"There’s a really cruel, gore-wallowing streak in some people that technology and situation sometimes colludes to enable."
I know I already linked to Charles Arthur's thoughts on phonecam snaps, but recent events have increased my desire to drop in my tupponeth.
Those of you not reading the feed may have noticed a hint of redecoration around the vicarage. Gone is the amateurish butchering of a standard MT template, at last replaced by something a little more... me.
Among the main changes, the entries are individual archives again, on the right-hand side are some details of places and things I'll be attending and doing (currently there is no feed for that - maybe that's for next time), up at the top we have links to the portfolio that will eventually be restyled to match what we have here, and each entry is now tagged with its own 'inspired by' keyword. Oh and to mark the occasion, a name change and new tag line. Have a look around, test the sofas, try the patio doors. I'm confident you won't be disappointed.
The guru behind the rebuild is Mr Barry Frost, a man now owed enough beer to ensure that he never plays the harpsichord again. Take a bow, Mr F.
There's a visitor's book by the door, all comments welcome...
Back in London, and it's raining. In Spain, I'd find this cheering after a very, very dry year. Here it's just a little depressing. I think I'm catching a cold. And yet still people ask: "So when are you moving back to London?" to which I continue to reply, "Why, pray tell, would I want to?"
Anyway, my return means I'm rather busy right now, and still watching with interest as the mechanic fiddles under the bonnet of my blog (with me occasionally prodding something and asking 'so what does that do then?', and then nodding sagely at the unintelligable answer). So only a brief linking to wise words, where I could really have gone into a full 3000-word rant:
Let's forget about citizen journalism
Robert Scoble, meet happy slapping.
I'd be glad to introduce Robert Scoble to a... but I digress. Key excerpts: "It’s not journalism; it’s not bearing witness, except in the most anti-empathic way." "Could [we] also concede that other attempts to get Ordinary People to behave like journalists - Ohmynews I'm looking at you - are also unforgivably lame? Student newspapers, only without the brevity? Let's, instead, alight on a model of citizen storytelling." "[Let's] get on with the business of training professional journalists who know how to tap into the web's emerging storytelling culture to get new stories, and improve on the ones they've always written."
Next week: why pretty much all podcasting is truly dull waffle, and so could we all shut up about it please. Actually, maybe it is the new blogging after all.
Anyone else coming to the Zembla event at Borders on Charing Cross Road tonight?
So, to Barcelona again. Just till Monday, don't get yourself worked up - I arrived yesterday and am in town for a few days, mostly to attend a magazine festival.
It's the first time I've been back since I moved away, and it's as strange returning as returning always is. Barcelona. Two years of my life, and a city I got to know rather well. I spent much of yesterday afternoon just strolling around, greeting familiar street corners, exchanging knowing nods with the psychogeographic equivalents of comfy cardigans from winters past.
Small things may have changed (not that anyone else would notice - a new restaurant here, some fairy lights there), but broadly it's the same as it always was. However, the mental picture of my Barcelona I've carried with me in Madrid differs from what I'm seeing now in one crucial respect: I'm no longer in it.
This is a place of memories, a place where I was and I did. But now I am and I'm doing elsewhere, and a trip this short can never be much more than an enjoyable flick back through a 3D photo album - one that I filled to the limit, with long-forgotten images falling out unexpectedly as I walk the streets and turn the pages. Not enough time in this visit to start a new page; no real inclination either.
The sets, the costumes, the smells, the sounds, the people are all the same, more or less - even, pleasingly, some of the graffiti is too. Only one thing is missing from my Barcelona: me.
"A society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by people who believe in anything."
As someone who doesn't Torrent, I was delighted to see the Internet Archive distributing the acclaimed BBC series from last year, The Power of Nightmares. And it's even more pleasing to see that, unlike, say, Stupid White Men, subsequent terror attacks haven't in the slightest affected the strength of its argument. I'm very much looking forward to tracking down Adam Curtis' Pandora's Box as a follow up.
The Power of Nightmares was famously edited to a single feature-length documentary for Cannes, which may or may not get distributed in friendly nations. Me, I want it edited into a longer, six-part series. Much predictable "pinko Brits" counterargument available on the net if you want it; Wikipedia's article answers much of the more reasoned criticism. My feelings? The Precautionary Principle is essential for emergency services, but, in the logical conclusion to its own premise, is best kept out of politicians' reach in case they do something terrible with it.
Here's your link so go click and start your further education in Islamist and neocon philosophy. (And I'd like to apologise to the owner of my local open wifi node. It was the terrorists wot stole your bandwidth.)
Warm here. But note the very low humidity - sweat dries in seconds, and you don't walk around feeling sticky.
Just warm. Very warm.
Some rooting around in the publication linked in the previous post has led to myself and Mr Richards coming to the conclusion that North Carolina's News and Observer is a rather good paper, at least in its online commitments. We have a Readers' Editor blog and a Grammar blog, a graduation photoblog, a local tax calculator, a local blogwatch, and, even better, reader consultation over new designs on the weather, with downloadable pdfs. If blogs are the new journalism, journalists are the new bloggers.
UPDATE: though nowhere near as enlighted in their online policy, this is a rather marvellous example of the New York Times' adoption of flash journalism.
"Unable to actually prove this complex theory scientifically, and frustrated by the cruel conspiracy of the so-called "scientific community" working against his efforts, he ultimately stuck his head in a heated gas oven with a golden delicious apple propped in his mouth. Miraculously, the apple was saved for the evening dessert. Calvin was not."
Back on one of my more-favoured themes, the States has a robust tradition of paid-for obituaries. Usually that means badly written good intentions from a grieving relative with journalistic pretensions. But not always. This particular effort provoked comment in the newspaper's Reader's Editor column the following week.
Ken said it well: "They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live."
LNR said it better: "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
And our emergency committee is called Cobra. We win, again.
Bonus links: As after 11th September, Ian McEwan is the most eloquent. Then, nothing could have prepared us. This time, the news of the successful Olympic bid was more surprising than this. How could we have forgotten that this was always going to happen?
Yesterday, everyone was asking me if I was from London. Today, they're asking again.
"The winner is.. Singapore. Or you don't leave alive."
Oh come on, you know we all want to see that happen.
Confident? Us? Look what I just found...
Domain Name:
london2016.co.uk
Registrant:
The British Olympic Association
Registrant's Address:
1 Wandsworth Plain
London
Greater London
SW18 1EH
GB
For some reason, these people have grabbed london2020.co.uk. It seems that, if we don't win today, we're not going to bid twice more, anyway.
Moscow also is hedging its bets: Owner, Moscow2016.ru: State office Sports & Spectaenlar Events Administration. Going for a spectaenlar bid in 2016, then. They won't be going for 2020 though, as a certain Evgeny A Skomorovskiy has the domain.
Louis Gilbert Stanislas of Saint Denis has Paris2016.fr (though not even Paris has Paris2012.fr.) Daniel Flax of Flaxman Productions has NYC2016.com.
And, in a somewhat bizarre twist of twisting, remember how I said yesterday that Madrid proudly had "no plan b"?
Clearly not. I now own Madrid2016.es. This is all far more exciting than the real Olympics...
No-one here considers London a serious Olympic rival. All the coverage is based on Paris vs Madrid, with London somewhere a distant third or fourth in the bidding order. Rumours of an attempt by Coe & co to use tactical voting alongside Madrid to knock out Paris were met with derision here - and a general sense that London already knew it was going to lose.
But something doesn't feel quite right. The TV images of the Madrid delegation heading to Singapore ("we have no plan B" they proudly proclaim - the slogan of the year, it seems) had twice as many student volunteers as besuited professionals. The press packs for the IOC were shown in large white envelopes sealed with brown parcel tape. The small details may not count for much, but as Malcolm Gladwell would no doubt agree, it's all symptomatic of a larger sensation of what feels like a group of over-enthusiastic Rag week organisers bidding to run the space shuttle programme.
Me, I'm sufficiently torn not to mind who gets it. Professionally, I'm a freelance journalist working in Madrid - and would love the short-term extra work that a Spanish win might muster. Personally, I wouldn't trust the Spanish construction industry (and its huggably close links to politicians) further than I can throw an Olympic shotputter. Add in the enormous debts each city has to bear (the IOC of course doesn't take any responsibility for that; part of the deal is that it gets 50% of revenue, not overall balance) and I'd probably rather hand it to Paris, in the name of cheaper brie and champagne.
"Turtle, by the way, is a very funny word." —Roger Ebert, review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Back in Copenhagen, Jimmy Wales revealed to us over dinner his favourite Wikipedia article: this one. It's all in the delivery, folks.
