Here are people who should know more than we do, but they don’t. In a lot of ways, you’re already ahead of them if you’ve bought a few packets of Panini stickers for the kids’ album because you know who the players are. It shouldn’t be that way. These people are being paid to be experts, yet they’re sitting back and approaching every game like a pleb. They talk only about the players they’ve heard of — Argentina is Messi and Tevez, for example; South Korea is Ji-Sung Park — from the Premiership or the Champions League, and that’s that. No bothering to look any further. There is no world of football outside of England, or the top teams in Europe — everyone else is just ballast. Just spin out some old flannel about shocking defending and put some whizzy circles around players in the replays at half-time, and that’s job done. It’s crass, ineffective, tedious, lacking in insight, and downright contemptuous of the vast majority of footballers and teams at the World Cup.

I was struck most by “ineffective, tedious, lacking in insight, and downright contemptuous [of the audience]” and it got me thinking about a documentary the BBC had put out about Atlantis (yes, really). When I watched a bit of the documentary, it intrigued me, and I was quite entertained by it (good production values, engaging host, etc.), but I discovered, after a series of short Google searches, that dozens of little details that were stated as “fact” (or not qualified in any way) were either largely discredited theories or incredibly tenuous extrapolations. And yes, of course: it’s television, it’s not a history book; but why shouldn’t it at least try to be a bit more rigorous? Telling us something is a theory (albeit a largely discredited one) doesn’t diminish its value as an interesting anecdote (I’m thinking of the small segment about “evidence” of human sacrifice at a Minoan site); but it does, perhaps, make everything less black and white, and the “plebs” who watch television need things to be simple. Or so the argument goes. But it’s not really an argument, just an excuse for lazy programmme-making.

It didn’t used to be like this: Kenneth’s Clarke’s Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man are two examples of engaging, entertaining programme-making that doesn’t skimp on its research or dumb-down its subject-matter. And there are still good programme’s being made, so mainly I’m just ranting.

Television has always been getting dumber, though, so none of this is especially revelatory. The frustrating thing when it comes to information and research, whether about footballers or Atlantis, is that here and now in 2010 information is incredibly easy to access, anywhere, and at any time. People, well-paid BBC pundits and documentary producers in particular, have iPads and netbooks, 3G and wireless, Google and Twitter. With the power of all that at our disposal, it shouldn’t be difficult to find out some anecdotes about the Serbian football squad, or to see what current thinking is on human sacrifice in Minoan civilisation. And if we really can’t utilise all this technology at our disposal, for simple tasks or for complex problems like fixing a broken oil well, then we’re probably doomed.

Well, there I was thinking I could read an article about Edward Heath, when I get stopped (somewhat slugglishly — lots of javascript seemed to be in play) by an invitation from The Times to sign up and “preview” their “new sites”. But I didn’t — still don’t — want to preview their site “for a limited period”, or learn about what makes them worthwhile, or become a member; I just wanted — still want — to read the article. I have been fenced out. If I was in the UK, I could go to the library and read the piece. And if the article was in today’s edition of the newspaper, I might even be able to buy a copy. But I’m not in the UK, so neither of those options are viable (and both are silly: I learned about the piece online, so I should be able to read it online). If I want to get through the fence, I must pay.

If I were to pay, what then? Would I subsequently pay for eye-catching, highly recommended articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post, The London Review of Books and The New Yorker? If I wanted to read a selection of, say, 6–12 articles (a not unreasonable number) during one 24 hour period, would I need accounts with each and every publication? Or would I “micro” pay, a dollar an article, perhaps? (I’m being deliberately difficult here, but it’s not a stretch.) If I did pay, could I share the link with others, or would they too hit a wall they’d have to pay to get through? It all seems immensely complicated, expensive, and unsatisfying.

The internet allows people to pick and choose from far more sources of content than ever before. This is not news, but it’s worth thinking about what things were like before the internet, RSS feeds, and the myriad delivery systems. We are no longer in a world of just newspapers, radio, and television. You don’t need to choose between The Guardian and The Telegraph: you can have both, in small doses. It’s up to you. You like the Sudoku at The Telegraph? Help yourself. But you think their editorials are a bit, how to say, conservative? No problem: switch tab to The Guardian. Neither of them have good book reviews these days? That’s fine, just head over to The Times Literary Supplement and see what essays they have on offer. This is the internet I know.

I’ve seen my first pay wall (see the image below) and I’m worried: it seems like the internet just got one site smaller; it feels like a step backwards; and what happens next? My students, many of whom frequently find themselves at sites like The Times, will find this sort of stuff limiting. Will they open accounts? Or will they just turn and go somewhere else? Some will try, but most won’t be able to pay, if it comes down to that: no credit cards, no electronic currency. Their curiosity will hopefully lead them to ingenious ways around the problem. But sites asking for money (micro or otherwise) will put off a great many of my students.

Anyway, enough hastily written venting.

“No, you can’t read the article.”

“No, I’m not going to give the logs to someone who suggests that I might have been drug-addled when I decided to turn in a spy,” says Lamo […]

In his chats with Lamo, copies of which were provided to Wired.com by the ex-hacker, Manning described a crisis of conscience that led him to leak a headline-making video of a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

A spy? Perhaps. But to be honest, if I were asked to choose between a spy like Manning and a journalist like Poulsen, I’d take the spook, every time.

More on the wider story here, here, here, here, and here.

The person who leaked the so-called “Collateral Murder” video of the US Apache helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in Baghdad, resulting in their deaths (including two Reuters journalists) has been arrested, according to a report in Wired.

The Wired report, which contains lots of details and information from friends of the man arrested, SPC Bradley Manning, says that Manning was arrested after he told a former hacker of his leaks. It also contains the news that Manning leaked other material, including 260,000 diplomatic cables from the US which has not been previously reported, as far as I know.

But then things get quirky:

Wikileaks has denounced the news in its Twitter feed this morning, saying about the Wired reporters:

“Adrian Lamo&Kevin Poulson are notorious felons,informers&manipulators. Journalists should take care.

“Statement: Washington Post had Collateral murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT it to the public.

“Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”

However, they have not yet denied the story, and claim in fact that their security protocols prevent them from even knowing the source of their leakers.

The “former hacker” mentioned is Adrian Lamo, an intriguing character. And one of the article’s writers, Kevin Poulsen (slammed by Wikileaks along with Lamo), isn’t exactly dull: he’s a “former” hacker himself and has had a book written about his exploits. So, Wikileaks is angry about the ethics of the piece, but both Lamo and Paulson (they’re acquaintances, probably close friends, as far as I can tell), seem to be standing by the line that the FBI were informed about the source of the leak because of the huge risk to national security:

Lamo has contributed funds to Wikileaks in the past, and says he agonized over the decision to expose Manning — he says he’s frequently contacted by hackers who want to talk about their adventures, and he has never considered reporting anyone before. The supposed diplomatic cable leak, however, made him believe Manning’s actions were genuinely dangerous to U.S. national security.

Poulsen has responded to Wikileaks response to his article:

@wikileaks I’m going to “hell” for reporting on the arrest of an alleged source of yours? So military detentions should be kept secret?

As replies go, that one seems a little oblique. Deliberate evasion, or is he missing what Wikileaks seem (to me) to actually be saying (very indirectly): that Lamo and Poulsen were complicit in alerting the authorities and that it was less a case of reporting on news than of blogging about what they’d done (albeit blogging in a manner that appeared to be journalism). And more fundamentally, Wikileaks are really saying it was unprincipled and wrong. But that might be reading too much into things. It might be as simple as one former hacker deciding to protect the interests of his country by getting in touch with the FBI and another former hacker then writing an article about what the informant did and the aftermath. Whatever really is going on, I’ll be watching for developments.

If a camera is within prison walls we should always be asking; How did it get there? What are/were the motives? What are the responses? I consider the photograph as social document, therefore, what social and political powers are at play in a photograph’s manufacture? And, how is knowledge, related to those powers, constructed?

It’s implicit, I think, that these are questions we could — should, even — direct at all photography, not just the photography of “sites of incarceration”.

On the first day of this fresh new decade, I read something that lodged itself in my mind and promptly began gnawing:

[…] I think photographers are talking pretty much to each other with their photos these days. Does anyone else really even notice photography these days, much less whether it is good or bad? […]

I think other people do notice photography, and I think that some will notice the aesthetics, others, the content, and others still, an product of the two. But I do wonder if a large amount of contemporary photography (and likewise contemporary poetry, contemporary fine art, etc.) is created solely for appreciation within a quite insular, self-contained, elitist milieu.

In other news, I’ve finally updated scribeoflight.org, which feels like a good start to the year.

The song of the day has been ‘Changes’:

I watch the ripples change their size,
but never leave the stream
of warm impermanence and
so the days float through my eyes,
but still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations:
they’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

I have a feeling it’s going to be an interesting year.

One of the biggest advantages of this new theme is that images in posts can be wider (436px or 596px) than they could be in the old theme; the down side of this is that images in the older posts, posts written for the old theme’s specifications, may appear a little too narrow.  This is a problem I have no immediate plans to remedy (manually editing 200 chunks of HTML code is tedious).

So, a new look, and hopefully one that is readable on all browsers.  If you encounter any problems, let me know.

Hurricane forums are full of excited comments about central pressure and wind speed and comparisons to Camille and 1931 and 1938, with hastily-tacked-on notes about how it will be tragic if anyone dies and they hope it’s a dud.

Here is the strip itself:

‘Disaster Voyeurism’, the 611st xkcd webcomic. (Source)

Wonderful.

And there seems to be something going wrong with a few other recent posts.  Annoying.  I can’t work out if I’ve been hacked or not.

KINGdesk Web Design has just released wp‐​Typography, a merger and expansion of the wp‐​Typogrify and wp‐​Hyphenate Word Press plugins and SmartyPants functionality.  It is now a one‐​stop‐​shop for improved web typography in Word Press.

The new plugin looks very powerful.  You can find out more on their site, here.

If you have a few minutes to kill, you might want to take a look at an interesting audio slide show that’s just been published on the website of The New Yorker.  It’s a commentary by Peter Schjeldahl on some of the work, and some of the artists, featured in The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, an exhibition currently showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Many of the artists discussed were completely new to me, including Dara Bernbaum, the artist behind the Wonder Woman video still at the top of this post.