Bits 'N' Bobs
20/11/07 22:58 Filed in: General
Nonsense | Blogging
If you have been missing your regular dose of
Raiméis, the good news is Maca's
back after an eight-month hiatus.
Stephen Fry's blog is also a repository for his weekly Tech column in the Guardian. This is good news as it saves me from actually buying the paper, thus reducing my carbon footprint somewhat, which seem to be all they ever go on about in the Grauniad these days. (Also the fact that I can never find it on the Graun's website is a pain.) He has also just written a long piece about the perils of trying to have a full-throttle, no-holds-barred, fists-banging-the-table debate with Americans. It kind of reminded me of the criticism Carole Coleman came in for after her combative interview with President George W Bush a couple of years back.
(As an aside, I find it hard to forgive Fry for coming up with the awful neologism "Blessay.")
The Kindle… hmmm… I'm not so sure. Reading a book is more than just scanning the words on a page. There is the tactile experience of handling the book, turning the pages and so on, that I would miss if I were to go all electronic. There is also the $400 (or whatever the Euro equivalent will be when/if it ever makes it over here) I would miss too. Is it the iPod for books? John Gruber doesn't think so.
I was away in England from Friday to Monday and so only caught a glimpse of the tabloid headlines following the McElhill tragedy in Omagh. One paper ran with a front page headline along the lines "Sex perv Dad torched them all!" Now, whatever were the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these poor unfortunate people, some of the tabs were well out of order in their coverage of the story. These headlines were being printed as the family were still lying dead in the burnt-out ruins of their home. Their relatives, friends and neighbours would have still been trying to get some sort of grip on the awful events, so to run these lurid headlines even before the bodies were removed from the scene of the fire was insensitive in the extreme. The tabloid editors will no doubt defend their headlines by saying that they are only reporting the news that their readers want to read. But are the readers of Irish tabloids really that interested in such sensationalism? As I said, I was away last weekend. Was there any debate or discussion about the behaviour of the tabloids in the aftermath of this tragedy?
The Department of Revenue and Customs in the UK has managed to lose the details of every family that claims child benefit - all 7.25 million of them. I'm so glad that I'm not the poor sod that decided to call the courier.
Stephen Fry's blog is also a repository for his weekly Tech column in the Guardian. This is good news as it saves me from actually buying the paper, thus reducing my carbon footprint somewhat, which seem to be all they ever go on about in the Grauniad these days. (Also the fact that I can never find it on the Graun's website is a pain.) He has also just written a long piece about the perils of trying to have a full-throttle, no-holds-barred, fists-banging-the-table debate with Americans. It kind of reminded me of the criticism Carole Coleman came in for after her combative interview with President George W Bush a couple of years back.
(As an aside, I find it hard to forgive Fry for coming up with the awful neologism "Blessay.")
The Kindle… hmmm… I'm not so sure. Reading a book is more than just scanning the words on a page. There is the tactile experience of handling the book, turning the pages and so on, that I would miss if I were to go all electronic. There is also the $400 (or whatever the Euro equivalent will be when/if it ever makes it over here) I would miss too. Is it the iPod for books? John Gruber doesn't think so.
I was away in England from Friday to Monday and so only caught a glimpse of the tabloid headlines following the McElhill tragedy in Omagh. One paper ran with a front page headline along the lines "Sex perv Dad torched them all!" Now, whatever were the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these poor unfortunate people, some of the tabs were well out of order in their coverage of the story. These headlines were being printed as the family were still lying dead in the burnt-out ruins of their home. Their relatives, friends and neighbours would have still been trying to get some sort of grip on the awful events, so to run these lurid headlines even before the bodies were removed from the scene of the fire was insensitive in the extreme. The tabloid editors will no doubt defend their headlines by saying that they are only reporting the news that their readers want to read. But are the readers of Irish tabloids really that interested in such sensationalism? As I said, I was away last weekend. Was there any debate or discussion about the behaviour of the tabloids in the aftermath of this tragedy?
The Department of Revenue and Customs in the UK has managed to lose the details of every family that claims child benefit - all 7.25 million of them. I'm so glad that I'm not the poor sod that decided to call the courier.