Has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

For the uninitiated, The Muppet Show was a television show in the seventies that copied the old style of theatrical variety shows. The show was populated with small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, who gets pushed into a big budget number with added realism with the sideways glances to the edge of the stage. Albeit in the stage manager's office controlling Viking singing pigs or listening to the heckling of the two old men in the box. This environment, created by Jim Henson and financed by Lew Grade is mainly populated by actors and actresses lovingly recreated in natural and man-made fibres apart from the celebrities.

The video above shows part one (of three) for the first episode of the first season. Within two minutes, we are introduced to Mahna Mahna - you could say it is a version of Psy's Gangham Style. It is sung mainly by a Muppet who could be wearing sunglasses or has really dark eyes singing lyrics that don't make much sense to the uninitiated but it is quite catchy. Does that remind you of anything?

On the flip-side, there seems to be no need to describe YouTube, but I will. It is a collection of videos added to by the public, "but was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal" (Wikipedia 2013). These videos attract "more than 1 billion unique users who watch over 4 billion hours of video each month whilst 72 hours of video are uploaded each minute" (YouTube 2013). But remind yourself of what videos are on YouTube - small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, small furry animals. Here is one of the videos you might find readily on YouTube:

Each media outlet, be it through television (120 episodes of the original Muppet Show series - Wikipedia 2013) or through the Internet (in 2011, it had more than 1 trillion views - YouTube 2013) has its similarities and its differences. But, if you are bored on a Friday afternoon before you go home from work and watch a cute kitten or watch a sheep baa, it is possibly because the kids in the seventies were brought up on furry animal sketches. Enjoy this Muppet song brought to you by the wonders of YouTube and spot the celebrity plug.

So can you answer my question, has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppet_Show. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

Statistics - YouTube . 2013. Statistics - YouTube . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

Oubliettes and why aren't there more of them in the real world

So should we worry about the oubliettes and why there aren't so many in the world. First of all, what is an oubliette?

According to Vocabulary.com, it is a form of dungeon that is "...very well constructed from the captor's point of view...the only entrance and exit being in the ceiling far above where the prisoner stands, escape is pretty much impossible." (Vocabulary 2013)

For the children of the eighties, you may have been introduced to the concept of an oubliette through Jim Henson's Labyrinth, where our heroine falls through a well of hands and is asked if she wants to go up or down. She chooses down and ends up in an oubliette at the 3 minute stage in the video below..

So creating an oubliette must have been a nightmare for both the builder and possibly the interior painter but a cinch for the architect. Imagine the profile of a brandy glass without the stem and other 

versions surely exist. Here is one image courtesy of Google Search:

How do you get a prisoner in there without injuring them, how do you get them out of there once the term of imprisonment has expired. I guess if the prisoner has expired before the time of imprisonment has completed, the body is left to rot to add to the overall environment.

What would the Third Geneva Convention of 1929 and updated in 1949 (relative to the treatment of prisoners of war) have to say on the construction of oubliettes and their use during periods of war. According to Wikipedia's summary of Part II, articles 12 & 13 to 16:

"Article 12 states that prisoners of war are the responsibility of the state, not the persons who capture them, and that they may not be transferred to a state that is not party to the Convention. Articles 13 to 16 state that prisoners of war must be treated humanely without any adverse discrimination and that their medical needs must be met." (Wikipedia 2013)

Articles 25 to 28 of Part III of the Third Geneva Convention deals with the quarters of the prisoners. Article 25 states: 

"Prisoners of war shall be quartered under conditions as favourable as those for the forces of the Detaining Power who are billeted in the same area. The said conditions shall make allowance for the habits and customs of the prisoners and shall in no case be prejudicial to their health." (ICRC 2013)

So I guess that is why there are less oubliettes created now after the introduction of the Geneva Convention.

It could be said that the smell of decaying flesh may lead to tunneling animals to dig through the oubliette's structure that could lead to escape for subsequent prisoners who have not expired.

This video below shows a Saxon oubliette under Courts of Justice in Nottingham which is really quite well conserved:

Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.icrc.org/ihl/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e63bb/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68. [Accessed 04 June 2013].

oubliette - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com. 2013. oubliette - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/oubliette. [Accessed 04 June 2013].

Third Geneva Convention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. Third Geneva Convention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Geneva_Convention. [Accessed 04 June 2013].