Friday, September 13, 2002
England's wildest moorland is threatened by big cats and silly politics
The Countryside March is just over a week away and I'm making my way to Exmoor, in England's West Country, to gauge what the mood is like among prospective marchers. Exmoor's economy centres round farming and hunting. With agriculture facing an unprecedented crisis, the £13.5 million which hunting accounts for are crucial to the community's survival. Locals need a ban like a hole in the head so it hardly comes as a surprise that they will flock to London to defend their livelihoods and their culture. So I'm going to talk to Jeannette, Dinky, Donald and the hundreds more whose jobs are at risk to find out what their plans are. This means no more postings from me until Sunday, but expect a lot more on my return. But I also have another reason for visiting Exmoor - one which has partly been inspired by Ken Layne's Weird Files. Legend has it that a big cat has been stalking the moors since 1983, killing sheep aplenty. Although the big cat is most probably a large fox, some think it is the descendant of a black puma which mated with a leopard (God only knows where they got the idea from). Sightings of the Exmoor beast have been few and far between lately, but I'm undeterred. Saturday afternoon will see me on a cat-searching safari - before animal welfare activists decide to ban that too. UPDATE: my first article on Exmoor is live here. ------------------------------------------------------------
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My colleague Holly Kirkwood says that Tony Blair doesn't know where he stands on a hunt ban. Indeed, she thinks that - beside war on Iraq - he doesn't know where he stands on anything.
And finally: you can now leave us comments, so talk to us!
posted by Carla Passino at 4:55 PM
More SNAFUs in Florida's voting system, and how to fix it
The Florida voting system keeps its record consistent. Instead of dimpled chads now we have PCs that do not boot up properly, but the results are the same. Disenfranchised electors and an election result that is probably messed up. Given that more and more races seem to depend on a handful of votes, I wonder if we couldn't find a better solution to this impasse which risks jeopardising the value of the democratic process. I have applied powerful research and development resources into devising a perfect, low cost, efficient solution that even manages to get around the challenges posed by Arrow's Theorem (which basically says that no voting system can be truly democratic). Mooraq's think-tank is therefore proud to present you the UVA (Ultimate Voting Aggregation): Does anybody have a coin?
posted by Mooraq at 2:43 PM
The World According to Saudi Arabia Hilarious, that is, to our depraved Western eyes. I am sure Dr Algosaibi was dead serious when he said that giving a criminal a good lashing is miles better than jailing him. Or when he argued that "nobody in Saudi Arabia wants a secular state. They believe in their religion." Which is obviously why droves of Saudis cross the border every evening to go drinking and wenching in Jordan. But, then again,"democracy is a Western phenomenon," so who cares what people really think? In this Dr Algosaibi is not alone. There are many in Asia who think that "Asian values" - as if there really was a culturally homogenous entity called Asia - are incompatible with democracy, which they see as a Western imposition. Interestingly, it is usually rulers who say it. That's because the pro-democracy activists are dead, jailed, or, at best, exiled. Meanwhile, the local people live in fear or - as is the case with Saudi Arabia - are brainwashed into hating the West. But Mr Algosaibi really doesn't care about all this because he has his heart set on gentler pursuits. He is a poet, you see. And, like many other great artists, his poetical genius is underappreciated and misunderstood. Why, his latest piece of work, even earned him a reprimand from Britain's Foreign Office. To think that it was such a vibrant celebration of Ayat Akhras, a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket and "died to honour God's word". Coarse Westerners that we are, we clearly didn't 'get' it.
The Saudi Ambassador speaks out on flogging, politics and poetry
The September 7 issue of The Spectator features a hilarious interview with the Saudi Ambassador to the Court of St James, Dr Ghazi Algosaibi.
posted by Carla Passino at 10:43 AM
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Great Propaganda In the latest news section we are delighted to learn about the production of new posters to celebrate the noble feelings of the Korean people for the peerless leader. I am sure that many copies of "Sky high is National Pride for Having Peerlessly Great Man" and "All of us have Awaited the General" will decore adolescents bedrooms all over the world. The piece-de-resistance "Let us Glorify the Great General's Successful RUssia Visit True to Army-Based Policy" will be the definitive poster. Move over Britney! Irony apart, the conditions of life in that wrecked country are appalling and getting worse. The thought of Kim Jong Il smiling to his beloved subjects from thousands of posters make me shiver in disgust. The only positive aspect is that this reminds me how glad I am to live in a democracy, and of all the things we often take for granted, like freedom.
North Korea press agency site is always a good read
Once in a while it is fun to read the North Korean press agency site with its endless praise of Kim Jong Il, modestly nicknamed "humanity's guiding star".
posted by Mooraq at 4:12 PM
Zimbabwe Dies Worse, the fate of horses is being shared by other livestock in Zimbabwe, further aggravating the famine which is ravaging the country. The war veterans who have taken over from white farmers have killed the cattle and burnt the land, turning fertile fields into a wasteland. The irony of this all is that it is not white farmers who suffer the most at Mugabe's hand. Many have fled the country already, the others can always find refuge in Britain, Mozambique, South Africa. Black farmworkers, by contrast, have no wage, no food, no prospects and nowhere to go. They are at the mercy of Mugabe and his scions, who only feed loyal followers and political allies. The others are reduced to picking nuts from the woods - or die of an empty stomach. But Mugabe has sold his story of racial hatred very well. It's white against blacks, it is retribution for the "intimidatory attempts by some countries and regional blocs that are bent on subordinating our sovereignty to their hegemonic ambitions and imperialist interests." So South Africa turns a blind eye, while Namibia threatens to follow suit. Meanwhile, the usually vocal West-bashers keep unusually quiet on the Zimbabwean dictator. Where, pray, are the No Global, the People of Seattle - always so ready to accuse the West of all sorts of misdeeds against the Third World - when an African tyrant deliberately starves his people to their deaths?
Robert Mugabe is consciously ruining his own country
Robert Mugabe's abominable land seizures have made a fresh set of victims. My colleague Emma Thomas, from Horse & Hound Online, reports that horses which have left behind by evicted farmers are dying by the score in Zimbabwe. Confined to their stables, the animals have been at best neglected, at worst subjected to appalling cruelty. Volunteers from a local charity who try to lend a helping hand receive death threats.
posted by Carla Passino at 2:40 PM
A Nasty Surprise Who are you? Why, why pick that name for your machine? UPDATE: Mooraq, who knows every trivia that there is to know in the world, tells me that, in Japanese, ATTA means Yippee. So maybe there is a perfectly innocent explanation behind the ATTA 11 name and, if there is, I apologise to whoever was using it. But ATTA 11? I remain unconvinced.
What is ATTA 11 doing on Sentinel?
I was taking a look at Sentinel's traffic reports this morning, and - out of curiosity - decided to check the details of who is visiting the site. Usually this is a list of Internet service providers and search engine bots, occasionally interspersed with individual server names: ANNA, MIRABELLE, Jerry's machine. This morning, standing out among the other entries, was ATTA 11. I felt sick.
posted by Carla Passino at 8:29 AM
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Ads That Work
The Ad is dead, long live the Ad
Noteworthy article on the Technology Review about the future of TV advertising. As a user of TiVo, I know how the digital revolution is reducing the impact of commercials, especially TV ads. Despite the increasing bombardment of ads we are subjected to, we are learning to retaliate. From ad blockers on our browser to the ffwd button on our PDVR, our mental immunosystem is learning to cope with ads. That leaves a big problem unresolved though: who is going to pay for the pleasure of offering me the next series of the West Wing? Product placing, I agree, might play a big role. Next time I will see Jack Bauer saving the world while talking into his Nokia phone I am sure going to buy one. But let's be realistic, there is a limit to the number of products one can show before the public is going to phase them out too. I think that the real answer lies in another form of advertising. I do not know what the media expert term is, but I call it "ad that doesn't suck". I was at the cinema the other day and, when the feature was not preceded by a few trailers I felt cheated. They actually wanted to deprive me of my allotment of ads! Why do I not feel the same ache for washing powder ads? Easy to answer: usually they suck, while trailers are cool. So maybe it's time the bright and clever ad people realise that, if they want us to watch ads, they should give us something worth watching. Something funny, interesting, engaging, curious, sexy and smart. It's not that we do not want to watch your ads guys, it's just that we don't want to watch junk. Give me something interesting and I'll watch. Maybe I will even ffwd that annoying twenty minutes of West Wing to get more quickly to the next interesting ad.
posted by Mooraq at 10:35 PM
A Question of Commas
Misinterpretation of words is nothing new
A previous posting of my co-blogger Carla about different interpretations given by the Times and the Post of a report on Saddam's military capability, reminded me of an old story. Misinterpretation of words goes way back in time. One Greek once asked the Delphi oracle if he was going to survive a forthcoming war. The oracle's famous words were, if I remember correctly, "ibis redibis non morieri in bello" ("you will go you will come back not die in battle"). The guy, sure of the supernatural power of the oracle, went to war without a worry in the world and, obviously, died there. His family decided to hire a trail lawyer and launch a lawsuit against the oracle (not exactly, but the equivalent for that time). The oracle defended itself by saying that it had been misinterpreted. The correct phrase was "Ibis, redibis non, morieri in bello" ("you will go, you will come back not, die in battle"). It was just a question of commas.
posted by Mooraq at 10:05 PM
American Missions Face Anthrax Fears Somehow, I am inclined to believe that the letters are the product of some sick mind somewhere, rather than a terrorist action. I hope I'm right. posted by Carla Passino at 5:29 PM
Remember Manhattan On one one thing he is right: "We’re going to win. We don’t have any choice." posted by Carla Passino at 3:50 PM
When Time Stopped I remember I came back from my lunch break and my designer told me: "it seems a plane crashed on the World Trade Center". I remember thinking about the "Britney Spears is dead" rumour which had tricked the BBC into writing a news story a few weeks earlier. I remember telling her: "Are you sure it is not some kind of sick hoax?" Then news came of the second plane, then the third, then the fourth, then the sky of London was suddenly full of choppers, their buzzing unbearable. I remember worrying about my husband, who works for an American bank which was considered a potential target. I remember the phones not working and the relief when he called me to say he was fine and was being evacuated as a precaution. I remember my father phoning me from Italy, pretending, because he is a man of another era and couldn't admit to being worried about me, that he was phoning me to "discuss the news". I remember the security announcement on the loudspeaker of our high-rise building saying that "anyone could leave work if they wanted to". I remember thinking that I couldn't, that I had to string together a couple of sentences for the website. We have to let our readers know we care, I remember thinking. I remember thinking it was the start of the Third World War. The rest is a blur. posted by Carla Passino at 3:16 PM
In Memoriam posted by Carla Passino at 8:21 AM
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Blame It On the Stereotypes Then the wall collapsed, the bear turned out to be a panda and the Atlantic become a little bit wider. Today we seem to disagree on everything, from the way to eliminate pests to the way to eliminate terrorism. Why is that? After all we share so many things. As somebody who is daily in contact with people from every latitude, I believe a lot of this is due to the stereotypes that still guide most of our reciprocal dealings. Ask most Europeans and you will be told that all Americans are obese, uneducated and overly armed brutes bent not so much on world domination, but on covering the globe with asphalt and McDonald's drive-t(h)roughs. Ask most Americans and you will be told that Europeans are foppish imbecilles that would currently all speak German or Russian if not for the US intervention and that should give daily prayer to the US for teaching democracy to the world. Needless to say, both views are wrong, but it is surprising how our perceptions are still shaped by these stereotypes. Take Saddam: Europeans see Bush as the sheriff shooting from the hip and asking questions later. Americans in turn see Europe as an anti-semitic continent bent on pampering Arab terrorist. I am afraid we need some effort from both sides to improve understanding and go beyond the easy stereotypes. We have to remember that our divergences are still trivial compared to the values and the culture of democracy we share. Enemies of both would like nothing better than see us bitterly divided. posted by Mooraq at 5:17 PM
Is Evidence Against Iraq Half Full or Half Empty? More: according to the Post, "Iraq lacks material for nuclear bomb." This headline is based on the very same British study (by the International Institute for Strategic Studies) which leads The (British) Times to open with "Iraq's arsenal and a nuclear threat". And compare the leading paragraphs: "Saddam Hussein could have nuclear weapons within months if Iraq succeeds in acquiring sufficient highly enriched uranium from foreign sources," writes The Times. Not quite, says the Post: "Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon 'in a matter of months,' but only if it manages to acquire fissile material from an outside source." Two more words, an entirely different meaning. Don't you just love journalism? UPDATE: Calpundit and Demosthenes think I am wrong in pointing out the difference between The Washington Post and The Times' articles on Iraq's attempts to produce a nuclear weapon. It is, Calpundit says, "medieval scholasticism at its worst." Now I must admit to having a somewhat anal approach to the written word (I love etymology for starters) which is more than vaguely reminiscent of the medieval monks' attitude towards manuscripts. I guess I could easily have been Jorge of Burgos in The Name of the Rose. But I think it is very interesting how the very same report led to two very different interpretations (as proven by the headlines as well as the leading paragraphs). I don't really care which of the papers is truer to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' report - although it scares me to death that all it takes for Saddam to have a nuclear bomb is for some rogue state or trafficker to sell him enriched uranium, so I'm more inclined towards The Times' choice of wording. What gets me is how the papers' different points of view colour what is supposedly a news story - which, as such, should entail factual reporting. posted by Carla Passino at 9:40 AM
Monday, September 09, 2002
Ah Sudamerica, Sudamerica Meanwhile, I wonder how the spectre of the economic slump is going to affect Brazil's presidential elections. According to a recent survey (in Portuguese), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has increased his lead over rival candidates and, with a healthy 37.7% of preferences in opinion polls, is likely to make it to the Presidency. Investors worry that Lula may renounce President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's free-market policies and may even want to renegotiate Brazil's $250bn plus debt. But the Labour candidate - who, it must be said, has much softened his Leftist rhetoric - is popular precisely because he denounces market liberism, which many Brazilians identify as the culprit of the country's soaring unemployment rates and widening gap between rich and poor. Lula lost four elections in the past (three presidential elections and an election to governor of São Paulo, as Sergio Maggi clarified via e-mail). He may well be the least suitable man to lead the country to an economic recovery that would require the full support of foreign investors and the IMF. But, paradoxically, the very reason why he shouldn't be elected is the one which may bring him to power. On a footnote: Sergio Maggi reports (in Portuguese) that he is being spammed by Brazil's Parliamentary candidates: "I am reading all their e-mails," he writes. "To find out who not to vote for." posted by Carla Passino at 6:08 PM
The Power Of Selfishness I don't know California well enough to venture an opinion on what Jarvis says. But I know that September 11 affected these shores in a very similar way to the one described by Vincent. Of course, it did shock people into wanting to make the world a better place - Tony Blair's words that "we have a moral duty to act" being a case in point. But it was also a sharp reminder that life is short and that you should not dither before you get what you want. In Britain, for example, the aftermath of September 11 saw a sudden demand for foreign homes, as people who had long thought of relocating felt they had to do it right there, right then. Carpe Diem. I agree with Jarvis that putting together yoga (or property, for that matter) and September 11 is appallingly shallow. It is also much easier to do for those of us, whether Europeans or Californians, who saw the horror on TV or via the Internet but didn't have to live through it. But it is also a human reaction, encoded in our genes. It is the very same reaction that allows us to continue functioning after a death in the family: life goes on, be selfish and grasp it before it is too late. And, let's face it: if we didn't, if Californians, or Europeans, stopped taking up yoga classes, dieting, divorcing, flying or buying property abroad, if, in a word, we stopped living, then the terrorists really would have won. posted by Carla Passino at 9:45 AM
Letters containing a white substance are delivered to American embassies and consulates across Europe
Reuters reports that American embassies and consulates in Germany, Italy, Denmark and Luxembourg have received letters containing "unidentified" white powder, sparking fears of an anthrax attack. Local labs are now analysing the substance.
September 11 through the eyes of a warblogger
I disagree with almost everything that James Lileks writes in his anniversary post, but find it moving nonetheless. It is a letter he wrote to the man he was a year ago.
September 11, 2001 as I recall it
September 11, 2001. I was due to go on holiday on Friday 14 and was wrapping everything up at work. I remember I wrote a story on Dennis Publishing for Poynter.org's E-Media Tidbits, early in the morning.
Requiescant in pace
Why USA and Europe seems to have increasingly diverging opinions
Yesterday was easy, relatively speaking. The big bad bear called USSR was casting such a gloomy shadow over Europe. With Berlin cut in half by a wall it wasn't difficult for Europe and the US to agree on almost anything, at least the important subjects.
The same report leads to two very different stories on The Times and The Washington Post
The US doesn't have a case against Iraq - or does it? The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration can't find convincing evidence to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organisations.
A round-up of news from Brazil and Argentina
Four years of recession have taken their toll on Argentina, where crime rates soared by 140% between 1991 and 2001, according to the Jornal do Brasil (in Portuguese). Worse, this year's financial crisis is expected to cause a further rise in violent offences. Given what I saw of the country in Nine Queens - which was filmed before the devaluation of the peso - I don't even want to think what life must be like in Buenos Aires now.
Why diets, yoga, property and divorce all play a part in the war on terror
Jeff Jarvis has an interesting piece on the different reactions to September 11 in the East and West Coasts of the US. "Californians don't get September 11 -- because it's not about them," says Jarvis. And he quotes an LA Times piece by Norah Vincent - in which she writes that most Americans have changed their lives since September 11, even if it is "something as outwardly trivial as finally sticking to the Atkins diet, quitting smoking or taking up yoga" - to make his point. "If anything," says Jarvis, "September 11 should perhaps motivate you to try to better the world rather than yourself."
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