There will not be an episode of Stilgherrian Live tonight. I’d more or less made the decision earlier anyway, because I’m short of decent sleep thanks to unrelated insomnia. But late this morning I discovered that I’m in the 2% to 10% of people who get flu-like symptoms in reaction to the Yellow Fever vaccination, starting 3 to 9 days after the injection. It has been 8 days.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2009.
“The greatest challenge to implementing social media within any organisation is the willingness for that organisation to accept the cultural change that will ultimately occur. And occur dramatically and at a rapid pace. Social media holds a mirror up to an organization from the external customers/clients/constituents that shows an authentic, and sometimes unexpected, face.” — Nick Hodge
“I’d add that that face is almost always unexpected.” — Mark Pesce (in private conversation)
Clearly I’m not going to get anything else written until I respond to The Gnome Situation. I’ve been reading the comments and mulling possible responses for days. It’s getting in the way of actual, productive work. So here we go.
No. I will not be removing Gnaomi from my desk.
Discussing an issue as important as rape through the proxy of an anthropomorphised piece of clay seems, to me, a poor tactic. Nor will I compromise the actual or perceived independence of my media output, no matter how worthy the cause.
There’ll probably be people at ActionAid who won’t like or understand that outcome, so here’s the long explanation…
Here are the web links I’ve found for 22 May 2009 to 27 May 2009, posted automatically.
- The Age of the Essay | Paul Graham: This essay dates from 2004, but it’s still valid. The essay, the kind that’s about exploring an issue, is a natural form of writing online. Plus I like his comments about disobedience and creativity.
- GLAM | Wikimedia Australia: One for your diaries! A little conference called “Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia: Finding the common ground” at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 6-7 August 2009. Hosted by Wikimedia Australia, with discussions on four themes: Education, Technology, Business, Law. To be opened by Senator Kate Lundy, Senator for the ACT.
- That 180ms is the bane of my life: Network engineer Glen Turner explains why the 180 milliseconds it takes for Internet data to cross the Pacific causes problems. “You’ve got to realise that Australia is almost unique in being a long way from the centre of gravity of its language. Broadly, almost all German-speakers live in Germany, whereas a tiny proportion of English-speakers live in Australia. That has an effect on Internet traffic. Most Internet traffic in Germany stays within Germany. Most Internet traffic in Australia goes offshore.”
- One thing PC users can do that Mac users can’t…: Crude but effective.
- Media and Brand Supremacy: Why the New Media Brand Could Be Nike | The Huffington Post: Heidi Sinclair notes that individual journalists and commentators are sometimes bigger news brands than the outlets they work for. There’s plenty here which meshes with my complains that some folks don’t separate the content (“news”) from the container (“newspapers”).
- texts from last night: A scarily funny collection of people’s (allegedly) drunken text messages. Don’t click through unless you’ve got plenty of time to spare.
- Death in Birth – Where Life’s Start Is a Deadly Risk | NYTimes.com: The first of three articles on efforts to lower the death rate in Tanzania. Excellent timing, given Project TOTO. Challenging to read, however
- The Angelina Factor | Bitchy Jones’ Diary: A ranty article which, in language which may be confronting for some, explores the social and psycho-sexual issues around the idea that Angelina Jolie is universally sexually attractive. Just for the record, I do not find her the least bit attractive.
- Rethinking the Global Money Supply: Scientific American: China has proposed that the world move to a more symmetrical monetary system, in which nations peg their currencies to a representative basket of others rather than to the US dollar alone. The article includes a little history, too.
- “We did not know that child abuse was a crime,”says retired Catholic archbishop | the freethinker: The retired Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert G Weakland, says “We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature… [I] Accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’.” WTF?
- Comedy Thrives in Times of Despair | Spiegel Online: Monty Python’s Michael Palin on what the financial crisis is a boon for comics, and the perils of political correctness.
- Hello Africa | Vimeo: A 42-minute documentary about mobile phone culture in Africa.
- Shell On Trial | newmatilda.com: Next week, Shell will appear before a US federal court on charges of torture, extra-judicial killing and crimes against humanity for incidents which took place in the Niger Delta. Will it be the first multinational found guilty of human rights abuses?
- Genital warts take Shoaib out of Twenty20 World Cup | ABC News: There was a time when someone’s medical history was considered private, even if they played sports professionally. Personally, I reckon the specific of Shoaib’s medical problem are none of anyone else’s business.
- PlugComputer Community: The developer community for Marvell’s Plug Computer.
- Plugging In $40 Computers | NYTimes.com: Marvell Technology Group has created a “plug computer”. A tiny plastic box you plug into an electric outlet. No display, but Gigabit Ethernet and a USB. Inside is a 1.2GHz processor running Linux, 512MB RAM and 512MB Flash memory. US$99 today, probably under US$40 in two years.
- Misguided middle-class moaners | BusinessDay: Ross Gittins explodes a few myths about Australia, class, taxation and social welfare.
Tanzania’s climate seems to be shifting dramatically. Reporting from a World Meteorological Organisation meeting, attended by meteorologists and climatologists representing 187 countries, freelance journalist Amanda Gearing writes in Crikey today:
More rainfall seasons have been failing since the 1980s, severely affecting food supplies of people who are mostly subsistence farmers on small farms.
“If (the short rains) fail it means their survival is threatened and this becomes worse when the second rain fails because it means the whole year is a total failure and we’ve had the government intervening more often to give food assistance to the people,” Tanzanian principal agro-meteorologist Deusdedit Kashasha said. “They produce on small farms which may not be enough for a year in a good season so if they don’t even have that small amount produced it becomes pretty dire.”
Australians are meant to know about drought. We’ll see soon enough, I guess.
[Update 26 May 2008: Quite a few commenters have decided to tear this article apart. Some are "the usual suspects", sure, but others...]
There have been objections to the presence in my video diary of Gnaomi the Gnome.
Gnaomi is topless and, it is alleged, this is symbolic of the degradation of women — inappropriate given what ActionAid stands for.
I will consider my response and post it in due course. However you may wish to join the fascinating discussion, as opinions differ.
Please post your comments over on the original thread so everything’s in the one place.
[Update 28 May 2008: I have now responded, in a post called Look, about that damn topless gnome… Do feel free to continue the conversation.]
The estimable Possum Comitatus has asked this very question over at Crikey Blogs.
I’ve already added my two bits, mostly referring back to my post Why The Greens won’t win Marrickville from 2007.
I’ll be talking about Project TOTO with ActionAid Australia CEO Archie Law on tonight’s Stilgherrian Live from 9.30pm Sydney time.
You have less than three hours to nominate someone or something for “Cnut of the Week”. Sorry ’bout the late notice, but I’ve only just decided that I’m well enough to do Stilgherrian Live tonight.
We’re looking for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change. It has to be something in the news in the last week, and you have to explain yourself. Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them.
Everyone who nominates and leaves a valid email address goes into the draw for a free t-shirt of their choice from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing.
Nominations for “Cnut of the Week” are open until 8.30pm Sydney time, and you must nominate at the website for it to count. And also, when we draw the t-shirt winner, you must be watching the program and email us the code word within 5 minutes of your name being announced, otherwise we’ll pick someone else.
(Of course, neither they nor us are as lame and unethical as to share your email address with anyone else. I for one have site policies about this sort of thing, and so do they.)
At 8.30pm you should be watching Nick Hodge‘s program @NickHodge with special guest Mark Pesce before Stilgherrian Live starts at 9.30pm.
Who do you nominate, and why?
Yesterday I was given a, erm, flowchart for diarrhoea, if you’ll excuse the phrase. I’d never realised that diarrhoea needed an instruction manual.
I was also given my vaccinations, as foreshadowed. And it’s all on video, to be published later.
Speaking of video, my diary entry is rather subdued today. Yes, vaccinations do make one feel crap. But I manage to talk about diarrhoea, and about how the online conversation about this project is already taking on a life of it own.
I’ll get that video online as soon as Viddler stops spitting the dummy.
ActionAid face an interesting challenge in taking on this project.
Their message is no longer being delivered through what the estimable Bronwyn Clune calls control media or what I usually call industrial-age media. They’re now participants in a social media conversation. Everyone in that conversation is a free agent, capable of saying what they wish — including myself.
ActionAid will have to overcome the fear of losing control.
Of course, as I explained in The Importance of Authenticity, they’ve never had control over what other people might say. It’s just that now all those ephemeral conversations are visible to everyone on the Internet. It’ll be interesting to see how a traditionally-structured organisation like ActionAid handles this new environment.
ABC The Drum
Crikey
CSO Online
Delicious
Dopplr
Flickr
LinkedIn
newmatilda.com
Patch Monday
Posterous
Qik
Stilgherrian Live (Ustream)
Technology Spectator
Twitter
Viddler
Day 3, and I’ve been subdued
21 May 2009 in Project TOTO by Stilgherrian | 4 comments
As mentioned in my previous post, I’m having a slow day thanks to the side effects of yesterday’s batch of vaccinations. Nevertheless, here’s a video, recorded around 7.15am.
(If the video isn’t working, try over at Viddler.)
A video with Gnaomi and a cat? What a bonus!