Hell in a handcart
Computer games, diddies and the breakdown of society
This morning’s episode of Radio Scotland’s Morning Extra was about videogame violence and GTA IV (yep, I was the one who called in at the end to call irresponsible parents “diddies”, heh). I know phone-ins don’t exactly attract rocket scientists - I mean, they let me on air - but even by the usual standards of jaw-dropping nonsense I was gobsmacked by one caller. He thinks violent videogames are bad. He, er, lets his eight-year-old play 18-certificate video games for hours on end. He doesn’t approve of this.
WTF?
*bangs head on desk*
All this scratching is making me itch
Many years ago, I was driving a Transit (badly) through St John’s Wood in London and misjudged the width of the van, knocking out the taillights of a parked car. I stopped and left a note so the owner could get in touch with a bill (he/she didn’t, which surprised me). A few years after that, I was driving my mum’s car through an exceptionally narrow street and scraped someone’s bumper. I stopped, left a note, and paid for the repairs to the other car - which I regretted, as judging by the bill the owner replaced the standard bumper on his Ford Fiesta with one made of gold, rubies and diamonds. Despite that, I’d do the same thing again. To me, it’s obvious: you smash something belonging to somebody else, you pay to make it good.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point in the last week or so somebody has scored deep lines along one side of my car while I’ve been parked in Tesco (I know it was Tesco - I’m a parent, I don’t go anywhere else). The car’s worth approximately 5p; the damage would cost several hundred quid to repair (it’s a wing, two doors and a rear panel). And it’s not the sort of damage you can do without noticing. So some bugger has scraped the shite out of my car, known full well what they’ve done, and just buggered off.
I think I’ve mentioned this before: one of my neighbours takes a note of the registrations of cars parked next to him in supermarkets. I used to think it was a stupid idea, but now I’m not so sure - because if I’d taken a note of the cars parked next to me, I could find them in future and set them on fire.
Keystone cops prevent perfectly legal photography
Security goons, store-clerks and police officers detained Flickr user “i didn’t mean to go to Stoke” for taking photos in the outdoor, pedestrianized area of Middlesbrough, UK
Meanwhile in London, the PCSO (aka Keystone Cops or “not cops at all”) try to stop someone filming (video link).
There are places you can’t legally photograph or film without permission - privately owned property, such as shopping malls, airports and train stations - but shooting in the street is perfectly legal.
(Thanks to David for the links)
My eyes! My eyes!
The Daily Mail website has published a photo of Gillian “Terrahawk” McKeith in a PVC catsuit.
Aren’t there laws about that kind of thing?
/pours domestos into eyes
iPod porn and news that isn’t news
An interesting article (Salon.com, via Fark) on a rash of iPod-porn stories that appeared on US TV. Now, iPod/iPhone porn does exist - the porn industry isn’t exactly slow to embrace new technology - but what’s interesting is the content of the news reports.
Nine stations aired Raskin’s warnings. Her segments had the look and feel of ordinary local news: Super-coifed anchors offer alarmist assessments of everyday objects, story at 11.
But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod, Raskin used her time on TV to push “safer” holiday tech gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source. These weren’t unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to pimp their products during news appearances
Sounds like a pretty lucrative line of work. Maybe I should ask for cash to plug stuff on radio.
Robin Raskin, the iPorn-wary tech journalist, told me that between 2002 and 2006, she appeared in almost three dozen TV marketing opportunities — roughly eight a year, each of which was sponsored by three to five companies and was built around a holiday or news event.
It’s more fuel for the Flat Earth News argument that cost-cutting in media means that an increasing amount of “news” isn’t anything of the sort.
A great book, but the people who need it won’t read it
I mentioned this briefly before, but I’d like to mention it again: Suckers, by Rose Shapiro, is a wonderful demolition job of the alternative medicine racket.
Like all polemics, it sometimes crushes things that perhaps don’t deserve to be crushed - so it’s very hard on acupuncture, despite some indications that it can be useful in some circumstances - but the overwhelming majority of Shapiro’s targets deserve, and get, both barrels.
Here’s a short extract:
One American alternative practitioner and supplement salesman, Gary Null, tells us that “a solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programmes, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory . . . Triumph over cancer would dry up contributions to self-perpetuating charities . . . It would mortally threaten the clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive treatments in which so much money is invested . . . The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs”.
An imaginary researcher says: “Every year we must show you results. After all, you won’t support us if you don’t think we’re getting something done. On the other hand, we can’t be too successful — and we certainly can’t afford to come up with a cure. After all, if we did that, how could we come back to you next year and get more of your money?”
When in 2003 the US Food and Drugs Administration stopped Alpha Omega Labs selling Cansema, a worthless cancer cure, one supporter suggested that this was “no doubt because their products worked. The FDA has a long history of doing this to developers of successful cancer remedies”.
Alternative cancer therapists say their plant-based “cures” are overlooked by pharmaceutical companies because naturally occurring substances — rhubarb, for example — can’t be patented, precluding profit for “Big Pharma”. But David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology at University College London, told me: “The kudos that a pharmaceutical company would get for finding an effective cure would be so enormous that it’s hard to imagine that they would decline to produce it, even if it didn’t make a lot of money. In any case, even when a plant-based substance (like Taxol, from yew) provides the initial lead, it is common for synthetic derivatives to be made that have better properties than the original.”
The book’s particularly good at characterising the typical alt-med consumer - well-educated, reasonably well-off women - and detailing the ways in which the alt-med industry targets them so effectively. Some bits had me jumping around in fury, and others were just desperately sad. Well worth reading.
Return of the son of ID cards
An excellent post by Mr Eugenides:
If you want to know what’s really happening… you watch the hands.
So never mind the cards; it’s all about the database. It’s always been all about the database. Don’t watch the cards. Watch the hands.
There’s something wrong with this swan story
About 200 years ago, I blogged about a Sun story claiming that asylum seekers were coming over here and eating our swans. The short version? It was bollocks. But it’s back! Back! BACK!
Immigrant was cooking swan surrounded by the bodies of slaughtered birds
Blimey.
In a squalid makeshift campsite by a north London waterway, a man was cooking his evening meal - surrounded by the bodies of slaughtered swans.
Mr Gibson did not need to look in the pot to know what it contained: the piles of feathers and stripped carcasses were evidence enough.
And that’s not all. The man was an immigrant!
By the time he had alerted the authorities, the man - believed to be an East European immigrant - had packed up his tent and fled.
Believed by whom? The article doesn’t say, but it does point out that the park is used by, y’know, foreign types. The article also reluctantly notes that by the time the authorities got there, the actual evidence of swan-cooking had magically disappeared.
The article continues:
Several of the campsites were littered with dozens of old car batteries but it was not clear what use these were being put to.
It’s obvious: asylum seekers are coming to our parks and electrocuting our wildlife! Happens in Eastern Europe all the time. My wife went to Poland once and couldn’t sleep at night for the sounds of quacking and zapping.
Far be it for me to suggest that the article’s a load of old bollocks based entirely on hearsay, but…
The war on cheese
A report commissioned by the Food Standards Agency suggests that cigarette-style warnings on dairy products could prevent all kinds of horrible deaths. The FSA says that reports are “overblown”, but doesn’t actually rule the idea out. So it’s going to happen, then.
It’s time for a crackdown on binge drinking… doctors
I’m sure this will be all over blogland, but I’m posting it anyway because it made me laugh.
The BMA, which condemned 24-hour drinking last week and called for higher taxes on alcohol, faces accusations of hypocrisy after complaints of drunken antics at its central London headquarters.
It has emerged that while blaming everyone else for Britain’s binge-drinking culture and demanding a general sobering-up, the BMA wants to stay open for two hours longer, until 1am. Its application to extend its drinking licence has attracted allegations of antisocial behaviour by partygoers.
…residents of nearby homes have complained of the guests “frolicking” on scaffolding outside the building, “urinating” outside neighbouring properties on Tavistock Square and “causing disturbances” in the early hours.