Reviews Category
We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.
Croydon bin officer breaks the Gates of Hell (video)
LOCAL news special. Meet Bharat and Sheela Gandhi of South Norwood, London. Says Mr Gandhi:
“The behaviour by the council person was inexcusable and even dangerous as he left our property vulnerable and without any reason… It would have taken a lot of force to break the gate. There is a bell for people to ring, which he did not.”
The Gandhis, who run the local Neighbourhood Watch, installed a CCTV camera at their property. It recorded a Croydon council worker breaking their gate. The “bin officer” was calling to talk about recycling. He could not navigate beyond the gate. Eventually, he broke it, unhooking the gate from its hinges.
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Police ticket armless motorcyclist for driving without a seatbelt?
TWO seatbelt stories to consider. The first is set in Canada, where Steven Simonar, 55, from Saskatoon, is upset about the $175 ticket issued by police for not wearing a seatbelt. Mr Sakatoon has no arms. This , he says, makes fastening the belt tricky when driving alone.
Simonar says the police told him:
“He became very ignorant, and said, ‘Well if he can’t put his seatbelt on maybe he shouldn’t be driving.’ That’s what really made me mad…
“It never dawned on me I’d get a ticket, because I’ve been stopped numerous times and I’ve never had an issue. You just have to look once to figure it out… I’ll go to jail over this – I am not paying that ticket.”
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The Day My Kid Went Punk: a punksploitation special
THE Day My Kid Went Punk was a 1987 abc Afterschool Special. It posed the question:
“What do you do when your bright, loveable, talent kid turns into a punker overnight?”
Hide your eyeliner?
On with the Punksploitation:
Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Flashback, TV & Radio | Comment
Bill Roache arrested over child abuse claims in this life
BILL Roache MBE has been accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in 1967. Roache, 81, is best known for playing Ken Barlow in Coronation Street. Police arrested him at his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, as part of Scotland Yard’s Operation Yewtree, the investigation into historic sex crimes.
As yet, only showbiz names and connections with that world have been arrested as part of the trawl triggered by the revelations about Sir Jimmy Savile. No politicians, journalists, peers, medics, lawyers, sportsmen or military men have been arrested. Which seems odd, no?
PS – Roache was in the news recenetly for saying we should be more understanding of paedophiles. He told New Zealand TV:
“Paedophilia is absolutely horrendous. Paedophiles should be sought out, rooted out and dealt with.
“But there’s a fringe of people who, particularly pop singers, they have these groupies. These girls who come, they’re sexually active, sexually mature. They don’t ask for their birth certificate, they don’t know what age they may be.
“But they’re certainly not grooming them and exploiting them, but they can be caught in this trap.
“Whether they’re proven guilty or not, we should not be judgmental about anybody, ever. We should always be totally forgiving about everything.”
And:
‘There’s been a pendulum swing after the Jimmy Savile situation. All I am saying is that if you’re accused you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty but if you’re a celebrity you’re pilloried. There should be anonymity for both the accuser and the accusee until such time as there is evidence and then it should come out.”
And:
Roache: “If you accept that you are pure love, and if you know that you are pure love and therefore live that pure love, these things won’t happen to you.”
Interviewer Garth Bray: “To some people that sounds perhaps like you’re saying victims bring things on themselves – is that what you’re saying?”
Roache: “No, not quite, but and yet I am, because everything that happens to us has been a result of what we have been in previous lives or whatever.”
It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me in a previous life, either…
Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
States United to Prevent Gun Violence produce this great anti-gun advert
IS this the greatest anti-gun advert? States United to Prevent Gun Violence has message:
GUNS HAVE CHANGED.
SHOULDN’T OUR GUN LAWS?
That’s a great slogan and advert, isn’t it?
Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Big news for those of you who don’t read the Wall Street Journal…
DO you read the Wall Street Journal, the business and economic newspaper? Well, no matter if you don’t. The paper ‘s entire output has been distilled into one headline that appeared on August 29, 2013.
You cannot be too rich! Phew!
Who carved a massive dick into the Godalming butcher’s parking space?
BAD Drawings of Dicks heads to Godalming, Surrey, where butcher Simon Thornton has spotted the large penis cut into the cement behind his shop. Mr Thornton, who is local councillor, had invested £3,500 to cover the three parking spaces. The cement was wet when the artist struck. Says the butcher:
“I was happy with how it was all looking and locked up and went home for the night. But when I came back the next morning I was faced with the image. It is huge. I can’t really afford to have it all re-done so I have done my best to scrub it out and make sure I place my car carefully over it every day. I told PCSO Dan Burrel about it but no more action has been taken. I don’t think it was a personal attack, just mindless vandalism.”
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Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Reviews, Strange But True | Comments (3)
Executed Richard Cobb says ‘Wow! That is great’ after receiving lethal injection
THE State of Texas executed Richard Cobb, 29. THe murderer was put to death in Huntsville, Texas. After he was injected with a lethal dose, he lifted his head and said:
“Wow! That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, warden! Thank you (expletive) warden!”
Amanda Kercher co-opts the Kercher family into plugging her book
AMANDA Knox has been on the TV in the US. She tells ABC that she “wants to be recognised as a person”.
“I mean, it’s one thing to be called certain things in the media, it’s another to be sitting in a courtroom, fighting for your life, while people are calling you a devil. For all intents and purposes I was a murderer, whether I was or not. I had to live with the idea that that would be my life.”
She toldUSA Today, as quoted in the Times:
“The ideal situation in my mind is that (the Kercher family) could show me Meredith’s grave. Because it was like, I wasn’t allowed to grieve, either, and that would mean a lot to me.”
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Chernobyl: the word’s worst nuclear accident in photos – then and now
AT 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, an engineer flicked the power switch on the control panel in the Chernobyl plant 4th reactor’s control room and triggered the world’s nuclear accident. The above picture show the missing power switch which was stolen by souvenir-hunters.
The old control room, with its damaged machinery, inside Reactor No. 4 in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is seen in this Nov. 10, 2000 file photo. Geiger counter registered about 80,000 microroentgens an hour _ 16,000 times the safe limit.
Satellite view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in USSR, as made by U.S. Geographic Survey EROS satellite, April 29, 1986, a day after a violent nuclear explosion at the plant.
Experts said that a radioactive cloud from the Soviet nuclear accident at the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine would probably pass over the polar ice cap, move across Canada and into the northwestern United States shown April 29, 1986. However, the experts say the amounts of fall-out would be so small they would not present a health hazard.
The British tabloids reported.
An aerial view of the Chernobyl nucler power plant.
An unidentified student one of a party of students who returned to London from Kiev passes through the arrival lounge at London?s Heathrow Airport, Thursday, May 2, 1986 carrying some possessions in plastic bags. The students from Kiev near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident were screened by the National Radiological Protection Board and were reported to be in no danger whatsoever.
On April 21, 1990, young children on a collective farm are patients on a ward in Syekovo, a village not far from the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Four years after the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl accident, these children were suffering intestinal problems from exposure to radiation. A Soviet newspaper has said scientists still expect thousands of deaths from radiation released in the Chernobyl explosion and fire
The 20-mile exclusion zone around the plant is now overgrown and Pripyat, where the plant workers used to live, is a ghost town.
Children’s toys and gas masks, covered by the radioactive dust are seen on bed frameworks in an abandoned kindergarten in the ghost town of Pripyat on March 10, 2006, in Ukraine. Pripyat was built nearly a mile from the plant to house the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s workers.
Immediately after the two explosions in Chernobyl, while firefighters were still trying to come to grips with the enormity of the meltdown, the people of Pripyat went about their normal business. Then they started suffering powerful headaches and vomiting. When they were eventually resettled they left behind their kitchenware, their children’s toys, food in cupboards.Now, with its abandoned funfair and nursery school untouched for more than two decades, the town resembles a modern-day Pompeii.
Ivan Kalenda turns away to wipe his tears as he visits his three-year-old grandson Vitya, right, in the children’s cancer ward at a hospital in Gomel, 300 kms, 186 miles southwest of Minsk, Belarus, March 19, 1996.
Ukrainian children suffering from cancer, listen to music at the children’s hospital in Kiev Tuesday, April 18, 2006. Greenpeace said Tuesday in a new report that more than 90,000 people were likely to die of cancers caused by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, countering a United Nations report that predicted the death toll would be around 4,000.
Natalya Lopatyuk, 41, left, and her daughter Yulia, 19, hold a portrait of Natalya’s husband and Yulia’s father Viktor in Kiev, Ukraine, Saturday, April 15, 2006. Viktor Lopatyuk, an electrician at the station died from acute radiation poisoning 22 days after the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant stands encased in lead and concrete following the accident.
The sarcophagus encasing Chernobyl was built in haste and is crumbling. Despite strengthening work there are fears it could collapse, leading to the release of tonnes of radioactive dust. Work is due to begin on a £600m replacement shelter designed to last 100 years. This New Safe Confinement will be built on site and then slid over the sarcophagus.
School children wear gasmasks during nuclear safety training lessong in Rudo near an isolated zone around Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Monday, April 3, 2006. About 600,000 people were mobilized to fight the effects of the explosion, and more than 116,000 evacuated from their homes. The ex-Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are stilling coping with the aftermath of the accident today, from skyrocketing rates of thyroid cancer to a marked increase in health concerns among the 5 million people whose land was dusted with radioactive particles.
A warning sign installed in a forest in Gomel region, Belarus, Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006. The warning reads “Radiation contamination! Mushroom and berries gathered must be subjected to radiation checks.”
Lasting legacy of Chernobyl for dozens of British farms is the restrictions placed on the movement of their sheep and lambs from within the affected areas which are still in place today 10 years after the disaster. Farms like those of John Harrison at Ulpha in the Lake District.
A woman who fears she has thyroid cancer is waiting to have her throat checked in a hospital in Ivankov town at Ukraine’s contaminated zone Friday, April 7,2006.
Ukrainians dressed in the uniform of the Chernobyl nuclear station workers light candles to commemorate those who died after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a ceremony at the memorial to Chernobyl firefighters in the city of Slavutich, Ukraine, Friday, April 26, 2013.
Why ‘gay’ John Lennon liked Yoko Ono
WHAT did John Lennon see in Yoko Ono? In The Beatles, Football And Me, Hunter Davies wrote about Lennon’s relationship with Brian Epstein, the band’s manager. They went to Spain together. Writes Davies:
“John wasn’t a homosexual, but he was daft enough to try anything once.”
Lennon’s childhood friend Pete Shotton says Epstein “toss [Lennon] off”.
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Posted: 30th, April 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
21 vintage camera adverts for your inner voyeur
BEFORE the age of digital cameras in everything, buying a snapper was a call to loins. Men needed cameras for one reason: to record women (and in one instance below, other men). We’ve compiled 21 great images of what photography looked like before self shots and the internet.
Michael Landon did it was “flash”. The star of Little House on the Prairie was the wholesome and good Charles Ingalls, creating a myriad children from God’s will and hearty woodland walks. Then in the 1980s he got a Kodak Ektralite camera and went to film girls in their swimmers doing onto varnished hardwood flooring.
Going Beyond subtle.
Whipped hair and soup strainer, Tamon man was a serious photographer. The Playgirl ideal never smiled.
She’s looking at you. He’s looking to steal her necklace.
The name’s Bond. Basildon Bond. So shoot me!
Why flash at the beach? Because with brilliant light you can see through her swimsuit, that’s why. And you live in Bridlington.
a
It’s 1932. Women are free to watch.
The XL Addict has a raincoat and bins. He is a “man on the move”. He;’s looking at your “money maker”. He is the man your mother warned you about.
Five reasons. One… two… three… (or are they a pair?)… four…
Get a grip
An eyefull. Shoot.
Romance lives in upskirt shots.
Your Kodak dealer has lots of photos. You just need to aks the right questions.
That sort of man. And it’s not “small”, ok.
Also cooks, cleans, communicates with Mars and deflects Russian atom bombs. The camera is merely huge.
The man on the floor is a keen observer of the human condition.
The Nikkormat FTN is “bait”. Be the master of bait…
See that girl in the distance? Now take a look through a Soligor 80-200. Yeah, she’s that close.
Camera woman wears ideal photography kit.
It’s just like being there.
With the Vivitar Super 8 women are easy meat.
Talent
Posted: 30th, April 2013 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
US sheriff threatened blogger with gun
GUNS. The debate in the US rages. In Beaver County, a local sheriff is accused of making threats against a blogger and a volunteer:
Both alleged victims testified at length today. Mr. Fleischman, a county jail guard, said that when he went to shake the sheriff’s hand at a campaign event, the sheriff called him a profane name and threatened to cut off his hands and eat them. He said he didn’t report the incident to anyone because he feared for his job and the sheriff is president of the county prison board.
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Posted: 30th, April 2013 | In: Reviews | Comments (4)
Petrol thief takes off into the air (Video)
TO Mt Warren Park, on the outskirts of Brisbane, Australia, where a woman is attempting to steal petrol. She makes to escape. But the car’s driver puts their foot down before she’s in the vehicle. She get caught on the fuel line and takes off into the air. The line snaps. The petrol gushes around her.
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In 1967 five flying saucers landed in Somerset and across southern England
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Boston Marathon victims vow to get better
AFTER the bombs went off in Boston, the pain began. Rather than focus on the true victims of the murder, we have seen voices raised about female Muslims living in fear of reprisal from white racists. One writer told us that these women were living in “hell“, as if Boston were now a fiery home for evil, violent bigots. A few scuffles from idiots were a sign that America was a race riot waiting to happen. But what we’ve seen is understanding and a coming together of humanity.
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Boston Bomber’s ex Nadine Ascencao says Tamerlan Tsarnaev heard the Devil taking through his TV
IN today’s episode of Why Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated a bomb at the Boston Marathon murdering innocent woman and children, we hear from Nadine Ascencao, 24, who claims to have dated the killer.
In “My boyfriend the bomber”, we meet the “fanatic’s ex”.
What was he fanatic of? Islam? Tamerlan Tsarnaev left no jihadi suicide video behind. We’ve seen no messages of hate and vengeance.
They couple dated in 2006. The Sun says she was 17. The Sun does not say how old he was, just that he was 26 when he died. The impression is of an older controlling male. But he’s have been 17 or 18 at the time.
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In pre-War America Paul Satko and his family sailed their Ark of Juneau from Virginia to Alaska
IN pre-war Great Depression-hit America, Paul Satko and his family set about transforming their car into a boat. They would drive and sail to a brighter future future in Alaska. The problem was they lived in Virginia and were too poor to pay air fares.
Photo: The Satko family, late of Richmond, Va., now of Tacoma, Wash., aboard their weird-looking craft, The Ark, in which they plan to leave on a two-months voyage to Alaska on March 24, 1940. Paul Satko, jobless machinist-welder, who built the craft and hauled it across country on a trailer, is at the extreme right. The rest of the sea-going Satkos–who will serve as the crew–minus two boys in Virginia are, left to right: Betty, 4; Edward, 17; Hazel, 18; Mrs. Satko; David, 9; William, 7; Grace, 11; and Joe, 15.
Photo: Paul Satko’s home-made Ark (background) was tied up at Seattle on April 27, 1940, awaiting a court order on its seaworthiness for an Alaska trip, but Satko and daughter Betty, 4, still day-dreamed of their long-planned northland voyage. Spectators are viewing the Ark.
Daniel Strohl takes up the story:
In 1934, Paul Satko lost his job as a welder and machinist in Richmond, Virginia. Like many other Americans at the time, for months he searched for a job to support his wife, Mollie, and their several children, only to come home in vain. Unlike many other Americans at the time, he refused to accept relief or government handouts to the unemployed. Instead, he heard of a government program offering 40-acre plots in Matanuska Valley in the territory of Alaska and apparently decided that he, his wife and two of their oldest children could combine four lots to create a vast 160-acre farm. Getting there, however, would be another story altogether.
Satko, a Marine Corps veteran who had sailed to China, the Philippines and Hawaii, decided to build himself a boat. However, rather than sail it out of an East Coast port and then on to Alaska, Satko decided to haul it across the country and then launch it from a West Coast port. Basing it on a truck chassis with the rear wheels still attached, he welded the steel frame of the nine-foot-tall, 40-foot-long boat together in Richmond, gathering whatever scrap materials he could find. To tow the boat, he used another truck chassis, stripped to the framerails and re-powered by a 1926 Buick engine – at most a 75hp, 275-cu.in. overhead-valve six-cylinder. In early 1938, he, Mollie, and seven of their nine children then set out from Richmond to Tacoma, Washington, attracting attention the whole way and earning the boat a nickname, the “Ark of Juneau.”
The journey across America took 81 days. The family based themselves in Tacoma for a year to make ready. In mid-April 1940, the bright yellow-painted Ark set sail:
The initial voyage only lasted a few days, curtailed when Satko ran aground on a sandbar at Magnolia Bluff outside Seattle. After the Coast Guard towed the Ark into port, a fellow sailor, Captain John Fox, executive secretary of the Master, Mates and Pilots’ Union, filed a complaint with the county requesting that the children be removed from the boat for their own safety. “This thing has passed beyond the stage of a joke,” Captain Fox told the Associated Press. “(The Ark) hasn’t enough power for the Alaskan trip. this was demonstrated when it was unable to make headway in a fresh breeze and moved sidewise. She would be a menace to navigation. Pilots would have to be on the alert for her constantly.” A judge agreed, and police removed six of the seven children from the boat, arresting Satko in the process for trying to prevent the police from serving the court order.
He shortly after posted bail, thanks to the help of some friendly Tacoma residents, and set about altering the Ark as the judge requested while the rest of the family – ordered to remain off the Ark – stayed in an apartment in Seattle. Yet a month later, with the alterations incomplete, Satko set sail for Everett, Washington, where he met up with the rest of his family, driven up by supporters who wanted to see them on their way. After a brief stop in Anacortes, Washington, where the Coast Guard refused to allow the Ark to continue, the Satkos left under the cover of darkness to make it to Canadian waters before the Coast Guard could catch up to them. Two months later, they made it to Juneau and eventually homesteaded in the area, though they were never able to obtain the 40-acre plots that set them on their journey.
Juneau Empire tells us what happened next:
The Ark finally reached Juneau on July 26, 1940. Shortly after the family arrived, a daughter, North Sea, was born on the Ark.
The Ark was beached on Eagle Landing and the Satkos obtained a homestead between Herbert River and Eagle River. The family lived on the Ark while Satko and the older children built a cabin on their homestead. The family developed a large garden and sold produce in Juneau. The products were sold to the public and some were sold wholesale to George Brothers’ Grocery Store.
However, the U.S. Department of the Interior would not give Satko a title to his homestead because he failed to file for the title within the prescribed time.
In 1946, after the war was over, Paul and Mollie, along with their children, returned to Virginia. Hazel (Mrs. Bill Brown), Joe and Grace (Mrs. Tom Connolly), remained in Juneau. The Ark became a victim of time and the weather, and only parts of the steel keel remain. Paul Satko died of a heart attack in 1957 at the age of 66. Mollie died in Washington in 1995, just a few days before her 92nd birthday. Only Joe of the original settlers remains in Juneau.
More here.
Views on the national and local newspapers’ alternative Royal Charter
A RIVAL Royal Charter for press self-regulation has been drawn up by publishers in the news business. The Government’s Royal Charter is not to their liking. (Read it in full here.)
The Newspaper Society explains:
“This initiative by the UK’s national, regional and magazine publishers completely accepts the need for a new regulator to be recognised by a genuinely independent body – which was a central conclusion of the Leveson Inquiry – and aims to help move the debate about the future regulation of the press to a constructive conclusion. Importantly, there will be a public consultation on the industry’s proposals giving newspaper and magazine readers the chance to have their say – a consultation that the Government has refused for its state-sponsored scheme.
“The industry’s proposal is closely based on the draft Royal Charter published on 12 February which had been painstakingly negotiated with national and local newspapers and magazines, and accepted by Ministers. It is a workable, practical way swiftly to deliver the Leveson recommendations, which the industry accepts, without any form of state-sponsored regulation that would endanger freedom of speech. It has widespread backing across the industry. It will deliver a system of regulation which will provide real protection for the public and which offers:
• tough sanctions, with the new regulator having the power to impose fines of up to £1 million for systematic wrongdoing ;
• up-front corrections, with inaccuracies corrected fully and prominently;
• strong investigative powers enabling the regulator to investigate wrongdoing and call editors to account;
• genuine independence from the industry and from politicians with all the bodies making up the new regulator having a majority of independent members appointed openly and transparently; and
• public involvement in the framing of the Code of Practice which binds national and local newspapers and magazines.”
Hacked Off responds:
“This desperate move by editors and proprietors – rejecting the Royal Charter agreed last month by all parties in Parliament and due to be approved by the Queen in days – is only the latest proof that most of the industry has learned no lessons from the Leveson experience. They are not sorry for the abuses exposed at the inquiry, or for the further abuses exposed almost weekly since, and they do not accept the need for real change.”
Fiona Richmond (NSFW photos her career) told the Telegraph her views on The Look of Love, the dull biopic about her former lover, the pornographer Paul Raymon. It stars Coogan:
“I was also so upset with Steve Coogan…During the lunch I asked, given that he had been part of the Leveson Inquiry and strongly complained about invasion of privacy, why he thought it was acceptable putting me in scenes that never happened: wasn’t it an invasion of my privacy? I never, for example, took part in orgies, or a threesome. But it didn’t seem to matter to him in the slightest.”
Simon O’Neill, group editor of the Oxford Mail:
“I support radical changes to the way Britain’s press is regulated, as I want no part of an industry that hacks phones and convicts innocent people on the front pages. But I will not accept a system that has been steamrollered through by self-interested politicians and pressure groups in the dead of night.
“The implications for press freedom in this country with politicians astride the regulation process hardly bear thinking about. Furthermore, I am disappointed, but not surprised, that despite fine words from MPs of all parties, including the three leaders, the impact this would have on the regional press has been completely ignored, or at best viewed as collateral damage. They clearly believed that if they patted us on the head we’d just go away. They were wrong.
“I want firm, fair and credible press regulation that also preserves freedom of the press in this country for another 300 years or more. That is why I support the Independent Royal Charter. It offers a sensible and effective solution to the current stalemate.”
All news stories start as local news stories…
Fabulous Frisbee 1977: A model shows us the Basic Catching Postions
SO. Summer’s coming and you’re wondering who to throw a frisbee like the dudes in Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Well, in 1978, Fabulous Frisbee told us how:
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Posted: 28th, April 2013 | In: Books, Flashback, Sports | Comment
Hunter S. Thompson writes to a TV producer
IT’S Hunter S. Thompson Sunday. Here’s how the writer responded to a TV contract:
Spotter: The Live Feed.
Posted: 28th, April 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Was the Yugo the worst car ever made?
WAS the Yugo the worst care ever made? Known locally as the Zastava Koral, the Zastava corporation’s compact hatchback died in 2008, when the last horror rolling slowly off the Zastava factory in the Serbian town of Kragujevac.
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Posted: 28th, April 2013 | In: Flashback | Comments (3)
Boston bombers fail to trigger race war: bigots use Islam to get whitey
WHO to blame for the Boston bombings? Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26? There’s a whole list of reasons here. Writing in the New York Times, Marcello Suarez-Orozco and Carola Suarez-Orozco, both of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies know:
The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.
Blame America? The NY Times has reported:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to playing a role in the marathon bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 260, and told federal agents that he and his brother were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs, when he was interviewed Sunday at the hospital, law enforcement officials said.
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Is Wikipedia anti-women? No. But the OED and Encyclopædia Britannica might be…
WHO writes the stuff on Wikipedia? Men mostly? Is that good or bad? Is Wikipedia a place where women are held back? Is is sexist?
Jim Giles says its Westerners:
The most active editors live in the US and Europe … and this means the supposedly global project is skewed towards Western interests. According to a 2011 study by Mark Graham at the University of Oxford and colleagues, the snowy wastes of Antarctica have more articles dedicated to them than all but one of the countries in Africa. In fact, many African nations have fewer articles than the fictional realm of Middle Earth. These regions, notes Graham, are “virtual terra incognita”.
Then there is the gender issue. Around 90 per cent of Wikipedia editors are men, and it shows. In 2011, Shyong Lam of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and colleagues measured the length of around 6000 Wikipedia articles about movies. This is a good proxy for quality, since longer articles tend to be more thorough. Lam found that movies aimed at a more female audience tended to get short shrift. Relatively threadbare coverage of When Harry Met Sally is not a big issue, but Lam believes the problem is a wider one. Female editors tend to work on topics like the arts and philosophy, but their lower participation may be making these articles shorter than others….
Wikipedia was the place where the radical rethinking of the encyclopedia began. Yet its future may now be threatened by a strain of conservatism and parochialism that its early supporters frowned on in traditional publishing.
In 2011, the New York Times said 13% of Wikipedia editors and contributors are women.
Maya made her point:
The Times article generally suggests that the problem when it comes to Wikipedia is the same one that plagues the real world: women often aren’t as assertive about putting forth their views. On the other hand, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones argues that men are simply more likely to have the obsessive personalities required to spend hours writing and editing a Wikipedia post and Anna North at Jezebel thinks that a male-dominated “nerd culture” may provide a “web-specific reason” for the disparity. Meanwhile, the anti-feminist blogosphere offers the simplest explanation yet: women just don’t care and are too busy “chatting with [their] friends about all the various boyfriends drifting in and out of their lives.”
Of course, is any of it important? The chief editors of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1837 to know are:
James Murray
Henry Bradley
William Craigie
C. T. Onions (Mr)
Robert Burchfield
Edmund Weiner
John Simpson
Do we trust the OED less because men are in control of the contents?
The Encyclopædia Britannica’s current board is made up of:
Wendy Doniger
Richard Fishman
Benjamin M. Friedman
Leslie H. Gelb (Mr)
David Gelernter
Murray Gell-Mann
Vartan Gregorian
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea
Wikipedia isn’t holding women back. It’s bucking the trend. It’s a veritable feminist fest…
Photo: Mallory Whitt works at her desk at the offices of the Wikipedia Foundation in San Francisco, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012.
Posted: 27th, April 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Who parked on the graves by St Catherine’s Church in Church Street, Ventnor, Isle of Wight?
REDDITOR MrSmo swrites that he was walking by St Catherine’s Church in Church Street, Ventnor, Isle of White, when he spotted cars packed on graves:
They were all parked there for what appeared to be a service. I don’t believe for a second you could ‘accidentally’ drive over two risen concrete graves. It looks like the passenger door is blocked by a tombstone for Christ’s sake! It’s just a crass act of selfishness and disregard.
Few of us like to be reminded of our death. But are we now in denial about death? Is death just a bump in the road we can navigate or squash? Don’t stare death in the face – cover it your hatchback and hope it goes away…
