Unidentifed, flying object
We're back. Collings & Herrin Podcast 45, our first in the new year, is ready for take-off - or soon will be - unlike Monarch Airlines, as you will hear in our all-new consumer advice section. Just off the banana flambe boat, Richard tries out his new, "chillaxed", non-hectoring, post-Caribbean persona and Andrew, in a New Year's Resolution, becomes a man of rational scientific thought and debunker of non-evidence-based myths. It takes us quite a while to get to the newspapers, but when we do, it's mainly the story about the UFO hitting the wind turbine that we cover in detail, and the Radio Solent scandal. Don't worry, in the end, we both return to our usual selves. Except Andrew. Pictured: the lovely Grenada chocolate Richard bought for me, and possibly made, using his own feet. It's great to be back, shouting at each other again at the tops of our lungs and not sponsored by Monarch Airlines.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 3:03 PM
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24 Comments:
Thank god your new years resolutions haven't changed either of you one bit. And thank god you chose to talk about the UFO news incident and not Gaza (no disrespect to that news obviously). Love you guys lots!
Huzzah!
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but still no use of the fancy microphone?
Andrew, I couldn't resist
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7819843.stm
the German Newsreader w/Cat story. Slightly whimisical, but isn't he the spit of RH? (the weather forecaster that is).
Adam
Another great podcast Andrew. I knew that Richard Herrin had been a vegetarian but not that you had as well - why did you both stop?
I just had to comment to say that the "all sex is rape" comment is an urban myth and was never actually said:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinnon.asp
I feel this is an important point to make as people often drag up this made-up quote in order to discredit feminism and make feminists as a group look ridiculous.
Thank you for the clarification, Liquidcow - as an ardent and very careful feminist, I am happy to see this myth corrected. (I have personally never found feminists ridiculous. But you knew that.)
To back up Liquidcow's comment, I found this quote from Dworkin from a New Statesman interview in 1995. It's pretty unequivocal.
There is a long section in Right-Wing Women on intercourse in marriage. My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse--it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman. I said that when we look at sexual liberation and the law, we need to look not only at which sexual acts are forbidden, but which are compelled.
The whole issue of intercourse as this culture's penultimate expression of male dominance became more and more interesting to me. In Intercourse I decided to approach the subject as a social practice, material reality. This may be my history, but I think the social explanation of the "all sex is rape" slander is different and probably simple. Most men and a good number of women experience sexual pleasure in inequality. Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don't think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality.
It's important to say, too, that the pornographers, especially Playboy, have published the "all sex is rape" slander repeatedly over the years, and it's been taken up by others like Time who, when challenged, cannot cite a source in my work.
Oh, by the way, in answer to Ten's question, I gave up my vegetarianism after a number of years of being pretty strict (no fish, no gelatine, no animal fat etc.), because I ate a bacon sandwich and it tasted really nice, so I tried a trial separation from my vegetarianism and I'm afraid I never went back. This was when I was just a couple of years out of college.
No problem. The quote made me extremely angry, from a feminist perspective as I think it is insulting to women as well as men, until I realised it was made up and I was wasting my time and energy getting angry at it. If it saves other people the same to let them know it's a fiction then that's obviously a good thing. I actually first heard it mentioned by a lecturer at my uni who really should have been more informed on the subject. She may have been trying to provoke discussion but I think even then it is a silly thing to bring up for that purpose if nobody really said it or (presumably) believes it.
Was the bacon sandwich airborne?
Must say, Andrew, that although some of the 270+ comments on the Word site about 'Squirrelgate' were of the boring 'stick to what you know, sunshine' variety that many more were poking fun at these pompous gits and cheering you on.
Almost as bad as people eating in a cinema, is people eating on a podcast/radio programme.
Steven H.
Great podcast. Richard mistaking "Silence of the Lambs" with "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" literally had me laughing so much I had to take a few minutes to compose myself before going on with my daily business. Even now I chuckle thinking back on it.
Get Richard jetlagged for every podcast from now on!
"You're having a go at him now. No wonder he wouldn't go in your cupboard."
Marvellous!
I'm not sure if anyone else has posted this... Just been away and was catching up. There is this rather interesting bit from the second chapter of the first Sherlock Holmes book (Study in Scarlet):
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”
“To forget it!”
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Complete book here (out of copyright)
Obviously it's worth pointing out that Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies and was a loon. But the resonance between Andrew and Sherlock Holmes was startling to me!
Stephen Fry talking about why that Holmes quote is stupid
is anyone else having trouble reading warming up on rich's site? i haven't been able to use it properly for about 2 weeks now.
Fine for me, Peter. Have you contacted Richard?
Very much enjoyed the latest podcast but have you taken down all the previous episodes? I have listened to them but would like to download them again but on itunes now I can only see the latest one. Can you let us know whether this is deliberate or if it is possible to put the old ones back up? Many thanks, Helen.
Not sure what's amiss there, Purlpower. All 47 podcasts are available to download on iTunes when I look at it. (That includes the until-recently-missing first six.)
Are you looking at our actual entry in iTunes where all the positive customer reviews are, or just your own podcasts subscriptions page?
This is basically another IT question, and I'm sure somebody else down here in the basement will help ...
it only appears to affect the computers at work. as far as i know we have no filters on websites at all so it looks as if an exception has been made for rich's website! even the IT people don't know why.
peter
My site seems to be blocked in a lot of places that have any kind of filter - I noticed the other day that you can't access it from Macdonald's- I guess because it has a lot of swearing in it. Which seems ironic when you think of all the offensive shit they're doing to the world.
Fucking wankers.
Hopefully Collings is now blocked too.
Besides, Burger King taste a fuckload nicer than McDonalds.
There, that should do it if Richard's post didn't!
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