I love how as soon Stephen Fry said libraries the camera cuts to a picture of some books. Was there really someone in the editing room thinking "Oh fuck what if the BBC 2 audience doesn't know what a library is We better find a picture of some books"
Sex is lovely, vaginas and penises themselves are pretty rancid. I just tend to think of the theme music from The Good Life while making love instead. Much lovelier.
Fair play to Stephen Fry- he criticised negative, snarky TV that focuses on the things we hate in the world, then he put his money where his mouth is and made QI- the polar opposite. Got to give him credit for that.
+samwiseshanti Yes, but like all people who espouse the idea of indiscriminate niceness, he inevitably had to achieve it via projecting hatred towards something else (PCs, Windows). Nobody is universally nice.
Yet it would be very easy to argue against his choices as well. 1. Movie critics play a vital role in dissecting the art that is most pervasive in our current day and age. By dissecting it, we can glimpse what is possible or rather what could be possible, as well as analyzing long standing issues with media. Disassembling sexist or homophobic tropes can only be done by vigorously and sometimes too harshly looking at entertainment. It is - or at least can be - done for the improvement of media as a whole, which is a valid goal. 2. Art is subjective and policing other people's tastes is already a step towars authoritarianism. Noone harms others by owning, purchasing or producing shallow pieces of art. While one could argue that cheaply written novels would influence people toward unrealistic views of the world that can be harmful, a painted plate alone has no such power, so there is no benefit in taking away things from those that have a different taste. 3. A symbol itself does not constitute harmful cultural appropriation and a belief in extra-scientific approaches is not inherently evil either. The dream catcher as an example falls particularly flat, given that with dreams an important part of it is psychological, so believing in a magical item that keeps away bad dreams might very well put you at ease enough to actually take care of said dreams. Additionally, adopting a belief held by a culture that was ravaged by people of one's own culture at least gives the culture some space to stay alive. Having a dream catcher because it "looks cool", would fulfill the criteria for cultural appropriation, it disregards the origin and thus trivializes the culture. Giving something outside one's culture the benefit of the doubt is a positive trait. It's the opposite of "they do x, so we are in our right to commit genocide". Also, why are we so lenient with home grown anti-scientific ridiculousness but fail to show that leniency when it comes to foreign things? Wouldn't prayers more firmly belong into "Room 101", given how they are much more pervasive and harmful in modern Britain? 4. This one is easy. Language changes and evolves. We laugh at those in history who tried to stop language from changing, because they look like utter fools, very much like humans of the future will look back at those of us who fight tooth and nails to keep everything the same, to conserve everything. Being conservative (lower case, mind you), is what makes humanity suffer. It is what makes LGBTQIA+ people suffer, it is what makes people of colour suffer, it is what makes women suffer and it is what makes everyone suffer who has even a shred of creativity or abilitiy to think freely. Traditions - of language, societal roles, etc. - need to be questions. Do they need to be questioned at every single step on every single topic? Certainly not, but standing in the way of progress just because it hurts one's sense of familiarity will be the wrong thing to do 99 times out of 100. 5. Evolutionarily speaking, the dislike for something is the strongest uniting force and it always has been. It made sense in the day of nomadic clans of humans or pre-humans, and while we want to get rid of it rather desperately, the fact that it's hard coded into our brains makes it hard to shake. There are different approaches to hate, though, which are crucially divergent from one another. Hatred because of deeply rooted beliefs will make us hate other humans. Hatred because of something which is exactly as arbitrary but more easily seen as arbitrary will make us groan, roll our eyes and hate other humans - for 3 seconds, before we move on. Coming together to hate the fans of the opposing sports team (in a non-hooligan kind of way, of course) for two hours will bring the most unlikely people together in their artificial hatred. This unity can last, yet outside of match day, the sane people will still happily mix with the opposing fans and might unite for different causes. Hating banal things together makes us feel connected. Noone will start hating a person collecting painted plates because of this show, but our collective hatred of said plates can give us a sense of having something in common. The truth of the world is that for every two people on this planet, they will easily find dozens of things they have in common, and focusing on that common hatred for small things might make us less prone to hate people for who they are. Because they hate astrology as much as we do.
I love that when Stephen says "libraries", the BBC felt it necessary to show a picture of some shelves with books on. For the benefit of their younger viewers no doubt.
Gosh... he actually put his own show in the bins... How cool is Paul Merton? And Stephen Fry is just awesome. He's one of those people I'd love to sit and have a conversation with. Someone genuinely intelligent.
How great it is when Fry is spontaneously asked what he would put in his "Room Lovely" - he even makes it look like he's really thinking trying to come up with some examples - and when he happens to mention the Mac computer they at once have one on their screen in the studio - non-scripted spontaneity at its best :D
The part where they discuss speech particularly 'you can't turn round to me....' almost made me spit a mouthful of beer at my computer. I could not agree more.
No, because this isn't the last episode. Ian Hislop was the last guest of this format of Room 101. He's the only person to ever do the show twice. That had a proper send off. It's on youtube if you have a look.
He actually says "people would SAY things like" which makes sense as the words which follow are an example. He is not replacing 'say' or 'said' with 'like'.
Hid did quite a anti-Windows rant on the QI Vodcast for episode 5 (Europe). If you find it on RU-vid it starts around 2 minutes into the video. He also owns enough IPods, IPads and IPhones to open a small store. Stephen claims to have bought the third Mac in the UK (that would have been back in 1984!). The first two went to his friend Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
LOL I remember when I was watching Neighbours when I was a kid and someone quite clearly said that someone else had "had a strike". I asked my mum what a strike was, and she said that it was in fact a "stroke". Totally that "Oi noi" syndrome Stephen mentioned here!
1:36 - The explanation I've heard for using "like" instead of "said" is that it implies that what is reported is an *approximation* of what was actually said. i.e. "He said something *like* this, but those weren't his exact words."
How could you have not known that already, he is at the launch of pretty much every new iPad and iPhone and has allways said about how much he likes apple products.
Frus latest twitter: Giving a little talk to a school later on. Everyone looking gorgeous and smiley and absurdly young. No, not in the least "attracted" to kids about 40 years younger than him.
If Steven Fry ever stops doing QI, I hope he starts doing "Room Lovely." Fry would be a fabulous host. He'd keep the guests honest and remind the world what a wonder it is.
my friend's mum once started talking to us about the word 'like' and how it is overused in conversation and it always make me thing about the word after I've used it.
I don't consider redundancy a problem with language. If we were to strip out all that is redundant with English we would be talking Orwell's "Newspeak".
Ive's a good designer, and more responsible for Apple's success than Jobs was (in my opinion). But without Dieter Rams' designs, Ive would not be close to where he is today.
@33six The problem with Microsoft and Windows is it's still largely in the same mind set it has been for the last 20 years. It's a case of "it'll do". WIndows 7 and WIndows Phone 7 are a nice step in the right direction, but on the desktop we're still stuck with a lot of different UI elements and designs dating back over several versions of Windows which have yet to be updated to be consistent with the newer look. Their other software also isn't consistent in UI and so on.
@Craxblorg Probably not really a case of him 'letting' it go out on that channel, more that they were just the easiest route towards getting it made. To be honest, Pixar also say that they don't really think about the audience that much. When I saw Toy Story 3, there was barely any children there either! And we went on the weekend after it opened, so the place was packed! Maybe I'm just lucky.
@Craxblorg Ren & Stimpy isn't a children's cartoon and they haven't made any new episodes for about 15 years! But at least you still have children's TV in the US. There's barely any in Britain now. Both the BBC and ITV have scaled their output back massively. A couple of good shows survive though.
What a fantastic show. I would love to have a version of this made here in the U.S. Somehow I envision Dennis Miller being the host of it. And the guest on the first episode should be Lewis Black, to show everyone how it's done. XD
@Soundfrequency I think he appreciates the attention given to its design. You must admit that overall, Macs are prettier than PCs, OS and casing, whether or not you like to use them.
If I won a dinner date for three, it would be me, Stephen Fry and a damn good sommelier. I think the evening would be - for me at least - memorable. Anyone who is capable of knowledgeably mentioning Amy Turtle and Wittgenstein in one brief exchange is ok by me.
@TalesOfWar Pixar are regarded as more the exception than the rule though. At least as far as most mass audience cinema is concerned. I was referring more to TV though in my point about US industrialisation. (It's also debatable as to whether Pixar have never made a film pitched by an outsider. Brad Bird was originally going to make The Incredibles with Warner Bros. But I don't know if he told Pixar about the idea before or after he accepted their offer to work there.)
@lewisner I'm talking about the current state of TV. If you think My Family is all we have left, then you're wrong. Admittedly, most good comedy on British TV now is in the form of panel shows, chat shows and stand-up - which are so popular now because we live in the age of reality TV, but that's another discussion - so perhaps Americans are currently doing better at sitcoms. But there's still Lead Balloon, Peep Show, Not Going Out, Miranda and more recently Roger & Val and Grandma's House.
Windows and Mac interfaces are essentially the same and it doesn't take much design a rectangle The people who deserve the credit are the engineers who actually built the computer and not some guy who stepped in afterwords and said, "Oh ya, uh, lets, like.., make it kind of see through and with different colours." I'm sorry to say it but Fry seems to have been indoctrinated by the Apple ad campaign and become a fan of a giant for-profit cooperation. (The other 99% of him is is perfect of course)
Sunny Delight generation?! Stephen, you're dating someone from the Sunny Delight generation! Don't group us all together, the majority of us don't speak in AQI.
@EinherjarServitor He says he liked them originally because the interface was so much nicer (before MS used GUI) and stuck with them ever since. I don't think he despises microsoft anymore - I think there are some favorable reviews from him on smartphones using windows floating about.
yeah it definitely depends. PC's were founded with the idea of word processing and business ventures. Mac on the other hand, has clearly developed into a media machine. i have no problems with a PC for the most part, i own a Dell Studio Hybrid, but when it comes to audio production, which both my bf and i are studying, a Mac is the way to go. he has a Mac and hates PC's :P plus a lot more things are compatible with a PC. there's pros and cons to everything.
@Nerfi Phineas and Ferb is a pretty good show. And Little Einsteins, for the younger crowd. Interesting for the kids, and not so mind numbing as to force parents to leave the room.
