Ahem

Nick Griffin on Question Time

On Dan Brown

I'm obviously not the only one to be horrified by just how bad a writer Dan Brown is.  Click here for the worst 20 sentences chosen by The Telegraph.

Optimism and the internet

On of the things I find laudable about a lot of the internet's innovators is a notable stream of optimism, even idealism.  Google's 'don't be evil', the open source concept, free content, all these things seem to be symptomatic of a broader belief that good will out.

I remember when the internet was first being talked about in the mainstream.  There was much chatter about how it could lead to greater tolerance, because people would be able to read opposing or divergent views more easily and readily.  Instead of just getting your news from The Daily Mail, you'd also be able to read The Guardian.

And yet sadly, the opposite seems to be occurrng, in politics at least.  I read a study once (I know, not very accurately sourced, but this is a blog after all) that demonstrated that people tended to read more of what they believed in online as compared to offline.  In other words, people tend to be exposed to fewer divergent opinions, not more.  I wonder whether this has something to do with the tone of some of the debates in the US. Maybe not.

I know this doesn't exactly chime with my recently-announced determination to stop being misanthropic, but I can't help but wonder if greater use of the internet as the predominant source of information will actually polarize populations more.  Maybe we'll end up looking back at Fox News and think that it actually was relatively fair and balanced.

America: back to not being cool

I have a theory that one of the reasons people outside of the US were so happy when Obama won is that most people really want to like America because they think it's cool.  Like American food, you know it's not exactly good, but it sure is tempting.  

It was very hard for most people to like the US when W was... doing whatever it was he did. So when Obama came in, we were suddenly allowed to like America again, to admit that it was pretty cool after all. We were prepared to forget Dubya, to overlook all that 'lying to Congress and the people so we can go to war' thing, and to gracefully pretend that the startling oddity that is Palin never really happened.

Them came the whole birth certificate thing, and the Muslim thing, and the whole crazy anti-healthcare thing ... and the US was back to being that embarrassing drunk friend at the party that you'd all like to ignore if you possibly could but is making so much noise that you can't help but look. And cringe. And wish they were cool again.

Sigh.

Comments, and my ongoing battles against misanthropy

I have a vile tendency towards misanthropy. 

This tendency, I know full well, is not consistent with being a Christian, so I'm working to battle against it.  As with many struggles, it's an ongoing process with good days and bad days. I've found that the best way to battle against things like this is to take concrete steps; too often we try to change behaviour by willing ourselves to think differently, whereas the best thing to do is usually to act differently.  In that spirit, here are two things I've resolved to do:

-Stop reading comments

The comments section on websites is where reason and restraint go to die. With a letters page in a newspaper or a phone-in segment of a radio station, there is at least some kind of editor whose job is to filter out things that are abusive or wrong. The comments section, however, is usually populated entirely by things that are abusive or wrong. I realised last week that I'm very rarely enlightened by anything I read in the comments section.Instead, I usually end up depressed or angry. So, from now on, I'm banning myself from reading the comments.

-Catch people doing good

If you want sustenance for a misanthropic outlook, it's easy to find (especially in the comments section).  But this is really just another version of theme days - you can see repeated instances of anything if you're looking for it. So rather than trying to find examples of people being stupid, I'm now on the hunt for people doing good things. I'm pleased to say that I've found plenty of instances of that, too.

I think it's too rare that we take note of people doing things that are worthwhile.  Not rising to a bait, letting someone in to a traffic jam (and then forgetting about having done it), those sorts of things. It reminds me of one of my favourite lines from one of my favourite bands (The Weakerthans):

"Somewhere someone's saying they're sorry, someone's making plans to stay".

More updates on the struggle to come.

Computer says no

www.hunch.com is a fascinating site.  It basically helps you make decisions, based on what it thinks you think.

To begin with, it builds up a profile of you, based on answers to a number of questions.  The more questions you answer, the better picture of you the site is able to build. Once you're set up, you can ask it questions like "should I buy a Kindle?" and the answer - your answer - comes back (98% no for me, apparently.  Which is good, seeing as I can't buy one in Canada.

But still. Worth checking out. I think. Let me ask hunch first and I'll let you know.

Internet = wow

I’ve just had a very strange and wonderful internet journey.

 

I was reading The Guardian online and saw that Radiohead had a new song out today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/05/radiohead-harry-patch-in-memory ).  So I clicked on the link and it sent me to the page on the BBC site that has the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8184000/8184802.stm.  It is a stunning, heartbreaking song that uses as lyrics comments from one Harry Patch who died just a short while ago.

Harry Patch (I discovered) was a Passchendaele survivor and one of only 4 remaining World War One veterans, and one of the oldest men in Europe. (Incidentally, Passchendaele was also the subject and title of a recent film made in Canada because of the central role that Canadians played in the battle.  The Canadian troops were so fierce that the German troops to nickname them ‘Storm-troopers’: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092082/ .)

 

Intrigued, I wanted to know more about Harry Patch, so I went to Wikipedia and read his profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch.

 

It turns out that Harry Patch was born in Combe Down.  Combe Down is a small village of under 3,000 people in the South West of England.  It's also where I was born and raised, and where my parents continue to live to this day.  Amazed, I clicked on the link in Wikipedia on Combe Down (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combe_Down) and at the bottom of the page was a list of Grade II listed buildings in the village.  In amongst the list was ‘Nos 83-101 Church Road’.  I clicked on the link to find a picture of 83-101 Church Road, Combe Down on the Heritage England site: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=444898.  My parents live at 89 Church Road.

Wow.

Do social media have a fundamental flaw?

With Facebook, Twitter et al growing rapidly, there seems to be a concomitant rise in predictions of their demise. The reason usually given is that they can't seem to find a way to make money.  That's obviously a valid reason, although I'd be interested to learn how long it took the telephone companies, newspapers and radio stations to make money. YouTube is still only a few years old, and I remember when I worked at a magazine publisher that it was considered good going if a new launch broke even in 3 years.

But I think it's worth asking if there's a fundamental problem for web 2.0 companies beyond business plans.  I'll admit that it seems pretty unlikely, but I wonder whether the whole concept of having to populate sites will itself turn out to be a trend.

Most social media sites now seem to be at the mercy of two basic human traits: narcissism (or, more charitably, the desire to connect to others) and laziness. Currently, the need to connect is winning, and social media is booming.  But I wonder whether we'll look back to now at some point in the future and marvel that we ever thought people would put in the effort to update other people's sites.

Just a thought.

On Twitter (2)

(I chopped this post in two as a sort of homage to the word limit).

2) It seems half-baked

It strikes me that Twitter doesn't seem like a fully-formed or thought-out service, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most services want you to grow your networks, and get more useful as you do. Most companies in general are designed to 'scale' successfully.  Twitter doesn't (at least in terms of the website).

With Twitter, the more people you add to your network, the less useful the website becomes.  The service gets more useful, but the site doesn't. So off everyone trundles on to other companies like Tweetdeck, which help mitigate the problems that Twitter has created. I know people burble on about 'eco-systems' and the like, but the fact remains that it's a service that doesn't work well when people do what they're supposed to do. That seems half-baked to me.

The second reason is that it isn't very easy to use. Signing up and all that is straightforward, but beyond that, it's pretty clunky. Answers aren't linked to questions, it operates on its own schedule not the users', the whole 'secret code' thing of hashtags, RTs and Ds is horrible, and it's hard to filter the stream in genuinely useful ways, meaning you have to trawl through a lot of rubbish before you find the interesting things.

It's not that any of these are terrible in themselves, it's just that they seem like things that would have been sorted out before a product was launched.

Or maybe I don't get it.  After all, I am the same visionary who ranted about YouTube and MySpace, missing the point almost entirely. (Cartoon by the always-brilliant www.toothpastefordinner.com)

 

On Twitter (1)

I've been using Twitter for the last few weeks or so, about a year after the cool kids started. I joined because I thought it would be the only way I could understand why people used it - there didn't seem to be any compelling reasons from the 'outside'.  Here's what I think so far:

1) It provokes disproportionately extreme reactions

For some, their embrace of Twitter seems so feverish that it makes you imagine that they delineate their lives in a BT and AT phase. For these Twitterados, the service is all that the web should be: fast, informative, easy, enlightening.

Twitter seems to make other people angry. It provokes comments more related to personality than service, such as 'narcissistic', 'vapid', and leads people to make suggestions as to the limited social capacities of its users.

I have a theory that both reactions come from the fact that a lot of social media end up being advanced version of school. There's an element of those who 'get it', and those who don't, with a certain snobbery emanating from those in the know. The number of friends, connections or followers you have 'proves' how popular or unpopular you are(n't).  The website (?) 'how long have you been on Twitter?' was surely written by and for those eager to show that they were ahead of the curve.

I find myself swinging between two extremes of thinking that it's either a) brilliant or b) a symbol of a declining civilization, twittering while all else burns. It's probably neither.

Mind the gaps

I've been thinking a lot about gaps recently.  Gaps as in things not there, left out, held back.

In music, for example, it's often what is left out that gives a song its impact.  Compare the two versions of 'Brandy Alexander' by Feist and Ron Sexsmith, and you'll see what I mean.  The beauty of Feist's version is that it's so sparse and 'gappy'.

I think gaps are crucial in relationships as well, in the sense of what's not said.  There's a great section in 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' by David Sedaris (one of my favourite ever books) about his partner restraining himself from making a cutting remark.  Sedaris says that he thinks that's what love is: not saying hurtful things that you could say.

I have a theory that you begin to appreciate gaps more as you get older. Maybe you become less capable of dealing with constant inputs, or maybe it's a question of greater discernment through experience, I don't know.  

I wonder whether we're in danger of filling our space with things like Twitter, texting, camera phones, iPods, etc.  When faced with a gap, we tend to lunge to fill it, and those things fill gaps really well.  But I wonder whether we should instead be holding ourselves back, minding the gaps.

The internet: still crazy after all these years

It's easy in this day and age to think of the internet as a collection of cool and helpful tools to make our lives more like those we find in the pages of our favourite magazines.

How refreshing it was then to come across a reminder of the sheer oddness that still abounds.

I found this site a while ago (goodness knows how), and it has a hypnotic effect on me because it's so bonkers.

I absolutely love it.

http://stargods.org/

My friend just published a cookbook!

An old friend of mine just published a cookbook  - 'The Vicar's Wife's Cookbook' - and it looks fantastic!  I went on a camping holiday in France with her and her husband (the aforementioned vicar) many years ago, and I can still remember a meal she cooked for us. Steak with squeezed lemon, and a salad made of rocket, blue cheese and plums.... delicious.

I want this book! (How's that for a subtle birthday hint, Mum?).

There's a review of it here, and you can buy it here.

 

The face of a boy hearing for the first time

“This photo was taken by photographer Jack Bradley and depicts the exact moment this boy, Harold Whittles, hears for the very first time ever. The doctor treating him has just placed an earpiece in his left ear. Date unknown.":

Uh oh

Just a thought

There have been a few  stories recently about 'surprising' pieces of good news in the economy (growth in housing starts in the US, CPI increases in Canada, etc).  Those that are professing themselves surprised are economists.  Presumably the same economists who failed to predict the current recession.

Maybe the only surprise is that we still expect economists to always get it right, despite the fact that the vast majority of them failed to see any of the recessions since the 1930s.

Just a thought. 

What happens when you lose your password

1) You don't update your blog for ages

2) You feel guilty for not updating your blog, but aren't quite sure why

3) You make sporadic attempts to remember the password, but fail

4) You get all confused because you also have a work blog and typepad thinks that it's the only blog you have and you can't remember how to get typepad to see you as 'personal David' not 'work David' (there's a metaphor waiting to happen)

5) You get distracted by signing up to Twitter, 18 months after the cool kids did

6) You finally sort it out by remembering how to get typepad to differentiate between your 'selves' and reset your password

7) You feel relieved

8) You feel pressure to update again regularly

9) You realise that you are social not-working and decide to stop

[The sound of stifled giggling]

From today's issue of the august New York Times:

   "In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britain is full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; East Breast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worcestershire; and Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire.

Others evoke images that may conflict with residents’ efforts to appear dignified when, for example, applying for jobs.

These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Wetwang, East Yorkshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent. And, in a country that delights in lavatory humor, particularly if the word “bottom” is involved, there is Pratts Bottom, in Kent, doubly cursed because “prat” is slang for buffoon".

I remember many a happy hour at the back of geography class poring over maps looking for such gems.  Happy days.  

Hope

More than anything else, this is why I admire Obama so much.

Words I like (part 3)

Loll

Surround

Seldom

You may proceed.

   

Business and goodness

Goodness And Happiness - Why Generosity Is The Future Of Marketing Strategy

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: digital planning)

Top 10s of 2008!

I know, I know.  You've barely been able to contain yourself during these last few weeks, waiting, wondering when my top 10 music lists would be posted.  Well, your wait is over, dear reader.  As with last year, I retain the right for a tune or album to be in the list that wasn't actually released in 2008.  My rule is that I had to have been introduced to it this year.  Because it's important that you know that, obviously. Thanks to the brilliance of Owen, all of the top ten tunes have links so you can hear them if you don't know them.

TOP TEN TUNES:
10.  Poses; Rufus Wainwright
9.    Cologne; Ben Folds
8.    ManWoman Boogie; Q-Tip
7.    Hearts on Fire; Cut Copy
6.    Blue Ridge Mountains; Fleet Foxes
5.    Time to Pretend; MGMT
4.    A&E; Goldfrapp  
3.    Your New Twin Sized Bed: Death Cab for Cutie
2.    Mirrorball; Elbow
1.    Dream Job; The Dears

TOP 10 ALBUMS:

10.    Cut Copy; In Ghost Colours
9.      The Dears; Missiles
8.      Hayden; In Field and Town
7.      Death Cab for Cutie; Narrow Stairs
6.      The Streets; Everything is Borrowed
5.      Sigur Ros; Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Enadlaust
4.      Fleet Foxes; Fleet Foxes
3.      TV on the Radio; Dear Science
2.      Coldplay; Viva la Vida
1.      Elbow; The Seldom Seen Kid

 

Snowpocalypse!

There's a big snow storm headed to Toronto today, and someone creative at the weather centre said that it was a 'snowmageddon'.  I somehow misinterpreted that as 'snowpocalypse'.  Either way, it's extremely exciting!

SNOWCOPALYPSE!  WE'LL SELL YOU BOTH WINTER BOOTS, BUT YOU'LL ONLY NEED THE TOES!" (or something).

Nut fight!

I know I should have come up with something better for my first post in a while, but hey ho.  Anyway, it's still a wicked picture.

We're really not that important

“It’s ridiculous to ask people to wait a couple of minutes,” said Sergei Krupenin, executive director of marketing of DeviceVM, a company that makes a quick-boot program for PC makers. “People want instant-on.”

Really? "Ridiculous"?

Maybe we should just learn how to wait for 2 minutes.  More article here.

Things I have learned from the internet (1)

1) Cats are often hilarious.

2) People polarize precipitously.

3) People think their views are important.

And if Obama doesn't win...

"That one" won

I know this is a bit overblown, but I find it difficult watching the US presidential debates. It's a very similar feeling to watching England play football: I'm worried about it going badly. Mind you, recent debates have been more like watching England 5 - Germany 1, or at least one of those 'hey, we didn't do so badly after all' matches. It now seems to have reached the stage where at the very least it would be a surprise if McCain won. If Obama wins, one of the best things about it (and there are many) is that it would discredit the kind of barrel-dredging awfulness that has characterized Republican campaigning since Lee Atwater et al.

There's something fundamentally depressing about a call to the lizard-brain, and something fundamentally un-Christian, in my view. Which makes it all the more depressing when it's conducted by people calling themselves followers of Christ. Somehow, I can't imagine Jesus being OK with hinting that Obama is somehow 'not American' (i.e. either Muslim or - worse - liberal), which is what Palin/McCain has been doing.  It seems contrary to everything He said and did. I honestly don't know how you can square running "one of the most appalling campaigns we [New York Times] can remember" with a Christian faith.

On a lighter note, Radar magazine has a few good explanations on why McCain pointed to Obama in last night's debate and referred to him as "that one". (Poster from www.barackobama.com).

Not even attempting to remain entirely rational in my support for Obama

Frankly, given the sinful mendacity of the McCain-Palin campaign, I'm fast wondering whether rationality has much place in this race anymore.  One of the things I most admire about Obama though, is that I know he will keep making rational points. And keep hugging children, as detailed in this blog, Yes We Can (hold babies).

Wow

Here's an example from a collection of 38 of the most incredible photos I've seen in ages (even including mine... ahem).  They're by a photographer called Yann Arthus-Bertrand, who's exhibiting 150 4' by 6' images all taken from above.

 

The painful truth

I am, as long suspected, a complete cliche.

Hope

From today's Time:

"For McCain, the most troubling sign may come not from the details of the poll, which are grim for Republicans, but from the historical context. No Democrat has crossed the 50% threshold in the general election since before Ronald Reagan was elected, let alone do so a month before the election".

Staggering

From today's Guardian review of Jamie Oliver's new programme:

"Travel the eight stops on the Jubilee line tube from Central London's Westminster to Canning Town and you find a decrease in life expectancy of nearly one year for each station going east.

A child born in one deprived Glasgow suburb can expect a life 28 years shorter than another living only 13km away in a more affluent area, a three-year investigation for the World Health Organisation found in August".

Glorious

When I saw this, I laughed out loud for at least 60 seconds.

My fear for the 08 US elections

Obama said yesteday: "You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid".

And yet they voted for Bush twice, an ultimate political and social insider masquerading as a man of the people....

Speechless

Wow

And it's not even finished yet...

Institutionalised dyslexia: the new frontr

One of my pet peeves is companies deliberately mis-spelling words.  "Kool Kats", and the like.  It irks me.

The internet, no respecter of spelling or grammar at the best of times, seems particularly prone to this slack-jawed idiocy.  Indeed, it has developed a particularly annoying and common trait (oh sorry, 'bloggerati', should I say "meme"?), namely the 'loud-mouthed r'.  Because people who run some internet companies are too busy to write whole words that end in the letter 'r', they are forced to abbreviate.  Flickr.  Tumblr. And now 'Graspr'.   

I'm sorry, but that's just silly.  Sadly, I have a feeling it's only going to get sillyr.

Magnificent irony

I spent a year studying Le Front National, the far-right wing French party then led by Jean-Marie Le Pen.  It was always a challenge remaining a rhetorical distance from a subject that veered between odiousness and forehead-smacking idiocy.  Fortunately, I don't have to anymore, and I can crow in a beautifully ironic setback I read about today.

The party isn't doing too well financially, and so has been forced to sell it's headquarters. What's fantastic about it is that the party of "Keep France for the French" and "2 million immigrants, 2 million unemployed" has sold it's building to .... a Chinese university.

Ahh... just great!  Rear more here.

Badly driven cars

My list of cars that are usually driven badly (in Canada, anyway):

1). Toyota Corolla
2). Any Buick
3). Any car with a box of tissues visible in the back window

"I like turtles"

I find this so funny that I laugh out loud for quite a long time.  I'm slightly concerned about what that says about me.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Design your own book cover

This is an absolutely brilliant idea from book publishers Penguin in the UK.  Basically, you create the cover for the book.  Such a good idea, it makes you wonder why it's not been done before (always the sign of a good idea, I find). They've got some rock and roll celebrities to have a go, and the gallery is filled with a mix of professional and not so professional looking covers. 

Only two small flies (gnats?) in the ointment:
1) you can't actually get the cover printed; wouldn't that be cool?
2) they're not taking any more submissions

Still - genius idea!

User-generated content

There have always been two nagging doubts in my mind about user-generated content:
1) once it's no longer a novelty, why will people continue to do it?
2) a lot of it's not very good, or at least, not as good as professionally produced content

I don't know the answer to the first question, but this submission to a Radiohead video contest refutes the second one:

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo.

Fun with charts

Twitchers

Some people laugh when I get a bit excited about bird-watching.  Others know the truth.

and this is just a song I love!

How to open a set

Even Bill Gates struggles with Microsoft

This is an unintentionally funny rant by Bill Gates about trying to use... um... Microsoft products.  A few choice excerpts below:

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess.