BBC bleeps Shane

The 1987 classic "Fairytale of New York," by the Pogues, is hands down the favorite holiday song at our house -- though we try to keep the kids from listening too closely. It's irreverent and foul-mouthed, but surprisingly sweet, too. And it's a great tune. Really, who couldn't love a song that begins "It was Christmas Eve, babe.... In the drunk tank"?

But I understand why the BBC -- amid a national grassroots campaign to make the tune Britain's #1 song for the holidays -- decided it had to censor the lyrics during radio play.

The word they bleeped -- faggot -- is easily the most offensive word in the song. But there are enough others -- scumbag, arse, "cheap slut on junk" -- that it's hard to imagine the song ever getting mainstream airplay in this country. First Amendment or no, our Puritanical roots tend to put the kabosh on things like that.

Which is why I'm a bit bemused at the torrent of criticism the BBC's decision has unleashed. You'd think the BBC had declared war on Christmas or something.

In the end, the outcry led the BBC to reverse its decision. So a song that couldn't possibly be played uncut in this country is once again being broadcast in full in Britain.

Somewhere, Shane McGowan is smiling and downing his third pint of bitter.

Fun "Fairy Tale" fact: In Britain, when the song was performed live on BBC's "Top of the Pops", producers made the band change the word "arse" to "ass", which they apparently considered less offensive. The reverse, of course, is true here.

music, Pogues, politics, midtopia

Happy Birthday to me

I turn 40 today, and all I want for my birthday is intergalactic war:



Of course, it doesn't come out until Sept. 25, and I'd need to buy an Xbox 360 first -- it won't run on the Xbox already in my house.

But those are quibbles. I'm 40, dammit! Life's gettin' short!

video games, midtopia

Tanks for this

It's not my backyard, of course, but as a former tanker I fully support the family in this one.

WASECA, MINN. -- Tony Borglum has a thing for tanks. So much so that last fall, after he and his father traveled to England to buy one, they bought four more with the idea of opening a tank-riding business and obstacle course in their back yard.

"We were there a day and a half, and I got to thinking: 'There's nothing like this in the U.S.,' " said Borglum, 20, talking about the obstacle course in England where he bought the tanks and an armored personnel carrier. "I said, 'I think people would be interested. So let's bring some back and see what happens.' "

What happened has turned Waseca County into a battleground, pitting the Borglums and their plan against dozens of residents who are less than thrilled by the idea of seeing and hearing tanks and an armored personnel carrier rumbling across the land.

The vehicles involved are British and varied, and none of them are actually tanks. They include an Abbott self-propelled artillery piece, a FV432 armored personnel carrier and two armored cars: a Saladin and a Ferret.

Noisewise, I don't think the neighbors have much to worry about, though I agree with their concerns about the outdoor shooting ranges. I just wish ex-tankers could actually drive the things instead of merely riding on them. Ah, well.

Minnesota, armor, politics, midtopia

Maybe we are all sheep

Like a lot of people, I've often wondered why "popular" often doesn't equate to "quality" in books, film and the like. There are a lot of explanations -- marketing, the lowest common denominator at work, or simply shrugging it off as evidence that the American public, by and large, are a bunch of dunces who really like fart jokes.

Turns out, though, that we're simply not the independent thinkers we think we are. Almost as important as reading a book we like is knowing that other people are reading it, too.

[Conventional marketing wisdom] makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.

Oh sure, you say. Nice theory, but c'mon. How do you prove that?

Like this.

In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

It turns out that an independent assessment of "quality" is a factor; quality songs tended to be popular in all the worlds. But it turns out it's only a factor, not the factor or even the biggest factor.

So "Bridezilla" and it's ilk isn't going to disappear from the airwaves anytime soon. But we can take comfort in the knowledge that it's not because we're Philistines; it's because being part of a group experience is more important to our brains than the fine details of what that experience is. Opera or "Jackass": as long as you've got company, it's all good.

science, psychology, politics, midtopia

Puppy killers on "People's Court"

Back in June I wrote about a family whose dog was killed by some neighbor boys, and how they were musing about taking the case to Judge Judy.

Well, alerted by a reader, it turns out that they did, and the episode ran today. Not Judge Judy, but "People's Court."

I can't find anything about a verdict. Anyone able to help me (and the reader) out?

People's Court, politics, midtopia

Just for fun

It's Friday, and I've been coming across a lot of really bizarre links lately. So here's another one: The Museum of Really Bad Album Covers.

Update: photo added.

humor, midtopia

Political Compass

Not much time tonight, so how about a little topical entertainment?

The blog is named Midtopia, and I think of myself as a moderate. But am I really? I took the Political Compass test to find out.

It plots your political position on two axes, giving a more nuanced view than the traditional left-right divide.

My score on a scale that seems to go from -10 to +10:

Economic Left/Right: -1.38 (slightly left leaning)
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.18 (moderately Libertarian)

I guess I really am moderate -- though with a libertarian streak. And I think the nature of some of the questions means the score actually overstates my leftward tilt.

If you're interested, take the test and post your score in the comments.

politics, midtopia

The Oscars were last night?

I suspect I'm the only blogger on the Internet who didn't actually care.

After putting the kids to bed, I spent last night watching a tape of Wednesday's episode of "Lost" -- much closer to "must see" television, IMO. Then my wife got home, and we watched the tail end of the Oscars -- in between flipping over to "Scary Movie III".

My sole commentary: Reese Witherspoon blew it with that acceptance ramble.

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oscars, midtopia

Fun with Ann Coulter

Because any chance to bash Ann Coulter should be embraced and doted on, I'd like to do my part to publicize her own personal Votegate.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections records show Coulter voted last week in Palm Beach's council election. Problem is: She cast her ballot in a precinct 4 miles north of the precinct where she owns a home — and that could be a big no-no.

Coulter, who owns a $1.8 million crib on Seabreeze Avenue, should have voted in Precinct 1198. It covers most homes on her street. Instead, records show, she voted in Precinct 1196, at the northern tip of the island.

(snip)

No matter, Florida statutes make it a third-degree felony to vote knowingly in the wrong precinct. Lying on a voter's registration can cost up to $5,000 and five years behind bars.

Follow up articles here and here.

Personally, I'm pulling for the five years in prison instead of the $5,000 fine....

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coulter, voting, palm beach, crime, florida, politics, midtopia