Hello America!

 
I became a "permanent resident" on the 20th of December, landing in Boston to spend a couple of weeks with family in New Hampshire before heading to New York City.

I set up a bank account with TD Bank a couple of days after arrival (fortunately a foreign national doesn't need a social security number to set up a bank account, but you can't get paid without one and I'm currently still waiting...). All seemed to go smoothly but after a couple of days my card was blocked, when I went into the branch to check why and seeing my details on the computer they had somehow put my middle name as my surname! So I was actually Mr Richard... this was a level of incompetence for which I was unprepared. The account took a little while to get sorted and I had a few other cards blocked over the next couple of weeks, hopefully it's sorted now!

That inconvenience aside, christmas is usually a period of time where vast quantities of food are consumed, this also happens to be the case whenever we visit New Hampshire. A combination of the two led to an ascension of gluttony that would cause Jabba the Hut to blush.

I didn't want to purchase too many things while we were still in New Hampshire as we'd only have to cart them across with us, but while in Bullmoose (I hate to think how much money I have spent in there over the last 8 years) I saw the Stax/Volt 1959-1968 9-CD singles box-set for a good price. It was actually gathering dust so I really had to give it a loving home.

The in-laws have a new dog since we last visited (as well as goats, a horse, chickens, ducks, guinea fowls and probably other species I'm forgetting) called Redford.

a rare moment when Redford is not terrorising me...

We arrived in New York on the 4th of January and made our way to our apartment in Ditmas Park. Greeted by a friend of the landlord who showed us in, after a nervous few minutes where none of us could get the keys to work we finally managed to enter and set our things down. The apartment is great (though the shared heat in this building is brutal, need the windows open and fans going most of the time we're inside and it's January!) and the area seems pretty convenient (I suspect I will do a separate blog about it at a later date). We're about a 20-minute subway ride to Union Square on the Q-line (of course!). Here's a view from our window.

So far we've gotten out and about quite well, experiencing many areas of Manhattan. Had a nice walk along the Brooklyn Bridge (best to walk from Brooklyn to Manhattan for better views, though parts of the view are obstructed due to repairs), drinks in the East Village (and onto Williamsburg, getting home at 3:30am...), record shops in Greenwich Village, and various moments of gawking at the various buildings in the city (and the general prices of just about everything).

Also nipped a bit further south to Coney Island, taking in a visit to the New York Aquarium but not before trying a Nathan's Hotdog and a stroll along the boardwalk.

The Bronx Zoo is a real treat and you need a whole day there to just about squeeze everything in. We were quite lucky because the Red Pandas were on real form, and I'd never seen a Polar Bear or Snow Leopard before. Other highlights included a Mouse Deer (too dark to get a decent picture), Fossa and many others.

I'm not getting these events in order, but in any case. We had a nice walk around Central Park (and we also had a long walk around Prospect Park near where we live), both will obviously be more impressive later in the year, but they're pretty immense as it is. From Central Park we took in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is huge, we whizzed around as much as we could in a couple of hours but you could spend days in there and still have plenty to see.

I obviously haven't had time to indulge in the usual myriad "best of 2011..." lists (though I'll hopefully fit in a music compilation of sorts before the end of the month). My first day of work will be the 16th of Jan (which is a public holiday here for Martin Luther King Jr. day, but our office is still open), by which point I'd have had 4 weeks off, and will have forgotten what it is I'm supposed to be doing! So far it has seemed like a long holiday so it's still too early to tell if I am missing things back home too much, though obviously I'm a little anxious at the lack of (real) football, we don't have any TV channels here (just a DVD player) and I had the misfortune of watching a game of "American" football, which seems like watching real football if only it were played constantly with set pieces, with the ball only being in play for a few seconds at a time. I'm not sure how anyone manages to get through a game without getting extremely drunk. It also proved quite difficult to find an electric kettle!

Goodbye Great Britain

I will be flying to the US on Tuesday morning to start a "new" life in New York City (via New Hampshire for Christmas). It has been a long process to get to this stage, my initial visa application was sent this time last year and I don't think there has been a single day since that someone hasn't asked me "when are you going?", my self deprecating side wonders if they are eager to get rid of me! Of course, though there is frustration at having to answer the same question many times a day (no fault of the questioner), it is also humbling and heart-warming that many have an interest.

Getting a (spousal) visa for the US is a long and boring process, but thorough, I've had medicals, police reports, interviews and just made a copy of our full application which ended up being a whopping 55-pages (probably more, but I only copied what I thought I really needed to). I've had to fill in tax forms for my wife covering the last six years, and the previous year we bought a house (which we're now renting). We've also got my wife British citizenship so I have filled in enough paperwork in the last two years to last a lifetime! Yet there are more forms to come when I enter the country...

I've never been to New York so to dive straight in to a permanent residency is perhaps a bit risky, but I'd be a fool to not take on the promotion and chance to live in a place like NYC, if it doesn't work out I can at least say I tried, and I'd only be spending the rest of my life wondering "what if..." otherwise. I've been relatively calm about all this for the last year but when my flights were booked last Monday and it suddenly became "real" there seemed to be a heavy weight dumped onto my shoulders. It wasn't until last week I even had sorted out a place to live in the city!

Still, I'd like to look back before I move forwards, when faced with such a move it's made me think about my identity, who I am as a person. I've been very fortunate that I just so happened to be born not just in England  (which must rank as one of the most desirable countries to live), but the beautiful city of Oxford. Such serendipity could lead one to become guilty of solipsism.

I often think of myself as first and foremost, someone from Oxford, then from England (then British), though I'm not overtly patriotic in any case. Oxford has felt a huge part of my life, I just love being in it, taking a stroll around Radcliffe Square (pictured) and many of the other wonderful main streets and narrow alleyways. Getting a sense of the achievements of many great scientists, authors and assorted intellectuals that have passed through the history of the area cannot help but give one a sense of wonder, and the architecture is exquisite beyond words and is truly moving. I love nothing more than talking a stroll around Christ Church meadow, spending a lunchtime in the Museum of Natural History or my personal favourite, The Museum of the History of Science, and of course one cannot overlook the main museum of the city, the Ashmolean, and there are many other museums worth a visit. So it is not without great consideration that I would move away from home, somewhere that feels like it's coded into my DNA itself. On Saturday I also managed to catch a final game at my beloved Oxford United, we beat Northampton 2-0 so it was nice to end on a victory. I'll have to worry about how best to catch up with the football when I'm out there.

Oxford is not without its flaws, of course, which include a lack of amenities in general and a dearth of independant shops (the recession seems to have been particularly cruel here) particularly for music. Sometimes the students can be a bit of a pain in the arse (many are perfectly pleasant, in my experience, I should say...), there is nothing more frustrating for this local boy than to overhear a conversation in the pub of people pretending to appear self-indulgently intellectual. This can reliably be experienced in the otherwise delightful Eagle and Child pub, no doubt the reason for misguided conversations of the wannabe intellegientsia is due to the venue being the pub of choice for The Inklings.

I will of course, greatly miss friends and family most of all, but efforts will always be made by and to those that matter the most, I would wish not to dwell on such thoughts for now as it is alien territory, but the fact is I don't get to socialise with many people as much as I'd like to anyway so all that is required is some careful planning. Unfortunately, christmas has been a bit of a bust this year and I haven't written any cards or bought and presents, which I feel bad about, but at least I have a good excuse I think! I sit here writing this, with time ticking by, trying to cram in a few of my favourite things while I still can. First and foremost I have David Attenborough's latest series, Frozen Planet, recorded and am trying to complete it before heading off, managed to squeeze in four episodes on Saturday morning and I have about 1 to finish! Attenborough is a personal hero and I can leave the country with the satisfaction of having met him briefly at a book signing a couple of years ago.

With bags yet to be packed and many last-minute arrangements to fulfil, I long for a moment at some point in the future (hopefully not-so-distant future...) where I am relaxed (preferably with a satisfying beverage), letting out a big sigh of relief that everything worked out just fine. With so much going on it has been hard not to drown in an ocean of stress and there will no doubt be difficult moments as I try to adjust, but there is much to look forward to and I am looking forward to living a new chapter in my life. As much as I love where I am from, this has made me realise a desire to experience something different. I will be back at least once a year so whilst there are many things and people I feel as though I didn't quite get time for, there will hopefully be other opportunities. My goodbyes have unfortunately been as inadequate as this blog, but the arrow of time only goes forward, and it is time to look that way...

First image in this post is by the amazing Terry Border

Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011

I woke up this morning to the terrible, but not unexpected news, that Christopher Hitchens had passed away.

Hitch (always Christopher, never Chris) was a man of outstanding intellect and his mastery of the English language was, in my experience, unsurpassed by anyone. Reading his words and hearing his voice was like having a intravenous drip of knowledge delivered straight to your very core. Hitch's greatest weapon, for me, was his ability to make you think about a subject, even if you vehemently disagreed with his stance on something you had to admire his ability to make a compelling argument on just about anything.

Christopher was diagnosed with stage 4 oesophageal cancer in June 2010 ("there is no stage 5", he remarked), who knows if it was a result of his lifestyle, it was rare up to that point to see a picture of the man without a cigarette or a drink, but his father also died of the same disease so perhaps his genes are to blame.

His tour-de-force, in my opinion, was 2007's God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything. But his attacks on people like Mother Theresa should also not be forgotten and showed just how much damage she did as opposed to good.

Many people are wary of Hitch's political yo-yo performance over the years, but the left-right sides of politics should be much more blurred than what they are and he showed this over the years, I think. It seems almost ridiculous that you can often take a subject and predict someone's political leanings based on their answer (abortion, education, etc, etc) but each subject should be tackled on its own merits and people tend to stick to political ideologies through stubbornness.

One of the four horsemen of New Atheism (self-proclaimed by Hitch as he knew they would only be given a name by someone else at some stage) along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Dan Dennett, Hitch's performance in religious debates leaves a trail of defeated opponents that would make even a vengeful deity proud.

So often were his opponents left realing after a verbal knockout, the term Hitchslap was born.

This particular performance is a snippet from a debate he had alongside Stephen Fry, against Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan (you can find the whole debate on youtube, search for Christopher Hitchens Stephen Fry Intelligence Squared or something similar).

While his support of the Iraq war surprised some and lost him some friends and allies, it is easy to understand why he supported it. Throughout his life the one thing you can say he was absolutely consistent with regards to a subject was his disgust of anything totalitarian in nature. This was his biggest gripe towards religion, the unjustified worship, the need to be subservient to a dictator that was not elected, he compared heaven to a celestial North Korea.


The world has lost a great intellectual and possibly our most devastatingly intellectually honest writer. He passed away with an unrivaled dignity. He never wavered during his illness, honest until the end. His last article on Vanity Fair titled Trial of the Will in particular is a brutal exercise in realising one's own mortality. But while some argue there are no atheists in foxholes, Christopher continued to prove many people wrong about such notions.

It is our office christmas party tonight, and I shall be having a contemplative toast in his honour, and if the bar has any Johnnie Walker Black Label then all the better. Christopher, thank you.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

We are constantly bombarded from all directions with news stories and images of various atrocities throughout the world, so it's no surprise that when someone claims that we're actually living in the most peaceful time in human history, a few heads are turned. This is the claim that cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, has made in his latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature.

I haven't read the book yet and am looking forward to doing so (it is a whopping 800-or-so pages, but such a subject is deserving of a full analysis). I did, however, have the pleasure of seeing him do a lecture about his new book at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on the 3rd of November. Unfortunately it wasn't possible for Steven to use a screen to emphasise some of his points with various charts and images, but it just made for more emphasis on what he actually had to say. While violence has not decreased to 0 and there are no guarantees that violence will not increase again in the future, there are reasons to be cheerful.

It seems Pinker has the empirical evidence to back up his claims (the list of source data is hefty), even the catastrophic wars and regimes of the 20th century are part of this decline in violence, it almost seems natural to think that it was the most violent time in human history, but as a % of the world population, World War II barely scrapes into the top ten of the most horrible events of all time. People never seem to cite pre-20th century atrocities in the first place (the Triple Alliance War is thought to have decimated 60% of the population of Paraguay, for example). To justify his claims, Pinker has to account for violent deaths as a % of the world population which may seem a copout for some who could say that a rise in the absolute number of violent deaths would be cause for concern (WWII is the deadliest in terms of absolute numbers), but it's the only fair way to gauge violence over the ages. If you consider that % of world population is not a fair measurement you run into some problems (both morally and rationally). Here is a passage of the book that goes a little way to explaining why a violent deaths as a % of world population is the best way to measure violence over history:

As I note in the book,  “Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease. So the number of people in a given time and place who enjoy full lives has to be counted as a moral good, against which we calibrate the moral bad of the number who are victims of violence. Another way of expressing this frame of mind is to ask, `If I were one of the people who were alive in a particular era, what would be the chances that I would be a victim of violence?’ [Either way, we are led to] the conclusion that in comparing the harmfulness of violence across societies, we should focus on the rate, rather than the number, of violent acts.”

There are many reasons speculated for the decline of violence, abolition of slavery (as of 1980 slavery is now illegal everywhere on the planet) and witchunts, humanitarian and equal rights movements, etc. Printing and literacy get high praise and other enlightenment values, when knowledge and reason have surpassed superstition and ignorance then there is no reason to be violent towards certain groups. Also the increase of literacy can increase the amount of empathy in the world, imagining what it is like to be someone else, is cited as a potential reason. Pinker shows that human nature is complex and while we still have inclinations to be violent, we also have historical circumstances that favour peaceful intentions.

This is not the lecture I witnessed but it is the lecture with which he is currently touring:

I got my books signed afterward (I also have a copy of Words and Rules) and he was kind enough to pose for a photo. It's also interesting to know that Pinker carries a gene that causes baldness in 80% in carriers, clearly he is in the 20%!

So, if Pinker is right (and I think he is), we should be optimistic and even more grateful for enlightenment principles than perhaps we take for granted, but it's important to remember that there is no guarantee that violence will continue to decrease and it would seem foolish to ever speculate it would become 0 (a point he stresses himself). It seems while we need to concentrate on what we as a species has done "right" over history to drive violence down, we shouldn't get complacent. It strikes me that while idiotic ideologies are still rife in the world, coupled with an increase in technology, it may become possible for fewer people to inflict more destruction on more people with less effort. While we still have irrational superstition in the world, and people who are willing to kill in the name of iron age mythology, we have reason to be wary. It seems obvious that reason and rationality will be the driving force towards a more peaceful future if we are to reach one on a much larger global scale.

Since this post, I have read the book, my review is here.

My favourite video games

I found an article from a couple of years ago that I wrote about my favourite video games, and while I'm in the process of writing a few new articles for this blog (and I'd love to hear any suggestions about other subjects that might be interesting), I thought this would be a handy stop-gap.

When compiling this list, I found myself being drawn into nostalgia, perhaps because I have many more childhood memories with games than I did with other things, anyway, nostalgia or not I have picked games that I have enjoyed immensely since my earliest memories. My main criteria was “how much time did I / do I spend playing this game?” and while the order is fairly loose, I think it’s accurate.

Sensible World of Soccer (PC): This had to be number one, the first Sensible Soccer game was also brilliant, but Sensible World of Soccer added a new element, with tweaked gameplay but the best thing was you could select a team to manage, you could get promoted / relegated, make transfers, it had all the cups, etc. It was just brilliant, a strikeforce of Bebeto and surprise package Gordon Watson (anyone remember him?) who cost a bargain £325k... I was so into this game that I documented my entire 20-season (that's how long it would let you go in one game) history, including all player appearances and goals, transfers in and out, etc, etc. I had 2 A4 binders of the stuff, I think they're still in the attic. I doubt I have racked up more hours on any other game, and I would have thrashed the pants off anybody, I should have entered tournaments.

Counter Strike (PC): Of course, this had to be in here, given that I'm in a clan that is(was) dedicated to the game. I started playing in 1999, I think, when it was CS version 1.3. Many updates have since come and gone but the popularity of the game is still staggering. An online first-person shoot 'em 'up, simple goodies (Counter-Terrorists) versus Baddies (Terrorists), in a variety of maps, simply fantastic times although the family-community that is VMK possibly puts this game higher than it would if it were strictly on a gameplaying basis alone.

Football Manager / Championship Manager (PC): Any longterm fans of this series will know about the split between Football Manager and Championship manager (Football Manager is now very much the title to chose from) but they used to be one and the same. And I couldn't pick between an individual release so it's the whole lot I'm talking about here. I would lose days playing these games, always attempting to drag Oxford (much like in Sensible World of Soccer come to think of it) from the depths of the football league to domestic and European glory. Many people simply don't understand the idea of playing games like these where you don't really "play" the games themselves, but those of us with he bug know what it's about. In one game I even edited myself into the team as a youngster, although I made myself so good that I refused to sign a new contract and buggered off to a bigger club. Lesson learned. It was probably Championship Manager 3 that I have spent most my time on.

Pro Evolution Soccer (PS1 to present day, PS3): When this series started, it began as International Superstar Soccer but in more recent years morphed into Pro Evolution Soccer. The series as a whole has largely been excellent and continues to be lapped up in large numbers with each release. Although recent years has seen Fifa become arguably a better game in the last couple of years, I'm hopeful that Pro Evo can claw back the title of best football game. Playing this against friends had led to many laughs, and many insults!

Mechwarrior 2 (PC): What could be more fun than rumbling around in a giant robot blowing things up? Not many things. Mechwarrior 2 brought with it a sense of graphical awe at the time and this was a very skilful game to play with so many ways you could twist and turn your Mech, the thought of being able to move in one direction but swivel your body in another was great fun. My Dad and I and would play this together usually, I would be in control of the movement while he was the weapons man, and we still joke about him using an AC-20 like it was a machine gun, fun times.

Savage Empire (PC – 386 processor days): Savage Empire was a huge and complex RPG (especially for the time), set in an unknown Jungle land filled with dinosaurs and various tribes, the ultimate goal of the game is to get all the tribes to unite and destroy some kind of evil race. Of course each tribe has its own tasks you have to fulfil before they will join in with your unity, ranging from finding stuff, to killing a T-rex, etc, this game was huge, and fun, and very difficult. You had to communicate with computer characters by typing stuff in, which was also fun but made things difficult if you couldn’t find the right words to say to get more information (imagine how long it took before you even thought of typing the word “unite” for any reason!).

UFO - Enemy Unknown (PC – 486 processor?): This game was immense! Basically you had to save earth from alien invasions, the crux of the game was a turn-based strategy game while in contact with the enemy, but you also had to build up a base, research technology, keep various countries happy (you had a budget each month, the more you kept a country happy the more money they gave you) and just about handle everything you could imagine that would be thrown at you. I’m not sure another game has created such suspense as this.

Quake 2 (PC): Another FPS game but Quake II successfully attempted to bridge a gap between FPS shooters and task-based RPG games while also kicking things up a gear with impressive graphics.

Streetfighter 2: Championship Edition (Mega drive): The best fighting game, who hasn’t heard of Street Fighter? Anyway, this version in particular was the one that caught my fancy. Funnily enough I bought my younger brother one of those things that are essentially a control-pad that you stick into the TV and it has a game on it (imagine back in the day, 1993, that a whole console was needed to play this game), anyway a few months later he was playing it when I visited and he completely kicked my arse. It was a bit like the young pretender finally taking the crown of game-playing, a sad feeling, still, I taught him well.

Gauntlet (Amstrad CPC464): Spent many a day with this, usually playing with my brother, who tended to be the wizard, I would tend to (and have tended to ever since when it comes to games of this ilk) play as the barbarian. Gauntlet was a fantasy hack ‘n’ slash game, you had a birdseye-view, the graphics were simple and the game was hugely playable. The purpose of the game was simply to escape each level, finding the exit after a myriad of dead-ends and huge variety of monsters, if you ever saw “Death” chasing after you (I always thought it looked like a gorilla) then you had to just run! The game never actually ended, to my knowledge, after a certain point the levels would just randomly generate. And if you ever got stuck, you could just sit in the same place for an age (seriously, it felt like hours) and every block would turn into an exit!

Monkey Island 2 (PC): The best adventure game ever, enough said. If you ever played this game then you’ll know just how fun, and difficult it was.

Dune 2 (PC - 486): I’m not sure how many people played this game but it is one of the most influential games ever and essentially established the real-time-strategy games that most people later took for granted like Command & Conquer and Starcraft.

Duke Nukem 3D (PC): “It’s time to kick arse and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of gum”, those opening lines will always be remembered. Duke Nukem blew away the previous competition (Doom II) with the added ability of being able to jump and explore much more of the world you played in. We used to design levels for this at college and have big multi-player games (sometimes in lesson!) in the same room, very fond memories. It’s also where I decided on my first game name, Albatross, though that changed when Counterstrike came along.

V-Rally 2 (PS1): Many laughs were had with friends playing this game, you could play 4-player split-screen, obviously this is before the age of mega-TVs being more obtainable so 4 people sharing a 20” screen didn’t leave you with a lot of room to look at! However, it was great fun and the single-player game was also mesmerising, not to mention one of the most unforgiving games you’ll ever play, it wouldn’t take much to knock you flying although when you became more skilled at the game it made you appreciate it much more.

Baldur's Gate (PS2): This series of games is significant in the sense that my wife will happily play them, so I get to game without getting moaned at! Balders gate is your typical walk-around hack and slash RPG, but it’s done very well.

Micro Machines up to and including V3 (Megadrive – PS1): The first game I can remember that allowed you to play with more than 2 people at one time (the cartridge housed 2 extra controller slots), brilliant! So you’re racing along against your friends and basically if anyone falls so far behind that they disappear from the screen then they lose a life, which made for great entertainment. The 3V sequel took things to another level with the 3D element of the game, although the original was equally playable.

Double Dragon (Amstrad CPC464): Scrolling beat ‘em up game, basic, but brilliant, and at the end of the game after playing co-op through the whole bloody thing you had to fight each other to get the girl, needless to say when my older brother and I would play this game the fight at the end would sometimes turn into a real fight.

Tomb Raider (PS1): This is brought platform games into the modern world, gone were linear 2-cd landscapes, enter fantastic (at the time) 3D graphics and all sorts of difficult situations in your way.

Bioshock (PS3): One of the current-generation releases in my list, this game reignited my love of single-player FPS games, that had been on the wane since Quake II.

Silkworm (Amstrad CPC464): Another game I would play with my Dad, one of you could be a helicopter, the other could be a jeep, a basic scrolling shoot ‘em up game but great fun.

Descent 1 & 2 (PC - 486): Another FPS-type game but this time you had control of a small ship in often claustrophobic surroundings, the controls were fantastic, given you complete control with its 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) gameplay. This spawned the ultimately superior “Forsaken”, but Descent was where it began.

International Track and Field (PS1): Another communal game, the rivalry my friends and I had on this game was stupendous and also led to many different playing “styles”, I invented the fleece technique, by wrapping my finger up in my fleece I could glide over the buttons with great speed rather than trying to tap each one separately.

Honourable mentions:

Resident Evil (PS1):

Sonic the Hedgehog (Master System)

Diablo (PC)

Speedball 2 (Mega Drive)

Book review: Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape (How Science Can Determine Human Values) by Sam Harris

 

This is the first of Sam’s books I have read but it certainly won’t be the last (in fact I ordered The End of Faith at the start of the week). The book is about the concept of a science of morality based on the well being of conscious creatures, made possible as we begin to understand more and more about everything that happens at the level of the brain. Using a baseline of the worst possible suffering for the longest amount of time (for everybody), we can see that all experience moves up or down this landscape Sam has created (if one does not want to avoid the worst possible misery for everyone for the longest possible time, then I don’t know what you’re talking about, and more importantly I don’t think you know what you’re talking about either). Everything we do that is worth talking about is something that alters our consciousness (mostly very little, other times hugely so) and anything that affects consciousness is happening at the level of the brain.

I had the pleasure of getting tickets for an evening with event that Sam and Richard Dawkins were doing at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in April earlier this year. I hadn’t yet read the book, in fact I only picked it up earlier that same day so I could get it signed afterwards. The talk was filmed and you can watch it here on youtube:

The talk is a good primer for the book (and while some people have attacked his idea as another form of utilitarianism, I think the tour he has done in support of this book shows he is not guilty of this), and of course some of his introduction is almost a direct lifting from it (as you would expect), but the book certainly goes into more detail. If I were to note a slight disappointment then it would be that I was expecting perhaps a bit more on the technical aspect of the brain given Sam’s expertise in neuroscience, though there is plenty about the brain and his FMRI experiments and it's these moments where the book is most compelling. Regardless, the book left me wanting more in that regard (better that way than bore me to tears), Sam writes with a razor sharp clarity and shows the fallacy of religious moral teachings admirably, if religion is ever right, it’s right by accident.

The criticism towards the book comes from a misunderstanding of the matter in my opinion, Sam has not written (or attempted to write) a book that has all the answers, merely opening the door and exploring how and why we should be able to deride moral values from science. Perhaps this humility is disappointing for some people. It’s a liberating idea and not one that should be met with scorn, he makes plenty of analogies towards a science of physical health, when Doctors tell us things like “smoking causes lung cancer”, we don’t picture this as hostile men in white coats telling us how to live our lives in some kind of Orwellian horror show. Indeed, physical health itself is difficult to define but we don’t doubt that a science of medicine is based on physical health, and so we should deal with moral science in a similar way. Sam points out the blurred lines between facts and values as processed by the brain (this is why beliefs matter so much), how we should not confuse a position between not having answers in practice and not having answers in principle, and how there will doubtless be many different ways to travel up and down the moral landscape regarding the same questions. Harris has responded to the most compelling criticisms of his book on his website - http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-critics/

It’s a huge topic that should be taken seriously, in my opinion, and hopefully The Moral Landscape is a means towards a rational dialogue on the matter.

8/10

I'd also urge you to read Sam's blog which never fails to make you think.

Anna Calvi: Artist and album review

 Water Rats, London - July 2009

I first saw Anna Calvi supporting Carina Round (whom I also first experienced as a support act, opening for Gutter Twins) in July 2009 at the Water Rats. She was jaw-droppingly good, cue close to two years waiting impatiently for her self-titled debut album to be released on Domino Records...

The record remains one of, if not the strongest release of 2011 and has what seems a rare sense of identity and confidence seldom seen from a debut these days. It's been described as a dark record and while one could easily nod in agreement to that statement, it perhaps conjures the wrong impression, yes it's dark on occasion but I find it a beautiful and uplifting effort. Anna knows when to leave space for the songs to breathe and other moments to let the music soar to a natural crescendo. It's the ease with which Anna is comfortable in such a wide dynamic range and volume that demands attention from the listener, and it's certainly an album that rewards any attention you can afford. When it's all too easy for music to become a bit more disposable in this digital age, it's seemingly hard to make time to just sit down and listen to something, but I assure you, dear readers, this deserves your time.

Having first experienced Anna in a live setting, you can't help but be struck at how incredible her guitar playing skills are, this virtuousity appears in a more subtle form on the record overall, so I would certainly urge you to catch her live if at all possible. Though this is not to say these studio versions are in any way watered down, there's just something about the intensity and passion with which she performs live and her range of skills from classical to flamenco, rock and blues become overtly evident.

Oxford - May 2011 

Anna is complimented by drummer/backing vocalist Daniel Maiden-Wood, who dominates his modest setup and knows just the right moments to add a bit of flare or drive a song forward. Mally Harpaz completes the lineup, mostly playing the harmonium (that's an instrument you don't see all that often) but also contributes with other instruments and additional percussion.

Calvi's vocals are reminiscent of some of my favourite singers such Jeff Buckley and PJ Harvey (unfortunately it seems to be quite hard to be a good female singer without being compared to the great Polly Jean at some point...) among others.

The album kicks off with a low-key guitar instrumental, Rider to the Sea, which hints towards an Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western standoff. Desire is the second single release from the record, Calvi uses phrases like "the devil" as personal metaphors and this song features Brian Eno, who is a huge fan. Desire has a real drive to it while it's also hard not to be entranced with the perfect production on the record, you get some sense of euphoria as she belts out the chorus while the song builds to a triumphant finale.

My personal favourite song on the album is Suzanne And I, I love the pounding drums and the perfect guitar sound, it's a real victory and as you hear the album unfold you feel as though the band have really agonised over every single second of every song, they must all take their art very seriously but do so in a way that doesn't come across as pretentious. Listening to interviews where Anna is so mild and softly-spoken you wonder how she must flip some kind of mental switch to project such a powerful and commanding vocal when singing.

Oxford - May 2011  

The Devil certainly evokes the Jeff Buckley reference I made earlier and it's these quiet, reflective songs that really draw you in, immersed in the space between each note, aching for the next snare hit like listening to the best slowcore can offer. The mood perks up again with the album's debut single, Blackout, which features some rare bass guitar but at this point that only emphasises how little the presence of a bottom-end has been missed (and this coming from someone who plays bass).

I think this performance of Love Won't Be Leaving (from the TV show Live From Abbey Road, the song starts at 1:21) showcases Anna's all-round qualities, the dynamic range I spoke of, great voice and the blistering guitar solo is something to behold. Please give it your time, I do wish the extended mid-section was on the record. The only word I can use is blistering!

I wanted to get this blog piece done in time to predict that Anna would get nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize - I couldn't really care less about it, but people do usually get some extra exposure from it, which will hopefully be the case here. There's something old and new that Anna is doing and I imagine I will continue to be entranced by her and hope she has a long career, let's hope she isn't put under too much pressure and allowed to flourish on her own terms.

Oxford - May 2011  

All photos taken by me apart from the album cover.