I would be failing in my duty of shameless self promotion if I didn’t draw your attention to this nugget from Jack Shafer in the Washington Post: [more…]
Missionaries, mercenaries and misfits
Lara Pawson, currently a writer in residence at the University of Witswatersrand, has a chapter out in a new book edited by Kenyan author, Rasna Warah. Don’t judge it by the cover (unless, of course, you really LOVE the cover). Here’s what she sent me:
It’s a very readable anthology featuring some of East Africa’s best-known writers, thinkers and “developmentalists”, such as Binyavanga Wainaina (who regularly features in the Mail & Guardian) and … er, an English woman from East London. My own chapter originally appeared in Radical Philosophy (a journal also worth reading and available at www.radicalphilosophy.com).
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links for 2008-07-19
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The recipe for profitable broadcast television is pretty simple: Develop large audiences that you can accurately measure and sell them to advertisers who need to reach them. The shows that do this even have a name, “Hits.”
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The Law Of Unintended Consequences: “I’m not watching The Daily Show nearly as much as I used to, I think because Bush has dropped out of the scene so much that I don’t need the emotional release Jon Stewart was providing for me.”
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“Little is known … about the biological basis of trust among humans. Here we show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, causes a substantial increase in humans…”
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links for 2008-07-18
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It’s great! Shocker.
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“[M]arket provision may now be such that the consumer market failure arguments that sustained the old rationale for PSB, have been superseded. We are left largely with the citizenship arguments.”
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“One reason there are so many anonymously sourced news stories in New York and Washington publications is because reporters outnumber good sources by a wide margin…”
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“[W]hile happy to put numbers to the BBC’s positive market impact, the PWC researchers didn’t find time to quantify any of the potential negative markets impacts resulting from the £3.5bn of public money spent by the BBC on delivering said purposes.”
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There are a very large number of potential targets where protection is essentially a waste of resources and a much more limited one where it may be effective.”
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the Metropolitan Police insist that (a) they’re not going to release data for crime mapping (b) even if they did, they keep it amalgamated on such a level that it wouldn’t be any use to anyone.
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Gotta love this: “[F]ans are allowed to have an opinion of their own, but threatening or disrespecting the writer just goes to show that the specific reader is not only ill informed but immature.”
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The citizenship rationale for public service broadcasting
Even though public policy is usually a rough mix of 99% pragmatism and 1% principle, there are a few occasions when the principle is asked to puts it head above the parapet.
In policy relating to public service broadcasting in Britain (infotainment’s soup kitchen for the soul), pragmatism means preservation of a ‘strong’ BBC.
And the principle behind public service broadcasting is old and frail (market failure when last spotted) and very rarely seen.
But today it sneaked out - twice - in a speech by David Currie, the outgoing chairman of Ofcom. [more…]
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links for 2008-07-17
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“[T]he total decline in value of the dozen newspaper shares trading since the first of the year was nearly $27.7 billion, a plunge of 35.7% in 6½ months. This calculation does not include the shares of Scripps…”
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‘He says a government grant would save up to £200 million a year spent collecting licence fees, which he described as a “desperately unfair tax”’
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“I read a lot about journalism online these days and there’s an endless refrain that goes something like this: The people leading newspapers are imbeciles, and if only they had more foresight, had planned ahead and embraced the Internet sooner, newspapers
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“Labour MPs - counselling offered ahead of future unemployment…”
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“Starting on July 28, the Journal will raise its cover price from $1.50 to $2, putting it on a par with the Financial Times. Interestingly, the hike comes as the paper’s editors are being urged to think more about how they can use the front page to boost
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“11 papers are being forced to pay out £550,000 between them – a little over £50,000 apiece - and that may seem like a small price to pay in order to continue their lawless activities”
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How does leaking details from this (censored) Annual report, only to favoured mainstream media journalists, ahead of the supposedly informed debate in the HoC, but not making it available to the public via the web, give the impression of anything other th
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“When legal letters threatening action for defamation arrive in an editor’s in-tray, the names of certain lawyers can induce a queasy feeling. Robert Verkaik, our Law Editor, profiles the libel specialists”
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“[R]eading customers aren’t deserting newspapers at anything approaching the rate that advertising customers are. That is no consolation for newspaper company employees who are losing their jobs…”
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“The metadata applied to blank cassettes was almost exclusively applied by biro, whether it was to the label of the cassette or writing out tracks by hand on the inlay card.”
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Live blogging: Future of Public Service Broadcasting
London Business School: David Currie, outgoing Ofcom (UK broadcast/digital regulator) chairman. [more…]
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