Beer and loafing in PA

So I’m back, if not from outer space, at least from outta this century. I’ve just spent the past two weeks at Pennsic – two weeks of camping amidst 11,000 card-carrying hardcore nerds, geeks and history/fantasy buffs. My people.

Two weeks dressed as a pirate, attending classes on mediaeval/ renaissance history, spending money I can’t afford on baubles and trinkets, and drinking quantities of alcohol that would make Robert Downey Junior go “hold on, that’s a bit much”.

I normally go every year for a week of escapism, but this year I went for two weeks. My liver is still aching.

Now there were some fun parts to Pennsic this year. I learnt how to roast coffee beans. I taught a couple of classes myself (about the history and folklore of marine mammals). I went on the annual “rum roam” with an old buddie, had some quality time and caught up, and enjoyed an excellent “pub” crawl to boot. I learnt how to play scrabble properly, so that I actually started winning games (this is the one board game I always get trounced at normally – I just used to like making cool words, instead of playing strategically. But now I get it !). I had fun drawing on people with henna (including a henna Cththulu and elvish phrases, that looked totally awesome). We had an excellent band visit camp, who sang us piratey/bawdy ballads. I also had some quality time with a male friend of mine I only see once a year, who is hilarious as hell, and one of the nicest people I know – such that there was teasing in camp about our bromance. Plus, I GOT TO WEAR PIRATE CLOTHES EVERY DAY !

I also: (a) nearly got into a bar room brawl with someone over the war of 1812 (one of my special skills); (b) got very drunk one day and embarrassed myself with a fit of bad singing and obnoxiousness; (c) got hit in the head by at least three tent/ridge poles while trying to help camp mates; (d) spent way too much money; and worst of all (e) dropped my glasses in the porta potty (ewwwww!) – luckily I had a spare pair.

Duckpocalypse now !

Sometimes you just have to catapult rubber ducks from one half of camp to the other. You need to keep the riff-raff in their place by raining ducky destruction down upon their heads. Unfortunately this led to some revolution from the other half of camp, with us finding one day, the heads of decapitated rubber ducks on kebab skewers lining the walkways – very ‘Game of Thrones’. Ducks were also placed into a pie and presented to “duckmaster general”.

The resistance was brutal

A woade design on a member of the duckie resistance

This of course spawned duck-hurling retribution, with the cry “release the quacken !” more rubber ducks hailed down onto the revolting camp mates. This then spawned a follow-on coup, involving the other half of camp painting themselves blue and reenacting the “Freedom” speech from Braveheart (I admit though, being a Beneduck  Arnold and switching side at this point, and helping to mastermind the revolution – hey I’m a British/American dual citizen, I sometimes get conflicted).

“So you can shower me with ducks, you can drink my rum, you can hit me o'er the head with a tent pole, you can even gossip  and make up rumors about me all you want, but ... you can NAEVER TACK AWAE MA FREEDUM ! "

Mystic mumbojumbo

Now I am a scientist through and through. I normally believe what data shows me, but I am intrigued, if skeptical, by ghosts and the supernatural. But I had a tarot reading done last year, for fun, which turned out to be spookily accurate as it happens. Anyway, I just had a fun lunch with one of my besties and we were joking about a tarot deck I found in the basement. So we had a go. We were both a little freaked out at the results, as the lines in the tarot interpretation book were almost word for word the conclusions we came up with for the issue were were discussing. Now if any of my friends has spooky mystical powers, it's my lunch date. She has "gypsy princess" practically written on her. But anyway, the interpretation from the book was spot one.

Maybe I'm turning from Scully into Mulder in my old age. Pass me the tuning crystal, and fung my shui, I'm gonna get my ley lines done.

The King of Cups

Whalespotting

So for the last few weeks, I've been in 'sunny' (not so much) Scotland leading a marine mammal biology course. Here's a few of the highlights.

Dramatis personnae

There were 56 students all together, 9 of whom were from the US from my university, which included:

Kathy 'the loud'. A nice student, but tended to "turn it all the way up to eleven" when she talked.

Wee hairy Dave (not to be confused with big Dave or wee not-so-hairy Dave)

Tracey 'the spacy' (imagine a brunette Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter)

"Mom" (one of my graduate students) 

Velma "the Pole" (whose contract required her to mention Poland every three hours without fail)

Connor aka "Luke Skywalker" - cos he looked like him, duh. Extremely sweet and wholesome.

Cody 'the douche' - not really, although his physical similarity to both Luke Wilson and an character from Jersey shore was astounding.

Sheri 'the quiet' (says it all)

Kev 'the spaz' - very nice guy, but, well a bit of a spaz, and he will agree to this. But nonetheless drew Scottish girls to him like midges to a ginger.

I have to say, this was a great bunch of students. On field trips you often have one or two who are a pain, deliberately or unintentionally. But we really didn't have an problems this time they were great.

(I should probably add that the above names have been slightly changed to protect the innocent, and also there was a strict no underage drinking policy on the trip before anyone asks and there were enforced rules of behaviour ...).

Our epic adventure in haggis land

To cut a long story short and to skip sagas over lost luggage. We arrived in Glasgow early in the morning to find that our hostel would in fact not let us into our rooms for another eight hours. What to do? We went to the pub. So began a trend that lasted rest of the day, in fact the whole trip. As a responsible adult, I should add, that thoughout the trip I did make sure that everyone behaved themselves, moderated their drinking and that Cinderellas went home promptly at midnight lest they turn into drunken pumpkins.

The next day, the jet lagged posse headed to the Isle of Cumbrae, a quaint little island in the Clyde estuary. The island was a popular location for holiday homes for the gentry of Glasgow in the 19th century and the 'capitol' of the island boasts a white sandy beach ringed by sandstone Victorian houses, many in the baronial  style. All in all, it looks a little like Hogsmeade-on-the-sea (and if you don't know where or what Hogsmeade is, you ain't no friend of mine).

Millport

After settling in and getting a general briefing, it was off to the pub, and to broaden the student's understanding if music and culture in Scotland, we hit a bar doing karaoke. Somewhere there are videos. There were "Abba wigs" at one point. It's best to cast a veil over the whole proceedings...

The daily schedule for the first week of so basically involved students taking boat trips to monitor seas, or do surveys for porpoises, or one of two lab projects - one of which very glamorously involved sifting otter poop for fish bones. Afternoons generally involved hours of lectures, with two or so hours of lectures after a huge and wholesome dinner. Then, invariably there was the nightly pilgrimage to the pub.

For those readers who aren't from the UK, student life is irrevocably pub-oriented, and universities pretty much accept this as a fact. So most of these pub visits had UK faculty accompanying the students and drinking with them. Compare this to field courses in the US, where students today are typically forbidden to drink. In my experience students on "dry" courses drink anyway, but do so in secret, drinking spirits, and end up getting into far more trouble. As I said, my students were all well behaved - at least while I was there. But anyway, back to the plot.

I'm on good terms with Robert, the publican of the main 'local' that we go to, and because we can invariably bring fifty thirsty students to his pub, he's very open to giving us the back room/bar of his pub over to us so we can basically have our own private events. He'll also organize pub quizzes, discos and karaoke for us, which he dutifully did. So besides various pool tournaments we had quite a few things to to in the evenings. The annual pub quiz is a particular favourite of mine, and this year in an act of deviousness, the faculty inserted questions from the course in the final round - now that's what I call an "assessment tool". I was pleased to see my students scored high marks, and it brought a proud tear to my eye when they answered the question "which whale has the largest penis, and how long is it?" right (for the record - the sperm whale and 15' ).

Another highlight was karaoke. What the students lacked in terms of having and vocal skill whatsoever, they made up in enthusiasm and a willingness to get up and look complete idiots. There were actually a couple of good singers (I highlight Lianne and Jenny in case one of them ever reads this), but most were dreadful ...

The next stage of the trip was to head off to the Isle of Mull - arguably the whale watching capital of northern Europe. But before I do so, I should give a call out to the infamous Andrew Campbell. Andrew is a famous and venerated marine biologist of the old school, and I love sneaking into his lectures during the course just to listen to his anecdotes. To get the idea imagine a slightly porgy country squire talking about doing surveys for turtles who suddenly remarks : "... So moving to a new survey site, we arrived rather too late, and had had a bit of refreshment en route, and so Rupert (another senior and famous marine biologist) and I rather blearily  staggered into what we though was a hotel, and we were rather the worse for wear and didn't register the interesting furnishings and staff until the following morning when we found we'd booked ourselves into a brothel". If you know me in real life, ask me about the "sea cucumber" story ...

So we decamped to the postcard pretty isle of Mull, where we stayed in a cute ecolodge overlooking the sound of Mull and a stone's throw from the picturesque village of Tobermory, and spent the next three days looking for whales, dolphins,  basking sharks and otters.

Evening at the ecolodge

Tobermory

For the record, on my best day we saw 27 harbor porpoises, 6 minke whales and 6 basking sharks.

A basking shark

A minke whale

The little stay on Mull was delightful, and "mostly harmless".

While I'm talking about Mull, here's an anecdote from a previous course about the infamous "shaggy" Thompson, who was last rumored to be running to be a member of Parliament ... (fade to scene) we were sailing down the sound of Mull on a blustery day, and we were confused at why passing boats were sounding their horns or shouting at us, until one of the crew looked up into the crow's nest and saw shaggy stark naked, and saluting passing ships. Bearing in mind this was a very chilly day ...

Later that night he tried again, climbing onto the top of our minibus (which was parked on the main street), stripped naked and had his arms out in a cross, pirouetting until his pale, white butt was suddenly lit up, by the headlights of a police car, coming down the hill. Shaggy then leaped off the front of the minibus, still naked, slid down the windshield, "catching" himself on the wipers, then ran down a side street and scrambled through an open window behind the local youth hostel -  again, still naked. Evenings in Tobermory have subsequently seemed a little quiet in comparison to that year.

The final stage stage of the trip, my American students said goodbye to the Brits, and we headed to Inverness.

Downtown Inverness

Inverness is a beautiful city, with many baronial style buildings, nestled on the banks of the river ness. Our hostel, not so beautiful however. We had to manhandle heavy luggage up several flights of spiral stairs. The rooms were so small that if the four boys stood up in their room at the same time, there was no space. It was like staying in Harry Potter's room under the stairs. Two of the girls ditched the hostel and went for a nice B&B, while the rest of us roughed it. We had to get out of the place though. So we headed for hootenanny's for some live "diddly- diddly" music. I introduced the students to the delights if chips and curry sauce & scotch eggs. We ended up in a club holding a "games night" where we played giant Jenga and jumped about in bouncy castles. Kev pushed over another group's Jenga tower. "That took a lot of time to make" <in broad Scottish accent> said man who was the size and hairiness of Chewbacca.

"I know, I was watching you" replied Kev. That comment warranted a quick and forceful extraction that seal team 6 would be proud of.

"There's a  m***** ******* platypus on this m***** ******* unicycle!"

 Close to the end of the trip, slight hysteria began to set in. We went to the Loch Ness visitor center and were told that ecologically, Nessie couldn't exist, to the disappointment of the students. Desperate to at least have a chance at glimpsing the monster, we went to Urquhart castle, on the banks of Loch Ness. No monsters, but plenty of idiots. Tourists lacking self awareness or awareness of others. Castle was nice though.

Urquhart Castle

The next stop was another castle, Doune Castle, where parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail were filmed. This was a great site, with lots of rooms to explore, staircases to clamber up and  great view. Compulsory activities for us were to lean over the battlements and taunt the French tourists, and to 'gallop' around the courtyard with a pair of coconuts.

Doune Castle

"It's just a flesh wound!"

Final port of call was Edinburgh. To not give a list of bars and pubs visited I'll simply highlight a few:

Best beer: Brewdog

Best pub grub: Black bull
Best live music: Whistlebiskies
Best character (and most ghosts): Banshee Labyrinth

For the academic part of the Edinburgh visit, I took the students to 'the dynamic earth' - a great museum of geology, ecology and evolution. Stretching 'historical education' to the limit, we also visited the Edinburgh Dungeon to get the willies scared out of us by Sawney Bean, Burke and Hare and other Scottish horrors. For 'cultural education' there was the 'whisky experience' where we had fun having our palates educated about the differences in scotch (at least the over 21s did).

The final educational event was curtesy or Mercat tours. Which started with me being attached to the Mercat Cross and being flogged for being an Englishman, by our lovely guide Fiona (who flogs me every year, regular as clockwork). The tour took us into the creepy under city of Edinburgh, through crypts and spooky rooms. Sadly no ghosts were encountered - just creepy Mr Perkins the fairground owner.

The final night I shall draw a veil of modesty over, to protect the young, innocent and weak of heart (or liver). Highlights were, however, acquiring a number of horse masks and dancing in said masks, making a scene that looked like "equus the musical". Some time in the early hours I won a dance off against an Italian guy, mostly through enthusiasm and extravagance, rather than any skill.

And so ends my little Scottish travelogue. Next stop, the middle ages ...

Home, sweeet home

I'm currently in my British motherland and being here has reminded me of something's I really miss living in the US, some aesthetic, some not, and began to list them. So as I sat in my room, listening to the sound of rain putter-pattering against the window, which to me brings  back memories of summer holidays as a child,  I started writing the list down, and decided, heck, why not post it. So here you go, the bits of Blighty I crave:

Birdsong:  Now, I do hear birds singing in the US, but it's typically just a couple, and just not the sheer diversity. At one end of an avian migration route, the UK simply has more birds, mostly coming to the UK to breed, besides residents. Plus the work of the Royal Society of the Protection of Birds has helped conserve the variety, unlike in the US where many native species have been decimated. I also like seeing the ubiquitous magpies flying about, and in the colder months the sounds of rooks and crows "cawing" in fields.

Religious tolerance & liberal values: America likes to think of itself as the "land of the free" and a cultural melting pot. It isn't. Seriously, the way religion has such a stranglehold on American politics would be considered abhorrent in the UK which has a much more "live and let live" mentality. Also the political values in the UK are such that even the Conservative party, the most right wing of the three main parties, is to the left of the Democratic party. Talking to students her about the US healthcare system and the reaction against "Obamacare" they just couldn't believe that the public would be against universal health care and, especially, that people could be denied the best possible health care just because of what insurance (if at all) they had - they considered it just so morally alien to them. They consider that access to the best possible health care as a fundamental moral right for everyone. And don't get me started about access for all to university education.

Proper tea: None of this weak namby-pamby weak Liptons rubbish that you get in the states. Good strong PG Tips or Tetley tea. What the Brits call "builders tea".

Sense of humor: I must have a caveat here that most of my friends have a sense of humor where they get sarcasm, double or "single entendres" and more surreal "pythonesque" (which I discovered is actually in the Oxford English dictionary - humor or situations that recall Monty Python) jokes. But too often Americans don't.

The joy of snacks: Although the UK has a bad reputation for cooking, it really isn't deserved. In the past couple of decades the British have become obsessed with cooking. Just look at the popular cooking TV shows in the US like top chef, most were stolen from the Brits. Even your average pub prides itself on the quality and variety of its dishes- as opposed to burgers, fries and nachos that you find in nearly every US bar. The restaurants are also typically very friendly to those with dietary needs - almost everywhere has a large selection of gluten-free, halal and vegetarian/vegan dishes. But, for me it's the snacks I really miss: salt and vinegar square crisps, Worcestershire sauce-flavored crisps, veggies pasties, chocolate digestive biscuits, custard creams (also a biscuit), and chocolate - Hershey's chocolate officially is not chocolate in Europe because of its inferior chocolateyness, snacks like Cadbury's flake and double deckers just kick the butt of American chocolatey snacks. Also a special shout out is warranted for the spicy deliciousness of HP sauce and branston pickle (the latter brings out the flavor of cheese in a simply mouthwatering way) … mmmmmmm.

What I don’t miss: grey skies and rain, rain, rain and more rain … sigh.

Ridley Scott what were you thinking?!

The last few weeks I've participated in an orgy of movie watching, thanks partially to long plane flights and staying with my movie-buff sister for a few days. I've mentioned before how once upon a time I did movie reviews, and enjoyed writing them. I have just seen a film that gave me the urge to put pen to paper again. Or at  least electron to silicon.

Two of my favourite films as a teenager, in fact even as an adult, were Blade Runner and Alien. The characters were three dimensional, the cinematography and effects and direction were outstanding, and they were full of atmosphere. So the director Ridley Scott has been one of my favourites as a consequence (my all time fave director is probably Hitchcock though, but Scott is up there in my top 5). I am also a fan of Aliens - one of the few sequels that really was a sequel to the original movie, as well made as the original but different - again three dimensional characters, great sets and loads of atmosphere.

The main attractions of Alien 1 & 2 is that the characters were beliveable - interstellar truckers in 1, military grunts in 2 , and the worlds they were set in although futuristic, looked realistic. They are both a tiny minority of movies where spaceships float in the vacuum of space silently (accompanied by a deliciously creepy film score), and the science is actually relatively plausible.

And then we have "Prometheus" - the prequel to Alien.

(spoiler warning)

First of all, the science is dreadful - I'm told the space science is OK, but it's full of bad biology. The engineers we are told have a 100% DNA match with humans - seriously, they are giants with pitch black eyes and thick marble-like skin. That alone would require quite a few different genes. At the beginning of the film we see an "engineer"/"ancient" dissolving themselves into the water supply of a primeval earth. Despite the fact that if you reduced DNA to it's component parts, it would not reassemble at a later date in the same order, that's just bad chemistry, but in 3 or so billion years between the engineers dumping DNA onto the earth the evolution of humans, did the engineers not evolve at all? We go from bacteria to humans on one planet, but the aliens are untouched by natural selection and evolution.

They find a several alien head in perfect condition after 2000 years despite being in what we are told is earth like atmosphere - is this atmosphere completely sterile? Are there no decomposing bacteria? We see later that the planet has worm-like creatures, so the chance of zero bacteria or similar is unlikely. Moreover they take this head, and despite being two thousand years old, they are able to electrically stimulate it's nervous system. Finally from a scientist's perspective, their portrayal of a biologist made me cringe. What biologist goes up to an unknown wild creature saying "hey beautiful" and try to pet it. I've been attacked by enough wildlife, even cute seals & dolphins to know that those buggers bite and have nasty infectious diseases.

Finally, Noomi Rapace has an alien removed from her by the auto-surgeon. When she returns later to that room, the small tentacled alien she had removed, has grown to giant size - how? It was sealed in a room with no access to food. Matter cannot simply appear from nowhere, so how did the creature grow. Did it each all the surgical instruments in the room for nourishment?

Then there are various aspects of the plot that don't make sense. What was the heiress of a multi-billion dollar company doing taking two years off to visit an alien planet? Shouldn't she be watching the company? The aliens have super technology, yet dispatch pesky interlopers by beating them up. What no weapons?

There apparently was a catastrophic outbreak of one of their created "viruses", so what does the hibernating alien do first thing on waking? Kill the humans and launch the ship towards earth, despite having been in stasis for 2000 years. What no checking to see if the situation has changed in the last 2000 years?

There were a few positive notes those. The character of "David" was one of the few ones with any depth, and extremely well acted. I love the "Lawrence of Arabia" scene.

Charlize Theron's character, although a plot hole, was also interesting, and I liked how although human, members of e crew thought she could have been an android, because she was so so emotionless and unempathetic. Noomi Rapace tried her best despite clunky dialogue. As for the rest of the characters - meh. Can't I couldn't remember most even when the film was playing, they were so one-dimensional.

If you want to see a good film, avoid Prometheus, and I recommend looking out the following to add to your Netflix queue.

Best exotic marigold hotel: Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith - what's not to love in this superbly acted, sentimental and amusing story of senior citizens moving to India to stay in a ramshackle hotel.

Honkey dory: In 1976 a drama teacher tries to stage a musical version of the Tempest at a working class Welsh high school. Despite Minnie Driver's intermittent Welsh accent,  a nice movie.

Pirate radio: Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Kenneth Brannagh and a host of great British actors, including two actresses I have crushes on. The soundtrack is fantastic.

Anonymous: An interesting film with the premise that Shakespeare's plays were written by the Earl of Oxford and that Queen Elizabeth I had a host of illegitimate children. The latter is probably more plausible - she was periodically confined to bed because she had an illness which caused her to "swell up". There are huge historical flaws in the Earl of Oxford thesis though e.g. the Tempest is widely believe to have been based/inspired by  a 1609 popular pamphlet on a "tempest" that caused a shipwreck that marooned scores of people on an island. The Earl of Oxford died in 1603 - the number of similarities between the pamphlet and the circumstances of the play are so abundant that it would require the Earl to be seriously prophetic. That's just one argument. But nonetheless, I really enjoyed it, even if they did make Kit Marlowe a jerk (one of my favourite historical characters).

As a final note, Snow white and the huntsman is worth watching just to see Ray Winton play "scary" the dwarf - other dwarves include Ian MShane, Bob Hoskins, Nick Frost and a smattering of other famous British dramatic actors. The dwarves have much much acting cred than most of  the leads. It is also nice to see "Bella" be bad ass, as opposed to simpering and whining about her boyfriend woes. Snow White is a much better role model for young girls than the shallow, pathetic, self-indulgent "Bella".

Protecting Panama's dolphins

Now the International Whaling Commission is drawing to a close I can reveal a little about some of our successes at the meeting.

Firstly we drew attention to the poor beleaguered population of bottle nose dolphins in Bocas del Toro, Panama. This population of less than 200 animals ISPs the focus of o huge amount of dolphin-watching activity. I personally saw 6 boats around a small group of 5 or six animals, and colleagues say that up to 25 is common, although we did get reports of sometimes nearly a hundred boats chasing dolphins in the high season. For the record, Panama has great dolphin watching regulations, some of the best in the world. But boat operators either don't know about them, or typically don't care. There is certainly no enforcement. I should add that not all boat operators are badly behaved around dolphins. I personally witnessed two companies behaving impeccably near dolphins, obeying the regulations and complaining and shouting out at operators that weren't. But they are in the minority.

The situation in Bocas was discussed at the IWC scientific committee (personally having photos of boats in clear violation of regulations helped quell the protest from government officials that there was no problem and the rules were always obeyed) and their concern was expressed in the official report, which also stated that  the Panamanian Government should do something about the situation. Certain IWC commissioners visited government high ups to protest the situation too. The fact that Panama is the host of the IWC, is an indicator that they want to be seen as a world nation that has an active interest in the management of whales and dolphins, and it's certainly embarrassing for them not to have their house in order on that score. A week after I left Panama now, I hear that there is positive movement on the government front, there have been some meetings with boat operators and a new research project to monitor the sustainability of dolphin-watching in the area, and to study the impact of the activity on the dolphins, has been initiated (incorporating colleagues and even some of my graduate students).  So at least something positive has come out of this year's Whaling Commission meeting, which makes a pleasant change.