Off to France tomorrow!

London Underground drivers speaking their minds

Hilarious

http://solo2.abac.com/themole/#heroes

Memory

"The primary principle of Ingsoc is the mutability of the past"

I'm reading 1984 at the moment and last night re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They are two fantastic explorations of memory.

Orwell presents a vision of a future where the past is constantly changed. Winston spends his days rewriting old articles to suit the constant political changes. Oceania is war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia, then instantly it swops: Eastasia is an ally, Eurasia an enemy; and everyone switches instantly. When Winston is captured by the thought-police, O'Brien tortures him by burning a newspaper article - a piece of documentary evidence - that is tangible proof of how the party has shifted reality. "I remember it" he protests. "I don't" replies his tormentor.

Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry's film is just fantastic. Lacuna is a company that can erase your memory so you can forget about a painful breakup. But Joel finds his very personality disappearing at the same time.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Death of A President

Powerful idea. Great narrative. That's what makes a film great. Great way to use the documentary format too.

Documentary / journalism / drama - it's all about stories.

Imparitality

I'm doing work experience at the BBC at the moment, and one of the internal training videos has a great little explainer on the principle of impartiality. It's done by Evan Davies.

He says that impartiality is a style of broadcasting, but not the only "right" style. Newspapers, which posit their position in a partisan one-sided manner - as "viewspapers" as it were - are not only a valid part of our democracy but a vital part of a democracy.

However impartiality IS the right style for the BBC. He uses the metaphor of a courtroom. The BBC's role is to ensure that the jury has the facts and arguments with which to make up its own mind. It invites members on the various sides of an argument to posit their views, whilst doing its best to ensure the facts being banded around are correct.

This, in my view, is a clear public good - something valuable to our democracy which the free market would be hard pressed to deliver at the quality our democracy deserves. This is why BBC News should always be publicly-funded, and generously so.

However, I'm not sure why the rest of the BBC has to be thus. Why not fund BBC News with a grant from the government? Like the World Service?

But then would this make it too vulnerable to government pressure? It's an interesting question to explore.

Arguing in the pub

I recently finished work on a Channel 4 dispatches film. I was working as a runner and researcher. The director of the film made this point about film-making. 

"It's like you at the pub arguing with your friends," he said. "Everyone's arguing and carrying on, and nobody's listening. Then you get to press PAUSE. You go away for several weeks, collect all the best arguments and evidence together, and then come back and everyone sits down and pays attention to you for an hour."

It really is an awesome privilege.

What's so bad about designer babies?

The idea of "designer babies" is abhorrent. But why? Follow this thought experiment:

Premise 1: A high IQ is an advantage in life. Having a pleasant (rather than an ugly) countenance works to a person's advantage.

Premise 2: A high IQ is something you're born with.

Premise 3: We have a strong moral tradition of natural equality - all men are created equal. The divine right of kings, aristocracy, racism, sexism ... these all arguments based on the idea of natural privilege.

Therefore: what's wrong with designer babies? Why can't we abolish the last natural privilege, and make all our kids brainy?

But isn't playing God?

Yes. So what? Humans play God all the time. Eating animals, planting trees, building cities... humans have been affecting their environment.

We also do our best to affect our kids once they're born with education and so on. What's so different about doing it before they are born?

But we've never done that before...

The argument is education and so on are "natural", but using genetics to affects babies is "unnatural".

What's so different? Better technology? We never flew before we invented the aeroplane. If it's "unnatural" to fly, should we burn all our aeroplanes?

IQ doesn't determine success / high IQ isn't something you're born with / we don't know what genes affect IQ...

I'm exploring the idea of genetics and natural equality, I'm less interested in it practically. I could make the same argument for beauty or height. Why can't we design our babies?

But everyone would look the same

I'm not sure that's true. You can make a building a thousand ways and people do. Everyone listens to different music.

I Don't Know

Politics is hooked on certainty.

A policy has to be sold as the answer.

When will we have a politician who can say: "Well I think this is a good policy, I'm going to give it a try and hope it will work, but ultimately I don't know."?

What's more, policies take years to have any effect, and often changes are resisted by bureaucracies.

Most fundamentally, policies are often only one input on any given problem.

Take the education of children. We tend to talk about government as if it is the sole cause of good or poor education. We talk about "failing schools".

This is nonsense. What about, I don't know, parents, the aptitude of the child, the culture the child grows up in, and so on?

Ministers sit in Whitehall and pull levers hoping the machine will produce different outcomes.

We harangue them when nothing changes.

But if government can do only a little, when will we start to see it as our problem? We complain about education but we don't sign up as volunteers to listen to children read.

We have the politics we deserve.

Video Games Encourage Violence

... but so what?

Here's another argument to consider:

Violence in video games normalises it. The more you pretend to shoot someone with a gun, the less unnatural it is. Practice makes actions easier. Video games encourage violence.

And so do films. And plays. And so do many other forms of art.

Encouraging something does not make you responsible for it. Yet, our law argues the opposite. If you "incite" violence, you are responsible along with the person who actually is violent. Why should this be so?

It has become common to talk about America being responsible for all the deaths in Iraq. Americans are responsible for the bombs they drop. But why are they responsible for those who die in a suicide bombing?

So even if video games do encourage violence, that is no reason to ban them.

What do you think?

War on Drugs

Is the the war on drugs more harmful than the drugs themselves?

Here's the argument:

Legalize drugs. Prohibition is illiberal and ineffective. The current drugs war is a disaster for everyone involved, except the criminal gangs. When police manage to cut down on supply, the price goes up and the profits made by criminal gangs just increase. Sell drugs in government lisenced stores, give the 3rd world producers a better deal, starve off the criminals and make some money for the public coffers. Treat addiction as illness.

What do you think?

Borders

The idea of borders is morally obscene.

Here's an argument to try on for size:

My British nationality and the rights that grants me are a form of inherited privilege. I gain those rights at birth. And yet, central to most cherished notions of justice, is equality - the idea that all are born equal. It is at the heart of our ideas of rights, and has been the main enemy of numerous evils: racism, caste-systems, slavery, ethnic conflict, sexism, as well as ideas of a "ruling class". As they declared in 1776: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal".

Not all inequality is unfair. People make different choices and may have more or fewer privileges as a result. But still we cling to the idea that men are born equal. Nationality is the ideology that supports the infrastructure of the state-system, a system which treats people unequally on the basis of their birth.

Will we not one day look back on the passport as a symbol of profound injustice?

But what does a world without borders look like? Could we have imagined the EU as a place without borders a hundred years ago?

Or does international law and human rights redeem the state-system? Can it allow the nation-state system to become only expressions of collective identity and liberty? Like different families in a community, or different businesses in a market. Free to try different policies and systems.

Can you imagine a world where migration conferred privilege to a nation. As a business grows in the market place as customers prefer its goods or services, what if a nation's borders expanded as people wished to join? Mexico wishes to join the United States. And as temperatures rise, the United States wishes to join Canada.

Short little film

A short little film shot on my mobile phone (Nokia N95 8GB). Valentines Park, January 2009.

No excuses for targeting civilians

The excuse Israel gives for targeting the UN school is that Hamas was firing rockets from there.

Hamas are using civilian shields, and then when they are hit by the Israelis, they remove the soldiers' bodies and invite in the TV cameras.

In other words, the Palestinian civilians get screwed by both sides.

Used as shields by Hamas, bombed by Israel.

While civilians get killed, do Hamas and Israel actually have anything to gain from a ceasefire? Is Hamas more or less popular now than before Christmas?

I think many in the UK see this conflict partly through the experience of Northern Ireland. The consensus view about that conflict is that 1) compromise is inevitable 2) it's all about hearts and minds. In other words, it's about "soft power" rather than guns and tanks.

For e.g. internment (chucking anyone who seemed vaguely terrorist-like in prison) might (controversially) have been a sucess in reducing violence, but it was the "recruiting seargeant" for the IRA, and so any short-term success was out-weighed by its long-term effects.

Israel doesn't see it like that.

It's an interesting debate - hard vs. soft power. Gandi and Martin Luther King are often used as examples of soft power. Yet they had the support of numbers. Does peace (i.e. two autonomous states) have popular support in the region?

It's not complicated

Commentators keep calling the Gaza crisis complex. It's not.

It's very difficult, yes. There are two sides strongly set against each other, with grievances on both sides.

Israel:
- rockets firing into Israel
- an government who won't recognise Israel as legitimate

Hamas:
- air and ground attacks on them, with large numbers of civilians being killed
- don't recognize Hamas as legitimate
- won't open the borders and let Gaza operate as a country
- stole the land of Israel after the second world war

People fall into the trap of trying to figure out who's in the right or not. Whose side am I on? they ask. Wrong question.

It's not that difficult to see what the solution is: Hamas to stop the rockets, Israel to stop the attacks. International monitors to keep the borders open and free of arms smuggling. Gaza allowed to develop, and its people allowed to get on with their lives and vote in whoever they like to power.

Question for anyone who knows: is there a naval blockade of Gaza? Why can't journalists just sail in? Can't we ship in relief supplies?

"I am in the rather unusual situation of living alongside hurting children, young people and families day by day, while at the same time being a part of the care system in helping to frame policies, administer Children’s Fund money, trying to help partnership between different professionals, and engaging the voluntary sector in partnership focussed on children. And I have found that for the most part I operate in two different worlds that have very little to do with each other.

There is an industry that produces reports, prepares for inspections, develops guidelines and organises training courses for practitioners, produces new strategies and forms of organisation and partnership, but I see very little evidence that it actually helps the lives of the sort of children, young people and families that Camila and I live among.

...

To hear professionals in the statutory and voluntary sector bleat about the poverty that blights the lives of children and families, while these same professionals draw sizeable salaries has always struck me as verging on the disingenuous or hypocritical."

Keith White

Akihabara rampage

So a guy goes on a rampage with a knife in Akihabara

Two things to note:

1. Chris Hogg, the BBC correspondent, doesn't speak Japanese and even mispronounced the name of the place: Akiharbara. (Reminds me of when Tim Gardam visited Japan, thanking everyone, arigarto gozaimas) No-one says Akiharbara. It's like saying New Yak instead of New York. STILL, snobbery aside - to look at, the reporting was sound. More to the point: better than what I still know how to do. I guess languages are a bonus, but knowing how to report a story is the most important thing.

2.
"A few hours later the area had been cleared. There were pools of water on the side of the road where the blood had been washed away....

In front of it bystanders were reading special single sheet editions of a newspaper which detailed what had happened, with photographs of the emergency services working at the scene."

Who wrote that newspaper? That's someone who's a real reporter. Isn't that something newspapers should be thinking about? Have a printer in a truck, reporters just put in what they know - rumours or otherwise, and sell to people at the scene...

All avenues exhausted...

Went to Bloomberg today. As you might know, I've been hunting down an internship there. Well no reply to my emails so I put on a suit and tie, and off I went. I talked my way past reception and went to find the lady in charge.

But it was no good. We had a very friendly conversation but the internships are for students, and I don't have any experience in a news-room. Oh well. I'll send her a thank you-card.

Anyway, the upshot is though, I'm coming home!

Probably get back even before my birthday on the 11th.

I wanted to go to North Korea, but it's looking expensive. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia are all on the wish-list too. Hmmm...

Truth is I'm kind of keen to get back. Big book shops, large sandwiches crammed full of filling, real bread, gravy... oh and friends and family.

The Cognitive Age

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

From David Brooks in the NY Times

No more boring letters

As you may know recently I've been hunting down work-experience and contacts in the media industry, trying to get advice and so on. I finally got sick of sending off dry cover letters and emailed this to Alan Vandermolen, Edelman's Asia-Pacific President:


I just read this:

“My god this place is just exploding … . we have so many great opportunities here and we are really only constrained by getting good people in … . jeez if I was in my late 20’s or early 30’s I’d be here in a shot”.

I came across it here (http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=496) on David Brains blog.
'Go to Asia!' he enthused.

Well I'm here.

But 'out east'? Does Japan count? Doesn't matter, I'm happy to go anywhere. Where would you go if you were me?

My name is Brendan Miller, and I came out here on a scholarship after University. (Modern History and Politics, Oxford) I learnt Japanese (Have level 2, and studying for level 1) and am now interning for an MP in the Japanese parliament (strongly qualified in answering the phone and taking out the rubbish).

Can I do an internship for you? Get a job? Advice?

Deleted this message yet? How about some advice on how to email people you don't know - ?

My current plan is to go into journalism but I've got an open mind. The world changes too quickly these days. Best to know what your passions are. These are mine. There's three.

• The buzz - News, ideas, history, people, design, art, politics, global, international, geography, biography, people's stories.
  
• The craft of communication, the skill to make a message sticky like duct-tape, news that engages the left and right side of the brain, emotions, curiosity, stories
  
• What did you build today? Creative, people, teams, partnerships, leadership, business. Building a system, not just hauling buckets.

Oh, and won't accept anything less than ten million a year.

How I'm doing?

Would love to hear from you,

Brendan


Got a reply back that day:

OK, Dude, you got me. Have a CV? Pls zap that and a phone number. In Tokyo now, but leaving later today. Will call you over the weekend or next week. Thanks for the interest.

Links 16-5-08

• How to do online video

http://www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/Digital-Media-Online-Video-BRoll-Making-Good-Video/Digital-Media-Online-Video-BRoll-Making-Good-Video.aspx

• "We will be able to see consumer reviews of restaurants on our PDA as we stand outside looking at the menu". Some interesting views on future trends...

http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=671

Links 15-5-08

• Everyone you know thinks the same as you

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/04/25/homophily-serendipity-xenophilia/

Academia: a waste of space?

This lunchtime in the Japanese Diet's basement cafeteria, I had a debate about academia and its style. The issue was, why does academia insist on a particularly sober style (no personal story, photos, colour, information side-bars etc)? My friend was describing how her PhD supervisor would score out anything which seemed too "journalisty" - i.e. anything which didn't seem dry enough. Why is this?

I think academia is great. The aim of furthering knowledge for knowledge's sake is a noble and important one, and one which every society should make space for. What's more, despite newspapers always writing sensational pieces about research "into the bleeding obvious" (Academics speculate that exercise increases chances of sweat; "significant link" between being fat and being unhealthy), I support academics deciding what they should or should not investigate.

But what makes academia special is its funding. Where the money comes from, and who decides how it's spent. I don't see how "making it dry and boring" need be necessary qualifications for academic work.

There's a science of communication. One can pick out what makes one block of writing interesting and effective at communicating its message, and what makes another a waste of space. A recent book ("Made to Stick") by Chip and Dan Heath outline those elements which have been known to skilled rhetoricians (the original word for skilled communicator) since the Greeks: concrete details, emotion, a story, "curiosity gaps", simple (without being simplistic) etc.

Many academics write like computers, expecting to be read by computers. Their work should be structured and logical, but no personal details please. No human interest please. Photos? A new format? When academics don't write in a way that hooks the reader and the reader gets bored, drifts off and falls asleep in their seat, then instead of loading guilt on the reader (What a weak academic athlete you are!) surely the academic should consider making their work a little more (dare I say it?) journalisty - ?

This is, of course, delayed rage left over from University. Hours in the library, trudging through articles, falling asleep at the desk, waking up to find my face stuck to the pages. A weak academic athlete indeed.

When is it wrong to get rich?

"News isn’t the only way we encounter other countries - movies, television and music shape perceptions as well. But journalism has an explicit public service function, a social responsibility to inform citizens so they can make political decisions. Some of the blame for an isolated, ill-informed citizenry has to fall on the news media." Ethan Zuckerman

I've argued for a more "selling-centred media". In other words media should not forget it's a business, and that thinking more like a business might stop the hand-wringing about "how we are going to pay for the new media?" But if newspapers are a business, what about business ethics?

All businesses have a set of ethics. An ethical business is more than just a "legal" business. Its a set of practices to ensure that, even though a business has to make money by selling stuff (they are businesses after all) they do so in a way that makes those who participate proud and happy to be part of it (workers and customers).

Having an "explicit public service function" is great - if you're getting your money as a public service (i.e. from government). I think it's great when we as a society can make a space for independent organizations. (Being independent from the customer is more powerful than being independent from government.) But what about when fulfilling the function of a public service turns people off, bores them, makes them watch/read/browse something else? You can write "worthy" pieces all day long, but if no one reads them, what have you achieved?

Is there another way, rather than hectoring the public with "you should care more" moral posturing?

What do you think? Still puzzling away...

How will we pay for it? Baghdad EastEnders

The big question for newspapers buzzing around at the moment is, "Where will the money come from?".

Well I think I have the answer, but first I want to explain the bigger picture as I see it.

There's a big emotional attachment to the printed edition among a section of the public. But that section of the public is getting older. Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. What's more, the average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.

With fewer readers, so goes the advertising. And the money.

Young people go on-line. And why not? It knocks the socks of other media. You can read good, old-fashioned copy (or maybe not old-fashioned - as I will explain below), but you also get to watch video footage like on TV - which is exciting and engaging (watch Jeremy Bowen getting shot at for example).

Plus you have the flexibility of a newspaper in choosing what you want to read/watch. It's why CDs knocked cassette-tapes out of the ring. You can access the bit you want straight away. You don't have to sit through three stories, which are very "worthy" but don't interest you, until you get to what you want to see.

We can also answer back now too. No more shouting at the TV, shout directly onto the message board. You might even get a response.

Then, on top of that, you can get as much or little detail as you want. Just Google / Wikipedia the topic and you can down as deep as you want to. Want to see another point of view? Good sites link to someone else who's saying something different. News story on Iraq? Now switch over and see of Al-Jazeera make of it. A side-bar in a newspaper is often a useful way of getting the context for a story. The bit that's new, the "news bit", (peace deal falters over question of Jerusalem) is confusing, boring and seems unimportant, without the "context-bit", something giving the bigger picture (What's the "question of Jerusalem"? Why do they care? Why do I care?). But with the web, no longer a grey, dry print out of the big dates of the Israeli-Palestine conflict; rather, animated maps, a well-written FAQ, a host of links to other sources, and a separate piece by the reporter, explaining face-to-camera the history.

But if the web's so great, what's the problem? Well after they tried charging for access for a while, newspapers switched to advertising. But it's been a disappointment. Advertising just doesn't pay the bills. Advertisers prefer to go on search engines - where they can advertise their camera just at the moment someone is thinking (and typing into Google) "Where can I buy a good camera?". On-line sections of newspapers are massively subsidised by print sales. So what to do...

Well first let me explain, that there's one more consequence of the way an internet based piece of news links to sources full of more detail, that hasn't been considered much yet. With a side bar full of links to encyclopedia articles, separate documentaries, and so on, there's something else that we can do. And it's to do with the possiblities this repository of more info on demand presents for changing the way articles are currently written.

The current journalist structure is an "inverted pyramid". In other words, the first sentence sums up the story, then the next paragraph goes a little further, and so on and so on: layers and layers of greater detail. Legend has it that this dates from the Civil War, when reporters were worried their wires would get cut off at any moment when delivering their story, and thus the need to put their most important information first.

The problem is that this takes all the curiosity out of it. You get the end at the beginning. The finale at the start. But that's not how other communications work. What Chip and Dan Heath call "curiosity gaps" is what advertisers, marketers and authors of page-turning thrillers all do naturally. Why not newspapers? Why can't the news be a "gripping read"?

Imagine a newspaper of the future. A big, broad-sheet sized slate, not shiny, but matt-finished and readable like paper - yet no worries about spilt orange juice. You sit at the table, munching away at your cereal, flicking your hands across its surface (see the CNN "magic wall") watching videos, and reading copy; but this time it's like you're reading a thriller. You're following the adventures of a reporter in the conflict-zone. You getting to know about the conflict. But maybe you know a little bit about the reporter too. Less a series of reports, more video-blog. It may be unprofessional for the reporter to talk about how scared they were, or how they fancied the cameraman from CNN, but hey, you never watched "professional news" anyway.

As the old-guard who feel it is their job to "protect" journalism from "dumbing-down", frivolity and becoming "soft" lose readers (and eventually their jobs), a new generation will emerge, who understand that information has to engage the right and left side of the brain. That involves a writing process that makes space for emotion, curiosity, and stories. It's what all good school teachers understand instinctively - trained from years of doing their journalism in front of a live studio audience.

But where does this leave us on the finance question? "Where's the money going to come from?!" I hear you scream. Don't worry, be patient. I'll get to that.

The "newspaper disease", as Roger Black calls it, is the result of an industry that has come to see itself as a kind of public-service, like doctors or the civil service. They have a duty to be there, like guardians-of-the-realm, there to protect us from devious governments and bad grammar.

But the truth is they are there because readers want to read what they produce. Of course, what a lot of readers want is accurate and objective information. They want protection from devious governments. However, the key verb there is want. Journalism may be good for our lives, but so are restaurants. Yet no restauranteur believes he deserves to survive, "or else the public will starve". To extend my little metaphor further, we can talk about brocolli. Why? Because "brocolli" has been the metaphor of choice among media-types for the news that is "good for us". In other words, fruit and veg is good for the health, but its dull and tasteless. Well, what I'm saying, is that fruit and veg is strawberries and peaches and plums too. News can be exciting and delicious.

An example? Here's one off the top of the head. How about conflict-zone soaps? Yes, a soap like Eastenders or Coronation Street. Explicitly fiction, using local actors, in English or with subtitles, it would reflect one family's life in a conflict zone - with all the plot twists, love-triangles and fights that make drama so captivating. But linked to the site, (it should be on the web of course, even if you choose to watch it from the sofa on a big iMac type thing), would be the life-stories and blogs of the actors themselves. And a documentary from the "hard-news" journalist explaining the context. And even flashy maps if you like. The point is, it would be interesting and engaging in a way hardly imagined by news editors these days. Today Students buy entire series of a programme on DVD and watch them back-to-back, solid over a 3 day period, with odd breaks for sleep and food. Do they do they do that with the output from your news organization?

Then we might start to see the break down of the artificial barriers that we've inserted into the human experience of learning about the world. No-one argues that the only place you can learn about the world is from non-fiction. Even if the topic (politics for e.g.) is usually the domain of news, do people learn nothing from fiction-treatments of the topic (West Wing, Yes Minister)? Of course they learn loads. It's not so much delivered as absorbed, but none the less important at that. It's like what Dr Kerry Weaver of ER walking around on her clutches did for understanding of adisability, or how the character of Mark Fowler in EastEnders educated people about HIV. And this is the start of the answer to where the money is going to come from.

If one learns about the news topics from all sorts of sources, why the divides between News and Entertainment in the broadcasting company? Between the Fiction department and the Newspapers in the publishing company? Is news was drama, couldn't it get some of drama's budget?

The answer is the money will come when people pay for it. Deep-pocketed benefactors, whether they be governments (BBC) or individuals (Al-Jazeera) are rare exceptions if one considers the entire news market. Citizen -journalism doesn't get round the problem that most people find news dull. No the solution will come from the market. In other words people will pay for it.

"But the internet public don't like paying for anything on-line!" I hear you say. I'm not sure how true this conventional wisdom is. Lots of people do pay for lots of things on-line - books, movies and music. And as people are increasingly finding out when their free stuff fails - there's no-one to complain to if you don't pay for it. When you've put some money down you get to shout at someone. I think most of the early resistance has gone, as companies come to the fore who are "real" (Google or Microsoft vs. one more anonymous M-Matrix Solutions Media type thing); fears about credit-card fraud fade, more and more people experience through Amazon or eBay, buying stuff on-line, and the main users of the internet, the young, get older and in turn have more money.

But the truth is they won't pay for it if it's dull. Or bland. Or boring. That's where the real work has to be done. Make news fascinating, page-turning, thrilling stuff and you're on to a winner. AND you'll get your money.

The Newspaper Disease

From Roger Black

.... wrong ideas, ones that have tripped up journalism over the last 50 years

Reporters, led by The Newspaper Guild, acted on the assumption that their profession was as permanent as that of doctors and lawyers .... More than a profession, the newsroom was convinced that journalism was a public trust ... Journalists believed that they had deserved this trust. The business was so good that the permanence of their social institution was taken for granted.

[BUT!] .... People bought the newspapers, not so much because they needed them, but because they liked them. Newspapers were useful, yes, and even necessary during wars and recessions, but people paid money for them because they were interesting and sometimes fun.

The 1920s-style, general-assignment reporter (cf., The Front Page) who could cover anything and write it up beautifully, all the while drinking heavily, was actually interested in selling newspapers. He (and it was mostly male in those days, notwithstanding His Girl Friday, the remake of The Front Page, starring Rosalind Russell) took delight in a zesty mix of crooks, crackpots, clowns and crooked politicians. Newspapers ran the photo of plane crashes, the maps of battles, the profiles of movie queens and breakaway baseball players and random escaped zoo animals. There were not a lot of correspondents down at the city hall waiting for press releases.

....

What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of the newspaper business. And it has gotten too late to expect the inmates to redesign the asylum. It’s going to have to be done by the proprietors. Willful, single-minded, near-genius proprietors like the ones who built the business. ....

Newspapers have about a year to get rid of all the people who can’t pull their own weight and to redeploy all the smart energetic journalists who can find the great stories and push them out to print, web and video. Some papers still have lots of talent, but they must push it to the front so readers can find it and find that they like it. Papers who continue to bury the smart people (or have already driven them away) will not make the cut. With the current recession, if newspapers don't move quickly, the market will crush them.

Digg? I'd rather bury the whole thing

I don't know why everyone is getting so excited by Digg, it's a pain in the arse. I like the idea of clicking on a button at the bottom of an article that says, "Hey this is a good one! Read this!". But I don't want to "write a description". I don't want to sort it into a topic area. I'm not a publicist for this thing, for goodness sake! I just want to click and go. And not only that, after "digging" something, it wisks you off to its homepage, instead of letting you continue your crawl through the web. Waste of space if you ask me.

Rev. Wright

If you want to actually watch it for yourself:


The Press Club moderator distinguishes herself with her sour face. Though to be fair, I think they would have been better letting in less guests.

A short film that will stun you, guaranteed.
Part 1
Part 2

Tip of the hat to this guy

• Using computer games to explain the news

http://reportr.net/2008/04/05/why-video-games-have-a-place-in-journalism/

• Work experience

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/07/pressandpublishing3

Links 2-4-08

• How can the comment section of news sites be less rubbish?

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3655186.ece

• MPs vs. Google's Lawyer Over Rape Video

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3662228.ece

Should Google screen videos before letting them be shown?

Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmathen East and Dinefwr, said that Mr Walker's defence was "deeply objectionable". "It surely shows your system is completely inadequate."

vs.

Mr Walker said, however, that it would be "neither efficient not effective" for YouTube to screen the entirety of the content uploaded by its users - about 10 hours of footage every minute - before it was made public.

... "You do not have a policeman on every street corner to stop things from happening, you have policemen responding very quickly when things do happen."

• Photo-journalists from the Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/related_features/young_photographer/article3583642.ece

If you want to do this job, you have to have a passion. ....

You have to live with the deprivations; to be able to go without sleep, food, companionship and all the normalities of life....

Then you have days where you've missed a picture and, unlike a reporter, you can't pick up the story afterwards. .... You're only as good as your last picture.

But there are some downsides; the incessant travel, being away from my wife and children ....

I didn't have a day off for two years, I worked to get a toe in the door and tried to become half-good. I did news, features, fashion - I was happy to do anything. .... Nobody else used to like working on Saturdays, and I'd put my hand up for the shifts.

I still prefer to use film. .... I don't need to see the pictures on an LCD screen because I've been doing it long enough to pretty much know how they'll come out anyway....

I decided that I wanted to be a photographer when I was 16. Photography typified everything that I was interested in - current affairs, looking at other people's lives - and once I got my first camera, a rather nice SLR when I was 15, that was it. ....

... Tough but great, especially in London, because it's so competitive down here. When I was in Birmingham, you could turn up and be the only photographer there but here you're usually one of ten. You have to fight to get the best picture.

• Secrecy and a boss who's an arsehole : how Apple flies in the face of Silicon Valley norms

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=1

• Is Flash the future of online journalism?

http://flashjournalism.com/examples/case_studies.htm
http://sambrook.typepad.com/sacredfacts/2008/04/flash-storytell.html
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/30/65-excellent-flash-designs/

Long Live Street Photography

To some, the very idea of covertly photographing strangers might seem “odd”, even distasteful. And yet a proportion of those same people will own a print of Robert Doisneau's Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, or have sent greetings cards showing 1930s Paris, as recorded by Brassai. Street photography has given us a lot. More, perhaps, than we know.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3574763.ece

Links 31-3-08

• Advice on entering the industry

http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2008/03/27/journalism-school-graduates-how-to-increase-your-chance-of-finding-a-job-and-decrease-your-chance-of-having-to-vent-on-angryjournalistcom/

• Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine with a fascinating lecture

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/72

• Tom Cruise parody - and this is just excellent

http://gawker.com/5004604/tom-cruise-parodies-continu-get-more-polished?autoplay=true

America America America

Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post:

"...I turn on a radio talk show host named Michael Savage.

Savage is asserting that his sources have told him that Obama owes his candidacy to the support of gay men and that Clinton is bankrolled by "big lesbian money." But, mostly on this night, Savage wants to discuss a radio talk-show competitor of his named Bernie Ward. Savage admits he despises Ward because Ward is an ultra-liberal and also because, at some point in the distant past, Ward tried to hurt Savage professionally in some unspecified way. Savage says he is driven by vengeance and never forgets his enemies.

Tonight, he is gloating because Ward has lost his job and possibly his future freedom. He has been charged with distributing child pornography, has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial later in the year. Savage tells his listeners that he has obtained the police report in the federal case and that it contains details of perversities so repugnant, so obscene, so salacious that a recitation of the facts would nauseate any decent person who hears them.

Then he wonders aloud whether he should read them on the air.

He's not sure. It would pain him to do so, he says gravely, but maybe some social good could come of it or something. He's leaning against it, he says, but is going to leave it up to the listeners. So, he invites callers to vote on whether they want to hear the really filthy, lurid, lewd, licentious stuff.

I click on an online thesaurus to find a stronger word for "shameless." Nothing quite does the job.

Savage is evidently taken by surprise when a few of his early callers actually say they don't want to hear it. He even argues with one of them: Well, you could just turn it off, no?

At this point, for the first time all day, I have muted all the TVs and put my laptop aside. I'm fascinated, if not in a good way. I feel complicit, like a spectator at a hanging.

Inevitably, listeners force his reluctant hand, and Savage begins to dish the dirt. Much of what he reads is a transcript of a 2004 chat room conversation between Ward and a dominatrix who calls herself "Sexfairy." The facts are, indeed, disturbing. In skin-crawling detail, Ward explained to his online dominatrix that he is sexually aroused by young teenage children, including his own kids and their friends. He claimed he has masturbated in their presence. At one point, he allegedly sent the woman a photo showing two minors in a sexual situation with an adult. That's the point at which Sexfairy went to the cops.

What isn't clear is whether this is the truth or some sleazy fantasy world Ward has created for his online persona: Savage grudgingly allows for the second possibility, which is, in fact, Ward's defense. Ward doesn't contest the accuracy of the transcript; he says that he was role-playing. (Less plausible is his contention that this was all innocent research for a book on hypocrisy.) Even accepting that this conversation was fantasy, Savage says, the facts show the man is a pervert, is liable to do anything and needs to be separated from his kids, pronto.

In the next few minutes, Savage is going to elevate this disingenuous personal vendetta into the realm of political pornography. He'll be uttering hate speech, and, as such, I don't know if I should share it here. It's absolutely obscene.

Tell you what -- I'll have you vote on whether you want to hear it. Okay?

Okay, you have spoken. I'm only doing this because you demand it.

Savage segues from the pathetic case of Bernie Ward into an attack on liberalism in general. He says that Ward is no aberration, that liberals and progressives are closeted, self-loathing sexual deviants who take bleeding-heart positions on public policy to atone for the filthy urges that haunt their minds and poison their souls.

"Liberalism is a mental disorder, and it is also a cover," he says. "All this do-gooderness is a cover for very, very, very evil deeds."

He continues: "You say, 'Are you generalizing?' The answer is no. I have long tried to comprehend the madness of the American left. I have long tried to figure out what motivates them to hate the family, the church, the police, the military. In fact, why they hate the male, the patriarch. The answer is because they know they're no good, they're know they're dirty and are afraid of being found out. They're afraid Daddy will punish them for what they're doing."

Liberals and progressives, he says, are "degenerates" who are "on an express train to Hell."

How can Savage possibly cap this performance? Ah, here we go:

"I am warning you that many of your progressive friends--the permissive ones, the ones who laugh at conservatives, the ACLU types, the antiwar types? If they have children, I am warning you to watch your children when they go over to their houses."

When he finally cuts to a commercial, I turn him off. Now everything is muted. There is a brief, eerie silence, and I can actually think. I don't listen to talk radio much, so I'm not quite sure what to make of all this.

Who is Michael Savage, and can there possibly be more than a handful of feebs who tune him in?

I check. Michael Savage is the third-most popular syndicated radio host in the country. He has 10 million listeners, which is more people than read the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, combined."

Pundustry, pundustry, pundustry.

Read the article and you'll see why I wrote that.

Links 26-3-08

Graphic explanation of Creative Commons

• http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works_23

State of the Media Report 2008

• http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/narrative_overview_intro.php?cat=0&media=1

Be a blogging star (link via Sacred Facts)

• http://blog.nextnewnetworks.com/2008/03/21/so-you-want-to-be-a-blogging-star/#more-556

Anniversary report on Iraq from Reuters - beautiful and terrible

• http://iraq.reuters.com/

How long does it take to become an expert?

From Peter Norvig

Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simaon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Samuel Johnson thought it took longer than ten years: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

• The International Center for Journalists (www.icfj.org) is a non-profit, professional organization that promotes quality journalism worldwide in the belief that independent, vigorous media are crucial in improving the human condition...

• Reuters "Requirements - languages and education

Either -- you be fluent in English plus one other language. This will mean being able to operate as a journalist in the language, reading the newspapers, listening to radio and TV, attending news conferences and conducting interviews. You will write in English.

Or -- you will have an economics or finance related degree.

For all applicants, a strong interest in reporting financial markets is essential. We also require a 2:1 or above (or equivalent) in any degree discipline and you will need to demonstrate a passion for journalism, for example through experience with your school, university, local or national newspaper, radio, or TV."

Links 24-3-08

'The Sahel'. A National Geographic slide-show/video. Beautiful pictures, and fascinating commentary from Paul Salopek, who Foreign Policy call a "stone-cold great writer."

• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player?titleID=1437286183

James Kynge speaking on internet-TV. Use the menu on the right to skip the incredibly inane comments from the moderator and the speech, the Q & A is the most interesting part.

• http://fora.tv/2006/10/06/James_Kynge

FreeDocumentaries.org is a fascinating source of information. This is footage from inside a Chinese publishing factory.

• http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=96

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, on one side of A4, makes his predictions for what's going to happen in international relations.

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/03/21/GR2008032103784.htm

Internship in Washington at Foreign Policy magazine

• http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=55

Advice on writing from Foreign Policy

• http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=38

Nippon News

http://www.digitalrailroad.net/NipponNews/Default.aspx/

"
If you have exceptional content to offer we want you on the Nippon News team.
We accept a wide array of submissions and we are always looking to broaden our network of talented photojournalists and photographers."

BBC's 10 Days of War

This is the kind of thing I want to be involved with...

10 Days to War

"The reason we've chosen drama is that now we can recreate the scenes the cameras couldn't capture at the time ..."

News that engages both the left and right hand side of the brain.

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

NEW YORK-Citizens were urged to wait out the phenomenon that scientists described as "utterly beyond human control."

Links 18-2-08

• Never use your mouse again

http://www.legalandrew.com/2006/04/27/kill-your-mouse-automate-mouse-clicks/

Links 17-2-08

• Atheist confronted with miracle

http://frostfirezoo.com/atheist-sees-image-of-big-bang-in-piece-of-toast

Links 12-2-08

• How will internet news ever make money?

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php

• Fascinating time-line of time-lines:

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/13/timelines.php

Living in the Cloud - Links 11-2-0

Can you live entirely "in the cloud"? In other words, with everything on-line?

• This guy even wants his applications and desktop on-line...
  

http://www.myuninstalledlife.com/

• All your photos and music on-line?

http://www.sharpcast.com/

• More secure? Never "left at home"?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/15/scitech/pcanswer/main3169392.shtml

Japan and Korea are spending millions on fibre-optics, internet connections that work literally at the speed of light.

Will there be a time when we complain about the government's management of our internet infrastructure like we do about roads and railways?

And what about wire-less... How far are we from a completely on-line world?

And one more link:

"Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your “stuff” has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?"

• http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done

Hierarchy is essential for any community - ?

Internet culture originally was based on anonymity, equality and freedom of information (both in terms of access and in cost). At some level this seemed to present a kind of new dawn, one didn't need a newspaper job or a printing press to get people to hear you, anyone could contribute to the conversation.

It was the attraction of this idea that let people feel so little impunity about copying music and software. Denying access didn't seem to sit well in this utopia. Blogs and Wikipedia seemed to be the natural results: the principles of equal access, sharing, freedom producing something that seems to threaten newspapers and reference books alike.

But then came facebook, and the realization that anonymity is poison for any community.

Taking this to its logical next step:

"Quick things you should know about membership

1. You can make rank! Each time you post in the fora, gallery or the reviews you increase your postcount on the site. As your count gets higher so does your rank and privileges.

2. Your Reputation! You can add to another user’s reputation by commenting on the quality of their posts in the fora and elsewhere. Others can also do the same for you. Your reputation will greatly influence the areas of the website you are allowed into, and more.

...

4. ...as a registered member you get a large amount of disk space on JREF... If you ever need more space just make rank! As your rank increases on the site so does your privileges and space!"

So by introducing hierarchy and priviliges, one makes incentives for people to visit your site.

Down with equality! Up with privilges and hierarchy!

Makes sense I suppose, but what a change.

Top designer Paul Smith in Ilford

"a London suburb with a fantastic cultural mix"

Links 8-2-07

• "...in every system that I have seen where anonymity becomes common, the system fails" Why facebook triumphed over Myspace.

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html#kelly

Links 7-2-2008

• A new approach to finding good articles on the web. A network of journalists (both professional and "citizen") bookmark interesting stories...

http://blog.publish2.com/election-news-network

• Media Geeks - a search engine of media blogs, websites and so on.

http://mediageeks.org/

Links 1-2-2008

• A ship's anchor takes out India's internet. Fascinating maps of all those cables under the sea.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/8001

Links 30-1-08

• The most popular (most linked-to) blogs on the web

http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/

Links 29-1-08

• State of the Media Report 2007

http://stateofthemedia.org/2007/

• Foreign Policy daily briefings - let yourself imagine you're the PM

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/Morning_Brief

• Obama doing rhetoric in a way that just isn't allowed in UK politics

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=273806

Links 24-1-08

How to make something great -
http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2008/01/15/the-secret-to-making-something-great/

Working in the media in 21st C - sounds great...

Working in the Media

Media Career 1.0 (1950s - 1990s)

Go to University, preferably Oxbridge, and take an arts degree to develop your mind. Join a local newspaper or radio station. Blag your way in. Work your way up to a national newsroom or production department. Find an organisation you like and dig in for the long haul. Specialise in print or radio or TV. Climb the vertical ladder step by step, grade by grade. In the 1980s independent production companies open a few more opportunities. It's important to read newspapers, listen to the radio, watch lots of TV. Your employers will even pay you expenses to do so. In the 1990s managers start to talk about "multiskilling". This is obviously a ruse to get you to do two jobs for the price of one and should be resisted. As should any steps to take away your desk/office/locker. You worry content is becoming a mere commodity - it used to be a vocation. Don't panic about the introduction of computers and "emails" - they are just electronic memos. You read "Three Blind Mice" about how the TV networks failed to spot the threat from cable. If you are lucky you may occasionally be asked to go to a conference in another country - airports are exciting. Someone talks about a new idea of "working from home" - sounds like a good way to get a long weekend and avoid dull meetings.

Media Career 2.0 (1990s - 2015)

Take a media studies course that will teach you digital production - or computer science that will teach you how to build web pages. Blag your way in. Move from job to job trying to find interesting projects to build out your CV. Don't specialise in one skill - you need at least two or three. You're your own person and have no interest in a career ladder. If your employer is too restrictive - freelance or, better, offer yourself as a web consultant. Live out of your (Mac) laptop. Your last boss offered you a corner desk to get you to stay - wtf? You never sit at one anyway. You will need Twitter, Facebook, IM as well as email accounts to keep in touch with your peers and find out where the next opportunity may be. You will find yourself watching less and less TV, but radio (or rather audio) is good because you can stream it through your Mac while you work. Don't bother with newspapers - too analogue. What matters are ideas that can be monetized. You read "The Cluetrain Manifesto" about how markets got smarter than business. Make sure you regularly get to one of the many conferences where the digital clan gathers for its global campfire summits. If you can't get a ticket there are lots of social media drinks and breakfasts to go to instead. Airports are a hassle - no free wifi. When you're stoked and on a great project you work 24/7 to get it done - then take 3 weeks off. They can always get you on your mobile and you'll avoid dull meetings.

Media Career 3.0 (2015 - ?)

Take a series of highly vocational courses to give you the widest set of skills you can manage - coding, video, business, psychology, economics, law, web science, marketing. Blag your way in. Network constantly and aggressively. It's all about who you know. The successful ones sit on a beach in Australia and run the website for a European magazine or run an automated digital service which purrs away and earns them money from micro-payments while they sleep; some Californian guy pings you on your all-service IM (which you have open 24/7) to get you to do for his site what you did for the contract before last. Your functionality delivers higher returns than most of your colleagues - so the work chases you. If it doesn't - switch careers. You have to have a network of contacts to thrive - there is no distinction between home and work. TVs? What was the point of those? You watch video on your phone. Print? Too niche. Audio is good because you can stream it on your Mac while you work. You read Lawrence Lessig's latest book on how internet governance failed to keep up with technology. Your mobile screen is your office - you've never met your boss and don't know where he works. Meetings are virtual - video links. Some of the older guys still get on aeroplanes to go to conferences and eat together. But airports are hell and since the cost of flying trebled, it hasn't been worth it. You don't do dull meetings.

How to become a journalist.

http://www.scribblesheet.co.uk/blog/2007/10/10/76-ways-to-become-a-journalist/

What we need is not more information,
but more understanding ....

"Three Word Chant!" — An Anarchist anti-slogan used in the Battle of Seattle to "illustrate the reification of the slogan in mass culture".

Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas had a mystical experience while celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. At this point, he set aside his Summa. When asked why he had stopped writing, Aquinas replied, "I cannot go on […] All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."

Later, others reported that Aquinas heard a voice from a cross that told him he had written well. On one occasion, monks claimed to have found him levitating.

From Wikipedia, 25th December 2007

Bruce Humes

How did you learn Chinese? Was it mostly self-taught?

I studied Chinese at the U of Penn in Philadelphia for 2.5 years, and was already—seems odd but true—a fluent speaker upon graduation. I learned how to read fluently in Taiwan (1 year), and then used Chinese for research and interviews first as an immigration advisor in the States, and for several years running about the mainland and Taiwan, covering the burgeoning IT industry. By the late 1990s I had mastered writing Chinese on a computer (self-taught), and during 2004-7 have become a public speaker, hosting 100+ export management seminars throughout China.

What’s the most difficult thing about translating Chinese to English?

Writing down in English what I experience when I read in Chinese. There is a huge experiential gap, and bridging this gap is made harder by the fact that I—like many Chinese-to-English translators—long ago abandoned life in an English-speaking society for one where Chinese is dominant. It has been said that no translator is perfectly bilingual. You are by nature either closer to the source language or the target language. When translating Shanghai Baby I often found it easier to “experience” than to “re-create.”

From my perspective, the ability to “get into” and deeply experience the world described in a given book is capital; this, plus strong writing skills in the target language are the things I would seek in a translator. I frankly don’t see that these abilities have much to do with sex…or race…or age per se. Translators need rich lives—imagined and real—upon which to draw for understanding and for creativity!

What is the process of translating like? Is it a collaborative effort with the author, where you actively discuss the nuances of words and debate about the semantics? Or is it more of a solitary process involving just you and the pages?

There are solitary aspects to it, but in an ideal world, the literary translator needs and seeks input from others. I hired several other people to help me get it “right.” The basic steps:

1) Read the entire novel twice;
2) Each morning, read one chapter and underlined all problematic words/phrases.
3) Checked for meanings first in all-Chinese dictionary, and sometimes in Chinese-English dictionary;
4) Had a native Chinese read the chapter aloud to me, which immediately resolved some of the original questions I had, because some of my original questions had been due to incorrect reading on my part;
5) Spent most of one day doing a draft translation. Occasionally looked up words in dictionary, but mostly just wrote down whatever came to me, to be reviewed later.
6) Next day, reviewed the problem areas (10-15 per chapter). If necessary, sent e-mail to authoress asking her input.
7) Finished draft and sent to couple (she Shanghainese, he American) for proofing and polishing. Their approach: She rarely looked at my English. A professional conference interpreter, she preferred to do a running interpretation of the original, with her English-speaking husband noting differences between her version and mine on his computer. He would then discuss these areas with her, and having checked both versions against the Chinese original again, then change the English accordingly. This worked well because he was younger than I and less fluent in Chinese, and thus a better writer of contemporary English, particularly conversational English.
8) Made final changes after noting input from authoress and proofers.
9) Submitted final copy to publisher in the UK.

How long did it take you to translate Shanghai Baby?

About three months.

How have all the publicity and the popularity of this book affected or changed you?

The book’s notoriety has certainly changed my life. It has helped keep the English version in print, keeping my name in the spotlight and thus helping me to win new contracts translating other fiction.

Critiques of the book—and criticisms of me for translating such “trash”, some very rude and made to my face—have forced me to ponder the question: What is my responsibility as the translator of a literary work? This may sound like an academic question, but Salman Rushdie’s Japanese translator was murdered, and more recently Iraqi interpreters for the US military have been threatened and killed as well. Scholars in the field of translation studies point out that literary translation is a chosen behavior, and the translator is an important link in a larger system, which also includes the “patron” (e.g., the publisher) and the audience (the reader). Partly as a result of such criticisms, my own view of my role has changed. When Chinese angrily tell me Shanghai Baby is a potentially damaging misrepresentation of China to readers abroad, I am no longer likely to simply respond “Don’t blame me, I’m just the translator!”, because that’s an attempt to evade responsibility for the role I have played.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad

From Act IV, Scene I of As You Like It (which I went and saw yesterday).

A clash between youthful optimism and the cynicism of "experience".


JAQUES. I pr'ythee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee.

ROSALIND. They say you are a melancholy fellow.

JAQUES. I am so; I do love it better than laughing.

ROSALIND. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards.

JAQUES. Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing.

ROSALIND. Why then, 'tis good to be a post.

JAQUES.I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's,which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects: and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

ROSALIND. A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad: I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

JAQUES. Yes, I have gained my experience.

ROSALIND. And your experience makes you sad: I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad; and to travel for it too.

[Enter ORLANDO.]

ORLANDO. Good day, and happiness, dear Rosalind!

JAQUES. Nay, then, God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse.

ROSALIND.Farewell, monsieur traveller: look you lisp and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola.

[Exit JAQUES.]

"I'm the opposite. I'm a fairly regular guy."

From Po Bronson, who, apart from his Telly-tubby name, I find quite inspiring.


We have in our society this wish, this fantasy, that writers are somehow inherently hypercreative people, made so by a radically unusual background/childhood - as if writers are forged into being sirens due to some searing experience they have lived. Their writing, we ask, should come directly from that searing experience, lightning hot. Writers like James Frey, JT Leroy and Nasdijj feed this fantasy, and thus rise to a phantom fame.

I'm none of that. I'm the opposite. I'm a fairly regular guy. I don't have much of a particularly unusual story. I have two kids, I watch Sportscenter nightly, I have a simple house, I come from Seattle, I have two brothers, my parents were divorced but there was nothing unusual there, I love my grandmother who is still alive, I play soccer, and I enjoy my friends. I read pretty much the same books we all do. I read the same newspapers, watch the same movies. I have known some deep pain, but most of the time I have felt like my life is blessed. I have lost some friends, but my memories of them are always with me. I have lucked into some adventures, but the long stretches between adventures have been just as interesting.

I believe that writers don't have to be forged by some radical autobiographical experience. Rather, I believe writers shouldn't be romanticized. Most writers, rather unglamorously, are really just people who find some solace in expression. Combined with some tenacity, or refusal to give up, we spend years learning the skills of writing. One day we get published and expression becomes our profession. We continue to seek an elusive mastery of our art. What makes us good writers is our constant devotion to this craft, a willingness to keep learning. More tenacity.

We want authenticity in what we read. Authenticity is the post-modern elixir. In an age of lies and corruption - an age of irony and mass-marketed pop product - we have a longing, a craving, for authentic work, for authentic people. As a lazy shortcut, we've made the mistake of looking to the author's biography on the dust jacket as the stamp of authenticity. Authenticity is only properly earned on the written page.

When we tie a work's authenticity to a writer's autobiography, we are severely limiting our creativity. We cannot restrict our curiosity or creativity to that narrow spectrum of "things we've already experienced." Creative expression should never be handcuffed.

What do I have to write about? I hope I'm an inspiration to all those writers out there who don't necessarily have a dozen book-worthy memoirs in them. What I can do, instead, is listen. I can give voice to other people. I can travel, observe, interview, research and bear witness. I will get on a plane to fly across the country to sit in the living room of an average person who has never spoken to a journalist before. I do this all the time. My work might only occasionally be autobiographical, but there are worthy stories to report in every nook and cranny of the world. A good writer - one who really has the skills - ought to be able to wander anywhere and find a story. And then write about it in a riveting way.

My work's authenticity comes from the hard work I put into getting the story and shaping it into something that sings.

Aren't I worried about deconstructing the mystery that surrounds every writer? Not at all. I could tell you everything there is to know about me, and I'd still be a mystery. No matter how well they know me, I'm still a mystery to my wife, my brothers, my parents, my friends. I could give you all my notes to every interview, and it'd still be a mystery where I saw those themes I picked out, or how I decided to shape the story a certain way. The creative process can not be demystified.

Can a writer tell other people's stories? If they have the gift of empathy, then yes, certainly. The proof is on the page.

In addition to the non-fiction social documentaries I'm most known for, I have written novels, profiles, op-eds, humor pieces, performance monologues, book reviews, screenplays, television, radio scripts -- whatever form the material is best suited for. I respect each as its own art form, and I believe that practicing each of these forms emphasizes particular writing skills, which can in turn be employed in the other genres. I hope that some day I will be able to draw upon all these skills.

It is incredibly important for me to get out into the world and to hear and be inspired by the real lives of real people. I spend a lot of time interviewing, hanging along, being a fly on the wall.
I blurb and review books because I think it is every writer's job to participate in their community. I co-founded the San Francisco Writer's Grotto with Ethan Canin and Ethan Watters in 1994; we provide a community and a work environment for published writers. I have been on the board of directors of Consortium since 1992. Consortium is the exclusive national distributor of over 70 fine independent presses. It is based in St. Paul, Minnesota, where land is cheap and books can be trucked to either coast in 2 days.

I believe anything that gets people to read is worthwhile. Enduring the snobbery of literati and being forced to read books we did not relate to is what turned so many of us away from books--in junior high, high school, or later. I was one of those kids - I pretty much didn't read for pleasure through high school and college. In my early 20's, I had to re-teach myself the joy of reading, by starting with children's books and then young adult books and, eventually, adult books. Then I began writing school, at night, and was thrown right back into an environment that turns its noses up at anything but "fine literary fiction," which is a vague phrase that really means the genre of "contemporary domestic realism." During the days I taught reading and writing at two San Francisco high schools, primarily to immigrant kids who couldn't read well, and it was no place for literary superiority - if Tetje, who was from Sudan, wanted to read Jet magazine (because everything else was too hard to read), then I would happily discuss with him what was in its pages.

I think when a reader reads a whole book - which takes six to ten hours - that's kind of a gift to the author. The gift of close, undivided attention. To who else do we listen so closely for eight straight hours? And when readers give that gift to me, I'm grateful for it.

Po Bronson's Advice on Writing

From Po Bronson's website.

It takes an average of ten years dedication before you can make a living writing creatively full time. Even those who succeed early are often rewarded with praise too early, trapping them in a yet-to-mature phase as they attempt to repeat their success. It all evens out over time. Finding a way to allow yourself the time, to buy time as you mature into your writing, is the biggest
“how to.”

The writing life is lonely. Taking some of that loneliness out of it helps you to hang in there. Create a supportive environment that allows you to give it the kind of time it takes. Book clubs, workshops through bookstores, extended ed classes, graduate writing programs – they may not teach you to write, but they can support you and give you time.

Don’t be jealous of others’ success. Jealousy and envy are the enemy of genuine creativity. Wish others well and hope to join them someday.

Failure is part of it. You will be rejected dozens and dozens of times. The best way to prepare for it is to have something else in the works by the time the rejection letter arrives. Invest your hope in the next project. Learning to cope with rejection is a good trait to develop.

To be writing is good for the soul; it’s good for your character – to be observing, interpreting, producing (not just consuming). It’s good to share your work with others rather than be mindless. Pay attention to this. It’s very important. Success is not measured by bestseller lists. Certain types of great books sell very well; other types of great books don’t sell a lot. But they’re both great.

Don’t romanticize writing or think you’re cooler than other people. Don’t think you get special attention or have needs that are more special than anyone else’s needs. That manner of indulgent thinking inevitably leads to a bonfire, a flameout of selfishness. It borrows from the future in hopes that one can make it all pay off today. It’s unsustainable. Manage your responsibilities, take care of them, don’t borrow from the future.


Allow for many paths to your goal. Do not fixate on one path, because then you are likely to give up when that path is blocked.


Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.


Write from your whole self. If you have a sense of humor, make sure that flavor’s in your writing. If you like talking ideas, make sure there are ideas in your writing. Anything less will be unsustainable. You will get bored inside the narrative realm you’ve created, in the same way it’s boring to sit at a desk all day filing papers. The only way to last for the long haul it to avoid boredom, and to avoid boredom you need to let your whole self in. (Not to mention you’ll bore your readers).


Writers are often defined by what they do when they’re stuck, or blocked. Some ask what the character would do in that situation. Some look just for where the line wants to take them, where the style of the sentence wants to go – what reads well. Some, like me, try to remember our politics, remember what makes us angry – and let that inform what we should be writing. When you’re considering how to shape a story, pay attention to how you talk out loud about it. When talking out loud, one often naturally self censors and starts with what’s most interesting or tantalizing. We are often natural storytellers with our mouths. Let that guide the shape of
the written version. (But of course don’t just write down the out loud account.)



Write first. Worry about getting an agent or publisher later. Write it first. Prove you can do it and then others will listen. Tons of people talk about books they want to write. Far fewer are those who actually complete that vision. Don’t be a talker.


Can you write from other people’s point of view? Yes, if you’re empathic and willing to listen and care about others. If you care about your characters, readers will care. If you don’t like your characters, or your ideas, or your story, readers will smell a rat. Readers are smart and
intelligent. They are always able to spot my weak spots and quote back to me my very best writing. Appreciate this. Don’t write down to them, don’t assume that readers want something sleazy or simple. Don’t complain about “readers these days.”


Articulate, don't insinuate. The writer who insinuates merely makes a hinting nod to a notion that you and he are vaguely aware of and presumably share, presumably in exactly the same way. The writer who articulates does not fear that putting something into words destroys that feeling or thought. Only putting the wrong words on it destroys it. The writer who articulates does not presume all people experience feelings in exactly the same way.


When you're stuck, those aren't the worst parts, those are the best parts - they're your chance to be creative. When you want to skip something because it's too confusing to explain, that's your chance to slow down and behold the truth that real life is complicated, real people are complicated. Skip for the sake of convenience and readers will sniff a fake.



Embrace subjectivity. Even the subjectivity of an omniscient narration. Only by embracing it, truly, can you take the gloves off and let your take fly.


Create outlines but don’t stick to them. Revise your outlines half way through and then shortly before the end. Never stick to them.


Don't work up to your observations - don't save them for the last word. Start with them. Put your very best stuff first, and then force yourself to grow and synthesize and come up with more, more stuff to rival your best.


The best agents are the ones that are honest. Honesty is the basis of integrity. An agent wants a relationship for the long term, not just for a book. An agent (and an editor) are looking not just at your first book, but all your ideas, much of your future. Share your visions. Find compatibility.


Talk to your booksellers.

If you give yourself the time, you will not only get better as a writer. You’ll develop some correspondences with other writers, you’ll have met some in person at bookstores, other writers from your classes will get stories published here and there – slowly you will develop those elusive “connections” that seem so necessary to getting published. You’ll know some people. Not many people, but enough to carry a conversation. You'll have had so-an-so as a teacher. You'll get how it works. This wisdom just happens. Very rare is the writer who has written a great book and doesn’t have some connections yet. Focus on writing a great book. By the time you have, the rest will be there soon enough. I found my agent when I finally had a short story
published in a literary journal. I asked the journal’s editor for a recommendation, and he sent me to the person who became my agent.



Mailing your work off into the ether is a necessary process but not a very viable one. Treat people professionally. Supplement the mail with a short phone call, don’t waste people’s time, don’t be too needy.


Agents and editors are besieged by “okay” manuscripts. Yet they still hunger for and pray for the rare, great manuscript. What does this mean to you? It’s better to write something that’s
good and unique and fresh, than to write something that’s highly polished and accomplished but too similar to what an editor/agent/bookseller has seen many times over.


Do you need an agent? To be published by a major house, yes, almost always. To be published by a small press, often not. But it still helps to get how it works, to know a few people, et cetera.
Getting a book published is a great and rare event in a person’s life. But it also opens doors
into a pitiless world where writers are measured by sales. You haven’t “made it.” Nobody’s ever “made it.” You never get to go on cruise control. This is good – life shouldn’t be wasted on cruise control. If you want a cushy life on cruise control, you are missing the point of life.


Find a few good role models. You only need a few, maybe only one. Let them inspire you. Art reacts to art. All good books are a work of art that is a creative reaction to other art.



Always tell a story. It grounds the reader in a shared experience.


Understand voice. Write the same sentence ten different ways by imitating the writing voices of ten different writers.


Practice plots.


Understand different ways to tell the same story – the difference between hiding a surprise and foreshadowing it, for instance. Starting a story in the middle versus its natural beginning, et cetera. Learn what creates suspense, forward lean, keeps the pages turning.


Journalism first or fiction first? (Grad school in Journalism or Grad school in Creative Writing?) There is no way to answer this. This is an artificial question. It reveals a thirst, a hope, that the journey can be shortened, that there is a shortcut. It can’t. Journalism (facts) or fiction (style)? Both. Both. Both. In no particular order.


Don’t be a snob. It’s good for people to read, so whatever they read, no matter what it is, be glad they're reading.


No matter what your style or genre or form, even if it's journalism, read John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" very carefully and try some of the exercises. Realize that once you command these skills, you can break every rule he teaches, but these are the basic skills.


Work on your weaknesses. Find out what you’re hiding from.



Stop looking for shortcuts.

War photography

The first war photographer, Richard Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855.



Actually he had assistants rearrange the cannon-balls into a more aesthetic arrangement.

Love What You Do Everyday

"In the photocopying room at that large corporation back in 1992 a manager walked up to me and stated (as if he knew me), “You’re looking for the meaning of life aren’t you? I used to be there, but I gave up.”



From someone called "Clarey " (no relationship to me; in fact, found by accident, looking for a relationship of mine).



In this little blog entry, the lady describes how, in writing her PhD about domestic abuse, it is "no longer about finding some key to change perpetrators, rather it’s about the joy of the research process".



In other words, she recognises the importance of loving what she does every day. This resonates with me. Although working towards a meaningful bigger picture is inspiring, and helps you ignore small aggravations and headaches, if you do not love the everyday, the basic stuff or what you are doing with your time, you will find it impossible to continue.



However, more than that: someone who loves what they are doing is also a much greater contribution to the world, than someone who is doing something "important", but doesn't love it.

People who don't love what they are doing are unstable, bitter and make everyone around them miserable - these effects will, in my opinion, always undercut whatever good they are trying to add to the world.


Love, respect, leadership - these all like charity: they start at home. Sometimes the best thing you can do for "the world" is to make sure your own life is happy and positive. Although this means making giving an important part of what you do, it also means making sure you love what you do everyday.

Single life

The problems of single life can be largely solved by ensuring one posesses one - just one - knife, fork, plate and spoon.

The future of journalism

Here veteran journalist Mark Bowden has an interesting point to make:

The Point Journalism's future is in global dialogue
By Mark Bowden

...　I think the print edition will probably endure to some extent, but, without any doubt, the future of daily journalism is digital, not because it is the latest thing, but because it is, quite simply, a far better medium than paper and ink.

Right now, the technology is still in its infancy... annoying download delays for all but the fastest computers, and often with herky-jerky quality on screens no bigger than those on iPods. Most newspaper sites are little more than Web editions of the paper product, and more difficult to use. They are a little bit like early movies, in which the director essentially filmed a stage play.

But because journalism itself has value, eventually publishers will work out the profit problem.

The multimedia aspect will grow seamless. What will news sites look like then?...

I suspect news sites will open with a bang, displaying the most powerful video image of the day in the way editors have long chosen the day's most dramatic or informative still images to anchor Page One ...

[However] Unlike with TV and radio, which are stuck with people reading out loud, customers of digital journalism will get the best of all media forms. They can wade into any story that attracts them as deeply as they wish. Readers will gravitate toward prose, while those who prefer sounds and images can simply watch and listen. The digital report will not be locked into the strict chronological format of TV and radio news, but will be much more like a newspaper, which permits you to begin with sports and weather, if you wish, or go right to the editorials or comics.

The old idea of reporters covering a beat might well be replaced by an online reporter/editor who oversees a subject area driven by the entire community - a constantly updating police blotter or transit map, for instance. Digital thinkers refer to this as a pro-am (professional-amateur) model, in which the reporter is corrected, tipped off and guided - just as I was with Black Hawk Down - by the expertise of his readers.

Old fuddy-duddies like me will still want their news on paper and in the driveway every morning, but we won't live forever, and already two of the biggest newspapers in America - the New York Times and the Washington Post - are reaching more customers online than in print.

I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. I advise young journalists today to learn how to use a digital video camera, and to get used to working in multimedia. Nearly every story I write today for the Atlantic, and every book I undertake, I do in conjunction with a documentary filmmaker. This results in a documentary version of the story, which can be marketed to TV but also compiles the audio and video needed to produce a Web presentation comparable to Jennifer Musser-Metz's Black Hawk Down project.

If a dinosaur like me can do that, just think what a creative young mind raised in front of a video screen and keyboard will come up with. I literally can't imagine.

BBC Web principles

An interesting list of principles. I like this one especially:

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

Winter to Spring

Click here to see the whole series:

Tolerance vs Respect

This is the challenge: not just tolerance but respect to those who are different.


The difference between tolerance and respect:

You can tolerate me without knowing me, but you can't respect me without knowing me.

We must do more than just "put up" with those around us. We must find out about them.


The distinction came from Tariq Ramadan, part of John Humphries series.

British journalism

The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;

The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;

The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;

The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;

The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;

The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;

And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?

Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."


Read on my friend Rachel Bala's front page

world's most beautiful blue - Matisse

Archbishop Tutu on Ubuntu

Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language.

It speaks of the very essence of being human.

When we want to give high praise to someone we say "Yu, u nobuntu": "Hey, she or he has ubuntu" This means they are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring and compassionate. They share what they have.

It also means my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up in theirs. We belong in a bundle life. We say, 'a person is a person through other people'. It is not 'I think therefore I am'. It says rather: 'I am a human because I belong'. I participate. I share.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good. For he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.


Archbishop Tutu

Baghdad Diary

First, if there has been one bloodily learned lesson of this war, security is the priority above all.

Not democracy, not elections, not new governments nor hospitals or clinics. These only function properly when there is security.

...

We had the dilemma again with the weekend attack on the Sadriya market, when the news agencies billed it as the worst single bombing since the invasion.

It was - from one blast. But in November 2006 more than 200 people died and another 400 were injured in an attack in Baghdad's Sadr City.

It was a single incident, but it involved several bombs and mortars.

In other words, through a common journalistic device - first, worst, biggest - there is a risk of obscuring the wider truth of the level of violence.

...

The sectarian fissures now run through every level of society. "We have Sunni and Shia gangs now," a 14-year-old boy told me when I visited his school at the weekend.

"They fight each other in the playground."

...

The US military depends more than ever on private contractors to keep its operations here going -

I was talking to one of these contractors recently, as he started his second tour.

"We bring in everything - food, medical supplies and ammunition," he said.
And the convoys are regularly attacked, with far higher casualties than among US troops.

"We had 160 in our group on my last tour," he said. "We lost 40 guys."

I asked him why he kept coming back.

"Simple. The money," he replied.

I won't name his company, but the contractor told me he was earning almost US$17,000 dollars a month, tax-free, and with his health insurance covered.

He has a large family.

"Where else can I make that?"

For him, an early American withdrawal would be bad news.

"I need to do this for another three years. Then I can retire."

Andrew North's Baghdad diary

Hidden in the vastness of everything, the details need you.

From my friend Emma's blog, with small edits:

Why bother?

A tip

I have, over the last few weeks, had rather a lot of conversations with people in their late twenties who seem to think they are ancient, and their lives are almost over and they no longer have any potential to accomplish anything amazing in rest of their lives.

This has got rather irritating because the way they vent these feelings is to warn me that I will, in four to six years, feel the same way.

Maybe I will.

But maybe I won't. Now, this might seem to be a rather know-it-all attitude from a 22 year old, but I have reasons for saying this.

So...I said I had a tip. What is it? It is something I learned a while ago. Something that was imprinted in me.

I guess if you had to sum it up, in one little phrase, I guess it would be: "Do it anyway."

You will most likely not change the world in any large recognisable sense. It is highly unlikely that you will leave a mark on the Earth that any self-respecting Martian would deem worth checking out from her little pink spaceplane.

This does not mean, however, that you should give up and live on chocolate pudding while watching pay-per-view Bond films for the rest of your life. The world is not small, the world is not simple. Just because you can't change everything or even some of the things you most want to, you can still change a few crucial corners. Amongst the teeming masses of people, there are some that need you-- and not always in the ways you expect. Hidden in the vastness of everything, the details need you.

I learnt this by looking out from a hillside in the darkness. I was in a quarry, facing away from the naked landscape of crumbled stones and dust, looking out to the land below. All across the valleys and surrounding hills, thousands of little shacks lay under the shroud of darkness, all emitting only a tiny point of light from a lantern or a bulb surreptitiously linked to a passing overhead wire. There were so many lights. And each one representing a home most likely in need of more warmth, more food, more money, more clean water, more opportunity.

One light came from a family I had met that day. I was with a group building houses in the neighborhood for families identified by the local church as particularly in need of a warm shelter. We had given the family the new house, complete with a shiny front door and windows earlier that day, the mother tearing up as the father accepted the keys. She had told us all that she hoped her kids would grow up to be like us.

Details-- so many little things to remember. Little seconds filled with words and strange, heavy emotions. One family. Five children, two parents. In one town in one province. In only one country in our one world.

Only one light among all those thousands. One small detail. Thousands more lights still in need.

Why bother going? Can one light provide enough of a reason?

Selfish Altruist

Extracts from the Selfish Altruist

Aid that simply provides calories for the stomach and water for the throat is a reduction of people to things. How can there be a human concern for such a mean objective?

a superficial optimism [has] developed. In order to express concern for other people, we have to believe that they are good. In effect, aid agencies have preserved the concept of the 'deserving poor'. The idea is that people deserve our help because they are innocent victims. But this is not always true. And if it is not, are we supposed to withhold aid?

'deserving black'... Aid agency staff find it hard to accept that black people exploit each other and tell lies just as white people do, and that greed is not the sole preserve of cigar smoking white men who run the World Bank or are in charge of large corporations.

not born with a sense of 'concern for the person in need'
he describes how his is born out of a strong imagination - studied English at Oxford

'The mistake I now notice most is that we ignored the universality of the human desire for power. It was in ourselves, and in the poor, but we were only interested in people within certain limits and stereotypes" p11

Frank Johnson Obituary

Parliamentary sketch writer, Spectator editor

The son of a pastry cook, Frank Johnson grew up in Hackney
failed 11+ off to secondary modern in Shoreditch

lifelong love of opera and ballet that bemused his East End contemporaries: as a teenager, he would claim he was off to a football match on a Saturday afternoon, when in fact he was catching a bus into the West End, to watch matinees.

messanger boy at the Daily Express at 16
reporter on a local
joined Sun, ... Times, Telegraph ...

"While you were being flogged and starved by sadistic masters," he would tell the ex-public schoolboys at the Telegraph, "I was being brought breakfast in bed by my loving mother".

Nor did he regret not going to University, he was grounds for gratitude, since it meant that he began reading enthusiastically all the great classical tests at the time when his more privileged contemporaries had abandoned their own education.

A long time bachelor, linked to may beautiful women, he married Virginia, widow of Simon Lord Lovat, in 1998. She survives him.

John Virtue

The energy of Turner brought to a urban, London setting.

Opera

Opera

Remembering the show of Verdi's Nabucco in Sarejevo. Tell's the story of Nebuchadnezzar taking the Jews from their homeland to Babylon and into captivity.

The chorus is famous, "Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate" ("Fly, thought, on golden wings") as the Hebrews sing of their wish for freedom.

When Verdi wrote it its theme of a people without their home, was in the context of Italian nationalism (Italy was not a country until late 1861), but in the context of post-civil war Bosnia, it was especially poignant.

How rich are you?

This is fun

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Cognative Dissonance

Cognative Dissonance is described by wikipedia as the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time.

I've been fascinated by this idea recently, accounting as I feel it does, for so much of human activity.

The theory of cognitive dissonance was first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956. The UFO doomsday cult that he observed, counter-intuitively, continued to believe even after their leader's prophecy failed. When the world wasn't destroyed as expected, the members "lessened the dissonance" by accepting a new prophecy; that the aliens had instead spared the planet for their sake.

Another example is Festinger and Carlsmith's class experiement in 1959.

Students were made to perform tedious and meaningless tasks, consisting of turning pegs quarter-turns, then removing them from a board, then putting them back in, and so forth. Participants rated these tasks very negatively. After a long period of doing this, students were told the experiment was over and they could leave.

However, the experimenter then asked the subject for a small favor. They were told that a needed research assistant was not able to make it to the experiment, and the participant was asked to try and persuade another subject (who was actually in the on it) that the dull, boring tasks the subject had just completed were actually interesting and engaging. Some participants were paid $20 for the favor, another group was paid $1.

When asked to rate the peg-turning tasks later, those in the $1 group rated them more positively than those in the $20 group and control group. This was explained by Festinger and Carlsmith as evidence for cognitive dissonance. Experimenters theorized that people experienced dissonance between the conflicting cognitions "I told someone that the task was interesting", and "I actually found it boring". When paid only $1, students were forced to internalize the attitude they were induced to express, because they had no other justification. Those in the $20 condition, it is argued, had an obvious external justification for their behavior.

The researchers further speculated that with only $1, subjects faced insufficient justification and therefore "cognitive dissonance", so when they were asked to lie about the tasks, they sought to relieve this hypothetical stress by changing their attitude. This process allows the subject to genuinely believe that the tasks were enjoyable.

Put simply, the experimenters concluded that many human beings, when persuaded to lie without being given sufficient justification, will come to believe that such behavior is more acceptable than they would have originally assessed.

That was a cleaned up extract from Wikipedia.


What I reckon to it

The idea that giving and receiving is a key part of human relationships is widely held. But the focus is usually on the receiving of gifts: I get a nice box of chocolates from my friend, and my feelings towards him increase - the feeling of friendship is like a kind of payment for the chocolates. I find the idea that the important part of that relationship might actually be in the giving, very interesting. You give someone a present, or more generally, you do someone a favour; and you account for this behaviour to yourself by saying "I did that for because I like her."

If the giving is as important as the receiving, this suggests that one might actually become closer to one's friends by asking them to do you favours. Rather than thinking the best thing you can do is not "burden" anyone, perhaps too much independence is a barrier rather than an aid to better relationships.

This comes home whenever you are a host. You fear the guest who refuses to take tea, water, coffee, or anything from you. When someone receieves and thanks you for your hospitality you are all the more easy.

Thus forget the "Nothing, I'm fine" response to the "What do you want for Christmas?" question.

Language (and Hell)

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitle approaches one.

Famous to observers of internet culture, I came across this again in How to argue - a very succinct treatment by Daniel Sokol on the BBC website. It's clever because it is an incisive observation on human nature (on the temptation to overuse the slippery slope argument), and also an amusing play on the vernacular of science. It is this second aspect I'm more interested in.

I am fascinated in the slow change of ideas over human history. Not so much big fat juicy ones like "is the world round?" or "we are made of tiny things called atoms", but more subtle ideas that we don't ever really consider, presumptions on which many of our thinking is based. I find it fascinating when you can trace an idea and see how it changed over history. In Our Time, a radio 4 programme anchored by Melyn Bragg, is very good at this. I include this extract, by way of illustrating my point, but also because it's fascinating in its own right:

During the inter-testamental period (the time between the completion of writing the Old Testament and the writing of the New Testament, 250BC-50AD) there was a period of growth in belief in the Judeo and Christian world of hell or Gehenna, but still in very vague terms. Around the 4th century, worldwide, and amongst many of the main religions: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Taoism, there was suddenly an astonishing growth in graphic depictions of hell: if you had ever looked lustfully at a woman you would have your eyes pecked out in hell; if you had been a glutton your liver would be picked out; if you had done false dealings your hands would be cut off, repeatedly, for eternity and the stumps then dipped in lead.

The ideas of hell moved away from the basic conception of hell as something to be saved from, developing into titillating stuff that was graphic, exciting, pornographic across all major faiths. Something which the major faiths had in common, beyond the sudden blossoming of graphic detail amongst their depictions of hell, was the common theme of the story of a journey going down into the underworld. In Zoroastrianism there is the journey of Arda Viraf, in many ways the prototype of all the later stories of journeying through hell or hells. This story was enormously popular in the Middle East for 1000 years but it is difficult to date exactly, estimated at around 150-200AD. After this came the Apocalypse of Paul a story which was immensely popular and which almost made it into the New Testament, appearing in it early on but dropped by about 500AD. The Apocalypse of Paul describes an incredibly dramatic journey down into hell where all the various scenes of hell are depicted. This story almost certainly shaped Dante’s thinking and because it was thought to have been written by the Apostle, Paul, it carried a certain authority.

Much more followed, but you can get a sense of the kind of history I find fascinating.

Often the change in ideas is subtely reflected in our language. Bragg notes for example that one can track a change in expressions from “freezing in hell” (because the religions where such ideas originated came out of hot climates) until you could “burn in hell” (after religion moved north).

The aspect of Godwin's law that I find interesting is the way the parlance of science (or more specifically mathematics) has been adopted to express a piece of wisdom. From a time when wisdom was put in plays and parables, the form that is appropriate now is that of science. Another tongue in cheek example:

Finagle's Law- Generalized version of Murphy's law, fully named Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives and usually rendered "anything that can go wrong, will".

Going to Dinner - Hornby

One of the scenes from Hornby's How to Be Good is worth re-telling, at least in abridge form:

We haven't had a meal with friends since Before GoodNews, bu on the Friday night we go to our friends Andrew and Cam for supper. GoodNews is babysitting: he offered, and the kids seemed OK about it, and as we'd actually failed to find an alternative, the offer was gratefully accepted.

Andrew and Camp are People Like Us, alarming so: Andrew has a perilous toehold hon the bottom rung of the media ladder, except it's not really perilous, because if he lost his footing he wouldn't actually fall very far, nor would he do himself or his family very much damage. He has a monthly books column in a men's fitness magazine, and is therefore probably the world's least-read literary critic. He is, of course, writing something else - a screenplay, rather than a novel, felicitously, so David can commiserate rather than feel threatened, and they can - could - both bitch happily about awful films they have seen or terrible novels they have read, and the bitching miraculously becomes mutually supportive and comradely, rather than merely unpleasant. Cam works in the Health Service as a manager, and she's nice enough, but we don't have an awful lot in common: she is Health Service-obsessed and has never wanted children, whereas I am happy never to talk about work if there is another conversational topic, including children, on offer. We are nice to each other because we both recognize the value of this relationship to our angry, frustrated menfolk.

Except now, suddenly, my man is neither angry nor frustrated. Andrew doesn't know this yet. He phoned, he invited, I accepted, I hung up, and there was no opportunity to mention the Finsbury Park Miracle. David seems unconcerned. In the car on the way over (we usually take a minicab, but David has shown no desire to drink more than the occasional glass of wine, so he is driving), I ask him gently whether he'll be telling Andrew about GoodNews.

"Why?"

"No reason."

"Do you think I shouldn't?"

"No. I mean ... You know, if you want to, you should."

"I'll be perfectly honest with you, Katie. I've found it's quite hard to talk about. Without coming across as a weirdo."

"Yes."

"Why do you think that is?"

"I've no idea"

"People are blinkered, don't you think?"

"That must be it. Maybe best to leave the subject alone, then."

"I think you're right. Until I've ... Until I've developed the language to talk about it properly."

All sorts of muscles all over me relax, and I hadn't even realized I was tense, although I still get the feeling that this evening might be tricky. "What do you think you'll talk about, then?"

"I'm sorry?"

"What do you think we'll talk about? How will the conversation go?"

"How should I know? What a peculiar question, Katie. You've been for dinner at people's houses before. You know how it works. Things come up and then we discuss them."

"That's true in theory."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, that's how it works in most cases. But when we see Andrew and Cam, we walk in, and then Andrew says that so-and-so's a wanker and his new book is awful, and you say that the new film by somebody else in unintentionally hilarious - even though nine times out of ten I know for a fact you haven't seen it - and Cam and I sit there smiling and sometimes laughing if you're being funny instead of just plain nasty, and then you get drunk and tell Andrew he's a genius, and he get's drunk and tells you you're a genius, and then we go home."

David chuckles. "Nonsense".

"Suit yourself."

"Really? That's your impression of our evenings with Andrew and Cam?"

"It's not an impression."

"I'm sorry if that's what you think."

"It's not what I think. It's what happens."

"We'll see."

We walk in, we're offered a drink, we sit down.

"How are you?" Cam asks.

"We're fine, I think," I reply.

"Better than that fuckwit J-, then," says Andrew gleefully. That's all it takes - "We're fine", because us being fine gives him the opportunity to talk about someone who isn't fine: J- is a well-known writer who has had a famously bad time of late. His new novel has had unanimously stinking reviews and failed to reach the bestseller lists; meanwhile his wife has left him for one of his younger rivals. The old David would have drunk deep from this cup, but the new one simply looks discomforted.

"Yes," says David mildly. "He's been having a bad time, hasn't he?"

"Yes," says Andrew. And then, presumably because David has, in his own way, responded to the bit about J- having a bad time, but not to the bit about J- being a fuckwit, he adds, hopefully, "Fuckwit".

"How are you two?" says, David.

Andrew looks mystified: twice he has offered the hand hand of enmity, twice it has been refused. He tries one more time. "We're better than that fuckwit J-, too," he says, and laughs at his own joke.

"That's good," says David. "I'm glad."

...

[Later Katie reflects on the long list of people (Paul McCartney, Monty Python, Melvyn Bragg, Dennis Bergkamp ... and so on) who Andrew and David have "hitherto regarded as talentless, overrated or simply wankers".] the Coen Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Andre Agassi...

It is easier, in fact to write down the people in world history that they both like: Bob Dylan (although not recently), Graham Greene, Quentin Tarentino and Tony Hancock. I can't remember anyone else ever receiving the double thumbs-up from these two guardians of our culture.

I got sick of hearing why everybody was useless, and ghastly, and talentless, and awful, and how they didn't deserve anythign good that had happened to them, and they completely deserved anything bad that had happened to them, but this evening I long for the old David - I miss him like one might miss a scar, or a wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic. You knew where you were with the old David. And I never felt any embarassment, ever. Weary despair, sure, the occasional nasty taste in the mouth, certainly, flashes of irritation almost constantly, but never any embarrassment. I had become comfortable with his cynicism, and in any case, we're all cynical now, although it's only this evening that I recognize this properly. Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on, and though I'm not fluent in it - I like too many things, and I am not envious of enough people - I know enough to get by. And in any case it is not possible to avoid cynicism and the sneer completely. Any conversation about, say, the London mayoral contest, or Demi Moore, or Posh and Becks and Brooklyn, and you are obliged to be sour, simply to prove that you a fully functioning and reflective metropolitan person.

I no longer understand very much about the man I live with, but I understand enough to know that this evening is almost bound to throw up a decisive moment, a moment where David's new found earnestness, his desire to love and understand even the most way-ward of God's creatures, will be met with blank incomprehension. As it turns out, the wayward creature turns out to be the outgoing President of the United States, and it is Cam, not Andrew, who is on the receieving end of David's terrifying sincerity. We're talking - as best we can, from a position of almost fathomless ignorance - about the US primaries, and Cam says she doesn't really care about who the next president is as long as he keeps his thing in hsi trousers and doesn't monster young interns, and David shifts in his seat and eventually wonders, with a patent reluctance, who we are to judge, and Cam laughs at him.

"I mean it," says David, "I no longer want to condemn people whose lives I know nothing about."
"But ... that's the basis for all conversation!" says Andrew.

"I'm tired of it," says David. "We don't know anything about him."

"We know more than we want to."

"What do you know?" David asks him.

"We know where he puts it about."

"Do we? And even if he does, do we know why? ... I think he must have been a very torubled and unhappy man" says David.

We all concentrate very hard on our tricolore.

I venture an entirely positive opion on our hosts' newly renovated kitchen, and we are happy for a while, but it clearly occurs to all of us simultaneously that there are very few subjects which offer that kind of harmony, and every now and again one of the three of us slips up, as if we are suffering from cultural Tourette's. I make a disparaging remark about Jeffrey Archer's literary ability (a passing observation - not even an observation, more a simile - buried in the middle of an otherwise unexceptionable exchange about a TV programme) and David tells me that I have no conception of how hard it is to write a book. Cam makes a joke about a politician who has recently been jailed for embezzlement, a man who has become a byword for untrustworthiness, and David makes a plea for forgiveness. Andres has a little sneer about Ginger Spice's role with the UN and David says it is better to do something than nothing.

In other words it is impossible: we cannot funciton properly, and the evening ends in confusion and awkwardness, and very early. There is a consensus in our particular postal district that people like Ginger Spice and Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Archer are beyond thepale, and if someone goes around sticking up for them then that consensus fails, and all is anarchy. Is it possible ot divorce a man simply because he doesn't want to be rude about Ginger Spice? I rather fear it might be.

How to be Good - Hornby

I'm re-reading the excellent How to Be Good by Nick Hornby.

The story begins with local GP Katie Carr finding herself in a Leeds car-park, having just slept with a stranger, and asking for a divorce from her husband, David - self-styled "Angriest Man in Holloway". Anything could be better than this cynical and miserable man. However after an encounter with GoodNews, a new-age healer type, David undergoes a radical change of character - becoming a do-gooding, pleasant, wants to engage with his children-type. How Katie, a good person - "I am a doctor" - and her chidlren struggle with this is makes up the rest of the novel. Countless scenes make you laugh out loud - in that coffee-shop funny looks from others way- little Tom, for example, in response to his father giving his toys away to the women's refuge centre, starts stealing from school, as he's now "deprived" too.

Katie is left miserable, her middle-class mores unable to cope with someone actually willing to test them. "I'm a liberal's worst nightmare" David explains, "I think everything you think. But I'm going to walk it like I talk it". Katie struggles to respond, and justify her life to herself:

I know how this sounds, but he makes me so angry. I'm a good person, I'm a doctor, I know I had an affair but that doesn't make me bad, that doesn't mean I have to give away everything I own or watch while my chidlren give away everything they own...

The flimsy basis of her set of values are exposed

Later, half-asleep, I start to dream about all the people in the world who live bad lives - all the drug-dealers and arms manufacturers and corrupt politicians, all the cynical bastards everywhere - getting touched by GoodNews and changing like David has changed. The dream scares me. Because I need these people - they serve as my compass. Due south there are saints and nurses and teachers in inner-city schools; due north there are managing directors of tobacco companies and angry local newspaper columnists. Please don't take my north away, because then I will be adrift, lost in a land where the things I have done and the things I haven't done really mean something.

In this sense the story is in the tradition of Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, playing out the consequences of "being good" and unpicking the confusion that follows. However Hornby is exploring and prodding fun, not condemning. This is a kindly tease, not the condemnation of a radical. It is also just a very good funny novel, and gets - like all Hornby's novels - what I call, the beautiful basics right. That is, the characters are believable and human, and they develop over the course of the narrative. In my opinion however good the setting, style and everything else - if the beautiful basics aren't there, the novel is not worth the paper it's printed on.

"shopping for men is a time-sensitive military exercise"

true

Reading

"Good books are detonating devices, able to trigger something in the mind of the reader - a memory perhaps, or a revelation, or an understanding not possible by other means. Not for nothing was Madame Bovary kept away from trapped French housewives. The introverted nature of reading is part of its power. No one can see what changes might be taking place under the surface of your silent repose. It is this unaccountability to external authority that makes reading both defiant and an act of free will. The CCTV and the bugged phone can do nothing about the private dialogue between reader and writer". Jeanette Winterson in the Times

John Mayer #5

"I worry,
I weigh three times my body
I worry,
I throw my fear around"

Clarity - John Mayer

Islam and enlightenment

As Christian nations had their Enlightenment, is that what Islam still awaits?

A question I am increasingly pondering...

What follows is one response to that question. It is some extracts from Salman Rushdie's 1991 speech in commemeration of the 200th anniversary of First Amendment. It was given in a New York hotel suite, apparently in a room guarded by twenty armed men, the windows blocked by bullet proof mattresses.


"A hot-air balloon drifts slowly over a bottomless chasm, carrying several passengers. A leak develops.. the wounded balloon can bear just one passenger to safety... but who should live, who should die?

...The Balloon Debate: an evergreen favourite of debating societies everywhere, where speakers argue over the relative merits and demerits of the well-known figures they have placed in disaster's mouth.

I have spent a thousand days in just such a balloon, but alas this isn't a game.

For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair".

The balloon is over the chasm again; and it's still sinking. I realize that it's carrying a great deal of valuable freight. Trading relations, armaments deals, the balance of power in the Gulf ...

What is my single life worth worth? Despair whispers in my ear: "Not a lot"

Sometimes I think that, one day, Muslims will be ashamed of what Muslims did in these times, will find the "Rushdie affair" as improbable as the West now finds martyr-burning.

... Maybe they'll agree, too, that the row over the Satanic Verses was at bottom an argument about who should have power over the grand narrative, the Story of Islam...

I recall my near-namesake, 12thC philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) ... who argued that "not all the words of the Qu'ran should be taken literally. When the literal meaning of Qu'ranic verses appeared to contradict the truths to which philosophers arrived by the exercise of reason, those verses needed to be interpreted metaphorically." (Words of great Arab historian, Albert Hourani)

...I asked myself, it is time to pick up Ibn Rushd's banner and carry it forward?

But my fantasy of joing the fight for the modernization of Muslim thought, for freedom from the shackles of the Thought Police, was stillborn...

I found myself up against the granite, heartless certainties of Actually Existing Islam, by which I mean the political and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Muslim societies...[and has] supplanted a priest free religion by a priest ridden one and makes literalism a weapon and rediscriptions a crime.

...Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world-view is the easiest to keep hold of; whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable.

Yet I must cling with all my might to that chameleon... must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, not matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I fished in it for my art.

...

'Free speech is a non-starter,' says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself...

That's the end of my speech from this ailing balloon. Now it's time to ask the question: what is a single life worth?

Is it worth more or less that the fat contracts and political treaties that are in here with me?

You must decide what you think a friend is worth to his friends, a son is worth to his mother or a father to his son.

You must decide what a man's conscience and heart and soul are worth. You must decide what you think a writer is worth, what value you place on a maker of stories, and an arguer with the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, the balloon is sinking into the abyss.

Finally graduated...

With Seb, his mother, Maggie and Nut

John Mayer Poetry #4

Everybody is just a stranger
But thats the danger in going my own way

"I feel closest to those who take defeat in their stride and just keep going, rather than to those who aspire to victory down a rational path. In life's losers I find a humanity lacking in the winners."

Miyazaki Manabu

Music #1

Loving Lilly Allen at the moment. How good is to here an authentic local accent working in music. Like The Streets - another favourite.

Which makes me think: Aside from Maxy Jazz of Faithless is there another British rapper that makes the accent work?

John Mayer Poetry #2

"I am driving up 85 in the
Kind of morning that lasts all afternoon"

Georgia - John Mayer

John Mayer Poetry #1

"We bit our lips
She looked out the window
Rolling tiny balls of napkin paper
I played a quick game of chess with the salt and pepper shaker"

My Stupid Mouth - John Mayer

youth

"The years between 14 and 17 are spent constantly trying to persuade the bus driver that you should get a concession or the barmaid that you should get a Carling. Either way, you are nothing except a GCSE pass-rate statistic."

Friend of last year Ciaran makes an interesting point here

Let's kick this off again:

thoughts, Japan, memories, women, philosophy, spirituality, 漢字, ambition, Linden Hall

Put lots of weeds together, you get a meadow.

Stupid English

"Future generations will look back and say in the name of tolerenace, we sat on our hands and cut our own throats."


That was Salman Rushdie, giving his support to Jack Straw. Salman Rushdie is an elegant writer, I just read his 1991 speech about the fatwa the other day. Powerful stuff. However, how exactly can one sit on your hands and cut your own throat?

It reminds me of Ian Duncan Smith telling someone (who cares who) that he was going to stand shoulder to shoulder behind him.

Such images are completely vacuous.

Whist ranting on the subject....

- This was what Orwell was talking about. What is the point of using metaphors such as "toeing the line" or "swan song" when they completely lack any visual power to a modern audience (to the extent many mispell the first of those two, "towing the line")

- Reminds me of David Cameron saying he stands for optimism, and the Guardian's Simon Hoggart's reminder to apply the opposite rule. When listening to such claims can you imagine anyone calling for the opposite?

- Nick Robinson notes the rise of "calling for a debate" as a stock political phrase which is becoming increasingly meaningless.

Looking for a cuddly Valentine's Day gift? Give her HIV or the Flu!

Indication of where things are going... ?

There's much controversy over the Islamic cartoons. Very interesting in its own right, but WHERE ARE THE CARTOONS? I can't find them anywhere! BBC don't have them, and none of the "links to other news sources" were any help either. Google News search gives me article after article describing the controversery without giving me the bit I'm most interested in. Until I got to Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons

Can networks be more effective than hierarchical organizations, even with no monetary reward? Maybe, maybe.

Leadership # 3

“What new ideas and perspectives will characterise the successful leaders of tomorrow?”

While last years competition was only leadership styles, this year's discussion is about ideas.

The question is about 'successful leaders'. What is our definition of success? If success is simply power, then it is not clear that a powerful person need have any particular perspective or idea. Power comes from many sources. The Duke of Westminster's ownership of half of Mayfair and Belgravia makes him, and his descendents rich people, but a monied man's most original idea may merely be about how to spend it. The power of the military junta that controls Myanmar has little to do with ideas, and everything to do with the number of AK-47s they control.

The question's juxtaposition of ideas and leadership invites us to define leadership more narrowly. Thus a leader is a different to others who wield power, getting others to do as they wish (coerce) through economic, legal, or brutally physical means. A leader is someone who wields power through their influence of their ideas. Ghandi although he had no one in his pay, held no legal-political position of power, and was a small and frail man, was a 'successful leader' because of the power of his ideas. His was what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power' or what Weber called 'status'. His ideas, through the expression of his actions, words, personality, and life-style, had a powerful efect on the views and perspectives of those in his country and around the world.
The question is thus about, what are those next big and new ideas, that are going to change the course of human history.

To be continued...

Leadership # 2

"To be a Leader is to have the ability to create and maintain networks that drive change"

This is the central idea of Rowenna Davis audio piece on 'invisible' leaders which won last year's prize. I remember meeting her once at a Environment Committee party - which I realize sounds dull - and because she was pretty I decided to remember her name by rhyming it with with a beverage I used to enjoy as a child. We then had a little talk about Neela (my current college daughter, who'd I'd met at interview a little while earlier), which was quite pleasant before going home at which point I blundered out the room embarassed, as I bid "Ribena" farewell.

In the piece she interviewed four people that she thought of as people worth talking to: Jonathan, the founder of the Hub (which seems a kind of Gentlemen's club for trendy left-wing media types - the kind that would wear cool glasses); Nikki, a human rights lawyer who led a campaign against "educational apparteid" (not letting asylum seeker children into our classrooms); Neela, who led a hands-for-peace campaign against the Iraq war (and who is also my college daughter - obviously her main claim to fame); and Mr Jenkins (or Jenky) an old inspirational Geography teacher who is indeed inspirational.

Although Ro's piece was, she says, investigative in its approach - it has a clear and strong argument. The leaders of the 21st century will be those who, taking advantage of the Internet and other such technologies, have the ability to create and maintain networks that drive change.
Such leaders are often invisible - as Ro puts it, buried in a network, not exposed on the top of a hierachical pyramid. In the 21st century when we value people's equality, the inequality of a follower (implicit in the idea of a leader) can be done away with Ro argues. This is a kind of leadership that inspires others rather than seeking to control them:

"The 21st Century will require a new leadership ... It will require people who can walk the tightrope between initiating change on the one hand, without fostering hierarchies of superiority and inferiority on the other."

In short:

"Leaders open up spaces for people to create change rather than forcing agendas on them."

In fact the work identifies another leader - one shying away from traditional stereotypes of hierarchy, using networks to create a space for people to speak for themselves, and using technology (if not particularly cutting edge in this case) to do so: Rowenna herself. The way she chooses audio, because her subjects "can tell their story much better than I can", networking four people to make her point, illustrates her argument beautifully.

Thinking about leadership...

After seeing this...

“What new ideas and perspectives will characterise the successful leaders of tomorrow?”

Judges include Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, and Clare Short, MP.

I must register by Sunday 5th February and enter my piece by Sunday 26th March. They have a dinner, and final on 12th May at Templeton College.

www.oxfordleadershipprize.org.


Hmmm....

The following isn't arguing anything. Don't read and expect to arrive anywhere. I'm just musing.

"Leader" is the antonymn of "Follower" - someone with no agency: the proverbial leaf in the wind. But does that mean a great leader cannot follow? I follow my doctor's advice; he, afterall, knows what he's talking about. Surely the question is why do I follow his advice? It's about my independence of mind. The degree to which someone is a follower/leader cannot be judged from looking at one's actions.

So if we move the discussion to the inner realm - is the issue really about originality. How common is it that someone actually expresses an original idea?

But then I'm off the point. The question set does not invite a philosophical discussion of agency.

Answer the question. I can seem Bowles' looming head now.

"Answer the question. Question the answer." I saw that on a management consultancy recruiting poster. The implication was that at their company, independence of mind was welcomed - one would not be a drone, following the orders from upon high. It was an attractive. No one wants to be controlled, a follower. We value our independence, the idea that we lead ourselves. Are those of influence, those best able to encourage others that they leading themselves, when in fact that are being maniupulated. I'm powerful because I've made you think that my idea is your idea.

This meets Joseph Nye's definition of soft power - a new articulation of an old piece of wisdom about power. You can get Mr. X to do your will through force, (hard power) but a more effective form of power is when you can get Mr. X to do your will through his own will (soft power). Many analysts have seen the story of American foreign policy as the shift to using hard power (guns, tanks, economic sanctions) away from soft power (diplomacy; ideas of truth, freedom, democracy; international condemnation, a.k.a. "a very angry letter" in the words of Team America's Hans Blix).

Often we think of successful or "great" leaders as charasmastic, quasi-magical figures, that inspire many followers onto super-human triumphs. However, the reality is we don't like the idea that we are followers, and we tend to enjoy knocking holes in supermen. So perhaps those actually most able to influence (succesful leaders) are those most 'invisible': those most able to convince others that they have not led x to a new opinion, position, or viewpoint; but merely encouraged x to do what they would have done all along.

Still thinking...

In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's what kind of story this is.
Will Bloom, character in Big Fish, a film based on the novel by Daniel Wallace.

"Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers, and how one remembers it in order to recount it".
Nobel prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of a 100 Years of Solitude, in his memoirs.

There is a lot of controversy in the American papers at the moment about James Frey's best-selling "A Million Little Pieces". It is one man's account of the gutter, his life crushed by crime and drugs, until he eventually finds his way out of the gloom. The book hit the best-seller lists after a Ophrah Winfrey endorsement, a tale of inspiration and hope. Except the book is riddled with inaccuracies. Various background checks by journalists have discovered that countless of the incidents were subject to distortion, from embellishment to complete fabrication. One Amazon.com reviewer's response, where the book had claimed the no.1 spot for some weeks, is easy to sympathise with: "Disgraceful, dishonest, distasteful ... pure fiction sold to the public as fact".

Big Fish is a film about a son who goes home to see his father one last time before he passes away. His father is a habitual story teller, an incorrigible creator of elaborate fantasies which although charming to strangers and casual friends are a source of frustration to his son, who wishes to know the truth about his father, and his own past, before he passes away. The fantasies, or lies as the son sees them, while amusing to him as a child now insult his intelligence as an adult. However, his attempts to break through this barrier of fantasy, continue to be reposted.

Father: I don't know if you're aware of this, Josephine, [son's fiancé] but African parrots, in their native home of the Congo, they speak only French.

Josephine: Really?

You're lucky to get four words out of them in English, but if you were to walk through the jungle, you'd hear them speaking the most elaborate French. Those parrots talk about everything. Politics, movies, fashion. Everything but religion.

Son: Why not religion, dad?

It's rude to talk about religion. You never know who you're gonna offend.

Josephine actually went to the Congo last year.

Oh, so you know.


As the film progresses the film's narrative switches between the son back at home, and a typically Tim Burton extravaganza: a dramatization of the father's fantastical life as he fights a giant, joins the circus, meets a witch, and parachutes into North Korea on a secret mission, rescuing on the way, a pair Siamese twin entertainers kept captive by the evil communists.

The idea that the film is playing with is that, our lives memories, our very histories, our self-image and very idendity are constructed from myth rather than reality, fiction not fact.
The difference between us and the father who insists on keeping "reality" to one side, is one of degree rather than category.

All of this is not necessarily an argument for excusing Frey's actions. As Milan Kundera, the Czech exile from Cold War Communism, reminds us in his 1979 Book of Laughter and Forgetting, there is a dark side to memory, the past, and its manipulation. Kundera recounts how in the aftermath of the Second World War victory, Gottwald was leant a hat in the cold by a a subordinate called Clementis. The scene was photographed. But in a one of the bloody purges that followed, Clementis' execution required him to be erased from the photographic record also. The new picture showed Gottwald standing alone, Clementis' hat still perched on his head - a ghost of the forgotten man.

In the book, as Mirek decides to defy the regime's efforts to control:

"Mirek rewrote history just like the Communist Party, like all political parties, like all peoples, like mankind. They shout that they want to shape a better furutre, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the pount that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only the power to change the past. We fight for access to the labs where we retouch photos and rewrite biographies and history. "

And yet the central character of the book is Tamina, a Czech exile living a new life in France - much like Kundera did himself. She works in a French café, and as time goes past and she thinks of her lost husband she is desparate to retrieve her notebooks from home. Kundera writes:

'She wants to have her notebooks so the the flimsyframework of events, as she has constructred them ini her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the totering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly towards death.

Kundera has a reputation of being a mix between philosopher and author, and indeed some believe (the psycholigical school) that the answer to the old identity problem (If your body ages and changes, your mood changes, your character grows - what is constant? what is "you"?) is to be found in memory. This seems true of Tamina. But if Tamina's identity is so wrapped up in her stories, and her stories are just that - stories - what hope does she have of finding authenticity in her past? Moreover, if her past is fiction, what is her present but mere fabrication? Or is the expectation for truth is our presents, as Tim Burton's film seems to suggest, a fruitless exercise, as we all find solace from life in our stories.

This is not an argument that we should excuse lies, but merely that claims to truth in our pasts are themselves not only impossible but unnatural. "Oh you'll never guess what happened to me on the way into the office today..." Everyone knows someone who is always ready with a story like this. Details are elaborated, ommitted and manipulated leaving the narrative core of a compelling tale. It's better that way, it's funnier or more poignoint. It's needed for the story. It's human. A big fish story.

Who moved the cheese?

Just been reading Dr Stanley Spencer's book "Who moved my cheese?"

The Spencer book is a 'modern day parable' about how to deal with change, which tells the story of two little humans running around a maze full mice looking for cheese to eat. They find some cheese, settle down and build a life around it - move house, raise families, and even hang pictures of their cheese on the living room wall. Then one day the cheese disappears, and unlike the mice who scurry off immediately back into the maze in search of new cheese Hem and Haw (our two heroes names) do exactly that: hem and haw over what to do. The rest of the story follows the process by which one of the little men (Haw) decides to re-enter the maze and look for new cheese, while Hem is left "hemmed" in my his old attitudes, his sense of injury, fear of the maze (with echoes of 'rat race'). Haw embraces change, Hem shuns it. ("embrace change" is a horrible phrase). It's full of little epigrams that become more poignant with the illustration of the story. I am now tempted, for example, to write "Imagine what you could do if you weren't afraid" on a poster and stick it on my wall. At a time when I'm starting to feel anything from a slight tightening in the chest, to a full blown panic attack, whenever someone mentions the word 'future', I find this kind of thing genuinely inspiring.

The thing is, it's all slightly repulsive, or at least kind of pathetic. This is one of the big genre of books from the land of mission statements, where "gurus" think outside boxes, whilst maintaining a P-M-A (not to be confused with PMT), visualizing their goals in a win-win strategy to maximise the synergistic qualities of first things first. It just seems kind of weird, and well... American.

I always feel really embarassed to admit I've read one of those kinds of books, let alone pass on
its contents. I hide my copy of Men are from Mars behind a copy of the Economist, or read it with a torch under the covers at night.

Probably the thing that puts me off is that, I know it already. It's mostly common sense, or at least stuff that people have told me (though my Dad is Canadian, and an ex-Personnel Manager, making Covey's 7 habits, or some other such work, regular fodder for kitchen table conversation). You're reminded of your own stupidity whenever you read it. ("Oh yeah I knew that. Damn.")

But then I guess that's the thing about wisdom, you've got to keep re-learning it. Or at least until you start doing. Oh well one step at a time.

International Relations

I often thought that the public sphere (a social science word for the conversation of the nation as expressed through the newspapers, parliament, tv etc) could do with more input from the academic perspective of international relations. Well I thought I would - albeit as an amateur - start giving it a go.

List of possible topics:

Why international law is not like normal law (municipal law), why it is always going to be weak, but why it is still important?

Can the spread of nuclear weapons make the world a safer place?

Fitting morality and discourses of justice (talking about right and wrong) into our understanding of international relations. (Why people who say: "What right do we have to invade Iraq, without giving up our own right not to be invaded?" are talking out their arse.)

Why people who say "who are we to impose democracy upon a people?" are also talking out their arse.

America-hating and why I hate it.

Will democracy decrease terrorism?

Iraq: a botched idea rather than a bad idea.

Hmmm. This could get messy. I'm trying to do two things. Explain the debates within the academic field of international relations which inform many of the issues the world is concerned with at the moment; and what I think about all those issues. However, I'll try and separate out issues as best I can so you can see when I'm simply explaining and when I'm arguing for a certain this or that.

Oh well see how it goes.

New Year's Resolution

To abolish the word 'like' from my vernacular.
But not just removing it that, like, random way. But COMPLETELY not even 'I like football' or 'She is like my friend's sister'.

No like.

science catching up with common sense

A big ya-boo sucks to Natalia Chan after I read this week that wrapping up warm helps fend off a cold. The Cardiff University's Common Cold Centre found that 29% of volunteers who spent 20minutes with their feet in a bowl of cold water developed a sniffle over the next five days compared with just 9% of those that dangled their bare feet in an empty bowl. Apparently exposure to the extremeties (feet, and in another study the nose - although I'm not sure how they did that without drowning the volunteers) activates dormant infections.

I lived with Nut for two years, and every time one went into her room, the windows would be wide open and she would usually be nursing a cold. A cold you see - as she would explain - was a virus, and thus unaffected by the temperature of the room. In fact a colder temperature made the room a more hostile environment for the little buggers. * But then why do you always have a cold while I sit in my warm snug room nice and healthy? Surely our mothers and grandmothers, and the collective wisdom of the generations they represent, (which is to be avoided in some matters - the purchase of clothes, the cutting of hair - to name two) weren't basing such crazy ideas (wearing a scarf and closing the window as ice and hail bounces in through the opening) on something of worth. Who knows, but if you will excuse me, I'm going to put my slippers on.

* Does anyone know the difference temperature has on virus (as opposed to bacteria which if we are to believe the refridgerator manufacturers thrive in a warmer temperature) ? Biologists out there?

"What is love?"

"baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me - no no" ... so went that Disco classic. Much of humanity's other creative energy throughout time has gone on and on about on this point...

I thought I'd add my two cents (whatever that phrmeans)

It is a common observation that the typical Disney romance is a fairytale fiction based on a particular aspect of love, as far from reality as airbrushed thighs and breasts in a magazine. Although this romantic image’s status in our culture has distorting consequence for people’s expectations of love and happiness, I think most accept it as a mostly harmless set of ideas, images and words that it’s fun to dress up in on Valentine’s Day and Anniversaries.

But I wish our culture had a different cultural costume for these kind of occasions. I love the words of Iannis (Pelagia’s father) in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin:

“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”

Maybe it’s a result of having only one word for love (compare the Greek 4 words or Arabic’s 14) but it seems we’re missing something when we as a culture can only get romantic and gooey about “young-love”. De Berniere on the other hand finds something to celebrate in the ‘entwined roots’ love that comes with maturity and a long time at a partner’s side. This kind of love is not only more realistic than the ‘temporary madness’ of youth, but it has a depth that comes only with time, work and daily decisions to love your other. I have a number of friends who fell in love with another man or woman at University, another who in many ways really suits them. However, almost without exception, all are splitting up as ‘their lives go in different directions’. As my friend Felicity explained it to me: “I just don’t feel any overwhelming emotion or commitment to Chris, and it’s better I do this now [go away] than resent him later”.
I respect that there is some sense in being skeptical of how long such a University relationship might last so as to make wise a decision to do something exciting or unique regardless of a boyfriend’s plans - in Felicity’s case – leaving the country on a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship. However I worry that Felicity’s expectation for ‘emotion’ to one day overwhelm her regular “rational” decision making process misses that love is itself a daily decision. More than an acceptance of the “harsh reality” that love is sacrifice and hard-work and we need a way of celebrating it: a “new romance”, songs stories and films that emphasize the beauty of the kind of love that comes with time. Jack Johnson’s Do You Remember comes close (thanks for the recommendation!)

Will miss my mates...

Hal ... Tom and brother.... Dave and John

and Virginie of course (we had a little Japan party...)

The Incendiary

I should mention that The Incendiary rock my world.

www.theincendiary.co.uk

Going to Japan

I am going to Japan.

http://brendanmillerjapan.blogspot.com is where you'll find Japan references

Road to Edinburgh

Thetford might be a lovely place. There may be people out there who have happy childhood memories of icecream and sunny swimming pools in Thetford. However, as I sat on my backpack by the side of the A-something or other, in a muggy cloud of dust and car exhaust, “happy” would not have been a good way to describe my disposition. I was hitch-hiking to Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History march and I was not having a very successful morning.

Admittedly, hitch-hiking is never the best way to appreciate a place. In 2003 I had gone on a charity fundraising hitch-hike to Malaga with a friend from College. My only experience of Madrid on that trip – capital of Spain and sought after destination for English football players – was a dusty petrol station on the south side of the city’s main ring-road. Indeed I know now that Thetford has a long and rich history: a Viking settlement, the sixth biggest town by the time of the Norman invasion, a parliamentarian stronghold in the Civil War and even the birthplace of Thomas Paine.

Needless to say I did not see this historic side of Thetford. The Thetford I was seeing as I trudged around its out‑of‑town roundabouts and by-passes was a smileless wasteland of industrial sites, grey grass and tarmac. It was also not on my way. I was going to North, and yet I had somehow veered off East, to this God-forsaken armpit of the UK road network.

And to think, my journey had started so well. The sky had been bright and pink as my Dad had dropped me off at Harlow services on the M11 that morning. The weather seemed to match my optimism – or my veteran confidence, as I - considering my Malaga-feat - liked to think of it. Indeed, as the dawn sun started up the sky and the first few lorries and cars drove by my hitch-hiking spot, I returned the drivers’ expressions of suspicion and confusion, with what I hoped seemed a worldly-wise smile. I know how this works: initial disappointment, a little bit of self-doubt and then someone picks you up in the end. And they had. The sun had been higher up the sky than I’d expected, and the amount of self-doubt inside had been more than a “little”, but now a young lady in a Ford KA was taking me on my way. My journey had begun.

Fleur wore big fashionable sunglasses, had grown up in Historic Bury St Edmunds, and was just back from her holidays in Spain. She was also a complete nutter. “Just ask your angels” she commented, when I expressed my nervousness about completing my journey up North. “That’s what I do whenever I need a parking space – consult my Angel cards”.

As our discussion continued we touched on a variety of topics: physics, “Just see the spirals, they are beneath everything we do”; metaphysics - “the relationship between karma and auras is often misunderstood”; even history (?) - “the Age of Aquarius has in many ways only really begun” – before finally settling on politics after I’d mentioned the reason for my trip north. Fleur had a number of insights on politics.

“Wanker!” Fleur observed thoughtfully. “Tony Blair … what a big Wanker!”.

She went on to explain: “He’s such a … a… Wanker”.

She shook her head.

“And you know that this LiveAid thing is such hypocritical shit! All these celebrities – what do they actually care? Just want the TV. Make’s me sick. And you know it will all be yesterday’s news soon enough. Nothing will have changed and yet there Geldof is dressed in white, his head on Tony Blair’s shoulder”.

Fleur turned out to have a strong streak of Victor Meldrew cynicism in her. Of course I just sat here. Partly because she was driving, and it’s kind of part of the deal of hitching that you have to sit and smile to this kind of thing, and partly because I’m chicken. I was used to debates with friends about the effectiveness of aid and how this was different to the Cold War and it wouldn’t all go to dictators. I had my statistics on free education in Tanzania and the evils of subsidies. I was used to scepticism butthis complete utter cynical rejection had been absent in my university bubble.

She finally dropped me off at a Tesco’s petrol station, complimented me on my aura, and drove off to help her mum paint the living room in Bury St Edmunds. I was slightly off course, but it was progress. I got out my sign again and waited patiently.

Unfortunately my next ride didn’t pay close attention to the sign. Although it was a hurried pick-up as I was on a sliproad and he didn’t have much time or space to stop. I had had to change location after Tesco’s (or rather its frustratingly nice manager) had decided not to help me in my adventure North. In fact I thought I’d be stranded outside Historic Bury St Edmunds in such a position. “I used to have to hitch hike around … and you would have been stuck there forever man, waving your arm like a leaf in the wind,” Carl, an ex-US Army man, explained with that a lyrical I-have-a-dream rhythm that I recognized only from films.

However, grateful though I was, Carl was heading for a meeting in Norwich – not my destination at all. Nevertheless, he knew a good spot that would at least be better than the slip-road I’d been on. Meanwhile, he seemed earnest to tell me – with that American confidence for which there really is no English equivalent - about his work. Carl was a social worker, “the only black social worker in Norfolk” which was important. “You see I’m giving those kids everything that the guy in the suit is giving them, but I’m giving it in a way that they relate to.

“Without me, drug use rockets!

“Teenage pregnancy – rockets!

“Violence – rockets!

“But with me … the kids they love me … I’m like Hercules: everything I touch turns to gold.”

Then without slowing down as he swept around the country corners, he (with what I hoped was military skill) started to burrow behind my seat. “I got some stuff back here,” he said glancing occasionally at the road, “I’ll show you what I mean.” He plumped a big photo-album on my lap. “Look at that!” Inside was a series of photographs of scruffy teenagers in caps and earrings at work with chicken wire, paint and crepe paper. Finally there were photos of their finished work.

“That one’s DJ primate” Carl explained.

DJ Primate looked like a were-wolf in mid change, except the wolf looked more like one of Sauraman’s monsters in The Lord of the Rings: a fearsome papier maché head sat on top of a
tattooed and ribbed torso.

The Thetford I didn’t see “And that one’s Britney Primate.” Carl said as I turned the page to another of these creatures. “The kids named them themselves” Carl explained. “That way they have more ownership. It’s about respect. You see how creative that is – gives those kids confidence. Last week we had a show for the Mayor. The Mayor of Norwich. At the town hall. You see? That’s what it’s about. Self-confidence. These kids need that. And I think they can go further. I see these on television, giving other kids hope. The galleries in London, they need these. To help those London kids. Or Blue Peter. To show the world what you can do with self-confidence.”

I imagined John Lesley presenting a make-it-yourself Blowjob Primate on Blue Peter.

All this prevented me once again following our progress on the map. And so when Carl pulled off a large roundabout (“This is Thetford. Great spot! No problem – great spot!”), stuffing a leaflet in my hand in case I bumped into a blue Peter presenter, and then speeding off to help the down-and-out kids of Norfolk I wasn’t exactly sure which big roundabout I was on. A young man with no hair was walking past.

“I am polish” he said, smiling helpfully, as I approached him. “Where is this?” I asked. To which he replied, “I am Polish”, gave me a reassuring nod and headed off again on his way. Did I cross the Channel by mistake?

And here I was in Thetford four hours later. I had moved around different arms of the roundabout, before tramping some distance to a motorway lay-by which another (more helpful) passerby had suggested. He had not been the only help. A few drivers had returned my thumbs up gesture with one of their own, giving me moral support – before heading off on their way. "Get a car!" had been the useful suggestion from a truckload of squaddies who had rumbled by, and a mini-cab driver had taken me 400 metres down the road before the confusion was resolved. To begin with my luck had not improved at the lay-by. The best I had done for an hour and half was a friendly A BBC Camera man offering to take me to Terrington St Clement near King’s Lynn.

And then finally a break! A lorry – driven by a Scotsman no less – heading for Edinburgh if I could just wait for a couple of hours. My spirits soared! I had been at the last of my reserves of faith as face after face frowned at me suspiciously before speeding past. I had been off track, in a bad spot, and had started to hate not only Thetford, petrol stations but British people in general. I mean in 2002 I had traversed two foreign countries and 3000 miles in six days; in England practically an entire day and barely 100 miles. But finally a break. You see, I said to myself, it all works out: initial disappointment, a little bit of self-doubt and then someone picks you up in the end. Don’t lose your faith so easily! Wonderful Thetford!

And then after two hours my lift told me his instructions had changed: he was heading to West Thurrock.

I tramped back to the roundabout miserable in the hot sunshine. I swore at everything and walked to Thetford train-station. Bloody Thetford with its bloody train-station. Once on the train heading east I phoned my mum and ate a cold chicken meat sandwich. Mum agreed that it seemed like I’d given it my best shot. “And,” I said, thinking out loud, “a train now to Edinburgh would be exorbitant and I really can’t afford that especially as I’d taken the day off my temping job to make this trip.” Mum reassured me that my choice to come home was sensible and said goodbye.

I sat on the train feeling grumpy. I just didn’t want to be sitting at home tomorrow watching the Live8 concert on television. If only I could have found a better spot, or waited for a better ride at the Harlow services. My friend in Edinburgh had reserved a place for me to sleep that night and I knew people who’d be there tomorrow. But it would cost at least £90 to take the train at this point. Why didn’t I just book a coach for £40 two days ago? Why had I gambled on there being space on the CND bus? Why had I been so confident about hitching? I couldn’t spend that much just so I could walk around Edinburgh for a 3 hour march. Wouldn’t it better to just send the money to charity? The real big question that burnt through me though was that one which I guess must haunt every person who ever becomes politically active: even if I was there, would it really make a difference?

I was reminded about a pub debate I’d had with a friend disillusioned with his gap-year experience. “Why didn’t I just send all that money – hell, even half the money – and let it be used to employ local people to build that safari centre?” he had asked poignantly. While arguing that it was just unrealistic to expect him or anyone to actually do such a thing, and that money would have just been spent on holidaying or beer, my main argument had been about the importance of experience. He should not underestimate how important actually going to Kenya and seeing it had been for nurturing the concern he now felt for the country.

It was also true that what was really needed often was not money. Indeed, one of the themes of the Make Poverty History had been about how doing things like abolishing trade subsidies would allow African products to compete fairly with Western goods, and allow such countries to work themselves out of poverty. The potential, in terms of money, in a move like this would far outweigh the money given in aid every year. To use an old political line, why give them a hand-out when they could be given a hand-up? It was, then perhaps unlike the last Live Aid Campaign, not a struggle for generosity but a struggle for political change. And where there was political change, the money would follow.

These thoughts took me as far as the ticket queue in Peterborough. I could go either way here: take the train back home to London, or catch one heading North up to Edinburgh. Argument and counter-argument fluttered through my head. I tried to be analytical as Oxford had taught me. Weigh up the arguments, which was the most compelling? Go home or on to Edinburgh?

“Fuck the power, Fuck the System, What we need is Socialism” they chanted loudly as they walked down the Edinburgh cobbles. Dressed in red t-shirts the Socialists were the amber light in a traffic light colour code of protestors: middle class, sandwich eating, Make Poverty History protestors were dressed in reassuring white, while anarchists in masks and sunglasses were dressed in black. In the middle of were the socialists in red – they wouldn’t throw stuff, but they would swear in their songs: the PG-rated protestors.

I had made it to Edinburgh. I had dug deeper in my student overdraft and taken a train. Now I was waving my “C.A.P. is crap” banner enthusiastically. I was anxious to impress one of my marching partners – a beautiful girl called Natalie from University who had spent the morning reminiscing about all the Anti-War marches she’d been on. I’d nodded with what I hoped seemed knowing sympathy, whilst desperately trying to avoid admitting I’d supported the Iraq War (and Top Up Fees for that matter). It’s so hard to be a good student when you agree with the government. That had been one of the reasons why I’d wanted to come: finally an important march I agree with!

I had spent a long time in the Peterborough station thinking over reasons like this. Did my tourist-curiosity, my desire to say I’d been to a march when my grandkids asked about my student days, and my desire to get Natalie’s number while I was here mean my motives for coming were just selfish? I thought of Fleur pointing out my hypocrisy. But then, I’d thought more about this on the train. Fleur’s cyncism and belief that nothing would change was just intellectually lazy, a kind of dogma. Although political change can be hard, history is full of examples change – grudgingly and rarely pretty, it often seemed as drudging as my hitching had that day. It was always easy to sneer. Of course the campaign’s impact might be limited, of course celebrities might not be experts, and people excited about Live8 because of the music more than the issues. Of course I might have other reasons for coming than the ‘pure’ motives of ending poverty around the world. But the white colour band around my wrist was not a symbol of moral purity, but of a desire for change which is what I wanted.

However, truth be told this is what had occurred to me only once I’d bought my ticket for Edinburgh. Before it had seemed an important argument. But then arguments had failed me on the Peterborough platform. The more I’d gone through the mental debate in my head, the more it seemed to me this was not a debate that could be answered with reason. Or it could, but whatever choice I made I could provide a reason for it. For so long the academic questions I’d been answering –Was the UK Parliament’s power in decline? How could overseas aid be best given? Who should I vote for? – had been the kind of questions which one could debate and analyse. Yet, when it came to an important decision – a personal decision – all I had left was my gut. And that’s when it struck me: I just wanted to be there. I just felt I should be there. That’s what it came down to. There wasn’t a good reason. It just was. And there was actually nothing more compelling than that.

Edinburgh was amazing. I talked to a Chinese exchange student and to a vicar from Liverpool. I watched Billy Bragg sing a song with help from the Little Marshes primary school. I asked my anti-war crush that if she was going on any marches, I’d be, er – happy to go with her. I waved my banner and took photographs. I chanted and whistled through my fingers. And as I walked around the city, with half a million other people who had made their own roads to Edinburgh, that I might have even made a small difference. I joined in for another chorus of Billy Bragg’s Bob Marley cover.

“Let’s drop the debt and it’ll be alright” we sung.

Why people should join political parties

I can't be bothered...

This is really addressed to people who are interested in politics and feel some kind of civic duty but are hesitant to join political parties.


But I don't agree with everything they say...
I think that generally, people over-play what joining a political party entails. They equate it with other commitments like marriage or choosing a football team: a permanent choice which people should keep to. A history of having changed parties is never, for example, advantageous to a politician's reputation. Such people are portrayed as power-hungary or opportunistic. A change of parties is seen as a betrayal of faith.

However, joining a party is not a confession of faith. It's simply the group of people you trust most to go the way on issues that you would go yourself in their shoes. You don't have to agree with all of a political party's programme: in fact, few members do.

Parties have always had diversity of opinion in them, that's why they change with time, and that's what makes them democratic. While parties try to seem united at election time - because of the electoral costs of seeming divided - they are not the monolithic entities that might appear to be. Often the biggest critics of a government come from within its own party.

That debate is good. Debate will either cause you change your mind to a more persuasive point of view (at least you'd hope so if debate had caused you to change it), or equip you to better defend your original opinion.

Thus, although it seems counter-intuitive: you don't have to agree with a party's programme in order to feel at home within it. Your opinion should be welcomed however different it is.

But I'd rather join a pressure group...
But what about the alternatives to joining a party? Many studies of politics note the trend towards membership of issue-groups. Are these not a better use of political energy?

Single-issue groups are able to keep focus on one issue while governments change, uniting otherwise politically different people on one issue they agree on. Thus they can be very effective. But it seems to me there are dangers with all the political talent going into interest groups. Firstly, if all the talent is interest groups, where will get our high quality politicians from?

Secondly, democratic politics works on compromise. Focussing energy and effort on a single-issue ignores this reality, making for a nation of irresponsible democrats; people willing only to blame politicians for not doing x or y, but never willing to support our representatives when they make choices between competing priorities. This contributes to a society whose political discourse is already dominated by cynicism rather than scepticism - that sees politicians as the worst kind of scum. (With the result that the talent goes into media/charities/pressure groups and so on - more "honourable" choices)

Lastly, leaving political parties unpopulated by 'real' people, will mean they will increasingly rely on donations from rich individuals: parties won't be dominated by the most engaging and persuasive point of view, but by those with the most money.

The future: learning from the Church
Many commentators within political studies are worried about the decline in political party membership for some of the reasons stated above. I think that parties need to learn how to combat this. I think much of what determines whether someone joins a party is social and this sense they could learn a lot from the Church. The Labour party really needs an Alpha Programme: a introductory programme with a strong basis in friendship and community. The Conservative party has always been better at this with countryside fundraisers, driving around jeeps and shooting birds. We need a left-wing equivalent of this - but then Labour's never been good at fun: that's why so many working class people remain instinctively Tory.

Finished Finals!

woooo!