The Express talk scrap about Europe
It was hard to walk past a news stand today without doubling over, either from fear or hilarity depending on whether you’re one of the Express’ Righteous Crusaders to Get Britain Out Of The EU Right Now or someone that at least makes an effort to form an opinion. For the Express, it did scream:
Don’t worry though, the body text was far more measured:
The plan could create a modern-day equivalent of the European emperor envisaged by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.
Yes, that’s right. The EU is at risk of transforming from a sometimes-ineffective but well-meaning bureaucratic nightmare quite literally into a brutal religious dictatorship in which no-one can see because all lighting was banned by Brussels. And what’s the plan, you ask? Why, nothing less than a devious scheme to merge the presidencies of the European Council and the European Commission!
It’s unclear why this would result in the scrapping of Britain (or indeed what it means to ‘scrap’ a country anyway), but perhaps the author of this exclusive exposé was badly burned when he got a dual-fuel deal on his utilities and some bright spark delivered his gas and electricity through the same pipe.
Regardless, at least we learn—albeit with a citation most definitely needed—that
The two senior EU bureaucrats, Mr Barroso and Mr Van Rompuy, are locked in a bitter power struggle to determine who is the true big cheese or ‘grand fromage’ in Europe.
Thank God that they want to be the grand fromage and not the große Käse, or the Express’ typewriter (which has had all filthy, foreign diacritics removed) would’ve been unable to cope.
In reality, there may be a few guys in Europe who have had a little blue-sky thinking session and wondered whether rationalising the mad European institutional labyrinth with a single big Président might be a good place to start. That’s it. If they were genuinely challenging the existence of Britain, we’d be out of Europe faster than a hedge fund’s capital gains.
There are three ways you can take this story: you could be a sneery, sad newshound who finds this hilarious; a Machiavellian newshound who thinks we should get out of Europe and thus sees this as a slightly rancid means to an end; or, you could be an unfortunate Express reader, for whom this is news, taken as a fact as cold and hard as fromage cheddar dans le réfrigérateur.
How are stories like this allowed to be published? If anyone buys the Express other than purely ironically, and we have to assume they do, this kind of crap is dangerous. There are good, interesting reasons to be involved in, or wary of, various aspects of the European project, but out-and-out factless antipathy doesn’t help anyone, except possibly the Express’ proprietors.
In fact, their willingness to treat their readers with such disdain is rather tasteless. Like cottage cheese. Which, unhelpfully for sarcastic sub-editors on a deadline, translates to blanc à la faisselle. But, like the EU, it requires more than a GCSE in French and some hysterical newspaper-stoked fear to understand.
It was hard to walk past a news stand today without doubling over, either from fear or hilarity depending on whether you’re one of the Express’ Righteous Crusaders to Get Britain Out Of The EU Right Now or someone that at least makes an effort to form an opinion. For the Express, it did scream:
Don’t worry though, the body text was far more measured:
The plan could create a modern-day equivalent of the European emperor envisaged by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.
Yes, that’s right. The EU is at risk of transforming from a sometimes-ineffective but well-meaning bureaucratic nightmare quite literally into a brutal religious dictatorship in which no-one can see because all lighting was banned by Brussels. And what’s the plan, you ask? Why, nothing less than a devious scheme to merge the presidencies of the European Council and the European Commission!
It’s unclear why this would result in the scrapping of Britain (or indeed what it means to ‘scrap’ a country anyway), but perhaps the author of this exclusive exposé was badly burned when he got a dual-fuel deal on his utilities and some bright spark delivered his gas and electricity through the same pipe.
Regardless, at least we learn—albeit with a citation most definitely needed—that
The two senior EU bureaucrats, Mr Barroso and Mr Van Rompuy, are locked in a bitter power struggle to determine who is the true big cheese or ‘grand fromage’ in Europe.
Thank God that they want to be the grand fromage and not the große Käse, or the Express’ typewriter (which has had all filthy, foreign diacritics removed) would’ve been unable to cope.
In reality, there may be a few guys in Europe who have had a little blue-sky thinking session and wondered whether rationalising the mad European institutional labyrinth with a single big Président might be a good place to start. That’s it. If they were genuinely challenging the existence of Britain, we’d be out of Europe faster than a hedge fund’s capital gains.
There are three ways you can take this story: you could be a sneery, sad newshound who finds this hilarious; a Machiavellian newshound who thinks we should get out of Europe and thus sees this as a slightly rancid means to an end; or, you could be an unfortunate Express reader, for whom this is news, taken as a fact as cold and hard as fromage cheddar dans le réfrigérateur.
How are stories like this allowed to be published? If anyone buys the Express other than purely ironically, and we have to assume they do, this kind of crap is dangerous. There are good, interesting reasons to be involved in, or wary of, various aspects of the European project, but out-and-out factless antipathy doesn’t help anyone, except possibly the Express’ proprietors.
In fact, their willingness to treat their readers with such disdain is rather tasteless. Like cottage cheese. Which, unhelpfully for sarcastic sub-editors on a deadline, translates to blanc à la faisselle. But, like the EU, it requires more than a GCSE in French and some hysterical newspaper-stoked fear to understand.
There’s Norway that’s relevant
The tragic and untimely death of swimmer Alexander Dale Oen made the BBC News front page today. Over to Auntie:
Emergency services arrived at the scene within minutes but were unable to revive him.
Dale Oen won gold in the 100 m breaststroke at the World Championships in Shanghai in July 2011.
His triumph came just days after the attack in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik which killed 77 people.
Sorry, what? One sentence this guy is swimming very fast, the next sentence (or, equivalently, paragraph on the Beeb), we’re being reminded that his death pales into insignificance next to a massacre which took place in his homeland, with eerie temporal proximity to his win. Wait, did I say ‘eerie’? Two events happening not-even-simultaneously? One of which was a very competent swimmer doing very well at swimming? The probabilities boggle the mind. At least they do if you’re a BBC News editor, apparently.
Even if it were a genuinely noteworthy coincidence—which it isn’t—it might not be worth noting. Does it contextualise Norway to remind us of a racist with a gun fixation and a catalogue of delusions?
‘Oh, that Norway. I got a bit confused when you said “Norway”, because I was thinking about Congo, but now you’ve reminded me of Anders Behring Breivik—can we mention his name again? It’s way more memorable than “Norway”—Anders Behring Breivik, mighty Scandinavian anti-hero, I now understand which Norway you were talking about. But I don’t want to go to that Norway. It sounds dangerous to me. I heard about some swimmer or other. He wasn’t called Anders Behring Breivik. But he was from Congo too, and he died.’
Is the essence of Norwegianity really a blond-haired, blue-eyed, pathetic massacring shit? Isn’t that what Breivik himself thinks? Oh dear God, what have we become?
The tragic and untimely death of swimmer Alexander Dale Oen made the BBC News front page today. Over to Auntie:
Emergency services arrived at the scene within minutes but were unable to revive him.
Dale Oen won gold in the 100 m breaststroke at the World Championships in Shanghai in July 2011.
His triumph came just days after the attack in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik which killed 77 people.
Sorry, what? One sentence this guy is swimming very fast, the next sentence (or, equivalently, paragraph on the Beeb), we’re being reminded that his death pales into insignificance next to a massacre which took place in his homeland, with eerie temporal proximity to his win. Wait, did I say ‘eerie’? Two events happening not-even-simultaneously? One of which was a very competent swimmer doing very well at swimming? The probabilities boggle the mind. At least they do if you’re a BBC News editor, apparently.
Even if it were a genuinely noteworthy coincidence—which it isn’t—it might not be worth noting. Does it contextualise Norway to remind us of a racist with a gun fixation and a catalogue of delusions?
‘Oh, that Norway. I got a bit confused when you said “Norway”, because I was thinking about Congo, but now you’ve reminded me of Anders Behring Breivik—can we mention his name again? It’s way more memorable than “Norway”—Anders Behring Breivik, mighty Scandinavian anti-hero, I now understand which Norway you were talking about. But I don’t want to go to that Norway. It sounds dangerous to me. I heard about some swimmer or other. He wasn’t called Anders Behring Breivik. But he was from Congo too, and he died.’
Is the essence of Norwegianity really a blond-haired, blue-eyed, pathetic massacring shit? Isn’t that what Breivik himself thinks? Oh dear God, what have we become?
Daily Mail Bricks itself in
To those lucky enough not to have been following this story since its bitter beginnings, Samantha Brick is a woman. She wrote an article for the Daily Mail on Tuesday, complaining that other women hate her because she’s too beautiful. The utter irrelevance of the piece, the galling arrogance of the idea, and Ms Brick’s failure to meet the standards of ‘beauty’ for many readers was a red rag to a platoon of bulls. The page was inundated with comments, and thus was born a temporary mini-phenomenon for both traditional and social media.
Now, the ante just keeps getting upped:
The self-parody alert apparently hasn’t gone off at Daily Mail HQ. Or maybe it has, and someone pulled the wires out and stamped on it a few times because the sound it made was just too beautiful for human ears. Even seasoned press disparagers are watching the continued apparently-uncontrolled-but-possibly-self-aware tailspin of the Samantha Brick non-story with a kind of pinch-nosed amusement so, apart from the fact that we’ve not linked to the story directly, they’ve won. The Daily Mail have found the winning formula.
They’ve created a totally bizarre perpetual motion machine of a story that runs entirely on its own perceived notoriety, regardless of the number of meta- prefixes required to explain the situation. I might be wrong, but I think we’ve become meta-meta-meta-interested, in that the most interesting aspect is that meta-meta-interested parties (who recognise the cheap ad-revenue-maximising strategy being employed) still go back for more. If that interests you, it’s time to get a job in a philosophy department. Or at the Guardian.
The Daily Mail is collapsing into an event horizon of navel-gazing recursive reporting which threatens to engulf Twitter, Fleet Street and, shortly, the entire western spiral arm of the galaxy.
And, when half of the Milky Way is torn asunder as an indirect result of them, I think we’d all be justified in hating Samantha Brick for her looks.
To those lucky enough not to have been following this story since its bitter beginnings, Samantha Brick is a woman. She wrote an article for the Daily Mail on Tuesday, complaining that other women hate her because she’s too beautiful. The utter irrelevance of the piece, the galling arrogance of the idea, and Ms Brick’s failure to meet the standards of ‘beauty’ for many readers was a red rag to a platoon of bulls. The page was inundated with comments, and thus was born a temporary mini-phenomenon for both traditional and social media.
Now, the ante just keeps getting upped:
The self-parody alert apparently hasn’t gone off at Daily Mail HQ. Or maybe it has, and someone pulled the wires out and stamped on it a few times because the sound it made was just too beautiful for human ears. Even seasoned press disparagers are watching the continued apparently-uncontrolled-but-possibly-self-aware tailspin of the Samantha Brick non-story with a kind of pinch-nosed amusement so, apart from the fact that we’ve not linked to the story directly, they’ve won. The Daily Mail have found the winning formula.
They’ve created a totally bizarre perpetual motion machine of a story that runs entirely on its own perceived notoriety, regardless of the number of meta- prefixes required to explain the situation. I might be wrong, but I think we’ve become meta-meta-meta-interested, in that the most interesting aspect is that meta-meta-interested parties (who recognise the cheap ad-revenue-maximising strategy being employed) still go back for more. If that interests you, it’s time to get a job in a philosophy department. Or at the Guardian.
The Daily Mail is collapsing into an event horizon of navel-gazing recursive reporting which threatens to engulf Twitter, Fleet Street and, shortly, the entire western spiral arm of the galaxy.
And, when half of the Milky Way is torn asunder as an indirect result of them, I think we’d all be justified in hating Samantha Brick for her looks.
Cashogram UK 1.0
PDF version / Image / Source data
We’ve just launched the first iteration of a new project: the Cashogram! Ever wondered how spending on hospitals compares to holidays, or how porn compares to MPs’ expenses?*
Whether or not you have, you’ll probably enjoy the Cashogram: UK personal and government spending in pounds per person per year. Check out the diagram, and a few thoughts we wrote down, at headlinesuperheroes.co.uk/cashogram.
* Probably not in the case of Jacqui Smith and her husband.
Read full article »PDF version / Image / Source data
We’ve just launched the first iteration of a new project: the Cashogram! Ever wondered how spending on hospitals compares to holidays, or how porn compares to MPs’ expenses?*
Whether or not you have, you’ll probably enjoy the Cashogram: UK personal and government spending in pounds per person per year. Check out the diagram, and a few thoughts we wrote down, at headlinesuperheroes.co.uk/cashogram.
* Probably not in the case of Jacqui Smith and her husband.
Anti-terror paranoia: give us arrest
The Metropolitan Police this week launched the ‘It’s probably nothing, but…’ campaign. Comprising adverts in ‘local and ethnic minority press’, it reminds people that it’s your civic duty to assume that a beardy man doing his bins at an unusual hour is planning to blow up Parliament. Your civic duty, not a sign of advanced paranoia. Because, as Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Osborne said:
Terrorists live among us. We want you to tell us about anyone or anything you see which is out of place in your normal day to day lives.
Terrorists live among us. They mix up the cutlery in our drawers. They twist cables around each other in the night. That jumper you lost on the walk home from Tesco’s? Terrorists. There’s one hiding under your bed, next to the skeleton of a commie that McCarthy failed to purge.
The number of people killed in terrorist atrocities in the UK in the last 6 years, 7 months, and 7 days is zero. This leaves a couple of possibilities:
- Highly effective policing—which, incidentally, seems to be getting on fine with the current paltry level of information from the public—is catching all the would-be bombers. This fact is going largely unpublicised, because to tell people about successfully-thwarted plots would be a risk to national security, and is unlikely to be a good incentive for those currently wondering whether to report vaguely suspicious activity to the cops.
- There are no terrorists.
The fact that Britain’s Top Anti-Terror Cops have resorted to a parodically weak-sloganed campaign like this surely torpedoes hypothesis #1. And the conspicuous absence of atrocities, combined with the ease of killing people if you really want to means that, if #2 is slightly wrong, those few terrorists who do exist must be pretty dim, unimaginative losers more deserving of inclusion on You’ve Been Framed than the 10 O’Clock News. Long may it stay that way.
Not wishing to chase shadows like some kind of over-imaginative police ‘informant’, we concede that it’s unlikely these cack-handed ads are part of a populous-subjugating, power-grab cop-conspiracy. It’s probably nothing but another scaremongering police campaign.
The Metropolitan Police this week launched the ‘It’s probably nothing, but…’ campaign. Comprising adverts in ‘local and ethnic minority press’, it reminds people that it’s your civic duty to assume that a beardy man doing his bins at an unusual hour is planning to blow up Parliament. Your civic duty, not a sign of advanced paranoia. Because, as Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Osborne said:
Terrorists live among us. We want you to tell us about anyone or anything you see which is out of place in your normal day to day lives.
Terrorists live among us. They mix up the cutlery in our drawers. They twist cables around each other in the night. That jumper you lost on the walk home from Tesco’s? Terrorists. There’s one hiding under your bed, next to the skeleton of a commie that McCarthy failed to purge.
The number of people killed in terrorist atrocities in the UK in the last 6 years, 7 months, and 7 days is zero. This leaves a couple of possibilities:
- Highly effective policing—which, incidentally, seems to be getting on fine with the current paltry level of information from the public—is catching all the would-be bombers. This fact is going largely unpublicised, because to tell people about successfully-thwarted plots would be a risk to national security, and is unlikely to be a good incentive for those currently wondering whether to report vaguely suspicious activity to the cops.
- There are no terrorists.
The fact that Britain’s Top Anti-Terror Cops have resorted to a parodically weak-sloganed campaign like this surely torpedoes hypothesis #1. And the conspicuous absence of atrocities, combined with the ease of killing people if you really want to means that, if #2 is slightly wrong, those few terrorists who do exist must be pretty dim, unimaginative losers more deserving of inclusion on You’ve Been Framed than the 10 O’Clock News. Long may it stay that way.
Not wishing to chase shadows like some kind of over-imaginative police ‘informant’, we concede that it’s unlikely these cack-handed ads are part of a populous-subjugating, power-grab cop-conspiracy. It’s probably nothing but another scaremongering police campaign.
No re-Morse
Oxford astrophysicist Professor Steve Rawlings was found dead on Wednesday. He was by all accounts an excellent academic, and I can vouch for the quality of his undergraduate lectures. Most importantly, my thoughts go out to his family, friends and the Oxford Physics community.
The tabloids’ thoughts, however, are nowhere to be seen (do they even have any?). I hate the prurient, half-baked insinuation flying around after a possibly-suspicious death, but sadly this one is close enough to home (I’m a physicist at Oxford University) that I have read some of it. I took the Telegraph’s hot-off-the-press reporting with an appropriate pinch of salt, revulsion and intrigue (the Beeb and Guardian being far too measured at this stage in proceedings to allow me to accrue any goss), but it’s The Sun which really took the biscuit, and pissed all over it like a US Marine. Murdoch’s red-top opens its sombre tribute to the great prof with
An Oxford University don has been found dead at a rival lecturer’s home after a suspected academic row.
A ‘rival’ lecturer? What does that even mean? Last time I checked, Oxford’s admittedly-unusual teaching system was not adversarial, and academics are notoriously benign. But, for those of us thickies for whom decoding nonsensical innuendo is too complicated, The Sun still delivers. Later in the article, it explains:
Prof Rawlings was based at St Peter’s College…in Oxford—setting of the Inspector Morse TV murders.
Oh, thanks The Sun, that’s really put this tragedy in a context I can relate to: it’s like a trite televised murder mystery! Now I understand. I guess a world of easy caricatures, cheap cultural shorthand and ‘rival academics’ who might kill one-another over differing interpretations of Bayes’ theorem is easier to write about than waiting for a police investigation to pan out in order to report actual facts.
Fuck you, The Sun.
And fuck you, The Daily Mail: they couldn’t even confine their self-satisfaction at having spotted the Morse connection to the article, and blurted it out in the headline:
Oxford don quizzed over the death of professor who was his best friend (with all the hallmarks of a Morse mystery)
Oh, so he’s his best friend now? I guess that does make some sense, given that they tell us
Professor Rawlings and Dr Sivia co-wrote a book titled Foundations of Science Mathematics…available for £13.99.
Sorry, what? Not content with merely ‘sickening’ and keen to rack up ‘bizarre’ to boot, The Mail’s remorseless search for not-even-circumstantial or just plain irrelevant non-evidence extended to seeking out some Amazon reviews for their co-written tome on maths. ‘It covers everything I need and will be useful to look back at maths I have done in the past, for future reference,’ explained a witness. I mean, student. Who read a book they wrote in 1999 and posted a review on the Internet. If that isn’t admissible evidence in our so-called justice system, I think we should probably abandon it right now and initiate universal Trial by Media in the Court of Public Opinion.
Every time a newspaper comes near something I know anything about, bullshit, inaccuracy and innuendo are thrown about as though salacious copy sells copies or something. The self-parodying, stereotype-laden stories in The Sun and The Mail lend the world a warm, simplistic familiarity, rather more like an episode of Inspector Morse than the diverse, messy world they claim to relate. Real life is far more interesting, and the real people in it far more complex than the column-filling caricatures in the tabloids. And one of those real people is now dead, and many whose lives he touched are now grieving. Have some fucking sympathy.
Rest in peace, Professor Rawlings.
Oxford astrophysicist Professor Steve Rawlings was found dead on Wednesday. He was by all accounts an excellent academic, and I can vouch for the quality of his undergraduate lectures. Most importantly, my thoughts go out to his family, friends and the Oxford Physics community.
The tabloids’ thoughts, however, are nowhere to be seen (do they even have any?). I hate the prurient, half-baked insinuation flying around after a possibly-suspicious death, but sadly this one is close enough to home (I’m a physicist at Oxford University) that I have read some of it. I took the Telegraph’s hot-off-the-press reporting with an appropriate pinch of salt, revulsion and intrigue (the Beeb and Guardian being far too measured at this stage in proceedings to allow me to accrue any goss), but it’s The Sun which really took the biscuit, and pissed all over it like a US Marine. Murdoch’s red-top opens its sombre tribute to the great prof with
An Oxford University don has been found dead at a rival lecturer’s home after a suspected academic row.
A ‘rival’ lecturer? What does that even mean? Last time I checked, Oxford’s admittedly-unusual teaching system was not adversarial, and academics are notoriously benign. But, for those of us thickies for whom decoding nonsensical innuendo is too complicated, The Sun still delivers. Later in the article, it explains:
Prof Rawlings was based at St Peter’s College…in Oxford—setting of the Inspector Morse TV murders.
Oh, thanks The Sun, that’s really put this tragedy in a context I can relate to: it’s like a trite televised murder mystery! Now I understand. I guess a world of easy caricatures, cheap cultural shorthand and ‘rival academics’ who might kill one-another over differing interpretations of Bayes’ theorem is easier to write about than waiting for a police investigation to pan out in order to report actual facts.
Fuck you, The Sun.
And fuck you, The Daily Mail: they couldn’t even confine their self-satisfaction at having spotted the Morse connection to the article, and blurted it out in the headline:
Oxford don quizzed over the death of professor who was his best friend (with all the hallmarks of a Morse mystery)
Oh, so he’s his best friend now? I guess that does make some sense, given that they tell us
Professor Rawlings and Dr Sivia co-wrote a book titled Foundations of Science Mathematics…available for £13.99.
Sorry, what? Not content with merely ‘sickening’ and keen to rack up ‘bizarre’ to boot, The Mail’s remorseless search for not-even-circumstantial or just plain irrelevant non-evidence extended to seeking out some Amazon reviews for their co-written tome on maths. ‘It covers everything I need and will be useful to look back at maths I have done in the past, for future reference,’ explained a witness. I mean, student. Who read a book they wrote in 1999 and posted a review on the Internet. If that isn’t admissible evidence in our so-called justice system, I think we should probably abandon it right now and initiate universal Trial by Media in the Court of Public Opinion.
Every time a newspaper comes near something I know anything about, bullshit, inaccuracy and innuendo are thrown about as though salacious copy sells copies or something. The self-parodying, stereotype-laden stories in The Sun and The Mail lend the world a warm, simplistic familiarity, rather more like an episode of Inspector Morse than the diverse, messy world they claim to relate. Real life is far more interesting, and the real people in it far more complex than the column-filling caricatures in the tabloids. And one of those real people is now dead, and many whose lives he touched are now grieving. Have some fucking sympathy.
Rest in peace, Professor Rawlings.
Crackers crackers exploding jokes
’Tis the season to deconstruct jollity and so, filled with Christmas spirits, may we present our selection of post-modern cracker jokes. Merry Winterlight from Headline Superheroes!
What did the cold penguin say to the other cold penguin?
Wark.
What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck?
A dead duck and no presents.
Why isn’t this joke funny?
Because this is the punchline.
What is longer than a snake and shorter than a mouse?
Fatal error, invalid integer operation.
Why is Santa good at chess?
Because pawn king rook knight. Bishop.
What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?
Implication.
What’s black and white and red all over?
A hypercube.
What did Mr and Mrs Christmas call their first child?
Malcolm.
What did the Daily Mail reader give her family for Christmas?
Unwelcome opinions.
What did Kim Jong-il give Colonel Gaddafi for Christmas?
Nothing. He was a Communist.
What did the man find in his Christmas cracker?
This joke.
What do you get if you eat all the Christmas decorations?
Sectioned.
How do they celebrate the birth of Christ at Hogwart’s?
They don’t. He’s fictional.
’Tis the season to deconstruct jollity and so, filled with Christmas spirits, may we present our selection of post-modern cracker jokes. Merry Winterlight from Headline Superheroes!
What did the cold penguin say to the other cold penguin?
Wark.What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck?
A dead duck and no presents.Why isn’t this joke funny?
Because this is the punchline.What is longer than a snake and shorter than a mouse?
Fatal error, invalid integer operation.Why is Santa good at chess?
Because pawn king rook knight. Bishop.What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?
Implication.What’s black and white and red all over?
A hypercube.What did Mr and Mrs Christmas call their first child?
Malcolm.What did the Daily Mail reader give her family for Christmas?
Unwelcome opinions.What did Kim Jong-il give Colonel Gaddafi for Christmas?
Nothing. He was a Communist.What did the man find in his Christmas cracker?
This joke.What do you get if you eat all the Christmas decorations?
Sectioned.How do they celebrate the birth of Christ at Hogwart’s?
They don’t. He’s fictional.
No woo-woo, just Cox
Buoyed by the success of the ‘Professor Brian Cox talking on a mountain’, ‘Professor Brian Cox talking in a desert’ and ‘Professor Brian Cox talking on a mountain whilst being filmed from a helicopter’ formats, the BBC decided to try out ‘Professor Brian Cox talking in a lecture theatre’ on Sunday night. Thus was created lamentable celebrity science circle-jerk A Night With The Stars, in which Cox talked to a room full of self-consciously air-headed celebrities about quantum mechanics, which is hard.
Anyone watching the show may well have been disappointed and shocked first and foremost by the dodgy extrapolation of Pauli’s exclusion principle. But also worrying was Cox’s mad closing line. Referring to the magnificent, mysterious majesty of quantum mechanics, he said:
There is no woo-woo. It is just beautiful physics. Thank you.
Do you think he knows that ‘woo-woo’ means vagina?
Do you think the script editors or production team, or even the person who types the autocue, know that ‘woo-woo’ means vagina? Or is he just, slightly crassly perhaps, highlighting the current gender gap in physics?
Every electron in the Universe is simultaneously wincing.
Buoyed by the success of the ‘Professor Brian Cox talking on a mountain’, ‘Professor Brian Cox talking in a desert’ and ‘Professor Brian Cox talking on a mountain whilst being filmed from a helicopter’ formats, the BBC decided to try out ‘Professor Brian Cox talking in a lecture theatre’ on Sunday night. Thus was created lamentable celebrity science circle-jerk A Night With The Stars, in which Cox talked to a room full of self-consciously air-headed celebrities about quantum mechanics, which is hard.
Anyone watching the show may well have been disappointed and shocked first and foremost by the dodgy extrapolation of Pauli’s exclusion principle. But also worrying was Cox’s mad closing line. Referring to the magnificent, mysterious majesty of quantum mechanics, he said:
There is no woo-woo. It is just beautiful physics. Thank you.
Do you think he knows that ‘woo-woo’ means vagina?
Do you think the script editors or production team, or even the person who types the autocue, know that ‘woo-woo’ means vagina? Or is he just, slightly crassly perhaps, highlighting the current gender gap in physics?
Every electron in the Universe is simultaneously wincing.
Cherry peaking
The Beeb have produced a delightful graphic showing the peaks and troughs in website visits, a proxy for newsiness, over the last twelve months:
The photos ruin an otherwise highly scientific analysis. Why does Bin Laden’s picture appear a month after he died? Why is the UK budget being delivered by a Japanese dude in a respirator? Why does Amy Winehouse get half of June for pre-mourning even though she didn’t die until 23rd July? Does the large number of visitors to the BBC News site on the day of the riots itself constitute a riot?
The Beeb have produced a delightful graphic showing the peaks and troughs in website visits, a proxy for newsiness, over the last twelve months:
The photos ruin an otherwise highly scientific analysis. Why does Bin Laden’s picture appear a month after he died? Why is the UK budget being delivered by a Japanese dude in a respirator? Why does Amy Winehouse get half of June for pre-mourning even though she didn’t die until 23rd July? Does the large number of visitors to the BBC News site on the day of the riots itself constitute a riot?
World Cup sandwich
While cleaning out the attic at Headline Superheroes HQ, we came across a relic from better times, when the air was fresher, the sunlight brighter, and rare earths slightly less rare in the earth.
If you’re irked by novelty souvenir stationery, papal snowglobes, and looming towers of unpurchasable made-in-China Hallowe’en rubbish on Sainsbury’s shelves that are more scary for having been conceived than for the monsters depicted, this item will make you squirm.
And with the Olympics approaching at a speed measured with needless and public precision by a shard-like timepiece in Trafalgar Square, we thought it might now be apposite to pre-emptively draw attention to the excesses of sports-related tat.
Corporate marketing teams and aspiring electronic engineers, behold ‘World Cup sandwich’: a cautionary tale.
While cleaning out the attic at Headline Superheroes HQ, we came across a relic from better times, when the air was fresher, the sunlight brighter, and rare earths slightly less rare in the earth.
If you’re irked by novelty souvenir stationery, papal snowglobes, and looming towers of unpurchasable made-in-China Hallowe’en rubbish on Sainsbury’s shelves that are more scary for having been conceived than for the monsters depicted, this item will make you squirm.
And with the Olympics approaching at a speed measured with needless and public precision by a shard-like timepiece in Trafalgar Square, we thought it might now be apposite to pre-emptively draw attention to the excesses of sports-related tat.
Corporate marketing teams and aspiring electronic engineers, behold ‘World Cup sandwich’: a cautionary tale.