News of note

Google's new mapping of UK is worrying, but....

2009-03-26T01:05:00.002Z

... it's fantastic for pranksters, especially if you like drawing enormous willies that can be viewed from space!!

Teenager's draws 60ft penis on parent's house
Matthew Weaver - Guardian

(image from the Guardian)

Google Street View is in the UK

2009-03-20T00:15:00.002Z

And it's invading your privacy (but not mine - yet!)

The Google cars have been driving around 25 UK cities to map out 3D views of the UK, so if you're in one of the cities you can be looked up and nosey people can zoom in to peer through your windows.

Should put up with the intrusion?

This guy didn't!

This kid has dedication to education

2009-01-07T23:11:00.002Z

He wanted to get to school so bad that he drove to school when he missed the bus. At the tender age of six. Ah, they grow up so quickly!!

I don't condone irresponsible behaviour... but, I have to make an exception here! He's my type of student - dedicated!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1107688/Boy-drives-family-car-school-missing-bus--continues-journey-foot-crashing.html?ITO=1490

I can't wait until a TV executive picks up on it and makes it into one of those action TV movies where he's played out by Micauly Culkin's youngest brother. It'll be great!!

Richmond, my home borough, most copied town name

2008-12-30T01:55:00.003Z

Innovate, don't duplicate they say.

Unless you live in my home borough. Richmond is statistically the town name most others have copied. 55 different Richmonds in the world. It's just no big enough any more! Just try searching "Richmond" and you get returns from websites in America in the state of Virginia. Agh!

Interestingly, London is second place in the list - 46 in total. Next time someone accuses London of being one of the worst cities, blame it on its other 45 cousins!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1102645/All-roads-lead-Richmond-British-place-copied-world.html?ITO=1490

"Fat" engines

2008-12-24T03:37:00.004Z

Oh dear me, it's all so very Fight Club, is it not?

A cosmetic surgeon in Los Angeles has managed to harness the power of his patient's excess fat to run his 4x4 (which is not the greenest of cars)!

Strangely enough, it's also illegal to run your motor off human waste... hmm! But with enough liposuction being performed in LA, that's an awful lot of juice for your motor!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1101005/The-liposuction-fatmobile-How-cosmetic-surgeon-fills-car-patients-excess-flab.html?ITO=1490

Bush shoes 'projected' to sell well

2008-12-23T02:40:00.002Z

This one's from the Guardian. Turns out if your product is used to overthrow (or just throw), the orders will flood in. But why?

Stampede for 'Bush shoe' creates 100 jobs
By Robert Tait for the Guardian

Their deployment as a makeshift missile robbed President George Bush of his dignity and landed their owner in jail. But the world's most notorious pair of shoes have yielded an unexpected bonanza for a Turkish shoemaker.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Orders have come mainly from the US and Britain, and from neighbouring Muslim countries, he said.

Around 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq, while a US company has placed a request for 18,000. A British firm is understood to have offered to serve as European distributor for the shoes, which have been on the market since 1999 and sell at around £28 in Turkey. A sharp rise in orders has been recorded in Syria, Egypt and Iran, where the main shoemaker's federation has offered to provide Zaidi and his family with a lifetime's supply of shoes.

To meet the mood of the marketplace, Baydan is planning to rename the model "the Bush Shoe" or "Bye-Bye Bush".

"We've been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy. We've even hired an agency to look at television advertising," he said.

Zaidi has been in custody since the shoe-throwing incident, amid claims that he has been badly beaten. He faces a possible jail sentence for insulting a foreign leader, but has reportedly apologised and requested a pardon from Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/22/turkey-george-bush-shoe

Steal the Empire State? You can in deed!

2008-12-03T21:38:00.004Z

A newspaper in New York managed to steal the Empire State Building to expose a huge legal gap in the city's legal system. Because the city register clerks aren't required to verify the information, they were able to do it in under 90 minutes!

It was reported here in the Independent, but I managed to hunt down the original from the New York Daily Post, here.

Whatever next?

You don't need to swear to be funny or get your point across

2008-11-23T18:21:00.002Z

Something everyone should learn is from an article that caught my eye on the BBC website this evening by Clive James, where he talk about... the removal of swearing?

Indeed, because we're all a bit partial to slipping a curse word in to emphasise our point, even from managers to kids with no manners to grandmothers swear (when they do I make the sign of the cross for the very sin of letting one slip), what if we just took them out.

Frank Skinner did so at one of his stand up gigs once. No one noticed. Maybe we should cut it out too, and not stain our childrens' souls with language that would turn the air blue.

Read what Clive James had to say here

"I could have 300 siblings" and new credit crunched cars

2008-11-14T22:34:00.003Z

An emotional piece in the Guardian today about a woman speaking on siblings of donated sperm. While adoption is something people are more familiar with. I guess you never think about children of donated sperm because the biological father doesn't have to be on the birth certificate. It's interesting medium-length reading.

It turns out if you fancy bartering on a new car, dealers are willing to bend backwards to any offer you make according to this article in the Mail.

The origins of text speak (txt spk)

2008-11-12T23:27:00.003Z

Ah to be going through stacked copies of newspaper supplements I never got round to reading.
As it so happens, txt spk has been around far longer than you may have thought. That's right. Even Dickens used it!

If you thought txt spk is "dsgstng" due to it's lack of vowels and punctuation, check out this article I found in the Guardian Review earlier:

2b or not 2b

It's an extract from the writer's book Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. I'm sure he appreciates my plugging of his product :)

The TIMES is the new GUARDIAN (Don't judge me)

2007-03-21T15:33:00.000Z

A bit of comment/reflection here.

Photo taken and copyrighted to me!

I like to read the Guardian. Good photojournalism, well laid out, not too big, yet not too small, so I can read it on the tube.

And I like to think that people don't think I'm a conservative bastard that reads The Mail, or a patriotic wanker that reads The Sun. Or illiterate because I read The Daily Sport (I don't). Because political implications lie within the paper you read, if you actually concentrate on what the newspaper's values are.

Now, I don't like the fact that Rupert Murdoch controls so much of our media, which is why I try not to support his causes too much. Okay, I have a MySpace, but I don't have Sky!

And at first I didn't like reading The Times, because I thought it was too professionally elite for me - all those pages of shares and stocks, etcetera, etcetera.

Yet as of recent I'm picking it up more often (99p book promotion as well), and its the main newspaper I'm using to find stories for my blog! AND its in tabloid format!

So I just want the world to know: Although I dig some of the stories it has, and credit where it's due, they are interesting, I am not a pro-Times reader. I don't pick it up because I stand for its beliefs, and I'm not reading it to impress anyone - I read newspapers in full hoodies and tracksuit bottoms - who is anyone to judge!?

I will always like to have my name associated with The Guardian, because they're probably the best British paper and follow my interests - breakdance made the cover of The Guide a fortnight ago!

"Owned by no one. Free to say anything" - The Guardian

Looking at their marketing site though, I can see it will be bloody hard ever writing for my heroes.

Still, I thought I'd draw your attention to it.

And before signing off: my choice of newspaper for any particular day can also sometimes be swayed by either the front page headlines, supplements or giveaways, or on which money-off vouchers I have on me at the time.

Sunday's stories

2007-03-19T12:51:00.000Z

Sadly there wasn't much in yesterday's papers that interested me too much to write about. I had News Of The World (like I buy that pap[er]) and The Observer (with free CD!).

News Of The World had next to no news in it at all. I could read about Macca making homeless jibes at his ex-wife (Paul MacCartney to you and I), but frankly I don't give a toss.

The Observer (obviously) had the proper news in it, reports, spotlight reviews etc, but it made me want to put my feet up and read under a lampshade, the laid-back Sunday paper that it is.

A bit of flicking through brought me to one article that interested me, "Don't exaggerate climate dangers, scientists warn."

And, my fellow scholars, its all too true.
Don't you hate it how Hollywood makes you think some things are true? Blockbuster special effects, landscapes of an apocalyptic nature, and a script that has been meticulously researched to make it as scientifically legitimate as possible?

According to leading climate change experts and findings from the charitable trust Sense About Science, Hollywood confuses the idea of global warming too much in its films. The Guardian named the blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow" as an example.

It is only too true, when you concentrate on these films properly. How exactly is a huge catastrophe really going to happen overnight? A small breeze turns into a tornado that becomes a hurricane that stirs a tsunami that wipes out New York City? Only on a Hollywood set!

The argument put forth is that films make out "catastrophic events were likely when this could not be proved." So, scientifically, with all the research behind it, its fictional fact, if you can excuse my oxymoron.

Alas, journalists cannot escape the criticisms either.

The media, like Hollywood are "appealing to fear" to push more dramatic headlines and grab readers' attention. Recent reporting on the recent study written by the UN International Panel on Climate Change used the words 'devastating,' catastrophic and 'terrifying' even though the study does not use such terms.
Here I quote Hardaker, one of the experts who wrote the report (download here):

"Once you begin to exaggerate the science in either direction the debate gets out of control"

So we are getting confused by what we see or read, because scaremongering and fact gets mixed up. What we watch or read about is in fact removed from reality, as Sense About Science puts
some claims to rest at the bottom of The Guardian's article.

What have I got out of this article? Firstly, newspapers, the industry I'd someday like to make it into exaggerate a bit too much. I mean, I knew that anyway. But the urgency it puts into these headlines - STOP CLIMATE CHANGE NOW! - it makes me wonder how they come up with the next day's news if that's all that can be reported on! Today: sunshine and clear skies, tomorrow: APOCALYPSE!
Finally, I learned of a new word, "Hollywoodisation"

What the bloggers said:
Some news bloggers are so lazy.
Mrs Doyle copied-and-pasted the Guardian article straight into her blog (probably too busy making tea for Father Ted), but she managed to research Sense About Science (copying-and-pasting their the text) from their donors and funding policy page.
She types (throughout, rarely!):

"Sense about Science is largely funded by industry and corporations from it’s own website"

"It also lobbies government on other controversial issues such as GM, nuclear, renewable energy, and endeavours to becoming a leading source for the media in these and other issue."

Good findings.

Peter at Junkk Male has thrown in the towel with blogging on global warming, linking to the Guardian's article. Good for him, he points out we can probably never win with global warming, therefore blogging about it is a waste of time!

Which rounds off today's blog.

PEACE

Go straight to "RETAIL JAIL!"

2007-03-17T18:21:00.000Z

I wont lie. I like 5-finger discounts. Anything I can get for free, I'll have it. Pointless or petty.

For no reason at all I'll pocket small things from big corporations, like jacking the occasional sugar sachet or five from Starbucks.

Okay, I'm no criminal! I have enough money to get me by, and I don't see myself having enough courage to swipe something expensive. I'd get in a lot of trouble and get a criminal record and all my future employers would see it and I'd be ashamed of getting caught.

Well now Selfridges have set up cells in their stores on Oxford street to detain any would-be shoplifters. The story even made the front page of The Guardian ('Ground floor perfumery, stationery ... and cells') on Thursday.

The police will be given extended powers to take fingerprints and DNA at the scene while detainees are kept in the cells for up to four hours in a perspex box, so they are visible to the public.

The idea behind it is to hold suspects long enough for their identities to be taken, and to take police out of the office and onto the streets to deal with the crime, not at the stations processing low-level paperwork. Having the suspects on display should act as a deterrent (it certainly works for me)

I was surprised to see this story didn't pick up as much attention as I thought it would, although I admit I'm only checking online versions of newspapers as I didn't read that day's paper until the next morning.
The Sun picked it up, though, as did The Times.

What the bloggers said:
Surprisingly I couldn't find a lot of web comments linking back to the Guardian's story, as most just quoted the entire story in their postings, although I did find:

Londonist in reaction to the headline called their post "Cellfridges"
There's a nice quote there playing on Selfridges' old slogan 'Why not spend the day at Selfridges?'
Funny people!

The phone-in fiasco : the votes are in!

2007-03-13T21:57:00.000Z

ITV Play is to be axed!

The Times' subliminal messaging

2007-03-09T22:35:00.000Z

Brilliant. The Times had an article on a study where brain scans were used to see if subliminal messages affected the human brain (Subliminal advertising may work, but only if you're paying attention). The answer, they do. It was an interesting read, learning that an advert for a George Bush campaign was pulled after it was discovered the word 'rat' flashed for a split second, which viewers absorbed, relating Al Gore to be a rat!

The footer of the page said to turn to the leading article. Pay close attention to detail. Here's a copy of it from the online edition:

Smoke Signal Puffs

The real news of how to pass secret advertisements and influence people

Subliminal advertising really works. The brain absorbs minimal messages without even realising that it has seen them. Buy The Times. Ingenious scientists at University College London have proved this by brain mapping. Human guinea-pigs had their brains scanned while being blinkered and brainwashed by subliminal trickery. Meanwhile, they were given absorbing tasks to distract them. For example, brush up your Shakespeare: O God! that one might read your book of fate,and see the revolution of the times. Do not for get. The time soon passes when one is reading. Of course, nobody expects such fun and verisimiltude on our idiot television. If you want the real news and sage comment, you need the world’s oldest and greatest daily paper.
Nobody knows how much advertising works. The top guess is that about 10 per cent of the people are taken in by the choice and master advertisers of the times. The poser for the admen is which 10 per cent are gullible enough to buy their puffs. In the ad biz, sincerity is a commodity bought and paid for like everything else. But now the trick is to get your message across without the little victims noticing that they are puppets on a string of coded messages. At the heart of the ridiculous slogan is the subliminal. Readers of this newspaper are too quick-witted to be taken in by such devious manipulation, which is, in any case, illegal in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, be on your guard. Timon of Athens is the best model in these subliminal ambushes. Read all commercials, watch all television, with caution. The narrowed eyes of the worldly-wis e cynic are the best organ to ward off the secret poison arrows of the subliminimalists.

The phone-in fiasco

2007-03-07T20:20:00.000Z

The headlines of all the newspapers yesterday were pretty much all on the same topic - ITV suspended all their quiz call-in programmes after premium-rate regulators were prompted to investigate recent scandals with phone-in competitions.

A dig through old copies of Media Guardian (yes, I keep cuttings of articles I find interesting lying about my bedroom, I hoard my knowledge in one place) shows this is a long-running problem.

My oldest headline I have is 'Money For Nothing,' investigating the thousands of callers who call the quiz shows every night who stand little chance of winning even though the answer to the questions they ask seem so damn obvious!

The trouble is the answers are so open-ended there are a thousand solutions to the questions! This means thousands of wannabe winners call in (up to 6000 at peak time according to some newspapers) at 75p a minute and most either get put on hold or don't get through. ITV reaps in more from this than its advertising revenue!

Anyway. The investigations mean that no longer does ITV1 (terrestrial) switch to ITV Play (digital) after it has finished broadcasting. Presently, ITV Play is transmitting a splash logo with the message "ITV Play is currently unavailable."

Although we could have easily found out ourselves, The Sun wants to remain a leader in its 'exclusives' and 'lifted the lid' on all the shows that have conned us (EDIT: Link no longer works), even though it only sourced quiz provider Eckoh. Thanks Sun. Like they're the only company who does this. And like you cover media events with the commitment of The Guardian!.

Their whistleblower did reveal that many people who called the premium-rate numbers for some of their shows were being charged even though their calls were not successful due to computer crashes at peak times, and some competition rates were charged way higher than they were advertised.

Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV has said the quiz call-ins will stay and the news has reached the Prime Minister.

The implications of this mean other TV stations have prompted their own audits into their premium-rate call-in services because now the public wont trust them. And there are a lot of call-in shows out there that want our votes or answers!

What is to be done now? The Network for Online Commerce are backing a 'Fairplay Kitemark' scheme. Maybe this will become a new standard for out late-night gambling addiction?

Possibly related to the story is this. Perhaps her phone was stolen by an angered 'You Say, We Pay' caller?

What the bloggers said:
Posted on the Junkk Male blog, blogger Peter sourced most of the news stories following the phone-in scandal and writes:

"As a participant in a voter-driven reality TV show, who was the
cause of some to commit funds to these guys pockets in support
of what they thought was fair contest, I am intrigued as to how this
still seems to be more 'slap wrist, don't do it again' as opposed to
what it seems to me to be clearly: fraud. Why?"

----------
PS: Photo taken and copyrighted to me!

Tesco misleading us with cut-price lies? BASTARDS!

2007-03-05T22:19:00.000Z

I, as the ethical, handsome, aware retailee you all know and admire HATE to spend extra pennies on things that contribute to my daily life, like eating my five portions of fruit a day.

TESCOS recently their fruit-and-veg pledge on TV and in the press. To drop the price of different fruit and vegetables every week to help us eat the PC five-a-day.
BING! Every little helps...

HOWEVER, I discovered in The Times ('Tesco 'misled shoppers' with half-price offers on fruit and vegetables') there is a loophole in the market trading standards that they've exploited in order to make out they cut their prices, when really they raised the price steeply before dropping it for the promotion.

Now, we know that supermarkets fix prices regularly, because when you do the weekly shop, and buy, say, pre-packaged dessert, like apple pie from Asda for ONLY 99p, and word gets round how delicious that pie is, you know that a few weeks later, that same apple pie will cost double in a few weeks!

Well, the Department of Trade and Industry has a "28 day rule" on how long something can be priced before the price is marked down.

The Times 'article says:

"Tesco confirmed that apples, peaches, nectarines and plums had all risen in price in December before being reduced in the first week of the promotion. A spokeswoman said that the fluctuations had been due to seasonal variations, such as rises in transport costs around Christmas. “Any suggestion that we ramp up prices in order to cut them again is the purest nonsense,” she said.
As perishable goods, fruit and vegetables are exempt from the “28day rule” in the Department of Trade and Industry’s pricing code of practice, which states that shops can advertise a discount on a product only if it has been priced at the higher rate for the past 28 days. Mr Fisher said that supermarkets used the loophole regularly. He added: “We [consumers] are suckers. We like a price with a big discount and if it’s cut, we believe it’s cheap. We don’t shop the way we’re supposed to, by checking prices thoroughly.”"

FOOLED! We're all fooled by these big, glittery promotions!

The Times in print edition printed a table of comparisons of original prices, compared to raised prices before the fruit-and-veg-pledge offer, with the price now and calculated the difference between the original and present price to be no less than 20%.

Although The Times did not publish those statistics, The Guardian did! ('Tesco accused of cheating over half-price offer')

"Gala apples rose in price from £1.19 a kg in the week beginning December 11 to £1.99 in the week of December 18. They were then slashed to 99p in the first week of this year. Plums were £1.48 for 500g on December 11, but went up to £2.99 in the week of December 28, before being cut to £1.48 again in the first week of the pledge. Nectarines similarly rose from £1.49 to £2.99 before being cut to £1.48, while peaches rose from £1.99 to £2.99 before the price was halved."

*EDIT!*

After a bit of surfing about, I just discovered it was The Mail on Sunday that broke this story first!

Church condemns 'humiliation TV'

2007-03-02T15:06:00.000Z

Indeed, esteemed scholars, we thought it was the Roman Catholic church at the centre of recent controversy when it was revealed illegal immigrants form most of their congregations in London.

Today it was debated at a general Church of England synod that television that "exploit the humiliation of human beings for public entertainment" such as Little Britain (particularly the way character Vicky Pollard makes fun of how teenage girls talk) and reality TV series Big Brother and Saturday night entertainment shows like Strictly Come Dancing are "fatally eroding" society and its standards of behaviour (Daily Mail headline) because they focus too much on the losers.

It also debated concern for the censorship of films, making pornography or extremely violent scenes more accessible by people. Films such as Baise Moi and 9 Songs, which feature frequent scenes of graphic real sex in them were passed as 18 certificates, which it is argued would have been rated R18 a decade ago, allowing them only to be shown in licensed cinemas.

Different sources took different angles on the matter.
The Daily Mail ('Film sex and violence 'fatally eroding' society') focused more on the aspect of film classification standards being lowered and changed to fit in with societies taste at different periods. In its report it gives five examples of films that have been passed with a certificate lower than what they felt they should have been classified:

Baise-Moi, Initimicy, 9 Songs and Destricted are all 18 certificates that should have been given an R18 certificate, but were passed with an 18
Casino Royale, the latest James Bond film was passed with a 12A despite critics saying it should have been rated 15 because of scenes of torture.

The Guardian ('TV contests humiliate losers, say synod speakers') also focused on the complaints of young children from cathedral schools being allowed to watch the latest James Bond film and the "melodramatic excess" of singling out losing contestants on Strictly Come Dancing was against the Christian ethos to help those who have been losers.

Interestingly, it also got a quote from a former BBC executive Anne Sloman, now a member of the Archibishops' Council who spoke from her experience

"Broadcasters want to know what you think. If you think a programme is
exploitative let them know, but try to avoid using the electronic equivalent of
green ink."

BBC News ('Church condemns 'humiliation TV'') used a photo of Big Brother winner Jade Goodie in its report. It also defended (I say it would have to, anyway) Strictly Come Dancing for its charitable work donating money to Children In Need. They were the only source I have found that also noted that included the influence of violent video games in their article.

What the bloggers said:
hockeyshooter blogs on BBC's article:

"I don't know about "can" exploit - they do exploit - that's the whole point of Big Brother. The programme producers deliberately pick people who are going to piss each other off, get in a strop and therefore create "good" television. But the CofE do need to realise the difference between Big Brother and Little Britain - they're hardly the same thing."

Strictly Come Blogging says, on The Guardian's article:

"Personally, I don't believe that any of the participants are humiliated in any way. The public, the presenters and even the judges are on the side of the participants, however good or bad they are. Exiting participants are always treated with respect and encouraged right until the end. Strictly participants are treated better than on any other 'reality' show in my opinion.

And every single participant says how lifechanging appearing on the show is. A little bit of dramatic tension is a small price to pay, I'm sure."

Good day to you all

2007-02-28T15:05:00.000Z

Fellow scholars, intellects, universiteers, Frank, I would like to welcome you to the fountain of knowledge that is my news blog.

I shall be updating it frequently with hopefully an expanse of stories that will cover a wide range of news topics, although the topics will generally revolve around my new values, sometimes mainstream, at other times curious. This is generally a celebrity-free area!

It will be the only blog you will need to check. Ever. Thus making me the greatest student in the course and paving the way to journalistic success. Obviously.

Until then, I've this offer that those in my Film Studies class can use to help them in their course:

~BLESS~