My Favourite Movies: Centurion

One last roll of the dice. It’s what the Emperor wants, it’s what the Emperor demands. After years of raiding by the as yet unconquered northern tribes known as Picts the Emperor has had enough. To end the troubles once and for all he sends the 9th Legion, commanded by General Titus Flavius Virilus (Dominic West) north into enemy territory. Their mission is to destroy the Pict threat for ever. To help them find their elusive enemy is a local female tracker Etain (Olga Kurylenko), who is reputed to hold no love for the Picts and to be almost supernatural in her abilities, is assigned to lead them to the enemy camp. But Etain has other ideas. Meeting them on the road north is escaped centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) who knows a thing or two about the Picts and speaks their language fluently. Joining the 9th Legion he is involved in Etain’s treachery but survives along with a handful of other Roman soldiers – either lucky enough or skilful enough to escape the massacre. Ready to flew home south Dias commands them into the heart of the beast to rescue the General or die trying. But when the rescue mission fails the remaining men must run for their lives dogged at every step by Pict warriors who know every blade of grass and appear never to need rest or food. Hundreds of miles behind their own lines and on foot the odds are stacked against them. But Dias has made a promise to get them home and it’s a promise he intends to keep no matter what.

Billed as ‘Britain’s answer to Gladiator’ this is a cracking film that packs a lot into its 93 minute running time. Fassbender is at the heart of things throughout and is a delight to watch as always. He comes across as a battle hardened veteran of numerous campaigns who is deadly in close quarter combat and decisive in his command of men. Kurylenko (also seen in Max Payne, Hitman, Quantum of Solace and Oblivion) is superb as the female warrior out for revenge against all things Roman and the supporting cast of J J Field, Lee Ross, David Morrissey, Liam Cunningham and Noel Clarke make an interesting set of Roman soldiers who try to balance taking orders with survival in an environment where everything and everyone is trying to kill them.

Two other actors deserve a mention – Axelle Carolyn (seen with the bow in the picture below) who played a second Pict warrior woman almost as dedicated as Etain to killing Romans with an almost casual disregard and Imogen Poots who plays the solitary ‘witch’ who comes to the Roman survivors aid when they most need it.

Fast paced and relentlessly violent with blood a-plenty this gives both sides of the fight equal credit without demonising either side. Implacable enemies are given reasons for their hatred and become much more believable because of it. There are few good guys and bad guys here – just people fighting for what they hold dear and for their lives when they have to. If there are any truly bad guys here it is the arrogant General who thinks he can conquer the world and the corrupt politician who will do anything to go home to his beloved Rome. If you want a stunning Roman adventure on the very frontiers of the known world this is definitely it.

'In every real man a child is hidden who wants to play.'

Friedrich Nietzsche

Cartoon Time.

Aids: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa'

By James Gallagher for BBC News

3 October 2014

The origin of the Aids pandemic has been traced to the 1920s in the city of Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists say. An international team of scientists say a "perfect storm" of population growth, sex and railways allowed HIV to spread. A feat of viral archaeology was used to find the pandemic's origin, the team report in the journal Science. They used archived samples of HIV's genetic code to trace its source, with evidence pointing to 1920s Kinshasa. Their report says a roaring sex trade, rapid population growth and unsterilised needles used in health clinics probably spread the virus. Meanwhile Belgium-backed railways had one million people flowing through the city each year, taking the virus to neighbouring regions. Experts said it was a fascinating insight into the start of the pandemic. HIV came to global attention in the 1980s and has infected nearly 75 million people. It has a much longer history in Africa, but where the pandemic started has remained the source of considerable debate.

A team at the University of Oxford and the University of Leuven, in Belgium, tried to reconstruct HIV's "family tree" and find out where its oldest ancestors came from. The research group analysed mutations in HIV's genetic code. "You can see the footprints of history in today's genomes, it has left a record, a mutation mark in the HIV genome that can't be eradicated," Prof Oliver Pybus from the University of Oxford told the BBC. By reading those mutational marks, the research team rebuilt the family tree and traced its roots.

HIV is a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus, which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat. The virus made the jump on multiple occasions. One event led to HIV-1 subgroup O which affects tens of thousands in Cameroon. Yet only one cross-species jump, HIV-1 subgroup M, went on to infect millions of people across every country in the world. The answer to why this happened lies in the era of black and white film and the tail-end of the European empires. In the 1920s, Kinshasa (called Leopoldville until 1966) was part of the Belgian Congo. Prof Oliver Pybus said: "It was a very large and very rapidly growing area and colonial medical records show there was a high incidence of various sexually transmitted diseases."

Large numbers of male labourers were drawn to the city, distorting the gender balance until men outnumbered women two to one, eventually leading to a roaring sex trade. Prof Pybus added: "There are two aspects of infrastructure that could have helped. "Public health campaigns to treat people for various infectious diseases with injections seem a plausible route [for spreading the virus]. The second really interesting aspect is the transport networks that enabled people to move round a huge country." Around one million people were using Kinshasa's railways by the end of the 1940s. The virus spread, with neighbouring Brazzaville and the mining province, Katanga, rapidly hit. Those "perfect storm" conditions lasted just a few decades in Kinshasa, but by the time they ended the virus was already starting to spread around the world.

Prof Jonathan Ball, from the University of Nottingham, told the BBC: "It's a fascinating insight into the early phases of the HIV-1 pandemic. It's the usual suspects that are most likely to have helped the virus get a foothold in humans - travel, population increases and human practices such as unsafe healthcare interventions and prostitution. Perhaps the most contentious suggestion is that the spread of the M-group viruses had more to do with the conditions being right than it had to do with these viruses being better adapted for transmission and growth in humans. I'm sure this suggestion will prompt interesting and lively debate within the field."

Dr Andrew Freedman, a reader in infectious diseases at Cardiff University, said: "It does seem an interesting study demonstrating very elegantly how HIV spread in the Congo region long before the Aids epidemic was recognised in the early 80s. It was already known that HIV in humans arose by cross species transmission from chimpanzees in that region of Africa, but this study maps in great detail the spread of the virus from Kinshasa, it was fascinating to read."

[Fascinating indeed!]

Just Finished Reading: Plague – A Very Short Introduction by Paul Slack (FP: 2012)

Yes, its VSI time again – AKA holiday time a few weeks ago and the VSI books are thin and easy to carry in groups without breaking my shoulder carrying them home!

Plague is interesting – except of course when you’re living through it and have no clear idea of what’s going on. This was, until frightening recently, the way of things. From the historical record, going back as far as Ancient Greece, periodic plagues ravaged Europe, East Asia and India, much to the consternation of the people living there. With little idea of how germs work and are transmitted they had little clue how to fight the disease or how to cope with the devastation it left behind. Plague arguably transformed the entire history of Europe and may have even given rise to modern society itself by tipping the Feudal system over the edge by accelerating its decline and sowing the foundations for early Capitalism.

The Black Death is the most well-known, and one of the best recorded of the European plagues but there is still some controversy over what disease this actually represented. The historical record is unclear and there is some evidence that the disease might indeed have been several different, if complimentary, diseases working concurrently – possibly mutating as the moved across the globe in pulses. Before the advent of antibiotics the only certain way to prevent the spread of plague was isolation and quarantine. This worked time and again in small hamlets and larger towns across Europe and sometimes failed spectacularly when a single infected person was allowed across the barrier – whole villages are recorded to have died that way.

Plague, of course, is back in the news again with the recent major Ebola outbreak in Africa. It looks like it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. The possibility of millions of deaths was mentioned on the news this morning. Imagine now if we lived in a world without modern hospitals, drugs and 24 hour care. Imagine if we lived in a world where we had no clear idea what disease was, how it was transmitted or how to react if we or a loved one contracted it. This is what it was like when plague moved across the world killing millions in a matter of months before disappearing as inexplicably as it arrived only to reappear again months or years later in a different place or, more frightening still, in the same place with the same mortality rate again, and again, and again. The horror hardly bares thinking about.

Pandemics are an important part of human history and might play an important part in our future with emergent diseases coupled with antibiotic resistance. It is not a nice feeling to think that we might be slipping back into a world easily recognised by our 17th or even 14th century ancestors. To get an idea of what that future world could look like you could do a lot worse than read this fascinating little volume. But be warned, it has an excellent bibliography and you might find yourself digging deeper into the plague pits of centuries gone by.

Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: Concretopia – A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain by John Grindrod (FP: 2013)

Well this certainly pushed several of my buttons all at once – British post-war history, architecture and design, and even a brief mention of the town I spent my formative years in (ages 10-23). Before reading this I had hardly given such things a second thought or a second glance. I guess that I had been brought up to view concrete ‘brutalist’ architecture as eye-sores and the greatest planning mistake of the last century. This view was certainly reinforced by the almost regular and sometimes theatrical demolition of tower blocks and other bastions of the future. But I realise now that there is much, much more to this so-called ‘urban blight’ than I had ever thought possible.

Of course these things – tower blocks and other concrete constructions – didn’t emerge from nowhere. These futuristic (at least from the viewpoint of the early 20th century) ideas emerged in the 1920’s with the likes of Le Corbusier but only really took form in the great urban reconstruction programmes forced on all European countries after WW2. There was a massive and urgent need for new homes which had to be built quickly and cheaply with the minimum of materials. But things of this scale take time – no matter the urgency – and the first permanent housing projects (not hastily but ingeniously constructed prefabricated dwellings) went up in the 1950’s. The early tower blocks amazed their early residents – they had running water, internal plumbing and even central heating. For residents of aging and overcrowded Victorian slums they were a revelation. After their initial success the only way was up – literally. With taller towers and the concept of ‘streets in the sky’ separating pedestrians from the increasing number of cars on the newly built roads everything looked good and the future was so bright people started buying shades. But not everything was rosy in the concrete jungle of tomorrow.

In hindsight (that wonderful ability) it became clear that haste and lucrative contracts rather inevitably lead to corruption and shoddy construction as companies bid or buy themselves a piece of the action. A case in point being the infamous Ronan Point which partially collapsed after an upper floor gas explosion. This was the beginning of the end for the super-high rise. Then came the trails and convictions for double dealing and graft which did the building contractors, architects and government ministers no favours at all. The concrete future literally came crashing down around their ears with unfinished projects, cut-backs, and eventually demolitions. The dream of a utopian future ended almost before it had begun. It did however leave behind some amazing pieces of architecture that only now, decades later, people are beginning to love and demand to be kept away from the next wave of planners demolition experts.

Part history of the future, part travelogue around 50’s to 80’s Britain, part autobiography and part love affair with the building material of tomorrow this was a surprisingly gripping tale of an idea that literally became concrete. At times I was honestly making a mental list of buildings around the country I wanted to see in all their majesty. It also made me understand the New Town I grew up in much more too. Although I never lived in any of the tower blocks I did visit a few of them in the 1970’s and although my ‘home town’ only got a brief mention the design of other towns turned out to be similar enough for me to completely relate to them in the authors narrative. A must read for anyone interested in post-war Britain, town planning or the marvellous material that is concrete.

Cartoon Time.

Rosetta: Date fixed for historic comet landing attempt

by Jonathan Amos for BBC News

26 September 2014

The date has been fixed for Europe's daring attempt to land on a comet: Wednesday 12 November. It will see the Rosetta satellite, which is currently orbiting the huge "ice mountain" known as 67P, drop a small robot from a height of 20km. If all goes well, the lander will free-fall towards the comet, making contact with the surface somewhere in a 1km-wide zone at roughly 15:35 GMT. The European Space Agency (Esa) says the challenges ahead are immense. Imagine pushing a washing machine out the back of an airliner at twice cruising altitude and expecting it to hit Regent's Park in London - all while the ground is moving underneath.

Although not really analogous for many reasons, this scenario does give a sense of the difficulties involved. The chances of failure are high. "J" site is the best location on the comet, but it is still far from flat Esa's confirmed date is actually a day later than the one that had been discussed in provisional planning in recent months. The extra time will give flight controllers a bit more latitude as they try to get Rosetta into just the right position to deliver the 100kg lander, which goes by the name of Philae. This requires careful "phasing" of Rosetta's path around 4km-wide 67P so that the satellite turns up at the precise, pre-determined ejection point, 22.5km from the centre of the comet at 08:35 GMT. Because the whole event will be taking place 509 million km from Earth, any radio signal will take 28 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Esa's ground station network. It means confirmation of success or failure will not come until perhaps just after 16:00 GMT.

The chosen landing site is on the "head" of the rubber-duck-shaped comet and is currently referred to simply as "J", the designation it was given in a list of possible destinations in the selection process. It is far from ideal. It contains some terrifying cliffs, but is the flattest, most boulder-free location the mission team could find in its survey of the icy object. Mapping of J and a back-up site known as "C" is ongoing. This past week, Rosetta manoeuvred into an orbit just 20km from 67P, enabling its camera system to see details that can be measured on the sub-metre scale. For landing, such information only has a certain usefulness, however, as the automated touchdown can only be targeted with a best precision that will likely run to hundreds of metres. And that error is larger than any of the apparently smooth terrains in the J zone.

The whole separation, descent and landing (SDL) procedure is expected to take seven hours. Philae will take a picture of Rosetta as it leaves its "parent". It will also point a camera downwards so that it can see the approaching comet. Not that this information can change anything; Philae has no thrusters to control or alter its descent trajectory. It will land where it will land. But the images will help controllers determine where the robot ended up after the event. If Philae gets down successfully into a stable, operable configuration, it will fire harpoons and deploy screws to try to hang on to the surface. The action of these devices will tell Esa mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, that the surface was engaged. Will it hang on? Part of the problem here is that no-one really knows what the surface conditions will be. Philae could sink into a soft powder or impact ice as hard as rock. A major worry is that it could simply bounce off into space. Whatever the outcome, the Rosetta mission will continue.

Already the main satellite has returned some astonishing pictures of Comet 67P and the close-quarters observations it will conduct over the next year will transform our understanding of these remarkable objects. The timings mentioned on this page carry some uncertainty and would change if subsequent mapping shows the J site to have a major problem, with Esa forced to shift its attention to the back-up destination, C.

[Amazing. Even if the landing fails (which I really hope it won’t) we’re learning lots about comets every day that Rosetta staying in orbit around 67P. If the landing is successful this could just be the beginning of a future programme of both comet and asteroid mining that could transform our exploration and colonisation of our Solar System. It’s an exciting time to live in.]