Law & Order: Dublin Edition

Court reporting has its moments. Especially in Ireland apparently.



"The plaintiff said of the experience, 'It frightened the shite out of me altogether, Lord Jesus.'"

Presidential Snark

Ahahaha:

Official White House Response to "Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016":

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

That's awesome, I don't care who you voted for.

Review: Sweet Tooth

Originally published in the Greymouth Star, 10 January 2013

Imagine Jane Austen writing a spy novel set in 1970s London, and you’ll have a decent idea what to expect of the latest book from Atonement author Ian McEwan.

Beautiful, conservative Serena Frome, a third-rate mathematician with a passion for books, is groomed for recruitment to the British intelligence service by her much-older lover. She is assigned to the “Sweet Tooth” project, a secret effort to fight the Communism culture war by funnelling government money to anti-Communist writers.

Serena’s first recruit is Tom Haley, a charming artistic sort who writes short stories about lust, betrayal and self-delusion. Her fascination with these stories leads to an attraction to Tom and they begin an exciting affair, spending their weekends going to classy restaurants, drinking champagne and discussing literature.

But the longer the affair continues, the harder it is for Serena to keep her mission a secret or avoid the suspicions of MI5 – especially when Tom uses their money to write a dystopian novel about the excesses of capitalism.

Sweet Tooth is a classic McEwan book, with the same slow pace and long, introspective chapters as Atonement and On Chesil Beach. The Cold War discussions are interesting if you like history and politics, and the descriptions of British intelligence call to mind the dimly-lit bureaucratic intrigue of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

But if you’re hoping for a thriller, you’ll be disappointed. Early hints of violence and danger never go anywhere, and the only real surprise is a clever plot twist at the very end, which makes you want to go through the book all over again to pick up the clues you missed.

Body Image

The NZ Herald Online went unintentionally meta in this article about the need for positive female role models to battle "the epidemic of eating disorders and self-harming among young girls":

I can't tell if the ad undermines the article or reinforces it, but either way it shows the risk of combining news, advertising and automated web design.

Current Events

How's this for media gossip. Today NYT's Brian Stelter got the scoop that Current TV - famous for hiring, bickering with, firing and being sued by Keith Olbermann - has been bought by Al Jazeera, which means Elliot Spitzer, Jennifer Granholm and the other lefty pundits will be dropped too:

Al Jazeera plans to shut Current and start an English-language channel, which will be available in more than 40 million homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar.

Time Warner Cable responded to this news by dropping Current TV, and right-wingers on Twitter started an Islamophobic hashtag game about new show ideas like "Stoned in Afghanistan" and "Arabia's Funniest Home Beheadings."

And now it turns out that Glenn Beck tried to purchase Current himself last year but was rejected because he's "not aligned to [their] point of view".

Remember when that scrappy documentary series "Vanguard" was doing award-winning exposés on organised crime and Olbermann was going to single-handedly save journalism from corporate interference? Where did it all go wrong, you guys? (About five minutes after KO signed on, yes, I know.)

The Making of "Snow Fall"

I finally got around to reading The New York Times's multimedia feature "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek", which has been attracting a lot of attention from web-savvy reporters.

Basically, it's a long, in-depth article about a deadly avalanche in the Cascades near Seattle, illustrated by videos, photographs, audio clips, slideshows and animations that come to life as you scroll down the page.

I really like the format. It combines classic long-form writing with the smooth interactive experience that people now expect from online media, and the graphics and videos make it easier to concentrate on the story and keep track of all the details.

In a team interview with Source, NYT's graphics director Steve Duenes explains: "We wanted to make a single story out of all the assets, including the text. So the larger project wasn’t a typical design effort. It was an editing project that required us to weave things together so that text, video, photography and graphics could all be consumed in a way that was similar to reading—a different kind of reading."

If this is where print journalism is headed, then I'm encouraged - but it's looking more and more likely that I'll need to dust off my computer science degree if I want my career to go anywhere. And here I thought I'd escaped.

2012 in 4 Minutes

Happy New Year.

 

via Ryan James Yezak