All posts by Kevin

Media

Dominica discovered

News of the Caribbean island of Dominica has been like waiting for a bus. Nothing for years, and then three items come along all in a row.

The first reference to the nature island of the Caribbean was on television a few of weeks ago. BBC2 included footage of the island in its documentary series on family history, Who do you think you are?, when featuring the news presenter Moira Stuart. Some of Ms Stuart’s maternal ancestors came from Dominica.

Then on Wednesday BBC Radio 4’s programme Woman’s Hour reported on the Dominican author and politician Phyllis Shand Allfrey. It seems some of her short stories have been republished.

Finally on Friday Woman’s Hour interviewed Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC, who’s been declared Parliamentarian of the Year. Not only does she have family history in Dominica, but she’s also a member of the Bar of Antigua and the Commonwealth of Dominica.

With all that out of the way, it’s probably safe to assume that we won’t hear anything more about Dominica for the rest of the decade.

Personal

I’m a Londoner

The Londonist, a “website about London”, believes that:

You don’t have to live in London long before you get offered a pair of bargain “high spec” speakers out of the back of a white van. It’s like a coming-of-age ritual…once you’ve been offered some dodgy stereo equipment you can truly call yourself A Londoner.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to me once while I was walking along Holland Park Avenue. I’d no idea it was a scam, let alone such a common one! Of course, I’m far too straight-laced to even consider such an offer, but I also had two pairs of stereo speakers that I wasn’t using, so no harm was done.

Guess I’m a Londoner now though!

Media

McLuhan strikes again

This week’s Economist magazine contains an interesting article (subscription required) on the survival of high street bookshops despite the increasing success of their online rivals.

It seems bookshops were expected to disappear once we’d all switched to Amazon:

“Everyone got the internet wrong when they assumed it would replace retail,” says James Heneage, the boss of Ottakar’s. “It’s simply a new channel.” That may be a comforting thought for other [high street] retailers as Christmas approaches.

Of course, Marshall McLuhan wouldn’t have been surprised. In 1964 he wrote:

“…it is only too typical that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium. It is only today that industries have become aware of the various kinds of business in which they are engaged. When IBM discovered that it was not in the business of making office equipment or business machines, but that it was in the business of processing information, then it began to navigate with clear vision. The General Electric Company makes a considerable portion of its profits from electric light bulbs and lighting systems. It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as AT&T, it is in the business of moving information.”

From Understanding media: the extensions of man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.)

Management

6 Myths Of Creativity

From Fast Company | The 6 Myths Of Creativity:

5. Competition Beats Collaboration

There’s a widespread belief, particularly in the finance and high-tech industries, that internal competition fosters innovation. In our surveys, we found that creativity takes a hit when people in a work group compete instead of collaborate. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information. And that’s destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

I knew it all along.

Media

Today

This morning’s edition of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 included two interesting stories just before it ended.

  1. A report on the difficulty in finding a religiously themed Advent calendar in the UK this year.
  2. A report on George W. Bush’s first official visit to Canada.

Both are worth hearing, and available online for the next seven days (RealPlayer required).

Culture

Thought for the Day

Yesterday’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 struck a chord with me. Written and presented by Elaine Storkey, it was about the ambiguity of language and the arrogance of conceit. It’s well worth reading, but for anyone who can’t be bothered to click on the link above, here are two of the best parts:

There is nothing more telling than language for conveying differences of outlook and perception. That is very evident right now in Iraq. Even amongst the key players words tell their own story. One of the marine Commanders outside Falluja describes the assault about to take place on that city as an ‘epic battle’, whilst the Prime Minister of Iraq, declares a 60 day ‘state of emergency.’ The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan refers to an attack on Falluja as ‘an escalation in violence which could disrupt Iraq’s political transition’, whilst Lt Colonel Brandl commanding one the battalions of the American marines talks about it as uncovering the hidden face of the enemy. His words are graphic. He says, ‘The enemy has a face. He is called Satan. He lives in Falluja and we’re going to destroy him.’

So why does language offer so many perceptions of reality, especially the shape and meaning of evil? One of the obvious answers is that we are all partisan. Each of us uses language to depict our own point of view. We notice most fully the evil done to us or to our group, whilst rephrasing the evil we do to others with the language of justification and exoneration. And when this becomes habitual and uncritical, partisanship can move into self-deception. We can come to believe, at both personal and national levels, that we own the language of evil, that we decide on its use, and it is one from which we are excluded.

As if in support of Storkey’s commentary, today’s Guardian carries a frightening story on its front page that includes the following quote: “They call us terrorists because we resist them. If defending the truth is terrorism, then we are terrorists.” It seems language is also a weapon in this war.

Canada, Culture, Current Affairs, Politics

Anything goes

The BBC is reporting that John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, has topped the US dance chart at the age of 71 with a song supporting gay marriage (see Yoko’s gay wedding song is US hit).

I can’t understand how George W. Bush can argue that he’s in favour of greater freedom for people when he “wants to change the US constitution to specify that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman”.

Thirty-seven years ago while Justice Minister, a famous Canadian communist declared “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation“. The left-wing Liberal Pierre Trudeau was in favour of freedoms that the current “leader of the western world” is unwilling to give his own nation.

Whenever I hear the Bush Administration arguing rhetorically about freeing foreign peoples, I can’t help thinking of Cole Porter (an active homosexual, but at least he married a woman!). Porter hit the nail on the head when he wrote Anything Goes:

The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos
And though I’m not a great romancer
I know that I’m bound to answer
When you propose,
Anything goes

It seems to me that the people who talk most about freedom, are really opportunistic control freaks who disguise themselves as liberals (i.e. freedom fighters) whenever it helps their selfish cause. Things are not what they seem, and anything goes!

PS – Is dancing allowed in Texas?

Culture

Man Booker prize

1 Comment

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to judge the world’s most prestigious English-language book award? If so, Fiammetta Rocco’s article Man Booker prize in this week’s Economist is for you.

Apparently “More than 100,000 books are published in Britain each year, virtually the same number as in America, which has five times the population”.

Culture

Liberals at heart

1 Comment

Given its origin, it’s ironic that the term “liberal” should have become a dirty word in the US. It’s derived from the Latin word liber meaning to be “free”, so you’d think that a nation that was willing to make great sacrifices in the name of freedom must be full of liberals wouldn’t you? Not so apparently, which makes me wonder what all that talk about encouraging democracy and freedom is all about.

The Online Etymology Dictionary has an entry for “liberal” and it’s quite interesting:

liberal (adj.)

c.1375, from O.Fr. liberal “befitting free men, noble, generous,” from L. liberalis “noble, generous,” lit. “pertaining to a free man,” from liber “free,” from PIE base *leudheros (cf. Gk. eleutheros “free”), probably originally “belonging to the people” (though the precise semantic development is obscure), from *leudho- “people” (cf. O.C.S. ljudu, Lith. liaudis, O.E. leod, Ger. Leute “nation, people”). Earliest reference in Eng. is to the liberal arts (L. artes liberales; see art (n.)), the seven attainments directed to intellectual enlargement, not immediate practical purpose, and thus deemed worthy of a free man (the word in this sense was opposed to servile or mechanical). Sense of “free in bestowing” is from 1387. With a meaning “free from restraint in speech or action” (1490) liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning “free from prejudice, tolerant,” which emerged 1776-88. Purely in ref. to political opinion, “tending in favor of freedom and democracy” it dates from c.1801, from Fr. lib