Boycott referendum rerun is rescheduled

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Greens sow the seed for political optimism in Brighton

With the ever growing mistrust of the Labour Party reaching new heights and creeping scepticism over the Conservatives and the substance of their policies, political pessimism is rife in Britain. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the MP expenses scandal and higher education cuts have all served to intensify the scrutiny to which political parties are subject. What comes with this is a culture of pessimism and negativity engulfing the political world that reigns supreme, highlighted by a downturn in voter turnouts from 71.4 per cent in 1997 to 61.4 per cent in 2005.

Now is a time, in the run up to the General election, to be more pro-active and optimistic and move away from the reactionary behaviour that characterises, and comes to embody, our negative attitudes towards politics. The genuine chance the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas holds in becoming the first Green MP is something that should not only excite Brighton voters, but also help to restore some optimism. There is a viable alternative to the mainstream parties with which we have all become so disenchanted. Read more

Brighton and Hove boasts gay-friendly employers

The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) rights advocacy group, Stonewall, released its yearly Workplace Equality Index earlier this month showing Brighton and Hove City Council in the top five on its list of GLBT-friendly employers.

The Council has a module in its diversity training about the experiences of GLBT persons in the workplace. Joining the Council in the list of top employers are East Sussex County Council, Sussex Police, and East Sussex Fire and Rescue service.

The University of Sussex has not done so well, nor have other educational institutions. Stonewall’s report states that universities and housing organisations are the employment sectors with the lowest scores.

The University of Sussex Student Union (USSU) Welfare Officer Ciaran Whitehead offered up a possible explanation for the university’s absence from the list: “The Equality and Diversity Committee used to meet three times a year. However, in June, the Chair (Deputy Vice Chancellor Paul Layzell) decided that the number of committee meetings would be reduced to two per year. The reasoning behind this was that the committee would still be able to complete its policy work with fewer meetings. Most of the members do not appear to really be passionate about it. It’s a shame that, being so close to Brighton, we really don’t seem to celebrate and promote equality and diversity at Sussex.”

In addition to the committee, there is an equality and diversity forum with more representatives from the Union and university staff, which meets three times a year, although it does not have the power to determine policy. The forum serves only in an advisory capacity. It is difficult to determine just what the E&D committee has discussed in its recent meetings. The minutes from the meetings are supposed to appear on the committee’s Sussex website, but as of the writing of this article, the most recent set of minutes available was from February of 2008.

University students only have a 10-minute attention span

University students suffer from a mere ’10-minute attention span’, a recent study suggests. The research, undergone by Olympus Technologies, also shows 21 % of students are struggling to attend lectures and meet deadlines due to their need to support themselves with part time jobs.

A third of students link their short attention span to lack of sleep, due to being ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘unprepared’ by money issues and lectures. Suggesting a link between poor job prospects and poor performance, the survey goes on to state that  nearly half of all students fear “graduating with little to no job prospects, and high debts”.

One in ten students fear their university degrees will be a waste of money, and many feel that they are ill prepared for living a modern university life.
To combat these problems, an online guide to managing money published by Olympus suggests using online money-saving websites, joining the National Centre for Social Research in order to lessen student debt, researching credit cards and investing in technology, such as the Olympus brand voice recorder.

Recent research undertaken by Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, suggests that stress and mood are vital in their effects on attention span. Schooler also found that while alcohol decreases the frequency of mind-wandering, it also decreases the productivity in these mind-wanderings, causing an “empty space rather than a thinking space”.

In research taken out on a group of his students, Schooler discovered that their attention while reading, drifted roughly 6 times in an hour – agreeing with British students’ estimated ten minutes.

Yet Schooler’s research suggests that it is the time in which our minds wander that we are at our most productive.We may be more likely to make mistakes or fail to form concrete memories, but it is at these points that we are able to form complex ideas and digest the ‘bigger picture.’

Gradual Decline

The Badger talks to Sussex comedy group Casual Violence! about black comedy, kitchen-sink dramas and urination

Hannah: Okay so I’m here to talk to you about  the Gradual decline of…

James: The Gradual decline of a previously tight family unit in the face of economic hardship: A comedy.

Hannah:  I’ve read that it’s a spin on a ‘gritty kitchen sink drama’.

Adam: Yes,  really strange irony, my old school is putting on a play  at the same time called ‘Love on the Dole’ with exactly the same story, but it’s serious. Properly going for the heart strings stuff, whereas this is, going for the mole strings.

Hannah:  Can you give a brief synopsis of what happens?

Adam:  It’s based around a family living in Manchester or Newcastle.

James: an unspecified northern place.

Adam:  You’ve got Barry, the big man of the house who loses his job, and the son Mark played by Alex here, whose got no arms or legs and lives in a box.  Probably the most controversial part is  the daughter whose parents are labouring under the misapprehension that she’s got Downs syndrome and are repressing her because of it.  It’s showing each family member’s struggle, but presented in a ridiculous and comic way.

James: With the daughter, it’s looking at  people’s attitudes to that sort of thing (Downs Syndrome).

Adam:  A lot of the comedy that I do is looking at stupidity and ignorance.   The two characters in this play who are disabled or considered disabled are actually  the strongest in the play  and by the end we are invited to  have judgements about the mother and the father.

Hannah: Your comedy  does push limits, it’s quite black but it does have a point.

Alex: It’s not  ‘haha Down’s Syndrome’, it’s portraying attitudes towards it.

Adam:  There isn’t a single joke made at the expense of disabled people.

Hannah: Obviously there’s a fine line, and you should consider how complicit the audience is.

James:  Oh  definitely, it’s all quite dark  and grotesque but we don’t do offensive comedy.

Adam:  But then there’s certain subjects that when people hear, they press the alarm button in their head and go ‘ah, that’s offensive’.

Hannah:  There’s a  delightful quote in an interview that you said about pissing on people’s boundaries.

James: (laughing) no, I said I don’t like to piss on people’s boundaries!

Adam:  That’s a good point.  We don’t like pissing on people, we do like pissing on their boundaries.

James:  I said I don’t like pissing on people’s boundaries!

Alex:  Pissing near people but not actually on them.  Sometimes we splash them.

Hannah:  Nothing actually on your clothes.

James:  When I got interviewed for the first time by the badger about Porn for the Blind  I said I didn’t want to step on people’s boundaries but we’re aware we might be toeing the line, the second for the monologues in October  we said that we won’t completely piss on people’s boundaries and now we’ve said that we’ll piss everywhere and some people might get splashed.

Alex:  Bring an umbrella.

James:  There’s always people  who like to hit the red button though.

Hannah:  A little Daily Mail reader in the corner of the room.

Adam:  It’s the kind of mentality that almost deliberately misses the point.

Adam:  The comedy is dark but it takes a position of ignorance and makes it. look ridiculous.   I actually  once got attacked for mocking stupidity.  I was doing stand-up and some guy got up and  asked me to define stupidity.   What a stupid question.

James:  It kind of proves the point.  You feel vindicated when people have that sort of reaction.  Sometimes when I’ve done sketches  that have been close to the bone, and people pick up on one aspect, you kind of mentally tick them off next to the idiot box.  Comedy is the format where you can play with these sorts of things.

Hannah:  It’s the space on stage where you can articulate certain issues safely.

Alex:  And if you laugh at it, it takes away its power.

Adam:  It’s got to be in a context where that’s obvious though.

Hannah:  I was thinking about Harry Potter, when you get the scary  things in the cupboard.

Adam:  A boggart.

Hannah:  And you’re supposed to laugh at them and they’ll go away.

Alex:  We are the boggart.

James:  Yeah laugh at us and we’ll go away.

Alex:  We’ll hide in your cupboards.

James:  With one play,  Dead as a Dodo, this guy comes to sit next to me and was asking about the comedy group.  There was a flyer for Dead as a Dodo on the table and I showed it to him and he told me that he was from the island where all the dodos were massacred by English and Portuguese soldiers and so found the title quite offensive.  Apparently he hadn’t heard of the saying ‘dead as a dodo’ and later on I caught him downstairs ripping up posters and flyers.  He said that he didn’t understand, why didn’t we call it ‘dead as a doughnut’?  He compared the slaughter of the dodos to the  Nazis killing the Jews in the Holocaust.  The play was actually about the destructive impulses of mankind and how this resulted in the death of the dodo and as soon as I explained this he apologised.

Hannah: Do you have any comedy influences that you use?.

Adam:  Christopher Morris from Brass Eye.  I think TV comedy is dying.  Brass Eye came out eight years ago and that was the last really solid comedy programme. Now you have to look to the internet.  A lot of web animators don’t have the same constraints as they would in TV, and  that’s where the future of comedy is.

‘The Gradual Decline of a Previously Tight Family Unit in the Face of Economic Hardship’

Marlborough Little Theatre, 29th/30th Jan, 8pm, £5

Welcome to the ‘teenies’!

Dear Readers

Welcome to the ‘teenies’! Although much of the print and televised news over the Christmas break was dominated by our national inability to deal with the snow, it is clear that 2010 is going to be a big year in politics. With the infamous ‘Christmas-day-bomber’ provoking a knee-jerk reaction that will see the introduction of near-naked bio-metric scanners at airports, it is clear that the ‘war on terror’ is intensifying. So if you have any opinions you want heard, from international issues to ones relating to our current educational, economic and political crises, feel free to get in touch so we can feature your piece in our freshly redesigned Badger. In this way we can continue to function as a forum of debate on the issues we face in our University, in the government and beyond.

We would also like to reaffirm our commitment to producing a platform for the diverse views and opinions of our student body. The articles published in the comment section do not necessarily represent that Badger’s opinions, or those of the editors. Remember we want to stimulate lively debates in this section, but at the same time are committed to impartiality and professionalism in our own approach.

Finally we would like to say an enormous thank you to all those who contributed to the comment section last term.  With such a huge range of contentious issues on offer, The Badger’s Comment and Opinion section is a more vital tool than ever before in the constant battle to get your voices heard.  You can now get involved via our Facebook group (Comment & Opinion Writers at The Badger 2009/10) or by emailing us directly at badger-opinion@ussu.sussex.ac.uk, as well as keeping up to date with all our articles and leaving your own comments at thebadgeronline.co.uk/section/comment.

Gemma, Mark & Nicky

Comment & Opinion Editors

Mandelson’s measures will cause “University meltdown”

Business secretary Lord Mandelson has declared that the government is to cut university funding in England by a total of £398m for 2010/11. The reduced allocations will witness £84m taken from the funding budget for buildings and equipment, and £51m for teaching.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that even deeper cuts of 12.3% over 2011/12 are needed for ministers to achieve their target of halving national debt by 2013. This would mean an extra £1.6bn of cuts to the science and universities budget.

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The chemical of motivation

What fascinates and troubles me about the brain is what it wants and desires. I’m always acutely aware of the limits of my own free will: eat less, exercise more, study more, be more social, dare to do this, stop doing that; it seems like a never-ending struggle! I know I’m not the only one frustrated by this experience, especially now, with new year’s resolutions failing left and right. Why is this happening?! What can you do about it?

In the middle of your brain you have half a million neurons that release dopamine into your frontal lobes. These neurons form the core of your brain’s reward system, which generate motivation. Rewards like food, drink, play, sex and addictive drugs, raise dopamine concentrations in your brain just like earned rewards such as money. Unexpected rewards are particularly effective – dopamine builds up in anticipation of uncertain rewards, making everyone at the bus stop stare at the bend where the bus will appear. Low dopamine concentrations on the other hand make you distracted and disinterested.

Different behaviours are produced by different groups of neurons in the frontal lobes. These neuronal groups run on dopamine, and the behaviour you feel most motivated to perform at any given moment is that of the group that generates the most dopamine. Eating sweets is easy: with a few simple muscle movements, your dopamine neurons are activated. Studying for a distant exam is hard: it requires your full attention and activates your dopamine neurons only indirectly, through your prefrontal cortex, which simultaneously has to inhibit more immediate urges like surfing the web, going out or watching a film.

New year’s resolutions fail because we make them considering only the wonderful goal, which by itself produces plenty of dopamine, especially when it’s new and feels like a fresh start. We don’t realize how hard it will be for our prefrontal cortices to provide the new neuronal groups with enough dopamine to make us run regularly, or read in the library, or go to the gym, or in any way compete with the entrenched neuronal groups that have us sit on the couch, or over- eat, or smoke. On a normal day, the further away a goal is, the less attractive it seems, because the further away a reward is, the less dopamine it generates. For example going for a run will give me a shot of dopamine but its such an unlikely occurrence that sitting on the sofa eating a large bar of chocolate will give me a bigger surge, at least in the short term.

So the trick to keeping new year’s resolutions: be nice to your prefrontal cortex. Quitting smoking is knowing that the urge is strong because dopamine neurons are covered in nicotine receptors, but the brain will change in a few months because it can reorganize itself through plasticity – the ability for the brain to reorganise and reassign neurones for a new skill – and the urge to smoke goes away. Understand your brain, the possibilities are endless; you might even keep your resolutions.

A word from the wise: a testament to the daily good work done at the Student Advice Centre

“This is not an FAQ service – it’s a matter of choosing life” - Sussex Alumnus, 2002 – 2005

“I received a First Class honours degree from Sussex in 2005, propelling me to my career aim, of working as an HE tutor after I complete my doctoral work.

The student advice centre was a central part of my experience at Sussex, not least for the times when I felt I could not find the strength to keep motivated or give the course what I needed to do well. I spoke with advisers about loneliness, frustrations associated with money worries, invaluable help in the latter stages to do with finding MA funding and realistic advice about my proposed career path. I supported my degree with an LEA fees grant, a student loan, and in times of extreme difficulty, I received Hardship funding to get me through the term. The student support was utterly central – I can remember strongly walking into the offices feeling distraught, and leaving with the immense feeling of relief that comes from being properly supported.

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Snowflake physics

Britain is under siege. Forget terrorism, forget recession. The snow is here. Anxious parents queue for hours stocking up on 40 jumbo-sized loo rolls and loaves of bread. Previously benign neighbours steal salt for their driveways. Camera crews aim their sights at the elderly, the gangly and the irresponsible in cynical hope of dramatic collapse and newscasters talk in hushed, alarmist tones, professing apocalypse. There is no doubting it: there is nothing we love more than to complain about our weather.

Not wanting to look outward at the world, I stared at the snow. This got me thinking; can it be that no two snowflakes are identical? The answer is a resounding no. Because water is not isotopically pure the probability of two crystals, with unimaginable numbers of molecules having exactly the same distribution is vanishingly small; in fact, so small that it probably has never happened. What of the wonderfully intricate crystals that adorn knitwear? Mathematical permutation can answer this. Suppose we have 15 snowflakes on a scarf and there are 15 positions for the first snowflake, 14 for the second, and so on, which multiply to over a trillion orderings! If you could ‘build’ a snowflake using but a 100 ‘pieces’, the number of permutations would exceed the number of atoms in the observable universe! Hence, no two complex snowflakes have looked, or will ever look, identical.

Nakaya, a Japanese nuclear-physicist-turned-snow-crystal extraordinaire, painstakingly classified the crystals into 41 different morphological types, from hollow columns to sharp needles, to curious columns capped on either end. How on earth do we explain such diversity, and indeed, what is the cause of the beautiful six-fold symmetry?

Let me take you on a journey, far up in the clouds. Inside each snow crystal, there is a dust particle which along with other gases, is required for the initial attraction of water molecules. The fate of the flake depends on the temperature and the Supersaturation (a measure of water concentration). A slight change in either direction has a beautiful effect on the form.

On a molecular level, the corners of a snow crystal stick out so water molecules more rapidly diffuse and condense upon them. For a while, the edges can keep up, as they become rougher and rougher as the corners extrude outwards. But eventually, they’re as rough as it gets, and the corners win out. The snow crystal has grown arms! This keeps happening, arms growing arms resulting in fractals.

As the snow crystal flutters about in space, its microclimate changes, so its pattern of growth changes. Due to the diminutive size of the crystal, all arms are exposed to the same environment, and thus, symmetry is maintained. No two snow flakes take exactly the same path, and so no two are exactly alike. thus, in principle, one should be able to infer the ‘history’ of a snowflake from its form; or to quote Nakaya, “Snowflakes are hieroglyphs sent from the sky.” Snow isn’t a time to fret and moan, it’s a time to awe at the beauty of the natural world.

Read more at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/