Format: Blueray
IMDB entry: here
An old film, but a good one. I had previously only ever seen this on TV broadcasts, so whilst the story (a civil war veteran returns to his family only to find them killed except for two neices in an Indian raid and pursues the Indians for years) is old, the cinematography is resurrected by the format and it makes the film watching for that alone. Not that the story is not worth it on its own, but you probably already know the story.
One thing on the news recently that caught my eye was a complaint about how modern history at school concentrates in detail on a few periods in history but presents no grand overview of events throughout history. Well assuming this is true (the media does not always get things right) then it’s a shame there is no ‘grand overview’. However the pundits commenting on this and suggesting that a grand overview should be part of the course did immediately jump on the old rote memorisation of dates bandwagon.
There’s a large number of people who seem to think you don’t know history if you cannot reel off a huge list of dates of significant events. Mistaking a list of dates for ‘history’ is one of the dumbest mistakes anyone can make … to everyone other than the dedicated rote learner, a history lesson of long lists of dates is excruciatingly boring, doesn’t teach you anything interesting, and has very little to do with history. Those who campaign for children to spend hours memorising dates are doing nothing more than trying to re-introduce a style of teaching that gave a big advantage to those with good memories (and I happen to be one) and a huge disadvantage to those whose memory was less capable but perhaps could understand history more.
There is very little need for people to memorise lists of dates when there are so many reference works available. Does someone who thinks the battle of Hastings was in 1066 have a greater understanding of history than someone who thinks the battle of Hastings happened sometime in the 11th century but also knows it occurred just after the battle of Stamford Bridge ?
The UK government today announced tentative plans to encourage the building of low cost homes that would be affordable by ordinary people. The idea of affordable homes is definitely good in a country where most young people will probably never be able to afford a home of their own given that in many places average homes cost ten times an average salary.
However the interesting thing is not so much about homes, but about the failure of the capitalism system to provide a product at a suitable price point. Since WWII, the government has taken the lead in home building for the lower end of the market although the vast majority of government built homes were for rent (and in fact old council houses are still fantastic buys because of the build quality and relatively low prices). Since the early 1980s the government has pretty much left it to the private sector to provide housing. They have failed.
To demonstrate this, look at house price inflation … it vastly exceeds ordinary inflation. The Halifax House Price Index shows that since 1983, house prices have increased at a rate of 8% a year whilst ordinary inflation increased at 4.5% a year. Even more dramatically (and expanding on statistics given earlier), the ratio of house price to salaries has a long-term average of 3.5:1 whereas in 2006 this ratio was 6:1 and a later survey shows that in some areas 10:1 is being exceeded.
There are a variety of reasons given as to why house prices are so inflated including :-
But the fact remains that the original Thatcherite theory that the market would provide has failed. In theory entrepreneurs would seek to find a way to produce homes in a quantity and at a price point to fill the gap in the market … cheap homes for first time buyers who could not otherwise afford to get onto the housing ladder. There is plenty of demand for such homes.
As an example, it should be possible to build much more densely in cities than is currently the case … not far from where I am writing, there are large amounts of land occupied by single-story garages and this in one of the most densely populated cities in the UK! Another example, why are there not property developers experimenting in alternate building strategies to produce homes cheaper ? For instance using pre-fabricated modules to provide a snap together set of prepared rooms would probably be cheaper than doing things as we currently do.
Not that I am covering all possibilities here … after all that is what the property developer is supposed to do. The one that comes up with a way to build cheap high quality homes in bulk will probably make far more money than the property developers who produce high value homes … “pile it high and sell it cheap”.
There are some knuckle-dragging Neanderthals (and I’m being insulting to Neanderthals making that comparison) who when they can stop drooling, parrot some nonsense about how they have come up with a “scientific” demonstration of how the evolution hypothesis is wrong and that the ages old creation myths given a quick paint of pseudo-science is a suitable explanation of how life came to be.
There are supposedly several arguments for “Intelligent Design” …
The first of course is the dumb religious prejudices of those who support “Intelligent Design” in that they cannot bring themselves to believe that the theory of evolution is compatible with a creator. This is principally a failure of imagination. Assuming you go with the Genesis creation myth, the dumber believe that God created the world exactly as depicted in Genesis. Just imagine for a minute, God trying to explain how he created the universe to a less educated man of pre-history … he would almost certainly resort to a simplistic explanation to avoid having to spend years at the task. If the Genesis myth is real, then it is most likely to be as described … a simplification suitable for man. There are many religious people who accept this and accept evolution as a reality.
The second argument is that evolution is an unproven theory over which there is considerable debate amongst the scientific community. Well the scientific community is wondering where all the argument is. As to whether evolution is unproven, well of course it is. There is supporting evidence, and nobody (with any credibility) has disproved evolution. It is the currently accepted theory as to how life came to be as is now.
There is also the complexity argument … those who argue for a “designer” claim that there are elements in life which are too complex to have evolved and this demonstrates that a designer was necessary. Not so … believing that a system is too complex to have evolved is again a failure of imagination. We may not understand how something could have evolved, but that does not mean it did not evolve.
Those in favour of “Intelligent Design” are anti-scientific bigots (it has been demonstrated again and again that there is no science in the “theory” of “Intelligent Design”) who want to turn back the clock to a time when anyone wondering about nature would be told “God made it that way” and to stop wasting their time. They want us to return to the dark ages.
Laugh at them. Spit on them. And ignore them.
And if you live in a country where they are corrupting the education system, fight that corruption!
Well the answer to that question is not very … we elect representatives who make the necessary decisions on our behalf. Of course we’re a lot more democratic than some other places, and less that some others. For the record we’re probably more democratic than the ancient historical source of the idea of democracy … Athens. The Athens city state was only democratic if you were rich and male.
We happened to have had two examples of exactly how undemocratic the UK is this week … the resignation of Tony Blair and his replacement as Prime Minister by Gordon Brown, and the defection of Quentin Davies from the Conservative party to the Labour party.
The constituents of Grantham & Stamford are probably somewhat taken aback at finding themselves represented by a Labour MP; after all they were under the impression that they had voted for a Conservative MP. Well, no they hadn’t really … they really voted for Quentin Davies through thick and thin, and officially the party he belongs to is irrelevant. Of course his constituents might disagree, but their only avenue of complaint is when he tries to get re-elected.
Similarly nobody voted for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. We all knew he was going to get into the hot seat of course … unlike Mr Grey’s (John Major) coup d’état where he replaced Margaret Thatcher. We didn’t have any say in the matter … the largest party’s leader is always (by convention) asked by the Monarch to become the Prime Minister. We may think that we are electing a Prime Minister (and the politicians encourage this), but really we ave no say in the matter except in having some influence on what party becomes the largest.
Does this need reforming ? Well perhaps, although there is always a danger in reform that we make things less stable. I think at the very least MPs who leave their party should resign their seat because we really are not living in a time where each MP acts more or less independantly.