Category: General

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | BBC must become more impartial

The BBC is among a very small handful of news outlets that spend considerable resources on introspection. The results are published and highly publicized, and this year’s results are summarized in the above article from–who else?–the BBC itself. This self-examination has led the BBC to conclude that it could profit from less partial, less biased reportage.

The “innately liberal” bias is apparently the BBC’s greatest shortcoming, of course. It seems as if the BBC is paying too much attention to human rights and poverty, and this is a bent that it ought to temper because the 2008 Olympic Games will take place in a country whose government is a bit sensitive to Western coverage of its pathetic human rights record.

And, it’s just not right to criticize China. Israel, however, is a perfect subject for criticism because it gives BBC journalists total access to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Southern Lebanon. The fact that Palestinians are willing to kidnap and to threaten to kill BBC reporters apparently exempts them from any criticism. This might be an implicit statement by the BBC that they hold barbarians to lower standards than civilized democracies, but no such implication can ever be found in their reportage on Israel. Certainly, none of this fighting could be framed in the context of the borders drawn by British authorities in 1948.

In light of the British government’s foray into Shariah compliant bonds, its less than outraged reaction to the kidnapping of its reporters by Palestinian authorities, its less than vigilant reporting on Tony Blair’s halting of a government investigation into corrupt deals with Saudi Arabia, its hard line against Israel, and its total lack of vigilance in reporting the disastrous consequences of the Iraqi campaign betray something other than an “innately liberal” tilt. A slavish obedience to the Blair government is perhaps a better assessment of the BBC “impartiality”.

BBC SPORT | Motorsport | Formula One | United States loses F1 Grand Prix

The Formula One Grand Prix circuit will not include the United States in 2008. The organizers feel that it is more worthwhile, i.e., profitable, to erase the lone stop in the US from the schedule and add events in East Asia. 

One wonders when Americans will realize that they have lost the prestige of being the largest, most lucrative market in the world.

  

BBC NEWS | Business | Ford and GM see US sales decline

When the competition is out-designing, out-marketing and out-hustling you, outcomes like Ford and GM’s are entirely predictable. That the executives at these companies failed to see what consumers and analysts were seeing decades ago is reprehensible. That they managed to award themselves untold millions in bonuses is unconscionable. That they do not react to it is, frankly, criminal.

My old 1.6 L, 16-valve base model Nissan Sentra is running great after 13 years and 120,000 miles. The fact that GM, Chrysler and Ford cannot build a small car with this much endurance explains a lot. And, the fact that these monsters of American industry still do not offer any fuel efficient cars explains the rest:

Ford’s sales of traditional cars fell 24.6% last month.

By contrast, sales of its light trucks, which includes its sports utility vehicles, added 2.9%.

GM’s passenger car sales lost 22.3%, while its light trucks lost 25.6%.

It’s almost as if some very powerful people have a very high stakes bet about which company is going to go bankrupt first, and they are pulling every string they can to win the bet.

BBC NEWS | Business | Blackstone buys Hilton for $26bn

Paris Hilton might donate $50 of her profits from this sale to relieve the misery she encountered in prison.

Starbucks reputation on line in court case | | Guardian Unlimited Business

I can’t say that I am particularly passionate about the unionization of Starbuck’s employees. It would be nice, perhaps, because it might bring greater consistency to the Starbuck’s experience. The Starbucks union organizing web site claims that they wish to have:

• Increased pay and raises
• Guaranteed hours with the option of full-time status
• An end to understaffing
• A healthier and safer workplace

Those all sound like reasonable demands. On those rare occasions when I have entered a Starbucks, I have wished that the cafe were in a slightly greater state of order and cleanliness. It seems as if the staff are always struggling to balance their time between cleaning and fulfilling orders, but they just don’t seem to have enough time to clean because customers are perennially queued to order. Of course, some locations are better than others, and some times of the day are better than others. Nevertheless, it does make sense that a large corporation should have sufficient resources to make every moment that they are open to business fairly consistent.

Despite all this, the reason I hate going to Starbucks is that they do not serve their drinks in real porcelain cups. I am told that certain locations will do so if I request it, but why the hell would I need to request a real cup of coffee?

And, no, playing Paul McCartney for 24 hours non-stop is no incentive for me.

ScienceDaily: New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong

Bruce Spencer is not the first guy to argue that jury trials have an excessively high error rate, but he may be the first scholar to put a number to this error rate. His calculations arrive at a minimum error rate of 13%, or one out of eight. This finding implies not that American justice is blind or deaf, but, perhaps, dead.

Skeptics of statistics (or statistical skeptics) are welcome to read the original manuscript on the Northwestern University web site (pdf file). They are also forewarned that this article delves into esoteric subjects like definitions of “error rate”, statistical methods, and analysis.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Mass circumcision to fight Aids

It’s apparently true. Circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV (and, hence, AIDS) through heterosexual sex. Consequently, some are pondering mass circumcisions in South Africa as public health policy.”It’s good to be Jewish”, or, far more likely, “it’s good to be Muslim” is what many Africans must be thinking these days. I’m smiling, of course, and the Jews and Muslims in Africa must be breathing a sigh of relief.

My sex in the convent – by Nobel poet | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Do macho men need to brag about bagging nuns? Is this a point of pride in the framework of machismo?

The bigger question is, perhaps, why on earth would the members of this convent raise a raucus about the obviously flattering musings of a Nobel Laureate, Juan Ramon Jimenez. After the pedophilia debacle that the Catholic Church has endured over the past decade, why would any order of the Church care about a capable poet’s fond recollections of forbidden love? By now the entire world knows that the Church meticulously documented all incidents of pedophilia committed by its priests, avidly hid the crimes from the public and overtly lied and denied access to its archives when the time of reckoning arrived. What harm could possibly come from the revelation that the women who worked in a Madrid convent at the turn of the century erred as human beings?

The Catholic Church promotes an extremely select few to the level of saint. Thus, it freely admits that its followers are human. So, why would it take offense at a revelation that it freely admits through its actions?

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anger over Polish breast montage

The Poles have certainly demonstrated little brains by comparing the current German government with the Nazi regime. And, whether insulting Germany is a demonstration of balls is an open question.

Perhaps this is what earned them the subordinate position in this magazine cover. This cover image is most distasteful, but it is strange that the Germans seem to be angrier than the Poles. After all, the cover is depicting the Polish leaders–and by extension, the Poles themselves–as subordinate to the German step mother.

It is silly to express surprise at the fact that Germany, France and the UK are leveraging their full economic might in the drafting of the EU founding documents. It is sillier to think that insulting the Germans will win the Poles any additional bargaining power.

World War II may never end.

Sadistic, brutal and bleak: censors ban Manhunt 2 game | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology

Censorship is a horrible thing, of course, but the question of whether something material or intellectual is “fit for public consumption” is a legitimate one. If governments can ban certain foods (for example, the Guelaguetza chain here in Los Angeles no longer serves grasshoppers.) from consumption, then it is fair to ask whether they can ban other things from being consumed.

Germany and Austria have, understandably and justifiably, banned Nazism from public consumption. The Federal Communications Commission in the US has banned consumption of Janet Jackson’s nipple by the general public (and we are told that the Superbowl watching audience is one and the same with the general public, but I have my suspicions). And now, the British government is recommending the banning of the video game Manhunt 2 because the game has “an unrelenting focus on brutal slaying”, and because “The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rejected the game after finding it ‘constantly encourages visceral killing’.”

Is this a legitimate banning of virtual cocaine? Is it equivalent to (though clearly not on the same scale as) the banning of Nazism and Janet Jackson’s decorated nipple? The FCC will probably argue that Manhunt 2 will not be broadcast to innocent children as JJ’s nipple was, but the argument skirts the real question of whether anything as sadistic as Manhunt 2 is fit for consumption by anyone. Certainly, the government deems it necessary to keep everyone safe from child pornography, bestiality, and snuff films. Why is it that a virtual murderous rampage is morally more defensible than Janet Jackson’s nipple, and child and bestial pornography?

If the corrupting of the mind is a scourge to be battled by authorities, then why not ban a game containing no political statement, no intellectual content and no aspirations of decency? Why do the purveyors of trash enjoy greater freedoms in the US than do dissenting political factions? It seems as if the British authorities have a better notion of what is fit for public consumption than their American counterparts.

Deep fried Snickers bar, notwithstanding.