When waking this morning I turned on the radio to my favourite station, the ABC’s NewsRadio. The first two news reports I heard were about a small riot in a prison in Tunis and a Person getting sick on a cruise ship needing to be helicoptered to Tasmania.

Why these news reports? It is like they pick completely random events to report on. We hear no news reports about Tunis at any other time, and the events on cruise ships are not constant reporting items. But of course we know why these are reported – Fires! Prison riots! Medical Emergencies! Plane Crashes! Murder!

The “news” as we know it, is almost the opposite, not News but rather a random collection of factoids.

I can only endorse the recent proposal by Chris Dillow in the UK:

The BBC is “incredibly stupid” to devote so much resources to news-gathering. It should instead close down its radio and TV news operations for the UK, confining news to its website. I say this for six reasons:

1. TV especially is not the right medium for news. Stories are rarely illuminated by egomaniacs waving their arms. News is better suited to the web, which has the virtues of immediacy and flexibility; if pictures or sounds improve a story, the web can carry them, and if not, it can bin them. The web also better allows reporters to explain what’s going on, as Mark Easton’s and Robert Peston’s blogs demonstrate.

2. Reducing expensive news-gathering would release resources for better programming. News could be replaced by quality documentaries; an understanding of the Israeli-Gaza conflict would surely be better promoted by historical documentaries than necessarily partial reports of who’s lobbing bombs at whom.

For Australia this could be a useful proposal, the ABC could close down its large and expensive news operations, stop reporting on prison riots in Tunis and spend the money on useful and meaningful programming for Australia.

The Duchess came out last year and the plot of the movie seemed to be about some young lady in the 18th century who wears nice frocks and marries some member of the landed gentry and gets upset because she is meant to have babies and he is in charge.

A female friend found all this quite moving, and I must admit I found, not so much the movie itself (which I have no intention of seeing), but rather the reaction to it a bit annoying.

I couldn’t really pin down my basis of my feelings until I saw an article in the Washington Post: Michael Dirda on ‘Mrs. Woolf and the Servants’. A room of one’s own — and someone to clean it. The book examines the relationship between Virginia Woolfe and her servant. Yes she had a number of female servants. Woolfe was a feminist for herself but happy to receive servitude from her fellow women.

!8th century society was established on class based oppression. The life of some frocked minor royal was irrelevant in that system of oppression. In fact she was far, far better off than most; due to her wealth. If she really cared about oppression she would have been campaigning for the working class poor and not for herself on minor issue (gee, her husband had a mistress, how terrible for her, as she sits in her silk gown eating strawberries).

He may not be long as the Doctor, but at least he has a sense of humour.

Album: Radio Swan is Down by Laura.

I had this album floating around for a while before listening to it and I have found it quite enjoyable, it reminds me of the shoegazing music of the early nineties.

Interestingly enough, the band is Melbourne based, which I didn’t realise when listening to them (which may explain why there were not a lot of clips on youtube). Anyway, try this on for size:

Pharyngula is a science blog by PZ Myers, and he does not take much liking to the suggestion that Alzheimer’s is caused by extraterrestrials.

I can see why a scientist would not be a great fan of the article:

Dr. Salla specifically documents Manipulative Extraterrestrials that use mind control weapons technologies, that interfere with human cognitive functions. Could Alzheimer’s be a side effect of an alleged interference in human cognitive functions?

…Dr. Salla, Dr. Lash, and other learned researchers suggest that such human conditions as Alzheimer’s and Dementia may be appreciated by becoming aware of Manipulative Extraterrestrial interference against human free will.

…The Bible itself in pre-translated forms, as presented by Biblical scholars, actually contains specific warnings against these apparent Manipulative Extraterrestrials, who have apparently sought to interfere in human cognitive/neurological processes.

It would appear that aliens are “Archons” are manipulating our minds, causing diseases and we were warned in the bible before the aliens manipulated our minds to remove the references in later bibles.

Where are these ideas coming from? Searching on the name Dr John Singh turns up another interesting article, also on the website of “The Canadian” this one entitled Totalitarianism as a Manipulative Extraterrestrial Ruse:

…research on the Gnostics, suggests that Manipulative Extraterrestrials called “archons” as “trojan horses”, seek to infiltrate human institutions. David Icke’s testimony inspires consideration on whether signs of activity, that is voided on basic human decency do not suggest the work of an alien intruder, operating in a mimicked human form, using the simple technology of virtual reality…Adolf Hitler, another dictator that ruled over Nazi Germany, in the same era of Joseph Stalin, has been documented as acting as an operative of Manipulative Extraterrestrials, in the perpetration of Crimes Against Humanity, which include the Holocaust. Adolf Hilter has been historically documented as being a member of the UFO oriented Thule society, before his rise to power.

The David Icke reference is an interesting one, but for the moment continuing with the current path the presentation of these articles on a seemingly mainstream paper’s website does seem a bit funny. Admittedly I haven’t heard of it, but I have heard of the Australian, and this seems comparable? Looking at the front page, the first article is about Obama, uh oh….

Hitler became infamous for talking “hope” and peace through “non-aggression packs”, as he prepared for the violence of invasion and “Blitzkrieg” (lightening war).

“Hitler? Are you kidding me?” you might ask. But, who in Germany during the 1930’s in a time of sought democratic renewal, would have predicted the that Germany would start a World War, under a dictatorial government, that would seek to use concentration camps? “Concentration camps? We don’t have those.” Well, that’s not what the evidence suggests, according to investigative journalists that notably include Alex Jones. Mr. Jones and others allege such camps are ready and waiting to accept “designated occupants”

I should note that the article is also written by Dr John Singh. I suddenly realise we are in woo-woo territory. When you scroll down the articles, an awful lot of them seem to involve extraterrestrials:

Manipulative extraterrestrials and mind control

Capitalism: An alien ideology from who were as human being [sic]

Hurricanes and the Bermuda Triangle

Ethical Extraterrestrials and the maturation of the galactic culture

Florida: UFO’s, extraterrestials and the parachutist

(I would also note a number of articles about transgender issues. Go figure).

So we are talking about a UFO website with links to Gnosticism and thus to broader Conspiracy Theory issues. Which provides the link to David Icke, who, on googling, turns out to be a leading proponent of conspiracy theories. From his wikipedia article:

At the heart of Icke’s theories is the view that the world is ruled by a secret group referred to as the “Global Elite” or “Illuminati,” which he has linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while not denying that these are an anti-semitic hoax. In 1999, he published The Biggest Secret, in which he wrote that the Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids known as the Babylonian Brotherhood, and that many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

This is great, you want your conspiracy theories Big and Beautiful. The Jews running the world was a bit simple, and the ET’s going around re-writting the bible and giving us all headaches is not really up there. But George Bush and the Queen being secret reptilian humanoids, now that is a conspiracy theory you can love. We are in Dr who territory with that one.

I always kind of knew these theories were out there, but to see them all out there so blatantly makes you pause. Kind of like running bare foot into bindies in the grass and having to back out very slowly. In this particular case there is also a big turd with the bindies:

David Icke is coming to Melbourne in April 2009! Truth Movement Australia is putting on an event- you can book tickets now!

I once considered buying a Thomas Friedman book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”, at one point when I was interested in reading more on globalisation and trade. It had just come out and I did look at it a few times in the book store, but it just struck me as well, a little unserious.

Matt Taibbi reviews Thomas Friedman’s new book:

Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.
Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:
The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”
First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.
Even better was this gem from one of Friedman’s latest columns: “The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?” There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the “title” of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he’s a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel? Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: “It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor’s been drinking rubbing alcohol!”

Read the whole thing, but you should start with his review of Friedman’s previous book.

Hat tip to Lawyers Guns and Money

You often read about how people change there live after having some form of near death experience, or life threatening event. You could imagine the following individual moving th Cuba to live on the beach the rest of his life.

Some things never change…

I was just listening to the BBC program Thinking Allowed which this week was about the history of “gangs”.

The two main gangs discussed are the Scuttlers – youth gangs around Manchester in the late nineteenth century – and the Hooligans – street gangs around London at the same time.

A contemporary report blames the violence of these youth gangs on the corrupting nature of the Theatre, which showed cheap crowd pleasing plays of murder and mayhem.

Its over a hundred years later, and its now TV and gangsta rap, but the old traditions still live on.