Media Control (Noam Chomsky, 2002 2nd edition)

At only 100 pages long, this is a very approachable and digestable book by Noam Chomsky. It's subtitled "The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda". It seems to be a minor update to this speech from 1991.

The first chapter examines the lesson of the Creel Commission of 1916 concluding that "state propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect."

The next chapter entitled "Spectator Democracy" traces how the current use of propoganda became rationalised and instituitionalised as an essential element of our modern version of democracy. This is a false democracy where an elite group decides what is the common interest and guides the "bewildered herd" of the population.

Next he covers the rise of the Public Relations industry and its effectiveness in blunting the labour movement using the Mohawk Valley formula. This has led to a business-run society and concludes "the people who are able to engineer consent are the ones who have the resources and the power to do it - the business community - and that's who you work for."

Subsequent chapters build on how opinion is engineered providing many provoking examples. The last chapter entitled "The Journalist From Mars" is a transcript of a talk given to the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 15th anniversary celebration (2002) on the media coverage of America's "war on terrorism". Taking the point of view of a truly foreign journalist, he expertly dissects just how blind and tightly controlled the US is.

It's a good read and should change the way you listen to the news. It's also very depressing as the unjustness of it all is unfolded.

Purchase Amazon US or Amazon UK or follow the above links to read most of it.

Oh Dad Gloriyous Dad

R* created these lyrics to the tune of "Food Glorious Food". Spelling and punctuation all original but you should know that deard is "dared" and beast is "best".

Oh DAD gloriyos DAD.
Sometimes you get a bit mad.
and you are very glad to add.
and allways you get BAD when
thing get a mess. and I have
deard  you too wher a dress and look
your beast to look your beast ........
in a dress!

I should also mention that we have been talking about dares recently and one of the big dares at the moment is if I wear a dress then so shall she (it's a very BIG deal to get R* into a dress). We're still negotiating the parameters of this dare. I think I'd look nice in a floral pattern...

Gong Hey Fatt Choy

Happy Chinese New Year! It's year of the monkey. Our celebration is pretty quiet with no family about. The kids got dressed up in Chinese clothes and we went to a local Chinese restaurant. The food was terrible. *sigh*  For decent Chinese food, you have to drive into London. Tomorrow, we'll do a tea ceremony for the kids and avoid cleaning the house - my favourite part!

Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002)

An entertaining film but certainly not for everyone. The plot:

"After her release from hospital following treatment for self-harming Lee Holloway gets a job as a secretary to a lawyer, Mr Grey. It's not too long before she begins an affair with him but he suddenly loses interest. She now has to fight to regain the relationship which had been based on masochistic submission... "

Yep, not your regular plot. It's actually quite a slow film as it all concentrates on their evolving relationship. The acting was excellent and the masochistic scenes are not gratuitous. It's tricky tackling a topic involving a woman who likes abuse but it's handled delicately and in the end, it's just a love story.

What Have I Done To Deserve This? (Pedro Almodovar, 1984)

We watched this movie as part of our monthly Foreign Film Night gathering. Don't bother watching it. I like its quirkiness and it has it's funny moments but the story and plot just never gets anywhere. By the end of the movie, you're left thinking "What was all that about?". There's better ways to spend your time.

Mission To Mars

So Bush wants to send men to the Moon and Mars just like his father did. The estimated cost given to his Dad was 500 billion and the topic was quietly dropped. I wonder what's changed? The cost would still be enormous and for what? Bragging rights?

I should admit I've been indocrinated in enough sci-fi and Star Trek to quite like the idea of space exploration. Let's terraform Mars. Sure. It's a long term goal we can work on over the next few hundred years.

So the program needs a good vision and slow, steady progress on a series of worthwhile goals with consistent funding. I think the President can provide the vision but he shouldn't be setting the timeline. Personally, I don't see the point of going back to the Moon; a space station makes more sense. And it's seems pointless to send people to Mars when robotics would be much more risk averse and cost effective. But I'm no rocket scientist.

For an interesting story about colonising Mars, I can highly recommend reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Nebula Award 1993). His approach is scientifically accurate but the future history is even more entertaining. It's part of a trilogy but Red Mars was the first book and best book in the series. It's followed by Green Mars and Blue Mars but I found the story really started dragging out too much in the remaining books.

Purchase Amazon US or Amazon UK 

Mummy's Boy Daddy's Girl

So why is it that the phrase "Daddy's Girl" has a relativley warm positive connotation while the phrase "Mummy's Boy" has a negative connotation?

Music Retailing Sucks

So as I was shopping for CDs the last few weeks, it hit home that music retailers really have missed the boat on how to sell music. The problem is that it is assumed that you know what you want to buy beforehand and hence the store is organised like a library for you to find the CD and go buy it. For this to work, demand has to be generated through radio or some other media or through word-of-mouth. It basically assumes that you've already made the purchase decision before coming into the shop. This is stupid.

This system favours only the latest hits and most popular CD's which you're likely to hear in the media. Meanwhile the back catalogues are growing bigger and bigger all the time but it's hard to discover the great songs they contain. It would make so much more sense for a music retailer to organise around helping you to find some great new music to listen to.

The current retailing methods that are employed are to tell you what's new and what's popular and provide a few music listening stations (which many people won't use as they consider them unhygenic). Some stores let their staff write up recommendations. That's it.

I'm not a retailing expert but here's some ideas about what they could do:

• provide displays that groups similiar music together
  
• show how CD's are related to other CD's through trends or artists
  
• provide information and displays on seminal recordings in particular genres
  
• provide recommendations for what makes up the must-have CD's for specific genres
  
• create music discovery workstations
  
• provide reviews of CD's from trusted sources with the displays
  
• allow you to return CD's you didn't like
  
• allow you to bring your own headphones or borrow clean ones for the listening stations

PURE Digital Tempus-1 DAB Radio

I bought this radio for Jenny as a Christmas present. It's excellent. Didn't have to crack open a manual to get it to work which is always a good sign. It autoconfigured itself and easy to use. The reception is crystal clear and there's lots of stations to choose from. Good-bye FM; hello DAB!

The radio also includes digital output and you can upgrade the firmware via a USB connection. Turns out the product is based on the Frontier Silicon Chorus FS1010 processor. It's an entire platform on a chip with 150Mhz DSP, 384K RAM and a load of onchip peripherals. Kind of bizarre to know your radio runs four threads!

BBC: Diamond memories of the dead

Ok, it's pretty weird but I guess it's not a bad way to remember someone:

"The company, operating in Hove, Sussex, but with a US parent, charges up to £11,000 to take a sample of ashes, extract the carbon and create a "memorial" diamond."

I offered to do this for Jenny but she declined. I wonder if you get to choose the colour...

R* Starts Judo

Last term, R* decided she would like to try Judo so we signed her up for the school club. Yesterday was her first lesson (one hour a week). Looks like a lot of fun. She learned a throw and even tried sparring. She's one of the smallest kids in the class so she's going to have to learn her techniques well.

Last summer, she started showing a lot of interest in martial arts. Now is this something one should encourage or not? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing so they say. I showed her how to punch correctly and a bit about kicking. Then later I discovered she had shown this to a friend and also tried practicing on K*! It's probably best to only learn this within a formal context as the responsibility and discipline has to be taught at the same time. Meanwhile, she's reading my old martial arts books...

Jet Lag

Jet lag definitely seems to be worse when you fly from West to East. The kids are sleeping from about 7 pm (very unusual!) to the middle of the night and then getting up. The previous nights, R* got up at 2 am and stayed up. K* got up last night at 2:30 am but luckily he went back to sleep until 5 am. R* was already up by then. I've been falling asleep in the late afternoon for a few hours and then staying up late. All our schedules are fuddled up.

The Wind Singer by William Nicholson

We listened to this BBC Cover to Cover audio book over the holidays and it was brilliant. We're not alone thinking this as it won a golden Smarties award in 2000. William Nicholson is also known for writing the screenplay of Gladiators but this is his first attempt at a children's story.

It's essentially a fantasy adventure of three children on a quest. If successful, they will completely change the nature of the dreadful society in which their family despondently lives. Deeper than that, it's primarily an attack on conformism among children and the dangers of following a group (see interview by Jo-Anna Wildman). There is also a theme reinforcing the merit of a strong family.

Deeper still, it can be viewed as a satire of the absurdities created by a meritocracy and an examination of the idea of social inclusion. It's a book you can read at multiple levels.

Entertaining. Well paced. Superbly read by Samuel West. The audio book is six CD's long (7 hrs 45 minutes) and has no boring bits. Highly recommended. Or read the book yourself of course!

This is the first book in a trilogy and the other two books are available as well. Nevertheless, the climax brings the story to a satisfying close so you don't have to read all three.

We're Back!

So this morning I was reaping the benefits of jet lag by building a Lego speedboat with my four year old son at five o'clock in the morning! It's gonna be a long day. Nevertheless, it's always nice to get home, empty the suitcase, sleep in one's own bed and be surrounded with all your own stuff. Ahhhhh!

We had a great trip to Victoria and Vancouver catching up with lots of family and friends we have there. It made for quite a hectic schedule and three weeks wasn't quite long enough. We managed to get a couple of days skiing at Whistler so I'll try and put a short travelogue together describing that. I also splurged buying 22 new CD's from A&B Sound (one of my most favourite places) so I'll review some of those over the next couple of months.