I remember this phenomenon from my computer journalism days. I had assumed this was long gone but it’s still around as captured by BBC News Online. Doubly depressing because the CEO of CES seemed to be defending the practice. And triply depressing because I suspect its place at the number one spot of the BBC’s video coverage on News Online at the moment is nothing to do with its critical stance and everything to do with the models being shown to illustrate the story.

Update: And even more depressing than the above – @aleksk tweets i received the worst & most graphic abuse i’ve ever had online when i applauded the ban of booth babes at E3 on Guardian Gamesblog in 2006.

All of which reminds me that on one press trip a major tech vendor took journalists for a ‘jolly’ to the Lido in Paris (like the Folies Bergeres) – you can imagine how the female journalists on the trip felt…

I have long known one of the UN’s key prerequisites to help reach the target Millennium Development Goals is that developed countries should donate a paltry .7% of their GNP to aid projects (at present nearly all fall well short of this). I just found out (via the Economist) that there’s another even more ambitious but contrasting target. It seems that poor old NATO is suffering because most of its member nations are not spending up to the 2% of GDP target it has set for military expenditure. Would it be too much to ask that countries reach the .7% aid target first?

I was listening to the most recent This American Life about long shots. It was explained that in California, when prisoners who are committed for life eligible for parole are deemed by the parole board to be safe for release, the governor has the right to review their cases. Presently Schwarzenegger turns down 75% of these, and the previous governor turned down 99%.

What I found really shocking though was the opinion expressed by the judge who advised the governor between 2003 and 2005, Justice Peter Siggins. When it was suggested that these decisions were not made on merits but were rather based on political criteria (ie the potential embarrassment if a governor released someone who then went on to commit a crime). He said:

Part of a governor’s job is to be responsive to the constituents who elected him. The fact that the governor would think that a lot of people would be upset that this person got out of prison… it is the governor paying attention to the preference of a large constituency in California.

So essentially, yes – whether a prisoner is released depends not on whether an extensive examination of his character and conduct suggests he would be a risk to the public but whether the public (who knows nothing of him save his crime) would be happy for him to be released. How can a judge think this is right?

Thanks to BBC iPlayer and the increasing number of podcasts available my ability to download interesting stuff is finally outpacing the time available to consume it. My iPod now contains about 48 hours of audio and video material – a mix of (free classic) audiobooks, current affairs and history programs and a number of academic-related feeds, notably Thinking Allowed, Radio Berkman and of course the LSE’s own podcast of its lectures. Unfortunately, in attempting to update the podcasts blogroll on the right I seem to have broken it instead. You can see all of the individual podcasts I subscribe to as they broadcast in reverse chronological order here.

I must tune in to Obama’s speech so I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren about it. I’ll catch the stream on the BBC.

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed…

Hey the text of the speech isn’t being provided live as well – only highlights. But it must be around somewhere… google google… Nope. Hey I should microblog about that… tap tap tap… Hm. I don’t feel like the speech is really moving me as I’d hoped. I’ll blog about that too.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.

Ah that’s a good bit – I’ll blog about that. As soon as the BBC feed catches up. Tap tap tap…

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Oh – over already? Well that was historic… but I don’t know that I’ll be able to give much of an account of what it was like to be watching! I guess the habits of reporting over experiencing I developed in my stint at BBC News Online haven’t left me…

Even though I am a media junkie and have been following the financial crisis I have until now found it difficult to find trustworthy sources that would explain to me in simple terms:

1) Why is it all going pear-shaped?
2) To what extent will the US government’s plan fix the problem?
3) What will it cost (because the $700bn figure is not all going to just get spent without any return now or in future to the taxpayer)?
4) Is there a better way to try to solve the problem?
5) Who is to blame and what can we/should we do to them?

The This American Life radio programme helped once before with their excellent Giant Pool of Money episode on sub-prime mortgages. They have rushed out a new episode, Another Frightening Show about the Economy from the same reporting team (Alex Blumberg and some folks from NPR news). I have to say I found it less enlightening – probably because it had to fit a lot more in – but it still helped. If you don’t want to listen to the programme (though I think you should) here’s what I took away:

1) Greedy speculators found ways to gamble on the health of companies without facing government regulation that would have limited the amount of leverage they could use.
2) It’s not clear if the bailout will work, but hey we’ve got to try something!
3) We don’t know how much of the money we’re putting on the table we’re likely to lose.
4) We should be pushing Paulson to use the latitude built into the legislation to push for “stock injection” instead of just buying up bad debt. In other words don’t just give the banks money to bail them out for their crappy decisions, insist on some equity so if the bailout works the government has some assets for all that spending.
5) TAL doesn’t really tell us who to lynch – looks like the decision not to regulate was made in a bipartisan way.

PS the NPR team also has a daily weblog Planet Money and podcast to help you track developments. A good summary of their answers to questions 3 and 4 is here.

If anyone has alternative answers to my questions I would be interested to hear them – send me a comment!

Update: I see that the UK bailout looks like the stock injection option that NPR suggests most economists would favour…

This artwork/prank/pr stunt is fascinating. We take the fantastically complex technology involved in webcam chat for granted, but connect two points by fibre optic cable (I’m assuming that’s how this works!) and then let people look down the “telectroscope” using the naked eye and suddenly the experience becomes magical again…

Update: I just found that CNN has de-mystified the device – it’s actually a ‘conventional’ pair of very high definition webcams.

A depressing New Yorker article The Water Cure reveals that water torture was being perpetrated by Americans during wartime and debated more than a century ago – in this case, in the Phillippines. In a number of ways the debate then echoed what we hear today about waterboarding.

Just for a change neither of them have to do with terrorism. Eszter brought to my attention a feature in Popular Photography (US) about parents whose innocent (to them) pictures of their children were treated as suspicious by photo developers and resulted in their being criminally prosecuted. You can read the self-published story of a grandmother who fell foul of this culture of suspicion here.

The other story I heard on the radio this morning (listen to it here). Because (it seems) of arrest targets UK police have, a 13 year old child who shoplifted a single roll of candy worth around 40p was taken to the police station, cautioned, fingerprinted and had his DNA taken and stored.

I am not too worried about building up a DNA database per se but I am a little concerned that the fact that someone’s DNA turns up in the database could be taken by future employers or others as evidence of criminality itself, if one day it were to become public.

Epicenter started as a look at those who found themselves contaminated by the radioactivity from early nuclear tests but as this trailer demonstrates his curiosity and journalistic zeal soon encouraged him to broaden his investigation and, from the looks of things, turn up all kinds of interesting stuff about the history of nuclear weapons development. Danny has sent me a DVD so once I get it I’ll tell you more…