Have you ever truly benefited from a spork? Do you face a pressing need to bake muffin tops, not actual muffins? The Daily Meal rounds up the most useless food-related inventions: Quesadilla maker: Don’t you already have a pan? Spork: Use a fork or use a spoon. End of story.
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The designer on restrive jeans, transformative make-up, and high-waisted trousers 1) I created my first collection at 14. Bottle-green brocade trousers – like
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Fifteen million iPads were sold last year. As iPad 2 launches, Charles Arthur looks at the impact of tablet computers on the way we relate to technology, and five users tell us about how the iPad is feeding into the way they work A friend recently went to a business meeting. He prepared by pulling his laptop out of his bag. All of the clients responded by taking their iPads out of their briefcases. These were not gadget freaks or latte-quaffing Hoxton-based web designers, as some imagine iPad users to be. They were a large group of senior civil servants and bankers, in a country well beyond Europe and the US. To them, the iPad wasn’t a status symbol; it was a device they had chosen to use because it enhanced their ability to do their job. A year on from its arrival, and with the faster, thinner, second-generation model released in the UK on 25 March , Apple’s iPad tablet computer still divides opinion. A large group of people insist it is an “overpriced toy” with limited functionality – no keyboard, doesn’t run Microsoft Office, can’t play Flash video, can’t expand its storage. But a growing number believe that, on the contrary, the iPad represents a new frontier in computing. And they simply don’t care what the first group thinks. They’re getting on with using their machines. We have lived with the PC paradigm for around 30 years now, since IBM introduced its first personal computers and pushed them into businesses in the early 80s. Until the launch of the iPad last year the only comparable change in the market had been the laptop, which led to the emergence of an army of travelling salespeople whose most urgent need was always to find a power point where they could charge their machine’s fading battery. The iPad seems to be different – a third stage of computing. Horace Dediu, a former analyst with the mobile phone company Nokia who now runs his own consultancy, Asymco , argues that “the definition of a new generation of computing is that the new products rely on new input and output methods, and allow a new population of non-expert users to use the product more cheaply and simply”. That certainly sounds like the iPad. It shows that it is possible to have something that does all the computing functions you want with a big screen that also has long battery life and weighs almost nothing, certainly compared to a laptop. It is portable and durable, and the touch screen adds another dimension. Though it has the most prominent tablet in the market, Apple isn’t the only player (see its rivals assessed below). Dozens of companies are using Google’s free Android software to power tablets, and Google is helping them along with a custom version called “Honeycomb” , designed for iPad-sized Android tablets. An estimated 17 million tablets – from Apple and others – were sold in 2010 , and that number is likely to keep growing. But is it really changing the way we work? We interviewed a range of people in different professions to see whether the iPad is all hype – or whether in future we will all keep taking the tablets. CA Margaret Manning – businesswoman Margaret Manning first realised that her iPad was going to change how she worked when she was in hospital, recovering from a minor operation, about a month after buying it. “I realised I could comfortably do emails, download a book to read, watch a film, whatever,” she says. “There’s no other device that you can do that with. You certainly can’t read with a laptop in bed.” Manning, 50, is the founder and chief executive of Reading Room, a London-based web development agency employing 170 people. She takes the iPad with her to client meetings and presentations: “It’s got a wow factor,” she says. “I did a presentation that I ran off it, and all the people in the room went, ‘Ooh’,” she recalls, adding: “They were all bankers.” To Manning, the iPad’s chief virtue is its versatility. She can carry it in her bag to go to clients, check work emails in a coffee shop or train, and then take it to a bar later and kill some time playing a game. It’s become her laptop, TV screen, iPod and iPhone. “It’s adaptive to today’s digital age. You can create and consume content in a different way.” Key to that is the screen size. “The iPhone was a step towards this, but the format is vital. This allows businesses to start using it in a way they couldn’t with the iPhone.” She cites an app that Reading Room has developed for Grains Research Development Corporation in Australia which lets farmers examine crops for disease by comparing them, in the field, to pictures on the iPad. That could be done on a laptop – but it would be cumbersome compared to doing it on the handheld screen. She revels in the simplicity of the interface, and says battery life is key: “If it was shorter, that would change the relationship. If I had to travel with plugs and extra batteries that would change things. The iPhone’s battery life is too short – it hacks me off.” Are there any drawbacks? “There are two things that it doesn’t do well: the keyboard – if I travel with it, I have to take a lightweight keypad – and voice calls. You can use Skype [the free internet voice call service], but not everybody has Skype, and I can’t use it to call a client. ” CA Frasier Speirs – teacher “Nobody has lost a file for a year now,” says Fraser Speirs. “Which used to happen every week – someone coming along and saying they couldn’t find where they’d saved some work or other.” Speirs teaches computing studies at the private Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, and is also the IT co-ordinator there. Last year he went to his bosses with a radical plan: equip every one of the children in both the primary and secondary schools with an iPad. And not just for computing studies: for every lesson. Speirs wants them to replace textbooks, though he admits that is still some way off. But the iPads, with their simplified approach to filing (you can’t choose where to save a file), have made at least part of his life much simpler. The lack of a keyboard wasn’t an issue. “The problem with laptops in the classroom is the battery life, and the size and weight. When Apple said that it would last for 10 hours, and we realised it actually did, that was really important. And the size and weight matters too for younger children.” The primary pupils only use them in school; secondary pupils can take them home. And teachers have them too, which has changed their view of computing. Speirs thinks it is time to reconsider how and what we teach children in an internet-connected world. “Previously, we taught technology just for business needs – Excel, PowerPoint. But now technology is there to assist learning. What do we teach, when you can look up facts in two seconds flat? The answer I think is much more about challenge-based learning, where you give the pupils a high-level goal, and have the teacher support them in achieving it.” But what happens when those children leave school and encounter laptops and even desktops in businesses? Speirs isn’t worried for them. Children starting at Cedars now will graduate in 2024, he points out – and any company still using desktops by then will be hopelessly behind the curve. CA Richard Bowman – physicist Will the iPad soon become a fixture in science labs alongside Bunsen burners, microscopes and graduated cylinders? Richard Bowman, a 24-year-old physicist doing his PhD at the University of Glasgow, reckons so. His field is optics, and in partnership with colleagues at the University of Bristol he recently developed an app that allows users to manipulate microscopic objects simply by touching the iPad’s screen. Before iTweezers, Bowman employed a desktop computer and a mouse to control optical tweezers, an instrument that traps and moves microscopic particles using laser beams. Now, he does it all on his iPad. “It’s quite a natural interface,” he says. “It’s like you’re touching the actual particle and pushing it around. We can also move particles up and down with the pinch gesture, which is hard to do with a mouse.” It may be some time before iTweezers appears on the market – “there are loads of intellectual property issues” – but Bowman has already had interest from scientists in various fields, including chemists at Glasgow University who are using it in experiments with crystals. In the meantime, he’s developing a more commercially viable iPad app called LabVIEW with his colleagues in Bristol: “It puts virtual dials and sliders on the screen to let you control your experiments in the lab”. One serious limitation of the iPad, according to Bowman, is that “Apple are quite restrictive in what they’ll allow to run on it. You have to register as an Apple developer and use their tools to do things.” But, he adds, “I think the iPad is definitely here to stay – its capabilities are increasing all the time – and multi-touch interfaces definitely are the future. If you can control several things at once, it means you can interact with your experiment better, it can happen faster, and you can do things that you couldn’t do before.” KF David Kassan – painter When David Kassan bought an iPad last spring, his intention was to use it simply as a portfolio to show to prospective clients in the art world. Kassan, 34, is a Brooklyn-based artist who paints “really realistic lifesize figures” using oils on wood panel, and the iPad, he says, is “like a perfect art portfolio. You can adjust the colours, it’s a cool thing to hold, and it’s easier to update than a printout. That’s the reason I got it.” But on a trip to Europe last summer, Kassan started messing around with the ultra-basic Brushes app on his iPad. “I sketched people in subways and airports, and did studies of paintings in museums. I started using it as a completely portable, full-colour sketchbook. It meant I didn’t have to bring watercolours or an easel with me. I could just slide it out of my bag and start using it.” Now he finds himself painting much more when out and about. “I’m an observer of everything – that’s my job – and the iPad is a great tool to see things around me and be able to record them so that my eye gets keener. Also, if I’m in a museum I can do a study of the colour of a painting, not just the drawing and compositional aspects, which is all I’d really get to understand with pencil and paper.” Kassan believes that the device has improved his “real painting”, but does this mean that the paintings he does on the iPad will never qualify as “real”? Actually, he says, “I’m working on a piece right now, a lifesize head that I’m trying to do exactly like my real paintings.” Using a more advanced app called Artrage and a Nomad touch-screen paintbrush, he hopes “to make it as realistic as possible, print it up and sign it. I thought I might put it in my next solo show in October to see what it’ll sell for.” KF Richie Hawtin – musician/ DJ Early last year, the DJ and producer Richie Hawtin was putting together a live show to mark 20 years of Plastikman, the most prominent of his many musical alter egos. Due to its scope, the show posed a considerable challenge to the British-born techno megastar. “When you do an electronic performance, traditionally you have a mixing board with all these knobs and faders to create the sound,” he explains. “For this show, each song called for a whole different set of knobs and faders.” What Hawtin needed, in order to control all those diverse environments at once, was a touch-screen device. The iPad came out in April. Within two months, Hawtin and his team had integrated it into the Plastikman performances. Six months later, they formed a company, Liine [www.liine.net] , to turn the apps they’d developed into commercial products. One of these apps, Griid, “allows you to navigate a musical environment that would be hundreds of screens deep if you were trying to look at it on a normal laptop. With your hand movements you can zoom from left to right, find the instrument and the melody that you want, and start, stop or modify it with a quick touch.” Another app, Kapture, “allows you to take snapshots of different states of your performance. If something amazing comes together, you can capture that moment just by touching the screen, and return to it later. Then you can then morph all these moments of the show together.” Both apps interface with the popular Ableton Live sequencing software and can be used in the studio as well as onstage. Harnessing touch-screen technology, Hawtin says, is like “following a dark path with a torch and stumbling upon new techniques. The show has evolved into something that we didn’t even realise was possible.” Being able to use both hands on a screen, rather than being tethered to a mouse and keyboard, “transfers a bit more of your spirit into the technology you’re using”. Ever the restless techno-pioneer, Hawtin is now looking forward to future devices “that can sense not only left or right movements but how much pressure you’re applying to the screen. That, as far as musicians like me are concerned, will be the next huge development.” KF iPad Tablet computers Android Apple Apps Computing iPod iPhone Google Charles Arthur Killian Fox guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Plastic surgery has undergone quite the boom and, ahem, bust cycle over the past decade. The number of breast implants is up 40%, with about 300,000 women having them done in 2010, while the number of breast lifts rose 70% to 90,000, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile,…
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Tiger, Tiger, the graphic account of an abused child’s relationship with a 51-year-old paedophile, is already being hyped as the most controversial book of the year. A writer, a psychologist and a survivor give their verdict The critic – Rachel Cooke Picture a seven-year-old girl. She is called Margaux. She likes ice-cream and gum balls, though only red ones. She dislikes puzzles and the scary-looking jokers in a pack of cards, which she insists be removed before any game is played. Now picture her lover, Peter. Yes, you read that right. Her lover. He is 51 years old, and a self-taught locksmith. He has limp, grey hair, cut in a bowl, and a collection of exotic pets. One of these pets is a cayman, “part alligator, part crocodile”. The cayman, living in captivity in the oppressive fug of Peter’s apartment, is tiny, just half the size of Margaux’s arm. But his owner likes him that way. For Peter, small is beautiful. He would like Margaux to stay small, too. Her birthdays make him more than usually tearful, for they remind him – as if he needed reminding – that she is rapidly approaching the end of what they both think of as her “nymphdom”. If you want to know more about Margaux and Peter’s 15-year relationship – conducted in full view of a number of perfectly sentient adults, it ended only when Peter killed himself by jumping off a cliff – then you should head out to your local bookstore and reserve a copy of Tiger, Tiger , surely the most hyped memoir that 2011 is likely to produce (already sold to 20 countries, this is a book, its publisher insists, which “has to be talked about”). But, first, have a think. How much more do you want to know? Or, to put it another way, how much more can you take? There is plenty to unsettle and upset in Tiger, Tiger , not least those sentient adults, seemingly complicit in Peter’s crimes in the interests of an easy life. But the most troubling thing by far is the attitude of its author, Margaux Fragoso, who is determined to spare us absolutely nothing, and so details not only every dubious “tickling game”, but also such things as the way Peter’s penis looks, his fondness for frottage, and the reasons why they were never able to enjoy full intercourse. Is this, as some American critics have politely suggested, a sign of her great survivor bravery? I’m not sure. It felt as blank as pornography to me – and the more it went on, the more convinced I was that only a voyeur or a pervert could admire it. Can Fragoso write? Yes. But not so well that you would read her for her style alone. Inevitably, I’ve already heard Tiger, Tiger described as “Lolita, from Lolita’s point of view”. But this is lazy. When Margaux and Peter read Nabokov’s novel together, he is upset that “Lolita didn’t really love Humbert”, a reaction that convinces poor Margaux she can be the best “nymph” ever, as loving as she is loved. Why does she need this love? Because she is otherwise entirely without affection. The book is set in Union City, New Jersey, where Margaux lives with a mother who is mentally ill and a father who is distant and furious, and it is this home life – brutal and mean – that drives her into Peter’s arms. She sees him at the swimming pool, splashing around, and asks if she can join in. Thereafter, she is smitten. He is so kind. A curious man-child who at first asks very little from her – even later, his line when it comes to sexual favours is “only if you want to, sweetheart” – Peter tunes into her likes and dislikes with exquisite enthusiasm, with the result that she comes to see him as a soul mate. The unwavering laser of his attention makes her feel wanted and alive. In a prologue to her story, the adult Margaux writes that spending time with a paedophile “can be like a drug high”. In her own case, it was a drug she was unable to give up. All this is beautifully done: a dark door unlocked with the snugly fitting key of experience. But still, something salacious lurks here, too. Why did Fragoso include such graphic intimacies? It seems to me that there are only two possibilities. Either the post-traumatic stress disorder she describes in an afterword has left her so numb, so utterly anaesthetised, that a part of her is still unable to grasp what adult-child sex means in the real world – in which case, a kindly editor should have stepped in and saved her from herself. Or, she knows exactly what she is doing, and a part of her relishes these passages: their power to horrify and, perhaps, their power to thrill, to shift books. Naturally, I am unable to judge her on this score. But reading her memoir made me feel exploitative, prurient and sometimes rather sick. Is this cowardice on my part? No. Contrary to what Fragoso’s supporters seem to believe, a desire not to have certain images imprinted on your mind isn’t at all the same thing as burying your head in the sand and hoping that child abuse will simply go away. The psychologist – Oliver James I will be surprised if many readers of this book enjoy it, find it enlightening or recommend it to their friends. That is not because of the sexual explicitness. Exaggerated by publicity-seeking publishers, the intimate details should not disgust or trouble most adults, although there is more information than we need (Nabokov’s restraint in this area remains the standard for how much is required for us to get the gist). No, the difficulty is really that Fragoso has simply not created a memoir which is compelling to read or contains any deeper message (and I suspect it would have been the same had she told the same tale as fiction). The main emotions it evokes are depression and, occasionally, the feeling of being the voyeur of a lot of domestic nastiness. A brief afterword offers this justification for the book: “By setting down the memories I’ve worked to break the old, deeply rooted patterns of suffering and abuse that have dogged my family through the generations.” Doubtless this is sincerely meant. It might be that she was also impelled by a desire to launch a literary career through a shocking idea: that a vulnerable, emotionally needy girl could feel love (though not sexual desire) for a man who sexually exploited her for a decade from the age of seven. Unfortunately, that is all she offers, a no-holds-barred account of the relationship. In writing books for the public, it is not enough to just make others feel as depressed or empty as you. This is a sorry tale which just makes you feel… sorry. If her motive truly was to break destructive patterns, good luck to her, I hope she succeeded. By all means write it out for herself. Why do we need to hear the story? The model for how to convert the lead of horrendous maltreatment into the gold of valuable literature is Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose books, the final volume of which, At Last ), is eagerly awaited in May. Its central character, Patrick Melrose, was abused by his father, a man of appalling sadism and some psychopathy. St Aubyn has stated that his father also abused him in real life. However, the books go far beyond this maltreatment, subtly exploring Melrose’s mother’s motives and confronting questions of importance to everyone. They show how all of us are either robotically reproducing or reacting against the care we received. Whether from affluent or poor homes, whether hideously mistreated or just averagely neglected, this is the human predicament. In a triumphant end to the books, St Aubyn provides a moving and optimistic basis for seeking real independent volition. By contrast, Fragoso offers us undigested fact. In being so frank, perhaps she feels relief. But she simply transfers the damaged feeling from herself to the reader. Of course it is a massive task to do anything else if you have been abused. As the Human Genome Project is proving, genes play little role in severe mental illness, and it is clear from this book that, at times, Fragoso was made schizophrenic by the abuse. There are 14 different studies showing that at least half of people diagnosed with this problem suffered abuse. On average, a woman who suffered it when young possesses 5% less of a crucial part of the brain for emotional regulation (the hippocampus) than an unabused woman. There are similar findings for maltreatment in the histories of people with personality disorder and depression. But whatever the form that the subsequent emotional distress takes, alas, just evoking it in others does not make for enlightening or readable books. If writing it all down helped Fragoso to break the cycle, great. But in needing to share it with us in this form, you cannot help feeling she still has much work to do on herself. Oliver James’s latest book, How Not to F*** Them Up is out in paperback The survivor – anon Why anyone would read Tiger, Tiger of their own volition is beyond me. When I was invited to review it I did what I think anyone would: shrink internally and shudder. Sexual abuse is a harrowing topic and, as a victim of it, my initial response was to feel culpable and apologetic for the book’s existence. I’ve never read about abuse before: it is something that happened to me that can’t be undone and the less I allow it to affect my life and to define who I am the more power I have over it. As I read it, clenched, I went through myriad emotions: outrage, repulsion, sadness, grief, empathy, anger. The only redemptive feeling it prompted was admiration for Fragoso’s unwavering candour: she is a talented writer and her memoir is executed without judgment or shame. But Fragoso’s portrayal of herself seems almost completely defined by Peter’s idolisation of her. I felt she was objectifying her child self in the descriptions of how imaginative she was and how conscious she was of her sensuality. That Peter has infected her self-image in this way sickened me more than the deeply disturbing graphic sexual content. At points in the narrative, I felt it was an affectionate commemoration of Peter and a startling study of Stockholm syndrome. Perhaps the most significant thing about it is that every adult in Margaux’s life is complicit in her abuse. By telling her story I do think, to some degree, she empowers victims of sexual abuse by forcing the world to bear witness. But who are these willing witnesses? Who is it written for? Herself, as a cathartic act of self-empowerment? Fellow victims? Paedophiles? Or those people with a morbid fascination for perverts? It is a truly horrible read. As Peter insinuates himself into Margaux’s affections, I was in the grip of suspense, awaiting the inevitable abuse of trust. And this is what I found distasteful – the sensationalism which will undoubtedly sell many copies. The real question is whether this book is necessary. Victims shed their victimhood by voicing their experience. I, too, write to cope but I want to create things of beauty that defy the ugliness of abuse. I’m pleased Fragoso has spun her flax into gold, but the cynic in me can’t help but feel it was, in part, published to capitalise on the inevitable controversy, thereby continuing the cycle of exploitation. Relationships Rachel Cooke Oliver James guardian.co.uk
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The Oscar-nominated actress despairs at the dearth of good female parts offered by the big studios. The solution for her was simple – to direct and star in her own feature film In the garden of Vera Farmiga’s home in upstate New York, the grass is stained by a patch of darkened ash. Every time she is sent a script she doesn’t like – a script that is badly written or underdeveloped or contains unchallenging female characters in a state of semi-permanent undress – Farmiga (pronounced “Far- mee -ga”) puts it to one side. Then, when the pile of unwanted scripts is big enough, she builds a bonfire and burns them. “They do get thrown in and used for fertiliser,” she explains with a quiet, apologetic laugh. “It’s recycling. Bonfires need to be fed and scripts, after all, are wood.” There is a pause. “Especially the wooden ones.” One imagines there are a lot of scripts that end up on Farmiga’s bonfire. Over the last year, the mother-of-two has become one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actresses despite – or, more likely, because of – the extreme care she takes in choosing roles. After a breakthrough performance as a closet drug addict in the 2004 independent film, Down to the Bone , which was greeted with critical acclaim but only modest box-office success, Farmiga spent the rest of the decade playing a series of subtly rendered supporting characters in mainstream movies. She was a troubled police psychiatrist in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed , a philosophical Romanian prostitute in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering and the wife of a concentration camp commandant in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas . Then, last year, she appeared in Up in the Air, playing Alex, a self-assured, sexually amoral businesswoman racking up the frequent flyer miles alongside George Clooney. The film was an unexpected hit and Farmiga was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress. “The response was amazing,” she says. “I think women were just so pleased to see the tables turned. It’s so common to see a movie with a man exploring his unsettled streak, his sexuality in the way that Alex does. Oftentimes, you do see the woman being shafted and it was refreshing to see a woman who was in control and unapologetic about her sensuality, desire and needs.” Now, having finally shrugged off the “up-and-coming” tag, the 37-year-old actress is appearing in her first big-budget, all-action thriller. Source Code , by British director Duncan Jones (who is David Bowie’s son and who made his name with the offbeat, low-budget sci-fi movie Moon ), tells the story of a soldier played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he is part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. The catch is that he only has eight minutes in which to do so. What would Farmiga do if she only had eight minutes left to live? “Ideally, I wouldn’t be running around a train,” she says. “If I was on a high-stakes mission to save the world I might reconsider, but I really would just rather spend it in a really foofy bed with my husband and my children, soul-gazing.” In Source Code , Farmiga plays a very un-foofy air force officer who is Gyllenhaal’s only contact with the outside world. She says she almost didn’t take the role because she was felt that her character “was not that stimulating on the written page”. But then she began to see the script as a challenge, so it escaped the bonfire. The resulting performance is classic Farmiga, displaying her uncanny ability to hint at the hidden depths within a character who could, in other hands, be little more than a superficial adjunct to the plot. On screen, she possesses a rare combination of luminescence and a mastery of nuance, expressing internal conflict with a slight twist of the mouth; conveying a sense of deep emotion through the merest flicker of the eyes. “Often, I find it hard to be still,” she admits. “Always, when I get stuck, it’s the thought process [of a character] that I return to.” Although Farmiga has the looks of a leading lady – porcelain skin, blue eyes, a beguiling smile – one gets the sense with all her performances that it is what is going on behind the face that counts. “I’ve always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it’s not the lines you say that are important – it’s what exists between the lines,” she says. “What I’m compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.” No wonder, then, that Farmiga has previously shied away from the big Hollywood studio juggernauts. “I’m least challenged or inspired by those stories,” she explains. “I’ve gravitated towards independent cinema because you have to work harder in studio scripts to flesh out characters, particularly female ones. They are not as sharply edged, they tend to be quite watery. They are not renderings of women as I know them.” Partly in order to rectify the dearth of good female roles, Farmiga has recently directed and starred in her own feature film, Higher Ground , which tells the story of a woman’s struggle with faith from her 50s childhood to the aftermath of a spiritual crisis. Well-received at Sundance earlier this year, the film has recently been acquired by Sony. “I’ve been very pleased with the reception to the movie,” says Farmiga. “I grew tired of asking permission [to play the roles I wanted to play]. With Higher Ground , I thought, ‘OK, let’s create an opportunity.’ It’s frustrating because I feel like I work harder to bring life to…” She breaks off. “I mean, I know the roles [for women] are out there but it’s just so cut-throat and everyone’s vying for them.” She doesn’t strike me as being particularly cut-throat, I say. “Umm…” There is a long pause. “It depends on the subject matter. No, I won’t harm someone else to get my own experience but I am demanding. I demand a lot from myself.” Later, she adds: “Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing. My ambition is to be inspired perpetually and I don’t think it’s too much to ask.” She laughs. “I won’t take anyone down for it, but I will go white-knuckle for it.” The fact that Farmiga remains driven by the need to do interesting work means she is correspondingly uncomfortable with the idea of too much fame. “The more famous you are, the harder it becomes because you’re demystified. The more people know about you, the more face-time you get in the media, the harder your job becomes to create a character in whom people suspend disbelief. Honestly, I cherish the position I’m in – I do have respect but I can hide away.” Her feet are kept planted firmly on the ground by her family. The second of seven children, Farmiga was brought up in New Jersey by her Ukrainian immigrant parents – Mykhailo, a computer systems analyst , and Luba, a teacher. She attended a Ukrainian Catholic school, toured with a Ukrainian folk-dancing ensemble and didn’t speak English until the age of six. For a while, Farmiga had childhood ambitions to be an optometrist or a shepherdess (until recently, she farmed a flock of Angoran goats – “It was a good source of therapy every time I finished a movie and felt depressed”). These days, her parents are rather baffled by what their daughter does. “They’re very sensible and grounded,” she says. “They take it with a pinch of salt. You know, I’m one of seven and they want success for all their children. They’re proud but they’re even more proud now that I’ve given them grandchildren.” Farmiga and her husband, Renn Hawkey, a carpenter who was formerly keyboard player for the synth-pop band Deadsy, have a two-year-old son, Fynn, and a four-month old baby daughter, Gytta. What if one of her children wanted to be an actor? I ask. “I would encourage them, whatever their convictions are,” she says. “I think it can be a noble profession, I really do.” Elizabeth Day guardian.co.uk
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The maker of Supersize Me has targeted advertisers who are increasingly muscling in on films and TV shows He took on fast-food giant McDonald’s in the documentary Supersize Me . Then he targeted the “war on terror” in Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? Now hit film-maker Morgan Spurlock has a new target: the advertising industry. Spurlock, whose cinéma-vérité style has made him one of the world’s best-known documentary-makers, has decided to take on the increasingly active phenomenon of product placement, whereby advertisers pay to have products used in films and TV shows. His new film , called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold , was a smash at the Sundance festival earlier this year and will be released in the US next month. It follows Spurlock as he tries to get funding for his film from numerous corporations – an endeavour that results in a sort of exploration of the way advertisers have increasingly started to place their brands in films and television programmes. “What I want to do is make a film about product placement, marketing and advertising where the entire film is funded by product placement, marketing and advertisement,” Spurlock explains in the movie. He managed to persuade 15 brands to stump up cash. Testament to his success, the film’s full-length title is POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold ; a California-based pomegranate juice drink agreed a hefty sponsorship . The film is coming out at a time when product placement is becoming increasingly controversial amid huge changes in the advertising industry. The rise of devices like Tivo – which allows people to record shows and skip adverts – and the increasing number of viewers who watch films and TV through the internet has meant that fewer people are exposed to traditional advertising. One recent statistic estimated that perhaps 90% of prime-time TV viewers in the US aren’t prepared to watch the adverts. “People record shows or watch them online. I haven’t watched a TV commercial in a long time,” said Jeff Greenfield, the publisher of Product Placement News . That situation has placed huge pressure on advertisers to get their products in front of viewers’ eyeballs in more subtle ways. American Idol judges now sit with Coke in front of them. Car chases have the hero driving certain makes of vehicle. Actors wear clothes from particular fashion labels. Key scenes take place in well-known coffee stores. The product placement industry has become such a key part of entertainment that the BrandChannel blog doles out annual awards. In 2010 it proclaimed Apple the most successful product placement brand, noting that its products featured in 10 of the 33 number one box-office movies in the US that year. The film with the most placements was Iron Man
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Researchers ‘over a barrel’ after coalition threat to cut £100m grant from Arts and Humanities Research Council Academics will study the “big society” as a priority, following a deal with the government to secure funding from cuts. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will spend a “significant” amount of its funding on the prime minister’s vision for the country, after a government “clarification” of the Haldane principle – a convention that for 90 years has protected the right of academics to decide where research funds should be spent. Under the revised principle, research bodies must work to the government’s national objectives, although the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that ministers will not meddle in individual projects. It is claimed the AHRC was told that research into the “big society” was non-negotiable if it wished to maintain its funding at £100m a year. The director of research at Cambridge University’s history faculty, Professor Peter Mandler, told the Observer that the AHRC was forced to accept the change by officials working for the minister for higher education, David Willetts, regarded as one of the intellectual driving forces behind the “big society”. Mandler added: “The government says they have rewritten the Haldane principle but they have junked it, basically. They say it is now their right to set the priorities for how this funding [is] distributed. They have got the AHRC over a barrel and basically told these guys that they cannot have their money unless they incorporate [these] research priorities. “Willetts was negotiating nominally, but the word is that it has come down from the secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, Vince Cable. Almost everyone who hears the story is upset about it. What about curiosity research, blue sky thinking? What is worrying is what won’t be researched because of this.” There is growing anger at what the Royal Historical Society (RHS) described as a “gross and ignoble” move to assert government control over research in favour of what one academic labelled a party political slogan. Professor Colin Jones, president of the RHS, said the move was potentially dangerous for the future of academic study in the country. “It seems to me to be absolutely gross,” said Jones. “In a way, the AHRC should be congratulated for securing a good settlement in a difficult spending round, but there is something slightly ignoble about making the ‘big society’ a research priority.” He added: “It is government money. They have the right to spend it on what they want, but there is a degree of anxiety about the strings being put on. They are being strengthened, which could be dangerous for independent research.” A principal at an Oxford college, who did not want to be named, said: “With breathtaking speed, a slogan for one political party has become translated into a central intellectual agenda for the academy.” Labour MP and historian Tristram Hunt said he intended to raise the issue in parliament, describing the research priorities as “grotesque”. He added: “It is disgraceful that taxpayers’ money is being spent on this bogus idea.” It is understood that Oxford University intends to discuss the imposition of “big society” research at the next meeting of its sovereign body, the Oxford congregation, in May. Gareth Thomas, the shadow minister for higher education, condemned the development and called for transparency from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He said: “Vince Cable and David Willetts need to explain why he has allowed an ill-thought-out, half-formed Tory election idea to divert precious funding away from genuine research. “When the government is axing virtually all the funding for the teaching of humanities, social sciences and the arts, wasting critical research monies on the ‘big society’ is simply unacceptable.” Last month, the prime minister rejected criticisms of the “big society” and said the idea was his driving force. He said: “We do need a social recovery to mend the broken society and to me, that’s what the big society is all about.” One of the tasks of research, according to the AHRC’s delivery plan, will be to define “difficult to pin down” values in “recent speeches on the big society”, such as “fairness, engagement, responsibility, mutuality, individualism [and] selfishness”. A Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spoksman insisted that the AHRC itself had proposed the “big society” as a strategic priority. “Prioritisation of an individual research council’s spending within its allocation is not a decision for ministers,” she added. “The government supports [the Haldane] principle as vital for the protection of academic indpendence and excellence.” Research Research funding University funding Higher education David Willetts Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
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Tory peer accused of using ‘meaningless’ comparisons to try to make his argument against the need to tackle global warming Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has been privately accused by the government’s chief scientific adviser of making “incorrect” and “misleading” claims in his book on climate change . The charge against Lawson, the country’s most prominent global-warming sceptic, was made during an extraordinary and at times fractious exchange of letters between the men following a meeting over coffee at the Lords. Sir John Beddington wrote to Lawson to tell him that his book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming , had made “a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way”. An appendix to his letter accused Lawson of making “meaningless” comparisons to prove his thesis. In response, Lawson wrote back to accuse Beddington of attempting to “trump” his arguments without evidence or quantification. He also confessed to being baffled by Beddington’s criticisms, adding that the government adviser had committed a “gross misuse of language” in claiming that the Earth has warmed “dramatically” in the past 150 years. Lawson, who is chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation , is the most prominent critic of the government’s policies on climate change. While not denying that there is evidence of a change in the climate, he has announced himself unconvinced that it has been caused by greenhouse gases. Lawson is set to represent the climate sceptics at a debate hosted by the Spectator magazine, entitled “The Global Warming Hysteria Is Over: Time for a Return to Sanity”. But Christian Hunt of the website Carbon Brief , who, along with investigations website Spinwatch , uncovered the letters, said they showed Lawson did not have a grasp of the science: “It is worrying that a prominent figure like Lord Lawson is seen as a credible commentator on this issue, when his understanding of appears so flawed.” “His climate-sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation claims a charitable aim ‘to advance the public understanding of global warming’, but they seem to spend most of their time casting doubt upon well-established science.” Speaking from his home in Gascony, Lawson denied to the Observer that he had been “upset” by Beddington’s criticisms and said he had failed to find a single factual inaccuracy in his book, which was first published in 2008. “We got on well in personal terms, but it wasn’t a meeting of minds,” he said.”I wasn’t upset in the slightest, because I seem to recall that I thought that he had missed the point. “I am chiefly concerned with what is a sensible policy. I seem to recall that none of the things in that appendix really affected the question of what policy one should pursue. Moreover, so far as my book is concerned, he was … unable to find a single thing in it that was factually inaccurate.” Of his first meeting with Beddington, before their correspondence began, Lawson added: “He had been recently appointed and he seemed to me to be a reasonably sensible fellow, and I said come along and have a cup of coffee at the Lords and discuss this together.” Beddington’s first letter to Lawson was written a month after their meeting last March. To Lawson’s claim in his book that there has been no “further global warming since the turn of the century”, Beddington wrote: “Short-term temperature trends are meaningless in the context of global warming.” To Lawson’s claim that calculating average global temperature is not straightforward and data from the developing world and former Soviet Union were not reliable, Beddington claimed those issues were taken into account and warming could be seen in other ways, such as in the decrease of Arctic sea ice. To Lawson’s claims that urbanisation raises near-surface temperatures and might be responsible for the recording of global temperature rises, Beddington said it has been studied and found to have a “negligible effect”. And to Lawson’s claim that “neither scientists nor politicians serve either the truth or the people by pretending to know more than they do”, Beddington wrote: “It is clear from the scientific evidence … that the risks are real and, I believe, it is not going too far to say, potentially catastrophic in the absence of strong global action to reduce emissions.” A month later Lawson wrote back thanking him for his “very full response”. But he warned Beddington, as a scientist, against the “journalistic” phrase “catastrophic climate change”. He then described his use of statistics as arbitrary, and his facts as carefully selected. A month later, Lawson again wrote to Beddington demanding that he write to the Guardian to deny a report that the civil servant had been highly critical of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Beddington refused, claiming he had not criticised Lawson and stood by his criticisms about those who rely on anecdotal evidence to disprove climate change. Climate change scepticism Green politics Climate change House of Lords Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
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The CDU’s hold on the state may give way to a Green-SPD coalition after the chancellor’s U-turn on nuclear power Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany is one of Europe’s richest regions. For almost 58 years, it has been governed by Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But from 6pm tonight, when the first results from the state’s elections start to come in, this region of plenty might well be heading into the clutches of the opposition. If the pollsters are correct, the risk-averse burghers of Baden-Württemberg – with their locally assembled Mercedes in their garages and their jobs for life – may end up electing, by a narrow vote, Germany’s first Green regional prime minister. Even more shocking is the slim chance that the ultra-socialist Linke (Left) party might win enough votes to be represented in the state parliament. The election might be a local one, but the consequences will reverberate in
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