Then and now
Suddenly, through the drunken haze, crazy dancing and loud, out-of-tune singing to Chesney Hawkes, I stopped. Standing, slightly dazed on the dance floor, I began to wonder what we were actually doing. A normal Saturday evening, a completely ordinary club night, the non-student sector of Oxford out celebrating the weekend. And then there was us. A small pocket of hobbits, devils and superheroes out for a vaguely-themed 21st birthday party. We had left the college 'bubble' where you can dress up and act like a maniac and get only a few confused looks in return. We were in the real world. Or at least, as real as Oxford gets. As the dancing gap between our group and everyone else in the club grew and the rude comments increased, it struck me that maybe we were intruding on their territory. There was really no disguising the fact that we were students. And this was no student club night....
Features: Finger on the button
According to Albert Einstein, if World War III is fought with nuclear weapons, then World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. It is as difficult to disagree with these words today, as it was over 50 years ago when they were first spoken. Horrifyingly, Britain, the US, France, Russia and China currently possess between them over 36,000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the world many times over. Britain's nuclear weapons are based at Faslane on the River Clyde, thirty miles north of Glasgow. There are four Trident submarines at Faslane, each designed to hold 128 independently targeted nuclear warheads. Each warhead has seven times the explosive power of the bomb that killed 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima in 1945. As you read this, Britain is potentially poised to kill up to 500 million people at the press of a button. And it's costing us £1.5 billion each year....
Features: Dancing in the streets
"Lecherous, money-grabbing, no-talent individuals - except for those fire-eaters, they're quite good." This was one opinion I encountered in my survey of street performers in Oxford. Not sure where my interviewee saw the fire-eaters, but the general view was somewhat different.
Features: Man on the moon
Milos Forman's life reads like a bad movie. Parents taken by the Gestapo to die in Auschwitz, movies banned 'forever' by the Czech authorities, effectively exiled to America when Soviet tanks rolled into his native Czechoslovakia; then a rise to become one of world's most renowned movie-makers.
Features: Absolutely Fabulous
Seventh week brings us the second annual Mr and Ms Oxford Competition, returning after the 'roaring success' of last year's event in BarMed. RAG hope thirty colleges will be strutting their stuff in the Union before a panel of celebrity judges. This is not just a straightforward beauty competition. Male contestants are faced with 'more physical tasks', such as eating ice-cream while doing sit-ups. Their respective ladies will be cheering them on, lovingly spoon-feeding their blokes G&Ds - not sexist in the slightest. The competition is an invitation for self-humiliation, a 'tongue in cheek fanciability contest'. Sounds great, but what attracts the entrants? ...
Features: Quackers?
Oxford is undoubtedly synonymous with tradition. As a university steeped in history, we've had ample time to acquire a vast array of customs and rituals, which often seem completely absurd to anyone not from Oxford (and even those here sometimes question why). Many have been in existence since time immemorial and so the reasons why they were begun in the first place have been lost, modified, or in some cases made up completely. Not that we really mind. The traditions unique to every college set each one apart from all the others. They help to define the character of the college, affording that special quality loved by those residing there. ...