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Posts Tagged ‘Blogposts’
‘Item one: we need more gigs’
July 28th, 2009 |
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Terry’s month of silence
July 27th, 2009 |
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Perhaps Chelsea’s captain spent all summer struggling to find the words to describe his selfless loyalty towards the club
Let’s take John Terry’s word for it. Let’s assume he was telling the truth when he said that “I am totally committed to Chelsea and always have been”. When all’s said and done, only the archest of cynics would doubt the sincerity of a top-flight professional footballer issuing the written equivalent of a crest-kiss-with-clenched-fist, because anyone with a passing interest in the game knows it is not populated by players, or indeed managers, with form in the field of dishonest declarations of loyalty.
Some have questioned the bona fides of Terry’s oath of allegiance on the grounds that it was pledged after five weeks of complete radio silence, a period long enough to prompt acerbic suggestions that “Mr Chelsea” was displaying a certain amount of contempt for his club and those who support it. If he knew Chelsea’s supporters were on tenterhooks waiting to hear his plans and knew there was no question of him leaving Stamford Bridge, why did he wait for more than a month to offer any kind of reassurance?
While it’s possible he was suffering from a particularly nasty throat infection that had rendered him speechless, it seems obvious that Terry is so committed to Chelsea that he was prepared to waste the best part of his summer holidays with spiral notebook in hand, sitting in an armchair surrounded by scrunched-up balls of paper, sucking furiously on his pencil as he struggled to find the exact words required to describe the selfless loyalty we now know he feels towards his club and its fans.
These same fans should be wary, however, as Terry’s statement reveals him to be a man so lacking in ambition that he was unprepared to even consider the prospect of signing for a club whose financial clout and relentless, if ultimately unsuccessful, pursuit of the world’s best players and John Terry has been well documented. Let’s face it, a player so reluctant to even think about leaving his comfort zone is unlikely to stray out of position to cover for Jose Bosingwa or Ashley Cole the next time either full-back is left horribly exposed.
Chelsea supporters could also be forgiven for questioning the smarts of a player whose steadfast refusal to use the interest of a club reportedly prepared to double his wages as leverage with which to secure a new, improved contract from his current employers suggests he may well be several sandwiches short of a picnic. Equally incomprehensible lapses of judgment on the field of play during the coming months would almost certainly scupper his team’s chances of bagging a major trophy.
These are interesting times for Chelsea fans, who will be preparing for the season ahead with some trepidation now that their club’s captain, whose carefully considered utterances have revealed him to be something of an ambition-free dolt. The scarcely plausible alternative, that he’s yet another calculating mercenary who held his club to ransom before fobbing off its fans with a transparent and misleading sop, is unlikely to reassure them.
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Terry’s five weeks of silence
July 27th, 2009 |
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Perhaps Chelsea’s captain spent all summer struggling to find the words to describe his selfless loyalty towards the club
Let’s take John Terry’s word for it. Let’s assume he was telling the truth when he said that “I am totally committed to Chelsea and always have been”. When all’s said and done, only the archest of cynics would doubt the sincerity of a top-flight professional footballer issuing the written equivalent of a crest-kiss-with-clenched-fist, because anyone with a passing interest in the game knows it is not populated by players, or indeed managers, with form in the field of dishonest declarations of loyalty.
Some have questioned the bona fides of Terry’s oath of allegiance on the grounds that it was pledged after five weeks of complete radio silence, a period long enough to prompt acerbic suggestions that “Mr Chelsea” was displaying a certain amount of contempt for his club and those who support it. If he knew Chelsea’s supporters were on tenterhooks waiting to hear his plans and knew there was no question of him leaving Stamford Bridge, why did he wait for more than a month to offer any kind of reassurance?
While it’s possible he was suffering from a particularly nasty throat infection that had rendered him speechless, it seems obvious that Terry is so committed to Chelsea that he was prepared to waste the best part of his summer holidays with spiral notebook in hand, sitting in an armchair surrounded by scrunched-up balls of paper, sucking furiously on his pencil as he struggled to find the exact words required to describe the selfless loyalty we now know he feels towards his club and its fans.
These same fans should be wary, however, as Terry’s statement reveals him to be a man so lacking in ambition that he was unprepared to even consider the prospect of signing for a club whose financial clout and relentless, if ultimately unsuccessful, pursuit of the world’s best players and John Terry has been well documented. Let’s face it, a player so reluctant to even think about leaving his comfort zone is unlikely to stray out of position to cover for Jose Bosingwa or Ashley Cole the next time either full-back is left horribly exposed.
Chelsea supporters could also be forgiven for questioning the smarts of a player whose steadfast refusal to use the interest of a club reportedly prepared to double his wages as leverage with which to secure a new, improved contract from his current employers suggests he may well be several sandwiches short of a picnic. Equally incomprehensible lapses of judgment on the field of play during the coming months would almost certainly scupper his team’s chances of bagging a major trophy.
These are interesting times for Chelsea fans, who will be preparing for the season ahead with some trepidation now that their club’s captain, whose carefully considered utterances have revealed him to be something of an ambition-free dolt. The scarcely plausible alternative, that he’s yet another calculating mercenary who held his club to ransom before fobbing off its fans with a transparent and misleading sop, is unlikely to reassure them.
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The great Renaissance art cover-up
July 27th, 2009 |
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The 16th-century notion of creating artworks purely to hide and cover over secret paintings raises questions about why these concealed works existed at all
Why do some paintings need to be covered up? In the seductive display of Titian’s Triumph of Love, currently at the National Gallery, you discover that the Venetian master painted this sensual image of Cupid as a “cover” for another painting. This means a second canvas that fitted over and concealed a picture beneath. It was not that rare a practice in the Renaissance. But why? Were the concealed paintings rude, or dangerous, or in some way heretical?
I love this image of the secret painting, the occult artwork that needs to be hidden from prying eyes. Triumph of Love was apparently a cover for a portrait of a woman – but was she a mistress, a courtesan? What made her portrait illicit?
I saw another example of a cover in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence last week that casts light on why such portraits were hidden. Pygmalion and Galatea, by the great Florentine mannerist Agnolo Bronzino, depicts a young man kneeling in prayer to the goddess Venus. Behind him, a sacrificial fire blazes in a bleak hilly landscape.
Bronzino painted this as a cover for his teacher Jacopo Pontormo’s Portrait of Francesco Guardi. Pontormo’s painting is a sensuous yet heroic image of a young citizen soldier. Guardi stands in cream and red with a sword at his hip and a halberd in his hand. It was painted when the Florentine Republic was under attack in 1529; the youth is a volunteer soldier ready to defend his city.
The Republic was crushed after a siege in which tens of thousands of people died. The Medici family imposed a dukedom on the city and hounded down dissidents. This must be why Bronzino was asked to paint a cover for his master’s work – so that the Guardi family could keep a blatantly subversive, Republican portrait discreetly veiled from prying eyes.
The true secret of covers is that Renaissance paintings are full of subversion and heterodoxy. Bronzino’s cover, with its blazing pyre and barren trees, alludes to the horrors of tyranny even as it covers a libertarian image.
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Is Spotify iPhone app too like iTunes?
July 27th, 2009 |
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Streaming music service Spotify submits iPhone app to Apple, but analysts say it might be too close to iTunes to be approved
European streaming music service Spotify has developed an application to use their service on the popular iPhone, but it must first submit it for approval to iPhone maker Apple, which could reject it on grounds that Spotify competes with its own iTunes music store.
Apple has approved applications from streaming music providers Pandora and Last.fm and satellite broadcaster Sirius XM, but those services are more like streaming radio, with Pandora and Last.fm allowing people to listen to a specific genre of music or music similar to listeners favourite artist. Spotify allows people to choose specific songs to listen to and create playlists of those songs.
Speaking to paidContent, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said he expects Apple to approve the application in the next few weeks, and he added, “Apple has already approved several other music services such as Last.fm, Deezer and Pandora. We very much look forward to people being able to access their Spotify library wherever they might be and we’ve spent significant time and resources to ensure we’ve stuck to Apple’s developer guidelines point by point.”
Apple might be more open to approving Spotify’s application because it is in talks with music companies and could be bringing out its own streaming music service, although such a service has been rumoured for years. Apple and the music industry might be trying to increase revenues from digital music by offering value-added bundles of content including video, interviews and streamed music.
Spotify has two services: a free service supported by advertising; and a premium service that allows users to listen to ad-free streams for £9.99 a month.
The iPhone application will be restricted to Spotify’s premium users. Some iPhone applications such as voice over internet service Skype are restricted to only working on Wi-Fi, but the Spotify application will work over Wi-Fi and also 3G mobile phone data networks.
One of the biggest draws for Spotify’s application will be the ability to listen to one’s favourite music even when no internet connection is available.
With advertising supported businesses coming under pressure during the recession, Spotify must convert more users from the free model to its premium model to succeed where others have failed, says Mark Mulligan, vice president and research director of consumer product strategy at Forrester Research.
The problem is that the premium streaming music businesses have a dismal record of failure in the UK, he said. Virgin and HMV shuttered their premium music streaming businesses, with HMV relaunching a new offering. Napster has between 50,000 and 60,000 UK subscribers, numbers so modest that it shifted its European headquarters to Germany.
Although Spotify has not discussed publicly how many premium subscribers it has, Mulligan estimates that the figure is in line with the industry standard 1% of its user base. “You have to really detest ads to pay £9.99 a month not to get them,” he said.
To survive and add more paying customers, companies like Spotify must launch value added-services like this mobile application.
Spotify is currently not available in the US, and the application will likewise only be available in the west European and Scandinavian markets where Spotify operates. However, this could be an important step towards a US launch.
Pandora and Sirius XM saw great success with their iPhone apps. Pandora executive Tom Conrad said they were adding a new listener every 2 seconds in the weeks after their iPhone application launched. Having the application ready for the US launch could be key to Spotify’s expansion plans.
On Spotify’s blog post announcing the availability of the application, many users are asking when it will be available for other major mobile phone platforms including Nokia handsets running its S60 smart phone operating system and handsets running Google’s Android OS. The company has already showed off a demo of the application running on Android earlier this summer.
The question remains whether Apple approve Spotify’s application. Adding the caveat that one should never try to second guess Apple, Mulligan said he would not be surprised if the application was rejected.
Apple already rejected the Podcaster app because it duplicated functionality of iTunes. While Spotify have been quite clever in releasing a video demonstration of the app to whet customers’ appetite, Mulligan said it might be too good, too similar to Apple’s own iTunes store experience to win approval.
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Kayaker makes record 55m waterfall drop
July 27th, 2009 |
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Watch Tyler Bradt execute a world-record drop over the Palouse falls in Washington state
This has to be seen to be believed.
When Tyler Bradt shot down Palouse falls, he broke a world record and his paddle, but he survived virtually unscathed.
Bradt achieved the feat in April, but the video has only just emerged.
After plunging 55 metres (180ft) he surfaced after seven seconds only slightly out of breath and with a sprained wrist.
“I actually expected more of an impact,” he told the Seattle Times. “… considering the waterfall, the injuries were pretty minor.”
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What’s up in the Big Green tent?
July 27th, 2009 |
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Some suspect foul play in the last-minute cancellation of the Big Green Gathering, but the Vestas protest might get an unexpected boost instead
News broke over the weekend that the organisers of the Big Green Gathering had finally crumbled under ceaseless pressure and demands from the local council and police, and decided not to stage the event. Bills had soared and it was deemed unfeasible for the organisation to go ahead.
The reaction, as you’d expect, is one of frustration. “The BGG is basically a gathering for people wanting to build a better world,” said Andrew Martin of Veggies. “There are workshops on green energy, ethical living, consensus-based decision-making, protesting and campaigning. I’m sure that’s got something to do with why it’s been shut down.” Veggies is a vegan catering organisations which, like some of the other organisations who regularly take part in the BGG, raises funds for environmental campaigns, including the Climate Camp.
I can’t help but suspect that the closure of the event stems from both police heavy-handedness at protests, such as at the G20 demonstrations earlier this year, and a more specific aim of undermining Climate Camp, after the police were criticised for “counterproductive” tactics. Climate Camp will be signifcantly poorer as a result of this decision (I’ve heard a confirmed figure of between £10,000 – £15,000).
The whole thing really sticks in my throat. It’s hard to imagine a festival with a more positive aim than the Big Green Gathering, which grew out of Glastonbury’s famous Green Fields and became a festival in its own right in the nineties. The aim is celebratory, and the idea that something designed to inspire and regenerate should be choked out of existence by a bunch of narrow-minded policemen and kow-towing local councillors is profoundly depressing. I may not want to spend the weekend studying alternative sewage possibilities, but I’m grateful that somebody does.
But it may be that the police are shooting themselves in the feet with this approach. In the 1990s the Criminal Justice Act united a whole slew of campaigners and party-goers in opposition and helped boost the anti-roads movement. Shutting down the BGG could potentially have the same effect.
Messages are already flying around the internet suggesting that instead of going to the BGG, people head down to join the protests outside the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight. If just a few people take up the suggestion, the police have created a whole new headache for themselves.
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Should I ditch my secret millionaire?
July 27th, 2009 |
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A reader wonders whether finding out about her new boyfriend’s hidden wealth will jeopardise their relationship
Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in Saturday’s paper.
This week’s question
I have been seeing a lovely guy I met on a dating website. We get on ridiculously well but, unknown to him, I’ve found out he’s a millionaire. I’m uncomfortable that our lives are so very different, and worry he might see me as a “gold digger”. My friends say I’m in a flap about nothing and it’s a no-brainer! How do I resolve this? Do I finish it? Or am I being prejudiced against the rich?
What are your thoughts?
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Tomasky Talk: On Sarah Palin
July 27th, 2009 |
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Tomasky talk: As Sarah Palin prepares to leave office, Michael Tomasky reflects on her tenure as Alaska’s governor
Hunger bites back
July 27th, 2009 |
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If the news that for the first time more than a billion people are classified as chronically hungry doesn’t completely kill your appetite for eating out, there is a way to assuage the guilt
As the invitations for the autumn celebrity cook book launches pile up – the latest is Tamasin Day-Lewis‘s Supper for a Song – you realise that the publishing world has cottoned onto the fact that people are finding it tougher to feed themselves in their usual manner. Clever! “In tough times we still always crave good food, even if we have to cut down (or give up) eating out … ” runs the blurb for Tamasin (sister of Daniel).
I can’t help wondering about the people who are having to give up eating entirely. Any top tips for them? Their numbers are up more sharply than those of British shoppers forced by the recession to slum it at Lidl. For the first time over a billion people, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, are chronically hungry. Nearly half of them are children.
Climate change and the renewed rise in the price of staple food commodities now ensure that more people than ever before in history are going to bed hungry. There’s a good analysis in the Economist of what is happening, and what the future holds. Part of the problem, of course, is that we’re still turning poor people’s cereals into ethanol for our green cars. Here’s me banging on about the effect of this in Cambodia for OFM last year.
It is the height of the cyclical famine season in east Africa – but, as the Guardian reported yesterday, the financial crisis means that rich countries are cutting their aid budgets. The shortfall means that emergency feeding programmes in Uganda, Somalia and Kenya may soon have to stop. The money missing amounts to $4.8 billion – easy to find for a bank that’s got itself in a mess, but not for millions of people in east Africa.
Still reading? If you are, you may be wondering what we can do, The most food-head-friendly aid agency working on global famine is Action Against Hunger – who have teamed up with Carluccio’s, Oliver Rowe, Fergus Henderson, Giorgio Locatelli and Michel Roux to help you feel a little less guilty while you guzzle courtesy of their pleasingly counterintuitive Fight Hunger, Eat Out scheme. So – eat, drink and be generous. A song for these hungry times.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Hunger bites back
July 27th, 2009 |
No Comments
If the news that for the first time more than a billion people are classified as chronically hungry doesn’t completely kill your appetite for eating out, there is a way to assuage the guilt
As the invitations for the autumn celebrity cook book launches pile up – the latest is Tamasin Day-Lewis‘s Supper for a Song – you realise that the publishing world has cottoned onto the fact that people are finding it tougher to feed themselves in their usual manner. Clever! “In tough times we still always crave good food, even if we have to cut down (or give up) eating out … ” runs the blurb for Tamasin (sister of Daniel).
I can’t help wondering about the people who are having to give up eating entirely. Any top tips for them? Their numbers are up more sharply than those of British shoppers forced by the recession to slum it at Lidl. For the first time over a billion people, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, are chronically hungry. Nearly half of them are children.
Climate change and the renewed rise in the price of staple food commodities now ensure that more people than ever before in history are going to bed hungry. There’s a good analysis in the Economist of what is happening, and what the future holds. Part of the problem, of course, is that we’re still turning poor people’s cereals into ethanol for our green cars. Here’s me banging on about the effect of this in Cambodia for OFM last year.
It is the height of the cyclical famine season in east Africa – but, as the Guardian reported yesterday, the financial crisis means that rich countries are cutting their aid budgets. The shortfall means that emergency feeding programmes in Uganda, Somalia and Kenya may soon have to stop. The money missing amounts to $4.8 billion – easy to find for a bank that’s got itself in a mess, but not for millions of people in east Africa.
Still reading? If you are, you may be wondering what we can do, The most food-head-friendly aid agency working on global famine is Action Against Hunger – who have teamed up with Carluccio’s, Oliver Rowe, Fergus Henderson, Giorgio Locatelli and Michel Roux to help you feel a little less guilty while you guzzle courtesy of their pleasingly counterintuitive Fight Hunger, Eat Out scheme. So – eat, drink and be generous. A song for these hungry times.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Tomasky Talk on Obama’s healthcare reform
July 26th, 2009 |
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Tomasky talk: How the US Senate finance committee and its chairman, Max Baucus, factor into healthcare reform
Bacteria outcalculate computers
July 24th, 2009 |
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Biologists have created a living computer from E. coli bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems
Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon.
The research, published today in the Journal of Biological Engineering, proves that bacteria can be used to solve a puzzle known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem. Imagine you want to tour the 10 biggest cities in the UK, starting in London (number 1) and finishing in Bristol (number 10). The solution to the Hamiltonian Path Problem is the the shortest possible route you can take.
This simple problem is surprisingly difficult to solve. There are over 3.5 million possible routes to choose from, and a regular computer must try them out one at a time to find the shortest. Alternatively, a computer made from millions of bacteria can look at every route simultaneously. The biological world also has other advantages. As time goes by, a bacterial computer will actually increase in power as the bacteria reproduce.
Programming such a computer is no easy task, however. The researchers coded a simplified version of the problem, using just three cities, by modifying the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria. The cities were represented by a combination of genes causing the bacteria to glow red or green, and the possible routes between the cities were explored by the random shuffling of DNA. Bacteria producing the correct answer glowed both colours, turning them yellow.
The experiment worked, and the scientists checked the yellow bacteria’s answer by examining their DNA sequence. By using additional genetic differences such as resistance to particular antibiotics, the team believe their method could be expanded to solve problems involving more cities.
This is not the only problem bacteria can solve. The research builds on previous work by the same team, who last year created a bacterial computer to solve the Burnt Pancake Problem. This unusually named conundrum is a mathematical sorting process that can be visualised as a stack of pancakes, all burnt on one side, which must be ordered by size.
In addition to proving the power of bacterial computing, the team have also contributed significantly to the field of synthetic biology. Just as electronic circuits are made from transistors, diodes and other devices, so too are biological circuits. Synthetic biologists have worked together to create the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and this new research has contributed more than 60 new components to the list.
For more information on the expanding field of synthetic biology, download the latest edition of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast. Alok Jha and James Randerson were joined in the pod by synthetic biologist Paul Freemont, professor of protein crystallography at Imperial College London, to discuss a future of biological machines.
To get daily news updates from Guardian Science, follow us on Twitter.
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Kick-ass women slay convention
July 24th, 2009 |
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Comic-Con’s debate about ‘female power icons in pop culture’ suggested that Hollywood is less adventurous than TV – and that Alien’s Ripley is still the ultimate wonder woman
As the panellists walked on stage for the Wonder Women talk at Comic-Con yesterday (subtitled “female power icons in pop culture”) it was interesting to see the various levels of famous; Eliza Dushku, formerly of Buffy and now star of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, got a good round of applause. Zoe Saldana, the new Uhura, got lots of claps and growing number of “whoop whoop whoooooooo!”, noises. Elizabeth Mitchell, from Lost, received both whoops and several cheers of “Lost! Lost! Lost!”.
And then? Ripley beat them all. And so she should, being the best female action hero ever despite it being 30 years since Alien was released. Sigourney Weaver got a standing ovation for simply walking on stage – and from that point until the end of the panel, the air was crackling with bright little flashbulb hiccups and the little electric cla-chuk of 4,000 digital cameras taking 400,000 pictures of a stage that felt as if it was 40 miles away.
Weaver was passionate in her belief that female action stars – and powerful female roles in general – should be action stars and roles first, and female depending on whoever was best for the role.
“Science fiction is an investigation into what it is to be human,” she said at one point. “A lot of the roles I have played, they’re not trying to create a female action figure – they’re trying to create a fully-functioning human being; a character comes first.”
Of Ripley she said, “I was playing a person: people want things, believe in things. I am grateful, though that when we started out, I got to wear clothes. Real clothes.
“I think my issue was what people were always looking for was someone who was 5’2″ and petite and blonde and I couldn’t possibly do that, I would tower over these leading men” – and she patted the shoulders of the tiny, younger actors to her side. “I get sent roles now, but still, men’s roles – because society is changing faster than Hollywood moves and can understand.”
The question of appearance ended up being one of the key points of debate.
Saldana, already all the rage thanks to her turn in the Star Trek reboot, was by this point becoming more popular by the second thanks to her intelligence and articulacy on the panel.
“It’s about how long I have to stand fighting a room full of men about why I should do a fight scene in trousers, where I’m required to run across a floor and leap on to a moving elevator,” she argued, “They’re confused because they’re convinced I should be just as good at doing that in a leather miniskirt and Gucci boots.”
Dushku, meanwhile, came across as somebody who wanted to be both powerful and frequently score roles that being a young, striking woman allowed her to play. She talked of having a character that was able to sell sex – to use, as she put it, her feminine wiles.
“I asked Joss for the most kick-ass multi-dimensional character he could think of, and he delivered … this character, it’s just a lot like me.”
So is the problem in the writing, the casting, or what the audience demands and understands?
Lessons here:
1. Soldana has her head truly on her shoulders in terms of what’s going on, as well as her ability to connect to an audience.
2. Age is also an issue. Elizabeth Mitchell: “My roles have been far more adventurous, far more interesting, once I moved beyond 30; my roles are juicer, and sexier, and more powerful – we’re allowed to do all those things, be all those things, once we pass 30.”
But, and this was a point that both she and Saldana touched upon, these roles are more likely to be in TV than on film. It seems to take ideas longer to filter through Hollywood than through TV, and riskier casting, they suggested, is more likely to happen on the small screen than the big.
This was all wrapped up when someone brought the title back into play. If this was all about Wonder Woman, why wasn’t there a Wonder Woman movie (Dushku, the most likely to know what the hold-ups on Whedon’s planned project, wasn’t saying anything, if she knew). Could there be a 35-year-old Wonder Woman? Or even a 45-year-old one? Or would she have to be 25, like so many other roles?
The affectionate crowd could have named Soldana Wonder Woman on the spot, who responded with a thoughtful critique: “65-year-old men want to see 25-year-old women. And they’re the people that are cutting the cheques, they’re the people that are making the decisions, and until we change that – until they allow a younger segment of the audience to have a say in those decisions that’s going to continue to be the way.”
“I think it’s a mistake to look to Hollywood as the bringer about of socio-economic, sociological change,” said Weaver. “It’s about your writing the scripts, leading them by the nose into making the decisions that actually, and accurately, represent the feelings of the audience.”
Or as Saldana put it – you have to ask. The fans have to say they want something different when it comes to casting women in supernatural or super-powerful roles.
But that just makes you wonder whether it’s wishful thinking on the part of female actors. After all, when the super-fans typical of Comic-Con want something, they are not backward in coming forward. Perhaps they are already getting what they want.
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The Word of Mouth KFC challenge
July 24th, 2009 |
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When the ‘secret’ of the Colonel’s blend of herbs and spices was revealed, we had to test the recipe – and then see if it could be bettered …
Woody Allen once opined that sex is like pizza – even when it’s rubbish it’s pretty damn good. I feel the same way about fried chicken. The truth is, it would take effort and skill to screw up succulent chicken meat, dredged in seasoned flour and cooked in boiling fat. Like many other foodies I have a problem with the moral implications of KFC’s chicken meat but I can’t, with my hand on my (rapidly congesting) heart, say it doesn’t taste pretty good when fresh from the bucket.
But I’m lucky enough to also have sampled the real thing. I lived for several years in rural North Carolina and married a local girl. The reception was held on a hot summer evening, on the banks of a sleepy river on the family farm and was a pot-luck affair. In the course of the evening a couple of hundred people turned up, most carrying trays covered in a cloth and containing a personal variation on fried chicken.
Your personal ‘secret recipe’ for fried chicken is a pretty serious business in the South, and a newbie outsider like me could be forgiven for believing that all those family reunions, church picnics, barbecues and tailgate parties were just a front for a bitterly fought and endless competition to produce better and better fried chicken. I personally reckon the world would be a much better place if we all got together every now and again in a ‘healthy’ competition over fried chicken. It sublimates family tensions, draws communities together and generally makes it socially acceptable to eat like a starved weasel in the name of politeness. An online competitive chicken fry-off, then? Bring it on.
Thanks to a huge response from WoM posters we were able, once again, to revisit the endlessly fascinating moral arguments surrounding the eating of animals. We were also able work out a sensible method of home cooking fried chicken, and devise a convincingly British spicing mix.
Lacking KFC’s mighty pressure fryers and mindful of the need to cook the chicken right through, we were happy to follow the suggestions of double cooking. Most recommended some time in the oven after frying, but we thought we’d experiment with poaching beforehand and, as many of our posters suggested an overnight marinade in milk, we decided to use the marinade as the poaching liquid. It’s worth noting for future recipes that chicken marinaded and poached in milk has an unbelievably suave flavour and texture, and that the poaching liquid thickens to create the most soothing cream of chicken soup I’ve ever achieved.
We made up two batches of seasoned flour, using Ron Douglas’s ‘KFC’ mix and our own Guardian crowdsourced version – let’s call it ‘GFC’ – and fried sample pieces of the poached chicken dredged in each.
‘KFC’ mix
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)GFC mix
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp sage
1 tsp celery seeds
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dried onion flakes
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground white pepper
I’m not going to lie to you. If your paper gives you moral carte blanche to wolf it down in the name of research, and when it’s hot and fresh from the bucket, KFC is gorgeous. I haven’t eaten chain fast food for a long time and the combined hit of chicken, fat and flavour was disorientatingly powerful. It’s the sort of comprehensive sensory seeing-to that’s both best and worst about drink, drugs and sex. So very good and so very bad. No wonder teenagers live on this stuff. But trying to apply any kind of critical approach to the flavour was surprisingly hard. I can’t tell you what that famous mixture of 11 secret herbs and spices actually tastes of, because I couldn’t distinguish any particular flavours amid the assault.
Cooking from scratch enables us to do two things that the Colonel can’t: use great chicken and drain the grease more efficiently. This gave us a real head start, and the results were stunning. A single bite of the homemade KFC is enough. It’s like biting into a dew-fresh ripe peach after eating a canned one. It’s obviously the same thing but an order of magnitude better. As before, none of the flavours predominated enough to be identifiable but, having made up the mix from scratch, we now know the secret. Herbs and spices be damned, that staggering, mouthfilling, umami facepunch of a flavour is down to the two tablespoonfuls of MSG.
GFC, our own mix, was very, very good. Nice flavours, well chosen and matched. It’s refined, elegant and I’d proudly serve it at a family picnic. An elegant Southern church lady would gladly remove a cotton glove to pick up an MSG-free GFC drumstick. She would compliment us on our British reserve, our eccentric quirkiness and our general pluck, but as far as stimulating the senses goes, she’d politely opine, “why, it’s like comparing iced tea and crystal meth”.
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Hoax plan to pave over Central Park
July 24th, 2009 |
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Is the hoax campaign to concrete over NYC’s favourite green space and build an airport a satire on incompetent transport policy or another product viral? Watch this space
“Environmentalists rally in support of Manhattan airport”. That got your attention, didn’t it? And that was precisely the intention of the Manhattan Airport Foundation, a mysterious organisation that has outlaid its proposals to bulldoze Central Park in New York city and build an airport instead.
The foundation put out a press release earlier this week saying that the “Triborough Association for Fair Treatment” – a group it says lobbies to get legislation drafted to help protect migratory birds from aircraft strikes – was putting its full support behind the building of a new airport in the heart of Manhattan as it would reduce the kind of bird-related incidents that brought down US Airways Flight 1549 back in January causing it to bellyflop into the Hudson.
It’s all nonsense, of course. The whole thing is a hoax – one that’s been getting plenty of attention all week and managing to snare a few suckers along the way, too. The Manhattan Airport Foundation is pure fiction, as are its plans for an airport. Only a few nanoseconds of consideration lead you to realise the last place on earth that would ever be concreted over to make way for an airport would be Central Park.
But who is behind the hoax? And why have they spent a considerable amount of time and effort (and, presumably, money) creating such a professional-looking website? Chances are the site will soon morph into an advert for something or other, as has happened with other web hoaxes in the past. Or it could be some web-savvy comedians looking for some viral marketing?
No one yet, though, seems to have undercovered the real identity of those behind the Manhattan Airport Foundation, or their motive. The website’s domain name was registered back in April (even though the foundation claims to have been founded in 2006), but the identity of the domain’s owner has been withheld. The foundation’s Twitter page has only been live since 8 June, and its address is listed as being on the 58th floor, 233 Broadway. Yet the building only has 57 floors.
A press release dated April of this year says the foundation is to receive “significant financial backing over the next five years” from the “Waalwijk Charitable Trust”. In addition to this, the “Tokyo-based holding company Yamanote Ltd” will be making a “substantial gift”. Again, both these organisations are fictional – Waalwijk is the name of a town in the Netherlands and Yamanote is an affluent area in Tokyo.
The only person’s name mentioned anywhere on the site is a press officer called “Audrey Cortlandt”. Again, nothing of note shows up online for that name, although it does throw up some interesting anagrams – “Lady Dancer Tutor” being one of them. Not that this really helps us, though.
The plot thickens.
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Food tattoos: tasty or tragic?
July 24th, 2009 |
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From fruit to burgers to kitchen appliances, there are a lot of food-related tattoos out there. What tasty tat would you choose?
There is a tattoo trend afoot. We’ve had dolphins, ancient symbols, “ironic” sailor tattoos and now I give you … the food tattoo.
Before I go any further, I feel like I should state straight off the bat that I don’t like tattoos. On me. I’m not a huge fan of them on other people either, but it takes all sorts. Working in fashion, I have a low boredom threshold – I want new and I want it now. The thought of deciding on a tattoo today that defines me so much that I feel the need to have it scratched into my skin yet will still hold true in 10 or 20 years time strikes fear in my heart. Call me fickle.
When Lulu Grimes of Olive magazine Twittered these food tattoos I thought it was a pretty funny joke. But it turns out these are real tattoos. As in, these people are stuck with them forever.
Don’t get me wrong, I love food. I spend much too much time planning what I will eat next and have many favourite foods. Most of them involve cheese. But, never in all my days of scraping the last crumb of Stilton off the rind, have I considered marking my love of the stinky cheese in a permanent fashion.
The shaven-headed man pictured above loves fried breakfasts so much that he sports a full English on his shiny pate. At least he could grow his hair back to cover it up, although the thought of a baked bean peeking out of his parting makes me feel a little nauseous. A woman has a cherry-topped cupcake on her foot, but look a little closer and the cherry is a skull. Sinister. And weird. Yet another shows a piece of toast, complete with smiling face, spreading itself with jam. The toast looks happy enough, I wonder whether the owner of the tat is quite so jolly?
There are dripping slices of pizza, rashers of bacon, angry-looking leeks, shrimps and, inexplicably, a blue cupcake sitting on the toilet.
I just don’t get it. Some of the tattoo owners appear to be advertising food joints like the American burger restaurant Wendy’s. What’s the motivation? Is brand loyalty alone enough? And what do you do if you get a meaty hot-dog inked on your arm and then turn vegetarian? Turn it into a gherkin?
And what about your chances with the opposite sex? Eating food can be sexy. Removing your clothes to reveal a carton of milk holding hands with a cookie or all the ingredients needed to make hummus, not so much.
Maybe celebrities (they love a tattoo, don’t they?) could get in on the branding action. Amy Winehouse could get a bottle of Tanqueray gin inscribed somewhere (if she can find the room). Stella McCartney could get a veggie burger. Justin Timberlake could get a Big Mac to go with his McDonald’s jingles.
But what should you never, ever, no matter how drunk you are, have tattooed onto yourself? Anything in the line of Ginsters pasties, Spam, sausage rolls, and rice pudding, surely.
It’s impossible to decide which is the worst, but possibly, given the rampant spread of swine flu, the idea of engraving my flesh with a butcher’s diagram of a pig, complete with all the different cuts, comes close.
If I was forced, upon pain of death, to have a food tattoo. I would a) probably choose death, b) get the smallest thing possible, like a poppy seed to actual size, and c) have it removed.
What food would you get tattooed?
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Irrigation is key to food security
July 24th, 2009 |
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Irrigation seems to have been left off the agenda when it comes to discussing food security in Uganda. It needs to be added now, argues Richard M Kavuma
As we now know, the people of Katine, the wider Teso region and other parts of Uganda are bracing themselves for famine following back-to-back drought. This is, of course, bad news, which makes the recent G8 pledge to support Africa to feed itself all the more timely. But what bothers me is the failure of the Ugandan government and indeed its donors – including the UK – to realise that simplistic solutions will only be stop-gap measures. Yes, there is talk about fertilizers and drought-resistant crop varieties, but governments have pretty much maintained a business-as-usual approach to agriculture. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s 2009 Least Developed Countries report says as much.
People in Katine realise that the weather is changing and many ask what is happening to “their” world. A year ago, one village leader’s message to the G8 heads of state was that they should help Katine plant trees to help stabilise the unpredictable weather. Of course, planting a tree in Katine is no panacea for all the crimes committed against the planet, especially by wealthier countries, but the 55-year-old village chairman was thinking along the right lines. But what does his president, Yoweri Museveni, in Kampala think? That it is all right for natural forests like Mabira to be replaced with sugar cane farms because sugar cane companies will pay billions of Ugandan shillings in taxes.
One painful thing about this drought/famine scenario was echoed by Stephen Ochola, Soroti district chairman, the other day: How can Egypt and Israel, which are largely deserts, grow fruits and export juice, while Uganda, blessed with rich soils, rainfall and lakes and rivers, starves? Why, Ochola wondered, can’t Uganda start seriously promoting irrigation to supplement the rains when necessary?
Out of Uganda’s estimated 400,000 hectares of irrigable land, barely 5% is under irrigation – and these are large-scale farms. The government has for years talked about harnessing water for production, but there is too little being done.
People must find creative ways to harness water resources to make irrigation by smallholder farmers possible. But they need creative, committed leadership. It is expensive, of course, but who said saving lives was going to be cheap? For without a change in approach this is what it will come down to – saving people from starving to death.
Another issue that does not feature in the G8 text was brought up by farmer Julius Eilu, who is already having trouble feeding his family of nine children. Asked what he would do to cope, Eilu said: “Perhaps I should stop fathering children.” This is a telling statement by a father in an area where children come with some pride.
Eilu’s president in Kampala sees no problem with Uganda’s population growth rate of 3.2% per year. In fact he thinks Uganda’s population of 30 million is too small. Yet as families have more children that they can hardly afford, farmland gets fragmented into small plots for the many siblings, productivity reduces and the dependence ratio grows. Couple that with unpredictable weather and the business-as-usual approach of the state and you have the recipe for a perpetually food-insecure, poor country.
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Johnny Depp no match for Twilight
July 24th, 2009 |
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Johnny Depp mumbled, Robert Pattinson twinkled and James Cameron previewed his new film Avatar at the festival where everyone’s dressed up as their favourite superhero
The first sighting of James Cameron’s Avatar (not mine)
The popularity of the big movie panels in the convention centre’s largest hall means that if you’re not there queuing up five hours before (if you’re, say, doing something else) you’re not getting in.
So I can’t tell you how amazed and awestruck I was to see James Cameron’s new movie juice splodged all over the big screen in glorious 3D technicolour. But I can tell you how impressed other people seem to have been, like this person from E-Online and this person from Screenrant. They both liked it. And luckily, you don’t have to wait too long to find out, because Cameron’s going to be staging 15-minute Imax Trailers on 21 August. For free. Which is an unprecedented move. And should make for some interesting dates.
“What shall we do tonight?”
“I thought we’d go to the cinema for quarter of an hour, then I’ll drop you home and I’ll go back to my house and think about a 3D Zoe Saldana painted blue for the rest of the evening.”
“Oh. Um. OK.”
Depp drops in. Mumbles. Leaves.
In five words. Exactly. Well, that’s all he had for the audience excitedly watching a preview of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
You can see how he might have felt miffed, of course. The audience, though thrilled at his appearance, was overwhelmingly made up of people who’d been queuing all night for the Twilight panel, which came later than the Disney morning panel. I don’t care how laidback and tousled you are, when you’re being stared at by 6,500 bleary-eyed teens who are clearly all thinking “Well he’s all right, but he’s no Robert Pattinson …” that’s got to be a kick in the tousled nuts.
You are what you wear. If you wear it for four days straight
For the true fan, wearing a T-shirt to express your allegiance to a franchise (be it comic, character, film, television programme, game or, you know, other) is not enough. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a good start, but the more powerful allegiance still is dressing up in full costume.
So far I’ve seen (among others) three Catwomen, two lycra-clad Stormtroopers, eight Jedis, and for some reason, around a dozen Pikachus. There will, in the middle of Friday, be a “Slave Leia Photo Op” for all the women who’ve come dressed in a metal bikini. Well, there was one last year. There are many other clothing choices: some more familiar than others a selection is here.
Endyman
For those who count themselves among the faithful Middleman comic-to-TV-series adaptation fans – the cult, quickly cancelled TV show made a comeback. Or sort of; the cast got together for a table reading of the 13th (never produced) episode. Highlights are here.
He Wood if he could, and he did
There’ll hopefully be some more on this in the Torchwood panel on Sunday, but Russell T has been warming up his outspeaking muscles in preparation, telling fans that if they don’t like the twist in Children of Earth, that’s too bad, and maybe they should go and watch something jolly like US series Supernatural instead. Huzzah. See, this is a big story because no one popular gets killed off in US TV (unless they ask for too much money to renew their contract) for fear of breaking a winning formula. Good old RTD: All about the story.
That Twilight panel
Was enjoyed greatly.
The three leads (the vampire, the girl, and a hot dog – sorry, sexy werewolf), flirted with each other, complimented the fans and talked about how working on Twilight: New Moon, was one of the greatest experiences of their lives. And a great film that everyone should go and see (obviously).
The noise “SQUEEEEEE!” was made early, loudly, and often, by all.
Meanwhile, on the other side of a heavily guarded conference door, 100,000 grumpy genre fans grumbled about the fact that, frankly, if vampires are sparkle, they’re not real vampires.
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How it feels to be sued for filesharing
When I contemplate the above sum, I have to remind myself what I’m being charged with. Investment fraud? An attack against the government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave
To a certain extent, I’m afraid to write this. Though they’ve already seized my computer and copied my hard drive, I have no guarantee they won’t do it again. For the past four years, they’ve been threatening me, making demands for trial, deposing my parents, sisters, friends, and myself twice – the first time for nine hours, the second for seven. I face up to $4.5m in fines and the last case like mine that went to trial had a jury verdict of $1.92m.
When I contemplate this, I have to remind myself what I’m being charged with. Investment fraud? Robbing a casino? A cyber-attack against the federal government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave.
No matter how many people I explain this to, the reaction is always the same: dumbfounded surprise and visceral indignance, both of which are a result of the amazing secrecy the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has operated under. “How did they get you?” I’m asked. I explain that there are 40,000 people like me, being sued for the same thing, and we were picked from a pool of millions who shared music. And that’s when a look appears on the face of whoever I’m talking to, the horrified “it could have been me!” look.
The reason this has remained so silent despite passionate opposition is that nearly all people settle. My story of becoming an exception started four years ago.
In 2005, my parents received a letter from Sony BMG, Warner, Atlantic Records, Arista Records, and UMG Records claiming “copyright infringement”. They were given a number to call, which was their “settlement information line”, a call centre staffed by operators who, we are emphatically told, are “not attorneys”. The process of collecting money from these threats was so huge, they had set up a 1-800-DONT-SUE-ME-style call centre.
The operators did little more than ask how you would pay (they wanted $3,000, I believe) and repeated intimidating lawsuit statistics. I sent them a money order for $500, which they returned. I told them I couldn’t pay any more. We discussed whether I might qualify for “financial hardship”, and then I stopped hearing from them, which I didn’t question. I graduated from college and began studying for my physics doctorate.
And then in August 2007, I came home from work to find a stack of papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment. That’s when I found out what it was like to have possibly the most talented copyright lawyers in the business, bankrolled by multibillion-dollar corporations, throwing everything they had at someone who wanted to share Come As You Are with other Nirvana fans.
I had assumed that as an equal in a court of law in the United States, my story would be told and a just outcome would result. I discovered the sheer magnitude of obstacles in your way to get your say in court. And even if you get to trial, (which only one other person, Jammie Thomas Rasset, has done) you’re still far from equal with the machine controlling 85% of commercial music in the US.
But to even start fighting assumes you (a) know what you’re even being sued for and (b) have a concept of what grounds to fight it on. Most of the time you know nothing except for the huge stack of paper written in legalese that says you owe several thousand dollars and it will probably cost you more than that just to hire a lawyer. If you can find one.
I had frequent contact with one of their Colorado counsel. While she was impudent to the point of vicious (“Come on Joel, I think you did it”), I continued to use phrases like “I respect your position” and “we have a respectful difference of opinion”. I have no record of this intimidation because the person in question made sure to keep contact restricted to phonecalls.
Every conversation consisted of her trying to get information out of me about my defense, telling me how much bigger the settlement would be if I didn’t settle now. Shaken, I would call my mother, who was a state-paid lawyer in child custody cases, and ask her what to do. We blindly fired all kinds of motions at them. Eventually my mother became afraid to answer my calls, worried it would be about the case. For the court “settlement” I offered $5,250, which the RIAA declined, asking $10,500. I saw myself on a conveyor belt, being pulled inexorably toward the meshing of razor-sharp gears.
Then in summer 2008, I arrived home to find a letter addressed to me. The return address said “Harvard Law School”. Curiously, I opened and read it. “My name is Charles Nesson, professor of Law at Harvard. I caught wind of your case,” it said. “I can be of any assistance, don’t hesitate to call.” I called. Nesson picked up. I said, “Yes, you can be of assistance!” My mom drafted a letter to him, summarising where we were. The opening line read, “Dear Professor Godsend”.
Since then I’ve learned that you don’t have to accept phone contact from the RIAA lawyers, but could demand correspondence by mail. I’ve been deposed twice – for nine hours one day and for another seven a few weeks ago – where I was asked every irrelevant question about my life, cars that I owned, websites I’ve operated. The RIAA will try to denigrate this, saying I was only talking for seven hours and then five and a half, but I was stuck in their office the entire time. You think it makes any difference to me when I can’t work?
My sisters, dad and mother have all been deposed. My high-school friends, friends of the family too. My computer’s been seized and hard drive copied, and my parents and sister narrowly escaped the same fate for their computers. And the professor who supervises my teaching is continually frustrated with my need to have people cover for me, while my research in grad school is put on hold to deal with people whose full-time job is to keep an anvil over my head. I have to consider every unrelated thing I do in my private life in the event that I’m interrogated under oath about it. I wonder how I’ll stand up in a courtroom for hours having litigators try to convince a jury of my guilt and the reprehensibility of my character.
But the support helps. I’ve had a great team of Nesson’s students helping and the professor himself has been magnificent. Most of all, I’m touched by the warm messages of support from the people who’ve written in, Twittered, and Facebooked me (though I’ve been too paranoid to friend strangers lately). Best hopes to others dealing with the same: Brittany Kruger, Jammie Thomas, and the other 39,997 of us.
The trial starts today, 27 Monday July. Regrettably, it won’t be webcast as we requested due to the RIAA’s successful opposition, but we will tweet (with the hashtag #jfb) and blog as much as possible, and there is a website where you can follow us and learn more.