One annoying thing about the news coverage of the Asian Tidal wave is the way in which the media can’t help fussing about “how did this happen?” “Why weren’t we warned,” the interviewers ask, “can’t we be protected from these disasters?”
One program I was working on also contained an item about how grass is starting to grow in Antarctica because the ice is retreating. It’s because of global warming. We’re getting the warnings now, it’s just that we’re ignoring them.
Dictionary.com/trampoline: “trampoline
n. An incredibly hairy technique, found in some
HLL and program-overlay implementations (e.g., on the Macintosh),
that involves on-the-fly generation of small executable (and, likely
as not, self-modifying) code objects to do indirection between code
sections. These pieces of live data are called `trampolines’.
Trampolines are notoriously difficult to understand in action; in
fact, it is said by those who use this term that the trampoline that
doesn’t bend your brain is not the true trampoline. See also snap.”
Speaking of hydrogenated vegetable oil, here’s a list of the bad things it does, from tfX, the UK campaign against trans fats in food:
I was helping put out the food at the daughter’s school Christmas party yesterday. I found it a bit disturbing for several reasons.
The first thing that worried me was that I seemed to be the only person helping who washed his hands before handling the food. I’m no cleanliness fanatic, far from it in fact, but this did seem to be a rather obvious case for a bit of rudimentary hygiene. Parenting is a mucky business and the food we were putting out was going to be sitting at room temperature for at least an hour.
The next alarming thing was the pork. There are loads of Muslims at that school, as well as a few vegetarians and yet there was no plate on any table that didn’t contain sausages and sausage rolls, often heaped up against cakes, sandwiches and other foods. I mentioned it to one of the other helpers, a former teacher, and she didn’t think it was an issue at all. I think that religious food laws are simply insane but some people feel very strongly about them. Surely we should at least make an attempt to respect their views.
The worst thing though was the terrible quality of the food. There were a few token carrot sticks and chunks of cucumber but everything else was a series of variations on salt, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil and flour. Not to mention the supporting cast of nasty additives. I saw virtually nothing that I would feed my children at home; most of it I wouldn’t eat myself. I got the impression that the people who contributed food had just bought the cheapest possible snacks they could find, maybe it was stuff that they wouldn’t normally give their children either. But surely a party should be an opportunity for fantastic, beautiful, exciting food, maybe delicacies that one normally wouldn’t indulge in. There’s simply no point in serving up a load of revolting junk, not really food at all, and in such quantities that most of it ends up in the bin anyway, which is where it belongs. What are we trying to teach our children - Eat well when you must but eat crap when you’re having fun?
I noticed today that one of our fancy flat screen LCD monitors seems to have the corporate log-in window burned into it. In the good old days we used to have screensaver programs which prevented the icons on our desktops from getting permanently burned into the phosphor of our Cathode Ray Tubes. The programs worked by replacing the desktop with a permanently moving display of eye-candy. Most famous of these programs was After Dark and its flying toasters. Of course the monitor manufacturers introduced new designs which resisted the burning-in of images but the users didn’t really understand and continued to use the unnecessary screensavers for years. How depressing then if the new generation of monitors is going to start getting burned in, sending us right back to the start of the cycle again.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Iraq faces descent into chaos, says CIA chief: “In a speech to US marines in Camp Pendleton, California he [Mr Bush] described the war in Iraq as part of the global struggle against terrorism and warned: ‘As election day approaches, we can expect further violence from the terrorists.
‘You see, the terrorists understand what is at stake. They know they have no future in a free Iraq, because free people will never choose their own enslavement. They know democracy will give Iraqis a stake in the future of their country.’
Throughout the speech, Mr Bush referred to the insurgents, who are largely Iraqis opposed to the US occupation, as terrorists.”
I’d love to ask Mr.Bush whether he would consider anyone who opposes the US militarily to be a terrorist. I think he would. He has this frightening world view which says that anything he does is legitimate because he was ‘democratically’ elected and so anyone who opposes him is de facto undemocratic. Thus anyone who fights the US politically is a subversive and anyone who fights with guns, even if they only target soldiers, is a terrorist.
On Friday BBC World TV broadcast an interview with a man called Jude Finisterra who claimed to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical, the current owners of Union Carbide, the company which caused the Bhopal Disaster in 1984. In the interview Finisterra said Dow had taken responsibility for the disaster and was setting up a $12 billion fund “to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal site.”
Finisterra also said the company “resolved to liquidate Union Carbide, this nightmare for the world and this headache for Dow, and use the $12 billion to provide more than $500 per victim, which is all that they’ve seen.”
One programme on BBC World Service radio, World Update, broadcast a clip of Finisterra in their billboard at 10:00 but the World Service newsroom never went with the story. However as far as I can tell World Update didn’t issue a retraction of the story, they simply never mentioned it again. [Apparently they did issue a retraction the next day - thanks to Mark MacD for the info]
The BBC said that “it appears that part of the Dow website had been hijacked in a detailed and carefully planned operation.” In fact according to the Yes Men the request for an interview was emailed to DowEthics.com an obviously satirical site which has on its front page the following claim:
Dow is responsible for the birth of the modern environmental movement. Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, about the side-effects of a Dow product, DDT, led to a groundswell of concern and the birth of many of today's environmental action groups. Another example of Dow's commitment to Living. Improved daily.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone in their right mind would mistake this site for the official Dow Chemical site, let alone a journalist. The Yes Men did achieve a well-publicised hijacking of a domain called www.dow-chemical.com exactly two years ago. Dow responded very vigorously, took possession of the domain and closed down several other sites hosted by the same ISP.
What’s really strange is that although the BBC news site does carry a retraction of the story you won’t find it by searching on the front page for the words “bhopal hoax”. That search yields exactly 0 results.
Here’s a site that deserves some attention, if only to correct its Brummie bias. A collection of photos and reviews of spectacular Christmas decorations created by private individuals on their houses and in their gardens. Since the site carries the logo of Birmingham City Council I’m afraid they may not accept submissions from anywhere else, which is a pity. Our London decorations are vastly more varied, imaginative and impressive.
Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself an internationalist and I have a deep interest in and enthusiasm for China. Even so, I got really depressed while Christmas shopping in the toy department of John Lewis because almost everything they sell is made in China. I bet there are loads of kids who won’t get a single present this year that is made in the EU.
That is just one reason why I’m feeling so enthusiastic about the Playmobil web store. It’s a really well designed site and the range of beautifully made, imaginative, entertaining and cheap toys is just stunning. I love the attention to detail.
For instance, the Playmobil Santa and sleigh has several toys included for Santa to deliver and if you open the little boxes there are tiny books, a racing car, a miniature teddy and a little football inside them. How often were you disappointed as a child by empty pretend presents? I also love the way in which the themed ranges are so extensive and carefully thought out. The police range has all the things you’d expect but also a safe cracker’s set complete with dodgy looking criminals, a working safe, money and gold bars. There’s also a flash looking getaway car for the crooks or a speed cop complete with radar gun. The building range includes a portacabin for the architect to sit around in as well as the more obvious diggers and cranes and the fairy tale range has a hollow oak for the princess to hide in as well as a waterfall and a frog in a fountain. I’m not sure what range the small and large rock formations belong to but I like the look of them as well.
Unfortunately I had already sent in my order when I discovered the Playmobil collector’s catalogue which features “pictures of over 2000 objects from the 30 years old history of Playmobil… categorized by rareness.” It’s only a tenner, come on mum.
It seems a sensible enough idea: show people web pages, track their eye movements while browsing and voila - you can figure out which page designs work best. It’s the sort of thing that marketing people (booo hiss) love and I can see the appeal, but like much audience research it does work better when you’re thinking about news in its role as entertainment rather than education. It also tends to ignore the value of good writing. I think that our gaze is partly driven by a sort of pre-reading that we do with our peripheral vision based on word shapes. Good writers unconsciously incorporate this into their style and make text that looks attractive as well as sounding good when read. Even so, it’s definitely worth a look.
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