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July 21, 2006

Drink-sodden Armageddon, update

Around 10 months ago, a number of people were predicting that the UK was about to descend into some kind of drink-sodden Armageddon. I mocked their use of this phrase at the time, thinking it unlikely. So imagine my glee when, in yesterday's newspaper, I found this:

The 24 hour drinking laws have not led to any more violence or vandalism after pub closing time, new figures show. [...] Their [the Home Office] report, Crime In England and Wales 2005-6, concluded: "The data show no indication of a rise in the overall level of offences as a result in the change in the opening hours."

Stick that up your Daily Mail and smoke it.

(Speaking of the Independent, their front-page infographic today is great.)

Posted by James at 17:44 | Comments (0)
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July 20, 2006

Social Notworking

"Social networking" websites are all the rage these days. I think most people I know, particularly in my age group, have been a member of at least one at some point, even if they don't recognise them as such. The famous ones that actually went by that name were Orkut and Friendster, whose main basic premise was that you signed up, told the site who you knew, and it told you who they knew. You could search for other people based on various criteria, for reasons of employment, dating, or whatever. The principle was sound, but the whole thing seems kind of pointless to me.

MySpace is at least a little more directed — the site was originally a music promotion thing, where bands could showcase their tracks, maintain a blog, etc, as you'd hope they might on their conventional websites, but this way MySpace would provide all the technological wizardry and the artists or their promoters could concentrate on the content. Now, of course, it's degenerated into the same sordid evilness that chatrooms and web forums did before it, where naive young teenagers are courted by seedy middle-aged men pretending to be rockstars/teenagers/priests, kidnapped, abused and murdered, on an almost hourly basis [Source: Daily Mail statistics department] . Apparently bebo is very similar to MySpace, but I must admit I've not looked cllosely at it.

And then there's sites like last.fm, which have no reason to provide "friends lists" and "groups", except that people seem to want them. They add nothing to the value of the site, at least for me, but still I play along and add people I know on the site as friends. I dread to think what the people behind last.fm are doing with all this data about who my friends are, though.

On the positive side, Facebook doesn't seem to have succumbed to the usual social networking rot just yet; I suspect this is because they limit who can sign up, to people with university email addresses, or email addresses with specific employers. And signing up with such an address only gets you access to the profiles of people in the same "network", in general. These restrictions a) keep the annoying kids out, and b) stop people getting randomly stalked/harrassed quite so much, a win all round.

To be honest, I'm only really on Facebook so that, in 5 years time, I'll still have some chance of being in touch with the people I went to uni with. Experience of leaving university before tells me I'm unlikely to stay in touch with more than a couple of my contemporaries by conventional means. It's a bit like a pre-arranged version of Friends Reunited I suppose...

Are there any other social networking type sites out there of interest? Do they all suck as much as each other? Answers on a comment, usual address...

Posted by James at 17:39 | Comments (1)
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July 16, 2006

Enjoy responsibly

Top tip for the day - if you're in charge of one of the world's largest breweries, and in a position where it's your responsibility to promote the responsible use of alcohol, it's probably best not to lose your licence for drink-driving.

And while you're there, Peter, what were you guys thinking with the lager slush-puppies?

Posted by James at 03:19 | Comments (0)
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July 10, 2006

Goodbye, Zizou

I'm sure everyone knows this story by now, but I'm going to inflict it on you one last time. Once upon a time, there was a child born into an Algerian/French family, in a poor part of Marseille. He grew up to be a muslim, though he describes himself as "non-practising". He turned out to be pretty good at football, and after a few years in the French league, moved to Italian giants Juventus, then got bought for €66,000,000 by Real Madrid. For France, he played over 100 games, and scored two decisive goals in a World Cup final, against no lesser team than Brazil. 3 times he was elected as FIFA's world player of the year. But as he retires from football (his final game was today) he gave the world something much less impressive to remember him by.

It's a real tragedy, but this is now Zidane's legacy. What a terrible end to a great career. Football fans across the world will miss this great talent, I'm sure.

Posted by James at 01:01 | Comments (0)
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