Preacher Plans Twin Towers of Babel

Controversial pasta (surely "Pastor", ed.), Terry Jones - the man who put "mental" in "fundamentalist christian" - landed in New York City last night, still hoping to meet the local imam with plans for a downtown religious centre.

Jones left his Dove World headquarters near Gainsville FL in an armchair powered by nine thousand white doves, rather than a jet owned by a leading news manufacturer, as rumoured earlier. But he never did reach the imam.

Something Happened Along the Way

"Downtown New York was bigger than I thought," a rueful Pr Jones admitted to Sky News reporters who are desperate to hype this non-story. "I became confused about the meeting location."

Indeed, downtown New York City is renowned for planning laws that nestle "gentlemen's clubs" amongst giant testaments to fear and greed. So Jones could be forgiven for mistaking the New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club for the site of the religious centre, as both lie within a few blocks of the former site of the famed "Twin Towers". Many gentlemen have similarly lost their way.

Meeting Will Go Ahead Today

News editors now hope the bogus meeting between the religious leaders will take place today. Apparently Pr Jones will present his own plans for the religious centre - a development proposal he has dubbed the "Twin Towers of Babel".

"The towers will have their tops in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth," Jones explained.

The local imam could not be reached for comment, sensible man, while a spokesman for the New York City planning office expressed doubts about the proposed height of the towers. "We've approached the Man in the Moon with a view to discussing how we share airspace, but he hasn't yet returned our calls."

Why eBook Readers Still Need Bookshops

I don't have the latest, smaller, lighter Kindle because I'm still enjoying the previous model - mainly for the convenience. My choice of book depends on what I feel like reading, and I tend to have as many as 5 books on the go. That's a lot of books to carry round on a business trip or even a week away. It also suggests I have about 5 feelings.

Not everything I read is on the Kindle. Everything else seems to be stacked on my bedside table. That's the first reason owners of eBook readers need bookshops - people like to give books as physical presents rather than emails, which don't gift wrap so well. But I do happen to have 4 books on the Kindle now: The Worst Date Ever (Jane Bussman's superbly written account of the hilariously appalling life of a celebrity 'journalist'), Smile or Die (Barbara Ehrenreich on the evils of the 'have a nice day' culture), The Junior Officer's Reading Club (Patrick Hennessey brilliantly recounts his time as British Army officer), and Stage-Land (Jerome K. Jerome's humorous critique of the Victorian theatrical formula).

The main reason the owners of eBook readers need bookshops is for inspiration. There are only so many books you can instantly recall as ones you wish you'd read but haven't. And Amazon's recommendations tend to reflect what I've bought the rest of the family as gifts - you can't read Brio, and Aliens In Underpants Save The World" probably wouldn't look so good on a small black and white screen. Book reviews would be helpful if only I trusted them. Instead, I trust the first page of the book, but Amazon doesn't always let you "Look Inside". So there's ultimately no substitute for whiling away the time in a decent bookshop, Kindle in hand, discreetly downloading the best stuff more cheaply until the manager asks you to leave, or you find something that looks better in real life. Which is still possible.

Of course, all of this begs the question: what should tomorrow's bookshops look like? But that's another post.

Publishers Need New Filters - And Friends

There has been much hand-wringing over the camp fire of late amongst the 'traditional' media concerning futile attempts to restrain publication of various 'stories' in the face of [trumpets sound] "The Blogosphere", as Charon QC has described.

Even after 15 years of public Internet development, we are still in the midst of a "fight over information flows and access to flows", as Clay Shirky put it. The traditional media are really bleating because we - their readers - have moved away from their cosy, "free-rider resistant", proprietary model of information distribution to a new "free-rider tolerant" model. A plunge in production costs and a diffusion of free self-publishing applications has meant that quality-filters no longer need to be applied at source. A glance at all media, from the nightly television schedules to books, to social networks, radio and daily newspapers prove that people will watch, read and listen to all sorts of crap. It's just a matter of enabling people to find the crap they want - creating new filters that work for creators and their audiences alike.

Unfortunately for the traditional media, the best of that territory is now occupied by others, and their only response has been to circle the wagons. While they stuck to the old trail and a broken business model, various facilitators began to understand and solve consumers' filtering problem - notably Google, whose CEO can now lecture the newspapers on their future, amongst others. The iPad has really opened up the "apps" channel as a whole new form of content. Facebook has recently struck another significant blow, and the semantic web is developing fast, while others continue to study the challenge of "information overload". The traditional media response to all this has been either to figure out a way to get us to collaborate exclusively on their proprietary platforms or erect a 'paywall' to charge directly for accessing their own content. Others have enlisted government support, with questionable results.

It's not over, of course. The digital era has only just begun. Newspapers, books, movies are not dead. Innovation doesn't kill anything. Everything co-exists. Electronic book readers, like the Kindle, are effectively new filters that still oblige you to pay for reading books and newspapers (and blogs). More and more information will be added at an exponentially increasing rate. Filters will continue to break and taste patterns will shift constantly. Many old niches remain, and finding new niches will take editorial and marketing skill, some of which still resides inside the traditional media wagons.

But they need to uncircle those wagons and start making friends.

Seen This, Seen Them All

I do enjoy movies that undermine the Formula. I've seen both sides this week - The Expendables (as in the film, especially every actor's lines, is expendable) and Scott Pilgrim vs The World (now that's more like it).

I was left with a similar feeling as after the "action double" I saw in May - Kick Ass and Iron Mask 2. The Expendables no doubt aspired to Scott Pilgrim's tagline, "An epic of epic epicness". But the geeks earned it.

Bliar - The Hype Spawned The Hatred

Gideon Rachman, writing in the FT, suggests that the loathing of Tony Blair is overdone. He says that "...Mr Blair made his fateful decision on Iraq for reasons that were both honourable and understandable... the decision to back the invasion was not an isolated act of Blair-inspired lunacy. It reflected the conventional wisdom of the British political establishment."

What Gideon overlooks is that Blair never sought a mandate to govern according to "the conventional wisdom of the British political establishment." He offered us change, personal empowerment, the Third Way, an end to 'boom and bust' etc, etc. Then he and his ministers proceeded to behave in a way that even his most ardent supporters found thoroughly disillusioning by comparison. Not just ignoring mass demonstrations on Iraq, but systematically ignoring the House of Commons, dedicating themslves to spin, tolerating the Mandelson affairs, perpetuating the dysfunctional relationship with Brown and so on. Gideon Rachman suggests that Blair's election victory in 2005 means "the idea that the British voters rounded on Mr Blair in disgust after Iraq is simply false." But this view conflicts with Blair's own admission during his resignation speech:

In his speech to supporters at lunchtime, Mr Blair dealt directly with Iraq, many people's perception as his ultimate legacy, saying: "The blowback since ... has been fierce, unrelenting and costly."

The disaster of Iraq had continued to snowball since 2005, coinciding in 2007 with the realisation that the economic cycle had turned (despite Blair's promise of an end to boom and bust), which is when Blair gave his hospital pass to Gordon Brown and set sail for untold wealth on the speaking circuit. By November 2007, the Bank of England was actively trying to manage the impact of the looming economic slowdown.

But such was the height and breadth of expectation that Blair had set for himself not even his resignation could spare him from the impact of all the bad military, economic and political news that was to follow.

The hype had already spawned the hatred.

Image from Gideon Rachman's cited article in the FT.