Free Hugs
by John Walker on Feb.10, 2008, under The Rest
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.
$300, or $80bn?
by John Walker on Feb.09, 2008, under Rants
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?
In Treatment
by John Walker on Feb.08, 2008, under Television
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.
The Power of Drew
by John Walker on Feb.08, 2008, under Television
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.
Walker Vs. CPA: Part 2
by John Walker on Feb.08, 2008, under Rants
A couple of people have pointed out to me that my emails to Sid Cordle have been less than ideal.
I believe that satire is a powerful and effective medium for causing debate and anger. And I do not regret using this. However, I do regret being a poor representative of Christianity, which I believe is the case when my position appears rooted in hate. So to address this, I’ve written back to Cordle, apologising, and restating my position in a more direct and less hostile manner. Here it is:
Walker Vs. Christian Peoples Alliance
by John Walker on Feb.07, 2008, under Rants
A while back I emailed a “political” party, the Christian Peoples Alliance (sic), to ask them if they could include an apostrophe in their party’s name. The reply was astonishing. They told me, straight-faced, that they’d focus tested the name and people prefered it with without the apostrophe. Nothing could possibly bring more confidence in local government leaders, eh? Democracy in action!
After some more recent correspondence, I focus tested myself, and it turns out I prefer to spell their name, “Cruel Hatemongers”. Here’s why!
As a result of my request, I found myself on their mailing list. Most of it is mindless local government nonsense, a lot of it is ghastly attempts to prevent Muslims from building mosques, and then this delightful press release arrived:
Derren Brown: System
by John Walker on Feb.05, 2008, under Rants, Television
Ooh, three of my favourite things combined: bemoaning Derren Brown, tricksy mathematics, and slagging off homeopathy!
I hadn’t even heard that Derren Brown had a new show, until Tim IMd me to let me know it was great. I read the summary – Derren Brown reveals he has a system for winning horse races, and proves it – and sighed. Same old trick from him – do a crappy magic trick and dress it up as paranormal powers, while saying how he doesn’t believe in paranormal powers. I bemoaned to Tim that it would just be a trick, wah wah. Tim clearly smiles to himself, and lets me know that might be the point of the programme.
(You can get hold of it via Channel 4’s abysmal 4oD service. Assume I’m going to ruin any surprises below.)
The Rules
by John Walker on Feb.04, 2008, under Rules
#36 No whistling in public. I never thought this would be a contraversial rule, until I proposed it to some apparently idiotic people, who protested. No, absolutely not. It’s the height of rudeness. If I’m standing in line in a shop, the last thing I want to hear is the moronic brainwrong musings of some halfwit, emitting in the form of tuneless, aimless, high-pitched whistling. If you’ve got perfect pitch, and can generate a beautiful, melodic, and most of all, purposeful tune, then please, contain yourself and wait for an appropriate moment. If you’re not capable of this, which you’re not, never leave your house again.
#37 Television and radio continuity announcers are not a part of the programmes they talk between, and thus are not allowed to add their contribution. You aren’t funny, you aren’t in their gang, and it’s not only embarrassing for you, but spoils the moment of the show we were just watching. Shut it. (There’s an exception, of course, which is when the announcer is scripted by the show’s writers, never better evidenced than by the otherwise dreadful Sofa Of Time on Radio 4, where the announcer dead-panned before it began, “Listeners are advised that the following programme contains an angry giant.”)
Reviews: Japanese DS Round-Up
by John Walker on Feb.01, 2008, under The Rest
A new occasional column I’m doing for Eurogamer has its first entry posted. It’s a round-up of Japanese DS games that aren’t seeing releases in the West.
It begins like this:
The Nintendo DS is a phenomenon almost beyond our understanding. Sales in the UK are stunning, with the device proving appeal across all of gaming’s traditional boundaries. But it as nothing when compared to its success in Japan. It’s frankly bewildering.
The DS has now outsold the PS2 in lifetime sales. In Japan alone, 20,954,157 units have been sold. Pluck a random week in January and you find 103,000 were sold compared to 34,000 PS3s or 5,500 Xbox 360s. That means one in every six people in Japan own a DS, with up to 300,000 more going out on a weekly basis.
And the software is as crazy. Nintendo dominates Japanese software charts in a way that’s frankly embarrassing for everyone else. To take the same week, it saw the Wii and DS occupying 16 of the top 20 software sales, the DS claiming 9 of those spots. This was no anomaly. Week after week the top 10 is almost exclusively Nintendo. It’s another world.
Homeopathy Apparently Doesn’t Work!
by John Walker on Jan.31, 2008, under Rants
Thanks to Tony who pointed me toward this wonderful news story:
NHS trusts ‘reject homoeopathy’
Here’s an excerpt:
“NHS primary care trusts are slashing funding for homoeopathic treatment amid debate about its efficacy and the drive to cuts costs, a study has suggested. More than a quarter have stopped or cut funding for such services, research by the GP magazine Pulse has found. The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, the country’s largest, confirms it has lost eight contracts in a year and referrals are down by 20%.”
Skip, skip, dance, dance.
It’s still utterly terrifying that qualified doctors – people with medical degrees – are falling for this woo-woo bullshit. And that they can come out with statements like,
“The homoeopathic hospitals provide a specialist service that has helped hundreds of thousands of NHS patients over the last 60 years and has extremely high levels of patient satisfaction. They are particularly well equipped to treat patients whose complex chronic health problems have not been effectively treated by conventional medicine.”
He somehow forgot to add, “We’ve never produced a scrap of evidence that anything we’ve done in those 60 years has had any effect beyond placebo and basic counselling,” but I’m sure the BBC just cut him off or something.
Don’t forget that homeopathy is deadly. Yes, it’s laughable, but it’s also vile and cruel, preying on those whose symptoms are imaginary, the frightened and dying, and those too stupid to know better. And it’s murderous, deliberately preventing people from taking effective medicines, such that they die because they drank a bottle of water. Nevermind how many conclusive studies come out proving it utter crap, we just go around and around the same pointless pole of stupidity.