From David Weinberger’s journal…
The Encyclopedia Britannica has refused my request to interview an editor for 15 minutes about the process by which it chooses authors. I explained that this is for a book. But, the head of the Britannica’s communications group decided – based on what? – that they don’t want to support people who are “cheerleading for the downfall of businesses that they deem to be part of an old regime.”
Yep. According to the New York Times,
Amazon introduced a grocery store last week, complete with sales rankings, customer reviews and recommendations. (For the record, customers who bought Froot Loops also bought digital pedometers. Who knew?) It is the 34th product category Amazon has rolled out since it started expanding in the late 1990’s, but for some it is the most puzzling, since it calls to mind some of the worst Internet business debacles on record…
Today’s excerpt from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, Aged 51 1/2…
Wow. Will ya look at these friggin financials! Sales up 24%, net profit up 48%. And our EPS is 10 cents above what those imbeciles on Wall Street were predicting. Gosh. We are sooo friggin hot right now. We’re like the Michael Jordan of business. Nothing but net. Hey, Michael Dell, how you guys doing down there in Buttfriggerville? Huh? What’s that? I can’t hear you. Watchoo say, boy? Sales up 6%, net down 18%? Well, sorry to hear that, wall-eye. Hey, maybe you guys should try to actually invent something. Like, hire engineers and actually design a product. Or maybe not. Maybe just leave that invention stuff to us. Ha! We R 2cool2Btru!!!!! I am going to run out to the JobsMobile and do donuts in the parking lot!!! Then I am going to kiss Peter Oppenheimer on the mouth!!!! Later losers!!! I am so cool!!!!
Pity it’s a spoof.
(We’re on holiday.)
One of my favourite books is Power by Steven Lukes. In it, he says that power comes in only three varieties: the ability to make people do what they don’t want to do; the ability to stop people doing what they want to do; and the ability to shape the way they think. The last is the power that our decaying mass media have, and in Britain exercise to a frightening degree. Britain’s tabloid culture explains why it’s effectively impossible to have a grown-up public discussion about any complex policy issue.
Brooding on this this morning, I came on Martin Kettle’s column in this morning’s Guardian. “It is beyond argument”, he writes,
that the award of peerages has always been a cynical business. Ditto that Britain’s party-funding system is unsustainable. And also that John Prescott is a busted flush. All these things are true and, in context, serious. But there is much more to politics and government than this. Yet our po;itical culture doesn;t want to know. It seems incapable of getting out of second gear.
This has been a week, after all, in which politics has emphatically not been about games but about the real thing. The Middle east has taken a sharp turn for the worse. What appears to be Islamist terrorism has been unleashed on a country with impeccable anti-imperialist credentials. And the UK government has announced a major strategic rethink of the country’s long-term energy needs.
And yet what, for most British journalism this week, has been “the question that just won’t go away” — aka the question we prefer to go on asking anyway? Not the Middle east, Islamist terrorism or whether the lights will stay on. Instead we have a choice of: “Why didn’t John Prescott declare the gift of a stetson?”, “Who else has he slept with?” or “Are the police going to question Tony Blair about Labour loans?” In this political culture, the closest we get to putting it all into perspective is episode 952 of the “When will Blair go?” saga.
One of the delights of the Guardian is the “Corrections and clarifications” column which runs alongside the leaders. Not only is it an example of good practice (everyone knows that we journalists make mistakes, so why not make a feature out of a bug?), but it often makes enthralling reading. See, for example, this entry from July 14:
The photograph of a jellyfish shown in ‘Bathers beware’, page 9, yesterday, was of a Pelagia noctiluca and not, as we have been informed by the agency which supplied it, Auerlia aurita.
It’s over. But what madness overtook Zidane? Here is the moment as recorded in Rob Smyth’s Live Blog of the match.
109 mins: ZIDANE SENT OFF FOR STICKING THE HEED [sic] ON MATERAZZI!!
Oh. My. God. In his final professional match, Zidane had been sent off for a disgraceful headbutt on Materazzi. He just rammed his head into Materazzi’s chest; it was really firm and nasty. Horrible. Now that really is a headbutt. It was also completely off the ball and at first it seemed he’d got away with it, but after talking to his assistant – and possibly after an intervention from the fourth official – the referee was alerted to what happened, and sent Zidane off. He has always had a nasty streak, but this was just ridiculous. What on earth did Materazzi say to provoke that? Either way, it was a disgusting, nasty, blackly comic headbutt, delivered with a Hitchcokian suddenness, and it’s an unbelievable ending to Zidane’s lustrous career. It was a JFK moment and a GBH moment rolled into one oh-my-giddy-aunt moment. And he could still end up lifting the World Cup!
He didn’t. But it was such a terrible end to a great career. Mind you, one look at Mathias Breschler and Monika Fischer’s astonishing large-format portrait of Zidane would convince anyone that he’s not the kind of guy you’d like to meet on a dark night.
Now that’s it’s over (the tournament, that is), here’s the strangest thing of all. During the entire duration of the footyfest, which supposedly gathered the best footballers in the world into small patches of Germany, there was only one truly outstanding match — that between France and Brazil. I watched many of them with my laptop perched on my knee, and that was the only match which seriously diverted my attention from email, browsing, blogging and work.
I’ve been reading the leaked emails from Des Swayne, Dave Cameron’s parliamentary gopher, courtesy of the Sunday Times. The one I particularly like includes the following passage:
1. Transfer of HoL [House of Lords] reform to Jack Straw means that Teresa [May, the shadow Leader of the Commons] will speak for us: this is a sensitive issue and Teresa is neither liked nor trusted across the party. A tight rein will be necessary.
2. Nicholas Soames wants to talk to you about how to ‘stroke’ the peers. I have asked Louise for a slot.
What can this mean? Nicholas Soames is a preposterous voluptuary (and close friend of the Prince of Wales) who never fails to amuse. One of his estranged ex-girlfriends was once quoted (I think in Private Eye) as saying that making love to Soames was “like having a very large wardrobe fall on you — with the key sticking out”. He always reminds me of another celebrated voluptuary, Lord Castlerosse, who was similarly statuesque. The prospect of Dave and Soames massaging members of the House of Lords does not bear thinking about.
From today’s Guardian…
It may be one of the richest tennis events in the world, but the six-figure prize money on offer at Wimbledon is apparently not enough for some of the world’s best-paid sports stars.
Yesterday it emerged that players are routinely swiping the green and purple towels from the courts at the end of matches. The All England Club confirmed that more than 2,500 of the £24 towels disappear during Wimbledon fortnight, costing the club more than £60,000 a year…
Image (c) bp plc
While driving yesterday I was listening to John ‘Lord’ Browne, CEO of BP, being interviewed on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs programme and was struck by one of his choices — a song by Diana Krall. But of course I was unable to make a note of it at the time. It turns out that the BBC maintains a useful web page detailing the choices of current and past guests on the programme. Later, I bought the track — ‘Narrow Daylight’, written by Diana Krall and Elvis Costello — from iTunes, and very nice it is too.
I met Browne at a college dinner a few months back and discovered that we have two interests in common — photography and cigars. We use similar cameras, but he has much better smokes. Which is not entirely surprising: after all, he’s the one with money to burn.