife, afterlives, by, creative, David, David Eagleman, death, Eagleman, explore, from, Islands, Liam Trim, life, love, man, original, philosophy, physics, Ray Bradbury, relationships, sci-fi, Stephen Fry, Sum, Tales, The, writing
A Two Ed Race?
The Labour leadership contest has a long way left to run but two candidates in particular showed the enthusiasm and dynamism required to lead the Opposition this week, in the wake of the coalition's "austerity" budget.
Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have responded to the Emergency Budget delivered by George Osborne with just the right mix of indignation, outrage and vision for Labour voters and indeed the public in general. Balls claimed that he had urged Gordon Brown to rule out a VAT rise in the election campaign, pointed to David Cameron's own comments that it was a regressive tax striking the poor hardest and insisted that if he was calling the shots he would slash the deficit with more taxes on the wealthy. The younger Miliband also, with more reluctance, said he would not have sanctioned a VAT rise and launched an ambitious, progressive call for a graduate tax to replace tuition fees. He was united with Balls in condemning the coalition cuts as ideological, reaching far beyond the measures recommended by financial bodies and Labour's own pledge to halve the deficit in four years. Both men were also silent on how Labour would have achieved such a reduction but the benefits of opposition allow for constant criticism without a great deal of scrutiny, and one landmark policy announcement each from both men was surely enough for one week.
By contrast the long term frontrunner to succeed Gordon Brown, David Miliband, has struggled with the transition from minister to shadow cabinet, from government to party. His response to a Budget hailed as the worst in generations has been far less visible than his younger sibling's in the press. In an article in the Guardian David said the cuts would lead to a lost generation of young people, only to see his brother Ed's policy announcement of a graduate tax snatch this platform from him. In TV appearances since announcing his candidacy the former Foreign Secretary has been hampered by his close connections to both the Brown and Blair administrations, spending his time defending New Labour's record rather than announcing his own plans for the future. This is odd given that his brother was responsible for penning New Labour manifestos and was himself a cabinet minister under Brown, but nevertheless something David has been unable to shake off. In the Commons he has slipped up when debating with Foreign Secretary William Hague, referring to his Conservative opponent as the Shadow minister still. All in all, especially given his past reluctance to challenge for the leadership, David Miliband appears uncomfortable running for leader and only willing to do so as a vehicle to returning to power. His proposed initiatives so far as a leadership candidate are limited to fluffy talk about community action and lack the potency of the two Ed's efforts, who have embraced the opportunities of opposition.
And yet the elder Miliband's weaknesses are also a source of strength. David is the safe bet for Labour party members, the continuity candidate who will not abandon the centrist appeal of New Labour but will also provide a suitably fresh face for the electorate. There are concerns about his lack of people skills, the common touch, the political "X-Factor" but these are balanced by an impressive intellect and competent government experience. His rivals for the Labour leadership may be making short term waves, but these are media attacks primarily aimed at the Liberal Democrats that many within the Labour party will know Conservative advisers are happy about. Ed Miliband's policy move on tuition fees for example, whilst positive and progressive in a sense is also an opportunistic swipe at the Lib Dems whilst they are down, all because they "betrayed" progressive politics with the coalition. I have warned previously on this blog that Labour leadership candidates will be tempted to score cheap points and target the Lib Dem vote and that a more sensible approach, one that promotes fairness in British politics as well as the long term interests of the Labour party, would be to avoid a realignment of the political system that leaves Labour isolated.
Sadly this is the trend of the campaign so far and David Cameron will be gleefully eyeing a second term without Lib Dem restraint if a Labour party emerges that continues to drive Nick Clegg and others into Conservative arms. Ed Miliband is not wrong to seek a replacement to tuition fees and in many ways it is good that he has done so as the Lib Dems withdraw their support for such a policy. However he has made the Lib Dems the enemy unnecessarily and I can only hope that his brother starts proposing popular, progressive policy free of emotional attacks on the Lib Dems . David must up his game to set out his own vision with passion, not just for his party but for potential voters. If he does not do so he may just watch his brother preside over a realignment that sees his party significantly weakened and content with enthusiastic opposition, isolated on the Left, a long way from the ministerial cars he grew so used to.
Tagged 2010, Balls, Britain, Budget, Climate, coaltion, Conseravtive, David Miliband, Democrat, Ed, Energy, Foreign, Labour, leader, leadership, Liam Trim, Liberal, Miliband, Politics, race, rise, Schools, Secretary, VAT
Things can only get better…
Am I the only one that's disappointed? Now I know everyone would have been gutted with England's opening result but the tournament itself has yet to ignite into the vivid festival of football, of entertainment, that we have been promised. I write following Germany's demolition of Australia, the only game with goals galore so far. I am yet to see an entertaining contest that gripped me for ninety minutes.
It is not only disappointment either; some aspects of this World Cup are simply irritating. The opening match was no classic but I forced myself to sit through out of a sense of occasion, only to be repulsed by that blaring soundtrack of horns that has accompanied every game since. The only game in which the ceaseless drone has not spoiled my viewing pleasure was England vs. USA, which I watched at a skewed angle in a bar with the only audible noise from the stadium being the rhythm of England fans' drums. For all I know though the horns may have persisted in the comfort of homes across the nation, without the accompanying chorus of drunken chanting to beat them into submission.
I also pity those who watched it at home and therefore may have actually heard the banal bleating of Adrian Chiles in the ITV studio. Why such a man was fought over and subsequently acquired for ludicrous amounts of money is beyond me. I could just about tolerate his autocue, everyman style on Match of the Day 2. This after all was a highlights show and unless you enter isolation to avoid hearing the scores at the weekend you are aware of the results when you tune in. His dull delivery seemed to matter less then. Live coverage however could do with an injection of occasion and excitement now and again, something Chiles does with all the effectiveness of a damp cloth. I imagine any genuine football fan could do a better job of presenting than him, as he seems to have entered some sort of depression in the absence of One Show co-presenter Christine Bleakely. Someone ought to remind him he's getting paid to watch football at the World Cup! If he's this bleak in South Africa I fear for GMTV when he returns to front their new look breakfast hello.
Other aspects of the broadcasting spoil the purity of the football. For example ITV in particular have a fetish for slow motion, showing not just glorious goals again but the gesticulations of a manager, the expressionless face of a manager or the brandishing of a yellow card again and again and again. Such clips are used not just in-play but again at half-time, eating into the precious seconds of "analysis" squeezed between commercial breaks and Chiles drearily informing us of upcoming unmissable fixtures. The "analysis" is conducted by the likes of Gareth Southgate, another boring character, and Marcel Desailly, whose comments are far from boring but not usually correct; "the midfield needs to sit down on the defence more".
Then there was England's opening performance and the shambles of Clint Dempsey's goal. I have previously defended Capello's handling of the Terry scandal but serious issues remain that should have been ironed out long ago and were not examined in the warm up matches. It is unacceptable that we do not know who our first choice goalkeeper is, our best midfield, our best formation or who will partner Terry out of uncapped Dawson and recently un-retired Jamie Carragher. One of these issues could seriously undermine a team's chances of tournament glory, let alone all of them.
However on the upside things can only improve from here and England's performance was their best in a while, despite the result. The coming days should see better football and better news for England, with Gareth Barry set to return, perhaps freeing up Gerrard to connect with Rooney and lead us to glory? Well, maybe.
Tagged 2010, Adrian Chiles, boring, CaughtOffside, disappointing, dull, England, football, Howler, ITV, Liam Trim, low key, Robert Green, soccer, South Africa, USA, World Cup


text:
Q: How to display Chinese characters in Python? I have an excel file that contains Chinese characters. I imported it to jupyter notebook using Pandas. The code I used is shown below:
data = pd.read_excel('foodjournal.xlsx')
words = data['name'].values.tolist()

I have Chinese characters such as this:
êùçè•≠
What type of encoding is this? How can I display this as a Chinese character?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Step on My Box
It6fL-BbeDpUMiXInPAV_X5k3whl4TidjNM6R1pifTgEW4ZS
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Dodgers prospects
Dodgers notes: Chris Woodward (reportedly) returns, more praise for Dalton Rushing
By Eric Stephen@ericstephen Jan 21, 2023, 5:02am PST
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Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images
The Dodgers are reportedly bringing back Chris Woodward as a special assistant in the front office, per both Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times and Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic.
Woodward was fired as Rangers manager last August 15, in his fourth year on the job. Prior to that, he was third base coach for the Dodgers from 2016-18, and also coached infielders while with Los Angeles.
Per both Harris and Ardaya, among Woodward's duties with the Dodgers will be as a roving infield instructor throughout the organization. Woodward also worked with infielders during his three years in the Mariners organization, including 2013 in the minors and from 2014-15 in Seattle with the big league squad.
More prospect talk
Catcher Dalton Rushing, the Dodgers' second-round draft pick in 2022 who hit .424/.539/.778 in 28 games with Low-A Rancho Cucamonga last season, was one of 15 players profiled by Baseball America who just missed making their top 100 prospect list.
"Few players increased their prospect standing post-draft the way Rushing did," Geoff Pontes wrote. "He fits onto the just missed list and will likely jump on to the Top 100 as soon as a few prospects graduate in the opening weeks of the season."
The Dodgers had six prospects on the Baseball America top 100, and Rushing was ranked as the No. 8 prospect in the system by BA. In between was outfielder Andy Pages at No. 7. The discrepancy can be explained in just how Baseball America compiles its top 100 list.
"Each offseason the prospect team at Baseball America engages in an exhaustive reporting process, polling front office personnel, scouts and analysts throughout the game to provide the most accurate possible prospect rankings," Pontes explained. "What emerges is a wide spectrum of evaluations. Our team whittles down a list of over 200 players to form our Preseason Top 100."
Also in the piece, Pontes listed every prospect to receive a top-150 vote from either the BA team or other sources. In that group were Rushing, Pages, and Josue DePaula, the outfielder who doesn't turn 18 until May and who was ranked the team's No. 7 prospect by Eric Longenhagen at FanGraphs.


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An identifier for an actuator endpoint. Endpoint IDs may contain only letters, numbers '.' and '-'. They must begin with a lower-case letter. Case and syntax characters are ignored when comparing endpoint IDs.
Factory method to create a new EndpointId from a property value.
Factory method to create a new EndpointId of the specified value.
Return a lower-case version of the endpoint ID.
Factory method to create a new EndpointId from a property value. More lenient than of(String) to allow for common "relaxed" property variants.


Домой Slot REVIEWS Cash Coaster Slot – Ready for a Day at the Luna Park?
Cash Coaster Slot – Ready for a Day at the Luna Park?
The iconic Cyclone rollercoaster is the big star in this IGT slot. I don't know if it's childhood nostalgia, the retro feel or the funfair treats but we got so excited about this slot so quickly, it was hard to decide who gets to review it. Free spins, win-both-ways feature and stacked wilds guarantee quick wins and a thrilling ride minus the nausea. The symbols are things you usually find in amusement parks – pretzels, popcorn, ice-cream, cotton candy, snow cone, toffee apples and marquee lights 7s. Add the fairground sound effects and the catchy music and you have it – a fun-packed day in Coney Island and a chance to win much more than a plush toy.
If you'd like to know exactly why you win, our review is going to explain all features of this slot and its options. Find out how to activate the Free Spins and how much you can actually win. Read about our experience with this slot and recommendations for similar games. And if you would rather spin the reels in complete oblivion of the rules and enjoy the atmosphere, just go to LeoVegas and spin away with a great bonus. Either way, you will find what you are looking for.
And if you are the type of person who likes to read the last page of the novel, here's a demo version of the Cash Coaster slot you can play for fun. See if you like the slot without spending a penny. Of course, the thrill of playing for real money is incomparable but at least you will get an idea of how the slot works in a controlled environment.
Now that we've whetted your appetite, it's time to play for some very real money and experience the real joy of winning. One of our top recommended online casino sites, LeoVegas, has included this classic slot in their games portfolio. What's even better is that you will get a tasty bonus on signing up.
Cash Coaster is a 5-reel 30-line video slot that is themed on the popular Coney Island roller coaster. And note that paylines win both ways. Every little detail of the slot brings you closer to the real feeling of being in an amusement park – the funky 1970's music, the shouts 'yeah', the crowd cheering, the mechanical clicking noises. The graphics are somewhat old-school but in a good way. They look vintage, not outdated. There is an autoplay option that lets you choose between 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 automatic spins so you can put your feet up and enjoy the game hands-free. As we already mentioned in the first paragraph there is a free spins feature with sticky wilds, but you will read more about it in the next paragraphs.
The highest paying symbol is the red marquee 7. Get five of those and you will win your bet x500. There is also a blue marquee 7, and regular pink, yellow and green ones. Five sevens of any kind will bring you x40. The tasty snacks pay significantly lower. The toffee apple and the pretzel are the lowest with only x75 for 5 of them. The special symbols are easy to spot. You cannot miss the Wild simply because it literally says 'WILD' in uppercase marquee letters. It substitutes for all other symbols besides the bonus one. The first, last or both reels may become wild so your chances of winning increase immensely. When the stacked wilds are activated a rollercoaster full of screaming people comes down the screen on the first reel and then shooting right up on the last reel. The bonus symbol is a free spins ticket. The free spins feature is comprehensively described in the next paragraph.
READ: Battlestar Galactica Online Slot – a Cylon-Free Review!
Another interesting thing about Cash Coaster is that you cannot choose the paylines, i.e. there are 30 paylines and you bet on all of them. Also, for every spin you take, you will pay additional 10 coins for the feature. The minimum coin size is just a penny, which means that the total bet would be 40 pence. The maximum bet per line is £10, which adds up to £400 per spin. Unfortunately, there is no progressive or guaranteed jackpot, but the maximum payout is really impressive – 25.000.000 times your bet.
To trigger the free spins, you have to land 3 bonus symbols in any positions. After the first two symbols land on the reels, the other two reels speed up the music intensifies, and you cross your fingers. Then a caller will urge you: 'Step right up and pick your ticket booth!' A screen with a red, blue and green booth will appear and you will have to pick one. You can get 4, 5 or 6 free spins. What's even better is that you can win other 4-6 free spins during the Free Spins. Your winnings during the feature are multiplied by 30 and the first and the last reel are always wild. And what's even better is that even during the feature you can win additional 4-6 free spins if you land 3 bonus symbols on reels 2,3 and 4.
When we tested the game, we got to the bonus round pretty often and somehow, we always chose the booth with 6 free tickets. As for the winnings during the feature, they are quite generous because of the x30 multiplier and the sticky wilds. One time we walked away with a 3,000+ win. Other times it's around 900 but this is still a great outcome. To be honest we weren't able to trigger more free spins during the feature but maybe that's just our luck.
Although Cash Coaster has a mobile version, not all online casinos have it in their portfolios. However, our recommended site, LeoVegas, supports this screen format. The game has all the functionalities of its desktop version but one – there's no autoplay button. Also, to adjust your bet you will have to press on a green arrow on the right and another screen will slide. On start up you will be asked whether you would like to turn the sound on or off, which is very convenient.
Overall, we like this slot very much. It is simple and yet fun. Maybe it's not a great choice if you just want to relax spinning the reels because of the noisy sound effects and the plunging roller coaster. But if you are a thrill seeker, that's your game. There are so many ways to win – the sticky wilds, the free spins and the win-both-ways feature give you some really good odds. So, if you are already a fan of this slot, we have more similar games to offer. Bomber Girls have the same vintage look and offer free spins. Britain's Got Talent also offers free spins and has sticky wilds. And finally, in Starburst you can win both ways.
Would we play this slot again? Definitely yes! Are there slots with more features and innovative extras? Of course. But that doesn't mean that from time to time we wouldn't like to go back in time and enjoy a good old simple slot. It's like the 90's classic sitcom Step by Step, you wouldn't necessarily want to watch it every day, but if you spot it on TV you wouldn't change the channel. And, come on, if you are reading this last sentence, why not give it a try at LeoVegas?
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Pilot Error
In an exclusive interview, exiled American Airlines CEO Don Carty reveals how he lost his job—and where the most important employer in the metroplex is headed now.
S. C. Gwynne
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/pilot-error/
From the September 2003 Issue Subscribe
LAST SPRING, WHEN DON CARTY WAS being widely hailed as the man who had saved American Airlines from bankruptcy, I never imagined that I would be standing on the deck of his well-appointed timber lodge in Whistler, British Columbia, talking to him about what had gone so disastrously wrong. As recently as April, the 57-year-old executive held the most important job in the airline industry—CEO of American, the largest airline in the world. He had pulled off a stunning piece of brinkmanship, the largest consensual (not court-ordered) corporate reorganization in the nation's history, and he had done it by leading by example and treating the unionized pilots, flight attendants, and transport workers as partners instead of mortal enemies. He took the unions in, opened his books, and told them more about the company's business than any American manager ever had. Unlike his snarling, combative predecessor, Robert Crandall, in his five-year term as CEO Carty had tried to remake the unforgiving, top-down, hyperagressive culture of American and its parent company, AMR Corporation, into something friendlier and more humane. He was a nice guy. He had tried to do the right thing.
And then, unaccountably, he made one large, irrevocable mistake. In the wake of an emotionally charged labor negotiation over huge wage cuts for American's roughly 100,000 workers, news broke that he had concealed about $40 million in executive perks from the unions, who went nuclear when they found out about it. Critics called Carty's move "shameful" and "appalling." Carty resigned, some reports said, "in disgrace." As a BusinessWeek headline put it, "What was Don Carty thinking?"
I had gone to British Columbia, having been granted the first full interview Carty has given since his resignation, to get some answers to that question—and another one: What is the future of American, to which the economic fate of Dallas, Fort Worth, and North Texas is inextricably linked? As air travelers who go through Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport are constantly reminded, American Airlines is less a company in the traditional sense than a colossal organizing principle, an idea around which enormous numbers of people (24,600 employees in North Texas), enterprises, and cities have coalesced. A bankrupt, or dismantled, American Airlines is not a pretty thought.
"In hindsight, I did make a mistake," Carty said, sounding penitent. "I very publicly apologized. We should have put that information [about the executive perks] out there. I am sad not to be part of the recovery. I am sad that some of my employees think of me as a bad guy." During our interview, he was seated across from me at his dining room table, a friendly, outgoing man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He seemed happy with his new life—and who wouldn't be? These days he hikes the snow-tipped mountains that ring his house, romps with his four-year-old son, drives his nine-year-old stepson to hockey practice, looks after board memberships that range from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to the Dallas Symphony, Southern Methodist University, Dell Computer, and Sears, and fields half a dozen calls a day from headhunters.
The story he told, gazing periodically toward the liquid sunshine cascading down the vertical slopes of Blackcomb Mountain, was nothing like what I had read in the newspapers about his fall. He insisted that his so-called money grab was a media-fueled illusion, and he wanted me to understand, by way of background, the full context of American's perilous run-up to bankruptcy in late 2002 and early 2003. It began with a Biblical concatenation of disasters: "We were already going into a recession in 2001. Then there were the unbelievable events of 9-11, when twenty-three of our employees were killed. Two months later, there was the crash of Flight 587 in Queens. More death, and a crisis of confidence in one of our aircraft types, the A-300. Then, about a month later, the shoe-bomber happened in Paris, and everybody said, 'Well, of course American is a target; it says "American" on the side,' and we lost even more passengers. Then the price of fuel goes through the roof in anticipation of Iraq. Iraq happens, and then SARS hits, and we are the biggest U.S. carrier in Toronto. I have left out the hailstorm that grounded one hundred planes in Dallas. We had to shrink the company twenty percent, lay off twenty thousand people."
Even before the events of 9-11, Carty and his management team had known that American would have to cut $4 billion in operating expenses to survive. The most intractable problem, he said, was wages, which had spiraled upward in the fat times of the nineties. Unions asked for—and got—large pay raises, using strikes or the threat of strikes as a bargaining tool. In bad times, revenues dropped, but the cost of labor remained high. This cycle, and some good old-fashioned mismanagement, was the main reason that, of the one-hundred-plus carriers that started up in the deregulation era that began in 1978, only a few survive—and why established airlines like Pan Am, Eastern, and TWA (which American took over) failed. But there were other problems too: While airlines were rolling in profits, they forgot all about streamlining their operations. "The error of the traditional airlines," said Carty, "was that we didn't see a big need to change."
By early 2003, though, American's troubles were too obvious to miss. It needed to reduce its costs immediately. Management figured out how to achieve more than $2 billion in savings through fleet simplification (fewer types of aircraft) and technology and productivity improvements. The rest would have to come from lowering workers' wages, and that required Carty's getting the unions to go along. "They had to believe that management had done everything they knew how to do short of coming to labor," said Carty. "They had to believe it was really four billion dollars. The way we did that was to share more data about this than we had ever shared before." He promised them that American's top management would share the pain—some $100 million would be taken out of the paychecks, bonuses, and stock-option plans of the top echelon of executives. Carty himself would waive his normal bonus and stock award and reduce his salary by a third. Then he told the unions that they would have to give up $1.6 billion in wage cuts and work-rule changes (such as how many hours pilots must fly per month), which meant up to a 40 percent cut for a few employees. He gave the unions a choice: concessions or bankruptcy. On March 31, American, teetering on the edge of insolvency, stopped paying its bills. Sixteen days of white-knuckle ratification proceedings later, the unions agreed to concessions. This was by no means the obvious choice. Other airlines had opted for bankruptcy, even with its potentially harsh consequences. Many American employees and even several members of AMR's board favored bankruptcy.
On April 15, however, American had had to file its annual 10K form with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which it reports the financial results of the previous year. Two days later—and just hours after the new union contract was ratified—the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the AMR board, which Carty chaired, had approved $40 million in executive perks during 2002 that the union had not been told about during the negotiations. It was all there in the 10K filing: $15 million in "retention" bonuses for several top managers—including Carty—if they stuck around for three years and bankruptcy protection for a $25 million executive-retirement plan covering the top 45 officers.
Carty told me that the perks were an effort to staunch the loss of American's top managers, which became a major worry after 9-11. Many had in fact already left the company. Fair enough. But why wait until the 10K to reveal them—and why had Carty later chosen not to tell the unions about them? Two very simple and very human reasons, he said. First, protecting executive pensions from bankruptcy is a clear signal that a company is in financial trouble, and American didn't want the world to know how bad things had gotten. Second, Carty didn't want the executives who weren't getting the retention bonuses to know about them. He did say that he mentioned the need to do something to keep his executives in an early 2003 meeting with the unions but not in a specific way. "The mistake I made right there," he said, "is that I should have been very explicit about what we had done and had not done. I wish we had done it earlier and shown them all of it."
So, as BusinessWeek asked, what was he thinking? He had to know that the perks in the 10K were going to become public during the negotiations. Carty said that he took comfort in the fact that other airlines had made more-extensive moves. "I was feeling pretty good about it coming out," he said. "That sounds ironic, but Delta and Continental had just released what they had done on executive compensation and ours was modest by comparison. My naive view was that the press would compare American with Delta and Continental and say, 'This is a pretty responsible board.'" Naive is right: Anyone who reads more than the comics ought to have known that the story would read something like, "At the same time that American Airlines was demanding $1.6 billion in concessions from its unionized employees, the company gave $40 million in perks to its top executives." Carty also thought that his 33 percent pay cut and forgoing regular bonuses and stock awards, plus his agreements to cut $100 million from management's payrolls and his willingness to defer his own retention bonus, would demonstrate his personal leadership. In retrospect, this was an astonishing miscalculation.
After the storm broke, Carty apologized publicly and profusely. But it was too late to undo his mistake. The press smelled blood, and the unions were threatening to back out of the deal, an act that would force American to file for bankruptcy within hours. "I knew there was no way to put things back together unless I resigned," Carty told me. "Any executive-compensation package seems excessive to the line employees, anytime, but particularly when you are asking them to make cuts." He announced his resignation, preemptively, in yet another all-day, white-knuckle piece of brinkmanship that saved the airline for the second time in eight days. "I had a lot of regret, obviously," he said. "I loved American. But I knew that what we had spent two years doing would be undone if I didn't resign. And what would I have had, a bankrupt airline?"
What about the future of American Airlines? I asked. Carty was surprisingly upbeat, considering the glum outlook for the airline industry: "I feel enormously good that the company is out of bankruptcy, that the board is still there and the management team is still there." (Carty's chosen successor, Gerard Arpey, is now the CEO of the company.) The $4 billion cost reduction, he said, should be enough to make American "extremely competitive" again, even against start-ups like JetBlue Airways. Because American has a higher revenue potential than low-fare carriers such as Southwest Airlines, thanks to first-class and business travel, Carty said American can afford to have 20 to 30 percent higher costs, although some analysts put the figure nearer to 10 percent. "I would be nervous if I were one of the start-ups," he said. "Watch the third quarter."
But he also cautions that the good old days of the nineties will never return. "The hard thing for our employees is that some of them think this is a temporary sacrifice to save the company," Carty said. "But it is something far more permanent, far more fundamental. The old work rules are never coming back. Compensation increases are going to closely parallel what is happening in the rest of the economy. Being a pilot is never again going to be what it was."


RUFFIAN READY SALE: No, Robot, No!
Battalion interactive launch at Walthamstow Wetlands Lates!
National Poetry Day roundup: Catullus in the Guardian, Headbooks special offer and a cheeky Imp!
National Poetry Day recommends Bad Kid Catullus!
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Refugees cross into Hungary underneath the unfinished Hungary–Serbia border fence, 25 August 2015. Photo: Gémes Sándor/SzomSzed, Wikipedia Commons.
Cynicism And Salvation: A Response To Suketu Mehta On Immigration – OpEd
September 17, 2017 Bombs and Dollars 1 Comment
By Bombs and Dollars
By Ben Sixsmith
"You owe us and you need us" is the message of Suketu Mehta's Foreign Policy article on immigration. While I think his piece is vindictive, condescending, illogical and often uninformed it is refreshingly blunt.
Let us step back for a moment. In these arguments it is tempting to bracket people as "pro" and "anti" immigration. I am not anti-immigration. I think some measure of movement makes cultural, economic and humanitarian sense. (I am an immigrant as well, though I would have argued the same before leaving England.) What I do oppose – and have opposed, and will continue to oppose – is mass immigration on a reckless, utopian scale that ignores tradition, prudence and the popular will. Mr Mehta disregards them, and does so with some contempt.
The headline and the illustration are, well, illustrative. "This Land is Their Land", booms the former. Not even our land. Theirs. The illustration depicts migrants in a rowing boat, clutching The Stars and the Stripes. (Are they crossing the Atlantic?) A man holds a child while a woman wearing a hijab looks across the sea with a determined expression. I do not think I am being cynical if I suggest that this is an unrealistic portrayal of a Middle Eastern family.
Mehta has no time for distinctions between immigrants, even saying the difference between refugees and economic migrants is a mere "choice of words" as "whether you're running from something or running toward something, you're on the run". An atheist fleeing Afghanistan might disagree with him. There is in fact a clear difference between running from death and running towards wealth. But for Mehta migrants are more or less a monolithic bloc: "us", with "our communities", arranged against the West.
Mehta scorns the idea that Westerners have the right to choose which migrants to accept. To him, immigrants are "creditors" taking what they are owed. "All hail Western civilization," he sneers, "Which gave the world the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and global warming." Westerners have done – and do – a lot of dreadful things but Mehta's denunciation veers into agitated overstatement. As grotesque as the Atlantic slave trade was, slavery had existed for millenia. The Arabic slave trade began hundreds of years before Europeans disgraced themselves with this oppressive system, and ended long after the success of abolitionism. Great as our contribution to climate change appears to be, the world's leading contributors to fossil fuel emissions include China, India, Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Mehta attributes all or at least most of the troubles of underdeveloped countries to Western misdeeds. British wealth and Indian poverty, he claims, citing Shashi Tharoor, was built on the depredations of the British Empire. Alex Tabarrok refuted these ideas in his review of Tharoor's book – while, I should add, granting that the British did appalling things.
Europeans "corrupted our governments", Mehta continues, neatly absolving African and Asian officials of blame. They did this "so their corporations could continue stealing our resources". If the West is cunningly bent on plundering the Third World why is it so often Chinese businesses that do crooked deals in Africa? Or is that somehow our fault as well?
Syrian migrants are moving, Mehta claims, "Because the West…invaded Iraq…and set in motion the process that destroyed the entire region." Iraq was a disgraceful catastrophe, true, but does Mehta think the Middle East – with its ethnic divisions, Islamic extremism and authoritarian rulers – would have been harmonic if the war had never taken place? The argument that Iraq caused the Arab Spring was rubbish when neocons made it in its first triumphant weeks, and remains rubbish now. We do owe Iraqis for our miserable recklessness, and are assisting them in the destruction of ISIS, but the idea that the West bears all responsibility for the troubles of the Middle East is childish nonsense.
Mehta's condemnation because vengeful when he claims:
It is every migrant's dream to see the tables turned, to see long lines of Americans and Britons in front of the Bangladeshi or Mexican or Nigerian Embassy, begging for a residence visa.
I think well enough of migrants to believe that Mr Mehta is putting these strange, vindictive words into their mouths. (Our editor, Sumantra Maitra, also has an Indian background and criticised the piece on Twitter. Mehta blocked him.)
Having claimed that immigrants are bitter people, bearing fantasies of Western suffering, Mehta insists they are actually going to save us. If I thought so poorly of a people, I might not be warm, generous or cooperative – but, again, I do not think most migrants share his view.
Some do. Some hold it to far greater pathological extremes. Mehta has a lot of fun with Enoch Powell's nightmares of the River Tiber foaming with much blood, but it would have been nice to have some recognition of the hundreds of people who have died in New York, Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels, Nice and Manchester. The jihadists who perpretrated the crimes in those great cities thought of themselves as "creditors" as well.
To Mehta, it seems, immigrants are just better than natives. "They will bring energy with them, for no one has more enterprise than someone who has left their distant home to make the difficult journey here." Immigrants are different. Some are enterprising and some are not. Some immigrant groups are less reliant on state welfare than native Britons, for example, and some are more. "Given basic opportunities," he continues, "They will be better behaved than the youth in the lands they move to, because immigrants in most countries have lower crime rates than the native-born." Again, it depends on which immigrants and which natives – and how creative Mehta could be with "basic opportunities".
Once Mehta reaches his grand climactic claim that the "immigrant armada that is coming to your shores is actually a rescue fleet" this reader could feel his arteries throb. As an immigrant – in Poland, which Mehta reveals his ignorance of when he suggests President Andrzej Duda leads the ruling party – I hope I am doing well for my host nation. I work hard to make a difference in my community. I cannot imagine having the brass balls to claim it needs me, though; that I am its "salvation"; that I am "rescuing" it. I would not be very popular if I did.
This article was published at Bombs and Dollars
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One thought on "Cynicism And Salvation: A Response To Suketu Mehta On Immigration – OpEd"
A Dutch Guy
I enjoyed this article. I agree with most of it, the article of Mehta annoyed me immensely with it's extreme claims and lack of nuance.
I like a bigger focus on economics though. I feel Mehta so easily brushes over the fact that there is indeed a very large difference between different groups of migrants in their contribution to the welfare state. In Holland, where I am from, this disparity is huge. Somalians perform incredibly bad, while Chinese perform better than native Dutch when it comes to employment and benefits consumption. That's not even mentioning the very important nuance of knowing at what point a citizen contributes tax-wise to their society. It is not at minimum wage, but only (in Holland) at a point beyond that. Nuances that Mehta completely glosses over. It makes his piece very unconvincing for me.


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OAKLAND, Calif. — Two teams coming off embarrassing losses get a chance to vent their frustrations on one another Friday night when the Portland Trail Blazers visit the Golden State Warriors.
The longtime Pacific Coast rivals will be meeting for the first time this season, with Portland coming off a 143-100 drubbing at Milwaukee on Wednesday night, while the Warriors were getting thumped at home by Oklahoma City, 123-95.
The Warriors' loss gave them a four-game losing streak for the first time in the Steve Kerr era. It's come with Stephen Curry (strained groin) and Draymond Green (sprained toe) out of action.
Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson scored 27 points apiece against the Thunder, but the rest of the Golden State roster combined for just 41 points.
Durant, who contributed to a poor Warriors night on 3-pointers by going 1-for-5, knew exactly what went wrong after the game.
The Warriors were leading the league in scoring before the skid, during which they've topped 95 points just once. They now find themselves seventh at 115.4 points per game, one spot ahead of the Trail Blazers (114.2).
Both teams have gone over 100 points in 12 of the last 13 meetings, with the home team sweeping last year's three-game season series by averaging 119.3 points.
The teams haven't met since last March, when the Trail Blazers recorded a 125-108 home.
Portland has to hope the two-time defending champs don't recall that defeat, because the Bucks sure hadn't forgotten their previous game against the Trail Blazers when they got a rematch Wednesday.
Portland beat Milwaukee 118-103 two weeks earlier.
A Trail Blazers visit to Oakland means a homecoming for star guard Damian Lillard, an Oakland native.
The schedule-makers did Lillard a favor by scheduling the Trail Blazers a game at Golden State on the day after Thanksgiving. It allowed Lillard to visit family and friends on the holiday.
Whether his family and friends were watching in person or on television, Lillard put on a show in all three matchups with the Warriors last season.
He averaged 36.0 points in the two home wins, making four 3-pointers in each, and surely wasn't to blame for the 111-104 loss at Golden State in January, pouring in 39 points on a night when he connected on five 3-pointers.
He's lost six in a row in Oakland, and has saved most of his big outbursts against the Warriors for home games. He had a 51-point explosion against the Warriors in a home win in February of 2016.


We all get hit with digestive discomforts from time to time. To find some natural relief, look to the centuries-old practice of yoga to help stretch those belly muscles and kick-start the digestive system. Check out these 10 yoga poses to ease belly bloat.
Downward dog is a yoga practice staple and works to relieve uncomfortable gas buildup in the belly by improving circulation to stimulate digestion. Standing with your feet hips-width apart, bend at the waist until your hands touch the floor, positioning the body into an inverted "V" shape. Making sure your arms are now shoulder-width apart, press hands and feet firmly into the floor, and take several deep breaths, resting deeper into the stretch with each exhale. Find out even more daily habits that reduce belly bloat.
Child's pose is known as a "grounding pose," and one you can always come back to relieve pain associated with bloating by applying pressure to the lower abdomen. To find child's pose, kneel on the floor, hips resting on the heels of your feet. Bending at the waist, reach the arms out in front of you and slowly crawl your fingers forward, stretching as far as is comfortable. Once you're settled, breath in and out for about 20 to 30 seconds, before walking yourself back into an upright position with your hands. Repeat as many times as you like.
The deep stretch found within a seated forward bend applies a lot of pressure to the abdominal muscles, diminishing discomfort with every breath. (This one does go a little deeper than the standard forward bend, so try not to push too far past what is comfortable for you and your body.) Seated on the floor, stretch your legs straight out in front of you, feet together. Then, bend forward at the hips, reaching toward your feet, keeping your back as straight as possible. Take a few deep breaths once you've reached as far as you can, and use your hands to slowly guide your way back into an upright position.
This deep pose, a variation of a sun salutation, takes the ab-elongating power of upward-facing dog and adds the additional benefit of stretching the psoas muscles, which may contribute to belly cramping if left too tight. Starting in downward-facing dog, bring your right leg up in between your hands as you exhale. Bend the front knee 90 degrees, and keeping feet hips-width apart, bring the arms up on either side of your head, reaching toward the sky. You can keep the back leg engaged, or lower to rest the knee on the ground. Take five to eight deep breaths here, and then release back into downward-facing dog before repeating on the opposite side. Find out how to flatten your belly without a single crunch.
It sounds simple, but this is actually the most important move of them all. Yoga is all about connecting with the breath, and the simple act of deep breathing exercises can work to help reduce stress and anxiety, which some researchers believe may directly affect your digestive functions. This exercise is ideal for anyone looking to unwind or center themselves, and can easily be practiced pretty much anytime, anywhere. Seating yourself in a comfortable position, soften the face, close your eyes, and alternate inhaling and exhaling, keeping your spine elongated (you can imagine a string pulling you upward from the top of your head).


text:
Asylum Applications at 10-Year Low
Matt Weaver, Guardian (London), Feb. 28, 2006
The number of people applying for asylum in Britain has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, new Home Office figures reveal.
But the government admitted that it has still not met its target on removing failed asylum seekers, despite predicting that it would do so this month.
Today's figures showed there were 25,720 asylum applications in 2005, down 24% on the previous year and the lowest level since 1994.
Tony McNulty, immigration minister, said: "Intake [of asylum seekers] is falling at a faster rate than elsewhere in Europe, reflecting the package of measures we have put in place, such as immigration controls to ports across the Channel and legislation to target abuse."
The statistics also show that removals of failed asylum seekers rose by 2% in the last quarter of 2005 and 20% on the same quarter the previous year. This comes after the government increased cash incentives for asylum seekers who agree to leave the UK voluntarily.
The government had pledged to be removing more failed asylum seekers than the number of unfounded asylum applications each month by December 2005.
After it missed this target, Mr McNulty predicted that it would be reached in February. However, the minister admitted that it had still not been met, but was "confident that we are close to achieving it".
In the last quarter of 2005 there were 6,165 asylum applications. Iranians were the largest single group of asylum seekers with 820 applications, followed by Eritreans (595) and Afghanis (510).
The figures also showed that the number of eastern Europeans applying to work in Britain has increased to 345,000 since Poland, the Czech Republic and six other countries joined the EU in May 2004.
Research commissioned by the government had previously estimated that annual applications from the eight accession countries would not exceed 13,000.
The 50,000 EU accession arrivals in the three months to December last year was 8,000 higher than in the same period in 2004. Poles accounted for 59% of applicants, followed by Lithuanians (13%) and Slovaks (11%).
East Anglia overtook London as the destination for the most foreign workers, with 16% compared with the capital's 15%.
Mr McNulty said there was no evidence that new workers from eastern Europe were responsible for a rise in unemployment last year. He said they made a "welcome contribution to our economy and society".
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "The government is still taking too long to remove those whose applications have failed. It is disappointing to see that the government continues to fail even to remove more failed asylum seekers than arrive."
More information on asylum seekers was needed, he said. "The government cannot tell us how many people are living here illegally, including how many failed asylum seekers remain in the country. It also cannot tell us the impact of migration on public services. How many children of temporary migrants are in state schools? How many temporary migrants are receiving NHS treatment? How many are receiving in-work benefits?"
Mr Davis claimed that the number of workers arriving from EU accession countries was "wholly uncontrolled". "The fact the number of immigrants from EU accession countries who have come to Britain is 15 times the government's own maximum estimate is a further indictment of how it has no grasp on the facts and figures of immigration," he said.
Topics: Britain
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