This has to be a textbook example of Irony:
Julian Assange's own memoir is being released without his consent.
Discuss...
Friday, September 23, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Television 4, Sept 18 2011
It still remains to be seen what this will look like, but if this is anything to go by I'm quite unsettled by it.
From what it appears, this could be a 24-hour digital infomercial channel as part of the Prime7 TV network for regional Australia. Seriously, do we need a 24-hour advertising channel on TV? Do we need more advertising?
Who would be brainless enough to watch a 24 hour channel full of ads? I'm naive enough to think that this won't be the case; that channel 64 would not be as vacuous as the press release makes it sound. But I'd be really annoyed it is...
From what it appears, this could be a 24-hour digital infomercial channel as part of the Prime7 TV network for regional Australia. Seriously, do we need a 24-hour advertising channel on TV? Do we need more advertising?
Who would be brainless enough to watch a 24 hour channel full of ads? I'm naive enough to think that this won't be the case; that channel 64 would not be as vacuous as the press release makes it sound. But I'd be really annoyed it is...
Monday, September 12, 2011
9/11 Remembered
I shed a small tear yesterday as I heard a small piece on the radio commemorating the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York. The piece was genuinely moving, but, sentimentalist radio programming aside, the event it chronicled was so profoundly tragic and mind-boggling devastating that you couldn't help be moved by it.
A lot of people I knew watched the events almost live as they unfolded on the news. I didn't have the TV on at the time. With the time difference between New York and Sydney being what it is, the first plane hit at 10:46pm Sydney time, and I went to bed about then. I heard nothing until I woke up to go to the beach at 6am - on the radio alarm clock they were talking about some major tragedy involving planes flying into buildings. I launched out of bed and fired up the TV to see it for myself....
...Words failed me. There was just nothing I could do or say. I felt powerless but I felt so profoundly saddened by what I was seeing.
Even now, it's still so hard to put into words what I feel. There's no doubt that this event changed the world and the lives of people living on the other side of the world as well. As Australians, our neighbours in Bali had their own tragedy just over 12 months later when a bomb took out 88 Australian nationals in the Sari club.
As a result of this, the world became a hotbed of paranoia and general fear. More terror attacks happened in the years since, two wars have been fought, Middle eastern dictators have been forcibly removed and more. In the immediate 12 months after the event global finance markets took a hit, consumer confidence plummeted, tourism crawled to a stand-still. Evan as far as people not wanting to eat out anymore caused issues, with heaps of small businesses shutting down. Indeed, our local pizza place closed with months of this tragedy, but that could have been through other issues too...
...either way, things were never the same anymore...
...Lest we forget.
A lot of people I knew watched the events almost live as they unfolded on the news. I didn't have the TV on at the time. With the time difference between New York and Sydney being what it is, the first plane hit at 10:46pm Sydney time, and I went to bed about then. I heard nothing until I woke up to go to the beach at 6am - on the radio alarm clock they were talking about some major tragedy involving planes flying into buildings. I launched out of bed and fired up the TV to see it for myself....
...Words failed me. There was just nothing I could do or say. I felt powerless but I felt so profoundly saddened by what I was seeing.
Even now, it's still so hard to put into words what I feel. There's no doubt that this event changed the world and the lives of people living on the other side of the world as well. As Australians, our neighbours in Bali had their own tragedy just over 12 months later when a bomb took out 88 Australian nationals in the Sari club.
As a result of this, the world became a hotbed of paranoia and general fear. More terror attacks happened in the years since, two wars have been fought, Middle eastern dictators have been forcibly removed and more. In the immediate 12 months after the event global finance markets took a hit, consumer confidence plummeted, tourism crawled to a stand-still. Evan as far as people not wanting to eat out anymore caused issues, with heaps of small businesses shutting down. Indeed, our local pizza place closed with months of this tragedy, but that could have been through other issues too...
...either way, things were never the same anymore...
...Lest we forget.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Murdochs again...
Here is an opinion that makes some good sense (for once) about the level of influence Rupert Murdoch has in the media.
I see it as a real issue for the head of a media organisation to determine which way to slant a story as it appears in his papers. It's well documented how News Ltd's outlets are attack dogs for more small-L liberal type government groups (Labour in the UK, Democrats in the US, Labor and the Greens in Australia) and lap dogs for Conservatives.
The issue is more that this plays into the hands of those who are less engaged with their world and who are apathetic enough to accept at face value what the papers tell them. These types of people (and I refuse to identify demographics here) are the ones who will not get the full and unbiased account of what is happening - they get a dodgy slant on it that may or may not be correct, especially in light of the recent News Ltd scandals.
How they've managed to build themselves up with such power is beyond me, how they manage to keep it and continue to have such influence confounds me. I recently remarked to a colleague who said he holds a small amount of shares in News International that, in light of the phone hacking scandal, "if that was me, I'd be getting off that sinking ship". How wrong I was. News isn't going to go under with any small stroke of a pen. They are too big and have too much money to disappear overnight....
...unfortunately.
I see it as a real issue for the head of a media organisation to determine which way to slant a story as it appears in his papers. It's well documented how News Ltd's outlets are attack dogs for more small-L liberal type government groups (Labour in the UK, Democrats in the US, Labor and the Greens in Australia) and lap dogs for Conservatives.
The issue is more that this plays into the hands of those who are less engaged with their world and who are apathetic enough to accept at face value what the papers tell them. These types of people (and I refuse to identify demographics here) are the ones who will not get the full and unbiased account of what is happening - they get a dodgy slant on it that may or may not be correct, especially in light of the recent News Ltd scandals.
How they've managed to build themselves up with such power is beyond me, how they manage to keep it and continue to have such influence confounds me. I recently remarked to a colleague who said he holds a small amount of shares in News International that, in light of the phone hacking scandal, "if that was me, I'd be getting off that sinking ship". How wrong I was. News isn't going to go under with any small stroke of a pen. They are too big and have too much money to disappear overnight....
...unfortunately.
21st Century Propaganda
Here is an interesting story published recently regarding the release of a colouring book for young children explaining the events of the 9/11 tragedy 10 years ago.
If the idea of memorialising an event such as this in this fashion isn't strange enough, the blurb on the inside takes the cake. According to the story, it is full of factual inaccuracies and falsehoods, but more worryingly, it takes a pro-American, anti-Muslim view of the events.
The fact that Muslims are labelled as "extremist", "terrorist" and "anti-freedom" is of some concern. The target demographic (ages birth to around 8, I'd image) is largely unable to comprehend any sense of reasoning here. Everything they understand is, for want of a better term, black or white; no shades of grey. That comes with the ability to think in abstract terms into the high school years.
For the most part, kids of this age group believe almost blindly what their parents and teachers tell them. This in itself is not a bad thing. What IS a bad thing is when the kids are told something that is inaccurate, and they take to believing that in the same way. Explaining this to kids in this fashion is likely to make it easy to understand, but I do see potential for kids to assume wrongful views based on biased information.
Kids of all ages need to be given information that presents a cohesive view of the world. Most kids under the age of 10 can see both sides without getting confused. It's not hard to say that "a handful of bad people did bad things to innocent Americans. The bad guys identified themselves as "Muslims", but not every Muslim is a bad guy like them. Not everyone agrees with what these bad guys did. Killing people is wrong etc etc etc..."
Where were you when you heard about the 9/11 tragedy??
If the idea of memorialising an event such as this in this fashion isn't strange enough, the blurb on the inside takes the cake. According to the story, it is full of factual inaccuracies and falsehoods, but more worryingly, it takes a pro-American, anti-Muslim view of the events.
The fact that Muslims are labelled as "extremist", "terrorist" and "anti-freedom" is of some concern. The target demographic (ages birth to around 8, I'd image) is largely unable to comprehend any sense of reasoning here. Everything they understand is, for want of a better term, black or white; no shades of grey. That comes with the ability to think in abstract terms into the high school years.
For the most part, kids of this age group believe almost blindly what their parents and teachers tell them. This in itself is not a bad thing. What IS a bad thing is when the kids are told something that is inaccurate, and they take to believing that in the same way. Explaining this to kids in this fashion is likely to make it easy to understand, but I do see potential for kids to assume wrongful views based on biased information.
Kids of all ages need to be given information that presents a cohesive view of the world. Most kids under the age of 10 can see both sides without getting confused. It's not hard to say that "a handful of bad people did bad things to innocent Americans. The bad guys identified themselves as "Muslims", but not every Muslim is a bad guy like them. Not everyone agrees with what these bad guys did. Killing people is wrong etc etc etc..."
Where were you when you heard about the 9/11 tragedy??
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