Superted

For those out of the acronym loop, TED is a not-for-profit organistion that arranges lectures and conferences on Technology, Entertainment and Design, with the overarching aim of proliferating ‘ideas worth spreading’.

In the past they’ve had Sam Harris talking about science and morality, Julian Assange discussing the continuation of Wikileaks, Steven Pinker lecturing on the myth of violence, plus many other speakers talking on innumerable topics. (This has also included a talk by David Blaine entitled ‘How I held my breath for 17 minutes’ and Bono expatiating on aid in Africa, but you can’t win them all.)

With 625 speakers listed on their page, there’s enough material to sate even the most staunch procrastinator, and while some of the talks may seem a touch woolly and vague (see Richard Sears), many others discuss important things in an engaging and accessible way.

The video posted below, for example, which comes from Ethan Zuckerman—who, with his long hair, glasses and floral shirt, fulfils the computer-nerd stereotype in a very pleasing way—talks about the relatively closed nature of the internet in terms of cross-cultural communication. By using the internet in English, Zuckerman argues, and by then operating within social networking sites that work to restrict our interaction with other cultures or languages still further, a whole swathe of information about the world is lost to us.

Zuckerman’s project, Global Voices Online, which he co-founded with Rebecca MacKinnon, is looking to span this communication divide and bring about a more global internet. An internet that—with the help of cross-cultural experts, or ‘bridgers’, together with both machine and human translation—might be better at teaching us about the world we live in and the people who inhabit it.

Not really something I’d considered all that much before, and TED brought it to my attention … for free. Nice Teddy.

Top of the pops

For an explanation of sorts, see this here.

Wallace, Flatley and a flaming rooster

The internet, with its billions of dials, levers and pulleys, is a truly undiscerning archive of information—a place for everything, whether legal or illegal, uplifting or horrifying, valid or manufactured. It’s a bit like a sinkhole in that regard: providing a seemingly limitless capacity for any old shit that people fancy throwing in. Unlike a sinkhole though, this junk doesn’t just disappear into a murky mud-slop like an old lawn-mower, instead it’s stored and replicated for public consumption in the most effective and expansive digital archive ever created. Add to this the fact that the internet is, by and large, unregulated, and you have the perfect conditions in which to propagate, distribute and historicise some of the most wonderful nonsense.

As a very minor and inconsequential example, take my last post, which suggested, in an entirely fictional alter-reality, that I had been involved in a sex-scandal with Gregg Wallace, the bald Masterchef judge. Implausible, perhaps, but not beyond the realms of all that is possible. (I’d like to think I stood a chance, at least. I churn an impressive hummus.)

The good folks at Google then rewarded me for this misdemeanour with number four in the Gregg Wallace sex-scandal rundown (I have, by the way, checked the top three search results, and they’re conspicuously scandal-free):

And thus a Gregg Wallace sex-scandal is born, albeit a scandal that no-one will ever notice or care about. Or, for that matter, search for.

A much more impressive example of internet cheekiness comes courtesy of some friends back in the UK, who a few years ago doctored the Wikipedia entry for Michael Flatley (back in the day when such vandalism was much more easily achieved) with the addition of the following sentence:

In September 2000, Flatley was awarded the prestigious ‘Coq Flambee’ by the Sorbonne, Paris, for his commitment to the furtherance of Franco-Irish ‘relations’.

Brilliant.

I’m not exactly sure how long this piece of perfection lasted on Wikipedia, but certainly time enough for several lazy researchers to copy-paste Flatley’s Wiki entry onto their own websites. It even made it onto michaelflatley.com for a short time, which when it comes to acts of internet vandalism, has to be the apex of achievement.

Type the words ‘Michael Flatley Coq Flambee‘ into Google today and you are still rewarded with a whole host of positive returns, some of which span linguistic divides.

Im September 2000 wurde Flatley das prestigevolle „Coq Flambee“ durch das Sorbonne, Paris, für seine Verpflichtung zur Unterstützung der Franco-Irischen „Relationion“ zugesprochen.

En septiembre de 2000, Flatley fue concedido el “Coq prestigioso Flambee” por el Sorbonne, París, para su comisión al formento de relaciones Franco-Irlandesas.

Again, just brilliant.

In fact, this little bit of nonsense has made it onto search.com, reference.com, enciclopediaespana.com and statemaster.com, not to mention several blogs and forums that mention the accolade. And from what? An inspired decision by a couple of drunk students to tamper with the Lord of the Dance.

Of course, there’s always one smart-arse know-it-all who tries to ruin everyone’s fun, but to the man who wrote the following comment on stateuniversity.com, I say that you are a despicable killjoy of the highest order, and I’ve a good mind to fabricate a sex-scandal with you, just to teach you a lesson:

The “Coq Flambee” reference is completely bogus—probably a lame attempt to suggest that Flatley is gay. Obviously, this piece has been largely copied from Wikipedia, where the reference first emerged (and has been deleted. It has been edited out. Internet searches for “Coq Flambee” turns up nothing outside of this reference).

Just as a point of order, the inferred homosexuality of Flatley is far from lame. It is an expertly interwoven subtext that plays on the French for rooster, ‘coq’, and its homophone in English, ‘cock’—an inference that is then developed though the use of ‘flambee’, which is indicative of heat, frictional or otherwise. The quote marks around the word ‘relations’ is the cherry atop of the inference cake …

But whatever the legal or moral verdict on such vandalism, Flatley has now, on certain websites, an additional and prestigious award to his name. Something else to put on his mantelpiece; another bauble for his tree.

And surely if the internet’s for anything, it’s for creating fictional awards for Irish dancers.

Excuses

It’s been some time now since I promised an update on my burgeoning acting career.

The glamorous lie accounting for this absence is that following the filming of the advert I was snapped up by a leading ad agency and have since been jetting off round the world at the behest of Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent; that I’ve been sipping cocktails with supermodels, hobnobbing with the rich and famous; that I’ve made millions and then lost it all on some atrocious sex scandal involving Gregg Wallace, the bald Masterchef judge.

The mundane truth, however, is that several thousand pages of exam practice material had to be published, the world cup happened, and I was struck down with gastroenteritis (which as illnesses go, is up there with scabies in the glamour stakes). I’ve also been hospitalised following a botched wisdom tooth removal that saw me ingest gallons of blood, but perhaps more on that another time …

I will still, someday, complete my casting story with a description of the fitting (where they dressed me up as a clown), and the filming (where, jibbering uncontrollably at the madness of it all, I was asked to jump in the air about 700 times whilst holding a film camera), but perhaps not until the actual denouement of the story, where the thing finally appears across all mediums like some horrific carpet bomb of embarrassment.

I believe this will happen in the autumn, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I promise to share this car crash with the world.

It’s interesting though, during my absence from this blog, that there’s been a certain amount of ‘heat’ (intentional or otherwise) around my purgative tale of dancing shame, with searches such as “casting shame”, “shame casting”, “casting first video shame” and, most peculiarly, “casting jeans on myself” all being submitted to the WordPress search engine. Quite what these people were actually looking for baffles me, but one way or another they stumbled upon my ignominy and humiliation.

And for that I am eternally grateful.