As a restful alternative to the shenanigans of The Apprentice, you might want to try Cheddarvision…
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They’re Baaack!
Another bunch of 16 people whom I definitely wouldn’t want to bump into at parties has hit the screen tonight. Yes, the third series of The Apprentice has begun in all its tacky, toecurling glory.
Apparently, all the candidates have left their previous jobs to take part in the show. I can’t think why. Probably that very thought was going through the mind of tonight’s – ah – victim, Andy Jackson.
In fact, I can’t help but wonder why on earth anyone would want to take part in this at all. The process does seem to have a tendency to self-select the candidates who appear for the most part to have the most unappealing human characteristics. Speaking of which, it would seem that Tre Azam is easily the leader in the candidate from hell stakes on the boy’s side. I’m not sure yet about the girl’s side, but Gerri Blackwood has possibilities.
Still, I have to admit that it has all the appeal of a road crash. You know you shouldn’t look at it, but it has a certain morbid fascination, and you rubberneck as you drive past on life’s road.
Update: Anna Pickard’s got a brilliant blow-by-blow blog of the opening episode here.
5 responses to “They’re Baaack!”
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Sleaze compels. At the risk of wafting clouds of superiority up through the Low Countries, I can SO resist these (yawn) programmes. I’ve honestly never seen their appeal, I couldn’t even abide Borat, though I found it funny. Am I saved or have I lost the popular culture stakes?
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Well, I can certainly resist crap like Big Brother, of which I have seen perhaps two minutes, and "I’m a Celebrity…" (never seen). But TA does have a certain je ne sais quoi for me. Perhaps it’s because I used to come across examples of the candidates, complete with their management speak, and their appalling management skills (which, of course, they thought were superb), in my working life. In TA, I have a glorious opportunity to revel in schadenfreude and laugh at such cretins without any fear of retribution. So, I’m shallow.
You should give TA a chance. Treat it as a pantomime, chock full of villains and dames. That’s what Nancy Banks-Smith does in her review today, and she’s usually got a good handle on these things. -
Oh, and if you’re still not convinced, then perhaps Cheddarvision will be more to your taste…
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If Nancy Banks-Smith wants me to watch the test pattern overnight, that’s what I’ll do. I am putty in her backhand.
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Yep, I know what you mean, Coboró. Ms. Banks-Smith is a class act. She must be ninety years older than God by now, and still going strong…
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Another Debate
This time it’s Dawkins and McGrath. I haven’t heard it yet – just downloading it now. I’m curious to hear whether McGrath comes up with anything better than hand-waving this time around.Update: Nope – he didn’t. He’s a prime example of an "Imperial Courtier" who dances round every utterance without voicing anything whatsoever of substance so far as I could discern.Leave a comment
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The World’s Biggest Sundial
The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society draws our attention to the world’s biggest sundial – with a gnomon that is 155 metres (510 feet) high.Leave a comment
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Clippy Reincarnated?
Some of you will probably remember Clippy – that obnoxious anthropomorphised cartoon paperclip that came with earlier versions of Microsoft Office. Thankfully, it has now been laid to rest in the latest version of Office. But don’t breathe too easily – the next generation of these assistants has just made her debut on MSN Messenger.2 responses to “Clippy Reincarnated?”
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I really liked that paper clip thing, I’m sure it used to give me really evil looks when I buggered something up. I’ve just discovered your blog ~ very good! , Love & nostalgia, Mrs M oOXOo
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Thanks for dropping by, Mrs. M. But you shouldn’t have let yourself be fooled by Clippy. "Evil looks"? Nah, Clippy was just evil through and through, right to the heart of his little steel frame…
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Life Imitates Art – Part II
Sometimes I think my head will explode. It’s likely to be triggered by an overdose of incongruity. Such as this: the video of Nigerian email scammers acting out the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch in the mistaken belief that this will earn them a scholarship to come to the US to study film.Leave a comment
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Life Imitates Art
In a fine piece over at Ballardian, Simon Sellars muses on the parallels between a film made in 1974, modern suburbia in Australia, and the uncanny prescience of J. G. Ballard in describing it all. Worth reading.Leave a comment
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Peanut Butter and Evolution
I’m currently under the weather with ‘flu. So I’m not feeling particularly wonderful at the moment. A feeling that was not helped one jot or tittle by this pile of bollocks.There’s more where that came from apparently, but I don’t feel strong enough to wade through it.(hat tip to Richard Dawkins net for the link)Oh, and while we are on the subject of how stupid people can be. This example of motherly love takes some beating for the sheer banality of evil.One response to “Peanut Butter and Evolution”
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The only way these people can hold on to and pass on the message is not that they have an unshakeable belief in the fallacy of evolution, but that they have an equally as rock solid certainty that the rest of the world is as stoopid as they are.
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Happy Birthday, Richard!
Richard Dawkins is 66 today. One digit short of the mark of the beast, in the eyes of some, no doubt. May he be around to celebrate many more birthdays…Leave a comment
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Monkey Think, Monkey Do
Emotiv Systems demonstrated a prototype of a new computer peripheral recently. It purportedly allows the wearer to think about actions, and for those actions to be acted upon by the computer. Watch the video to get a sense of this. I can’t help but feel that a) the learning/training time is going to be fairly long and b) the response time as evidenced from the video (presumably carried out by trained personnel) is slower than molasses on a cold day. Still, it will be interesting to see what actually arrives on the market.Leave a comment
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The GP’s Brain Is Missing
David Colquhoun has recently drawn attention to the shameful practice of some Universities offering BSc courses in homeopathy. Now, a doctor, Ann Robinson, responds in an article saying that there is no harm in it:The big question here is not whether homeopathy works but whether it has enough of a scientific basis for it to be taught as a BSc degree course. I can’t really see the problem. We teach BA degree courses in media studies alongside traditional English literature. So why not homeopathy alongside medicine?She clearly doesn’t understand the difference between a BA and a BSc – between the arts and science. Words fail me. However, allow me to quote one of the comments left by a reader of Ann Robinson’s article. "Medgirl" writes:"Says Ann Robinson: ‘Even the fiercest critics of homeopathy will agree that it does no harm – which is more than you can say about conventional pharmaceutical drugs.’I completely disagree with this statement. I studied medicine in India, where homeopathy is a very popular form of alternative medicine and has university-affiliated colleges offering degree courses. Students who cannot get into medical school often take up studies in homeopathic medicine.As an intern, I saw too many times the tragedies that homeopathic treatment led to. I can never forget a woman who was brought in on a stretcher to our surgical outpatient clinic. She was moments away from death and the most foul smell entered the room with her. When her relative lifted her sari, we could see one of her breasts had melted into a rotting mass, infested with maggots. The consultant, recognising yet another case of breast cancer left too long, said what had they been doing all this while, because this didn’t happen overnight. ‘She had a lump in her breast, and the homeopath treated it. He said it would get bigger, and then melt away, but with the melting she has become very ill.’ The surgeon told the family to take the woman back to the homeopath, that there was nothing we could do for her now.Maybe these cases were extreme examples, but I think conventional medicine has more of an ability to recognise its limitations."2 responses to “The GP’s Brain Is Missing”
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there was a case here recently which I can’t track down for you, where an nhs doctor was prescribing homeopathic medicine with serious results. I think the problem comes when people fail to either understand the subject properly, or to know when its no longer enough, and for up to date treatement to step in.
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Homeopathy is simply placebo medicine, nothing more and nothing less. That’s all that has to be "understood" about it, it seems to me.
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A Nice Analogy
Skeptico has a post: How do you prove photography to a blind man? It is a particularly nice analogy to make to those who make claims that psychic phenomena actually exist.(hat tip to The Bad Astronomer for the link)Leave a comment
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Sunshine
Mark Kermode (the good doctor) writes an intriguing teaser about the forthcoming film Sunshine. It definitely goes on the list of films that I want to see.Leave a comment
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A Debate
I see that a video of the recent debate between Alister McGrath and Peter Atkins is now available here. The topic of the debate is: Darwin and Humanity: should we rid the mind of God?The sound quality is somewhat suspect for Peter Atkins, but stick with it. Clearly God is on McGrath’s side – or at least the sound engineer is.I have to say that I was very unimpressed by McGrath – he sounded just like a trendy vicar giving a sermon, with the amount of his handwaving counterbalanced by the shallowness of his arguments. And I marvelled when he said:"When I was young I used to be an amateur astronomer, I used to look at the night sky and I knew just enough astronomy to know that the light from some of those stars wouldn’t hit earth for hundreds of years and to me, that simply said to me, you will be dead by then and so the night sky was a symbol of melancholy, a reminder of the brevity of life."It sounded to me as though he needs God so that he has meaning to his life. I don’t. When I look at the night sky, I too realise the same fact about stellar distances, but that to me is amazing, not melancholic, and, I might add, that knowledge has come through scientific advance and not through theology.2 responses to “A Debate”
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Never mind that the light that he’s seeing is already there, it left the stars all those thousands of years ago. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for not being able to see what’s in front of your nose and making stuff up instead.
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Why do they always pick such lame ducks to represent us God believers? That aside, when I was a kid, I had a telescope, and this star atlas, and I used to apparently be found crying over it (such a pussy) because as I said ‘I’ll never be able to go there!’ For me it was wonderful and amazing and I wanted to know about it – God or not was irrelevant. It was all an incredible wonder. Still is.
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Rijksgadget
Here’s a terrific little gadget for your Windows Vista Sidebar: Rijksgadget. It displays a new painting each day from the collection in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. If you flip the picture over, you find out information about the painting.Leave a comment
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Rights For Filth
I would like to think that this gentleman is being ironical, but I fear that he is being absolutely serious… Clearly, care in the community is going too far…However, good to know where he stands. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry after listening to this codswallop. However, I know that he just can’t help it. Oh, and he’s an ex-policeman apparently. Makes you feel proud, doesn’t it?2 responses to “Rights For Filth”
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Think he votes BNP? The man’s not a Christian; Christ kept the company of whores, sinners and lepers. He’s probably Presbyterian, but he’s no Christian.
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I don’t know what to say? I mean, imagine dragging women, immigrants, feminists and those lovely pagan catholics into the filth of the anus lusters! What next?
I’m very much afraid the man is deadly serious – and a cop. Heaven help us all.
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Bookshop Blues
I’ve just found out that the Gays The Word bookshop in London’s Bloomsbury is struggling to survive in the face of rising rents and falling sales.When I lived in London I would often visit it. It was a great place – and felt at times like a tiny community centre.I see that Jeanette Winterson thinks that perhaps its work is done, but when I read that the bookshop’s owner says that they still get “a brick through the window once a year and twice a week people spit on the windows”, then I have to wonder…If you live in London, or are visiting, please pop in. You can also sponsor a bookshelf – visit the web site for more information.Leave a comment
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Beyond Parody
There are some things that are clearly beyond parody. Such as the news that Dr. Ian Paisley has comissioned a bio-pic of his life. The end result will be clearly something that will have to be experienced in a cinema equipped with full Dolby sound in order to appreciate the decibel levels of his stentorian oratory at full blast.My favourite (I think apochryphal – but you never know) story about the old rogue and bigot is when he is addressing a rally of the faithful…"When the day of Judgment comes, there will be a weeping, a wailing and a gnashing of teeth!"A little old man mumbles with his gums and interjects at the front: "Dr Paisley, what will happen to us who have no teeth?" "Teeth," says the great man, "will be provided." Or, as he would say: "Tayth wull be provayded!!"Leave a comment
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The Royal Society Videos
I’ve just learned that The Royal Society has put some of its lectures on the web as video and audio streams. Here’s one: Professor Steve Jones talking about Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right. Terrific stuff.Leave a comment
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Epicurus Or Heidegger?
How do you live your life? By not worrying about death? Or by letting the realisation that life is finite, and death inevitable, shape what you do in the time allotted?Epicurus argued that the fear of death was irrational. "Where death is, I am no longer," he said, "and where I am, death is not." Epicurus’ point is that there is nothing to fear in death itself, what people really fear is the process of dying and the pain that all too often accompanies the final illness.Heidegger, on the other hand, argued that death is a constant presence in life, and renamed human existence "being towards death". Heidegger therefore rejected the Epicurean idea that death is irrelevant to our lives. To understand life fully, Heidegger argued, one must understand oneself as finite.These two points of view are explored by the philospher Havi Carel in a compelling piece in The Independent. The question is thrown into sharp focus for her by the fact that she has, at most, 10 years left to live. Ten years that will increasingly be marked by illness and pain.Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t feel the two viewpoints are an "either/or" situation; to me it feels like a "both/and". I don’t fear death, and I know that it’s inevitable. Perhaps that’s because, as Carel argues, I am in good health. Perhaps if I were in her situation I might feel differently. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because one of our neighbours has recently been told he has only a few months, perhaps just a few weeks, left to live. He seems to have accepted this with equanimity – he’s more concerned about how his wife will cope – and is busy putting his affairs in order in readiness. His forthrightness is admirable, and is an example that I hope to follow when my time comes.(hat tip to Julian Baggini over at Talking Philosophy for the link to the Carel article)Leave a comment
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