Enough hunting around Gmail Swap for people with imagination and kindness (fun though my couple of swaps have been). I'm not giving my invitations out for software code-cracking or eternal friendship with a teenager in China. And I'm not giving them to soldiers because I don't think 'Someone gave me a gmail account if I promised not to indiscriminately shoot anyone today' would go down well with their commanding officers.
But I have five invitations. My friends that wanted one have one. And while they are still worth something (one gigabyte of space and a rather marvellous layout system, plus of course you'll be a much cooler and valid person) I want my own farm. Send a Cow has a gift catalogue with prices starting at five British pounds for a day's training up to a whole farmyard for £2000. If you go and order online, asking for a gift notification card to be sent to claremariewhite at gmail dot com, I will send you an email as soon as I receive the card. I promise. I'm not just trying to promote Send a Cow specifically - if you can find another similar charity that will independently send me evidence of your donation that will do, but Send a Cow is good as it has goats (£25), bees (£10) and fruit trees (£10), all of which will give African families a chance to improve their own futures. I think the best value gift is £15 for 12 chickens and eight turkeys.
So that's my appeal. Give me bees. Give me apples and pigs. Thank you.
If you're planning to do this then you might want to email me or leave a message here and I'll reserve your invitation. I will of course post any results here, perhaps a picture of our virtual farm, utilising all my artistic skills - which would be entertaining.
Update Kind Claire W (almost me but with an extra I) has generously offered six of her invites towards the farm. She would particularly like a forest of trees (£10 = 30 trees x 6 = 180 trees). So if you're planning to buy trees, email me first and I'll link you up with Claire.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
It's not the pretty people's fault
What a thrill: Mischa Barton, the overly beautiful star of great teen drama The O.C., is British. No, not all ugly dumpling skinheads - there's another one to add to the list headed by Kate Beckinsale and Keira Knightley. Having just wasted a good ten minutes poring over pictures of Mischa, though stil shuddering to learn that she was the creepy scary dead girl in Sixth Sense, I have discovered that she lived in London until the age of four, when she was shipped off to New York to become a movie star. That makes her our's, OK, guys?
But as I flicked through the pages of Metro and peered at the pictures of Nadia in someone else's Sun, I came across that time-honoured and weak argument from rich-green-entrepeneur Roddick that our media and world are so bad because 'most of our media today focuses on celebrity'. This argument, which basically comes down to the idea that we're too busy reading about celebrities to think about the real world, is nonsense. Because, put simply, we *can* think about more than one thing at once. Yes, we can, honestly. But those people who criticise the media because of celebrity obsession are distracting themselves and failing to acknowledge the real scope of the problem. There is plenty of serious stuff in our papers, but it's nonsense.
To illustrate let me take you through my definitive page-by-page analysis of your average British middle market newspaper:
Page one: We're all going to die/the floods are coming!
Souped-up scare story made up around the watercooler terrifying us all about the latest healthscare / what a lot of rain there's been / immigrants
Page two: Snore snore
Dutifully reported events or announcements by the government / trade unions / thinktanks presented in 'serious' short stories, but rest assured no-ones reading that because they're looking at
Page three: Phwar!!
Fabulous respectable actress out on the town last night but golly, is that a nipple showing?
Page four, five, six: Sex between adults - why you MUST know
Latest sex scandal involving well-known figure of 'authority' which normally reaches such gigantic proportions purely because of some spat between an editor and some PR machine which immediately sends every editor on Fleet Street to their chequebooks in the name of press freedom, Your Right To Know and The Public Interest - all of which doesn't apply when it comes to actually reporting what's going on in the world.
Page seven: What Murdoch's government are lying about now
Leaks, spin, made-up numbers and easy-to-follow 'fact' boxes that will really confuse you
Page eight: Murders, rapes and robberies
All the really essential, difficult to get stuff phoned in by your drunk correspondents from outside Britain's courtrooms
Page nine to 14: We must have done enough news by NOW
No. Time for the international news, all about the American elections
etc etc etc
So you see, dotted around all the celebrities, the serious stuff isn't telling us anything at all. Is the real distraction stories on celebrities? Who, to the best of my knowledge, rarely murder, incite others to violence or send in the national troops to kill and be killed in the name of their country? The horror of seeing Britney in Farenheit 9/11 vacuously putting her trust in her president (and finally showing us that she and Justin are not, after all, meant to be together) was the final assurance that celebrities and hard news should be kept firmly in their separate spheres. Reading and gossiping about celebrities is harmless - celebrities provide national entertainment which can be gleefully shared by friends or strangers on a train. It's necessary for a country which no longer has the same sense of community as it once did.
No, the problem is in newspapers which think they have the right to mislead their readers by printing rubbish, that they have the right to invade anyone's privacy and misuse the public interest argument that should be confined to, er, the public interest (ie politicians stealing money, not having affairs unless it happens to be with a spy) and that we actually care in the slightest about the thinly veiled spin that passes for political news now because an actual announcement or actual events isn't exclusive enough and involves a bit more effort that printing the latest anxious speculation in the corridors of Canary Wharf.
If the good papers realised that there's no shame in a bit of celebrity indulgence (which, to be fair, the Telegraph has to an extent though it has come in for much criticism over it) then we would finally have a good mix in a newspaper. Put the latest developments on Michelle and Stuart's 'romance' in (quick, before we lose interest - oh, there it goes) next to news on Sudan, it might just get more people reading proper news. And that, surely, is what newspapers are there for, isn't it?
Postscript: I don't want to blow my own trumpet (the classic blogger lie) but I've been doing mental ticking of boxes in recent days and the above content analysis is Right. Especially in the Standard.
But as I flicked through the pages of Metro and peered at the pictures of Nadia in someone else's Sun, I came across that time-honoured and weak argument from rich-green-entrepeneur Roddick that our media and world are so bad because 'most of our media today focuses on celebrity'. This argument, which basically comes down to the idea that we're too busy reading about celebrities to think about the real world, is nonsense. Because, put simply, we *can* think about more than one thing at once. Yes, we can, honestly. But those people who criticise the media because of celebrity obsession are distracting themselves and failing to acknowledge the real scope of the problem. There is plenty of serious stuff in our papers, but it's nonsense.
To illustrate let me take you through my definitive page-by-page analysis of your average British middle market newspaper:
Page one: We're all going to die/the floods are coming!
Souped-up scare story made up around the watercooler terrifying us all about the latest healthscare / what a lot of rain there's been / immigrants
Page two: Snore snore
Dutifully reported events or announcements by the government / trade unions / thinktanks presented in 'serious' short stories, but rest assured no-ones reading that because they're looking at
Page three: Phwar!!
Fabulous respectable actress out on the town last night but golly, is that a nipple showing?
Page four, five, six: Sex between adults - why you MUST know
Latest sex scandal involving well-known figure of 'authority' which normally reaches such gigantic proportions purely because of some spat between an editor and some PR machine which immediately sends every editor on Fleet Street to their chequebooks in the name of press freedom, Your Right To Know and The Public Interest - all of which doesn't apply when it comes to actually reporting what's going on in the world.
Page seven: What Murdoch's government are lying about now
Leaks, spin, made-up numbers and easy-to-follow 'fact' boxes that will really confuse you
Page eight: Murders, rapes and robberies
All the really essential, difficult to get stuff phoned in by your drunk correspondents from outside Britain's courtrooms
Page nine to 14: We must have done enough news by NOW
No. Time for the international news, all about the American elections
etc etc etc
So you see, dotted around all the celebrities, the serious stuff isn't telling us anything at all. Is the real distraction stories on celebrities? Who, to the best of my knowledge, rarely murder, incite others to violence or send in the national troops to kill and be killed in the name of their country? The horror of seeing Britney in Farenheit 9/11 vacuously putting her trust in her president (and finally showing us that she and Justin are not, after all, meant to be together) was the final assurance that celebrities and hard news should be kept firmly in their separate spheres. Reading and gossiping about celebrities is harmless - celebrities provide national entertainment which can be gleefully shared by friends or strangers on a train. It's necessary for a country which no longer has the same sense of community as it once did.
No, the problem is in newspapers which think they have the right to mislead their readers by printing rubbish, that they have the right to invade anyone's privacy and misuse the public interest argument that should be confined to, er, the public interest (ie politicians stealing money, not having affairs unless it happens to be with a spy) and that we actually care in the slightest about the thinly veiled spin that passes for political news now because an actual announcement or actual events isn't exclusive enough and involves a bit more effort that printing the latest anxious speculation in the corridors of Canary Wharf.
If the good papers realised that there's no shame in a bit of celebrity indulgence (which, to be fair, the Telegraph has to an extent though it has come in for much criticism over it) then we would finally have a good mix in a newspaper. Put the latest developments on Michelle and Stuart's 'romance' in (quick, before we lose interest - oh, there it goes) next to news on Sudan, it might just get more people reading proper news. And that, surely, is what newspapers are there for, isn't it?
Postscript: I don't want to blow my own trumpet (the classic blogger lie) but I've been doing mental ticking of boxes in recent days and the above content analysis is Right. Especially in the Standard.
Well, it made me laugh
The following is from The Friend in 1978 and has been included in an email bulletin I write for web-subscribers. I thought it would be appreciated by at least a couple of this site's regular readers...
Review: The Man who gave his company away by Susanna Hoe
(Biography of Ernest Bader, 'the émigré Swiss Quaker who has dedicated his life to building a two-way bridge between industry and Christianity')
Most people know that Ernest Bader built up a successful industrial firm, then transferred both control and income to his work force. This book goes into detail about these arrangments and the problems successfully encountered, and could serve as a ground-map ('here be dragons') for anyone studying ways to alleviate capitalism's unpleasant side-effects.
E.F. Schumacher, a trustee of the Scott Bader Commonwealth, said: 'A strong and very upright searching Quaker. But he is a very difficult chap… he is a military pacifist, a very dictatorial democrat, a very intelligent ass, an asinine genius'.
Explaining to an enthralled overseas visitor how he had created the Scott Bader Commonwealth out of love for his worker, to show the way to a new and loving order of society and hoping, through love, to put an end to war, he added: 'the trouble is, there isn't sufficient love in the world.'
'Everyone doesn't necessarily see it your way', said his son.
Ernest banged on the table. 'Then drown them. DROWN THEM.'
Review: The Man who gave his company away by Susanna Hoe
(Biography of Ernest Bader, 'the émigré Swiss Quaker who has dedicated his life to building a two-way bridge between industry and Christianity')
Most people know that Ernest Bader built up a successful industrial firm, then transferred both control and income to his work force. This book goes into detail about these arrangments and the problems successfully encountered, and could serve as a ground-map ('here be dragons') for anyone studying ways to alleviate capitalism's unpleasant side-effects.
E.F. Schumacher, a trustee of the Scott Bader Commonwealth, said: 'A strong and very upright searching Quaker. But he is a very difficult chap… he is a military pacifist, a very dictatorial democrat, a very intelligent ass, an asinine genius'.
Explaining to an enthralled overseas visitor how he had created the Scott Bader Commonwealth out of love for his worker, to show the way to a new and loving order of society and hoping, through love, to put an end to war, he added: 'the trouble is, there isn't sufficient love in the world.'
'Everyone doesn't necessarily see it your way', said his son.
Ernest banged on the table. 'Then drown them. DROWN THEM.'
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