Doctor Who returns. After the spotty Big Finish radio dramas, the Beeb have officially sanctioned a new Internet-only series of adventures with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, allowing listeners to vote on whether the series should return. But will flooding the BBC servers be the only legitimate way fans can get the show back on the air?
posted by ed
on Jun 12, 2001 -
19 comments
Patient confidentiality vs. cancer research. New rules on patient confidentiality prevent
"research that recognises dangerous side effects of treatments and it would prevent research that would recognise avoidable causes of diseases and death. " What is more important: 'medical progress' or 'your medical file'?
posted by nonharmful
on May 19, 2001 -
2 comments
BBC to North America and Australia: Drop Dead. The BBC World Service is dumping all shortwave broadcasts to the US, Canada and Australia as of July. If you want to listen you'll have to get it off the net, or hope your local public radio station uses at least a few WS programs as cheap filler material. A couple hundred US stations do this, but did we mention they tend to do it at 3 in the morning? (Scroll down past the Angola stuff in the above link.)
posted by aaron
on May 8, 2001 -
18 comments
Is TV dumbed down so much these days that even educational or documentary material needs to appeal on a broader audience? It seems that TLC and Discovery are going overboard in their need to draw viewers, though, then their motto 'a place for learning minds' becomes just another example of false advertising. If you were to tune in at prime time, chances are the stuff that's on would be about
a)aliens,
b)Christianity, or
c)aliens and Christianity. Tune in for TLC you'll always get
'worst drivers 3: road rage' or 'plastic surgery gone BAD'. Their good productions, such as the
Great Books Series have been shut down over 2 years ago, and these days the most interesting stuff that's on is shown in reruns over at the discovery civilization or science channel. BBC and PBS creates interesting programs, but not all that often.
Sometimes people complain at how Survivor and the rest of the reality show stuff is dragging down TV to the very bottom, but is it really effecting everything?
posted by tiaka
on May 7, 2001 -
47 comments
BBC report on the May Day protests On the whole I've been shocked by how uninformed the BBC has been, especially in comparison with
The Guardian's comprehensive coverage. Having attended the Oxford Circus demonstration, I be sure of two facts: one, that the gathering was almost entirely peaceful... and two, that the heavy-handed police action is likely to incite frustration and violence. Remember, kids: the 3,000 'protesters' include ordinary members of the public caught in the police blockade.
posted by tobyslater
on May 1, 2001 -
8 comments
You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye! Yes, the "Rudest Person on Television" is about to hit American airwaves as NBC desperately tries to catch up to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and "Survivor". This little BBC profile of Anne Robinson explains it all for us unsuspecting Yanks. Is "YATWLG" about to be the next hot meme?
posted by briank
on Mar 27, 2001 -
38 comments
Is this the Face of Christ? 'The BBC used a combination of 2,000-year-old Jewish skulls and ancient religious images to generate what it claims is the first "true-to-life" picture of Jesus Christ.'
posted by LMG
on Mar 26, 2001 -
28 comments
yo d00dz! hav u seen tihs? "Two-thirds of the 18-24 year olds questioned do not worry about punctuation, grammar or style when writing messages. About 16% sign every e-mail with love and kisses, even when addressing their boss."
l8s, love wrighty XX
posted by gi_wrighty
on Mar 22, 2001 -
30 comments
BBC to repeat 'racist' remarks. On Monday night's
Room 101 show, Anne Robinson (currently preparing to launch the US version of her quiz show
The Weakest Link) launched into an attack on Welsh people and their language. Despite protests, and the fact that North Wales police are
investigating Robinson's remarks, the BBC has rejected requests not to broadcast tonight's
repeat of the programme.
posted by ceiriog
on Mar 11, 2001 -
30 comments
Ask Putin. At 15.00 GMT today, Vladimir Putin will answer questions posed by the public live online. Two Russian journalists and one from the BBC will select the questions, you can submit yours here.
Accountability or Publicity on the part of Putin?
posted by Markb
on Mar 6, 2001 -
1 comment
"What is most disturbing about these people is their banality, their normalness... It's the fact that these people are chatting and they are horribly normal, everyday people, yet they are capable of
these acts of unimaginable savagery."
Tired of politics and Survivor 2? Let's talk about
real cannibalism!
posted by lia
on Feb 17, 2001 -
6 comments
Libyan gets minimum of 20 years for Lockerbie Bombing by Scottish Court. Why are British courts handing out such tiny sentences? After all, in America it's not uncommon for people to receive 99 years for a single murder. Some people are doing over 10 years for rape alone. This Libyan could have easily received the death sentence if he were in the US, as it was similar in scale to the Oklahoma City bombing.
Yet, in the UK, it's possible to kill people through negligence, and get away with it. Just last month an uninsured driver was speeding, killed a pedestrian, fled the scene, and although found guilty, only received a
driving ban!
Is the UK overly soft in its sentencing? Or is the USA overly draconian?
posted by wackybrit
on Jan 31, 2001 -
23 comments
Malawi's albinos are discriminated against. People are suspicious of their pale skin and yellow hair.
so they've formed the Albino Association of Malawi which is lobbying for such rights as an end to workplace discrimination and government aid for their unique medical needs. the ministry of health considers the group's demands reasonable and is working on solutions which would include education for comunities on how to look after albino children.
posted by palegirl
on Jan 25, 2001 -
3 comments
"States' Rights" hit the UK? First abolishing tuition fees, now providing long-term care for the elderly: the Scottish Executive is making life, um, "interesting" for its progenitor in Westminster. The downside of an unwritten constitution?
posted by holgate
on Jan 25, 2001 -
7 comments
This and
this aren't exactly what you'd call urgent breaking news. (Respectively they're about the Ring of Fire and historical earthquakes.) So why couldn't the BBC take enough time on them to get their facts right? [More inside]
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jan 13, 2001 -
8 comments
Americans 'have more sex'. No, that's not a order. But according to Durex, you're meant to be getting it more often, at a younger age. Does this say "as much about bragging as actual sexual behaviour"? Or are we just being led to think that "we are strange if we aren't thinking about sex all the time", as
this Salon piece suggests?
posted by holgate
on Oct 17, 2000 -
8 comments
Looks like any other 'amateur' web page with a popular culture slant, is actually the precursor to a BBC TV series about a dot com startup, the site is intended to be a tie-in to the series and viewers will be able to follow the progress of the site while they follow the progress of the characters behind it on TV. More
here.
posted by Markb
on Sep 8, 2000 -
0 comments
Hmm. Why am I not surprised? Muddling with your serotonin in such a drastic way has always struck me as an overreaction to depression. Let's be honest. In a world jam-packed with aggressive apes who deny that they
are apes, a little depression is a healthy response. Taking a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor just because you feel blue is like taking 10000 micrograms of Acid because you like the Harry Potter books.
posted by Ezrael
on Jun 6, 2000 -
30 comments
Cybersex addiction? Here's an AP wire story that's a fairly thin re-write of a
BBC story on people becoming addicted to cybersex. Some interesting facts -- it's almost 50/50 women (how come *I* can never find them? :-). Fairly balanced, if you read the whole thing, but still a bit inflammatory.
posted by baylink
on May 6, 2000 -
7 comments
the annual 8 day orange throwing festival in italy is ending today. [
BBC News real video report] -- great footage, they explain the bizarre tradition, show it, and show the aftermath [which includes some bloody injuries] -- if you saw a segment about this on bbc world news last week, this is the same.
posted by palegirl
on Mar 8, 2000 -
0 comments
