Yesterday, being the day before the federal election, I ‘rehearsed’ in my twitter stream, just so as to be ready for later today. Below is the result. Note that the most final, or “most recent one”, is at the top, so you should read them in order from the bottom up to maintain chronological order. Also, that way the punch line will follow the set-up. Always better.

	…right. Rehearsal complete. Tune in to see those gaps filled in with actual names and quotes. The fun starts at 7:00pm Pac. #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	Does anyone know where I can get a TV repaired inexpensively? #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	If [party leader] says [frequent talking point phrase] once more I’m going to throw something at the TV! #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	@AnthonyFloyd This is why the rehearsal is good. Locating both correct spelling and smart location prior to need. #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	OMG! I can’t believe [name of candidate] got re-elected! After they said [daft public statement] only last week? #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	If those numbers from the east for #elxn41bc don’t get neutralized by BC soon, I’m going to set some houses on fire! 23 hours ago
	Iff’n something doesn’t come in soon for [riding not yet reporting returns] I’ma gonna kill someone! #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	AUUGHGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGGHGHGHGH! #elxn41bc is going to be the worst moment in the history of the Dominion! I’m moving to New Zeland! 23 hours ago
	HOLY CRAP! I don’t believe the returns in [riding name] for [candidate/party affiliation]!!! It’s like [year it happened] again! #elxn41bc 23 hours ago
	[then realizes he forgot #elxn41bc in the last tweet, swears quietly, notes he’ll have to be careful about that in 24 hours] 23 hours ago
	[twitches a bit, flexes arms, stretches back and shoulders, wiggles fingers, rolls head around on neck] 23 hours ago
	Okay, earlier today @petermansbridge and @CBCStephenQuinn were rehearsing for #elxn41bc tomorrow, so it’s time for me to do the same. [ahem]

The Dextr application which makes your Twitter feed into a screen-filling, one-tweet-per-screen image that you can run on a secondary screen or laptop.

Pole Dancer Doll for Kids (via Gizmondo)

Following on a bit from a post over on Christopher Fowler’s blog (visited daily by all good persons and true), it seems the inter-world is a-gog about the Pole Dancer Doll for Children [image right]. And rightly should be, frankly. It’s not only a bad example for children, the figure is wearing the frumpiest frock ever devised! Can’t they find her something that looks flattering? Even something pretty would make the toy less hideous to the eyes, surely?

But, I hear you cry, is that real?

A Pole Dancer for your desk!

Well, I’ve found a reference on the site for the New York Daily News (the NYC equal to the Daily Mail), but it seems to have originated on Gizmondo on Aug. 30 ^th. Neither of these is exactly proof positive, but the figure bares a striking similarity to an earlier product.

This week’s appearance in the marketplace of a motorised pole-dancing doll, followed Gizmondo’s coverage December 14^th of 2006 of Marks & Spencer – Britain’s un-official national department store–removing from their catalogue the “USB Pole Dancer” for adults [image, left], with an RRP of £19.50. The product was offered for sale a week later after its inclusion in the catalogue of Boys Stuff (which seems like limiting the market; what of Lesbians?) and the price jumped to £29.95. By this time, searches for “Pole Dancer” on M&S’s site were met with no results, but helpfully suggested “more results were found under ‘Polo Dancer’”. No statistics were available for how many took-up the suggested new search.

Coverage of the M&S brew-ha-ha (December 9^th, 2006) are available courtesy of – predictably – the Daily Mail article “The £19.50 pole dancer M&S was forced to axe”.

Granted, the Weekly World News did a four-colour supplement on the doll, but let’s not bother about that.

Continuing in the pattern of “lemme tell you what I think about this”, here’s the book that was finished earlier this week. Once you’ve read it, you probably will read newspapers more carefully; no matter how carefully you thought you read them before.

First, however, let’s have one thing clear from the outset: this is not about how some minority group or secret committee is controlling the world and/or the media. While there may be decisions made about things by groups we know nothing about (that’s why they’re ‘secret groups’ after all), it’s all too easy to shuffle off one’s responsibility for not doing anything to change things by blaming an anonymous ‘powerful individuals’. Here’s an H.L. Menken quote included in the book (p. 395) which goes some way to explain how this sort of thinking can be rubbish:

…the central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his rights and true deserts … [He] ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street or some other such den of infamy.

This book is specifically about how there are few, if any, people in control of the media. While many reporters and editors find all too frequently that they aren’t able to do the fact-checking they wish to – and are frustrated at the situation’s stasis – they aren’t the cause of it through lack of initiative; they simply haven’t the time. According to the staggeringly persuasive argument of author Nick Davies, the newspapers of the UK are essentially now all owned by people who have little interest in publishing newspapers containing journalism. What these individuals are principly concerned with is simply ‘selling copies of the paper each and every day, and the more the better.’ This ‘quantity over quality’ approach is why they are termed “the Grocers” by Mr. Davies.

Certainly, any business must be operated with an eye to profit v. loss. However, there is so much an avoidance of idealism towards the media’s content, that the readers are being under-served to the point of unconscionable delivery of falsity on the part of the various persons responsible for the media outlets’ content.

While the book focusses much of its time upon the newspapers of London – including entire chapters each devoted to the Sunday Times, the Observer, and both the Daily and Sunday Mail newspapers – the problems and trends can all be recognised as being world-wide in scope. The newspapers of North America are, thankfully, prevented from out-right lying about individuals in print, owing to a reversal of the onus of proof in legal arguments here, when compared to the UK. That said, the habit of reporting quickly and loudly, then correcting slowly and quietly, is one which no legal or regulatory procedure can effectively prevent.

The other worrisome trend is the one first identified in the book: things being simply repeated from the texts of Media Releases without any effort to confirm that there is any validity within them, or even if they contain amplified – or ‘sexed up’, to use the UK Government’s term about the Iraqi WMD reports – versions of the truth which is then responsible for a snowball effect of panic about the subject in question; which then is fed-back into (EG: Iranian Elections get dropped to cover Michael Jackson’s death) or someone is able to stop the thing by explaining that it’s simply not true in the slightest and we can all relax now (EG: the nullification of the principle of habeas corpus in the USA is only applied to the cases of those naughty terrorists).

The fact that this book doesn’t cover is the recent development of newspapers closing due to financial decisions by their owners, despite any budget restraints they may have imposed prior to the shut-down. It would be fascinating to know what Mr. Davies’s views of the ‘new media platform’ might do to return journalists to the forefront of the delivery of facts. He suggests late in the book that an over-haul of newspapers is required, with the probable method of delivery being some sort of display screen.

Read this book, not to begin seeing some Secret Star-Chamber Cabal controlling the World’s fate, but in order to see that there is an ordinary group of men frantically pulling levers behind the curtain so as to continue making the Great Oz of the Media just as impressive and seemingly required as ever before.

Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media by Nick Davies; PP 420 (including index), ISBN: 9780099512684; 2^nd Edition published in 2009 by Vintage, an imprint of Random House, London, SW1V

I’m not entirely certain why this needed to be reported, but here’s what I just stumbled upon when browsing:

Europeans Get Drunk 'to Have Sex'

Young adults in Europe deliberately binge on drink and drugs to improve their sex lives, research suggests.

The UK has one of the worst reputations for binge drinking and underage sex but there are striking similarities between countries, a study found.

A third of 16 to 35-year-old men and 23% of women questioned said they drank to increase their chance of sex.

The study — of 1,341 young people in nine countries including the UK — is published in BMC Public Health.

Young people were also more at risk of unsafe sex while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the study found.

The researchers said although it was well known that use of alcohol and drugs was linked to risky sexual behaviour, this study showed many young people were “strategically” binge drinking or abusing drugs to improve their sex lives.

If you feel the need, head to THIS SPOT HERE to read the full report.

The article basically says that by the time a typical European youth hits 16 — and certainly if they live in Vienna — then they no longer have their virginity and have either tried or regularly ingested any number of illicit substances prior to, or in order to enhance, sex. Some even have had some sort of alcohol or drugs in order to engage in a sexual act they may not have even considered prior to the taking of those substances.

See, if I had know this 25 years ago or so, I would have gone to Europe far earlier than at age 41. Like, really! Nothing like this has ever happened in Canada! No! Never!