While I was away I heard the Marmite crisis predicted last year has actually bitten — hard. I didn’t know Nick Smith was the Minister responsible for Marmite, but, well, yeah, I can see he really had to go. Accountability.
Marmite stocks exhausted. Minister resigns. Fair enough too. (pics: thedailywh.at and Fairfax)
On a serious note, Smith’s cronyism has added more weight to those suggesting an image of sleaze has attached to the National Government. Stephen McElrea, Wayne Mapp, …
– P
Just back from my school camp/tropical island holiday (ha!) and look what was on the fax machine: A new scam looking for victims…
Fishy? Yup.
Yellow Pages Group is warning its small business customers not to be sucked in by a scam that asks for their details so that they can be listed online.
The faxed request from a company called Yellow-Directory-NEWZEALAND has been identified as a scam by the Department of Internal Affairs.
It asks customers to sign up for a listing period of two years at $140 per month.
Yellow Pages says people should ”exercise extreme care” when engaging with the company. … stuff.co.nz
Here’s the fine print they probably don’t want you to read … “Should the client elect to have its data removed from the listing payment is still required.” [At $140 per month!]
Fishhooks and broken glass. Or 'fine print' as it's known. (click to enlarge)
Dorks. But (shockingly) it must work!
Oh dear.
– P
I’m a parent helper on my son’s school camp on Motutapu Island this week … so things will be quiet from me.
Go well in the meantime. – P
Designer Erik Spiekermann: Standing on the shoulders of giants? Or appropriating existing symbology and harvesting its legacy?
Thought provoking.
– P
I’m writing a post about denunciation and related matters … and look what popped up in my twitter stream:
Ha!
-P
I did not know this:
… having a .com domain name for [your] website is sufficient for [you] to be subject to US jurisdiction – which allows for nasty stuff like the US government seizing [your] website or extradition to USA to stand trial over there based on allegations alone.
The bottom line: If you have a .com domain name, or other at-risk domain names like .net, you are subject to US domestic laws and jurisdiction.
Food for thought from Have a .com web address? Know the legal risks by Vikram Kumar | National Business Review.
I saw this film ‘The Ides of March’ with a pal on Friday night and it was brilliant. Dark, sinister, awful, and brilliant.
What is it about politics that provokes acts of treachery and intrigue? Why does it so often descend into the arena of personal destruction?
Plutarch records the intrigue surrounding Brutus’ assassination of Julius Caesar. What’s changed? Nuttin’.
When I hear someone say they were brought up in an intensely political family, I know more often than not that means they heard schemes and plots to cut the ground out from under political rivals.
Look at the language of the dark side of politics: knee-cap, knobble, cripple, crush, destroy. They mean business. These words, used as verbs (‘doing words’) describe actions aimed at neutralizing (at best) the ‘opposition’. It matters not, of course, whether that opposition is, for the time being, within one’s own party or not. Ambitious political animals will savage each other and climb over each other’s still warm body (figuratively speaking) for political advantage.
The binary choice: ‘You’re either for us or agin us’ applies. Intimidation and threat is, distastefully, very common.
If it is possible to undercut one’s enemies and destroy their confidence to the extent that a battle or actual showdown is avoided, well, so much the better, seems to be the approach. Truth is secondary. Consider the political leaders you know about who, presented with information (true or false) chose to resign rather than wait for an axe to fall. Don Brash has been on all sides of those equations — the shafter, the shaftee, etc. Beneficiary and victim of the process.
Hang out with political animals, as I have done, and you’ll find they are, by nature, schemers. (Even worse than journalists! Actually, in my experience most journos are intensely interested in the whole wheels-within-wheels, story-behind-the-story aspects of life. We’re curious to know the ‘real story’. Oh, and we’re gossips.)
Arch schemers like National’s Michelle Boag and Labour’s Mike Williams, now both relatively mellow (or so they would have you suppose), still benignly spin and machinate when they can. They have been in many a brutal campaign.
By the time a polished political figure (like, say Barack Obama) appears in any meaningful public profile, they’ve in most cases experienced the private, behind the scenes deal crunching, trade-offs, arm wrestles, alliances of convenience, neutralizing of opponents, dealing with political scandals real and manufactured, and ugly, cynical compromises … which is what the movie ‘The Ides of March’ is all about,
Chess, they say, resembles war — it’s a strategy game with bursts of ‘killing’ and planned sacrifice. So it is with politics.
– P
A huge embarrassment for ‘This American Life’ …
RETRACTING “MR. DAISEY AND THE APPLE FACTORY”
16 March 2012
Ira [Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life] writes:I have difficult news. We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth. This is not a story we commissioned. It was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s acclaimed one-man show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” in which he talks about visiting a factory in China that makes iPhones and other Apple products.
The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show. On this week’s episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory.”
Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.
We’re horrified to have let something like this onto public radio. Many dedicated reporters and editors – our friends and colleagues – have worked for years to build the reputation for accuracy and integrity that the journalism on public radio enjoys. It’s trusted by so many people for good reason. Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards.
A press release with more details about all this is below. We’ll be posting the audio of the program and the transcript on Friday night this week, instead of waiting till Sunday.
Mike Daisy’s response:
I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by The New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.
What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed THIS AMERICAN LIFE to air an excerpt from my monologue. THIS AMERICAN LIFE is essentially a journalistic - not a theatrical - enterprise, and as such it operates under a different set of rules and expectations. But this is my only regret. I am proud that my work seems to have sparked a growing storm of attention and concern over the often appalling conditions under which many of the high-tech products we love so much are assembled in China. [emphasis added]
For the second time this week, I say: this reminds me of some bloggers.
It’s just not good enough nor credible to pose as someone who appears to abide by journalistic values of truth and accuracy, purporting to ‘report’ ‘facts’ … but inserting lies, distortions and partisan disinformation … then, when shown to be a liar, trotting out a ‘but I’m not a journalist‘ routine.
Unconvincing.
– P
Update: Here’s Rob Schmitz’s more detailed account of uncovering Mike Daisy’s ‘dramatic licence’ (read: deceit) An acclaimed Apple critic made up the details (marketplace.org)
image: jeffbots.com (click)
“Report: 51% of web site traffic is ‘non-human’ and mostly malicious
By Tom Foremski | March 13, 2012, ZD Net
Summary: Web site analytics packages record what real people do on a site but most web site traffic comes from other computers often with nefarious intent.
Incapsula, a provider of cloud-based security for web sites, released a study today showing that 51% of web site traffic is automated software programs, and the majority is potentially damaging, — automated exploits from hackers, spies, scrapers, and spammers.
The company says that typically, only 49% of a web site’s visitors are actual humans and that the non-human traffic is mostly invisible because it is not shown by analytics software.
This means that web sites are carrying a large hidden cost burden in terms of bandwidth, increased risk of business disruption, and worse.
Here’s a breakdown of an average web site’s traffic:
– 5% is hacking tools searching for an unpatched or new vulnerability in a web site.
– 5% is scrapers.
– 2% is automated comment spammers.
– 19% is from “spies” collecting competitive intelligence.
– 20% is from search engines – which is non-human traffic but benign.
– 49% is from people browsing the Internet.The data was collected from a sample of 1,000 websites that are enrolled in the Incapsula service. …”
(Via Report: 51% of web site traffic is ‘non-human’ and mostly malicious | ZDNet)
Now THAT’S worth knowing when considering puffed-up claims of ‘follower’ figures on, say, blogs, doncha think?
– P
Here’s a sensational way to resign from your job … which became an instant internet meme.
Click to read the original letter at the NY Times
Followed (very quickly) by a wonderful spoof…
Click to read a brilliant spoof at The Daily Mash
There’s no saying how much Greg Smith’s resignation-in-the-round was influenced by the very serious ‘Why I left Google’ blog post by James Whittaker … who’s gone to work for Microsoft (!)
Wow.
– P
“Mum? That’s gross how you still …”
The other three of us in the kitchen this morning waited (with bated breath) to hear how my 11 year old was going to finish his sentence.
“… keep those locks of our hair, isn’t it?”
We laughed.
Whew.
– P
Cameron Slater, of course, will be delighting in any consternation and outrage (read: attention) his agitprop provokes. Mission accomplished.
As I have noted before, blogger Cameron Slater has ‘truthfulness and accuracy’ issues in my view. (Balance, obviously, one has learned not to expect from a partisan attack poodle like him.)
Here’s TV3 Political editor Duncan Garner’s response to what he clearly sees as Cameron Slater’s disinformation about the source of video footage of a 2008 John Key speech screened on 3News last night (see: Labour: Key promised no job cuts, asset sales in 2008 speech – Video – 3News)
As I said, any such criticism is rich ego food for the needy attention-seeker. Nevertheless, let me say this:
As a mouthpiece (Paid? Voluntary? It doesn’t matter) for the ratepayer-owned Auckland port company — which dubiously leaked details of an employee’s personnel records in an effort to discredit a critic — Cameron has again mashed together his customary nasty, hyperbolic political tribalism (‘union thugs’, ‘liars’, etc) and polished the resultant turd by hosting/approving (or authoring?) some truly awful bigoted and racist bile in his blog’s trenchant comment stream. [e.g. ‘dumb coons’, ‘porch monkey’.]
It’s only going to get worse, I suspect. The well-groomed chairman of the Port company Richard Pearson must have, I guess, approved his PR ‘strategists’ weaponising of Port of Auckland personnel information.
Feeding material to football hooligans partisan bloggers like Cameron Slater, or the business class model Cathy Odgers, may bring a short term PR payoff. But Mr Pearson could perhaps consider the old saying, ‘Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas’.
Or maybe Richard Pearson (who batted away Auckland mayor Len Brown’s offer of mediation as “too late”) should run for mayor himself?
Maybe he already is.
– P
NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd quotes Hilary Clinton posing a really good question about an aspect of conservative ‘moral’ fixation…
Photo from @DebErupts on Twitter (click)
Hillary Clinton has fought for women’s rights around the world. But who would have dreamed that she would have to fight for them at home?
“Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,” she told an adoring crowd at the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center on Saturday. “But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.
“Yes,” she continued to applause, “it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world.” …
Dowd makes a case for a Hilary Clinton candidacy for US president in 2016.
Wow.
– P
