Said entry is also pretending to be written by one of my heroes, Charlie Brooker. How can this have happened.
November 2005 Archives
ITV, apparently having decided its output is so high quality it can waste money on dotcom acquisitions, has decided to spend £120 million on Friends Reunited. Nutters.
Does anyone really bother with Friends Reunited any more? I haven't updated my entry in a year. Neither has anyone else at any of the schools, clubs, workplaces, etc that I went to. The bulletin boards aren't clogged up with people chatting. None of the people who failed to sign up when it was at its peak have had a change of heart recently.
It's dead. It's so 2001-2003.
If ITV really has that much money to throw around, perhaps it might like to spend more on decent programming and its ITN contract so that the latter's journalists can afford to eat food for a change.
Ah, there's nothing I like better than mocking an organisation that's thought about its needs enough to put together a press pack, yet hasn't bothered to update it in two years. Congratulations, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority! You've managed to create a dozen or more inaccurate articles by now that no doubt you'll have to correct, if ever you hear about them – which is unlikely.
Anyway, there are some fun nuggets of information in this particular press pack, including the fact the Venetian hotel (my favourite) cost $1.5 billion to build. That's a lot of money.
I'm not one to throw charges of “irresponsible journalism” around and I'm in favour of freedom of speech in all its glory, but even I have qualms about an article on Slate explaining how to set fire to a Peugeot.
I doubt there'll be many rioters and rioters-to-be that will read it. But all the same...
There's a lot of it about today apparently.
Oh dear. Why am I not surprised by any of this?
It's Sunday, so why don't we look at what's been in some of this week's magazines?
The Economist and the New Statesman both had articles on Venezuela which came to surprisingly similar conclusions in some respects. Both magazines concluded Chávez's treatment of the foreign oil companies drilling in Venezuela was reasonably justified. Odd that, given that New Statesman's article was written by the highly left-wing John Pilger and The Economist is pretty much a standard-bearer for right-wing neo-liberal economics. I guess the one thing we can conclude is the oil companies had it coming.
New Statesman is an odd magazine that proves the rule that 90% of everything is rubbish. Apart from the Pilger piece, there were only a couple of stand-out pieces: new columnist Ziauddin Sardar's look at Hizb ut-Tahrir; and Charlotte Raven's review of Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? a book I suspect, despite my best attempts at sunniness and optimism, will be a must-have on my Christmas present list. Otherwise, pretty much everything in NS was as the book suggested. It's the first time I've ever read it through, other than to skim bits in WH Smith, so I might try their trial offer (13 issues for £4.99) and see if it grows on me.
The ever-excellent Economist also had an intriguing article on language development, which raises as many questions, if not more, than it answers. The only thing more surprising was that New Scientist didn't cover the study to perk up what was a relatively limp issue this week.
Last item of note this week was from The Guardian's Bad Science, looking at why the BBC's science coverage in the news is so embarrassingly bad. The particular story cited took my breath away in its science-fiction stupidity. How can they let this rubbish on the air?!
Oh well.
I've added flashcards for Week 4 of Instant Spanish to the iFlash page. I am moving faster than that, honest; I just want to make sure that there aren't any typos, before I upload them.
If you don't live in SE London, you probably don't get this rubbish through your door:
Mr. Yousaff
International Spiritual Healer God Gifted
Born with this Knowledge
I can give help and advice no matter what your Problem is,
I can solve them with one visit. I can help you with Practical solutions concerning marriage, business and court cases and sexual problems. I can improve your life and I can bring back your lost friends, loved ones and relations, I can make your marriage better and I can give instant good luck in family Problems, I can remove from your life black magic, illness and eliminate habits like Drinking and smoking etc.
Anyone who has these problems contact
Mr. Yousoff Now
QUICK RESULTS GUARANTEED
First thing this guy needs is a magic wand to fix his punctuation and capitalisation. If he can bring back the dead, a full stop shouldn't be too hard. The second thing he needs to do, of course, is decide whether he's Mr Yousaff or Mr Yousoff.
However, my burning question is: “Does Mr Yous(a/o)ff actually make money?” If he fixes everything with just one visit, he must have higher call-out charges than the average plumber, just to break even. And are there really enough staggeringly gullible people to support him? Sure, there's a reasonable number of Africans living here, who I'm guessing are his target market (insert disclaimer about Africa not being a single country, all have different cultures, etc). But they can't all believe this stuff surely, any more than 100% of the locals round here watch Second Sight on Living or the French are a homeopathy-only nation? I could do a vox pop to find out, but that would involve stepping out into the oh-so-cold air. So maybe I won't. (Gosh, what a fantastic journalist I am. In mitigation though, I wouldn't be paid for it and I do have a lot of deadlines to meet right now - all of which will pay me.)
Even if any of them do believe, though, is a psychic sticking his badly phrased flier from the 18th century in someone's letterbox the cultural equivalent of an undertaker driving around town in his hearse, shouting into his loudhailer about two for one offers - that is, possible but not the done thing? I'm sure there's a case study for a marketing mag in there somewhere.
Just in case you thought we lived in a free society, here's a little something to put a damper on that thought. The government is threatening to sue newspapers under the Official Secrets Act if they reveal the contents of a memo that reveal a disagreement between Tony Blair and George Bush over the way the Iraq war is being conducted. That seems a worthwhile use of the Act, doesn't it? That's the kind of thing we need to clamp down on or else our enemies will destroy us. So much for our so-called Freedom of Information Act, which seems to be more or less voluntary at times (Give us the information. No. Okay).
In case you're interested about some of our other free speech limitations, there are also D-Notices, our blasphemy laws and our libel laws.
