Singing into your airbrush

As a starting point to this entry, I draw your attention to no. 10 on this list I posted a few entries ago. The reason I draw your attention to this is because this entry focuses on that most wonderful, wholesome and all-round high quality reality TV series The X Factor.

Now, I'm not a fan of The X Factor, but that doesn't mean that when Hayley's watching it I don't sit there and take the piss out of/get drawn into it. It feels like The X Factor has been on for several months already, but it's apparently only about six or seven weeks. Plenty of time for me to start analysing its incredibly manufactured style and pick it apart like the English teacher I am. So, for the first few weeks we are treated to talentless morons who are completely oblivious to how rubbish they are, a smattering of people who do know how rubbish they are and are playing it up to a nauseating level in order to get on telly, and a handful of people who are okay singers but nothing special. So far so excruciating. Some of these are put through to sing/make me want to punch them again, and their number is reduced again seemingly arbitrarily by Simon Cowell and his three puppets. Then this number is cut in half again through pretty much exactly the same meaningless process as before, and then again although this time in ridiculously over-the-top locations aroung the world.

All this time, the makers of the show do as much as they can to make the contestants seem "real". It's not enough that they are human beings who can breath and eat and blink and sweat, no, the audience has to be shown how "real" these people really are. They're much more "real" than anyone sitting at home because they've all experienced a multitude of hardships that, whilst many other people have experienced these too, they've not experienced them to the degree that our contestants have. Either that or the contestants have had to deal with more than one hardship at the same time. Or, if they haven't got enough hardships from their pre-X Factor lives to make them seem "real" enough, then they're given a new one during the course of the show, even if that's something as trivial as a sore throat that means they can't do the one thing that makes their miserable existence worthwhile to them, i.e. singing. Yes, these are "real" people; they must be "real" because, after all, this is reality television we're dealing with.

So in the last episode, after several years of whittling down the contestants, the series entered the phase of proceedings where our contestants start actually doing pop-star-type things such as extravagant performances with lots of vigorous dancers, intricate choreography, colourful pyrotechnics and, well, basically anything that can distract us from the fact that these people aren't really that good at singing. Par for the course when we're talking ITV Saturday and Sunday evening light entertainment. But what struck me is that, having spent every moment of the series up to this point ramming the "realness" of these people down our throats, the show now presents them as fabricated, artificial pop wannabes without a shred of reality to them. They have the contestants standing in front of some kind of wind turbine, or possibly part of an aeroplane hangar, make up clinging to their every pore, some with a pointless new hairdo, and airbrushed beyond recognition.

Having told us about all the hardships these people have had to deal with, and before they've even become pop stars to pour into the already over-saturated and homogenised charts, the contestants are reduced down to manufactured shells for whom the general public turn their money over to ITV via their phones because Dermot O'Leary tells them to.

Anyway, as I continue to experience this year's series of The X Factor, I anticipate at least one more rant being generated from the ordeal, so watch this space.

Rubbish Mail

So I've been having a pretty frustrating time with the Post Office lately. The whole system for getting parcels delivered seems pretty inflexible given that most people are going to be out of their homes during working hours. Every time I order something online, I put in my address in the almost certain knowledge that someone will try to deliver the parcel when I'm not there, and that seems crazy. Every time I order something, I know I'm going to have to get up early and go to the depot before work. And so will everyone else, so there will be ten people there before the depot is even open.

So everyone who works standard hours ends up standing in a queue in the freezing cold for an hour to get their parcels. That's not delivery, that's collection, and given how big of an issue it must be, it seems very strange that there is no alternative.

For some people, getting the delivery at their work is an option, but for others it is not. My workplace doesn't have a post room, and large volumes of employee mail can be frustrating for the administrative staff to deal with, so we are asked to avoid doing it if possible. This leaves me with no option but to pay for Saturday delivery (and many sites don't even have that option) if I want to ensure I'm at home when a package arrives, and that seems like an unacceptable solution for something that must be a common problem.

I'd love to see some way of registering with Royal mail that I am out during the day. If enough people signed up (and surely there are enough people to make it worthwhile doing), alternative deliveries could be made to those addresses in the evenings or early mornings, at a time better suited for all.

If someone still wasn't home, then the parcel could be returned to the depot for collection or redelivery as standard. Even at the depot, though, things seem archaic. There is no computer system in place, and no package tracking, in any Royal Mail depot I've been to - the parcels are piled in a back room ordered (as far as I can tell) by postcode and size, and then when someone requests their package, the attendant has to search (occasionally unsuccessfully) to find it. Even if a fully computerised system is not possible, at the very least, there should be a better way of tracking down a particular package than sifting through stacks of them in a room. Some sort of unique code on each card that could be copied onto the parcel, allowing it to be filed in an exact location in the storage area, for example. Anything to avoid turning up and being told "Sorry, mate, I don't know where your parcel is - try again later in the week". That's not the way to run a public service, or at least not one that is concerned with customer satisfaction.

Striking postmen may be a major issue in the news at the moment, but in terms of getting hold of parcels, I'm not sure my experience will change that much if they do stop working.

Anyway, if I really want to get my post delivered at a particular time, I can always pay 3 grand a year for the privilege.

Badverts 2

A second installment of the TV ads that have got on the wrong side of me recently for one reason or another.


Kellogg's Rice Krispies Squares

Not a bad advert in many ways. A simple idea - puffed rice community lives on chocolate volcano - executed well enough with CGI krispies and volcano, obviously aimed at the kiddies to make them pester mum and dad whilst doing the weekly slog round Tesco. What I take issue with here is the accent of the narrator. He's supposed to be from the Caribbean or somewhere in that region. That's what I just about get from the way he mangles the opening sentence anyway. But after that ignorant piece of rice plucks a seemingly innocent flower from the cocoa crater he calls home, the narrator seriously loses the plot. Where the hell is that accent meant to be from? Somerset, perhaps? Maybe Wales? Or somewhere that doesn't actually exist? I'm going to go with box number three please, Noel. I mean if they wanted a Caribbean accent, instead of hiring someone who really really can't do one, why didn't they just go for the much easier and obvious option of, oh, I don't know, hiring a voiceover guy who comes from the Caribbean? But they didn't, and so we get this embarrassing, chewed up, offensive-to-your-ears-whether-you're-from-the-Caribbean-or-Crewe monstrosity of an impersonation. I'm guessing I'm not the only one of this opinion, as the advert has since been changed and now runs with a different voiceover who's supposed to sound like David Attenborough on a nature programme. He doesn't. It's still shit. Not quite as bad, nor as offensive, but still shit.

Mikado

An advert that lies (for me, at least) on that fine line between a campaign that's quite brilliant and one that's just plain wrong. But in so many ways it lands firmly in Wrongville. The advert has almost nothing to do with the product, reducing the snack being advertised to little more than a prop in the story it's telling. This is not a problem in itself, as any self-respecting drum-playing gorilla will tell you. But that means the company, having shunned the more traditional "buy our product because it's great" route, now has no choice but to promote the values associated with their product to make people want to buy it as it fits in with "who they are" and "what they're all about". And what values does Mikado have, according to the advert? Well, that it's "a bit cheeky". A young woman working in an office accidentally sets off the photocopier whilst kneeling on it trying to reach a Mikado stick. Oooh, cheeky.

But it's not. It's really, really not. This isn't Barbara Windsor giggling whilst clasping her boobies in a Carry On film. It's not even a rebellious teenager pulling his already-halfway-to-his-ankles trousers down and xeroxing his clammy posterior. The woman in the advert is wearing a short skirt and straddling the copier, meaning that she's either making copies of her knickers or her, ahem, "front bottom". See why it's not so cheeky any more? But it doesn't stop there. The male co-worker who had previously exited the copying room now re-enters, and is clearly somewehat surprised by what he sees Little Miss Knickers doing. At this point, the makers of the advert make sure that their advert cannot be rescued in any way, shape or form by slapping on the most inappropriate slogan for the scene which we are now gazing upon: "More than a little bit tempting". Fair enough with regards to the woman wanting a Mikado stick, but genuinely alarming when considering its alternative focus. Apparently the values that Mikado stands for are centred around office rape. If that's who you are and what you're all about, what the fuck is wrong with you?


Diet Coke



This one doesn't really need a huge amount of analysis. Annoying vacuous chart pop music. Annoying slogan that's trying to be oh so hip. So, a good start then. We then get a montage of women being, to put it bluntly, twats. Ruining wedding photos, trying to starting fights in bars, pissing around during a coworker's office presentation. And thinking they're hilarious whilst doing it. I could go on and on about how vomit-inducingly irritating all the women in this advert are, but that would be to waste far too much energy on them. Essentially, Coca Cola are saying if you're a woman and you drink Diet Coke, you'll become a complete dickhead. Great ad, guys.


ITV1



So, I'm at the cinema, awaiting the start of whichever film I've chosen to see. The advert starts, and this one comes on. I've not seen it before. So I begin taking it in. As it unfolds before me, I start to consider what it could be for. A new drama series, maybe? Perhaps a charity? I keep watching, still unable to put my finger on it. The advert continues. The kids are walking on a beach, there are homeless people living on the beach - could be about conservation at a fair stretch? Then the kids start doing the whole "throwing stones at the sky to break up the clouds" bollocks. At this point I've given up trying to work out what the hell this advert is for, because I've run out of things that could possibly fit with the colossal amount of pretentious wank that is being played out before me. This advert pretty much ticks all the boxes for being everything I hate. Child actors being annoying - yep, there they are; token foreign-looking kid in a half-arsed, last-minute attempt at diversity and political-correctness - most certainly; lashings of oversentimentality - oh yes sir, plenty of that. And still, I'm none the wiser as to what is being advertised to me.

As the children dance in the sunlight, which they have apparently never experienced before, playing whimsically with a damaged umbrella without a care for the used nappies and hypodermic needles that have likely come into contact with it, Patrick Stewart puts me out of my desperation and reveals that this heartstring-tugging tale is in fact an advert for ITV1. My jaw drops. ITV1? The "brighter side"? Really?! So, the channel that brings us The X-Factor, Tonight (which might as well be named The Daily Mail: TV Edition) and The Jeremy Kyle Show, turning on this channel is like, and I quote, "being able to make the sun shine whenever you want"? This advertising campaign is so ill-judged and egotistical, it's laughable. I can't think of many things that deserve such overwhelming and histrionic praise, let alone self-praise. But ITV1 is somewhere near the bottom of the list. I could go on and on about the things that this advert does wrong, but I'd be here for a long, long time.


That wraps it up for this second entry. Chances for a third installment? Well, that all depends on whether companies and advertising agencies continue to make terrible adverts. So, quite likely then. As always, if there are any ads that have caught your attention and/or got your goat recently, please let me know.

Badverts

Advertising in its various forms can be inspired. At the moment, on TV at least, it certainly isn't. A selection of the worst TV ads on at the moment:

Confused.com - I think my main bone of contention with these is that Confused.com actually want you to believe that people record themselves on YouTube talking about car insurance comparison websites. Add to that the fact that the people on the ads are at best not very believeable as genuine members of the public, and at worst are annoying enough to make me want to stick a fork through their skull. Especially the guy who gives "hilarious" examples of questions that "other price comparison sites" ask you. Except that they aren't hilarious, just annoying. Fits in with the rest of the advert then.

Envirofone - In a similar vein to Confused.com, except that it has even worse production values (which considering Confused.com has made theirs look like YouTube is pretty impressive by Envirofone). The backgrounds look like the makers of the advert have simply picked some generic neon tie dye backgrounds found in a five second Google image search. The people chosen are again painfully unconvincing as average people, and the fact that they've been chosen to appear diverse (the first three being: Asian man, Welsh woman, punk with over-the-top spiked mohican) makes that even more apparent. The worst has to be the bloke who shouts "WONGA!" into the camera in a feeble attempt at a cockney accent, so feeble it doesn't even deserve to be called mockney. Whenever Mr. WONGA! comes on screen I want to dispatch him and every other loser on the advert as quickly and violently as possible. Other reasons for annoyance include the sheer lack of information on the advert, almost to the point of false advertising (so, I'll get £50 for my old Nokia 321o that I used about ten years ago, will I? I highly doubt it), and the fact that the man I assume is meant to be a biker (although I only assume this from his beard, seeing as his accent sounds more like a cross between Seann William Scott and Alan Carr) is wearing a shirt that I own. Bollocks.

John Frieda: Sheer Blonde - The only version I could find on YouTube has a German (?) voiceover in the middle, but it doesn't take away from my point. The whole premise behind this advert is just shockingly bad. Woman with blonde hair interrogated by second-rate good-cop-bad-cop team. The advert has a mainly American feel, and yet the accents and the newspaper clearly point to England as the setting. London, to be precise. The whole thing just feels, well, shit.

Savlon Advanced Healing Gel - I can just imagine the advertising ideas guys at Savlon Towers sitting in the board room agonising over the idea for the new Savlon advert. Then, after hours, maybe days of crap idea after crap idea, they finally had to settle on this as the best of a bad bunch. "Well, some kids might buy fake wounds to pretend they've got injured... I mean, I know my kid wouldn't, but maybe yours... No? Fuck it, let's go with it anyway". It's just rubbish any way you look at it. Not funny. Doesn't make me want Savlon. Twatty little kid in my face on the telly. Interestingly, looking this one up on the 'net led me to find out that it had received ten complaints. Eight of these ten apparently thought the advert "glamorised wounds" - okay, I can stretch to that - "and could be seen to condone knife crime amongst the young". Wait, what? If you haven't done so yet, watch the ad. Spot any knives, among the young or otherwise? Maybe the ad at a stretch encourages bad bike riding, but we don't even see the bike crash, just hear it after watching Twatty ride past and make the leap ourselves. At the end, a bunch of eight-year-olds look at Twatty's obviously fake cuts and grazes in a park. Yep, obviously off to stab someone for their iPod Touch once the sun sets.

As we seem to be receiving such a wealth of toss from the people in TV ad land, maybe I'll make a follow up to this entry. I'm also going to unearth some of my favourite adverts from years gone by and put them up here soon. Feel free to let me know of any other truly bad, or indeed truly great, ads that you see.

QFT?

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but the BBC love their quotation marks in article titles on the website, and it still annoys me on a fairly regular basis. I may be wrong, but it seems to me like quotation marks around a word or phrase when used in a news article should be direct quotes, and should be relevant to the article. So these two recent examples annoyed me:

'Secret' Obama code name revealed. Given that the first line of the story describes the code names as "not-so-secret", and the only time the word secret is used in a direct quote in the article is when the secret service says of the code names that: "There's nothing top secret about them", why in the headline of the article is the word secret used in quotes. No one seems to be describing the codes as secret except for the journalist writing the article. While it could be argued that the article isn't a serious piece of news, and is more human interest than anything else, I worry that quotation marks are able to be used without source and in a way that opposes the information in the rest of the article.

Shannon accused 'is a bit creepy'. This article about the trial of those accused of the kidnap of Shannon Matthews is a little bit more worrying. In the first line of the article we have the line:

The niece of the man accused of kidnapping Shannon Matthews said her uncle was a fantasist and a "bit creepy".

But later in the article we have the actual courtroom exchange:

Ms Meehan was asked by Frances Oldham, QC for Ms Matthews, if she agreed with the description that her uncle was "a loner, a strange character, a bit creepy and a fantasist".

She replied: "Yes".

So, no only is the first line misleading, since the niece did not actually say the things that are being claimed, and merely agreed with them, but the quoted text in the headline is again not verifiable as a direct quote, since nowhere in the article does anybody use the phrase 'is a bit creepy'.

Again, maybe I'm nitpicking here, but I would expect news reports in general, and those from the BBC in particular to be a little more careful about the quotations they use. If a quote is used in a headline (which may be the only information seen by large numbers of readers), it seems as though that quote should be reliably sourced and reproduced within the article. There are many more examples of this, such as this article about Osama bin Ladin's whereabouts, in which the headline quote is not attributed or reproduced. Without knowing more about the rules that journalists are under, clearly I can't say much of substance, but to me this kind of quotation practice seems at best disingenuous and at worst outright misleading.

Double blow.

This is an update to my post of a week or so ago about the situation at Newcastle. It is necessarily football-related, so if such things are anathema to you, then feel free to ignore it.

This evening Mike Ashley has released a statement about his intentions to sell the club. The full text is here, and it is well worth reading for a look at the emotional and logistical problems running a modern football club. It makes me feel hugely sad to see someone who has managed to get hold of something they love and respect feeling backed into a corner to the point where they need to give it up. I love Ashley's attitude to being an owner who's not afraid to mingle with the fans, and up until the end of the summer, I think he had the backing of the vast majority of them.

Possibly the only thing Ashley did wrong was underestimate the double-edged sword that is Keegan. Getting him back was a master-stroke, and meant that as long as Keegan was happy, the fans were happy. Unfortunately the flip side of this was that if Keegan became unhappy, so did the fans, and this unhappiness boiling over into protests was the least that could be expected if such a popular person is percieved as having been forced out.

The only mention he makes to the transfer issues at the centre of the recent problems is to say that he prefers to buy young talent rather than big names, and that this conflicts with what the fans want. He says: "The fans want this process to happen more quickly and they want huge amounts spent in the transfer market so that the club can compete at the top table of European football now".

I agree with nufc.com, that this is a misreading of the situation. The fans want success, and they want the team to play good football. They will be willing to wait 3 or 4 years or longer for the success as long as the team is playing good, passionate football. We would much rather be an Arsenal than a Chelsea, but to talk about nurturing young talent on one hand and then selling James Milner, one of our major proven young talents, on the other is to send confusing messages.

Ashley's plan for the club is brilliant on paper - it is exactly what we need as a club. Had the statement come out as a plan of action at the beginning of the season, every supporter would be behind it. Even Keegan must have been behind it in theory. The only differences come in practice, when the wage bill needs to be cut, and the manager insists he needs to keep players. When we need replacement squad members, but the manager doesn't like the ones the scouts have found. When the scouts go over the manager's head and the board buys the players anyway. These are the areas of disagreement. These are the areas the fans and manager are unhappy.

Ashley then says: "I have the interests of Newcastle United at heart. I have listened to you. You want me out."

I don't think this is necessarily what the bulk of the fans do want. I think the fans are reacting to the loss of Keegan badly, and lashing out. If Ashley really wants what's best for the club, I think he needs to stay and prove to the fans that he has their best interests at heart.

After reading through his statement and looking at the work he has done, I think most fans would want him to continue to run the club. I think they want someone in charge who is passionate, and I doubt we'll find anyone better than Ashley on that score. We also want a manager who is passionate, and we'll never find someone better than Keegan on that one. Ashley and Keegan are the perfect people to run the club together, and to lose them both in under a month due to what seems like a personality clash, or a disagreement of style, is heartbreaking.

Dethroned

This is another post unsuitable for those people not a fan of football...

Back in January, I wrote about the possibility of Sam Allerdyce leaving Newcastle, and the problems I had with the way the club and in particular the media were handling the situation. Allerdyce, of course, left the club, and Keegan was brought in. Now, less than nine months later, it's being reported that we're in the ludicrous situation of being managerless again.

I don't have as much to say this time, because really there isn't much to be said. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding about the role Keegan was expected to play, or the power he was expecting to have, but for a club like Newcastle to lose a manager who was adored by the fans, who had begun to shape a team and who had barely 20 competitive games in charge, and to do so because they wouldn't allow him to have control over the players he was managing is not only ludicrous, but also shameful.

There is quite simply no way for a manager to get his team playing well week-to-week if he cannot guarantee that he will have the same players available a week later. And a manager cannot be expected to improve a team if he is not in control of who is bought and sold. And if a manager is not in charge of which players are playing for the club, then he can't be held responsible for the team's performance.

If that was the situation at Newcastle (and it is a situation that has been rumoured to be present many times over the last decade), and it was this situation that caused Keegan to walk, then good on him, because to work under those restraints is not to manage, but to simply be a coach and a figurehead for media attention. Keegan is a better manager than that and a better man than that, and if that was the choice to be made, then leaving was the correct decision.

Frankly, I'd be concerned about the credentials of any manager willing to step into that kind of position to replace him.

Of course, if he was sacked, then it's almost more ludicrous, since we've now had four managers in the four years since Robson went (taking any recent chance of competitive success we might have had with him), and none of them appear to have been given any freedom at all. Someone needs to be given two or three full seasons to shape a team, irrespective of league position. If that cannot be guaranteed, then I wouldn't be surprised if Newcastle continue to finish low-mid-table and churn through a manager a year for the next decade.

I thought Keegan was the perfect person to take on that challenge, and for him to be forced out in such a short space of time leaves me angry and disillusioned.

UPDATE: Ok, so in actual fact, no one seems to know what the hell's going on...

UPDATE: For a worrying few days there, it looked like I might have been ranting aout a resignation that never happened, but no, he's gone.

Technological highs and lows reprised.

So, I don't want to write too much about the current state of my phone, but after mentioning previous troubles, I wanted make sure that people weren't under the impression that my telecommunicative issues were resolved.

Having finally resigned myself to buying a new handset to prevent the resetting problems I was having, and then further resigning myself to buying a pay as you go phone as the cheapest route to obtaining said handset, I did end up with a nice new shiny-looking phone. A phone with a whole other set of issues.

Problem one is that the phone seems somewhat disinclined to send multi-part messages. This means that I have to compose every message, however complex, as a single 140-character string, or risk the recipient only recieving the first part. While not insurmountable, it does lead to me spending rather more time constructing my messages than I did previously, which can hamper speedy text conversations.

Problem two is that the phone occasionally decides to cut off calls with no explaination . I don't make many calls, so it doesn't matter massively, but it's very frustrating. Luckily it usually only seems to do it once per call, so if I call the person back, it tends to be ok.
Problem three is far more annoying, and comes from the difference between the key layout on my previous and my new phone. The "1" key on my new keypad is marginally lower, which means that when typing quickly and trying to put punctuation into text messages, my thum hits slightly too high, and in fact hits the key above. The problem is that the key above is the send-message-without-confirmation button, the presence of which I have neither understood nor needed on any phone. It'll hopfully be something I'll get over as I geet used to the phone, but next time you're texting, imagine sending the message accidentally every time you use punctuation and contemplate just how astonishingly irritating that would be.

On the plus side, technologically, I finally got my hands on a laptop, specifically an ASUS Eee PC, on which I am typing this very post, whilst sitting in my living room, just for variety. I'm hoping that having a portable laptop will be something that encourages me to be a bit less tied to my desktop at home, both for blogging (and other such internetery), but also for entertainment purposes, since it'll allow me to watch media from my computer from anywhere in the house, and media from the internet from anywhere with wi-fi.

It has also reminded me just how much I hate touchpads on laptops, and a small mouse of some kind will almost certainly be my next purchase, to prevent me smashing the keyboard in frustration...

Onion unwanted

Second only to soft drink half measures in my rage-inducing food-and-drink-related issues is when a meal I ordered turns out to have unexpected additions.

Case in point, if I order a "hand-made beef burger with cheese and bacon", I don't expect the otherwise delicious burger to be packed full of little pieces of onion. Perhaps the chef decided that it tastes better that way, and perhaps many people would appreciate the addition, but it violates the simplest of rules: if it's not on the menu, don't put it in the fucking meal.

If I decide that a salad I'm making would be improved with a few shavings of bacon in it, but fail to advertise this on the menu, I'm lining myself up to be faced with some very angry vegetarians, not to mention all the other groups for whom pork is objectionable.

The anti-onion lobby is admittedly smaller, but it is nevertheless extant. Some people just don't like bits of onion in their food, and if you put them in without announcing it, all you're going to do is piss off a portion of your clientèle.

So thanks unnamed pub in which I had lunch, for letting me buy something I didn't actually want to eat.

Consideration.

To whoever left their rubbish on the back seat of the 85 bus yesterday afternoon:

Thanks for leaving your food wrapper and drinks can on the seat there. That's not inconveniencing the next person to sit down at all. Thanks for sitting opposite one of those tfl signs (the ones asking people to be considerate and not litter) for your whole journey, but not taking any of it in. And thanks especially for making sure the can wasn't empty when you dumped it on the seat, so that when I picked it up, so that I could sit down, it emptied itself over me. I was just saying to myself that the only thing that could improve the journey was if I was sticky and smelling of blackcurrant.

So thanks for making my journey everything it could be.

Maths FTW (OMG LOL WTFBBQ!!!11!1)

I was reading through the links spat up by my Google homepage today, and happened across this article about word usage in IM conversations. Interesting enough, but not earth shattering by any means. However, a sentence at the end caught my eye:


Ignoring the fact that they don't make clear whether it's just those three terms that make up 2.4 percent, or the whole slang dictionary, the line that really bothers me is that the researchers apparently describe 2.4 as an "infinitesimally small" proportion. Now, there are plenty of terms they could have used instead, 'tiny', 'minute', or even just 'small' on its own. But they chose to use a term that means 'vanishingly small', 'approaching zero', or, indeed, 'too small to be measured accurately'. Which, given they're describing a measurement, is patently untrue.

Clearly it could be a misquote, or a misunderstanding, but for a statistical researcher to use a mathematical term like that is really quite misleading. It would be like saying that the proportion of black people in the UK was infinitesimally small, which would not only be incorrect, but also insulting, since the word has connotations of insignificance too. In either case, don't use the term infinitesimal unless you actually mean 'basically zero'.

It reminded me of another case of mathematical language abuse I noticed while watching the film '21'. A character, ostensibly an extremely bright mathematician, is explaining the Monty Hall Problem, and has to describe the probability of picking a single correct choice out of three alternatives. How does he describe this probability? 33.3%. And the opposite probability? 66.7%. No. Just no.

No university maths student would describe probabilities like that, let alone one at MIT, and the lecturer would instantly correct him. No maths student would even use percentages, since you have to talk about recurrences. He should have said 1 in 3 (and 2 in 3), which is not only the simplest and most accurate description of the probability, but also the one that comes naturally from the statement of the problem, and it makes me annoyed that at some point the scene has been rewritten by someone who didn't understand what they were doing.

So there we are. If you're going to use a mathematical term, please get a mathematician to look at it. And if you can't find one, then pick another word. There's plenty out there that won't make us rant.

Glass half full...

One of the continuous things that niggles me about modern life is the approach to soft drinks in pubs and bars. As both a non-drinker and a diet coke addict, the provision of non-alcoholic drinks in social establishments is something I encounter pretty much constantly, and my complaint usually boils down to the size of the drink served.

Usually nowadays you can get a pint of diet coke in a pub, thankfully, as I have been told in the past that the pub in question "doesn't serve" or "isn't allowed" to serve soft drinks in pints. In bars and clubs it's a different story, though, usually it'll be a half pint, but sometimes it's just a plastic cup, or cocktail-sized glass, and often for the same price of (or even more than) a pint in a pub. Clearly it's up to the particular establishment to determine how it wants to sell its drinks, but to have such limited options on size seems to be deliberately obtuse. I'll sometimes resort to drinking water in places like that, if it becomes too expensive and fiddly to keep getting tiny one-gulp glasses of coke.

The second way that the size of the drink can be restricted is with the level of ice included. I'm not totally anti-ice, by any means. In the summer, a few blocks of ice in a drink can be very nice (though no substitute for the drink itself being cold), but the way that ice is used in drinking establishments at the moment, all year round, seems to be as a deliberate method of restricting the amount of liquid served.

It's rare that you'll be asked whether you want ice or not, and you usually have to be pretty quick, clear and forceful about making your preference clear if you don't want any. Usually, if you don't state a preference, you'll get the glass filled to the top with ice, and then the gaps filled in with coke. Is there anyone, anywhere in the history of drinking who considers this a satisfactory way to serve a drink? At the very most, a glass should be filled 1/3 full of ice, and even then only in the summer. Filling the whole thing and then adding the drink cuts the amount of liquid served down to between 3/4 and 1/4 of the available glass-space. In any other situation the drink would be replaced (imagine being served a beer that was 1/2 head), but in this case, you actively have to insist to get the drink you order.

In some places, they will serve without ice if asked, but will leave a gap at the top of the glass to ensure that you're not getting any extra by doing this. The gap left varies, but can be up to an inch. I rarely argue about it, but it does seem ludicrously tight of a pub to deliberately withhold from topping up a drink that's being served just to save the tiny amount of money that it might cost (and at the risk of future sales too).

My main problem with these situations is that there seems to be very little thought from the bar staff. When I order a pint of diet coke, it's because I like the taste. If I wanted to quench my thirst, I'd get a glass of water. There's really no logical reason for filling the glass up with ice first without asking, but they do it anyway, without really thinking about the customer experience they're providing. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's worked behind a bar (*ahem* Bambi), but it really does seem negligent for people to deliberately give you as little as possible of the drink you want.

And there is a special circle of hell reserved for bartenders who serve regular coke when diet coke was ordered...