Electoral Fraud and the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna

The blog 'Gates of Vienna' appears quite Islamophobic, naming itself after the furthest point that the Ottoman Empire reached in mainland Europe (the gates of the Austrian city of Vienna during the second siege of that city in 1683). Yet this article about voter fraud among the Muslim community is disturbingly well-argued. I don't wish to suggest that I believe such practices to be commonplace, but the voting system in this country does seem constructed in such a way to easily allow them.

PS: Technically 'Gates of Vienna' should be 'Battle of Tours' - the furthest an Islamic army got into Europe was at the Battle of Tours (in north-central France) in 732 where Franko-Burgundian forces defeated an army invading from Muslim Spain. That and the blog seems to overestimated the degree to which the Second Siege of Vienna was an organised attempt to topple the then admittedly quite weak Austrian Hungary. See this episode of the Radio 4 series 'In Our Time' (always worth a listen) for further information on that.

(N.B: Declaration of Interest - yes, Jeremy Black pops up on this show too. He's an expert in quite a few areas!)

Morality, History and Cricket

I'm in the middle of reading Duncan Hamilton's Harold Larwood, his biography of the Nottinghamshire and England fast bowler.

Larwood was one of the great England fast bowlers of the inter-war period. He took 78 test wickets in 21 matches at an average of 28.35 runs per wicket. In contrast the indisputably great Australian spinner Bill O'Reilly took 144 wickets in 27 matches at 22.59. His first-class average meanwhile was 17.51; his great friend and partner-in-bowling Bill Voce (also of Nottinghamshire and England) had a first class average of 23.08.

Still it is Bodyline, as Hamilton rightly argues, that defines histories of Larwood's career. 'Bodyline' is a style of bowling that aims to pitch short, towards the batsman's body in line with leg stump. The ball is delivered at speed (and Larwood could unquestionably deliver speed). This tactic gives the batsman two options. Number one is try ducking, or simply being hit. This was not to be attempted lightly. Bert Oldfield, the Australian wicket-keeper during the 1933 Ashes series where Bodyline was deployed by the England team, fractured his skull mis-hitting a shot off Larwood's bowling. The other was to risk hitting the ball - and unless you played the ball well delivering a deflection to the fielders behind square leg.

Bodyline was designed to temper the batting of Donald Bradman, an Australian batsman who is to this day the greatest batsman who ever lived (his career average of 99.94 runs per match is easily the highest in cricketing history). It worked to the extent that Bradman's series average was 56.57 as opposed to his average in England during the 1930 Ashes series of 139.14. It was viewed as an affront to the spirit of cricket though (no formal law was being broken) and led to a diplomatic incident between Britain and Australia.

Hamilton exonerates Larwood in his biography. Larwood was influenced by his natural deference towards his county captain, Arthur Carr, and his national captain, Douglas Jardine, both men who strenuously disliked Australians. He bowled what his captain ordered. Popular memory of both the Oldfield incident and when Larwood hit the Australian captain Bill Woodfull in the chest has both balls being 'Bodyline', when in fact they were 'just' hostile fast bowling. Larwood was horrified by his hitting of Oldfield and the MCC and the tour manager Plum Warner were responsible for officially supporting Larwood and then hanging him out to dry after Bodyline became too controversial.

In fact the only person who comes out of Harold Larwood relatively morally is Bill Woodfull, who refused to counter England with Australian Bodyline bowling. Jardine is plainly described as ruthless, even by Larwood. Larwood meanwhile comes across as paradoxic; a shy, retiring man who nonetheless contained within him a fiery, competitive streak. He was following orders in Australia, true, and Bodyline was not quite the new threat pounced upon the Australians that popular myth might remember it being. Yet he did bowl those balls. Given the nature of Bodyline, it's difficult to see what else one might have expected to happen.

In the end it's difficult to tell. One can sit here 80 years on and moralise to one's heart's content. England in 2010 is not Australia in 1933 though. Harold Larwood lived in an age when protection for the cricketer, personally and in terms of their career, was weak. A small accident could end a career for ever; there were no physiotherapists. Men expected a greater degree of tragedy in their lives. It comes down to the old question historians, and people, have to ask themselves: can we really judge them, we who were not there?

P.S: In more philosophically simple news, London Irish beat Munster in the Heineken Cup. Get in!

The persuasive power of a good moustache

David Starkey from when he taught history at the LSE in the 1980s. I disagree with the man on almost all points, but that is definitely quite a moustache. I can almost frame the 1950s Conservative Party election poster around that picture.

The picture comes courtesy of Wikipedia.

Education and Technology

The university runs what's known as an LTHE (Learning and Training in Higher Education) course for all its Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs - remember what I was saying earlier about acronyms!). At LTHE 1 a very nice man from the Education Enhancement Department stood up and gave us a brief taster of the oncoming role of technology in education. A speech that I was reminded of as I read the opening few paragraphs of this article.

Now Jonny Rose (he of the blogs list to your right) will tell you that I am a luddite through and through; a man who believes technology should best be kept at arms length. He referred me to these two pearls of wisdom; one from Michael Hyatt and the other from the new media commentator Seth Godin. I include both here as I think they do have something worth saying.

Personally I recoil slightly whenever I think of technology and education. The idea of using Twitter (a source of all vacuous information) to advancing learning seems counter-factual. Yet I suspect our chap from Education Enhancement may have been right. Not completely; computers will maintain their ability to fail at the worst moments. We're not in a position to avoid them though. Two generations down from mine will be the first generation of the Academy to have grown up with Facebook as part of their lives. The speed at which society is adjusting to new technologies is incredible. I was reminded during the last US Presidential election for instance that Youtube did not play a large part in the 2004 election not because people hadn't got used to it but because it didn't actually exist then. MySpace, by now an old fogey among social networking sites, is almost twenty years my junior.

Society is changing, and we must change with it. Just don't expect me to like it much. 

How am I

There's always the tendency to say 'Oh fine' to that question.

Honestly? I'm tired. It's the end of the first week of term and I'm napping at my desk. I'm just tired; I can't remember not being slightly tired all the time. There's the thesis to write, my class to organise, the Post-Grad Prayer Group to run, a summary for the next Foundation seminar to write and the PG Reading Group to prepare for. Oh, and I need to fix my printer, possibly do some bar work to get some extra money in, and a paper to write for a conference in November and have a word with my dad. Meanwhile my computer might be giving up the ghost, I don't know yet.

Sometimes I just want to say to the world that frankly you guys can go on for a bit and I'll catch you up if I can. The typical 'Stop the World, I want to get off!' mentality. Then I remember a few things. Mainly that I'm so blessed it's almost unbelievable. I just want to shout at myself that what on earth are you complaining about? You have a roof over your head, money to get food in and a family, friends and most importantly God who loves you. You have access to the internet, radio and TV. You can walk into the supermarket in October, for crying out loud, and buy bananas!

You're already ahead of most of humanity. You're living an existence that many people would literally give their right arm for. The God you believe in came down from Heaven itself, took human form and was crucified, one of the most agonising deaths conceivable, because of His love for humanity. There are people living in the Congo, in Sudan and Somalia, in Pakistan, India, China and North Korea and, let's be frank, in the UK who long for half the existence you're leading.

Stop whining man and get on with it. Trust in the Lord, don't kill yourself and remember what's important. You'll be fine

History and Christianity (incorporating Historiography)

Hello,

I'm going round in circles a bit with my thesis at the moment, so I'm going to follow some good advice given to me once and just write something else for a while.

The following is a quote from a book called Lifted, by Sam Allberry (Assistant Minister of St. Mary's Church, Maidenhead, UK). In this first chapter the statement of Peter in Acts 3:15 ('You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witness to this') is being analysed:

'Peter's final comment indicates that the vindication of Jesus is public. None of these has happened behind closed doors. It wasn't human sleight of hand or trickery - God did this. And he did it publicly on the stage of human history. It happened, we're told repeatedly, on the third day. Jesus' resurrection was as precise a historical event as his birth or death'

(pp. 31, Lifted; Sam Allberry; Ashford Colour Press, 2010)

Christianity is undoubtedly a faith that placed great store in its own history. Allberry goes on to note that in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul is careful to note the various times when Christ reappeared to his followers (five times, including Paul himself). Indeed the very nature of Christian faith is tied up in these reappearances. One of the more common criticisms aimed against the idea of faith is that it negates reason. Faith here is belief without proof. Now in another post I quoted from the Book of Job to the effect that lying for God is unacceptable. 2 Hebrews 1 meanwhile tells us that 'we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it' (mine is the New Living Translation). A degree of study therefore is not only beneficial but expected.

Allberry's case is that the fact of the Resurrection is the cornerstone for such faith. In the manner that one accepts that sodium reacts with water because you are told so and see the evidence (this sentence was not written by a chemist), Christ related the facts of his death (Matthew 17:22, Mark 8: 31, Luke 9: 22 and 44, John 12: 23-26) and Resurrection to the Apostles, and then was resurrected Himself. The Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christian belief. Christianity links together sin and spiritual death. Sin leads to that death, but following Christ saves you (John 5: 24). Through the act of the Resurrection, Jesus, the son of God, came to die for our sins and overcame death itself, breaking the hold of sin. 'If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins' (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

In other words the historical reliability, the historicity, of Christianity is central to the tenants of the faith. The question then arises how reliable is that historicity. I'm not expert on biblical interpretation and dating, and I won't try and claim to be one here. One of the central principles of historiography though is analysing likely patterns of behaviour. If, for instance, you are told that person X did something, and that something seems logically or reasonably unlikely to have occurred, then it probably didn't. Let us say, for instance, that one afternoon while researching in the British Library I came across a letter from Harold Laski referencing a time when Napoleon dressed up in frilly knickers one afternoon in August 1801 and can-canned his way down the Champs Elysees in Paris. Now there are several reasons that I can reasonably discount that letter as a source. Firstly Laski is well-known among political history circles for not being the most reliable font of historical knowledge - he enjoyed retelling a good apocryphal story as fact. Secondly such behaviour would be completely out of character for Napoleon. Thirdly the Can-Can didn't originate until the 1830s (I did look that up on Wikipedia, so don't take it as face value).

One of the most common arguments in favour of the historicity of the Gospels is that without these the behaviour of the early church makes little to no sense whatsoever. Let us theoretically say that Christianity was a con-trick, designed as an ego trip and then adapted to elicit gullible Palestinians to hand over their goods to the Apostles (for the sake of argument I'm interpreting Acts 4: 32-36 in a very negative light). If so, itt would have to be an enormously complicated conspiracy. The following, for instance, is a list of fate of Christ and the Apostles as accepted within Christianity (I've adapted this from Wikipedia, but as far as I can see the list seems accurate):

Jesus Christ - crucified
Simon Peter - crucified
James, son of Zebedee - beheaded
John, son of Zebedee - died of old age
Andrew, brother of Peter - crucified
Philip - crucified
Bartholomew - flayed alive and then beheaded
Matthew - killed by a halbeard (a two-handed pole weapon)
Thomas - killed by a speak
James, son of Alphaeus - beaten to death with a club after being crucified and stoned
Jude - crucified
Simon the Zealot - crucified
Matthias - stoned and beheaded

(Matthias replaced Judas Iscariot, who hanged himself after betraying Jesus)

Of the 13 men on that list, 1 died of old age. Either Jesus found the 12 most gullible men in first-century Palestine, or he was enormously convincing himself. Why though would he himself undergo crucifixion?

I hope to do more in this topic, but I'll need to read up on my first-century Palestinian history beforehand.

Now, lunch.

On 3D movies, or why Resident Evil: Apocalypse is morally superior to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

There are, I like to think, three different types of '3D' film.

The first is the old-fashioned 3D films of the 1950s and 1960s, which relied upon those blue and red glasses to give over an impression of three dimensions.

Then there are the two different types of modern '3D' films.

Films of the first type would include Avatar, Toy Story 3 and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Now I haven't seen the first two but wouldn't mind seeing them at a later date. I have no intention to see the third - partly because I think it looks like an hour-long metal video, and partly because Mila Jovovich is unhelpful in my walk with Christ. I can't see any objection to these films though. They were made to be shown in 3D. While I may suspect that they all still suffer from the problems Mark Kermode highlighted when he predicted the death of 3D cinema, it is integral to the director's intent for these films that they be projected as 3D movies.

Now Joee Townsend, a friend down here in Exeter, has written on his blog a well-argued post on 3D movies that summarises the issues with them well, and I'd recommend you read it. He points to the growing numbers of films that advertise themselves as 'made in 3D!'. The latest Will Ferrell film, Megamind, for instance, looks fun and entertaining. How though does it being in 3D add at all to the cinematic experience for those who are going to see it? 


Which brings us to post-production 3D, and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Post-production 3D is when a film is shot in traditional 2D and transformed into a 3D picture, as the name suggests, in post-production. The effect can be disastrous. When reviewing M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender the influential Chicago Tribune critic Roger Ebert called it 'an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented'. He pointed especially to the way in which 'it's a well known fact that 3D causes a measurable decrease in perceived brightness, but 'Airbender' looks like it was filmed with a dirty sheer over the lens'.

Well that's one critic's view. Here's another. This writer has seen one film in 3D - Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. There are significant problems with the film that would persist even if it were shot in 2D. Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen, for instance, is clearly Miranda Richardson's 'Queenie' from Blackadder II. It seemed to me too that Burton was largely uninterested in the film; or, at least, significantly less engaged with what he was directing than say Edward Scissorhands, or even Batman. As the Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan puts it, the film feels more like a Tim Burton derivative than something he actually did himself. Watching the film though was a troubling experience. I found the 3D disruptive, intrusive and completely unnecessary. It detracted from the film; I was unable to sink into the experience of watching it as fully as some of his other movies. It was not just his lack of engagement with the film, which can be off-putting. The 3D actually repulsed me from what I saw.

Certainly until I see Avatar or Toy Story 3, I'm unqualified to give an absolute opinion on 3D movies. Yet this is what I'm saying as my interim thoughts: for the most part, I can't see what 3D adds to a film. It may give us something that looks impressive, but I was deeply impressed by the visuals in Chris Nolan's Inception, shot in High Definition but in 2D. There are exceptions, true, and please don't misunderstand me. I'm convinced that Resident Evil: Apocalypse will be rubbish. It is not advertising itself as anything else though, unlike those movies that try to convince you that 3D marks a paradigm shift in cinematic history. In short, until a films start passing the Avatar test - that the film would be substantially less engaging in 2D - then I'm with Mark Kermode. I don't think, ultimately, that there's life in this format.