Twitter and God

Judging from the fact that most of you came to this particular page through Facebook, I’m guessing  most of us are no stranger to the social media anymore. Or are you? Today I saw a picture being shared furiously on the aforementioned social network, which explained eight different social media in a funny way. What was less funny to me was the fact that I had never heard of five of them: foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest, Last.fm and G+ are total strangers to me. (Okay, I know G+ stands for Google+ but I have no idea how it works).

So that’s five out of eight, but which three are missing? Obviously the most popular ones, since even I know them. There’s Facebook, duh. YouTube, that’s another one. And finally there’s Twitter – which only last week was in the news.

The occasion was that recently the first major study was concluded as to the relevance of Twitter. As you probably know, this rapidly growing microblogging service enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters. Some use it for personal reasons, as a kind of online version of cell-phone text messages (sms), while others follow or write tweets in a more professional context, like the political media or cultural scene. The conclusion of the study was that a good tweet is relatively rare. It seems only 36% percent of them are experienced by the users as ‘interesting’.

Of course this is a difficult criterion. Suppose I asked you to rate your current email inbox. What percentage would you rate as ‘interesting’? Moreover, if a certain account you follow on Twitter is not interesting anymore, you can easily unfollow it. Indeed, whereas with Facebook you need permission to follow someone’s account, with Twitter you can instantly follow anyone you want. Personally, for instance, I follow @BarackObama, @ParisHilton and even @jesus. The sky is the limit, pardon the pun.

Which brings me to the following. To give you a small sample of how Twitter works, I thought I’d give you a selection of Ricky Gervais’ tweets. Besides an outrageously funny comic, he’s an animal rights activist, a humanitarian and a convinced atheist. Above all, Ricky Gervais is not afraid to speak his mind about what he believes in.

About God and religion, for instance. A while ago Gervais got caught up in a discussion about religious matters. I don’t know exactly when it started, but it seemed to speed up after this tweet:

@rickygervais And this photo is NOT me a dressed as Jesus. It's from The Invention Of Lying. And even if it was, so fucking what? http://pic.twitter.com/DhOD7lF1

20 Jan

What followed was a veritable bombardment of Gervais on Twitter by people who tried to convince him to believe in this or that God or religion. Here’s some of the funnier ones (in quotes “ ”), most of the  time with Gervais’ answers immediately following:

@rickygervais “@HerNameIsDawn: @rickygervais What do you think happens to the mind after you die?” The same as what happens to your voice

24 Jan

@rickygervais “@ckleass: do you have any friends who r Christian?” Yes. & Jewish & Muslim. I've also friends who love GLEE. We don't have to always agree

25 Jan

@rickygervais Ask yourself why you don't believe in all the other gods. Your answer, is why I don't believe in yours. This endeth the religious tweets.

25 Jan

@rickygervais “@jskrew: I believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny- what religion is that?" As valid as any other.

29 Jan

@rickygervais “@LeoDukes: Here's a thought! I'm a fan who enjoys your works, but Im sick of you going on about religion. Should I stop following?” Yes

1 Feb

@rickygervais “@ChallonGoodeRVC: @lewisdent @billybasset1 there's heaps of proof of Gods existence!” Go on...?

3 Feb

@rickygervais “@Graeme289: oh man give it a rest about god .....” Sorry for tweeting you all the time Graeme I...oh hold on, YOU'RE following ME. #gorp

3 Feb

Now who said comedy and philosophy couldn’t go together?

Ricky, if we had one, we would award you the 2012 Fred and Fred prize!

Keep on Rollin(s)

According to the Wikipedia entry on amor platonicus, genuine Platonic love means that 'the beautiful or lovely other person inspires the mind and the soul and directs one's attention to spiritual things'. Assuming this is a good definition, I can safely begin this blogpost by saying that I am Platonically in love with Henry Rollins. Born as Henry Lawrence Garfield in 1961, an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor (Sons of Anarchy, for example) and radio DJ. Make your own acronym with the following words: disorder, attention, hyperactivity and deficit...

I've seen him on the Arenberg stage on Tuesday, performing his spoken word show "the Long March", and I was (once again) completely blown away. From the moment he comes on stage, wearing his standard uniform (black trousers and a black t-shirt, although not wearing Vans this time), until he leaves the stage three hours later: the man just doesn't stop talking. His mouth doesn't even stop for the smallest sip of water, he is a verbal muscle machine on a roll... Early Black Flag memories, provocative rants on American politics and global economy, flashes of auto-critique, funny travel stories and an insight into his ever-positive (and highly contagious) attitude in life: he kneads it into an entertaining show which somehow combines his humour ('uma', referring to one of his travel stories) with an amount of energy which could easily help a few countries through the winter months. Based in the Northern hemisphere, du-uh.

As today is National Poetry Day (not the international one, mind you, that would be March 21), I decided to add two particular pieces by Rollins. First of all, a quote: The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs. From a man who is as active as he is (check the internet), I can take this.

Secondly, a cute little poem. By Mister Rollins, of course.

ADVENTURES IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS
 You climb, and climb.
Hand over hand.
 You reach the top.
 You stand on the shaky edge of your heart.
 You look in her eyes.
 You hold your breath and jump.
 You Leap into her arms.
 Her arms fall at her sides.
 You fall past her window.
 You hit the ground.
 You are shattered.
 All broken up, like someone taking a bottle, and dropping it onto the ground.
 All busted up.
 Sharp jagged broken pieces of yourself lying on the ground. 
You put the pieces back together again.
 They never go back quite the same.
 The outside is seamless and smooth.
 But inside, broken glass, mind and soul with little cracks in the sides,
 and loose splinters at the bottom. 
They stay to remind you.
 At times the soul glass splinters will give you a jab to remind you of your leap.
 After a time when you start climbing again you will forget about the soul glass splinters.
 She can break your fall, or let you fall and break.
 And every time you jump
 You just know she’s going to catch you.

Ah, it feels good to 'know' people making you feel less afraid to turn 51...

Pippa

A few days ago an item came by in the news that reminded me to complain about something (lol). The segment was about the most popular names for baby girls in Flanders in 2011 (big sigh). The list is as follows: 1) Emma, 2) Julie, 3) Lotte, 4) Marie and 5) Elise. Yet the most interesting fact, apparently, was that there was a remarkable surge of one other name: Pippa. And of course Pippa Middleton’s popularity explains the phenomenon.

Now while you are reading this, ask yourself: why do I know Pippa Middleton? (Notice that I’m not even considering the possibility you don’t know her)

That’s right. Pippa Middleton is Kate Middleton’s sister and you know her because of these pictures:

At the royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton she made quite an impression, it is said time and again, for wearing a nice dress (some say nicer than the bride’s) and for being, well simply put, a nice-looking girl. Understandable, isn’t it?

I agree, but that’s where it stops for me. What happened after the wedding is sheer insanity.

Some facts. Pippa is photographed somewhere between 300 and 400 times a day (link). Pippa has recently signed a £400,000 deal to write a guide to party planning (link). Pippa’s ass is set to get its own YouTube online series (link). I kid you not.

And why, I ask you?

Why is this Pippa so famous? Does she have a lovely personality? We don’t know. Does she have a nice voice? We don’t know. What are her talents? We don’t know.

Apparently, we don’t know anything about this woman, but she’s world famous nonetheless. At least Paris Hilton has a sex tape and shows her knickers once in a while in some nightclub. But Pippa? The ‘news’ media watchers publish about her is often so boring (Pippa loans Kate’s coat. Pippa goes running a half-marathon), that I seriously suspect Pippa to be boring as well.

Surely it can’t be all explained by the bum, can it? I mean, sure the woman is blessed with a beautiful behind, but let’s be honest, it ain’t that fabulous. Seriously, let’s hand out a weirdly anonymous compliment, but I’ve dated at least three girls who had much better bums than Pippa. In general, I honestly think that many girls and women I know in person are more beautiful than this Pippa character.

So why is she famous? The truth? Pippa is famous for being famous. That’s how weirdly empty we’ve become as a society. And you know what is the weirdest part? 

I’m pretty sure Pippa hates it.

Pissed off

Ah, the news. Always new opportunities to get irritated, frustrated or downright angry. During the past few days, a particular article had me raise my eyebrows...

You might have seen the video featuring American soldiers urinating on dead Afghan bodies. The 40-second clip, showing four men in combat gear exposing their genitals and relieving themselves whilst making bad jokes ("Have a great day buddy, golden like a shower!"), went around the world quickly and sparked outrage and a possible diplomatic row between Washington and Kabul. Even the Pentagon spokesman said the video was deeply troubling, and added "Whoever it was, and whatever the circumstances, it is egregious behaviour." Understandable, right? 

In a sense - a very weird one, that is, because the comparison I am about to make is more farfetched than a massive cruise ship running aground off the Italian coast, because the captain felt like waving his family (and a few other people, may they rest in peace) goodbye - this all reminds me of a discussion I had when I was 21 years old. I used to be a member of WINA at that time, the student organization associated to our mathematics department. As a matter of fact, I was in charge of taming the freshmen at our cantus activities (schachtentemmer, if that makes sense to you). 

To be more precise, this also implied that I had the final responsibilities over the student initiation ceremony (for those of you who are not familiar with this: it's a kind of passage rite, involving lots of beer, some nudity, oodles of ingredients to make pancakes and, of course, even more beer). Even today, I can still clearly recall that one particular moment when some of my fellow WINA members asked me whether they were allowed to 'wash' the students that very night. When I asked them what they meant by that, they gave me a 'you-idiot, isn't-that-plain-obvious'-look and added "Spit on them, of course!". I wasn't shocked, I knew far worse stories from other student organizations, but I obviously answered that they weren't. Because to me, student initiations were (and still are) all about recruiting people, engaging them in social activities and offering them a night of fun to remember for the rest of their lives - despite the alcohol. As opposed to what some people believe, it is not about humiliating people. 

So why am I telling you this? What does it have to do with US soldiers urinating on Afghan war victims, facing severe punishment because of (and I quote) this apparent desecration of the dead as a violation of our nation's military regulations and of international laws of war prohibiting such disgusting and immoral actions? I will tell you why: because this reasoning pisses me off badly. I find it very ironic - in a bad sense of the word - that people are judged as immoral because of something they did during a fucking war. It wasn't a cantus, nor a social activity meant to bring people closer together or to offer them an experience to remember forever (I am afraid that soldiers are returning with enough experiences they'd rather not remember). It happened during a conflict which, by its very definition, leads to mortality and human behaviour defying what we consider to be 'right'.

I am no expert, nor a philosopher - merely a pacifist with a humble opinion I feel like sharing - but according to me it doesn't make sense to make rules about what is okay and what is not during a war. Because the act of declaring and fighting a war itself is not okay. Period. Who are we to judge people who were actually trained to kill other people, from behind our desks or the comfort zones we tend to call 'houses'? Do not get me wrong (repeat twice!), I am by no means saying that what these soldiers did is morally right, but I am questioning the very concept of making rules about something that should not be in the first place. Amen. 

Year-End Questions

If you tend to follow the media a bit (and you do, because you’re reading a blog at the moment), there’s no way of escaping the annually recurring lists of year-end questions that magazines, news papers and such invariably publish. The usual format is to get some celebrities to fill in a bunch of questions, such as Best CD?, Best book?, Best movie? etcetera.

However, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never enjoyed reading such lists. In fact, I find the whole thing a bit pointless. I mean: these lists are obviously meant to be a cute way to have the public discover some of last year’s best CDs, books and movies. However, most of the time I either haven’t the slightest idea which CD/book/movie people are talking about or I do know the cd/book/movie in question and then the suggestion doesn’t matter anymore!

So, for this year I decided to draft an alternative list of questions that unlike all the others you might actually recognize and/or enjoy. So here you have ten year-end questions about 2011, Fred and Fred-style. Hope you like them!

And by the way, let’s all agree to enjoy 2012, shall we? It’ll make things so much easier!

1) Most absurd moment?

Sitting with Fred in a restaurant in Tokyo, realising that the waitress is actually Chinese, not Japanese, listening to their conversation in Chinese, and later on in the same restaurant being addressed as Supama, Supama! Crah Keh, Crah Keh! (‘Superman, Superman! Clark Kent, Clark Kent!’) Apparently, I look like Clark Kent to Japanese people. (Must be the glasses, I suppose).

2) Best personal insight?

Realizing that not everything that happens in life is my responsibility or fault. (I tend to take stuff way too seriously, I suppose)

3) Best unforeseen event?

Gaining at least four, possibly five female friends. (I never used to have those in the past, you know!)

4) Biggest crying-but-in-a-good-way moment?

Lots of stuff. Watching the movie Up, talking with Fred about Derrida, visiting new born babies, realising what Elbow’s song Lippy Kids is about. (Very much in touch with my feminine side in 2011, I suppose)

5) What I would most like to do in 2012, if it were not so embarrassing because I’m not a teenager anymore?

Go on a survival weekend.

6) Most heartbreaking moment?

Opening the door for a six-year-old trick-or-treater at Halloween, not realising what she was doing, then awkwardly stammering that I had no candy in the house (not even a bar of chocolate, really!) and then closing the door again. Afterwards wondering whether a pear or €2 could have made the situation better or possibly worse.

7) Most annoying physical feature?

Discovering that my secret wish of being an old man (see here), has manifested itself in a definite increase of hair in my nose and on my shoulders. (Seriously, I now shave the inside of my nostrils and my shoulders every week – also a candidate for question #1)

8) Best food discovery?

Pumpkins of all sizes, shapes and colours. (Just love them)

9) Best question?

If you were a tree, which tree would you be? (My answer: ‘Officer Crabtree!’)

10) Best thing I used my computer for?

Starting Fred and Fred, duh!

Fred and Fred For Life

Unless you’ve been living under a very big rock this week – something the size of Mont Saint-Michel – you have not been able to escape Studio Brussels’ annual charity radio show called Music For Life. In fact, Music For Life is the Belgian counterpart of a Dutch initiative called Serious Request, a radio project organised to collect money for projects of the Red Cross, which has been picked up in Switzerland, Sweden and Kenya too. During the project, three DJs live in a house of glass for six days without eating anything, instead drinking special juice to stay fit.

Organised consistently to fix attention on one of the many forgotten humanitarian issues in the world (like malaria or clean drinking water), this year’s edition focuses on diarrhoea as one of the main causes of death in children worldwide. Indeed, Wikipedia tells me that ‘(i)n 2009 diarrhea was estimated to have caused 1.1 million deaths in people aged 5 and over and 1.5 million deaths in children under the age of 5’. And since Music For Life was first organised in Belgium in 2006, the show has grown immensely in popularity, which is also clear from the financial results of the project. Last year, for instance, Studio Brussels was able to amass a whopping € 5.020.747 to help the Red Cross in its struggle against AIDS.

So far, so good you would say, but alas, things are not that simple. Especially in more leftist-intellectual circles Music For Life is seriously frowned upon. In fact, I cannot tell you how many people have spontaneously told me over the last few days how much they’re annoyed by the ‘whole business with the Glass House’. And to be frank, I used to be one of them, but then I started thinking about the initiative.

To start, many people are sceptical of the way the money collected will be spent. How much does Studio Brussels keep to organise all this? How much will actually reach these poor people? Who are we supporting? Now these are valid questions, but still. The organisation involved with Serious Request is the Red Cross, founded in 1863 to protect human life and health, and an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. A trustworthy organisation if ever there was any, wouldn’t you agree? Sure, there will be some money that doesn’t reach the Red Cross or that the Red Cross will not manage to get into the right hands, but that’s an issue with all humanitarian help.

Furthermore, I notice that people find fault in the way Music For Life draws away attention from other organisations such as Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières or, more importantly, a huge amount of small but worthy NGOs that struggle to get any public attention and financial support. Again, there is some truth in this. But to use this argument to be against Music For Life is illogical. It’s like saying we shouldn’t focus our main medical research on cancer, because there are thousands of other diseases that need curing. It’s deplorable that we can’t support all causes, but does that mean we should stop supporting the Red Cross?

However, the biggest criticism against Music For Life is something more philosophical. Many people take issue with the ‘fun’ aspect of the show. Without really knowing why, they get annoyed by the insane popularity of the DJs (“I hate that Siska!”), the tacky Christmas atmosphere the Glass House oozes (“Those ugly red hats people wear!”) and the jolly-jumpy attitude of the people in front of the house (“Half of them are drunk!”). For some reason such behaviour seems unbefitting for the situation. Now why is that?

What really bothers people in this is the hypocrisy they perceive in the situation. And they are right: with an highly mediatised event like this – follow them on the radio, TV, webcams, Twitter, Facebook, etc.! – you quickly notice that the show is as much about the popularity of the DJs, about the artists playing support gigs and about the people coming along with donations, than about the cause the show is supporting. A good illustration of this is the reactions of people afterwards who are angry because in spite of collecting x-amount of Euros with their school, organisation, etc. they didn’t even get mentioned on the radio! Or the text messages of people you see on the screen: “Pff, this is my tenth SMS and I haven’t got through once!”.

Ergo: it’s more about everyone else than about the problem of diarrhoea.

However, if this is your reason not to support Music For Life, consider this. The famous French philosopher Jacques Derrida has a theory which is called l’aporie du don. It says that it is actually impossible to give a true gift. Indeed, a true gift should be unselfish, but still every gift to someone else is at the same time a gift to yourself. Think about it: when we give someone a gift, we want to make them happy. Now re-read the sentence: ‘we want to make them happy’. Giving a gift is always also about making yourself happy, and therefore every gift is, in a way, selfish. In fact, the happiness derived from giving a gift is even parasitical to the other person’s happiness. Indeed, we are only happy when the gift has succeeded in making the other party happy. So in essence, giving a gift implies stealing some of the happiness from the person who received the gift.

Hmm. Now that’s a buzz-killer, ain’t it? So much for the spirit of the season! Still, if Derrida teaches us anything, it’s that we shouldn't worry about such an aporie, because it’s inevitable. It’s not because we will never be able to be one hundred percent altruistic in giving a gift, that we should not give one.

Ergo: I see no reason not to support Music For Life and accordingly I will support it. So here’s my solemn vow: for every comment (just type SUPPORT) to this blog, Fred and Fred will donate €1 to Music For Life. So keep those comments coming!

LinkedIn: Shit That Siri Says

There's nothing technology can't do anymore, my grandma would say. Actually, she'd use some juicy West Flemish turn of phrase, but that would be the gist of it.

I was reminded of this when recently I heard about Siri on the new iPhone. Siri is an intelligent software assistant which functions as a personal assistant. Apple describes it as follows:

Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Say something like “Tell my wife I’m running late.” “Remind me to call the vet.” “Any good burger joints around here?” Siri does what you say, finds the information you need, then answers you. It’s like you’re having a conversation with your iPhone.

Sounds like science-fiction, doesn't it? But it really seems to work. (If you want to see how, you can find a little movie clip here.)

However, as with all artificial intelligence and voice recognition programs, there are always situations that cannot be anticipated and which will result in the program going nuts. I remember that Lernout&Hauspie's dictation software was fine as long as you stuck to words a toddler would know, but once you started dictating things like antidisestablishmentarianism you'd end up with rather strange stuff on the screen.

And so it's no different with Siri. It's fine when you ask it to find you the nearest bakery, remind you to go pick up your dry cleaning next week, but when you ask some more hardhitting questions, you can get some strange answers. Especially since the developers have given Siri what they call a 'sassy personality'.

Now some guys have dedicated a whole site to strange responses Siri gives (and I guess to asking strange questions too!) and they called it Shit That Siri Says. Here are some of the best for you to enjoy:


Funny, innit? You'll find many more on http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/!

The MJ conspiracy

Today I read a story in the papers that reminded me of a very distinct childhood memory. I think I must have been about eight or maybe nine and on holiday in Spain. I was playing in the pool with some newly made Dutch friends, when all of a sudden they introduced a new kid. And the new kid was black. That’s right. It may strike you as funny but at that age (late 80s) I had never seen a black person in person. I remember going up to the kid, who was about my age, and asking him in all my childish naiveté if I could touch his skin. I guess I just wanted to know what black skin felt like. He said yes and so I stuck out a little finger and poked him in the forearm. I remember clearly that I was very surprised. I had expected the skin to feel different, perhaps more coarse I don’t know, but I was astonished to find that his skin felt just like mine. ‘Well what do you know,’ I told my parents that afternoon, ‘they’re just like we are!’.

I’m never quite sure whether this story means that at age eight I was essentially a racist or not. Sure, my conclusion was that we were no different from each other, but still I had expected that there would be a difference and I based that assumption (perhaps ‘prejudice’ is a better word?) on racial grounds. However, in the end I guess that whatever my basic attitude, I learned the correct lesson: that although there is an undeniable difference in appearance between races, appearance is as far as the difference goes…

At the same time, there is that difference, but even as I’m typing this I feel that we’re not really comfortable discussing that. After all, why discuss it, if it doesn’t matter, right?

Well, let’s go back to the newspaper article I mentioned earlier. It’s about Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris Katherine Jackson (°1998), who is going into acting. In the article she is just called his daughter, but you see, I have a theory about MJ’s kids – at least about the first two, the oldest is known as ‘Prince’ (°1997) – and it’s quite simple: I’m not really convinced they’re his.

My reasons? Simple observation, really.

Here’s a picture of Michael with his father (Joseph Walter "Joe" Jackson) and his mother (Katherine Esther Scruse):

They are both black people (they’re not of mixed heritage, which could explain things further down the family tree), and therefore their child, Michael, was a black person too:

Now we all know that somewhere along the way Michael turned himself from a handsome black man into a scary white woman. You know what I mean, but here’s a pic anyway.

Bear in mind, though, that these changes were done with plastic surgery, i.e. skin transplants and skin products. They are not genetic. Michael’s DNA is what it always was, that of a negroid man.

Now, have a look at Michael’s partner, Debbie Rowe, who was MJ’s partner from 1996 to 1999, and who is Prince’s and Paris’ mother:

Now genetics dictate that MJ and Rowe’s children should be of mixed heritage. Someone like Halle Berry, for instance, whose mother is of European descent and whose father is African-American, or like Barack Obama, who is the son of a father from Kenya and a European American mother.

So we should expect MJ’s children to look something like that. Instead this is what his daughter and son look like:

Now does that seem right to you? Indeed, there have been persistent rumours, especially about Prince’s father being someone else. (By the way, there are no Wikipedia pages with detailed information on any of the Jackson children!) And let’s be honest, who would be surprised to find out that Wacko Jacko’s kids were really someone else’s? Isn’t it quite possible that a person who obviously had a pathological wish to be a white person, faked having white children?

So is our culture just too politically correct to ask these questions, or am I still, after all these years, being racist when I’m surprised that a black person’s kids don’t look black enough?

I wonder.

The Ig Nobel Prizes

You might have read about them in the paper today, but obviously there is only one source that you can trust on a topic like this: your faithful Fred and Fred. If ever something was right up our alley, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes.

In case you missed it: the Ig Nobel Prizes (a pun on ignoble and Nobel) are awarded each year in October for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to ‘first make people laugh, and then make them think’.

Yesterday the 21st award ceremony took place at Harvard University, and a Leuven professor was on the receiving end. Indeed, Luk Warlop, together with a number of colleagues, received the prize for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things – but worse decisions about other kinds of things – when they have a strong urge to urinate.

Funny, innit? And it gets even better if you remember that the Ig Nobel Prizes are almost always presented (by genuine Nobel laureates, by the way!) to actual researchers who have been labouring for years on extraordinarily difficult, but seemingly trivial or absurd topics. Just imagine what some academics apply themselves to. Here’s a small sample of the prizes over the years:

• Literature (1995): David B. Busch and James R. Starling, for their research report, ‘Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World’s Literature’. The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweller’s saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.
• Chemistry (1998): Jacques Benveniste, for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet.
• Physics (2000): Andre Geim and Michael Berry, for using magnets to levitate a frog. Geim later shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on graphene, the first time anyone has been awarded both the Ig Nobel and (real) Nobel Prizes.
• Physics (2001): David Schmidt, for his partial explanation of the shower-curtain effect: a shower curtain tends to billow inwards while a shower is being taken.
• Biology (2003): C.W. Moeliker, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
• Economics (2005): Gauri Nanda, for inventing Clocky, an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.
• Mathematics (2006): Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes, for calculating the number of photographs that must be taken to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.
• Medicine (2010): Simon Rietveld, for discovering that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller coaster ride.

Now say for yourself: surely it’s any academics dream to receive an Ig Nobel Prize one day? Therefore we from Fred and Fred are already hard at work for next year’s edition. Just imagine the possibilities…

• Cosmology (2012): Fred and Fred, for proving the possibility that parallel universes exist in which even numbers cannot be divided by 2.
• Linguistics (2012): Fred and Fred, for their study ‘Fly, Feel and Fall’, a list of 1,000 words which become very funny when pronounced with a Japanese accent (which turns every f into an h and every l into an r).
• Marketing (2012): Fred and Fred, for definitively disproving that cleaning products which feature animals (ducks, frogs, bears, etcetera) clean better than those which do not.
• Philosophy (2012): Fred and Fred, for (the title of) their paper ‘Does Existentialism Really Exist?’.
• Sports Science (2012): Fred and Fred, for discovering the constant h, representing the relation between the size of the ball and the size of the hole (basketball, snooker, golf, …).
• Medicine (2012): Fred and Fred, for their decennia-long research ‘Is it really impossible to lick your own elbow?’.
• Communication (2012): Fred and Fred, for talking for a whole night about the infinite monkey theorem, which states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Fingers crossed!

Pod-heads (2)

[Press play]

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Why is it, that guessing exactly when a certain event took place in the past is so hard to do? I'm pretty sure that a majority of the people didn't realize, until this week - unless Planet Media's news rays couldn't penetrate the thick layer of clouds around your head - that 9/11 happened already 10 years ago. I heard some people say it felt like it happened only yesterday, whereas others dated it back more than a decade ago.

Does this mean that people tend to forget the answers to what will ultimately become obvious pub quiz questions, or merely that Time itself behaves in strange ways - resolutely trying to prevent its very Soul from being captured by mundane concepts such as seconds, days and years?

I don't know the answer to the questions above - I can't even remember when I started thinking about them - but I do know that there are things defying both the (lack of) power of our brain and the somehow unpredictable grip of time on our lives.

Timeless things.

Like music.

I guess we all have our own list of classics, don't we? The kind of tracks we can keep listening to, never getting bored with them. Our best friends in the record collection, with whom we share moments, good and bad. Songs that make us close our eyes and realize that sometimes it doesn't matter that we don't know when things happened.

Only that they happened...

JLo

Okay, I’ll be honest: I feel like being a bit dramatic today. So I thought I’d do some complaining for you. Nerd-like complaining involving difficult words, sure, but still, complaining. You know, just in case your day hadn’t been annoying already, I thought I’d happily share two of my own frustrations, both concerning matters of the media.

(1) I have to admit I’m a sucker for bad TV. I liked Big Brother until it grew old (halfway the second season), I liked Idol and I still like Survivor (called Expeditie Robinson in Belgium), so yesterday I thought I’d give another show a try. This one has been around for quite a while, but I never watched it from beginning to end, and since yesterday was the first episode, now was my chance. The show is called Farmers Looking for a Wife, and recently they added or a Man to that, because they’ve had female farmers on. The show’s premise is actually not that bad: it’s a dating show for farmers, who understandably haven’t got much time for a social life. Which leads to toe-cringingly awkward situations of course… All fun and games so far, until somewhere in the latter part of the show. After a short speed date with the various candidates the farmers had to pick three and send the rest home. After each selection the camera then showed the losers’ walk of shame. Five or six women or men - understandbly not the best in either the looks or the brains department - walking back to their cars, heavily upset for being rejected and all of a sudden even more aware of the camera in their faces. Now I’m not so naive to suppose the producers of this show have the farmers’ or the suitors’ best interests at heart. I know it’s TV and I know TV doesn’t show people’s real stories, it uses people to show scripted stories. But this was TV kicking people when they’re down, and even I could taste the dirt of its boot. Is it really true that most people will only feel pity for the contenders in this scene and not hostility towards the makers of the show? Because that’s the only way a shot like that can ever work. That’s cynical.

(2) I’ve been hearing this radio ad for some Brussels university lately and it’s driving me up the walls. If I remember well, it starts off with some sounds from nature and a documentaryesque voice whispering: “We find ourselves in the habitat of the studentus Brusellus…” The rest of the ad I don’t remember because I get so f*ing worked up about studentus Brusellus! It’s pig-Latin, or, for the Flemish among you, Jommeke-Latin. Just take any word and put -us at the end and it’ll be Latin! But for crying out loud, in an ad for a school? Really? You couldn’t be bothered to ask someone with an inkling of Latin to come up with studens Bruxellensis, which isn’t quite correct, but acceptable and still recognizable? Of course, the ad is supposed to be funny, but clearly the joke is in the grotesque circularity of the scene, a scientist describes a scientist (the student) in a scientific way. A bit like when Charlie Chaplin participated in a Charlie Chaplin-lookalike contest. So for the scene to work the scientific element is crucial and has to be believable. It doesn’t have to be correct, but believable. Like when you know the starship in Star Wars doesn’t actually work, but it looks like it works. The thing is, for many people, studentus Brusellus is not believable. In comparison, none of the Latin in the Harry Potter spells is correct, but for those who do notice, they also notice it is consistent (in its errors), which makes it a kind of code. And codes appeal to our sense for secrets and mystery, which not only preserves the dramatic illusion in a movie about a wizard, but even strengthens it! So, all things considered, why be sloppy, use bad Latin and risk losing the attention of anyone who knows a little of Rome’s language? It kills the dramatic illusion of the joke… unless, of course, correct vocabulary itself is a joke to the Brussels university in question. Which I suppose it is.

I told you I was going to be a bit of a drama queen today. Primarily a Latin drama queen, it turned out. Yes, go back to the title, enjoy your Aha-Erlebnis and be amazed by my powers. Always the drama... Sigh.