I dream of Jeanie

Daytime tv. Gotta love it.

Today I saw the pilot episodes of I dream of Jeannie. It had a different intro, but most of the recognisable characters seemed to be there. The Major (as played by Larry Hagman) was a Captain. And given how goofy he was in the opening episodes, I’m not really sure how he got that promotion.

I remember really liking the show when I was young, but I’d never seen the opening episodes. I’m not sure how the series got commissioned, but that Sidney Sheldon must have been a pretty persuasive producer.

In the 2nd episode, Jeannie magics herself and the Major Captain back 2000 years to ancient Baghdad. But everyone’s already Muslim (Islam isn’t yet 2000 years old). It was quite interesting to see the Major being held captive by a barbaric, giant Baghdadi. It all seemed quite dark and prophetic, in a way.

like watching a trainwreck

A former colleague of mine had a moonlighting job acting as guide-cum-chaperone-cum-cultural interpreter to American high school bands and majorette corps who march in London’s New Year’s Day parade. I’m not sure who goes to see that parade and if it’s shown on tv it’s up in the nosebleed channels on some open access programming. But American high school students pay to march in London – so there’s a parade.

This colleague often had to deal with American parents and chaperones who were a bit shocked by the more open, permissive culture of Britain. For example, one came to her complaining of the unrelenting pornography on the hotel tv and could they please have the channel blocked?

Upon investigation it was discovered it was one of the regular old, free-to-air network channels – good old Channel 4 with a little late night, educational, culturally enlightening documentary. And no – since it was a “terrestrial” channel – it could not be blocked. This stuff was being broadcast into every home in the land.

I had to admit I had some sympathy with the American parent. After all, on what other channel can you find a man talking openly about his love for his pony (as I have watched – rapt)? And I don’t mean like a little girl’s love for her pony. Not at all.

Of course Channel 4 doesn’t always have stuff like that on, but sometimes it does and tonight it did. It was all about the Virgin School – where a group of middle aged women (often twice the age of their clientele) help men become – well, not virgins. They’ve all got certificates in something called “sexual grounding”, so I’m sure it’s all totally legit. Did I mention that this school was located, rather conveniently, in Amsterdam?

This particular programme was focusing on James, 26, from Kent who was their first English client and who had gone over to Holland to learn how not to be a virgin. It was cringe, after cringe after cringe as young James shopped with his grandmother for new underwear for his course (he told her it was a confidence building course). The Vol-in-Law was working on the laptop and said “I’m averting my eyes.”

I did not turn away when a woman over twice his age ( and certified in sexual grounding) was encouraging him to touch her wherever he might. I said “I can’t, it’s like a watching a trainwreck.” But indeed even I had to turn away when the role play turned to a school reunion and James was confessing his undying love to the intimacy therapist (playing some old crush of his) within moments of asking her onto the dance floor.

Channel changed. Even the hardiest of us have to turn away when the carnage gets too bloody.

Euro-fantastic

We did watch the Eurovision song contest last night. The Serbian lesbian pop ballad won. And I’m a winner, too. Who knew my semi-finals results post would get hundreds of hits off the search string “Serbian Lesbian Eurovision”

It was one of the better songs, definitely. And the staging was really brilliant. Somebody somewhere said “How can we turn a short, ugly obviously dyke singer to our advantage? I know, let’s have lots of lipstick lesbian Amazonian types stiffly writhing in the background, implying that while she might not be a looker to you or me – at least she appeals to a certain type – in Serbia” Whoever came up with that is a pop genius. It really worked. It was compulsive viewing. It handily beat even the most favored entry – the Ukranian transvestite with the nonsense song and the mirrored outfit (that was fab, by the way).

The Texan came over to watch the Eurovision. In her five years here, she had never actually sat down to watch the Eurovision all the way through (I have to admit I don’t always manage it). She was amazed by the cheesy, cheese-cheese of the songs and the strange Eastern-European stylings. Even though she still has family in the Czech Republic – growing up in America you can’t really get your head inside those particular tastes and preferences.

There were some good examples of ethno-pop – and I do like me some ethno-pop (Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia and Ireland and Greece entrants all fall in this category more or less). You can hear all the songs here and check out videos here for every single entrant.

What’s even more interesting than the performances are the voting patterns and system. It used to be that winners were chosen by a panel who, although internationally representative, were just as on the up-and-up as a Russian Olympic skating judge. But in recent years, the tv companies have figured out there’s a lot of revenue in phone-in, so now each country runs its own phone-in sytem – and the votes are tabulated in a kind of particularly unbalanced electoral college system. That is – the UK can vote for any of the entrants but the British one. The votes are counted and the top 10 entrants are allocated points between 1 and 7 and then 8, 10 or 12 points for the favored contestants. All other entrants receive 0 points (or nil points en Francais) from the UK. Alright, it’s fair enough that Britons can’t vote for the UK entrant (I guess), but why should the smattering of votes of each of the itty-bitty countries count exactly the same as the millions of votes from the UK, France or Germany.

And then what’s worse all the little countries vote in blocks. (See an analysis here) All the Scandinavian countries vote for each other. All the Baltic countries vote for each other. Now all the former Soviet Republics are in the contest and they vote for each other – as do the Balkan nations – united once again in the name of music – which has a bit of a distorting influence. The dire Russian entry – which was all about whoring (I’m not kidding – check out the lyrics ) appears to have won because every surrounding country feared having their gas supply cut off if they didn’t vote for Russia. On the other hand, Turkey with the stupid “Shake it up” seems to have done quite well because Turkish emigrants in a number of Western European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria) voted for their home nation.

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Anyway, congratulations Serbia. Next year, Belgrade.

They shoot foxes, don’t they?

Did you know that if you live in London you can hire a man with a rifle and a night vision scope to come to your house and hang out with his gun propped on the sill of your bathroom window? And that he can take out any visiting foxes with hopefully no more than one shot (per fox)?

I did not know that. I found this out on a show called Meet the Foxes – which was all about the foxes of North London.

I’m not sure this is such a good idea.

I know it’s only a .22, but my patio is made of some kind of composite concrete. That’s the kind of thing that might chip if dude missed.

Jonestown, 1978

There aren’t too many news stories that I can remember from my first decade – but I do remember:

• Nixon’s impeachment – this was made more vivid by my adults explaining they were going to fire the President. What did I know between impeach and fire? I was four. Impeach sounded ok to me – fire – well, I imagined they were going to burn Nixon, to set him on fire. I wrote him a letter of support dictated through my dad – apparently I said that “me and Bebe Rebozo will always be your friends.”
• The 1976 presidential election.
• The Iranian hostage crisis – that did go on for a bit.
• Jonestown, Guayana 1978

Jonestown made a serious impression on me. All that poison Kool-Aid, all those dead bodies rotting in the jungle. My memory of the event itself is hardly different than the news footage – panning across Jim Jones’ carnage. Body upon body – and little paper cups. I also remember someone telling me that they had only used the slim packets of Kool-Aid – the kind where you have to add your own sugar. But they hadn’t added any sugar – only barbituates and potassium chloride. I remember thinking – “Well, I wouldn’t drink any poison Kool-Aid without the sugar – that would be nasty.”

Last night I watched a nearly two hour docu-drama of the Jonestown massacre. There were interviews with survivors, including Jim Jones’ son. There was lots of stuff my 8 year old brain hadn’t picked up or didn’t hold on to at the time – like a Congressman and a news crew were shot dead. Or that vast numbers of people, including children, had been murdered (I guess they didn’t want to drink the unsweetened Kool-Aid either). Or that Jim Jones seem to be vaguely Maoist (and despite the suicides, a kindler, gentler, form of Maoism) – with an odd mixture of socialism and Christianity and cult of personality.

The docu-drama did seem to miss out some of the details. How was the massacre discovered and reported? What happened afterward? They were nearish a Guayanese town – apparently locals and soldiers witnessed the shootings, but they did nothing? Why?

The Vol-in-Law commented that the 70s were a strange time of optimism and immunity. Why would a Congressman go into a cult compound, a kind of heart of darkness cult compound with guns, and assume that it was OK to go unarmed and meddle around and then leave safely. Contrast Jonestown with the Branch Davidians in Waco fifteen years later.

the great global warming swindle

I’m scientific. I’ve got a degree in an applied science. I know about science stuff, or I did anyway, before I forgot it all. But the point about science stuff is that it isn’t the facts that matter so much as the approach – the spirit of scientific enquiry.

But facts do matter as well. Climate has been changing a lot since before humans evolved – so humans had nothing to do with it – and that’s a fact. There have been much wilder climactic swings than global warming gloomsbodies have been predicting. I’m reasonably familiar with these changes because my applied science was geology…a very long history of the earth. Humans tend to have a very short perspective – take a step back – there’s been a lot of climate change.

So I have this long perspective which makes me sceptical. Also, I appreciate scientific enquiry which frankly I’ve been too lazy to look into when it comes to climate change – but I can’t jump into one camp or another until I’m reasonably convinced. So I’m a global warming sceptic.

This week Britain’s Channel 4 broadcasted a documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle. It was an interesting mix of social commentary and science. The science bit is:

• that the greenhouse effect doesn’t really work like it’s commonly understood
• CO2 is lagging indicator of temperature not leading – so causation works the other way round (heating up of the earth releases carbon from ocean – and heating the ocean takes a loooong time),
• the earth heating is caused by changes in the sun,
• human CO2 is a relatively small amount of the total so cutting back on emissions won’t make much difference.

The social science bit was:

• humans like to doom monger, this is just the latest in a long line of scary stories
• this is the cause that anti-capitalist political activists flocked to after the dismal failure of communism and socialism.
• scientists jump on the bandwagon because they’re funding hounds – and there’s now a ton of money in global climate change i.e. you want to study squirrels?, you want to get a grant? you better write a proposal that includes the effect of climate change on those fluffy-tailed rats or you ain’t gonna get no money.
• and there was a little bit on how humans are a bit short sighted – gosh, it’s an early spring this year* – I can’t remember such an early spring – must be global warming

But not many dispute that in the past few decades the earth is warming up and that there are some consequences. Particularly for humans in marginal cirucmstances – the desperately poor living in areas where climate change has the largest impact.

So the key questions still are:

• does human activity have any impact on climate (even if it’s not the major driver)?
• would changing some human behavior (e.g. consumption patterns that lead to carbon emissions) make a difference to climate change?
• is the benefit to some humans living in desperate conditions greater than the cost of changing our ways?
• if changing our beviour would make a difference to climate change, is there a sufficient benefit to humans of maintaining the habitats of interesting animals like polar bears? would we be really, really sad if they were gone? (probably)
• is it more efficient to compensate the humans who are most effected rather than change our ways?

And additionally…

• Are there other consequences to burning fossil fuels to human health and the environment?

I would suggest that there are severe consequences to our patterns of consumption – for example inner city children who suffer respiratory damage from the particulates in gas or petrol. I find it ironic that people Britain are so worked up about climate change (which probably wouldn’t affect them too much) caused by burning fossil fuels and yet were extremely late to banning leaded fuel which is absolutely proven to damage children – both to their physical and mental health. That’s just one example. If we concentrate too much on global warming, we may be in danger of overlooking other serious consequences of human behaviour on the environment and other humans.

*Note – I’ve seen heard a few comments here and there on how much earlier spring is this year and how that’s a sign of global warming. My impression is that spring is just about on time this year, but was really late last year.

For example:

Last year – the first daffodils on 25 March – and I mean the very first – and there were no others in my garden.

The year before:

the daffodils are quite well established at the end of March

And this year – first daffs at the end of February.

But I have had them bloom much earlier – even in January.

Hey at least it wasn’t Tennessee

Top Gear is a British auto show. Un-PC, irreverent and with a host – Jeremy Clarkson – who at best might be described as curmudgeonly anti-America. It’s probably the top auto show on British tv. And it’s kinda funny.

Recently the Top Gear lads went to Alabama. Just for the heck of it, they painted slogans like “Country and Western is Rubbish” and “I’m Bi” on each other’s cars and then drove around to see what would happen.

They don’t get the warmest of welcomes at one small town gas station. (You know things are bad when a town’s own resident calls his home a “hick town” – and when the gas station owner says “I’m callin’ the boys!”) Cripes.

Jeremy Clarkson finishes the piece with “I’m doing something I thought I’d never do; make a run for the border.”

He didn’t say which way he was headed. Perhaps he was about enter the Greenest State in the Land of the Free.

Watch the hijinks ensue (via YouTube)…

Hat tip to fellow Southerner and American expat Kathy at What Do I know?

It was all probably just a cultural misunderstanding. Sweet Home Alabama is actually one of the most welcoming states. (Don’t let those bullet holes in the “Welcome to Alabama!” sign fool you. Most people keep their guns on safety there.)

Truthfully though, you don’t tug on superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t mess around with cultural iconography… Jeremy might think it’s cool to poke fun, but I’d like to see him do something similar in the nastier neighbourhoods of Glasgow wearing the wrong color football strip, or why doesn’t he go to certain neighbourhoods of Birmingham still reeling from recent terror arrests with a car painted up with “The Prophet was a pedophile”.

The limits of rudeness

Advisory: This post contains strong language of an adult nature

I can’t believe I’m posting about Celebrity Big Brother. The “normal” version of Big Brother is bad enough – but pack the tv fishbowl with a bunch of second rate celebs and it’s even less interesting.

But here I am commenting on it. Here’s why.

Many, many people are upset over “racism” on Big Brother. There have been 27,000 complaints (and counting) to Channel 4, which produces and airs the show. Apparently, a Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty has born the brunt of many negative comments from her fellow celebrity incarcerees. Shilpa Shetty is probably an annoying diva, but I bet she’s more talented than the other D-list shut-ins and makes a ton more money, too. I’m sure that’s at the root of the problem, rather than racism per se.

When asked whether she thought she’d been the victim of racial abuse, Shilpa Shetty didn’t think so. She didn’t think she’d been treated well by Jade Goody (another participant) but she didn’t think the remarks were racially motivated.

I think there are a lot of insecurities from her end, but I don’t think it’s racial.

Now I don’t know if any of them are racist or not. But I have noticed that appalling behaviour – rude, crass comments, sexism, classism, snobbery (reverse or straightforward) go unremarked on – unless, of course, it smacks of racism.

Jade Goody’s boyfriend called Ms Shetty a name which was bleeped. Many people complained that he’d called her a “Paki” (a derogative term for someone of Pakistani origin – Ms Shetty is in fact Indian). But actually, he’d called her “cunt”. Well, that’s ok then, apparently. Misogyny is all good viewing – (until you use the c-word), but woe betide anyone who uses a racial epithet.

I don’t think it’s OK to call Ms Shetty a Paki or a cunt. I don’t think that this is the kind of behaviour we want from anyone. Why can’t we just stand up for decency? Why do people even watch these nasty-mouthed people act in ways we wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) tolerate on the playground. Have we become so immune to rudeness that we only think it’s worthy of comment when it’s racist? Personally, I think we should be drawing the line a lot higher.

(Oh – and for anyone who comes to this post looking for Paki cunt – go fuck yourself. And yes, I do appreciate my own self-generated irony)

Stand up

At Harry’s Place there are two recent brilliant posts. One is about a Dispatches programme on Britain’s Channel 4 last night called Undercover Mosque. I missed it, but apparently it “uncovers” the hate preaching going on in British mosques. Hate preaching that is bankrolled by wahabist Saudis.

The investigation reveals Saudi Arabian universities are recruiting young Western Muslims to train them in their extreme theology, then sending them back to the West to spread the word. And the Dispatches reporter discovers that British Muslims can ask for fatwas, religious rulings, direct from the top religious leader in Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mufti.

Saudi-trained preachers are also promoted in DVDs and books on sale at religious centres and sermons broadcast on websites. These publications and webcasts disseminate beliefs about women such as: “Allah has created the woman deficient, her intellect is incomplete”, and girls: “By the age of 10 if she doesn’t wear hijab, we hit her,” and there’s an extreme hostility towards homosexuals.

Lovely.

On the Channel 4 site, most comments applaud Channel 4 and the Dispatches programme for their work. But of course, a few don’t. I do love this one:

It is becoming fashionable in the West to attack the Islamic beliefs and teaching. One year ago, our prophet was depicted and mocked. However, we as Muslims should see this as another opportunity to reform themselves and to spread the word of Allah, after all our aim and objective is to give Dawah.

OK, I can certainly see how some Muslims would feel under attack or at least harsh scrutiny. And yes, that statement about “reforming themselves” and spreading the word of Allah is almost turn-the-other-cheek-esque. But our commenter goes on to say:

Gradually by the will of Allah, we shall conquer every country, be it the USA or others.

Lovely.

In the same post, though there’s an example of a Muslim who doesn’t want to use his religion as a weapon and who is fighting against political Islamisation. It’s all very well to point out the bad in the spread of political Islam and to ask moderate Muslims to stand up to it, but we ought to least listen when some of them – like Shaheed Satardien seem to be doing so.

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The other great post is about Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner and how he’s uncovering the secrets on some of his country’s dirty past. This includes opening the files on the Buenos Aires bombing of a Jewish synagogue in 1994. Looks like it was Hezbollah with backing from Iran. Kirchner, although a “leftist” who buddies up with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, has done what other leftist leaders in South America haven’t.

…it’s reassuring that Kirchner is standing on principle by refusing to join other leaders in greeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his current Latin American tour.

But here’s the poignant bit:

I’m sure I could find much to dispute with Kirchner, not least his lavish praise for Chavez, but at least– unlike some other “leftists”– he draws the line at embracing a man who protects people almost certainly responsible for the mass murder of Jews as Jews.

There was a time when this was the minimum you could expect from those who identified themselves with the Left. Not anymore.