John Walker's Electronic House

If you didn’t see the video from the Jimmy Kimmel Show where his girlfriend, Sarah Silverman, confesses in song that she’s been fucking Matt Damon, then you’re rubbish at the internet.

It’s here:

Rumours of a revenge video have been around for ages. It’s finally aired. And yes, Jimmy Kimmel is fucking Ben Affleck:

The list of celebrities in there is just insane. You’d normally need to be saving the world to get that much of Hollywood in one place, rather than making a dumb video for a pretend fight on a chat show. But this is by far the preferable result.

Here’s a quite remarkable story. Quackometer is a site that covers bad science – the dubious or downright nonsensical claims made by those professing “alternative medicine”. It’s been doing a splendid job for the last couple of years. Recently it posted a story about “Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi MD MPH FRIPH FRCAM FACAM MICR”, covering his various documented moments of madness, to which the good doctor replied with a mystifying lawsuit.

Quackometer’s pathetic hosts, Netcetera (“passionate about hosting”), responded to the empty threat by pulling the entire site offline, permanently. A mealy-mouthed excuse about violating terms and some such rubbish is all they’ve given as explanation, because of course their only reason was cowardly stupidity, and a complete lack of interest in protecting the rights of freedom of information.

Professor Obi, as he likes to call himself, was fired from South Tyneside General Hospital for serious professional misconduct, and had his license to practise medicine in the UK revoked. A trustworthy man to be sure.

He now claims to be the boss of the “Royal College of Alternative Medicine”, which is a near-fictional entity, not existing beyond a website, and so many of those letters after his name are of dubious origin, while many others are cheaply bought titles from various worldwide websites. Delightfully, he is alleged to have conned an old lady out of her life savings since being fired for allegedly failing to treat a heart attack patient, innappropriate treatment of psychiatric patients, and abusive behaviour toward colleagues. He’s all-round the sort of guy to which you’d want an ISP to immediately capitulate, yes indeed.

Gimpy’s Blog provides an excellent summary of the recent closure of the site (from which much of the above has been cribbed), and a previous post details where you can find copies of the articles removed from Quackometer, for instance here.

Fortunately, the good people at Positive Internet, who host this blog, as well as Rock, Paper, Shotgun, have stepped in to provide hosting for Quackometer, which should be online again shortly. Positive have a history of stepping in to offer hosting for sites that have been shut down either by cowardly ISPs, or for sites that deserve support but cannot afford excessive hosting charges. The wonderful Bad Science site is a previous rescue of theirs.

“Professor” Obi has duly threatened Positive in his latest blog post.

His blog is well worth a read. It’s very difficult to believe it’s not a spoof, so hilarious is its composition. For Obi, any who disagree with him, or mention his tawdry past, are automatically racists. For Obi, “victory” means saying, “I’m going to sue you!” to anyone who observes his history. For Obi, the only logical course of action is to describe himself as “Leader of the Opposition against the General Medical Council” – a clearly evil body as they dared to fire him for repeated counts of serious misconduct.

Phrases like, “Speaking in Belfast , at the end of a Private Inspection Tour of an Alternative Medicine Facility , the Eminent Black British Human Rights Crusader delightfully said…” are just so fun. So, after he walked around someone’s back room where they wave crystals, the disgraced former doctor said to the other guy in the room…

Seriously, have a read. If it’s a spoof, then I’ve been fooled. But the writing style matches that of his own nutcase website, implying something this ridiculous might actually be real.

New review up on Eurogamer, for one of the most lovely DS games yet.

The title is enough to let you know everything about this game. It’s gorgeous, elaborate, and silly. It’s a game that can only work on the DS, and celebrates all that’s engaging and esoteric about the medium.

Professor Layton is a top-hat-wearing fellow who has a penchant for puzzle-solving. He has heard word about a mysterious village containing a special puzzle revolving around an object called The Golden Apple. Travelling with his young companion, Luke, he enters the curious village to discover a town populated by people obsessed with puzzles, and a lot of peculiar secrets. It’s a puzzle game, but with one heck of a story.

My early impressions were correct. As In Treatment nears the end of its third week, it continues to escalate. It really is one of the most stunning pieces of television I’ve seen.

I can’t stress enough how much this show is worth watching. If you’re in the US, subscribe to HBO just for this (as if you needed another reason), or watch it on their website. If you’re outside the US, fake your IP so you can watch it on HBO’s site, or find it by whatever means the moronic system forces you to. You’ll want to find out what I discuss below for yourself.

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The best reason to vote Obama so far, America-o-readers:

2007 was missing something incredibly important: a new Mountain Goats album.

2008 will not be so cruel. Here’s the video for the first single:

Also, Darnielle’s song for Super Tuesday here.

Some people are terrible at hugging, their bodies apparently entirely constructed of elbows, awkward and certainly not comforting. Or worse, there’s the false hug, the lazy loose-armed obligatory greeting hug. But wonderful are real hugs, two people holding each other for a moment.

In Bath on Saturday, I saw a man holding a sign reading, “FREE HUGS”. I stood and watched for a while, my first thought being, “What’s he selling?”, my second, “What’s his alterior motive.”

These are fairly sad thoughts. And far moreso after I realised that he was simply hugging anyone who wanted it. He didn’t speak to people who didn’t talk to him first, he didn’t whisper a secret message in their ear afterward. He simply hugged them.

What moved me more was quite how real these hugs were. The difference here: neither person knew the other.

Many tourists were seeing it as a novelty, having photographs taken and making sure the sign was in shot. But the majority of people were stopping, barely saying a word, and then being warmly hugged, and walking away. It seemed these people needed it. They wouldn’t walk away giggling, or making a joke about it to their friends. Some did. But so many just took the hug that was on offer.

Some people can watch a magic trick and be dazzled and delighted by the spectacle. That’s most people. I can’t enjoy a magic trick properly until I know how it’s done, and then I get so much more from watching it performed. I wanted to know why he was doing this, what motivated this street altruism. So I went up and asked him, and with his permission recorded his answers. Throughout this he was being asked for hugs, stopping between questions to hug those that had stopped nearby. I’ve edited out a lot of the gaps, but importantly, there were a lot. (Sorry about the horrible quality – for some reason in converting to mp3 it muffles and clicks).

The Free Hugger, existing on the internet under the name Wot Gorilla, has details about his hugging here.

Go hug for free.

After touting the idea for the last year, Bush is going ahead with his plans to give every American a $300 “tax rebate”. Costing the country $80bn, its intention is to give everyone an economic boost, and push away thoughts of a recession.

It’s like someone trying to bump-start their car’s ruined battery. Rolling it down the hill to get the engine to come to life, and hoping that it will be enough to reach their destination. It seems so implausible a solution, and so incredibly likely to cause the economy to break down a few metres further down the road.

I avoid conspiracy theories as resourcefully as I can, but when America’s education system is collapsing through a lack of funding, and $80bn is pissed away in meaninglessly small chunks of cash – a couple of new golf clubs, or a third of that month’s rent – it’s hard to ignore that terrifying feeling that the Bush administration – indeed the entire government who have approved this move – would rather see America get stupid, and shut up for half an hour while they spend their present. (It’s hard to immediately pin it down to electioneering, because the recession fears are happening right now, as well).

I have a thought for a response to this, but I’m the other side of the world, and not involved. But this seems like the right idea:

A massive campaign should now be organised to encourage all those who are willing to give their $300 to a single fund. A fund that is given to the American state education system, or something else similarly in crisis which the government are not spending money on. In fact, Bush gave me the idea. Quoting the Scotsman:

“President Bush first proposed the giveaway earlier this year, arguing that a stimulus package would work better if the people, rather than the government decided where it was to be spent.”

The implications of this statement are so terrifying. As if everyone getting a stupid £150 is going to allow them to change anything. But how about taking him at his word? Let the people decide where the government should have spent this money. Get organised, recollect all this money that’s being sent out, and then give it back to the state such that it can only be spent on those issues intelligent Americans believe need it most.

Can this be done? Surely such a move would receive massive amounts of publicity? It would get news coverage, simply because it would be confusing to them by its apparently altruistic (despite being anything but) behaviour. Surely the intelligent media would get behind such a project, and enough would get involved such that billions could genuinely get fed back into the system where they belong?

There are very few programmes that are compellingly brilliant from the very beginning. Most need time to develop, and many, while great, never astonish. In fact, I’m struggling to name any other than Slings & Arrows. Perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, Homicide: Life on the Streets. Unless something dramatically changes after the first eight episodes, I believe In Treatment will be in that brief list.

The concept is simple and unique. Gabriel Byrne plays Paul, a 50 year old therapist, seeing a number of patients. The half hour programme is shown every weeknight on HBO, with Monday to Thursday featuring four different cases. On Friday, Paul sees a therapist. Each episode consists of almost nothing but the conversation between therapist and patient. Perhaps two minutes might see Paul talking to his son, or making a telephone call, but the rest is spent in the dialogue, in a single room.

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I’m a little late on this one.

Last year CBS showed a new quiz show called The Power Of 10. This show was unique in one very specific way: It’s really good. But more than that, it’s also not cruel in any way. It picks up on the themes of popular modern quizzes, but strips away the nonsensical meanness, and the agonising pressure, and just lets contestants have fun, with fun questions.

Compare this with Fox’s latest quiz output, The Moment Of Truth, and it’s a fresh breeze in a murky, unpleasant schedule. The Moment of Truth takes a contestant, asks them about 50 questions before taping while they’re wired to a polygraph, and then asks them a selection of these questions on air, in front of their close friends and family. With every question they answer honestly, they win a larger amount of money, but as they progress they risk revealing increasingly awful secrets in front of those they don’t want to know. It’s every bit as vile as it sounds. Attempting to get people to admit to affairs, secret addictions, and other unpleasant facts about themselves, in order to hurt those around them, for cash. Of course, its ratings are very high.

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