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?

[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.

[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.