Tuesday, April 1, 2003
Opening Up «
I’ve been looking into We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs. I’ve been feeling like a one-topic pony recently. I can’t focus on personal stuff properly. That’s not a bad thing, I could write about addiction or work. I could be more personal, even dull.
Looking round other blogs, this seems to be the saddest ever. I was severly shaken by the third entry Why carry on? which looks like a suicide note to me; no job, no relationship, and parents dead. And he hasn’t posted in over a month.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 6:07 pm GMT
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Love, Peace, and Harmony «
The Second Superpower is an attractive proposition, and one I would have embraced fifteen years ago. But something strikes me as wrong-headed about it now. This movement has a surprisingly agile and muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with world society as a whole — and who recognize that at a fundamental level we are all one. These are people who are attempting to take into account the needs and dreams of all 6.3 billion people in the world — and not just the members of one or another nation.
This sounds so — old-fashioned. My generation said we believed in that, so did the one before. It didn’t seem to happen. People only a little older than me grew up into Tony Blair and Jack Straw.
It is not our destiny to live in a world of destruction, tedium, and tragedy. We will create a world of peace. Very nice, it took the words right out of my Miss World acceptance speech. A charming blend of We are the World, and Workers of the World Unite.
Love, peace, and harmony? We all agree, don’t we?
Rebecca Blood "who is offering the most complete coverage of the war? The spin is certainly different, but with regard to access, quite possibly the winner is Arab television." Now this may well be true, but access is not everything. The most noticeable thing about war coverage, as with all journalism now, is that it is mostly editorial, speculation, and commentary. This is mostly a bad thing, and my faith wasn’t raised by the sight of the BBC’s John Simpson in the front row of a general’s press conference, conspicuously failing to take notes. However, some of the most insightful comments have come from pundits at home. This is because they at least have a crack at the larger picture.
However, the BBC, dare I say, the beleagured BBC, asks Are voices of dissent being stifled?
I mentioned depressing blogs yesterday. Salam Pax hasn’t posted in over a week.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:13 pm GMT
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Retractions «
I don’t get many comments, but this from Terry Pundiak bothered me, much as the picture bothered him. I thought he was wrong. Horrible things happen in wars, bombs kill people, and they allow the killers some distance from their victims, so I’m prepared to believe that the men in the trench had surrendered, and that their killers did not know this. It was, if you can call firing a lethal weapon at someone an accident, an accident. I think you can say many things about the media presence in the war, but fakery was not among their sins. So I didn’t reply to his charge. Mea culpa.
Until the LA Times printed this retraction and apology. Now I think anything is possible.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 7:31 pm GMT
I mentioned this article yesterday. This morning, I thought, well why didn’t I give it a really good kicking?
Andrew Orlowski: Antiwar slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the antiwar movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank™ to flood Google with Moore’s alternative, neutered definition.
Orlowski points out that the term was used to describe active protest, that is, on the streets, not pondering to a VDU.
To all the "A-list" bloggers, here is the Second Superpower.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:10 pm GMT
They say that one of the problems of women in the military is that their male colleagues can’t take it when they get injured. The press seem to have a similar problem with Jessica.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 3:33 pm GMT
Andrew Marlatt’s Axis of Just as Evil (for some reason often attributed to John Cleese), may not be satire, but it’s pretty funny. (In an US-kind of way. Scotland isn’t an independent nation, and anyway, I rather think that he had Wales in mind.)
Some good can still come from this was, and Boris Johnson sums my hopes in Blair’s price must be peace in Israel. (I think there are two problems with his conclusions. First, it looks like a US force which will take Baghdad. While the victories so far can be ascribed to British forces, the war will go to the Americans. Second, while it might be fair for Bush to listen to Blair as Johnson expects, his hands aren’t tied an he can always declare that the UK is an ‘irrelevance’ — or he can hide behind protracted talks with Israel.)
The Pentagon doesn’t seem to believe that Iraq can govern itself. I heard someone on radio 4 argue that the experienced administrators were in the Ba’ath party and were therefore "bad." (We are "good" and they are "evil.")
Cannibal dinosaurs. Don’t tell me you’re surprised that there was no honour among nine-foot lizards (OK, not exactly lizards) of very little brain.
Harry thinks that George Galloway should be expelled from the People’s Party after his interview for Abu Dhabi TV. Galloway’s comments don’t seem to cross the treasonable line to me. He doesn’t ask that our troops come to harm. He asks them to refuse to fight and come home, because he believes that the war is illegal.
As for being a traitor, the people who have betrayed this country are those who have sold it to a foreign power and who have been the miserable surrogates of a bigger power for reasons very few people in Britain can understand.… He added: "Given that I believe this invasion is illegal, it follows that the only people fighting legally are the Iraqis, who are defending their country.
That strikes me as sufficiently different for him to continue.
Oxblog draws parallels between the Peter Arnett controversy and the National Review’s decision to sack columninst Ann Coulter (whom I’m only aware of through liberals slagging her off; now it seems that her former employers agree with their charges).
For what it’s worth, I think that CNN had every right to sack Arnett, but again, what he said wasn’t treason.
Ann Coulter’s offending article demanded that We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. So let’s bomb all Islamic and secular states. Secular states? That rings a bell… And there’s Israel too. The next century will be interesting. (For the record, Ms Coulter was sacked over a year ago, and she was plainly reacting emotionally to 9/11. Oxblog is written by three people, who discuss this to death.)
The Onion, on form as ever in a crisis, is good on Bush Thought War Would Be Over By Now, and Saddam Speech Suspiciously Mentions Nelly Song From Last Summer.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:57 am GMT
WAR! US troops rescue Palestinian.
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? al-Jazeera thrown out of Baghdad.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Edwin Starr dies.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 9:10 am GMT
Friday, April 4, 2003
Nevermore «
I’m never going to post several times in one day again.
Instead, I’ve played around with the site settings, trying to make the html as valid as possible, including checking the RSS feed. I’ve also added basic spam protection to the email addresses in the comments, which now look like this: mailto:REMOVE_THISa@b.comAND_THIS which should stop spambots.
Enough for one day.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 5:15 pm GMT
Saturday, April 5, 2003
Who Needs Shakespeare? «
BBC Radio 4’s Donald Rumsfeld Soundbite of the Week.
The poetry of Donald Rumsfeld.
David Blunkett talks about asylum seekers on Radio 4’s Today. Mostly, he’s talking about Abu Hamza. But he says, rather oddly, after distancing himself from the extreme liberals, that he opposes the death penalty (fair enough, but this is UK law, and in the Geneva Convention), and will not deport anyone facing death or torture in their home country, regardless of what they had done or whether their asylum appeal was successful or not.
Now, if your government threatening torture isn’t an adequate reason for seeking asylum, what is?
Hurriedly scribbled @ 2:19 pm GMT
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:12 pm GMT
Sunday, April 6, 2003
Two Sides of a Coinage «
Not that I’m anal enough to collect them, but certain coinages are wonderful. In this Slashdot story, there’s a new (to me) internet acronym: FRRYYY, which I take it means ‘Free Registration Required, Yadda Yadda Yadda’ (and seems to be exclusive to references to the New York Times).
This may not make it into the countless little handbooks, like the The Rough Guide to the Internet, that attempt to explain internet arcana to ‘newbies’ (one of the uglier terms around). The New York Times has taken their archive off-line. Links to stories older than 30 days will no longer work. As many blogs and newsgroups discuss breaking news, this may not seem to matter, and the term may carry on, but the historical interest of blogs is diminished.
Straight Dope say that the phrase ‘yadda yadda yadda’ was not coined by Seinfeld (whose site, curiously spells it as ‘yada yada yada’) or Larry David.
When is a word not a word? Andrew Orlowski’s use of Googlewash comes under fire from Kevin Marks, who accuses him of selective quotation and ad hominem attacks. Well, all quotation is selective, but I don’t see the ad hominem attack. Orlowski uses the adjective ‘bashful,’ but that is following a self-deprecating quote from Jim Moore (who wrote the original piece). Dave Winer joins in, claiming that Orlowski doesn’t understand search engines, the article that Orlowski cites doesn’t even have the phrase second superpower except by implication, which is beyond the scope of even the mighty Google. But this is not what Orlowski claims — he says that the phrase (and its paraphrases) were around for some time, and have been hijacked by a reinterpretation. He doesn’t say that any one article has the ‘proper’ definition. (Both replies found through Technovia.)
Winer goes on with a strange defense: First, let me say that Moore has what it takes to be an A-team blogger. I could see that immediately as I watched him work on his new weblog on Monday. We share an office at Berkman. Winer’s perception borders on the psychic if he can tell by watching someone at a terminal if they’re writing Pulitzer class prose, playing Freecell, or surfing porn. Still, points for honesty in declaring a personal interest. Further down the page he says Jim Moore sat next to me. We’re rapidly becoming good friends. When I showed features he liked he giggled. So Winer raising his beautiful head in defence is admirable, but ad hominem. But when he says Moore did coin a new phrase, he goes too far, for instance, it’s here: Hague Appeal for Peace.
Neither attack addresses the original charge that Moore’s piece is sprinkled with trigger words for progressives, liberals and NPR listeners. Instead, both resort to ad hominem attacks.
Let me say that I don’t have what it takes to be an A-list blogger. But, like Carol Smillie, I’m prepared to cheat my way in.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:31 pm GMT
"This has been a terrible war for television news," Reuters quote veteran BBC journalist John Simpson as saying. Simpson spent the first Gulf War in Baghdad, and reported on the bombing. He emerged with credit for his courage in staying. He also spent several months in Afghanistan, which he entered disguised in a burka. He is a ‘well-fed’ six-foot tall man, so this took some guts. "I had size 10 boots on and I was not your average lady Afghan size, but I’m really glad I did it to see the reality of women’s lives there…"
However, this war has been different. Journalists have been ‘embedded’ with the troops. The old-style reporters preferred to remain independent and have missed the stories. Simpson has largely been stuck in Kuwait.
Hateful though it is, ironic is therefore the only word for his present situation. Simpson is reported to be injured after US bombs own convoy in N Iraq.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 10:03 am GMT
Monday, April 7, 2003
Fashion and Free Will «
I was in a paper shop this morning, the kind that only sells magazines, newspapers, and sweets. Or so I thought when this guy diffidently and not hopefully asked if they sold sugar. They did, but that’s not the point of the story.
I haven’t taken sugar in tea or coffee for several years now. I did at one time, and it seemed that everyone I knew, apart from my parents, did. I once shared a house with a girl whose boyfriend took only half a teaspoon of sugar in tea, unlike the rest of us who had at least two. And I thought something like, well, if he can have a half, I can at least cut down to one teaspoon, and within a few weeks I was down to a half teaspoon myself, which seemed like such a token gesture, that I gave up sugar altogether.
Now I suppose that, over the years, more people I know don’t take sugar, but I thought that was a self-selecting sample, because a lot of my friends could be characterised as “the health crowd.” But I went to a funeral a several weeks ago, and not really knowing most people, made myself sociable by helping in the kitchen. Out of seventeen people who wanted either, only one had coffee, and that with sugar: the rest had tea without. Though I knew only a few of them, they were all the same class as me, the same sort of education.
So it strikes me that my version of how I gave up is nearly irrelevant. I was merely part of a trend. At one time, we all did one thing, and now we do another. It’s not as obvious as changes in acceptable clothes, or catch phrases that disappear overnight, especially because taste seems so internal. We wear clothes for other people. We talk to be understood. But what we eat or drink ought to be a private choice.
There seem to be fashions in taste as much as everything else.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 9:21 pm GMT
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Out in the Real World «
While I’ve been considering such froth as the ‘Millionaire’ trial, there is still serious news beyond the war. Not that most newspapers seemed to notice. Congo massacre ‘leaves 1,000 dead’. The country the BBC insist on calling the DR Congo (the ‘DR’ stands for ‘Democratic Republic’) is still the setting of a conflict. Congo: Africa’s worst war.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:05 pm GMT
I don’t know what it about driving that brings out the worst in us. It seems to a combination of anonymity, personal space, and a feeling of control, all the buttons fascism pushes in fact. (Similar factors are aroused by blogging and newsgroup flame wars.)
I drove a little over a mile this morning to hand in an application form. On the way up, traffic was slow due to a number of causes, and the Mini Cooper behind me jumped a couple of places at the lights in front of Sophia Gardens on Cathedral Road, by going into the right-turn lane and burning off at the lights. I thought something like "you crafty bastard, we’ll see what good it does you." After the car ahead of me turned off, I found myself behind the Mini, when it stopped at a pedestrian crossing, behind a learner driver. There’s usually a lot of traffic coming into town on Cathedral Road, though today there wasn’t and the Mini pulled out into the opposite lane to overtake as soon as the lights changed. The learner turned left and I was behind the Mini again 100m ahead at the next lights. (This must be one of the most regulated stretches of road in Cardiff.) I could see the driver looking at me in the mirror, glowering might be more accurate, so I said things to the effect that what he’d done had been stupid and rude, and let him interpret as he liked.
After another set of lights, we headed off in different directions, as we waited he tried to outstare me, and I considered it best to look ahead.
On the way back, it was my turn to annoy someone else. There’s a pointless crossing on Lower Cathedral Road where southbound traffic has the right of way. This usually means that northbound cars tail back to the lights. (Yes, more lights.) If I’m going south, and I can see that the lights are red, I let traffic through. (I have to stop anyway, why not use the time sensibly.) So I flash my lights, and this classic-looking rich guy behind me (big Merc) shirt and tie, jacket somewhere else, is wagging his finger at the sign. When the queue had cleared (I ignored him) and we got to the lights (which were still red) I wagged my finger at the red. I though he was going to explode. I’d violated his right to go first, no matter that it didn’t do any good.
Maybe cars are the reason for the supposed decline in manners, as Peter Hitchens likes to fulminate about. Bet all this boiling rage and impatient was absent in the days of pony traps.
Would we be politer if we still carried swords? We’d mostly be a lot more afraid, though that’s not the same thing.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:55 pm GMT
Matt in Today’s Telegraph shows just how good he is at seeing common factors in top news stories.
Mohammed Said al-Sahaf’s belligerent and plain weird press conference.
Millionaire trio escape jail. On the second story, the defendants find an articulate supporter in Fred Housego (probably the most famous Mastermind winner) on the Today programme.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:43 pm GMT
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
2003 «
"He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed, greycoloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful."
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Chapter 20.
"His hair is cropped short. Half his teeth have been knocked out, his face is battered and the eyes sunken and haunted-looking. His chest is covered with 50 separate cuts from a knife, his back has even more marks, which he says are cigarette burns. Two of his fingers were broken and deliberately bent into a permanent, contorted position and there’s a hole in the middle of his palm where his torturers stabbed him and twisted the blade."
Shaking Off Saddam, an MSNBC report on the freed prisoners in Basra.
There are times when I think my opposition to war was totally misguided. Although there are lots of other countries with appalling human rights records. And we’ve yet to see how the next Iraqi regime treats its prisoners. For the record, there was a better way to do it, and whatever the reasons were (September 11, Weapons of Mass Destruction), they didn’t include tortured Iraqis, anymore than either the UK or the US fought the Second World War because of Belsen.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 2:00 pm GMT
I don’t really understand this story. (Quick summary, geeky guy with blog meets allegedly geeky girl. He posts good things about her. Then a mystery reader writes in to tell him that she is not all she seems. He does some research. The whistleblower is right. Tears. Breakup.) Why lie to someone that you’re in the same profession? I can understand pretending to be an oncologist or an airline pilot. I’m sure there are conversations in US bars right now:
Guy: I’m in the US Marines. Between you, me, and the gatepost, I shot Saddam.
Girl: you certainly got home quick.
Guy: You know the transporter in Star Trek? Well the military has it now. They beamed all the heroes home for some well earned R & R. [Pause] So how about it?
And I suppose you could pretend to be a model, even with other models.
Girl: it’s really hard being a model.
Guy: I know.
Girl: I mean sometimes you have to stand up. For a long time.
Guy: Terrible, ain’t it.
Girl: And having your hair done and everything.
Guy: And only being an hour late.
Girl: Well, sometimes three.
Guy: Astronauts and doctors have it lucky.
Girl: And miners, I’d like to be a miner.
Guy: Or work in McDonalds.
Though the truth should come out sooner or later:
Old guy in hospital bed wired to all sorts of machine [leans forward and pulls oxygen mask down]: Mavis, after 60 gloriously happy years, I must tell you something…
Wife [Choking back stertorous sobs]: No, no, you must rest.
Old Guy: I must, I must… I never was a gynaecologist, I worked in Wal-Mart.
Wife: You beast!! [Beats him around head. A steady hum is heard and the lines on the monitor go flat.]
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:45 pm GMT
Now the Millionaire trial is over, it’s got to be turned into a play or something. Tecwen Whittock should be played by David Jason, who can do clever, crafty, shifty, frustrated, and pull it all off with facial tics. I’m less sure who would be good in the other roles. Ewan MacGregor can’t really do an English accent, the right kind of actors are too old or too young. Maybe Arabella Weir could be the wife: casting against type. Chris Tarrant would play himself.
Is it a classic English caper? No one gets hurt, and everyone who goes on WWTBAM is greedy, so they’re just greedy with a plan. Celador, the production company are complaining, but their publicity (8 pages in the Daily Mail yesterday) can’t be bought — and just as the show looked like fading.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:17 am GMT
Thursday, April 10, 2003
The End Justified the Means «
I still think that this was an legally dubious war, fought for the wrong reasons. It has turned out far better than I expected, and I’m pleased to be able to say that I was wrong. There is still the peace to negotiate, and, of course, Saddam was in power, gassing and torturing for twenty-five years, so why pick now to depose him?
I fully accept that neither President Clinton nor the UN saw fit to rid the world of the dictator, but neither did George H W Bush or Ronald Reagan.
So right result, and maybe, this time the end justified the means.
The BBC Reporters’ Logs are excellent. Sadly they don’t seem to be archived. Or if they are, there are no links. So I reproduce some of the highlights from today, 10 April.
Baghdad Paul Wood 0521GMT
For a lot of the American marines, they think this war is all about defeating terrorism, they will tell you that over and over again. There is also a connection in the minds of the American public between the regime of Saddam and what happened on September 11, and apparently the flag that was draped over this face was flying over the Pentagon when the plane crashed into it.
Baghdad Andrew Gilligan 0655GMT
The problem now is the looting and anarchy that’s starting to bite. Baghdad last night was a city without law, order or electricity.
Baghdad Andrew Gilligan 1016GMT
Saddam Hussein has already been spotted in more places than Lord Lucan. He’s been in the Russian embassy, he’s been in the mosque this morning, he’s alleged to be on a convoy to Syria — no doubt he’ll soon be found on a sofa in Huddersfield.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 7:03 pm GMT
Sean-Paul Kelley doesn’t get it.
The popular warblogger thinks this is the future. He thinks that the internet and the media have been liberated, and he is free to take what he likes. He could not have been more wrong.
The old regime is still in power. Far from the new media having overthrown the stuffy conventions of the ‘old media,’ the mores of ‘professional’ print journalists still hold sway.
The new kind of journalism Kelley has been boldly fighting for has suffered a setback. This bold, brave new style doesn’t bother with attribution, with fact-checking and the other excuses for delay. Kelley wanted a fast-paced, slimmed down, fighting media that could respond to any situation at any time. He saw himself and his brother bloggers slaying the dinosaurs of the hated ‘clerisy of professional Journalists.’
He didn’t anticipate the traitors in his midst. Someone close to Kelley, someone who knew his every move, was reporting to the old guard. The informant was waiting for a false step, and when he saw it, he sprang into action.
Newly-married Kelley broke one of the rules of old journalism, one of the regulations he had hoped to repeal. Some of his material was lifted verbatim — without attribution from Stratfor, a paid news service.
Kelley was shamed into publishing a retraction on this website The Agonist, but he added a rider: "the old journalist’s bellies will burn in hell! They have sown the seeds of their own destruction. I have sent out bulk emails offering 10% off suicide pills and they are taking them and dying in their thousands. I tell you this, they will not take Blogistan! Victory is ours."
Asked if he knew the whereabouts of Wil Wheaton, he replied angrily "What kind of question is that to ask me? I tell you Wil Wheaton is alive. He will be in the next Star Trek movie, as he was in the last one. Star Trek will boldly go on forever. These rumours that it has come to an end are lies."
Source: Wired. Apologies to: Dan Gilmour’s new book (and see the comments on Slashdot), Mohammed Said al-Sharaf, and Kevin Marks.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:06 pm GMT
Friday, April 11, 2003
I Use Anarchy «
Julian Barnes in today’s Guardian: This war was not worth a child’s finger. Robert Fisk in Baghdad. Yesterday, it seemed like the jury had returned a verdict of ‘justifiable’ on the war. At the moment, they seemed to have popped out again for further deliberation. The jubilation of the American entry now seems to have given way to mindless destruction, I heard a reporter on the radio say that he had seen someone shoot a driver so he could steal his truck. People have been beaten up for being in the wrong district. Children fire rocket-propelled grenades (you won’t catch me reaching for those know-it-all acronyms of the hardened desktop general) at US soldiers.
There was also the bombing. I believe that the Coalition (ugly, but less so than a list would be) took several precautions not to harm civilians. (Who can say every precaution, when the obvious one of not dropping bloody great bombs on a city wasn’t taken?)
And someone wrote or phoned into Jeremy Vine to say that it looked like the Iraqis couldn’t run themselves without dictators. I consider that racist and not true, though the facts don’t support me at present.
Whether or not Gordon Brown has rejected the Euro for this electoral term, or whether Tony Blair can ever recover relations with the French, there is one more reason to be suspicious of the EU: MEPs vote to ban stem cell research.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:16 pm GMT
Saturday, April 12, 2003
A Well-Kept Secret Out At Last «
Now we can say it. Say it? We’ll shout it from the rooftops.
Say what? You ask. You haven’t heard?
TELL THE WORLD! Tell them now!
Saddam Hussein was not very nice.
Read this: "For over a decade CNN has knowingly hidden the truth about Saddam for years. People have been tortured and killed because CNN hid the truth in order to keep an office open in Iraq." (Emphasis added. Grammar in original.)
Saddam not nice, and CNN were complicit in his crimes! They might as well have applied the electrodes themselves, the liberal, high-minded, college educated scribblers. This is their pathetic justification.
A spokesman for Amnesty International said, "It’s really shocking, we campaign on torture and human rights abuses worldwide, and, despite our several reports on Iraq, all of which we release to the media, CNN’s craven non-reporting kept US citizens from ever hearing about it. Even now, many Americans cannot find Iraq on the map."
Now, fearless Howard, a listener to Rush Limbaugh (who as we all know, has been ceaseless in exposing human rights abuses), has come forward with the truth. He concludes: "So who is responsible for the deaths of more people? ENRON, Global Crossing, Exxon, the timber industry, Newt Gingrich, and all the other whipping boys of the left ADDED TOGETHER, or CNN? Pull the plug on CNN… they are DONE!" Done indeed, but hard facts are hard to beat. We’ve done a little digging on the number of deaths directly caused by CNN. This shocking statistic inludes all the innocents that CNN journalists shot, blew up, tortured, starved, or beat to death. It is not pretty. It is 0. We warn you that this may be an overestimate.
We are happy to report that there is no evidence to connect Howard, unmasker of CNN evil, with Rupert Murdoch.
If you want a good fictional account of media reporting on Iraq (as opposed to bad fiction and long rambling emails to talk radio stations), try Jonathan Coe’s excellent What a Carve Up!
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:24 pm GMT
Monday, April 14, 2003
Like Sheep «
www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com isn’t as bad as I originally feared. How did so many people see fit to link to it when it was down for most of the weekend (and down again now)?
I mentioned in an earlier post the Tom Tomorrow story Busted. The Guardian reports on a similar campaign by creationists.
Being British, I’m often guilty of suspecting that Americans don’t understand irony. WE HATE BUSH HATERS! proves me wrong.
And, while I’m on trends, The Econmist looks down from its Olympian perspective on Linux versus Sun, MS, and Oracle.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:49 pm GMT
Groundless rumour and conspiracy theories are one of the innocent pleasures of the internet. This is a good one: not that I’m convinced either way. The destruction of the staute last week was a manipulated media event. Tale of Two Photos, more Photos of the statue being pulled down and Robert Fisk on same. Perhaps the locals were too busy looting to bother pulling down statues. However, there seems to have been enough film of Iraqis smashing and shooting images of Saddam to convince me that a number of them were celebrating last week.
2,000 Baghdad Police Report for Work — under Saddam, the force was 40,000 strong. The issue at present is that the Iraqis don’t have liberty — not the law-regarding liberty we have. They have anarchy, which is different. I’ve always semi-considered anarchy (at last the shackles of our oppressors: parents, teachers, etc are thrown off!) attractive. I remember a piece in the NME on the Brixton or Bristol riots describing the community-mindedness of the rioters. (Tell that to PC Blakelock.) The hospital-smashing, grab-all -you-can madness that seems to have siezed the Baghdad isn’t the utopia I had in mind.
Is this a liberating army? It seems more concerned with the safety of the oil wells than with clean water or functioning health care. (Though oil wells were set alight in the last war, and the only thing worse than a rigid determination not to repeat one’s mistakes is repeating one’s mistakes.)
What does seem uncontrovertible is that the war was ostensibly fought over weapons of mass destruction. None have been found. Now, there is some strength in Rumsfeld et al’s argument that Saddam behaved suspiciously, as if he had something to hide. Even Graham Norton suggested that ‘now would be a good time to use them.’ But part of the horror of Saddam is that he would use weapons, if he had any, within his own borders. (’On his own people,’ would open a can of worms I’d rather keep shut for now.) His survival has been through fear. He may not have had weapons, but he may have wanted his enemies to think that he had.
Tony Blair may just be strong enough to stand up and say, yes, we fought this war under mistaken pretences, but look at the good we’ve achieved. Avert your thoughts now from poor armless Ali, the dead in the bombings, those who will die in fights over looting, the deaths due to the filth in the hospitals and the water purifiers which have been stolen, what do these matter to freedom and a nice palace for Mr Chalabi?
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:56 pm GMT
Dave Winer and his colleague Ben Edelman have discovered a shocking shortcoming in the World’s Favourite Search Engine™: Google is not psychic.
Google describe SafeSearch thus: "When SafeSearch is turned on, sites and web pages containing pornography and explicit sexual content are blocked from search results." This is what Mr Edelman found that it did. Google don’t claim that it can tell the difference between ‘hardcore programming’ and ‘hot hardcore action.’ They do say, "If your website appears to be filtered by SafeSearch and you do not believe that it should be, please write to [us]."
It must be a slow day for news. Did someone mention a war?
Hurriedly scribbled @ 11:57 am GMT
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Corrupted «
The BBC News site’s Technology columnist Bill Thompson asks Is Google too powerful? and suggests that it be nationalised or at least regulated. (I think this is from the being-intentionally-controversial camp; regulation would be likely to see Google’s UK office closed, and no change in company policy.) The piece includes a very neat summary of Google’s purchase of Pyra, and this admirably dismissive paragraph:
Blogging is not journalism.
Which of course, it’s not.
Blogging is like the comment pages in a newspaper, not the news. An Incomplete Annotated History of Weblogs defines blogs as "personal sites that are continuously updated, with commentary and links." The commentary side reminds me of the old far-left papers, of which only Socialist Worker still seems to be going, which divided into rants about international stories in the Guardian and stories of their upcoming protests and actions. Neither of these constituted journalism in the sense of recording events.
Some blogging is informed. Take Anil Dash yesterday on Google’s advantage is RAM, an informed think-piece which would shine in any computer glossy. He’s no less entertaining when he tackles politics with Spread the Love, but while he is authoritative in the former, the latter piece is distinctly ropier. Blogs won’t replace journalism, because they won’t replace research and knowledge.
That’s what makes some of the outcry about the Agonist rather hypocritical. The site does not pretend to discover or break news, only to discover breaking news. I’m not sure how naive you have to be to think that one man can run a site in Texas and simultaneously be seeing Baghdad first-hand. Blogs can break news. They can break the real news in life: marriages, births, and such (though they’re a rather cold way to deliver such news). They can bear witness to real events, such as September 11. And they can function as press releases: Dan Gilmour broke the news of Google’s Pyra purchase.
Blogs may (if they last, if the internet doesn’t crack when 99.99% of traffic is spam) be the raw material future historians consider, but they shouldn’t be mistaken for news.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 7:46 pm GMT
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Him Outdoors «
I locked myself out of my house this morning.
It’s one of the hazards of living alone, of course. I have a friend with a key who lives round the corner, but she is at work. I think that her son is living with her again, but if so, he’s not answering the door in the morning.
One of the houses down from me is having a new floor put in (they thought it would be done by Tuesday, but the builders are still at it). I don’t know them that well, although we say hello, and I thought that IF I’d left the back door open AS WELL, I could just climb through several back gardens and get in. Just as well I hadn’t really.
So, as I had no cards, no address book, I felt kind of stuck. I’d only gone out for a paper, and the keys were in my running backpack, because I left them there last night. The only other person with keys lives across town, and would certainly be at work. So I tried to phone him from a call box. I thought that the new number for directory enquiries was 118 118, that didn’t work from a BT call box.
Here’s why: there’s more than one 118 number now, and 118 118 isn’t BT. The ads don’t say that it’s not, as it happens, it just seemed a reasonable inference. BT does have a 118 500 number, and I had thought that after months of advertising the 118 118, they’d cavalierly changed it, just like their logo.
So I learned something today. There’s a cutthroat market out there for directory inquiries, and other companies numbers don’t work from BT call boxes.
Yes, I phoned someone else, toodled round his house, and dug out my keys, got home (made sure it was the right set) dropped off both pairs, and only lost an hour.
Things I meant to put in yesterday
AOL press release Litigation Offensive Against Spammers. Good, but I’ll be happy when I see a reduction in spam coming from AOL addresses. It couldn’t be that hard to stop mail going to more than, say, five addresses at once. (If you have to send more because of work, maybe you should use the work server.) The worst offender seems to be yeah.net/, and after changing my email address with everyone I ever registered with from my home, ntlworld, address, to my hotmail address, I’ve noticed one thing. Spam has hardly fallen off one, and not increased on the other. Most ntl spam seems to be of the ‘force’ kind that’s sent to everyone with a similar address
Saddam Proud He Still Killed More Iraqi Civilians Than US
Slate has a List of Books on Iraq (and Al-Jazeera, the state of Islam, GI experiences from the last Gulf War).
According to the Independent, Iraq has fallen. Saddam is deposed. But, after 27 days of war, little else is resolved.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 4:44 pm GMT
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Knob Twiddling «
ITV is going to show the ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ with the coughing. (Not that you’d know it from their website, although it’s the best publicity the show has ever received.) Jon Ronson in The Guardian covers the Millionaire trial. I knew that the Ingrams had married in Sully (near Cardiff). I hadn’t realised that Diana Ingram was from Cardiff (as is Tecwen Whittock, and Ronson).
Although ITV1 and Celador seem a little coy on the details of the broadcast (which hasn’t stopped them trailing it), I want to watch it to hear the coughs for myself (as Chris Tarrant famously didn’t). Will they play with the recording to make the coughs more obvious?
On a related subject: Did CNN Turn Up The Boos During Michael Moore’s Speech? Paranoid perhaps. I’m still struck by the idea of all these celebs frozen in their seats afraid to alienate any section of their public. So in my book, they’re all wankers. George Clooney can make his politcs apparent without the annoying shoutiness of Moore, and without cringing to public opinion. Roger Ebert on Michael Moore.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:50 pm GMT
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Tips on Netiquette «
Rule #1 DON’T spam. After that. Trim your posts. A Beginner’s Guide to Effective Email. Metafilter’s Matt Haughey on How to Write Effective Mailing List Email. Though it seems that email gets you down.
More rules. Don’t be sarcastic; don’t start flame wars. Zeldman lays into Winer’s take on CSS and Mark Pilgrim in What’s your Winer Number? calculates that "Since so many people have been personally abused by Dave [Winer]… the Extended Winer Number was created to distinguish between them." (Reading Mark reminded me of Jeffrey, and then I noticed in the comments that Mark was, in fact, inspired by his piece.) Is something going on or what? (A little digging shows that Mr Winer has indeed upset a lot of people over the years.)
Another story on the US versus the UN: the Guardian reports [US] Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO. I’m sure I saw this story linked with the cattle industry’s concerns over the number of teenagers in the US becoming vegetarian. Time on American beef producers attempts to win back young salad-eaters.
There’s been a lot of press on the Honda advert, but none of it that I’ve seen so far has noticed that there are in fact two cars. I saw the alternative version with a saloon last night. The main ad I’ve seen several times now ends with the plip key for the estate being pushed and the hatchback door closes causing the centre of gravity to move forwards, which in turn tips the car on the balance so it rolls off smoothly. The saloon version ends differently, but is identical up to the speakers under the glass causing the spring to roll forwards. If I didn’t dream this, and I’ve been ill and a little delerious, I rather doubt that it was ever filmed in one take.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 12:44 pm GMT
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
Who’s Greedy Now? «
Give him back the cheque. The Guardian found last night’s gloating Millionaire program as distasteful as I did. One of the tragedies is that Celador can produce this crap while the law prevents the Ingrams from getting a penny.
I hope, but I’m by no means certain that this is the end of the road for the WWTBAM format. The programme alleged that the successful fraudsters were desperate, obsessive, and greedy. As all the contetants seem to be. Getting on the show is quite hard: the lines cost 60p a minute and the basic call is two minutes. One contestant (according to the Guardian) made 1700 calls, but, if you feel lucky, lines for this series of the hit series are now open (surely they could have phrased that better?)
The story is being turned into a film, about a plucky TV company with franchises selling in 100 countries, defeating the greedy giants who … ah, well …
Amazingly, the British public seem to be lining up to scorn. Good job they abolished stoning.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 7:55 am GMT
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Mostly About Blogging «
Don’t ask me what an anti-blogger is, but I hear they have 7 habits.
The Guardian covers the launch of TypePad by Six Apart, the company behind Moveable Type. (The piece is by Ben Hammersley, who wrote the O’Reilly book on RSS.) I knew I should have posted this link to Anil Dash yesterday. (Hat tip: Dive into Mark.)
TypePad is going to be a remote blogging service, similar to Blogger. Moveable Type users have to have their own sites and database hosting. I’ve also heard Moveable Type described as having the ‘steepest learning curve’, though neither factor seems to have impeded its rise to near ubiquity. TypePad will also compete with Radio Userland. Google recently bought Pyra, the company behind Blogger, and they turned bad overnight. So look out for Harvard research which shows that the Trotts are, in fact, agents of Satan. (My source for this intelligence decided to remain anonymous, but he won’t get his Winer number down like that.)
Well, I’m away on a stag weekend in sunny Brussels for the next three days. So no posts from me until Monday. Unless I find an internet café.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:44 pm GMT
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
Back «
Going away for any length of time shows that missing the news never means that the world came to an end. Life is actually much better without news. I finished one good book — Norman Lebrecht’s The Song of Names, and started what promises to be another, Margaret Atwood’s Bluebeard’s Egg. The thought occurs that technology makes life worse, though it ought to make life better. (Quick summary of argument for life-improvement: technology adds more choices, instead of walking to work, I can, in principle, cycle, drive, take a train, etc; as no rational person would take anything other than the best possible choice — or at least eliminate worse ones— if the best choice already existed, nothing is lost, and if not, that’s one more strike for human happiness. But it doesn’t seem to work like that.)
Banging my head against writing scripts which count users and track referers. There was an invisible counter on here already, but it counted some spiders, and I don’t want that, plus I forgot when it went on, so there’s a new counter as of today. The referer thing at present is going to behave oddly. Once there are more than 9 referers, it will sort them into an array, chop out the duplicates, and sort them. As this will probably cut them down to less than 9, duplicates will be added until the process repeats. At some point, I should have more than 9 unique referers, after which I’ll tweak the script to count each.
The weekend away was good and refreshing, in a self-poisoning kind of way. Belgian beer is stupidly strong, but it doesn’t give you a hangover. However, after two-and-a-half days drinking the stuff, I’m still knackered.
As a stag party of 12 males, we wisely stuck to guide book selected venues and this eliminated any group decision making, if it didn’t stop us losing each other at frequent intervals.
The prospective groom (is he the "stag’ — I’ve never known) drank more than any of us, and even his knowledge of strange beers gleaned from the off-licence on Whitchurch Road, was expanded. He didn’t do anything more stupid than staggering home drunk, and resisting being put to bed, and jumping out the window in his boxers as soon as he was "free." He then climbed up a vertical fire escape ladder, until he got to the roof, where he discovered that he was stuck, cold, and his foot hurt. So rather than climb down, he tried to break in. But someone heard him, and opened a window, which he climbed in without waiting for an invite. He found himself in a room with two men and a woman, and introduced himself with ‘Je suis Gallois’ [an approxmiation of ‘I am Welsh’]. They called reception, who came up and led him away, without asking questions about why he was there in his now very dirty boxers.
They can be very tolerant in the Benelux countries.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 8:49 pm GMT
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Peace Dividends «
Well, I’m now convinced that the war on Iraq will have an impact on terrorism, but not because Blair, Rumsfeld, etc protest that weapons of mass destruction will be found, or that there ever was a link between Saddam and Al-Quaida.
According to the Torygraph, America will withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia. Now, this Summary of Reports Concerning Threats by Osama Bin Laden says "Bin Laden… vowed to wage a jihad or holy war against U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia because of U.S. support for Israel." Which will reduce the risk of further attacks? Crushing Saddam, or complying with Bin Laden’s demands? As always, Rumsfeld has a case for his actions. There really is no pressing need for a US military presence in Saudi Arabia now, and if the administration is distancing itself from the House of Saud, good luck to it. Whatever the real reason, Al-Quaeda got what they wanted.
Al-Quaeda’s "rallying cry is the liberation of Islam’s three holiest places — Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem," according to Who is Osama Bin Laden?, so simple withdrawal won’t be the end of terrorism, but it looks like a dangerous precendent.
Hurriedly scribbled @ 1:26 pm GMT
