One Bad Thing About ‘The Da Vinci Code’

In 2003, Dan Brown wrote one of the most popular works of fiction ever written, The Da Vinci Code, which sold over 80 million copies over the next six years, and was translated into 44 languages. It is probably also the most Marmite-like book ever written. Many swear by it, arguing it to be an incredible book, others argue that it is incredibly poor.

Having read the book, I’d say that it’s pretty good. Dan Brown has an ingenious style, involving two intertwining plots, with alternate chapters. However, there are always holes at the end of each chapter, meaning you will read on to the next chapter of the plot, in turn acquiring more holes, and so on. This made reading any Dan Brown incredibly annoying, but also somewhat invigorating, and so credit to him!

But I’m not here to give you a review of The Da Vinci Code, I want to discuss the events and style that evolved from its publication which, quite frankly, destroyed the genre of academic fiction in its entirety.

This book triggered an instant interest in anything to do with cryptography, the Italian Renaissance, Jesus, or indeed anything else discussed by Brown. What this did lead to, though, was hundreds of academics, probably on disappointingly low salaries from some university somewhere, saying to themselves:

‘Wow, I could write that! Dan Brown is only an author, and I’m an expert! This is going to be easy! One-million-dollar contracts, here I come!’

It’s probably unnecessary to say that this was a miserable failure.

Via a shamefully blinded idea, these PhD students and professors thought that they could write better than people who not only earn their living as a result of it, but also dedicated their lives to this art.

On the contrary to this, I will say that these naive scholars, if they really put their mind to it, could write, and well for that matter. But they all make two grave errors:

1. They never have an original idea. They thought they could write a book similar to The Da Vinci Code, so they try to replicate it. Not only will the reader realise that this is their goal, but they will always be writing in the shadow of the book that sold 80 million copies.

2. As academics, they always put their study and subject before the actual story. The actual book becomes a platform on which they can display their infinite knowledge of something most people don’t care about anymore.

The second point, in my opinion, is a much more serious issue, given the fact that it makes reading their books a living nightmare. To display this perfectly, I am going to use the uniform example of a failure like this: The Tomb Of Alexander by Sean Hemingway.

Yes, Sean Hemingway is a direct descendant of Ernest Hemingway, and the latter ought to be turning in his grave if he were to find out, whilst frolicking in literary heaven, that his own grandson wrote a book so useless.

Anyway, Sean Hemingway is a curator at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has a PhD in classical art and archaeology. Good for him and all, but you could literally figure that out by reading this fiction book. However, for the ultimate blasphemous act, I am going to directly quote from page 62:

…To my knowledge, I’ve never had any previous thoughts on Alexander the Great in my life. I want to learn more about him. Since you are an expert, can you recommend any reading materials for me?’

 

 

Tom thought for a moment and then replied, ‘Well, I’d suggest you start with the primary sources. Unfortunately, practically nothing survives from Alexander’s lifetime but there are later ancient biographers. I’d begin with Arrian and Plutarch. There’s a modern biography by Peter Green that is also quite good…’

This is the point where I threw the book against the wall and started crying for the time and money I’d wasted acquiring and reading this book. It’s awful enough for a fiction book to have someone inquire about ‘reading materials’, but for a detailed reply to worm its way into this catastrophe is just phenomenal.

This is a clear example of a writer simply trying to show off about something nobody cares about, and doing it on one of the purest stages in art and culture.

Another, more scientific example, is The Black Cloud by the award-winning physicist Sir Fred Hoyle. This book concerned a group of physicists dealing with the approach of a big cloud of gas threatening to wipe out life on Earth by blocking it from solar radiation.

Despite having an interest in science, albeit not so much in physics, this may have been the most boring book I’ve ever read, instead of the thrilling apocalyptic novel I’d been promised by the blurb. In fact, it is so bad that at one point two of the physicist drive into the middle of a desert and have a fifty page conversation on theoretical physics. I was sold…

Again, it is just some scientist believing he could do something that science fiction writers had perfected. Idiot…

Anyway, I’m losing the energy to continue this rant, but I will finish with some good news, being that it has not always been a failure, and on the rare occasion that a decent book is actually produced via this route, not only can it be interesting and informative, but also more fun than you’d expect, so:

-for the scientists, I’d recommend anything by Isaac Asimov (professor of biochemistry).

-for arts students, I’d recommend Raphael Cardetti (professor of Italian history) – Death In The Latin Quarter

The (Hypothetical) Origins Of Us

Recently, I have been researching and preparing several science-y posts in an effort to make this summer vaguely worthwhile in light of imminent university applications. However, a couple involve biochemistry that I’d rather like to get my head fully around prior to writing. And I have still not got my hands on a pigeon stomach (not yet though, but soon…). However, I feel the overwhelming urge to write.

So this post has been something of significant interest to me, and was actually part of the driving force convincing me to study biology. Despite my admittedly minimal substantial research into the topic, I have presented my ideas at school, and thus consider my theories and conclusions to possess at least a shred of legitimacy. So I plant to share it with you guys!

I’ve just realised I need a graph. As I’ve not come across anybody who has made a similar graph, it is not on Google Images, and my computer skills have significant room for improvement, so I’m going to go ahead and describe it to you.

Okay, so imagine a simply double axis. The x-axis represents time, going from 7 million years ago right through to the present day. The y-axis represents the braincase volume.

For the sake of my argument, I have made two assumptions: the first is that as the braincase volume increase, the size of the brain also increases. Whilst this may not always be true, there seems to be no reason for this not to be true. After all, why should there be space in the braincase?

My second assumption is that as the brain increases in size, the ‘intellectual capacity’ of the organism possessing this brain increases. This is slightly more controversial, as it is shown that this is not always the case. Organisms such as elephants and dolphins possess bigger brains and, to our knowledge at least, they are not even close to being on par with our own intellectual capacity. However, we are only interested in the brains of hominids, so human-like species. 7 million years is most likely not enough time to allow complete evolution of brain, and thus neural, structure.

What is important in determining intellectual capacity is the folding of the brain. It is suggested that this capacity occurs as a result of electrical impulses down neurons in the brain, which possessing billions of these tiny structures. As the amount of folding increases, the surface area of the brain also increases, leading to the ability to hold more neurons, resulting in increased intellectual capacity. As the structure of human brains has not changed much in the past 7 million years, thus, my second assumption is legitimate.

Anyway, back to my graph! This graph is designed to plot the braincase volumes of the immediate descendants of our own species, Homo sapiens. This begins with an extremely ape-like species, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, 7 million years ago, which had a braincase volume of around 300ml. This remained pretty much constant, until about 2.4 million years ago.

This period of time led to the evolution of the Homo genus, which humans belong to. This was spearheaded by the species Homo habilis, Latin for ‘handy man’. Despite surviving for less than 0.9 million years, its braincase volume leapt from around 350ml to an astounding 700ml. This trend was maintained by Home erectus, the first human species to stand on two feet, whose braincase volume grew to around 1000ml, before reaching our immediate ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis, with a braincase volume between 1300 and 1700ml.

At this point, something very interesting seems to happen. Rather than continuing to increase, H. heidelbergensis splits into two species: humans and Neanderthals. We humans possess an average braincase volume of around 1450ml. However, Neanderthals had a braincase volume of over 1600ml! But only one of these species is alive today…

 

Having first drawn this graph, three questions came to mind:

1. What caused the dramatic increase 2.4 million years ago?

2. What caused the line to level off after the evolution of Homo heidelbergensis?

3. Why did humans survive instead of Neanderthals?

So I applied some rational thinking and logic to the situation, and these are my conclusions.

1. What caused the dramatic increase 2.4 million years ago?

There seem to be several reasons explaining this drastic development. However, I do not wish to bore either you or myself in details, so I will discuss one discovery, which seemed not only to be the driving force behind the other causes of development, but also any sort of human development ever. This discovery is the discovery of fire.

Professor Alice Roberts, in her wonderful documentary series Origins Of Us, carried out an interesting demonstration involving loads of carrots. The first part involved her eating a kilogram of raw carrots. Not only did this take her hours, but by the end of it her jaw was sore and was obviously worn out by the multitudes of crunching it had been asked to do.

The second part of her demonstration involved her eating a kilogram of boiled carrots. On the contrary to her previous encounter with carrots, the kilogram was eaten all in one sitting, and the strain on her jaw was significantly decreased. The nutritional content of both kilograms was essentially equal, yet the nutrients from one kilogram required lots of energy for digestion, and the latter required less. The overall net gain of energy will have lead to more growth which, inevitably, would have resulted in bigger, and better, brains.

This led onto another brilliant breakthrough: the invention of tools, more specifically the spearhead. These could be obtained very simply by simply bashing two rocks together. However, the possible uses of this tool are endless, particularly regarding hunting and gathering, a caveman’s two favourite activities. This resulted in a better diet, displaying a wider range of nutrients, thus leading to even more growth, thus leading to bigger brains, thus leading to better tools, thus leading to better food, and so on and so forth.

Hence the development! But it was not to last…

2. What caused the line to level off after the evolution of Homo heidelbergensis?

The answer to this question is a bit more simple: if the braincase continued to grow, the human species would die out.

Many people like to think that if humans kept on evolving, gradually we would become a race of Megamind-like creature with incredible heads. However, this poses several questions. For example, how much would our bodies have to develop in order to cope with the added size and weight of our new heads? or a more significant one, wouldn’t childbirth be impossible.

Fortunately, humans have evolved to maximise braincase volume. An example is that women have a wider pelvis, allowing the pelvis to cope with a bigger head during childbirth. Another one is that childbirth in humans is almost on the edge of being completely lethal, quite unlike any other species known on this planet.

This has lead to an interesting disadvantage, in that human babies are completely defenceless against the outside world, and possess no hope of surviving alone. This has led to a variety of social changes unique to humans, explained better by a social anthropologist.

There are also a variety of physiological traits which came about as a result of big brains. For example, babies are born with a hole in the top of their braincase. This allows expansion later on in development, allowing bigger braincases in the future.

And finally…

3. Why did humans survive instead of Neanderthals?

Again, a simple explanation (though maybe I won’t go on a weird tangeant this time…): Neanderthals became too big.

Being larger allowed them to possess much larger brains. However, a bigger body requires many more nutrients. As Neanderthals existed in the same time frame as humans, there was competition for resources. With their smaller bodies, paired with drastic climate change, resulting in the destruction of European forests, where Neanderthals were known to reside, humans were able to survive with less food, thus causing the Neanderthals to become extinct, leaving only us humans.

Another theory exists that the brains of Neanderthals were much less developed than ours, leading to much less complex communication techniques. For example, when a Neanderthal would say ‘Me want hunt mammoth’, a human would say, ‘Today, we shall hunt the sleuthing mammoth. Using our sharp spears, abundant cunning and striking good looks, we shall surround the herd of mammoths, thus trapping them, bestowing upon us a feast of juicy meat to satisfy our carnivorous wives’.

Though many parts of that script will be shamefully inaccurate. Ah well.

Given this ‘research’, I’d say there is one take-home lesson regarding evolution and natural selection. Natural selection occurs as a result of an evolutionary pressure, followed by the reaction of a species to this pressure. This may be as a result of height, colour, cunning, diet, immunity to a specific disease, or any variety of things.

Now take a look at humans. We do not seem particularly special. We’re a slow, lazy, smallish species, yet we have an undoubted dominion over the entire animal kingdom, from gorillas to parrots to fungi to spring onions. This has occurred as the result of only one evolutionary trait: ingenuity.

In terms of survival, ingenuity is awesome. In fact, it is so good, that all other traits become completely irrelevant.

Cheetahs are the fastest animals on Earth, right? Wrong. Humans have been able to travel much, much faster than cheetahs.

Giraffes are the loftiest animals on Earth, right? Wrong. Humans have gone much, much higher than giraffes. If there was a fruit in an tree to high for giraffes to reach, humans could reach it without any problem.

Humans are the only species to become totally adamant in any living condition on the planet, no matter how harsh.

So that is, finally, my important lesson to you all about natural selection for humans. Although we are actually pretty helpless, useless creatures on the exterior, inside, we are the most phenomenal, powerful thing to have ever happened, possibly to the universe. And that is something to wonder about.

 

 

A Life’s Soundtrack

Yesterday, I watched a film that has been considered to be a cinematic breakthrough, and they were right!

Boyhood tells the story of Mason Jr., a six-year-old boy, and his path through childhood to his high school graduation twelve years later. Filming started in Summer 2002, and continued every Summer until 2014, using the same original cast. As of today, it has received 100% from Rotten Tomatoes, based on 102 reviews, and 99% from Metacritic, based on 30 critics.

I was going to do a post on why this film is so exceptional, but I’m exhausted after a long two weeks of bugger all, so I’m only going to write about one specific part which I found particularly intriguing: the music.

One of the first scenes in the film shows Mason’s sister singing Oops…I Did It Again (2000) by Britney Spears. A bit later on, a girl is featured singing a song from High School Musical (2006). A while later, you start hearing Mason’s better musical years, regarding influences from The Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips. A year before he leaves to go to college, he is in his car listening to Suburban War (2010) by Arcade Fire, and shortly after he is in a bar listening to Somebody That I Used To Know (2011) by Gotye.

Incredibly, genius director Richard Linklater seems to have used music as a means of setting the cultural scene for Mason’s life. Everyone loved High School Musical when it came out, but eight years on we have all forgotten. In Boyhood, Linklater wants to ensure that the viewer is always in touch with where Mason is up to in his life, and what better way to do that than via a teenager’s release? Whilst some may simply consider this to be a measly cultural nuance, I consider it to be a stroke of genius on Linklater’s part.

But this got me thinking back. I’ve not always been in to the sort of music that I am into now: most of it hadn’t even been written. Can my entire life be summed up in a set of tunes, as Linklater attempted to do regarding Mason.

So that is what I will be using this post for!

Below, I have tried to sum up my interest in music in a collection of songs. I did come to the realisation that my interest in music was almost zilch during my earlier years, so I have begun a bit later. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it!

2004 – My First MP3 Player. 

My dad put the music on it for me, so there was a lot of dad rock…

…but there were also some classic songs…

…and some incredible songs that I still enjoy today.

2008 – Guitar Hero

This was where I got the majority of my music for the next year or so, which was not necessarily a bad thing!

2010 – My First Indie Attempts

This didn’t last very long. I moved on. Gladly! Paramore’s third album Brand New Eyes is still very good though.

2011/14 – Proper Music. Finally.

This was the song that catapulted me into a life of trying to be pretentious…

…this led onto the variety of brilliant gateway bands…

…and attempts at being really weird…

…before culminating in my current scenario.

2014 – The Best Song Ever

And as a result of all of this, my entire life has found, what I believe to be, the best song ever written.

Of course people will disagree, and I would be interesting to hear your views. Please leave your thoughts as a comment!

So that is my life!

In addition, as I have said, Suburban War itself features in Boyhood, as does Deep Blue, which comes from the same album. So if you are looking for a perfect teenage, coming-of-age, beautiful album, then I would extremely highly recommend to Arcade Fire’s Grammy-Award-winning album The Suburbs. All of it.

So that wraps that up. A review of Boyhood will arrive soon.

See ya!

 

 

 

Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’: This Summer’s Analogy

It is not very often that I read plays, especially modern plays. Being a Classics student, I have often revelled in the great works of Sophocles or Euripides, and I have also ‘revelled’ in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. However, theatre has almost become a thing of the past, becoming replaced by film and major Broadway productions. Even The History Boys was made into a film, starring the original cast from the stage production. Now we are reliant on playwrights, such as Alan Bennett or Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) to redefine the theatre as an art form.

Of course, the success of The History Boys was in no way hindered by the film created post-stage. Yet its poignancy and message have been designed for the theatre and, having both read the play and seen the film, I can in some way confirm this.

That is not to say that the film is bad by any means. With the cast (including James Cordon and Dominic Cooper) achieving their successes from the stage, the film almost feels like a play. I’ve noticed that on the stage, an emotion can only be conveyed in an exaggerated fashion, so as to be conveyed to a far-off viewer. For a film it is the contrary, where techniques such as camera angles or complex body language can do this successfully. Whilst this way is just as, if not more, powerful, it almost seems lazier. However, the exaggerations are not compromised in the film, with suitable annunciation in most cases and the overly-witty responses, which only represent the theatrical nature of the film.

The quality of the actors is one huge selling point of the film, but of course, it ain’t the only thing. It was also Bennett’s job to create a production which conveys the message which he intends to convey, but also make the production simultaneously inquisitive, hilarious and heart-breaking.

And on his part, it is a huge success.

The History Boys revolves around eight working class students who, intending to study History at Oxbridge, have returned for a term to prepare for the examinations and interviews. This is done with the aid of three teachers with radically different teaching viewpoints and techniques: Hector is a veteran who believes that words and culture are most important in defining a young man. Mrs Lintott believes in teaching a curriculum to the best understanding. Irwin is a young supply teacher who wants to make History an exciting discipline again. And the Headmaster is obsessed with league tables.

This play, through these three teachers, addresses a long standing issue of viewpoints on education. What is it really there to offer? How important is it really? Of course, there are many answers to these questions, all possessed by these teachers, and also the students of our day. It has taken me almost three years to not complete my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award due to sheer boredom and riotous behaviour against the bureaucratic nature of everything. However, some people have lapped it up. In this case, when university entry is the overall prize, these things are done solely for the purpose of university entry. D of E was created in order to allow less privileged students to have the opportunity to help the community, learn a new skill and have some general fun. Now, it is used to get into university.

It is claimed that programmes, such as D of E, are necessary as they allow you to obtain UCAS points. These are supposed to get you into university, however its nature still eludes me to this day. This has given me a lot of comic relief in quizzing the sorts of people doing D of E concerning the nature of a UCAS point.

Does reading give you UCAS points?

What is the books are really small?

What is they contain lots of pictures?

What if you are blind in one eye?

This has allowed me to come to the conclusion that, in fact, nobody knows what they are talking about. Apparently I have UCAS points. And that is lovely. But I’m not sure why…

This idea is not much expressed in The History Boys, given that these sorts of ideas only came into play recently. However, teachers such as Irwin are fixated by teaching the boys how to ‘stand out’ amongst the other prospective History students from more privileged backgrounds. He does this by branding their essays as ‘dull’, and telling them to stand out by arguing on the contrary to their actual stance which, if you ever try it, is extremely fun.

However, the viewpoint taken by the more naive of our community is that you can partake in activities in order to broaden your character INSTEAD of in order to get into university. This stance is stressed by Hector, who encourages the students to study French, recite poetry and watch films that no one else has heard of. This has set up some of the most hilarious scenes of literature I have ever read (though sometimes a decent knowledge of French is helpful).

Being potential Oxbridge candidates ourselves, many of my friends will be using this Summer to cram their heads with enough co-syllabic knowledge to get them an interview at a good university. This action, and its consequences, are perfectly displayed in Bennett’s The History Boys. Is it the correct thing to do? I guess it depends on who you are and your own reasons for going to university in the first place. But The History Boys is a witty, subtle, moving and immensely funny ode to what our lives seem to have become, and is undoubtedly worth a read.