PopCult: January 2004 Archive Page

Media literacy is the buzzword. Already part of the national curriculum in England for older children, the government also wants primary school pupils to have a greater understanding of the hidden depths of TV, films and other media.

More than ever before, children are immersed in a media-saturated world and exposed to television in particular. --Jonathan Duffy --Media studies: The next generation (BBC)

Thanks for the link, Rosemary.

A Selection from the Posthumously Published Ernest Hemingway Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, A Very Short Death, c.1959

It was late summer and you were alone in the café. You were sipping vermouth and reading about the war. You liked the way the vermouth tasted good when you drank it with your mouth. The war was going badly.

You tapped your tired fingers on the arm of the wooden chair where you were sitting in the café when it was dark and late. You liked how the chair was made of wood.

"Oh darling, you mustn't talk such rot," she had said. "I'll kill him."

You felt broken and drunk in the cool night and remembered the white boat on the river.

DID YOU?

a. Grit teeth and think about the war.
b. Order a brandy that overflowed and ran down the stem of the glass and think about the war.
c. Notice the electric light hanging over the empty terrace and think about the war.

--The American Canon of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (McSeeeney's)

What's extremely funny about this format is that it's not too different from the reading quizzes I give. Since it's so easy nowadays for students to download plot summaries from the Internet, in order to motivate students to keep up on their literary readings, I will make a multiple-choice test, with questions that list four things that did happen in the reading, and one other event that will sound plausible to someone who has only a basic understanding of the plot, but that didn't really happen.

Scientists at MIT's Advanced Machine Cognizance Project announced Tuesday that, after seeing the final installment of the Matrix trilogy, they will cease all further work in the field of artificial intelligence.... "I saw Revolutions with my 12-year-old son Eric," Markovitch said. "He saw the look of worry on my face and said, 'Dad, don't be scared. It's only make-believe.' I had to tell him, 'No, son, it's what your father does for a living.'" --Scientists Abandon AI Project After Seeing The Matrix (The Onion)

It's very amusing reading the scientists quoted in the story referring to pop culture such as The Matrix, the Terminator series and Rage Against the Machine. It reminds me of the class discussion that ensues when nobody has done the assigned readings, but plenty of people have recently seen a movie that has some vague connection to the theme the class is supposed to be exploring. (I haven't had one of those classes recently, but when it does happen, the memory sticks around...)

Crucially, Mr Medjahdi said he could see no photographers anyway near the car, despite initial police suspicions that they might have distracted the driver. "I got a complete picture from my side and rear-view mirrors of what was happening beside me. There was no other vehicle in my field of vision. I saw no cars with the Mercedes, no photographers on motorbikes around the car. There was no one," he said. --Diana crash witness speaks (ThisIsLondon.com)

I had occasionally caught myself wondering... if the princess's car were being pursued by paparazzi, where are the photos of the crash? Either they were lousy paparazzi, or the driver had already eluded them. How did the "pursued by paparazzi" meme get started, if the only eyewitness to the crash reports that there were none? It appears simply to be the opinion of Mohamed al-Fayed, father of Dodi Fayed, the princess's companion who was also killed in the crash:

Early eye-witness accounts broadcast on radio and television around the world portrayed a sickening scene in the Alma Tunnel, with paparazzi swarming around the wreck of the Mercedes, taking pictures moments after the crash, giving no thought to calling the emergency services and obstructing people who had come to give help to those inside the car.

A little googling shows me a news CNN report from 1999 that concludes, "there was no evidence they [photographers] were close to the car when the accident occurred, the report found". I confess I'm not that interested in royal politics, but I'm surprised that I didn't know about this alternate story, which isn't as powerful as the "pursued by photographers on motorbikes" meme.

The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion. --Michael Crichton --Aliens Cause Global Warming (Crichton Official Website)

SETI is the "Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence" project. A screen-saver popular among uber-geeks actually gives your computer calculations to do in order to help out the whole SETI program. The "Drake equation" is a way of figuring out, out of all the stars where planets might exist, where those planets might support intelligent life, where those life forms might attempt to communicate with outsiders, and where those signals might actually have been broadcast at precisely the time necessary for us to be able to receive them now. I have a vivid memory of Carl Sagan introducing this equation in the classic PBS series "Cosmos." (See a few of my thoughts on religion and Sagan's novel "Contact".)

Since we have no meaningful way to supply numbers for most or all of these variables, Crichton calls this guesswork "prejudice."

From time to time I blog about how the news media accepts unquestioningly the "fact" that global warming is caused by human activity, and I confess to feeling a bit smug each time I see a "mistaken" story.

But I've got to be honest with myself. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, and rejoice in every law that makes it easier for me to breathe fresh air. Crichton gives an interesting account of how the EPA used "junk science" to "prove" that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And it's really easy for me to want to pat the anti-smoking activists on the back for their cleverness.

If the pro-smokers are so tobacco-addled that they can't see how yucky their habit is, and if it will take a little bit of scientific hocus-pocus to reduce the effect their nasty habit has on my nose, then bravo! If it's true that the science that supports smoking bans is no better than the science that supports global warming doomsday scenarios, then I'm employing a double standard, calling junk science duckspeak (George Orwell's term for an utterance which, when spoken by a supporter, is true and just and good, but when spoken by an opponent, is false and wrong and bad.) (And, of course, all this presumes that what Crichton and others call junk science really is junk. Since I'm not a scientist, I have to accept -- on faith -- the word of experts. I've been following the global warming/population bomb meme complex for long enough that I can see where journalists are oversimplifying or selectively reporting in order to reinforce a particular bias; I am not as informed about smoking issues (nor, to be honest, do I plan to investigate, since I'm personally in favor of the current anti-smoking trend).

An older link, popular now thanks to the skeptics at Arts & Letters Daily.