From the monthly archives:

June 2011

Things I liked

June 30, 2011

A few things I found interesting recently:

China in Angola. Angola is China’s most important African partner, supplying more oil than any other country including Saudi Arabia. China is vital to Angola as a means to rebuild the country. And the oil-for-development program is now well underway. But according to this excellent report by Rafael Marques de Morais, many of the projects are shoddy, funds still go missing at the presidential office, and accommodating 100,000 Chinese workers isn’t easy.

Blame the Greeks! A look at how the international media has fastened on to Greece as the root cause of Europe’s troubles, neatly ignoring the roles played by European banks, politicians, and others. (Bonus Spiegel special, in English, on Europe’s Euro-nightmare).

Mamet dishes it. A sizzling interview with the great dramatist as he excoriates the Left for just about everything. A lot of unhinged nonsense, but entertainingly done. Most outrageous: when he compares liberal statements on Israel to speeches by Charles Lindbergh and Oswald Mosley in the 1930s.

Pawlenty’s about-turn. Fairly startling story of how presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty went from being a champion of action on climate change, to someone who questions the science. Interesting also for what it says about the GOP’s ongoing ideological purification.

Spam kills. Inside the unspeakably heinous US spam industry. Inhumanity to animals and humans. Beautifully written.

Scarcely believable sky-dive dance at Prague’s Sky Dive Arena.

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Why the US is in trouble: reason 362

June 30, 2011

Wow:

When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America’s wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project “Costs of War” by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. (www.costsofwar.org)

Think that’s US trillions (12 zeros) rather than UK (18 zeros) but still.

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Myspace, waste of space

June 28, 2011

Good piece on Myspace’s decline:

At its December 2008 peak, Myspace attracted 75.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., according to ComScore (SCOR). By May of this year that number had dropped to 34.8 million. Over the past two years, Myspace has lost, on average, more than a million U.S. users a month. Because Myspace makes nearly all its money from advertising, the exodus has a direct correlation to its revenue. In 2009 the site brought in $470 million in advertising dollars, according to EMarketer. In 2011, it’s projected to generate $184 million.

In February, News Corp. (NWS), which bought Myspace and its parent company, Intermix, in 2005 for $580 million, started officially looking for a potential buyer at an asking price of $100 million, according to a person familiar with the sale process. Yet even in the midst of a frenzy for social media that has seen LinkedIn (LNKD) valued at $6.4 billion and Groupon rebuff a $6 billion takeover offer from Google (GOOG), barely anyone wants to buy Myspace.

Felix Gillette puts the company’s troubles down to managerial complacency, strategic mistakes, and a lack of testing for new products. He also notes “social networks appear to be a very peculiar business—one in which companies might serially rise, fall, and disappear”. Things can and come go very quickly.

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Today in charts: Facebook

June 25, 2011

How Facebook is sucking up all before it:

facebook minutes

As Ben Elowitz, founder of Wetpaint, a digital media firm, puts it “the web is shrinking”. From a marketing point of view, what happens outside Facebook is becoming less important.

But at the same time Facebook’s growth (in terms of new users) has tailed off in mature markets, because it is apparently running out of customers to recruit. Neil Charles, head of econometrics at Brilliant Media, says floatation valuations that assume exponential growth look fanciful. Moreover, there is nothing on Facebook to keep people at the site indefinitely:

The real issue for Facebook long term – and what in my opinion is going to be its undoing sooner or later – is that it has very little reason for users to stay, beyond the fact that it knows their network and makes social connections easy. It offers photo storage, but there are better places for that. It offers video, but there are better places for that too. Social gaming? The list goes on. Facebook has nothing to offer that you can’t get better elsewhere, except that it makes sharing easy.

If I could share photos and a news-feed with my friends, through Gmail, Diaspora or a solution I don’t even know about yet, and crucially, do it better and without giving the content to Facebook, then I could migrate to that platform pretty well instantly. The crash could happen incredibly fast.

Facebook arrived in four years. My prediction is that it could become a ‘remember when…?’ within the same time period.

I think this misses the point, because Facebook’s strength is precisely “that it makes sharing easy”, rather than the quality of, say, its gaming application. On the other hand, as I’ve said before, there is something inherently faddish and short-lived about social networks (many have failed), and Facebook is neither cool these days, or particularly slick. If I had any money, I wouldn’t be investing in Facebook, not because social networks are going to disappear, but because the market is so innovative. Someone will come along with something better.

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Ray-Ray

June 22, 2011


“Ray”
German Shepherd-Collie mix (with a touch of Lab, and a hint of Ridgeback)
Age 14 and 7 months
Otherwise known as: Ray-Ray, Rayster, Cabaret Ray, Big Nose, Little Miss Sunshine, Princess, Lumpy.

To be honest, before “owning” Ray, I was a little sceptical of people’s affection for animals. I would dismiss all that ‘man’s best friend’ stuff, and when I heard stories of how upset people were when their dogs died, my reaction was often “it’s only a dog, what’s the big deal?”.

I think it comes from growing up in a family without a full-time dog, with a father who didn’t like, or didn’t want dogs, and a mother who did want them, but who had a traditional English attitude that dogs should have their place.

Well, having looked-after Ray for 10 years, I now understand how attached people get, and how upset they are when an animal passes (“pet” is such a stupid word). It is a crushing experience, and I currently feel more overwhelmed and tearful even than when my Dad died, as silly as it is to compare.

Part of this is shock. I thought we would have her for a few more months, perhaps even a year. Though she had a medical episode last week, she was still lively the last few days. When I walked her yesterday, she was pulling as hard as ever.

People liked Ray, and she liked them – perhaps more so than other dogs. We had countless encounters with strangers, because people wanted to stroke her, and Ray always wanted to ingratiate herself (she had this thing about backing into people to get her arse rubbed).

She had a default big-doggy grin, so people lighted up when they saw her. I felt proud to walk the streets with her, because so many people would point to her and remark after her. It was like going around with an expensive model, someone everyone admires.

I’ll miss her most because she was up for anything. There was never a time you would leave the house without her wanting to come with you. And, once out, she was always happy to walk further, and experience everything you did. She was also incredibly welcoming when you came home. Whatever crap had happened, there she was, her tail wagging, her nose nestled in your thigh.

Life goes on, yeah. But I do feel sad, and a bit miffed, today. I wish we had her for longer. It’s not going to be same.

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That’s right, blame China

June 21, 2011

Something disturbing about this ad from GOP candidate congressman, Mark Amodei. Presumably he’s not going after the Chinese vote in his district (in Nevada):

More here.

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The “real reasons” for war (contd.)

June 16, 2011

More on the story supposedly proving that the Libya-intervention is “all about oil” and satisfying US companies (as suggested by Glenn Greenwald and others): Juan Cole points out the US was not a primemover, at least initially:

The United States in any case did not spearhead the UN intervention. President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, along with the Pentagon brass, considered the outbreak of the Libya war very unfortunate and clearly were only dragged into it kicking and screaming by Saudi Arabia, France and Britain. The Western country with the biggest oil stake in Libya, Italy, was very reluctant to join the war. Silvio Berlusconi says that he almost resigned when the war broke out, given his close relationship to Qaddafi. As for the UK, Tony Blair brought the BP CEO to Tripoli in 2007, and BP had struck deals for Libya oil worth billions, which this war can only delay.

Not only is there no reason to think that petroleum companies urged war, the whole argument about UN and NATO motivations is irrelevant and sordid. By now it is clear that Qaddafi planned to crush political dissidents in a massive and brutal way, and some estimates already suggest over 10,000 dead. If UN-authorized intervention could stop that looming massacre, then why does it matter so much what drove David Cameron to authorize it?

This of course is the same Juan Cole who was reported today to have been subject to a CIA smear campaign during the Bush years (because the White House didn’t like his anti-war views).

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Two dudes watch cricket

June 16, 2011

A couple of American dudes, with little or no knowledge of cricket, sit down for nine hours to watch the recent India-Pakistan World Cup semi. Their report is funny:

The Pakistani bowler is named Umar Gul, who looks a lot like the Pakistani version of Stat Boy from “PTI.” Gul rubs up the ball. The fielders are positioned haphazardly around the circular pitch. Gul backs up to a position that seems to be several hundred yards outside the stadium. He then starts running, and continues to run for, like, ever. He rears back, plants his foot on a white line in the crappy field, skips the ball on its scraggly surface toward Virender Sehwag. And…cricket!

That’s the way Nate has summed up, after a beat, what happened. Gul bowled the ball, something kind of happened with Sehwag, someone yelled something, people milled around, and we have no idea what has just occurred.

(Settle in, people. This is going to take a while.)

Away from home, I’m missing the cricket this year. We’d normally be in the middle of the season now, with the longest days and the latest finishes. I think about it sometimes walking down the street: whacking a ball, or just standing in the outfield watching the whole thing. Apparently, there’s a thriving New York cricket scene, but I can’t say the idea of coconut matting and rough outfields appeals very much. (That sounds snobbish – but it’s not meant to be. I just think that cricket played on a mat, rather than a prepared pitch, is a different game somehow). Anyway, baseball is a good too.

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Not all hacks are the same

June 16, 2011

tabloids

As the UK debates a new privacy law, Brian Cathcart offers a useful analysis of what is and isn’t journalism. Much of the UK press, he argues, isn’t in the journalism business at all, and shouldn’t have special rights protected:

In both motivation and method, the Mosley case demonstrates, journalism is distinct from the industry of privacy invasion. But the privacy invaders prefer to muddy the water. When the News of the World lost that case it announced that “our press is less free today after this judgment” — appealing, by implication, to a noble British history and British tradition of press freedom. Now press freedom is an important matter and its history is certainly rich in noble deeds, but William Cobbett and John Wilkes did not suffer imprisonment and exile to enable journalists to bribe, bully and deceive their way into other people’s bedrooms. Nor, if you forgive the anachronism, did they have in mind the sort of people who would illegally hack into the mobile phone messages of the famous on the off-chance they might learn something titillating. These martyrs in the cause of press freedom had some meaningful conception that the press needed to be free to serve the public interest, and they did not see the public interest merely as a smokescreen.

The whole thing is worth reading, as they say.

It does seem like an impossible task to design a law that protects privacy while maintaining the media’s rights. Real life situations are too complicated, and technology is always changing, throwing up new problems (see the recent scandals involving Twitter). Probably what will happen is what normally happens. There will be lots of talk about having a law, before the government eventually backs off, realising how difficult the whole thing is (and how powerful the press can be).

Failing a law, though, Cathcart’s distinction is a useful one, and one that “serious” journalists should be pushing. Personally, I think UK journalists are too indulgent towards unethical behaviour. There’s a tendency to treat tabloid methods, in particular, as a bit raffish, rather than condemning them outright. We should stop thinking that what every journalist does is the same. They’re not the same. And we would all benefit – society and the profession – from saying so.

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Facebook revolution? Think again.

June 14, 2011

We think that when governments take away Internet access, as Syria has done recently, they are restricting freedom. But the opposite is also true: opening up Internet access can be a means of flushing out and arresting activists, as this post by Jillian York, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains:

When Syria’s government unblocked Facebook, YouTube and Blogspot in February, many activists saw the move as an overture to protesters, possibly one offering a semblance of the freedoms won by insurgents in Egypt and Tunisia.

Others saw it as a potential means of surveillance. They were right: Within weeks, reports began to emerge from detained Syrian activists who said that authorities had demanded their Facebook passwords. Others inside the country noted that their friends’ Facebook walls had been compromised and now contained pro-regime sentiment.

On Twitter, Syrian protesters have noted the emergence of pro-regime “spambots”: accounts set up with automated feeds that post benign content, including links to attractive photographs of Syrian landscapes, to the hashtag used by protesters and supporters, presumably to flood it with contradictory information. Activists believe the bots have been created by regime supporters, paid or otherwise.

The potential for authorities to use tools like Twitter and Facebook to track down insurgents is very real. Many demonstrators chose early on not to hide their identities, emboldened by the success of Egypt’s mostly peaceful uprising. When coupled with Facebook’s requirement that users create profiles using their real names, pro-democracy activists are at risk of being unmasked on social networks.

This is why the continued reference to Twitter and Facebook revolutions is so stupid. Yes, maybe, some people have organised because of these technologies. But how many have also been locked up because of them? And how safe are these mediums going to be now that Western politicians keep referring to them? Not very. Probably future freedom-fighters won’t go anywhere near these sites.

Truth is that we like talking up Twitter and Facebook because of the reflected glory: it allows us to think our model is hastening liberty around the world. It is about us not them. I’m not denying the role of the Internet, but we can’t take much credit for the great upwelling in the Arab World this year.

(H/T John Naughton)

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