Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category

It must be true. I saw it on the internet.

My friend Marc posted a video on his website yesterday. It’s interestng — a sort of “Oh. My. God. Social Media is not a fad. It is taking over the world!” manifesto … with waves of what Marc called “facts and figures that are hard to ignore”. Having watched it, a few things struck me: […]

Pe-lonker!

How to show off about your car, but soften the blowhard-ish bit: Hi! My name is B**** Mc***, you may or may not have heard of me before, either way, that’s OK with me. I’ve never been featured in the BRW Rich 200 (nor do I want to), hardly ever wear a suit and tie […]

“SHUT UP!”

Re my earlier post on censorship … look at this. Creepy.

Sacred cows and calls for censorship

“Don’t mention the war” — Basil, Fawlty Towers I took some interest in a recent comment on a discussion forum which attacked a journalist for reporting bankruptcy proceedings being undertaken against a failed property developer — accusing the journalist of improper motives for the story. The critic himself has a somewhat unfortunate track record in business […]

Exodus?

I’ve always thought when facebook and twitter got mainstream the kids would leave for somewhere ‘cooler’… as happened to MySpace. Now Miley Cyrus (1.1 million followers) has [reportedly] bailed on twitter… too trivial, too intrusive, too demanding, too ADHD-inspiring would be my guess. Watch her rap yourself, and observe her own entertaining ‘explanation’… Twitter followers […]

Ripples flow from this brave woman’s stand

There’s a good article on The Independent website about the Liskula Cohen/NYC model case, which I mentioned earlier. The more I read about this gutsy woman and what she’s standing up for the more I like. Having been victimised by someone lobbing slimeballs at her from behind a mask of anonymity, she pursued Google to […]

Today’s ‘Word of mouth’

Credibility, celebrity and their effects… Stephen Fry, whose Twitter followers now number 770,000, recently spiked sales in a book he liked… A book of short stories has leaped up Amazon’s book charts to become second only to Dan Brown after Stephen Fry endorsed it on his Twitter feed. Early today (10th September), the actor told […]

The Internet, Robin Hood, and his Merry Men

Let me tell you a fairy tale, if I may. There was once a man named Robin Hood and he had a band of Merry Men, and yes there was also a Sherriff of Nottingham, and a contingent of motley Hench men. One day Robin Hood and his Merry Men did something very bad and […]

OK, now this is getting silly …

Blogger told to stop advising on immigration A blogger who came to New Zealand from Britain has been warned to stop giving immigration advice on her blog – or face prosecution under the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act. The Immigration Advisers Authority says Helen Winterbottom was breaking the law by posting on avalonsguide.com, and has told […]

Pushing the boundaries

Now these guys are just playing with us. It works, though. Good for them, no comment about the product.

Potshots from behind a mask of anonymity are, by definition, cheap

I wholeheartedly agree with the court decision to order Google to identify the blogger who [allegedly] defamed this NY model. My view: People need to be accountable for their public statements. Anonymous log-ins tend — in some — to breed a recklessness and nasty damaging discourtesy. And they shouldn’t get away with it. (I still […]

Am I a luddite? Neh!

… [T]he project of digitising the information held in the world’s printed books is too important to be dealt with purely as a commercial venture between rights holders and a potential supplier of services. …. If we let Google have its settlement we will all be the poorer. Not for a while, perhaps, but one […]

Merlin Mann on the internet

The internet is becoming this thing where it’s just people trying to become successful on the internet by showing other people how to become successful on the internet. It’s this unbelievably fractal ponzi scheme. It’s very Escher. Boy, it’s a terrible terrible ghetto of information out there. It’s like a snake masturbating its own tail. […]

A loss of moral authority

There is added moral authority when someone who hasn’t had to struggle sounds a call to help those less privileged. Beyond mere noblesse-oblige, Teddy Kennedy became a leading voice of ‘liberal’ ideology, with an emphasis on equality and innate justice best expressed in the civil rights movement of the 1960s — but applied far wider […]

The power of an appeal to decency

A recent reference to a made-up threat of ‘Death Panels’ led me to recall a famous political showdown. Legend tells us this interchange sparked the beginning of the end for Senator Joseph McCarthy. While McCarthy was not without opponents to his paranoid demagoguery, lawyer Joseph Welch went down in history as a giant-slayer. Welch was […]