St1jere’s Weblog

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008 was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, a collaboration with famed director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name. Born in Minehead, Somerset, England, Arthur attended Huish Grammar School, Taunton after his secondary education, but was unable to afford a university education and got a job as an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education. He served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defense system, which contributed to the RAF’s success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke spent most of his service time working on Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) radar as documented in his semi-autobiographical novel Glide Path. Although GCA did not see much practical use in the war, after several years of development it was vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949. After the war he earned a first-class degree in mathematics and physics at King’s College London.

In the postwar years Clarke became involved with the British Interplanetary Society and served for a time as its chairman. Although he was not the originator of the concept of geostationary satellites, one of his most important contributions may be his idea that they would form ideal telecommunications relays, an idea he advanced in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the BIS in 1945. The concept was published in Wireless World in October of that year. Clarke also wrote a number of non-fiction books describing the technical details and societal implications of rocketry and space flight, the most notable being, ‘The Exploration of Space (1951)’ and ‘The Promise of Space (1968)’. In recognition of these contributions the geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union as a “Clarke Orbit”.

On a literary front, his first professional sales appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946 – ‘Loophole’ was published in April, while ‘Rescue Party’, his first sale, was published in May. Along with his writing Clarke briefly worked as Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts (1949) before devoting himself to writing full-time from 1951 onward. Clarke also contributed to the Dan Dare series published in Eagle, and his first three published novels were written for children. Clarke struck up a friendship with author C. S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s and they once met in an Oxford pub, ‘The Eastgate’, to discuss science fiction and space travel.

In 1948 he wrote ‘The Sentinel’ for a BBC competition. Though the story was rejected it changed the course of Clarke’s career. Not only was it the basis for ‘A Space Odyssey’, but it marked a more mystical and cosmic turning point to his work. Many of Clarke’s later works feature a technologically advanced but prejudiced mankind being confronted by a superior alien intelligence. Some of his works, such as, ‘Cases of The City and the Stars’; ‘Childhood’s End’; and ‘This Encounter (2001)’ (2001) series, feature a breakthrough from such encounters with superior alien culture that accelerates humanity into the next stage of its evolution.

In 1953 Arthur met and quickly married Marilyn Mayfield, a 22-year-old American divorcee, and mother of one (a son). They separated permanently after six months, although the divorce was not finalized until 1964.

In the early 1970s Clarke signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science-fiction writer at the time. The first of the three was Rendezvous with Rama in 1973, which won him all the main genre awards and has spawned sequels that, along with the 2001 series, formed the backbone of his later career. In 1975 Clarke’s short story “The Star” was not included in a new high school English textbook in Sri Lanka because of concerns that it might offend Roman Catholics even though it had already been selected. The same textbook also caused controversy because it replaced Shakespeare’s work with that of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Isaac Asimov.

Early in his career Clarke had a fascination with the paranormal and stated that it was part of the inspiration for his novel Childhood’s End. He also said that he was one of several who were fooled by a Uri Geller demonstration at Birkbeck College. Although he eventually dismissed and distanced himself from nearly all pseudoscience he continued to advocate research into purported instances of psycho kinesis and similar phenomena.

In the 1980s Clarke became well known to many for his television programmes Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World and Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers. In 1986 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

In 1988 he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, having originally contracted polio in 1959, and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter. On 10 September 2007, while commenting on the Cassini probe’s flyby of Iapetus (which plays an important role in 2001: A Space Odyssey) Clarke mentioned that he was completely wheelchair-bound by polio and did not plan to leave Sri Lanka again. In 1989 Clarke was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). The same year he became the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004 and he also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.

On 26 May 2000 he was made a Knight Bachelor for his Services to Literature at a ceremony in Colombo. The investiture of the award had been delayed, at Clarke’s request, since 1998 because of an accusation, by the British tabloid The Sunday Mirror, of pedophilia, which was, however, found to be baseless by Sri Lankan police and retracted by the paper soon after. The award of knight bachelor carries the title of “Sir” and no post-nominal letters meaning that the previous postfix of “CBE” stood. In December 2007 on the occasion of his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans bidding them good-bye.

The author chose to live in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) from 1956 until his death in 2008, having emigrated first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in the capital, Colombo. Clarke, though, held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. An avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club, living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for his novel ‘The Fountains of Paradise, in which he first described a space elevator. He believed that this would be his legacy, much more than geostationary satellites, as he believed that space elevators would make space shuttles obsolete. His many predictions culminated in 1958 when he began a series of essays in various magazines that eventually became ‘Profiles of the Future,’ published in book form in 1962. He developed a timetable that describes inventions and ideas including a “global library”, a timeline that goes till the year 2100.

Clarke died in Sri Lanka at 1:30am on 19 March 2008 local time (UTC+5:30), after suffering from breathing problems according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides.

Olympique Lyon’s 1-2 aggregate loss to Man U aptly sums up the future of club football around the world. The club’s demise from Europe is blamed, in some quarters on their policy of selling off key performers every season. Such stars as Malouda, Essien and (soon) Benzima, are just some of the club’s alumni playing elsewhere at present. Even clubs as illustrious as Sao Paolo (Brazil) and River Plate (Argentina) have become suppliers of major talent to the moneyed counterparts, mostly in Europe. Of course, European football is always in the spotlight limelight courtesy of UEFA’s clout among FIFA member associations. However, Lyon’s plight mirrors that of clubs from as far away as Angola – e.g. Petro Atletico’s Manucho (currently of the Greek side Panathanaikos).

It is clear that even after the G-14′s demise on 15th February 2008, there are three distinct castes of football clubs. The bluebloods are the who’s who of European football, including Liverpool, Man U, Inter, Juve, Milan, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Category II has the lesser nobles, which is sides with genuine pedigree but which have fallen off the top rungs of football, the likes of Bayern Munich, Ajax, PSV and Porto, all of whom are former European Cup winners. The last category has pretenders to the throne, which in a nutshell is the rest.

The Premiership is dominated by the so-called ‘big four’ who play musical chairs when it comes to league positions 1-4. In the CL they constantly make the final knockout stages – it is now two years in a row with all four having made (at least) the last eight. Last season featured three of these clubs in the semis of the said tourney. For three years in a row it has been at least one English club in the final – Liverpool (2005), Arsenal (2006) and Liverpool again (2007). The four clubs keep improving each year but do the rest benefit? Everton’s sole season in Europe in recent years is 2004/05 season, which saw them get eliminated before the CL’s knockout stage. According to former US defender, Greg Lalas, Arsenal, the big English four play ‘continental football’ while the rest play in the typical English way.

This is the same kind of league dominance that sees top clubs in Germany, Bayern in particular, and the old firms in Scotland – Celtic and Rangers – buy up all good players coming through their rival club ranks, effectively killing their leagues.

In the long run, while acknowledging this phenomenon as a modern-day reality, what direction is football heading? It is almost impossible to imitate Milan’s Paolo Maldini and play till the age of 40 (not forgetting eight European finals!) The current crop of players’ rate of burnout is astounding. This might be due to playing too many matches, related fatigue and resultant injuries. No wonder exorbitant wage demands are commonplace today.

All the enumerated reasons actually boil down to money. Where do clubs obtain the funds needed to purchase quality players? Sale of tickets, merchandising, TV rights, targeting of rich buyers of clubs, playing in high population markets like Asia, liability (debt), etc, provide the start of such answers. Why are more games – which ultimately cause injuries – being played? Money. Is this quest for the almighty dollar spiraling out of control?

As a fan, I cannot ask players to tone down on their demands, or ask clubs to stop seeking bigger profits. However, the madness has got to stop sometime. We can indeed gain the whole world but lose our souls, which I think has already occurred.

There needs to be a return to the values that made clubs what they are. While impossible to go back to the glory years, in whatever era, how about recapturing that old spirit that distinguishes one set of fans from another. Clubs should be more than mere money-minters. They unite communities and provide a sense of identity and nationalism, a case in point being Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona, symbols of Spain’s regions of Catalonia and that of the Basque respectively. How about fair play, passionate competition (not xenophobic behavior by Ultra-like groups), and even fantasy in play? Ronaldinho, a relentless competitor, has a style that is more in the realm of the aesthetic than mere competitiveness.

These points, while scratching the surface of the what-the-football-wo rld-can-do iceberg, do provide a starting point for any debate on such an important topic.

How on earth can a human being think of exterminating the life of another? As if that weren’t bad enough, how does a government actively seek to snuff out the life of its citizenry; the sole reason why it exists in the first place? The latter, also called genocide, can be defined as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. This definition comes from the While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in Article 2 the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  

A look around the world is instructive. Hassan al-Majid, a.k.a. Chemical Ali, cousin to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, was condemned on Friday (29th March 2008) by his country’s presidency, for his role in the gassing of Iraq‘s citizens in 1988. The event, called the Anfal campaign, led to the deaths of an estimated 180,000 members of the Kurd community, in the northern part of the country. Al-Majid was convicted on genocide charges and initially sentenced to death in June 2007.   

In Africa, former Liberian president and warlord, Charles Taylor, is facing charges of rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers. Taylor‘s trial, before the UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone, had to be postponed till Monday (3rd March 2008) due to the former president’s ill health.   

On the dawn of Wednesday (27th February 2008), unidentified gunmen attacked a village in Darfur (Western Sudan), killing about 20 civilians. It remains unclear who exactly committed the killings as a rebel coalition, the New Sudan Brigade, blames pro-government militia for the dawn raid on the village of al-Sunta in southern Darfur. The casualties number the village mayor and a prayer leader. Since the conflict began in 2003, about 200,000 fatalities have been recorded with about 2.5 m displaced people.   

Back to my opening questions, why would any government want to exterminate human life? What would make some in rulership hate others so much that killing them would not touch any part of their conscience, assuming they have any? It is indeed tragic when those tasked to protect end up killing their wards. It is sad when any government, whether Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia – for those who only think such happenings are found in Africa – attempts to wipe out people, whatever the pretext used.

Unfortunately for all concerned, humanity does not seem to be improving morally, despite great learning and exposure to other cultures. It also ties in with the Bible’s observation of ‘nothing really new under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  Unfortunately, mankind has been full of such acts, starting with colonizers everywhere and those who moved into territories previously occupied by others, e.g. settlers of European descent on finding Native Americans. Why not take the moral high ground and tolerate each other.   

Shame on all of us. The world is big enough for all of us; we are not even optimumly utilizing mother earth as we should! We ought to have more respect for cultures, even those we don’t understand. There are of course certain practices to be shunned altogether in a civilized society, but killing our fellow humans is surely unacceptable. We have more in common than differences. Sample the following seeming simplicities:

1. All of us share the same DNA structure
2. All humans have capability of mating and producing viable offspring
3. Each of us is unique, from the fingerprints we have, to our individual scents, to our hairs, etc.
4. What we call skin color is simply the pigment melanin! Dark people only have more than lighter ones!
5. In truth, the area of belief and religion is personal. Why should anyone die for tenets they hold dear to themselves? To me the rider should be as long as it doesn’t cause harm to the greater society.
6. All the above and others, ad infinitum.

It doesn’t sound like much but it’s actually much more than I see around me. Mankind is too full of hatred to be of use to each other. It’s a lesson all of us need to learn; none is exempt.