Slashdot Mirror
Physicists Uncover TV Show Biases
Tsalg writes "Interesting to see what scientists can uncover from watching one of the silliest TV shows in Europe, where singers represent countries in a contest, and then countries vote for.. for what exactly? Well it was reported in a Nature article where the show was used as a barometer of European nations' feelings about their neighbours, that
Britain is in harmony with Europe, Nordic countries fancy each others' stars, and France is out on a limb."
Watch the UK broadcast of it if you can get hold of it. The "host" has been doing it for years, he always comments on it and points it out every time people vote for "friends". It's been that way for years and always will be.
Hell it's the best reason to watch for us in the UK. The back handed comments rock.
I like muppets.
Did they even bother to look at the result of the voting?
Wait, that's NEWS? Everyone in Europe at least already knows that, whether they watch the, um, show or not. :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
(If I Was A Physicist)...
I would find a more scientific subject to study, you know, that is actually related to physics.
But eventually, all other countries adopt the principles put forth by France.
The article was published on the 20th, which was one day before the yearly contest, making it a whole year out of date; the results were hardly surprising, though.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Wow, that's a new low. Nature sells out.
Was the information really lacking, or was it just me? The summary summed up everything that was to be said in the article itself.
Jerry! --
This looks way more interesting than "American Idle," which isn't nearly as good as the original, "Eric Idle."
David Letterman, though, does acknowledge that his very popular "Will It Float" segment is based on the original British "Is It Buoyant."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Terry Wogan has being saying this for years.
Although I don't think that the UK is considered 'in harmony'. With no adjacent land borders we have very few 'friend' votes other than Eire, the only other friend appears to be Malta.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual contest where the countries of Europe (or, more accurately, members of the European Broadcasting Union, which includes Israel) come together, each put forward a song and performer, and have a contest.
.. then all the people in Europe call in and vote while a dire interlude performance is shown (this is how Riverdance became famous). After that, each country is contacted and a representative reads out the votes that country's viewers gave.. which vary between 1 and 12 points.
Generally twenty four countries make it through to the final (which is all most people watch).. four of those are automatic placements from the main contributors (UK, France, Germany, Spain) and the rest survived the semi-final.
Then they all perform a song, most of which are hideously awful, and sometimes ham up national stereotypes in the most hysterical of manners (this year, Moldova had a crazy celtic style thrash rock song with some 90 year old woman banging a drum)
Inevitably, national biases always come out. Greece and Cyprus often give each other 12 points, all the Nordic countries vote for each other, and, nowadays, all the Baltic states vote for each other too. Until recently, Greece and Turkey would never give each other any points.
The whole contest is really an opportunity to laugh at our fellow Europeans, see some hideous songs which will never make it anywhere, and listen to some great commentary which pokes fun at the whole charade.
...on grinding up the contestants and firing them in a particle accelerator. I might suggest we do this with American Idol contestants.
...Still no cure for cancer.
Look, the reason you vote for culturally similar countries, is that you share taste in music with them. Obviously these former russian nations actually think they're sending something good. I for one think it's crap and I think the contributions from my neighboring countries are superior. Not because I somehow "like" these people, the music is just closer to my preferred style. There are some exceptions though, like the year Turkey won for example.
Olympic gymnastic and figure skating judges, especially back during the cold war when there was no doubt you had blocks of voters.
I wonder though, is Britain more "European" because larger immigrant blocks vote for their home countrymen?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
There's another reason - the four main contributors (Spain, UK, Germany, and France) get to sing every time, because they give lots of money to the contest, and they have made a habit of being in the bottom 4 in recent years. Everyone hates our being filthy, filthy rich.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Scary how well that scored - eek.
I've only watched the voting part for years - Terry Wogan's comments are superb, though this year he did sound more sober than normal.
Please
It would be extremely interesting to see the votes mapped onto a social relationships chart, if only to confirm the groupings and the weak bonds between certain members of groups to tie them to the others.
Doing some kind of statistical analysis based on previous year's set voting patterns and then removing their significance from the current result might actually give an idea of who was the best artist, contrary to the winner of the popular vote.
Business Voyeur
In the end we all surrender and say 'Fuck it we hate you all'.
I can't believe that they actually had to study this to figure it out. It has been going on for years all over the world. This falls into the "Move along, nothing to see here" category.
/. news posting:
I can see the next
"SEC - Something isn't right at SCO"
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I freely admit I haven't RTFA, but I read some excellent coverage of this story on wsj.com.
Apparently, Morgan Stanley came forward, said they had produced all the emails. (time passes) They find some more emails and turn them over. (time passes) The find a closet stuffed with backup tapes and turn them over. (Time passes) Morgan Stanley files a document certifying that they turned everything over. (Time passes) Morgan finds even more emails and turns them over. This causes the judge to get annoyed.
One of the earlier problems was that Morgan had built a database to house old emails and the first time they were told to turnover emails, a sysadmin who was not in a clueful state just searched the database without finding out how much had already been imported into the DB. (Turned out the DB had only had a small percentage of old emails put into it.)
Go Molvania !
TV executives discover elusive Higgs boson!
The article claims this is the event's 50th anniversary. Not true. This will be the 50th show, or the 49th anniversary of the first show.
'American Idle'[sic] came from Britain's Pop Idol. Remember that British guy Simon on the show? Yeah he brought it here from Britain. Thanks blokes.
That pretty much sums this up. A research into a kitchy phenomena revealed that things you'd expect anyway are true, at least as far as this kind of pop-culture acrobatics.
I'm not sure why this is Nature, and I'm even more confused as to why this is at Slashdot.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Which is why Terry Wogan's commentary is so entertaining, and well worth a watch over dinner and a few drinks.
BTW this years winner was Greece and France were last...
rt
It is completely different to *Idle, and much much older (this was its 50th show).
We get the *Idle over here.
Simple, this administration has a policy not to use e-mail. No e-mail, no records. No records, no scandals.
For those in the US, it's actually a large elaborate practical joke to make make people look silly.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
"The last time I saw a pair of legs like that, they were standing in a nest."
(If you were a physicist) you'd probably also have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than stay home alone watching the Eurovision song contest ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Just look at the statistics and you'd see the same thing:
:-)
Scoreboard, final
Scoreboard, semi-final
In this case, statistics don't lie. Or at least they agree with this report, so in that case it'd lie too.
For example, you'll see that Sweden got their two highest scores from Denmark and Finland and zero points from most others.
This is also commonly happening in eastern europe, and yet an example of it can be seen with Croatia and Serbia & Montenegro.
Voting on your neighbors has happened for a long time in the ESC so it's not news, and it's usually part as just a friendly gesture from the televoters and part because the countries have similar taste in music. Any watcher of this show would've noticed this fairly easily too.
Personally I think most music there suck horribly, and don't take the competition too seriously, although it's a bit annoying when friend voting go overboard and their top scores is given to a country that has some obviously extremely poor song. But then again, maybe it's just me having a culture collision and they honestly found it was good. Europe is so diverse in cultures that it's entirely possible.
It's kind of funny though; at least this time neither France or Germany seemed to get *any* friendship votes from their neighbors.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
And, of course, supporting the war on Iraq.
Plus, all those post-communist Eastern European countries are where it's at these days - they are the trendies. The UK etc are the equivalent of grumpy old men whining about thruppeny bits.
My other processor is big-endian.
> The summary summed up everything that was to be said in the article itself.
summary adj.
1. Presenting the substance in a condensed form; concise: a summary review.
2. Performed speedily and without ceremony: summary justice; a summary rejection.
Now was the 'information really lacking'? Maybe (didn't RTFA, really, really couldn't care less). Based on what you wrote, I imagine it offerd much, much more.....
nobody in the U.S. gives a fuck.
http://torrentspy.com/search.asp?mode=torrentdetai ls&id=286201
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
wanted to kill myself after that 'grandma bangs the drum' one.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I seriously doubt the skills of this researcher if they can suggest that "Britain is in harmony with Europe" after we received only 4 points in the competition (median was around 60), narrowly escaping last place.
That said, 4 points is a record score for us since the invasion of Iraq. I hate to think how America would score if they entered. You might say, Matt, the USA will never be in the Eurovision song contest they're not in Europe. Well, can I just say neither is Israel.
Personally, I was dissapointed the freestyle Ukrainian rap didn't do better.
So Mr Researcher you're wrong. Europe hates us. Maybe the heading was ironic. I'm stupid. Rtfa.
For stating the obvious about my own country? Come on here, if it wasn't for the fact that we can always rely on France and Germany to do worse, we would have been last. ;)
How are we ever going to spy on these countries if they stop using Windows?
"Man some people aren't getting enough sleep...must've seen that silly Star Wars movie too many times in the last week or so"
It was strange actually - I saw "The Science of Star Wars" and actually saw physicists from Cal Tech, MIT, and other places come up and talk about how close current science might become to reaching Star Wars, and I proceeded to laugh myself clean off my chair onto the floor. Physicists nowadays obviously must not have much to do.
Er. As far as I know there is not any 'traditional antipathie' between Belgium and the Netherlands.
If there already was an antipathy, I think the clash would more go between Germany and the Netherlands.
Belgium is only the target of jokes in the Netherlands, and then mainly targeting them on the 'dumb belgiumness', but this does not show in any form outside of those jokes, socially, nor politically.
David Letterman, though, does acknowledge that his very popular "Will It Float" segment is based on the original British "Is It Buoyant."
Only because the majority of American's don't know what the word "buoyant" means.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
...instead of bitching about people wasting their time, why don't you spend your time feeding the poor or building shelters for the homeless? Another "GET SOME PRIORITIES" fool gets modded up...
Isnt that *the* major factor whenever a major corporation switches, or is looking to switch? Isnt that the main factor that is always pushed for switching from closed source to opensource here on slashdot? It isnt just the communists that want to freeload, everyone does.
Was there anything informative in that "article?"
mbbac
Um, I know it's "Idol." "Idle" was a lame joke. Oh well.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Nil pwa
Talk about stating the obvious!
... still no cure for cancer.
Summary: you can be arrested and detained for up to four years because the police think you appear dangerous and might commit a crime. Police are using this power to imprison people who are not criminals by any stretch of the imagination - it's a purely repressive tactic, used to intimidate and control.
If anything, the American media is too soft on Cuba, often forgetting (as apparently you have) that it is one of the last holdouts of an unacceptably repressive style of government that much of the 20th century was spent abolishing. Unless you actually live there, you do the Cuban people a disservice by trying to diminish the seriousness of these problems.
TV executives discover elusive Higgs boson!
Thanks for the only genuine laugh I got out of this thread!
Seems to me that the whole article is indicative of people in general. People tend to congregate with other people with the same interests/views etc. Just post an article about Microsoft or religion in /. and read the posts, almost all of which are negative toward those respective subjects. On the flip side, post a story about Linux or P2P networks, and the responses are generally positive. Everyone has a bias, and they vote for the things that represent their bias. Nothing wrong with it, but the whole study seems like they were stating the obvious.
I wonder how much time and money they spent on this study...
A more graphic description of the voting patterns can be found here It clearly show that us Brits (and Irish) vote for the better songs while those Southern (and Eastern) Europeans can't be trusted.
American Idol is just a rehash of the old "Gong Show" program, but where the really bad acts are left out.
The UK etc are the equivalent of grumpy old men whining about thruppeny bits.
As a Londoner, I have to say that because of the fantastically low-cut tops that were being worn by some of the female performers, I was most certainly not complaining about thrupenny bits during the show...
Yes, there is a good deal of "friendly" voting going on. The reason may at least partly be taste, though. Neighbouring countries tend to be very close, culturally and lingustically, people tend to meve between them a lot and can usually see each others television and radio broadcasts. So they will tend to have more similar taste in music than countries far apart. I would not be surprised if that is one part (not all, obviously) of the "bloc voting".
:)
As for your second point, why would the amount of money contributed to the EU correlate in any way with the popularity of the songs? Looking above, you'd expect the opposite, actually. A country is a large contributor because it's, well, a large country. And a large country tend (other things being equal) to be more insular and less influenced by the cultures around it. The songs will tend not to appeal as widely among its neighbours or other european countries as the smaller, more exposed, countries.
And yes, musically it's rather like a slow-motion trainwreck, but that's part of the appeal
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
They probably refuse reading slashdot because it isn't in one of the Francophone languages and because slashdot should actually be called "estafiladepoint" .
Laugh! It's -supposed to be- funny. Credits to Babel Fish.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I see you are wearing your tin foil hat.
First, there's an issue of degree. There are far more ordinary people in Cuban prisons, who would not be imprisoned in any free country.
Perhaps. They jail political dissidents. We jail pot smokers. Thus, the US has the highest imprisonment rate in the world. (Or very close- we don't know North Korea's) Cuba's not even in the top ten.
Second, I wasn't defending the US, I was pointing out that Cuba is still a very repressive place, and those who want to pretend that everything's cool and its problems should just be accepted with a wink are themselves collaborating in the repression of the Cuban people.
I'd be one of the last to defend Cuba- it's a wreck of a country due to a meglomanical dictator. The world will be a better place when Castro is worm food.
But other countries simply don't see Cuba with anywhere near the level of hatred in the US. They see us pointing fingers at Cuba's repressive practices while we're busy keeping people in legal limbo forever in our own tiny slice of Cuba.
If we had cleaner hands other countries might be more willing to listen to us about Cuba.
Since they are physicists I would have expected them to look for biases in Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek, not a song contest show.
...and by "left out", you mean "aired the first few weeks instead of between other \"good\" acts so you can watch the funny ones and be spared the manufactured drama".
Everyone hates Germany, they only got 4 points.
I don't know about other european countries, but at least here in Germany, the show has gained cult status among gay people...and at least once in recent years the German performer was an artist/comedian that went to the contest just to poke fun at it :)
Many people like it just because it's garbage,
sort of like "Attack of the killer tomatoes".
The problem is that nobody takes it seriously. If they did, they'd pit their best singers and performers against each other. Instead (at least in the UK & Ireland) it's more like a talent show with the people choosing the least worst of a handful of songs to represent the country.
Just look at Ireland this year. They have the likes of U2, The Corrs, The Cranberries, Enya, Phil Coulter, Van Morrison and even *spit* Westlife. So who did they send to compete? Two nobodies - a 15 year old ginger four eyes and his sister to sing some dirge about "Love". The sad part is that they chose these two after a long running sub-Pop Idol kind of competition.
So naturally when the songs are so appalling, the votes are heavily slanted to their Euro-pals. This year the finalists were heavily Eastern European so the vote reflected that. The stalwarts like the UK, France & Germany finished miserably.
Another weird thing is observing how the songs from past years get ripped off in the following year's competition. Turkey won a couple of years back and you could still hear ripped off riffs from their entry even this year.
Of cause you will deny all that I have said, saying that I have a warped view of history, am an anti-american zealot or that I have my head full of conspiricy theories. But why do you say this? Because you too have been brainwashed by your government. But condemn the Cubans for it. You somehow have been convinced that your government is conducting a rightious crusade against the ideology of the corrupt ledership and liberating the people from tyranny, when really all it is doing is robbing medicine and food from the people when the corrupt ledership can still get whatever they want. Your told that America is the country of freedom and honesty while Cuba is the country of propaganda and lies when in reality it is your government that calls Cubans to defect yet turns them back in the water. America is in an indefensable position here, Castro may be a brutal dictator and a warped propagandist but whatever harm Castro has done to Cuba, America has easily done triple.
Cuba is not evil, Cuba is just another country with it's own stupid ideas that will get it nowhere. The Cuban government does not deserve placation either. However what Cuba needs is a little bit of compassion for the innocent people who are being hurt by America's oppression of them. America is not evil either, but what America is doing to Cuba is far more evil than placating Pol Pot or Edi Amin or any evil person who has ever walked.
Blindly patriotic Americans may mod me down all they like, but for every -1 I get, that's another demostration of how widespread this brainwashing is.
Last year I computed a distance-weighted adjustment of the Eurovision scores, on the basis that if you voted for a country far away from you, you must have really liked the song since its cultural attachments to you are weaker than a song from your neighbour. So if you like faraway songs they must be really good, and hence worthy of more marks.
I got a map of Europe, used the locations of the capital cities as surrogate coordinates, computed the distance matrix, and reweighted the score from the Eurovision website to adjust for this.
Here's the top 5 from my adjusted list (left) and the original list (right):
cyprus 280 ukraine 280
ukraine 273 serbiamontenegro 263
greece 263 greece 252
turkey 245 turkey 195
serbiamontenegro 199 cyprus 170
So Cyprus jumped four places by my system into first place!
I should have cranked this system up again for this year, offered it to the TV companies, profit!!
The big irony is that I had a proper scientific paper (on malaria prevalence) REJECTED by Nature this year, and then they produce this fluff! Gah!
Baz
I think that there is a general understanding even here in the US that the sanctions on Cuba are both counterproductive and implimented in such a way as to hurt the generally innocent Cuban civillians. I think that most Americans would favor more trade with Cuba. The problem instead however is that the ages of the past seem to lie like a nightmare on the present, and what was once a cold-war imperial policy (the Cold War was an imperial chess game between two cultural and political empires, IMO).
See here is the problem: During the Cold War, the US implimented a policy of helping Cubans who didn't much like Castro immigrate to the US, where they now make up an indispensible voting block on one of the most important states (Florida). In doing so, we have essentially imported Castro's oppoisition to the US, where they are now a formitable force. Sort of a tail wagging the dog....
So now, anyone with presidential aspirations cannot afford to alienate this group. So while we can pursue free trade with China (which seems to be helping to force them to transform their economy to more of a market one), it is politically impossible to do this with Cuba.
Furthermore, lets look at this idea of placating evil. I have only a few names to mention: Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Ho Chi Minh.... Each of these people have either been close US allies or CIA operatives. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Just like the Germanic tribes and the Romans, only former allies can beat the world's largest superpower. We saw that with Vietnam, and we may be seeing that today with Iraq.
Today, things are probably a little better, but we still see issues with the regimes of countries like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia in terms of systematic oppression of their peoples. Yet these are still our current allies. China was left off the list because I don't think that they are really being seen as an ally at the moment. So I ask again, with friends like these who needs enemies?
Interestingly if oyu look at Africa, those countries which during the cold war associated themselves with the USSR are now further in their transition to democracy than those dictatorships that the US propped up. Sometimes I think that we are our own worst enemy in these regards.
Our embargo of Cuba is an anacronism, and a relic of days gone by which has unfortunately institutionalized itself. Free trade is the one weapon we could use with impunity against Castro and which his government could not withstand. Yet it is off the table because it is seen as placating him.
Well, french revolution has to be taken in context, it was the first in Europe with very hostile neighbours and against its own government, so it deserves credit for that, it was not that easy as simply copying American revolution. There were a lot of threats from other countries who feared this would give bad ideas to their own people which it finally did.
By the way, I think that French helped Americans just to piss off the english and reduce England's supremacy over there.
Finally, US governement didn't like the french revolution and backed England in the blockus against french coast. Remember that Lafayette was a royalist who actually ordered the troops to shoot at people a few days before la bastille fell.
. . . man, what parallel universe did that response come from?
Methinks you responded to the wrong comment, our you're just spamming.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Chavez, the subject of the coup, has implicated the U.S. repeatedly. Moreover, there are plenty of facts all around. Don't be so trusting of the official line. It's not like this was unprecedented as previous posters pointed out.
The parent has a link that is much, much more informative than the original article.
That ANYTHING that involves democratic processes is polluted with bias and stupidity. Nothing new here....
There is one very important point about voting.
After adopting SMS voting last year, Eurosong voting became contest of "Who has more diaspora".
Look at for example Austria. Austria gave 12 points to Serbia&Montenegro, not because Austrians think it is the best song, but because there is huge number of Serbs living&working in Austria. Look at what countries gave most points to Turkey. They got 10 points from Belgium, 12 points from France and Netherlands.Guess why.
Jokes are supposed to be funny not lame, just FYI.
Can anyone explain to a French guy what this expression means ?
Oh and why does it alywas have to a huge argument whenever France is mentionned ?
Last, why are PHYSICISTS qualified to perform such an analysis ? "Nuclear physicist says French painters like eating pork". Huh ?
I would find a more scientific subject to study, you know, that is actually related to physics
Not just a better topic, but much better assumptions. Look at what they say in the last paragraph:
"The researchers admit that their analysis is based on one contentious assumption: that all the songs presented are equally good, so that votes are a reflection of national taste rather than the absolute quality of the entries."
So would people vote in the same way whether the singer is Eric Clapton or the Spice Girls??
That's ridiculous.
Does giving votes every year to Malta and Cyprus qualify as being harmonic then? Or do Malta and Cyprus genuinely produce half decent tunes each year?
Yes we do! They still teach sex education in some places around here. How exactly the buoy-ant and girl-ant make a baby-ant isn't made so clear, but that is another problem.
The article is devoid of data. The text of the study can be found here though: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/?0505071
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
The researchers admit that their analysis is based on one contentious assumption: that all the songs presented are equally good, so that votes are a reflection of national taste rather than the absolute quality of the entries.
This is where science runs into trouble. From reading TFA and some posts on this thread, it's easy to see that some Euro-nations are colluding with their votes.
I think it is definitely irresponsible for these scientists to claim that their data reveals some kind over-arching euro-political mood.
This is basically like using 'American Idol' to get a sense of American's political feelings somehow. It's bullshit.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Scientific American and Popular Mechanics don't publish original research. Nature does, but it also summarizes interesting papers published elsewhere, in the belief that most of its non physicist readers prefer not to scour physics preprint services for the odd paper on complex systems.
Life goes on.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
OMG I remember the gong show... that show rocked!
So cheesy... yet... satisfying
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
I really wonder why "Will it Float" is so popular. It is so stupid. I mean...some things are funny. Some things are so stupid they are funny. But that segment fits in between where it isn't funny at all. But then again...I don't find Letterman very funny either. Give me Conan over him anyday.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
did anyone see the title of the paper? actually what am I talking about. this is slashdot. that would've required not only RTA but also going to another level and copying a link and pasting it into your browser. unthinkable.
anyway, it's called "How does Europe Make Its Mind Up?". for anyone in the UK over about 30 that might ring a bell. the *legendary* english band bucks fizz won the contest in about 1980 with an unspeakably cheesy tune (are they ever anything else?) called "making your mind up". awful. but it had a classic bit in the dance routine where the two blokes ripped the long skirts off the two girls to reveal...
two shorter skirts.
Living in another European country, I can assure you, that you're wrong. Hate order here is:
1) USA
2-100) -
101) Germany
102) Britain
Well, actually we don't hate the brits, we just think that they are slightly dumb due to too much incest.
Uh...according to the CIA Factbook even Mexico has a bigger GDP than Spain. The top 4 in Europe should be Germany, UK, France, and Italy. Italy, not Spain. Spain was and ever is a bucolic backwater, sort of like the southern half of Italy.
nah, the biggest problem is that the french "stars" that make it to Eurovision are really crappy. So that influences the voting, just like the article points out at the end: all songs are not equally good!
Another important thing is that various cultures consider a good song differently. The notion of "good" varies. Just like "good food" in the US is not the same as "good food" in the UK (well, UK traditional food is usually anything boiled, but that's another story).
Thus my analysis of those results is that the UK has the most open tastes, where the French have the least. Of course, part of the problem is that the French "stars" also have an ego that dwarves the Eiffel tower, and won't accept that maybe there's someone better than them.
I know, I lived there. The good french music is not the one that makes it to Eurovision, it's the band of friends that gets together in a tiny countryside village. It's just like in the US, actually: there's a problem with the recording industries in both countries. Here they sell us crap, there they try to sell crap. Luckily lots of small groups can make a living from their concerts, even if they don't make it on the national TV.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Can someone just explain two things about Eurovision - why has the UK been consistently entering shit songs and shit performers for several years straight? is this on purpose? its not like we don't have any real singers - there have been some good ones, wtf is going on? And WTF is Israel doing in this contest?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Only because the majority of American's don't know what the word "buoyant" means.
Do what now?
sig?
It's a chance to watch something different on TV, a break from other 364 days of fake reality shows and marketing-written soaps.
Some take the contest more seriously than others of course, but if you don't love it, you love to hate it.
I actually have a couple of points to offer:
--A Polar bear is a Rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
When I was a student oh so many years ago, two physics student friends came up with what they believed was an object (i.e. quantifiable) measure of female beauty. I'll try to remember this -- physics was never my strong suit.
The first student suggested moment of inertia about the z axis. The second amended this by suggesting it be divided by the natural period of oscillation. In other words, the measure represents a compromise between curviness and jiggliness.
Now, I need hardly add that for these two young men, this was a purely theoretical exercise. Neither at the time had the least discernable empirical experience with the female sex, because dates for them were about as elusive as the Higgs boson. It wasn't until a few years brought a bit more maturity that they actually dated and eventually got married, an outcome I suppose that may justify some optimism for the prospects of many Slashdotters.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What do you mean you'll get to it on commercial.
Thats it. I'm cutting the entertainment budget back to a pack of cards and pretzels.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I really wonder why "Will it Float" is so popular. It is so stupid. I mean...some things are funny. Some things are so stupid they are funny. But that segment fits in between where it isn't funny at all. But then again...I don't find Letterman very funny either. Give me Conan over him anyday
I think it's closer to the non-funny-therefore-funny model. As with most of Letterman's long-running gags, it ceases to be about the actual activity at hand (like throwing things off the building, etc), and more about the Kabuki-like form of the thing. There's a rhythm to it - a set of familiar expectations that makes things like the "what are playing for today?" question and the actual dunking totally beside the point. Personally, I think Letterman keeps doing it because it's a good excuse to keep bringing out the Grinder Girl, which is certainly a highlight.
I also really like Conan, but it's just apples and oranges - totally different stuff for a different audience at a different time of night. The real thing will be to watch how he changes his stuff when he moves into Leno's slot in a few years. Letterman's dry, more subtle manner grows on you though - well, on me, anyway. He's more the eccentric uncle we all wish we had, and Conan's more like the joker cousin we do have. Love 'em both, though.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I saw that exact comment a few days ago. Either someone's trolling and getting moderated informative, or the slashdot comment system is really screwed up today.
I am trolling
Friends voting for friends in Eurovision discovered! Film at 11!
The first question refers to the fact that the French tend to "hate" the Americans a good deal (not something that is hidden) in return Americans have made it a classic to look down upon the French. Generally this involves a multitude of comments from which one is expected to infer that the most manly French men are effeminite in the extreme and are cowards. So, whenever France is mentioned big fights break out where the honor and dignity of the French are trashed.
:: French Painters like eating sausage. :: "Les peintres Francais aiment la saucisse."
;)
Second question: a physicist is un physicien nucléaire in most cases. So, does it not seem odd that physicists were doing STATISTICS?
Finally the last comment follows from the following train of thought: Pork -> Sausage
I assume you can follow this.
Si tu veux plus de clarifications dis le moi.
-Un Americo-Belge a un Francais
Gravity Sucks
Sweden (who's song totally sucked)
And this is different from all the other country's entries how?
the AC
who got invited to at least 3 eurovision parties this year
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
And because the rest of them don't know how to properly use apostrophes.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Only because the majority of American's don't know what the word "buoyant" means.
Hey, I don't mind you insulting those of us in the US (we generally deserve it anyways), but please leave the Candians, Mexicans, Central Americans, and the South Americans out of it.
Not just a better topic, but much better assumptions. Look at what they say in the last paragraph:
That sounds worse than it is. They're not assuming that all of the songs are equally good, they're just assuming that the quality of the songs is not correlated with the national origin of the singer. That is, that over enough songs you'll have roughly the same ratio of good French songs to bad French songs as good British songs to bad British songs.
That assumption is contentious not because it's silly, which it would be if your interpretation were correct, but because there *is* a possibility that song quality is not completely independent of song origin. National differences in population and culture may very well cause one country to produce, on average, better songs than another.
Even if there isn't a real quality advantage to one nation over another, there's also the possibility that the sample size here is too small for the law of averages to wipe out any advantages that one nation might have by getting "lucky" and having one or two performers who are particularly talented.
So, it is a contentious assumption, but it's not the ludicrous notion you implied when you said:
So would people vote in the same way whether the singer is Eric Clapton or the Spice Girls??
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I think it's funny that Britain faired the best in this "contest" considering they are generally considered the "least European" of all the nations. However, this is and interesting phenomenon if the researchers are correct about how this show is used as a barometer for European countries judging each other. But in the end, what does it all mean? So what if Europeans hate their neighbors? That's nothing new. And even so, better for them to take out their aggressions on a TV show than to dive back into their long history of war, right?
Health Insurance Quotes
given that I'm seeing it in a thread about the Eurovision Song Contest, I'm going for "screwed up".
Still, arguments about Cuba in relation to Eurovision is strangely in keeping with the bizarre nature of the contest if you ask me.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
Everybody loves them in Europe - from Ireland to England to France to Germany to Spain to Italy!
I was just watching one of their 2004 concerts in Benidorm, Spain. Somebody threw a teddy bear up on the stage for Andrea (she gets a LOT of teddy bears - at the Ischgl performance, there was a stack of 3 or 4 of them on the drum riser!). Jim started playing a piano ditty, she started dancing with the teddy bear. The audience began singing "Ole! Ole!" and the rest of the band then jumped in and played along. She ended the dance by mooning the crowd.
You gotta love 'em!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
So this is the reason for the horrid amounts of unwatchable stuff on TV.
andy andalibian
I couldn't believe the rubbish I read in Nature.
I thought this was supposed to be a more "respectable" mag. Not anymore it seems.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Brits have won it a number of times - but the only reason they have been doing miserably in the past few years is because they are not in harmony with the rest of Europe - i.e. their warmongering ways in Iraq and Afganistan.
This competition is being used as a political voice.
Sure - you get the Greeks giving Cyprus 12 poitns and vice versa,and the Balkans giving each other top points.
Inevitably however, the best songs do indeed get the higher votes, and so the competition somehow does justice to the good songs ( not all I might add).
Just to clarify, what makes it even better is that Terry Wogan isn't hosting the actual contest - he's just hosting the BBC telecast of it. His role is more of a play-by-play commentary of what the actual hosts are saying and doing, and lampooning them.
Examples of his comments involve said Moldovan jokes, predicting the votes of the Nordic countries before they would say them (and then talking about how right he was), and signing off for the interval (when they count the votes) by saying "...I don't know about you, but now I turn to drink to continue."
For a comparasion of his role, imagine if the guys from Monday Night Football were funnier, and did play-by-play of the Emmys.
Cue The Sun...
As Ukraine is now an independent country, and not a territory, just "Ukraine" is the preferred usage.
I think it is the continuation of the "I am an open proxy troll", who seems to have found a hole in slashdot.
The new "type the text in the image" requirement for anon posting seems to back my theory up.
Others think that the votes reflect traditional antipathies between adjoining countries, meaning the Dutch won't vote for the Belgians.
No no no!!! The Belgians won't vote for the Dutch, the Dutch won't vote for the Germans.
it's not just anonymous. I'm being asked to type the text too and I'm logged in. But I think you may be right.
It was making for some surreal threads tho.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
... the women are HOT! A big redeeming feature.
Apart from that some of the songs are actually good. I was surprised last time I watched it ... I was totally mesmerised, like a combination of beatiful European women, some decent songs and a lot of subtle satire (without the performers realising it).
I'm hooked. It helps if the commentator is good at satire.
Bitter and proud of it.
Maybe the other countries just don't have nearly as many Cuban refugees bad mouthing the regime they've fled.
There's a story on this in Kuro5hin. I used to hate Eurovision, but that guy (in Kuro5hin) made me reconsider it, and take it as a chance to laugh at ourselves, competing for the last, not the first position. Apparently, Brits and Norwegians rock in this modality of competition ;).
To do list for Windows
I liked very much Serbian song, but unfortunately it's not trendy to vote for them :(
Absolutely correct. I remember only too well when I lived in Oklahoma many years ago standing on the shores of a man-made lake with one of the local inhabitants (that must have been one of the few lakes in OK). He made reference to 'that bew-ee out there' (sorry, but it's hard to spell a pronunciation that's not a real word). It took 3 attempts before I realised he was talking about a buoy ...
If they didn't finance it, and didn't automatically get to participate in the finals, they wouldn't have made it past the semi-finals, like Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland et al.
Another explanation is just natural selection. The other contestants have to win a semi-finals first.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
well, UK traditional food is usually anything boiled, but that's another story
This from someone whose national dishes are frogs legs and snails? I guess you longer call the Brits "rosbif" anymore.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Well it may be what we're known for, but most people in France don't eat those. In fact, very few do. I've never had either one. And some people call the Brits "rosbif" and others don't. There are local differences, just like everywhere.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
There are local differences, just like everywhere
Like in the UK maybe? It may surprise you to know that "UK traditional food" is not "usually anything boiled".
Fish and Chips
Roast Beef
Yorkshire Pudding
Cornish Pasties
Scones
Crumpets
Welsh Rarebit
None of these are usually boiled, though there are some traditional dishes that are, such as Haggis, and Blackpudding. So drop the "usually", insert "sometimes", reparse, and you know what? UK cuisine isn't any worse than French.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Quality is based on both the subject and the object. Think of a database's E-R diagram -- quality is the relation between two entities.
An interesting, but insightless, article.
I personally don't think the outcome would have changed much had France not been involved, but let's assume it would have... If you look at other territories of the British empire, you see the exact same thing, though many years later. Perhaps Washington would have failed, and an uprising 50 years later would have suceeded... It really doesn't matter much either way.
But besides that, if the British had won, it's rather certain it would have meant doom for England in either WWI or WWII, as you wouldn't have had the Americans around to save your asses. It's hard to say what would have happened to history had that small issue changed, but the prospects certainly don't look good for England.
Of course I'm focusing on England, but the French had a big stake in this as well. If they hadn't helped out the Americans, the Americans wouldn't have helped them out during their revolution, and likely not during WWII, either.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That is one of the problems with most Americans, once they leave the shaky realm of their own "history", created to be self-assuring, things fall apart pretty quick.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
No, but close to it. The USA's entrance certainly changed the outcome of WWI significantly.
The USA's entrance into WWII was directly responsible for the liberation of France, and many other countries. Whether the ultimate outcome would have been different is debatable, but the evidence pretty strongly points to that being the case.
I NEVER suggested the king was personally benefited by the revolution. The country as a whole is a different story.
Nothing is falling apart. You're just making strawmen, declaring yourself right, and everyone else wrong. Keep on trolling...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
WWII: you only had a chance because the war in Russia.
"The country as a whole" is a pretty dumb concept. Because then the USA would still be part of Britain as a whole.
Keep on being American.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck