The Third Man – An American Film ?

 Film, Media  No Responses »
Jul 122010
 

According to the American Film Institute, the film “The Third Man” is American. There is one small problem with this: it is a British film through and through. The director was British (Carol Reed); the writer (Graham Greene) was British, and of the three producers only one was American (the others being British and Hungarian). The film was made on location in Vienna with additional work in a British studio.

So how on earth can anyone consider it to be an American film ? Interestingly the AFI seems to make a habit of this – in their 1998 list of great films, some of the films leap out at me as being British :-

Of that list, there may be some debate about the last two, but both were directed by an American directory after he had chosen to live in Britain. Both were written by British writers, and the sound requirements of 2001 could only be met at the time by the use of a British studio.

The trouble with claiming that several of the greatest films ever made were American when they were in fact British, undermines the British film industry. And it’s not as if the American film industry is short on great films!

Lesbians Spend 111% Of Their Time Checking Out Breasts!!

 Media  No Responses »
Jun 102010
 

According to this article on Sarah Palin’s alleged breast enhancements – which is just foolish speculation anyway – lesbians will apparently spend three times as much time checking out breasts. Maybe so, but the interesting point is the woefully pathetic numerical sanity checking in this article.

Who can spend 111% of their time doing anything ? We are not talking about that foolish “110% effort” which is just innumerate marketing, but a simple bit of statistics. If you spend every second of every day staring at TV, you might get to 100% time spent wasting your time, but no matter how hard you work at it you’ll never get beyond 100% – it just isn’t possible to use more time than is available. A figure of 111% translates as spending a smidgen over 26.5 hours in every 24 hours staring at boobs.

Not only impossible, but frankly the lesbians I have met do not seem any more inclined to turn into drooling idiots in the presence of breasts than ordinary men do. To go on because that could be misunderstood … lesbians seem perfectly capable of holding down jobs, joining a conversation, and doing pretty much everything others are capable of. Something they would find tricky if they were so obsessed with breasts that they spent an impossible 111% of their time staring at boobs.

In case you are thinking that the 111% figure is a simple typo, it is made clear in the article that the figure is “calculated” by taking the figure that straight women spend obsessing about their friends breasts (37%) and multiplying by three because lesbians spend three times as much time obsessed with breasts. Not the way that such a calculation is made!

Perhaps the relevant article author should spent a little less time thinking about breasts and more on basic numeracy. This kind of inaccuracy is the kind of thing that gives the “news” media (and the Internet) a bad name for inaccuracy.

Gordon Brown and the “Bigoted Woman”

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 

So this lunchtime, Gordon Brown was being interrogated by an ordinary voter. Fair enough. But later after getting into his car without checking his microphone was off, was heard calling her a “bigoted woman”. He has already apologised, but the damage has allegedly been done.

It is certainly the kind of mistake no politician would like to make – an easy boost to all the others.

It has been seized on as an example of how Gordon Brown has no sympathy with the interests of common people. Possibly.

But it could also be his way of dealing with stress – to insult someone in “private” (and he thought it was in private) is a way of letting off stream. Anyone who has worked in IT will undoubtedly be familiar with the strategy. And a politician meeting with a member of the public who is asking aggressive and unscripted questions is likely to get a little stressed.

And who is to say he is unique in this ? Gordon Brown has been caught out by making two mistakes – expressing his feelings out loud, and not making sure he was really in private. Other politicians have so far in this election have not been caught out, but who is to say that they do not do exactly the same ?

Looking back a day later, and what now ? I would say that nobody is really interested in Brown’s “disastrous” mistake – despite all the fuss in the media. Is his mistake more an opportunity for the media to make a fuss ? The subject hasn’t come up in conversation and nobody has encountered this page through a search. Perhaps to the ordinary voters out there, there are other factors far more interesting than whether Gordon Brown sometimes is a little less than diplomatic in private (or what he thought was private) ?

Mephadrone Deaths ?? Part 2

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 082010
 

Despite being some time since the issue of mephadrone jumped into the consciousness of those who are not familiar with the drugs scene (or the “legal highs” scene), I am still not aware of any genuine deaths that can be solely attributed to mephadrone. There seems to be a number of deaths where multiple drugs were involved including mephadrone and of course the media scaremongers are blaming that drug for the deaths.

It is also clear that there are a number of health risks associated with mephadrone; so the same as paracetamol then ? Well not quite – there has been no extensive testing of mephadrone to assess the risks associated with it whereas paracetamol has had extensive tests. The risks of paracetamol are well understood and the benefits are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages.

Are the apparent risks of mephadrone and the fact that it has not undergone any proper form of testing enough to justify making mephadrone illegal ? Well perhaps …

But some are saying that it should be illegal because people think that because it is legal, it is safe. I am afraid that argument is more than a little ridiculous – after all rat poison is hardly safe but it is still legal. Personally I think that someone who receives a parcel through the post containing a product labelled as “plant food” and still believes that taking it is safe is more than a little foolish.

But of course the true merits of the argument are ignored when the government makes a knee-jerk reaction to make it illegal – as is due to happen on the 16th April 2010.

Professor David Knutt has made an interesting point that people who choose to use recreational drugs may well be better off using the already illegal amphetamines or ecstasy because the risks of these are known whilst mephadrone is an unknown quantity. Whether we approve or not of the use of recreational drugs, it seems that making the drugs illegal is not going to stop their use.

Indeed it may well be that making such drugs illegal not only pushes people who insist on using into the arms of pushers who adulterate their drugs with other harmful substances, but also pushes people into trying “legal highs” as an alternative. These “legal highs” are obvious less understood than drugs that have been around for some time, and may be more or less harmful than the existing choices.

By continually looking to what drug users are using and making everything they use illegal, we are encouraging the development of new drugs with similar effects. These new drugs may be more or less harmful than the ones made illegal – we just do not know.

It is time we re-considered this failed attempt at prohibition which has been going on since (in the UK and in the case of opiates) just after World War I. There are many arguments against the current position on prohibition, but one argument that is of particular relevance in today’s financial climate is the possible tax revenue that could come from a “sin tax” on recreational drugs. Making drugs legal would very likely reduce their cost sufficiently that a tax could be added and the resulting product would still be cheap enough to undercut the illegal drugs – and of course the government could add a big health warning.

So It’s May 6th For The UK Election

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 062010
 

Now that it has been announced, we can look forward to a very tedious month whilst the politicians try and grab all the headlines with variations on “look at me” (with the hope that their exhibitionism will turn into a vote). At least we know when it will be over at last.

Of course because of the election system we suffer, most of us don’t have much in the way of a say in what the next parliament looks like and who makes up the government. Apparently around half of the current seats in parliament have not changed in terms of what party the MP represents in over 40 years! So much for democracy.

Of course there is a form of democracy at work here – those few of us who live in marginal seats are effectively the ones who decide what bunch of politicians make up the next government. The rest of us are expected to vote according to the usual pattern and return an MP for our constituency no different to the previous one.

Perhaps we should remember the expenses scandal, and vote for independent candidates not affiliated and obligated to the party machines.

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