What is “lying news”? How do you fancy the idea of submitting your website for Government approval before you can upload an update? Those are dilemmas that Turkey’s netizens are facing right now, and it could effectively strangle the internet, the last bastion of free speech, in the country.
That’s Turkey off my holiday destination list.
In case anyone didn’t catch this in ’s journal, Holywood is up to some rather worrying legal moves that could profoundly cripple the way technology develops over the next few years. Read, consider and, if you can, complain.
There’s often an assumption, usually found amongst the residents of the United States of America, that the UK and the US share a broadly similar frame of cultural context. This is, quite frankly, bollocks.
Take a quick look at this story: UK wants music embassy in the US. The key points are scattered through the story, but they come down to (a) virtually no British music is having an impact on the US charts and (b) the US is the most parochial music market in the world, bar Pakistan (which is currently edging the world towards nuclear war and thus is not a country to look up to).
Now, why is this important? Surely the good citizens of the US are entitled to listen to whatever music they want to? Of course they are. Indeed, I listen to quite a lot of American music and enjoy it throughly. The point isn’t that, it’s that many Americans are simply unaware of their degree of cultural isolationism at the moment. The British chart is a mix of British, American and European artists. The US chart is largely US artists. The cultural infulences at work there are purely American.
They are equally unware of the degree of cultural Imperialism that goes on. People outside America don’t mind it that much - they’re quite happy to use good American products that come their way. But the asymmetric nature of the exchange makes some non-Americans uneasy.
Many US writers in Livejournals, Blogs and newspapers are turning their attention to Europe and the rest of the world in a way they haven’t since probably the Second World War. George W Bush has been forced to play a bigger part on the world stage than he would have if left to his own devices. We all remembers some of the simply daft things he said about foreign countries in his election campaign. This change of focus is an inevitable consequence of September 11th, but one that makes the rest of us a little nervous. Why? It’s because suddenly Americans are commenting on things they have very little real understanding of. Sure, there are some well-informed commentators out there saying interesting things. But there’s an awful lot of people espousing a jingoistic belief in the inherent superiority of the American way, without truly understanding the cultures and philosophies of those lands. They haven’t seen their TV, watched their films and listened to their music. They haven’t read their books or skimmed their magazines. They see everything through glasses with the stars and stripes printed on them. Indeed, many seem genuinely surprised when they discover that people hold different views from them and promptly set out to persuade the poor, ignorant natives.
I freely admit that not every American is guilty of this, but there’s enough of them out there to make web browsing an increasingly uncomfortable experience. The really curious thing is that the attitude I’m describing here reminds me powerfully of the attitudes of the British in the 19th Century. Any chance of learning from our mistakes?
While the Americans that make up the majority of my readership (with apologies to jackslack, ladyjestyr and eyebeams) are busy enjoying Dead American Soldier day, I’m labouring away in the office in a desperate attempt to get ahead. Next week, you see, we have two days' holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Now, that would be a cause for rejoicing in most quarters, but for us poor devils on weekly magazines it means doing five days' work in three. Pah. Humbug.
I’ve done quite a bit to get ahead, so I’ve been passing that mid-afternoon lull coming up with stupid ideas for the real names of major holidays with ladyjestyr:
Small Furry Subterranean Mammal Superstition Commemoration Day
Day Co-opted From Ancient Religious and Spiritual Traditions and Now Hijacked To Represent The Alleged Birth of a Judeo-Christian Iconic Personality
Day That Those Ungrateful Colonials Celebrate Their Treachery In Kicking Their Rightful Lords and Masters Out of The UK’s American Colonies
Day That Those Ungrateful Colonials Celebrate Their Treachery In Kicking Their Rightful Lords and Masters Out of The UK’s Australian Colonies, Except The Governmental Apparatus, Because Quite Frankly If You Let Australians Elect Their Head Of State You’d Get A Bloody Rugby League Player for President.
Lativa have won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with a rather upbeat Latin number. Hurrah for them.
Britain came in a respectable third equal with Estonia. We beat the French!
You know, there’s only really two important bits of tech a journalist needs: the PC and the phone.
We’ve been without our office phones for four hours now. It’s been a pretty relaxed afternoon here at work. Mind you, it’s always pretty relaxed on a Friday. The news team barely ever put in an appearance, as the issue’s already gone to bed. That just leaves us dedicated features types bashing out our 1k+ of insightful prose. Hell, by early afternoon we loose the production folks to the pub.
I’m teetotal boy this evening though, as it’s the Suffolk drive for me. Vive l’iPod!
The new Star Wars movie? Tremendous fun. I enjoyed myself thoroughly.
That’s all I have to say on the subject. It’s just a mass market movie. It’s really not worth all the words that have been devoted to it in Blogs, magazines, Livejournals and papers. But it is worth a few quid and a couple of hours of your time.
I wish it noted that there are good day in life and there are bad days in life. A day which starts with your mobile phone being nicked from your bad while walking from the gym to a meeting has all the makings of a bad day. However, I’m seeing Lorna for the first time since Sunday tonight, so I’m rather hoping it’ll evolve into a good day. Let’s hope, eh?
We’re meeting up in London tonight to see (you guessed it) Attack of the Clones. Lorna is quite excessively excited and I can’t help but be carried along in her wave of enthusiasm.
In the meantime, people might like to read this spoiler-free interview with George Lucas, from the UK’s The Guardian newspaper. I think it makes some very interesting points about what he’s trying to achieve.
After four hours in Ipswich hospital, we have learned that Mum does not have a problem with her retina. She merely has Posterior Vitreous Detachment, which means the jelly that makes up her eye is shrinking. The problems she’s been getting are the result of the shrinking jelly tugging on the retina and optic nerve. All should be well again in six to eight weeks. Back to London this afternoon, but for now it’s off to the pub for lunch!
After a two hour drive through the driving rain, I’m here in Suffolk. It’s odd to be here on a weekday evening again, but not unpleasant. Mum’s gone to bed, and I’m bashing out a feature for the magazine, as I won’t be in the office to do it tomorrow.
The iPod was a marvel on the way up. Hook it up to the cassette that comes with Dr Bot’s iPod Connection Kit, put that in the stereo and then put the iPod on random play, and the driving tunes are sorted. It made a difficult drive in the dark and pouring rain much, much easier.
My brother is proving that he is his mother’s son by getting increasingly panicky about tomorrow. He’s really scared about a repeat of last year, which seem out of proportion given what’s actually wrong with Mum. Still, the poor boy’s under a lot of stress right now (self-inflicted admittedly) and I think it’s getting to him. The financial stretch of doing up this house is making him insecure and the last thing he needs is another threat to his family. Just as well it’s only a retina problem.
Hmm. Better get some sleep. I need to drive to the hospital at 8am tomorrow.
Looks like I have an impromptu trip to Suffolk ahead of me tonight. Mum has a problem with a partially detached retina. She may need operating on, so it’s off to Suffolk I go. Let’s hope it all goes easily.
This is a bloody good idea, and what’s more, it came from Ireland.
This is a better site for people in the US.
Those of you who recall my rant about CDs which won’t play in PCs or Macs might want to check out this site, which has more information about what I’m talking about.
Damn you, Sony!
There’s a guy who can’t be older than 21 or 22, thin and geeky looking, snoring like a complete bastard. Concentration slipping….
Time to turn up the volume on the iPod, I think.
I’m on the road today, paying a visit to York to interview the chief executive of a software and web firm specialising in the property industry. It’s nice to be traveling again. It used to be a major part of my job, but my time out of the office has declined sharply in the last 18 months. Spending four hours or so on a train is a surprisingly relaxing experience.
I made a little mistake on the way up, though. It was foolish, but easily done. After all, how was I to know that the carriage I chose was a Quiet Zone, which bans the use of electronic equipment? To me, it was just the quiet carriage with plenty of seats free. It was only once I was sat down and comfortable that I noticed the discreet sticker informing me of the restrictions. So, for two hours I was deprived of the use of my iBook, iPod, Visor and mobile phone. I rather enjoyed it. I read the paper, stared out the window for a while and just let life pass me by.
Of course, it couldn’t last. Here I am on the way back, iBook open and iPod playing. And yes, I’m writing a journal entry in the rather nifty offline application YaxJournal, which rocks for this sort of thing one of the major advantages LiveJournal has over Blogger at the moment.
These journeys out of London go a long way to reminding me just how pleasant a country the UK can be at times. London is so different to the rest of the nation that you forget how easily you can reach the countryside, how much slower the pace of life is and how beautiful everything is once you escape the terrible pull of the capital. I’m maybe an hour away from hitting London again as I write this (Grantham station on the edge of Lincolnshire if you’re interested) and I’m not much looking forward to being back there, especially as I have a tube journey ahead in just pre-rush hour traffic. Bah and indeed, Humbug.
Another university friend has just become a proud and slightly deviant father. Truly, middle age approaches.
A few of you may have noticed that I’ve been rather quiet on here of late. One or two of you might have even cared. There’s a reason for this, which is mainly down to my experimentation with Blogging. Within the next couple of weeks I expect to have my Blog up and going.
That doesn’t mean that I’m abandoning LiveJournal, though. I intend to use Blogger for the more in-depth political thoughts and ramblings I have (much as James does here) and save LiveJournal for this kind of day-to-day nonsense. More news as I have it.
Oh, and suggestions for the name of my Blog will be gratefully received.
I’ve been silent a little while, but that’s to be expected when a long weekend with my girlfriend and my garden has kept me from my computers. Tomorrow should provide a little more time fo journaling, so I’ll catch you all then.
Normally, I like Fridays. This Friday in particular should be a good one, because Lorna is returning from a week away in Majorca with her family.
However, instead I have woken up to two pretty depressing pieces of news. The first is that the British National Party, the right wing extremists, have secured a couple of council seats up north. Looks like France no longer has a monopoly on that lurch to the right that Le Penrepresents.
Oh, and just down the road from where I live, a bunch of fans of Millwall Football Club went on a rampage last night, injuring dozens of police officers. I thought we’d got that sort of behavior out of our systems five years ago.
Oh, for those of you wondering what my experiences of the May Day protests were like, I hope to have that up in an entry later in the day.
We’ve had trouble in Australia and Germany already. I’m heading into the West End now. Wish me luck.
If I was a rich, famous and successful author I could blow deadlines out of the water in a spectacular display of special effects and then wait for the publishing house to send round a nubile young editorial assistant to ensure that I stayed focused on getting the work in.
Sadly, I’m not, so I’m going to bed at 1.30am after working all evening to get a short story finished.
Roll on the future.
Of late, I’ve been doing something with increasing frequency. No, it’s nothing immoral or furtively sexual. In a way, it’s more not doing something. Let me explain. I’ve been walking into music shops such as HMV with the express intention of walking out with a particular CD. Four or five times, I’ve walked out without the CD. It’s not for lack of stock in the store, or lack of cash in my hand. No, the lack of purchase has come down to a few little words: WILL NOT PLAY ON PC/MAC.
Now, let’s be clear here. I’m a writer. I make my living by creating easily copied material. Thus, I am deeply opposed to piracy and did not use Napster and its ilk. However, because I’m a writer, I do the majority of my music listening when sat at a computer. Indeed, my purchase of an iPod has meant that I buy more music. With more opportunities to listen to music (the train, the gym, the car, the garden…) my desire for it increases. Thus, MP3 is good for sales, at least in my case.
I know I’m not alone in this. many students, for example, don’t buy both a computer and stereo, they just use speakers with their PC and listen to music that way.
This is a dumb, dumb move on the record industry’s part. It’s not going to stop file sharing. Pirates will always look upon copy protection and they’ll beat it within hours of release. All it will do is piss off non-techie users like myself, who wants to pay good money for music they like, but is being prevented from doing so.
Last lost sale: Episode II soundtrack in the supermarket, one hours ago.
For the first time in my life I feel strongly enough about certain political issues that I intend to write to my MP. The reasons? Well, there are certain issues about the NHS that I have discovered through a friend that appall me. I can’t really discuss them without betraying confidences, but a lot of public money is being spent that should be going into private pockets the way it is. The other concerns state benefits. In the last two years I’ve come face to face with the reality of dole scroungers, and I really feel that this issue needs to be addressed and addressed soon.
To my delight, I’ve discovered that my MP has a website, which will make tracking down her contact details much simpler..
London is developing a tradition of May Day Riots. Anti-capitalism protesters take to the streets in great numbers and generally cause a certain amount of trouble. Admittedly, there’s some debate as to whose fault it was last year - the police have taken some heavy stick for their behavior last year. Co-incidentally enough, heavy stick is exactly what they were giving the protesters.
Anyway, seeing as my office is right in the heart of the West End where all the trouble is likely to be, my employers have kindly said we can all leave at 3.30pm tomorrow. Colour me concerned…