Daily Archives: March 26, 2006

Blood on the red carpet: Annie Proulx at the Oscars

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One of the few good things about tidying up on a Sunday morning is that it gives one an excuse to read old newspapers before they go for recycling. I’ve just come on this gem that I’d missed — Annie Proulx’s acute account of what the Oscars hoopla is like from the inside. (She wrote the story on which Brokeback Montain is based.) Sample:

The people connected with Brokeback Mountain, including me, hoped that, having been nominated for eight Academy awards, it would get Best Picture as it had at the funny, lively Independent Spirit awards the day before. (If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit choices.) We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash – excuse me – Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline. Next year we can look to the awards for controversial themes on the punishment of adulterers with a branding iron in the shape of the letter A, runaway slaves, and the debate over free silver….

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Now there’s a woman who knows her Winnie the Pooh.

And while we’re on that subject, tech publisher Tim O’Reilly runs wonderful conferences called “FOO camps” (FOO = “Friends of O’Reilly”). Someone from Disney heard about them, and organised an analogous one for Disney staff. They called it a “POOH camp”, naturally.

‘Progress’

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Nice rant in today’s New York Times…

There is a decision pending within the bowels of the federal government that may be the single most incomprehensibly wrongheaded decision of the century.

It’s small when compared with Iraq, but it’s still maddening. It involves allowing passengers to talk on their cellphones while they are in flight. Now, as everyone who has the misfortune to fly commercially knows, air travel today is mind-bogglingly uncomfortable. The seats are small. The flights are nearly always full to overflowing. The food is unspeakable. The air is fetid and filled with germs. Many a time I board an airliner hale and hearty, only to emerge with a raging pneumonia.

But there is one saving grace. Unless you are seated behind or next to really rude people — which happens surprisingly rarely — air travel is fairly quiet. Yes, the flight attendants stand around and talk. Yes, before the plane takes off people scream into their cellphones, but along about three hours into the flight from, say, Kennedy to LAX, it’s pretty peaceful.

That’s solely because passengers can’t use cellphones aloft. That prohibition was one of the great decisions ever. Now, in a fit of idiocy, some airlines are suggesting that they be allowed to sell the use of cellphones in the air at nominal prices. This will mean yelling and screaming and boasting and complaining for almost all the time you’re sealed in that sardine can. The government is apparently planning to allow this anarchy.

Deconstructing Google AdSense

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My post on Bushisms led Google to place an ad for this outfit on the page. They sell “outdoor clothing shooting and stalking equipment”. Reminds me of the joke that was current when Bush’s Pa, George Snr., was running for president and Dan Quayle was his running-mate. “Bush and Quayle — sounds like the title of a hunting magazine”.

Iraq’s economic ‘recovery’

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From a piece by Zaid Salah in OpenDemocracy…

It was revealed on 9 March 2006 that oil production in Iraq is in fact at the lowest rate since the war. In August 2004, oil exports stood at 1.9 million barrels per day (mbd). Less than a year later, in July 2005, they had fallen to 1.42 mbd. We have now learned that in December 2005 exports fell to 1.1 mbd, their lowest rate since the war. This stands in complete contrast to the declarations made by US and Iraqi officials on the state of Iraq’s oil industry. From Paul Wolfowitz, who famously declared that Iraq would be able to finance its own reconstruction, to Iraqi officials who declared in December 2004 that oil production would reach 3.5 mbd within less than twelve months: all have been involved in a huge operation of deceit.

The oil industry is crumbling, and the more it crumbles, the more we can write off any hopes for the rest of the country. This development impacts on Iraq in three ways. First, it translates into less monies available for the government’s general budget (by way of example, the ministry of justice’s budget for 2006 was reduced by two-thirds in comparison to 2005); second, oil shortages can be felt at petrol stations throughout the country, where average Iraqis often have to queue for days at a time in order to fill up their gas tanks.

Third, it affects electricity production, which incredibly also declined to its lowest point since the start of the war in March 2003, with the overstressed power network producing less than half the electricity needed to meet Iraqi demand. Most of Iraq’s power installations run on oil, so the fuel shortages have a direct impact on electricity production throughout the country. In addition, the fact that Iraq is exporting less will necessarily mean that reconstruction of the electricity sector, and even maintenance of the inadequate supply that is currently available, will suffer as a result.

The long arm of the law

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This morning’s Observer column…

Although the established order struggled initially with the challenges posed by the net, in general it has made astonishing strides in getting the unruly beast under control. That control will never be perfect (witness the way the file-sharing genie escaped from the bottle), but the long arm of the law has had little difficulty reaching into cyberspace when it chooses to make the effort.

And although libertarians will no doubt protest, sometimes these intrusions may have beneficial effects. Those of us who want the net to serve as the Speakers’ Corner of the 21st century have to accept that speakers must take responsibility for what they say.

Even in the US, freedom of speech does not include the right to shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre.

And in Britain it should not include the right to call somebody a sex offender when he is not.

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