Quentin had a link to some thoughtful musing by Bill Thompson about the current Wikipedia controversies. His conclusion:
I use the Wikipedia a lot. It’s a good starting point for serious research, but I’d never accept something that I read there without checking. If the fuss over Siegenthaler, Stoltenberg and Curry means that other readers do the same then it will have been worthwhile. We shouldn’t dismiss the Wikipedia, but we shouldn’t venerate it either.
The Observer, the newspaper I’ve written for since 1972, has been published in broadsheet format ever since it was founded in 1791. But today’s is the last broadsheet edition. From next Sunday it will be published in the Berliner format of its sister paper, the Guardian. The change was inevitable, but it’s the end of an era all the same.
A Global utility knife, IMHO the best in the world. It’s Japanese, beautifully made and perfectly balanced. And sooo sharp. I’m the cook in our household, so this is a working tool, not a toy.
A pair of Grado SR-60 open-back headphones. I know, they look like something that Soviet radio operators used to wear, but they’re exceedingly comfortable and provide wonderful, rich audio.
The DVD set of Heimat 1, Edgar Reitz’s stunning saga of life in rural Germany between the First and Second World Wars. I was a TV critic for 13 years, and when I quit in 1995 an interviewer asked me what I would remember most from my stint. I had no hesitation in responding “Two things: Reitz’s Heimat and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective“.
But by far the best presents I got were some mince pies specially baked by my daughter for me on Christmas Day with the letters of “Happy Xmas” cut out in pastry and presented in a hand-made box.
‘Sir’ Bob Geldof has accepted a role as poverty consultant to the new Compassionate Conservative (TM) Tory Party. Naturally he denies that he is deserting New Labour. After all, he was never a member so how could he defect? But it’s one more straw in the wind. Geldof & Co can spot a change in the wind a hundred miles away. Now all I’m waiting for is for Richard Branson to discover the attractions of the Cameroonies. Remember the way he showed up at the Labour victory celebrations in May 1997 after a decade of paying sycophantic attention to the Tories?
The ludicrous UK ‘gong’ system has given a piddling ‘honour’ to Jonathan Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPod and iMac. He’s become a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours list. Er, what empire is that, exactly?
“Paradoxophile”.
Used by Frank Kermode to describe Adam Phillips, the soi-disant expert on flirtation, Freud and other fashionable topics, in the London Review of Books, 19 June, 2003.
Nice story in the Guardian.
When a middle-aged man swore at airline staff after he was refused a drink on a flight from Manchester to Tenerife, he got a sunshine break he had not bargained for. The pilot diverted the charter plane and dumped the troublesome holidaymaker 300 miles from his destination on a barren volcanic island off the west coast of Africa….
We use budget airlines a lot and I don’t envy the cabin crews. It’s become a horrible job, even when the passengers aren’t obstreperous. It takes about an hour to fly from Stansted to the various airports we use in Ireland, and each time I look on in amazement as the crews rush to get through the same deadly routine — passing through the cabin with a drinks trolley, then coming round trying to sell scratch cards and ‘duty free’ goods. Then tidying up and packing everything away prior to scrambling into their seats in preparation for landing. And then being expected to turn round the plane in 25 minutes. (That’s the RyanAir norm.)
When I was a child in 1950s Ireland, the profession of “air hostess” was regarded as unutterably glamorous. Parents prayed that their daughters might get a job in Aer Lingus, the state airline, thereby enabling them to land some rich businessman as a husband. Mind you, the prospective husbands would have needed to be well-off, because Aer Lingus fired its hostesses the moment they got married. (So, come to think of it, did church/state-run primary schools.) Different world, then.
Hmm… just noticed that the offending passenger is “understood to be an Irish citizen living in Lancashire” who “ignored numerous appeals to calm down when he was refused further alcoholic drinks”. Bet his Ma hadn’t been an Aer Lingus hostess.
Yes, I know — it’s a perennial issue whenever two or more photographers gather in the same space. Ken Rockwell has written an excellent, no-nonsense page about it.
Here’s something to cheer you up — the transcript of a Fox News interview with the Leader of the Free World on the subject of his iPod. The interview begins with Brit Hume asking the Prez what’s on his device now:
Bush : Beach Boys, Beatles, let’s see, Alan Jackson, Alan Jackson, Alejandro, Alison Krauss, the Angels, the Archies, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, Dan McLean. Remember him?
Hume: Don McLean.
Bush: I mean, Don McLean.
Hume: Does “American Pie,” right?
Bush: Great song.
Hume: Yes, yes, great song.
Unidentified male: . . . which ones do you play?
Bush: All of these. I put it on shuffle. Dwight Yoakam. I’ve got the Shuffle, the, what is it called? The little.
Hume: Shuffle.
Bush: It looks like.
Hume: The Shuffle. That is the name of one of the models.
Bush: Yes, the Shuffle.
Hume: Called the Shuffle.
Bush: Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle.
Hume: So you — it plays . . .
Bush: Put it in my pocket, got the ear things on.
Hume: So it plays them in a random order.
Bush: Yes.
Hume: So you don’t know what you’re going to going to get.
Bush: No.
Hume: But you know —
Bush: And if you don’t like it, you have got your little advance button. It’s pretty high-tech stuff.
Hume: . . . be good to have one of those at home, wouldn’t it?
Bush: Oh?
Hume: Yes, hit the button and whatever it is that’s in your head — gone.
Bush: . . . it’s a bad day, just say, get out of here.
Hume: Well, that probably is pretty . . .
Bush: That works, too. ( Laughter )
Hume: Yes, right.
Footnote: American Pie is the song containing the line “Drove the Chevvy to the levee but the levee was dry”? Who said irony was dead.
Microsoft has announced that it will no longer ‘support’ the Mac version of Internet Explorer. Yawn. But Bill Thompson sees this as an opportunity. If Microsoft no longer wants Mac IE, he argues, why not release the source code and let keen programmers support — and maybe enhance — it. Now there’s a real optimist for you.