Brennig Jones (and friends)

Move along, there’s nothing to see (or hear) here.

Just a test podcast post using the original test audio file, to see if the server-based technology bugs have been ironed out.

B.

TMA07: Block 5 comparison

This assignment related to Block 5 and you will be dealing with two different works. When you have completed the assignment, please send it to your tutor to arrive no later than 4 April 2008.

Pleas remember that this assignment is non-substitutable.

You should answer this question in an essay of no more than 1,500 words.

Question
Choose two works from Block 5. Discuss the ways in which your two chosen texts exploit the traditions and conventions of their genre both formally and in terms of content. You might find it useful to consider points of comparison between your chosen texts. Credit will be given for attempting a comparison between works of different genres, but you don’t have to do this.

The four main texts studied in Block 5 are:

Guidance notes

Pygmalion – Wide Sargasso Sea
Your starting point might be the word ‘exploit’ in the question: remember that this can mean using traditions and conventions in an established way and challenging, adapting or even flouting those same traditions and conventions. Block 5, Unit 19, offers plenty of guidance on the dramatic conventions and the myths and traditions used in Pygmalion. Consider how Shaw is exploiting the structure of the five-act play, the conventions of comedy, and Ovidian myth and fairy tale. Block 5, Unit 23, contains ample guidance on the novel as a genre and its conventions and structure; it also relates Wide Sargasso Sea to library traditions and myths. Consider the ways in which Rhys structures her novel, how it relates to the novelistic tradition as embodied in Jane Eyre, and how the perspectives, style and characterisation used in the novel relate to established or accepted conventions. If you choose these two texts, you may wish to discuss to what extent these authors may be regarded as flouting or attempting to reform generic conventions and traditions.

Medea
If you choose to work with Medea, you need to look for the main traditions and conventions of Greek tragic drama before you can work out how Euripides exploited them. These include the structure of the play (Units 20-21, p.60), dialogue (pp.60-61), mythical content (pp.69, 87-91), theatrical space (pp.69-78), and aspects of performance such as actors, masks, costumes, movement, including the deployment of the chorus and stage machinery (pp.61-3). However, you are not being asked to give a survey and should avoid a straight summary of traditions and conventions. A better approach is to feed information on conventions and traditions into your discussion of how they are exploited. For example, you might examine how the device of stichomythia is used in a particular episode, perhaps one of the three involving Medea and Jason (p.56). You are also being asked to look at both form and content. Your essay should include examples of both, even if they are discussed together. You will find the Glossary (pp.113-15) useful for the formal elements of Greek tragedy and may wish to refer to Margaret Williamson’s article in Resource Book 3, D9, when considering such issues as the representation of public and private space in performance.

Don Juan
You are advised to reread pp.136-40, paying particular attention to the discussion of the musical traditions that Strauss could call on when writing a large-scale orchestral work. You might find it helpful to reread some of the detailed discussion of Don Juan and think about the conventions associated with specific instruments.

B.

Religious Studies or History of Science

This assignment relates to Block 4. When you have completed it, please send it to your tutor to arrive no later than 22nd February 2008.

You are asked to answer one question only from the two printed below. Both questions require you to write an essay of no more than 1,200 words.

Religious Studies

Question:
How far do you think observing a visible religious activity, such as a festival, can help you to understand the part a religion plays in the life of an individual and a community?

Guidance note:
Units 14 and 15, together with DVD2, Tracks 14 and 15, provide you with many and varied examples of visible religious activities. In discussing this question you can draw on these or any other examples with which you are familiar. It is up to you whether you take a wide range of visible activities or simply discuss one in great detail. If you wish to focus on one, Unit 15 gives you more than enough to work on in its examination of the Hindu festival of Durga Puja, or, of course, you can find your own example.

The purpose of the question is to test your understanding of the kind of model that scholars might use when they set about studying a religion. Units 14-15, Section 4, devote considerable attention to Ninian Smart’s ‘dimensional model’ and the units return to this on several occasions. In discussing this kind of approach, however, the units also emphasise that many of the claims and experiences associated with religious activity are not so open to investigation. In planning your answer, you will need to give careful thought to the examples you intend to use, ensure that you show what the observation of your examples tells us about their place in the lives of individuals and communities, and, finally, give some consideration to the issue that lies at the heart of the question – how far you think this kind of approach takes us in trying to understand the religious activity you have encountered.

Or

History of Science

Question:
Assess the claim that Alfred Russell Wallace is a casualty of our preoccupation with scientific heroes.

What evidence could be drawn on to support or contradict this assertion?

Guidance note
You will need to draw on Block 4, Units 16-17, to consider how notions of the scientific hero were formed in Wallace’s own time and subsequently. This in turn involves assessing what counted as credible scientific achievement in nineteenth-century England and what could compromise that sense of achievement and the corresponding image of heroism. The discussion of ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ in Section 2 and 5, the historical background surrounding scientific achievement in Section 3, and some comparative points made about Charles Darwin and Wallace, should provide ample material for your discussion.

Personal note of substantial irritation:
I am so fucking annoyed with this question that frankly I find it difficult to articulate myself without swearing.

Why on earth do the guidance notes restrict the student to (and I quote) nineteenth-century England?

Wallace wasn’t even English – he was born in Wales and his family ancestry is firmly rooted in Scotland (I’ll give you a clue guys, look at his surname!).

But on a wider issue – was there no scientific community in the rest of Great Britain?

Of course there bloody well was – with the majority of scientific output at this time coming from Scotland rather than England.

Presumably this mis-sighting is all down to some complete and utter ignorant twat at the Open University thinking that England is Great Britain.

I’ve got news for you twat.

The reality is that England is a component rather than the whole.

With – presumably – high-level people at the OU having mindsets like this, what chance does the quality of the rest of the course stand?

B.

Well I felt it.

The earthquake.

At 00.57 I was woken by the whole house vibrating and a deep rumbling (as though a fleet of a couple of hundred very large HGV’s were cruising up the drive at 60mph.).

My first thought was that the hot water tank was boiling and about to explode.

Then it settled to a low-level throb for one or two milliseconds and then vanished.

‘Oh yeah’, I thought. ‘Earthquake’.

I can remember the first one I ever felt – I was working in San Francisco. Now that really was scary.

According to this morning’s media the epicentre was in north Lincolnshire; there are a number of quotes from the British Geographical Society (whose website will, I imagine, get hit to buggery and back today).

Ironic really, because BGS are based less than 20 miles from from the epicentre – at Keyworth in Nottinghamshire.

A crisply-minted bar of chocolate goes to the first person to hypothesise a conspiracy theory about BGS trying to drum up business…

B.

Look, English isn’t my first language. And besides, the English language isn’t static; English is an evolutionary beast, it changes with each generation. And if a member of this generation (points finger at self) wants to introduce a word like ‘workery’ than actually it’s cool and ok and hip and happening and everything and… just… so there! I mean, I could have said something really ancient like “Riding Along on a Crest of a Wave” but how many people would have got that? Don’t answer. I hate being wrong. Besides, I’m in much too good a mood to be wrong about anything. Because today I’m in such a good mood I’m on the verge of taking over the world… and allowing everyone else to continue living on the planet. Rather than on a small corner of the moon. Don’t look at me like that. I know the moon doesn’t have corners and one more glance like that my friend and you’ll be out! Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes…

Top workery!

People are funny creatures, capable of much funniness. And fun-ness.

Yesterday, despite having lunch on the hoof and a trip to Maplin (note to self: must call the place ‘Maplin’ not ‘Maplins’, the former being the electronic gadgetry emporium I visited, the latter being the name of the fictional holiday camp in Hi De Hi!) I had a better than good day.

Many people put in significant effort to make my away fixture to scientific folk a massive success.

It’s always a little touch and go – as anyone might be able to appreciate – to ‘go out in to the field’ (though no fields were actually visited on this occasion) and meet a bunch of interested people.

But not only were these people interested when I got there… They were very interesting too!

A win-win!

Yay!

It was, without doubt, a long day but by then end of it I’d met three Professors, a couple of Fellows, a bunch of very nice Doctors, a couple of Post-Docs and a brace of PhD-students.

And the conversations were brisk, professional, pointed and purposeful (sorry, couldn’t think of a ‘p’ word for brisk).

It was a wonder that I slept last night – I was that fired up.

Today too (not, I hasten to add, that I was trying to sleep at work – oh no!).

In fact despite less than my usual amount of caffeine and (sits back and counts) yep, five meetings and a software demo, despite all that… I’m still flying from yesterday.

And two good meetings with senior bods this afternoon helped clarify a couple of minor niggles – brush them aside really – and set me on a more direct route to my objective.

I wish, right now, there were more hours in the day.

I could comfortably fill an extra three working hours, five days a week.

Yes I know. And I agree! I do like to sleep sometimes, you’re right.

But suddenly I have so much to do. Four projects simultaneously, all to be delivered in the same time-frame.

But I love a challenge.

Liverpool next Monday.

I’d offer to bring you back a stick of rock but I have some kind of peculiar quality about me that makes the stuff evaporate.

Weird!

B.

Lunch is a take-away cardboard mug of latte as I jog down the road to Maplins. It has a lid. The latte.

Well, I expect Maplins has a lid too.

But oh, what it is to be in a place with many – different – shops!

I have nothing against Swindon per se.

Except that there’s no ‘electronics bits and bobs shop’ in the centre.

There are, however, four – count them, four! – card shops.

Because..?

I have hypothesised – perhaps because the average Swindon shopper is female and the average electronics bits and bobs shopper is male?

Anyway.

Sometime soonish I shall have a crack (snigger) at another test podcast – with my new purchase incorporated in the set-up.

Ooops! Ten minutes to get to my next meeting venue. Gotta run!

B.

OMG there’s a guy over there – a student – whose ring tone is ‘Jerusalem’. But not in a good way, I mean in a cheesily cheesy Casio kind of way.

So this morning’s train journey – look, you’ll have to forgive me, I get easily excited by new stuff. And old stuff excites me too, if I haven’t encountered it for a while.

I arrived at my local train station with two minutes to spare, my face glowingly pinkly from the cold, breath steaming on the air, my laptop bag clasped firmly, iPod giving me an episode of No Agenda, feeling much like a ‘new boy’ having his first day at school.

Has it really been so long since I took a work journey by train from my local station?

Yes. Because the train operators have issues carrying passengers where they want to go.

The train arrived bang on time.

And the train was full.

Actually that’s not accurate.

The train was over-full.

If there are no vacant seats and people are forced to not only stand in both ends of the carriages, they also have to queue down the length of each carriage, the train is over-full.

Hmmm…
Isn’t that a health and safety violation? Don’t I remember reading that after one particularly awful train crash, the train operators were told that the number of fatalities and injuries was so high because people were forced to stand in lines through the carriages?

Anyway.

I handed over less than £10 for a return journey – which isn’t bad – but I have to stand all the way there – not good.

The standing meant that the conductor gave up trying to collect fares when he looked at how many people were crammed in to the next carriage.

We arrived at the destination – three minutes late but I’m not complaining about that.

Four minutes walk later I arrived at my destination.

How cool is this?

Yes, I did ask you to forgive me for being simple. Perhaps Soph’s right. Perhaps I am a bit simple…

Yeah, and you so don’t need to comment on that last bit.

We’re on a break right now – looking forward to lunch though – but this morning has been very interesting.

Today I like people.

Except for that student over there with the cheesy Casio ring tone.

I hope he falls on his mobile and accidentally breaks it.

Evil cackle…

B.

Tomorrow I shall be leaving my fellow motorists unscared as I swap my driving gloves (not really) for a return rail ticket from Bromsgrove to Birmingham.

Yes, I’m exchanging my home collective of scientific bods for an away fixture.

The best thing about this is that I’m able to do this journey on a strange metaphysical construct some people have chosen to label as…

Public Transport (duh, duh, duuuuuuh!).

I shall leave the house, walk the five minutes to the train station and (presuming the train turns up) hop aboard where I’ll join the cheery throng of Monday morning commuters.

Fully equipped with my 21st Century weaponry (iPod and laptop) I’ll take my seat and will be swiftly conveyed through the countryside towards the hustling conurbation that is the City of Birmingham.

I’m sad.

I’m sad because I’m actually looking forward to having the opportunity to travel on the train – but only because my normal five-days-a-week trip is (according to the train operators) a journey that no-one (wants?) should be able to make.

Bless.

Next Monday I get to take another train. Couple of trains. Destination Liverpool.

But for tomorrow, Birmingham is enough.

Today Birmingham.

Tomorrow the world!

exits stage left cackling evilly…

B.

But for some reason…

Amusing in a very wrong way.

B.

First in this post, to Switzerland.

Land of the cuckoo clock (even though it was a German invention), numbered account and the world’s most secretive banking laws.

And green – in an environmental rather than rural way.

Anyone who has heard the TV journalist Jeremy Clarkson’s views on Switzerland will realise the country is an extremely green place.

And an extreme place.

The latest piece of green Swiss extremism is a proposal to ban the Swiss Air Force from low flying in Alpine areas.

The Swiss Air Force is only a defensive force – Switzerland isn’t even a member of NATO – and it solely exists to protect the bankers and cuckoo clock makers.

But the Swiss greens are saying that the noise of the Swiss F18s and F5s is harming the local economy and environment.

Switzerland has many Alpine areas and it’s not a massive leap of logic that one would want the national Air Force pilots trained in that kind of landscape.

The Swiss greens seem to think it’s not necessary.

It’s probably not another massive leap of logic to surmise that the Swiss greens probably want to do away with the Swiss Air Force.

I trained on exercise with the Swiss Air Force; it’s a service comprised of part-time, amateur servicemen and women.

But their capability and professionalism is worthy of – and in the case of some nations, exceeds – the same standards of most professional aviators.

Even though I have a very large video clip of a cockpit-filmed dog-fight that unfortunately shows 14 Sqn Royal Air Force comprehensively kicking Swiss backside all over their own airspace.

It would be sad if the greens became elevated to a place where they set national defence capabilities.

And now, to Guam where…

The world’s most expensive air crash has just happened.

A United States B-2 ‘stealth’ bomber crashed just after take-off from Anderson Air Force Base, Guam.

Thankfully both pilots ejected (I’ll tell you a true story about Royal Air Force ejection procedures in a minute) safely, but the aircraft is spread over a large area and will keep the wreckage-pickers busy for some time.

But at a cost of (count the zeros!) $ 1,200,000,000.00 each, this relatively unreported event masks the world’s most expensive air crash.

And now that anecdote…

The first time I flew on a low-level sortie as I was strapped in to my ejection seat the pilot said over the intercom:

And if I say ‘Eject, eject, eject’ I want you to reach down and pull that tag immediately, and if you say “What?” you’ll be talking to yourself’.

It crystalised my thoughts!

B.