More stuph

[dreamer_easy]

Ricky Gervais and the British way. "Anyone from anywhere can be cruel, anyone from anywhere can be witty, but there is something particularly British about cruel wit." I didn't see the Golden Globes or hear any of Gervais' remarks - what interests me, always, are the cultural differences between the English-speaking nations.

"only around 6 percent of U.S. scientists are Republicans". What the hell?

Words about "The Scream"

Jocularity: Crunks 2010: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections, in which we learn that Lizo Mzimba was not in fact taped to a wall. (The previous year's edition discusses the spread of amateur factchecking, a subject close to my heart. :)

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

What the hell?

That surprises you?

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

It really does! If it was more like idk 60-40 or something, that wouldn't amaze me, but six percent?!

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Well, the way the Republicans bash the educated elite, denigrate scientific theory and have a general suspicion of data, it makes sense to me. It's not like they're all Democrats or anything, but the Republicans make it pretty clear that they're not interested in the reality based community and thus vice versa.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Thought you might enjoy this article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=1) about the similar skew among social psychologists.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I saw that - the guy's argument is a bit of a whiny muddle, but the actual studies linked to are really interesting. I honestly wouldn't have expected such big differences in the apparent politics of different professions. Or, more accurately, different professors. I wonder what the politics of psychologists and psychiatrists in the US are like? (One comment I found suggested that fiscal conservatives might not be as keen on the starting salary of a professor after all those years of college!)

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Rather good column on the subject!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/feb/13/3

[qthewetsprocket.livejournal.com]

Re: the Gervais article - having lived in both countries, I think the author's talking out of their ear a little bit. And massively over-generalizing (what, in an opinion piece?? *GASP*). Good-natured ribbing between friends is a phenomenon I witnessed and experienced on both sides of the pond. Bad-natured ribbing was not. When a remark was mean-spirited, in my experience, it tended to go down just as badly in the UK as it did in the US.

I don't think you can put a nationality on someone making a cheap bid for publicity by trying too hard to be controversial.

[jblum.livejournal.com]

I do think it applies to *fictional* comedy, though -- so many Britcoms hold their characters up for agonizing ridicule, without nearly so much we're-all-friends-really stuff to offset it...

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

The obvious counterexample is that guy who walked off Buzzcocks! But broadly speaking, I think the article has a point - there's a lot about mock abuse and teasing as a form of male bonding in Watching the English, and off the top of my head I can't think of a US parallel to the banter in Top Gear, let alone NMTB - with the exception of the Roast!

[tysolna]

... which is why, apparently, the US version of Top Gear is inferior compared to the UK version. Also, have you seen the Top Gear UK-Australia "Ashes" match in the last episode?

Re: Gervais - I've seen the clip in question, and quite honestly, didn't think it was that bad, but it probably didn't go down too well in the luvvie world of Hollywood. ;)
Which reminds me of the Sport Relief 2010 gala where James Corden made a "motivational" speech which laid into many a sports star.

[hnpcc]

There was an interesting discussion about the lack of Republicans (or openly Republican) in science in Obsidian Wings a couple of months ago.

Basically -- because even the short version is getting to be too long -- I think that in the 80s the Republican powers saw even the hardest of hard scientists, the physicists and geologists and NASA, take positions that impeded the core Republican value of Making Money. Then, once they stopped worrying about what a bunch of eggheads thought, they could turn up the music playing to a Christianist audience and be against evolution and the wrong sort of medical research. But the underlying drive, IMHO, was Republican resistance to the kind of planetary systems concerns that we currently lump under "climate change".

No idea if that's exact or not - and I'd be interested to know what the breakdown of Liberal:ALP is in Australian scientists. Or, more accurately, the breakdown of Lib:ALP:Green to be honest.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that link - very interesting. I followed a link from there to the Frum Forum article, which said:

"Under Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, Republicans championed science and knowledge. But over the past 30 years, national Republicans have formed an intensifying alliance with religious conservatives more skeptical of science and knowledge. [...] In the age of Fox News and the Tea Party, the cultural war has heated up, and the anti-academic and anti-science rhetoric has intensified."

A positive feedback loop, with the GOP becoming more and more anti-science rather than changing its tactics (to the distress of moderate Republicans), could perhaps explain that extraordinarily low figure.