'Is Nana Mouskouri not in town?'

BBC prefers showbiz over substance

This week I turned on the BBC News and watched one item where the full 10-person shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year was read out. Only a few days earlier a "story" about the first £1m item on the Antiques Roadshow was the third item on the BBC News. Yesterday BBC News reported that Graham Norton was taking over from Terry Wogan as host of the Eurovision Song Contest. BBC News reports that BBC staffer replaces BBC staffer on BBC show. There's a media studies module in there somewhere.

Ban Christmas? Been there, done that.

Christmas came late to Scotland

Christmas itself was until recent times a purely Religious festival and New Year was and still is the main holiday for Scots. Christmas was not traditionally celebrated in Scotland because it was banned for nearly 400 years until the 1950's. Hogmanay was the real traditional celebration. The reason Christmas was not celebrated until recently go back to the time of John Knox in the 1580's as it was seen to be papist in origin - the ban was strictly enforced in law.

Until recently, Christmas was fairly low key. It wasn't even a public holiday until 1958. Up till then, people worked normally on Christmas day, although the children did get presents. Therefore the Christmas 'traditions' in Scotland are pretty much the same modern US version. If you wanted to have a real traditional Scottish Christmas, you should go into work on Christmas day! In 1997/98 and 2001/2002 there were strikes at Scottish banks because the bank staff were getting English holidays rather than the Scottish ones which have more time off at New Year.

Pogroms

United Jerusalem

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn´t a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.

Via See also Jeremiah Haber

Update:
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday lashed out at settlers in Hebron who attacked Palestinians and their property in recent days, joining other Israeli figures in branding the attacks a "progrom."

sunday papers 7th December 2008

Whoops! #857

Can't resist linking to this March 14th piece from Beatrix Campbell (the left's answer to Melanie Phillips)

Who do we blame?

Karen Matthews has acted appropriately throughout: she was waiting for Shannon at home; she contacted the police as soon as she had exhausted all the obvious locations. And yet, our eye is drawn to her poverty, numbers of partners, cans of lager going into her household. Everything about Ms Matthews' life has been up for scrutiny.

There has been talk of domestic violence. I can think of several high-profile "human interest" tragedies in which the domestic violence endured by a middle-class woman has been successfully screened from public knowledge.

Karen Matthews has been subjected to a Today programme interrogation that appeared to position the mother as the perpetrator: Sarah Montague asked her seven times about her lifestyle. Her patronising preoccupation was how many men there have been in her life, not her judgment about them. Has any other, apparently blameless mother been so sweetly assailed?

Saturday Papers 6th December 2008

When the US sneezes...

U.S. job losses worst since 1974 as downturn deepens

U.S. employers axed payrolls by 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years and far more than expected, government data on Friday showed, as the year-old recession hammered every corner of the U.S. economy.

U.S. stock markets opened lower, oil prices and the dollar weakened and U.S. government bond prices rallied as the data showed the U.S. downturn was deepening.

"You can't get much uglier than this. The economy has just collapsed, and has gone into a free fall," said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York.

Health 2.0

Patients as Partners

Medicine has always been a top-down affair. Doctors, drug companies, regulators, and researchers are the expert gate-keepers, telling patients what they need to know. Even their own medical records are locked away to protect their privacy. So what would happen if critically ill patients joined together, obtained their personal information, and made it public?

Just such a real-world experiment is under way at a Web-based social network started by the company PatientsLikeMe. The two-year-old venture has already signed up 23,000 participants in five chronic-illness categories—amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's disease, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and mood disorders.

George Carlin: The End

Nine days before his death, George Carlin spoke to Psychology Today. Sadly, the two-hour interview would be his last.

George Carlin's Finale

On his modus operandi.

Do I try to make audiences think? No, that would be the kiss of death. But what I want them to know is that I'm thinking. It's part of that showoff and dropout syndrome. I need toshow them I've brought myself to a cleverer, smarter spot than theyhave. In doing so, I'm saying, "Can't you see this? Can't you see?"

On the joy of performing.

You get 2,500 people acting as a single organism. The audience is a single organism and it's you and it. To have that feeling of mastery up there —it's an assertion of power. "Here I am, I have the microphone, you came here for this express purpose." There's nothing like it.

Via GK

The 'other' Talibans

Anand Gopal, Making Sense of the Taliban

Who exactly are the Afghan insurgents? Every suicide attack and kidnapping is usually attributed to "the Taliban." In reality, however, the insurgency is far from monolithic. There are the shadowy, kohl-eyed mullahs and head-bobbing religious students, of course, but there are also erudite university students, poor, illiterate farmers, and veteran anti-Soviet commanders.

The movement is a mélange of nationalists, Islamists, and bandits that fall uneasily into three or four main factions. The factions themselves are made up of competing commanders with differing ideologies and strategies, who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners.

Anand Gopal's website: Global Dispatches

So that's where my pen went...

Radiologists uncover and label a new teen affliction

Researchers evaluating a new technique for locating and removing objects accidentally embedded in the body say they may have uncovered a new form of self-mutilating behavior in which teenagers intentionally insert objects into their flesh.

Personnel at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, report extracting 52 foreign objects that 10 teenage girls deliberately embedded in their arms, hands, feet, ankles and necks over the last three years, including needles, staples, wood, stone, glass, pencil lead and a crayon.

One patient had inserted 11 objects, including an unfolded metal paper clip more than 6 inches long.

Bombs away!

Cluster Bomb Treaty: Signing Begins to Bring Ban on Production

Governments from around the world today began signing an international convention banning the production of cluster bombs - unexploded canisters that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians and remain scattered dozen of countries.

At the Oslo signing ceremony, Norway, which has led the efforts to ban cluster munitions, was the first country to sign. It was followed by Laos - where cluster bombs dropped by US planes more than 30 years ago are still killing civilians, and Lebanon, another country affected by the weapons.

By the end of tomorrow, around 100 of the United Nations' 192 members will have signed up. Once 30 countries have ratified the convention, it will become part of international humanitarian law.

There will, however, be a number of notable absentees, including the US, China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel.