Self-Referential Media

A few days ago I heard Scott Mills announcing an Ed Sheeran song on Radio 1 and to my great surprise it was not ‘The A Team’, which, if Radio 1 is to be believed for the past 4 months, is the only song he’s ever attempted to write or play.

This song, You Need Me, not only seems to hail the artist as a necessary entity and demotes ‘you’ to a lowly parasitic being, unable to function without the glorious Mr. Sheeran, it also comments on Ed’s song writing process and his thoughts on his career. This is what today’s moan is going to centre around.

http://www.pyromag.com/music/9902/ed-sheeran-the-a-team-exclusive-review/

 

Most music played on Radio 1 at the moment is bloody awful and this song has made me realise part of what is so annoying about the new breed of artists. Songs seem to now be an ego trip of artists, a platform upon which they can discuss the fact that they are musicians or to describe themselves in ways that are almost certainly exaggerated, misguiding or simply false.

Another instance of this happening I have noticed is on the ‘Street Summer’ advert shown on Channel 4 every 15 minutes; someone called ‘Mz Bratt’ claims the following: ‘I am big, I am Bratt, I am bruffer dan brat, I am tougher than a lion’, another line does follow this but the words have been so lost in ‘ghetto’ that they have drowned into an oblivion of nonsense.

Who the hell are these people!? This seems to be their replacement for walking. Walking has evolved with us over millions of years, why's that girl on one arm!?

 

I have no guess what ‘bruffer dan brat’ means, but I’m fairly sure it’s as unlikely as her being sturdier than a lion. Why do these hideously over-confident people feel the overpowering urge to bombard my ears with these ill thought out lyrics that, in effect, means absolutely sod all?

This genre of music seems to have escaped the normal constraints of humanity; if any other medium were to spend 50% of its air time commenting on the fact that it was a part of the media spectrum and described falsehoods about itself it would not last long, it would be ridiculed and branded as pointless.

If I were to spend most of my time writing this blog going over the fact that I am writing, occasionally making up phrases such as ‘bruffer dan brat’ and exaggerating parts of my own body, personality and credibility then an even more negligible number of people would bother sifting their way through my various mumblings.

If the BBC were to do the same... Actually, here I’ve found a stumbling block. But this is also something that has annoyed me. Onwards I plough.

 

BBC nature documentaries, such as Life, are amazing. The effort gone to to get right shots and to enlighten the ignorant masses is fantastic. These documentaries are amongst my favourite programmes on telly, and I would love to see more of these on. The recent fascination with the final 10-minute copout at the end of each of these, however, frustrates me no end. I have watched some of these, and it is amazing to see the lengths gone to to secure the perfect few seconds of film, but it does seem to have become standard to include this at the end, cutting a good hour-long programme to a measly 50 minutes when other publicly funded channels are already cutting down programme length as ad breaks are getting increasingly longer.

http://battlebunny.com/2010/04/26/bbcdiscovery-life/

This has quickly gone off-topic, my rage is towards ‘urban’ music and hideously bad lyricists.

Despite the obvious inappropriateness of this technique (providing we ignore the BBC’s current form), ‘street’ music has picked up this annoying habit and its fans lap up the lies of these idols thoughtlessly.

There’s very little else I’d like to do more than to trawl through more terrible music on YouTube to find more examples of this music in order to provide my observation with more ammunition, but unfortunately I’ve got better music to listen to, so if you wish to prove it to yourself, listen to any music liked by the popular kids and you’ll soon find too many examples to shake a stick at.

The Drake Equation

A few weeks ago I coincidently watched two programmes featuring an equation dreamed up by an American Astronomer - Frank Drake. This equation supposedly calculates the liklihood of intelligent extra terrestrial life in the Milky Way with which communication might be possible from Earth.

The first programme I watched was fiction, and so I passed it off as a leap of imagination and let it lie. Then a few days later it reappeared in a BBC4 programme entitled 'The Seach for Life: The Drake Equation'. In this documentary the Drake Equation was taken apart and explained in its constituent parts. Here my suspicions and issues with it grew as the leaps of faith allowed by fiction was seemingly being entertained by the scientific community.

Before I delve into this 'revolutionary' equation, I feel I must introduce it properly;

(stolen from Wikipedia)

The full equation is explained properly here, and I shan't waste time here going into it.


This equation I have no problem with, it seems to fulfil all sensible areas of calculation in order to estimate the liklihood of little green men.

In this BBC production, Drake inputs various numbers into his infamous equation to create the all-important estimate. I'm sure anyone ignorant of this knowloedge previously is fairly interested to hear the prediction. It is 10.

Ten instances in our galaxy that would likely have developed intelligent enough life to create the desire to communicate with other beings. Again, I shan't delve into complicating issues such as of dying civilisations, changing technology or sheer bad luck, as it is the arrogance with which Drake ploughs on with his prediction that I take offence to.

The first two numbers input by Drake are perfectly acceptable (despite the recent, more accurate estimates, but for the purpose of argument, they are innocuous enough) - 10 stars formed per year and half of these stars will be orbited by planets. Unfortunately it is here that his equations seems to begin to leap into the abyss of guesswork.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0411a/

Next comes potential development of life on the planets formed. In each solar system he predicts that 2 planets will be capable of this feat. He based this guess on our solar system, which - as far as we currently know for sure - only houses one planet with life one - and so, suggestably, only one capable of nuturing life. This leads onto the next part - actual development of life. Here, Drake predicted a 100% sucess rate. How on Earth (and the other life-sustaining planet in this solar system) does this one work? We have proof for one instance of life in the entire universe, and this is planet Earth. How can he predict 2 planets having the correct atmosphere to house life when the practise of modern astronomy is still uncertain of life orbiting our Sun?

So we now have life on 2 planets in this hypothetical solar system. Supposedly 1% of this will evolve to be intelligent! Of the billions of species of life on Earth, only one has managed to evolve to fit the criteria of 'intelligent', yet the bold Drake chose to go with his one-in-a-hundred theory.

The final input I take issue with is the ability to communicate - the penultimate number. Again, 1% is utilised. Again, Drake has ignored the one study of life in the universe we have. He predicts that 1% of the intelligent life evolved will develop the ability to communicate with other planets when the evidence we hold tells us that the one instance of intelligent life has developed the ability and desire to communicate.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/profiles.cfm?profile=560

The equation has since been readjusted by other scholars and new predictions have been created. But there is a distinct lack of impirical evidence - as can be expected with this line of exploration - to go along with the painfully arrogant guesses that Drake originally made.

I utterly believe that there is life out there, somewhere in the vastness of the universe, so please do not take this ranting piece as an attack on the search of extra terrestrial life - although I am not entirely decided on the safety of communication and contact with alien beings, despite the fascination behind it.

This blog's been a bit of a change of topic from the usual, so I hope it's not been too boring to trawl through. It's current 3am and I have a lecture to be attending in 6 hours time, so it's good to see me putting my nighttime to good use.