"The difference between the judgment of a great critic and that of a semi-literate censorious fool lies in its range of inferred or cited reference, in the lucidity and rhetorical strength of articulation or in the accidental addendum which is that of a critic who is a creator in his own right."

Now there is something to get arguing about!

Telegraph | Arts | Opinionated  and proud to admit it
- posted by Paul Davies @ Friday, December 12, 2003

 
Food for thought

A strong attack on the weakness of the case for "organic" foods and an equally robust defence of transgenic foods (or "Frankenstein" food as the ludicrous Daily Mail puts it). The case is well made. I have always been "agnostic" on the question of genetically modified foodstuffs, but always suspecting that the organic lobby was guilty of ignorant anti-scientific thinking. If modification means that, for example, more rice can been produced with fewer pesticides and modififed to include vaccines, etc, then that is of immeasurable benefit in poor parts of the world. The argument that the Organic Lifestyle is a luxury for rich westerners with romantic hankerings for a simpler life has much weight - making them appear to like Marie Antoinette playing at being a shepherdess.

For me, the main objection to GM foods has always been a political one. The fact that control of GM foods was in the hands of a very small number of companies - potentially a cartel - is quite clearly a bad thing, whatever the benefits of the transgenic foods may be. If the claims for modification are justified, then the processes involved are a public good and should therefore be owned by the public. But these days the idea of public ownership seems more antiquated than traditional, organic farming methods.



Butterflies and Wheels Article
- posted by Paul Davies @ Tuesday, October 28, 2003

 
Baroque and roll

what is bad - according to this guy - about some of the "authentic" performances of Bach and Beethoven. He has a point to make, but there is good and bad musicianship in both camps. Article is good as it has links to musical examples.


Speed Freaks Do Bach - Please, stop turning sublime classical works into dance music. By Jan Swafford
- posted by Paul Davies @ Friday, September 12, 2003

 
Dalai Lama about to meet Bush: the sublime and the ridiculous

His Holiness is, in fact, more interested in meeting scientists at MIT than with Bush at the White House.

In a lengthy interview he talks about his hopes for a deal with the Communist bastards in Beijing and there have been some signs of a thaw. Still a long way to go.

He also talks about how he has tamed the demon of sexual desire by not eating after midday. So doubt if he ever sends out for a Chinese take-away.

Mind you, if anyone knows about the Chinese taking away, it is the Dalai Lama,

Ignore my silly comments - read the interview


Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Full transcript of interview with the Dalai Lama
- posted by Paul Davies @ Friday, September 05, 2003

 
Let there be Enlightenment

Always good to bash the cultural relativists - those with the benefit of enlightened education who wish to surrender insight and intellectual integrity for misguided political reasons.

Time to take on the anti-anti-Islamic nonsense that has been trotted out since September 11.

Take a look at this little example of "islamic maths"

Little Omar has a Kalashnikov with three magazines. There are twenty bullets in each magazine. He kills 60 infidels with two-thirds of the bullets. How many infidels does he kill with each bullet?

This book review pulls few punches and if, in approving of it, I fall into the "orientalist" and "cultural imperialist" camp, so be it. But, as shown elsewhere on this Blog, I'm not that hot on a lot of western things either.


The Spectator.co.uk
- posted by Paul Davies @ Thursday, September 04, 2003

 
Ball scores – but in whose net?

The reaction to this year’s James MacTaggart memorial lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival given by BSkyB chief executive Tony Ball has focused, understandably, on his criticism of the BBC licence fee.

Although much of what Ball said about the future funding and remit for the BBC is self-serving – prevent the Beeb from competing in some areas thereby reduce programming costs for BSkyB – there is much that is worthy of serious consideration.

Setting clear remits for BBC television channels is something that makes a lot of sense in a multichannel environment. Clearly there are some areas where it is good for the BBC to be kept out and provision left to the commercial sector.

The suggestion that the BBC auction off its most successful “franchises” may have some merit in it. But it looks suspiciously like a way for Sky to get content like EastEnders on the cheap. Under this proposal, the BBC would develop new programming, taking risks and Sky and other commercial networks would reap the rewards of programmes that were popular. In essence, the BBC becomes the television research-and-development arm of BSkyB.

The ironic feature of the lecture is that Ball makes more sense when he is talking about the BBC than when he is describing his own company.

Ball heads of a network that distributes 400 channels and recently pocketed a cool £9.3 million from “exercising” his share options – a most agreeable form of exercise, it must be said. As befits a man in this position, he talks quantity more than quality. Like all free-market capitalists he chants the mantra of “choice” and the simplistic equation that “more channels equals more choice”.

Up to a point. But if the effect of more channels is to force the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to cut budgets to compete, to take fewer risks because the price of failure becomes too high, there may be – in certain respects – a lessening of choice. Ball invokes a MacTaggart lecturer who came from the creative, rather than the managerial, side of the television fence: the late Dennis Potter.

Potter (who memorably christened his fatal cancer tumour “Rupert” in homage to Ball’s boss Mr Murdoch) wrote one-off plays and drama series, the like of which we are unlikely to see again. More channels means less choice for BBC producers in terms of risk-taking. Television moves towards the formulaic – 13 half-hour or hour-long series for each television season. Difficult, then, to fit in the 75-minute drama from a leading playwright.

Ball talks of the huge number of Asian channels on Sky Digital. This does indeed illustrate how well certain minority communities – especially those that speak languages other than English – have been served by digital satellite television.

That said, you will look in vain on Sky Digital for a similar array of foreign-language channels from France, Italy, Germany or Spain. The presence of such channels would do wonders to help language learning among UK school children. There is no shortage of capacity on Sky Digital for channels such as ARTE, the excellent Franco-German arts channel. But we are far more likely to see the launch of yet another shopping channel selling dubious devices for creating perfect abdominal muscles.

Ball boasts of the amount of religious programming carried on Sky. But he is speaking of televangelist channels – mainly American – which make some pretty dubious claims about miracles and which are in essence little difference from shopping channels. As “religious programming” all of these channels together are not worth one edition of Everyman or even a half hour of Songs of Praise.

There may be, as Ball says, a huge range of history channels on Sky. But after a while the viewer finds that these are basically along the lines of – any history you want, but mainly WWII and Nazis because that is what the target demographic (men 18-35) want.

Creating channels and schedules to fit the demographics demanded to sell advertising is not, in itself, going to lead to more choice. It is more likely to lead to copy-cat channels all chasing the same audience.

This leads on to the one subject conspicuously absent from Mr Ball’s hymn to the free market: advertising.

The BBC offers, thanks to the licence fee, something that the commercial sector cannot offer – programming free from regular interruptions with injunctions to buy. Most parents, I would suggest, would prefer that the Harry Potter film were shown on BBC1 rather than on a commercial channel which would bombard their kids with advertisements for toys, unhealthy sugary drinks and the like using the well-honed techniques of “pester power”.

It is the absence of advertising that makes the BBC’s digital children’s channels – CBBC and Cbeebies – stand out from their commercial counterparts. And watching them provides considerable relief from the bombardment of Barbie ads elsewhere.

Ball, who is paid in part by the pester-power merchants, would not see it this way. He sees the licence fee as a regressive tax. But he makes no comment on the fact that there is tax levied on viewers of commercial channels – the extra cost of products to pay for the advertising.

But let us give Tony a BBC that is no longer funded by the licence fee. Let us give him an active involvement in the future of public-service broadcasting in the UK.

I propose a new system of funding for the BBC. An annual budget to be set and linked to the retail price index. Channels to have clearly defined remits. And funded by a tax levied on ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and all other commercial broadcasters. The tax would be levied proportionally according to the turnover of the companies concerned.

This may mean that Mr Ball has a smaller bonus, but surely this system – in which BSkyB can be seen to be funding quality public-service broadcasting – is much better than a regressive old licence fee.



- posted by Paul Davies @ Monday, August 25, 2003

 
A candle in the wind or a beacon of hope?

It seems like a small gesture - Arabs and Israelis playing Beethoven together. When suicide bombers and Israeli tanks and helicopter-gunships kill and kill and kill, does anyone have the ears to hear music? But Barenboim and Said are trying. And, as has been said, far better to light a candle than complain about the dark.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | 'Peace' orchestra makes Arab debut
- posted by Paul Davies @ Monday, August 25, 2003

 
PowerPoint - what's the point, where's the power?

* good article
* shows what is wrong
* with way people use Power
* Point presentations
* dumb-downed data all dressed up
* with no where to go
Wired 11.09: PowerPoint Is Evil
- posted by Paul Davies @ Friday, August 22, 2003