Chicago has most consecutive days of snowfall since records began in 1884…
Flint, Michigan breaks 95-year-old record…
Blowing snow, frigid temps pound nation…
Global Warming Round Up
January 15, 2009
The the impotence of of proofreading
Blogging
Anorak did not win an award for blogging organised by people who like to organise things.
NoseMonkey just missed out:
Blogging is just a publishing medium. To say “blogging should be like this, not like that” is a nonsense, as blogging is about whatever individual bloggers want it to be. But blogs do have a brilliant ability to foster new communities, new relationships. Done right, they can bring people together to achieve great things, positive things. Political blogs are mostly about the negative - Melanie Phillips’ more than most.
Happily, Anorak did win an Anorak - “the web’s foremost awards”. So well done us!
The Internet In The Media’s Sphere Of Deviance
1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) …
2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree…
3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.”
There is no debate. Unless you’re online…
The Scores In Gaza
1,000 dead:
One-third are children! Wow, the Israeli military is doing a fantastic job of targeting just Hamas people and avoiding casualties!
Culture Wars
Ed Driscoll on the culture war
Hosny Mubarak wins in Gaza
Hosny Mubarak. I know, I know, I am shocked too. But check this out: 1) He managed to sideline Qatar and Syria and the Iranian allies in the region, despite the huge pressure they put on him, and made Egypt the most important player in the palestinian Israeli conflict again (ironically, thanks in part to that same pressure), 2) His popularity in Egypt grew because of his position on the Ghaza offensive and the “Blame Egypt” global hysteria that followed, amazingly even amidst people who have always opposed him, and 3) He managed to get Hamas to accept the egyptian truce intiative yesterday, which is not a victory for Hamas by Israeli admission, and also ,which- if Israel agrees to- would end the conflict and makes the proposed emergency session of the arab league that Qatar wants so badly -in order to have another PR victory- purposeless.
Obama keeps kids his lives private by publishing his letters to them
Barack and Michelle Obama are worried about media intrusion into their family lif so much they’ve, er, published dad’s letter to his kids.
Harbin Dioramas
ough scenes.
The base was set up in 1939 to do research on the capabilities of the soul and human body. This researched was done on various peoples including Soviet, Korean, and British, but mostly on Chinese POW’s. Over 3000 people were executed on the site by means of: freezing, bombing, injecting, infecting, dissecting, putting them in a vacuum until they pretty much exploded, etc. In all instances, the test subjects were alive and the experiments went on until they died.
Japanese justice in North Korea
“A suspected Japanese drug smuggler departed from the DPRK after being held in custody here….Yoshiaki Sawada…who had been held in custody in the DPRK since October 2003 for attempting to smuggle drug[s]…the DPRK treated him in a humanitarian manner and leniently dealt with his case, taking his wish to go back home and health condition and so on into consideration”.
A spotter The Croydonian notes:
Five years in the Pyongyang Big House. I hate to think what a non-humanitarian manner and severity would entail.
Norman Lamont’s green shoots and other own goals
Nick Robinson on Vadera and Lamont:
Do you remember one of the most notorious quotes of the last recession? The claim in 1991 by the former Chancellor, Norman Lamont, that he was seeing “the green shoots of economic spring”.
Well, the woman who is Gordon Brown’s most important economic adviser and the Business minister has just repeated it.
Baroness Vadera said today that “I am seeing a few green shoots”. She was asked on ITV’s Lunchtime News whether she saw “green shoots” and being the consummate “backroom girl” that she is and not a frontline politician she did not spot the trap.
File under: They’re quoting Lamont!
Ricky Hatton tucks in wife’s lover
“Brock’s a big bloke, isn’t he? If you found him in bed with your girlfriend, you’d tuck him in” - Ricky Hatton.
Females Wanted To Fix My Ride
Seen in window of…
Spotter
Did Montalban quote Moby Dick on his deathbed?
RIP:
Ricardo Montalban, AKA Khan Noonien Singh, will now only be accessible on DVD in the movie room of your local SF convention and on late night television.
We want information. Did Montalban quote Moby Dick on his deathbed?
A whale on Fantasy Island?
John Calder and obscenity
John Calder is the retired owner of Calder Publishing:
Was publishing things that people found controversial your sole aim?
Not particularly. I didn’t agree with all of the authors I published. I did not agree with Trocchi’s heroin habit, for example. He advocated that the stuff was actually good for you and that everybody should take it. Heroin gives you big ideas but takes away the ability to do anything with them.
