The Ice Planet
May 22, 2013
More unusually, the thriller is about an Islamist attack on Britain. Whatever subtleties he offers the reader, Clyde is not frightened of saying that Islamists are an enemy. You should buy this book for that reason alone because very few writers are prepared to be as blunt.
One of the strangest features of mass culture over the past decade has been the near-total break between what thriller writers write and what spies do. Since 9/11, the fight against radical Islam has consumed the time of intelligence services and anti-terrorist police forces. Yet it barely features in spy fiction. The standard plot device remains the enemy within. The Bourne films were the most successful thrillers of the 2000s, and deservedly so. But it was not al Qaeda but corrupt and unscrupulous officers in the CIA, whom Bourne had to fight. In the recent Bond films, 007 is also up against a cabal of western conspirators rather than a plausible foe.
As soon as you see a government minister, or intelligence or police chief in television drama, meanwhile, you need only set your watch and count the minutes until the hero exposes him as the cancer at the heart of society.
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at May 22, 2013 09:00 AM
May 20, 2013
Heaven high. It’s episode 135 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss all manner of things that we end up discussing anyway. Including the Conservative’s peculiar backpeddling on gay marriage, the current state of South Africa, and the new-found potency of the cold virus.
There’s some lovely chat about Ferage, and then a review of Eurovision. You can see the 2011 opening ceremony here:
We recall the majesty of Wogan’s Web, the dreariness of Doctor Who, and John’s potential new house.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 130 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
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by John Walker at May 20, 2013 01:52 PM
On the edge of Rugeley stands Amazon’s largest distribution centre in Britain. Life for the workers who trudge around the 800,000 sq ft warehouse is not as bad as it was for the men who once worked in the pits of the Staffordshire coalfield, but that is not saying much. They must carry satnavs, which direct their movements round the stacks and flash warnings from managers to stop dawdling or chatting with colleagues. Britain being the way it is, they have no job security.
Trade unionists call the Amazon shed a “slave camp”. But whatever arguments they have with Amazon’s management, one point should be beyond dispute – Rugeley is in Britain. British customers send Amazon their money. British workers package their goods and send them off in vans along roads built and maintained by the British taxpayer. If workers steal – and before they can go home or visit the canteen, they must walk through airport-style security scanners to prove they have not – Amazon will call on the taxpayer-funded police to arrest them and the taxpayer-funded criminal justice system to prosecute them. Admittedly, Amazon’s buyers who supply the stock are based in Slough rather than Rugeley. But the last time I looked Slough was in Britain too.
Carry on reading
by Nick Cohen at May 20, 2013 09:57 AM
May 18, 2013
This evening I went along to a talk, part of Bristol’s Festival Of Ideas, by geneticist Steve Jones. He’s recently published a book, The Serpent’s Promise, in which he reinterprets the Bible as a science book. It’s not as spurious as it sounds, although I’ve not read the book yet – Jones is an atheist, and was interested to investigate whether there’s any science to be found in the books, and to reinterpret the pseudo-science and historical claims it makes. Which sounds tremendous, so Laura and I went along.
The talk itself, in which Jones answered questions from a host, was a good time. It was a touch lacking in depth, a little heavy on the “buy the book in the foyer after” and a little light on the meat. But an enjoyable evening nonetheless.
One particular comment really stood out to me. It was a response to a question about whether religion made people happier, in which he explained that the data he’s seen showed that no, in fact religion fails to make people happier. Those who identify as agnostic or atheist tend to identify as happier.
And I realised a part of where this debate is going so wrong. Obviously the “Science vs Religion” discussions are far too often between those who wish to “oppose science in the name of religion” and “oppose religion in the name of science”, as if either were anything less than mad. But it’s understandable! Because the religiosity that’s presenting itself is one that absolutely should be attacked by those of a rational, scientific mind.
During Jones’ talk, it became very apparent that the version of Christianity he’s experienced, and the version that others have expressed to him, absolutely merits the dismissal and refuting it receives. A Christian doctrine that proselytises on the basis of offering “happiness” is fundamentally unrelated to the faith on which they claim to be based. Christianity sold as everything from a means to escape the pits of hell to a self-help cure for the lacklustre is a heretical misinterpretation of the most serious magnitude. This is perpetuated by both the intentionally malevolent, usually with a financial and/or power-based incentive, and the ideologically naive, people who very genuinely want to help spread something they believe to be good. This “Christianity”, the one that makes people happier, entirely merits the scorn it receives from the scientific community, and absolutely deserves to be found as lacking under any scrutiny.
It’s just, that’s not Christianity.
In fact, it’s such a warped understanding of the faith that it becomes ultimately destructive. It makes perfect sense that societies with this as their basis – and indeed so many Christian nations are – should be the most unstable, the most cruel, the least socially advanced. Because it’s a religion of self-fulfilment, of achievement over others, of intrinsic hedonism, and ultimately of selfishness. Whether the basis of your religion is to protect yourself from some non-specific eternal damnation, or to reach some sense of internal enlightenment and satisfaction, it’s narcissism, and utterly without basis in the teachings of Jesus. It by its nature is inherently “them” and “us”, insiders and outsiders, acceptable and unacceptable. It breeds inequality – it strives for it.
Christianity never offers “happiness”. Such a spurious and delusional notion would be meaningless to offer anyway. To achieve a state of fixed happiness would require the complete abandoning of any notions of sympathy, empathy or social awareness – in other words, it is to be a sociopath. To exist in such a way that the horrors affecting others no longer impact on your state of mind is to be dangerously delusional, and deeply hideous. Anything that promises you “happiness” is automatically to be deeply feared.
Christianity, in fact, promises a greater lack of this notion of happiness. When people approached Jesus and asked him what they needed to do to follow him, he invariably responded by saying, “Give up the thing that makes you happy.” This wasn’t self-flagellation, or some cult-like stripping of someone until they were dependent upon the leader. This was, simply, sacrifice. It was about taking away the meaningless trinkets that delude you into believing you are content, and facing the brutal reality of life, such that you would be finally in a position to do something about it. Jesus didn’t say, “Follow me and you’ll feel better.” He said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” That is, pick up the instrument of torture on which you will ultimately die in misery and pain, and follow me. Who’s up for following now?! This Christianity is about learning the joy of responding to suffering. It is a rejection of “happiness”, “contentment”, “wholeness”, or however else it’s sold, in favour of experiencing love as a transforming action.
So the question at the beginning of it all begins to look so farcical. Christianity is questioned as to whether it is “really succeeding” for people, by a measure of whether it makes them more happy. And is found lacking. Of course it is, although mostly for the worst reason. Mostly it’s because people who have been sold this heretical religion, this Christianity that cures your melancholy and plasters a smile upon your face, and it cannot possibly succeed. Because it’s dishonest, unrealistic, and plain grotesque. It’s a lie. Those who join in with the hope of happiness are certainly going to feel let down. Of course they’re not going to be demonstrably more “happy” than the secular.
Let alone those who respond to Christianity on the basis of what it actually offers: a stark, painful truth. To follow Jesus, to “be a Christian”, is to live a life in which you are fundamentally aware of inequality, injustice, and cruelty, such that you are in a position to respond to it. To see every human being as created and loved by God is not to see a world made of rainbow-sprouting clouds and especially bouncy bunnies. It’s to see so many of those created and loved beings living in horror, and to feel the weight of that. It’s to sacrifice to option to dismiss the poorest around you as “scum” or “scroungers”. It’s to sacrifice the ability to delude yourself into believing that the brown kids with flies on their eyes aren’t actually the same as you. It’s to sacrifice the false comfort of calling paedophiles “monsters” and dehumanising the most abhorrent amongst us. Is that going to make anyone happier? Of course not.
(I want to stress that Christianity is obviously not a necessity for someone to recognise the horrors in the world, and nor is it at all necessary to be someone who lovingly responds to it. The point is that it is required for those calling themselves Christians to see and respond, if they are to have any understanding of the faith they purport to live in.)
(I also want to stress that living with a Christian faith isn’t abject misery. It is also to live knowing the love of God, which is fairly fundamental. It’s just, if someone experiences that love, and then isn’t driven to damn well go fix the stuff that’s wrong, to have a greater perspective of just how wrong the wrong things are, then they’re not following Jesus at all.)
The question asked of Steve Jones tonight should have been, “Do you think that religion is succeeding in making Christians appropriately unhappy?” And Steve Jones should have been able to respond, “No! It isn’t! It is taught as either self-help or as a consequence of fear, and exists in the self-delusion that it is achieving anything in doing so, ignorant of all rational, scientific understanding of the human condition.”
Of course the secular scientific community thinks that Christianity is demonstrably failing in its apparently intended goals, even before they get to the impossible and unproductive discussions of attempting to disprove the unprovable. And of course such a deluded, reactionary, and ultimately ignorant religion reacts to the scientific community with fear and hate – they can barely cope with maintaining their own façade of “happiness”, let alone with these other people poking at it from the outside.
Meanwhile there is a Christianity being practised by very many that has no aspirations toward delusions of happiness, and funnily enough also isn’t driven to distraction by arguing against those discovering the wonder of the cosmos, the phenomena of genetics, the impossible joy of the atom, the mysteries of string theory, the issues of global climate change, and the extraordinary, beautiful nature of evolution.
by John Walker at May 18, 2013 12:40 AM
May 14, 2013
Review of 5 Days in May by Andrew Adonis
Cool anger drives Andrew Adonis’s first-hand account of how Labour tried to stop the Liberal Democrats handing Britain over to a reactionary and incompetent Conservative administration. As a Blairite education and transport minister and a former member of the Social Democratic party, Adonis had spent his adult life believing a “progressive coalition” could unite the centre and left of British politics.
His five days in May 2010 negotiating on Labour’s behalf disabused him of that notion and much else besides.
“Clegg wouldn’t put the Tories in power, throwing over a British Liberal tradition going back a century and a half as a progressive anti-Tory party,” he thought as the electorate returned a hung parliament. When they heard that David Cameron was making Clegg a generous offer, Gordon Brown and much of the cabinet thought the “process would turn to our favour once the Tories and Lib Dems had rehearsed the extent of their differences”.
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at May 14, 2013 08:26 AM
May 13, 2013
When you see rottenness in a system you must ask: does it come from one bad apple or does the whole barrel stink?
The rank smell emanating from the coalition is impossible to miss. At first sniff, it appears to come from the blazered figure of Iain Duncan Smith. It has taken me some time to identify its source, because appearances deceive. From his clipped hair to his polished shoes, Duncan Smith seems to be a man who has retained the values of the officer corps of the Scots Guards he once served.
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at May 13, 2013 09:58 AM
May 10, 2013
When I heard that Niall Ferguson had said that JM Keynes advocated reckless economic policies because he was gay and childless, and hence had no concern for the future, I wrote: ‘If true, this represents Ferguson’s degeneration from historian to shock jock’.
The reports were true, but I was wrong. There has been no degeneration. Ferguson has always been this crass and crassly inaccurate.
Carry on reading
by Nick Cohen at May 10, 2013 08:50 AM
May 08, 2013
Heaven high. It’s episode 134 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss whether it’s time for someone stood up for the rights of the white, hetrosexual male. But we do discuss John’s cold, and then a worrying return to cream teas. We explain why some people can’t be followed on Twitter, and then have a nice discussion about that nice boy, Justin Bieber. And John puts a hit out on Mark Kermode.
We announce plans to close down the Lake District, give away far too many personal details about ourselves, and predict our future leader, Prime Minister Wibblywob, leader of the Spoil Party. And once more we find ourselves upset by the ages of celebrities.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 130 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
Or you can listen to it right here:
by John Walker at May 08, 2013 09:47 AM
May 06, 2013
]
We flatter ourselves when we boast of mastery of the ironic style. Unlike literal-minded Germans and Americans, we are not ashamed to live behind masks and speak in riddles. On the contrary, we delight in it and damn foreigners for their insistence on saying what they mean. They lack our sophistication. The delightfully quirky British sense of humour leaves them cold.
If we were harder on ourselves, we would notice that on the reverse side of the ironic coin are the smuttiness and evasiveness that always accompany self-censorship. We would wonder how we ended up in a country where fear of causing offence or crossing a powerful or litigious interest had become so ingrained the British could no longer speak plainly or read freely.
Carry on reading
by Nick Cohen at May 06, 2013 08:16 AM
May 04, 2013
This week the guys discuss… well nothing according to Tim Cook. We also chat about iMessage’s self censorship and the iBeetle!
by britishtechnetwork at May 04, 2013 11:37 AM
May 01, 2013
A plane crashes in the Sahara. Only a reporter and an editor survive. At first they hope that rescuers will see the smoke rising from the wreckage. But the fire dies, and no one comes. They are lost and alone under a merciless sun, and start walking.
For days, they march in horrendous heat. Their water runs out. Their skin peels. Their minds reel from sunstroke. Finally, they collapse — blistered and dehydrated — at the bottom of an enormous sand dune.
“Let’s curl up here and die,” gasps the editor.
“No!” cries the reporter. “We cannot give up. Let’s climb to the top of the dune and see if there’s any hope.”
They stagger up — two steps forward, one step back — and reach the top of the dune.
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at May 01, 2013 10:50 AM
April 30, 2013
Heaven high. It’s episode 133 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss whether pensioners should donate their bus passes to charity. Instead we somnambulistically chatter about sleep, poo Braille, and periods. Then Nick begins a sizeable lecture on Bach. No, don’t be scared, it’s good. Here are the links you’ll need, if you have Spotify access. Compare this with this. And this with this. And here’s Chi-Chi Nwanoku.
We express our lifelong dismay that we never married cello players, John regales his anthropological journey into ITV, and we laugh in horror at UKIP. And then we explain in detail how everything is the fault of the immigrants, especially the one that is Nick.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 130 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
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by John Walker at April 30, 2013 09:55 AM
April 29, 2013
If you want to combat poverty, empower women. There are few uncontested arguments in social policy, but this is one of them. Give women control of their fertility and overpopulation and undereducation will fall. Give women financial independence and they will have the means to free themselves and their children from dangerous men.
Everyone accepts the proposition that, in general, mothers are more likely than fathers to spend money on children. Even the British government accepts it after a fashion. But religious bigotry, rightwing prejudice and bureaucratic convenience have made the coalition determined to forget what it already knows.
Carry on reading
by Nick Cohen at April 29, 2013 08:29 AM
April 25, 2013
I don’t normally campaign. I’m not a joiner or a natural committee man. But the state of free speech in England pushed me into despair, and three years ago I started to do what little I could for the campaign for libel reform.
Britain was not a country where the natives could debate their grievances and foreigners could come to talk of oppression in their own lands. Our politicians and judges welcomed actions from corporations at home that were clearly designed to use the crushing power of money to intimidate critics into silence, and from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, Hollywood paedophiles, Islamist fanatics and Saudi petro-billionaires. A Russian newspaper contesting Putin’s mafia state or a Scandinavian newspaper investigating the Icelandic bankers’ Ponzi scheme, would be hit with a biased law and huge costs by the London courts. Even after the death of Robert Maxwell in the early 1990s revealed that the old fraud had used the libel law to suppress criticism of his criminal business enterprises, the establishment did nothing.
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at April 25, 2013 01:40 PM
April 19, 2013
Heaven high. It’s episode 132 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss whether teachers should stop teaching their liberal views of history. Instead we talk about the latest news in the Boston bombings, as insensitively as you might expect. And even more insensitively, the funeral of Her Royal Highness Queen Margaret Thatcher.
We learn why Nick passionately believes in the healing power of beetroot, science’s early weekend, and pupils copping off with teachers. Then we conclude by deciding to enter a polygamous Swedish marriage and Nick dies.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 130 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
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Or you can listen to it right here:
by John Walker at April 19, 2013 05:27 PM
April 18, 2013
I duly filed a piece for the Observer saying that I and many other who opposed Mrs Thatcher felt uneasy about celebrating her death. Her supporters had a good case when they said that the protests were simultaneously childish and grotesque. But as soon as they censored, they lost the argument.
On cue, an email arrived from Russia Today, Putin’s English language propaganda station. Everyone who goes along with the denial of human rights in the West, the Leveson inquiry in Britain or any double-standard in a democracy should think hard about its implications.
“I am a producer on Russia Today TV network, a 24 hour news channel broadcasting in most parts of the world. We are talking today about BBC radio not playing the witch song (actually then it was changed to 5 seconds of it only) and are looking for guests with opinions and i came across your story and i thought it was wonderful and quite opinionated. So, i was wondering if there is a chance we could ask you to talk to us about your views LIVE today, in the evening. We are talking about freedom of speech, and i think this is what your article is about.”
Read the whole thing
by Nick Cohen at April 18, 2013 04:00 PM
April 17, 2013
Today Ben Kuchera, of the Penny Arcade Report, wrote an article in which he explained how games journalism works in relation to content and advertising. That gaming sites put up the galleries of cosplay babes because it’s necessary to fund the better, less popular content, all driven by a constant need for pageviews and unique hits. In his article, he writes as if he’s speaking for the whole industry, although excludes himself from the process. I’d like to add RPS to that exclusion list, thanks very much, because I don’t recognise a word of how he says my business works.
I’m not going to get into how RPS’s advertising works, because frankly I don’t know, and I prefer it that way. That’s all done by someone who works at Eurogamer, with whom we have an advertising partnership. We have laid down strict rules, they follow them, but how the charging works I’ve no idea.
Kuchera makes a few statements which I want to make clear don’t speak for me, or the business I co-own.
“People like to say that the games press is just chasing page views with certain stories, but let’s be honest: We’re chasing page views with every story.”
This is a very loaded statement. It’s both as banal as saying “Newspapers only include news stories because people want to read news,” and as sensationalist as saying, “They’ll do anything to make you click!” The truth is of course somewhere between. RPS, and I can only ever speak for RPS and no other gaming site, is a business. We make money from advertising, and we get advertising because we have people reading the site. So yes, we post things on RPS in order to run our business. But how that defines what you post is always the business’s choice, and Kuchera’s frequent inference in his piece that it automatically causes nefarious or unsightly content does not speak for me. If anything, at worst his article ends up being apologist propaganda for the sites that lazily rely on crude hit chasing, as if it were the only way.
“This is the reality of the business. It takes so many page views and so many uniques to stay in business, you find yourself going after stories you know will be popular. You may pass up covering games that don’t have a large following. You may break one long story into two chunks to stretch it out. You do anything to get people to click.”
No, we don’t. It’s central to RPS’s ethos that we do no such things. RPS has always had the policy (although that’s too strong a word – it’s just a thing we did because it was what we felt like doing) to give obscure indie gaming and AAA blockbusters the same coverage. Of course a AAA game everyone’s interested in is going to do more PR, put out more trailers and pre-release teases – that likely tips the balance. But when it comes to what we review and preview, it’s about what we’re interested in, and what we hope our readers are interested in. In fact, we do far more interviews with indies than we do with big name developers, not least because they’re far easier to interview. We review more indies than triple As, because there ARE more indie games than triple As. If a game has a trailer worth posting, we post it, no matter the budget behind it. And why? Because readers ARE interested. Certainly, my review of an obscure indie platformer is going to get a fraction of the views of a review of a big-name FPS. But we want to post it, so we do. That’s partly because we have a platform from which we can promote good games. But also, fewer hits isn’t no hits, and it all adds up.
But the last statement is the most egregious. No we bloody well don’t. Were that true, RPS would absolutely be tailored to suit the stereotypically perceived gaming audience, posting endless list features and galleries of half-naked women, because the reality is, that WOULD bring in a ton of hits. It’s gross, we hate it, so we don’t do it. There are better ways.
“How do sites justify running longer, in-depth stories that won’t bring in the huge page views? I have bad news. They write shit. Popular shit.”
Of all the claims made in this piece, this is the one that’s riled me the most. Primarily because it’s so monstrously untrue in RPS’s experience. We have never, ever, set out to “write shit”. We’ve posted trailers for games that are very popular, because we know that a large portion our readers want to see those trailers, and will complain if they’re missed out. But in doing so, we’ll comment on them, mock them, criticise them, or celebrate them. They are almost never posts that get big hits, apart from peculiar exceptions where for some inexplicable reason a bunch of other sites will link to us rather than the YouTube page, or whatever. We’ll never understand that phenomenon, but we don’t expect it, nor aim for it, because it’s rare and insane. In general, such posts aren’t big deals for us, since every other site has likely posted the same, around the same time. Just without our commentary or analysis, which we hope makes it worth reading them on RPS rather than elsewhere.
But that’s not the issue with Kuchera’s claim. The issue is that for RPS, it’s the longer, in-depth stories that see the huge page views. Looking at our most popular stories, they’re the ones that are based on our own original journalism, whether they’re our having sourced interviews or information from developers that other sites haven’t got, self-sourced news stories on topical matters, particularly well written reviews of popular games, or carefully researched editorials. (There are peculiar exceptions – one of the biggest stories ever on RPS is a collection South Park RPG screenshots, that were publicly accessible to everyone. We’ll never fathom that one.) But the rule is for RPS, the in-depth, longer posts are those that bring in the larger page views. You know – the best stuff.
And this is the important point: RPS isn’t magic. RPS isn’t a fluke. There’s this perception in the industry that goes, “Yeah, but you guys are lucky.” Piss off. We are not simply lucky. We work incredibly hard, ruled by our principles, and do our best to be very good at what we do. I’m sure luck comes into it somewhere, but it’s obviously not what brings success. The site is a successful, profitable business, paying five people’s full-time wages, along with paying good rates for freelancers, without ever having compromised our values. It didn’t start off with money (although we’ve never had any debts) – we worked very hard for very little, and were very fortunate, to get here. But we’ve never needed to post a gallery of booth babes to be able to write what we otherwise want to. Not because it wouldn’t have made it easier – it would have! But because it’s gross, and we’re not willing to be gross.
RPS is a commercial site, and we’re not pretending that we’re not doing it to make money. But we’re doing it for other reasons too – our passion for gaming, our desire to communicate, and the opportunity to provide readers with entertainment, information, and discussion. We love those things. We have a platform where we can do this stuff, and we’re delighted that we’ve proven that such a platform is possible if you’re good enough at what you do, and work damned hard at it. (Which is why it’s all the more galling when it’s dismissed as an ideological fluke.) That we’ve realised we get the biggest hits when we work the hardest is, perhaps, the good side of this motivational model.
I’ve only talked about RPS here, because as I’ve said, I’m in no position to talk about anyone else’s business. But I want to be clear that this isn’t unique! There are many other sites who have not resorted to the scummiest practices of the industry, and are very successful. The suggestion that commercial success is impossible without base behaviour is a lie the industry tells itself to feel better about itself. Kuchera seems to have bought into that lie, no matter his opinion of it.
There’s one other point I want to make here, regarding Kuchera’s point on adblocking. Adblocking does suck for us, and every other site that relies on advertising. At RPS we make sure that the ads we run are the least offensive options. We NEVER have ads that obscure the content, pop up, or make noise without your permission. Sometimes – not often – they can be a little annoyingly flashy, but that’s as bad as they get. We do that because we want the site to annoy as few people as possible. Adblocking us does hurt us, and we’d obviously prefer readers didn’t do it. And on top of this, I think there’s an issue with the argument so many make, including in the PAR piece:
“Whitelist your favorite sites from your ad-blocking program, and share your favorite stories on your favorite social networks. Tweet a story you like, or share it on Facebook.”
Good stuff, except approaching it in the wrong order. Whitelist EVERY site. Set your adblock to be automatically off. When you encounter a site that then spams adverts at you, repeatedly covering the text you’re trying to read with their crap, block the hell out of it. Sites should not have to earn being unblocked – they should have to earn being blocked. This idea that you should only whitelist those that you like best is incredibly selfish. Because what about the time a Google result takes you to a site that gives you some amazingly useful information? You’re not going to bookmark it, or visit it again – you got what you needed. And they got nothing for it. That’s messed up. But I totally agree with the bit about sending money into your favourite sites : )
(It’s probably worth noting that this site carries no advertising at all, and it makes no difference to the entire universe how many clicks it receives.)
by John Walker at April 17, 2013 07:18 PM
April 15, 2013
This week the guys cover iOS7, possible watches, fingerprint technology and MS Office for iOS.
Also all the usual features such as Crapplications, Picks and a look at other mobile providers.
Show notes for iOS 020
by britishtechnetwork at April 15, 2013 09:30 PM
April 08, 2013
Heaven high. It’s episode 131 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss what to do with the interest rates. And then despite Nick’s insistence before we started recording that he didn’t want to, he then insists on talking about John’s misogyny/sexism article on RPS for about forty million years. We do also discuss other more important matters, such as The Golden Girls, accidental upgrades, and My Little Pony.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 130 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
Or you can listen to it right here:
by John Walker at April 08, 2013 04:54 PM
April 01, 2013
We are back after (another) short break to discuss the transforming iPhone 5S, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Launch event, Blackberry actually selling phones, we answer your questions in the Trouble Gusset and of course we round off the show with a round of picks!
Remember if you want your question answered in the Trouble Gusset simply email BritishTechNews@gmail.com or tweet any one of us @paulwheatley, @rodti, @streakmachine or @maniacyak
Show notes for iOS019
by britishtechnetwork at April 01, 2013 08:52 AM
March 22, 2013
Heaven high, listeners. It’s episode 129 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss whatever happened to the dinosaurs. Instead we talk about how John is the most hated man in the world, Nick’s experiences at a comedy gig, and John is finally brought back down to Earth from his delusional celebrity.
We then play “Guess The Newspaper From The Headline”, the game that’s sweeping the nation, Nick explains why the SNP won’t win, and then there are more lessons in healthy eating from our nutritionist guru. Learn how Nick’s daughter turned into a guinea pig, the murderous ways of Ricarda Bigjoan, and some slightly more introspective discussion of the nature of bullying of trans* people. And bad laughers.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
Or you can listen to it right here:
by John Walker at March 22, 2013 05:31 PM
March 16, 2013
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
by levine at March 16, 2013 09:59 PM
March 15, 2013
I've just received the most extraordinary email.
Subject: Hi, I think you'd be interested what is new! modern method for you! You are not frustrated total
Date: 15-03-2013 16:48
From: "Mike Westgarth"
Now I'm always interested in what is new and I'm no stranger to modern methods, so I can see how I might be frustrated total if I didn't listen to what "Mike Westgarth" has to say.
Good day! I just read a cool way to be cool in bed! But do not write to anyone about this method to anyone
A cool way to be cool in bed? The mind boggles. It must somehow combine an edgy fashion sense with a practical and efficacious method of reducing one's core temperature when retiring for the evening.
Perhaps an Oriental fan with a Skrillex motif?
An air conditioning unit that plays One Direction songs?
Ice cubes in the shape of The Fonz?
I like that "Mike Westgarth" is so enthused about this exciting modern method that he's specifically forbidden me from writing to anyone about this method to anyone. And there I was about to dash off a missive to my Auntie Ethel.
You know, this principle is used sex stars!
Fuck no! Really? "Mike Westgarth" now you are making a fuck of me! Hilarity of fun! Your talk is strange of broken!
Seriously Mike. Stop it.
by rodti at March 15, 2013 05:03 PM
March 11, 2013
We’re back, back, back. It’s episode 129 of Rum Doings, in which we don’t discuss how all this snow cuh global warming! Instead we talk about the silliness of condemning bacon, the sugariness of Coca Cola, and then we partake in the Pukka Bath Quiz.
As per usual, Nick insists on talking about videogames, and the SimCity nonsense. And then John explains how forgetting a bag literally led to a matter of life or death. We discuss death, and being old, and how our parents are never allowed to die.
We’d really love it if you left a review on iTunes. Yes, iTunes is hideous, but reviews on there are what get podcasts more attention. After 100 free episodes, we’d love you to return the favour by writing a quick review.
Make sure to follow us on Twitter @rumdoings. If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, which apparently people still do, you can do that here.
To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.
Or you can listen to it right here:
by John Walker at March 11, 2013 06:13 PM
March 06, 2013
Stay up to date with Polygon’s score for SimCity with our live tracker.
by John Walker at March 06, 2013 10:16 AM
February 18, 2013
In this romantic edition of the iOS show the chaps cover the iWatch, iPhone 5S and 6 rumours. The Craplications, Picks, Tips and we try and answer is Samsung stealing Apples cool?
by britishtechnetwork at February 18, 2013 10:29 PM
February 07, 2013
As the majority of Suede fans know all too well, Suede have only ever made three good albums: their eponymous debut, Dog Man Star, and Coming Up. Despite the evolution in themes across these albums, from squalid suburban romance, through an epic Orwellian dystopia and finally into an ether-fuelled euphoria, Brett Anderson's songwriting maintained a consistently high quality. Unfortunately after those three albums his creative well must truly have run dry, as demonstrated by some of the horrors lurking in 1999's Head Music. Some examples:
From the chorus of title track 'Head Music':
So give me head, give me head, give me head music instead, You know oh is it all in the mind?
To the even more risible 'Elephant Man':
I am, I am the elephant man It is incredible how I can look just like just like an elephant man, just like, just like my elephant fans
Jesus fucking Christ.
They managed to churn out another album so poorly received that I didn't even bother to listen to it before the band finally imploded in 2003. Since then Brett has kept himself occupied churning out several solo efforts, an admirable collaboration with Bernard Butler and strutting about looking like a sexy triangle, and now in 2013 Suede are back together and have been busy in the studio.
In the light of their reappearance I'd like to delve into what I think might have been a key part of their downfall, Brett's growing dependence on fucking similes, and whether this has doomed the future of Suede forever (cue dramatic music).
Many of the challenges Suede have faced have been well documented. Infighting in the band during the recording of Dog Man Star led to Bernard's departure, Brett got himself addicted to crack and heroin in the late 90s, and Richard Oakes has a big face. Less well investigated is use of the simile in Suede's body of work, and to this end I have employed science and rigour and spreadsheets and stuff.
Step 1 - Lyrics
First up we're going to need samples of Mr Anderson's lyrical output. For the purposes of this study I have chosen all album tracks from Suede's five studio albums, excluding B-sides and compilations, and the two songs released so far from their upcoming album 'Bloodsports'. This makes a total of 59 songs. All lyrics have been taken from the song database at Suede Online with the exception of their two latest tracks. A Google search turned up fairly solid looking lyrics for 'Barriers' here, while 'It Starts and Ends with You' turned out to be a trickier prospect. I'm reasonably happy with the lyrics here with the exception of the first two lines which are clearly bollocks, and which I think should be:
Like a cause without a martyr
Like an effigy of Voltaire
It has probably not escaped your attention that the first two lines of that song are similes.
Step 2 - Word frequency analysis
By feeding the lyrics for each song into an online word frequency analysis tool I end up with lists of words, sorted by descending order of frequency. I then grouped the word lists for each song by album.
Step 3 - Identifying similes
The simplest way to identify a simile in these lyrics is to look for occurrences of the word 'like', and that's exactly what I've done.
Step 4 - Anderson Simile Index
This sort of exercise is much more fun if you drop in completely unnecessary and laughably flawed ways of measuring things. In this case I've developed the Anderson Simile Index, or ASI. To calculate the ASI for any given Suede album, simply divide the total number of similes by the number of album tracks. Easy!
Step 5 - Present the motherfucking findings
Findings indeed. Let's have a look at 'em!
Firstly let's look at the ASI for each of their studio albums:
Suede = 0.27 ASI
Dog Man Star = 1.08 ASI
Coming Up = 0.4 ASI
Head Music = 4.85 ASI
A New Morning = 1.45 ASI
Even this high level view shows alarming ASI levels in Head Music. I didn't expect the sublime Dog Man Star to peak at just over 1 ASI, although that's still quite low. Conversely the dreadful A New Morning emerges lower than I expected at 1.45 ASI.
Here is a visual representation in graph form of relative ASI by album:
"
But what does this hold for the future?" you bawl at me, maddened by your thirst for the sweet nectar of fact. Let me slake that thirst now...
Bloodsports (2 songs only) = 3.5 ASI
Oh Brett, what have you done? My first impressions were that these two songs from the new album signal an interesting new direction for Suede, but the ASI paints a bleak and foreboding picture. A picture with ravens and gravestones and zombies and that. And spooky cobwebs.
It's quite possible that analysing these two songs in isolation gives a skewed result, and the rest of the album is simile-free, but it's equally possible that 'Bloodsports' is going to be fucking shit. I note that the ASI is biased towards 'It Starts and Ends with You' rather than 'Barriers' by a factor of 6:1, which may or may not mean something. Let's look a little deeper into the data, and see what it tells us. It's hardly surprising that four of the worst offending songs are on Head Music, and here they are with their respective simile-counts:
He's Gone - 17 similes
Elephant Man - tied 15 similes
Can't Get Enough - tied 15 similes
Electricity - 13 similes
Somewhat controversially these four songs each happen to give credit to Neil Codling as co-writer, and in fact 'Elephant Man' is his alone. Could it be that Codling is the cancer that is poisoning Suede and Mr Anderson is in fact a blameless sexy triangle? Only time will tell, and I fully intend to revisit this analysis in March when 'Bloodsports' is released and the Anderson Simile Index has been judiciously applied.
For those of you who might want to scrutinise my workings or perform some Suede lyrical analysis of your own, the data in Microsoft Excel format is here.
by rodti at February 07, 2013 08:48 PM
February 03, 2013
Streak is off sick this week so Paul, ian and Rodti are joined again by Anthony Williams. The guys discuss iOS 6.1, the 128Gb iPad and Apple Shoes?!
Show notes for iOS 017 – Milky Goodness!
by britishtechnetwork at February 03, 2013 05:14 PM
January 20, 2013
The iOS Show is back!
After a month or so off the guys (minus Ian) discuss The Less expensive iPhone rumours, the Indian $20 tablet, Wayne Dobson and Linux making its way (back) to the mobile market.
They also cover the usual segments such as Tips, Plops, Picks and the trouble gusset!
Show notes for iOS 015
by britishtechnetwork at January 20, 2013 09:01 PM
December 18, 2012
So there I was happily playing through Telltale Games' The Walking Dead episodic drama on my Xbox when The Bad Thing happened. I'd already played the first two episodes, and since I had the week before Christmas off I launched myself enthusiastically into episode 3. With the exception of a nasty ragequit moment during a tricky gun battle it was enjoyable zombie fayre, until I tried to [spoiler redacted] the [spoiler redacted] after the really dramatic bit where [spoiler redacted]. No matter how many times I tried to [spoiler redacted] the [spoiler redacted] the game got completely stuck.
An example, with apologies for the poor video quality:
Anytime I use the notepad I get stuck in a loop. Pressing B to leave the notepad view goes back to my character, but I can't using any of the movement or view controls. It then snaps straight back to the notepad view. If I try to work my way through the puzzle (a series of switches) without using the notepad it's fine for a bit, but then the last switch isn't a usable game object.
I thought I'd give Telltale Games a yell on Twitter as I'd already spent a while on this:
Meanwhile the redoubtable Roan Lavery offered some sage advice:
And so I dutifully restarted my Xbox, rewound the game to the last checkpoint, played through the half hour or so I'd just deleted with high hopes that it might work. Which it didn't. The Bad Thing was still very much there.
Man was displeased by this.
I thought I'd leave it with Telltale Games and see what they came back with. It's now been over 24 hours and no reply, but I see their Twitter account has been active since then. Maybe they don't do support over Twitter, but it would be nice of them to say so.
A quick search for 'Walking Dead bug' on Twitter revealed some other people bashing their heads against The Bad Thing:
And a couple which seem to suggest that Telltale have a solution:
There's a related thread on Telltale's support forum.
In summary then, Telltale's 'solution' appears to be to buy episodes 4 and 5.
I can't help feeling slightly cheated by a company who leave a showstopper bug in the middle of the third episode (of five), and whose only workaround is to buy more episodes. While they're not hugely expensive at 400 Microsoft Points (around a fiver) per episode I'm not keen to follow their 'our product is broken, buy more of our product to fix it' advice. Particularly galling is that I was really enjoying it very much, and now I don't expect I'll see how it plays out.
So fuck you Telltale Games. Fuck you and your buggy pile of shit which will almost certainly win Game Of The Year but will still be a buggy pile of shit. And can I have my £15 back please? Oh, and fuck you.
Update - 18th Jan 2013
This has now been fixed in an update. Thanks a bunch Telltale! (Fuck you.)
by rodti at December 18, 2012 02:03 PM
