Friday, October 29, 2004
Firstly, Flores man [part is non-subscription].
Can I be the only expecting this to be a hoax? Part of me is expecting someone to confess that it was all done using some huge pressure chamber. And yet, it's in Nature, it's being carried by reputable sources. Am I really too cynical? It just doesn't feel right.
But maybe that's in part caused by only hearing of it via television news programmes, and them showing people joking about it, or anthropomorphising the heck out of it. The programmes seemed to regard hominid as human, and therefore people could talk about a woman doing something or other. To me, "woman" carries too much societal inflection. A female of this species might have done X, but a woman doing X? It's too certain, too easy.
But for the time being I'll ignore all the usual media dross about hobbits, leprechauns and dwarfs [most of the media have avoided using that latter word, wary of implying that people with hormonal variations are a different species. Some didn't manage this].
I don't know why I find this so hard to accept. Perhaps because I hadn't been paying attention, and so only heard it through the childish main media [who have the same linguistic interpretation skills as Downing Street applies to intelligence reports, "might" is "is", for example], and therefore scoffed at them sexing it up, and getting it wrong. Unfortunately I haven't a Nature subscription so I can't find what the original paper says, but I doubt it describes the hominids going out on morning to hunt pygmy elephants [although what else would "the little people" hunt?].
And so, to distract from this pointless scepticism, I mention something cribbed from the Guardian. One of the letters was someone writing in to ask if, now that 7 small skeletons have been found in a cave, Snow White is presumably helping police with their enquiries.
Other stuff and I'm not sure there is all that much to say.
Newsnight and Channel 4 have both recently carried worrying stories about the American election, which currently appears to need UN observers.
Bizarre random detail of the day:
On the back of the Pushing Tin DVD case is a box describing the level of unpleasantness in the film. So it describes the language as "Occasional, strong" [only occasional use of language? Must be a very short script] and the violence as "Infrequent, mild". The other two categories are "Sex/nudity" and "other". Quite why nudity is equated with sex I'm not sure, but that's Fox for you. And as for "other", the description is "Comedy, air traffic controllers". Given the first 3 boxes describe the amount and type of aspects which some audiences may find objectionable, does this mean there is a comedy amount of other? How much is comedy? Unless both descriptions are warnings, just in case there are people in Tunbridge Wells who will write indignantly to the Times should they find themselves unexpectedly watching a comedy.
But "air traffic controllers"? What's that in there for? In case there should happen to be some Amish guy watching the DVD and he'll get upset if he sees people making strong use of modern technology in their jobs?
And here's us with our giddying array of classifications, which usually leave one wondering what was so bad about that 18, or possibly if the PG threshold has shifted since we were young enough that it would matter.
Anyway that'll be it for now, as I'm still battling an erratic wireless connection, and have to sort out stuff for the weekend.
Anyhoo,
Can I be the only expecting this to be a hoax? Part of me is expecting someone to confess that it was all done using some huge pressure chamber. And yet, it's in Nature, it's being carried by reputable sources. Am I really too cynical? It just doesn't feel right.
But maybe that's in part caused by only hearing of it via television news programmes, and them showing people joking about it, or anthropomorphising the heck out of it. The programmes seemed to regard hominid as human, and therefore people could talk about a woman doing something or other. To me, "woman" carries too much societal inflection. A female of this species might have done X, but a woman doing X? It's too certain, too easy.
But for the time being I'll ignore all the usual media dross about hobbits, leprechauns and dwarfs [most of the media have avoided using that latter word, wary of implying that people with hormonal variations are a different species. Some didn't manage this].
I don't know why I find this so hard to accept. Perhaps because I hadn't been paying attention, and so only heard it through the childish main media [who have the same linguistic interpretation skills as Downing Street applies to intelligence reports, "might" is "is", for example], and therefore scoffed at them sexing it up, and getting it wrong. Unfortunately I haven't a Nature subscription so I can't find what the original paper says, but I doubt it describes the hominids going out on morning to hunt pygmy elephants [although what else would "the little people" hunt?].
And so, to distract from this pointless scepticism, I mention something cribbed from the Guardian. One of the letters was someone writing in to ask if, now that 7 small skeletons have been found in a cave, Snow White is presumably helping police with their enquiries.
Other stuff and I'm not sure there is all that much to say.
Newsnight and Channel 4 have both recently carried worrying stories about the American election, which currently appears to need UN observers.
Bizarre random detail of the day:
On the back of the Pushing Tin DVD case is a box describing the level of unpleasantness in the film. So it describes the language as "Occasional, strong" [only occasional use of language? Must be a very short script] and the violence as "Infrequent, mild". The other two categories are "Sex/nudity" and "other". Quite why nudity is equated with sex I'm not sure, but that's Fox for you. And as for "other", the description is "Comedy, air traffic controllers". Given the first 3 boxes describe the amount and type of aspects which some audiences may find objectionable, does this mean there is a comedy amount of other? How much is comedy? Unless both descriptions are warnings, just in case there are people in Tunbridge Wells who will write indignantly to the Times should they find themselves unexpectedly watching a comedy.
But "air traffic controllers"? What's that in there for? In case there should happen to be some Amish guy watching the DVD and he'll get upset if he sees people making strong use of modern technology in their jobs?
And here's us with our giddying array of classifications, which usually leave one wondering what was so bad about that 18, or possibly if the PG threshold has shifted since we were young enough that it would matter.
Anyway that'll be it for now, as I'm still battling an erratic wireless connection, and have to sort out stuff for the weekend.
Anyhoo,
