With so much stuff whizzing around the internets, accelerating barely-humorous* claims of big bangs, and all-devouring black holes zapping around one way, and conspiracy nuts spiralling out of control going the other way and throwing out like actual death threats to physicists, what does the resulting explosion of uninformed daftness tell us about the small-scale fabric of culture itself? Follow the tracks of the memes as they galvanise those around them and work backwards to the source…
Pop cultural candidate #1 has to be Dan Brown’s ‘Angels and Demons’ which features a finished LHC (as did Brown imitating ‘Decipher’ by Stel Pavlou). I have not read it, but it sounds particularly bonkers — I look forward to the forthcoming film. CERN even have a page for A&D fans explaining the reality. But that (appears) to be largely about a large bomb — it’s not the source of end-of-world-ism.
It’s got a sort of negative echo of Y2K about it all — those who know that there is little (i.e nothing) to worry about, are actually going out of their way to stress that this is the case, as it might lose them funding. The Y2K fear and uncertainty was, by contrast, a great source of cash.
It also feels like — finally an end of the world i can relate to! A bang not a whimper! A Statham/Cage blockbuster firecracker of doomscience instead of the media drip-feed namby-pamby melting ice caps and ‘won’t someone think of the polar bears’ editorials. Like boiling frogs, we can only get agitated when the threat is instant but fictional, not incremental and more likely. … read on …
WATCH THIS VIDEO. It’s a LOVE STORY. It’s like REMAINS OF THE DAY 2.0. The greatest love story ever blogged. erm, set against an epic backdrop of the deep south and the american civil war CSS standards compliancy and web-browser wars.
If you haven’t heard this song just go and listen to it. (You may recognise it — it was used in the sproutface DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet). That’s all I should say.
However, to make the your perhaps-momentous discovery more possible, you may need preparing.
If you have not heard Stina’s voice it’s because you’ve never seen an Ariston washing machine advert, and it’s her voice that could be the deal breaker. There are songs you cannot persuade people they will like, and often it’s because of the vocal. If a voice is like nails on a blackboard to you, you won’t get past that. Similarly if it’s like being repeatedly limply patted on the shoulder by a wet teddybear, you’re going to get fed up quite quickly. Still, I made an effort to like Neil Young and Morrisey, so you could have a go with winsome Stina, eh? She’s Swedish — you love Swedish pop right?
In a way this is the song to get past her twee etiolated voice. Like the little star, her voice might feel initially weak, but it’s got a hidden and precise power … read on …
The edition of Top of the Pops on the 8th November 1979 featured The Specials (A Message To You, Rudy), Madness (One Step Beyond), and The Selecter (On My Radio). UK pop buyers officially loved the “2 Tone” label. The distinctive checkered-strip logo was an instantly recognisable label of your pop allegiance — a simple design that was easy to pick out in tippex(r) on an army-surplus school-bag, or in the blocky graphics of home computers at the time (shift-S shift-S shift-S…). I was too young to care (or know) about labels, but I knew the music, and I knew there were special moves at the school disco.
The success of 2 Tone was rapid — their first release, by founding band The Specials, had only been in the summer gone of 79 when the band ‘The Selecter’ didn’t yet exist. They were the label’s first manufactured band, put together from Coventry’s ska scene and given the name of that first release’s (ambiguously attributed) instrumental B-side. … read on …
The Guardian’s “not Nancy Banks Smith” TV reviewer Sam Wallaston is a reliable sort of guy. I watched last night’s Come Dine With Me and was agog. “This is the best thing I’ve seen on Channel 4 in a long time” I exclaimed while watching between my fingers. Sure enough Wallaston’s review: “the worst programme on television”. He didn’t like it. And that’s why I read his reviews. “Never knowingly correct” goes his strapline. (Don’t get me started on his “ha ha geeks eh, this IS complicated and silly” he did the other day on Battlestar Galactica.)
Anyway… COME DINE WITH ME. Last night’s was more than awesome. This show has grown — a day-time staple, it’s gathered celebrity editions, and now it comes in a new format. No longer a short show every day of the week covering 5 people — they now compress 4 people in to a one hour show. It’s a sensation. Well for something that’s come from day-time. (It even has a rip off version on the beeb hosted by Simon Rimmer who seems to be trying to be on telly every day of the week for an entire year.)
But then having established a regular format, with often witty and interesting people who occasionally come to verbal blows, it goes HAYWIRE. Remember that first edition of Wife Swap with the foul mouthed racist woman — it was well train wreck. This was much the same but written by Mike Leigh. … read on …
From an anonymous source close to the company, I’ve found myself in possession of the “Infocom Drive” — a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I’ve ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.
If you want to play it here is the z-code file. You need an application that loads z-code files.
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The edition of Top of the Pops on the 8th November 1979 featured The Specials (A Message To You, Rudy), Madness (One Step Beyond), and The Selecter (On My Radio). UK pop buyers officially loved the “2 Tone” label. The distinctive checkered-strip logo was an instantly recognisable label of your pop allegiance — a simple design that was easy to pick out in tippex(r) on an army-surplus school-bag, or in the blocky graphics of home computers at the time (shift-S shift-S shift-S…). I was too young to care (or know) about labels, but I knew the music, and I knew there were special moves at the school disco.
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