Video: It’s Friday, OK fine… let’s watch a girl faint on live TV.

Video: Guy Goes Crazy & Attempts To Fly on Turkish TV.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

What do you make of the internet’s ability to laugh at the mentally ill? Should we boycott this sort of thing? There’s no denying it’s hilarious. But still…

Video: The day reality/gameshow TV took it too far.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Crazy stuff. I can’t believe this is actually a programme.

“What do you have next?” “Oh great, double social networking lesson.”

According to The Telegraph:

Children under 11 will be taught how to use the social networking website Twitter, as well as blogs, webcams and podcasts under plans for a new high-tech primary school curriculum.

The thing is, any child who wants to be on Twitter or who wants to make a podcast already knows how.

This ludicrous idea is being suggested because the government is run by stupid grownups. They think that the fact they just discovered Twitter (see here) means that the idea of social networking is a brand spanking new thing and that it’s all of a sudden essential to implement it on the ignorant kids of the United Kingdom. SOCIAL NETWORKING HAS BEEN AROUND FOR AGES.

Here are but a few.

School children probably already have new ways of communicating with each other through technology. They could give Gordon Brown three years worth of lessons in computers and the internet.

School is for learning about things that grownups know, things that kids couldn’t or wouldn’t know about of their own accord like Henry VIII and Pythagoras. School is not for learning about things that kids would do anyway whether they’re taught it or not.

No it's not.

Teaching Twitter in school would be like Sir Trevor McDonald teaching you how to skateboard, or Anne Widdecombe teaching you how to freestyle rap.

On the other hand, maybe this is a secret scheme to get kids off Twitter, and get on with their work! We all know that if something is cool, it instantly becomes uncool when adults catch on to it. For example, on a lot of TV programmes and films recently (He’s Just Not That Into You, Horne & Corden) they talk about MySpace as if they’re in the know. MySpace is dead and gone, no one is on it anymore unless they’re a musician or old. If a teacher was to actually order you to go on the internet and tell all your friends that you just had a ham and cheese sandwich, they would immediately beg to be taught algebra!

This is not cool. Not cool at all.

The government becomes more and more like someone’s embarrassing Dad every day.

Video: This guy has awesome reflexes.

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

It took me at least a week and a half to catch onto it, but I can now safely and confidently say that Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is the funniest thing on TV at this present time.

Video: Haunting footage – filmed under the water, drowned village, Capel Celyn.

UPDATE: After further research, it became apparent that this video couldn’t be Capel Celyn due to the fact that the town was demolished before they put the water in.

thelewiman:

its not tryweryn, the chapel was bulldozed and the graveyard cemented over,more than likely its from underneath lake vyrnnwy

LBfan0685:

The underwater views in this video are neither Tryweryn or Lake Vyrnwy – I was able to walk down into both lakes during the dry summer of 1995 and through the remains of both the village of Capel Celyn (Tryweryn) and the old village of Llanwddyn (Lake Vyrnwy), and there are certainly no walls or buildings left standing – although I was able to walk across the bridges in both villages – these being the only structures left standing.

For those of you who don’t know:

Capel Celyn was a rural community to the north west of Bala in north Wales, in the Afon Tryweryn Valley that was flooded to create a reservoir, Llyn Celyn, to supply Liverpool and The Wirral, with water for industry. The village contained, among other things, a chapel, as the name of the community suggests.

The video really choked me up for some reason. The fact that there are still buildings under there, to me is frightening.

A few months ago I got the chance to see the lake and the village’s memorial. I still find it such a striking symbol. Amazing that such a thing was allowed to happen.

I also went to see a Welsh play called Porth Y Byddar. This is perhaps the reason why recently, any mention of this hits me particularly hard.

The play really captured what it is to be part of a Welsh village, something which I have never experienced, but have a taste for when I return to Wales. No part of my upbringing has occured in Wales (minus countless holidays) so it’s amazing that these things remain so close to my heart.

The play also portrayed a time (50s) where to go to church was a norm, and the worship of God seemed to be more highly respected.

Characters were brought out beautifully in the play, which made the fact that their homes were drowned all the more upsetting, particuarly one mother who had lost her son to a drowning accident, having to move his body.

I’d love to see more media on the net on this, I will keep on my search; watch this space.

*The music in the video could not be more appropriate, it is Dan y Dŵr by Enya, which means Under the Water in Welsh.

Another appropriate track would be Dŵr by Huw Jones, which is actually about the drowning Capel Celyn.

The Pope is no longer ‘infallible’.

Papal infallibility is the dogma in Catholic theology that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of errorwhen he solemnly declares or promulgates to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals as being contained in divine revelation, or at least being intimately connected to divine revelation. It is also taught that the Holy Spirit works in the body of the Church, as sensus fidei, to ensure that dogmatic teachings proclaimed to be infallible will be received by all Catholics. This dogma, however, does not state that the Pope cannot commit sin in his own personal life.

This is an unbiblical and false assumption.

It has been made even more obvious that this is a heretical way of thinking in recent days with the current Pope, Joseph Ratzinger.

The Observer reports:

It is becoming something of a habit with Pope Benedict XVI. First, he says something that causes outrage inside and outside his flock. Then his officials offer “clarifications”. Finally, usually after a short but decent interval, he apologises publicly and humbly for any offence his remarks have caused.

Last week, it was over condoms and Aids. En route to Cameroon, Benedict told reporters on the papal plane that the distribution of condoms was making the spread of HIV/Aids worse rather than better. As the French, German and Belgian governments queued up, along with the UN, to condemn the pontiff for irresponsibility at a time when Africa accounts for three-quarters of all deaths from Aids worldwide, the Vatican’s website was busy tweaking. Condom distribution, the authorised version now read, risked making the problem worse.

If recent experience is anything to go by, before this papal tour of Africa ends in Angola tomorrow Benedict may well have made a limited public retreat. That has been how he handled the furore caused by his decision to readmit into his fold Bishop Richard Williamson, a British-born Catholic dissident and Holocaust-denier. In a public letter to all bishops, Benedict wrote that he “deeply deplored” what he called “a mishap” and added: “I have learnt the lesson.”

And in September 2006, when he was also in the line of fire, this time for quoting the anti-Islamic words of a distant Byzantine emperor during a lecture in Regensburg in his native Germany, Benedict used his regular Sunday Angelus prayer five days later to say he was “deeply sorry” for any offence caused.

Traditionally, popes don’t apologise. The church teaches that they are guided by God (and, since 1870, are officially infallible in certain matters of faith and morals). So Pius XII, the pope who failed in the Second World War to condemn the Holocaust, never subsequently offered a mea culpa. Even when Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, broke with tradition and started making public apologies, he only did so for events that had happened centuries ago, such as the Crusades and the Inquisition.

This pattern of making controversial statements and then backtracking goes to the heart of the enigma that Pope Benedict XVI has become as he nears the fourth anniversary of his election. He is simultaneously medieval in his habit of stating so bluntly what he sees as the church’s monopoly on truth, even when it flies in the face of reason, and modern in his willingness then to listen and react to his audience (and indeed, it might be added, in being the first pope ever to say “condom”).

Full article here.

BAFTA television nominations. Some predictions.

I was going to do a whole piece about my predicitions for all the nomintations, but then I realised that I haven’t actually watched half of the TV programmes nominated!

But here are some predictions I am actually qualified to make:

ENTERTAINMENT PERFORMANCE

Stephen Fry
QI
(BBC One)
Harry Hill
Harry Hill’s TV Burp
(ITV1)
Anthony McPartlin & Declan Donnelly
I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
(ITV1)
Jonathan Ross
Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
(BBC One)

I know everyone hates Jonathan Ross, but I still like his chat show; maybe it’s because I’d love to have one of my own one day *cough*.

In reality this nomination for me is between QI’s Stephen Fry and TV Burp’s Harry Hill, both are now no longer secrets that a select few watched and enjoyed, they are now truly mainstream prime-time classics.

My vote has to go with Harry Hill, because it is consitently brilliantly hilarious. He is actually the only reason that ITV still exists, the only thing which can guarantee a whole family half an hour of non-stop laughing.

COMEDY PERFORMANCE

Rob Brydon
Gavin & Stacey
(BBC Three)
Sharon Horgan
Pulling
(BBC Three)
David Mitchell
Peep Show
(C4)
Claire Skinner
Outnumbered
(BBC One)

Lots of people love Outnumbered, now on it’s second series, I only watched tiny little bits of it when it was on so am in no place to comment.

As you may know, I am a big fan of David Mitchell, but never have properly watched Peep Show; the camera angles get to me.

This award has to go to Brydon, as Uncle Bryn he is easily one of the best things about Gavin & Stacey. Just full of classic lines.

"Bryn means hill in Welsh!"

I’d like Top Gear to win the Feautures award, simply because it is Top Gear.

I’d like The Peter Serafinowicz Show to win Best Comedy. Very underrated sketch show. This guy is amazing:

Brilliant.

EPIC COLLISSION!

They won’t show it in this country I’m sure, but I’m looking forward to seeing it somehow.