2012-03-09
Reality vs Science Fiction
The Guardian, 29 Febrary 2012:
Soak the English: Welsh want paying for any water piped across the border
Politicians say rain-rich country must be compensated if ‘increasingly valuable resource’ is sent to drought-hit England
Frederik Pohl, The Cool War, 1981:
During the London water shortage just before the completion of the Rape of Scotland waterworks, Irish nationalists went around turning on hydrants and covert sympathizers left their taps running. It worked so well that Palestinian refugees, circumcised and trained for the occasion, repeated the process in Haifa to such an extent that two hundred thousand acres of orange groves died for lack of irrigation.
2012-03-01
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Telegraph: David Cameron could have ridden Rebekah Brooks’s ex-police horse, Downing Street admits. From the file “unlikely newsworthy triptychs” (via)
2012-02-21
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Charles Duhigg, quoted on Jim Romenesko’s post, NYT reporter defends Forbes writer accused of ‘stealing’ his work.
For the context: Duhigg wrote about data mining for the Times (as quoted here previously), but the article came to the public’s attention largely through a summary of some of the more interesting parts in Forbes. Romenesko’s piece is a good look at what three participants - Duhigg; Kashmir Hill, who wrote the Forbes summary; and Nick O’Neill, who wrote about who got the attention - have to say about the turn of events.
2011-07-06
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The Telegraph: Phone hacking: families of war dead ‘targeted’ by News of the World.
Am I allowed to hope that the “painful period” is as painful as possible? Please?
2011-06-27
Compare and Contrast: Rail Edition
BBC News: China tests Beijing-Shanghai bullet train
Engineers have conducted a test-run of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link, days before its public launch.
Officials, reporters and company bosses were on board for the 300 km/h (190mph) train’s maiden voyage, which the government has promised will halve the journey time to under five hours.
China is planning to roll out high-speed lines across the country.
But the project has come under fire for its high cost - the Beijing-Shanghai line cost 215bn yuan ($33bn; £21bn).
And the government has earmarked a further 700bn yuan for the rest of the project, which would see 16,000km of track being laid by 2020.
BBC News: Clash over new high-speed rail tunnel in Italian Alps
Police have clashed with demonstrators in the Italian Alps over the construction of a new high-speed rail link with France.
Tunnelling is set to start for a line from Turin to Lyon, which is expected to cut the travel time by nearly half.
Local residents built barricades to prevent heavy machinery from starting work in the picturesque Val di Susa, in northern Italy.
Police used fire hoses and tear gas to disperse them.
San Jose Mercury: Central Valley plan snags on politics
The plan for high-speed rail in California is to start on the Fresno side of the San Joaquin River, between Bakersfield and Chowchilla, and go until the money runs out.
The Central Valley, for many reasons, is a practical place to begin. The land is broad and flat and relatively inexpensive, and the federal government, which is contributing billions of dollars, requires it.
The first section will one day form the spine of a system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, officials say. But there is no money guaranteed to build the rest, and the initial tracks, through towns like Wasco and Madera, are conspicuously far from where most people live.
2010-12-10
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Camilla and Charles Windsor (the picture’s taken from the Telegraph, who had a nice big version in their gallery.)
The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade has an interview with the photographer, Matt Dunham of AP:
When they reached Regent Street, Dunham spotted two police outriders. Momentarily unsure of the reason, he then realised there was royal car behind them, though he had no idea who was inside.
“It was unable to move because it was surrounded,” he says. “It was stuck in a gridlock. There were people kicking it and screaming. So I raced towards it and then saw it was Camilla and Charles.
“Charles seemed to be waving calmly at first, trying to be amicable, but then he looked worried. Camilla was visibly agitated. There were a couple of people taking pictures with their mobile phones, but I knew I was the only newspaper photographer around.
“I had previously turned off my flash because it had attracted protesters who had tried to wrench my camera away. But the light was so bad by this time it would have been impossible to get a shot inside a car without it.
“The adrenaline was running by now. So I turned it on and took five pictures. I realised they were important and I saw another guy shooting video on his phone.
“So I got him into a taxi and we went back to AP’s offices in Camden.”
I think I disagree with Denise Wilton about the image becoming iconic. Technically it’s far from perfect, and perhaps the image does need context, but the thing about news images is that, once seen, they tend to carry that with them. Think of some of the iconic photographs from the Vietnamese War, for example.
In any case, if I were making a “news photographs of the year” show, I’d be frantically editing it to make room for this one.
(Edit) Looks like Tumblr Radar agrees.
2010-11-12
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A wide angle of the shot that featured on a bunch of UK newspaper front pages on Thursday:
See also: this John Harris comment piece in the Guardian. Well worth a read.
2010-10-30
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AFP: Typhoon churns toward eastern Japan. “Typhoon Chaba, packing winds of up to 144 kilometres per hour, is on course to affect the Tokyo region this weekend.”
2010-09-12
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Taken in 1984, Marilyn Johnson serving food to striking miners. From No Redemption: Keith Pattison’s photographs of the miners’ strike in The Observer.
Johnson is quoted in the accompanying piece by Red Riding author, David Peace:
“At the height of the strike, we used to feed 500 a day with food provided by local shops and cafes. There was always enough to go round because businesses in the community were so supportive with their donations. Everybody was in the same boat and we all pulled together. I’m proud to say that people respected me and the lasses who worked in the kitchen. I got to know so many new people that year.
“There’s very little community in Easington now. The pit was the lifeblood of the place, socially and economically, and things went downhill as soon as it closed. People moved out and houses and shops got boarded up. The benefit culture took hold. Eventually, there were drugs raids and stabbings in our street, so we moved away 11 years ago.”
