The Question, “Can God create a rock He can't lift?”

To ask whether God can create a rock he can't lift is to ask whether someone can do something he can't. It's simply a logical abuse of language and a meaningless question to ask.

Driving on the Hard Shoulder to Cut Congestion

What a crap idea the government has had to ease congestion by allowing people to drive on the hard shoulder (see link). Have they forgotten that the hard shoulder is there for a good reason? Now, even if you’re parked on the hard shoulder for a reason that isn’t a dire emergency, you’ll certain be sucked into one when someone smacks into the back of you. Imagine how terrifying it’s going to be when you’re parked there and cars are continually driving up to you at what are clearly going to be far greater speeds than the imposed 50mph limit, and then changing lanes last minute.

Which brings me to the second reason why it’s a crap idea. Congestion is caused by traffic waves. The general idea of traffic waves goes like this:

1. Someone slows down or changes lane.
2. The person behind slows down more than necessary to compensate, chiefly because they were driving too closely and are reacting out of shock.
3. The next person behind slows down even more than that, again due to a tendency towards overcompensating, and so on.

And thus traffic slows down and gets more congested. A way of looking at another reason for congestion is this: If you increase the thickness of a wire, then its current will meet with increased resistance and power will be wasted. Similarly, if you have more lanes, the traffic won’t necessarily go faster, because people will have more of a tendency to change lanes and slow the traffic down (again due to traffic waves).

This problem will increase massively when the hard shoulder is used as a lane. All it takes is one broken down car on there, and the entire lane becomes a pile-up. Even worse, the lane to its right will become jammed as people constantly try to pull onto it to get out of the pile-up, and the lane to the right of that will become jammed for the same reasons, and so on.

Those who have broken down and need to move onto the hard shoulder as soon as possible will have a terrible time trying to find a gap. No-one will want to let you in, because they know that they’ll have to slow down or stop and change lanes. In times where there’s mass congestion, when few people are likely to let you pull into their lane, that’s the last thing you want to face.

The hard shoulder, as I’ve said, will have an official speed limit of 50mph. Why? If it’s a lane safe enough to be used as one of the other lanes – that is, if it’s wide enough and there’s no debris – then it should be used in the same way as other lanes. Otherwise, don’t use it as a normal lane.

For those using the hard shoulder and obeying the speed limit, it’s perpetually very difficult to get into the next lane due to having to pick up speed first. By the time they have, the gap (if there is one) has gone. For those disobeying the speed limit, it gets more dangerous because there might be broken down cars in front of them and there’s little time to react and stop. Either way, it’s a crap, dangerous and terrifying idea to use the hard shoulder for normal traffic.

Pop Music

Pop music, n. A symptom of the inevitable degeneration of the art of music that results from the rise of music as a commodity and the fall in the wealth, and thus interest, of musical ideas worth exploring.

“Pop music” is the soap opera of the music world. At the top of the music tree you have the recognised geniuses that were so influential they changed the course of music and allowed it to explore other meaningful areas, resulting in entire ages – the Baroque, the Classical and the Impressionist, for example. Then you get the ones in between – the composers who explore these established areas and enhance the age by imprinting their own slant, or style. Then come the “lesser” composers, those who emulate the greats and write influential and effective but nevertheless watered down and less imaginative and innovative works, such as modern “classical” and film music.

Then, at the bottom of the pile, you get pop artists – people who know little about musical forms, but know a lot about what sells to the masses and makes the most money. The vast majority of it is churned out for a few months and then forgotten by those masses. It is throw-away music on demand.

But since when have “the masses” ever been right? Judging something as popular has never been a successful benchmark in determining whether it is good. Just look at EastEnders.

Sure, laud them for tricking an audience that gets what it deserves. But don’t blinker people to the point that they don’t even bother to examine what higher pleasures there are in the more major examples of music as an art. The three main problems here are as follows:

• The saturation of the music market with relative crap. Here, people think they have a lot of choice, but in fact they are bombarded with many slightly different examples of the same thing. (Thanks for this point go to Richard Stead, who aptly and succintly describes it as "ridiculous choice.") Pop music, regardless of how many pitiful and petty genres there may be, is just a menial exploration of the massive treasure-trove of ideas that music has to offer.

• The destruction of decent music education. At least since as far back as when I was at school, music has been taught in a way that makes it come across as dull, stuffy, old-fashioned and boring. Children are taught the same old dull pieces, and as a result people grow up with the stigma that all “classical” music is the same old dull crap.

• The fact that kids are brainwashed into listening to pop music (and not listening to other forms of music), because pop music is cool and (therefore) because of peer pressure.

The problem is perpetual, because adults who grow up to listen to shallow pop music are not likely to introduce their children to anything better. In fact, most pop fans don’t realise that they’ve yet to live, that there is far more music to the cliché recordings of the more boring works of Mozart and Johann Strauss and the glorified karaoke that is pop music.

Imagine this happening in the visual arts. Imagine that the only contact with paintings that people have is the same old boring, black-and-white, generic-looking prints of bygone painters. Their authors might be brilliant, and their fame justified. But if everyone is exposed to limited works, and no one is taught why their works are important to the art, then you can only expect people to turn away from what those works stand for. For younger people - and now, in a world of ever-increasing vanity, older people too - paintings would become uncool.

But there is money in every art, because it is a medium of expression capable of being desirable to people. So, now imagine that entrepreneurs realise the money potential and produce the sort of pretentious, cheap, shallow, abstract tat on display in the lobbies of hotel chains. People would accept these prints as brilliant in comparison. Their attention would be drawn because they look so much better than the boring prints, which are the only things that they can use as a comparator. Soon, the entrepreneurs move in, clever advertising brainwashes the nation, the tat becomes cool and thus very desirable, the entrepreneurs make their money as the masses blindly buy away.

The reason why the above scenario does not happen to visual art, and why so few are capable of putting pop music in context and realising how trivial it is, is this: People are exposed to many stimulating paintings, statues and monuments. Everywhere you look there are free galleries, buildings of different architectural styles and cheap prints of famous pieces. The “wonders of the world” – which are all visual – are preached constantly through TV programmes. Every time you go on holiday you’re likely to come into contact with visual works of art.

On the other hand, you can’t see proper music, it is rarely advertised to a wide and general audience, and it usually costs a lot to go and see live. You don’t see classical concerts on holiday, and any local music is designed to give a flavour of the culture rather than to show you how good the music is. There is no exposure, either for children or adults.

Of course, nowadays, a good “classical” concert can be cheaper than a pop concert. There are the BBC Proms, and “classical” music is almost always cheaper than pop music in the music store. But it’s all too late: People don’t buy (into) it because they don’t know why they should bother. There are two many barriers, most notably social and educational. They are denied access to a wealth of higher pleasures simply because of the ignorance of the person. On the other hand, pop music is everywhere – on the TV and radio, in the music magazines and on the news (usually because a singer has been arrested). It seems that everyone’s talking about it.

An orchestra and a musical genius can say more than you ever could with two guitars, a drum, a singer and a group of mates that come together in a garage. It is a fallacy to believe that, if you provide enough opportunities for people to make music, then the art of music will benefit. All that happens is that the music industry gets flooded.

When a culture is stable (without extreme situations like war and mass hardship) for a while, it gets complacent, and with this it devolves. Similarly, when a culture comes out of an extreme situation, it is kick-started into a flurry of creative activities. “There’s nothing like a good war to give culture a kick-start,” said a colleague of mine, Richard Stead.

Well, he’s right. And we’re seeing the polar opposite of this situation now, in music. There hasn’t been hardship of any kind in order to create the tension, anxiety and emotional extremes necessary to produce great works, and so the great works have given rise to shallow tat. The best music of modern times exists as a servant to the film, where musical devices are reused to death almost to the point of cliché to portray musically the major scenes of box-office films. Even here, evidence can be seen of the superiority of “classical” forms of music over pop music: If Pop is so good, why is it not used in films to portray high drama and suspense as much as orchestral music is?

Another reason why music has gone downhill is that the ideas worth exploring have already been explored. It's all been done. The best pop music can do is repackage these ideas in what appears to be new - that is, in new formats. The band that perhaps most closely provides cutting-edge pop music is The Divine Comedy, although Neil Hannon and Joby Talbot can be regarded more as classical composers than Pop-song makers due to their techniques, musical training and use of orchestral insruments.

Consequently, musical ideas within the Pop world are not only thin on the ground, they’re getting thinner. This can be seen in the pop world’s use of gimmicks that are irrelevant to the music they’re put to. Videos, loud drum beats and lyrics serve either to take attention off the shallowness and lack of quality of the music, or to make up for a lack of musical content. All gimmicks do is show Pop music up for what it is. Good music need never have any gimmicks; it will speak for itself on its own. Examples of gimmicks in Pop music are numerous, and here are some of them:

• Shouting, swearing and using stupid voices (such as those used in so-called “death metal”)

• Using sex to attract attention (such as in music videos, lyrics and sound effects)

• Using deliberately provocative themes in music videos and lyrics, such as murder, drugs and rape

• Giving so-called “genres” of pop music pretentious, over-hyped titles such as “euphoria,” “hardcore” and “heavy metal”

• Similarly, overhyping musical titles with self-flattering words such as “essential”

• Having a lead singer with a false but distinctive, provocative and clearly invented character

Not that its audience is capable of seeing any of this. If they actually bothered listening – genuinely listening – to a broad range of proper music, then they might actually find that it’s pretty good. It takes time to appreciate good music. They’d sooner ignore and ridicule it instead, and they’re allowed to do so because covertly it’s socially encouraged. They’re as closed-minded as those devout religious nutters who denounce all other faiths, even though they know nothing about those other faiths.

The best music is capable of telling a story with the music itself – in the melody and the structure – without any of the faff that comes with Pop music. That gimmicks are routine is testament to the fact that Pop has nothing relevant to say. Remove the lyrics, the over-the-top, hyper-cool drum beats and rhythms, the videos and the hype, and what you have left is what any given piece of music – if, in some cases, it can be called music – is worth. (In the case of Pop music, the end result is very little. In the case of rap as a definition, there is no music at all - more about this later.) After all, how can a music-maker be a master of his art if he doesn’t even know how to commit something to manuscript, compose in a number of time signatures, deal with more than a couple of simultaneous harmonies or write for more than one or two instruments?

The musical rules of the vast majority of Pop are overly restrictive, and unnecessarily so. But this is deliberate – it’s an excuse to do put in less effort. Why bother enhancing the art of music, when merely broadening it sells well enough? It goes back to what I said earlier, about why providing more opportunities does not necessarily yield better music.

On another point, a problem is pop music’s perpetual popularity and coolness. Why would people, as a mass movement, listen to anything else? The crowd goes with the crowd, and to do so is comfortable, easy and convenient. Pop music sounds nice and thus requires no thought, and it is widely socially acceptable. Why destabilise a comfortable situation?

The answer is that, while Pop might be convenient to its fans, more advanced forms offer much more. They give inspiration. They have the capability of conveying ideas in more depth, are rich in innovation and ideas, and are awe-inspiring to listen to considering the work that goes into them. The best composers can re-represent images in music – Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, or variation 11 of Rachmaninov’s Paganini rhapsody – and use tricks of sound to convey the most tragic and exhilarating of emotions.

All Pop music does at its best is to use instruments unusual to Pop and apply them to Pop music, to use strong language to gain attention by pathetic means, or to use musical devices that are new to the Pop music world but were old hat centuries ago to composers of finer music. Compared to a half-decent piano concerto, a pop song is a piss in the park. Gone are the decades of training at musical academies, not because they’re no longer conducive to producing the best music but because they’re no longer needed to sell records and they're no longer a priority of the Public. People have been brainwashed into listening to watered-down crap, they like it because they don’t know any other, and neither producer nor consumer thus complains. The consumers are happily blinkered, and the producers are happily lining their pockets. What a wonderful equilibrium.

From a technical point of view, Pop music is tat. All composers throughout time have written music in the general form it takes today in Pop – by writing songs, which consists of musical themes with lyrics. But they had the good sense to acknowledge that this was hardly the be-all-and-end-all of music. Instead of restraining themselves to an unnecessarily tedious and restrictive form, they used a wide variety of instruments and themes, produced comprehensive pieces of music that spanned far longer than a pitiful three minutes, and contributed much more to music than Pop ever will. The music of Muse sets the latest Pop precedent, because its song-writers have studied the great musical forms and incorporate them into their own music to give them richness and newness not seen in pop music before. Perhaps pivotally, their melodies are predominantly developed from playing around on a piano, rather than on a guitar. Yet even these innovations were already explored centuries ago. Once again, it might be new for Pop, but it’s old hat to music as a whole. In the case of Muse, it seems that the vast majority of the musical influence comes from the first movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2. (Compare the chorus melody of "Space Dementia" on the album Origin of Symmetry, the piano riff in "Butterflies and Hurricanes" on the album Absolution, and parts of the melody in "Rule by Secrecy" on the same album). Most of the other ideas by Muse simply incorporate semitonal key signature shifts, simple tonic triads and arpeggios.

There is a common conception that the definition of music is a pleasant sound. If you ask me, that’s utter crap. Music is a progressive melody, a story written in sounds that augment the story. Anything else – beats and rhythms being notable examples – are merely parts of music, things that augment the story. So, in fact, if you ask me, rap “music” isn’t music at all. I don’t care whether or not rap music is an attempt to convey genuine emotions and ghetto hardships, it still ain’t music. At its core, it’s just some words loosely spoken in time to a beat. Rap is, at its heart, poetry; what it has got to do with music, I have no idea. As far as musical excellence goes, it doesn’t fare too well – in fact, it’s hard to think of anything more primitive. It isn’t that I’m knocking tribal cultures in the Amazon that use drums and words as the only components of their “music”. Such pieces aren’t written to be good, they’re written to serve a specific purpose, such as in religious and shamanic rituals. The tribes themselves would not claim that it is good music in itself, if they understood music in context.

Music demands the most from writers, performers and listeners. Back at the other end of the spectrum, Pop music is formulaic to the point of ridicule. This is why there are so many genres. The more genres there are, the less free the music in each genre is likely to be, because it is more strictly defined. This is a travesty for musical variety. Here are the ingredients of the ultimate pop song:

• Cool yet unoriginal drum-beat. Let’s face it, there are only so many beat styles you can do with a drum, so you can’t do anything original here.

• Cool yet unoriginal rhythm, improvised from the drum-beat.

• One guitar that plays the melody (if any), and optionally another guitar that is played either two or five tones lower.

• A sequence of four base notes.

• A main theme or melody, which is an improvisation of the base sequence.

• A short, punchy and repetitive chorus.

• Lyrics that are based on sex but claim to be about love, string together sayings and clichés, and/or make no sense at all.

The method is equally simple: Get the beat and rhythm going throughout. Keep the guitars as simple as possible, repeating the same short sequence endlessly. Alternate the main theme/melody and chorus endlessly, with no variation. Repeat the four base notes endlessly. For the lyrics, choose words that have long vowel sounds. Sing the vowels slowly and in an exaggerated way to make it sound more interesting. Use cool instruments that people accept not because they enhance music but simply because they’re cool and expected.

It really is that formulaic. All you need to do is choose a pop “genre” and exploit it by reusing the devices that that genre offers. It doesn’t matter whether you create something new. (For an excellent case study of formulaic use of chords, listen to anything by Oasis. For lyrics that string together sayings and clichés, listen to Coldplay. For nonsensical lyrics, listen to Muse.) The creation of John Peel Day makes me laugh: How many of the acts he introduced have gone on to revolutionise, redefine or significantly enhance music? Or even, for that matter, Pop music?

All of this brings me, with much evidence, to my main argument: Pop music is by its very nature crap compared to “classical” (orchestral?) music because, while the latter contributes to the enhancement of music itself, the former merely exists to make money, pander to the masses and flatter the egos of the performers. The only ultimate and meaningful goal of any art should be to enhance that art – to give it interesting new directions that redefine what it is and how it is perceived. It is organic. Pop music has, instead, made it stale. Its protagonists staunchly adhere to the philosophy “we’re making money as it is, we’re getting what we want and we’re getting the attention that we crave. Why change it?”

You can tell good music just by closing your eyes and listening. You can tell brilliant music by studying the notes on the manuscript. Both these methods of appreciation give no haven to musical pretense, hype and general crap, and they allow you to see what is truly left behind - if there is anything left at all.

“Classical” Music

What a load of stuffy crap classical music is. It belongs to an earlier era. It is largely the preserve of the pompous and pretentious. You only have to look at the stuffy academics, the rich fat upper-class and the dangerously old who go to classical concerts in order to get an idea of what it’s like. Given the other, more popular and more prevalent forms of music out there, why bother with it? Classical music takes a long time to get into, while you can get as much as you want straight away from pop music. Where’s the fun in having to try hard studying music, when all you want to do is listen to it? It defeats the object.

Of course, there are those that point to new forms of classical music, such as film music. It isn’t dead, they say, it’s still going strong. This supposedly proves that classical music still has a place in the world, and that it must service its purpose well, otherwise other forms of music would by now have taken its place. But to these people, I say this: Film music is designed to augment films, not to be listened to in its own right. This hardly lends support towards the music itself.

They say that classical music has more depth, can convey stories with greater emotion and is written by geniuses who know more about musical forms than is the case with pop music.

Perhaps so. But most music that you will ever buy will be listened to once. By that, I mean that the first time is when you really listen to it. After that, it’s just played in the background while you go and do something else. If music is listened to in this way – as it usually is – then why do you need music that has any more depth? You just want it to sound good. This way, it serves its purpose of relaxing and entertaining on the first listen and being good background music to half-listen to thereafter. As for “stories with greater emotion”: anything that can be said in classical music can be said in the form of words – namely, lyrics. Besides, there is plenty of good pop music that conveys a good story; it just takes time to experiment with music a bit and filter out the crap. It doesn’t matter how genial someone is, if it fulfils the above objectives then it does its job.

Pop music even gives us additional benefits that “classical” music doesn’t have. It is classified into genres that are meaningful to us, which help us to choose our own musical tastes. There are those who prefer R&B, those who prefer dance and electronica. If you stick to albums and artists under these specific headings, then you generally know what to expect and you probably won’t be disappointed. Similarly, music is an art, and as such it cannot be described nor quantified in terms of being better or worse. Instead, it should be judged on how it makes you feel.

People who Cough Unnecessarily Loudly at Concerts

Coughing is a fact of life. Everyone coughs. Sometimes you cough and it’s so sudden you can’t help making a noise. Sometimes you cough and the world coughs with you – it catches on. But there is one thing that I can’t stand, which can be avoided: there exist multitudes of incessant crap-heads who engage in serial coughing at concerts when everyone else is quiet.

If you know you’ve got a cough, you can prepare and counter for it. And – here’s the apparently difficult part – you should counter for it. It goes beyond politeness and courtesy. To serial cough unnecessarily loudly is depriving people of the ability to listen to the concert and of reducing their ability to concentrate and absorb themselves into the music, as well as making it difficult for the orchestra.

It’s simple: As soon as you’re about to cough, cover or close your mouth. Before the concert starts, they should put the obvious and patronising but nevertheless necessary notice, “Please serial-cough quietly” alongside “Please switch off your mobile phone.” And they could also add “…or we’ll shut you up on your behalf.”

If I yelled every five minutes in a live orchestral concert, I’d get thrown out. And rightly so. So why aren’t the serial coughers?

BBC News

What a load of crap BBC News is. Whether it’s the TV or the online version, they’ve got it all wrong. All the news services are just as bad as each other; the BBC is only one example of the many I could have used.

In a relatively recent shift, the BBC has taken to using emotion to convey stories. While the appeal is obvious, it’s just plain wrong. The news should always be as impartial as possible. A news reporter should not prejudice the delivery of the news with intonation that conveys opinion, be it the BBC’s or the reporter’s. Frankly, I’m surprised they’re allowed to do it, since it is obviously going to make a huge impact on how people perceive the story. The watchers should be allowed to make up their own minds about an event from the facts conveyed, not have a ready-made opinion baby-fed to them by a news report phrased like a soap opera.

Who is a mere news reporter to tell the audience what it should be afraid, happy, unhappy or concerned about? To some extent, the news services cannot avoid this – the very act of choosing which stories to put onto the programme inherently brings with it an amount of bias. But it should be avoided as much as possible, as was the case decades ago when newsreaders used a neutral voice when delivering news articles.

This is a symptom, no doubt, of the perception that people don’t want to think for themselves – and perhaps in this perception they’re right. But that does not give the BBC the right to do what in effect is dumbing down. Enough of that goes on as it is.

Anyway, the BBC should not chase ratings. After all, not needing a big viewership is the only edge it has against the competitors. So why should it judge itself by these criteria?

Another thing that bothers me is what I call the “missing ‘is’ syndrome.” Here’s an example from the BBC News Web site[9]:

“This from the White House transcript:”

(makes no sense at all in standard English) when it should be:

“This is from the White House transcript:”

The former is not a sentence, and just sounds stupid. The latter is proper English, and it’s also less confusing. One of the Iraq reporters started using it, and now everyone across BBC News is in on the act. Presumably they think it sounds cool, professional, authoritative and attractive to audiences. But as it doesn’t add anything meaningful to the story or the delivery, there’s no valid point to it at all.

The online version of BBC News is even worse. For a start, grammar mistakes are rife. This sounds trivial, but a small grammar mistake could change the entire context of the story to far worse an extent than conveying an emotion could. Let’s take a real example:

A Guinness World Records team will decide if the record has been broken.[1]

In other words, if the record is not broken, then the Guinness World Records team will not decide[2]. The correct sentence would be, “…whether the record has been broken.”

This is a more minor example, but imagine its impact on a more important story. And another thing is the misleading titles it uses. Of course, I understand that titles have to be concise so that they are easily digestible and fit on the page neatly. But conciseness is one thing; being misleading is another. Consider this head-turner

Cardiff ‘UK’s Most Costly Place’[3]

says the headline. The story, in actual fact, does not say that Cardiff is the UK’s most costly place. They can’t even be forgiven for using the title’s single quotes, because it is still wrong. Instead, the story states that, according to a survey, people have less money to spend in Cardiff than the rest of the UK. This is due to low wages relative to the cost of living in Cardiff, not high prices relative to the UK. If a Londoner went to Cardiff, he might even find it quite cheap by comparison. Surely the following:

"Cost of Living in Cardiff ‘Highest in UK’"

would be more accurate, and it’s still a short headline.

This is a good example of one of the many blatant attempts to get people to open a Web page, so that they can get more page views – which is no better than the methods employed by spam e-mail, mail shots and other underhand adverts. It’s just the BBC trying to prove that it’s popular by increasing the readership statistics. But popularity should not be a goal. Quality should. People do not naturally pursue quality – that is why the Sun is the UK’s best-selling daily newspaper (if we’re to believe Wikipedia[4]). So this is a bad way of trying to measure success, even if quality is their genuine goal. There it goes again, trying to pursue indicators and statistics to things that don’t really matter.

And to make things worse, and speaking, as I was, of being “easily digestible,” the BBC also has a tradition of using long, complicated sentences. For example:

“The boy, reported to be from Penrith in Cumbria, but thought to have run away from a care home in Birkenhead, Merseyside, was heading to Lisbon.”[5]

Why not just say the same thing like as follows?

“The boy is reportedly from Penrith in Cumbria. However, he is thought to have run away from a care home in Birkenhead, Merseyside. He was heading to Lisbon.”

The gripes are endless. The following is a list of the many other common goofs on the BBC Web site recently, although many of them will likely be corrected by the time you visit the site. I’m sure this list will grow over time:

• Net reviewing body renews US links
  In July 2006, an official from the US Department of Commerce said it was still "committed" to turning Icann into a private organisation. Some suspected this might have happened on 30 September 2006 when Icann's current contract to run the net's addressing systems expired.[6]
  Do the BBC run a Time Service, whereby the future BBC relays messages to the past?

• Blair faces wave of resignations
  Tony Blair lashes out as seven junior government members quit over his refusal to name an exit date.[7]
  Does the BBC honestly think that "lashes out" constitutes fair, unbiased, factual news, rather than the outspoken hyperbole we expect from the gutter press? And while we're on the subject:

• Hardy's cottage to be rented out.[8]
  This is a blatant lie. As the news article itself points out, this is only "one of the options" that the National Trust (which runs the property) is proposing, and nothing has yet been decided.

• The most powerful vice-president ever?
  The rapport between interviewer and interviewee suggests that they knew very well what they were talking about.[9]
  If something is suggested, then it is irrelevant to say "knew very well". He might not have known "very well", as the report admits by using the word "suggests." There is no reason to use such emotive language except to give an unfair bias in one direction, which is not what a news report should be giving.

• Sir Elton Berates Australian PM
  Mr Howard denied the move was not homophobic.[10]
  Another libellous world-beater from BBC News.

• Guinness good for you - official
  The old advertising slogan "Guinness is Good for You" may be true after all, according to researchers[11]
  If something is official, there is no "may be" about it.

The BBC, as with other news services, has a duty to tell the news like it is and nothing more, and to tell it in a measured, unbiased and professional manner. From what I’ve seen, it is grossly abusing its position of authority and trust in order to tell things the BBC Way. And that is both dangerous and unforgivable

---

[1] BBC News. (17.08.06) “Fireworks Record ‘Looks Broken’”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4800575.stm

[2] Strictly this is impossible, because the Guinness World Records team would need to decide that the record is not broken in order to decide not to decide whether the record is broken, and would also need to decide that the record is broken in order to decide to decide whether the record is broken. I hope this provides some clarification on the subject.

[3] BBC News Online. (16.08.06) “Cardiff ‘UK’s Most Costly Place’”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4796075.stm

[4] Wikipedia, “Newspaper”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_newspaper#Circulation_and_readership and Wikipedia, “The Sun”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_%28newspaper%29

[5] BBC News Online. (16.08.06) “Boy boards plane without tickets”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4796199.stm

[6] BBC News Online. (16.08.06) “Net Ruling Body Renews US Links”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4799137.stm

[7] BBC News Online. (06.09.06) Front-page Headline. http://news.bbc.co.uk

[8] BBC News Online. (26.09.06) “Hardy's cottage to be rented out”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/5380464.stm

[9] BBC News Online. (30.10.06) “The most powerful vice-president ever?”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6096042.stm

[10] BBC News Online. (01.12.06) “Sir Elton Berates Australian PM”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6194584.stm

[11] BBC News Online. (19.12.07) “Guinness good for you - official”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3266819.stm

Drivers

Drivers are, on the whole, a terrible lot, and crap drivers inevitably pervade. Yet there’s no need for them.

The only reason people drive so badly is because they’re allowed to get away with it. The ones who don’t are either the unlucky exceptions, or the ones who crash. And regardless of how they wind up, it’s always the rest of us who are affected: We’re there when they do crash, or we have to pay for hikes in insurance costs and taxes to increase surveillance, or we have to put up with surveillance cameras. The last one is a joke in itself: Since when has a fast driver automatically been a bad driver? It’s the irrational and crap drivers that should be targeted, not those who are good enough drivers to be able to drive faster. Safety is in ability, not speed. Even so, speed is easiest to keep track of, and the police are only human, and like to do as little work as possible – even if it does mean incompetence. Why do something as difficult as monitoring and removing crap drivers, when they can sit back and let a machine catch vehicles that are moving forwards at a speed faster than an absurd and arbitrarily-set limit? It’s all a huge, complex mess.

There would be no problem if the real problem of removing crap drivers from roads was resolved. It isn’t particularly difficult, either. For example, things would improve immediately and immeasurably if, at the start of the person’s driving life:

• Driving instructors did their job properly. Instead of being motivated by sense rather than money, they could use their intuition, experience and harder testing methods to weed out the hopeless drivers from the rest of us.

• People who fail 3 times were be made to do additional, more rigorous driving tests that were tailored towards monitoring their dangerous faults.

• The government had the power to ban terminally useless learner drivers who should never be allowed onto the road. For example, people who fail 5 times could be banned from driving for life.

The police should monitor the roads for crap drivers. People who are caught doing any of the things in the following list should be taken off the road, until they can prove to a driving instructor that they can drive properly and have read the Highway Code at least once in their entire lives. Those who do any of the following in rush-hour traffic should also be banned for life:

• Those who drive 40mph in a 30mph area, and 30mph in a 40mph area (there are a lot of them).

• Those who stop at roundabout junctions, even though the roundabout is clear. Where's the logic in this? If you have to stop and wait for traffic on an empty roundabout, surely you're either going to have to be there forever, or to go for it – thereby breaking the rule and proving it a stupid one in the first place.

• Those who, as a rule, drive 10mph below the speed limit.

• Old people, and people who dither and dawdle in general.

• People who indicate right on roundabouts until the very last minute, and therefore don’t make it obvious that they’re leaving the roundabout until it’s too late to be of use. The result is that drivers waiting for these idiots have to waste time stopping at the junction unnecessarily.

• People who slow down noticeably, and then put their indicators on to turn off onto another road.

• Women drivers. I have no doubt that the reason men have more accidents is not because they’re worse drivers. It’s because they have to follow women (and old people), who drive so erratically that they cause men to have accidents. Women get away with not having accidents because everyone keeps out of their way.

• Practicers of what I call “jealous driving” – People who drive slowly until there’s a chance that you can overtake, and then speed up so that you can’t.

• Those who don’t know what the right-hand lane of a motorway is for. This group includes:

People who stick to the right-hand lane even though they’re being undertaken

• Those who are going the same speed as the car in the middle lane, and refuse to do the extra 2mph needed to overtake

• Those who, when in a fast-moving traffic queue in the fast lane, speed up and then slow down constantly, instead of moving at a consistent pace

• Those who get annoyed at the person in front who is moving at a consistent pace. They never seem to notice that, although the traffic in front of the “consistent mover” is getting away, it is probably going to slow down again.

In fact, most of these things are implicitly included in the law anyway. It is illegal to unnecessarily disrupt the flow of traffic - and this is also in the Highway Code. So let’s use the law and report these people. I can envisage in 10 years' time the Drive-time Vigilantes, who have a video camera constantly recording what's happening in front and behind. Useful in many ways - as a deterrant to stop crap drivers (or at least make them think), as evidence to show whose fault the inevitable crash was (see "Women Drivers" above), and also as a means of gathering evidence when reporting crap drivers to the police.

On another point, big cars are unnecessary, and should also be taken off the roads. Only farmers need 4x4s, and only frail and fat people need wide cars. Everyone should have to justify the vehicle that he has purchased, and fat people should have to give a bloody good reason why they’re not a lot thinner. Fast cars are OK, because they keep the traffic flowing efficiently, but only if the driver can prove he is not a boy racer, in need of a penis extension, or a crap driver for one of the previously mentioned reasons – in other words, a tosser.

It’s not just the roads that are a nightmare. Crap parkers should be given an extra parking test so that they don’t clog up public car parks. The test should also include:

• How to park square-on relative to the other cars

• How not to block two lanes

• How to open the car door without banging it into the adjacent vehicle. Another reason why unnecessary 4x4s and wide cars should be banned.

All of this should be added to the Highway Code under the title, “Common-Sense Rules that Everyone should Already Know.” Any driver flouting them is ridiculous, and by definition should be ridiculed.

No wonder drivers are getting more irate and speedier on the roads. It’s to make up for the time lost being stuck behind these people, having to second-guess irrational drivers, and having to navigate roads clogged with too much traffic – most of which wouldn’t be there if crap drivers were banned. Let’s get these idiots off the road, so that at last we can drive in peace.

Emergency Numbers

What a complete cock-up emergency numbers are. On old-style phones, it was quicker to dial smaller digits, because they took less time for the phone to register. So what number did the Government choose to give to the emergency services in the UK, to be used by those who need help as quickly as possible? The very 3-digit number that takes longer to dial than any other. Did anyone bother to complain, I wonder? Did anyone notice? The number certainly never changed, so I presume not. That’s a bit odd.

Nowadays, it isn’t so much a problem, of course. Except that, even now, it’s hardly perfect. In the US, the emergency services number is, of course, 911. But why use two different digits? Common sense dictates that any complications could easily be deadly for someone who is disorientated and panic-stricken. If you’re dying on the floor with a butcher’s knife through your chest, with no-one at hand to help, you’re hardly in the mood to concentrate on moving your finger from the 9 to the 1, and to press them the right number of times and in the right order. Most countries suffer from this problem (see link). In fact, the adopted standard EU emergency number is 112, some countries even have separate numbers for fire, police and ambulance, and some of these are 8 digits long!

For all countries worldwide, surely the best solution is:

1. To reserve the same number for emergency services, so that you know what it is (and are not liable to forget, if you’re in a foreign country) regardless of where you are.

2. To have the same number for all of the emergency services.

3. To reserve all of the “easy” numbers as emergency services contacts, which are 000, 111, 222, … 999. Then you know that you only have to jab the same key 3 times.

It isn’t that difficult, is it? Is it too much to ask? Or does it just make too much sense?

Atheism

Every rational way you look at it, atheism[1] really is a crap idea. But first, let’s look at what it is.

Dictionary.com:

Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.

Wikipedia:

Atheism, in its broadest sense, is a lack of belief in a deity or deities: the opposite of theism. This encompasses both people who assert that there are no gods and those who make no claim about whether gods exist or not. Narrower definitions of atheism typically regard as atheists only those people who assert the non-existence of gods…

These people may scoff at religion, such as how God can be in multiple places at the same time, yet they’re implicitly willing to accept quantum theory – which not only makes less sense but makes the claim that an object can be at two places at the same time. And this gets to the gist of why being an atheist is an act of lunacy: You shut out all possibility of there being gods without knowing either way, and thus without having a rational reason to. At least the rest of us have the sense to keep an open mind. Atheists are just as bad as the other religious nutters who insist that (only) their religion is right without bothering to see what else might be out there.

What is the point of being an atheist? From a philosophical point of view, being an atheist might aid trying to make an argument for or against being an atheist. This is similar to how “method actors” work. But any philosopher worth his salt would not need to do this. In fact, the best philosophers would be the opposite: the best method of structuring any worthy argument is from a neutral standpoint.

Even ignoring this, it only pays not to be an atheist. Those who call themselves atheists have the misfortune to belong to at least one of the following 3 unfortunate camps.

1. They don’t know what atheism is.

These people are either pitiful in only ever bothering to know or understand half of an idea, over-opinionated or gullible. One major reason for a person considering himself an atheist is to denounce religion. But it can easily be argued that atheism is also a religion (hence "the other religious nutters" referred to above). It at the very least has the main hallmark of religions, which is that believers have to take a leap of faith in order to taking as fact something that cannot be proven. Besides, there are many valid, good reasons for religion.

2. They’re merely saying it because it sounds cool (as with the historically-cool titles of “revolutionary” and “Marxist”).

Oh dear. (A future post is likely to focus on this.)

3. They really do believe that there are no gods.

But where’s their evidence? Once more, ignorance comes into play here. To say “there are so many bad things that happen, there mustn’t be a god” is not valid reasoning. You could say with equal validity, “there are so many good things that happen, there must be a god.” And a god is not necessarily a good creature, nor a bad one for that matter – some people consider Fate, Luck and Truth to be gods. Don’t laugh – they’re just as valid possibilities as any others, from a philosophical as well as a practical point of view.

Why would you want to believe that there are no gods? Implicit with the idea of a god is the idea of pursuing the good and moral life, bettering oneself, life after death and of reincarnation. All of these things lead to a healthier life regardless of whether gods really do exist; the belief of gods is merely a framework to help people to achieve worthwhile goals.

* * *

It only makes sense to keep an open mind, because let's face it, these are the stark possibilities:

• There really are no gods. Oh well, you haven’t lost anything. In fact, you can still feel better about yourself than the atheists, because you realised beforehand that you were in no position to know either way prior to this (whatever ‘this’ is).

• There are good gods. In this case, you will surely be praised by them at least for keeping an open mind.

• There are bad gods. You can at least earn Browny points for pandering to the possibility of their existence, and hope for lesser torment. (But then, surely a bad god in a typical religious sense is purely evil, in which case the hope is in vain regardless of whether your actions are good or bad.)

• There are good and bad gods. In this case, at least they both won’t all hate you for expelling the possibility of their very existence from your mind.

• There are neutral gods. In this case, nothing lost, nothing gained.

• None of us exists; the entire discussion is irrelevant. Oh well, once more there is nothing lost nor gained.

So I’ll leave you with this eye-opening statistic: Of the above possibilities, Atheists have at best a 50% chance of redemption (by either a god or oblivion) compared to those who are at the very least open-minded. You have been warned...

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[1] With the notable exception of implicit atheists, assuming that they cannot be blamed for not being aware of theism.

On the Blog

Blogs are the new crap. People with nothing to say have all of a sudden been given a voice, and they’re just lapping it up. Academics and experts spend decades getting to know their area and becoming respected enough to be listened to. So why should bloggers get there straight away and with no credentials?

And what they say is always written as if they’re right. You can always tell a lot about a person by their blog site. The most egocentric refuse to allow people to post comments in case they get scrutinised by someone who knows what they're talking about, while those paranoid that they might be wrong give themselves the ability to moderate them. The very fact that they choose to hide behind a blog in order to make their pitiful, opinionated views known shows the degree of their cowardice.

Who’s going to listen to them? There are so many blogs that the vast majority go unread. Bloggers either flatter themselves that their blogs are so good that people might want to read them, or they’re kidding themselves with the fantasy that some day they’ll be famous. I suppose it’s the subtext that blogs are like diaries that is supposed to attract readers. But people largely live such boring lives, why would anyone care what they have to say? Anyone with an interesting life is hardly going to be the sort of person who sits at a computer many times a day writing entries for a likely audience of one – themselves. Psychologists would say that blogs are a symptom of paramasturbatory psychosis, where the writers pleasure their minds with the fantasy of importance in order to replace the sex that they’re not getting. I’m inclined to agree. Blogging is just another outlet for a huge ego – except that, while the stardom afforded to producers of pop music, football and textile fashion is limited to a select few with supremely large egos, everyone has the ability to set up a blog.

It is the very fact that the Blog is so easy to start that shows it up for being a suspect medium. Talent is fostered from ability and practice, and makes itself known out of competition, reputation and self proof. Furthermore, a lack of anonymity causes people to have to back up what they say, and (thus) to have something worth contributing to the world, lest they be ridiculed, ignored and accountable. Even newspapers have to be careful about what they say or face getting into trouble. Yet blogs can be written both anonymously and freely, taking these very effective and worthwhile quality-checking mechanisms with them.

Unaccountability is a dangerous thing. Obviously, that someone might write convincingly doesn't make them right. Nevertheless, people have an unfortunate and pervasive tendency to be taken in by what sounds convincing. This is because people largely do not like to use their brains, and instead want to be told things to believe in, so that they don't have to. This potentially makes the world of the Blog a very dangerous one indeed.

Technorati is a site that, amongst other things, rates blogs in a chart according to popularity. Ironically, that what is considered "number 1" is by its nature very unlikely to deserve any such credence.

Let me explain...

The blogs that get higher ratings are those that get the most comments posted to them. But such blogs are likely to be popular in this way because of any of the following reasons:

1. The blog makes stupid comments that are flamed frequently.

2. The blog is merely a gimmick that attracts the press's attention, which attracts the people's attention.

3. The blog attracts like-minded stupid people whose comments support the stupid points that the blog makes. There are far more stupid people than clever people, so the stupid people are likely to win on sheer quantity.

On the outside, it seems that the invention of the blog aids a noble cause – that people should be given a voice to speak out against what’s bothering them, so that their views can be known and, if enough sympathy and influence is gained, something can be done. But consider this: If you give people a voice, they’ll use it. Those who get heard are those with the loudest voices and strongest views. And those with the loudest voices and strongest views are virtually always the most opinionated. And of all people, the opinionated are ultimately the most dangerous people to have a voice afforded to them, particularly when you give them the guarantee of anonymity and the freedom of expression.

Welsh

The Welsh Language Board recently made the stupid claim that kids should speak more Welsh outside school (see link). Load of crap? You bet. Besides which the Welsh Language Board is bound to make such a claim – it is a Board specifically set up to help the Welsh language. What else would they do? Show it up for what it is, and ultimately lose its Council funding? The truth hurts, particularly in this case.

But while the Welsh language is no doubt being helped by this proposterousness that I'm paying for, the poor kids who are forced to learn it are being massively hindered. Schools stopped teaching Latin, despite the advantages it brought (which Welsh doesn’t have, such as teaching the roots of many English words), because it was finally recognised as obsolete. As its presence in school lessons died out, so too did its usage. And rightly so: why learn and use an irrelevant language, when there are more important things to learn? It’s a bit like young children learning words like “moo-moo” and then having to re-learn the word “cow.” What a complete waste of time[1].

Welsh should clearly be taken down the same route of oblivion as Latin. Don’t get me wrong – Welsh is an interesting language that has, in the past, been very important in Wales. It’s just that it isn’t very important now, except for a small bunch of ageing crusty academics whose job it is to research the language’s past. It’s also only the Welsh who have ever used the bloody thing. And even then its very continued practice is bloody-minded.

There are four possible reasons for speaking Welsh, and they’re all crap reasons to continue recognising it to the point of forcedly teaching it in schools throughout Wales:

1. The Welsh still speak Welsh.
   To be more specific, stubborn and behind-the-times minorities of North and West Wales speak it. But they can also speak English. The only reason I can see to insist on speaking Welsh is to exclude outsiders from conversations. And from what I’ve heard of the North Welsh, this is quite a believable explanation. Sadly, it is this mindset that, to greater extremes, results in ideals such as those of the BNP.
2. The Welsh government[2] requires (in most branches, at least) that its employees ably speak good Welsh.
   But why require them to? The Welsh speak even better English, on the whole. It is so much more important for them to practice English for a variety of reasons, including relations with the rest of the world, business dealings and literature.
3. People speak Welsh because the Welsh government encourages them to.
   But why encourage them to? Does Welsh matter ? It isn’t even as if “speaking Welsh is a form of Welsh pride” is a good argument. Its only function is to exclude outsiders, as I’ve already said. That breeds nationalism to the point of disliking other nations. It’s also a sign of vanity rather than pride, because it’s a desperate attempt to cling on to one of the only distinct things that the Welsh have, in order that they can feel better than everyone else in some way. The word “pride” is a dangerous word to use because of its present-day synonyms, and it is largely best avoided.
4. It’s important that children are taught languages at school, and Welsh is the natural first choice because it’s the language of its people.
   I don’t think this argument is good enough. If it’s so important to teach a language, teach a language that is of use in the wider world, such as French, German or Spanish. As far as "language of the people" goes, something should not be taught simply because it is. Using terms such as "of the people" usually gets backing because it subconsciously evokes a sense of 'pride' (read: 'vanity'), and it is not in itself conducive to healthy reasoning.

It’s not even as if the Welsh government understands the overriding importance of English in the world at large, since English is taught as a second language in Welsh schools. How closed-minded can you get? Perhaps students should sue for the many hours lost to learning something that isn’t useful, which could ultimately be detrimental to finding a job due to lack of relevant skills. How often have you seen a job spec that says, “Applicant must speak and write fluent Welsh?” even if you have, it’s bound to originate from North Wales or be a job spec for the Welsh government, which is even then a needless requirement. In the wider scheme of things, it’s as ridiculous as a job spec that says, “Applicant must speak and write fluent Latin.” Unless the job is for a crusty academic specifically studying Latin language or literature, of course. If not, which you must admit is a near certainty, then let's replace Welsh with something better - such as the sciences, philosophy or the arts - and instead incorporate it into history lessons, or something.

To summarise, my argument is this: It is stupid and harmful to propagate Welsh for the sake of propagating Welsh, which is ultimately what is happening regardless of how you look at it. Sure, it’s a huge and integral part of Wales’s history. So let’s consign it to History (in more ways than one), move on, and stop wasting time. There are more important things to learn. Lets clear the dead wood and rejuvenate the Welsh culture with more worthwhile pursuits. It seems that the Welsh people are catching on to this fact (see addenda).

Or perhaps we should all abandon English as well, and learn Mandarin instead. After all, at least twice as many people speak Mandarin as English.

- - - - -

Addendum (18.08.06): It appears that, despite the Welsh Assembly insists on recruiting fluent Welsh speakers, it uses automated online translation sources for its Welsh road signs (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4794753.stm?ls). Couldn't they have used at least one of these people to spell-check a road sign, rather than wasting resources even more blatantly?

Addendum (16.01.16): Hooray, ten years later, someone actually speaks out! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-38531155

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[1] There is, of course, the argument that it is easier for babies to speak “baby speak” than the more “adult” word forms. I would argue that it’s better for kids to have a stab at the latter as soon as possible and initially get it wrong but continually improve, rather than to confuse them with what amounts to two languages. In either case, the case in favour of Welsh does not have this excuse at its disposal.

[2] Obviously, Wales doesn’t have a Government in the sense of the British Government, but then that’s why I didn’t use a capital ‘G’. I intend to imply a central elected political body in general. Perhaps the word “Assembly” would have been more appropriate.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is an extremely complex, massively powerful, awe-inspiring, extremely popular, state-of-the-art pile of crap. It's funny how large and successful companies find it too easy to go overboard on the feature list of programs that have been on the market for a long time, and this piece of software is amongst the worst of them.

Ingenuity is, of course, a good thing. But ingenuity combined with a huge feature list is entirely different. The former involves carefully designing, planning and development. The latter is just a load of modularised add-ins to the detriment of usability. Both purport to enable you to do more things, wherein lies the misnomer: just because there are more features, this doesn’t mean to say that you can accomplish more. There are three reasons for this, and the rules are synonymous with programming languages*:

1. No-one is ever going to be bothered to trawl through masses of documentation to see what’s there – and, even if they get that far, how to use it properly – so it never gets used.

2. By the time you’ve discovered what’s on offer and how to use it, you’ve lost more time than could have been put to use doing things in a simpler way.

3. By providing the user with fewer and simpler tools, these can be combined much more easily to do more things. Smaller building blocks are not only more flexible, they also enable the user to do things in their own way.
   

Try as it might, Word is not as crap as OpenOffice.org, though. At least Word doesn’t try and fail to pretend it’s something else.

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* cf. Graham, P. (2004) "Hackers and Painters: Essays on the Art of Programming", ISBN 0596006624

The Internet

The Internet is a massive load of crap. Well, to be more specific, companies that try to provide customers with Internet-based services do so in such a crap way, it's obvious that they're designed and developed by expensive, professional companies that know what they want to the extent of ignoring what's useful to its end users.

I entered my details into NatWest’s site three times to apply for Internet banking, in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. “There’s something wrong with your data,” it says. What a crap message that is. “There’s something wrong, and we’re going to blame you, but we're not going to tell you what the problem is.” It’s not my bloody information – which you keep referring to as data (I’m thinking of complaining about this) – that’s at fault, it’s you. I’m just the person entering his personal details, which he’s had for a very long time and knows that they’re just fine, thank you very much.

Of course, it is for reasons of security that they don’t tell you why your “data” are “wrong”. Yet get this: After the third attempt, they invite you to print out your details and send them to an address that bears the words, “Online Banking.” Oh, great. So I have to post an envelope advertising that it has banking details in it to an anonymous postal worker who, purely on the basis that he/she works for the Post Office, I'm supposed to be able to trust. Even worse, the enclosed banking details include sort code, account number, security number, full name and date of birth.

I decided to go the whole hog and send it in a Company envelope. If the thief already knows my personal and full bank details, he may as well know where I work while he's at it.

And Yahoo! is just as crap. It’s just one of the many examples of how a company panics when it realises (far too late) that it’s out of date, and throws huge amounts of time and money at trying, and failing, to improve its service*. The only result in the case of Yahoo! is that the user interface it has provided, the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta, is overloaded with detail and functionality. And, of course, it’s horrendously slow.

Why is it that the more mature a company gets, the more immature it acts?

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* See tomorrow's post.

Extraterrestrial Beings

They’re crap as well. If they’re so bloody clever, why don’t they do something about helping us out? And if they are here, why don’t they say so?

And I bet they see the Americans as the Head of Earth. The only advantage the Americans have is the combination of wealth and resources. Unless these aliens are a trading nation, why are these attributes relevant? For diversity and history of culture, the Chinese are a better bet, surely. I’m sure the Americans would love that prospect, a “former” enemy siding with an advanced alien species. There would certainly be less ego flying around the American Corridors of Power if they realised they didn’t have as much influence as they thought. “No, sorry America, you are going to enforce the Kyoto protocol, otherwise our rather influential, technologically advanced space buddies are going to do it for you in any way they see fit.”

Actually, perhaps extraterrestrial beings aren’t that bad after all.

People’s Use of the Word 'Irony'

The English language is an arsenal of weapons. If you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded, you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.

—Stephen Fry, The Liar, 1994

“What’s ironic is that...” “How ironic it is…”

The word ‘irony’ is used to death in social circles. It is the new cliché that’s not recognised for being one, and easily joins the ranks of ‘basically’ and ‘I mean’. I say the use of the word is clichéd, rather than the word itself. The word has a good, sound meaning. People’s overuse of the word, by overloading it with meanings it doesn’t have, is the problem.

Let me set my case in motion. I typed “it is ironic that” into Google. Let’s go through the top 4 unique results. Note as we go how much you can tell about people based on how they use the word "ironic." In fact, I think people could learn a lot from themselves by whether and how they use clichés in general, except for the unfortunate situation that "cliché people" seem also to be amongst the most opinionated people in the world who are incapable of listening to advice.

• 1. Nicole’s Blog: June 2005[1]

  “One might think that Neil Gaiman is clinically insane [...] He writes the way humans see. [...] It is a ironic [sic] that I should like his writings so much. As a rule (as in an absolute code like a marine would follow) I do NOT read anything that may cause my heightend [sic] imagination to work at full power; especially when it contains freaky material. And freaky is what Neil does best.”

  No Nicole, it isn't ironic. It's just you doing something without understanding fully why you're doing it, and then dressing this uncertainty and resulting mild embarrassment up as "irony" to make it sound better.

• 2. Romans Chapter 6[2]

  "It is a ironic [sic] that in order for us to become free from the bondage of sin we must voluntarily become the slave of Christ."

  No it isn't, it's simply an unfortunate circumstance. (Good point, though. Although I'm sure that "voluntary slave" is an oxymoron. "Unquestioning follower" might be a better phrase, even if such a person would be just as idiotic as a voluntary slave.)

• 3. euphoria.jarkolicious.com[3]

  “I am glad that persons independent and outside of my unit have taken the time to research and reach out for the truth. “The truth shall set you free.” It is a ironic [sic] that Heidi and Kit set out in an honest attempt to expose a fraudlent [sic] claim that turned on the accusers”

  No, not ironic, just unfortunate for Heidi and Kit.

• 4. Medrek Discussion Forum entry[4]

  “Frankly, it is a ironic [sic] that the war was sold as an aggression of Ethiopian sovereignty when it is nothing more than a long-standing family feud”

  No it isn't, because irony is unintended and I'm sure dressing up the war as a family feud was simply intentional propaganda rather than innocence and/or ignorance.

What is ironic is that the only people who claim in some form that they know what irony means always seem to show the opposite. I’m just hoping it isn't the case that I, too, have got the wrong idea about what ironic means. In which case, ironic this (except that, if I don't know properly what ironic means, then this isn't ironic, meaning that it is. I'll leave you to work that out).

Finally, I can’t resist giving you another Fry quote, cf. the first paragraph:

“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.”

- Steven Fry, Moab is My Washpot, 1997

* * * * *

Addendum

A certain Steve has pointed out that the "a ironic" typo 'coincidence' in the above quotes might be the consequence of my mistake when I typed the query into Google. I think this very likely. My points still stand, though.

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[1] Nicole. (Jun 2005) “Nicole's Blog: June 2005”, http://iapet.us/nicole/archive/2005_06_01_archive.shtml

[2] Scott, G. “Bible Studies In The Christian Library: Romans Chapter 6”,an Library: Romans Chapter 6”, http://www.christianlibrary.org/authors/Grady_Scott/romans6.htm

[3] euphoria.jarkolicious.com, “euphoricreality.net - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit Of Those Who Threaten It. http://euphoria.jarkolicious.com/journal/2005/07/28/667/

[4] Unknown, “WHY TIGRAY ALONE?” on Medrek Discussion Forum, www.ethioindex.com/medrek/viewtopic.php?p=15551

Life

Life is crap - or, at least, the idea of it, from an unbiased point of view. What is the meaning of life? I’ll tell you what the meaning of life is. The meaning of life is to find a meaning for your life. Having realised this fact, which is a bit obvious when you think about it, the meaning of life is to find an ever better meaning of life. In other words, life is what you make it. "I dunno," says God, "you'll just have to make it up as you go along."

This is, of course, a simplistic view. In the long-term, prospects appear not to be too brilliant to such theorists - regardless of whether they used the logic I've used above - which I will call the Simplists. For example, in the grand scene of things, what is the point of living in the first place, regardless of the pathetic attempts of conscious beings to do something with themselves? Surely, says the Simplist, the only reason for being is to improve the prospects for future reincarnations (just in case they will exist) and for the universe as a whole. But if the soul is not infinite, and the Universe is not infinite, then once again, what’s the point? If the Universe will end, all that work will eventually amount to nothing. If you deduct what you have at the end of the Universe with what you have at the start of the Universe, what result do you get? Nothing. "Simplism" meets nihilism.

If we are to assume that Morality is important – that, despite being invented by humans, morality is of great importance to animals that are capable of experiencing pain in any form – then the way that we affect others (and thus, presumably, the universe holistically) is of great importance, too. So too is the enjoyment of life. Therefore: because life is what you make it, to make it good is inherently the correct thing to do*, regardless of alternatives (such as to negate one’s existence).

So why should life be wasted on the Simplists? Are they right, in which case everyone is either a Simplist or an Idiot at heart? Or should society force them to make what Simplists would call the logical decision, and banish themselves from the Land of the Living permanently?

Interestingly, using this logic, you can also show that heaven and hell are the same thing, as are God and the Devil.

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* See also: Plato (360BC), “The Republic”, Book I. The most popular (and, in my opinion, the best) free online English version is translated by Benjamin Jowett at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. The site has always been temperamental, and links may not work. Failing that, the Penguin Classics version is passable (and very cheap).

The Public

What a pile of crap public perception is.

The public is not the guardian of knowledge. Scientists and philosophers are. These more enlightened people, if we’re to split hairs by regarding them as members of the public, are just that – members of the public, but not the public as a whole.

So why is the public so important? Why is it allowed to have views that so frequently contravene those of the people who know better?

And why is the public given the inexplicably ‘intrinsic’ right to vote? It isn’t as if everyone does masses of research into all available political parties before making an informed decision. You give people the power to make a difference, and their judgement and ultimate decision is made solely on things like

• Which party was in the news recently for something bad

• Whichever party is not the one that’s currently in power

• Who friends and relatives vote for

Adults look down on teenagers for their misguided attempts at managing their lives and for their refusal to seek and taking into account facts when this becomes important. What hypocrites they are.

“I work full time and have four kids,” says The Public. “I don’t have time to do research into these things.” Too bad – if you can’t do it properly, don’t do it at all. Leave it to the experts, the people in the know, the scientists and philosophers who make it their job to analyse these things. Test each individual on his/her interests and knowledge of philosophy, history, geography, politics and political parties, and award the right to vote to those pitiful few who deserve it.

The BBC trialled a service between Nov 2005 and Feb 2006[1], whereby users could download any BBC programme – TV or radio – of their choosing. Anything. The best musical recordings, free educational courses, award-winning nature programmes, ground-breaking comedies. What was the most downloaded programme?

EastEnders*.

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* See yesterday's blog.

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[1] Oops... link lost

Soap Operas

Coronation Street is true to its nature, if its theme tune is anything to go by: It’s dry, dull, out of date, nothing of significance happens, and it offers no positive contribution to society at all.

The public* loves it. Yet it’s crap.

But why is this? Why should people be duped into wasting so much time watching something that won’t help them gain happiness or learn anything?

The main argument for soaps, of course, is simply that it’s entertainment. Why bother going to a concert? Why bother reading a novel? It’s the fact that something new and unexpected happens that captures our attention.

However, concerts and novels offer something that soaps arguably do not. They allow escapism. Escapism from the realness of society. Soaps are a contentious issue on this front. Sure, they’re exaggerations of real life, and in this way they’re not true representations of it – or so I hope. This is their escapist element. But to what extent? I would say that this only holds as far as the number of people who get injured, shouted at, stabbed and arrested goes.

But these things do actually happen in real life (albeit in fewer numbers). You see it in the news all the time. All soaps do is concentrate the negativity of society into centres (axes?) of evil. Soaps amplify all the bitterness and hatred that people can possibly harbour. This is bound only to have a negative impact on peoples’ psyches and personalities, and to aid those who by their nature have diseased psyches and personalities.

Soaps are considered to be entertainment – I’ve already fathomed that. The shows are predominantly negative – that’s pretty obvious, too. So what this actually confirms is that:

• People who watch soaps find it entertaining to watch others suffer.

• People get hooked on soaps because they feel better about themselves by watching others being put down and placed in compromising situations.

What other reasons can there be? Why are soaps allowed to proliferate? And, most importantly, who are the people who watch them, and why aren’t they locked up in an asylum?

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Update: I had the misfortune to come across the following comment to the BBC News online article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6222393.stm:

We went to buy a sofa from DFS because we liked the adverts with "the nice one from East Enders who used to be in that band". The 50% of advertising that didn't work in his case was the 50% that tells you he's advertising SFS not DFS.

- John Gray, Glasgow

I have to say, he deserves everything he got. Asylum's too good for him.

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Update 2 (21.05.07): I notice that the BBC has dropped Neighbours. Perhaps, for once, the institution is standing by its commitment to provide quality entertainment and educational programmes that commercial channels do not?

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Update 3 (15.01.08): Quote of the day:

"When you look at the Globes or the Emmys, there are never any bad categories with soaps and reality shows getting their chance."

- Ricky Gervais

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Update 4 (07.06.10): Yesterday, EastEnders won a Bafta for "best continuing drama". Then again, Ant and Dec won an award, as did Simon Cowell for the programme "Britain's Got Confused Between the words Popularity and Talent". Ant's comment says it all:

"You feed a couple of kangaroo testicles to a glamour model and you get a Bafta."

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* This is a subject for tomorrow's blog.