John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

CNN: 27 February 2005: (This does contain disturbing stuff early on) I don't remember CNN being as bad as it was in Lanzarote. The last time we enjoyed CNN was on holiday in Spain watching the first gulf war kick off. It didn't seem too bad then.; This time around, CNN was scant, repetitive and biased.; Besides the obvious bias, there were various additional insidious layers of bias to see through. For example, they interviewed someone who appeared to be very knowledgable about Iraq. He'd written a book about the place. The anchorman asked whether it was true that the war had turned Iraq into a magnet for terrorists. That sounds like a question that's critical of the US. The expert, however, said that before the invasion Iraq was the home for a group that was "cutting out people's tongues" and "blinding people". Those are very powerful images. They don't go out of your mind very quickly. So now, we have a definite, strong image of Iraq containing brutal butchers.; The anchorman then said "of course, we've just had the president's inaugural address .... ". Having given us a repellent image and having left it with us for a few seconds with nowhere to run, he then gives us an image of stability, of clear white light. It's OK, we have a democratically elected president, we have a nation of good people, we have God on our side, our president will protect you. It's a bit like the pain/pleasure routine in A Clockwork Orange where the main character is shown various images in order to rehabilitate him. Here's one of an Iraqi cutting out your tongue, and here's one of our president addressing the nation. This is scary stuff. That was so obvious, so blatant, as to have been a matter of policy. A pre-planned psychological trick. It's really happening.; There was also a clearer view of what American business is like. It's very different in appearance to British business. In America, business is emotional. You win things. You reap rewards. Businesspeople are stylish, they get things done, they have good lives. It's a battle, a sport, in which the world divides into winners and losers. On the other side of the Atlantic, what do the British think of when they think business? Stuffy offices. Accounts. Tax and VAT. Employment law. EU regulations.; When I had a marketing consultancy, I often got business from the European offices of American companies. The American company generally marketed within the US. The European office often had the rest of the world to deal with. Either that, or at least Europe, Middle East and Africa. But there was one thing I could rely on. While the Americans were happy in their patch, all was well, but if they started to take an interest in the European office, everything was going to change. They would change our methods to their methods in order to 'integrate' things (to their way). They'd implement their campaigns worldwide, rather than take advice from the European offices. They'd always say they wanted to work with us, but the truth of their actions was always about having power, and taking control. It was never consensus, always hierarchy, and always with the Americans on top.; That came through in CNN's coverage of business, and in the business-led advertising. I'm not necessarily saying it's bad. American business does lead the world, and I'm not anti business. I'm trying to highlight the differences between the two cultures.; A few things on CNN highlighted that. I saw an interview with an Oracle spokesperson talking about their takeover of PeopleSoft. The anchorman asked if Oracle was going to use its size to crush their competition. The Oracle spokesperson simply said "yes" with a grin on his face. That would never happen in Britain. Well, it would probably happen, but it wouldn't be said so baldly on tv.; I saw another business person say "I'm a businessman, not a politician". The clear message was that the businessman was going to do what it took to be successful, it was up to the politicians to set laws to regulate what was possible, anything else is fair game.; I met a GM protestor the other day, hopefully I'll get permission to blog more about her, but she worked on GM as a geneticist. When the Americans announced they'd 'cracked' GM, she looked to see what breakthrough they'd made. There was no breakthrough. They had made less progress than she had. The fact was, she said, they simply "cared less".; So there you have it. Us Brits might think business will self-regulate, but we're not exposed to American business culture. American business, as Hollywood would put it, absolutely will not stop. It will press hard wherever it can in order to make money. Besides exercising our purchasing power, politics is the thing that stands between us and it. We must engage with politics, because that's the only thing that will stop American and other businesses taking what they want from us for themselves.; In the UK, you can't talk about politics. I remember an Italian friend (hi Valerio) trying to start a discussion about politics in a break at university. No-one bit, no-one answered his question. We're not used to talking politics. In Britain, it's rude to ask how someone intends to vote.; In Spain (perhaps in Italy too), the guys stand around on street corners in the evening talking politics. The television is full of discussion programs about the issues of the day, and very serious stuff it is too. Actually, we got more knowledge about the world's events from watching Spanish news (in a language we don't speak), than we did from CNN. A supposed 24 hour news channel, it couldn't carry less news if it tried. The only news, for two whole days, was the uniquely hairstyled Condoleeza Rice's flying visit to the rest of the world. In the end, we simply stopped watching.; The British culture of not talking about politics results in a loss of interest in it. Because we never consider it, it doesn't seem relevant to our days. Also, I think it's true to say ours is the oldest democracy. Maybe we just take it for granted. Our turnout at the forthcoming election is expected to be just 55%. Actually I think it will be more, as the result is becoming less of a foregone conclusion, there's just 2% between the two main parties now, so if there's a real chance of making a difference I think more people will turn out to vote. Personally, I'm one of the 2.75% of the people who voted green last time (more). It was the only party that made any sense at all. Think I'm mad? Want to make sure the Greens don't get in? Then vote.; Watching the Iraqi election was a real eye opener. I know I saw it through CNNs filters, but seeing Iraqis risk their lives to vote, seeing them talk about it as a great day, that was something special. Was America right to invade Iraq? Were the protesters wrong? I have to admit I'm still working through that one. Then I read this and this.; I didn't much like Naomi Klein's No Logo. I felt she misunderstood marketing. Yes, it was interesting to hear more about sweatshop labour, but almost everything she said about marketing seemed based in ignorance. I also felt it pushed Klein. Hey, it established her as a brand. She became famous and travelled the world as a speaker.; Her follow up book Fences and Windows contains short dispatches from her journey. This is more interesting. I can respect Klein now. As a result of her success, she's been all over the world and seen a lot of interesting stuff. This book has more hope. I've more things to follow up from this book.; When the Eastern block tore down communism, Murdoch talked about Sky tv's influence. How it showed those people a different life. They could see how much better their lives would be under capitalism and that knowledge fuelled their revolution.; Klein takes a different view. She talks about satellite tv presenting a homogenised world view. It comes from 'us' to 'you'. It's very clear, she says, to majority world viewers that they are not 'us'. I think it's even worse than that. Britain is supposed to be America's closest ally, sharing a language, sharing ideals. As a Brit watching CNN, I felt that I wasn't in the 'us' category either.; Satellite tv does not help oppressed people realise how bad their life is and encourage them to rise up in protest and install a democracy. It's more likely to demonstrate clearly how different they are to the 'us' that's broadcasting, and how little they have in common. If that's how it felt to me, how much stronger must the feeling be elsewhere? Maybe the next revolution will be against Sky tv.; That, incidentally, underlines the importance of the Internet which has the effect of increasing diversity. You can find yourself on the Internet, in your language, in your country, your interests, your beliefs, your way.; Finally, CNN is just irritating. We saw endless trailers for a program called "Design 360". When it finally came on, it trailed a part about surfboard design. My partner's into that, so when it was imminent I called her from the bathroom to watch it. It went by in a flash. Wooden surfboards. Hawaii. Now we use computer controlled machinery because it's more accurate. That was it.; Well, we could have guessed that. The program, the whole channel, looks like it contains information. It tells you all the time about how important it is to be informed. Yet it provides almost nothing. News on a five minute loop. Programs containing nothing but a few pictures and platitudes and information anyone with half a brain already knows.; Five minutes later, a trailer. For Design 360. Not the next edition, but the same edition, to be repeated. Endlessly. CNN is information lite for an audience conditioned to win in the time it takes to drink a latte. Go read the Economist.
Marathon: 26 February 2005: From small acorns, etc. On Monday I start my marathon training. I don't plan to run a marathon until 2007. This year, I aim to run a 10k (10km, 6.2 miles (I think)), the one in Walkington on the 22 July. It's not a big target, but the overarching message from the book I'm using Marathon Running for Mortals is to take it steady. Since I'm 43, I have to take it more steady than most.; I've bought a heart rate monitor from The Heart Rate Monitor Shop a perfect example of the Internet at its best. I could select a product from various parameters, order it online, the product (a Polar F6) arrived the next morning. How fantastic is that? Given that the other business I loved was Quiet PC, it's easy to conclude that the Internet works best when it connects a specialist need with a specialist supplier.; Anyway, my starting figures are, I weigh 213lbs (but I'm 6'6" tall), and my resting heart rate is 55bpm. Using the 220-my age formula (I think I might die doing a heart stress test), my maximum heart rate is 177, so my range is 122.; The program requires me to run three times a week. Twice for thirty minutes at 65-75% of my heart capacity, and the other for an increasing distance (starting, granted, at 1 mile) at 60-75%. So that's a heart rate range of 134-147, and 128-147.; There's also two lots of 30 minutes of cross training to do on the other days. That means, something other than running. I'll do weight training at the gym those days, although it doesn't help with the cardiovascular side of things.; I went out to try the heart monitor yesterday and just ran for fifteen minutes. It was really difficult to keep my heart rate that low, I ended up jogging like an old man .. more bouncy walking than running, and as my heart rate crept into the 150s I had to stop and walk every now and then. If I put in any effort at all, my heart rate went too high.; Maybe that's exactly the point. I may be strong (I do weight training occasionally) but it's been a while since I did anything cardiovascular. Perhaps I'm actually very unfit from that perspective. I'm presuming that, since the training program determines the amount of exercise by time within a heart rate range, my distance and speed will pick up as I grow fitter. I'll be able to tell that because I've got a pedometer too. All I need now is a GPS. Oh and a mobile webcam. Maybe rocket propelled shorts.; Oh, and drumming gets your heart going to the level of a decent walk.
Nucular: 26 February 2005: I can have no respect for anyone (unless they are genuinely uneducated) who pronounces nuclear as nucular. I think it demonstrates a basic lack of feedback, of questioning. Good people are constantly looking for feedback from the world, they want to know if they have been understood, if they've offended, if they've had the effect they wanted and not any other.; Good people would notice the disparity between them saying nucular, and the way the word is spelled.; Arrogant, self centred people don't give a dodo's doodah for any of that. They live in their own little world. What use have they for feedback? They say nucular because they've never questioned themselves.; Curiously, George Bush says nucular.; In Viz, a letter recently asked why we referred to Saddam by his first name. When bombed by Iraq, we say we were bombed by Saddam. Does Iraq's tv news say, when bombed by us, "last night we were bombed by George and Tony"?; Having said that, I'm not sure the whole concept of first and last names works in those parts of the world. I once spent a while trying to work out whether his first name was Saddam or Hussein and didn't quite reach a conclusion (see note 2 here). It's just one example of how much we don't understand about the middle east (and maybe understanding ought to come before bombing).
Jamies school dinners: 26 February 2005: In Jamie's School Dinners, Jamie Oliver tries to feed schoolkids nutritious school dinners for the government dictated budget of 37p per head.; It seems obvious to me that the only way to do that is to provide vegetarian or vegan food. Meat is expensive. That's because to farm animals, you have to grow food for them, process it, transport it and so on. That's obviously inefficient when we could just eat the plants directly. It means meat will always be more expensive than vegetables, nuts and seeds.; To get meat prices down, we resort to the vilest methods which produce unhealthy, taste-free meat. The only way Jamie can purchase meat to feed those kids is to condone those practices.
Global warming: 22 February 2005: So, global warming is real, and it's man-made. Good, now we've got that out of the way we can do something about it.
Labour and women: 22 February 2005: This Observer article is seriously irritating too. It's about how Labour needs to keep and win women's vote. I can't work out whether it's the journalist or Labour itself that's the source, but if it's the latter then we're in deeper do-do than I thought.; Do women vote for Blair because he has nice eyes? Contrary to what you might imagine if you read this blog for long, not much actually gets me angry. This sentence from the article managed it: "Milburn himself met female political journalists on Wednesday to show them his feminine side and share a cafe-style buffet lunch." A cafe-style buffet lunch? Is that the journalist emphasising that? Maybe all such meetings have cafe-style buffet lunches. Or was that designed to woo women journalists? I can't see Eleanor Goodman falling for anything so trite.; One idea might work. This government seems to have come a long way since Blairs Babes. Think of the real power players in the government, and not one female face comes up. Sure, there are some women in the cabinet, but none in the most powerful jobs. Solve that, and you'll have the answer to having women's respect.
The Celestine Prophecy: 22 February 2005: I read The Celestine Prophecy during the holiday. I don't think I've ever read a more irritating book.; First, there's the writing style. It's worse than Mills and Boon. There's the beautiful archeologist, the fit guy who works with disabled children and is currently soul searching in a log cabin by the lake, waking up each morning to swim to the middle.; Redfield can't actually be bothered to write the book. "In the distance was an orchard of some kind" .. well, you know, if you can't be bothered to paint the picture, I can't be bothered to look at it. Even the proofreader couldn't be bothered, the book contains typos.; That lake, incidentally, is the one which his grandfather swore to live beside. It used to have wild animals, cougars and bears, and creak indians. That was, obviously, until he moved in. There's no sense that that's kinda bad. Soulful he may want to be, but if he finds somewhere unspoiled, he's damned well going to build a house there. It's the American way.; Incidentally, what do you call daddy bear, mummy bear and baby bear's great grandparents?; The three bear's forebears.; Then there's just complete rubbish. For instance, when he starts on particle physics: "the act of observation alters the results - as if these elementary particles are influenced by what the experimenter expects". Yeah right. Firstly, Redfield knows less than I do about particle physics .. in other words, he couldn't be bothered to find out more. Secondly, the act of observation alters the results because in order to observe you have to bounce energy off the particle and when you do that, it changes. It doesn't alter the results because the particles know what we're expecting and run about changing things. It doesn't mean we can change matter just by changing our expectations. Third, he's expecting that I'm ignorant and will swallow this pigswill. I'm insulted.; He doesn't stop there. There's the big bang, all that hydrogen gathering together to make stars, the stars making helium, then lithium, anon until we have all the elements and each of them vibrates at a different, higher, frequency. That's a bit like evolution, first there were single celled animals, then plants, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and humans.; Then .. all living animals vibrate at different levels. OK. Now, what would be your conclusion from that, about the next step in life's development? Personally, if you look at the big picture like that, I'd be expecting some new form of life to pop up and take over, or some new type of human .. like The Tomorrow People. Another step change, is what you'd expect. But no. This is a feel good book after all. Depressing books don't sell. Humans, being at the top of the life pyramid, need to reach the higher vibrations by looking after their energy.; Did I mention that we gain that energy by eating? By jove this is jolly interesting.; The problem is, there's a nugget in here. He talks about four strategies we use to gain energy. They made some sense. It still seemed incredibly oversimplified. It reminds me of business texts like the One Minute series and all the others that followed in a similar vein, where there's a grain of truth hidden in a story. The story serves as the transport, and incidentally, the means to make money. Interestingly, I notice there's the same balance of very positive and totally negative comments as for Celestine. I can't fault the method, after all, before books humans passed on their knowledge through songs and storytelling.; The book, in the end, comes clean. It was Jesus who first managed to achieve these higher planes. Through applying the author's insights (wrong word I feel, musings maybe) we could become more like Jesus. Ultimately, we can reach such high levels of vibration we pass to a higher plane and begin living in heaven on earth. So, it doesn't look like a Jesus book, but it is one. It's a deception. It's happy clappy heavy selly.; By the end, Redfield is getting desperate. In order to inject some sort of excitement into the book, he has the Peruvian government (awful cads those South Americans) destroy all copies of the 'insights', which means those who have discovered them must pass them on by word of mouth. Well, they could write them down as they remembered them and photocopy them. But no, they're going to rely on word of mouth.; Oh, and the reason Jesus could walk on water is because he vibrated at such a high level that he became so light he floated. And the Mayans? The reason they disappeared is they all reached the same high vibration together and 'poof' they passed over.; The beautiful archaeologist, by the way, is never woven back into the story. She's just there in chapter one as a potential long haired, slim, twinkly eyed love interest, and then she's gone. Rather like this book will be soon.; Finally, in a huge surprise, Redfield reveals that there aren't just the nine insights in this book, there's a tenth. That, is in the second book. Oh, and an eleventh after that. Apparently, however, we won't need material wealth once we get all our vibrations sorted.; This is a book people with an external locus of control would enjoy. Are you internal or external? Try this. I thought it wasn't working, my score was 0.; It appears I'm not the only one.
La Era: 22 February 2005: We went to La Era, supposedly one of the best restaurants on Lanzarote and found it a bit unwelcoming, and the food not worth the expense or going back for. That's kinda all I want to say about that.
Finca De Las Salinas: 12 February 2005: It's a little boring for the casual reader, but I'd like to review some of the places I went to recently in Lanzarote. Part of the purpose of a blog is to provide a place for such thoughts. Future potential visitors to, for instance, Finca De Las Salinas should be able to gather together various people's opinions before booking, particularly once the semantic web is in place. Not that I'm encoding this information for the semantic web, but at least I'm publishing it.; Anyway, yes, that's where I've been. I reckon there are two key things that make Finca special. Its location makes it easy to reach from the airport, fairly central in the island, and it's in a rather beautiful, if slightly lifeless, town. Believe me when I say you'd prefer this location to, say, Playa de Costa Teguise. It, at least, is within walking distance of a shop for basic provisions.; The main thing is really summed up by the phrase 'quiet professionalism'. The women who seem to run the hotel, and the cleaners too, are at once friendly and totally professional.; Food-wise, always our first thought, they have a restaurant open every day except Sunday. You need to book as I think there's only two of them. We tried various good restaurants over the island and in the end came back to Finca because, yes it was convenient, but the food was really good too (perhaps a tad heavy on the salt) and reasonably priced.; One night in particular, my partner had a really supreme pasta dish. The crux of it seemed to be that it contained really finely chopped red pepper that had been cooked just enough to release all its flavours. I'd not come across that idea before so I'll give it a go at home one night.; It turns out Finca has been included in a number of good hotel guides, there was a Conde Naste publication in our room that featured it. It's very photogenic, but I felt some of the decor was in some way cynical. It used lots of paint techniques .. washes, ragging, etc, that were popular here in the eighties and early nineties, I can't decide whether those are local, time tested paint techniques and they just look 'outdated' to us because we went through a fad for them. Almost every other building was painted white, so I think it couldn't be a local thing. I think the colours and techniques originated in Morocco anyway. So that leaves the probability that the colour scheme was chosen to make the place photogenic, and to give the impression that we were living in an example of local architecture. The building is certainly an old one built with the proceeds from the salt works down the road and I think the owner still lives in that part of the house. Much of the rest has been built more recently. I just don't want to be fooled into thinking I'm staying in a piece of history when that's only partly true.; We surprised ourselves by using the tennis court a lot. Neither of us had played since school, but the equipment was free, no-one else used the court, it was well cared for and the net kept at the right height, and the weather was perfect for it too .. sunny yet fresh. We also played a lot of pool, a little table tennis, and there was a gym there which we used although that could do with a bit more thought .. the machines weren't actually that good considering the quality of the rest of the place. Having said that, it was a struggle to find two usable tennis balls, and the white ball had been lost from the pool table that was installed on a slant, so it was a bit more like playing golf than pool. That's just irritating .. if you're going to install a pool table, install it level .. there's no room for anything else. It felt like the main concentration was on the quality of the service, the rooms, the restaurant .. the key things .. but just a little more knowledge and attention needed to go into the 'sports' facilities.; One other incredibly minor thing bugged me and still bugs me. Given how attentive and professional the place was, the type of people who stayed there, and the cost of a night, did they really have to give us those clothes hangers that are designed so you can't steal them? Everyone has crammed their clothes into a suitcase and everyone will want to hang some clothes in the bathroom so the steam will drop the creases out. We need hangers that we can use all around the room, not just in the wardrobe .. no-one's going to steal them except possibly accidentally and if they do, so what? It felt like a rare oversight, or a out-of-character sign of mistrust. There weren't enough of them either, so our clothes spent all week three or four to a hanger.; Our room, B1, was also right next to the laundry, so the first few mornings we were woken by knockings and the sounds of washers and dryers. We soon got used to it though.; Oh, and the minibar in the room is worth mentioning. We never touch them on rumours of outrageous costs, but the Finca minibar is not only priced normally, but includes lots of soft drinks, perfect for the end of a long hot day.; I feel incredibly ungrateful for saying those things. The fact is, though, I wouldn't say them about a lesser place. It would be a waste of breath. With Finca, I get the impression that when they see this the key concerns will get addressed .. well, obviously not the decor, but the easy stuff at least. These were minor things which, given the standard they'd set in the rest of the hotel, were slight imperfections in an otherwise incredibly relaxing and beautiful holiday. Finca made our holiday and, unusually for us, we both felt very sad to come home and agreed, the only reason we'd go back to Lanzarote would be to stay at Finca de las Salinas. Nothing's perfect, but Finca gets very close indeed and it's because of the hard work of the people involved. Thanks.; Update 27/02/05: I just got an email to say they've bought new tennis balls and, get this, new coathangers. Told you they'd listen and respond :-)