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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.
(If I Was A Physicist)...
I would find a more scientific subject to study, you know, that is actually related to physics.
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! --
The American "Revolution" that didn't take place in a whole country and totally changed the way of government for it, but instead happened on a different continent, and didn't scratch the British monarchy in the slightest? Maybe you take your little uprising in the backwoods a tad too seriously? Ignoring how that would have ended if the French hadn't helped you...
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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.
Look, however much governments (US or otherwise) wish to pretend that their foreign policy is based on morality, it isn't. OK? Foreign policy is solely about protecting your national interests : in terms of finance and security, and the sooner you recognise that, the more sense you'll make of it.
It's not about good guys vs bad guys, and it's especially not about democracy vs. dictatorship. A dictator friendly to US interests (the House of Saud, for instance) is always going to treated more favourably than an unfriendly democrat (say, the President of France, or "Old Europe" as we like to call ourselves).
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".
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
Go back and take a look at the last few presidential elections and not how often Florida was a close state that could make or break a close election - and how many Cubans live in Florida. The reason we still have an embargo on Cuba is because nobody wants to take a chance of alienating these voters and losing an election because of it. It's got nothing to do with communism (which even most Republicans no longer see as a threat.)
Kind of makes you think - if the Clinton administration had taken a more cynical tack in the Elliot Gonzales case, Gore might well have carried Florida in 2000, seeing as he only lost it by 300 votes or so.
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.
That ANYTHING that involves democratic processes is polluted with bias and stupidity. Nothing new here....
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.
Baaaaahhh ! Come on ! I'm *also* French, but I actually live abroad since many years (and have been in different European countries), so maybe I have a better clue. The only people who believe their country is the most chauvinistic are really those who have not been abroad for a long time and cannot speak the language of the country they're in. Otherwise they'd quite get that people are not that much different in their way of thinking, at least accross Europe (indeed I believe all over the world). They'd read the local press, hear the local people, and see for themselves that the only real difference is that the French are just more *vocal*, so they chauvinism tends to show more.
On the contrary, I have a tendency to think that the French are the most self-flogging people on the planet (although some other countries are quite good at it too) ! It doesn't preclude being chauvinistic, however, I still haven't found a country with such a high level of pessimism about itself.