Robert Fisk remembers working at Rupert Murdoch's Times:

He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.

You hear all these awful things about Arab dictators and then, when you meet them, they are charm itself. Hafez al-Assad once held my hand in his for a long time with a paternal smile. Surely he can't be that bad, I almost said to myself – this was long before the 1982 Hama massacres. King Hussein would call me "Sir", along with most other journalists. These potentates, in public, would often joke with their ministers. Mistakes could be forgiven.

The "Hitler Diaries" were Murdoch's own mistake, after refusing to countenance his own "expert's" change of heart over the documents hours before The Times and The Sunday Times began printing them. [...]

[The paper's foreign editor...] dispatched me to editor Charles Douglas-Home's office with the Reuters story and I marched in only to find Charlie entertaining Murdoch. "They say they're forgeries, Charlie," I announced, trying not to glance at Murdoch. But I did when he reacted. "Well, there you go," the mogul reflected with a giggle. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Much mirth. The man's insouciance was almost catching. Great Story. It only had one problem. It wasn't true. [...]

‪Hackgate: The Movie. Some truly inspired casting decisions there.¹

[Via Liberal Conspiracy]

1. Marred somewhat by one really unfortunate choice right at the end. ↩

Long ago, in an era before newspaper web sites had comments:¹

From Lt. Col. A.D. Wintle.
The Royal Dragoons
Cavalry Club
127 Piccadilly W.1.

To the Editor of The Times.

Sir,

I have just written you a long letter.

On reading it over, I have thrown it into the waste paper basket.

Hoping this will meet with your approval,

I am
Sir
Your obedient Servant

(Signed, 'ADWintle')

6 Feb '46

1. OK. An era before newspapers had web sites. ↩

I've only now noticed that Clive James has resumed his role as a television critic, this time for the Daily Telegraph. His latest piece exhibits the range of interests characteristic of his heyday in the Observer:

The heroine of any nation's version of The Killing – it would be true even for the Italians – gets about 10 words an episode. For what it is like to get 10 words a second, you can always tune into Germaine Greer when she is on. She did an episode of Have I Got News for You and she was really on. She just blew the boys away with a hurricane of funny stuff. I was a guest on the show myself once and I was hopeless, an old man too in awe of the young sparks.

Germs is never in awe of anybody. Here was a reminder, crammed into a short space, of just what a fine intelligence she has under the occasional demented aberration. But if you wanted to hear the English language being spoken at its very best in the last two weeks, you had to be listening to Aung San Suu Kyi giving the Reith lectures.

Not to slight the excellent work he did once he started making TV series rather than writing about them, but it's good to have him back on the beat where most of us discovered him.

If half the job of making a good film is in gathering a capable cast, I'd say that Contagion might just be worth a look:

• Matt Damon
• Marion Cotillard
• Kate Winslet
• Gwyneth Paltrow
• Bryan Cranston
• Jude Law
• Laurence Fishburne
• Jennifer Ehle

Judging by the trailer it clearly isn't going to be the feel-good hit of the winter, but I should think it'll do OK.

(All that, and I didn't even notice who the director was until my third viewing of the trailer. I think it'll do more than OK.)

Dyslexie: the font for people with dyslexia…

This font is especially designed for people with dyslexia. When they use it, they make fewer errors whilst they are reading. It makes reading easier for them and it takes less effort.

Be sure to watch the video that illustrates exactly why Dyslexie is more readable.¹

[Via kottke.org]

1. It's just a shame that in order to display the text on their web page using Dyslexie the project team had to resort to using cufon, a sIFR replacement that wraps each word on the page in a bunch of markup and makes it hellish tricky to select, copy and paste a block of text. I couldn't even paste the copied text into a text editor window and get a usable result: I ended up having to use the Instapaper Text bookmarklet to produce a view of the page I could copy-and-paste the above blockquote from. ↩

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute…

In January 2004 the authors found their tearoom bereft of teaspoons. Although a flunky [...] was rapidly dispatched to purchase a new batch, these replacements in turn disappeared within a few months. Exasperated by our consequent inability to stir in our sugar and to accurately dispense instant coffee, we decided to respond in time honoured epidemiologists' fashion and measure the phenomenon. [...]

[Via iamcal]

"Cars 2" opens this week and Josh Berta will not be seeing it is a must-read:

Without question, [Pixar's] greatest misstep in design, and perhaps in general, is the film Cars. Released in 2006, this film follows the "stranger comes to town" adventures of stock car racing sensation Lightning McQueen. While it was less than loved by critics, there is no question it was a commercial success. In fact, some would say it is Pixar's most obvious grab at a pay day, appealing to the NASCAR set without even the thinnest of veils. But I would argue its middle-American appeal goes much deeper than its subject matter. Indeed, I believe Cars is a vehicle for the conservative, science-denying belief known as Intelligent Design.

See something or say something plots maps of major cities, showing locations from which people tweeted and locations where they posted photographs to Flickr.

Unfortunately I don't know any of the cities well enough to positively identify the locations revealed by the pictures, but a quick look at Google Maps seems to confirm that¹ many of the concentrations of red dots in London mark the locations of the various royal or public parks.

I wonder what such a map would look like for Newcastle. I can guess where most of the photos would be taken (i.e. on and around the Quayside), but where would all the tweeters be hanging out?

[Via Flowing Data]

1. As you'd expect. ↩

George C Scott watches the Jack and Jill trailer‏.

[Via Scanners]

Historical Meet-Ups is like Awesome People Hanging Out Together, but with the stories behind the meetings added.

Take, for example, Ingmar Bergman's encounter with Charles Bronson:

The meeting between Bergman and Bronson was facilitated by the Swedish auteur's unlikely connection to the coriaceous action star. The two men shared the same agent and publicist. They met once, during Bergman's first visit to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Bronson was filming one of his trademark shoot 'em ups at the time. Bergman visited him at the studio at their agent's behest. After they exchanged pleasantries, Bergman became entranced by the squibs that were placed on Bronson's body to simulate blood-spattering gunshot wounds. "Fascinating," Bergman marveled. "I never knew how they did that!" "You mean you don't use machine guns in your movies?" Bronson replied.

[Via MetaFilter]

Mark Longstaff-Tyrrell brings us Video for Kindle:

[...] I've designed a system to automatically convert a terrestrial digital TV transmission, as captured by a DVB card or PVR, to a sequence of static images annotated with the subtitles from the stream that convey the story as a kind of comic strip format. This can be viewed as HTML or PDF, so expanding the number of devices the content can be viewed on.

This is one of those ideas that straddles the boundary between genius and lunacy; I can't for the life of me decide which way it's going to fall.¹

[Via BERG Blog]

1. Of course, at the moment it's somewhat hindered as a practical proposition by the lack of a Kindle model with a colour display, but I think it's safe to say Amazon will be taking care of that little problem soon enough. Call it 'Video for Nook' for now, if you must. ↩

Google's Daniel Ford and Josh Batson have been mapping the languages of the World (Wide Web):

Most web pages link to other pages on the same web site, and the few off-site links they have are almost always to other pages in the same language. It's as if each language has its own web which is loosely linked to the webs of other languages. However, there are a small but significant number of off-site links between languages. These give tantalizing hints of the world beyond the virtual. [...]

[Via MetaFilter]

The News International scandal gets the Downfall parody treatment.

[Via Liberal Conspiracy]

Rebekah Brooks' Desert Island Discs:

Okay let's make one thing crystal clear. Just because Crazy Horses by the Osmonds is about to come on, don't put two and two together and think it has anything to do with the fact that I chose it. That would be incredibly naïve and short-sighted on your part and demonstrate once and for all how little you understand the world of high-powered record choosing.

[Via Spaceboy, posting to Word Magazine Blog]

A List of Completely Wrong Assumptions About Technology Use in Emerging Economies.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Fascinating.

[Via currybetdotnet]

Novelist Alex Shakar remembers The Year of Wonders:

"We're closing in on a deal," my agent told me on the phone. "I'm just turning him upside-down now and shaking him for loose change."

It was midday on a Monday in early August of the year 2000. The Nasdaq, rested from its breather in the spring, was sprinting back up over 4,000 toward its March peak. Vice President Gore, demolishing the Bush son's early lead, was pulling even in the polls. TV commercials depicted placid investors being wheeled on gurneys into operating rooms, stern-faced doctors diagnosing their patients with dire cases of money coming out the wazoo.

The previous Friday, bidding on my first novel had reached six figures, then paused for people to track down more cash. I'd later learn one editor spent the weekend trying to reach her boss on his Tanzanian vacation, finally getting through via the satellite phone of a safari boat on the Rufiji river, but that he wouldn't OK a higher bid because he couldn't get the manuscript in time.

I was 32. I'd never made over $12,000 in a year. [...]

[Via kottke.org]

Former Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara remembers being in the Sri Lankan team bus when it came under fire during the team's 2009 tour of Pakistan:

Tharanga Paranvithana, on his debut tour, is [...] next to me. He stands up, bullets flying all around him, shouting "I have been hit" as he holds his blood-soaked chest. He collapsed onto his seat, apparently unconscious.

I see him and I think: "Oh my God, you were out first ball, run out the next innings and now you have been shot. What a terrible first tour."

[Via MetaFilter]

It would appear that an Imperial probe droid has located Greenpeace's secret base on Hoth:

Greenpeace spokeswoman Leila Dean says in a statement: "Almost two million people have already watched our campaign ad, which is a light hearted way of telling the truth about Volkswagen and their opposition to climate change laws. The film has been hugely successful having been shared more than any other advert in the last 24 hours. We're disappointed that it has been taken down and we're hoping it's just a case of some rogue droids and that many more people will be able to watch the film soon."

(Previously.)

[Via @flminiblog]

Go Fug Yourself meets Starfleet's flagship: Fashion It So…

Charlie and Anna are revisiting Star Trek: The Next Generation. In a big way. And we've noticed that the clothes on that show are AMAZING. And not just 1987 amazing, or 24th century amazing, but BOTH, SIMULTANEOUSLY.

We celebrate those fashions here.

Warning: following that link may lead to bouts of laughing so hard that you forget to breathe.

[Via MetaFilter]