Get The Word Out

• Jobs go down the tube at big drugs firms — Times Online
  “But for senior executives, the move from a large company into a smaller one is often a shock and results in a lot of frustration, as Phil Gould discovered. He questioned his decision to leave Glaxo to become the chief executive of a biotech firm when he found himself picking sweet wrappers off the floor. “I realised that if I didn’t do it, nobody else would,” said Gould.”
  
  It’s bathos day at the Times! I was getting quite into this story until I reached the part about the sweet wrappers. I was expecting a story along the lines of a stuffy IBM suit trying to fit in at Apple in the early hippies-in-a-garage days and I got this instead. Walt Disney used to pick litter off the ground whenever he visited Disneyland, and so has every Disney CEO since.
  
  At the very least, we could have got an anecdote about some dyed-in-the-wool Big Pharma staffer moving to a biotech startup where half the staff were ripped to the tits on addictive cognitive enhancers, for example:
• Popular Wakefulness Drug May Be Addictive — Wired Science
  and
• 20 Percent of Scientists Admit Using Brain-Enhancing Drugs — Do You? — Wired Science

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• JILL DANIELS “HITS OF THE BLITZ” BRITAINS NO.1 WARTIME WWII 1940s SHOW
  Don’t ask how I came to be looking at this page. I’m linking it because I need to design a new website shortly and I think there may be some useful pointers here.

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• The belief that genes cannot be changed is now outdated
  Deeply dispirited to discover that Nature is still debating the merits of studying how race affects intelligence. To recap: race is a social, not a genetic, construct; we don’t have a reliable metric for quantifying intelligence. So people keep trying to measure these two undefined scientific concepts against each other… why? I’ll leave that for you to judge.</p>

  The early days of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor were spent trying to define the heritability of such traits as vagrancy and “feeble-mindedness”. That sort of research looks as idiotic to us now as this nonsense will to our descendants in a century.

• Should scientists study race and IQ? NO: Science and society do not benefit
  Steven Rose makes a longer and more coherent argument than I just did.

• Should scientists study race and IQ? YES: The scientific truth must be pursued
  “Even if one does not support such work in the interests of free speech, it should be seen as supporting the scientific process of debate.” The authors miss the crucial distinction between supporting poorly-conceived work and supporting the right of people to, if they really feel they must, do poorly-conceived work. You don’t support scientific debate by publishing gibberish in a quality journal.

  I agree with the authors that no-one should be put in jail or fired for expressing an ill-founded scientific opinion. That seems to be the brunt of their argument, along with their point that sometimes rebutting gibberish leads to useful work. Which is fairly spurious.

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Designer Babies: A Right to Choose?
Great entry at Wired Science, currently one of the best science blogs out there. I have very definite opinions on this issue, especially the part about selecting for deafness, but it’s good to see contributions from both sides.

Our science fictions
“But for some reason, only conservatives get blamed for hating science. Which is weird, because conservatives are, by definition, the ones who are supposed to hate strange new things. They hate foreigners, video games, rap and — from what I could gather from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s speech Tuesday — talking to adults.

“But since I moved to L.A., I’ve discovered that liberals hate science just as much as conservatives, and they talk about it a lot more…”

Deadly UCLA lab fire leaves haunting questions
Probably best you don’t read this story. Deeply dispiriting.

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I need to wear my glasses when I’m using the computer. I keep misreading that Gene Wilder has been refused entry to Britain.

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Just turned on the TV at the very second when Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were saying “And the BAFTA goes to…” “…Danny Boyle” for directing Slumdog Squarepants. Well, no need to watch the other two and a half hours of the broadcast, then.

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I saw The Spirit yesterday. I like to think I’m pretty good at separating the art from the artist — I happen to believe it’s much more important to support good writing than nice writers — but sometimes that is just not possible. I sat through the entire film wondering about Frank Miller. What did he think he was doing? I mean, really, what did he think he was doing? I may say more in due course.

The BBC is reporting that NHS deaths due to staff errors have risen by 60% over the last two years. It’s a he-said-she-said story: the Lib Dems say the figures are unacceptably high; the government says the rise is due to better reporting, not increasing error rates. These stories never cover what I want them to — 3,645 deaths compared to what? What are the figures like for other countries and other systems? What are they doing that’s different? As it stands, this is a pretty useless article.

Steven Soderbergh interviewed by the AV Club. He says, near the end: It’s unfortunate that we don’t live in a time now where a polarizing film is a positive. Like in the ’70s, if you made a film like Straw Dogs, and half the people hate it and half the people think it’s a masterpiece, that’s viewed as cool. Now it’s not. Now if you don’t get unified critical acclaim, your film is viewed as a failure. There’s no badge of honor in having a high-end critic bash you and have it in a sense prove that the film is not down the middle.

Interesting point. I use rottentomatoes.com a lot and it’s true that films which 85% of critics have been positive about will generally be pretty good. But maybe there’s a sort of lowest common denominator effect going on here and relying on sites like metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes means that you’ll see the likeable and worthy films but miss out on the brilliantly poisonous, divisive moviemaking. Hmm.

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Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode’s movie reviews podcast is one of my favourites. It’s like listening to 45 minutes of good cop/bad cop. Kermode is a shouty ball of exciteability and Mayo is the drilled and skilled professional broadcaster who’s there to keep him in line.

Still, even though I love a good pop culture rant and this show regularly boasts some of the finest, one thing has always bothered me. The problem is this: ten years ago I vowed revenge upon Mark Kermode.

In 1999, I decided to have satellite TV put in my flat. The Sky engineer came and installed the dish. I paid for the premium movie channel package. I even took out a standalone subscription to a new channel, Film4, which would be showing arthouse, foreign language, and otherwise obscure movies. All introduced by Mark Kermode.

I only had a vague idea who that was. Some sort of critic who always went on about how The Exorcist was the best film of all time. Still, I was interested to hear what he would say about the first movie shown on Film4, the Japanese-language horror Ringu, which I had heard was incredibly scary. Here is approximately what he said:

“Two things to note about this film. One, it’s not as good as The Exorcist. Two, the scariest bit is when the girl crawls out of the TV. And now, Ringu.”

Possibly the worst and most incompetent introduction of all time. So even now, a decade later, although I find his podcast entertaining and well-informed, I can never listen to it without grinding my teeth and muttering “Soon, Kermode, soon” under my breath.

But listen to this [mp3, 0.5 MB], from the most recent episode. My teeth-grinding days may be over…

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The day after Christmas. And I am typing this on my new laptop, which means that for the first time I have become a Vista user. I’ve avoided it until now, mostly because I didn’t want to be able to fix people’s broken Vista machines, but actually I haven’t noticed much difference from XP besides the extra flashiness.

Slashdot ran a question the other day about how best to set up Windows for use by a retiree. I saw the summary on Google Reader and immediately started counting down to someone suggesting installing Linux instead. That would be the first post, then. But after reading fifty other replies proposing the same, I started to think that maybe there’s something to this Ubuntu thing. Who knows?

The BBC is reporting more UK tourists avoiding Europe and going to America because of the terrible exchange rate with the Euro. I’m thinking something similar myself, for next year. Not only did I not set foot in the USA during the W presidency, the last time I was there was during Clinton’s first term. I watched him debate Bob Dole on TV.

Doctor Who was on!

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Admittedly this could be yet another factually cobblers Sun ‘exclusive’ but they’re reporting that Steve Coogan is developing a UK version of Quantum Leap. This could go either way. They’ll need a new catchprase for when the main character leaps into a new time. Instead of “Oh boy” it could be “Blimey, Charlie” or “Lawks a-mucky” or possibly “Jings, crivvens and help ma boab” if they want to go a bit further North.

Actually, the catchprase isn’t important. The success or failure of this venture depends on whether they bring back the Evil Leaper.

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As the headlines have lately been grabbed by such end-of-an-era events as the passing of Butler from On The Buses and the death of Nora Batty, I think it’s time to spend a little while reflecting on a certain type of British television. Not on the noble tradition of the Play For Today or the philosophical insights of Bryan Magee, the work of David Attenborough, or even the high-trash children’s programming of Robin Of Sherwood.

No, I’m talking about the tradition of slightly-to-incredibly naff TV which nonetheless holds a nostalgic pride of place in the heart of every red-blooded British citizen of a certain vintage. Subjects worthy of consideration may include:

Patrick Moore
The World Snooker Championship
Fifteen to One
British Professional Wrestling
The Family Ness
Taggart
Glen Michael
Televised Darts
Bob Holness

You may think that a celebration of such dubious “classics” would take the form of ironic snickering at the past. You may very well think that. But in attempting to answer such questions as “How did Patrick Moore become a professional broadcaster?” and “How did Jocky Wilson and Shirley Crabtree become sporting icons?” I feel that we come naturally to a celebration of the great British tradition of the gentleman amateur, and so to an appreciation of all that is to be cherished in the British character.

The truth is that these are people who, finding themselves in the spotlight glare of the prime time television audience, so braced themselves to their duties, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest twenty-eight minutes.”

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I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that a dog and a statue of Napoleon challenged one another to a game of Street Fighter 2, then sat down at the piano for an impromptu rendition of I’m The Scatman by Scatman John.

Wait, that wasn’t a dream.

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The Pixar Touch by David A. Price

I liked it. It lost me about 20 pages before the end, mostly because I’m not interested in reading much about the making of Cars. The early parts of the book are really good, though. The development of the technology, the move from shorts to advertising to features… it’s fascinating stuff. Some thoughts:

The history of Pixar is tied up in the history of Silicon Valley: the company wouldn’t exist if Steve Jobs hadn’t taken it off George Lucas’s hands in the 80s and extended it a $50 million line of credit. (Jobs had just been thrown out of Apple at the time and was anxious that his next project be a success; he was so bitter that all his office computing at Pixar was done on a laptop running Windows.)

The book makes a clear case for Pixar president Edwin Catmull as the real intellect behind the development of computer animation. Interestingly, he first developed it in a lab funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a.k.a. ARPA, the computer technology arm of the Pentagon. Those guys get everywhere.

Why are Pixar films so consistently good? Mostly because of what isn’t involved in their development process. The greenlight guy at Pixar is John Lasseter, who is a director, animator and writer: he is used to working with ideas, so he knows a good one from a bad one. Pixar films often change a lot between conception and execution, but that’s because the staff work hard to create the best story and characters, not because some clueless executive demands they put a giant spider in the third act.

Brad Bird co-wrote *batteries not included, then spent a few years in the wilderness before returning with The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. At one point during that period he was in line to write and direct an adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic The Spirit. I believe there is a different adaptation due for release shortly, but I haven’t heard who the director is.

I thought reading this book would make me want to rewatch lots of Pixar movies but oddly enough, no. I may watch Finding Nemo again, because the author really raves about it and I didn’t think it was very good. (William H. Macy originally recorded the Albert Brooks part. I think I might have liked that version better.) The description of John Lasseter meeting Hayao Miyazaki made me want to watch Spirited Away again, and I think I’ll find my copies of Afterworks and Afterworks 2, but that’s about it.

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Forbidden Planet had a history of Pixar on sale at half price. When I got home this evening, I realised I might have impulse-purchased some terrible work of hagiography, so I checked the Amazon reviews. Actually, they were mostly very positive with the exception of this, from a disgruntled former Pixar employee (complete with response from the book’s author)…

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That was fast. Within a few hours after the last post, stuartwest.com is now the number one hit on UK Google for the search term “Grandad And The Lad”. Obviously there are no online resources for this strip, so I can’t find out the cartoonist’s name or any biographical details. Maybe he died and that’s why it was discontinued.

But I suspect not. Probably shrinking newspaper budgets forced him off the funnies page, along with the caricaturing skills of Malky McCormick and the guy who did a Snoopy-style comic about a corgi in Buckingham Palace. Probably he’s semi-retired, living off his modest newspaperman’s pension and the occasional commission. Every week or so he fires up his battered 386, dials-up to Google and types in the name of the comic to which he devoted the best years of his life, hoping to find a new generation of readers discussing his work, but no, every time just the same old hit for “I HATE NEMI! (rant alert)”.

And then one day a new result appears. The cartoonist’s eyes light up. Finally, a step towards the recognition he has been waiting for. But no, it’s just me saying the strip was “terrible” and not “funny or memorable in any way”. The anonymous cartoonist is overcome by despair. A shattered wreck of a man, he slouches away from the computer in search of gin.

Well… no-one can live with this kind of guilt. I feel I should say something nice about Grandad And The Lad. How about this: my Gran liked it. She would act out the punchline for me every so often. Although come to think of it, probably only when “Shuggie And Duggie” had an off-day. Also, I think she generally preferred the comedy stylings of “A Man Called Horace”. Actually, what she really liked was the “Bogglewords” section and… oh God, I’ve fucked it up again, haven’t I?

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I’m now so used to the idea that everything is on the web that I get a bit startled and puzzled when I find something has gone missing.

For example, the Glasgow Daily Record had a strip on its comics page called ‘Grandad And The Lad’ — which was terrible, don’t remember it being funny or memorable in any way, but it ran for years so there was a lot of it — that the internet has almost no record of. I half-expected there to be Grandad And The Lad slash-fiction groups and an online project called Grandad And The Lad Minus The Lad, but the only mentions of the strip I can find are a couple of people talking about how dire it was in a message board thread titled “I HATE NEMI! (rant alert)”.

I also just listened to an early-80s interview with Douglas Adams where he mentions that the original Ford Prefect, Geoffrey McGivern, had suffered a nervous breakdown and gone missing for 18 months, and that all his friends and family were anxious for news of his whereabouts. No mention of that in his Wikipedia entry…

Continuing that theme of the human mystery, I read that legendary cartoonist S. Clay Wilson is on the critical list and unable to recall his own name due to serious head and neck injuries sustained on the trip home from a bar. His friends and medical team have been unable to determine whether he received a vicious beat-down at the hands of a Bay Area biker gang or if he just got so drunk that he fell on his head a lot.

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