Salocin

I've never been a great fan of unions, as some previous articles have made clear. I think they have no need to look beyond the limiting borders of their own self-interest, and that given the power they accumulate through their membership, this makes them a threat to society and the economy.

I've tilted at a number of these windmills - I've aimed my criticism at farmers, truck drivers, car assembly plant workers and coal miners. I've never targeted individuals, but unions as entities with a collective purpose, which may represent the average of a membership's opinions without representing the majority - the truth is that most of the members of such unions don't understand the effect of their actions in the greater scheme of things, and their selfishness is explainable (if not justifiable) when one takes into account their context, and the fact that they have no comprehension of why their position is damaging to the greater social, political and economic environment upon which they depend.

Academics have no such excuse.

These are allegedly the intelligent, sophisticated individuals to whom we entrust the education of future generations of leaders, businessmen and thinkers. These are individuals who have all the intellectual and theoretical tools at their disposal to understand the impact of their actions in the greater scheme of things.

This is what makes it so completely reprehensible that they should be holding an entire generation's progress to ransom by refusing to mark exams, so as to increase their pay.

That they may be underpaid, or not, isn't the question I am addressing here - their cause may or may not be legitimate, but their method of protest is unacceptable - a throwback from a bygone era where brinkmanship among unions was reflected by the brinkmanship of the cold war. They chose this method of protest, and to claim they "had no choice" is disingenuous and self-serving at best.

Of course the National Union of Students, trapped by its own blinkered left-wing attitudes, has no idea what to do. They represent the interests of students, not teachers, and they find themselves in a position where their entire membership faces possibly the gravest threat to their future that the NUS has ever had to deal with - make no mistake, the current situation is unprecedented, both in terms of its details and its severity. But the NUS is so trapped by its socialist dogma that it can't grow the backbone necessary to turn around to the teaching unions and take the side it needs to in order to resolve this problem in a way that would help its own membership. It's trapped between its duty and its ideals.

To those who understand the importance of a continued flow of talent from the educational establishments to keep the economy ticking over, this is a disaster. An entire year of employees held back from beginning employment is going to have repercussions in many areas: Companies will be unable to find the talent necessary to continue training and succession planning programmes, pension calculations will be indirectly affected, advances in fields of research that we don't even know about yet will be set back by a year, and tens of thousands of students will have to spend the additional money (which they will have to borrow) in order to complete their year, sitting exams they will be poorly prepared for, and therefore not getting results representative of their potential.

That educators could conceive that such a course of action is even remotely acceptable calls into question not only the excessive power of their unions, but their suitability as the caretakers of the education of future leaders in the first place. Education is about more than the skills and earning potential bestowed by a qualification, it is also about the ethics, morals, social responsibilities and professionalism that come with positions of responsibility - the academics on strike are clearly the last people to whom such a subtle and important task should be entrusted.

It's hard to argue with the point that, over the past few thousand years, Darwinism has led to some pretty impressive improvements in the fundamental design of a human being. Unless, of course, you're a creationist, at which point you're the exception that proves the rule.

From time to time, Darwinism needs a little help. An accelerant. Like the good people who spontaneously take themselves out of the equation.

Sometimes, people who would - given their incompatibility with survival - be troubling us no more, seem to be surviving quite handily, since their stated attitudes are not matched by their behaviours. They say one thing, but do another, and so despite expressing opinions that seem quite compatible with extinction, they remain frustratingly existent.

This apparent conundrum is why I am in violent agreement with a recent proposal from a liberal democrat to put a "tested on animals" label on all drugs that have, as part of their development or approval, been tested on animals.

The BBC provides us with a range of opinions, for example the liberal democrat in question thinks this would counter the claims of animal protesters, and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection claims this would only confuse people and would prove nothing.

Hang on.

So the BUAV is against labelling drugs as "tested on animals"?

Seeing as I disagree with almost everything and anything animal rights campaigners tend to come up with, this sounds like a good idea already. But it does appear a little confusing.

In the last few years, campaigners have managed to make coffee sellers put warnings like "Danger - hot beverage" on the side of coffee mugs, others are seeking to force McDonalds to write "Danger - food makes you fat" or something on the packaging around burgers. If it's genetically modified, the anti-GM crowd wants, "Danger - will turn you into a mutant soy bean" engraved on every item. But if it's tested on animals, then the anti-animal-testing wonks are against marking that on the box. Why on earth could that be?

Because it could confuse people??

If you look at the BUAV's website they have slogans like "Go Cruelty Free". Surely it would help to know what was tested and what wasn't to support non-animal-tested drugs? All the information would do is allow individuals to make a more informed choice. After all, what's confusing about the words "tested on animals"? Seems pretty clear to me.

That's the problem they're facing. Clarity.

If it becomes clear that most of the drugs that will alleviate pain for a number of different illnesses were developed through animal testing, or made use of animals in the safety testing stage of the drug's development, then animal rights campaigners might find themselves in a tricky situation. Suffer your symptoms - possibly for the very long term - or take the drugs and become a hypocrite. In some cases, it might be a question of allowing oneself to die, or living a hypocrite.

The truth is that it wouldn't come to that. If people realised just how key animals have been to the development of so many drugs, the support for animal rights groups would wane quite rapidly among the less radical supporters. It's easy to support something when you can remain comfortably ignorant of the cost, and you can carry on buying almost anything in the shops, safe in the knowledge that if it was tested on animals, there was no way you could know.

I'm all for transparency, and I think that more information is a good thing. If we can handle complex dietary information on every packet of food (and the relevant authorities think that we can) then we should be able to handle a "has been tested on animals" label on the side of a packet of pills.

Alistair Currie, campaigns director for BUAV, said he believed the public should be better informed, but argued that labelling medicines "tested on animals" would just be a statement of fact.
 
"I think that would be misleading to the public as all medicines are tested on animals - that does not mean they have to be tested on animals," he said.
 
"It is just propaganda for animal testing - it's not helping the public to understand the issue better.
 
"It may make people feel 'oh, that means we have to have animal testing', which we don't."

Well, that's not a bad point, but it would also provide a whopping incentive for pharmaceutical companies to start finding alternative ways of testing drugs - since it would allow them to distinguish their drug through the absence of that negative attribute.

Fundamentally, more information remains a good thing, and just because Mr. Currie doesn't like the interpretation people might put on that information doesn't mean it should be kept from them. You can't want transparency where it suits you, but not where it might work against you.

There's another benefit - a huge one as far as I'm concerned.

I'm against the gradual creep in the definition of an illness. An ache or pain that, a few years ago, would have been considered a normal part of being alive, is now treated as an affliction requiring medication. This is the fault of drugs companies forever seeking to create new markets for themselves.

The truth is I would probably think twice if I saw a packet of medicine with "tested on animals" written on it. I would consider whether I really need to buy it, or whether the symptoms I'm feeling will go away on their own, sooner or later. If I felt like I needed the drugs, I would still buy them, but it would do a lot to reduce the market for unnecessary testing on animals, because it would do away with drugs that aren't really needed that fall in that category.

Animal rights campaigners have pushed the pendulum too far, and are idiots if they think they won't suffer a swing in the opposite direction in the coming months and perhaps even years. But this idea, providing transparency and information to consumers, might go some way to restoring some judgement to the discussion. After all, economics is a profound form of democracy - every time you buy something, you are voting in favour of that product, and if you want people to vote against animal-tested drugs, you need to give them the information with which to do it.

Occasionally, in order to get what one wants, one needs to develop a massive blind spot with regard to the needs and wants of everyone else. Especially when getting what you want will cost everyone else dearly.

Such is the blind spot in the logic of the Herceptin campaigners.

While they would undoubtedly deny it for all they're worth, and it's probably something they've subconsciously avoided considering, their campaign will cost lives, not save them.

Only the lives lost will not be lost to breast cancer, so a victory in the fight against breast cancer will no doubt be claimed, advertised and celebrated.

Herceptin is a very expensive drug. There are reasons why the prices of drugs are set the way they are, and it's not to do with greed, it's to do with risk and the time-value of money. For every drug that gets anywhere in the development process, thousands of candidate molecules are discarded along the way. Millions are invested every year that lead to no discoveries, and the pharmaceutical companies take huge risks investing in dozens of development projects that never result in a saleable product.

When one drug does make it to market, it needs to be priced such that all of those failed attempts are covered by the revenues, as well as the costs of discovering, developing, testing, licensing, marketing and distributing this one specific drug. You're not paying for Herceptin, you're paying for every attempt to find a Herceptin-like drug, including all the ones that failed, because they're part of the cost of discovering the drug.

One of the many problems with Herceptin is that, statistically speaking, it isn't as great as the sensationalistic headline number seemed to indicate.

When the results of the Herceptin Adjuvant trial (Hera), a major international study on the use of Herceptin in early stage breast cancer, were announced, the audience of scientists gasped in astonishment.
 
What the trial data reported was that Herceptin could reduce the risk of recurrence in suitable patients by as much as 52%.
---- BBC News Website - Panorama article

It turns out that the statistic is really quite misleading, the real statistic is that 9.4% of women taking Herceptin found cancer returned, compared to 17.2% who did not have the drug. What this translates to, as any fool with a basic grasp of numeracy can figure out, is that if 100 women who are receptive to Herceptin take the drug, 7.8% will survive that otherwise would have died. That's quite a contrast with a 52% headline figure. The clinical director of NICE estimated that you would have to treat 18 people to save a life. Even people associated to the initial trials have expressed reservations about the way the data were presented

Even the lead investigator in the trials, Prof Ian Smith, according to a recent BBC Panorama programme, concedes that on the key question of survival, the proven benefit of the drug is currently only marginal.
'---- The Guardian, April 13th 2006

According to cancer specialists, the cost of providing treatment to the 5000 women diagnosed each year with early breast cancer would be £109M. That works out at £392,000 per life saved.

Does that offend? The fact that you can quote a cost per life saved?

If so, grow up.

The indignant (read ignorant) fools who mount high horses whenever someone considers the cost of saving a life need to consider what they will do the day their 9-year old daugher contracts Leukemia. The doctor will walk in and say, "I'm sorry, there's no money left to pay for the bone marrow transplant for your daughter because it's all been spent on the one-in-18 chance that the lady with breast cancer next door might be saved by Herceptin." Without unlimited resources, everything is about tradeoffs and the allocation of what resources we have - that unpalatable but absolutely essential job is what NICE is here for.

The problem with drugs like Herceptin is that they're highly specialised. They can only be used to treat a very specific form of cancer. That means that there are very few patients that can benefit from the treatment - 5,000 a year is not a big number when you spent hundreds of millions developing a drug.

As more and more drugs are so carefully tailored to target a specific ailment, they too will suffer from a restricted potential market, and the prices will rise still further.

If every sick person could have their chances improved by 7.8% at this cost, and every sick person had an unassailable right to treatment with such a drug, the current financial problems faced by the national health service would be tiny in comparison to the incredible cost of paying for these drugs. There comes a point where, if you want the best chance, you have to accept that society and the taxes it collects simply cannot stretch that far, and you have to pay for it yourself.

The first comment on the Guardian article illustrates the state of ignorance that prevails:

Your article states "The annual bill for providing Herceptin to the 5,000 women diagnosed each year with early stage breast cancer susceptible to it would come to £109m, according to estimates by cancer specialists. By your estimates about 280 of these women would die of breast cancer without the treatment, yet you would deny them treatment. Is life that cheap in the UK?

That's a cost of £389,285 ($735,849) per life saved.

No, life isn't cheap - that's the bloody problem.

We're suffering from a drought in the UK, or so we're told.

Advertisements are appearing in which we are told that it's wetter in southern Europe than it is in England.

The green movement is writhing in post-orgasmic i-told-you-so bliss, making the obvious and completely unwarranted link between global warming and the fact that the UK is dry.

For the record, it's not bloody dry. It drizzles constantly here. When there isn't a light smog-laden patter of acid rain, there's the impending arrival of a grey, smog-laden raincloud. The UK gets the worst of both - a grim and miserable Winter and Autumn, followed by months of awfully-written press articles about how we're all going to die of thirst unless everyone stops washing for the entire summer.

The recent water "crisis" has led to renewed calls for water meters in every home. In the UK, you see, water is sold to you on a subscription basis - you pay your annual charge, and you can use as much as you want. The British are as averse to having this system changed as they are to the introduction of ID cards (don't get me started).

In a grand example of how the prevailing system becomes a "right" in the eyes of those that benefit from it, consumers of the world's most essential resource rise up in arms at the thought that their consumption of it should be measured, and that they should perhaps pay for what they consume.

This looks awfully like a tacit admission that most people believe they consume more than their fair share. I've yet to see a Brit turn down a good deal, and if they believed they consumed less than their fair share, they'd be screaming blue murder because they were effectively being billed more than their share of consumption.

There's a term in economics for people who exploit systems that must be paid for centrally by taking more than their share of the resulting good - they're called free riders - in the sense that someone who uses a transport system without paying is being subsidised by everyone else on the transport system who actually ponied up the cash.

There's some interesting psychology surrounding free riders. It's a form of game theory.

Imagine a world where there was no enforcement ensuring that everyone paid for public transport. You were expected to pay, but there was no barrier or guard checking that you did. Assuming that on day one, everyone paid, what would happen as time passed? The less honest among us would stop paying within a day. Soon thereafter, a few others would follow. Then, as a shrinking proportion realised that they were actually paying everyone else's travel for them, they too would stop paying on the grounds that this was unfair. Before you know it, there would be no transport system because it would be bankrupt.

That's the free rider problem - while everyone in isolation thinks that the damage they do to the system is minor (and it is), their behaviour, extrapolated to the entire population, breaks the system. Free riding is also inherently unfair.

Transpose this argument to water, and what do you get? Spiralling demand for water since the amount you use is not linked to the cost you pay, no incentive to economise, and steadily increasing prices as the system struggles to cope. A drought on an island best known for its bad weather, and a bunch of previously stiff upper lips quivering in anticipation of actually being billed for what they use.

It's usually at this point that some imbecile brings in the point about water leakages from the system.

Emotionally, this is a powerful argument. Logically, it's completely irrelevant. The fact that there are leakages from the pipelines cannot (as far as I can tell) be logically linked to an argument not to pay for what you consume.

While there is little doubt that everything must be done to limit the loss of water from the system due to leakages, it's one hell of a leap to go from "The system leaks water" to "Therefore I must be allowed to consume as much as I like without monitoring". To those who reply, "But I use water responsibly, I just don't want to be measured doing it", I refer you to the bit on free riders above.

I for one am happy to have my water usage monitored. It would be a very elegant gesture if, in accepting to fit a water metre to my property, my water supply company were to offer me an incentive such as financial assistance in installing a more economical flushing system in the toilet, since mine dates from long ago and wastes water chronically. But that incentive is no prerequisite.

There are people pouring cubic metres of water over their cars to keep them shiny on the grounds that they "pay for it". Until they per per cubic metre, they're not paying for it - everyone else is.

People in London live in complete isolation from one-another. In a rush-hour underground carriage, bodies pressed against each other in the crush of a Central line commute, people couldn't be further apart.

On the tube last weekend, I saw a group of 3 get on together, and look for free seats such that they would be able to sit next to one-another. There were plenty of free seats, but nowhere were there three seats together. They ended up standing.

The reason they couldn't find 3 seats together was that all the people in the carriage had left an empty seat between them, spacing themselves out to maximise the emptiness around them. Everyone looked up when the group entered the carriage, everyone saw them looking around for seats together, and nobody offered to move.

Their personal exclusion zones were too important to sacrifice.

It's a strange phenomenon that can cause individuals - who under different circumstances might get along famously - to conscientously ignore each other for 15 minutes at a time while standing less than a foot apart in a confined space.

Try to catch someone's eye, and you're more likely to make them feel threatened or uncomfortable than anything else. Some take refuge behind books so as to avoid accidentally making contact with someone. Given that we have no personal physical space, a psychological space is created, within which no-one may enter, and which must be safeguarded by ignoring any attempt to make contact.

Having said that, I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people wish they weren't so completely isolated - it wears you down to be so surrounded by people and so completely alone. It brings to mind a quote from a film, that we Crash into each other just to feel something.

What does it take to thaw this societal hangup?

Briefly, after the attacks on the 7th July, people on the tube made eye contact. It was a weird time, but it felt as though the attacks had brought everyone together in some way. My theory is that they had given everyone the excuse they needed to make a connection, however frail and transitory, with the crowds around them, and for a moment the nameless mass of heaving bodies on the underground was actually made up of individuals - people acknowledged each other. It is a terrible shame that it faded, and a testament to how little the attacks really changed, and how much it takes to dent our self-imposed isolation.

There's a tribe in Africa who greet each other with their names, and the phrase, "I see you." This is a remarkable cultural feature. It represents a complete acknowledgement that there is another person here, and that you recognise them as an individual. It is the opposite of our own culture, where our interactions with other people treats them more like two-dimensional cardboard cutouts than real individuals.

Is there in that difference a testimony to something we've lost in the name of progress? Is it something we can recapture without sacrificing the progress itself? Is it something that can be done by individuals, acting alone? If so, how does my behaviour on the tube have to change in order for me to no longer be part of the problem? If you smile at a stranger, you do run the risk of making them uncomfortable, but perhaps that's their problem, and not something that should be allowed to make you less open to others.

So make an effort, and make eye contact with someone on the bus or tube, then smile at them, and don't judge their reaction, just do it for yourself.

I went for a run today. And yesterday.

My preferred route is anti-clockwise around Hyde Park, starting at the south-western corner, near High Street Kensington, and then circling around the perimiter to the extent the various paths and tracks allow it. I follow the same route as the Serpentine Running Club, which is how I know that it's 4.3 miles, or 6.9 kilometers.

I start out by stretching against the black metal railings at the very corner of the park. I also spend stupid amounts of time trying to make sure that my iPod mini (who would have thought they'd become out-of-date so damn fast?) is securely attached to my left arm, and isn't going to be a pain all the way around the park.

Then I spend a few moments worrying about what will happen if my car key somehow falls out of my pocket as I run.

I have a heart rate monitor. it's uncomfortable, and the strap sometimes slips as I run. I make sure that's all attached. Then I start running along the southern edge of the park. Past the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial, and this early into the run, I'm still in fairly good shape.

This is good because around here, you have to get out of the way of large numbers of tourists who insist on walking backwards while trying to get the memorial to fit in their camera's viewfinder. This requires lightning reflexes.

Typically, today, I jump out of the way of a fast-retreating japanese fellow by stepping onto the road, 10 yards away from where a bunch of people who are trying inline skating for the first time in their lives are, as a group, teetering on the brink of disaster. The Japanese fellow's girlfriend yells something unintelligible to warn him that I'm there, which causes the skaters to all look up. The first one then loses her balance, grabbing onto the second's shirt in a reflexive, but ultimately doomed attempt, to save her bum from impacting with the concrete. Newbie number two throws his knees together to control his skates - a genetically programmed reflex dating back to prehistoric times without inline skates - and promptly slides backwards into the rest of the group, who go down like dominoes.

Three minutes into my run and I've already caused a multi-innocent-bystander pile-up. I think, "Don't look at me, I'm just running here". Only I think it so incredibly clearly that I hear my own voice in my ears, even over "Everybody's Gone to War" by Nerina Pallotblaring through the earpieces - a song which, given the multiple friendlies writhing on the floor in a tangle of malcoordinated flesh, seems eerily appropriate at the time.

I check my heart rate monitor, and clearly the incident has affected me subconsicously, since it's blinking at me like I'm about to die. Only 4.1 miles left to go.

I cross the road that leads into the park, and cross the horse-riding track towards the tennis club. A horse with a seriously challenged digestive tract has passed nearby recently, and the downside of increased lung capacity becomes immediately apparent. A sudden burst of speed and deep gasping breaths seem to do the trick, and I settle into the run along South Carriage Drive.

This area is usually quite deserted, since it's not the nicest part of the park and the trees cut out almost all of the sunlight, so I'm expecting there to be no problem getting my thoughts back in order after the international incident at the memorial. Only I just had to dodge around a strange-looking fellow in a bowler hat. I check my heart rate in a panic, figuring my oxygen-starved brain is sending out ridiculous signals in the hope I'll stop the torture.

But my heart's fine, and look! There's another one.

My God, they're everywhere. Bowler hats... and they're in my way.

I end up running on the grass, because the swankily-dressed weirdoes don't go there, and the trees are easier to dodge than the fancy-dress party. A little further along, all is explained. Sort of. There's a tall building attached to the Hyde Park Barracks, where the local troops are housed. There's clearly some sort of function on, and when you're in the army and you're not wearing fatigues, you wear a bowler hat. Or something. Anyway, reassured that I remain as sane as when I started the run, I continue.

There's a girl running on the parallel path to my left. I'm running ever so slightly faster than her, but she's on the inside track, so to speak, and will have less distance to go as the runs around the park. "Not to worry, you're not competitive, it makes no difference". There's a word for people that hear voices.

I seem to be catching up to her much faster now. I haven't consciously increased my speed, but the calmly blinking display on my watch has picked up an increase in heart rate. Well - she is quite pretty, I'm sure it's nothing to do with the longer strides I now seem to be taking.

At the southeastern corner of the park, I take the outside track, and she disappears up a path that leads towards the centre of the park - oh well. All is well with the world, no large groups of people blocking the path, no random toddlers hell bent on getting under my feet. A path joins up to mine a few hundred yards ahead, and as I approach it, that girl appears on it and ends up running in front of me. Mustn't push myself too hard - it'll only give me blisters.

We come up to speakers corner - where nutters share their ideas, and a huge throng of people is standing there taking pictures of the crazy guy preaching about Jesus. There's clearly no way through, so I go around. Somehow, the girl, who I have now overtaken, runs straight into the crowd, and straight out the other side, totally without breaking her stride. I've taken a huge detour and am once again a significant distance behind her. I'm beginning to want her to not be there, she's distracting me from my run.

I'm determined not to run faster just to overtake her, but then a bundle of muscle with a mouth and lots of teeth comes bounding out of the undergrowth to my right, making noises like it's killiing something, and the next thing you know, I'm in front of her again.

The owner of the death machine comes out from behind some trees and shouts, "Daisy, come back here, Daisy!".

Daisy?

That thing sharpened it's teeth at night, I'm sure of it, and she calls it Daisy!

Along the top of the park, there's too many people, and I find myself zig-zagging between infants, parents, dogs, prams, and a squirrel who - for some strange reason - didn't see me coming until I was almost of top of him.

It's a bloody conspiracy if you ask me.

I'm beginning to get blisters. I can feel the heat building up just behind the ball of my foot, and it's unpleasant. It'll start stinging soon. This is because I ran yesterday, and my body is punishing me.

I finally get to the northwestern corner of the park, and turn left where you can see all the coaches behind a wall. I make my way around the inconveniently placed Kensington Palace, and that voice starts up again.

"You've not pushed yourself hard enough".

"You're finding the finish too easy".

"If you had guts, you'd finish stong, and make sure you tested your limits".

For some reason, my sanity completely abandons me, and I find myself sprinting the last 800 metres, as I pass in front of the statue of Victoria, take a sharp right around a couple of American tourists and hurtle down the slope past the Kensington Palace gate. There's a dog in the way and kids to either side, so I vault over the dog as though I still had the energy for antics like that, and feel most of the skin on the left-foot-blister bid adieu to this world forever. A sharp left a few yards further on, and my right foot is similarly abandoned.

At this point, I'm thinking really stupid things like, "I must get to the end of the run before this song ends" (it's "Love Generation" by Bob Sinclair), or "I must pass that bench before that dog catches that frisbee" (I kid you not).

Finally, a right turn down the path I came up when I first started, and both hands on the railings against which I stretched about half an hour ago. Sweaty, blistered, and strangely elated.

Why?

David Blaine's underwater stunt in New York is generating a lot of commentary and blog entries.

Every so often, someone does something that brings the worst in people out of the woodwork, and in this case, everyone appears to have something to say. From "What's the point" to "you're nothing but an publicity-whore", people have let rip, and in so doing, brought out an aspect of the ugly underbelly of modern society.

I'm more interested in the societal phenomenon that brings people to make such ugly comments, but before I get there, here's my humble opinion on what David Blaine is doing, because the venom people so enjoy spitting in his direction deserves a response.

On whether it's for real
I for one believe that he's absolutely geniune about going underwater for a week - he's actually gone to great lengths to ensure that it's auditable, to the point of staying in a glass bubble in a public place for the entire duration of the exercise. If that weren't enough, recent stories regarding his need for medical treatment lend credibility to the story. There's little point in trying to argue with those who choose to disbelieve, as it is always possible to cast doubt if one chooses to be a sceptic. He could have an army of external auditors watching him night and day, and naysayers would still argue that some trick was at work, allowing him to rest outside of the water. They have chosen to disbelieve, bandying the word illusionist around as though that were all the proof they needed, and no amount of evidence will be sufficient to convince them.

On why it's cool
A man saws a cow in half, pickles it and sells it as art. Another puts timers on lights in an empty room and receives a prize. A woman puts her unmade bed on show and judges use words like "masterpiece". If you're looking for pointless, there's plenty of it around, and most of it far less interesting than what's going on at the Lincoln Centre in New York. From the comfort of their nine-to-five world, a gaggle of hypocrites point fingers and claim that his attempt, whether real or not, changes nothing, achieves nothing, or does nothing for the developing world. They do this while standing in a train carriage, reading the morning newspaper on their way to work for the hundredth week in a row. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I would rather live in a world with a hundred David Blaines performing weird stunts in major cities and interesting locations across the globe than a world where we all toe the line and keep our heads below whatever metaphorical parapet the dull cohorts are shooting over today. I take issue with the daily grind and with normality in it's morale-sapping miserable conformity, and while I have no desire to immerse myself in water for seven days while showing off my tattoos to the world, or getting buried alive for too many hours, I'm glad I live in a world where someone somewhere is oddball enough to play at that.

On envy
Which leads me to my third point, and nicely segues into the real reason I'm writing this : When someone does something as unusual as this, people watch. They may bitch, and they may criticise, but they do it while watching. Why?

Because it throws into sharp contrast the monotony we all deal with every day. It's something different, and that's a great reason to do it, and to look at him doing it, all on its own. I don't want to do the things he does, but I envy the fact that he really isn't trapped in the nine-to-five. I don't want the whole package, but in some ways, I do want to have what he has. Admittedly, this is a negative, because it's driven more by aversion to routine than by a positive search for something better, but I prefer variety to regularity, and I have regularity in most things : work that's weekly, the routine of commuting to and from work, a salary that's monthly, bi-annual performance reviews, Christmas, Easter, the onset of winter and the long wait for Spring. It repeats, and because there's a lack of variety (some might say, excitement), I resent it.

Don't get me wrong, I do a lot to break it up - I go sailing, I travel, I take holidays - but that's the problem, they're holidays - breaks from the routine, which I must eventually return to. You look at a guy doing something as oddball as immersing himself for a week in a glass bubble, and it gets you to thinking. Or it gets you resentful. So to those who say, "What's the point?", look to thyself: Why do you get up every day? To earn a living. Because you have to. Because that's what the contract says. Because it's what you're told to do. Because it's all you know. Because the routine runs your life.

What's interesting is the sheer volume of the vitriol that gets pointed at him.

His biggest "illusion" so far is that he's convinced himself he's an illusionist. A better word for him would be delusional. He's a joke.
  Randal S, Los Angeles

The level of advertising for this event barely scratched the surface compared to, say, the latest episode of god-knows-what on your local TV channels, he's made people aware of what he's doing, he's made himself a piece of public performance art, and you can choose to go see him or not - to pay attention to him, or not. Throwing derogatory comments in his direction tells us more about the people doing the throwing than the man who appears to have a thick skin in more ways than one.

If I have one criticism, it's that I'm allergic to the sort of hyped-up promotional language used in such events, such as "Failure means a drowning death!!", but that's a matter of style, and I suppose it's almost a tribute to Houdini, given that it echoes the promotional tone of his work, and of the circus acts of the time. It certainly isn't sufficient to create any loathing, although it puts me off watching any television specials as I just cringe when I hear it.

I cannot understand why people are so venomously critical of this, and I guess that while I'm not sure what that says about me, I think I like it.