A whole bunch of inane ramblings about stuff. I can't be more precise than that, I'm afraid.
|
|
| chocolate and vodka A whole bunch of inane ramblings about stuff. I can't be more precise than that, I'm afraid. |
|
|
Tuesday, September 02, 2003 Oops To everyone I accidentally sent over here after my 'I've moved' email, sorry! You really need to be here instead. Put it down to a long week and a shortness of braincells!! posted by Suw | 9/02/2003 01:03:00 AM Tuesday, June 03, 2003 Chocolate and Vodka permanently moves I've decided. CnV is off to Blog-City forever. Please update your links, bookmarks, whatever, with my new address: http://chocnvodka.blog-city.com/. The archives will remain here until, well, until blog*spot kicks me off. ;) posted by Suw | 6/03/2003 02:23:00 PM Monday, June 02, 2003 still can't decide... I don't seem able to fix that Keanu post, which is really bugging me now. Still not sure if I am going to move everything over to Blog-City or stay with Blogger. I guess it depends on whether I can move my archives over or not. I have bigger things to worry about right now, though, but somehow this blog has become important. And I don't like having this knackered post ruining my archives. Ah well, we'll see. I'll just carry on cross-posting for a while and see what gives. posted by Suw | 6/02/2003 04:17:00 PM The Beagle's away, and the Celts are still everywhere, maybe At long last, Mars Express and the Beagle II lander are safely away! Launched today in a Russian Soyuz rocket, it’s sending back telemetry and all systems are functioning normally. We now have only six months to wait before it reaches Mars, when we will find out if the ESA knows the difference between yards and meters. Call me biased, but my money is on a yes to that. NASA, of course, with all its super-duper fandangally pretty American technology and super-duper ohlookdidwereallywasteallthatmoney budget, is also launching Mars probes this month, although I’m not sure whether JPL have yet managed to learn how to count to ten with out taking off their shoes and socks. For all their attempts to strut their stuff as the world’s leading space exploration agency, NASA couldn’t tie their own shoelaces without instructions and some nice big diagrams. They haemorrhage money through inefficiency and incompetence, and their shiny mantra of "better faster cheaper" has ended up costing them dearly, and not just in terms of cold hard cash. The loss of both the Mars Orbiter and Polar Lander missions were serious PR disasters in themselves, but the cost in human, PR and scientific terms of the Columbia catastrophe is uncountable. On the other hand, the ESA have been seen as also-rans for some time now, but with the launch of Mars Express and Beagle II, they prove that you can do real science in space on a tight budget, you just have to be a bit inventive about it. I really hope that we get to hear the obvious line "The Beagle Has Landed" in six months time, and that we get some high quality data back from the red planet. Not only would it be a poke in NASA’s eye, but it would also give a huge boost to European space exploration. After all, there’s no rule that says we can’t do it a lot better, cheaper and faster than NASA. Meantime, though, the damn Celts are everywhere. Maybe. The NY Times (registration required) and the International Herald Tribune both run stories on research that was done last year into the ancestry of a selection of British males which discovered that actually, the English aren’t all Anglo-Saxons, but often Celts. This implies, they say, that the Anglo-Saxons didn’t drive out the Celts, but married them instead. The BBC commissioned the research for their tediously dull series Blood of the Vikings, which was about as watchable as a wallful of Dulux’s newest colour. The data has now been published in Current Biology, a medical rag where I used to work, hence, I think, people jumping on what is actually quite an old story. (Well, they’re not jumping on the story because I used to work for Current Biology. Obviously. Although as an aside I would like to say that that particular job, as Editorial Assistant, does remain my longest ever job, and I left there in May 96. I was there nearly two years and jumped shortly before I was pushed, having become office photocopier queen and thus realising that there was, therefore, nothing left to achieve.) It’s also an old story that’s contradicted by this piece on the BBC Wales website which discusses research showing that the Welsh are genetically different to the English. This suggests that the idea that the Anglo-Saxons pushed the Celts out of England into the Celtic fringe of Wales, Ireland and Scotland is actually more accurate than the theory that everyone got on spiffingly, shagged and made babies. Me, I know the Welsh are different. They don’t have the laundry gene for one. posted by Suw | 6/02/2003 04:11:00 PM Sunday, June 01, 2003 my other blog Until I can fix the godawful mess I've made of this blog, you can read entries at my other blog. posted by Suw | 6/01/2003 02:30:00 PM blerugh i've killed it. posted by Suw | 6/01/2003 02:09:00 PM More Matrix stuff... I've been having an ongoing discussion as regards Mr Reeves over on Sweet Addy. There is one faction that believes that Mr Reeves is not quite the talentless jerk that some people would like to paint him as. There is another faction which believes that Mr Reeves is so thick that he coudn't find his own arse without directions. Me, well I believe that there are some actors, like some bands, that it's fashionable to hate. Maybe they're not the best at what they do. Maybe they've made some bad calls in the past. Maybe some things they've done haven't turned out too well. But somehow this gets translated into a real hatred, and I don't understand that. It's one thing not to like a certain film or certain music, but somehow this dislike of the end product gets translated into a real hatred of the purveyor. "I really fucking hate Grandaddy" or "I really fucking hate Keanu Reeves". Calm down guys, there are more worthy people to hate in this world. Like Bush. Anyway, how can anyone hate Keanu? I mean, really? Look at those big brown eyes and tell me he's not the cutest thing? Failing that, read this and tell me you don't have at the very least some grudging respect for the man. posted by Suw | 6/01/2003 01:38:00 PM Saturday, May 31, 2003 Two headed tortoise In South Africa recently was born a two headed tortoise. It seems that the tortoise is doing well, eating with both of its mouths and generally acting tortoisy. Unfortunately, one head seems to operate the front pair of legs, and the other head operates the back pair, which makes for a grand total of going nowhere when the tortoise is panicked. Now, the BBC piece left it there, but don’t you think this begs a few questions? Like, has the tortoise’s nervous system been split in two with one head getting the front half and the other head getting the back half? Or have the heads simply apportioned responsibility for different sectors of one nervous system? Something like either of those two scenarios has to have happened because if you had both heads controlling the same part of the body then you could end up with some bizarre mental fracas going on with both heads trying to get the same leg to do different things, for example. And what happens if one head wants to go in a different direction to the other head? Or if they argue? I don’t know much about the physiology of two-headed tortoises, but I find myself strangely curious. posted by Suw | 5/31/2003 12:46:00 PM Friday, May 30, 2003 Reality bytes Salam Pax has been getting some shit lately, from people who don’t believe he’s real. The rumours are that Salam’s some sort of agent or spy, or maybe not even in Baghdad at all but quietly forging his blog from some comfy pad in Kansas. Then there’s a bevy of other pieces quietly affirming that Salam Pax is real, is in Baghdad and isn’t an agent or spy but a simply architect with attitude. Chief amongst the believers is Rory McCarthy at The Guardian, whom one would imagine probably has the inside story considering that he’s managed to persuade Salam to write a column. Somehow, I doubt very much that the Guardian would be publicising their newest, shiniest recruit if he was in fact some bird called Dorothy from Kansas. The thing is, I don’t know jack shit about Iraq really. I know that I didn’t like the war, and that I wasn’t (and am not) happy about the way that the government lied to us, or the way that Blair has allowed himself (and thus the UK) to become the lapdog of the maniac Bush. I know that I was astounded (in a good way) by the number of people who protested against the war, and I know that this whole affair has been a wake-up call for the apathetic who have suddenly discovered that they are not willing to sit by and watch whilst atrocities are committed in our name. I also know that I do not trust the media to tell me the truth, nor the government. Both have lied and been caught lying throughout the entire episode, and I have no doubt that both will continue to lie for as long as they can get away with it. Salam Pax is a lone voice in all this. One man telling his story, explaining his reality as he sees it, and he sees it in a way that no one else (online) does. His intelligent prose goes a long way towards showing us what life is really like in Iraq right now, for him, his colleagues and his family. Salam also goes a long way to undoing some of the propaganda that’s been forced down our throats (and which some netizens seem only to eager to swallow with pride and patriotic fervour) by the American and British governments and media. See, I know I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that the authorities want us to view Iraqis either as The Enemy, to be exterminated and shown no mercy, or the Poor Pitiful Peasants incapable of doing anything for themselves and therefore reliant on ‘our’ kindness and generosity. Oh, look at us, the redeeming forces here to save your souls from the foul evil of your own culture and country. Salam gives the lie to this - he is intelligent, articulate, well informed and savvy. He presents his viewpoints in an articulate and engaging way and we get to see through his eyes a human story. It’s just one of the uncountable stories in Iraq right now, but it’s the only one we’ve got. And this is, I think, why certain individuals have an issue with Salam. He’s smarter than they are, more intelligent, more articulate. In fact, that’s what makes them so suspicious - how could an Iraqi be so intelligent and speak such good English? How could he possibly know so much about American culture? Er, hello? Wake up! Smell the roses! American culture gets everywhere, like creeping slime mould. I’d be more shocked if the obviously well educated Salam didn’t know about American culture. But in all the furore over Salam, people have really lost sight of what he is doing. He’s writing a blog - a personal account of his life. He’s not there to document the war and post-war collapse of Iraq. He’s not there to uncover Saddam’s crimes and those of the Ba’athists. He’s telling us what goes on his world, what’s happening in his life, and we need to remember that in order to keep things in perspective. This is one man’s viewpoint, not some history book in the writing. A happy side effect of Salam’s blog is that he’s educating some of us as to what life is like outside of our cushy little countries, those of us open-minded enough to take in what he’s saying of course. The others he’s just pissing off, which is frankly scores some serious points with me. Anyone who pisses off narrow minded racist middle-classes elitist fat-bellied Americans is right at the top of my party invite list. So yeah, Salam, you’re welcome round mine anytime, although I can promise you that you’ll not be overly impressed at what passes for architecture round here. All this discussion about whether or not Salam is real, though, has bugged me today. Not just because I’m a Salam believer and sympathiser, but because this whole online reality thing is major food for thought in my own life right now and has been for some time. I really am fed up of people telling me that you can’t get to know people online, and that online friendships are somehow flawed. "Oh, but you never really know them," they say. "How can you tell that they are who they say they are?" Tell me something, please. Email me - my address is over there on the left… no, the other left… ( ;-) ) and it works, really. Or leave a comment. How do you know that anyone is who they say they are? I’ve been taken in by people before, people I’ve met, people that have seemed perfectly normal and reasonable and nice. Then three months down the line, or three years, whatever, they have shat upon me from a great height. On one particularly notable occasion, I employed a guy as a sales rep for a company I was running. Seemed like a charming enough guy, had a reasonable CV, couldn’t immediately see anything wrong with him at all. So we gave him the job. Things didn’t go so well, he didn’t get any sales and the company was floundering, so we ditched him, as you do. So, in a perfectly natural reaction, he harassed us by phone. He’d ring up several times a day and as soon as anyone answered the phone, he’d hang up. To start with, you don’t think anything of it, but when it keeps happening again and again and again it starts to bug you. Then it starts to worry you. Then is starts to piss you off. Then you realise that if you keep reacting to it, he’s fucking won. We did a bit of research then, and oh boy, oh boy, do I wish I’d known some of the things I found out then before I’d given the freak the job! He’d been fired from his previous job for sexually harassing the boss’s wife. He was running a dodgy business from a non-address… oh I could go on, but I won’t. The irony is that I would never have found out this stuff if it weren’t for the fact that I was now in the same boat as his previous employers. They were all rather unwilling to talk to me until they knew that I was suffering the same thing that they had. If I had rung up before giving him the job, they would not have spoken to me, because giving references now has become so dodgy in terms of slander/libel that may people simply won’t do it. So my point is this - at which point in the past were people ever always who they say they are? Why has this issue of identity been flagged up as unique to the online environment when it’s an ages old issue that’s never gone away and probably never will? On the one hand, you could say that the internet makes it easier to be someone you’re not, but on the other hand, it’s the internet that allows people to check their facts, if they can be bothered to look. The resources are out there to help you find out about someone if that’s what you want to do, and it’s infinitely easier to do precisely because of the net. I’m no expert on digging for personal information online, but even I managed to find out stuff about our ex-employee that gave me pause. I never would have located that info offline, that’s for sure. Within most of us there is an inherent instinct to trust. It’s hardwired into us, a part of our physical make-up. If you have oxytocin in your brain (which you do) then you have trust, according to the New Scientist (password required but you can get a free 7 day trial). This instinctive trust is what makes the world work - without it, you can’t be a part of any kind of social group. And that’s just as much the case online as it is offline. Ok, so you’re missing the visual clues online, but you have other clues in the way that people write, the language they use and the way they react, and with a bit of experience you do get to pick up on whether or not someone is talking shit. I’ve been online for seven years, and I’ve met a lot of people online whom I have subsequently met offline and I don’t think I’ve ever been wildly wrong about any of them. This is not to mean that I’ve not subsequently misjudged people, but on the whole the number of nutters per square inch has been pretty low. One, actually, and although he was hammer-wielding he wasn’t in my presence at the time and it was only his computer which suffered. I’ve met some pricks, obviously, via the net, but then I’ve met many more in real life. No environment, or country, has a monopoly on pricks nor is anywhere exempt from their presence. It’s just one of this irritating things in life, like the way it rains whenever you don’t have your umbrella, or the way that you wait for hours and then three buses come along at once. The internet isn’t full of axe-wielding murderers. It’s not full of liars. It’s full of people, the majority of whom are simply saying it as they see it. You may disagree with them, you may not like them, you may think that they are pricks. But that doesn’t mean that they’re all Dorothys, pulling the wool over your eyes from Kansas, and if you really think that it does, you need to see a psychologist pretty soon about your paranoia. posted by Suw | 5/30/2003 02:37:00 PM Thursday, May 29, 2003 Junior Senior Ooh, I like this. Oh yes I do. posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 02:29:00 PM Another good idea According to Journalism.co.uk: Web guru Steve Outing has urged online publications to improve their journalistic 'talent' by scouting for bloggers. I think that’s a fine idea, yes! Someone somewhere should pay me large amounts of money to talk shit for a living. I’m expert at it - been doing it all my life for fun, so why not do it for money? I always said that if only I could find someone willing to pay me to talk crap, I could make a small fortune. Sadly, though, I suspect that online publications are about as capable of picking up a good blogger as Business Link are of ever making a decision. posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 02:11:00 PM Blogwise I'm listed on Blogwise now. I've had one click and rank 4153rd. LMAO. I'd make some quip about watching my blog plummet through the ranks, but I'm not sure there's anywhere to plummet to. Anyway, Blogwise is a good idea, I think - there has to be some sort of index of blogs that does more than give you a rank and a URL. posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 01:56:00 AM Bum Forgot to set the video before I went to bed last night, so missed my interview this morning. I think maybe that was my subconscious kicking in. I'm not sure that I'm not entirely happy not knowing how stupid I sounded. posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 01:12:00 AM |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||