Death by Humiliation

"In Memory of Myself" (2007) is based on a 1960 novel by Furio Monicelli, "The Perfect Jesuit" and is Saverio Costanzo's second film (his first film, Private, set in Palestine, won festival prizes). Monicelli experienced the novitiate directly, so this film carries the chance of authenticity. Set in the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore on the Venetian island of San Giorgio, you enter a world the Catholic Church has devised for the selection of priests. Denied any personal relationships (fellow novices are trained to report private conversations) and humiliated in group sessions, it is surprising that any novices make it through the gruelling and austere process. "You are here to test the order and the order will test you" One incumbent is dying, but only allowed occasional visits from his family. Another is found banging his head against a wall in the middle of the night; he amongst others realise that this life, after all, is not for them, and leaves.
We see the novitiate through the eyes of Andrea (curiously Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore was designed by Andrea Palladio in the 16^th century). Andrea is tested to the extreme. "Who am I," exclaims Andrea tearfully in the chapel. "Why am I here?" The homily rota is changed, Andrea must produce his homily the next day and works all night to achieve this. Fellow novices decry his offering as lacking in love, insufficiently humble. Will Andrea leave as others have done, or will his conversion to a selfless state be completed?
As a piece of cinema, this work is unique, memorable, challenging and rewarding. The sound track itself provokes extreme contrasts between the mood of the music and the sombre timelessness of the monastery atmosphere. As an insight into Jesuit life, I suspect you will not find better. As a two hour journey away from normal life, it was an unforgettable experience.

Standby Surprise

On the UK government "Act on CO2" website there is clear advice, which no one would disagree with: Don't leave it on standby
"If everyone in the UK switched off unused appliances it would save £800 million a year. Leaving appliances plugged in and switched on at the socket means they're still using energy – so turn TVs, games consoles and mobile phone chargers off at the mains to save yourself money."


This is self evident advice and easy to implement. Why would any one question it? Turning something off that you don't need will save energy and save the planet. But is it always true?


Here is a simple quiz question for all you energy gurus out there:
I go out for the evening and despite my usual vigilance I leave my phone charger switched on, my TV on standby, and (horror of horrors) an electric light on. The room is heated (it is winter) by an electric heater, which has a thermostat. So here is the question, does leaving the electrical devices on unnecessarily:

1. Use extra energy, contributing to my carbon footprint?
2. Make absolutely no difference to my energy consumption, but increase my carbon footprint?
3. Increase my energy consumption by the wattage of the devices left on, but make no difference to my carbon footprint?
4. Make no difference to either my energy consumption or my carbon footprint?
5. I need more information and need to thermally model your home and the insulation system on a computer before I can say.

So here is the surprise (for some people). If you want to be pedantic and very accurate, the answer is (5), but to a very close approximation, the answer is (4). The reason? Let me go over some very simple physics.


All these electrical devices convert the energy they use into heat (I'm assuming that the phone is not plugged into the charger so we are not converting any mains electrical energy into battery energy). Actually, conversion of electrical energy into heat energy happens at 100% efficiency for almost all electrical devices. The electric heater does the same. The thermostat on the heater does not know if the heat delivered to your room is from the heater or the other devices; it is all just heat. So whilst you are heating the room, the job of the thermostat is to maintain the room at a particular temperature. Everything else being equal, it will turn on the heater for slightly smaller periods of time to exactly compensate for the heat generated by the offending devices. The energy you use will be whatever is necessary to maintain the temperature difference between the outside and the chosen thermostat temperature inside. Which electrical device generates that heat does not matter. Obviously the thermal installation makes a massive difference and air flow from the outside through your room (a draft) is probably even more important. But the TV on standby makes no difference at all.


So why might answer (5) be important. We let us suppose that the phone charger is on the window sill, behind the curtains. It might then lose the heat it generates without contributing so much to the heating of the room. There would then be an argument for switching it off to save energy. I mention this only because there will be people who spot this and then claim that my argument is completely wrong. I will let you judge, on this.


Don't be complacent if you are in a hot climate with air conditioning running. Unfortunately the physics works the other way around in this case. Because air conditioning uses more energy than it shifts, the extra devices in your home now get multiplied by the efficiency of the air conditioning. A TV on standby using five watts now needs, maybe, another 5 watts of air conditioning to keep the room at the same thermostatically controlled temperature. And this will increase both your energy costs and your carbon footprint.

Murdoch Madness?

Let’s get real here. All the main newspapers have invested in their web sites in order to maximise income. Murdoch is just the first to blink and pursue subscription in addition to advertiser income.

Look what happened in the airline industry. Three years ago you had to pay extra to do an on-line check-in with Ryan air. Now you get fined £40 if you don’t. In the meantime, all the check-in desks (and the people who staffed them) have disappeared. Similar cost savings will occur in the news industry, once the market can be moved to the low cost automated delivery of the web.

No Justice for Venables

In order for Jon Venables to receive justice, it was essential for him to remain anonymous and to be tried for any new crime without his identity being revealed. Why do we even know, at this stage, that he might have re-offended? 

It seems to me that the very release of the information that he is back in prison is itself a criminal act and not in the public interest. It has increased the likelihood of his jury knowing who he is, which will then prevent a trial at all, since his lawyers will rightly argue that he cannot be tried without his previous crime being known. This is being handled extremely badly. 

In any case, it was decided that this 10-year-old killer should be given a second chance at life - but now we are reneging on that decision. Of course being in a young offenders prison will not have been the best rehabilitation anyone could receive, but is regrettably the only one available.

The press are guilty of stirring up the potential lynch mob here. We see interviews with Jamie Bulger's mother, who of course is totally distraught. But I am sorry, she has no more right to know what is happening than any of us do. If we believe in the criminal justice system, then its decisions need to be followed through and not flouted by a blood thirsty press. Yes, justice must be seen to be done, but let justice be done first. The debate about how we treat a killer who was still at primary school can come afterwards.

Jeffrey Archer - The Nearly Man

Jeffrey Archer has a very wide range of talents: athlete, auctioneer, charity fund raiser, PE teacher, politician, celebrity (loved in Immingham, apparently), actor, convict and, of course, author. The Beetles visited Brasenose College, Oxford at his invitation in 1964 and Ringo Star is quoted as saying  'He strikes me as a nice enough fella, but he's the kind of bloke who would bottle your piss and sell it.'
Jeffrey Archer's original motivation for becoming an author was to repay massive debts of over £400,000 after investing in a company called Aquablast in 1974. His first novel, "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" was the success he needed to avoid bankruptcy. No one can deny him his story telling talent, he is always a good, if not demanding, read.
Archer, however, is the nearly man. His web site claims he ran 100 yards in 9.6 seconds in 1966; that's nearly the same as Usain Bolt dramatically breaking the 9.6 second barrier for 100 meters in Berlin in 2009. Archer nearly went to Wellington College (actually he went to Wellington School) and nearly went to Oxford, but with only three O'levels when he left school; it is true he did get a teaching qualification at Brasenose as a mature student. He was nearly prosecuted for insider trading when he made £77,000 profit on shares in Anglia Television, purchased for a friend and just before its takeover by MAI, whilst his wife was a director. He nearly got away with falsely suing the Daily Star for reporting that he slept with prostitute Monica Coghlan and we were all nearly convinced that he raised £57 million in his Simple Truth campaign for the Kurds although they received only about £250,000. John Major was convinced enough to recommend him for his peerage.
It is ironic, then, that Archer's novel "Paths of Glory" is based on the true story of George Mallory, who, along with Andrew Irvine, nearly got to the top of Everest in 1924; his body was discovered in 1999, only a few hundred meters from the summit. Mallory and Irvine may have preceded Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in reaching the summit by nearly 30 years; we will probably never know. There is a touching parallel here between Mallory and Archer; both gaining schooling by scholarship, both aspiring to climb to greater heights, be they social or mountainous. Both maybe not recognised for their true achievements. The story is embellished with minor conflicts about class and establishment behaviour, but fails to address the real passion of the mountaineer. Mallory is of course credited with the famous three word explanation for why you should climb a mountain: "because it's there."