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You are viewing the most recent 20 entries July 4th, 200801:44 pm: No, not just sour grapes
I have a Youtube account: every video uploaded to it is my own copyrighted material. I use Youtube to watch vids: primarily, I use it to watch Johnny Cash sing. (Occasionally, Willie Nelson.) As of last Tuesday, Viacom gets to know exactly what my viewing patterns are. And yours. And everyone's. "To build its case, Viacom asked for a list of all the login IDs belonging to YouTube's users, along with the company's log of which videos they watched, when, and from which IP (Internet Protocol) address. With that logging database, it hopes to show that its copyright content is of more interest to YouTube's users than video created by the users themselves." - linkSo an American judge got to make an order that handed over identifying data about people living outside the US to an American corporation which is minded to really, really, annoy the people who used to be its customer base. Well, if you're still on Livejournal, you should be used to that. To quote someone else: "Now every part of the world is subject to US law. Except Guantanamo Bay." "That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely 'speculative.'" - linkSimon Davies does a big I Told You So: "Governments and organisations are realising that companies like Google have a warehouse full of data. And while that data is stored it is under threat of being used and putting privacy in danger." linkI was recommended to the Tor Project to improve your privacy online. I was interested to see if Organisation for Transformative Works had anything to say about this, but they don't. Current Mood:  awake , cool things people do with software, evil american politics, fannishness, youtube videos
July 3rd, 200810:39 pm: Kissing Is So Gay
 (If by some remote chance you've missed this particular thing, you can ketchup here and here.) Current Mood: amused , angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters
04:15 pm: This day in [my] history
(gacked from ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bethbethbeth) 2007: Well, it rained a lot. Also, aliens attacked my kitchen. (My god: this was before Wolf. References to Bob are to only one cat.) 2006: I wrote a response to Roy Hattersley's ugly misogyny, and (flocked) about the ceiling falling in at work). 2005: I shared a lovely Tolkien slash quote I'd found (in the TLS, of all places!) and I did a linky post about How to talk to a troll (all the links, of course, go to the SUPplace, because this was back before Brad sold the community down the river and the SUPplace was just livejournal. Of course LJ Abuse still reeked, but they were then just responsible for enforcing their own diktat, not for enforcing company policy. 2004: I posted a personality test result. That's all: in 2004 at the beginning of July, I was in transit: working in Cambridge, but going to London to stay with friends and meet other friends for dinner and go to Pride. So I wasn't journalling much. 2003: I did quite a happy post about having a pirated softcopy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, though I also moaned about being in the office and having to wash mugs. 2002: I didn't have a journal! I didn't get one till December 2002. Current Mood: sheepish , meme
July 2nd, 200805:49 pm: Bleeding gently, but there's cake
Period started this morning. I had run out of coffee. I downed two paracetamol and made myself kasha with garlic and chili for breakfast. (And before he left, Transamurai left me a piece of cake he'd bought to treat himself - fabulous gooey chocolately nut cake.) My new sinus medication is making me cough, I think - at least, I have a persistent cough that was awful just after I started taking it, and is better now, but still persisting. But I can breathe! And this is a plus, definitely. Breathing is good. I had a whole list of stuff to get done in June, and though I haven't totted it up (I should, yes) I got not a lot of it done, and I put that down to the depressing effects of Not Being Able To Breathe Proper. I am a bit ranty. This may be because I am also right now completely bloody (well, not completely, but you know what I mean: I am bloody and bloody-minded and bleeding ungently, do not cross me) but it's also that there is a whole stack of stuff to be ranty ABOUT, not least something I cannot write about properly till next week: the Home Secretary's completely split-personality attitude to hate crimes against LGBT people. It's bad that LGBT people in Britain should be intimidated and abused. But it's perfectly okay for LGBT people in countries like Iran and Syria and Jamaica to go in fear of their lives - they should just learn to "conduct themselves discreetly", you see. I have a friend coming up from York this weekend: she was going to arrive tomorrow night but fecal matter has hit fan and it won't be till Friday night. Reason for visiting: a friend (of hers, not mine) is getting married on Sunday, and she was invited to the wedding and figured she could cadge free accommodation with me. Which is lovely, because it will be great to see her again and have a chance to talk properly. The friend of a friend is marrying in the Hindu temple, the Mandir, which is about a mile and a half away - the other side of Leith Walk. I have blagged an invitation - well, permission, perhaps, since I gather the wedding service is open to all. (There's going to be a long reception/dinner afterwards, to which my friend is invited, and I'm to slope off sharpish.) I've never been to a service in a Hindu temple, and I am a complete religious tourist: I'm really looking forward to it. I note, though, that the Mandir's website mentions "actively discouraging discriminatory behaviour on the grounds of race, religion, colour, nationality, age, gender, marital status or disability". See what's missing? Yeah, so do I. Ah well. Current Mood: angry , eating some delicious food, just my life really, seeing friends
02:19 pm: Travelling to the US: two news stories
Center for Constitutional Rights, 30th June 2008: Today, the majority in a federal Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar’s case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.
The majority ruled that Mr. Arar’s constitutional claims that it was a violation of due process to lock him up for two weeks, obstruct his access to a lawyer and a court, and then to ship him to Syria for the purpose of having him interrogated under torture could not be heard in federal court for two reasons. It concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security, and that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights with respect to the government's interference with his access to a lawyer and the decision to send him to Syria to be tortured.
The majority also rejected Mr. Arar’s claim that U.S. officials are liable under the Torture Victim Protection Act, for conspiring with Syria to subject Mr. Arar to torture under color of foreign law. The TVPA creates liability for torture inflicted under color of foreign law, and courts have held that it applies not only to the torturer himself, but also to those who aid or abet in the torture. Arar alleged that U.S. officials aided and abetted in his torture at Syrian hands, but the majority ruled that the federal officials could not be held responsible for their conspiracy with the Syrians because they were federal officials exercising federal authority. Financial Times, 2nd July 2008: The US government will on Wednesday launch a tourism charm offensive in the UK, to persuade holidaymakers to take advantage of sterling’s strength against the dollar and make the US their next holiday destination.
Travel industry leaders, backed by Washington, will kick-start a tourism drive with DiscoverAmerica.com, the first dedicated national website selling the US to British and other international tourists. ( The letter I wrote )Write to DiscoverAmericaCurrent Mood: annoyed , hitting something very hard, howls of rage, writing complaining letters
June 30th, 200812:56 pm: Heinz homo haters
With reference to the news of last week: total signatures on the reinstate Heinz Mayo ad is now 11595. "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a tin of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at you, kid." Heinz is one of those homespun blue-collar brands that is a staple of our national diet. Its ketchup has just been voted by consumers as the brand with the most "equity", for goodness sake, after scoring highest against measures such as familiarity and quality. So how did Heinz get it so wrong with this ad?
Having been bold enough (or naive enough ... you choose) to sign-off a script in which two men's lips meet, Heinz was careful to make the whole gay thing a "joke": it's not as though either of the men in the ad is obviously meant to be gay, they both look so straight you could draw a line with them.
But adland knows full well that any suggestion of homosexuality in ads will hit some pressure points (reason enough, you might think, to challenge prejudices). Controversy will have been fully anticipated, and this ad will have been thought through thoroughly before the play button was pushed.
Which makes it all the more astounding, and disappointing, that Heinz was so easily cowed when the inevitable complaints tumbled in. The company wasted no time in sheepishly withdrawing the commercial. Which naturally sparked another row, this time with gay groups: Stonewall and the radio station Gaydar called for a global boycott of Heinz brands in protest.
Really, Heinz couldn't have stirred up more controversy if they'd tried – and a few cynics out there think maybe they did try, that the whole gay saga that dominated marketing headlines last week was a massive PR stunt. If it was, it backfired big time.
What's certainly true is that Heinz has proved itself to be too easily swayed, spineless even. Of course, for all its careful and sensitive self-regulation, sometimes adland gets it wrong and misjudges the nation's mood; advertising that causes genuine and understandable offence should be swiftly withdrawn.
But really, Heinz had an opportunity here to take an enlightened position, to defend the inoffensiveness of a (pretty dispassionate) kiss between two men. If we believe that advertising not only reflects society and its culture but helps shape it, then there are times when advertisers have to take responsibility for the influence they wield.
Heinz may argue that in responding to the complaints and withdrawing the ad it is doing exactly that. But it doesn't seem to have thought carefully enough about the wider message its actions might have sent out: that tacit endorsement of a gay relationship is something to be embarrassed about, to regret. And that's a very dangerous position for one of the nation's favourite brands to find itself in. Claire Beale And: . A global brand introduced a new television commercial in which two men were seen (briefly) to kiss on screen, owing to the transformational power of mayonnaise. See, the Book of Revelation just isn't specific enough on the seven signs of the Apocalypse. If only the four horsemen weren't so easily confused with fictional characters in condiments commercials then we wouldn't be in this mess. As it is, the religious right and heathen left are locked in an utterly futile and bombastic ideological row involving countless online petitions about whether Armageddon is signified by the fact of the ad or the pulling of the ad. Which was not banned and neither will it be, if the regulator ever bothers even to look at it.
It turns out that many of the complaints were organised by religious groups in the US, where the ad has never been broadcast. Offence is now apparently a global currency and officially a unit of measurement. I blame the internet. Given that, the BBC board should be rereading the key end-of-the-world signs just to double-check that there's no paragraph suggesting that if a head of marketing shall replace a longstanding head of radio, the bells shall ring and man shall be wiped out. Janine Gibson I know, I know; it was just an ad. An ad which American news stories have mentioned "it wasn't to be broadcast to children" without specifying that this was because Heinz Mayo contains way too much fat and sugar, not because two men kissed. But there was something about the way Heinz pulled it so fast, so apologetically, as if they should have realised that showing two men kiss is offensive to right-minded people. Tell Heinz. Pass it on.Current Mood: annoyed , angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters
June 27th, 200807:46 pm: I want to be unique, just like everybody else!
Gacked from blue_rose: Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...) Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.This would undoubtedly have been more difficult when I had a longer friends-list! So let's make it more specific. First round of "I've done this!" is confined to walking. If you've also done any of these, you get to nominate a topic for the second round.... I have: 1. Walked from Silverknowes to South Queensferry. 2. Walked alone down the South Kaibab trail, along the Tonto Platform, and up Bright Angel Trail. 3. Walked south over the Golden Gate bridge on the Pacific Ocean side... and had a traffic cop stop me and interrogate me before I left the bridge because multiple car drivers thought I was a suicide risk. Current Mood: sheepish 05:47 pm: Hee!
 By the way, I have discovered who the dominant cat in my household is: yup, still Bob, even if Wolf's bigger. Bob growls: Wolf gets out of the way. Current Mood: determined not to worry , cat politics, wolf
03:32 pm: The 100 books meme
I first did this meme in 2003. ( the Big Read thing )Current Mood: reading , books are what i read, meme
June 26th, 200806:28 pm: Bob home...
The vet said the tumour was quite large, but "these tumours are never malignant" - which, given Gallus was killed by a non-malignant tumour, and Cally died because of a (possibly unrelated, but still) tumour in her stomach wall, was not as reassuring as perhaps he'd hoped. Still. She's okay. But the operation is over (£343! Good thing I'd rounded the vet's estimate up in my head to £350, no?) and Bob seems fine. Is looking at me a bit suspiciously and declining to come over for petting, after I pushed her into her cat basket this morning. I need to take her back to have her stitches out in 10 days, and intend to have her weighed then - she was 3.3 kilos this morning, so hopefully will have gained some weight even in that small time. And then book another appointment for a senior cat checkup three months after that, by which time she should have put on lots of weight, I hope, and so on - I think I need to start bringing her in for "senior cat appointments" - just to have her weighed and check the tumour isn't recurring. There shouldn't be a charge for these - there wasn't for Gallus. Current Mood: okay , worrying about my cats
June 25th, 200804:10 pm: Heinz means bigot
Nigel Dickie: "Heinz is a global company and we respect all universal rights. The advertisement was intended to be humorous, not designed to cause offence to anyone. Clearly it failed in its intent to amuse and that is why we took the decision to withdraw it." You know what "respect all universal rights" means? It means not sexual orientation and not gender identity. Those aren't "universal" rights. Last Monday, Heinz started running a new advertising campaign for Heinz Mayo. (A fat-filled, sugary product that it would take an ad this cute and funny to sell, truly.) The ad was supposed to run for five weeks. The ad opens with a stereotype-family - a boy and a girl going to school, a father going to the office. The young boy and girl go to the kitchen to get their sandwiches, which are being prepared by a man with a New York accent, dressed in a deli serving outfit, who they refer to as "mum". When their father goes to get his sandwich he says to the man in the kitchen: "See you tonight love." However, the man barks back "Hey, ain't you forgetting something?", at which point the two men share a kiss. The man then sends the father off with the words: "Love you. Straight home from work, sweet cheeks." It isn't exactly a gay ad: it isn't exactly a straight ad. This isn't a same-sex couple bringing up kids together: it's a half-uneasy joke, "the concept behind the campaign is that the product tastes so good, 'It's as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen'." But on Friday, Heinz pulled the ad. Apparently the advertising watchdog got over 200 "complaints" that the ad was offensive and that two men kissing were "inappropriate". (Bill O'Reilly apparently said on air on Friday "So why are they doing that? Why -- it was. It was obviously a gay thing. Now I don't know what the message is, other than gay people like mayonnaise. ... I'm confused. This whole gender blending thing. It's confusing to me. ... I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing.") Nigel Dickie, Director of Corporate Affairs for Heinz UK, said the reason for pulling it was: “It is our policy to listen to consumers. We recognize that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it. The advertisement, part of a short-run campaign, was intended to be humorous and we apologize to anyone who felt offended.” Heinz.com1. Sign the Re-instate the Heinz Deli Mayo TV ad. 2. Contact Nigel Dickie: 020 8848 2726, Nigel.Dickie@uk.hjheinz.com (from their press release) Tell Dickie you weren't offended. (You can view it here or here.) 3. Contact Heinz direct: www.heinz.com, click on the Contact Us link. Tell them you won't buy a Heinz product until the ad's being broadcast again. 4. If you normally buy Heinz, don't. 5. Pass it on! I know, I know: it's just a TV ad. And however cute the ad, it's an appalling product. But Heinz's instant capitulation to homophobic bigots was so naked. Dress it up with a squirt of organic tomato ketchup and make your own baked beans. Current Mood: annoyed , angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters
June 24th, 200807:19 pm: Story exercise
Give me a word and I'll write you flashfic. Current Mood: bored , meme, writing
03:38 pm: Doctor Who meme (gacked from bluerose)
When you see this post, quote from Doctor Who on your LJ."Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby." (One of my favourite quotes. According to Tom Baker, the original script had the Doctor threatening to kill the Sevateem with a knife: Tom was adamant that there was no way the Doctor would ever do that, and substituted a jelly baby.) There's a line in a later episode, same Doctor: "I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you. Nine times out of ten..." Most of the other best lines are situational or dialogue. Current Mood: happy , meme
June 23rd, 200812:28 am: Wolf, the Mighty Hunter
Wolf just brought me a cow. (It's about as long as my hand, white-and-black and fluffy.) He's also yelling at me when the cow doesn't move around enough by itself to be interesting. Unfortunately, while it did once have a string attachment, some overenthusiastic Mighty Hunter broke it some time ago. ( wibbling about Bob )Tags: bob, wolf, worrying about my cats
June 22nd, 200811:06 pm: A Week in the Life of Yonmei, Volume 7 (Sunday)
It's a meme. These are the rules. As it's the last day I decided to make it 11 photos instead of 8. I'm a rebel. ( Free Shop )( Space Warps )( Gold Graffiti )( Buffet King )( Jordan Valley ) ( Long Shadow )( Rain Road )( Polski Sklep )( Road Block )( Queen Victoria )Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Current Mood: accomplished , meme, photos
01:35 pm: A Week in the Life of Yonmei, Volume 6 (Saturday)
It's a meme. These are the rules. But yesterday I cheated and took way more than 8 new photos and could not winnow them down to 8, so, well. ( Torchwood Coffee )( Honey Sale )( Grassmarket Cows )( Blue Box )( Victoria Street )( Christmas Shop )( Demi John )( Forest Tips )( Wall Eye )( Giant Door )( Hanover Street )( Good Grief )( Street Mirror )( Reflecting Row )( Victoria Park )Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Current Mood: accomplished , meme, photos
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