Separation anxiety

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So Tessa Jowell has separated from her husband, the corporate lawyer and associate of Silvio Berlusconi, David Mills. What always surprised me was what Jowell, who seems a wholesome and intelligent person, was doing married to a cove who specialised in tax-avoidance (which, I hasten to say, is perfectly legal).

I’m reminded of something Nancy Astor said, in a reply to a question about why she had shacked up with her first husband, an alcoholic adulterer. “I married beneath me”, she said. “Women always do”. She also observed once that “the penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you”, and that the only thing she liked about rich people was their money. Quite a dame.

Thumbs up!

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All those US Crackberry addicts can relax and go back to thumb-twiddling with a clear conscience. Here’s the Toronto Star‘s report of the outcome of the legal poker game between RIM and NTP:

More than two million Americans and the U.S. government are breathing easier today knowing that their BlackBerry devices, those highly addictive email gadgets invented and perfected in Canada, have escaped the horror of a nationwide ban.

Canadian tech darling Research In Motion Ltd. announced yesterday it has paid a whopping $612.5 million (U.S.) to patent nemesis NTP Inc., ending more than four years of hostile litigation and heeding the advice of a U.S. judge poised to trigger a BlackBerry blackout on the world’s largest economic power.

Shares in RIM surged nearly 20 per cent higher in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Don’t you just love that phrase “Canadian tech darling”? Who writes this drivel?

Lucky me!

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I’ve apparently won a big prize (a million dollars, no less) in a lottery. Which is nice, especially since I did not buy a ticket. The helpful email conveying these glad tidings continues thus…

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Your fund is now deposited with ourPaying Bank and insured in your name. Due to mix up of some numbers andnames, we ask that you keep this award from public notice untill yourclaims has been processed and the money remitted to your account as thisis part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming of unwarrantedtaking advantage of this program by participants as it has happened inthe past.

All participants were selected through a computer ballotsystem drawn from 25,000 names from Asia, Australia, New Zealand,Europe, North and South America, Middle East and Africa .This programmeis sponsored by EUROPEAN UNION/BILL GATES and WORLD INTERNATIONALLOTTERY ORGANISATION TO PROMOTE and ENAHNCE the use of SOFT WARE IN THEGOBAL WORLD.we hope your lucky name will draw a bigger cash prize in thesubsequent programs. To begin your lottery claims , please contact yourclaims agent, MR GEORGE PRATT on Telephone number:0034-606-742-900or
email:santaluciaseguro@netscape.net orsantaluciamgt@netscape.net,with all your information provided that youare the user of this mail,either your country passport or any otherindentity.

Now my question is this: who would fall for such an obvious scam? Presumably people do — otherwise the spammers wouldn’t do it. You’d have thought that even a half-wit would be put off by the typos and grammatical mistakes. Weird.

Getting his goat

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Er, surely this is a spoof?

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Thanks to James Miller for spotting it.

Tales from Securitania

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Amazing account on Andrew Brown’s Blog of his recent experience in London.

OK, so I looked a bit rough. I haven’t cut my hair in six weeks and I was wearing black jeans, a lumberjack shirt, a North Face jacket, and a rucksack for my laptop. When I came out of the tube at Liverpool Street, I noticed two cops in the main exit from the tube, but I took, as I usually do, the side exit past the shops, where there were two more cops, one black, and one white. I just had time to think this was to reassure us when the black one stopped me. Would I mind being searched under section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act?

It’s worth reading the entire post. It provides a deeply depressing insight into the cluelessness of New Labour’s national security state.

En passant… It also explains why I have stopped bringing my black laptop rucksack to London…

Ofcom’s ‘media literacy’ audit

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Ofcom (the omnipotent UK communications regulator) has conducted a study of what it calls ‘media literacy’ (defined as “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts”) in the UK. Summary of findings is here. Full report here. Highlights:

  • Age is a significant indicator of the extent and types of media literacy, with mobile phones a pervasive media technology for the 16-24 age group. Those aged 65 and over have significantly lower levels of media literacy than other age-groups.
  • Media platforms are seen mainly in ‘traditional’ terms; there are few signs yet of a widespread recognition of their wider digital functions.
  • Knowledge of industry funding and regulation across platforms varies. A significant majority of respondents (over 75%) know how the television industry is funded and that it is regulated. Over half of UK adults know how radio is funded and that it is regulated. Two in five internet users know how search engine websites are funded, although this drops to one quarter of UK adults as a whole.
  • Levels of concern about content vary across platforms, with little concern over mobile phone content. Most people are not yet aware of content controls on mobiles. A sizeable minority of internet users are not confident about blocking viruses or email scams.
  • Many people, especially the elderly, say they prefer to learn media skills from family and friends, or by themselves rather than in formal groups.
  • The highest area of interest for many people is in learning how to use the internet. One third of people say they are interested in learning more about digital platforms and services.

    • More on Fukuyama

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    Good review by Jacob Weisberg in Slate of Francis Fukuyama’s new book. Needless to say, Christopher Hitchens doesn’t think much of Fukuyama’s critical view of the neocons. But then you wouldn’t expect turkeys to be keen on Christmas, and in this context Hitch has become a rather tiresome turkey. Like the Bush regime, he’s running out of excuses, and it shows in the extent to which his piece is an ad hominen attack rather than a serious rebuttal of Fukuyama’s argument. Personal abuse, like patriotism, is often the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Dr Johnson might have said.

    Container slips

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    Quentin brought back an interesting quote from a conference he’d been to. It came from Peter Cochrane, who used to be head of R&D at BT and is now a freelance cheeky chappie. He claimed that more than 10,000 shipping containers are lost every year for various reasons — including being dumped overboard by ships’ captains who get rattled by the way their vessels are rolling in high seas.

    Original garbage

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    Nice piece in the Wall Street Journal by Lee Gomes.

    There is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of “original content” on Internet sites that is at best worthless, and at worst possibly even dangerously inaccurate.

    I should know; I’ve been writing some of the stuff myself.

    Understanding what’s happening requires a lesson in modern Web economics. If there is a topic in the news, people will be searching on it. If you can get those searchers to land on a seemingly authoritative page you’ve set up, you can make money from their arrival. Via ads, for instance.

    It’s a wicked world out there. Sigh.