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WikiWatching
I am really curious as to who sees a news article or something that crops up in the news and instantly thinks to themselves “Oh, I gotta make that addition on Wikipedia, it’s my duty”?
This stems from my reading about the death of Isaac Hayes, at the age of 65.
I read about it on the BBC News Website and this was reported onbly ‘36 minutes ago’. Lo and behold, the WikiPedia article about Isaac Hayes is full of information regarding his death. Not only that but there’s a plethora of editing to ensure the article’s integtrity.
What amazes me though is why people think it’s their duty to do this. Whilst I believe it is a good thing that information is now getting out there to the public domain in one centralised location, isn’t it dangerous to state so-called “facts” on a supposed encyclopedia website when all the facts have not yet been reported or are completely unknown?
What an unbalanced world we live in
Despite the major global event of the Olympics kicking off in Beijing, we have another global event going on that couldn’t be any more different from the values and statements of the Olympic Games.
in Georgia, specifically in the South Ossetia and now the Abkhazia regions, a conflict (or even war now, according to the Georgian parliament) is kicking off between Russian Forces (both forces stationed in the aforementioned regions and Russia-based troops) and Georgian troops.
To avoid a huge blog post detailing the history of such a conflict, I’d encourage readers to take read up on the situation before continuing. Despite me linking you to wikipedia, I feel the article is actually pretty well written and accurate.
Whilst the war, I believe, is a matter that should be resolved by all parties involved and not outside influences like the US or Great Britain, I feel that it is important that the International Community takes heed of what is going on.
The major western parties have swiftly moved to show their support for Georgia and condemned the Russian activities as ‘criminal’. They have called on Russia to halt it’s ‘unfair, criminal and disproportionate’ assault on Georgia’s sovereignty. I think it’s important to remember some of the facts here.
- South Ossetians do not want to be part of Georgia and have been pushing for independence form Georgia since 1991.
- There are over 70,000 South Ossetians who have accepted Russian passports, therefore making them de facto Russian citizens.
- Georgia, despite a ceasefire agreement on the 6th August, launched a major assault on the capital city of South Ossetia on the 7th August with unconfirmed reports of casualties.
- Georgia have been accused of targeting civilian amenities in the region, including hospitals in South Ossetia.
Georgia are not smelling of roses right now but since they have close ties with the West, specifically the United States, it’s no wonder that the Bush Administration haven’t condemned their actions as ‘illegal’ or disproportionate towards the South Ossetians.
Enter the Russians. It’s in almost every countries mandate to protect their sovereignty and their citizens. To know that Russian peacekeepers were killed (and allegedy deliberately targeted by Georgians), surely that’s a cause for the Russians to get involved. Moreso, the majority of South Ossetians and Abkhazian’s hold Russian passports, therefore are citizens of Russia, it is within Russia’s mandate to protect them and fight for their liberties.
Whilst it is obvious that the Georgian military is nothing compared to the Russian forces, let’s cast our mind back to when Israel conducted their war with Lebanon about 3 years ago. Not only did Israel completely outnumber the Lebanese, they constantly bombarded them with munitions that the International Community has long since considered illegal. Did the West then come out and label Israel’s actions as ‘disproportionate’ or ‘illegal’? No. They supported them.
People who believe claims for World Peace will lead to something and misguided. Sorry to sound so doom and gloom but how can world peace be achieved when double standards exist throughout the world. Russia and the US have bad enough relations as it is (especially with regards to the Iranian situation) but by the threats that the US have made towards Russia regarding future relations over this conflict, it can only serve to decrease the likelihood that we are going to see a stable and thriving Europe.
Especially when we consider factors such as the US’ proposed ‘Missile Shield’ in the baltic states.
Important News
Well, today has been a seemingly slow news day, if you were to go by what the People want to see. Before I sound all preachy and pretentious here, let me first of all say I haven’t really watched the news either today so consider this a non-critical comment, just something I’ve noticed. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that what I’m going to talk about is a middle-aged woman getting changed in front of her window and I’m a prepubescent boy with a new telescope for my birthday.
As we can see, more of the ‘lighter’ or ‘whimsical’ news stories are the ones most distributed. The most read category and identical set of stories (at time of writing, not this post but this sentence, which is 10:44pm GMT). So essentially, the hottest news today is that a fat lamb likes to lie on a sofa, a gay bishop was heckled, twat ‘Banksy’ may be revealed but we’ll never know as he’s never going to come out, much to the disappointment of the gay bishop, a referee was drunk and you’re not allowed to pop your clogs in the freezing cold.
In reality, some of today’s proper news stories:
There’s quite a lot of news going on there, enough to keep BBC News 24 presenters actually doing something other than showing live pictures of something only somewhat slightly relevant to whatever news story they were covering. So, let’s see, we’ve got a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, that must be a good milestone, Pakistani soldiers being killed by militants, that’s important news, stabbings in festivals and a victim of knife crime being named.
All in all, quite a filled sandwich of news. Again, not that I’m suggested we all ought to be tuned into the news 24 hours a day and keep abreast of what’s happening. I’ll be honest, I don’t give a hoot about 99% of the stories above anyway.
But is it possible that people tune into the news just for those ‘And finally…’ moments where a cat got stuck up a tree and the fire engine sent to rescue it got stuck down a well on it’s way there? Why not make two versions of the news, The Serious News and The Silly News? I wonder what will get more ratings. Hmmmm.
Contextual Merchandising Not Always Good
The way the internet is moving with regards to advertising is putting a lot of emphasis on contextual merchandising. The basics of this is that you will get adverts on your web page that is related to what you are currently viewing - Google AdSense is the biggest example of this and it has helped wannabe Internet Entrepreneurs make a fair few bob since it’s inception.
That being said, is it really always a good idea. A few months ago (January 2008 actually) I was randomly browsing the Internet and on Yahoo’s news I noticed that a boy was shot dead in a McDonald’s restaurant in Brixton. Nothing really startling there, given today’s ‘day and age’ (God, I sound so old). Then, whilst perusing the adverts I notice a huge big McDonald’s advertisement offering me a Big Tasty at McDonald’s. A kid just got shot in McDonald’s but upon hearing that news all I oughta be thinking about is, “Hmm, you know what, a big tasty sure does sound great, thanks to that lad in Brixton, I now want to go to McDonald’s.”
It’s utter nonsense. I think it’s somewhat tasteless (and that’s just the burgers…boom boom) to have contextual merchandising picking up feeds from news stories. I mean, on Sky News I noticed an article about how it’s so awful to bit fat, coupled with ‘OMG LOSE WEIGHT NOW!’ style adverts. That surely isn’t right.
I’ll be keeping an eye out now for when contextual merchandising goes wrong. I have only got a screencap of the Yahoo incident:
Apologies for the quality of the screencap but you get the picture.
If you find any examples while trawling the web, let me know, email me a screenshot to neill@bloggyblog.co.uk or post a link in the comments.
Have a good day!
So Much For Privacy
Crazy law suits are nothing new in the USA but for me one the craziest court cases was finished today. In some weird and unfathomably twisted logic, a fat person suing McDonald’s for making them fat has some grounding at least.
Announced today, however, a US court has ruled that Google must divulge the viewing habits of each and every YouTube user to Viacom. They will no doubt peruse all the millions and millions of user IDs, take note of each and every IP address whilst monitoring what they’ve viewed or uploaded onto YouTube. Moreso, despite this being a US court that has ruled this, it is believed that Viacom will have rights to globally inspect what users have visited.
I personally don’t have an account with YouTube but I anonymously view videos, many of which are probably illegally uploaded and many of which I may have some shame about watching - easy people, YouTube doesn’t allow pornography, I am talking about sad cheesy 1980s hit songs.
This is a clear violation of user rights. I do hope Viacom take up Google’s offer to provide an entirely anonymous list of user activity.
However, not to dwell on the negative - there may be some positives that come out of this. We all know about the Rickrolling craze so I’m guessing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” will feature quite highly in Viacom’s analysis. Maybe they’ll strike a deal with him regarding some form of come back.
We can only hope.
I’m so worried about…
Monty Python aficionados will of course recall the song “I’m So Worried” and only now when I’ve grown to the ripe old age of twenty three does it actually make sense.
We’re supposed to be worried about everything nowadays. There are very few things left in life that we can sit back and enjoy. Pretty much everyday in the news we’re being told that we can’t spend as much money as we used to, the economy is toppling over, jobs are harder to get, pensions are more expensive, we won’t be able to afford houses and so on and so on.
Okay, fair enough. I’ll worry about my wallet. I’ll worry about my income. I’ll worry about my finances. I’ll just have to tighten the belt and get on with things.
But wait. There’s more. Our carbon footprints (I really hate that terminology and the whole concept of ‘carbon footprints’ and more specifically the idea of ‘offsetting’ your carbon footprint by paying money (rant to come at a later stage)). We’re destroying the planet. We have to act now to change things. We have to stop using so much carbon and polluting the atmosphere so our children’s children’s children’s children can enjoy a clean atmosphere. There’s an entirely different discussion about whether climate change is actually a man made issue or a naturally occurring incident but right now that’s irrelevant because I have to worry about destroying the planet.
So I’m worrying about my wallet and the trees. I can’t now resort to buying TESCO Value products or Sainsbury’s ‘Basics’ as they’re probably produced in some factory where six million chickens live in a small urban London apartment. Nor can I buy clothes from Primark as they’re made by Indian children who get paid pennies. Nor can an expensive carbon efficient car (not that I can drive) or else I’m expanding my ‘carbon footprint’ (Which, according to Google is 6.12 tonnes…). So in order to save the world, I have to spend money but I can’t spend money or else I’ll end up with nothing in the bank for my cushy retirement and my children’s upbringing.
On top of this, I have to worry about the Middle East. I have to worry about global conflicts. I have to worry about Zimbabwe. Yes, there are terrible things going on in the world right now. There always has been and there always will be but there’s just absolutely nothing that I can do about it right now. Sure, I can donate to charity. I can put a quid in a collection box. But that quid could help offset my 6.12 tonnes of carbon each year.
What exactly is there left to enjoy? In keeping face with the Monty Python song, we do have to be worried about the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow.
Amy Winehouse
So it would seem that a British woman has been arrested for smuggling 1 kilo of cocaine that was hidden under her wig.
I´m not to be telling the police how to do their job but hasn´t anyone else noticed in the light of the above news article that Amy Winhouse´s hair is growing taller exponentially with how much she is falling of the rails? Somebody take a peak in there and there you have it, her life and musical career back on tract. On second thoughts….
