AFI 100 Films

Last night I watched the very enjoyable Annie Hall, a film that rivals Duck Soup for the sheer rapidity of laughs from the central character.  Everytime I find a film particularly interesting, it is always fun to look at it’s IMDB and Wikipedia entries.  In doing so today, I noticed Annie Hall appears high on the America Film Institute’s Top 100 polls for overall best (#31), laughs (#4), passions (#11), songs (#90), and quotes (#55). [Did no one else find the frequent sight of Woody Allen in bed scary, I wonder?]

These AFI polls were conducted last year (2005) and, while I agree with the appearance of Annie Hall in those top 100s, some of the other listings are simply weird and a lot about the viewing public can be read into the entries…

1. Take the ‘100 Cheers‘, i.e., the most inspiring movies.  A lot of movies appearing on the list, I admit, are quite inspiring, but what makes them good films are their cautionary tales that often end in disaster:
   • Bridge on the River Kwai (#14)?
   • The Right Stuff (#19)?  Grissom’s vessel “failing” on re-entry, most of the surviving original test-pilots being sidelined, and then Grissom being burned to death because the removal of explosive latches that failed for him at the end of M4.  Cheery stuff indeed.
   • Lawrence of Arabia (#30)?  The disasterous occupation of Damascus after the ‘traumatised’ Lawrence orders the Tafas massacre and his subsequent removal by the Army.
   • 2001?  A Beautiful Mind? Chariots of Fire? [I just noticed that all but one of these is based on a real story; what does that tell you about the world?]
2. And then there’s the 100 Quotes!
   • Why have “Plastics” (#42) above “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?” (#63)
   • Why no Duck Soup? [it was nominated three times in the 400 nominations]
   • Why a silly Keaton quote from Annie Hall (#55)? [there were two Alvy quotes nominated]
   • Interestly, “Excellent”, “We’re not worthy!”, and “One Million Dollars!” didn’t make the Top 100, which shows you how high-brow the vote was.

Wikipedia: Democracy in Action?

Wikipedia’s contribution to democracy receives a lot of hype. But it is not the articles themselves that are democratic, there the views of the last person to edit the piece stand, but the deletion review debates. These are fascinating to watch: the debate never really evolves, but everyone weighs in with their opinions, and a true consesus is rarely reached.

Real World’s Graduate of the Year, Kirill Makharinsky, has been keeping the Wikipedia masses busy. Someone — one of the family, I think it was disclosed — has been hitting Wikipedia with articles about St. John’s finest. The deletion debate received some strange comments from new users, but the (meritocratic) ‘consensus’ was thankfully in favour of deletion (now twice).

But this story highlights another part of the seedy underbelly of Wikipedia: to be fair to Mr M, it seems to have been an assassination job: as 84.70.175.84 pointed out, Kittybrewster (aka Mr/s Arbuthnot) may have edited the article PoV and then put it up for deletion. The article has gone now anyway (only the edited version is in Google Cache) and it’s nice to see group’s take wise collective decisions: Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, yes, a comprehensive one, but one that doesn’t follow ephemeral solar flares of notoriety, nomatter what Oxonian “sychophants” (to quote the assassin) think.

So, where does Mr M stand? Well, as one user said on Wikipedia, “Notability. There’s plenty of time“.

A quick overview of his companies:

• amiworthit.com, “The largest social networking club for students online” [own quote from someone actually on Facebook].
• ClickUni. (Coming soon! the site claims.)
• CanAnyone (COMING SOON, the site claims. Something — The Sphere Network — can be found in a subdomain.)
• Thinkplane, a consultancy with no online presence.
  (I hope I haven’t missed any here.)

Why They Call It Work

I’m off to Accenture this week on their Sampler Scheme so my mind has been turning once again to the World of Work, an exciting ride that Thorpe Park (see previous post) has yet to add to incorporate into their fun park.

Dutifully, I’ve therefore been catching up on my reading, as the flooding of my del.icio.us testifies, and worryingly came across this article in HBR: Why They Call It Work by E.L. Kersten [HBR, Vol. 84 Issue 2 (Feb 2006), p66-67]. It describes surveys that point to dropping job satisfaction in both the UK and US. “Robotic” seems to be an understandable descriptor.

Where the article is strangely insightful is the ‘innovative’ analysis of the reason for this decline: it can’t be that workplaces have degenerated so much in recent years (although, at least in the UK, the rise of soulless customer service centres must have had some effect on morale). Instead, Prof. Kersten suggests, it may be because employees have been taught to expect too much from their jobs. This seems to ring ridiculously true (so much that I hope it’s ironic) with Prince Charles’s ambition remarks about people having ‘ideas above their station’.

People may often have exaggerated ideas of their own achievements and worth, as mentioned in the excellent article on bounded awareness in the previous issue [M.H. Bazerman and D. Chugh, Vol. 84 Issue 1 (Jan 2006), p88-6] — ideas that I will admit on catching myself entertaining occasionally — and I believe that this may play at part in people expecting too much from their careers. We can’t all be brilliant analysts, communicators, leaders, etc. and it’s maybe only natural that we tend to more readily recognise our strengths and others’ weaknesses. And, yes, this may lead to dissatisfaction with our jobs, but I think that, managed successfully, this can be a wonderful force for the good.

If I’m happy with my job what is really striving me onwards through gruelling self-development to better myself? Is happiness — or rather ’satisfaction’ — just a manifestation of a lack of creativity and ambition?

For me that’s key: I think I can be happy in a job while being totally disatisfied, and long may I always be…

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p.s. When I just hit ‘publish’ and the title of this blog appeared on the screen, it finally dawned on me: who is the ultimate example of satisfaction? Grossmith’s Charles Pooter. He may do his job very competantly, but the book doesn’t describe any way in which he is singularly helping the company except when his son is fired, he worries about his own future, and he is really driven to extraordinary lengths to secure the custom of Mr Huttle’s American never-named friend.

Google Print

William Rees-Mogg has an interesting Comment piece in today’s Times on the future of the fastest-growing company ever entitled Grow up, Google.

He describes his small academic publishing company and claims that Google is threatening to overthrow the whole concept of copyright and thus put him out of business. Not only is the big G on a course to crush poor Lord Rees-Mogg’s livelihood, but apparently put and end to all innovation (“No copyright � no revenue � no innovation.”)

Much has been written about Google, and more specially Google Print, and their regard to copyright law. In one of the first legal tests of their technology, last week a US district court ruled in their favour in respect to their cache. The use of the material in a cache was deemed fair in a case that has a number of similarities to Google Print: selected copying and holding of copyrighted works where it is up to the author to opt-out.

This strikes to the heart of the matter as I see it: copyright is a privilege granted to creators of works, in that society agrees to afford them certain rights for a period of time, in return for public use after that period has expired. It must have a sensible framework that responds to the needs of society and the artists, and, if last week’s ruling is anything to go by, the courts agree on this.

It is not as if Google is actually threatening to end copyright; by employing the fresh technologies and a rather radical approach to information, they are stretching the possible realm of copyright into new paradigms. But, content creators have to realise that there must be limits to their control. There must be possibilities for fair use.

It would be nice to see content creators and artist groups realise that the new possibilities for using and accessing their material offers a realm of new possibilities for them and consumers may be fight back against over-zealous control [Sony?].

Google Print should mean more and more people finding the value in established print media. In the days of misleading blogs and suspect entries on Wikipedia, the public will probably finally get better at judging value and authority. This can only be good for society, informed debate, and quality publishers.

Forgetting about all these grandiose ideas, Google is essentially applying the rules that have evolved in the online world (caching, linking, listing, implied permissions of use) to the print world. That can only be a good thing (dependence on sensible thinking implied).
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Double Dragon

The founder of StyleBible, Amanda Zuydervelt, writes in today’s Independent about her experience on the BBC2 show Dragons’ Den.

She didn’t get the quarter million she was after, but says that this was not her primary motivation for appearing. One wonders just why therefore she comes across as so bitter: attacking the BBC and the show’s producers, before singling out Doug Richard, chairman of Library House, for some special attention.

This is one crusading, feminist* entrepreneur, who — for some reason — thinks that this perfect world owes her something. She seems determined to overlook the fact that society is far from ideal (thankfully), so people, as they are perhaps entitled (it’s their money, after all), will make snap judgements; but, crucially, it’s up to the ’salesperson’ to sell the idea effectively. In the article she criticises the Dragons for not grasping the potential for her idea; is this not, at least in part, her fault for failing to explain and pitch it properly?

Maybe she’s cleverer than all that: she admits that she’s after PR, so what better way than pitching an aggressive article to the editors of the Independent? Hits a go-go. Or, as they would say on /., Step 2: ???; Step 3: Profit!

She’s also written a letter in her company blog claiming heavy editing bias (as there may be) and even more bitterness towards Doug Richard. She even seems to gloat about the poor viewing figures. Admittedly these difficulties may not be entirely down to her: I can certainly see why 4m people (presumeably 2m men, therefore) would prefer the disarmingly charming Sarah Beeny to the impoverished Rachel Elnaugh.

* – I say this only because of her attack that she thought she was being branded as ‘blonde’, when — out of some respect — she may credit those potential investors with the ability to see beyond that.
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First-class Opinions

I hope I’m not being snobbish, but I really can’t see the ’scandal’ behind the disclosure in today’s Independent that students at Oxbridge stand twice the chance of getting a first. Now, that’s twice the chance (22%) of getting a first over a student at Newcastle.

In the days of online application forms that introduce grave prejudice against graduates with 2:2s, or even 2:1s, thanks to inane filtering by HR departments, moves to try to standardise class marks across the country are very welcome. So, while not wanting to put down students from Newcastle too much, it seems reasonable that Oxbridge graduates, who one can fairly reasonably assume are among the brightest in the country, do deserve a better chance of getting a first.

In fact, given the general fears of grade inflation, I would be more interested in the grades awarded by those universities that have to fiercely compete for students in order to survive: an unscrupulous department in such a place could very easily guarantee sufficient numbers by gaining a reputation for inflated class marks.

Rather than focusing on Oxbridge for an easy headline, the article should really have emphasised the disparity between Imperial and King’s Colleges, which offered the most firsts (25%) and fifth-bottom (13%) respectively. There is your story Ms Woolf.
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