Be Careful What You Wish For

America. It's an odd country. It has lots of good things, and many bad. One of those good things is their Constitution. Something England doesn't bother to have. As part of the Constitution they have a first amendment that states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

A wholy admirable sentiment. Try as I might I can't imagine a situation in which I would describe this as "going too far" in any manner.

Some American students can. 1 in 3 of them.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

Which, if I understand correctly, means that a significant number of Amercian students want less rights.

They deserve them.

Bits And Bobs

Over at Making Light Teresa maintains that "My readers are the best thing about this weblog. If you’re not reading the comments, you’re missing half the fun." It's true and her recent post on an Onion piece is a case in point. The comments start off as "Ha ha, I thought that was funny, too" and quickly evolve in to a discussion of whether it's duck or duct tape. The answer, of course, is it's Gaffa Tape, any musician knows that.

Also after reading those comments, you'll never forget what "apocope" means. I now need a good reason to bring it up in conversation.

Speaking of comments, I got my first comment in ages -- since the great Making Light spike, in fact -- from Chris over at Splinters, perhaps I should be horrible to people more often[1]. I'll answer it soon, but I need to think a little more clearly than I am doing today. I keep wanting to defend The Incredibles partly on box-office performance and I don't want to get into that.

Box-office is a lousy way to review movies and I don't really get what it means to a movie as a work unless the movie was created simply to make money. David Poland's Hot Blog does this quite a lot, and I guess that's his right, but I don't know how reading, for an example, "Closer added about 30% more screens and will see a gross increase this weekend of about 15%" tells me anything about Closer as a movie. What it does tell me is that the idea that accountancy has replaced creativity in Hollywood sometimes applies to critics, too.

So, anyway, this being a bit of a round-up, I'm going to mention my referrer logs, feel free to skip to the footnote.

No really hilarious ones recently, though a Google for '"pubs to avoid" in Newcastle" (oddly, I don't show up on this anymore) made me smile. An AOL search for "PASSIVE AGRESSIVE VIOLENT BEHAVIOR" made me realise that, perhaps, I should spell-check the cut-n-pasted stuff, and the Google for "age effection of solving a puzzle" made me realise I should spell-check my own stuff, too.

I do get links from other Blogs, too, but most of them are from that "Go To Next Blog" button at the top of Blogger pages. I got one recently that seemed to be a blog solely set-up to provide links to a dog company's website. Frown-worthy behaviour at the very least.

By far the most links I've had recently are for "Samarost Walkthrough" (which again I don't show up on any more, is Google purging its Blog links?). Now, there are some hard games on the 'Net. I've been stuck on quite a few. Samarost is not one of them. Just click things and, eventually, you'll click them in the right order, also if you've clicked something once it doesn't mean you can't click it again.


[1] Splinters is a great site, though. It will always have a special place in my heart for being the first place, that I read, to point out how "Arts & Letters Daily" had slipped from "must read" artices to "this agrees with my politics" ones. Now that was a rant worth preserving.

All White "Pride"

Every so often something happens that is so mind-blowingly dumb that you just have to stand and gawk open-mouthed at it. All the time realising that no joke you can make about it is ever going to be funnier than the incident itself. It seems that in football if these occurences have nothing to do with Sepp Blatter, then they involve the FA:

The Football Association have apologised for a "regrettable oversight" after a DVD which claimed to feature the greatest post-war England internationals did not include a single black player.

The DVD, entitled 'The Pride of the Nation', has been included in a welcome pack for newcomers to the 'englandfans' official members' club.

Penguin Pick Up

Chris over at Splinters, fresh from ranting about The Incredibles[1], spots the flaw in the John Sutherland's article about the massive Penguin warehouse cock-up:

People are unlikely to buy direct from publisher websites because most of the time, people don't know, or care, who the publisher is. The reason why Amazon continues to thrive is because it has built itself into the consciousness of Net users as the first place to go and look for just about anything. That's especially true of books, and Jeff Bezos's first great idea was to stock a far greater breadth of more obscure books than any sane advisor thought wise - the result was that he attracted a huge audience looking for hard to find books.

Penguin, though, might actually be one of the few publishers for who this might work especially with their huge Classics range, but other than that I would image that few people buy books based on who published them.

That said, I did buy mostly Picador books for a time. I'm sure this says some thing very bad about me.

[1] Chris is so proud of his rant, he's made it a feature of the Spike main site, which is like being proud to show off the scar you got from shooting yourself in the foot. He mentions his referrer logs showing up links from Animation Nation, but doesn't link to the discussion in particular. It's here. You can't help but agree with this:

Anyone who thinks Shrek and Shark's Tale had intelligent scripts and knows enough about daytime American sitcoms to use them as good comparisons doesn't hold much credibility with me than any other armchair critic.

Darth Tater

OK, so I've resisted temptation to link to this for long enough...

Yes, I will be buying one at the soonest opportunity.

Drumming Effects Intelligence

Acccording to research done at the University of Toronto, drumming can make you smarter. Apparently hitting things is good for you and drumming can stimulate brain activity. Drummers apparently "do tend to score better on IQ tests, and have fewer discipline problems".

Only, I imagine, if the school is full of bass players...

Is Bugs Bunny a Twansvestite?

Here's the proof.

Link via Boing Boing.

English like it's spoke

Harpers have an article about how the English don't always quite say what they mean. It's mostly to do with communications in Europe and the the was alledgely found found by a journalist for The Economist in 2004 on an office wall in the European Court of Justice. The list has such gems as:

What they say: By the way/Incidentally . . .
What is understood: This is not very important.
What they mean: The primary purpose of our discussion is ...

And:

What they say: With the greatest respect . . .
What is understood: He is listening to me.
What they mean: I think you are wrong, or a fool.

Well, anyway, I'm sure I've been guilty of most if not all of these. If guilty's the right word. Mostly it shows that the British can be disdainfully cruel if they can get away with it while still keeping an air of quiet dignity. I can't see anything wrong with that...

The Economist, by the way, have their own article on this, which manages to find other sides the story by looking at how other countries use their native languages in subtly confusing ways:

No less obvious is the fact that ideas about plain speaking do not travel easily across the Channel. As the Brits see things, a Frenchman who says “je serai clair”(which literally means “I will be clear”) should be understood as meaning: “I will be rude”. Also evident is the Anglo-Saxons' contempt for spectacular gestures à la française. The phrase “Il faut la visibilité Européenne”(“We need European visibility”) is rendered as: “The EU must indulge in some pointless, annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing.” The British also suggest that the sentence “Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique” (literal translation: “We must find a pragmatic solution”) should be understood as meaning: “Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward.”

In Praise of Plagiarism. Perhaps.

Somewhat appropriately I can't remember where I found this link. Anyway, it's an article called Something Borrowed by Malcolm Gladwell.

True, copying could go too far. There were times when one artist was simply replicating the work of another, and to let that pass inhibited true creativity. But it was equally dangerous to be overly vigilant in policing creative expression, because if Led Zeppelin hadn’t been free to mine the blues for inspiration we wouldn’t have got “Whole Lotta Love,” and if Kurt Cobain couldn’t listen to “More Than a Feeling” and pick out and transform the part he really liked we wouldn’t have “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—and, in the evolution of rock, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a real step forward from “More Than a Feeling.”

I always find copyright to be one of those contentious issues that never gets resolved satisfactorily. On the one hand I do want musicians to profit from their original work and on the other I don't want medicine companies using their privileged position to exploit the sick. Gladwell seems happy to take each issue on a case-by-case basis, but that's as open to inconsistency as any position.

Self Indulgence

TBogg links to a new web craze (possibly). You have to hit shuffle on your iPod and list your top ten. I don't have an iPod, but I tried it in WinAmp and got:

Blackstreet feat. Slash & ODB - Fix (Remix)
Tom Waits - The Part You Throw Away
Was (Not Was) - Tell Me That I'm Dreaming
Warren Zevon - Macgillycuddy's Reeks
Various Artists - Reach Out, I'll Be There - Four Tops (The)
Garbage - Medication
Zalatnay Sarolta and Generál Group (Generál együttes) - Come Alone (Gyere egyedül)
Beck - Lost Cause
Lewis Taylor - Never Be My Woman
Mark Lanegan Band - Come to Me (feat. PJ Harvey)