News and views on domain names, the Internet and life in general
From the category archives:
I posted the video of the United Nations’ representative Sha Zukang losing it about a week ago but forgot to stick up a blog post about it.
It was a remarkable thing: Egypt’s first lady had inserted her own agenda into the Internet Governance Forum’s schedule – which caused no end of problems as everything [...]
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I’ve always thought Eddie Izzard was supremely funny but I didn’t realise that he’d be a really nice bloke just to know and have a conversation with until today.
I embarked on some rather silly Twitter-following very early this morning (all sparked off by Stephen Fry tweeting about Trafigura) and ended up discovering that Eddie Izzard [...]
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It makes me proud to be British when I see something as simultaneously wonderful and hilarious as a middle-aged woman brow-beating a government minister into changing government policy.
Joanna Lumley is a treasured British asset – a ludicrously posh but much-loved and fearless actress – and she has been spearheading a campaign against the government for its treatment of Nepalese “Gurkha” British Army fighters.
Just look at this video in which Lumley speaks and then stares at immigration minister Phil Woolas just daring him to contradict her. The finest traditions of a British Battleaxe. He cowers under her summary and then embarks on a droney, bureaucratic explanation of how it all works and why the government hasn’t just made a complete arse of itself. I think Woolas’ political career is over.
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Interesting judgment from the United States Supreme Court earlier today: you cannot say the word “fuck” on TV. Well, you can, but you’ll be heavily fined by the FCC. The same goes for “shit”.
Unfortunately, we did not get a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore-style explanation (“a cock in the hands of Pinter”), as the Supreme Court chose to render fuck and shit as “the F- and S-Words”. Nonetheless, it decided that the FCC decision to remove the one-fuck-for-free rule on TV broadcasts on US networks was neither “arbitrary” nor “capricious”.
Read the full Supreme Court decision here [pdf]
It’s not just these two words either – the FCC rules cover anything that denotes “sexual or excretory activity or organs”. Bono has yet to yell out that winning an award made his sphincter vibrate (it was Bono that created the new rules by saying it felt “fucking brilliant” when he won his Golden Globe a few years back) – it would be interesting to see how the FCC reacted to that.
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Michael Smolens is the platinum guide for the revolution that is going on right now with video over the Internet. As the CEO of DotSub – a company which enables people to simply and easily transcribe and translate film online – he is on the cutting edge.
Which is why it is such a pleasure to talk to him: because he always has some video project or program on his mind that he tells you about, incredulous that you haven’t heard of it yet. So when Michael called me yesterday to tell me he’d be in Los Angeles in early February and did I fancy meeting up, I was delighted to hear about another extraordinary and inspiring use of film the likes of which make me want to pick up my camera right now and get filming.
I check it out online this morning and then also dug out some other recommendations he had made to me and then it occurred to me, buzzing with hope and energy, that it might not be a bad idea to share this knowledge with whoever reads my blog.
So here is a quick guide to the most inspiring films and movements around at the moment. Why be medicated with nonsense television when you can be uplifted and inspired with Net marvels?
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