Nope, nothing else, not today.

I was hoping for a “crowd goes wild”, which means a personal best, or “great finish” which means that the last km was the fastest.

Oh well.

I stop looking at it and enter my house.

Running is a funny business. It is the most simple and easy of sports to take up; all you need is a pair of shoes (and these days there is a whole barefoot running clique who claim you don’t need even those) and yet, and yet, never in my life have I run more than 100 meters. Not that I was shy of sports; fencing, martial arts, marital arts – you name it. However, my first day’s attempt to run down to the gym was a disaster once those 100 had passed. My body simply stopped me flat and demanded to know what I thought I was doing, was I being chased by a hungry lion? Or avoiding an imminent meteor strike? No? Then why the hell are you doing this to us? It asked, gasping.

In the past such stern questioning, not to mention the following sensation of aching lungs, were enough to stop me. But, not today because I had caught a bug.

A Nike bug.

I have always been a fan of the colourful US brand. When I was a child, Nike was the coolest thing in the world; both ridiculously expensive and stylish. Unobtainable. Since then they have gone through a bit of a sea change themselves, upping the quality levels, creating some great equipment and yet keeping that cool label, that newness. Even when they come late to the party and a little underpowered in the features department even then they make a splash with their style and their enthusiasm.
It is that enthusiasm that is the key feature of this watch.

My early morning conversation in the “pro-running” shop near London Bridge highlights what “proper” running people think of that fact. (Imagine the scene in Point-Break where Keanu Reeves buys his first surfboard…)

“Good morning, sir,” said the thin and fit looking shop girl from behind her achingly cool piercings.

I guess I did look like a fish a bit out of water, in a running shop at this time in the morning; she looked like a 20 mile run was a daily occurrence before breakfast. Dressed for work, I guess I have the look of a geek with a love of good quality gadgets.

“I’m looking for a running watch with a heart strap,” I said.

“The Garmin” she said, pointing into a small glass fronted cabinet next to me.

I looked at the watch in question; it was a phenomenally ugly and boxy device like one of those stop-watches PE teachers carry that had been welded to a watch strap. Next to it stood the Nike GPS. To say that the Nike looked better is an understatement. I realised that I could wear that watch all day, even at work.

“The Nike’s nice,” I said hopefully.

The girl gave me an appraising look, followed by a pause as she mentally switched records in her head.

“Yes, sir, they are very popular, they have similar features to the Garmin but they are not as good.”

Even I know that’s code for, “she wouldn’t be seen dead in one”. However, Given that she has trouble walking through metal detectors or passing large magnets, I wasn’t swayed by the opinion her expression was trying oh so hard to hide. I realised that I was entering a new world with two groups, the sort of people who run every day for miles and miles and miles, and the sort of people who run a couple of times a week for around 30k total.

Journeymen and Beginners.

Experts and hobbyists.

The élite and the, well, not so élite.

I knew which group I was in, so I decided to change the metric the girl and I were using to judge the value of watches,

“how much is the Garmin?” I asked.

“£350” she answered, clearly of the opinion that mere price was an irrelevant point.

“And the Nike?”

“£170 and £50 for the belt”

I looked again at the choice. There was nothing more to say. If I turned up at home with a £350 watch I would be strung up by Cesca and rightly so. I did a mental calculation in my head as I was going to have to sell a beloved Christopher Ward watch to pay for it.

“I’ll take the Nike please”

Unwrapping.

Apple has indelibly changed the definition of what is cool in packaging when it released the iPhone. Since then many manufacturers have copied their approach. For example, my Samsung phone came in a box almost identical to the iPhone (and the phone is so similar that Apple is suing). Nike, who is surely BFF with Apple, has also followed Apple’s philosophy. The box containing the Nike watch is small and very well designed while at the same time evoking the spirit of the sort of boxes high-end watches come in. Everything is compactly slotted in. Compared to the competitions simple blister packs this speaks volumes. Once its secrets are open the following items are found within.

Another thing Nike has learned from Apple is to have no truck with anything but complete brand loyalty in a passive aggressive way. This is displayed perfectly with the lack of any way to attach the Shoe Pod to anything but a Nike shoe (which has a special hole for the nugget like device in the sole). I would have despaired had I not expected it and ordered a small pouch from amazon that attached to my laces. This little fella is cleverly designed and extremely snug – so it holds the Pod perfectly.

I followed the simple instructions and charged the watch up while signing up to download the sync software from Nike’s web site. (We will come to the website in-depth in a moment).

The watch has a thin USB adaptor hidden under the flap at the end of the strap. This clicks open and can go straight into a computer USB socket or via the short and branded extension cable given away in the box (presumably since some people still have under desk computers and not laptops). Once socketed the watch displays a charging message.

One of the most interesting features of this watch is its display. The LCD is in negative mode meaning that the screen is dark and the numbers and lettering are in blocks of “turned off” colour.

It has a large-size font choice meaning that the time display is split over two lines, which looks great and a close-up of the LCD shows it to be of very high “resolution”, the fonts curving smoothly and not blocky at all. There is no doubt that this display could show graphics with ease if it wanted to. The boldness of that display puts it firmly in the extroverted cool realm and the bright yellow on the reverse of the band (visible only in flashes and glimpses when on the wrist) follows this.

Next to the time, at a 90 degree angle, sits the day and date information along with the battery meter. This is the battery meter for the running part of the watch not the clock part. Once charged, which took about an hour (so it must be part-charged out of the box) the watch is ready to go. An “up down” rocker is on the left hand side above a bright yellow button. The rocker moves the watch through its menu system and the yellow button acts as an “enter” selector.

After using some serious gym watches in the past I was very presently surprised with the purposeful simplicity of the Nike. Some watches have a mind mangling choice of menus and settings for every sport. Nike has opted to throw most of these out and focus on the core experience, again following Apple’s lead. The watch menu has only four options, all visible on the first menu:

“Clock” This returns you to the clock mode.

“Run” Start a new activity.

“History” The last 50 activities.

“Records” This shows a rotating display of:

Total distance
Fastest mile
Fastest km
Fastest 5k
Fastest 10k

Notice there are no settings to be configured. Rather all the settings, apart from the registering of new sensors, is performed in the computer software upon attaching the watch via USB. This configuration software enables you to change lots of features, such as the default screen display while running; settings for laps, whether the watch will bug you to go for a run or even what your weight is for the calorie calculations.

On the wrist the watch stands quite tall and with its nice curved glass screen is just waiting to get smashed. Never the less I wear it every day. It goes well with my work clothes in that it is in a way a totem. Wearing a running watch to work, especially this running watch, is making a statement. That statement says that you are a member of the “club”. Not a geek member totally obsessed with statistics; no you are a “cool” member. This is a watch design for enthusiasts to meet other enthusiasts. I get a lot of interested questions regarding it, as many as I got for my other watches and this is all to the good as it provides motivation. Balancing the design of something is nearly as hard as wearing it if it makes a statement. All too often that statement is perhaps not the one intended. Consider the 50+ guy with his Jag car, or oversized Tag watch. Most of the time such a person’s statement is “I’m a berk with too much money and a lack of inner success”.

This watch simply sidesteps that. Anyone who challenges your “right” to wear it can be simply provided with the “Records” section to check your bonafides in seconds.

As long as you have them that is. When all is said and done, you must run the miles yourself; the watch will not do that for you!

It is not heavy at all and doesn’t bother me on the wrist. One thing to note is that the strap is integrated and therefore cannot be changed in any way. This may not be an issue unless the watch doesn’t fit. I have heard of people with very small wrists not managing to get the watch flush to their skin. For me, I run the risk of the opposite problem; my wrists are too big! I have the watch on the largest setting and it is snug and not loose. Of course having a watch this tight sometime means I can accidentally press a button. This has only happened in the gym once when lifting a 55kg bar weight above my head; my hand was pushed back enough that the back of it pushed a button. After stopping and pulling the watch up my arm the problem was solved.

Running in the watch.

The first thing one has to do when running for the first time is pair the sensors with the watch. I have the heart belt and shoe pod and I found that on first attempt at pairing (standing in the gym) the watch picked up too many sensors in range. Standing, briefly, outside solved this issue and I have not had it happen again as the watch remembers the pods, etc. it knows.

When deciding to do some recorded exercise you select the “run” menu and then turn on or off the sensors. So, if you are working out in the gym on weights, you turn off all but the heart rate belt and it will record your time, heart and calories. On the other hand, running outside (the watch’s primary use) will involve all the sensors and after turning their options to on, and selecting “continue”, the watch will announce that it is “linking sensors”. If you have wetted the Heart belt and moved the shoe pod within the last minute then it will pick these up in a few seconds. However, I have had the GPS take up to a minute (which feels longer when you are staring at the screen). Nike claim that the watch gets better at pinpointing the satellites in each use, and indeed I have seen the text “Updating satellite data” in the computer GUI as I sync it with Nike website. However, the watch also features the ability to start your run before the satellite has a fix, known as “quickstart”. This option is clearly there because the GPS lock takes so long (sometimes!). Of course, you wait. Eventually the link works and you get a little set of beeps that you are ready to go. A touch of the “start” menu option and you can head off!

While running the watch displays your selected options and occasionally beeps if you have turned on to have laps. During a lap moment the watch displays some quick data on the lap. You can have automatic laps or manual ones, which requires a tap on the case here:

Not a touch of the screen mind, you have to tap the top of the case front. Coincidentally, tapping this while in “clock” mode turns on the backlight for a brief moment. You can also have intervals as programmed again by the computer GUI. This means your speed work training will benefit from the watch telling you the splits and assisting you in not cheating.

Using the up and down rocker buttons you can switch the upper part of the screens display to show various metrics such as km, time, km average, heart rate, etc. All are easy to read when on the move. Tapping the yellow button pauses the action, something I use only when crossing a busy road or my phone rings or I come across a giant queen bumble bee (all of which has happened on my runs). Once you have finished your run, the watch displays a little congratulations message dependent on your performance and plays a little tune on a personal best time.

This is very cute in action and I find myself quite looking forwards to it. Then the watch displays the stats for the run all on one screen.

You can also use the watch to only record workouts on the HRM. In this mode the watch turns off the GPS and foot pod. I use the watch in like this every other day and it performs its functions well. The BPM is the useful metric when lifting as it enables you to properly manage your between sets and recovery times. So, while the watch doesn’t offer and specialist mode for lifting, it is just as good as any other HRM.

On the elliptical and other machines the HRM is often compatible and the machine will show that rate rather than that of the “grip” sensors. I often note that the watch is one or two calories different from the elliptical machine, something that is probably to do with the method of calculation.

Uploading

The Nike watch is designed to synchronise with the Nike Running website and is one of the largest features of the system.

Upon placing the watch in the USB it uploads to Nike and then boots their website.

Nike present a very high end website built in flash. However, the flash programming is terrible. I often find that the flash fails to load in sections of the site. For example, I have logged in to the “home” screen and selected “goals”. Blank. Nadda. So I select “home”. Now that’s blank. So I log out and back in. Now my profile is missing. So I select “all runs”. Blank. This isn’t my version of flash or my browser choice; this is simply a bad website. The choice of flash is bizarre, as Apple mobile devices cannot display flash and so you have the situation where your iPhone can upload a run, but can’t show the run in Safari mobile.

It’s not as if Nike can’t program great websites. Consider this one, which invented a completely new method of coding using parallax techniques and is written in fantastically quick and smooth HTML5.

When the site works, it is very good indeed. But, it is a very inconsistent experience. I emailed Nike regarding this and got a slightly glib reply. Hopefully, they are going to ditch it, but until then it is an issue. This is what I sometimes see:

Some of the features provided in the website are excellent. There is the runs themselves and each will show a map of the distance covered on a mapping system. This system is improving all the time and now you can use it to plan a run as well as review one. This is very helpful if you need to find a 5 or 10km route around your town.

Also great is the “goals” section that assists you in tracking progress. I find that having a goal that is within a few weeks’ reach is much more motivating than the long term goal of “getting fit”. Humans as a species tend to be terrible in focussing on longer term goals compared with immediate sensations (hunger for example). When you upload runs (and only runs – it doesn’t count workouts) they are automatically counted towards your targets. I have found that this has motivated me much better than I thought it would. It is the feature I love the most.

Above all this there are also “challenges”, which are like goals mixed with online clubs. Anyone can create a challenge and have people sign up to join you in it. Some are silly, some are charity based, some are mega hard and the website helps filter them based on your “Nike Level”.

This simple metric grades your progress as a runner using colours. Upon going up a level you get a small movie of some runner congratulating you and a new set of challenges to run against. It’s clever and motivational. I am now half way to the third category and I find myself considering running more often to speed up my progress. That’s a great design influencing my motivation. Nike certainly has that aspect of the experience nailed. The site also links in to Facebook and Twitter and when you upload a run it posts it to the social networks as well as when you set a new goal. This enables your friends to comment on it and motivate you even more. I have even found that friends have read my constant Facebook posts and taken up gym’ing themselves. However, for some stupid reason the system only posts your last run, so if you upload them in batches like me (as I run to the gym, gym, and run back) then the others are not Facebooked. This is slightly annoying as the final run of my routine is always the slowest as I am tired from lifting.

Are there any other problems with the watch and experience?

Nikes forums are full of people complaining about problems with their watches. The main one seems to be that the GPS is not super accurate. I have not found this myself. Reviewing my runs on the maps shows that the system has correctly picked up my journey. Perhaps it is to do with the satellites overhead?

I have noticed the system downloading GPS data:

Others have complained that the website doesn’t show enough detail of the runs for post analysis. I think this is an issue for those in the “elite” group. Nike hasn’t got all the detail recorded in the run on the site, but I understand they are considering it. Recently I received a questionnaire about the Nike site and it asked my preference for detail. I said that I always wanted as a much as possible.

Hopefully they are listening to the criticisms of those shouting. As is often the case on the web, the loud, angry minority make much more noise than those happy with their product and experience. I personally am very happy with the watch itself and unhappy with the website. However, I am content to give Nike a chance to repair or replace the online portion of the system. Such an action would not hurt their brand in the slightest, as flash is dead. No one in their right mind programs flash anymore and to block out Apple device users is a stupid direction given their popularity.

Key Features & Benefits

• GPS by TomTom + Shoe Sensor: GPS functions in tandem with the Nike+ Sensor to optimize seamless data tracking during runs (e.g. when running through an urban canyon, where GPS connection may not be available).
• Tap Interface: Users simply tap the display to activate the backlight and to mark laps during their run.
• Direct Connect: USB contacts are molded into the watch strap allowing the user to plug the watch directly into a USB port to upload run data and recharge the battery.
• Run Reminders: Users get automatic reminders from the watch when a run has not been logged in the past five days.
• Attaboys: Users receive recognition for achieving personal records, such as fastest mile, longest run, fastest 10K and fastest marathon.
• Nikeplus.com: Run data is saved to Nikeplus.com where runners can map their runs, find new routes, track their goals, receive coaching tips, challenge their friends, share their progress through Facebook and Twitter and more.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Ease of use
• Great Design
• Waterproof
• Nike+ website is great for motivation
• Easy to configure and install

Cons:

• Glass screen can be knocked
• HRM only workouts dont count towards your “goals” grrr
• Nike centric – no data coming out to other websites
• Problems with Nike Running Website – Flash (yuk!)

Final Verdict

For its motivational components, great design, high end experience I give the watch an 9/10. It is a simple and well-made device that I have a great affinity for. I am wearing it now on the train into London.

For the online portion of the experience I can only award Nike 7/10 with a note that when the site works well its potential is manifest. However, this is not all the time and so they “must try harder”!

Regards

Basho

You can buy a Nike watch from their store here:

Please note our affiliates policy

Announcing the opening of a new Basho website!

www.buddhabooks.co.uk

I have been writing reviews of books on this site for something like 5 years, also I have – as I am sure you know – a passion for Eastern Philosophy. Finally I can bring them all together!

Buddha Books is an editorial review website specialising in books on Daoism, Buddhism, Philosophy and other Eastern Religions in both book form and also audiobooks.

Here is the deal:

• I will be posting a couple of new reviews per week.
• All the reviews will be of books I own and have paid money for (I have a simply enormous collection).
• They will all take into account my knowledge (degree in Philosophy), views (one who has travelled the East) and beliefs (Daoist) and those of Cesca.
• Every review will contain a link to somewhere where you can buy the book.
• 50% of all the referral commissions will be donated to the The New Cambodian Children’s Life Association (NCCLA), which is a charity set-up for orphaned Cambodian children.

Also – after the great success of Cesca’s Photo exhibition, we will be offering prints of her collection for sale in a variety of sizes and frames all set to be posted straight to you. Bonus!

I invite you all to take a look and let me know what you think. The site is new – as is the theme – so there will be changes in the coming weeks as well as a large amount of new entries. My hope is that some serious discussion can be had over the books. If you disagree with a review – don’t hesitate to post up a comment.

Regards,

Basho

www.buddhabooks.co.uk

P.S. This does not effect this site. OC will continue on a dual monthly posting rate until the new year where it will then go back to weekly (I am working on a Diploma in Preventing Financial Crime at the moment)

I’m an avid reader of New Scientist magazine. In fact I get it every week. The headline will usually be about something “quantum” or allude to some current or near “breakthrough”. Of course real breakthroughs are hardly on a weekly schedule. I know this, but still I buy into it. It is a classic marketing technique that tempts impulse buying. New Scientist covers about Quantum are the geek equivalent of putting Princes Diana or perhaps Jordan on the cover of a ladies magazine or putting Bruce Lee on the cover of a martial arts magazine. In each case the marketers know what make people pick up the edition, what buttons to push.

It is this technique that got me to buy this book.

A few weeks ago my wife started a Skype chat to me at work. Normally this signifies that I need to pick something up on the way home or that I forgot to turn the iron off, or similar. However, this time she was definitely excited about something,

“Stephen Hawking was just on Radio 4 and said that Philosophy was dead!” she announced.

“As an ironic statement?” I typed back.

“No, he means it”

This I had to hear. Sure enough the Cambridge Physicist had a new book out. I picked it up at the train station and thumbed through it. On page one he announces “Philosophy is dead”. Like the banner of a New Scientist magazine, I found myself wanting to buy it just to read why. To be able to feel the argument’s weight, to be able to rebut it, because, frankly, he had really pissed me off. Cash was exchanged for book and I walked to the train with it in my bag, most of my arguments already forming in my head. Then something struck me:

I had fallen for it.

I had, as John C Dvorak would say, “Drunk the Kool-Aid.”

I was now even more miffed. Without even opening the book I suddenly knew how this would go and, I’m sorry to say, I was proved right. This isn’t a book about M-Theory. This isn’t a book inviting debate or interested in discussing the issues. This isn’t even a book for anyone who has access to Wikipedia. This is a book making a statement. Not, as the first page claims, that Philosophy is dead – I will deal with that in a minute – no, this is a book that is trying to setup a different type of mythology.

The mythology of the Physicist.

In this book Physicists are accorded a very special significance, a higher order than mere mortals. We are told again and again that their works are special, unique and different. That they stand apart.

All that is rubbish.

You see, it is a commonly held belief that in the past it was possible to be a specialist in multiple disciplines at the same time. Indeed some of the greats from the enlightenment were what we called then a “Polymath (these days we say “Genius”). Such giants as Goethe, Leibnitz and Hook. These men’s understandings, works and contributions to humanity are almost immeasurable and the fruits of it surround us every single day. However, since then science has been branching further and further into divisions and specialism’s and it is considered impossible for another Leibnitz to exist without him having to focus on one subject or become a businessman. This has led to a lot of scientists jostling for “rank” and “order”.

XKCD satirised this internecine strife perfectly in this cartoon:

The “purest science” award is generally granted to the Mathematicians; creators and guardians of the official language of science and pure in their abstract prowess to describe things in forms of numbers. But there is another group, self-aligned with the math geeks, who apply that language to something in particular; the Universe. These are the Physicists. The self proclaimed wizards of science, they formulate theories that attempt to probe the deepest corners of space and time. Even to the point of realising that space and time are actually spacetime. They exist in a constant battle against each other. The battle of modelling. Since there is hardly any evidence for much of theoretical Physics, these Physicists aim to create models that are “elegant” in their mathematical construction. A poem of maths, which they say points to the truth. They even get a feeling of “just knowing” that the theory is solid due to the ability to simplify the maths down to as small an equation as possible. These mini equations are their haiku’s; piquant attempts to explain the almost ungraspable.

Works of art?

Such grand and lofty aims sometimes lead to a kind of arrogance, conceit and over bearing self confidence that many scientists can get in their work. Ego mania is a strange and afflicting problem in the community (I’m looking at you Dawkins!).

However, entrenched positions that take generations to dig out of are against the basic fundamental principles of science in the first place. Chief being the principle of falsifiability. That is the principle that any theory can be proven wrong.

My Christian friend once asked me what it would take to prove science “wrong”.

“If I held out this beer can and dropped it,” I answered, draining the drink from it. “And if as I let it go, it didn’t fall; it just sat there in the air. And you wrote it down and photographed it, and filmed it and told people, and every time I did it; it was the same result…”

“Right…” He ventured.

“Then, Well, then they would get out the Theory of Gravity and tear it in half.”

“They would do that?” He sounded sceptical.

“Yes. The most cherished, most important, most agreed upon theory. They would tear it in two and throw it away.”

He now looked sceptical as well.

“And I tell you what, they would be glad. They would be happy about you having proved them wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because science is not one man. Not one theory. It is linked together on one vital understanding.”

“What is that?”

“That a theory, any theory, even a theory that has become a law, is only right until it is proved wrong. Once it is proved wrong by demonstration, then it is thrown out!”

“Really?”

“It’s happened before, many times.”

“That must hurt”

“It must be a real bitch mate,” I said and I held out the can and dropped it. It clattered on the floor. I looked at him and smiled, “The Theory of gravity survives for another day…”

He chuckled and passed me another beer.

Professor Hawking has written this book to try and pass the “good news” of his latest thoughts regarding a type of String Theory. A theory he has, in fact, changed his mind about in the last 5 years or so. Early types of String theory have been around for even longer than that. String theory is an attempt to answer two conflicting truths and to unify them. What is called “Classical Physics and Quantum Mechanics” Or in laymen’s terms, the theories of Newton, which are about the everyday normal sized objects, and the theories of Quantum scientists such as Feynman, which are about the very smallest of objects. These two theories make predictions about the future (another vital ingredient) that are seemingly both born out by experiment. In other words, Newton is demonstrably correct regarding gravity and Fennyman is demonstrably correct about Quantum. However, they don’t agree.

How can they both be right?

The general approach to this is to say that they are both wrong in different ways and that a further “truth” is waiting us to work it out to account for them both. A grand theory that unifies all Physics together. This is because, strange as it might seem, Physics theories are a moving target. For example, when I was young, I was taught in school the classical model of physics. This is what most people think of when they think of atoms and such. That classic iconic image:

This is now considered wrong as it ignores much of the known universe – such a gravity of the very very small; quantum gravity. One of the theories trying to explain quantum gravity was Super String. You don’t need to understand it to realise that this will eventually be proved wrong too. But it is a better type of wrong than the first. Lots of people worked on the theory and came up with different flavours, variations and entrenched positions. Then, one man, almost for a joke, wrote a theory for a conference that suggested that the competing string theories should actually be seen as one theory from different angles. He called this M-Theory. The M standing for both nothing and everything that starts with an M, which if you think about it is a part of the joke. However, M-Theory was thought to have something and many people started working on this. It became fashionable rather than freaky and soon Super String was moving from the fringes of Physics to the mainstream. Now it is the official “best candidate” for the Grand Theory and thereby for reasoning (with justification) how the Universe started. A question that has always been levelled at scientific explanations for the creation of the Universe theories such as the Big Bang is basically “who lit the match?” Simply put, in M-Theory, the Universe started by itself and is one of multiple Universes, endlessly flowing like bubbles in a bottle of coke with a Mentos Mint thrown in.

There is only one problem with it. Well, there are buckets of problems including that it requires many more dimensions to exist that are observable. However, by any measure the largest problem is almost unassailable; that it is almost impossible to prove.

The other day a scientist on Radio 4 claimed that all discovery was over and science would shrink in importance. This is a predication people have been making for generations, and it fails to take into account discoveries that await while we apply science in new and exciting ways. For example, the European Fusion reactor is running at something like 60% efficiency. Once they get it to run at 99% then they predict that the issue will become one of engineering; that is improving the machine to squeeze out the extra juice needed. During such a process a startling discovery may be made that changes everything. it’s happened countless times before in almost every field, especially medicine – take smallpox, it wasn’t until we discovered that milk maids didn’t get it that vaccination was posited, and no one can say that hasn’t changed the world.

Physics may be heading for a period of reengineering, where theory is not being moved forwards, it is the physical application of that theory (the experiments and the products) that is going to have to catch up. What is impossible to prove now, may be discovered to not only be provable, but may prove wrong as well.

This is Hawking’s good news: he thinks M-theory is almost impossible to prove, not totally impossible to prove. Great to hear, after all: if they discover the Higgs all this may become more important than ever.

However, that aside, Hawking tries a number of unconvincing things in this book that ruined it all for me:

1. He tries to suggest that M-theory is the natural successor in the smooth progression from ancient to modern man. He takes history and draws a straight line through it claiming some sort of manifest destiny for M-theory. This is rubbish. Super String is and more importantly was waaaay-out-there as far as mainstream science goes.

2. His grasp of historical thought. The book is peppered with quotes from historical figures all taken light-years out of context.

3. He places Physics on a pedestal. A big pedestal. I understand that he is a physicist, but in the book he tries very hard to make them look special and cool. It is as bad as Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory and as arrogant.

4. He tries to establish Physics as separate from other sciences. As I said at the top, science does struggle with over-specialisations, but the borders between one discipline and another are not as solid as Hawking claims. They are often walls only of our making, and he knows this! Theoretical physicists are not a true breed apart no matter how much they only live through their blackboards. All science is a brotherhood and should be treated as such.

5. He has a few pops at Philosophers.

Taking that last point in detail. On page one he claims “Philosophy is dead”. This is possibly the most ironic statement I have ever heard since Jim Tyler stated to me that if he ran the country:

…all extremists would be taken out and shot.

You literally cannot form the sentence “Philosophy is dead” and have it be true. Such a statement is a philosophical position by default. It’s oxymoronic to claim that “Philosophy is dead” Given any reasonable definition of the terms he is talking nonsense.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. Later in the book he refers to Philosophy as though it was all made up. I personally think it is a bit rich for someone who is forwarding a theory that has no shred of evidence to point the finger at Philosophers. After all, Science and Philosophy were once the same subject called “Natural Philosophy”. That they have diverged is not the wish of the Philosophers! Anyway, the only true difference is the usage of Maths. Philosophers are sceptical of maths whereas physicists love it. His claim that Philosophers lack the maths to understand his answers is not telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. Philosophers don’t want to use the maths! That doesn’t stop them coming up with the same answers in their own language.

Many great Philosophers have postulated the multiple universes stated in M-Theory. Not to mention that over 2000 years ago Plato suggested that other dimensions may exist, Indian Yogi suggested alternate realities and Chinese sages wondered if they existed on another plain in a different form. M-Theory?… pah!

Secondly, in the modern world, Philosophy is more important than ever. The Prime Minister of England studied it, as did many MP’s. Books on it are everywhere. It pervades the fabric of humanity at every level, from talking to friends down the pub, to high end intellectual conferences. This is because Philosophy is the human inclination to turn a question on its head. Philosophy is less about having the answer to everything, rather it is about having a better understanding of the question.

Clearly, he is trying to be contentious to make the book sell in the US.

I am not sure who will enjoy this book. There is nothing in it that you cannot read for free on the web, and if you already know the “public understanding of science” version of M-Theory and Quantum then you won’t read anything new at all. In fact I found his description of the famous Double Slit experiment to be one of the worst I have ever encountered and it is one of the most amazing scientific discoveries of all time. I still use it to amaze bright children.

I really like Hawking. I love his TV shows and would count myself as a fan. But this book was too lite to be interesting, too confident to be correct and too ready to jump on the money-train driven by such people as Dawkins to garner respect from me.

I would advise you to skip drinking the “Kool-Aid” on this one:

5/10 & YMMV

The story of a simple Buddhist priest travelling from India to China in the 5th Century doesn’t sound like something that would make for an interesting novel, but the after effects of this solitary man’s journey still reverberate today. In all parts of the far east, the name Bodhidharma is still very well known. In Japan, for example, little girls have Bodhidharma key-chains and all sorts of other cultural influences and footprints can be found. And not only in the geek fringes or the religious halls, no his is a visage often seen in paintings; most of the time shown as an old priest with a particularly fierce expression of concentration, and it is for this ability that he was most highly prized. Bodhidharma didn’t bring Buddhism to China or Japan, but he started a school of Buddhist thought that spoke to something deep inside the Eastern people that heard it. Spoke to their marrow with a simple and unselfish message of compassion, dedication and submission.

This effect changed them forever.

Can anyone claim to “know” the east without knowing the message of this man? His sandals touched the ground lightly, but his teachings thundered across half the world like a spreading earthquake. This was the effect of the Chan school of Buddhism, known in Japan and in the west as Zen.

As with many classical figures from Buddhism, and indeed many other religions, Bodhidharma’s journey has a few undisputable facts that have been the skeletal bones around which many tall tales have been spun. Some tell of his almost magical ability to stare, even to the point of literally “drilling” into rock with his eyes. Others say that he cut off his own eyelids, so that he couldn’t fall asleep when meditating (something that gets you a whack around the head with the stick in Zen training). All these tales have been worn smooth like pebbles on a beach and over the last thousand years have come to a “standard version”. That Goran Powell  diverts from the standard version in A Sudden Dawn is not relevant at all. His tale is the mythical idea that Bodhidharma not only brought Chan to China, but also brought Kung Fu along with it. That Kung Fu descended from India is almost too obvious to be true and many have seen traces of Yoga in the Chinese martial arts. The idea is that Bodhidharma was born into a martial class in India, which became knowledge he carried with him. Knowledge that he taught and that he used. However, such origins are hardly conclusive, as it is worth noting that the Buddha himself came from a martial class (again in the “standard version”), and he certainly never raised his staff in anger. Anyway and regardless, it is a very enticing idea and the martial reputation of the Song Buddhist monasteries such as Shaolin means that there must be some explanation to how the knowledge travelled from India. That is unless, like the calculus, it was discovered in two places at the same time. I am quite happy to imagine that it was Bodhidharma who brought it, whatever the real history.

The other “deviation” from the standard version is that he walked. Common lore says that he caught a boat, but this is mainly due to the belief that walking into China from India was impossible. Nothing could be further from the truth. The walk to Tibet from Himachal Pradesh is not for the unprepared and unfit, but it isn’t impossible. I have been to the starting point and spoken to guides who say it is not only possible, but that many amazing sights and temples await the brave. I plan to do it 9 years from now (Chinese government willing.) Bodhidharma could certainly have done it if he picked his time of year.

In many respects this novel is in the classic old-fashioned genre of Historical Action Adventure. Whereas very modern writing is obsessively focussed on the details of exactly what happened, here we have an attempt to tell us why. Why did Bodhidharma tell the Emperor of China that he had achieved nothing by building hundreds of Buddhist temples? Why did he sit in a cave staring at a wall for months? The answers that Goran finds to these questions illuminates some of the fundamental truths of Zen and the genre this novel belongs to is the same as that of Siddhartha by Hesse and Musashi by Yoshikawa. It is a genre that is fascinated with the East, see’s it through a certain idealised point of view and gazes at it like one would gaze at a beautiful flower. It is somewhat similar to Shogun, in that its idealised depiction of the characters and situations follows certain tropes. So here Bodhidharma is a giant of a man, able to amaze all around him very quickly. He has a diamond-hard stare, a firm staff hand, a kind heart, and knows his Buddha Nature like no one has since the great B himself. He is also a folk hero and protector of the weak, someone who is humble (a priest) but also someone able to stand up and be counted amongst the highest in the land (and to back-chat the Emperor of China!). The reason that Goran gets away with this is that by all known accounts Bodhidharma was exactly like this.

I loved this book. I found that it spoke to me personally in many ways. Firstly, the action is well written and clearly from someone who knows the martial arts inside and out. I have trained with and under Goran in Goju Karate and I can attest that he has a very high level of skill with the Bo Staff, which is the “weapon” wielded by Bodhidharma in the novel. The fighting depictions raised my pulse level and I found myself imagining the fight in my mind. And this wasn’t the cold style of combat writing, again more modern, that permeates the works of writers such as Iain M Banks and William Gibson. Goran brings the emotionality and desperation of combat into the writing enabling an intimate connection. These fight scenes bare this emotion out on the page and the reader is taken along with it. An effect similar to watching Star Wars for the first time and something of a rollercoaster ride. This feeling is also there with the other emotional scenes. There are a number of sex scenes in the book and they are handled well by not being over written and too involved. They also, mostly, manage to stay away from the purple overused prose of sex writing (again something that terrifies modern authors; because they fear the winning of a “bad sex award”). Goran handles the fact that we know Bodhidharma makes it to Song, by putting those he travels with under the hardest pressure and in danger and although I guessed the end scene I was still deeply involved with its conclusion.

The second way it touched me was that, as mentioned above, my wife and I have almost exactly covered the journey made by Bodhidharma in the novel. We have stood in the mountains of Northern India looking at the mountains of Tibet in the distance, we have stood on the other side (we flew over) in the Tibetan city of Shangri-La where I drank Yak Butter Tea (its horrible!). We have walked Tiger Leaping Gorge . We have seen the Buddhist treasures of the Emperors (now in the Forbidden City in Beijing). We have even been to a great Chinese martial-arts mountain (although, being Daoists, we went to Wudang Shan rather than Song). Reading about Bodhidharma’s journey and realising that Cesca and I, unconsciously, echo’d it was a great pleasure and brought memories of China flooding back to me – what an amazing place and people! I can’t wait till I get to that part in the writing on this site (it’s not long now before the Buddhism parts of our journey start, with a visit to the Bodhi Tree in northern India.) This definitely increased my enjoyment of the book and made me long to return there. If you have an urge to visit the far east, this book may well be your tipping point!

Finally, there is Zen itself. Zen is a jewel; a world treasure. It is incredible. The happiness that comes from a Zen Satori will stick with you forever, touch you deeply and change you in many ways. However, obtaining a satori is one of the hardest things it is possible to do, because you can only do it by not trying, by breaking down barriers in your mind, in your life and accepting a big leap. While Buddhism in general demands dedication and practice, learning and the gaining of wisdom, Zen cuts through all this with a transmission outside the scriptures. Its formation comes from the famous sermon given by the Buddha where he stared a flower and said nothing. However some Buddhist sects claim that this never happened. Whether they are right or wrong is not relevant as the Buddha definitely said, “Buddhism is like a raft across a river. Once to the other side, you no long need the raft.” You can’t argue with that! Goran handles the Zen parts of the book exceedingly well. Bodhidharma’s own enlightenment moment is swift and not drawn out – which to my mind is correct and just as it should be. Zen is romantically un-romantic. No great peal of thunder. No Vangelis music and no Matrix slow-mo. Just a switch in your head. Bodhidharma’s understanding of Zen is driven by strife and is grasped only after going through traumatic experiences, and this shows that Goran too clearly understands Zen. In a book where Zen is the “main” character, exemplified by Bodhidharma, this is the vital element in the book’s literary success.

I loved it and feel it would read well for people interested in Bodhidharma, Buddhism, historical fiction, martial arts, the far east or even just a good read. I think, you will surely agree, that this is almost everyone.

8/10.

Regards,

Basho

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About Goran Powell

Goran Powell’s martial arts training spans more than 35 years, and today he holds the rank of 4th dan black belt in Goju Ryu Karate. He is a qualified instructor with Daigaku Karate Kai (DKK), one of the United Kingdom’s leading clubs, and assistant coach to the successful Mixed Martial Arts team, DKK Fighters.

There follows a selection of images regarding Buddhism and Bodhidharma from Cesca and my travels around the world. These images contain a few spoilers, but if you like what you read in the book, these may help your imagination.

In Kick Ass we have all the elements of a standard “super hero” journey. The voice over, the sad life in school, the lust after the school’s best looking chick, the bullies and the obsessive compulsive masturbation fantasies. Yep, all present. Geeks must truly have inherited the earth, and must be earning millions, for films to try so hard to show them in such a positive light. Then the first person dies and it is the only person in the film who doesn’t die violently. It is Kick Ass’s mother, who drops dead in the opening montage. Nothing is made of this and she sort of fades from view. Nothing changes for the “hero”.

My Spidey-sense started tingling at this point.

I watched an amazing film once by Japanese director auteur “Beat” Kitano, called Boiling Point, in which the main character was a looser. After being struck out at baseball, he heads to a toilet shack and sits down. From that point his life changes and leads rollercoaster-like into confrontation with local Yakuza, ensuing violence and things being blown up. It was only after one character went into battle wielding a pineapple that my senses told me that something was amiss. Sure enough, the film appears to end with a fade to black… and then suddenly shows the looser still sitting in the toilet, he flushes and runs out to meet with his comrades.

The whole film had been a fantasy.

Kick Ass is like that. I kept thinking that after the credits would be a moment where he would wake up and it would all be a dream. Or more like a nightmare.

Trying to take a stand against crime, but for some reason wearing a costume – not that he has a secret identity to protect – the hero immediately feels for the lack of martial arts lessons and gets stabbed and run over on his first attempt. This leaves him with the ability to withstand more pain and on his second attempt, saving a guy from a gang kicking, he manages to outlast his three opponents to win the conflict.

Admirable.

Less admirable is the horde of people just watching. Why did no one call the cops? Or help? No, they just record it and put it on YouTube. Suddenly, his super hero identity has fans, lots of fans. This brings him to the notice of lots of people. Meanwhile the local crime lord is tracking down who has stolen his drugs, which he is doing by cutting people’s fingers off and putting other people in industrial microwaves to explode. The real culprits are the other super heroes in the movie, psycho vigilantes Big Daddy and Hit Girl.

They are truly an amazing father and daughter team of psychopaths. Big Daddy is this century’s winner of the Most Inappropriate Father Award who is on a punisher-like killathon working through the ranks of the crime boss’s henchmen and he has taken his 11 year old daughter along for the ride. By using comics to manipulate her mind and teaching her how to kill he has turned her into Hit Girl.

And Hit Girl is cool.

One definition of coolness is this, “The making of something that is difficult look easy”. That is why wearing sunglasses makes you look cool; walking in the sun requires that you squint. Squinting is effort. Wearing sunglasses you make walking in the sun look easy, therefore they are cool. Hit Girl makes killing look easy. She effortlessly slices up a drug-den of aggressive and violent “bad people” and inavertedly rescues Kick Ass from another serious ass kicking. In another scene she displays some of the best CQB gun play I have ever seen in film. She employs gen-3 night vision, the Mozambique drill, strobe lights, CQC knife/gun holds, tac-reloads and even ‘search and asses’! That this is being performed by a little girl, too young to fancy, made my spider sense go into overdrive.

I finally snapped when Kick Ass not only got the girl he had been lying too for weeks, in the most unlikely way, but he fucks her in the parking lot of the comic book store. I had that moment where you pull out of the film and wake up.

And suddenly it was all clear.

This film, with all its knowing winks to other super hero franchises, it’s horrific depictions of murder (such as a horrible moment where Dexter Fletcher is squashed in a car crusher by Hit Girl – and you see it all), its casual depiction of goodies & baddies by virtue of their masks, the Tarantino-inspired music and everyone but the main characters having nothing to do, is a satire. But not of what you think.

In one scene, the background characters see, as we do, the torture of Kick Ass and Big Daddy on screen. They are rescued on camera by a furiously shooting Hit Girl who then – having not broken sweat – casually shoots out the camera. They then comment to each other in a reflection of the thoughts going through the audience, and what do they say?

“I think I am in love with her.”

“Dude she is like 11 or something.”

Not a single word about Kick Ass and Big Daddy being brutally tortured, beaten to near death and Big Daddy being set on fire. They don’t care about that. Just like we don’t when we are watching. We already know what is going to happen, Kick Ass must survive, Big Daddy must die, but we don’t care at all. All we care about is how fucking cool Hit Girl is.

Yep, this film is a dark satire; It is a satire of us.

We film-watching idiots who sit through this stuff because it is cool, the comic reading fantasists living only on the internet. The porn watching, hentai viewing, YouTube nation that loves ultra-violence. The grosser Kick Ass was, the more the audience giggled and sighed like we were in a “feely” from A Brave New World.

The film is actually asking us, “Is this really what you will put up with?” Do we really want to apologise for an 11 year old shown slicing people up with a cute grin because it is a “cool” movie? Are we really going to accept whatever is thrown into our eyes and ears and make arguments that it is OK because we are completely desensitised to it all? Have we not played games with similar moments? Watched worse things on the net? Do we “care” about anything?

No, because this film kicks ass.

90% of the audience missed the point, missed that joke was on them, that they are the losers sitting around watching super hero movies rather than living a “real life”. Today I glanced through the comic in the bookshop and in the original version of Kick Ass, Big Daddy is eventually shown to be a liar and not an ex-cop with a grudge. A real nutter fantasist ruining his daughter by making her into Hit Girl. Also, Kick Ass doesn’t get the girl. And why? Because he is pathetic and had nothing to offer her.

That would have been a more satisfying ending than Hollywood’s version that hides the real target of the film’s satire. So, yes, Kick Ass handed me a stick and I have drawn my line. It was not where I was expecting to draw it on walking out of the film, but it is where I want it.

Kick Ass – do not want.

6/10

Regards,

Basho

This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, how they lived and how one of them died.

Despite the use of the definite ‘the’ in the first line of Philip Pullman’s new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, it is not actually claiming to be the real back-story of the influential spiritual leader. Rather it is a telling of a myth; a fable. And in doing so makes us face what the story of Jesus really means. All stories of the Gods are the subject of myth and they all have within them the patterns that stretch directly into the mind and subconscious. As with other tales of half remembered, but not forgotten, ancient wisdom, the story of Jesus has meaning beyond the telling. His is the hero’s story told again and again through the ages, and its lessons are to be read and dwelt upon over many tellings. So, as he steps though the doors of his life – the foretold stages of his journey – we step with him and arrive on the other side together.

The layers of understanding, which come with changing from child to man, are ones I remember clearly. At 10 I was always told that Jesus was also a God. Or was the Christian God himself in a certain form. This lesson led to my childlike wondering of, given the immense creative powers ascribed to this God, how it was that Jesus allowed himself to be nailed up in the first place. Why did he not use his godly power to save himself? Such are the practical thoughts of the child.

To an adult, the answer to this question is Gnostic and illuminates the spiritual level, understanding and beliefs of the speaker. The story sold to me at my Sunday school was that Jesus let himself be executed because he wanted to save us. This was something my young mind could not understand and, I presumed at the time, I would have to ‘grow up’ to realise. In the same sense that one finds an answer to Santa Claus’s apparent ability to travel around the world in one night, I did. In the sense of coming to an understanding of the churches’ view of Jesus, I did not. Growing up involved coming to terms with the world, my limited place within it and to walking some of the steps of the spiritual journey within myself. Together with the practical teachings of my schooling, the categorisation of reality scientifically defined in certain ways, this meant that the Christian God did not fit into my life.

I then came to another step on the path by wrestling with the relationship between God and Jesus. I was told that he was the father to Jesus, the son. My now adolescent mind, fresh from GCSE Biology and genetics class, wondered at the holy power that Jesus would inherit from having such a powerful father. After all, God apparently created everything, and had only one son. That son should have some serious power. I did not know then of the power of myth or of the real Jesus inside the tale. I had only the first inkling of the separation between the man and the myth. For Jesus died in a very human way. A visceral end of brutal reality. A grounding. At this point the myth rises to meet us, finding us contemplating the horror of such an end. My school told me that this was a humbling of the God, a sacrifice by the creator who wanted to understand his creations. But, my mind knew that the God could not really sacrifice anything. Astride the clouds of time and space, outside the mundane and unknowable in his extremes; so that even hearing his voice would shake the foundations of the planet, a God could not know fear, and without fear Jesus’ death meant less. His was the certain knowledge of his coming assention and his seat next to the father. For Jesus’ death to mean what it claimed he would have not been able to ask his father to forgive his persecutors. He invalidates it by his knowledge that he was immortal.

Finally, as an adult, I came to fully understand myth. I came to understand allegory and the nature of belief. Jesus suddenly became what he truly was; just a man. His is the hero myth of my culture, adopted over those of countless others. The myth of Jesus and God the Father rather than that of Buddha and the Bodhisattvas of Compassion. Or the Avatar Krishna and great blessings of Shiva. Jesus, like all these heroes’s, wandered into the desert, or sat under a tree, or flew through space or any number of ways of being removed from normal life. These forced the hero to look within and pass through temptation. Coming back from such an experience with new powers, new understandings and the ability to grant boons in the form of special teachings. The power to promise futures near at hand and of rewards from the Gods. Jesus was a man with in certain frame of mind. A man who had an experience in the desert that changed him. A man who really died on the cross and who suffered fear, doubt, uncertainty and pain for teaching his understanding. A human man of special significance, whose mind altering thoughts have been distilled into the strong myth around us today, taking in parts of all other myths, fulfilling all prophesies and speaking all truths.

That Jesus would have disappeared into the sands of Israel, swallowed whole by history like so many enlightened ones, without such myth making is a fundamental truth. As such was necessary for the teachings of Jesus to survive and flourish. How that came about is one of the great stories never uncovered. Who made the man Jesus, who died on a Roman cross as a Jewish heretic, into one of the ultimate personifications of the monomyth?

And what was their motives?

This is what is explored in Pullman’s novel. But instead of placing it historically or pointing the finger at anyone in particular (such as Saint Paul), Pullman makes his story a part of the myth itself. He uses the language of the myth to highlight the influence and effect. To point out which parts are which. So in this book Jesus is like so many other spiritual leaders in that he had an epiphany in the desert, changing him forever. However, in this book Jesus is born along with a brother called Christ. Christ represents many characters in the familiar story, but is actually the chime of the myth acting on the history of the man. At one point Christ acts in place of Judas, in another he is the elder brother in the prodigal son fable and in the finale stands in for Jesus himself.

As Robin Williams once said, being the brother of Jesus is a tough gig, especially since Jesus pretty much ignores his brother all the way through the story. Christ is left to run around after his more popular sibling and, like someone not cool enough to be in the band, becomes a chronicler of the events in Jesus’ life. The story is about how those events are presented in future times.

And the lesson is that no one can watch and record without changing what they write.

Jesus is not the first ancient philosophical master to have his words distorted by those around him. Socrates also never wrote anything down, yet he had all the ideas. It was his lover and friend Plato who was the author of the Republic.

20 years later.

How accurate an account is that going to be? Is there not a lot of temptation to round off the corners of the story and to join up the loose ends? To smooth out the kinks, enhance the events and to simply make the story fit with what you want to say? At which point do such actions become alteration and embellishment, rather than clarification and judicial editing? And why do it? To place yourself in the story or to keep on message?

Or just to make the story survive? To make the power of the message live on in myth?

Jesus didn’t write anything, but taught much, and so perhaps he expected such treatment? I feel that is the question Pullman must have asked himself before writing this novel and he really does a magical job of weaving the story of his narrative into the history, embellishing it so that the myth is formed in front of our eyes. Christ is present, Forest Gump like, at many major event in Jesus’ life and writes down what he sees. Jesus is presented as a powerful and contentious religious leader, more forceful and less eloquent than in the Bible. I found the speech of Jesus to be much more believable than in that older-tome. Jesus, in much of the New Testament, spoke in the riddles of emotionality and story, all powerful myth indicators. Indeed he never debated anything directly. Everything was thrown a curve ball that illuminated his point of view rather than expressed it. However, this may have been as in reality; I once met a poet on a train who spoke in the same rhythms and it was almost impossible to get a straight answer, which was most hilarious when he was asked for his ticket. This is not because Jesus is being difficult, says Pullman; it is because he has been getting rewritten. Jesus in this novel is a practical man, not aloof in his view of the world, but more alive, closer to the core of it.

In Pullman’s account Hirram the cripple is briskly told to, “take up your mat and walk”. This “get on with it” style of speaking is how Jesus deals with almost everything. Very direct, cutting out peoples illusions. Indeed Jesus is very believable and I found myself liking him. His directness and sight of what is really there is at the core of my own religious beliefs founded on yet another hero, Lao Tze. Of the events around Jesus Pullman reports those plainly and lets us draw our own conclusions. It is only into the mind of Christ we are shown, not Jesus, until the last moments. Christ wants Jesus to start the church and it is he, not the Devil, that approaches Jesus in the desert to “tempt” him with tales of the church’s future.

Christ himself is eventually approached by, “the Stranger” who convinces him to record the life of his brother, and he does but cant help subtly editing it. Why he would do this is brilliantly realised. The message of Jesus is not timeless, but the story of Jesus is. Thousands of preachers have expounded similar teachings. History has crushed them all underfoot. It is only Jesus’ story that is allowed to shine by the church in his name. Anyone else with a vision of eternity was burned or simply ignored. Christ needs to make Jesus special or, as the Stranger says, Jesus will disappear into history; forgotten. The Stranger tempts Christ by using his wish to help his brother and also his want to grab some of the limelight for himself. A subtle fall. The fall of making a myth. Christ is given a decision atop a slippery slope: help the Stranger and Jesus lives forever, refuse and stay true to your brother and his truths die with him.

I felt sorry for the Christ character, his final fall – the betrayal of Jesus – is seductively realised. Brought into the presence of the Jewish religious leaders by the Stranger, Christ is completely overawed by the proximity of their power. Suddenly he is inside the circle where he wishes he was with his brother, he is being asks for his advice; solicited not politicked. He gives Jesus up with barely a whimper of complaint by swallowing some comfortable lies. The arguments given by Pullman in the passage are those given to the coward looking for a way out, agreeing to anything to end the torment of embarrassment of being in the limelight for a brief moment. Told that it is the “right thing to do” and, believing it over his better judgement, it is he who kisses his brother in the famous olive garden and sends Jesus to his death.

This leaves Christ to become the immortal and risen saviour and to be mistaken for Jesus on Easter and suddenly the myth is made real. The actual message of Jesus almost becomes lost against the power of this story. Myth that grows to reach all corners of the world. That allows for no questioning of the story because pull the myth down and one risks pulling the message down with it.

I get the distinct impression that Pullman respects Jesus but hates Christ. I think he understands the power of the myth all too well. He blames the priesthood for using that power to conduct “evil”. So much “evil” that there aren’t enough rivers to hold the blood that has been spilt in the myth’s name.

Pullman has written an excellent book and one I recommend. It is important to be able to step along the hero’s journey and understand the ever repeated rhythms within it. Whether it is the ancient story of the Minotaur, the modern tale of the Skywalker or the encompassing monomyth of Jesus, the story goes on and will be retold in the same forms forever. I don’t think Pullman has a problem with that, his is a problem with what we listeners then go and do after hearing the story. We forget the point is to transcend the tale and grow spiritually along with it. As the Buddha said of his teachings – that it is a boat to cross a river – once to the other side you no longer need the boat.

You leave it behind.

I realised that those questions of my youth have no answer, no truth, they are the unknowable koans of my tribe. I celebrate them and no longer resent my apparent lack of answers for I have put away childish riddles and have found my way in the spiritual realm; this other shore. I can love Jesus the man as I can see him separate from the myth created around his life. I don’t think of him as God, unless in the sense that “I am God, you are God and we are God”.

Pullman too respects Jesus, but he cannot forgive the myth for its affects. He cannot forgive Christ.

A note on versions.

I read this novel in the iPhone Enhanced version and it was fantastic. Philip Pullman himself read the audio novel aloud and with a quick gesture I could move from the audio to the text version. The package also included some interview videos with Mr Pullman that I found most interesting.

You can also get the audio version on Audible without the text, also read by Mr Pullman.

Finally, you can of course buy the book in the traditional sense.

Regards,

Basho

Requirements.

So, I need a new laptop, one that covers all my specific bases. What those bases are has an influence on what I think of the machine in this review so I list them here.

1. It must be portable. This is the most important thing in a laptop. The machine must be light enough for me to be able to carry it to work every day. I have an 80 minute journey on the intercity train into London from Ipswich so a laptop cannot be too large in size or I will not be able to fit it in the small space afforded. Sometimes I see a person with a 17inch Macbook on the train. If someone sitting next to them wanted to use a laptop as well, they can forget it. Fur will fly before you manage to squeeze two machines into that space. Then, I have a 1.5 mile walk from Liverpool Street to London Bridge. So any machine of mine must be light enough to not hurt my shoulder after this distance. These are the portability tests I will be using. They are a little more “real world” than just weighing the machine, as would some other reviewers, but that it how we roll on the OC.

2. It must be powerful. My passion is being creative in my spare time. I write, I paint, I make films, etc. My current laptop runs Office just fine, but it struggles when rendering films in Sony Vegas. In fact I often have to leave it overnight to complete a high quality version of a film and it crashes with alarming regularity. So, my new purchase must be able to power through rendering in Vegas and in my new suite of Adobe Premiere. The other aspect to this is that I used to be a gamer, a big gamer. As raid master of the Hooded Nomads guild I ran a high end rig to support operations in Star Wars Galaxies, Crysis and Eve. I need those FPS! My current machine, as fine as the processor is, cannot even run Mount and Blade. I want something that will nail both requirements.

3. It must have a long lasting battery. My Samsung has a good battery, but nothing to write home about. I can squeeze out something like 3 hours in Windows 7 (which is excellent at battery management compared to Vista). However, Cesca –my wife- can make her Macbook Pro last all damn day. Any machine I buy will have to outperform the Samsung and give a £2000 Macbook a run for its money.  A tall order.

4. It must output to a TV. While small screen gaming is sweet on the go and on the lap, I want to be able to run this baby by a bigger screen for when at home. I have a LG 26 inch 1080p LCD TV, so we shall see what picture we can get up.

5. It must be good value for money. Cheap, like the budgie, is the motto. I don’t want to spend £2000 on a laptop, I don’t want to buy anything that expensive that could be dropped! The price/performance ratio is a vital metric.

So with those 5 requirements in mind, what to buy?

Dell and Alienware.

I have been flirting with many machines in the last few months, then I saw this:

And this:

Dell was a supplier of choice when I was an IT manager of a London Investment Bank. I bought hundreds of Dell machines. I also had a classic IT policy regarding laptops; IT got them first. If someone wanted a laptop, I would buy a new one and give them mine. This had real business benefits (honest!) in that we would be able to learn the laptop before trying to support it. The upshot was that I changed my laptop for a new model every 4 months or so. I have had HPs, IBMs (new and old ones), even a massive and ugly as sin Sony. But it was to the Dells that I returned, and not to just the business models. At one point Dell gave the XPS range a free deskside support contract, so I had one of those. I know a good laptop when I use one.

A few years ago Dell bought out the custom PC maker, Alienware. Before Dell got involved Alienware was a bit of a rich-kids brand. All that high-end hacker/gamer bullshit. I have no doubt that half the high end guilds rocked Alienware’s. They cost a fortune. Since Dell have owned them, they have come down in price. This is mainly because Dell have leveraged their better production model to be able to produce the machines at a lower price. All the better for us. At the moment, we stand in a cross roads for the brand. Dell’s own XPS gaming laptop is standing in direct competition to the Alienware brand, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Dell dropped one or the other. If they keep Alienware as they stand, I would also expect the branding to be toned down a little as well. Not all of us are 15 year olds (lucky you if you are!) and I personally don’t fancy sitting on the train with a “loud” machine saying in no uncertain terms that I am a punk bitch.

With the announcement of the m11x I grew excited. I have held the Alienware 17 inch model and it is the size of a bus. Definitely not something that I would want to carry, so the idea of an actually portable Alienware laptop was enticing. Also enticing was the price. An amazing £750 starting price is not to be sniffed at.

Ordering and Options.

I logged on and started to order.

Dell’s ordering website is quite good. It has all the features you would want. For the Alienware’s you can usually setup the machine in many different configurations, so that a 17incher can start at £1200 and soon be up to £4000 with all the trimmings. So, I was surprised to find that the M11x had little in the way of upgrade options. You could change the version of Windows, upgrade the RAM – but not too much – to 8GB, you had two processor choices and three harddrive ones. Sounds like a lot, but most Alienware models allow for thousands of possible combinations, rather and just hundreds. Perhaps they are coming soon. I didn’t mind, being an early adopter is fun and if it is a lemon, well it’s my loss not yours.

There are a few options to select:

Processor Options Intel® Pentium® Processor SU4100 (2M Cache, 1.30 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo SU7300 (1.3GHz, 800 MHz, 3 MB) Chipset Mobile Intel® GS45 Chipset Operating System Options Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate 64-Bit Dimensions & Weight Height: 32.7mm (1.29 inches) Width: 285.7mm (11.25 inches) Depth: 233.3mm (9.19 inches) Preliminary Weight: Start at 1.99kg (4.39 lbs) Keyboard AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard – Exclusive Design Audio Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio Network Adapter Options a/b/g/n 2×2 MIMO Internal WWAN Mobile Broadband

Memory Options 2GB, 4GB, 8GB DDR3 - 800MHz Display Options 11.6-inch WideHD 1366×768 (720p) LCD Hard Drive Options 160GB 5,400RPM 250GB, 320GB, 500GB - 7,200RPM 256GB - Solid State Drive Bluetooth Internal Wireless Bluetooth 2.1 Video Card Options 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 335M Battery 8 Cell Prismatic (64 whr) – Primary Ports IEEE 1394a (4-pin) port Integrated Ethernet RJ-45 (100 Mbps) 3 Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports DP / HDMI – Video Output 3-in-1 Media Card Reader 2 Audio Out Connectors Audio In / Microphone Jack (retaskable for 5.1 audio) Two Built-In Front Speakers

I took the upgraded processor, 4GB of RAM and the 320GB hard drive.

The final total was a respectable £868 including VAT and delivery. Lucky, I had a Christmas bonus then!

Just before the date the laptop was due, I received a call from Dell. It was an automated message asking me if I want to change the delivery date. A nice touch.

Unboxing.

The box the laptop comes in is very tightly made and nicely presented, if you are giving this machine as a gift: you will impress them. The standard Dell layout has been customised with a Alienware shaped bits and pieces box that neatly fits into the larger case. The laptop is presented in a nice soft bag/cover. Impressive.

Looks.

OMG this is a good looking machine. A hard and metallic outer shell makes it as sturdy as a rock, what I would expect from a gaming rig, but it also adds to the allure. It is light years better looking than my Samsung and gives Cesca’s MacBook Pro a run for its money.The screen hinge opens to a 140 degree angle and does not roll flat. Being a wide screen, the frame has a thick besel of unused real estate around the screen, but this is not deal breaker. Alienware have toned down the styling a little, and I don’t think I will have any issues with using this on the train in the morning.

Speaking of the screen, is is pleasantly thin with no thick back plate. This is a bonus for use in confined areas.

Stacking up against other machines.

The Alienware is small and dainty for something so powerful. Here it is against my work laptop (A Dell Latitude 7700):

And against my 11inch Samsung:

As you can see, while the M11x has still got the classic Alienware lines, it has been gently toned down and has lost a lot of weight. The laptop weighs no more than the Samsung, even with all that metal.

Powering Up & First Use.

On first use the Alienware immediately starts to impress. The entire keyboard lights up and the logo under the screen glows bright. The first boot is swift and running through the microsoft nonsense is thankfully quick as well. After the desktop appears, the system then runs the Alienware facial recognition software that records a picture of your face to act as your password into the desktop, removing the need to type a password. A gimmick, but a nice one that actually works.

After years typing on my Samsung keyboard, there was an adjustment period to the layout of the Alienware. The keys are flat, even perhaps  shade concave if they have any raised sections at all. They are punchy and responsive, but small. It will definitely take a little while to learn this layout, so at the moment I am looking at the keyboard to type. The font of the keys is a semi-scifi, StarTrek style. This is not problem, but a little strange. The gamers keys “wasd” have another symbol on them under the letters, which looks like Klingon to me.

The default backdrop and programs is as follows:

The famous Alienware Alien FX Control Panel software enables you to change the lights to any colour you could possibly want. I leave mine on blue and turn it off to play DVD’s.

As far as Crud Software goes, I only saw MacAfee, which I ripped off immediately.

Film Making and Rendering.

Making films is perhaps not the classic use for a laptop, but for me has become a real pleasurable experience. I make two types, films of my world travels and films of my airsofting. For this test I am going to make a film of one of my recent airsoft games and render it on my old and new machines. This will give us a real world test of the power of these boxes. I am not hoping for too much difference between the reference Samsung and the Alienware as the processor is not too ahead, but let us see!

Premiere Pro is a professional, real-time, timeline based video editing software application by Adobe. It was the software that rendered the Academy Award winning film, No Country for Old Men. A serious application!

Note. I only have the 32 bit version of this software, but the latest version is enhanced for 64bit, so if you have that, expect even more.

Both systems rendered a 2.40 minute clip in 1080p high def. The final file size was around 600Mb.

The Alienware did it in: 13:05 minutes.

The Samsung did it in: 14:27 minutes.

Victory to the Alienware!

Film Watching.

This system does not come with an internal CD/DVD or Blu Ray drive, but I have a Blu Ray external drive I use for backup. With the combination of this, a HDMI cable and a HD TV I am able to test high definition video playback.

It looks glorious!

However, on playing I suddenly got a bit of stuttering in the Blue Ray. A quick check online found that the system comes with the Dell Backup Manager installed, once I removed that, the system worked flawlessly. The picture was brilliant.

To even improve it further I installed the CoreCodec program that pushes all the video through the GPU and things really started to fly! I was able to play a full Blu Ray and download from Steam at the same time.

Sure enough, this machine can be easily used as a multimedia platform!

Gaming!

Rock on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2!

OMG, I have missed gaming on the PC. There is something just not quite right about gaming on a console. I just don’t get on with using a controller. I am a keyboard and mouse man and proud of it!  Well, for my £800 do I get something that can compete with all the PS3 and XBoxes in the world? You damn well bet your balls to a barn dance I do!

For many people, the gaming applications on the Alienware are the point of getting it in the first place. So, I can report that I subjected myself to many hours of hardcore gaming just for you. It was a real struggle I can tell you.  To put the system into gaming mode, simply hold down FN and push F6, this boots the Hybrid Graphics into, what I like to call, ‘Whoop Ass mode!”

You get one of the following pop ups to let you know it has happened:

My wife would come in and say, “please take out the rubbish, darling,”

I would shake my head sadly and say, “Sorry sweetpea, I have to finish this review,” and continue playing on for hours. It was funny at the time, but she is making me suffer for it now!

I got 45FPS on COD4:MW2 and 70(!)FPS on MAX SETTINGS in Left for Dead 2!

Playing games on this laptop, either through the HDMI or on the small but fast screen, is bliss. Pure and simple. From the point of view of gaming, this laptop is a new generation of size/price/performance.

Dell videos on the subject:

RAW Power Matrix.

Numbers mean everything to some and nothing to others. Nevertheless I did run all the standard tests on this rig.

CPU Rating:

The basic Windows 7 Experience Index runs a number of tests on the system that enables 5 metrics to be judged. Knowing Microsoft, this tool will not be the whole story, but I ran it anyway. The Alienware was run through twice, once with the integrated graphics card and once with the gaming card enabled. I also include the score from our reference system to show a comparison.

First, Samsung:

Then the Alienware with the Whoop Ass button off and on

Then I booted up the more in depth testing software PCMarks Vantage. This was again run through twice.

With the Whoop Ass button off the final score was 2884:

With all things set to maximum, the score was a much more impressive 3209:

Over-clocking

Over-clocking the machine is a simple BIOS option on bootup. With this on I reran the Windows Experience Index and came up with:

Noise

While it was putting the machine through its paces, I had a decibel meter sitting by the fan, to check the noise coming out during high stress. It registered a respectable 70 decibels, which is not too loud for anyone. You can definitely hear the fan, but it is not the Hoover-with-a-full-bag noise that I was expecting. When watching a film, you cannot notice it and while gaming I don’t notice anything but the action.

Battery.

Windows claims 6 hours in discrete mode, which is an enormous number considering the system is on “balanced”. I was able to get 6 hours with no problems when discrete graphics was on, and 4 hours in the high power mode. When playing games I got about 2.5 hours. Really good!

Real World Portability.

I cannot stress enough what a game changer this little monster really is. This is true potable gaming. In size, bulk and weight this bad boy is no better or worse than my Samsung and I carried that every day for a year on my journey around the world. I am very impressed in this respect. I slid the Alienware into my neoprene sleeve and went to work us usual. Brilliant. It raises no eyebrows on the train, and that is a bonus in such packed environs.

Wrapping up.

So, before reaching some sort of conclusion, there a number of bad things you need to consider:

For some bizarre reason SD cards stick out when in use. For those of us who would like a high speed card to sit in the machine to provide Readyboost, this is a real pain in the ass.

Also, the screen. While I am a fan of glossy screens for watching films, it is not a good idea for outside use. I mean, I know gamers will be in unlit basements mainly, but still!

Conclusion.

So, with those little niggles out of the way, let us consider this laptop:

It has amazing build quality.

It has stonkingly fast graphics.

It is a joy to write on.

It is fantastic to watch Blu Ray’s on.

It is great to create semi-pro films on.

It is small and truly portable.

It has outstanding battery life.

It doesn’t make you feel like a dork.

It gives a Macbook Pro a run for its money on the catwalk.

It is a dream of a laptop.

An incredible 9/10.

If you want a Dell Alienware M11x, I have a couple of link for you to follow. If you don’t want to buy a Dell Alienware M11x, then I also have a link…

… for a good Psychiatrist!

I have some Dell DEALS for you!
These are automatically updated by DELL to always give you the best deal.

(Please note our Recommendations & affiliates policy in the sidebar)

So, if you are interested in getting a Alienware M11x, please click one of the following:

“Never upgrade a Windows product; always do a fresh install”

Today I put that to the test.  I have been Installing and configuring Windows since the days of 3.1. My first exposure to the product range was Windows 2, which my father had on his PC.  My first professional exposure was the task of migrating 3.1 to Windows 95 at Spandex Plc in Bristol, way back when I was only a 14 year old IT intern. Since then I have developed a career in IT and now, at 32, have a Chartered IT Professional award from the British Computer Society. I say this, because it is important that my background and knowledge level is clear.

This is as much a guide as anything else, so in that spirit here is what you need to do to upgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.

Things to consider.

1. If your original computer came with Vista.  That is, it either had it installed when you bought it, or has a “Ready for Vista” sticker on it. This means that Microsoft knows about your machine and it reaches the standards they set for their software.  Half the battle here, and half the errors in previous upgrades, would have been due to non standard equipment that confuses the upgrade.

2. Which version of Windows 7 you want to go to. There are numerous charts on the Net about this, but essentially I am keeping this easy and going from Premium to Premium.  I am doing this because Professional is over twice the price, and I am going to try and see if I need it before I go for it.

3. The price of the software. As usual, and much lampooned, Microsoft have produced something like twenty versions of this product. I have gone for the Premium Upgrade package, which i bought, in all places, at Tesco’s supermarket. This was £56 and a quick price check via the red eye app on my iPhone told me that this was a good price.

Things you need.

1. Your upgrade DVD

2. Your laptop

3. A portable hard drive

4. A large glass of wine

Now, one of those, you may think, is not an actual requirement to upgrade Vista to Windows 7. All I can say is, “You obviously haven’t done this before”. Upgrading is going to take ages. Ages. There will be moments in the upgrade when you wonder if it has crashed, if it ever going to finish. It will probably look stuck on something at least once; endlessly ruminating at a low percentage.

This is all normal.  If you do the upgrade while stressed, high on coffee, arguing with your wife or in a hurry: then you will fail.

For me, a nice glass of wine, supper on the way and a long Sunday afternoon; that long dark teatime of the soul, is completely relaxing and the upgrade will not and cannot stress me out.

Even an professional IT person is prey for his emotions. I once saw a guy kick a £250,000 server because it failed a backup. Failed a backup. As in, it was not backed up and he was kicking it! Seriously, pray heed my advice and whatever your poison is; take a wee drop to relax.

Frankly, if my PC were waterproof, I would do these things in a warm bath with Cesca massaging my back!

Here we go.

1. Scan your computer with your anti virus.

Do this overnight the day before as this takes ages.

2. Defragment your computer. (Time = 16:00)

These two steps are vital. a fragmented computer will possibly triple the upgrade time. Mine is not usually fragmented, but this could take a while itself.

3. Uninstall everything you don’t need. (Time = 16:31)

It is vital that you go through your computer and remove all the junk you have installed over the months you have been stuck with Vista. It is especially important to remove anything that interacts with the desktop. So Rocket Dock, Google Chat, etc. Plus all the little applications that sit in the bottom right (by the clock), anything that isn’t made by Microsoft, came with a major product or came with the machine should be removed. I also uninstalled my firewall as I am sure that it is not going to be compatible. Since my Anti Virus is a free one, I uninstalled that too.

4. Backup your documents. (Time = 16:51)

Backing up is something we all should do more of. Now is the time to copy off your important documents, photos and pictures. If the install fails, you probably wont lose them, but just in case and you should be doing it anyway.

5. Check your disk space. (Time = 18:10)

You need lots of free space to install Windows 7. There is an official number, but on a laptop; the more the better. This is due to the RAM disk the upgrade will (probably) create, the more space that there is for this, the less likely your are to have problems.

6. Finally, you can start. Put in the DVD. (Time = 18:12)

7. The problems screen. (Time = 18:15)

Half way through the options I got this screen.  These are applications not compatible with Windows 7, or may screw the upgrade. Notice that iTunes is here. I quit the upgrade and removed all of these apps. I can always put  them back when I finish.

8. Restart the upgrade. (Time = 18:26)

8. The final result. (Time = 20:57)

As predicted, I did have a screen where the system sat on 38% for an hour and then jumped to 80%. This is classic Microsoft and nothing to worry about. The system also restarted about 3 times. When this happens do not touch anything. Dont press anything, don’t answer any message that pops up suggesting “press button to boot from CD” or “Chose operating system to load”. The upgrade will make all the choices; let it.

Wait.

Finally, you are asked for your Product Key, this is probably attached to the inside of the box, under the ‘manual’,

So, I am now on Windows 7!  Great, and it only took 5 hours. You notice that I did all this without Internet access (I have none at home), and when I get to a cafe later, I will do the online registration and patching.

Have I had any problems since upgrading? Only one. When my machine starts I get some sort of Intel error pop up. This is probably going to be sorted later today when I update via the internet.

Overall, the upgrade was the most painless I have ever encountered. I would go so far as to say that it was easy. At one point I was showing my wife the install going and accidentally ejected the DVD!  Upon putting it back in, the system carried on flawlessly. Phew.

Does this mean that Microsoft have changed? Only time will tell. But, as a new Windows 7 user, I can say that I am very happy!

Regards,

Basho

Items used in this post:

Transition is the latest book from the prominent Scottish author Iain Banks. Or Iain M Banks, depending on which genre of his books you read. Iain writes fiction novels starting with his very famous debut of, “The Wasp Factory,” which laid out a style of writing that displayed an emphasis on the suddenly shocking. Particularly the shocking that is to found inside the seemingly mundane lives of the characters. Banks is a master of layering suspense and then jolting you out of your seat in the final moments. For example, Iain will think nothing of killing off a main character suddenly and with no preamble.

Iain M Banks writes Scifi, and amongst aficionados of the genre (myself firmly included) he is generally considered to be a top tier writer of what I call, somewhat clumsily, ‘semi-hard’ fiction. In this form, his novels usually revolve around or are connected with the fictional post-scarcity human society called “The Culture,” and the effects this ultra-liberal society has on the others around it; be they lesser, equal, or (in one particular novel) greater in power. Up until now, Banks has kept these worlds very separate and rarely incorporates characters from one genre into another. The nearest he has come to this was in the “non M” novel, “The Bridge”, where there is a reoccurring section involving a clueless but wily barbarian who is clearly in a spaceship (not that he knows this and describes it in mundane language).

One of the things I think Banks has in his mind (and this is my guess here) is that the two genres, whilst usually separate, do actually occur in the same universe. There is no reason why this should not be so, and I suppose that it was only a matter of time before the two collided. While this novel is NOT a “Culture” novel, it does allow for the possibility that it too occurs in the same universe.

As the title of this book suggests, this is the initial results of a clash; a transition from one style of writing to another. I read an interview with Banks where he announced that writing the Culture novels, as attractive that they are to him, is harder than writing the normal ones; as the Culture is almost all-powerful and thus what can he do to challenge it in a realistic manner? By bringing the two genres together in, “Transition,” Banks is experimenting with having the unbridled imaginative fun of a Culture novel in the everyday Earth-bound setting of a normal one. Transition could easily be an “M” novel; It has, in my opinion, more science fiction involved in it that not. I have read that it has been released under M in the states and this shows that the normal rules we know and love do not apply here.

Transition is a novel from multiple viewpoints, but it generally follows the life of a super-assassin from another dimension. This assassin is a member of a very secret organisation called “The Concern” that uses people with his particular talents to “transition” dimensions. They do this to attempt to control the flow of history in a positive way by, say, killing one man or perhaps saving another. The novel mainly focuses on the effects of such transitions, explores the depths of possible experiences this brings to Banks’ mind and what form a civil war amongst those who transition would take.

The story is therefore just as silly as the above sounds.

When the main character “transitions” into another dimension he takes over the body of someone in that dimension and is able to fully experience their reality, including making them do things they would never normally do, be able to do, or even know about. It seems that he can fully take over the person entirely. What happens to his original form or how he manages to get back is much of the explanation around which the plot hangs. This influencing events style of organisation is territory Banks has written about before as in the Culture novels, where there exists another, similar, organisation with high tech powers called Special Circumstances that effects very similar operations on lesser societies and indeed, there may be an argument to be made (or forthcoming in later novels) that this is what is happening behind the scenes in Transition.

However, is the basic premise nonsense? How does the dimension stuff work and where does it come from?

The idea of multiple dimensions is becoming more and more popular in science due to the effect of Quantum theory. You have three options at this point in the review.

1. You can read my explanation of alternate dimensions. I shall explain it as concisely as I know how.
2. You can read the version by Douglas Adams.
3. You can read the version by The Cat from Red Dwarf.

Option 1

A note: I am a Philosopher, not a scientist and certainly not a Particle Physicist!

It has long been known that what we experience as separate dimensions: length, breadth, width and time are not in fact separate, but different ways of looking at the same thing. Einstein proved that space and time are actually spacetime and interjoined, so that your movements in one effects your movements in another.

Nothing much was made of this until the advent of a famous experiment and the rational explanation of its observed effects. The “Double Slit Experiment” involves the firing of a single particle towards a wall with two slits cut top to bottom in it; like two open doors. The particle can obviously go through the slit on the right or the slit on the left. Behind the slits is another wall that shows the results of which one the particle went through.
Sensible so far.

However, something magical happens.

The wall behind shows that the particle behaves as if it goes through both slits at the same time. This is seemingly impossible, but the experimenters have locked the experiment in the cleanest of conditions and fired only one particle at a time, but still the wall behind shows a pattern that clearly means the particle has travelled through both slits.

Then it gets stranger.

The scientists, being sensible fellows, put some further detectors on the slits. This, they thought, would explain which slit the particle went though as the detector would register right or left, or (gulp) both. However, as soon as they turn them on, the second they turn them on, the particles stop going through both and start acting predictably by going through the left or the right. When they turn the slit mounted detectors off, the particle goes straight back to going through both. The implications of this are enormous. Why does the particle behave this way, only when we are not looking (detecting)? What is this telling us about reality?

The upshot is that scientists wondered if perhaps the particle is being influenced by a particle from another dimension.Imagine if you will that as the particle goes towards the slits reality itself splits into two parts. There are two possible outcomes and so reality breaks into two different directions, two dimensions, in order that both are played out. In one, the particle goes left and in the other the particle goes right. However, at the Quantum level the particle still can somehow effect the other in the second dimension and this is why the wall behind the slits shows the results as it does. In other words, the particle effects itself! Cool huh?

By turning on the detectors on the slits, we are in effect forcing ourselves into a particular reality, choosing a dimension, and this ghostly inter-dimensional interference disappears.What this means is that for every decision ever made by every particle in the entire universe (that is a lot of particles) reality splits into two and the possible outcomes of that decision are played out in full in another dimension.

The cumulative result of zillions of small changes could result in realities quite different from ours.  In these other realities perhaps Germany won the Second World War, or England could have won the 1995 European Cup, or something even more bizarre and improbable. Or even something more mundane. It could be that in the other reality, I had one extra drop of coffee in my cup this morning. Not something that anyone would be able to notice in the absolute sea of dimensions splitting off all-over the place.

Option 2

Douglas Adams’ version: Mostly Harmless (Hitch Hiker’s guide to the galaxy)

Quote: “The first thing to realize about parallel universes… is that they are not parallel. It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you don’t try to realize it until a little later, after you’ve realized that everything you’ve realized up to that moment is not true”

Option 3

Cat: [turns to Lister] “So what is it?”

Lister: “Its a singularity, a point in the universe where the normal physical laws don’t apply.”

Cat: [turns to Rimmer] “So what is it?”

Rimmer: “Its a way of crossing dimensionality, a transfer of the soul across time and space.”

Cat: [turns to Basho] “So what is it?”

Basho: “It’s a hole in space”

Cat: “Oh, a magic door! Why didn’t you say so.”

Transition is about a group of people who have access to these other realities and can move through them with the aid of a certain drug and with the foreknowledge of where they will end up. Of course, like all humans they mainly use this skill to kill people and have sex with each other. With mastery of the transition technique you can Imagine a situation, and this happens in the novel, where you can have sex with your partner and transition at peak moment of orgasm to another reality just behind our own. Extending the “clouds and rain” almost endlessly (and delightfully) for as long as you could find realities to jump into. It is testament to Bank’s imagination that his characters ever make it out of bed in the morning! If I were gifted such a skill, I would make love to my wife all day and then simply transition to a reality identical to my own, except where I went to work. Bonus!

This is in fact the main problem I have with Transition.  If the dimensions are almost infinite, then there is no way that any organisation would be able to effect control over them. By trying to do so, they would only add to the dimensions being created, it’s self defeating!

The influences that go into thinking up such a work are manifold. Films such as Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix and Blade runner, as well as TV shows such as Quantum Leap and especially Sliders (a very similar concept) could all be possible influences, not to mention books such as Timeline by Crichton, Red Dwarf and even Dune. What Banks offers that is unique is his own personal ability to build tension. He is one of those authors where long and seemingly quiet passages of prose can be suddenly broken up in a burst of violence that is so rapid and visceral that you read right past the them and have to turn back and reread the previous few pages again this time with more concentration. This must be entirely on purpose, as we all know that real-life conflict and violence is identical to this. I think that Banks’ method of reflecting the speed of violence adds to the illusion of reality necessary to read a fiction novel and especially a scifi one. However, this does lead to somewhat abrupt endings, and the inclusion of epilogues to tie up the lose ends.  This book has a particularly unsatisfying epilogue, which is left to not only tie up some lose ends, but also explain some of the plot in a rather abrupt manner. I have to comment that this book is the sort that could not come from a new writer; it wouldn’t get published. The idea is just that little bit trite and Banks works hard to show the cracks in the plot as little as possible before pulling the top off the idea and letting it flow. In other words, he spends much of the book setting up limits for these powers only to unleash them by the end. This final moment is frankly too similar to that found in Heretics of Dune, where Miles Teg suddenly changes and I wonder if it isn’t something of a homage to that.

The above may make you feel that I did not like Transition, but this is not true. I love reading Banks’ prose and I am very comfortable with his writing style. Some of the main characters in the novel are only given a little outline, but the minor ones are (mostly) fleshed out marvellously. Much is made of a professional torturer called, “The Philosopher,” by his comrades due to his introspective manner.  It is with the minor characters that the political aspects of the novel arise.  “The Philosopher” lives in an alternate version of Earth where Muslims run the country and it is the Christians who blow themselves up.  At first I thought this was a cheap trick to avoid controversy in the press, but it is perhaps a form of social commentary. Read like this, Transition becomes a polemic on the state of our world, its people and values via the medium of satire and the the plot becomes a moot point. I, personally, don’t think that this is Banks’ main intention, but the internet is awash with the idea. The reason I discount it is that, frankly, the social commentary is not that good and if Banks really meant to write it as the foreground, it would be stronger and more of a focus.  Another interesting character is Adrian, who I cannot help thinking that I know (I work in the city myself). His, Gordon Gecko style, “greed is good” cityboy attitude is perhaps meant as a dig at the banking crisis, but, again he is hardly realistic. Also one of the characters could be Banks himself and this almost breaks, ‘The Fourth Wall’.

In conclusion, “Transition,” is a good read but does somewhat hit the rails in the ending. I suspect that this book is an experiment in combining the two halves of Iain and M Banks. I liked it and can’t wait for more. Perhaps in another dimension I am already reading future Banks novels?

7.5/10

Regards,

Basho

You can buy Transition here:

Amazingly it was true.

Such revelations mean that this book, which I would normally regard with scepticism, could also be true. I sure hope not.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a book about the US secret parapsychology warfare division devised in the 1970’s by New Age solider Jim Channon.  Channon envisaged soldiers with extraordinary powers that would enable a new era of warfare without the death and destruction the current era has come to represent.  Author Jon Ronson takes us through those early days and how they have possibly directly led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the terror purposely meated out in Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the FBI led screw up at the Waco Siege.

The name of the book comes from the early days.  Jim Channon wrote a short 51 page manual called, “The 1st Earth Battalion” (now available online!), that he presented to the US Special Forces at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. 

Welcome to those who will dare to think the unthinkable, the awakened warriors, and you evolutionary scouts. You are in good company. I want to thank all the “players” in our network of scouts for their work then and now as we continue into a new century striving to bring this world of ours into the vibrance it deserves. I encourage you others of similar mind to read the manual and accept the far-reaching challenges that fit for you. WE are all at the shift point …make your move! –Jim Channon

The SF took much of what Jim said to heart and formed a special group called the “Jedi Warriors”.  These special psychic soldiers were trained by an occult martial arts master in all manner of techniques, the most famous of which was the ability to stop an opponent’s heart simply by staring at them.  The Jedi Warriors trained in this technique by staring at goats. 

Seriously.

The goats in question were specially de-bleated and kept at Bragg for SF medics to test their own skills upon.  They did this by shooting them in the leg, treating the wound and setting the leg in plaster.  After this the Jedi’s would come in and try to stare them to death.  One succeeded.  Ronson’s story starts with his quest to find this mans identity and get him to demonstrate his powers. 

It leads into hell and back.

Such Scooby-Doo style fun and games, the seemingly harmless and surreal images of plaster wearing silent goats looking worried about a soldier staring at them, are the nice part of the book.  However, these New Age harmless times have led to somewhere not so funny.  Ronson outlines through a series of interviews with those who are willing to talk that the 1st Earth Battalion thinking has led to new ways to torture people in the so-called “War on Terror”.  His gonzo interview style obviously had a great effect on the Americans and he gets  people to say all sorts of things.  Sometime, he discovers, the parapsychology warfare group split into two: The White Ninjas, who invented such things as sticky fast drying foam and the Black Ninjas who hide subliminal messages in excruciatingly loud music played 24 hours a day in Guantanamo. 

Apparently, this song was played constantly at inmates.  I would crack in minutes.

That’s not the worst.  Amongst many examples comes the story that the Abu Ghraib photos, showing Lynddie England and others abusing Iraqis, was actually a Black Ninja project to create something to scare future inmates with; to make them crack.  They did this by systematically designing the most abhorrent thing possible to an Iraqi, and then setting it up.  Then, when it came out in public, they simply dumped all the responsibility on Miss England and claimed it was all her idea. 

A double tragedy?

The book goes on interview people accusing the CIA of colluding in murders, cover ups and the Black Ninjas of having been re launched in Iraq 2008.  It ends with the idea that the information out in the public domain, the funnier Goat Stuff, is actually a cover up of a different type.

I listened to, rather than read, this book by downloading the unabridged version from the excellent Audible.co.uk.  Much of the satirical writing is very funny, and the dead pan delivery of the narrator means all the jokes and silly images make you laugh, whereas the more horrible aspects are not glossed over.

People have been responding to this book.  Like many it has been optioned by Hollywood, but the latest news is that is has been taken up by George Clooney and will be staring Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Robert Patrick.  I can’t wait for that!

I recommend this book to anyone who likes wild and strange stuff, anyone who likes the military or military history and anyone pissed off about the “War on Terror”.

Ronson talks about his story here:

You can buy the book here:

AMAZON – THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

Download the audible audio version of the book here:

If you want to help those less fortunate, then perhaps you should donate a goat? Oxfam Goat Gift.  Only £25!