Musically speaking.
Yes, I know. But it’s just so perfectly eighties naff and I’m not ashamed for liking this. Better this than Tokio Hotel.
Wikipedia’s hacking me off again
The problem with Wikipedia is it’s high visibility. It’s always had a lot of attention online as well as in the media, but in the past two years the hype kicked into overdrive, until the point that everybody in reach of CNN now knows two things about it: it’s an encyclopedia and everybody edit it. On the whole this is a good thing, as that means more people come over and help, but it also draws in the numbnuts unfortunately. And there are so many of them: conspiracy theorists, xenophonic nationalists of every possible variety, fratboys and other jokers, those who think Wikipedia is just one big game for their entertainment, just complete idiots, undsoweiter. It doesn’t make it easier.
Case in point: the article on James Nicoll, which over the course of this weekend has been under attack from a more persistent than usual nutter, some anonymous prick from an Earthlink segment. What they have been doing is abusing Wikipedia policy for a subtle campaign of sabotage, in the process turning what was not that good an article anyway into a complete and utter shitheap, keeping several editors, including yours truly, working all weekend to try and undo the damage, only for the little fucker to do more.
There are ways to get around this: semi-protecting the page by disallowing anonymous edits, banning the user in question (though since they use dynamic IP addresses this is hard to do without bothering others at his isp), etc, but you shouldn’t have to do this. Due to its open nature and high visibility Wikipedia is very vulnerable to trolling, and while damage is usually quickly repaired, it’s the battles with the trolls that wear people out. It was much more fun three years ago, when you could still edit pages without having to engage in pest control.
Cory Doctorow
I’m not sure I actually like Cory Doctorow, either as a blogger or an esseff writer. Boing Boing used to be on my blogroll until it got too up itself for me, and I’ve tried his fiction but haven’t managed to finish any of it. Part of what annoys me about him is his relentless self promotion, part his equally relentless, somewhat naive techno exuberance. The combination just sets my teeth on edge.
A good example was linked to by Making Light the other day, a short called “Other People’s Money“, which was written for Forbes. The excerpt below showcases what I dislike about Doctorow’s writing:
“You’d have thought I’d learned my lesson by then, but no, sir. I am the original glutton for punishment. After Bubble 2.0, I took my best coders, our CFO, and a dozen of our users and did a little health-care startup, brokering carbon-neutral medical travel plans to Fortune 500s. Today that sounds like old hat, but back then, it was sexy. No one seriously believed that we could get out from under the HMOs, but between Virgin’s cheap bulk-ticket sales and the stellar medical deals in Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba, it was the only cost-effective way. And once the IWWWW signed up 80 percent of the U.S. workforce through World of Starcraft guilds, no employer could afford to skimp on health insurance.
The word would go out during that night’s raids and by the morning, you’d have picket lines in front of every branch office.
The whole story is like that, one long infodump laced with buzzwords and jargon to show what Doctorow thinks could be our future. It’s near future and of a type that I should like, like much of Doctorow’s work, as it’s simular to what people like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling have also written. There’s one great difference though, in that their stories were grounded in a political and sociological awareness that I find lacking with Doctorow.
Free rice
Free rice is another of those charitable websites, where your jumping through hoops is rewarded by a tiny donation to a good cause. Usually this involves pushing buttons, but the people behind this site have been smart enough to make a proper game out of it. You’re asking to guess the meaning of an uncommon word and if you guess right, you get to donate ten whole grains of rice to the UN! The longer you get it right, the harder it gets of course. It’s a very addictive game to those of us who are fond of words and vocabulary anyway, playing on the innate geeky loving of learning and competitiveness.
Nevertheless, it still reminds me of China Miéville’s short story “An End to Hunger” with its sarcastic putdown of such sites. If the people behind it are so concerned with ending world hunger, surely there are more effective ways of doing so? Because this way, it’s only a p.r. gimmick, a way for the companies sponsoring the site and the people playing the game both to parade their own goodness.
Does that mean you shouldn’t play their game? Not as long as you know it is a game, a put-on.
The Tudors
If there’s one thing the BBC just cannot do, it’s making trailers for their tv shows that do not fill you with a brightly burning hatred for the show in question after the second time you’ve seen the trailer. Doesn’t matter whether the programme itself is good or not, because the trailers are so annoying and they’re shown so often (even thirty seconds before the show in question comes on) that you cannot help but loathe it. And when the trailers are promoting something that is going to be awful, the trailers are even worse. Such was the case for The Tudors, BBC2’s latest mock-historical costumes ‘n sex drama. You knew it was going to be bad because the trailer showed all sort of dark! dramatic! scenery chewing, interspersed with pseudoporn, and the lead actor did that stupid “talking normally THEN SHOUTING bit” that bad tv actors thinks shows tension, but instead just makes them look like a berk.
We’ve watched the series a bit since it came on because we always catch it switching from Have I got News for You on BBC1 to Q.I. on BBC2, because we keep forgetting there’s half an hour inbetween them. While watching it, S— remarked that it seemed made for the American market because a) dumbed down, b) overdramatic and c) lots of filler that could be cut for commercials. Well, surprise surprise, it turned out she was right, Daily Mail tells us. This being the Mail, there’s plenty of sexy photos of it inbetween telling us how sexed up and awful it is:
Modern radiators, Tarmac driveways, concrete bollards and Victorian carriages have all made appearances in the tenpart series set in the 16th century.
Made by Showtime, a U.S. production company, The Tudors appeared on American screens before being bought by BBC2. Henry VIII is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers of Bend It Like Beckham fame.
Last night, Leanda de Lisle, a Tudor biographer, said: “Overall the series is badly written with an extremely cheap feel to it.
“It is hugely disappointing. With inaccuracies in almost every sentence, the BBC is dumbing down the Tudor period.”
She said the anachronisms would be acceptable only if the drama “rang true” – and this hadn’t been the case.
She added: “The characters talk in completely unnatural ways, addressing their own family members as “Anne Boleyn” or “Mary Boleyn” so that we, the stupid audience, understand who they’re supposed to be.
“Henry VIII was exceedingly powerful, both politically and physically, but Rhys Meyers is pretty, rather than macho and thus completely unconvincing.”
The Tudors is only the worst recent example of the BBC’s recent tendency to sex up and dumb down its historical dramas, either to attract more viewers or to be able to sell it on to the American market. Any educative values still presents in these shows is watered down to homeopathic levels in the process, losing much of the justification for them. These series are supposed to teach some history in an enjoyable manner, but unless you’ve got a fetish for “medieval” costume cosplay, you’ll neither enjoy The Tudors nor learn anything from it.