Paris 4: Tour Again

Wrapped around the first level of the Eiffel Tower are the names of 72 scientists, engineers and other notable Frenchmen. 

Several of these names I recognised - Le Chatelier, Gay-Lussac above for example. 

But this can be misleading: the Le Chatelier recognised on the Tower is Louis - it is his son who is the more famous, and  whom Le Chatelier's Principle commemorates.   So the Le Chatelier I thought I recognised was not actually there.

Wikipedia has a good entry on all of these names - all apparently chosen by Eiffel, and all men. 

The names were chosen in the 1880s, of course.  Just before the worlds of chemistry and physics were  overturned by atomic theory, radioactivity, relativity and quantum mechanics.  I couldn't help wondering which famous French men (and women) would have been memorialised if the Tower had been built fifty years later  - or a hundred.  The younger Le Chatelier and Carnot; both Curies, of course.  Who else?

Brazil Together

We all sat down and watched Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" the other night.  I still think this is a bravura, tour-de-force piece of film-making, taking all sorts of risks and mostly getting away with them.  A mordantly dark, comic dystopia.

We noticed in passing that the posters the masters and rulers of the dystopian society in the film (managing lives, loves, and - most emphatically - information) had plastered over the walls of the poor and disenfranchised read:

WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

Does that sound familiar?

Paris 3: Another Tour

After Les Invalides, we headed off for another Tour.  This one (as seen from the wet and rainy Batobus river cruise a day or so before):

The building is a gorgeous latticework of metal, even when just seen from the ground:

We'd booked ahead (for the others, not me - I don't do high things) - so all queues were avoided.  As I didn't ascend, the next few photos are by younger son.  (And there are others scattered through the other Paris posts...)

Missing chunks

The Tim Minchin Comedy Prom was broadcast on BBC2 last night.

Seeing it, rather than just hearing it on the radio, it came across as better and more coordinated.

But.   And but again.  The Beeb in its infinite wisdom decided they could cut it.  Gone was the Kit and the Widow satire on Sondheim (which I'd thought was one of the strongest pieces in the original).  But they'd kept in the Lloyd-Webber piece, which was aimed at a much easier target.

And they cut down Beardyman's set in the same way, removing most of his piece on Pachelbel's Canon - which was also pretty good.  

I'd like to claim they took out the less-populist stuff, but that isn't quite right as they also took out the Kit and the Widow singalong to Nessun Dorma ('Chicken Korma').

However, can you imagine them cutting any other (ie, serious) Prom the same way?  "No, I don't like that bit of the Brahms, so let's leave it out."

My real complaint, I suspect, is the attitude this editing shows to comedy, and the often-disregarded comedy in music at that.  

Just as the recent Guardian Guide to the Opera missed out anything which might be called light or comic opera (and heaven forfend we should mention G&S), so I would suggest this editing out of part of the Comedy Prom also demonstrates the aloofness and high-handedness that can still be seen in some British "High Cultural Circles."  Art has to be serious or its nothing; comedy is easy so we can dismiss it.

Anyway, it was quite annoying.

Poem of the Week

I Don't Want to be Nice
John Cooper Clarke

Here he comes now...

The fast fingers, the expert eyes
And the same old 'how'd you do'
Disgust is just his dumb disguise
He wants a word with you

His problems are the end
His mouth needs exercise
The last thing I need is another friend
I don't want to be nice

I don't want to be nice
I think it's clever to swear
Better seek some sound advice
Better look elsewhere

Your face is an obvious case
You shouldn't put it about
This is neither the time nor place
To sort these matters out

What you see is what you get
You only live twice
A friend in need is a friend in debt
I don't want to be nice

No we never met before
I'm very happy to say
Far from perfect strangers
I'd like to keep it that way

I'm not your psychoanalyst
I'd rather talk to mice
You're so easy to resist
I don't want to be nice

I don't want to be nice
I think it's clever to swear
Better seek some sound advice
Better look elsewhere

Your face is an obvious case
You shouldn't put it about
This is neither the time nor place
To sort these matters out

What you see is what you get
You only live twice
A friend in need is a friend in debt
I don't want to be nice

UCAS

Well, last week was fun.  'A' Level results are incredibly stressful, already.  But UCAS don't help at all.

It appears they opened the results Web sit early (at sevenish rather than eight in the morning) for a 'soft launch'.  In other words, anyone who connected in at that time could find out there results early, and possibly hae a head start with Clearing if they hadn't achieved what they had hoped for.  Not a good idea, perhaps.

But then it got worse: the fact that the site was open early was Tweeted and Facebooked and otherwise socially networked around the Web.  So by eight o'clock (the original published opening time) it was swamped, with no chance of anyone connecting.  So they had to take the site down.

This is not the first time it has happened of course.  But with the demand for  courses (as students try to avoid the iniquitous £9000 fees), clearing has become much more competitive, with the remaining places going much faster, it appears.  So for the students involved a much worse experience.

There are well-established technologies to prevent such problems happening, but it appears UCAS don't use them.

However, what I don't understand is why clearing has to open on results day.  Why not set up a couple of days as a gap, so that everyone can see their results, and get their head straight about what they want to do, and research alternatives, before clearing opens up? 

That way, UCAS would have to cope with a much smaller number of eager users (albeit still large-ish), with a much clearer focus.  Further, if the site went down for a while on Results day, no-one would really be disadvantaged,

Paris 3: Tour, Invalides

 24th July 2011.  The Final day of the Tour de France; Mark Cavendish wins the Green Jersey. It was teriffically crowded on the Champs Elysees, even relatively early in the morning.

The very centre of Paris was closed to traffic, and all the attractions we'd been interested in (eg an exhibition in the Grand Palais) were closed. 

So we left and wandered over to Les Invalides. We sat for a while outside, by the highly ornate Pont Alexandre III before we went in.

The Les Invalides complex includes the Tomb of Napoleon as well as several museums and collections.  We went for the collection of arms and armoury.

 Including this marvellous dragon-crested Chimera Helmet