spiked-politics | Column | Those cartoons: a caricatured argument

I’ve been following the global saga of the ‘cartoons that insult Islam’ with a mixture of amusement, horror and increasing exasperation. Increasingly it resembles an argument on Trisha where it’s clear that any slim points of difference are an excuse for people who dislike each other to go hammer and tongs.

Why is it that major issues on liberalism (free speech, tolerance, respect) are so often triggered by events which are somehow unworthy? I believe in free speech, commentary, tolerance and respectful behaviour: why therefore should I have to fight for this ground on the basis of some juvenile, purposely-provocative and slightly pointless cartoons. They are irrelevant at best and unnecessarily offensive.

This said, Mick Hume’s piece on Spike is a good read and covers the underlying issues well:

So, at the risk of stating what might once (ie, about a fortnight ago) have been considered the obvious, it is worth reminding ourselves that a dozen obscure, unfunny (unless something major has been lost in translation) badly drawn bad-taste cartoons are…

1. Not the start of a slippery slope towards an Islamophoic Holocaust in Europe, as Muslim groups and at least one Labour MP has suggested;

2. Not the bedrock on which principle of free speech in our societies stands or falls, as implied by some in the West.

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As secular liberals, whose cultures have spilt blood, tears and gallons on ink on religious reform, separate of church and state, emancipation and universal suffrage, it’s worth remembering how recently this “nirvana of free speech” has been reached. The history of Europe is one of religious zealotry, reform, counter-reformation, repression and finally a level of religious and social emancipation. We have had barely 50 years of classlessness, equal opportunity, free markets, open government… indeed, even listing these terms conjures recent examples of our own failures in each of these areas!

In order to either live with Islam or importantly (imho) to play to the broad, moderate majority within the ancient, peaceful and tolerant religion, we need to act with a bit more sensitivity and humility, while remaining strongly opposed on principle to the macho, jihadi voices of violence, repression and extremism (this applies to Islam as well as the Christian Right in the US).

This means it is incumbent upon us all:
* not to give offence carelessly or without purpose: since when is provoking someone to no end an expression of ‘freedom’ or an exemplification of values we hold to be universal and dear?
* not to take offence. Accept that there are occasions when we are sensitive to slight, even where there is none, or certainly none intended

I must be deluded though: if it were that easy then surely we wouldn’t have these arguments and deliberate misunderstandings.

Quote of the day though to Mick Hume:

The only restriction there ought to be on free speech is that it is the preserve of adults. Neither side has passed that test in this infantile spat. Instead of shouting at one another to shut up, it would be better if we all resolved to grow up.

TidBITS: The Incredible Shrinking URL

Good URLs are all the rage at the moment – very ‘web 2.0’! The requirements are that they’re clear, logical, hackable, persistent, don’t expose either the identifiers or the underlying technology etc (see – I was listening yesterday 🙂 ).

Anyway, apropo none of the above, this article on TidBits is a timely roundup of the URL-reduction services available to tame those dotted-domain+long-URL+session-keys+embedded-query+platform-specific URLs…

Normally, I use tinyurl but I’ve just been intro’d to LookLeap – looks neat. Not just a bland tinyurl domain, but a preservation of the destination address. Nice. Absolute shortness isn’t needed (provided the URL fits on a line) but the information “payload” is increased.

Early in January Vicky and I headed off to Venice for a long weekend, thanks to Elke for looking after the girls. It was lovely to have some time to ourselves to wander the streets (!), drink in the sights, drink up the prosecco and discover some new and remembered restaurants.

You can see the photos – a limited 30! – at the gallery. Do a slideshow so you can crack through them.

Photographically I was trying out an Xpan that I’d recently picked up as a rather trashed second-hand “bargain” from the Procentre. I was in a B&W mood (the weather was going to be overcast and rainy – just the thing for some grainy Tri-X). The ‘ManInTheShop’ suggested some Fuji NeoPan 1600 (a very fast B&W film) so I stuffed the bag with Tri-X and a couple of Neopans to try and we headed off. I’ll give some feedback once I’ve scanned in the panoramas…

We stayed at the Bauer and really liked it. We also found some great fooderies. Details shared after the jump…

The Future of Web Apps – Carson Systems conference

So, here I am at the lovely Kensington Town Hall. Lovely building – suprisingly well hidden, especially considering its bulk. A veritable Vogon Constructor Ship nestled in the midst of posh shopping.

This event has grown, grown, grown. From initial expectations of 1-200 people, we find 800 people in this fine hall, with an air of expectancy approaching that of a religious healing convention at the Latter Day Church of Web 2.0.

Some initial impressions:

1) 792 men, 8 women.
2) geek chic: pony tails out, shaved heads in. Less facial hair than in the late 90s. Some ‘glare’ issues from the back of the hall: combination of balding heads and gelled hair.
3) everyone has a laptop on their, ahem, lap. Ergonomics? What’s this doing for our posture? Our attention deficity disorders?
4) Given the power consumption on laptops, can this be a Carbon Neutral conference?
5) Mac laptops comprise over 50% of those in evidence.
6) the quality of presentations are stunning: no ‘Powerpoint Business Template #3’ in evidence. Is it all of the Macs, or have geeks discovered “design”? 🙂

Presentations were good: interesting people who’d done cool things.

Good format to the day: a series of 45m slots with 15 mins to stretch legs, chat, get coffee (aka “queue for 15 mins”). Kept things fresh.

I’ll link to the proceedings later, or you could just visit the conference site and look yourself 🙂

Publishing 2.0 � Bubble 2.0 Is a Bubble in Media

Thanks to Ian Worley for this link. Overly long but some interesting points. Seems a rehash of the ‘too much info so we need a [trusted] gatekeeper’ theme. This has been batted around in publishing for aeons: intermediation (“value-added services”, “peer reviewing”) or disintermediation; aggregation versus imprimatur…

Scott Karp implies that in a world of too much info there’ll be a single point (“portal”??) that becomes the gatekeeper: the trusted pointer. This is analagous to saying that in the Kelkoo age the new retailers are Kelkoo, Pricerunner et al, and that retailers are pushed into the position of ‘wholesalers’ to these new mediators.

While there’s some truth in this perspective it rather ignores people’s desire to graze (for serendipitous discovery, to get a feel for the size/shape of a topic) and their serene, ad-proof ability to ignore and filter.

Think of a typical middle-of-the-road department store or high street. Humanoids exhibit in turns a wandering/browsing behaviour, and sharp-elbowed, “I’m on a mission” hunting of items.

Why would this behavioural flexibility cease in the face of too much information (as opposed to too much choice in shoes, colas or undifferentiated consumer non-durables)?

There are a number of scenarios which are predictable:
* people get bored of lots of search returns. They either go with the top returns (zipf’s law), use a new search engine or get better at searching.
* google loses its lustre. It’s already had a good run at being the good guy on the interwebnet… China, privacy, Freedom and Wall Street are all clouds on the horizon
* recommendation networks become more important as a source of information.

Same old, same old.

Last weekend Vicky and I spent a romantic (aka eating, sleeping, wandering) weekend in Venice. Further details to follow with some obligatory gondola photies.

Anyway, two topics of conversation needed some further research: 1) what was happening about Venice’s “sinking” (apart from Pizza Express donating 5p/pizza to some fund or other); 2) what were the sewage arrangements.

Interesting Thing of the Day: The Sinking City of Venice fortunately came to my aid, gorblessit.

Good answer on the “sinking city” + “rising sea level” combo. Plus a one-liner on the sewage (just rolls out to sea).

Can’t find any succinct arguments on the environmental concerns, so any links/hints appreciated.

Oh, here’s the latest on the costs/implementation dates from the beeb.

EUobserver.com covers Chirac’s pledge “to compete with Google”.

Dubbed “Quaero” (“I seek” in Latin) so as not to upset Germans (since when have they loved Latin? German wasn’t a Romance language last time I looked… Maybe Chirac has other plans?).

While it’s tempting just to lay into French cultural imperialism, and generally have a go at Chirac (behave…) we shouldn’t forget our gratitude to the French for the support they give their film industry. Where would the world be without French film?

That said, we also have French protectionism in industry and business which isn’t doing either France or Europe any good…

What most rankles with me is the separatist, competitive and exclusive approach. In a world of contributive effort, open source software and eroding barriers, why Monsieur Le President couldn’t have dedicated money to supporting online content – paying for good articles on Wikipedia; enhancing material for google.fr to find…

Bah non – time for some imperialistic hullabaloo, as well as a chance to feed some more state support (oops, I mean funding) to Thomson.

How better to end that with Chirac’s apocalyptic statement of the obvious:

Today the new geography of knowledge and cultures is being drawn. Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world.
So now we know.

Search Engines as Leeches on the Web (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Interesting and combative Alertbox above, arguing that in an ‘arm’s race’ with competitors to improve the levels of acquisition from search, the only winners are the search companies. His argument is nicely illustrated, but it’s simply saying what we know: in a goldrush the best money is to be made from selling shovels rather than prospecting one individual claim.

The real learning here is:

non-search users become the true source of added value from website improvements

ie customer acquisition may be at a cost (loss leader, investment, call it what you will) while customer retention (ie subsequent “free” sales) make you the profit over the customer’s lifetime.

This is a good illustration of the usual retention and relationship marketing arguments, however it misses two worrying points:

1) too many customers never return. They don’t want to return. They didn’t even know who you were. These are the “one night stands” of acquisition. Take the discount/promotion and run. No breakfast. No commitment. No calls.
2) too many customers think that the search enging is the shop. Even “on brand” customers will enter your business’ name into google – it’s as if they can’t be bothered to bookmark your site or enter your own URL directly. Much as the old portals were the ‘windows on the web’ so the search engines are the launchpads for shopping. When I see staff at work entering our own brand names into google rather than having a bookmark I despair!

The challenges to retailers are therefore to:
* make a profit on every sale
* make each product page a web site
* differentiate between ‘customers’ (who have a relationship with you) and ‘purchasers’ (who don’t, and do not wish to have).

Villifying the search engines is like chastising farmers for making hay while the sun shines…

BBC NEWS | Politics | Galloway reality TV move defended

Oh well that’s OK then.

t is his hope that Big Brother would provide the kind of platform that the media does not normally provide for him

… saith his spokesman.

Silly me for raising an eyebrow 🙂

spiked-politics | Column | What Kennedy and Galloway tell us about politics now

An interesting and provoking article as ever from the good folk at spiked-online, talking about the two political stories of the week: Kennedy’s resignation and the storm over Galloway’s time in the BB House (see previously).

The thrust of the article is that politics in Britain is so without substance that the unimportant fate of two ancilliary players shows that we’re in the age of “presentational politics” – your demeanour and the show on which it’s exposed are more important that policies and, god forbid, delivery!

Do read the article, but some quotes are too good to miss! On Kennedy:

Kennedy can be seen as a politician for a time when politics lacks meaning. With no competing visions of the future, political life has been hollowed out. Without any wider sense of purpose in changing society, politics has become an end in itself – the aim of being in power becomes simply to remain in power, rather than to achieve political ends. Being a politician thus becomes another professional career, where one can get on as in other careers through personal characteristics rather than public actions – and can just as readily be brought down by character flaws.

And on Galloway:

It was odd to hear Galloway introduce himself to his fellow contestants as the leader of the British anti-war movement. After all, his appearance on the show only confirms that in reality there is no such movement to give him a platform, so he is going on ‘reality’ TV to advertise for one. For all his grassroots pretensions, Galloway has a good eye for today’s celebrity politics.

Mick Hume doesn’t exactly spare those of us who’re campaigning to get George to pay some attention to our constituency, noting:

That said, many of Galloway’s critics only confirm the lack of meaningful alternatives available. They complain that the MP ought to be looking after the drains and other local problems of his east London constituents rather than gadding about on the box. It seems that the alternative to showbiz-style political posturing is now the small-scale municipal managerialism that passes for ‘real’ politics.

This is missing the point. The body politic is sick and tired of ‘initiativitis’ and the grand, sweeping gesture: life on the street is what matters. I’d have thought that the founder of Living Marxism wouldn’t appreciated the focus on drains, cleaning and making the many, small differences in people’s lives that add up over time to a noticeable and useful change.

If you look at the comments on the Pledgebank page to write to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards (go, Hana, go!) then you’ll see the view that it’s OK to have a crap MP just so that you can cast an ‘anti-Blair’ vote! One moment’s gratification = 4 years of non-representation! Is that a fair trade?

On a final, lighter note, check on the “Get back to work, George…” petition page 🙂