Pure Evil and the Power of Language

Old news now. Over a week it’s been since Karen Matthews was found guilty of kidnapping her own child. Yet I feel compelled to write as something that was said during one of the post-trial statements has been bothering me. In his opening remarks, Detective Superintendent Kevin Brennan (above) says ‘Karen Matthews is pure evil.’
He then goes on to describe the events which grabbed the attention of the nation throughout the early months of this year. For those not familiar with this sad tale, Matthews, who lives in Dewsbury, a former industrial town in the north of England, reported her daughter missing one night last February. For three weeks extensive police searches revealed nothing until finally the little girl was discovered in the apartment of Michael Donovan, a relative of Matthews’ partner, a mere mile or so from her home. Joy quickly turned to confusion and then anger as it became clear Matthews was being held as a suspect. These events culminated with the guilty verdict last week.
If he’d described her actions as being pure evil I’m sure most would have either agreed or hardly noticed the comment. It was that labelling of the individual themselves that jarred. Applying the ‘evil’ tag to Matthews herself as opposed to her crime not only makes the comment more damning (which could have been the intention) and permanent, it also adds several unhelpful layers of complexity.
Some time around the birth of political correctness I was working as a teacher. Part of my job was to administer criticism and apply suitable sanctions when pupils did something wrong. During that time it was stressed that admonishment should always refer to the misdemeanour and not the child themselves. Put simply, ‘You are a bad boy/girl’ was frowned upon and discouraged whereas ‘The thing you did was wrong’ was favoured. Generally speaking, this made a lot of sense to me, unlike much of the other petty liberalism of the period. Clearly the crime in question here is far more serious than any child’s prank.
I would want to emphasise I have no argument with investigation or verdict. Matthews and her accomplice undoubtedly deserve to spend a long time in prison and already I have spent too much time and thought agonising over those five short words. Suffice it to say the case was complex and stressful enough without adding comments that raise questions of philosophy, theology and eternal damnation.
There are many more issue connected with this case that are far too complex to go into here: crime and its connections with poverty and unemployment, responsibilities of the social services, the role of the media and stereotyping to name but a few. Do a search. You’ll find plenty.

Hash Tags 'n' Glad Rags

Listening to the Six Pixels of Separation podcast on my shiny new iPod Touch last night, I was struck by an item which highlighted the growing use of hash tags. In this case it was referring to an educational conference held in Berlin: #OEB08. Following the eye-witness reports of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Twitter a week or so ago, I do recall seeing this reference to #mumbai but gave it no thought at the time.
I digress here for a moment or two. My flow has been interrupted while I actually search for the aforementioned key. It’s not displayed on the Apple keyboard. A quick search on the web not only reveals the location of # (alt+3 for uk keyboards) but also that many others have struggled to find it before.
It turns out (and remember, I know there’s huge numbers of you technical folk out there who are saying right now ‘Doh! You don’t know that yet?’ I’m talking to the rest of us) that the # key before a search term actually does a job.
This is how the site http://hashtags.org explains it: “Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.”
Hmm. Not sure I quite get that. Bit of real-time research needed here. Been to Wikipedia. A bit clearer, but maths never was my strong point. A few more websites later, it seems that, probably stated too simply, the hash tag improves searchability on a database. So if someone tweets using # followed by a term, eg Stephen Fry’s #oscarwildeday, and then someone uses the same term in their tweets, any searches will find all those entries quckly and easily. Another report I found about the use of hash tags was by anti-bullying site BullyingUK.
And of course, for every idea or innovation, there’s always people who see the negatives. As It happens, I think Paul Nich makes a good point here in his explanation that hash keys only work well when the group is big. He suggests another solution for smaller groups or organisations.
So, I’ll be trying a few # searches over coming days and I’ll let you know how I get on.

Why We Blog

Mitch Joel has raised some interesting questions about blogging in his latest article The Real Work Has Yet To Begin. It discusses the reasons why former bloggers or podcasters give up when ‘the real work’ gives them no time for this activity they see as a distraction or optional extra. He argues that blogging does constitute real work as it helps a company or individual to get more of what the former bloggers term ‘proper work’.
Personally, I think he’s right. Well, he is at least for the job he does and for the level at which he works. Firstly, he’s a journalist. Writing is part of his work and if nothing else, a blog gives him the opportunity to demonstrate his craft. Secondly, being in the social networking and marketing industry, his blog is a practical example of how blogging can help a company to grow and thrive. Furthermore, it gives him the right to write about blogging, podcasting and other web based social networking.
For the rest of us, particularly those starting right at the bottom with an audience of nil, keeping going is not quite so straightforward. What to write about is a major issue. ‘Write what you know,’ they say, and ‘don’t write trivia’ about the family dog or the kids. Trouble is, that’s what’s part of people’s lives. It is what they know and they don’t see it as trivial. I would argue that if they do it well then no problem. One of my favourite blogs is by someone who works in Starbucks. Her entries are of no great importance but the anecdotes she relates and her chatty, informal style have enabled her to build an audience to the extent that she feels confident enough to ask for tips. So, I make no apologies for trivia, particularly when I tweet.
Another good reason for blogging at the bottom and keeping going is at least it is a way of displaying a writing ability and developing a suitable style. And the more we do it, hopefully the blog will improve. And who knows? We might even get an audience.
So if, like me, you’re just starting out, why not treat your blog as a morning constitutional? Get up (a bit earlier perhaps?). Bathroom stuff. Enough clothing to be decent. Coffee. Blog.

Social Networking for the Rest Of Us

In terms of the internet, 2008 has been an important year for ickledot. In addition to stepping out and forming this little company, earning a bit of money and meeting some wonderful people, I have also come to recognise the benefits of what has become known as Web 2.0. I realise this is around half a decade after the movers and shakers turned the internet from a passive ‘get a website and wait for others to come and visit’ to a more interactive world of blogging, Twitter, Facebook et al. From what I read, they are already moving on to version 3.
I have described how this happened for me before but briefly it began in a big way with a presentation by Ian Green of Green Communications, my reading of Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and following the blogs of influential voices such as Dave Winer, Mitch Joel and others.
Obviously here in Sunny Oxenhope we are a world away from such high fliers (although the internet allows us to be an email away from direct contact and generally if we have something interesting to contribute a reply ensues). What interests me is how this technology can help local businesses - the butcher, greengrocer, hairdresser. How could they become part of the global network and also see their customer base and sales increase? Certainly many such institutions are under constant threat from the big supermarkets and need all the help they can get. Following on from that, is there potential for a local social networking business? If the big corporations can be served by companies such as Green Communications, could local shops and businesses benefit from similar yet smaller scale advice, particularly when sites such as Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, UpComing or even LinkedIn mean a considerable web presence can be constructed with very little expenditure?
To compare my position with a race or journey, I look way ahead to the leaders, the front runners including the individuals and organisations mentioned above. Looking back though, there is a long tail of social networking stragglers. My excellent local butcher had never heard of Twitter when I mentioned how my tweets about his pies had got a number of responses. He might argue he’s doing very nicely thank you and doesn’t need to get involved in all that stuff. At the very least though it is self-publicity and free advertising. The potential beyond is huge. Just ahead in the race are those who have websites in the same way they have business cards, compliments slips or letterheads. Their sites exist and and are immediately forgotten. Six months later they look tired, neglected and hardly ever visited. I have even come across larger institutions such as museums that still look upon their websites as little more than virtual billboards.
So that’s one of my target for the coming year. To explore how the wonderful world of social networking can be applied successfully to local shops and businesses that are ‘under the radar’ of the big players. Watch this space.

Sherman Robertson at the Bronte Blues Club

Arriving early to avoid the forecasted Pennine blizzards, ickledot was lucky enough to catch the closing bars of the Sherman Robertson Band’s soundcheck. I knew then that we were in for a special night. As the audience gathered, the sense of anticipation grew.

I know I’ve said it before, but the house band, BBC5, were in particularly good form. Apparently singer Michael Ford had been suffering with a head cold for a number of days and whatever it was that lingered in his nose or throat gave his voice a pleasingly gravelled edge.

And then came the whirlwind that was the Sherman Robertson Band! Having heard their session on last Monday’s Radio 2 Blues programme with Paul Jones, I knew what to expect in terms of style, but nothing could have prepared our little gathering for the performance that followed. From Beaux Bridges, Louisiana to Laycock Village Hall! It never ceases to amaze me that such a quality of music can be heard at this tiny venue high in the hills.

Sherman Robertson is a truly wonderful guitarist and showman. To me, the sound was vaguely reminiscent of Robert Cray and a number of others confirmed the validity of such a comparison. I saw Cray a few years ago (at Manchester Apollo: an inferior venue) and to me Sherman has the edge. More grit in the voice and guitar style. The supporting band were superb. Loud, but so clear, tight and obviously having a great time. Unfortunately a quick trawl on the old internet has not revealed any names, but I think I heard that the bass and keyboards players hailed from Leicester and the drummer from Birmingham.

Thanks go also to the organisers for managing to capture this rare talent for the Bronte Blues Club. If not thought of as an essential venue on the British blues scene before, it truly is now. A magical night. And it didn’t snow.

Bit Guilty …

… not been blogging enough recently. Soz. Over the last few days I’ve kept hearing about various things and thought ‘I could write a blog about that’ and then days pass and the chance has gone.

I was very pleased about Obama. Whether you like him or not you have to agree it’s good to have a politician elected without having to ‘dumb down’; appear less bright than he is in order to pander to ‘the common man’, whoever that is. Same with Gordon Brown really. He recently seems to have got the plaudits by being serious, being himself, rather than pretending to be something he’s not.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time updating another site I run. I first designed it using Freeway about four years ago. Now I’m attempting to bring it into the Web 2.0 era using Rapidweaver. Trouble is, it has grown to be huge and so is taking forever to transfer.

Also been using Twitter a lot. I’m enjoying it more and more. There’s a huge variety of people out there and it is truly amazing what can be said in the space of 140 characters.

OK. I’ll try to write something on a more regular basis from now on.

… and another thing …

All those involved in public life, whether it be sport, politics or the media, also have a private existence, like being on duty or off duty. Andrew Sachs was most definitely the latter. It’s a bit like the guy who punched Houdini when he wasn’t ready.