Overpromise, underdeliver

This article from the Guardian website yesterday makes me really annoyed. The headline says 'Virtual reality used to transfer men's minds into a woman's body'.

Now, look me in the eye and tell me that that doesn't sound like the most awesomest news story ever. The reader's appetite is further whetted by the standfirst: 'Researchers projected men's sense of self into a virtual reality woman, changing the way they behaved and thought'.

Come on, it's got sex, robots and out-of-body experiences. It's like Battlestar Galactica only real. Until you read further, that is.

The thrust of the article seems to be that researchers put a VR helmet on a man so that he was "in a woman's body" (i.e. if he tilted his head downwards, he'd see some boobs and maybe the hem of a skirt), and then slapped him.

It ain't news, it's barely science (not once it had been filtered through the university's PR department and the Guardian's editorial process, anyway) and it's not even fun.

We have learned a very important lesson here: never promise cosmic robo-sex fun and fail to deliver it. You will not be easily forgiven.

Hung parliament triggers linguistic crisis

The hung parliament has highlighted a deficiency in our language. We don't seem to have a word for what happens when you don’t win, don’t lose and don’t draw.

Here’s the situation: the Conservatives got more votes and more seats than any other single party, but not more than all the other parties put together, which is how you win an election. Labour and the Lib Dems each got fewer seats than the Tories. If they combine to form a Lib-Lab coalition they’ll have slightly more than the Tories – but still not more than all the other parties put together.

Nobody seems to have a satisfactory word for the situation the Conservatives are in, and it's making the discussion of the situation a bit tricky.

The rightwing press, of course, haven't let it stop them calling David Cameron the winner. Former Tory Prime Minister John Major was more measured on the Today programme this morning. When asked why the Conservatives should have to negotiate with a party that lost (the Lib Dems), Major said: “We didn’t win the election either.”

So they didn’t 'win', they didn’t 'lose' and they didn’t 'draw'. What did they do?

Any ideas?

Terry Pratchett on Doctor Who

As I've said here before, it's tough being a Doctor Who fan. It's such a hit and miss show. I love it because it's so full of daft yet brilliant ideas, but it does have a tendency towards stupidity, and I can understand why some newcomers and casual viewers can't be bothered with it. Recently I've managed to persuade my girlfriend to watch it with me, which is always nerve-wracking because you never know when it might turn out to be toe-curlingly dreadful.

So I'm very glad to see Terry Pratchett offering his take on Doctor Who in SFX. His comments have been picked up in quite a lot of other media, with headlines about Pratchett 'attacking' Doctor Who. Not so: he seems to have the same love/hate relationship with it that I do. He points particularly to the overuse of deus ex machina endings, where the episode concludes with some terrible crisis which the Doctor resolves by just waving his screwdriver and spouting some meaningless sci-fi babble.

It's important to remember that no matter how many fizzes and bangs and scary monsters you have, you still need a powerful narrative.

Why politicians can't say anything sensible

The furore over 'bigotgate' annoyed me for several reasons. To me, the fact that a politician said something spiteful and ill-considered behind someone's back is a non-story. Clearly it wasn't Brown's considered opinion that Gillian Duffy was 'bigoted', he was just letting of steam and exaggerating to make his point (his point being: Grr I'm tired and frustrated and pissed off). End of.

But here I am writing about bigotgate, because it made me think about the nature of political discourse.

We give our politicians a pretty hard time (especially recently when trust and respect for them have all but evaporated) and we are right to do so. But it's not all their fault. Put simply, politicians can't say anything sensible. When they come across as being dishonest, or evasive or unpleasant, sometimes it's because they are dishonest and evasive and unpleasant. But sometimes it's because they have no choice – - the nature of the relationship doesn't allow them to be straightforward, and that's everybody's fault: the public, the politicians themselves, the media, etc.

Take bigotgate: Brown made an ill-considered comment in private that he never expected to have to justify. We've all done it. I dread to think how many times I've slammed the phone down and said "wanker" just loud enough for my colleagues to make out. It doesn't mean I'd want to go on national TV and explain to the nation why the caller in question was a wanker. It just means I was angry or annoyed or just showing off. For most of us this is called life - but for Gordon Brown it's a disastrous 'gaffe'.

Take the parties' failure to be upfront about coming spending cuts: Yes, they've all failed on this one. But what are they supposed to do? Who's going to be the first to come out and say, "Yes we're going to brutally slash spending on vital public services so you can watch your grandma die in a hospital corridor while your house gets robbed." Would we thank them for it? Of course we wouldn't. The media would pounce on it, the other parties would have a field day, and the honest guy would finish last. No matter how much we might all individually welcome the honesty, the system of which we are all a part would make it a huge mistake.

Take the controversy over equipment for troops in Afghanistan: Soldiers complain that they haven't got enough equipment. Whether or not that's true, a sensible response is: Of course they do. Do you ever have enough equipment in a war? If I was risking my life in a far-off country, I'd sure as damn it complain about not having enough equipment. If things improved, I'd keep complaining. As it is, I work in a fairly well-equipped office, but I still complain about the size of the kitchen, and the lack of staples in the stationery cupboard, and the fact there's no one on reception first thing in the morning. That's life. I'm not suggesting for a moment that there isn't truth in the concerns expressed by soldiers - of course we should take their concerns very seriously and investigate them properly. I'm just putting things into a sensible real-life context. As a private citizen, I can do that, and if people take issue, fine. For a politician to do so would be suicidal.

A lot of this is the media's fault, but I'm inclined to see it as a more systemic problem, and I'm not sure how it can be addressed. The idea that we're ready for a 'new politics' looks shallow - the Lib Dems, who claim to offer some sort of bright new dawn, have indulged in their fair share of negative campaigning in this election. I don't expect major change in the political discourse whoever wins tomorrow.

But when we're throwing our hands in the air in despair at our politicians, let's consider for a moment the situation that we've put them in. I'd love them to be more honest, but if they were, would the world really thank them?

Greece fears batter markets again

This is one of those headlines where almost every word could be a noun or a verb.

I initially read this as "Greece is afraid of the markets for batter. Again." I was like, do people trade in batter? Does this have something to do with declining fish stocks?

Headlinese is terrible for this sort of thing.

Go Pullman. Go Pullman.

Philip Pullman defends his new book 'The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ' from someone who says the title is "offensive".

The best minute and a half of video I've watched in a while.

Deep volcanic hydration?

Volvic are doing their bit to make the world a stupider place by re-running their '14-day challenge' TV ad. It's an irritating ad in lots of ways - it's one of those ones that has a 'genuine' member of the public showing their 'genuine' enthusiasm for the product (which the gimp in question refers to exclusively as 'Volvic' rather than 'water'). Anyway, my beef with it is the following sentence, which is accompanied by a pseudo-scientific animated graphic of, like, volcanoes and layers and shit:

"Because Volvic filters through six layers of volcanic rock, it delivers deep volcanic hydration."

Deep volcanic hydration? Deep volcanic hydration? This is the worst kind of pseudo-science arse and I'm sick of advertisers getting away with it to flog their latest rebranding of their crappy product.

I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about this stoopidness about a year ago when the ad was first running, and I thought I'd share their response with the interwebs. They told me:

"We feel the ad draws attention to the way in which Volvic water is filtered. Whilst we understand your concerns, the ad doesn't claim that Volvic is superior to tap water or other mineral water. Furthermore, the ad doesn't make any claim about the relative hydration levels of types of water or state that Volvic hydrates the body in a more efficient manner. We understand that some viewers may object to the claim 'deep volcanic hydration' but we don't consider it likely to materially mislead viewers about the product."

So Volvic gets to keep polluting everyone's brains and the world keeps turning. Ho hum.