Word-whore. I write 'em. I talk 'em. Information, politics, media, and the cybers. I drink. I use bad words. All publication is a political act. All communication is propaganda. All art is pornography. All business is personal. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
The new ActionAid Australia website went live some time overnight. So, in this Brave New World of the Internet, that’s what makes the change from Austcare official, eh?
As part of Project TOTO we’ll be inserting a blog or blogs in there somewhere. That’s the next conversation — or at least one of them. How do we include the voices of our Tanzanian friends in there as well as the Australians?
There’s lots of other things to consider too, and I hope to post more later today.
Oh this is shocking! It’s 10 full days since Stilgherrian Live episode 48 was broadcast, and I’ve failed to tell you that it’s online for you viewing pleasure.
Well, it is.
We had another tie for “Cnut of the Week”. Australian banks, who charged record levels of bank fees despite the global financial crisis, were in 4th place (13%). US Senators, for failing to vote for the finding needed to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison were 3rd (17%). And in equal first place (35%) were Catholic power-brokers for failing to act on allegations of child sexual abuse, and Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures, who reckons nothing good has come from the Internet, period.
Congratulations to Sean the Blogonaut, who won a t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing — and a big raspberry to Sheila who would’ve won if she were watching the program when her name was drawn from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.
The program also included an interview with ActionAid Australia CEO Archie Law about our forthcoming Project TOTO.
I’m hoping that Stilgherrian Live will return at 9.30pm Thursday night, though that’ll depend on how hectic things get.
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.
“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…
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.]