mercredi 31 mars 2004

(Mainly) music jottings (iii) - free expression, fair dues There are alternatives, true, but the wait for the iTunes Music Store in Europe is getting a little long. Meanwhile at EMI, 1,500 jobs are to be axed, while 20 percent of the artists will have to start looking elsewhere: "The company said it expected the reorganisation of its business to save it about £50m ($91m) a year. But there would be a one-off cash cost of about £75m from the job cuts. EMI's artist roster, which includes Robbie Williams and Radiohead, will be reduced by about 20%, mostly 'niche and under-performing' acts in Europe. Other big name artists signed up to the world's third-biggest music group include Kylie, Coldplay, and Norah Jones. In London trading, shares in EMI surged 18.5 pence to 275.5p (...) But they refused to identify any of the artists who are about to get the chop, except to say they were 'local-country acts'." The penultimate paragraph of that BBC business report says it all really, doesn't it? Meanwhile, a patent application has been published for a 'Graphical user interface and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player' (US patent office). Otherwise known as an iPod. People have been saying what they think at 'Slashdot' (via the 'Guardian' blog). "The idea that we are at war works to the advantage of the Bush Administration. We have already seen how the war on terror conveniently morphed into the war on Iraq. Mr. Bush never misses an opportunity to conflate the two in his attempts to confuse the public. But is it a war, or just a shabby public relations ploy to achieve an alternate political objective?" Such questions (and attempts to answer them) are par for the course at 'Counterpunch', where Mike Whitney rejects the language of terrorism. More unusual is the place where I found that link. Bill Christison's 'thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse' often make for an interesting read. His list of media links is the most wide-ranging and freewheeling I've yet encountered in the blogosphere. It took a few minutes' work to determine that "BC" is indeed the Bill who "served on the analysis side of the (Central Intelligence) Agency for 28 years" (via 'Palestine: Information with Provenance.') Yes. I did plan to steer clear of both the mainstream and alternative political news sites until next week, but that's almost as hard as giving up smoking. Fellow junkies might care to know what 'Press Action' features as the "best of the web" (pablog). While scarcely as comprehensive as Bill's list, there are a few here I'm happy to discover. As EMI, Apple and others wage the interminable war to shape the music of the future -- and I pursue my illegal downloading of music and video without qualms, given the amount of money I subsequently legally spend on things I've sampled and liked -- I'm happy to be able to tell Matt Haughey that the 'Creative Commons' licence idea is making headway in France. Not just in the Web, but in mass circulation dailies like 'Libé'. Matt was wondering if 'Autres Directions in Music' (CC weblog) is what he thought it was. The full article about it, in French, is 'Albums de familles' (Libération). The same day, 'Libé' gave a write-up to A.S. Ambulanzen, a Berlin collective which has been militating for the abolition of copyright altogether. That's a pipe-dream, of course, but they contend that: "information does not want to be free. in fact it is absolutely free of will, a constant flow of signs of lives which are permanently being turned into commodities and transformed into commercial content. textz.com ("concept" manifesto) is not part of the information business. they say there was a time when content was king, but we have seen his head rolling. our week beats their year. ever since we have been moving from content to discontent, collecting scripts and viruses, writing programs and bots, dealing with textz as warez, as executables--something that is able to change your life. this is not promotional material. facing the unified principles of information--the combined horror of global communication and so-called guerilla marketing--there is no more need for media theory or cultural studies. the resistance against corporate culture can itself no longer remain in the cultural domain. you make a mistake if you see what we do as merely apolitical." Textz.com is a cult. It's also one of the places where, via 'juniradio' (berlin 104.1 fm, Ger.), you can you get the (in)famous 'Grey Album' (DJ Dangermouse) ... speaking of EMI (track 13). And this is where you'll have to excuse me while I watch Madonna's outlawed 'Erotica' video (pointless Amazon.com entry) and the banned Kylie Minogue lingerie advertisement. If "you'd like to ... watch Madonna", Andrew Parodi includes her in one of his many Amazon lists. A prolific reviewer, Parodi is one of those people that make Amazon so much more than simply a shop. One Acquisition (OS X peer-to-peer) leads to another... 10:14:22 PM  link   your views? [] My selfless career officially ends The first good thing about today was that I didn't wake up exhausted, as I have done since the week off began. The second was being told by gastrological expert Dr V. that the renewed bout of the Condition should be over in a couple of days at most. The third came in an e-mail from Tony. He informs that my 23-year career as an elected trade union activist officially ended last night, at the annual general meeting of Paris Branch of the National Union of Journalists. However his e-mail -- though the habitual model of brevity since the man still seems to believe he pays his Internet bill by the word count -- was unusually lacking in crucial details: "My duty won't B done until I inform U that the chair paid tribute 2 your work for the Branch @ last night's well-attended (27 members!) NUJ orgy in the Latvian Embassy. B4 U get 2 big headed I shd say I also got a tribute, along with several other persons in an evening that began with a minute's silence 4 recently deceased members, the secretary 4getting the minutes of the Feb meeting & the admission of half a dozen new members. After the nicotine break we proceeded 2 AGM, 2 numerous reports I cd not hear & the seamless & unanimous voting-in of every 1 of the single-choice candidates 4 office. I congratulated the chair on the speedy election in my best Russian accent but I don't think anyone saw the joke. JA, who'd picked me up @ M'parnasse, got us there in time to argue with the Bourse du Travail staff, who had 4gotten 2 book our room. He had a great time. I left supperless & walked 2 Gare de l'Est B4 I realised I'd taken a wrong turning. Cheers, Tony." First, my friend might make it clear that the tributes paid to us both were not part of the minute's silence. I'm ashamed to say that I've not been to a meeting for about a year, and thus could well be considered dead. Secondly, he fails to say who got elected. Thirdly, he explains neither how just one wrong turning sufficed to get from the Bourse du Travail to the Gare de l'Est nor why he wasn't fed. Fourthly, 27 members was a remarkable turnout. I need to know how many of them were old friends unseen for too long, how many were bores to be avoided and how many I wouldn't have recognised. Finally and most importantly, how many were unattached and highly attractive women? Tony has hearing problems and some of the rapporteurs may be monotone mumblers, but his eyes still work fairly well. Of half a dozen new members and others in attendance, I find it hard to believe that not one met the above criteria, deserving of the attention of a branch 'Welfare Officer (Retd.)' who is post-Conditionally determined to put his own first and foremost. 3:27:32 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 30 mars 2004

Two pros of prose in the VIP departure lounge Eh, ben! Two institutions gone in a day... I have a tremendous admiration for Peter Ustinov, his humour and his sharp wit and intelligence. I was a teenager when an uncle gave me a copy of Ustinov's 'Add a Dash of Pity', a splendid collection of clever, sometimes satirical short stories which I recall finding as amusing as they were moving. And he was unforgettable in 'Spartacus' (Rotten Tomatoes), in which, as Roger Ebert wrote in a 1991 review on seeing the film for the third time, the man upstaged everybody else... Ever since those early years of my life, Ustinov has always been a small part of it in his many different capacities, but a big-hearted man. He was irascible perhaps, but had a tremendous gift for getting his deep humanism across in a way that was never anything but entertaining. "I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilised music in the world," the raconteur, actor, writer and mimic apparently told Reuters last year (BBC obituary). That strikes me as a self-composed epitaph fitting enough for one of the greats. And on this note, 'The Age' gives him a fine send-off. Alistair Cooke has died too, taking in his wake a big bouquet of tributes from all over the world. When first I mentioned his 'Letter from America' in May last year, I couldn't help but say how his mannerisms sometimes grated on my nerves. Indeed, there were times when he made me snarl at the radio: "Will you just, please, get to the point!" But there are those who say the same of me. I never stopped listening to those weekly broadcasts and often in recent years went to some lengths to make sure I was in earshot of a radio for those 15 minutes on a Sunday morning. Sometimes it was Cooke whose voice dragged a reluctant Marianne out of bed while I shaved, learned much, and mentally disagreed with and admired the man by turns. When this "icon/doyen/permanent fixture" retired just a few weeks before his death, Terry Sedgewick down under remarked how Cooke was "used to getting his way with celebrities. Most of them were only too happy to appear on his programs for minimum pay. That was until he met Groucho..." (read on at 'There Ain't No Sanity Clause'). British domestic radio even made Cooke's departure its top new item in one of this morning's bulletins and the BBC news site is full of highlights and remembrances. He's irreplaceable, of course. In the event that I ever reach the age of 95, it would be a remarkable gift from the gods to retain the kind of professionalism and acuteness of mind that graced Cooke until the last. 10:21:33 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 29 mars 2004

Local colour When an excited "San Francisco" told me that 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' (IMDb) was the latest addition to his shelves, he even recited an extract or two. But still I wasn't going to fall for it until Francis started going on about the bonus DVD and its wonders. So I parted with more of next month's budget, sooner than I should have done. Come Sunday afternoon, Marianne persuaded me that it was silly to venture out to see the new Enki Bilal film straight away, when the queue was bound to be enormous. I agreed, feeling that we'd do better to make the most of the fine weather as well. But the Kid had other ideas. She closed the curtains on her side of the apartment, grabbed the 'Grail', along with a few other recent acquisitions, and turned the living room and her Mac into a modest home cinema. But today I can show you what the view from my back window looks like now that spring has arrived. I also took the 'phone for a walk. I've been meaning to blog a few more pictures of le quartier for a while, having written so much about it and some of the people round here. "Graffiti corner" is down at the far end of Thermopyles Street, where some of the local artists have little houses. It's only a few minutes' walk from home, but the cobblestones and a strong sense of community among people lucky enough to live there make the road a village in its own right. One day I'll take some close-ups of the work on the wall. It's prettier than the routine tags and diabolical threats that line the railway tracks. Most of the cottages are tucked away behind iron gates and gardens, making them hard to snap. This is one of the few that isn't fenced off. While local residents are fond of their privacy, it's one of the only roads I know in the whole of Paris where they hold an annual party when the really hot weather arrives. At this time of year, a little jazz band comes out on Saturdays to bring a touch of New Orleans to the corner where Thermopyles Street joins my own. I've never seen anybody drop coins into their hat, but they seem to be there for the fun of it rather than busking for cash. Up by the Pernety Métro station, on a busy junction in Losserand Street, the architecture says you're back in Paris, with its modern phone booths and the only local newspaper kiosk to open on a Sunday. You can't see the Canteen across the road, where Sam gave me no chance to choose what I wanted for lunch. He had one of his specials waiting when I arrived and had even made a tarte tatin, in one of his exquisite excursions from the regular menu. I asked if it was somebody's birthday, but no. Even Sam, who is not a political animal, was celebrating the local election results, which apparently means that a plan to get out the pneumatic drills will go ahead. "Once they've widened the pavement" he explained, "they'll let me put tables outside in summer." The last stop before it became too dark to use the 'phone's little camera was chez Francis, who was in less than saintly disposition. "Nice breasts," he remarked, looking at the obligatory slimming season cover of 'Elle' magazine. "I've noticed. She's plastered up at the corner too. What are you so cheerful about today?" "We won!" "The vote, you mean?" "Oh, please. No politics here. I'm talking about the rugby, you idiot. Gave les rosbifs a thrashing, didn't we?" 10:08:14 PM  link   your views? [] French ping-pong I can't think where Caroline Wyatt gets her ideas about the "ambitious and much-liked Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy" (in a BBC analysis of France's regional election result). Yes, he's ambitious. He's bright. And he's widely detested and even regarded as dangerous in the circles I move in. Caroline must have a different set of French friends. The morning's news cheers me up, of course, apart from the 13 percent of the vote given to the Front National (FN). But when it comes to that 'Reshuffle imminent in France after new poll thrashing for Chirac' (AFP/Yahoo), I'd be willing to bet that the French president won't risk giving the prime minister's job to Sarkozy. This election marks a return to business as normal. During the 23 years I've lived here, the French have almost always voted for "the other lot" -- anybody but those in charge -- when it comes to polls like this regional one. In 2002, though, there was a lapse into madness. During that year's presidential election, people got themselves into such a mess in the first round of voting that they ended up facing a choice between Chirac and FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Though some of my friends wouldn't agree with me, Le Pen (Wikipedia profile) is neither a neo-fascist nor stupid, despite the never forgotten remark about the Holocaust being but "a point of detail" of World War II. But some of the fervour he inspires has created the nearest thing to the Hitler youth this country has at the start of the 21st century. All that is pretty much what the Faithful 5 ¾ might expect to find me writing about the poll. However, the result and the sunshine inspired me to do something less predictable: filling in my complicated tax declaration this morning with something almost approaching alacrity. The tax form is the only document that annually arrives in our letterboxes in a black envelope. I'd planned to postpone filling in mine until the last minute, being unable to dissociate my dislike of dealing with bureaucracy from the heart-sinking feeling this particular civic duty used to give me back in the years when my French was almost as bad as my maths. I would do it online, now that's possible, if I didn't have to send the tax people so many bits of paper to prove that I'm telling the truth. If Chirac does decide to replace the prime minister, an outcome they seem to have taken for granted at the Factory, I wouldn't be surprised if he chooses a woman, Michele Alliot-Marie (the Globalist), the current defence minister. She's uncontroversial and would put up a good performance on telly without representing much of a threat to Chirac himself. But his choices are limited. And dull. It's partly because almost all of them are so boring that I don't write about French politicians very often. I imagine, nevertheless, that the people who make 'Les Guignols de l'Info' are readying a few new puppets right now. The equivalent of Britain's 'Spitting Image' satire -- described in a recent article which is as good an account of French humour (Economist) as any I've read -- is one of the few reasons the Kid still reproaches me for throwing away the TV. 12:58:28 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 28 mars 2004

Hotlines Augustine has kindly furnished a one-place link to her interviews with God. She's also removed any lingering doubts over whether to bother with Gibson's 'Passion', due here this week unless three Jewish brothers win a court case (BBC) -- which is extremely unlikely. "Well Mel, if you're interested in credibility, here's what you should do..." suggests Blaugustine (March 27 for ideas). zzz "The Touch Graph at Google allows you to see the net of relationships between web sites. Entering a URL lets you see a graphical map of its various 'Similar pages' links, as well as the pages similar to those pages, and so forth." (Grafyte Blog). It uses Java and requires a few moments' patience while it does it's thing. But then ... WOW! For reasons that escape my tired mind, 'Sexy Magick' was the nearest place running rings round me when I tried it. Perhaps Julie will know why when she's done with her move... I don't think it's just a matter of shared interests. Any sexy magick from this corner is locked up for today. I'm still waking up to the joy of being on holiday for a week when I'm not half asleep. zzz The Google beta is fun. So is the Blogbot project ('Things that... make you go hmm') they're working on at Microsoft, though I'd rather somebody else got there first. Having, on the other hand, turned down Orkut invites, I'm glad to see David Weinberger explaining why he looks "down (his) long and winding nose at Friendster and other such Artificial Social Networks (ASNs)" (JOHO). David -- whose 'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' (Perseus, 2003) is creeping its way up my reading list -- also objects to a misconceived notion common in news circles. "The Internet," he says, "is not a medium" (hyperorg). zzz ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.............. The rest can wait. 10:05:17 PM  link   your views? [] At the back of your mind Some of my more elderly friends and relatives worry far more about their memory lapses than they should. It's alarming, of course, to feel that you've "lost it", but I've been reading up the whole subject a little more closely of late and the news is not nearly as bad as it can feel. The science of the workings of memory has come a long way in the past decade alone. And it has once again attracted Hollywood's attention. "'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' (official site)' is one of the few films that has managed to take advantage of some of the storytelling possibilities of recent advances in memory research." Not due for release in France until October, the movie sounds pretty good, if the rest of Kirk Jobsluder's write-up on the film and the "mythical memory videotape" (Kuro5hin) is anything to go by. "Memory is not a videotape that can be rewound to a specific point in time, erased and wound forward again. We don't recall memory so much as recreate it anew each time. The badly-aged 'brain as computer' metaphor has tended to dominate speculative fiction about memory. In this metaphor, memory is encoded and stored on something analogous to a computer hard disk to be recalled and recovered later, and the ability to scan, project, copy, download, edit and delete memory makes perfect sense. In contrast, more recent research suggests that memory is quite a bit more slippery," Kirk says. The rest of his article is worth reading, as are a couple of entries on two different aspects of memory in the past week by Roland Piquepaille. On Monday, he told us of 'The Arrival of Nanotech Memories' and today, in Technology Trends, he explains "why researchers from Trinity College in Dublin are adding memory to virtual reality characters to give them a more realistic gaze". One of the most important things about memory decline with age is believing, wrongly, that you're doomed to suffer: "Research has also shown that common, everyday memory failures tend to be judged more harshly when the failure belongs to an older adult. What is laughed off in a younger adult is treated as an indication of cognitive decline in an older person. There are ways in which cognitive function (memory, reasoning, problem-solving, etc) declines with age, but it would be fair to say that general belief over-estimates the extent of this. It is, to a large extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe deterioration is inevitable, you are not likely to make any effort to halt it." That observation at 'The Memory Key' reads like banal common sense -- unless you happen to be one of the worrywarts. I strongly commend that "key site", 'About Memory,' maintained by psychology PhD and author Fiona McPherson. It's regularly updated and includes a weblog. If you've got Shockwave Flash, one of the fun links at Fiona's site is to 'The Secret Life of the Brain' (PBS) in 3-D. A trip there is much cheaper than a run through a scanner! 5:26:38 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 26 mars 2004

'Too close to the story...' Ouf! Life is better this morning, after last night's "cri de coeur". I both got some sleep and kept the food down. Woke up remembering the nicer things that happened yesterday. A chat about Edison Denisov with Barry, who loved the Symphony I'd lent him (in a Russian recording which no longer appears to be available). And the Desk's "farewell and good luck" party for Carole, one of the Factory's nicest people, who flies out this weekend with her family to take up a post in Johannesburg. Godspeed and a kiss, Miss. Our loss will most definitely be the South African bureau's gain! If this morning's renewed spring sunshine lasts through next week, then I'm really going to enjoy those days off. What was not good, however, is that I dug out and popped a couple of Valium tabs before a long soak in the bath in the knowledge that they will make the day's work to come endurable. Resorting to such chemical crutches runs deep against the grain now, since it's exactly the kind of non-solution to angst, stress and guilt that I strongly feel all the physical and psychological treatment I've had for the Condition over 10 months was intended to render unnecessary... Yet I'd collapsed into bed last night wondering what the hell I was doing as AFP's Africa Editor! Two things almost overwhelmed me yesterday. First, it was exhausting fighting off the "vibes" emanating from one or two other stressed-out people on the Desk in the engine room, as if their own problems and emotions were a part of me! What of those "barriers" I'd spent so much time probing with Dr F.? Secondly, there's a deeper sensation I've never understood and perhaps never will. It's as if I was at once both in Paris, handling all the news pouring in, and in Abidjan as the day's awful events unfolded. This, I suppose, is a tribute to the communications skills of colleagues there whose descriptions of the place on the 'phone in many a conversation have put flesh on the bones of my own experience of other African cities... But it happens to me often with this kind of story. In another life, I might be probing the psychology of empathy (Health 24), which apparently triggers some of our emotional circuitry. A way into my sessions with Dr F., I asked her how she managed detachment. So many people, so many problems, hour after hour for day after long day. She smiled, but refused to answer. Pamela Cytrynbaum has a go in 'Why your therapist can't be your friend' ('Psychology Today'). I'd check to see what the admirable Kathryn Petro has to say about this kind of thing at 'A Mindful Life', but ... "duty calls". 10:57:03 AM  link   your views? []

jeudi 25 mars 2004

The killing season starts ... again Getting a mild dose of tear gas tonight was the least of my worries. As the Métro train was approaching Opéra station, the driver announced that there would be a little "smoke in the tunnel. Just don't panic, please. The train won't stop at Opéra." But it certainly wasn't just "smoke." I've no idea who was being gassed above ground and I'm too tired to care tonight. Far more importantly, my friends' most dire forecasts about Ivory Coast appear to have been right. I don't know about the other agency copy on the Net, but the stuff from the Factory -- 'I. Coast peace in shambles after deadly protests' (AFP/Yahoo) -- couldn't be filed from the office because our people were unable even to get to the place in that part of Abidjan. What happened today is the kind of insanity -- or, rather, deliberately orchestrated mayhem on the part of a head of state -- that makes people want to stop reading about Africa. "Meanwhile, in the midst of the bloodshed, international radio stations including France's RFI and BBC's Africa service, went off the air, just as they had done when rebels rose up in September 2002 against [President Laurent] Gbagbo." That paragraph fairly near the bottom of the story speaks volumes. One of the obvious ways in which a power maniac like Gbagbo can really scare the hell out of his people and set the panic and rumour mills going is to deprive them of the news from abroad about what's really happening at home. This particular piece of shit, during all his years in opposition, billed himself a socialist! A man of the people... After tomorrow, I think I'm going to avoid the news sites for a week, unless I want to be consumed by guilt for taking those long-awaited days off when I know staffing's short at work. I'd forgotten until tonight, but it was in part an inability to let go of a bad, breaking story -- and repeating that experience over and over again -- which led to the onset of the Condition last year. And I called last night's entry 'Avoidance therapy'? 10:31:32 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 24 mars 2004

Avoidance therapy The Wildcat has placed her latest order for things wanted from Paris, but will have to wait. Yet another new publication appeared in Francis's shop today, offering the 'Star Trek: First Contact (IMDb)' DVD for less than five euros. "No!" Francis said. "Not allowed. Don't argue." "You're right. Thanks." Two of the Kid's top five films from last year, 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Equilibrium' (both reviewed here), appeared earlier this month on DVD, cheap. When I snatched those up, I asked Francis to remind me next time I looked greedy that I had just nibbled into April's music and film budget. He gets a gold star for keeping his promise. In any case, I saved money today by the simple expedient of being woken up early by the return of the Condition and feeling so nauseous for most of the morning that by the time I thought of having lunch and told Karin I was going to fetch my tray, my colleague informed me that it had been closed for an hour. An hour I appear to have lost completely. I'd already shut my front door without my keys, but didn't find this out until tonight... Several other minor upsets followed. All in all, it was a very rough day. I needed to sit down in the Métro coming home so much that I let two impossibly crowded trains through before being third time lucky, apart from the almost equally impossibly obese woman crushing a man opposite. She was from one of those countries where many women seem to become huge in their 30s while most of the men seem to stay slim as rakes, had four massive rings squeezing her fat fingers and a piggy stare all, persistently, for me. "Do you ever find people so ugly to look at that it makes you feel sick?" I asked the Wildcat, obviously not meaning those who are unwell themselves. "Every day," she said, which I shouldn't have found reassuring, but did, while I also felt better for not having eaten any of the chocolate I'd last night again felt the urge to get for myself and friends at the Factory. I still don't feel hungry and will only try to eat something anyway when I'm tired enough to sleep afterwards. All moaning of this kind has felt sillier and more relative than ever since reading 'cancergiggles' properly on Monday and finally putting it in the blogroll. I hope that the reason I've not been able to log back on to Cass's site for a couple of days is that he has attracted so much attention with his writing, including a press release, also on Monday, at 'pharmiweb'. Checking the link led me to my latest encounter -- and a poetry contest -- at 'The Raving Atheist,' a site which must get a mention and describes itself as "an atheistic examination of the culture of belief: how religious devotion trivialises American law and politics". As of this morning, I've completed another "meaning to". All the blogrolled links here which provide feeds are henceforth in my newsreader, among a total of 164 subscriptions. This may seem a heck of a lot, but sorting it out has already proved a considerable help in my daily check on friends and foes. Plenty of people can change my outlook on life, including right-wingers with whom I disagree fundamentally. I've again forgotten whether to ask the Wildcat if she was so surprised at my boobied bloggers link because some of those people are in a totally different part of the political spectrum from the likes of ourselves... Maybe there are exceptions to the "scarily simple" first of Charles Miller's Rules of Argument ('The Fishbowl'), holding that you "will never change anyone's mind on a matter of opinion", but I'm grateful to Rainer ('Solipsism Gradient') for an excellent link to some extremely sensible suggestions. 11:46:08 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 23 mars 2004

Africa's digital divide: updated facts, downgraded priorities Checking out some background related to an Internet and Africa story before leaving work, I should have looked at my own blogroll, which was a darned sight more helpful than Google & Co. Much of what I wanted was recently rounded up right here: 'For Most Africans, Internet Access Is Little More Than a Pipe Dream (OJR).' A fine "workplace" report posted at the Online Journalism Review by Chris Aiden last week confirms several things I knew, but adds some interesting ones I didn't. Just to quote one example: "The Zimbabwe government has been criticized for suppressing the media; officials in the administration of President Robert Mugabe last year closed Zimbabwe's only independent daily paper, the Daily News. The paper was closed in September; and though it resumed operations last month, a government application to ban it is going through the courts. Nevertheless, Zimbabwe has experienced an explosion of new Internet users: With a population of 14.7 million, there are a half-million people accessing the Internet, up from 50,000 in 2000. That's an increase of 900 percent, and the country's Internet penetration rate -- 3.4 percent -- is among the highest of any country on the continent." On that OJR page alone, there are several dozen hot links, many of which are new even to a "specialist" like me. Strongly recommended to anybody else pursuing similar interests. 9:56:06 PM  link   your views? [] Men should abstain; we've been pigeon-holed... ...but the 'Hindustan Times' picks up a test for the ladies. "Jane Ridley puts women into 27 distinctive character types and claims all women fit into one of her categories. And her A-Z of the fairer sex, makes for some very interesting reading." In which Kate learns she's not, after all, an Alpha Female (Electric Venom). 11:04:31 AM  link   your views? [] Blood, riches and an ambitious African film Here's a film which we may not get to see in Europe or the States, though it looks promising at allAfrica Arts. "Sierra Leoneans seem determined to put behind them the nightmare and scars of that war. From the ashes of war, a new nation is already evolving. Early this year, Sierra Leoneans got a helping hand from the ever resourceful Nigerian movie makers who have already made a film based on the war. Set naturally in Sierra Leone, the film is based on a simple plot that exploited the bitterness associated with the struggle to control natural resources. (...) 'Blood Diamonds' was inspired by the producer's desire to discourage armed conflicts in Africa and also spread the message of peace. The movie also reflects most of the tragedies of the war like amputation, conscription of children into the army and many other vices of war. And for the director [Teco Benson], this is one of his most ambitious projects in his over 10-year career as a movie director." Full article by Sylvester Asoya for 'The News' in Lagos. 10:45:12 AM  link   your views? []

lundi 22 mars 2004

A surfeit of muses? Not likely Since around the middle of last week, the Condition has made one of those sporadic and irritating comebacks I was warned about by the doctors last year. This is a minor and tiring nuisance, but also a "warning sign". I'm very glad that in a few days, I'll be enjoying a stretch of real holiday, when I can catch up on overdue medical follow-up, family phone calls, outstanding e-mail and unwritten reviews. Right now, I return with relief to a favourite subject. Women. And one "remarkable writer" of a man. There's no pecking order here. Each of the women, "chicks", "girls," I mean to mention have outstanding qualities. First comes Cindy the "squip", who informs us, with a link to Clive Thompson's 'Honesty Virus' in the NYT magazine that "When online, we are oddly prone to telling the truth." Would you believe it? "This snippet from the essay made me laugh: 'I spend about an hour every day visiting blogs, those lippy Web sites where everyone wants to be a pundit and a memoirist. (Then I spend another hour writing my own blog and adding to the cacophony.)' (I now have visions of all blogs with big red lips on them, not unlike the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse "kisses" urinals.) ;-)" Great stuff at 'Dusting My Brain'! Will Cindy shoot me if I mention how she's confessed that she's a "wild and crazy chick" (WCC)? It was that kind of self-definition -- and the impossibility of self-definition -- which cropped up last night when I had a wide-ranging chat with the Wildcat. After an hour, I had the Wildcat call me back. As you know, I learned many a lesson last year, about bills as well as about women. The Wildcat is in fine fettle. If I haven't mentioned her for some time, it wasn't because we're still fighting. For weeks, I didn't 'phone her and failed to answer the telephone when I knew it was her, knowing she'd leave a message if an emergency arose. My hope was that if we weren't nattering to each other, she'd be getting on with the writing she excels at when she puts her mind to it. And indeed she is, not every day but for herself when she's not doing it for the Factory. This is excellent news and I hope that it'll make her famous one day. The Wildcat's also feeling far healthier than she has for months, having survived the worst winter of her life, but the arrival of the sun where she is means that she faces the urgent problem of finding enough money to replace a fridge which has broken down and the shoes she'll need for the summer. I fear that she'll soon have to emerge from her anonymity and acquire some celebrity if she's going to make a living, because it's certainly not the Factory's policy regarding the wages of people like her that's going to make her rich. It was for the Wildcat, among others, that I've today managed to do one of the things otherwise postponed, because just as I encourage her writing, she it was who pressed me for an update here on the French battle for intelligence. She professed to be startled at my enthusiasm for 'Bloggers with Boobies' like Cindy, having apparently forgotten how gorgeous she looks herself -- if dangerous too, as now we know -- and how very hungry I get when women are as creative, "crazy" and unconventional as many are lucky enough also to be stunning to behold. I have now definitively forgiven her for fleeing at Christmas time when we could have gone to bed with each other. On the "chicks" and "girls" label that annoys some women but worries other not at all, the Wildcat informed me that she told one bloke who called her a "femme fatale" that she'd rather be known as a "fille fatale". There was then some debate as to whether or not she'd had more lovers than Carla Bruni... But I digress! Natalie has WCC qualities, of course. And the track that led me from her to Cindy and the other happily boobied bloggers -- or was it the other way round -- is too tortuous to describe, but we find common ground at one of my long-postponed "meaning tos". I've been meaning to write of Cass Brown, who gave another well-merited good review to 'The Joy of Letting Women Down' at 'Cancergiggles'. Yup. You read that correctly. Cass has describes his blog and more thus: "This site is hopefully an idiot's guide to accepting, living with, laughing at and dying from cancer. The very, very last bit I can't be absolutely sure of but then who the hell can? I could have put together some beautifully crafted, grammatically correct essays but I hope you will understand, that when I say 'I don't have a lot of time' I mean it far more literally than you do. I wanted to publish some thoughts which may just light a spark in some people." He succeeds, more modest than he need be about his writing. At the end of his own most recent post at 'Cancergiggles', Cass says: "If you ever, for one nano second, feel sorry for yourself, just simply be ashamed. Sorry to turn this on its head but this ISN'T ABOUT YOU. It's about the people you will leave behind and soon you will have absolutely zero input into the situation. Use whatever time you have to make them happy and for God's sake MAKE THEM LAUGH. If you have devoted your entire life to being a miserable, selfish, mean and entirely unattractive excuse for a human being, knock it off now! If you are bankrupt, don't have a friend in the world and your family has deserted you, get off your ass and make somebody else laugh. You get just one crack at this. You can't die happy if what you leave is a world of shit and grief. If at some stage in the future my name comes up and it elicits a wry smile from someone that's good. If it makes somebody laugh, you'll hear me jumping on the clouds." In his piece on Nat's book, he explains that he's "a partially reformed drunkard and a totally reformed womaniser." I'm a totally reformed drunkard. That proved so necessary that at the time it even seemed absurdly easy. As to the rest ... the Wildcat enjoyed herself last night. This was when I admitted that I had been wary of some women I found very attractive because I had considered myself "too old" or them "too young". The sheer stupidity of this inhibition came to light in the course of my encounters with Dr F., the psychosomatic "shrinkess", as one of my friends calls her. Whatever the Wildcat didn't do, she and Natalie both contributed to a crash course. Even if I've still much to learn. It gets worse. My acquaintances include a woman who's up to something extremely interesting I'd like to blog about, if she lets me. Now it would be dishonest to claim that her almost distressingly good looks have nothing to do with a conversation that went, in part, like this: "...but the last time I asked you out to dinner--" "Which was about 150 years ago," she interrupted. "--you set impossible conditions!" I finished, so astonished at the way she'd responded that it was a miracle I managed to complete the sentence. I don't know whether she and one or two other women who have inspired me in recent weeks, making life infinitely more palatable simply by being there, are WCCs. Yet. But the Wildcat, like Dr. F, thinks I've been one of the idiots of all time for hesitating to find out. Yes, I'm really looking forward to that week off, now that it's spring. "Why do we get all our funky new Aries Beginnings (Sun, Moon, and Mercury are partying up a storm in the sign of the rambunctious Ram) just as we slide into Winter? At least you northern Hemisphere-ites get some Spring into your step just as you're getting jiggy with it...," Goldie moans ('dramaqueen') That's simple. It's our turn! As to the Kid, time flies! The last weekend we were together, she decided to interrogate me about what brought me to France in the first place, and was delighted to learn that it was not a matter of what, but whom... Question after question, her eyes shining. "And after her," Marianne asked, "how did you meet Mum?" "You mean she's never told you?" "No," said the Kid, who's grown into a "blogger with boobies" herself in the past year. Well, possibly she wanted to hear the story all over again. Because now she's begun to understand what it's like. And as to the poor lad who couldn't tear his eyes off the Kid on the train, then thrust a hastily scribbled note of admiration and phone number into her hand just as she was getting off, oh heavens...! No. She never did call that number. 10:29:32 PM  link   your views? [] Minor iGripe: cleaning the Windows John Udell is a browser switcher. And the figure he mentions explains a little something which gnaws at my pride while possibly highlighting my incompetence. "In January 2004, 94.8 percent of Web surfers used Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, according to the Web analytics research company OneStat.com. Not me, though. For many months I’ve been using a Mozilla-based browser that can’t seem to settle on a name: Phoenix, Firebird, now Firefox. Identity crisis notwithstanding, it rocks. Trust me on this — I’m no knee-jerk open source bigot. During Mozilla’s long nuclear winter, I stuck with IE because I wasn’t willing to live with compromises. Then the tables turned. Suddenly, IE was the compromise I could not live with. Bugs didn’t get fixed. Standards support didn’t improve. New features didn’t appear. And the last vestige of cross-platform ambition evaporated when IE for the Mac was killed last year. The message is clear: Internet Explorer is dead in the water." 'Firefox fills the IE void,' John wrote at 'InfoWorld' on Friday. I'm happy with the browsers I've got, but here's Firefox 0.8 for Windows (and Mac). As to my pride, we are compelled to use IE 5 in the Factory. On Windows. And, unlike Explorer 5.2 for Mac, exceptionally in use in the following screenshot to prove my point, my computer at work obstinately refuses to display this experiment of mine as it should be seen. If the statistics John mentions are correct, up to 94.8 percent of my visitors conceivably do not see the right-hand column of my blog as anything other than a vertical mish-mash -- the way it looks at work and not as it does in the pic. I've done all that I can to rectify any errors in the HTML code. Nothing works, yet the site looks right in every other browser I've tried. So, sod it! Barry would recommend going to the Opera! 5:51:49 PM  link   your views? [] Three hefty blows to 'the Establishment' When there's so much of abiding interest to take in, meditate on and write about and so little time, the BBC's online 'Listen Again' feature is more than useful. It's a public service gift and necessity for busy people who need to plan ahead. Since I've had positive feedback about my previous links to programmes as Net subscription prices come down and more and more visitors here go "broadband", today's recommendation is something essential. This year's Reith Lecturer is going to be no less a figure than the phenomenal Nigerian writer, playwright and poet Wole Soyinka. His five weekly talks on a red-hot issue of our "terrorised" times, 'The Climate of Fear,' begin on Wednesday April 7 at 8:00 pm (that'll be 1800 GMT, I think, with the change to summer time imminent), with repeats on Saturday nights. The titles? 1. The Changing Mask of Fear 2. Power and Freedom 3. Rhetoric that Binds and Blinds 4. A Quest for Dignity 5. I am Right; You are Dead (more details at Radio 4 - Reith 2004). Soyinka sharpened the appetite this morning with an introductory appearance on Andrew Marr's 'Start the Week,' with other guests worth hearing too. Yesterday was "quiet" enough in the Factory to give me time to work on a couple of good feature stories from Africa. One of them -- written by a woman of such breath-taking beauty that she recently inspired a couple of my more elliptic entries here -- was such an original look at what it's like to be gay in Gabon that it was a real pleasure to render it into English! Her article included good quotes, that vital something some of us back in the engine room occasionally despair of getting from correspondents out in the field, particularly too many of the French ones. Born in a country long plagued by an institutional and turgid approach to the news, these people ruin potentially worthwhile stories by sending us pontificating ego-trips they classify as "analysis", which are regrettably prime candidates for the P13 treatment (my entry of March 9, to be pursued). However, that particular kind of pundit is an endangered species. Anne-Laure's story hasn't made it to the Web yet, so I can't link to it, but I can reference the more academic 'Heart of Lavender: In Search of Gay Africa,' written by Eugene Patron in 1995 for the 'Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review.' "The notion of Africans being 'innocent children' of nature, corresponds to European views that African sexual practices were primal and largely devoid of emotionally constructed associations. Likewise, homosexuality has also been vilified in western thought as being incompatible with intimacy and true romantic notions of love. As viewed from a defensive position, the ascribing of homosexual behavior to Africans and people of African descent can be regarded as doubly denying the emotional component of their sexual lives. It is not surprising then the popular view both in Africa and the African Diaspora that homosexuality is seen, as reported by Dynes, 'a "white vice" forced on healthy people to drag them down.'" The whole of Patron's essay is reproduced in 'People with a History' (Fordham University, NY). Yesterday's elections in the Comoros were so boring that even if we duly churned out several hundred words about them, I can't find almost no evidence that they ever happened on the Net. However, I'm delighted to mention a 'Setback for French government as Socialists surge' (AFP/Yahoo): "'This is a rejection of the government's policies..., a rejection of their effects in terms of employment, public services, education, research. In short the French wanted to deliver a serious warning,' said Socialist party leader Francois Hollande." After the second round of polling next weekend, I'll have more to say. Meanwhile, anybody would think that Hollande might have been reading 'Les Inrocks'. The sole contribution I could make to this "rejection of the government's policies", since I've never bothered to acquire dual nationality, was signing that petition I've reported on (the 'Appeal against the War on Intelligence'). Not only does the fight go on, but that document has led to the publication in the press of a mass of material I'm still wading through with the intention of summing it up here. This includes dozens of accounts by people bearing personal testimony to the destruction wreaked on whole sectors of society by the current government's policies of privatisation and other features of Thatcherism revisited. "Oh, that magic feeling Nowhere to go Nowhere to go-ooo" From 'L'écume de mes jours' (illustrated) Worse still, artists and scientists alike have been writing at length of the systematic suppression of creativity, intelligence and vital cultural activity considered to be of no economic value. Most interestingly, the war against such a mercenary approach at the top is no longer being waged merely by the "intellectuals" who sparked off a counter-attack from people in power. A few of the most telling contributions published in the latest issue of 'Les Inrockuptibles' itself, based on people's day to day experience, have been submitted by a medical secretary, a costume designer, an out-of-work actor, a young student of architecture... Some of these "witnesses" make a point of saying they don't think of themselves as intellectuals, but consider that they are in the front line of victims of the government's notions of economic success. Their "evidence" stands alongside that of people like the director of the Théâtre de la Bastille, whose website has gone as far as to publish a separate editorial -- in French -- about 'L'offense faite à la démocratie' (warning, Flash with an irritating sound effect!) Interestingly, a term that appears often in these articles, both on the Internet and in the written press, is "la résistance". Nowhere has the magazine that started all this fuss spoken of a "resistance movement". Instead, this idea is raised by different people from across the country who've begun to explain why they signed or support the petition. On March 4, though 'Libé' has slid a long way towards mediocrity since the paper I remember of the 80s, it gave column space for a reply to Xavier Darcos, junior minister for school education ('Libération'). Darcos makes mention of a "collective project" for society which he alleges forms part of the government's plans. First I've heard of it. The very use of the word "collective" by any member of the current crew of clowns strikes me as an ideological contradiction in terms. "2003/2004, l'année des menteries. 2003/2004, trois chefs d'Etat de trois grands pays ont menti. 2003/2004, Bush-Blair-Aznar. Ainsi vont la vie et le vice." ('mensonge(s) d'état et songes disparates', at davduf) Yes, but we knew that. What about here? Now? In France? The same day in the same paper, Pierre Marcelle was among the first to break the entertaining tale of how the prime minister asked his ghost-writers to start peppering his speeches with "a bit of culture" ('Raffarin et l'intelligence'). It was a dreadful mistake. Even a ham actor could have read those quotes as if he understood what he was saying. It may not be The Revolution. But I'll keep you posted on the Resistance. 4:16:41 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 20 mars 2004

Tony, the taxman and the TV: sunspots or psychic powers? Tony's been having problems, round in Odessa Street. And I haven't a clue what to tell him. This, with his permission, is what happened, from his e-mail: "DO U know about sunspots? Or possibly load shedding by electricity generators? I ask becos when I sought relief from filling out my tax declaration a wave of electronic hell hit me. First I tried your blog (anything 4 a laugh) which took 5 minutes to move from the heading, then froze after a few words, oddly spaced. I gave up & tried to change an address in my phone repertoire; a long but uncomplicated operation I've done many times - the machine simply failed to obey. After that I turned on my TV which went RED. Then I turned everything off & went back to my tax declaration: a long but complicated operation, since my pension consists of 12 different sums which I have to add up 3 times B4 I get the total right. Discouraged, I took no action & the condition cured itself. Is there a technical explanation? Do U know it? Wd I understand it? Or shd I just ask Sainte Anne's to keep me a bed? I imagine that the explanation must be sunspots or load shedding by the local power station but can't help a feeling that someone is sending me a message: You are not fit for the modern world, chum." Any thoughts? I have been to 'Sunspots in History' (Spaceweather), where I learned that "some people claim that even the length of mini-skirts and the performance of stocks are affected by sunspots." By way of 'A Vos Mac!' magazine, I discovered two pieces of software, one called Celestia and the other called 'Stellarium'. Both are free and quite remarkable, but proved a major distraction from Tony's complaint. I've Googled in vain, finding lots of information, but little of it within my grasp. Then I tried Enchanted Learning. And ended up at 'The Roots of Consciousness (William James site),' an online version of a hefty tome by Jeffrey Mishlove. This much I now know: I don't think it would be either wise or necessary to entrust Tony to the care of St Anne's mental hospital, particularly on the first day of spring this side of the equator. But the question of mind and matter has moved on apace in the years since I read Fritzoj Capra, as is amply illustrated by a highly rated reading list on 'Consciousness in Physics' (Amazon US) by one "marrorris2". In the meantime, Tony, you might get an answer out of EDF by the simple expedient of deducting an appropriate percentage from the payment of your electricity bill for each day the television turns RED. 7:23:11 PM  link   your views? []

vendredi 19 mars 2004

Impatient for Enki The Kid has a potential new school to visit at the end of the month. As if that weren't enough for a special Saturday's excitement or disappointment, Marianne's already obtained her Mum's agreement to let her be in Paris in time to take me to see 'Immortel'. Of all the interesting prospects recently trailed in the cinemas, this looks set to be one of the best. The poster's yet to appear on the streets, but the style is instantly recognisable. We're both hot fans of Yugoslav-born artist Enki Bilal, whose work I've mentioned before. His third film -- drawing on characters from 'La Foire aux Immortels' (a 1980 "comic" book series) is released here next Wednesday and is already all over the multi-media press. The original, available in English as 'The Nikopol Trilogy', takes place in the Paris of 2023, but presumably in one of Bilal's rare concessions to the demands of the market, the film's set in New York, 2095. It looks stunning, going by the trailer and some of the most prolific pre-release work I've seen in magazines since the original 'Matrix'. The 'Immortel Ad Vitam' movie site is in French, as is by far the best Enki Bilal site, but 'The MovieBox' offers a synopsis and other details in English, with some further links. The star with the striking hairstyle is Linda Hardy, who came came to public notice as Miss France 1992 (photo credit: Marianne Rosenstiehl of H&K). She made her first film, 'Recto Verso' (Allociné, Fr.) six years later. Though little more than an unpretentious comedy, it had the merit of being out of the ordinary, which makes Hardy a prime candidate for the 'Final Fantasy' treatment. Charlotte Rampling's also in 'Immortel'. This can only bode well, as does the choice of Thomas Kretschmann, who was brilliant in Polanki's 'The Pianist' (Rotten Tomatoes), to play Nikopol. While I'm not in the habit of saying much about films before I review them, this has to be an exception. It's even inspired yet another noteworthy addition to the multi-media press here, making the cover of the promising 'Parallax' N° 1 (no site ... yet). 8:36:36 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 18 mars 2004

Gossip column (from the blogroll) "Estuary English [the kind more and more people have started speaking in the 20 years since I quit the country] is the form of the English language common in the South-East of England, especially along the river Thames and its estuary. It is a hybrid of Received Pronunciation and a number of South Eastern accents, particularly from the London and Essex area. Some people think it will eventually replace Received Pronunciation as the Standard English pronunciation." That surprising assertion is in the Wikipedia. The link came from the London call girl darling of the moment. Who is suggesting that others "confess (to her) sins", if they insist (Belle de Jour). "This is rubbish and far too meta for my taste," she reassuringly adds. "I want to write about the usual things again. Let us return to the suck/fuck/sleep/gossip, shall we?" zzz Ah, the same old lies, but it's a long time since I mentioned D. 'Strangelove' Rumsfeld: "I’m delighted to see that MoveOn has acted quickly to put together an ad based on Rumsfeld’s 'Face the Nation' appearance on Sunday. Well worth watching. Send it to a friend." Sez Liz at 'mamamusings'. zzz "Downhill Battle presents: The Reasons to get rid of the major record labels. Here are the reasons (each is explained): Music diversity will grow. Pay-for-play radio will end. Independent music won't be marginalized. The lawsuits will stop. Artistic freedom will expand. Musicians will make a better living." From J-Walk Blog zzz Now this is a couple of weeks old. But still ... unusual! "That's it," warned 'blogjam'. "We're all going to die." zzz "Do you know what a stereogram is? It's a two-dimensional image that, when viewed properly, reveals a three-dimensional image within it. The trick to experiencing that transformation is to have enough distance from the image and to relax your gaze. Then it seems to pop right out. It can be very soothing as well as fascinating to rest your gaze within the picture. Well, that's what insight is, for me. If you look too closely at a situation, poring over minutiae, and if you stare too hard, you won't see it. Just relax. Step back from your thoughts. After awhile, insight emerges; it feels a bit magical. And you find yourself thinking, 'Wow! I see it! Wonder why I didn't before?'" writes Kathryn Petro. At 'A Mindful Life'. Stereograms were among many interesting things Marianne and I once found at Futuroscope. zzz Ye Gods! "Daytrip: Group Hug. True Confessions?" From 'WomanChild' (Snozberry). 11:00:31 AM  link   your views? []

mercredi 17 mars 2004

If you think I'm a 'braindead fuck', be bolder about it Francis, bless him, thought to keep me a copy of 'El Pais' for the Kid's eventual 18th birthday collection (the Faithful Five ¾ know what that is by now). Perusing the paper after my nightly stop by his shop, I felt tremendous admiration for the courage and resilience of the Spanish people, picking up their "lives as normal" after last week's atrocity. This bravery and contempt for the bombers is also manifest in some e-mail I've had from Madrid. I've already made clear, one way or another, what I think of the simple-minded clowns who've used the Net and other media to equate the outcome of the Spanish election with "cowardice in the face of terrorism". However, some of the stuff coming out of the United States in the past two or three days, such as an editorial by Wesley Pruden in his 'Washington Times', has been of a kind to make me feel both annoyed and disheartened. Being angry will get me nowhere, but I really don't like the feeling that a number of the people for whom I once felt a degree of respect, even friendship, have gone to live on a different planet, where almost intolerable arrogance and a total refusal to give even a moment's thought to the real origins of the behaviour they find unacceptable is the norm. Meanwhile, it's intriguing to see what some people use the search box on this place for -- the Atomz people being kind enough to send me a weekly report. So far this month, "sex" tops the list with 62 searches, presumably attributable to spiders rather than people, but who the hell's going to come here expecting to find "pictures of torture instruments" ... or "corky's lost car keys"? Some of my recent reflections have earned me hate mail, if only a little. This neither surprises me nor troubles me, but I do wish at least one of the four people who bothered to send it had been able to spell properly. If you want to insult me, you're welcome to do it right here on the blog! That's what the comments box is for and there's slightly more of a chance I might see some point in replying. To keep it private and personal smacks of ... well, you know what. As to the nice mails also piling up, I'll reply as of Friday. Sorry, but it's been a busy week. And by then, the mini-heatwave we've been enjoying will be over. Right now, there are good reasons to stay out late. 10:51:52 PM  link   your views? [] Use and abuse in the 'morning paper' Just occasionally, the Kid has been known to eat popcorn. "Health officials insist people who microwave popcorn and eat it at home are not in danger, although the Environmental Protection Agency is studying the chemicals released into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped." Chemicals? In the air? The stuff isn't good for you, that we knew. But I had no idea how awful it could be for the people who make it until I saw Eric People's story on the BBC: 'Popcorn victim wins $20m damages'. zzz "No longer can we sit in grubby geek glee, protected by our avatar shields, wearing only uniforms of underwear. Endangered are the days where we can pass digital transmissions and gas simultaneously, picking our noses with one hand, and stuffing pizza down our throats with the other." Well. During last year's heatwave, I was certainly clad in little more than underwear when I was working at home. And yesterday was warm enough, at last, to wonder what this summer will bring. They can't insist on trousers at the Factory -- can they? True, I prefer to have an idea what people I'm talking to look like. And since this may be reciprocal, I allowed the Kid to snap me with the 'phone camera last weekend, to adorn -- or otherwise -- my "about" page here. But video conferencing is not my thing and I've done with chat. For those who have made the leap, with iSight or whatever, Nitrozac and Snazzy are really trying to be helpful, offering hi-tech tips on making you look your best: 'You Sexy Thing!' (MacDev Center). zzz As if that were not enough, Apple plans to be seriously more helpful to disabled computer users with a 'Spoken Interface' for OS X. Some of us have only just upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3.3 (I went that way last night once I was sure it was safe), but the industry speculators reckon the new technology is in hand for OS X 10.4 (MacRumors). zzz As to the iPod, Apple's last exercise in genius, it wasn't meant to be killer technology: "A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod." ('Liquid Generation') Via OxDECAFBAD. zzz "PARIS -- The European Parliament approved a controversial piracy law that would allow local police to raid the homes and offices of suspected intellectual-property pirates, search their financial records and even freeze sus