(Click here for current BlogCode recommendations for Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts…)
I try not to blog about blogging – there’s enough of that already – but I should admit to not really knowing what do with my half-hearted, rarely updated blogroll. While I’m always flattered when someone links to me, I’m not keen on simply returning the favour. That strikes me as a route to a long meaningless list and who’s going to bother with that.

Which takes me to BlogCode, an idea from Bloggerheads (and others) based on StoryCode, a book recommendations system. At time of writing, it reckons I’m 90.29 per cent like myself, but I’m sure that will change: click the image to find out. I don’t know how great an idea BlogCode is. I can imagine finishing a novel and then looking for something similar (although Amazon.co.uk does a good job for me). But I’ve tended to include blogs on my blogroll that aren’t like me. Like The Noggie View (cultural comment) or New Links (web trivia) or Supermum (someone different’s diary). I don’t think its healthy to restrict yourself to a bubble of like minded individuals.

It may be worth noting that I’m 75.11% like Bloggerheads. I used to link to Bloggerheads, when it was more satirical, but it’s gone all serious. While Bloggerheads knows what it’s against, it doesn’t know what it’s for and so has lost direction. But author Tim Ireland should be praised for helping find a role for bloggers in political protest and for encouraging politicians to engage the medium. BlogCode may turn out to be a good extension of that as it helps Bloggers to find like minded others.

But I reckon that if the blogs yours is similar to tend to be the blogs you read, you’re not getting out enough.

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A new cultural experience for me: The Nutcracker, my first ballet. I didn’t expect to be quite so close to the stage, but then that’s what you get at the older theatres. We’re at the Opera House.

While I can’t always see the dancers’ feet, I can see up thier skirts. (Less childish comment will follow.)
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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Grizzly Man is the biopic of a fool. Timothy Treadwell dreamed of being ‘a fully accepted wild animal’. He projected a kind of humanity onto Alaska’s bears, and a morality on nature, that simply wasn’t there. The only mystery is the bears’ decision to eat their young before turning on Treadwell.
A fascinating portrait of naïvety, 8 out of 10.
Director: Werner Herzog
Walk the Line……13 (Tzameti)

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While Blair-Brown watchers were having an exciting weekend, thanks in no small part to Charles Clarke apparently describing the chancellor as a joint prime minister, I was learning a new word courtesy of my Museum of Spam: psycheocracy (I reckon it should be psychocracy, but I didn’t make it up).

Apparently, it means selecting leaders on the basis of their personality, something I think there’s far too much of already. The spammer advocating it reckons parliamentary candidates from all parties should undergo scientific testing before we, the people, get to vote. This would ensure all MPs had the ‘right personality’, that is, were anti-EU. Quite bizarre… it’s my favourite piece of spam in the whole museum. Psycheocracy.

Meanwhile, Brown’s promising to make speeches well beyond his brief, starting with a hard-line take on terror. This does make it look like the much hyped handover is entering a near final crucial stage, but at the risk of sounding facetious: so what?

Psycheocracy got me thinking of how all those anti-Blair campaigners will react when he finally goes. Will BackingBlair.co.uk simply become BackingBrown.com? Probably.

It’s clear that should Brown become prime minister there will be no Earth shattering change in direction. Nor would there be if Charles Clarke or one of the ‘skip a generation candidates’ won. They’re all where they are because, bar a few tweaks, they subscribe to same political philosophy and the next leader’s job will be to enable that philosophy’s continued evolution. That’s as it should be because in the end, ideas are bigger than any individual personality.

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Walk the Line serves Johnny Cash’s memory well with a competent biopic that depends upon, and more importantly gets, a superb performance from Joaquin Phoenix. If there’s a fault it’s that the becoming a rock star thing looks very, very easy.
A ‘does what it says on the tin’ 8 out of 10.
Director: James Mangold……Starring: Joaquin Phoenix……Reese Witherspoon
Hidden (Caché)……Grizzly Man

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I shall be holidaying stateside shortly but fortunately not Florida, where the Shoot First Law apparently, ‘authorizes nervous or frightened residents to use deadly force’. I spotted these ads in British newspapers in the summer, but never got around to checking them out.

Apparently, if a Florida resident feels physically threatened they may shoot you, even if they had other, less drastic, options open to them. So the travel advice is to be very, very polite to the locals when holidaying in Florida. Generally that won’t be a problem as we Brits are ever so well-mannered.

But what brought all this to mind is evidence that the gun-toter’s mantra – ‘An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.’ – may not be right. The New Scientist reports that motorists with guns in their cars are more likely to indulge their road rage. No doubt these tips will prove useful to those planning a trip to the land of the free.

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‘Violence down despite drink law’
– Daily Mail, February 2006

After all the hype and campaigning, it turns out that the hysteria whipped up over licensing reform had no more substance than a bottle of the American version of Budweiser. The apocalyptic vision of our pubs opening for 24 hours a day, filled with drunken violent scum never had any real credibility and now it turns out violent crime’s fallen a whopping eleven per cent. Hoorah!

That should be of no surprise to anyone who likes a drink or has a smidgen of experience of Britain’s drinking culture. While it would be silly to pretend that problem drinkers don’t exist, the weekend bingers do tend to be of an age where they simply can’t afford to drink all day. Many of the kiddies drink at home first, arriving in town already drunk. And you’ll be hard pushed to find a pub that actually opens 24 hours (around a third planned to open longer when the new law came in). The change simply means publicans can manage their businesses as they see fit, opening when there is a demand and closing when isn’t.

One pub chain claims longer opening has been bad for business. They blame extra security demanded by the hysterics. And some clubs may suffer as people aren’t kicked out of the pub and into their arms at 11pm, but that’s tough. Nobody’s claiming any significant boost in profits.

As the hysteria dies down, so will the extra policing, but as the Mail points out: recorded crime was expected to rise.

So vicious was the Daily Mail’s anti-pub crusade, publicans boycotted the rag. Yet it’s no accident that the Daily Mail got it so wrong. The truth is that the newspaper, like the Conservative Party it thinks it supports by putting Britain down, is out of touch. It has no real concept of what makes people tick and peddles a political agenda of no relevance to anyone.

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The betting markets are open on Sporting Index and Betfair for the Winter Olympics 2006. I can’t say I’ll be watching. The whole thing reminds me of bored Sunday afternoons watching Ski Sunday which, to be fair, has something of a cult following: listen to the theme and watch highlights here. My parents were well into it, but like most forms of racing I get a little bored. How many times can you watch people skiing down a mountainside?

Anyway. Ski Sunday was born after the 1976 Winter Olympic Games. I was seven, so I have to rely on others to assure me it was a right televisual treat. I reckon that if you want to make the Winter Olympics interesting, you should place bet on something. And nowadays there are so many options to choose from.

If you find stuff like spread betting, exchange betting and in-play betting a bit complicated, why not go with Totesport, a traditional bookie offering a FREE £25 bet on anything. If it’s the best odds on the Winter Olympics that interest you, try Betfair, where you exchange bets with other punters, can lay your own odds and bet in-play.

There’s spread betting from Sporting Index. It’s more risky to spread bet on the Winter Olympics, but they’ve got some great offers including £100 cashback after ten settled bets. Finally, Cantor Spreadfair, who offer up to £2,500 cashback, combine spread and exchange betting to create a whole new Winter Olympics experience.
(Offers available at time of writing, but not in the USA. Click advertisements/links for conditions.)

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Over on my other blog, I’ve written a dry-ish piece on human rights and business that reminds me of a film from late 2004: The Corporation.

The film’s central idea was that if corporations were people they’d be psychopaths. Without dismissing that, I felt it distanced we humans from any problems. After all, corporations are human constructs operating to rules we’ve made. So the Company Law Reform Bill, which rewrites those rules, is a golden opportunity to help create responsible corporations.

Where it goes wrong is in further prioritising shareholder’s interests without balancing their interests with those of others. Directors already have a legal duty to put shareholders first in everything they do, but it’s widely acknowledged that they don’t always do that. But my experience of management with shareholders on its back, is that profit is put before all else. Shareholders are investors and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re focussed on financial returns.

Amnesty International points out that globalisation means that British corporations often find themselves operating in environments where human rights are not respected and the environment barely protected. They’ve joined forces with CORE, the Corporate Responsibility Coalition, to campaign to amend the Bill in three key areas. The amendments would compel companies to report against a comprehensive set of key social, environmental and economic indicators. Directors’ duties would be expanded to include a specific duty of care for both communities and the environment. Finally, communities adversely affected by the actions of UK corporations abroad would be given some rights to seek redress in British courts.

So far 181 MPs have signed an early day motion in support and it looks like the government may have to incorporate some of CORE’s suggestions. It’s time to write to your MP asking them to support this campaign to create responsible corporations.

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Amid all the anti-Denmark protests and calls for arrests, this stands out as the placard that sums it up best. I can understand that you might (like this lady) choose religion over freedom, if it’s going to get you into heaven, but I’d like to see some evidence first:

‘To the Danish government… We are SHOCKED by your respect to freedom in disrespect to Religion’

Perhaps it’s because I simply can’t understand why anyone believes in god – any god – that I’ve never been able understand why anybody needs to seek retribution on his behalf. Won’t he do that himself when the time comes? Faced with blasphemy, surely the appropriate thing for a believer to do is offer a friendly warning: ‘you’ve just bought a one-way ticket to hell! Honestly, you really, really have!’

If that didn’t work, you could simply shake your head and block the blasphemer’s horrific fate out of your mind. If you were genuinely fearful for the sinner’s soul, I guess some sort of vigil might be appropriate. Ah, you might say, what if others are swayed by the blasphemer… don’t we need to shut him up? Well no. Violence tends to begat violence and create martyrs. Better to confront the criticism head-on with well thought out compelling arguments supported with solid, convincing evidence.

Which takes us to the Danish cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad. Some say the prophet shouldn’t be depicted at all (you should worship god, not idols) but that’s bogus as he’s pictured a lot without controversy (pics can be hard to find online, but there are two here) and it’s unlikely these cartoons will be used for idolatry.

In one a bunch of suicide bombers arrive at heaven’s gate only to discover they’ve run out of virgins. It may be that most Muslims don’t expect their martyrs to be rewarded with 72 virgins. Some think it’s raisins and are genuinely embarrassed by this nonsense. But some do and Hamas has pushed this line. Even if the number of Muslim martyrs expecting 72 virgins is relatively small, I reckon that the satire is fair: this the minority that produces suicide bombers.

Then we’ve got the picture of Mohamed as a bomb. This – ‘butcher those who mock Islam’… ‘be prepared for the real holocaust!’… ‘behead those who insult Islam’ – may be a minority response. But it remains a lesson in shooting oneself in the foot and shows how attempts to silence blasphemers backfire. So fair comment, once again.
Related:Religious Hatred Bill defeated compromised… hoorah! But what’s it mean?

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