Maybe the reason Reality TV works so well is that truth really is stranger than fiction. Ars Technica reports on a study that supports the notion that TV Reality is actually, Reality.
If you’ve marvelled at how rarely the nice guys succeed in these programs, the paper in the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology educates you in line one: “The Desire to Expel Unselfish Members from the Group” .
According to the study, altruistic members of a group ‘raise the bar’ for everyone else, and are universally reviled for it. The results were repeated, just to be sure. Yep, Goody-Two-Shoes suck.
I suspect there’s a cultural bias here, but anyone who has worked in team knows the sort of thing that is happening.
It’s another reason I believe the group that has a vision beyond itself, that has a reason to keep resetting the bar higher, is the one that will succeed. It’s true of sporting teams, of churches, of businesses, of volunteer organisations. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Any family members seeking the Family Tree – it’s offline for the time being while I find a better host for it.
It is currently available at ancestry.com, but I think you need to sign up for a free account to view it. There’s also a version at genesreunited.co.uk if you’re a member there.
If you are serious about tracing the family tree, I recommend at least getting a basic, free account at either or both sites, to help with the research!
But if you just want to snap off a twig for your own interest, let me know and I can send you what data I have. (I’m still in ‘data gathering’ mode so I can tell you when, but not how our ancestors lived. That’ll change soon.)
According to too many high school student debating teams (and their text books, apparently);
Australia is the fattest country on Earth
The article most often cited claims a statistic of 26% of adult Australians being ‘obese’, which is now a percentage point ahead of the USA.
This stat is attributed to a Federal Government report ‘Australia’s Future Fat Bomb’, which makes no comparison with other countries. The 26% figure can be pulled out with tricky maths, but comparing the results of a survey of a few thousand people on a free blood pressure screening day to different, broader worldwide surveys is more than a little problematic.
Anyway, it doesn’t ring true. For example, of my four friends, none of them are obese.
Part of the fun is defining what ‘fat’ means, and that all comes down to Body Mass Index. If you’re between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2, you’re just overweight. Over the 30 mark, you’re obese.
Also, it helps to go to the source(s) directly. The Wikipedia articles on Obesity in Australia and Epidemiology of Obesity have data that is several years old (none of which ranks Australia at the top).
The World Health Organisation has a bunch of cool data tools you can use to check the 2010 information for yourself. According to WHO, Australia is ranked #20 for males over 30 (years), and 49th placed for females. (The greatest girls and girthiest guys are in Nauru)
The OECD also publishes a report on their countries which is also summarised here. 2010: Australia third, behind the US and New Zealand.
The data isn’t worth celebrating; it shows we’re not far from being number one some day.
I know politicians are gonna be judged on everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth is those carefully prepared scripted remarks.
We worked hard. We tried to get the balance right, we tried to get the economics right, we obviously tried to get the politics right, we tried to spread the burdens around, we certainly were determined to keep the core commitments we made. And we have, in full.
An honest man is not a man who is honest; an honest man is a man who is dishonest but is quite honest about it. A man who hides his dishonesty, now he’d be a dishonest man. But disarming honesty about previous dishonesty is apparently OK. Of course the dishonesty in the first instance is annulled by the subsequent honesty and any reference back to it would be the act of a dishonest political point scorer.
For the few who have asked; Spandau Ballet’s concert at Sandalford Winery on the weekend was outstanding.
(Yes, this WAS also going to be a Tears For Fears review, but circumstances conspired against us. ‘Shout’ was great ‘drive up’ music, but was the last of the Fears’ set. Sadface.)
Unfortunately, many Australian dates will lack the outdoor setting for this ‘Reformation’ tour, which only added to the party atmosphere in Perth. Thank your chosen deity for perfect weather, an enthusiastic crowd and an organiser who knew how to get them from place to place*.
Opening with a brief retrospective video, Gary, Martin, Tony, Steve and John were back into the groove like they hadn’t left the stage for 20-odd years.
Each track (and mix) was album-perfect, amped up just the right amount to give them a new sheen. None of it is broken – they didn’t try to fix it. Ahead of the concert, I was worried that they would return to the overweening private-school earnestness that marked some of their earlier recordings, but for the most part, they got on with the job of delivering sugar-free 80s, mercifully filtered through the wisdom of years. They are putting rockers half their age to shame. Tony’s voice never wavered, and sounds better than ever.**
The setlist is available – heavy on the big hits and one new track to sell, ‘Once More’, the title of the 2009 album of the same name. Standouts for me were ‘Instinction’ and ‘Always In The Back Of My Mind’, both getting more than a breath of new life (and leaving me disappointed with the current recordings…). ‘With The Pride’ was stripped back to guitar and voice – beautiful. ‘Through the Barricades’ lifted the roof of the venue (or would have/will do). There was also a walk down memory lane of all home-video footage, which prompted more reverie about hairstyles and fashion than music.
The new album contains a few laid back re-imaginings, and is worth tracking down, if only for ‘With The Pride’ and the new single.
Judging by the comments and publicity around this tour, it seems like this really is ‘Once More’ – a reunion/farewell concert. Although the team makes a point to show what great friends they are now, there was no mention of the new album which is due this year, or any more new material. This concert rests on laurels, and doesn’t raise any new standards.
If, as I suspect, this is the last chance to catch them, I’d go for it. They put on an awesome show.
* Brickbats for ‘Advanced Traffic Management’ who delivered only 1 of the three promises in their name while presiding over near-criminal levels of post-event gridlock. Sack ’em, Sandalford. Even their website is a shambles.
** Once you get past Tony’s resemblance to KD Lang these days.
After a couple of days of twitterage under the hashtag #tvcrossoversidliketosee, I and others thought the following show ideas deserved some fleshing out. Your contributions welcome in the Comments.
Bear Grylls In The Big Blue House A real-life survival series where our hero survives on wits and gnats, until he’s sniffed out of hiding by an oversized orange muppet.
Dharma and Gregory House This week, hilarity ensues when a diagnosis of terminal lupus turns out to all be in our heroine’s head.
So You Think You Can Dance Like A Fifth Grader Our contestant’s dancing skills are rated and ridiculed by a panel of insufferably precocious 10 year olds.
Glee’s Anatomy Hospital life is set to showtunes, mainly so advertising copywriters can unleash a series of increasingly irritating puns like ‘singing your heart out’ and ‘break a leg’
Jamie Oliver In The Night Garden This week – Makka Pakka’s Pukka Rocky Road
Two and a Half Mentalists Life is tough for Penn and Teller and the vicitim of one of their failed ‘sawing a woman in half’ tricks.
Lost Betty This week’s cover: Grass Skirts And The Losers Who Love Them
Survivor: Cougar Town Courtney Cox challenges potential suitors to increasingly contrived challenges until they vote her off
24 Rock Jack Bauer might be the only one who can save NBC from itself. This week’s guest star; Conan O’Brien
Desperate Goodwives Men suck SOOOO Much.
CSI: Ramsay Street There’s Always A Clue.
Just Shoot Hannah Montana ‘Nuff said.
Spongebob Bebop This week, Patrick tracks down Plankton and claims his bounty, but somehow forgets to buy food again.
Trinny and Suzanna’s War On Everything Everyone needs at least one chicken suit in their wardrobe.
That’s So Merlin For some reason, Brotha’s predictin’ the future, wearin’ medieval clothes and talkin’ jive.
Buffy The Kitchen Nightmare Stake and ****ing Chips
Spicks and Specks In The City Panelists sit in a coffee shop and compare their scores.
As school starts for another year, I’m caught raveling a couple of loose threads exposed in my gray matter by an offhand Facebook post. I was gazing lovingly at my newly-christened ‘iPad mini’* and thinking about how similar in form is is to my first ever serious self-bought gadget acquisition: a Nintendo Game And Watch.
I had scrimped and saved lawnmowing money for 4 weeks to save up the $12 I spent at a Macarthur Square Pharmacy to buy ‘Fire’ – a simple little game of bouncing panicked residents from their burning building to a waiting ambulance.
Wouldn’t it be great to return to that simple gameplay for at least a little while? Today’s app ‘developers’ churning out sound boards and simple games of tic-tac-toe could learn a lot from the earliest mobile application developers – about gameplay, but importantly, about engagement.
They created situations and characters on tiny LCD screens which dragged 10 year olds away from the recess cricket pitch and under the Big Oak Tree for the first time. Nintendo – the inventor of Mario and Donkey Kong – understood early on that the game should be good, the hardware durable, but the kids will only keep playing if the characters are worth saving and revisiting. How many crowds of kids cheered on that little diver as he/she sprinted past the flailing arms of The Octopus? What is it about those cheesy little vignettes that inspires reverie today?
Unlike the Coleco Visions and the Ataris and the well-established arcades**, these games were portable (and school-suitcase-smuggleable). They could wake you up on the morning and keep you awake well past bedtime. There were no cartridges to purchase, no battery-draining backlights, and if things locked up, the ACL button was your friend. And they made cool little LCD explosions if you risked applying your thumb a little to hard to the screen. They established simple rules – 3 misses and you’re out. No saved progress, no cheat codes, no ‘unlocked achievements’, no multiplayer.
And yet, somehow, they consumed the attention and free-time of a generation.
As far as I can see, Nintendo has not allowed Game and Watch Simulators on the Apple iTunes Store. Presumably, the copyright police are (rightly) in Apple’s ear. You can find one or two ‘Game and Watch-type’ apps on there, but nothing worth spending time/money/bandwidth on.
However, there are some simulators available for Windows platforms – where developers don’t *necessarily* need to pass their wares through such a tight net. I found a couple of great sites, below, where developers have lovingly created some Games and Watches of yesteryear. See how many you remember!
For mine, the standout games I can recall: Fire, Octopus, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior, Snoopy Tennis and Oil Panic.
Sure, they’d barely rate a mention alongside today’s FPS/RPG/WoW/MMORPGs, and are probably heavily filtered through a nostalgic lens, but, dammit, they’re honest, hardworking little buggers that deserve a second chance in the apps store – come on Nintendo! Turtle Bridge for iPhone! Make it happen!
MADrigal goes One Step Beyond – even simulating some of the earlier non GW games like Sub Chase and Puck-Man – Yay LED!
If you have any other links or memories, please post in the comments.
P.S.: Circle of Life: I had to save up a similar amount of time to buy the latest Nintendo gadget: The Wii. And sure enough, in Super Smash Bros. Brawl – one of the retro Nintendo characters is – you guessed it – ‘Mr Game And Watch’ – all the way from the scene of The Fire. Spooky.
(* ‘iPad Mini’ is my new name for my ‘iPod Touch’.)
(Update – Feb 2013 – seems there’s a product called the iPad mini now. Guess we can substitute ‘iPad Micro‘.)
Opening with a brief retrospective video, Gary, Martin, Tony, Steve and John were back into the groove like they hadn’t left the stage for 20-odd years.
After a couple of days of twitterage under the hashtag #tvcrossoversidliketosee, I and others thought the following show ideas deserved some fleshing out. Your contributions welcome in the Comments.
I had scrimped and saved lawnmowing money for 4 weeks to save up the $12 I spent at a Macarthur Square Pharmacy to buy ‘Fire’ – a simple little game of bouncing panicked residents from their burning building to a waiting ambulance.
For mine, the standout games I can recall: Fire, Octopus, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior, Snoopy Tennis and Oil Panic.
BONWAG 