Backdated 2 - Sorkin's Stuido 60 is Sublime

Sorkin’s supreme studio 60 on the sunset strip

Aaron Sorkin is rightly renowned for the award-winning West Wing and Social Network.  The Newsroom, his current TV show, is something I am very eager to watch, and sad that I haven’t been able to yet.  His star is likely to rise higher still with the forthcoming biopic of Steve Jobs, which will apparently be done in just 3 different scenes, each one in the build up to a major product launch.  But one show that is often overlooked and was cancelled far too early is the quite brilliant Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

I’ve just finished rewatching the entire series, for only the second time, and I loved every moment of it.  Sorkin’s snappy dialogue fits the setting and the back and forth between the cast is a joy to behold.  As in West Wing, he is joined by Thomas Schlamme, and the camera work has some trademarks that let you know who it is behind the camera.  There isn’t quite the “Walk & Talk” of West Wing, but there are definite marks of it.  And when something is as seminal as that, why not continue to use it?

To summarise the major premise of Studio 60, it is a behind the scenes show about a late Friday night comedy show, in the style of Saturday Night Live.  The writer and executive producer, Wes Mandell loses his rag with the FCC and the censorship of his show live on air, gets fired and two old crew members return to rescue the show.  Starring Matt Perry as head writer Matthew Albie and Bradley Whitford as executive producer Danny Tripp, their chemistry (again first seen during Perry’s guest appearances as a lawyer on West Wing) is a joy, and they’re joined by a few others from there.

Through the first half of the series plot lines are set up which could conceivably last for a good 4 of 5 seasons.  Unfortunately, due to lack of rating success it got cancelled early, and you can see the rush to tie up a succession of loose ends.  It seems somewhat ironic that a show about a show where the ratings sometimes get glossed over in favour of putting out a good product gets canned for ratings.  And its a great shame, I would have loved to have seen how they would have been dealt with had time been their call.

That’s not to say that the second half of the series is devoid of good episodes in favour of finishing the plot.  Yes the final four have a lot of content in them, but they are stunningly written and performed, and the Disaster Show, featuring a cameo from Alison Janney, is great fun.

The backdrop of having to get a show ready to go every Friday night brings continual time pressure to the show, and adds an edge to it.  The constant reminder of the countdown clock in Matt’s office doesn’t let you forget it.  Remember, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Backdated 1 - Prometheus

Warning.  Here be spoilers!

I rarely, if ever, do film reviews, so this attempt to air my opinions on Prometheus may end up slightly haphazard.  Set in the same universe as the Alien quadrilogy, it had some stiff competition to stand up to in the two originals, widely regarded as classics, while having to cope with being expected to be far better than films 3 and 4 (which I am yet to see).  It also had the added pressure of being a prequel, and having to therefore exist as a standalone film, while setting up any future plots it chose to and adding to the mythology.

The film started with some fantastic panoramic shots over mountain tops and valleys, before focusing in on the top of a waterfall.  A humanlike figure approached, with enough difference to make him alien.  He drank some black liquid which transformed him, black patches appearing over his skin, and his body beginning to fall apart before he tumbled over the precipice, with the camera zooming into his body, down to his DNA which mutated and was ripped asunder before our eyes, before reforming.  Visually impressive, and raising questions as to what happened after it reformed, it was a very good opening teasing us with what was to come.

Unfortunately that was as good as it got.  The film seemed to suffer from a great deal of confusion, hints of ideas formed throughout but none really developed to a level where you could see if they had any scope.  There was a lack of identity, right down to what it was trying to be.  The original Alien was a horror and the sequel an action packed journey.  But Prometheus seemed to want to do both but without being able to do either well.  If it chose which path to take, and replaced some of the scenes of the opposite nature with more plot development it could have delivered a film to back up the opening visuals.

The plot in a nutshell is that archaeologists on earth had found images in 7 different ancient civilisations that all showed men looking up at larger humanoid figures pointing to the same pattern of stellar objects.  We then travel to the only known place with this system, and the only habitable location within it, and find a non-natural structure that they then explore.  Inside they separate into 2 groups, find a body with the head perfectly preserved and more of the mysterious black liquid.  One group taking the head back to the ship, and the other group end up trapped inside over night and get attacked by creatures that grow from the liquid.  We return in the morning to find them both presumably dead, one of the crew poisoned with a drop of the liquid by the ships android, and the android goes separately and finds one of the humanoids (who the head belonged to and turns out to be a form of human that we descended from) alive in a stasis chamber.  We return to the ship, have one of the supposedly dead crew attack it after being mutated, while another member turns out to be pregnant with an alien baby after sleeping with the poisoned man who gets torched to death.  After an emergency caesarean she thinks she kills it, and finds that the company founder, close to death, is on board trying to find the reason for life.  Together (with android) they go to the stasis human and ask it, only to find more black poison, wake the ‘human’ and for it to destroy the android, kill the founder and try to kill the rest.  She runs away, the ship goes on a suicide mission to stop it trying to kill everyone on earth.  It survives the crash, comes after the heroine but gets eaten by the alien baby, from which is born the alien of the quadrilogy.

Fully developed the idea of why these people came to earth (and other planets), left and why they then want to kill them could have made for a good film.  Explanation as to what happened when the ‘human’ drank the liquid in the opening, full blown action fight between the people from earth and those they go to see, proper horror with aliens of both kind lurking around the darkened corridors, all would have been an improvement on the confusion.  Unfortunately this isn’t what we got, and they just tacked the link to the universe onto it, and had no need to apart from the name.

The titan Prometheus tried to put man and god on a level.  Ridley Scott tried to put this on a level with the original 2 Alien films, missed and will be lucky if its considered on the same level as the latter 2.

Forms of Intelligence

No this isn't about artificial intelligence.  Nor is it about extra-terrestrials.  Or about intelligence of plants and animals.  This is about mankind.

We generally attribute certain characteristics to intelligence - good memory, being able to think both logically and laterally and being able to concentrate for periods of time.  And while these are good for the education we receive at school and university, is this the only type of intelligence that matters?  Are things like intuition not important?  And what about inter-people "intelligence" (for want of a better phrase)?  Knowing what to say to people, how to make a good impression, put people at ease and things like that?  What about adaptability? Is that not an intelligence trait?

We then get into the question of which of these are more important for general life?  For work life it is very dependent on the career you plan to take up, and I would have thought that for most people they try to go for a career which is suited to their abilities in these matters.  Meeting new people there is one that stands out, but when in conversation with people you've known longer then it matters more that you have similar levels of the earlier traits so you can have a two way conversation and push each other.

Tests never seem to treat these later aspects, and I'm sure there are plenty of others I've overlooked.  I think they are as important as the things that we do test for and I would like to see more.  I also think it would be interesting to see how different people would score - would people with a conventionally high IQ score well, or whether we would see a convolution of the distributions - and what the relation between them would be.

A XV from 15?

With the world cup now in full swing, it is always tempting to try to come up with the best XV in world rugby.  However, I find the challenge of assembly a world team where each country can only contribute one player more interesting - do you start with the key positions and then work out?  Do you start with the best teams, or do you start with the worst?  Or do you look for stand out players in any teams and then try to work out a XV?

I don't think there are any places you can hide in world rugby now - poor props and you will get penalised constantly in the scrums and when you're giving away that many penalties it gets hard to get any continuity.  Poor 2nd rows and you struggle in line outs as well as getting pushed back in scrums.  Poor back row and you never get any quick ball, so you're backs struggle to get space to work in.  Poor scrum and fly halves, the outside backs again don't have anything to work with.  Poor centres, you never get over the gain line from first phase ball.  Poor back 3, and you get peppered by high balls and struggle to get any territory.  Consequently, my approach will see me taking the best players from the worse teams first, and then taking good players from the best teams to fit in instead of their best.

The current IRB rankings are:

1(1)	NEW ZEALAND	90.55
2(3)	SOUTH AFRICA	86.71
3(2)	AUSTRALIA	84.84
4(4)	ENGLAND	83.99
5(5)	FRANCE	83.78
6(8)	IRELAND	82.50
7(6)	WALES	80.73
8(7)	SCOTLAND	79.12
9(9)	ARGENTINA	77.30
10(11)	ITALY	73.88
11(14)	CANADA	73.74
12(10)	SAMOA	73.59
13(13)	JAPAN	71.95
14(15)	FIJI	71.01
15(12)	TONGA	70.30
16(16)	GEORGIA	70.00
17(18)	USA	66.38
18(17)	ROMANIA	65.69
19(20)	NAMIBIA	61.24
20(21)	PORTUGAL	60.67

(http://www.irb.com/rankings/full.html)

The first 10 teams are obvious, Tri Nations, 6 Nations and Argentina.  After these, it becomes more awkward.  I will go for the Samoa, Tonga, USA, Georgia and Namibia.  Apologies to the higher ranked teams, especially Canada and Japan, but I think they have players that stand out more in their teams, and are closer to the level of the top 10 nations, (most unlucky here is the Japanese 10 James Arlidge who played exceptionally well against France).

Starting with Georgia, I would take their openside flanker Mamuka Gorgodze, man of the match against England, and voted the best overseas player in France's Top 14 league - beating players such as Contepomi Parisse and Wilkinson.  Namibia would give me their captain and flanker Jacques Burger, who has recently left the Sharks for Saracens and is a bit of a one man wrecking ball.  From Tonga I would have the Saints prop Soane Tonga'uiha, arguably the best prop in the Premiership.With Samoa, the choice is between Henry and Alessand Tuilagi, and Seilia Mapusua, and I think I will have Mapusua at 13 - Exiles fans will tell you how much they missed him since he went to Japan, allowing me to take Takudzwa Ngwenya from the USA to play on the wing - the man who famously outpaced Habana at the last world cup.

Moving into the top 10 Nations, we look at Italy, France, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and Argentina.  From Italy the two obvious candidates are Castro and Parisse.  For France and Wales it is the outside backs, Jamie Roberts and the front rows.  Ireland have BOD, POC and Bowe.  Scotland and England have second rows in Courtney Lawes and Richie Gray, and Scrum Halves.  Argentina, the strength is in the pack and in Hernandez who they are sorely missing this World Cup, and one of the stars of the last one.  From this, I would take Parrise, Bowe, Gray, Youngs, Hernandez, Adam Jones, and Servat, although it is very tempting to switch to Lawes/Cusiter - or potentially both second rows leaving room to take du Preez from SA.  This leaves me a second row, full back and inside centre from the Tri-Nations.  I would have Victor Matfield, Sonny Bill Williams and Kurtley Beale.

The Full Team:
1: Tonga'uiha (Tonga)
2: Servat (France)
3: Jones (Wales)
4: Gray (Scotland)
5: Matfield (SA)
6: Burger (Namibia)
7: Gorgodze (Georgia)
8: Parisse (Italy)
9: Youngs (England)
10: Hernandez (Argentina)
11: Ngwenya (USA)
12: Williams (NZ)
13: Mapusua (Samoa)
14: Bowe (Ireland)
15: Beale (Australia)

Looking at the players, only a handful would get close to a normal world XV, possibly only 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, and 15 would be considered with no guarantees about being picked.  However given the exercise here, I think this is potentially one of the better teams possible.

World Cup Preview

The Rugby Union world cup is just around the corner, and the squads have been announced.  So I thought I'd use this opportunity to look at the home nations ahead of the tournament in New Zealand, and see where we stand.


England

Squad

Props : Dan Cole, Alex Corbisiero, Andy Sheridan, Matt Stevens, David Wilson
Hookers : Dylan Hartley, Lee Mears, Steve Thompson
Locks : Louis Deacon, Courtney Lawes, Tom Palmer, Simon Shaw
Loose Forwards : Tom Croft, Nick Easter, James Haskell, Lewis Moody, Tom Wood

Scrum Halves : Joe Simpson, Richard Wigglesworth, Ben Youngs
Fly Halves : Toby Flood, Johnny Wilkinson
Centres : Shontayne Hape, Mike Tindall, Manu Tuilagi
Back Three : Delon Armitage, Chris Ashton, Matt Banahan, Mark Cueto, Ben Foden


With only 3 out and out centres, England do look a little light in this area, and the big shock was Riki Flutey missing out.  However, Armitage and Banahan both have experience playing in the 12/13 shirts so it is understandable.  And with the way that England played in the 6 nations, having big ball carrying centres freeing up space for the back 3 worked then, and I would expect them to use a similar tactic in the world cup.  Which carries on with the choice of loose forwards - only one out and out openside, but any combination of Wood, Haskell and Croft on the flanks have between them the skill set needed, almost more like a Left/Right combination than Open/Blind.  I agree with the choice of 5 props and 3 hookers, and the personnel chosen - in a world cup campaign I think it is essential to have depth in these positions.  With the half backs, I think Wigglesworth is lucky to be there, and I think the only reason he is, is because he can cover 10 too.  I like Simpson and think that he has the pace to keep defence honest near the fringes, which plays into the game plan of the big centres, and that due to the centres we've gone for a 9/10 player instead of bringing in Hodgson and having Flood or Wilkinson covering 12, as this would change the team dynamic too much.

Ireland

Squad

Props :  Tony Buckley, Tom Court, Cian Healy, Mike Ross 
Hookers : Rory Best, Sean Cronin, Jerry Flannery 
Locks : Leo Cullen, Domacaha O'Callaghan, Paul O'Connell, Dennis Ryan
Loose Forwards : Stephen Ferris, Jamie Heaslip, Dennis Leamy, Sean O'Brien, David Wallace (injured).

Scrum Halves : Isaac Boss, Conor Murray, Eoin Reddan.
Fly Halves : Ronan O'Gara, Jonny Sexton 
Centres : Gordon D'Arcy, Brian O'Driscoll, Paddy Wallace
Back Three : Rob Kearney, Tommy Bowe, Keith Earls, Fergus McFadden, Geordan Murphy, Andrew Trimble 

The Irish haven't had a good build up, losing all 4 warm up games, but they have a good sprinkling of match winners throughout their squad, and being able to leave players of the calibre of Fitzgerald and O'Leary at home speaks volumes about the faith Kidney has in the replacements.  Personally, I would've been tempted to take them, as the old adage goes, form is only temporary and I would back them to regain theirs.  The loss of David Wallace may allow them to try something I am keen to see, a back row of Heaslip Ferris and O'Brien - similar to the way Englands worked for the 6 Nations, although I doubt they will.  I think a lot will depend on how well their 9s play as they don't have a large degree of experience between them, but the back line outside is very encouraging.

Scotland


Squad

Props : Geoff Cross, Alasdair Dickinson,Allan Jacobsen, Moray Low, Euan Murray 
Hookers : Ross Ford, Dougie Hall,Scott Lawson
Locks : Richie Gray, Jim Hamilton, Nathan Hines, Alastair Kellock
Loose Forwards : John Barclay, Kelly Brown, Ross Rennie, Alasdair Strokosch, Richie Vernon 

Scrum Halves : Mike Blair, Chris Cusiter, Rory Lawson 
Fly Halves : Ruaridh Jackson, Dan Parks 
Centres : Joe Ansbro, Nick De Luca, Graeme Morrison
Back Three :  Simon Danielli, Max Evans, Rory Lamont, Sean Lamont, Chris Paterson 

Scotland have, understandably, gone with a forward dominated squad.  Their lack of try scoring is well publicised, and I hope that they will get this monkey off their back, with the backs actually doing some planned moves, and seeing lots of support runners for any breaks as this often is a major issue.  Their strengths are in 9s and back three, but a lot will depend on the centres and fly halves.  Nicki Walker is a loss as he was playing quite well for them, but hopefully whoever comes in will do a job for Robinson.

Wales

Squad


Props : Ryan Bevington, Gethin Jenkins, Adam Jones, Paul James, Craig Mitchell
Hookers : Huw Bennett, Ken Owens
Locks :  Luke Charteris, Bradley Davies, Alun Wyn Jones 
Loose Forwards : Toby Faletau, Ryan Jones, Danny Lydiate, Andy Powell, Sam Warburton

Scrum Halves : Tavis Knoyle, Michael Phillips, Lloyd Williams
Fly Halves : James Hook, Stephen Jones, Rhys Priestland
Centres :  Jamie Roberts, Jonathan Davies, Scott Williams
Back Three : Aled Brew, Lee Byrne, Leigh Halfpenny, George North, Shane Williams 

With Wales, I feel the biggest question marks are in the forwards.  With the back row they've only taken 1 specialist 7, who admittedly has been playing excellently, and only their first choice 6 is capable of covering there.  And then 3 players who can play at 6 or 8.  The balance seems off to me.  With the front row, they're missing their captain, so Hooker is a week area, and the first choice props are just coming back from injury so there are question marks there.  I feel this area is where they could struggle.  Behind the scrum, the squad is more or less as expected.  For their sake, I hope Phillips doesn't play too much as he is too ponderous and they need quick ball to get their outside backs to work.  However their back 3 are always exciting to watch, even if Hook, first choice 10, is the best cover at 15.

Resulting from Results

We're into the middle of August now, and that means that A-Level students have, after what must seem an age for them, got their results, and the GCSE students are about to get theirs.  On the apparent up side, the pass rate has risen to 97.8%, 8.2% of which was at the top grade of A*, but on the down side over 190 thousand people  had to go through clearance to try and get one of 40 thousand university places, and an expected 200 thousand people who wanted to go to university missing out.  But are these really the high and lowlights to come from results day?

It is said so often now that it has become cliché that exams are too easy, and a figure of almost 98% passing seems to be damning evidence for this argument.  However I do not believe this to be the case.  I think that people are no longer being taught the subject, but being taught to pass an exam.  With exams tending to ask similar questions year on year, and the restriction of the syllabus for some subjects aiding this it is possible to get an A in some A Levels by going through mark schemes and looking for the points that they reward, and then learning them.  I know this works, I did it for one of my modules a few years ago and got over 90% in it.  It demeans the qualification that many 17 and 18 year olds put a lot of effort in gaining.

I also think having such high rates are devaluing the qualification.  Unfortunately, with teachers living by their percentages they will do what they can to keep it as high as possible, which bring me back to being taught to pass the exam.  It may look great that they have so many A grades, but the actual amount they know may not bare sufficient resemblance to what an A grade student should know.  This results in universities struggling to differentiate between them - the amount of places that require 3As or higher is significantly less than the amount of students gaining them - over a quarter of all A-Level grades are A/A* this year.  We need more people failing, and fewer people gaining the top grades.  In general everyone will experience some kind of failure in life, but without having any experience of having done so at school they may not react positively and that is a vital life skill.  So overall, I think having the highest pass rates and % of A/A* ever is in fact not a good thing, but a bad one.

I also think that the huge amounts of people wanting to go to University is bad, so the 200,00 missing out is a good thing.  Understandable, but bad.  The reason I think it is understandable is that with the increase in the cost of going to University set to rise, the amount of people who would take a year out, or aren't sure are applying now otherwise the cost would be incredible.  However too many people are going to Universities simply to have a student experience.  This has become the overriding reason, whereas it should be that people go to University because they are interested in their subject and want to study it for 3 years.  This attitude is a pet hate of mine, and I would dearly love to see UCAS interview everyone who applies through them to decide what their motive for a degree is, and for people who only want to go get drunk to not get through.  However, such a system would be far too expensive and probably not work anyway.  There are also too many Universities now, giving a huge surplus in graduates seeking employment.  This results in jobs demanding a degree when it isn't always applicable to them.  Not every qualification needs to be a degree, or needs to be a university course - I also think the old polytechnics should go back to that status too.  As much as I want the population to be educated, university education isn't for everyone, and too many people don't realise it.

I know that my thoughts are probably against what most people believe, but in order to make the qualifications more meaningful I think they are necessary

Holidays for Science

I am an atheist.  I never pretend to be christian, yet every December I buy and receive Christmas presents, and every spring I do the same with Easter Eggs.  Yet I don't believe in them.  I do believe in science, but I've never celebrated any historic event from science in a similar way.  The 2001 census had approxiately 15% of the people who answered that question claim to believe in no religion, and almost 8% of people refused to answer it.  And while this is my opinion and not fact, I believe that there are people who never go to church, don't believe in any god, but put themselves down as Christian due to being raised in that religion.  Atheists are a growing population, but as a Christian country, we still celebrate these two holidays as a nation, even if we don't believe in them.  Darwin's Birthday I saw mentioned a few times last year, but this was the first time for it.  Any event worthy of celebration is only celebrated on memorable anniversaries of them, not annually.  And while the birth and death of Christ are clear events to celebrate, there isn't a birth of science, and neither has it died.  This leads to the question which should we celebrate?

There are too many contenders to celebrate them all.  A few initial thoughts give rise to the following :

1. DNA discovered
2. The structure of the atom being described
3. Achieving Cloning
4. Artificial life being created
5. The laws of Thermodynamics
6. Maxwell's Equations
7. Newton's Laws of Motion
8. Einsteinium Relativity
9. The Start of Quatum Mechanics
10. Darwin's theory of Evolution

Admittedly, having studied physics, I am highly biassed in including some of these, but I believe that without them our understanding of the world, and the technology that we would find ourselves using would be incredibly different to how it is now.  We would be without so many things we have found ourselves relying on, yet we don't celebrate them ahead of the birth of someone over 2000 years ago on a date different to that he was actually born on.  This seems to me to be crazy.  But if we split this group into two, Physical and Biological seem to be a natural split, we could replace Christmas and Easter with holidays that atheists actually believe in.  I realise that there are countless things I missed here -  I didn't even mention Penicillin and all the medical advances we've made, feel free to suggest any worthy of major celebration in our new atheist calender which will take over from the Christian one.  And just as the Christians annexed Pagan festivels to make the transition easier, I suggest Biology Day, being about new life, should be in the spring, leaving Physics Day to be Mid-Winter.  Surely it is only a matter of time before religious calenders become out dated, and with people still wanting holidays to celebrate, I think this is the future.