Song, er, Singh of the Nitpickers

[beamjockey]

The new issue of Symmetry hit the streets. In it is Simon Singh's account of the mock feud he got into with pop singer Katie Melua.

Originally, the song went:


We are 12 billion light years from the edge
That’s a guess
No one can ever say it’s true
But I know that I will always be with you.

Singh persuaded her to re-record the song with more scientifically accurate lyrics:

We are 13.7 billion light years from the edge of the observable universe
That’s a good estimate with well defined error bars
Scientists say it’s true, but acknowledge that it may be refined
And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.


He writes, "Thanks to my flippant spat with Katie, people who would never think of picking up my 500-page book on the big bang were getting a dose of cosmology. As a writer who wants to get people excited about science, the writing of the original article was probably the most productive hour of my career."

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

And exactly how does that make the song better? Idiot.

[(Anonymous)]

The changes make it a worse song. It will sound clumsy, and most listeners will associate the problems with the scientific content.

[alicebentley]

I would want to hear both versions before trying to come to a conclusion like that.

[shimgray.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone actually claimed the revised song was "better".

"I admitted that I was embarrassed by my lyrics, which had sacrificed rhyme for reason. I had also sacrificed scansion and any notion of romanticism."

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I don't have any idea about the actual song, but just reading the lyrics, the original sounds sappy and empty and the update makes me laugh, so in the printed form, it's clearly better.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This affair strongly reminds me of Charles Babbage's letter to Alfred Lord Tennyson (who might not yet have been a Lord, I suppose):

Sir:

In your otherwise beautiful poem 'The Vision of Sin' there is a verse which reads -- 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.' It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill...

I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read -- 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one and one-sixteenth is born.'... The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I believe the figure one and one-sixteenth will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,

Charles Babbage


In googling for this letter, I found that Singh is perfectly aware of it.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Knowing Singh from when he was a student, this seems like a fairly typical bit of self serving publicity, and nothing else.