Miscellany

[LadyShea]

This is what Kiddo wore to the supermarket with me today

I love that little dude.

[BrotherMan]

Were you going by Toshi Station to pick up some power converters?

[Ari]

"Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance. Well they're no friends of mine!"

[LadyShea]

He got the shirt at a Civil War battle reenactment (a little lady sews them herself)...but he will be thrilled that he looks like he is from Tatooine.

Speaking of Bort, did you see the Phineas and Ferb Star Wars crossover?

[BrotherMan]

For no reason at all I haven't watched Phineas and Ferb. I tried half an episode or something and it didn't get me.

[LadyShea]

OMG Bort! I am dissapoint!

[BrotherMan]

It's my one failing as a nerd. Some people in my circles have always raved about the show so I know I've probably missed out on something that's probably good.

[LadyShea]

I counted on you.

Anyway it's smart, it's funny, it's a musical, and the message is all about being creative and awesome.

[BrotherMan]

The Lonely Man Theme - The Incredible Hulk TV...

[LadyShea]

[mickthinks]

I've been doing a little research ...

Originally Posted by lisarea

That Petula Clark video:

OK. I give. Who is the last one? The second to last is Jimmy Savile, right? Which is pretty bad. But who's the last one? Is he even worse? Is this something I have to be British for, or am I just really stupid?

(I didn't recognize a bunch of the other ones, either.)

Okay, the video clip is heavily butchered so not all the personalities are seen in their original detail.

1. The first, fleetingly seen as Clark turns it over to the second, is the Emperor Tiberius. I am intrigued by this choice and would like to hear what Clark sings to him. Tiberius has no special fame or significance for Brits, and few of us woud be able to pick up any references connected to him.
2. Robin Day, TV News Anchor.
3. (skipped) Martin Peters, footballer.
4. Unaccountably Horatio Nelson, admiral (who, having been born under the sign of Libra, represents a spectacular fuck-up by the programme's researcher)
5. Jack Warner, actor (as Dixon of Dock Green).
6. Undoubtedly, and unaccountably, Hermann Göring, Nazi (who, having been born under the sign of Capricorn, represents a second research fuck-up)
7. Charles Bronson, actor, of course
8. the lately infamous Jimmy Saville, radio DJ and TV presenter
9. (skipped) Roy Jenkins, politician
10. The last one is indeed, as slimshady's lady said, Ken Dodd, stand-up comedian.

Ken Dodd's reputation has recovered from his prosecution for tax evasion, and a more innocent figure would be difficult to imagine. I think Curtis has made a mistake (unless he knows and is hinting at deeds of Dodd's that are as yet not public knowledge) and meant "the last one" to refer to Saville.

I want to add that I find Curtis's piece incoherent and pointless. He connects the past to the present in a popular but vacuous, degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon, manner. Diana Dors's career does not really shed light on the controversy surrounding the NSA and GCHQ, and Sam McClure's success in exposing conspiracies of power behind the railroads and the banks has little to tell us about the failure of today's journalists to expose conspiracies of power behind paedophile networks among light entertainers.

Yes, huge inequalities of wealth create huge imbalances of power which generate conspiracies perverting all our civilising institutions in ways which can defy our understanding. In that respect, 100 years ago was just like now. Does Curtis's article enlarge this obvious truth in any significant way? I don't think so.

[lisarea]

Thank you, mick, for that research, and I think you're probably right that he meant Jimmy Saville.

I'd put the inaccuracies down to two things. First, it was really hard to look things up before the internet, so fact checking was spotty. Second, those variety shows were all slapped together garbage. I don't know anyone who actually liked them, but I did know people who watched them just because there were usually only three or maybe four different things on TV at any given time, and maybe the other options were even worse.

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I want to add that I find Curtis's piece incoherent and pointless. He connects the past to the present in a popular but vacuous, degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon, manner. Diana Dors's career does not really shed light on the controversy surrounding the NSA and GCHQ, and Sam McClure's success in exposing conspiracies of power behind the railroads and the banks has little to tell us about the failure of today's journalists to expose conspiracies of power behind paedophile networks among light entertainers.

Yes, huge inequalities of wealth create huge imbalances of power which generate conspiracies perverting all our civilising institutions in ways which can defy our understanding. In that respect, 100 years ago was just like now. Does Curtis's article enlarge this obvious truth in any significant way? I don't think so.

That's actually a pretty good description of Curtis' style. The only thing I'd really take issue with is that I love that style. It's sort of halfway between James Burke's Connections and Grandpa Simpson's onion belting.

I'm sure other people could do a better job of making a more concrete, linear case and structuring it like a logical syllogism to make an argument. He could probably do that, too, but I like the woolgathering and the tenuous connections and the way he kind of meanders around, tying together other, seemingly unrelated topics, even when some of the connections are more tangential than others. So the way I read it, that article is about muckraking journalism, but it's also about a lot of other things too.

I have seen some people saying that they don't think his style translates to writing, which I can totally understand, but I guess I just like that style of narrative. His documentary series are longer, the topics are broader (technology, ideologies, freedom) and they're more clearly a series of loosely connected discussions of different topics separated by title cards so the transitions are more delineated. I rewatch some of the individual segments of The Trap and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace every now and again, and they stand on their own really well, outside the context of the series they come from.

[ceptimus]

I don't know if it affects the errors in the video but there is a drift, over time, between star signs and the calendar.

My birthday, October 23rd, was always Scorpio when I was a child. Now, on those rare occasions when I look at horoscopes in newspapers, it is Libra.

[Hermit]

Originally Posted by mickthinks

I find Curtis's piece incoherent and pointless.

Originally Posted by lisarea

I'm sure other people could do a better job of making a more concrete, linear case and structuring it like a logical syllogism to make an argument.

That article is a masterpiece. Like a pointillist painting it starts with a dot, adds more apparently unrelated dots, and somewhere along the line you can discern a picture. But the article is more than a pointillist creation. It's not just a bunch of dots that become an image. The flatness of the canvas is transcended, and very quickly so. Diana Dors is a dot. So is her hunky partner. If Curtis was a hack for some pulp magazine or a tabloid style newspaper those dots would remain just that, no matter how many more he'd care to add. The article would remain to be just what he said in the second and third sentence: A story that never adds up to a bigger picture. A recitation of isolated events. Curtis, however, does not just assemble dots. He shows how they interact, and the more dots are added the interaction creates a bigger picture.

It's not just bigger. It transcends its two-dimensional boundaries. The dot of the profit motive and the dot of mass media combine and interact with the dot of Dor's life and create unexpected, dynamic interactions on a higher level. Ever more convoluted, sometimes contradictory developments occur that in turn spin out into yet more dimensions.

The subject of the article is nothing like any of the uncomplicated laws of physical science. We therefore cannot expect - nor reasonably demand - a totally concise and precise conclusion such as e=mc². Despite the impossibility of a formal syllogism I see a fundamentally sound coherence in Curtis' piece, and a point at the end of it, vague as it necessarily is.

[lisarea]

OMG cep, you missed the huge news about all those astrology signs changing!

Your zodiac sign may have changed - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

I guess so did I, because I had no idea mine was different according to that too. My birthday is September 26, and as far as I knew, I was supposed to be Libra, but now it's shifted WAY over and I'm right up toward the beginning of Virgo.

This explains a LOT about my life, I tell you what.

[JoeP]

My question is ... did the horoscopes predict this change in signs?

[Ymir's blood]

Don't care what anyone says. I will always be cancer.

[BrotherMan]

[Hermit]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Your zodiac sign may have changed - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Millenniums? WTF?

Also, as a Gemini we felt somewhat conflicted at times, but at least we had each other. Now it seems I'm a Taurus. Should I change my behavioural pattern? Perhaps get more horny? Doesn't seem suit my age.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Don't care what anyone says. I will always be cancer.

Have you read The Worm Ouroboros? I've suddenly decided you may have an affinity with the black iron crabs of Witchland.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Have you read The Worm Ouroboros? I've suddenly decided you may have an affinity with the black iron crabs of Witchland.

Yes, I think we discussed the book at one point years ago.

[BrotherMan]

Serenading the cattle with my trombone - YouTube

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Yes, I think we discussed the book at one point years ago.

We did? It's entirely likely I just don't remember.

[mickthinks]

Originally Posted by lisarea

... that article is about muckraking journalism, but it's also about a lot of other things too.

Originally Posted by Hermit

Ever more convoluted, sometimes contradictory developments occur that in turn spin out into yet more dimensions.

I agree with both of these observations—I think they make my point. Hermit says he can find a transcendent coherence there. I think that's the illusion that Curtis is trying to create.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by JoeP

We did? It's entirely likely I just don't remember.

Probably been close to a decade now.