> It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics.
On one hand, it's definitely a joke, but on the other, Offspring frontman Dexter Holland has a PhD in molecular biology and Queen guitarist Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics, so it's not like famous musicians can't be highly educated in the sciences.
This list also includes Dr Brian Cox, who was in Dare and the live line-up of D:Ream (with such hits as 'Things can only get better').
And is a well published Physicist, broadcaster and educator.[1]
Also Brian May is deeply into Victorian Stereoscopy and has published books and movie (and takes stereoscopic images with his special selfy stick). He's part of the London Stereoscopic Society, I watched him present his film at a film festival.
Adam Steltzner, who was lead engineer for the EDL of the Curiosity Rovoer, used to play in a rock band. I attended his talk, and he was just as charismatic in real life as on camera.
I don't think we should be surprised to find doctorates in all walks of life. ~1-2% of Americans have a Ph.D.[0], yet ~1-2% of Americans are not academics. We've all probably been handed our change and receipt by an expert in Anglo-Saxon astrolinguistics at some point or another.
Hedy Lamarr has "co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication for torpedo guidance" according to Wikipedia, in addition to "appeared in 30 films over a 28-year career".
Natalie Portman is one of only 10 people to have an "Erdos-Bacon" number, which is your Erdos Number + Kevin-Bacon number. How many degrees of separation are you from co-writing a paper with Erdos and how many degrees of separation are you from being in a film with Kevin Bacon. Natalie Portman's Erdos No. = 5, and her Bacon No. is 2, for a combined 7.
If you don't know it yet, listen to '39 by Queen and pay attention to the lyrics -- the meaning of that song certainly caught me off guard the first time I realized it.
This website is beyond off-putting. I realize this was written 20 years ago, so I'm willing to forgive what, if written today, would essentially be adding cheap punches to a person who fought widespread mental abuse for over a decade. But apart from that, why is there a "booble" search in the corner, and why are there charts following the cleavage line of (a quite possibly underage) Britney Spears?
I love this comment. It demonstrates nicely how the web and (mostly American, I think other nationalities react differently) culture has changed over the past 20 years.
20 years ago this was simply funny. Nobody took it seriously. It even got an "awards" page.
These days, nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever.
Not here to judge right or wrong, I think it's somewhere in the middle, but it's an interesting observation.
I wouldn't want to be associated with such things not because I'm afraid of being lynched but because I've learned that it's demeaning to people. Pitchforks and pile are the excesses of a generally good movement to excise mean spirited or just unintentionally demeaning stuff from our culture but growing and learning to respect others is not a bad impulse. So I wouldn't pile on the author of this site but definitely will not be sharing it amongst my peers.
No, this isn't correct IMO. 20 years ago, this was funny to the small group of young men who would've been aware of it. "Locker-room talk" if you will. This was never "simply funny" to a lot of people, they just weren't empowered to say or do anything about it. Thankfully, things are changing.
Web technology isn't just the reserve of "geeks" making websites in their basements anymore. It fills every corner of our existance. It's no longer in the locker room and it should behave as such.
There should honestly be room for both. I bemoan the modern sanitization of every single corner of the internet. Remember what they used to say about TV? "If you don't like it, don't watch it". If you don't like it, don't view the site.
People should be empowered to say something about things. But in the vast majority of situation where no actual law is being violated, they really shouldn't be empowered to do anything about it. Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Why are so many people today willing to throw freedom of speech out the window?
You're free to engage in as much "locker-room" talk as you like. But I think more people are raising is simply in bad taste and often just cruel. Yeah, it's just speech and no one is harmed by it, but myself and are choosing we don't want to partake in it or give it the time of day. So go ahead, do it, but if I hear you doing it I'm going to think a lot less of you as a result. Your speech is free, just not free of consequences.
It's just unkind and there's not really any reason for it.
Strangers on the internet can't ruin marriages and careers alone. They can, however, shine light on things that might end a marriage, or a career.
My wife wouldn't divorce me if a random stranger on the internet accused me of something terrible. If I did do something terrible, then she might want to divorce me.
My employer wouldn't dismiss me if a random stranger accused me of something terrible. If I did do something terrible, then they might no longer want to be associated with me.
The problem is that these witch hunts are often not proportional to the alleged "crime", take the offense completely out of context and in some cases even ruin the lives of people who were innocent. The problem with the lynch mob is you don't get a fair trial. You get punished for whatever the mob says you did, regardless of what the truth actually is. Often what actually happened is blown out of proportion and sometimes its fabricated. Even when true, the "crime" often does not fit the punishment of harassment and "cancel culture".
If I make a dumb racist or sexist joke, I should be told "hey dude, fuck off, that's not cool", not have people calling my employer to tell them how terrible I am, harassing my friends and family or sending me death threats.
> My wife wouldn't divorce me if a random stranger on the internet accused me of something terrible. ...
My employer wouldn't dismiss me if a random stranger accused me of something terrible.
What if a thousand random strangers harassed you, her, your employer, your family and your friends with all kinds of accusations and death threats? Its not even that your wife or employer believes the mob, but that the stress and pressure becomes too much for them.
What if you made a single distasteful joke on twitter and instead of a few people telling you hey, that wasn't cool at all, instead you find tens of thousands of people harassing you and everyone you know? This happened to Justine Sacco. She made a very stupid and distasteful joke on twitter, to her 170 twitter followers. It got picked up by a journalist and thousands of people piled on to her. She lost her job because her employer didn't want to be associated with the press caused by the mob. According to interviews she suffered from anxiety and mental health issues for a long time after. Yes her comment on twitter was distasteful and racist, but it wasn't so bad as to warrant everything that happened to her. I've heard of such bully campaigns that lead to the targets suicide and it wasn't even clear if they were guilty of what they were accused of or not (but even if they were, their death is entirely too far!)
That doesn't seem reasonable to me at all. Quite frankly, I find it shocking how many people are not just ok with but also in support of these modern day witch hunts.
I don't know the individual story, but for me it sounds like a line was crossed.
> Yes her comment on twitter was distasteful and racist
Racism isn't acceptable in any form. If I make a racist comment, I wouldn't be surprised if my employer dismissed me.
I agree, trial by mob isn't acceptable, neither are death threats, and I agree that it's more common and that it shouldn't happen. (To avoid this personally, I don't use Facebook or Twitter) But if I make a racist statement, in public (because social media is public) then I won't be surprised if people start thinking of me differently and I won't be surprised if my employer decides to get rid of me.
The point is the statement wasn't good -- it was definitely in bad taste -- but I hear people make worse ones over drinks or whatever all the time. The correct response when it happens is to call them out and tell them to cut it out, that its not ok.
Getting someone fired over an off-the-cuff stupid joke is crazy. Getting a lynch mob to literally attempt to destroy someones life over a stupid joke is much much worse than the joke itself, no matter how sexist or racist it may be.
Besides, you don't change people by attacking them.
> I don't know the individual story
The specific story isn't really relevant, although you can look it up to see the context. The point is that the reaction is completely out of proportion with the "crime" and when someone loses everything over something as stupid as a joke, you either radicalise them or you push them to anxiety, depression and sometimes suicide. That is never ok no matter how racist or sexist you were.
> I won't be surprised if my employer decides to get rid of me.
Have you never said anything that you later regretted? I've certainly made jokes I wish I hadn't. She posted it to her 170 twitter followers, stupid sure, but how was she to know someone would pass it on to a journalist with hundreds of thousands of followers who would then spread it and complain to her employer?
I mean, sure, its dumb to assume anything you post online won't get spread and come back to you, but that's a separate issue.
Besides, it looked to me that the employer fired her because thousands of faceless "internet activists" demanded it, not because they themselves deemed the tweet was a fire-able offense.
Remember, this conversation is based off my statement above:
> There's a difference between calling someone out for something untasteful and actively trying to ruin their careers, marriages and lives over it.
By all means, call peoples bad behavior out! But don't go out of your way to try to ruin their lives. That is all I am arguing for.
> She posted it to her 170 twitter followers, stupid sure, but how was she to know someone would pass it on to a journalist with hundreds of thousands of followers who would then spread it and complain to her employer?
Because her job title was "Senior Director of Corporate Communication" at a PR firm. Her job was to anticipate how people might react to her, and to use that skill to show her clients in the best light.
It's not too much of a stretch for any of us to think "would I get fired if my manager saw this tweet in a bad light?" and then NOT TWEET if you thought "yes". There's only so much you can blame ThE mOB for.
Sure and I'm not making a judgement on whether or not she should have been fired. Perhaps she should.
My point is that the decision should be solely the employer and not under pressure from the lynch mob. In this case, the mob absolutely did put pressure on them to fire her. Without that pressure, they may still have done so, or they may have reprimanded her in another way, we'll never know. In the end, as long as she changes her behavior, I don't think her livelihood needed to be attacked and she certainly should not have been harassed to the point of severe depression and anxiety (which she talked about in interviews later).
Again, call out, reprimand, whatever is deemed correct. Don't incite a mob to harass them or try to ruin their lives.
> I don't know the individual story, but for me it sounds like a line was crossed.
I do recommend that you read (google her name and it should come up) it because it is very informative just how destructive these internet mobs can be.
Interestingly enough, she said her post was sarcasm to highlight racism and thought her 170 followers knew her well enough to understand that.
> People should be empowered to say something about things. But in the vast majority of situation where no actual law is being violated
That's exactly what's happening in this thread. People are discussing this website, sharing criticisms ("saying things" as you put it). Nobody is advocating for legal action, nobody is suppressing the author's speech.
> If you don't like it, don't view the site.
Sure! But someone posted it here for viewing and discussion. Should the comments only be for sympathetic discussion? What about freedom of speech!
> I bemoan the modern sanitization of every single corner of the internet.
There's plenty of corners of the internet that are anything but sanitized and will resist any form of sanitization. It's occupiers will probably choose that particular hill to die on too. 4chan would be a good (if you can use that word...) example.
> Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Why are so many people today willing to throw freedom of speech out the window?
Freedom of speech still exists. Case-in-point, the website in question still exists no matter how uncomfortable it makes me personally. Freedom of speech does not protect anybody from the consequences of that freedom.
People are much less tolerant of speech that offends them. I think this is a good thing, because many minorities were already often offended before but lacked the power to speak up. What you're seeing now isn't the erosion of freedom of speech, but the strengthening of it in the face of robust and diverse views.
Agree, but perhaps OP is bemoaning that some of the more tame stuff (like the Britney Spears bit) is being vilified. I mean, when you talk about "corners of the internet that are anything but sanitized" we all know how low and demeaning that can be.
I worry that this trend is polarizing — forcing us to two extremes.
> Kindly disagree. Compare the old Simpsons seasons with the more modern ones. There is a change in tone in general.
Sure, I agree. FRIENDS is also an example of a pop culture icon which has aged _really_ badly since the 90s. But consider how the demographic make-up of those writers rooms will have changed in the last 20 years too.
> The behaviour of Ross and Joey was pretty gross and would be looked on pretty badly these days.
Every main character on Friends was a caricature centered around a character flaw (or a stereotypical combination of flaws), so, yeah, any one of their actions would be looked on pretty badly now or at the time they were written, and Ross and Joey were pretty much the worst at the time.
Sitcom characters are very often far from role models for their time.
> It's no longer in the locker room and it should behave as such.
This website is not locker room talk by ANY means. The creator most likely had the hots for her, wanted to try and make boring nerd stuff more interesting & memorable and get more views. So what?
This is the online, PhD geek version of putting up a Britney Spears pinup. It's a fan/niche site, not the homepage of a major site. The audience is not kids; it's nerds.
She's a public celebrity who leveraged her looks to stardom. And a lot of people had the hots for her. So this guy used the shape of her body to explain conduction bands and valence bands and it's a problem? And an example of the cross that geeks need to bear in saving the internet with web technology?
Your opinion and ideal is not possible unless you censor content and user interactions.
And besides, the web got nasty once the general populace was added.
You can just look at your average friend and family argument on Facebook to see that.
> out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever
People like to claim this all the time, with very little evidence of it actually happening. Also the web is full of sexist shit, even 20 years later. I really don't see the point you are making.
In reality you are WAY more likely to get fired for union organizing or for being the victim of sexual harassment, rather than for being an edge lord on the internet.
It is isn't it? I've been watching StarTrek The Original Series lately and oh boy, have we changed. There is a Netflix Explained episode on Political Correctness, fascinating stuff.
To be clear, in my opinion we definitely changed for the better, the position of women at the end of the 60's (which seems so close) is almost mind boggling to me now. It's just 2 generations away from me, but back then my grandmother's mother told my grandmother: "You want to work? What? I'll teach you how to work, in the kitchen, and around the house." I think this caused my grandmother to be very liberal with her kids and as a result my mother was with me and my brothers. As a result I never understood how one can not see men and women as equal. TOS gives some "nice" insights into the matter though...
> To be clear, in my opinion we definitely changed for the better
I'd say most things changed for the better. But I'd be a hypocrite if I said there are no dark aspects. There are organized thugs on the Internet who will do everything to make your life miserable at the slighest hint of you not conforming to the current view on $SUBJECT. What's equally bad, it doesn't really matter if you actually did what you are accused of, it's enough that someone says so. As a consequence, many people just prefer to keep silent, including the ones who have the most meaningful things to say.
TOS is particularly interesting given how it made a noticeable push for equality and so on, a push that is much harder to notice due to different mores today and lacking context (for example, mini skirts used to be sign of women liberation, and IIRC there's at least one TOS episode with male crewman in a mini!)
Thank you for correction. Wasn't it per chance in one of the earlier episodes? I haven't watched TNG or TOS in ages and they were kind of watched at nearly the same time :)
The jokes fall flat because it's no longer taboo, it feels derivative even if it was original, and the context is gone.
This is why Bob Hope is lame to us. He may have popularized the "tight 5" standup format but everyone copied him and many do it better.
This is also why Amos & Andy is just a fairly uninteresting half hour of blackface racism or why Mr Yunioshi in breakfast at tiffany's just looks stupid now. Sure these are racist but when you look past that, they're also not funny any more.
They're pointing at some, bringing focus to it, but it has no more symbolic resonance.
It's also why if someone made say mrs doubtfire today it'd look like an outdated flop.
There's a societal context that gave these things a dynamic which no longer exists.
It's actually the same reason Monica lewinsky and draft card jokes wouldn't work today. There's no longer a supportive scaffolding to give it the context.
Race and sex based comedy can still be done, it just needs to live in the 2021 context.
It's still racist and sexist, which are both morally objectionable, but unlike this site, it could probably still also be funny.
For instance, you could do a black Mr. Magoo who gets treated with constant dangerous racial prejudice but in the magoo character, always assumes good intentions and miraculously survives everything. Runs into klansman, thinks it's a costume party, etc..
You might also be able to pull off the 3s company dynamic (in the original, straight guy needed to convince everyone he was gay so the premise was "straight man in the closet") but using a different spectrum that's more relevant to today's conflicts.
I think this comment says more about you than about the website, to be frank.
The distribution of people and cultures represented on the internet may have changed, but I think plenty of people would have seen this as objectionable at the time, even if you weren't as aware of them as you are now.
> These days, nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever.
Would the fact that the website is still up, _with_ a "contact me" link, undermine your point somewhat?
> These days, nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever.
To an extent - but 20 years ago was also pre-Facebook when use of psudeonyms was widely accepted internet safety advice.
It's mirrored an overall change in the culture. The left has become much more critical and sensitive, while the right has entered Satanic Panic 2.0 and decided that anything remotely edgy is evidence of Satanic baby eating and sees pedophilia absolutely everywhere.
20-30 years ago it was perfectly acceptable to make incredibly lewd or offensive jokes or have your band LARP as Satanists. The culture was far more tolerant of coarseness and taboo-breaking.
Here's an example that would drive the present-day left and right bonkers if it was released today:
> These days, nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever.
Or, er, maybe they wouldn't want to be associated with it out of other motivations, such as common decency?
I'm confused. If it is the photos that you consider indecent, surely you should be taking issue with the publicity machine that produced them? As far as I can see, this website has done little more than add a spurious connection to semiconductor physics.
Both of what? Both the publicity machine for producing the photos and the website for republishing them? Or both the photos themselves and the spurious connection to semiconductor physics?
>These days, nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever.
Is it really because "nobody would ever want to be associated with such a site out of fear of press and social media jumping at them and ruining their career forever" or because the web has matured beyond its "shitposting teenage edgelord" phase and many people now legitimately don't find that sort of thing funny?
I think you're turning a blind eye towards the more than strong association of Spears' public image and marketing with her sexual appeal. I suspect that the way she was marketed as an idol was actually influential in the business.
For instance, those photos of Spears were surely released on her behalf, to boost her career.
There are ways to engage with sexuality which aren't demeaning or dismissive. Personally, I would not say that "Booble" qualifies in this respect. YMMV
"Booble" and the other stuff seems like just harmless fun to me. I'm not saying it's particularly funny, but I don't see how is it demeaning or dismissive.
Is joking about this off-limits because Spears is female? If there was a fan-site dedicated to, e.g., a male bodybuilder; with similar attention given to his biceps muscles as is given to Spears' breasts here; would you think of it as demeaning or dismissive?
Another possibly interesting comparison would be with Black Sabbath. That band is responsible for a lot of groundbreaking and beautiful music, but they're are also associated with "heavy metal", which makes them absurd in most people's eyes AFAIK, sadly tainting the perception of Black Sabbath's music.
On the other hand, can you really blame anyone for making fun of the metal steretypes they let themselves be pigeonholed into? Their reputation isn't even an accident, it's connected with their target audience, giving them their niche. Arguably their music was even influential in creating the "metal" culture.
The takeaway here could be that there are usually different angles from which it is possible to appreciate (pop) culture, and it's stupid to let one aspect taint another, but also that there's no point in pretending an aspect doesn't exist or treating it with excessive respect (i.e., making a fuss about people joking about it).
EDIT: another relevant subject here is whether there should be subjects one can't joke with. I think I would like it if nothing was off-limits to jokes (even though I'm not especially funny). E.g., I'm pretty sure September 11 is sacrosanct in USA in this regard, and there are other subjects joking about which could get many a person quite uncomfortable, like child molestation, rape, murder, suicide, etc.
I myself sometimes get quite uncomfortable when I hear jokes about Holocaust and Jews, but the real issue there is not the jokes, the jokes are just a symptom of societal issues which should make one uncomfortable. I don't know what's the best way to deal with those issues, but I'm sure that making those jokes taboo is precisely what gives them a certain attractiveness and power.
It is possible I am overreacting. However, I think there are is a key difference between this and your example.
A male bodybuilder, specifically, has chosen to flaunt their muscles. There is an element of control and consent to the objectification of those muscles. While pop stars obviously use their image, too, the fixation on breasts feels different to me. It is not something that the artist has invited . It reduces Spears to her physical attributes, rather than engaging with the image she has put out. It places the viewer first, not Spears.
While I sympathize with your points I believe they are missing the mark. This isn't cringeworthy today because of the mental abuse that Spears was subjected to, or her possible underage status: this has aged terribly because there has been a seismic shift in how we (as a society in the west) talk about people in general, and women in particular. In my view, bullying and sexually tainted degradation has gone (is going) out of fashion, and not a moment too soon.
This website was ~7 years before her mental health issues became apparent. They don't need your forgiveness.
Her breakdown was handled very badly those 7 years later by society.
The Internets lack of empathy for mental illness in 2007 has been replace by the toxic virtual signalling we see today. It follows all the same patterns.
> why is there a "booble" search
If that's a genuine question, it might have been Brittney 'gif art' they have grabbed from somewhere, the logo seems to pre-date the website.
Internet humour in 2000, was like all societies as they progress, simplistic. It's a simple match of a 'rude' (but not extremely 'rude') kinda rhyme with Google.
Google also was not then what it is today, it might have been seen as somewhat of an in joke (I'm cool because I know Google and get the riff)
Britney Spears was also marketed around sex at that time. The internet allowed people to leave the medias bounds and parody it or cut to the chase.
Cheap punches? It would indeed be sad if Britney Spears herself were to see it like that, but let's hope she is more generous in her assessment of other people's motives than you are.
It's meant to be absurd. It was never intended to be "laugh out loud" funny.
The point was the juxtaposition of semiconductor physics and a pop star who made music for tweens. Remember that she was the most popular search query on the internet for a long time, and a lot of those queries were a lot more explicit than "britney spears cleavage." Look at it as a joke attempt at SEO at making basic semi-conductor physics rank higher.
> and why are there charts following the cleavage line
I always believe that these girls/boys who are dancing semi-naked, at the age of 10-17 need their parents/guardians removed/imprisoned (or worse). It cannot be that (in this example) Britney Spears was clearly being sexualized while underage. This can only cause issues later in life (if not early in life too), and for the example of Britney Spears we read about it in the news.
Yes, 'normal' (not exposed to such degree) also may go off the rails and shave their heads, sue their dads, etc. but we (as a society) need to protect children better from unecessary exposure and hurtful exposure. And social media definitely do NOT help to improve things.
I do respect the talented Miss Spears. As mentioned in the website, Hedy Lemarr was just a class apart - a great beauty combined with prodigious scientific talent.
I believe this is older. I first found this around 2002, and given that half the 1998-2000 internet was about Brittney Spears, it didn’t seem all that weird. Several female coworkers (Physics PhDs) showed me around 2005 without the slightest allegation of sexism, although they suggested I should make one based on male body part displays. If that exists, it wasn’t me.
Amen! It was digitally rustic (comparatively speaking) and each site was oozing personality.
Not saying I don't like the standardization and trends of today -- just that everyone's general inexperience with the web led to a lot of really weird and fun quirks at the time.
I met a traveller from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
and on the pedestal these words appear:
I've been fascinated by sites like this most of my life. A bit of searching a decade ago showed the author ended up with an undergraduate Desmond in physics.
What's fascinating is how useful this website still is and how genuinely poor teaching resources become once you leave mainstream education.
Serious question:
If I'm interested in getting a better understanding of the physics of semiconductors (starting around "atoms have protons and electrons" and ending around "...therefore an NPN transistor should act as a switch in this setup and a current source in this setup"), where would be a good, Spears-less place to learn this?
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/basics.htm
My prof showed a slideshow in class that included the band diagram photo, which definitely piqued my interest. I think its just an old school informative website on semiconductor physics with a Britney Spears theme, which back in the day must have been a great idea.
Oh boy, had forgotten about this little gem. Thanks for sharing, or I would have likely never gotten to see Dr. Gene Ray's infamous lecture at Georgia Tech. [1]
Quite sad to find out he suffered from schizophrenia. It will certainly make you view the video in a wholly different light.
On one hand, it's definitely a joke, but on the other, Offspring frontman Dexter Holland has a PhD in molecular biology and Queen guitarist Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics, so it's not like famous musicians can't be highly educated in the sciences.