Issue 14 Autumn 2008

Political GraffitiEthical Intuitions

Drugs and ‘�e Wire’Remembering Chile’s 9/11

�e Deep Blue Sea

10 11

ed and controlled. Under Clements Markham, it had undertaken to use Scott as an instrument of imperial exploration in a similar fashion to Livingstone before him. In schools ‘Empire Day’ would be introduced in 1902 with its accompanying text-books emphasising the “benefits of the great imperial heroes bringing civilisation”. Scott was one of those heroes. But this imperial overtone, a crucial element in Scott’s initial pop-ularity, has contributed to his demise in modern times. �e current dis-trust of Britain’s imperial trappings has been extended to a distrust of the empire’s last great hero. Shackleton is not tarred with the same brush. He was of Anglo–Irish descent and could not be numbered, as Scott can be, among the British middle class to whom the empire still played an im-portant role; he had no links with the RGS or any other imperial organisa-tions. Indeed, “he was one of the first examples of private enterprise

in exploration.” In complete con-trast to Scott, Shackleton was a man supremely out of place in the draw-ing rooms of the English elite, “the frank adventurer”. Shackleton’s story therefore is not fixed into its Edward-ian time frame but is extremely rel-evant to our own time – perhaps we may see that this is not a story fixed with any specific period of history.

Modern criticism, while not always valid and just, is symptomatic of a more general desire to challenge the British Empire and the greatest hero of its last days. Scott benefited from the unique emphasis on self sacrifice that abounded in Edwardian times.

He defined the Edwardian sense of gallantry and therefore finds his story inextricably linked to a bygone era. Shackleton, however, mistimed his expeditions to coincide with a war that would ultimately postpone the full recognition of his triumph. Iron-ically, this has ensured that he has not suffered at the hands of histori-ans picking over his stories. His tale is one which has no imperial back-ground, no untimely death and no strong historical ties. It is, therefore, perfect for the post–war era, which has embraced him accordingly. While the incredible story of Shack-leton has long been overshadowed by that of Scott, the time has come for revisionism. Great stories of survival can teach us things we might never have learned from the vainglorious. �at Britain has only just recently recognised this tells us much about the allure of Edwardian chivalry but also much about the profound shift in mind set that has now taken place.

Shackleton’s story is not fixed into its Edwardian time frame but is extremely relevant to our own

“

”

42 High Street, Oxford OX1 4AP Tel: 01865 245700

pening hours: Mon-Sat 8am-7pm, Sun 10am-5pm

Visit Olives for a true taste ofthe Mediterranean.

Fresh sandwiches, baguettes, ciabattas and paninis are served all day with an unparalleled range of delicious

fillings, along with hot soup of the day, muffins, cakes, tea and coffee.

During your visit, why not sample our extensive selection of international

cheeses, salamis, hams, specialist oils and French, Italian and local wines?

There’s nothing we like more than discovering new foods and flavours so come in and tantalize your taste buds.

!"#!$%&'(!)(*+,-./$+&&%/-)/$+&&$/+0!$/$+

12&3-*34$5&$!-%&&!"#!$%0/)6#-"&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7891:&::1::9;<=>&&&&&&&&???@ABCADEFGAHGIJ@KAL/LMGH>&&&&JKDAHHNABCADEFGAHGIJ@KAL

See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!—�omas Morrell (1703–1784)

�ink to excess

If you would like to find out about advertising in the Owl, please contact the.editor@theowljournal.com

10 11

ed and controlled. Under Clements Markham, it had undertaken to use Scott as an instrument of imperial exploration in a similar fashion to Livingstone before him. In schools ‘Empire Day’ would be introduced in 1902 with its accompanying text-books emphasising the “benefits of the great imperial heroes bringing civilisation”. Scott was one of those heroes. But this imperial overtone, a crucial element in Scott’s initial pop-ularity, has contributed to his demise in modern times. �e current dis-trust of Britain’s imperial trappings has been extended to a distrust of the empire’s last great hero. Shackleton is not tarred with the same brush. He was of Anglo–Irish descent and could not be numbered, as Scott can be, among the British middle class to whom the empire still played an im-portant role; he had no links with the RGS or any other imperial organisa-tions. Indeed, “he was one of the first examples of private enterprise

in exploration.” In complete con-trast to Scott, Shackleton was a man supremely out of place in the draw-ing rooms of the English elite, “the frank adventurer”. Shackleton’s story therefore is not fixed into its Edward-ian time frame but is extremely rel-evant to our own time – perhaps we may see that this is not a story fixed with any specific period of history.

Modern criticism, while not always valid and just, is symptomatic of a more general desire to challenge the British Empire and the greatest hero of its last days. Scott benefited from the unique emphasis on self sacrifice that abounded in Edwardian times.

He defined the Edwardian sense of gallantry and therefore finds his story inextricably linked to a bygone era. Shackleton, however, mistimed his expeditions to coincide with a war that would ultimately postpone the full recognition of his triumph. Iron-ically, this has ensured that he has not suffered at the hands of histori-ans picking over his stories. His tale is one which has no imperial back-ground, no untimely death and no strong historical ties. It is, therefore, perfect for the post–war era, which has embraced him accordingly. While the incredible story of Shack-leton has long been overshadowed by that of Scott, the time has come for revisionism. Great stories of survival can teach us things we might never have learned from the vainglorious. �at Britain has only just recently recognised this tells us much about the allure of Edwardian chivalry but also much about the profound shift in mind set that has now taken place.

Shackleton’s story is not fixed into its Edwardian time frame but is extremely relevant to our own

“

”

42 High Street, Oxford OX1 4AP Tel: 01865 245700

pening hours: Mon-Sat 8am-7pm, Sun 10am-5pm

Visit Olives for a true taste ofthe Mediterranean.

Fresh sandwiches, baguettes, ciabattas and paninis are served all day with an unparalleled range of delicious

fillings, along with hot soup of the day, muffins, cakes, tea and coffee.

During your visit, why not sample our extensive selection of international

cheeses, salamis, hams, specialist oils and French, Italian and local wines?

There’s nothing we like more than discovering new foods and flavours so come in and tantalize your taste buds.

!"#!$%&'(!)(*+,-./$+&&%/-)/$+&&$/+0!$/$+

12&3-*34$5&$!-%&&!"#!$%0/)6#-"&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&7891:&::1::9;<=>&&&&&&&&???@ABCADEFGAHGIJ@KAL/LMGH>&&&&JKDAHHNABCADEFGAHGIJ@KAL

See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!—�omas Morrell (1703–1784)

�ink to excess

If you would like to find out about advertising in the Owl, please contact the.editor@theowljournal.com

The Owl Journal

Chinese sloganeeringPropaganda as poetry in China todayAnna Holmwood — Modern Chinese Studies, St. Antony's

BreakfastThree slices of creative writingArts Editorial

Hearts, Heads and EthicsHow our minds decide what's rightJamie Horder — Psychiatry, St. John's

The Audacity of The Wire Politics, drugs and an extraordinary TV showChris Taylor — PPE, University

Carbon NanotubesThe amazing potential of the world's tiniest tubesNavaratnarajah Kuganathan — Chemistry, Wolfson

No Towers Fell on 9/11The new Chile remembers its own September 11thDaniel Altschuler

On the Underwater WorldJaws, the Titanic, and why the ocean depths have always fascinated usAdam Etinson — Philosophy, Hertford

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Editor–in–Chief and Chairman Joshua Eisenthal

Deputy Editor Jamie Horder

Humanities Editors Salmaan Mirza, Edwin Black

Arts Editors Reema Mehta, Neil Malloy, Meng–Yun Wang

Science Editor Jamie Horder

Managing Director Hannah Boyd, Ayushi Gupta

Production Editor Masud Rahman

Web Editor Matthew Roberts

DesignJamie Horder, Juliette Fisher, Jillian Fishman, Amanda Julius

Issue 14www.theowljournal.com

C o n t e n t s

Cover DesignMasud Rahman

Printed by Orchard Press01684 850960

4 Learn from the masses, and then teach them.— Mao Zedong (1893–1976)

In our post–Cold War world, radi-cal Islam has replaced communism as the West’s great ‘Other’. Chinese

Communist Party propaganda has be-come kitsch poster decoration for trendy lofts across Europe and America. It has been disarmed of its integrity; the pre-vious socialist radicalism is no longer taken seriously as China adopts a market economy.

But the significance of centralised politi-cal sloganeering has not disappeared from Chinese life. Beijing’s rough, northern, toothless grin still aims to steer this vast country’s ‘ideological purity’ alongside its moneyed relatives Shanghai and Hong Kong. As I travelled across the country last summer I found China’s urban dialect stamped across every corner, expressions emanating from Beijing were painted on the walls of China’s poorest villages.

The Chinese ‘modern civilised cities’ (文明城市) are best at articulating the

country’s new voice to the outside world. They exercise this voice internally too, with a swagger. An examination of this urban arrogance shows how the Com-munist Party’s ideological shift in recent decades has created a land of deep in-equalities, and a government geared to cater to the winners of the new market economy.

The Chinese countryside is ambigu-ous territory. A trip to the home of the Chinese ‘peasantry’ can often involve as much concrete as officially sanctioned ‘urban’ neighbourhoods. It is an ur-banised pastoral paradox. Government planning assigns ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ sta-tus, thus controlling a system of differ-ential welfare provision and economic benefits according to this divide. Rela-tively few ‘rural’ areas have managed to upgrade to the ‘urban’ badge despite being the location of much of China’s modernisation. But venture further west, and it is easy to discover villages

of mud houses and little infrastructure. The factory landscape of China’s east coast economic revolution is far away, and here people live in poverty. The cities of this region are now forgotten industrial centres with high unemploy-ment rates. The ‘peasant’ young have been forced to move further east in or-der to find employment, leaving behind their parents and children.

The visual environment in these western villages is simple. Beautiful landscapes frame inadequate housing made from basic materials. The only advertisements are those of China’s two state mobile companies, China Mobile and China Unicom, and the occasional incursion by Coca Cola. Otherwise the smatter-ings of colour are provided by the huge characters painted across residential walls. Many are signed by local village or township governmental bodies. Others are ‘anonymous’, but can be assumed to come from the same sources.

Chinese SloganeeringPolitical graffiti in rural China

by Anna Holmwood

5Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

Learning Chinese characters is time–consuming, and to be able to write them has always been evidence for the Chinese of the moral and political worth neces-sary to exercise authority. The Confucian intelligentsia viewed literacy and literary ability as a corner–stone of rule. Perfect-ing the writing of characters was, and to some extent still is, to realise their noble meaning through actions. Many of the radical Communist era leaders, most notably Mao himself, were famous for their beautiful calligraphy, and examples of their writing still adorn official build-ings, schools and sites of historical im-portance.

Shortly after taking power in 1949 the Communists radically changed methods of communication between rulers and citizens. For the first time mass com-munication was made possible. Access to education was widened and literacy increased at a remarkable rate. The reor-ganisation of rural and urban residents into communes created cells through which party activists could propagate and explain party policy.

Early communist rule was extremely popular, and its methods were more than the brutal ‘speak bitterness’ meet-ings for which the party has become famous. Traditional–style operas started focusing on ordinary workers and farm-ers triumphantly championing the revo-lution, replacing stories of emperors and princesses.

Speak to Chinese who were young dur-ing the Cultural Revolution and many express happy memories of freedom from authoritarianism, and top–level en-couragement to criticise and have their views listened to. Mao is still a popular figure in China, whose ‘slogans’ are seen by many as morsels of great philosophi-cal insight. This is not simply ‘sound bite politics’, but a reflection of how, for Chinese people, mastery of their lan-

Stepping Forward

Futile struggle, a life of need,If you don’t learn to read.

Throughout the twentieth century Chinese educated elites have been preoccupied with the idea of making China stand up to foreign imperialism, and move for-ward in its modernisation. Maoist slogans repeated the mantra of ‘step forward’, and urged the populace to do so with increasing speed. Brightly coloured posters reinforced the idea that collectivisation was the road to plenty, picturing peasant girls with arms filled with a bumper harvest. The government instigated a Great Leap Forward policy in the late 1950s which concentrated Communist ‘liberation’ euphoria into efforts to modernise the economy to American levels within 15 years. This infamously ended in a famine which killed millions. The scale of the disaster resulted, in large part, from the way in which the reward system encouraged of-ficials on the ground to mimic reports of runaway success coming from Beijing. The country was caught in a fever that no–one wanted to admit was a lie. Despite this tragedy the language of moving forward and fast–paced modernisation has remained popular with the Chinese Communist Party. Recent press coverage of China’s economic boom in the west has, in fact, mirrored a story the Party has been eager to tell for decades.

It is interesting, however, to see how the imagery of moving forward has been re-focused in contemporary slogans. Instead of an emphasis on collective progress improvement has become more personal, something for the individual to strive for, with consequences for the individual and his family. The imagery of moving forward is contained within characters, making it difficult to convey in translation. The character 愚, (yú), means stupid or foolish, but when proceeded with 治 (zhi), to cure, govern, control, the two characters mean ‘eliminate backwardness and ig-norance’. The slogans direct the illiterate to education in order to ‘cast off’, 脱 (tuō), their ‘blindness’, 盲 (máng). In Chinese illiteracy is to be ‘blind to language, litera-ture, culture’, 文盲 (wénmáng). The slogans are silent, however, on the spiralling costs of rural education, which has made it unaffordable for many rural households. This is a problem the Chinese government are trying to tackle, but they are far from achieving the universal nine years of compulsory education for China’s poorest.

6 Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true.— Hubert Humphrey (1911–1978)

guage has a concrete relationship to no-ble political action. The Greco–Roman heritage has always prized oratory, but in China it is the language as written which shows the great leader. In Chi-nese the word for propaganda, 宣传 xu-anchuan, has no negative connotation comparable to the English equivalent. The Chinese Communist Party both in-herited a tradition of political ‘slogans’ from Confucius, and transformed the language of Chinese orthodoxy.

The Chinese Communist Party appears to be a different creature now. In 2002 the then Premier Jiang Zemin became deeply unpopular in China for allowing capitalist entrepreneurs to join the par-ty. While Deng Xiaoping’s greater eco-nomic pragmatism has been welcomed, the introduction of markets in China has altered the country’s social make–up almost beyond recognition. Slogans such as ‘Development is the only hard and fast principle’ became synonymous with China’s new ideological direction.

Nowadays, in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou political sloganeering is presented on bright bill-boards which look like advertisements. In one such example the statement ‘Im-prove Citizen’s Quality and Promote the City’s Civilisation’ commands a picture of shiny modern apartment blocks sur-rounded by lush greenery. The Guang-dong Bank advertised its credit options a few years ago stating that ‘Consumer-ism is a philosophy’. Urban citizens are being ‘sold’ the new CCP values along-side the consumerist goods of a mod-ern, Western, lifestyle.

The slogans I photographed for this ar-ticle are, by contrast, found in the poor-est parts of China. Although they too speak of the importance of ‘civilisation’, and the ‘quality’ of rural citizens, they talk of a lack of ‘quality’, and explain grave social problems as resulting from

Construction, Building

Together build a ‘harmonious society’:Only then can we quell

Criminals taking your loved ones to sell.

The rhetoric of ‘building’ or ‘constructing’ the revolution has formed an es-sential component of the Chinese Communist Party’s repertoire. Its attrac-tion for the Party has been to associate political policies with notions of the physical strength epitomised by the image of the peasantry toiling on the land. In 1949 80% of the Chinese population were farmers. While Marx was suspicious of peasant revolutions, China did not have a significant urban pro-letariat to lead the ‘liberation from feudalism’. Maoism was characterised by its reliance on the peasantry, and indeed the rural communes became models for their urban counterparts. During the late 1960s, the Party ‘sent down’ young educated urban Chinese to the countryside to learn from the pure peasantry, to ‘cure’ them of their ‘bourgeois tendencies’. The use of terms such as ‘building’ and ‘constructing’, therefore, encouraged China’s poorest to believe that they formed the vanguard of the revolution, and were each positively contributing to its success.

In slogans it has usually referred to building abstract, or semi–abstract con-cepts, such as the ‘harmonious’ society in this example. As the government has increasingly introduced market capitalist policies it has been urging the populace to ‘construct’ modernisation. This has emphasised scientific, indus-trial, and cultural modernisation, crucially, in the image of urban China. The peasantry are losing out rhetorically as well as materially, and are frequently referred to as in need of improving their ‘quality’, 素质 (sùzhi). This ambigu-ous term has come to mean educational level, ‘behavioural’ standards, and social mores. Peasants now appear to be holding back China’s modernisa-tion. The slogan mentions the serious problem of the kidnapping of young children and women for profit. Many accuse the One Child Policy (which is more like a two child policy in the poorest regions) of creating conditions

7If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.— K'ung–fu–tzu (Confucius) (551 BC–479 BC)

this lack. The slogans are a mix of the positivism of the Maoist era, emphasis-ing agency and hope, and a modest ac-knowledgment that the ‘peasant’ heroes of China’s revolution are now the los-ing class. Their qualities, their idolised strength and commitment to the revo-lution, are now failing them in the ‘new China’. The farmers must transform themselves, and take responsibility for this transformation, in order to mitigate the serious dilemmas of the One Child Policy, increasingly expensive health-care and education, narrowing social mobility for those without education, and environmental degradation of vital farmland.

My translations try to reflect the plain lyrical quality of these slogans, but it has been difficult to capture the array of meanings one character can convey. I hope, however, that they at least pro-vide some insight into how ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is current-ly being justified to the poorest sections of society. During its 2007 17th Party Congress, the CCP admitted this is a task fraught with danger. The instances of rural unrest have been escalating in recent years, and the government has, in response, started introducing tax cuts and subsidies as part of its ‘Devel-op the West’ campaign. The ‘modern, civilised cities’ are able to buy into the Chinese Communist Party’s ‘made in China’ socialism, insofar as it is creat-ing the conditions for a new consumer society. But with such large sections of the population in poverty it is be-coming politically more expensive for the Party to ignore the consequences of its economic reforms. It remains to be seen whether the Party can continue to manage them. In China, the poet-ics of rule have always been important. However, with such diversity of condi-tions and cultures within its borders, it has never been easy for Chinese poetics to rule effectively.

Exemptions, subsidies, preferential provisions:A family with one child is no cause for concern,Central policy ensures those who adhere, earn.

The kidnapping and sale of young women and children must be attacked with force.

locking people into deeper poverty. Each ‘out of policy’ child must be paid for with disproportionately expensive fines, and young people take grave risks to hide pregnancies to avoid the Party’s family planning methods. There has been a dramatic rise in the snatching of children in China’s poorest areas as young boys especially have gained ‘market’ value. Previously empowering statements reflecting peasant strength have therefore been tempered with am-biguous statements of responsibility, encouraged to solve the problem them-selves. They are designed to justify the government’s retreat from effective welfare provision for rural communities.

8 Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.— Oscar Wilde (1854–1889)

Miles Mantle:

..which is why this is the first breakfast – first decent breakfast, really – I’ve had in a long time. I’m not doing that well at the moment, to be honest. Been better, you could say. Oh, you could. And I won’t pretend to be happy with myself, either. Lisa, my sister, once said something about self-esteem, and how it’s connected to all of this. Heard it all before, mate. Leaflets; social workers. Tell me something I don’t know. And I wouldn’t be so content if I were Lisa, anyway. Not with that arse on her.

But to my breakfast. This place – this restaurant (got to bend the syllables in the middle, there) – is fucking posh. It’s oh-so-sumptuous. Lots of oefs ben-a-thingy. The feel of smoked salm-on – dusk-pink flesh – on the tongue, et cetera. Isn’t that how you spell it? Getting my fix, I can tell you. Better than smack, it is. (Naaahh, it isn’t.) There’s a woman across the room from me (red carpet, oak tables) dining alone. She’s really hot, she is; hot and isolated, in whatever job she does – whichever business she’s going about. A breakfast appointment, perchance? Must be. I want to talk to her; wish I could talk to her. I have a pretty smile. Smile.

I’m just having a look through the wallet. A wee rummage. Calfskin, don’t-ya-know. The bloke’s called Neil. I’m paying for some more coffee (good Columbian roast) and a croque mon-sieur by card – I’ll sign for it - American Express. He looked the type; it was his suit that upset me, really. This imperious prick poncing about Shoreditch. So I followed him down some alley; asked him the time. Gave him one in the face, and one in the stomach. Done. He was coughing up blood when I left – but I was hungry, so I didn’t wait. Then I had breakfast.

Breakfast

Three student writers turn their precocious creative skills upon the meal a student is most likely to miss. In a few hundred words and under two hours each, breakfast is

addressed in the form of a sonnet, a monologue and a dramatic scene. It is recreated into pieces which are confessionary, mun-dane, aggressive, stereotypical and perhaps depressing, which remind you that while trying to encompass, affirm or deny life through a meal is perhaps a bit ambitious, it can’t be denied that this one sure makes a good start to the day.

9So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,

Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!— Robert Browning (1812–1889)

Roberta Klimt:

Breakfast Meeting

Not long awake, we’re at the cafe door.We were to have confided as we strolledOn some nice morning meadow, but it’s cold,And we’ve done rustic things like that before.Tea’s up, you tell me your news, I tell mine - Too analytically, as you discern.Is it so bad to practise what I learn?No, if you’re willing permanently to pine!Begin afresh, you counsel; I want to;These things take time; you say that’s too easy.I say I’m sure it isn’t so for me,But that, like all my thoughts, is lost on you,Who soon leave, after details of your bliss(You’re having lunch with someone after this).

Sam Caird:

Sunlight. A small wooden table covered by a white linen tablecloth. A light breeze blowing through an open window causes the edges of the tablecloth to flutter gently, window-side.

On the table:Various cereals including, but not limited to, ‘Wheetos’ and ‘Sugar Puffs’.A jug of milk.A jug of orange juice.A carton of grapefruit juice.An empty toast-rack, crumbs underneath.A dish of butter.Various condiments, including but not limited to, a jar of store-bought Raspberry Jam and a jar of homemade Marmalade in a jar marked, ‘Sevilla ’07’.A broadsheet newspaper, read and clumsily re-folded.Four glasses. Four plates. Four knives. Four bowls. Four spoons.

The sound of a swing-door opening slowly. Footsteps. Sound of swing-door closing and opening and closing and opening and closing. Swing-door stops. Footsteps stop. A man in a dark brown suit.

Sound of footsteps, distant, then closer, then close. Swing-door opens. Footsteps. Footsteps stop. Sound of swing-door closing and opening and closing and opening and closing and opening and closing. Swing-door stops.

Voice: Hullo.Voice: Hullo.

End

10

Dead bodies make us act very strangely. Last summer, the British government an-

nounced that it was considering intro-ducing an adopt an “opt–out” system for deciding who is considered to be a willing donor for post–mortem organ transplantation. This is as set against the current system in which people who wish their organs to be used must specifi-cally “opt in” to the donor register (only about 1 in 5 of us have). The suggestion was met by vigorous opposition; for many, an opt–out system seemed to have deeply sinister connotations. “The state does not own our bodies or have a right to take organs after death”, the Tories complained, echoing many others. More liberal readers may well scoff at this: it is not as if anyone was proposing taking organs without their (former) owner’s permission, merely that when in doubt, permission should be assumed. Who could seriously want to limit the number of available organs, when transplanta-tion saves lives? Yet we should perhaps consider how we would feel were some-one to suggest going a little further, if someone asked, for example: why allow people to deny consent at all? Assuming that we believe saving human lives to be, in general, a good thing, why allow anyone to opt out, if this means allowing people to die merely to indulge some-

one’s squeamishness? Most of us would feel deeply uneasy or even outraged at this suggestion. If you do not, consider how you would react to the query: why should we have to wait for donors to die at all? If two people are terminally ill and the only suitable donor happens to be still alive, would it not make sense to discretely hasten their passing in order to gain access to their organs before it’s too late? At the cost of one life, two would be saved — for an overall gain of one life.

By this point, almost everyone would say that we have gone too far. Yet there is much debate over where we ought to draw the line in matters such as this. This is not an article about the ethics of organ transplantation. I wish to take a step back and ask how we think, and how we ought to think, about these kinds of issues. How we do decide where to draw the line and what makes such decisions valid? Philosophers have often distinguished between two kinds of ap-proaches to ethical questions, approaches which one sees again and again in differ-ent guises in debates such as the one sur-rounding organs. To cut a very long story short, consequentialism is the view that the right or wrong of an action depends upon the results — if the action causes good things to happen, it’s a good thing. This is sometimes described as the view

that the ends justify the means. Non–consequentialism refers to any theory of ethics which denies this, holding that some actions are right or wrong in them-selves, regardless of their results. This is only the crudest level of philosophical taxonomy, but it is a useful start. An example of a consequentialist argument would be the above–mentioned one that in critical situations, surgeons should not respect the objections of an organ’s former owner or her family, because the overall benefit of overriding them — a life saved, a family spared bereave-ment — outweighs the cost — another family offended. (A rival consequential-ist might dispute the specifics of this, but he could not protest that “It’s stealing”,

Hearts, Heads and EthicsThinking and feeling about right and wrong

Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. (The heart has its reasons that reason knows not)— Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

by Jamie Horder

11

“It would be sinful”, or “We have a right to our organs”, since these do not refer to consequences.)

Philosophers have long debated the ques-tion of when consequentialism is a legiti-mate approach. Indeed, most of the 20th century’s most influential works of moral and political philosophy were attempts to deal with this question, but in one form or another it is centuries old and often seems to be intractable. Again, it is not my intention to pronounce on this issue, but to consider what it is that we are doing when we think and talk about ethics. One of the anti–consequential-ists’ most effective tactics has been to propose hypothetical scenarios in which consequentialism seems to lead to con-clusions which just feel wrong. Consider the case of the surgeon killing a person to harvest their organs, and if you are like most people, you will experience an

immediate, almost visceral feeling that there is something very wrong with this action. This you–can’t–do–that sensation has been dubbed a “moral intuition”, and many philosophers have pointed to cases such as “organ stripping” and ar-gued that, since consequentialism would recommend doing things which we in-tuitively recognise as being immoral, consequentialism cannot be justified. In other words, feelings are at the heart of our thinking about ethics.

Yet philosophers are not the only people interested in moral intuitions. A small but growing number of psychologists and neuroscientists are trying to apply a scientific perspective to these phenome-na, and one of the most interesting con-clusions of their research to date is that, when presented with situations such as those discussed by philosophers, people from diverse cultures and social groups

experience moral intuitions, and often very similar ones. Of course, everyone knows that what is considered admirable in one culture might be outrageous in another, but it appears that, although opinions on the rights and wrongs of particular things may differ, the general processes by which people make and think about moral judgements are rather universal. For example, the psychologist Johnathan Haidt, one of the pioneers in this field, studied six different groups of people in the US and Brazil, ranging from wealthy Philadelphians to poor res-idents of the city of Recife. Haidt asked them to imagine a number of situations, including a brother and sister’s incestu-ous kissing, and the case of a man who finds a creative way of enjoying him-self with a frozen chicken. Importantly, none of these situations involved any-one harming anyone (even themselves). He then asked them whether what the people in these scenarios were doing was wrong, and why they answered the way they did. Perhaps predictably, wealthier and more Westernized people tended to be more 'liberal' and less apt to condemn unconventional or ‘disgusting’ conduct.

However, even the most permissive groups still contained a fair number of people who did morally condemn some, or all, of the harmless but unseemly ac-tions.

What was most interesting was that in every group, such people frequently en-countered difficulties when they were asked to explain why they were so con-demnatory. A wide range of explanations were offered, but many individuals were unable to articulate any reasons; they said that the actions were “just wrong” although they did not know why. Haidt

Feelings are at the heart of our thinking about ethics

“”

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.— Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)

12 The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.— Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

called this phenomenon “moral dumb-founding” and argued that it was incon-sistent with the widely–held view that the process of moral judgement involves the conscious application of principles or rules. More recently, the philosopher Marc Hauser showed moral dumb-founding to be a global phenomenon. He analysed the responses of over 5,000 people who completed an internet–based survey in which they were asked to make, and justify, moral judgements on a number of hypothetical dilemmas, inspired by those which have long been discussed by philosophers. The classic example is the veteran “trolley problem”: for some reason, a runaway train is going to run into and kill five people, unless you push a lever to divert it onto another

track, where it will kill one person. In the second variant of this dilemma, the only way to stop the train and save the five people is to push a man off a bridge and into the path of the train. Should you act? Hauser discovered that while there were small differences, in general, people answered in a very similar way regard-less of their age, nationality, or religious belief (although it should be noted that all participants were English–reading in-

ternet users). A large majority of people (89%) agreed that it would be right to push the lever and switch the train from killing five people to killing one, where-as, in the variant scenario, there was an equally strong consensus that it would be wrong to push the man into the path of the train.

This is what most philosophers have con-cluded, and in all likelihood you will find yourself agreeing as well. Yet as Hauser points out, there is something very odd about our divergent reactions to these two scenarios. In both cases we are faced with two options (act, or do nothing), one of which will have the consequence of five deaths, the other, just one death. The principle of consequentialism tells us that we should do whatever brings about the fewest deaths in both cases — even if this means pushing a man in front of the train. Hauser’s results show that most people are not consequentialists, but fas-cinatingly, and just as in Haidt’s research, very few people could explain why they felt this way. Almost half simply claimed that they had a gut feeling or “just knew” that there was a morally important dif-ference between the two scenarios; many others seemed to be searching around for reasons, such as the subject who said that if he did not push the man into the path of the train, it would be OK, because the five people in danger would jump out of the way. Nothing in Hauser’s description of the scenario had suggested anything of the sort — rather, the subject seemed to have hit upon the idea after making

his judgement, precisely because it made his intuition justifiable. (This recalls another famous experiment in which people were shown photographs of two women and asked to pick the most at-tractive. The photos were then secretly swapped and the subject was shown the one they didn’t pick and asked to explain why they found her attractive. Most peo-ple were unaware of the trick and happily gave plausible–sounding rationalisations for a choice they never even made.)

One explanation for this curious, if near–universal, pattern of behaviour has been proposed by the philosopher and neu-roscientist Joshua Greene. According to Greene’s theory, although we can think about situations as consequentialists, ap-plying the same kinds of reasoning that an economist or an engineer might use to maximize benefits, our brains are also equipped with a kind of automatic ear-ly–warning system for immorality. This system does not take time to evaluate the consequences of actions but instead produces a strong emotional response to the actions themselves. We are not neces-sarily conscious of the workings of this system, but we are aware of the warnings it gives, in the form of moral intuitions. Greene has shown using neuroimag-

People happily gave plausible–sounding rationalisations for a choice they never even made

“”

Most people are not consequentialists ... but very few people could explain why they felt this way

“

”

13Of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important.

It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.— Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

ing technology that certain parts of the brain are activated when we experience moral intuitions, and a recent study found that patients who had suffered in-juries to these same areas tend to make consequentialist judgements — they saw nothing wrong with killing one person in order to save five, although their in-tellectual functions were quite normal. It was not that they could not deal with ethical questions, but that they seemed to lack the normal tendency to give non–consequentialist answers.

For Greene, moral intuitions are auto-matic, but they are much more than mere “knee jerk reactions” — although they present themselves to us as simple, incontrovertible facts (“It’s just wrong”) accompanied by strong emotions, in fact they are the outcome of a special-ised process, albeit one which is not un-der our conscious control or oversight. Moral dumbfounding and rationaliza-tion are what happen when we try to ex-plain or justify our intuitive judgements in rational or consequentialist terms, because they were never the result of a such conscious reasoning in the first place. A useful analogy is with art — we can all experience the beauty of an im-age, even though we may not be able to articulate the aesthetic principles which determine our judgements — “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.”, We must all share some such principles (otherwise no–one would agree about which pictures are pretty) but our minds apply them without our awareness.

The principles behind our ethical in-tuitions do not seem to be particularly mysterious once one starts to investigate them. For example, most philosophers and psychologists agree that the reason why we feel differently about the two variants of the “trolley problem” is that in one case, we are faced with intention-ally acting to bring direct harm to an in-

nocent victim (the man on the bridge), whereas in the other case, the harm we cause is “indirect” — we redirect the run-away train so that it hits a man, but we do not create the harm in the first place. A consequentialist would argue that this is an irrelevant distinction, and indeed many philosophers have mightily strug-gled to provide reasons why it should matter. Perhaps the point is that this is just the way our minds work — our moral intuitions happen to be triggered by acts independent of outcomes, and trying to justify this is like trying to justify the fact that we sneeze. Indeed, sometimes the nature of an action itself

fills us with disgust, even if there are no harmful consequences, as with the trans-gressions which Haidt studied. Greene believes that our minds are built this way because this makes sense from an evolu-tionary point of view — in life or death situations, you need to decide whether an action warrants punishment quickly, but calculating consequences takes time.

So to return to organ donation — can this research help us to think about ethi-cal issues more clearly, or is it of purely academic interest? This is a question which demands a sustained philosophi-cal debate, but one thing seems cer-tain — it is difficult to simultaneously regard one's moral intuitions both as authoritative guides to the proper course of action and as a short–cut put in place by evolution to make quick decisions in a Stone Age environment. Although the new perspective does not prove that our intuitions are meaningless, it does seem to undermine arguments based

on them — the fact that everyone feels strongly that something is wrong is not a valid point against it, if this can be ex-plained as kind of collective psychologi-cal mirage. If Greene’s account of ethics proves popular, philosophers might find it increasingly difficult to justify rejecting consequentialism on the grounds that it clashes with our intuitions.

Psychologists and economists are in-creasingly drawing attention to the fact that our brains systematically construct perceptions and conceptions of the world which are not always appropri-ate to the modern era — many of us in the West would benefit from a phobia of cigarettes and fatty foods, for example, but we are still most likely to be fright-ened of the spiders, snakes and heights which threatened our ancestors. It could likewise be said that the ethical challeng-es facing us today are of a very different kind to those which our brains are best at dealing with. We are morally outraged by the idea of directly harming someone by throwing them off a bridge, but many of the greatest threats to our health and security — such as global warming — are the indirect consequences of innocent actions. So, although it seems unlikely that our intuitions are going to go away any time soon, we may come to feel that we ought to take a more sceptical atti-tude towards them, and that despite our gut instincts, it is the consequences that matter.

The fact that everyone feels strongly that something is wrong is not a point against it

“

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14 I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.— Barack Obama (b. 1961)

The Audacity of “The Wire”

We’ve reached that time again in the American sporting calendar. The presidential

primaries are back, and for all you sports fans out there, they’re more exciting than ever. Barring a coup by Al Gore at the Democrat Convention, there will be ei-ther a black man or a woman at the top of the Democrat ticket as the party’s can-didate for President and Barack Obama is now the clear favourite. In addition, early polling suggests that he currently holds a narrow lead over the presumptive Republican candidate John McCain. For the first time in America’s history there is a realistic chance that it will elect a black President.

The attitude of many commentators is that the growing success of Obama’s candidacy represents a huge change in the attitude of the largely white American electorate and a huge step for all underprivileged minorities in America and for African–Americans in particular. However, many of the issues that affect minority individu-als and communities in the United States have failed to make an impression on this presidential election, in particular the im-pact of a decline in employment for the unskilled working class and the problem of the drug trade in American inner cit-ies. The issues debated have remained the

same, despite Obama; however, this is indicative of a lack of willingness by poli-ticians to challenge an entrenched status quo. It is on one issue in particular that the status quo is intensely damaging: the War on Drugs. This war has morphed into a war against an underclass who comprise the most impoverished and vulnerable people in America. The American under-class has been ignored by the mainstream media and ignored by the politicians, and the election of Barack Obama should not be taken as a clear signal that this is about to change. Criticism of the War on Drugs is regarded as political suicide for any as-piring leader in America; though Obama writes about the problem of drugs in in-ner city America in his book The Audacity of Hope, he clearly recognises this as well as anyone. The mainstream media can be relied upon to report drugs issues purely in terms of crime and punishment and this representation also largely extends to fictional examination of the issue in TV shows and in Hollywood.

The Wire is different. Its genius is that it has both the courage and vision that Hol-lywood and the mainstream media lacks, and an emotional power rarely captured in documentary film or books. Created by David Simon and set in Baltimore, Mary-land, The Wire is ostensibly a cop drama

that bears comparison to many others. However, after just a few episodes, a viewer will realise that this show is some-thing completely different. In its first four seasons, The Wire has gradually built up a picture not just of a single criminal organ-isation, nor even of a whole police force. It is also a powerful metaphor for and ar-gument against the failing War on Drugs, and a critique of the power of capital over people in American society, particularly at the bottom.

It is true of high quality cop dramas such as CSI or The Shield that they have a coher-ent overall storyline running over many episodes, even seasons. However, it is also true to say that one can simply watch a single episode and enjoy it, as there tends to be a different central story involving some new characters in each episode. This

The Wire has both the courage and the vision that Hollywood and the mainstream media lacks, and an emotional power rarely captured in documentaries

“

”

Political power games and the War on Drugsby Chris Taylor

15Drugs are murdering our children.— President George Bush Sr. (b. 1924)

may seem to be a strength of such shows, and it is certainly conducive to higher rat-ings, but any attempt to watch The Wire in a similarly casual way is completely impossible, like attempting to read just a single chapter from a long novel. The Wire does not compromise for a potential audi-ence’s lack of knowledge, whether of char-acters, context or even language. The dia-logue used in the show is thick with slang, mixed with complex police terminology and code names for various drugs, often based on current affairs. The complexity of the show and its inaccessible attention to detail is partly why, as the final season airs in the US, The Wire remains largely unseen and unknown by mainstream au-diences, just as the issues it tackles are ig-nored by its mainstream competitors.

The first season introduces us to the eve-ryday struggle of the police to prevent drug distribution at street level. Some of the characters introduced last through all five seasons, but many do not. The abil-ity of The Wire to ignore central charac-ters for several episodes or kill them off altogether at unexpected times is a mark of the show’s confidence. This is in stark contrast to other TV shows. House is a prime example of a show that is superbly put together but that depends to a huge extent on one main character in order to attract its audience.

The second season departs from the cen-tral focus on street level distribution and examines the fact that the drug trade af-fects all of the underclass, including the white working class suffering under a decline in American industry. The season depicts the lives of those working at the Baltimore Harbour and the city that is left behind after the middle class have fled to the suburbs. This is a large part of the message of the show — that the drug trade is able to exert control over people in large part because it offers economic opportu-nities for America’s underclass that are not provided elsewhere.

The third season returns to the drug trade, but this time dangles the carrot of change to the viewer. It examines the pos-sibility of reform and thus delves deeper into the politics of the city and the in-stitutional structure of the police force, but also shows the attempt by one leader of a criminal organisation to change the way the drug trade is run. This character, Stringer Bell, attempts to form a peaceful association, a form of cartel between him-self and his criminal competitors which would serve to lessen the levels of violence and lower ‘the body count’ that interests

the police. At the same time a police ma-jor effectively ‘legalises’ drugs in particular areas of his district. Despite a brief success on the part of both of them in reducing non drug based crime, they are doomed to failure. Stringer ends the season shot dead on a piece of his own legitimately bought real estate, in the shell of a building that he has been developing. Major Colvin is demoted and is forced to retire.

The fourth season examines the educa-tion system of the city. In order to ex-plain the adult characters in the show, particularly those who are members of drug gangs, we have to see them growing up. The acting of the preteen and young teenage characters shown in this series is extraordinary and the stories of their characters are deeply moving. Attempting to tell them here would fail to do them justice, but one scene particularly mer-its description. A teacher asks a class of middle school teenagers who have been removed from ordinary lessons due to behaviour to write down where they see themselves in ten years. She then asks how many wrote down dead. As all the kids raise their hands, one quips “Shit, you saw that comin’ huh.” Though an example of the black humour that pervades the show, the characters and the audience know that there is more than a grain of truth to their answers.

The fifth season asks the question that oc-curs to anyone who has watched any series of The Wire and who has been convinced by its authenticity: “If The Wire got any of this stuff right, if this is really what cities are facing, then why is it that no one is paying attention?” This is David Simon’s choice to focus the show’s final series on the role of the media in Baltimore and in the US as a whole, and its failure to pay attention to the issues raised by the show.

The Wire does not take a simplistically anti–establishment attitude to the War on Drugs. The police are not portrayed as

As David Simon glibly puts it, we are bored with evil

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16 Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.— John Hardwick (????–????)

simply oppressive, though police brutal-ity is explored. Likewise, those involved in the drug trade, whether buyers or sellers are not portrayed as good or evil, guilty or blameless (as David Simon glibly puts it “We are bored with evil”). The Wire cre-ates characters belonging to every institu-tion of the modern American city, includ-ing those engaging in the worst sorts of crime, with whom the audience are able to empathise. It then shows how these institutions, be they criminal, private sec-tor, law making or law enforcing, trap the individuals that they hold: within the iron grip of neo–liberal capitalism, which val-ues capital far above basic humanity, they are corrupting of the individuals within them. The drug gangs have their expend-able ‘corner kids’ who are ten a penny; the politicians need to be lobbied by a hugely expensive professional before they will even consider listening to the needs of the unionised ‘stevedore’ workers at the harbour. Teachers in public schools are shown to ignore any skills based teaching methods in favour of rigidly teaching ‘to the test’ in order to show improvement where there is none. Police officers are often ordered to increase arrests for the most minor drug offences or to massage the stats, irrespective of their real job of

protecting the public. A crucial figure of hope in the show, Councilman and later Mayor Carcetti, is eventually forced by a budget crisis to choose between his future political career and adequate funding for the public school system. His decision is predictable, but no less disappointing for that.

In terms of the drug problem at the cen-tre of the show, aggressive prohibition is shown to be hopelessly misguided. A church going community activist known as ‘The Deacon’ delivers the line to a po-

lice major that “You talkin’ ‘bout drugs. That’s sweepin’ leaves on a windy day, whoever the hell you are.” The Deacon is played by Melvin Williams, a former drug kingpin arrested by Simon’s co–writer, former police officer Ed Burns, in 1984. This is typical of the emphasis

placed on authenticity in The Wire. The writers have lived the stories that they portray and as Williams recently re-marked in an interview “they are smart enough to ask those who have lived these lives.” A key point made by the show is that even without the ineffective and corrupt police commanders, even with the best police work possible, ‘the game’, as the characters refer to the drug trade, will go on. Nonetheless, this show is by no means simply condemning drug pro-hibition. Simon believes that as a nation, America has decided that in economic terms the bottom ten percent are irrele-vant to the success of the rest. This leaves the inner city underclass with no other option but to participate in the drug trade, the only thriving local economy.

Apologists for Obama would respond to this allegation by saying that he would not ignore issues such as those raised by The Wire as President, but that he cannot afford to be defined by is-sues before the election. From Obama’s point of view, he cannot risk even now as appearing to be ‘the black candidate’ incapable of representing all Americans, as happened to Jesse Jackson in 1988. Obama has written eloquently about his own personal struggle with drugs in his youth, and has even named The Wire as a favourite TV show, but he has not indicated either in writing or in his ac-tions as a state senator in Illinois or as a US Senator that he fully understands the catastrophic effect of the War on Drugs on the poor in America. The is-sue is not mentioned as one of the ‘26 issues’ mentioned on his campaign’s of-ficial website. Despite having based an entire presidential campaign around the theme of ‘change’, Obama does not ap-pear to support much needed change in federal policy on this issue.

It is harsh to single out Obama for blame above other politicians, and an argument could be made that the implication that

Institutions, be they criminal, private, law making, or law enforcing, trap the individuals they hold

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17

he should feel more strongly on ‘black’ is-sues is stereotypical, almost racist. How-ever, this is not the point of this article. The point made here is simply that the existence of a successful minority candi-date is not enough to give greater status to issues affecting minorities in America. Baltimore’s local politicians are trapped by the wider dominance of capital over humanity in America, as well as the more obvious constraint of federal drug poli-cies. An irony of this hard–line federal ap-proach that is frequently highlighted by The Wire is that the FBI are not interested in helping the police catch the leaders of major drug organisations, even when large numbers of dead bodies are involved. In the post 9/11 environment, only politi-cal corruption and terrorism are deemed worthy of federal money, despite the fact that federal laws tie the hands of local law enforcement officers and politicians. The failure of the underclass in America to es-cape poverty and drugs is not a simple,

scandalous tale like individual corrup-tion, nor does it significantly affect stock market levels on a day to day basis. It is thus ignored by the local paper portrayed in The Wire, as it is ignored more widely in American media. Despite the status of political corruption as a priority for the police, The Wire displays the inadequacy of the rules governing campaign finance. Though the worst abuser of this system in the show, the paradoxically lovable Clay Davis, is prosecuted, the system that ena-bles political corruption, as with drugs, is left to fester. The media is not directly trapped by either the issue of political fi-nance or of drugs, but it is rendered im-potent in exposing the truth by its own surrender to raw capitalism. It is these problems in American society that are explained by The Wire through its depic-tion of the city of Baltimore and the char-acters that inhabit it. The unique insight that The Wire provides is the first reason to watch it.

The second is that, whatever one’s reading of the problems that The Wire examines, it gives any viewer astonishing characters whose stories are utterly gripping. It is in its veneration of the struggle of individuals in desperate circumstances that The Wire is at its most uplifting, and although the struggles of most characters are shown to be futile, they are rarely passive. They fight till the very end against each other, them-selves and the institutions that bind them, even if ultimately consumed. Despite its inevitable focus on the inner city and its preoccupation with the issue of the War on Drugs, The Wire indicates the wider prob-lems in American society, founded upon prioritising money and organisations at the expense of human beings. It also dissects the reasons why America is in a state of political paralysis with regards to its prob-lems. The Wire paints a bleak picture of so-ciety, but its individual characters, whether criminal, corrupt, naïve, or simply hope-less, are never less or more than human.

This article was written in February 2008.

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did.And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does.

— US District Judge James C. Paine, addressing the Federal Bar Association in Miami, November, 1991

18 A tree trunk the size of a man grows from a blade as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small heap of earth.— Tao De Ching

Carbon nanotubes

Chemistry is the science of shape. A molecule is simply a set of atoms arranged together in a

certain way, an atomic sculpture, and it is therefore no coincidence that all life on earth is carbon–based, for carbon atoms have the unique ability to form themselves into endlessly complex struc-tures. Graphite is composed of stacks of carbon sheets, while diamonds are the same atoms arranged in a regular lattice. All of the molecules that make up your cells, from your DNA and proteins to the transmitters and receptors in your brain, are based upon branching chains and interlocking rings of carbon atoms, with other elements such as nitrogen and oxy-gen being rather like decorations hanging from these carbon trees.

Just as the flexibility of carbon makes it capable of being the raw material for liv-ing organisms, so it makes it ideal as the building block of artificial constructs, molecular machines — what has become known as nanotechnology. Most nanote-ch is based on carbon because it is only with carbon that one can create molecules of almost any shape desired. The famous “buckyballs”, or buckminsterfullerenes, are spherical molecules consisting of (most commonly) sixty carbon atoms ar-ranged in a manner rather like a football. With a diameter of just a single nanome-

tre (one thousandth of a thousandth of millimetre), the buckyball’s perfect sym-metry is highly stable, meaning that these tiny globes can be produced quite natu-rally in everyday flames, although in order to manufacture larger quantities, much higher temperatures are used industrially.

The discovery of fullerenes stimulated researchers to explore various other hol-

low carbon structures, and in 1991 the Japanese electron microscopist Sumio Iijima, who was conducting research on fullerenes, discovered what have become known as carbon nanotubes. A nanotube is essentially an atomic pipe, or from an-other perspective, an elongated bucky-ball. They are essentially the narrowest cylinders which can possibly exist — with walls a mere single atom thick, and just

Small but perfectly formedby Navaratnarajah Kuganathan

19Good things, when short, are twice as good.— Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658)

a few nanometres in diameter, a nano-tube’s length can be many thousands of times its width thanks to the ability of car-bon to form endless atomic chains. Like buckyballs, they are made by vaporizing carbon compounds with extreme heat. Since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have attracted more and more theoretical, experimental and practical research due to their unique properties. Because they are tubular structures surrounding a hol-low space, nanotubes can accommodate foreign species (molecules) within their walls. A huge variety of metals, molecules and crystals can be trapped inside nano-tubes, the main reason for incorporating foreign species inside the tubes being to modify their electronic properties.

Researchers at Oxford have been success-ful in creating carbon nanotubes filled with various materials. One of their most excit-ing projects involves the use of larger nano-tubes which contain buckminsterfullerene spheres, an arrangement which has been affectionately dubbed a 'peapod'. If certain types of atom are themselves encapsulated within the buckyballs of a peapod, they can be made to act as tiny magnets. This series of magnetic spheres lined up within the nanotube can be used to store informa-tion, in much the same way as a computer hard–drive or cassette tape does, but on a far smaller scale. Indeed, the distance be-tween the buckyballs in such an arrange-ment is so minute that a computer built in this way could achieve quantum compu-tation capability — the ability to store and process information using the properties of single atoms. Quantum computation has long been a dream of computer scientists because the strange behaviour of single atoms means that such computers would be able to perform certain kinds of calcula-tions, such as those used in code–breaking,

far faster than on even the most advanced conventional supercomputer. The Depart-ment of Material Science at Oxford is cur-rently conducting intensive collaborative work in order to develop their 'peapods' into a working quantum calculator.

Yet carbon nanotubes promise to have many other uses. Due to their stable, regular structure they are phenomenally strong — on some measures, the strongest materials known to man — making them ideal for use in sports equipment such as tennis rackets and golf balls; even mixing tiny amounts of nanotubes into concrete has been shown to greatly increase its strength. The shape and structure of na-notubes also makes them the ideal field–emission materials. Field emission is the projection of electrons from a solid under an intense electric field. Carbon nanotubes have high electrical conductivity and, more importantly, an unbeatable sharp-ness to their tips. The sharper the tip, the more concentrated the electric field (this is the same reason lightening rods are sharp.) Nanotube composites have been used for electro–statically applying paint onto car components using field emission, and

this produces a much better surface finish compared with the previously used carbon black or carbon fibre composites. Nano-tubes are also used as antistatic shielding on air plane wings and fuselages.

In electronics, carbon nanotubes can act as highly conductive wires which allow elec-trons to flow along them with essentially zero resistance, and by adding just a few ex-tra atoms in the right place, it is possible to convert them into electronic components such as diodes (which only allow electric-ity to flow in one direction), suggesting the possibility of constructing fully–func-tioning carbon electronic circuits on a tiny scale. A number of companies such as Delft, IBM, and NEC have already de-veloped transistors (the component which forms the basis for all modern electronics) made of nanotubes, and recently, a team from the University of Illinois announced that they had built the world’s first nano-tube radio receiver. The technology prom-ises to make it possible to build electronics that are both smaller and more energy–efficient than ever before. In the coming years, we can expect big things from these tiny structures.

An electron microscope image of a carbon nanotube laying across four gold electrodes

20 Rome cut the heads off Christians but they continued to reappear. Something similar occurs with Marxists.— Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006)

10th September 2006, EveningSantiago, Chile

Tomorrow, thirty–one years ago, La Moneda fell. Some Chileans will cry on the date that marks the end of an era of possibility; others will rejoice in the memory of the tears of their compatri-ots. All of them know that tomorrow marks something historic, an occurrence far more symbolic than the simple fact of military jets bombarding the presidential palace. Though not everyone knows precisely what others will commemo-rate, even the ignorant know not to go outside for fear of what may come. To-morrow is a solemn day when some will celebrate as their opponents shout dec-ades–old slogans to feel their strength, el poder popular.

Fragmented, segmented, divided, this manifestación appears more like five or six marches than one

unified protest. Various groups, each with its own political agenda, march to their own boisterous beats — Prosecute Pinochet, Down with the American Empire, Education for All, ¡Viva Al-lende! With a full city block separating masses of people, photographers, and passers–by take advantage of the dis-tance to make their way across, as ven-

dors nimbly negotiate the crowd with their offers of limones anti–lacrimógenas, Super 8, and bebidas competing against the cries of:

¡Fuera de Chile, Colombia, y Argen-tinaFuera los yanquis de América Lati-na!

Flags and banners waving, muffled ex-plosions resounding through the air, free commerce lives on, as the Chilean Jaguar slides stealthily around and above these cries from la calle. Onward, like the vendors amidst the crowds in the street, a country maneuvers deftly forward, through the labyrinthine jungle of the global market.

No Towers Fell on 9/11Freedom at last for Chile?

by Daniel Altschuler

•Patrocio

Claro, the quality of life has improved. Yes, it’s true. People live better now — in all the houses there’s a refrigerator, a

washer, a television. That hard hard poverty doesn’t exist anymore, the kind you would see years ago when you were little. We’re in a democracy, and condi-tions have improved. We believe that modernity is here, it’s come to Chile, but it’s only for certain groups. It’s come to Chile, but who can take advantage of modernity? It’s the upper classes. We, the lower classes, are always going to be in need of something — whether it be housing, work, or health care.

•

•María y Claudia

ClaudiaDemocracy means equality, equality. That the poor and the rich have the same rights — but that’s not how it is.

21Either you be the tomb of the freeOr the refuge against oppression— Chilean National Anthem

Pa’ que sepas, la lacrimógena dueleTear gas hurts. It may not kill, it may not maim, but it hurts and it blinds and it frightens and it terrorizes. Who is re-sponsible? Perhaps the rebellious youth, unsatisfied with peaceful protest, filled with political memories from years well before their own birth. Or the pinoc-hetistas, eager to disrupt and disband this offensive demonstration. Or the pacos — officially los carabineros — the police who line the entire march route with looks and camera lenses that alter-nate between apathy and contempt. It surely does not seem coincidental that the tear gas strikes us only a minute after the marchers begin to direct their voices towards the police, their chants ringing through the air:

Ula, UlaLos pacos tienen tetasLas pacas tienen culas

Meanwhile, a few rowdy post–adoles-cent protesters run around the side of the march, through the tree–lined plaza, throwing rocks at a vaguely visible Mc-Donald’s on the corner. Then comes the popping sound of a small explosion.

As I maneuver around to the other side of the triangular construction site in the middle of the broad intersection, people

sprint in the opposite direction, as clear a sign to turn around as one should ever need. Not accepting the wisdom of col-lective instinct, I stand to the side and wait. It seems that the peace has settled, that the march will continue after the po-lice have cleaned up a bit. Perhaps the stragglers will be able keep moving for-ward.

The tear gas quickly overcomes every-one in the vicinity, and the panic begins

to spread through eyes, nostrils, and mouths. We all begin to run in the di-rection from which we have come, heed-lessly approaching a wide intersection and flailing ourselves across the avenue unable to decipher whether the light is green or red.

At 5 o’clock, the only definite in-formation is that there will be a march tonight in Lo Hermida.

When Nahuel invited me, I was excited

September of 1973 saw the military leader and commander–in–chief of a na-tional junta Augusto Pinochet declare himself the new president of Chile. This followed days of widespread civil unrest, as Pinochet's supporters deposed the incumbent president Salvador Allende.

The events, which began on September 11th, heralded a new era for the Chilean people, one of rule by military dictatorship, which instituted a more widespread Capitalist and pro–American attitude. The name Pinochet is well known to the international community now; before his death, he had been arrested in Britain for his role in violence perpetrated in Chile. His legacy, however, was to prevent Salvador Allende's socialist agenda, however violently it proved necessary, and for this reason, a few people take to the streets to demonstrate against the actions of the 11th September 1973 in yearly demonstrations.

Daniel Altschuler was a visiting student in Chile in September 2001, and in the following article describes his experiences amongst those Chileans who protest the coup of 1973.

MaríaThere’s democracy only for some, po. Be-cause for the poor, no, no.

ClaudiaIt’s democracy because we can go out on the street and say whatever we feel like saying.

MaríaOye, not even, because they take you to jail — the water cannon comes, they beat the hell out of you, and then they take you prisoner.

•

22 Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.— Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006)

by the prospect of seeing something else today, of witnessing another side of the Chilean 11 de septiembre. We meet out-side the local supermarket, one of San-tiago’s local Walmart–style superstores. We greet one another — he, brown–skinned, neatly–dressed, and slightly bookish Chilean twenty–something, and

I, conspicuous gringo visitor — and walk to his house to relax for a while. Lo Her-mida, as it turns out, was once a toma, an organized collective land seizure, back in the 1960’s before Allende took power. In the 1980s, Pinochet had built them houses. Not casas, however, but casetas or casas sanitarias, that is, each one a serviced site with a completed bathroom and kitchen.

As Nahuel approaches his house, he be-comes uneasy. He and his compañeros had been putting together propaganda, painting murals, and mounting collages; in his absence, they have mounted two of them on the gate of his house. Two years ago, when they did something similar, the police responded by throw-ing tear gas, the stronger kind, over the wall and into the patio. Nahuel does not want to subject the children of the three families living in the house to that expe-rience again.

Nahuel asks his compañeros to move the signs elsewhere. He then introduces his friends, some fellow Young Communists, others belonging to some of the groups

with a greater propensity for violence, and a pair from the same group as the an-archists who had thrown the rocks at the McDonald’s just before los pacos released the tear gas that had sent me scrambling across the bridge of the Río Mapocho.

For the time being, in Lo Hermida, all remains calm.

As the compañeros keep up with their po-litical artwork, Nahuel eats a late lunch. As we sit comfortably in his room, it is easy to be taken in by his truth; his clear, concise, and deliberate way of speaking always seems natural and honest. He has a way of expressing himself that makes his opinions seem like obvious conclu-sions drawn from generally valid premis-es. The poor people have lived in these conditions all their life, he explains; the police have been stepping all over them in their squalor for decades; whether educated or not, these pobladores can join the Communist Youth; some of the more educated ones will become pas-sionate about the ideas that they find in the writings of Lenin or Marx; others, who perhaps have not received the same education, will simply intuit the truth of the Communists’ stance, the honesty in their demands. Certainly, not every-one possesses this consciousness; many are debilitated by drug addictions and chronic criminal behavior; many more are simply disinterested in all things po-litical. From this discussion we depart, with Nahuel inviting me to a comité de allegados meeting in Ñuñoa where he is acting as a delegate. Fortunately, his friend has an extra bike, so we don’t have to share Nahuel’s, and we set off, through the streets of Lo Hermida, across Aveni-da Grecia, all the way to the next district, a tiring ride on a used bicycle with little air and even less space for the knees of a 6’5” gringo to peddle.

We arrive nonetheless, and Nahuel's friend goes off to get the keys to the

sede social. The discussion begins promptly, half an hour behind sched-ule. This meeting will focus on get-ting homes for los allegados — “the arrived” — who live in the houses or backyards of friends or relatives, with no place to call their own. Since the beginning of the post–Pinochet era, Chile's government has built over a million such houses for low–income people; understandably, these allegados in Ñuñoa want a piece of the action to address their families' needs. Nahuel takes control of the meeting, explain-ing that the best opportunity for the Ñuñoa group's success lies in allying itself with fellow allegados in Lucha y Vivienda. In fact, Nahuel has come to this meeting as a Lucha y Vivienda del-egate. This stronger group already has a project proposal underway and 300 registered families. As vecinos drift in and out of the meeting, some arriving late, some quietly slipping out early, Nahuel patiently explains technical details of government subsidies to this small group of generally uninformed, or misinformed, vecinos. Eventually, we leave, and ride away, continuing our conversation, but riding faster this time because the march should have begun already in Lo Hermida. For the second time tonight, we pass the Esta-

dio Nacional, where the velatón, a can-dle–light vigil, is in progress to honor those who were murdered and tortured in the stadium directly after the 1973 coup. Now, Nahuel explains with undisguised cynicism, the “Socialist” politicians have turned the velatón into a political platform, an event where wealthy people come to feel as if they

My second tear gas experience in 22 years, my second tear gas experience today. This time I am not about to brag to anyone

“

”

Against my instincts and better judgment, I walk out the door

“

”

23For what avail the plough or sail,Or land or life, if freedom fail?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

are participating on this symbolic day.

Finally, after another 15 minutes of pe-daling, we turn onto the street where Nahuel had met me only hours before. This time, however, the giant supermar-ket and all of the other stores lining the busy intersection are totally shut. Turn-ing onto the avenue, small glowing orbs, bursting with red and black, come into view in the middle of the streets. Bar-ricadas, meant to keep all automobiles, police or otherwise, from passing. The pobladores, Nahuel explains, with a cau-tious but irrepressible pride in his voice, are taking back the streets of their pob-lación.

As we continue ahead on our bicycles, the bonfires blaze on, each one fueled by the combustible garbage and old furniture of surrounding vecinos. The smell in the air, Nahuel explains, is burnt rubber; tires, quite flammable, are well suited for these fiery barricades. Often, Nahuel continues, the smoke from the rubber fires disguises the police’s tear gas. The only remedy for the lingering tear gas, he advises, is to take shallow breaths. As we ride closer to his house, I quickly understand; the odor of burning rubber creeps up just as my eyes begin to feel the air pinching my sinuses. My second tear gas experience in 22 years, my second tear gas experience today. This time I am not about to brag to anyone.

Much has already happened. As we ar-rive back at Nahuel’s house, it becomes clear that the open confrontations are well underway in the darkness. On the avenue where he lives, fiery barricades every hundred meters light up the scene of young males taunting, whistling, and yelling at the pacos in their riot gear (las Tortugas Ninja — the Ninja Turtles) in the distance.

As we enter the house, none of the af-ternoon’s artwork can be seen. The windows are covered up from the out-

side with wooden boards for protection against the tear gas and the rocks thrown earlier on, when we were still on our way back from Ñuñoa. Only a half hour be-fore we arrived, members of the house-hold excitedly report, the pacos released their tear gas bombs only 20 meters from the house. Sniffing the scent still linger-ing in the air, Nahuel changes from his neatly–ironed comité delegate clothes into his street clothes. Once dressed, now in loose jeans and a baggy, untucked shirt, he searches for the small piece of an

eyeglass lens — all he has left of a broken pair — that he uses when he truly needs to see.

Ready now, he says a quick and con-fident goodbye to his mother’s cheek, wrinkled from years of accumulated anxiety. Nahuel turns quickly away from her and tells me that he needs to go look for his compañeros. Do you want to go with me? he wants to know. Or do you want to stay in the house? Given the combative atmosphere in the

The victims of Pincohet

Augusto Pincohet

24 ¡Viva Chile! ¡Viva el pueblo! ¡Vivan los trabajadores! (Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!)— Last words of Salvadore Allende (1908–1973)

comuna, Nahuel’s not sure where we might find a bus still running, but we could try.

Despite the steady increase in my heart rate over the past half hour, I do not want to let Nahuel know that I am scared. That I want to go home, to leave his world for the comfort and safety of the cozy, suburban world where I have been staying in Las Condes. No, in this moment I feel uncomfortable with the thought that I have chosen to be here, that I could just as easily choose to leave. I do not want to be different from Na-huel; I do not want to be the privileged visitor who happens to have an acquaint-ance who lives in Lo Hermida.

I feel inclined to stay within Nahuel’s room’s cement walls, surrounded by his portrait of Salvador Allende, La Jota’s logo, and a bookshelf whose cherished item is Lenin’s complete works. Against my instincts and better judgment, I walk out the door with him, past the mothers and the children of the house, back into the viscous night of tire smoke and tear gas. If anything happens, Nahuel reminds me, you are an American student who was just at a meeting for al-legados in Ñuñoa and came here looking for a friend. You don’t need to tell the po-lice my name, or what organization I’m a

part of. Also: no pictures. The people on the street will think that you’re sapeando, a police — or worse, international — spy tak-ing photos of the young delincuentes. After setting these parameters, Nahuel reassures me that there is no reason to worry; we will not be in any real danger.

Back in the vicinity of la Rotunda, more young pobladores are out furiously, but apprehensively, screaming obscenities, whistling, and gesturing at los pacos in plain sight. Partially protected by a

brick wall jutting out on the corner of the avenue, Nahuel borrows my glasses to look to see if his friends are in sight. Standing well behind him, close to the wall that functions as a protective shield, I am left momentarily blind, as the blur of the night fire and the angry voices of adolescent males close in around me.

Nahuel returns with my glasses with the news that his friends are nowhere in sight. After a few minutes observing this scene escalate, I decide that I have come close enough to this violence. I

take the opportunity to tell him that, if we go look for them elsewhere, perhaps we can also find a place where the buses might still be running. Despite my fear, I feel both conflicted and guilty. It feels disrespectful to say that I am afraid and want to go home, that I am afraid of the reality that he lives. But while I hope not to offend Nahuel, I do not want to feel a rubber bullet in my spine, either. And I certainly want to avoid the inside of a Santiago jail cell. In that moment, it becomes plainly clear how much this is not my struggle, how much I do not belong to Lo Hermida, how much, de-spite my best efforts to the contrary, I remain a tourist of others’ poverty.

Not knowing what might have tran-spired on these now–quiet streets of Lo Hermida an hour earlier, but appreci-ating the less contentious atmosphere, I ask Nahuel for his impressions of the evening. Do you think that tonight was a well–organized event? Definitely not, he responds, incredulous at the question in the midst of the fires and the yell-ing and the shots in the distance. Well, might there not be a different way to re-spond on this night, to organize a new sort of mobilization? Has anyone ever tried to get a municipal permit for a mass march on this night? Could one of the

I remain a tourist of others’ poverty“

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25Of all of the leaders in the region, we considered Allende the most inimical to our interests.— Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State (b 1923)

various groups involved take responsibil-ity for the event and try to ensure that no one gets hurt, no one’s property gets destroyed, and no one goes to jail?

Nahuel eludes these questions, clearly considering the matter from a different perspective. The barricades are a way for pobladores to take back their población, to take back their streets. That is the power of las barricadas. On this night, he says, the pobladores control who enters and who exits. Their streets on their terms; their rights as members of their commu-nity. Nonetheless, as a young Commu-nist interested in organizing people and working to raise the political awareness among the youth — concientizar a la juventud — Nahuel wishes that tonight could be more organized, could express a clear political message, could offer a true challenge to the dominant system of political and economic power. If only, he wishes, our actions could threaten the wealthy entrepreneurs and politicians, many of whom celebrate this day as the

anniversary of the beginning of order, development, and modernity in Chile.

In the days after the march, the largest na-tional newspaper, El Mercurio, publishes two pieces that refer to the happenings in the streets on the 11th. The first surfaces on Sunday, when a picture of one of the trouble spots in the downtown march ap-pears coupled with a caption — but no article — explaining only that police de-tained 31 people at the march in el centro when these troublemakers hijacked the event by vandalizing and defacing public and private property and sparking con-frontations with the police. No picture, no mention given to the march itself, the

caption makes no reference to how many thousands of people showed up in the streets to honor the late Salvador Allende, to challenge gringo imperialism, and to make new demands of their government. Instead, only a picture — of police clean-ing up after riotous behavior — and a cap-tion testify to the previous day’s activities.

On Monday, the printed press reports what happened in the poblaciones on Saturday night. El Mercurio’s article focuses on the President of the Republic’s official denun-ciation of the evening’s violence. President Lagos, Socialist Party leader, has declared: “These violent incidents do not reflect Chile. Chile is doing well, advancing democratically and with respect to each one of its children.” From the President’s lament, the article goes on to describe the damage inflicted on poblaciones throughout the city. Lo Her-mida, Nahuel’s home, appears atop the list of sites with the highest level of violence. Two pictures accompany the article: one of the results of vandalism, and the other of an officer injured in the fray. According

to the official transcript of Chilean news, Saturday, September 11th, marked only a

day of unfortunate public demonstrations of delinquency and disorder.

On page two of Sunday’s newspaper, readers encounter a picture and a caption of the 400,000 people who demonstrated in 1974 to celebrate the first anniversary of the military coup. In those days, one infers, people demonstrated publicly in peace to express their feelings of national pride, contentment, and consent. These days, conversely, las poblaciones explode every once de septiembre when misguided delinquents take over the streets. Back then, order prevailed; now, chaos disrupts the progress of a steadily advancing mac-ro–economic machine. No discussions, no explanations, no reasons for what took place: El Mercurio shows no interest in an-alyzing the roots of this deviant behavior. In their silence, the editors intone: there is no logic, no sense, behind the violence of the 11th. All those who participated in the poblaciones should be punished, reformed, set straight. They are all the same, and they are not a part of us.

Considering these news items as I return to el centro for the first time since fleeing Saturday’s tear gas, I wonder: what is the result of such Manichaeism? And I realize that Chile’s official history has dismissed Nahuel, leader of today’s Juventud Comu-nista, as nothing more than a common delincuente.

The caption makes no reference to how many thousands of people showed up in the streets to honor the late Salvador Allende

“”

26The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,

but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.— Vincent van Gough (1853–1890)

On the Underwater WorldThe strange lure of the Deep Blue Sea

If you’ve ever been fascinated by the image of an underwater shipwreck, you’ll understand the point of this ar-

ticle. It’s easy to forget that more than two thirds of the earth’s surface is covered by water and that, frequently, it swallows up more than we care to dump into it. Inevi-tably, things fall into the sea. And if some climate theorists are right, rising sea levels will one day overtake the continents, turn-ing the earth into one giant shipwreck, a.k.a. Waterworld (with or without Kevin Costner). My question is not just what makes the underwater world interesting, but what makes the notion of a sunken world interesting. What is so intriguing about the second life afforded to objects that have inadvertently found their way to the ocean floor?

Of all aquatic environments, the ocean in particular is extraordinary. Despite hav-ing learned a great deal about the nature of life in the ocean since the advent of scuba diving apparatus, the seas continue to exert a weighty force on our imagina-tions, and for no unclear reasons:

The average depth of the oceans is about four kilometers, reaching a maximum abyss (at the Mariana Trench) of eleven thousand meters. That makes the deepest ocean floor farther below sea level than Mount Everest is above it, or in other terms, about as far below the water’s sur-face as the ground is below a flying air-liner. The creatures that live in the very deep are only now becoming accessible to us. Four years ago, Japanese research-ers captured the first live photograph of an eight meter giant squid in its natural abyssal habitat by attaching a camera to a very long fishing line. The colossal squid, a species not yet photographed live, can grow up to fourteen meters in length. We don’t need Jaws, Moby–Dick, or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to imagine the hor-rific creatures of the deep; lucky docu-mentary footage would be good enough.

Of course, it’s easy to exaggerate the exotic dangers of the depths. The Great White shark, for instance, is not quite the dia-bolical beast it’s made out to be. In the first book to popularize scuba diving after the

Second World War, The Silent World, Cap-tain Jacques–Yves Cousteau described his first encounter with the infamous “man–eater”:

The shark saw us. His reaction was the last conceivable one. In pure fright, the monster voided a cloud of excrement and departed at an incredible speed… Dumas and I looked at each other and burst into nervous laughter… After several weeks in the Cape Verdes, we were ready to state flatly that all sharks were cowards. They were so pusil-lanimous they wouldn’t stay still to be filmed.

Hardly the sort of behavior one would think typical of a ferocious killer. In fact, scientists are certain that humans do not rate highly on the menus of such sharks. The average underwater adventure is not that dangerous, and most fish are scared silly by the sight of such awkward, four–limbed creatures. One has to be either ter-ribly unlucky or terribly reckless in order to get hurt.

by Adam Etinson

27Ocean: A body of water occupying about two–thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.— Ambrose Bierce (1942–1914)

Yet, knowing this does not dispel the sense that the surface, the molecular tissue that divides water from air, is like the mutual horizon of two distinct worlds. Crossing

the surface for creatures natural to one or other world is like breaking through a bar-rier or wall into alien territory. I remember the first time I tried Scuba diving I hesi-tated for too long at the surface, unable to bring myself to follow the group that had already descended beneath me. I wasn’t able to submerge my head without panick-ing; the movement seemed physically im-possible. Eventually I forced myself down and slowly got used to the fact that I could still breathe.

Despite being the birthplace of the first liv-ing cell and all subsequent life, as we are often told, creatures that have adapted to land generally have a hard time going back into water. If they do return to the aquatic environment, it will come at the price of millions of years, as it did for seals, whales, and dolphins — creatures that still use lungs. If we look back far enough along the human evolutionary chain, we will even-tually come across some sort of (probably very weird) sea creature.

Sinking objects are welcomed by the earth’s waters without hesitation. To be sure, the toxic waste, sewage, and garbage we eject — as well as the five–or–so sunken radioactive submarines — are not the most welcome of human legacies to the sea. But in general, from the ocean’s viewpoint, the intrusion of human objects is no big deal. Shipwrecks in particular are embraced with open arms. Aside from any wholesome or-

ganic materials that may be aboard, wood that will be eaten up or simply decay, the physical structure of a sunken ship provides good home and shelter to all sorts of other-wise vulnerable marine animals. Hulls will often become the backbone of a thriving coral reef, one hard to distinguish from the surrounding terrain. And they will create an environment rich in nutrients, activity, and excitement for the casual fish passerby. Ironically, fishing trawler wrecks end up entangling nets like those they once de-ployed, frustrating fisherman and protect-ing some fish in the process.

The Titanic is perhaps the paradigm ex-ample of a shipwreck. Lying beyond the reach of sunlight, approximately four thousand meters beneath the surface (a depth only submersibles can reach), it took explorers more than seventy years to locate its remains on the vast seabed of the North Atlantic. When the wreck was finally discovered in 1985, it trig-gered a cascade of media, scientific, and exploratory activity, which we might say ultimately culminated in the 1997 James Cameron film, Titanic. Since its initial re-discovery and the pop–culture catharsis of the Hollywood film, interest in the sunk-

en ocean liner has naturally waned. But the wreck, like the ship before it, remains awe–inspiring.

Like most other shipwrecks, what the first explorers of the Titanic encountered on the seabed was a human artifact well on its way to complete dissolution and absorption by the environment. All organic materials ac-companying the ship, including its deck wood, have completely disappeared, eaten away long ago by the local marine life. It’s taken much longer for the wrought iron hull to rust away, but this too will one day disappear, and not too long in the future ei-ther. Hungry microbes devour the wrought iron hull and form the rusticle shapes that the Titanic wreck made famous. Robert D. Ballard, who first discovered the wreck and coined the term rusticle, described his im-pressions in Exploring the Titanic:

It looked as though the metal hull was slowly melting away. What seemed like frozen rivers of rust covered the ship’s side and spread out over the ocean bot-tom. It was almost as if the blood of the great ship lay in pools on the ocean floor.

The surface is like the mutual horizon of two distinct worlds

”“

Tiktaalik: the odd creature scientists now believe marks the evolutionary emancipation of animals from the sea. The alligator–like animal grew limb–like front protrusions

28

And so castles made of sandfall in the seaeventually...

— Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970)

Despite all this, due in part to the freez-ing temperatures and lack of sunlight at such depths, many aspects of the Titanic are strikingly intact. You’ll probably re-member seeing pictures or video footage of the bow of the ship at some point. It stands dignified and upright in the wa-tery black along with the unconsumed brass telemotor, which would control the speed and direction of the engines. The anchors are still visible and in place. For the moment, pretty much the whole front bulk of the ship stands up down there in the dark, surrounded by and

a terribly odd coincidence. But it wasn’t only spooky facts that got me interested in the Titanic. Now, looking back, I’m curious about why that ship fascinated me so. Why did I become so interested in a sunken ship?

The history of the ship must have had something to do with it. It is like a time capsule, a window onto a period in history. In the case of the Titanic, treasure was al-ways an important issue. Immediately after the ship sank proposals were put forward to raise and recover the wreck, primarily in order to retrieve what were thought to be lost items of wealth on board. But these is-sues don’t illuminate the full drama of the ship’s exploration. This is how Robert Bal-lard describes his very first encounter with the Titanic underwater:

Then, directly in front of us, there it was: an endless slab of rusted steel ris-ing out of the bottom — the massive hull of the Titanic! I felt like a space voyager peering at an alien city wall on some empty planet. Slowly, I let out my breath; I didn’t realize I had been holding it.

The shocking sight of the Titanic’s hull is due in large part to where it is. The wall–like side of the ship isn’t still in port, nor is it on display in a naval museum somewhere; it wouldn’t be as interesting to look at in those places. In-stead, it’s under four thousand meters of water in the dark bowels of the earth. It might as well have been dropped on the surface of the moon, some alien planet, or be in the belly of a giant whale. The strange psychological intrigue created by a shipwreck lies in its paradoxical com-bination of the familiar with the wildly unfamiliar and out–of–context. Titanic, the legendary and greatest shipbuilding achievement of its time that everyone knows, rests like a lost child in the most foreign of environments, surrounded by odd fluorescent–coloured creatures,

home to some of the strangest creatures on the planet.

When I was about ten years old, I must have seen some television show about the then–recent discovery of the famous ship, because I became fascinated by it. In one of the few school projects I ever put my heart into, I remember relating its story to my teacher, and speculating that humans had somehow provoked God himself to sink the ship by claim-ing that it was unsinkable (not such a far out idea for a kid who was taught the old testament in elementary school from the age of six or seven).

There are many eerie facts surrounding the fate of the ship, among them the publishing of a book by Morgan Rob-ertson named the Wreck of the Titan in 1898, fourteen years before the actual sinking of the Titanic. The book de-scribes a ship named Titan — deemed unsinkable, short on lifeboats, and in many other respects remarkably similar to the Titanic — that strikes a North Atlantic iceberg on an April voyage be-tween England and New York, capsizing and killing almost everyone on board. It’s Photograph of a live Giant Squid over one

kilometre beneath the surface

The Underwater Bow of The Titanic

29How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.— Arthur C Clarke (1917–2008)

plunged into the most unfamiliar and inhuman of contexts.

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera distinguishes between two aspects of death:

It is nonbeing. But it is also being, the terrifyingly material being of a corpse.

When someone dies, part of them is of course left behind. The psychological in-congruity of staring at a lifeless body bears a deep resemblance to that of staring at a sunken ship. In one sense, the abyssal waters of the Titanic are like a giant jar of formaldehyde preserving the gruesome corpse of the ship for all to see. Oddly enough, there is probably a bit of necro-philia at the heart of shipwreck–gazing.

deep–sea sulphur vents, darkness, and silence.

Imagining the twin Voyager spacecrafts reaching their ultimate goal of interstel-lar travel may elicit a similar reaction. Launched in 1977, these two small probes that each a carry golden record

containing earth images and sounds, a formal printed address from the then–secretary of the United Nations to all extraterrestrials, and of course record–playing in-structions, are now at the boundary of the solar sys-tem, farther than any other man–made object is from earth.

Or take NASA’s Pathfinder mission to Mars. There were all sorts of scientific inter-ests in landing the rover on the Martian soil. There was a chance it could provide evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial water and life, or that a Martian might poke their face into its web–linked camera and finally reveal itself to us. But the root of the hysteria that surrounded the mis-sion lies mostly in the ex-traordinary achievement of navigating this man–made rover, however slow and pathetic, on the surface of a faraway and distant planet. These ships and vessels are like lightbulbs of humanity

But the ocean is not exactly like formal-dehyde. It’s no neutral or transparent medium, designed simply for preser-vation and spectatorship. It is an en-vironment and world with a life of its own; and part of the fascination with a sunken ship lies in its role as a vicarious substitute for an experience of what it would be like to live in that world. The alien experience of living underwater is transposed onto the ship itself, as if were a space or deep–sea–diving adven-turer like Ed Harris in The Abyss (an-other James Cameron film).

On the other hand, the ship’s stillness and decayed state establish it as some-thing dead and foreign itself. Again very much like a corpse, the more in-tact it is, the more we recollect the liv-

There is probably a bit of necrophilia at the heart of shipwreck–gazing

”“

Image from the 1975 Jaws film poster

30The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy.

It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.— Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne

and potential hostility of the oceans to-wards human life explain our mythologi-cal association of loss with the sea. The ancient story of Atlantis, the mysterious sinking of a highly–advanced society, is perhaps one good example. Kostner’s Waterworld is, for better or worse, anoth-er. Encounters with sunken ships such as the Titanic, deep–space — or imaginary encounters with mermaids and extrater-restrials — are like grave revelations of human finitude.

For someone who was interested in the Titanic years before the Hollywood film was released, that event was a mi-nor disaster of its own. I couldn’t take myself seriously as a Titanic aficionado anymore. Part of the problem was surely that my interest in the ship could no longer be said to be special or unique. But equally disappointing to me was that the ship had been brought out from the

ing thing that it once was. In the case of the Titanic especially, it’s the in-congruity of its intactness that makes the sight of it so spooky. Its intactness transforms it into a sort of monster of the living–dead.

The Titanic is like a monster of the deep staring back at us. The most effective cinematic moments in Steven Spiel-berg’s Jaws, to me, are those shown from the shark’s eye–view. The film opens with the famously suspenseful ba–dum, etc., while we see a prowling view of the ocean bottom from the shark’s eyes. Of course it’s a scare tactic. Horrified, we’re seeing ourselves, our dangling legs, from a place we cannot see in return. Spiel-berg in effect gave the whole ocean a set of eyes that turn aggressively upon us as soon as we enter its realm. Now, for no actual good reason, we’re all scared to go into the water!

Monsters always lurk at the periphery of the human world, and the encoun-ter with a monster — or even adventure itself — is always connected to the con-frontation of some core human limita-tion. It’s no coincidence that some of the most famous monsters are sea–creatures. In dramatic fiction, Sperm whales, Gi-ant Squids, great fish (as in Ernest Hem-ingway’s Old Man and the Sea) — and even the crazy submarine captain in Tom Clancy’s Hunt for the Red October — all wrestle human protagonists to the point of near–death. The great indifference

deep and into the Hollywood limelight. So much attention had transformed it from a monster into a garden–variety household item.

Even the most extraordinary things can become banal without too much time or effort. I’m afraid that even if we do meet wise and benevolent extraterrestrials, what we’ll end up with is not a cosmic and enlightened perspective on life and humanity but instead something like the recent contest over the North–Pole sea-bed: politics and more of the same. Still, demystification is nothing to be resisted. The exotic will always be staring at us from one direction or another: whether it be macrocosmic, microcosmic, or — as Jules Verne explored it — in the future, on the moon, inside the earth, under the sea, or up in the sky. And don’t worry: no matter how well we build them, ships will always sink.

The great indifference of the oceans towards human life explains our mythological association of loss with the sea

”

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A mural painting of a mermaid by Den Poitras, from Gloucester, Massacheussets

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Name: Dan Massey School: Uxbridge High School Subject taught: ScienceSubject studied: Physics College attended: St Catherine’s College

A Week in the Life

The average day starts at 6:30 and one of my colleagues at Uxbridge, an AST (Advanced Skills Teacher) with a wealth of experience gives me a lift to school. We normally discuss the day ahead and talk through problems from the previous day. I normally get in at 8:00 and check all of my lessons for the day.

At 8:30 my Year 8 form arrive, 8BYR, all 27 of them. We have a fractious relationship as I was an assistant form tutor last year and they really liked the main tutor that is no longer with them, so it has been a constant battle since September to get them on my side. I have worked hard to instill a routine in the mornings that adds some stability to their day but they seem to disagree that this is a good idea. This week has been “Environment Week” and in spite of my best efforts enthusiasm has been low. When I tried to explain to one pupil that turning the TV off instead of leaving it on standby may save £40 a year he responded “but sir, I like the light” – what can you say to that!?

I had great fun with my AS Physics class this week; the abilities within the class vary dramatically and pitching the lesson at a level which can accommodate them all is very challenging. Some of the weaker pupils seem thoroughly traumatised by A Level Physics and I feel there are some parts they just won’t be able to understand but I always try my best to help them access the subject. Teaching exchange particles was fun, the basic premise being that two objects can energise one another without touching. A couple of skateboards and a tennis ball were all the props I required and I was delighted when the pupils approached the task with gusto.

I have been issued 3 Year 10 Science classes. I teach sets 1, 4 and 7 and the differences in ability are huge. This week I have to teach them all about efficiency and efficiency calculations. I am pleased that I get three chances to deliver the material but the depth I go into will vary greatly. With my set 7 they really struggled picking out the right numbers for the equation and I even as I explained the steps over and over again they were still struggling to understand – it was so frustrating, I am thinking of using football scores to engage them with it next week. While set 1 constantly need pushing and can be almost arrogant in their approach, I enjoy stretching them.

One of my big successes this week was with one of the pupils in my form. He is the sort of student that will misbehave all of the time and is easily led down a destructive path by his peers. He is generally in bottom sets though I feel he should be in the higher sets. As his form tutor I would visit him at some of his lessons: this week with the consent of his Maths teacher I visited him there. In Maths he sits with some pretty naughty pupils; when I went in I sat with him and worked on some Maths and when he was focused he was performing really well – I would even go as far as to say that we got on….ok. He is not well supported at home and comes to school lacking basic provisions such as pens, so when a girl in his class broke his pen he was pretty upset. The next day I presented him with a gleaming new pen, he didn’t have the social competence to utter a thankyou but he was very happy and I feel our relationship has improved and maybe I can be instrumental in really helping him this year.

Uxbridge High School is larger than an average comprehensive and has a large % of EAL (English as an additional language) pupils. In fact there are 65 different languages spoken in the school. Ofsted recently rated the school as Good.