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  if you can’t have baybees ...

... it is vital that problem is passed on to future generations. At public expense, of course.

This is regarded as far better than adopting viable children, abandoned and then abused by the State in their fake ‘homes’.

The selfishness and foolishness of individuals seeking in vitro fertilisation [IVF] , and a state that supports such idiocy, is just another indication of a sick culture.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour052009.php#reverse_eugenics_080809

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political correctness or a changing society?

Camp Coffee began production in Glasgow in 1876. It contains water, sugar, 4% coffee essence and 26% chicory essence.

In certain moods, I think it tastes better than standard coffee, being sweeter and less bitter. It has long served as a cheap substitute for the real thing and, thus, is spoken of disparagingly by dedicated posers. It is very useful for making coffee ice cream for children, with less of the caffeine.

The original bottle label, with the Scots officer served Camp coffee by a Sikh orderly.	Intermediate label, the orderly no longer offering the coffee on a tray.	Current label illustration with the orderly and officer sitting together to drink Camp coffee.

And here is a rather boring side story.

There is a strange tale of a British soldier winning a Victoria Cross and and being offered a commission as an alternative to the medal. He took the commission, later becoming a general - Major-General Sir Hector MacDonald, and was then accused of being a homosexual. He, therefore, committed suicide.

It is alleged that the general is the model of the British frontier soldier on the product label. Supposedly, this ‘explains’ why ‘camp’ is linked to homosexuality. This sounds very much like an urban legend to me.

A link if you want to find out more on this fellow.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour052009.php#camp_coffee_240709

the internet versus the fossil media

It is nonsense that internet news sources and commentators are amateurs by comparison with the fossil news publications. Every time a fracas breaks out, the net privateers are well ahead of the curve and the fossil media follows.

Over and over, the fossil media gives out politicians’ handouts without pointing out the severe dishonesty and often innumeracy in such sources.

The fossil media lives on puff handouts (‘news releases’) from corporations, politicians, academics and a very small number of (similarly lazy) news ‘services’.

The fossil media repeats the same ‘stories’ by cut and paste in (literally) hundreds of rags, whether on paper or on the net.

The fossil media has text mainly to sweeten advertising.

There is nothing the independent writers cannot provide, and better. If any fossil media source tries charging for their internet version, they will rapidly lose readership, and thereby advertising, while others will cheer that another fossil source is self-destructing and leaving more of the market to them.

The fossil media is derivative and doomed. It is also one-way.

The world is a’changing. The old framework is crumbling!

For those that still believe that individual bloggers, supported by not much more that Google ads, are little competion for well-resourced news gathering organisation, consider the following:

1. There is nothing stopping bloggers combining.
2. One person with intelligence can easily outperform the fossil media and the lazy dull hacks by choosing areas of interest and researching them effectively.
3. A great deal of what has driven the fossil media is not conventional profits, but power. Take, for instance, the BBC.

Any greater outreach capabilities provided by the web is a passing phase. The competition will continue to consume the fossil media. ☺

It is doubtful that any fossil media will be able to profit royally by becoming an internet-centred media company because the competition for power is so great. The web is characterised by the huge numbers coming on line year by year.

And that looks to me like a world of specialists. In a political newsgroup, for instance, there are specialists in military equipment and other backwaters who know vastly more than the average hack, or even than most of the present ‘New’ Labour politicians.

In my view, the fossil media they will be cut into a thousand pieces on the web. the notion that they can finance themselves through advertisings and direct sales ignores that advertising will be spread ever more thinly, and direct selling will increasingly intrude and so be ignored.

I can buy books on the web that, in the past, would, have taken me months to locate, if at all, and at far lower prices.

Just about everything is going that way. This technology is changing society in fundamental ways, just as did printing, the horseless carriage, nuclear power and the birth control pill.

The world will never be the same again.

related material
fossil media prestige rags spurned by net savvy readers

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour052009.php#internet_v_fossil_media_190709

problems with commitment

Some people have difficulty making a commitment.

Words from a 1935 song by Elsie Carlisle.

He was a lad in his twenties,
she was a girl in her teens,
the time it was when there was spring in the air
and everyone knows what that means.

Without any doubt he decided
that she was the one in his life,
so he knelt on his right knee and twisted his left
and asked her if she’d be his wife.

So he wooed her and wooed her and wooed her;
she wouldn’t say yes there and then,
’cos her mother had said she was much too young,
so he wooed her and wooed her again.

He was a man in his thirties, she in her twenty-third year.
He still loved the girl,
but she still answered no.
So he dropped a strong silent tear.

And when he was passing his forties,
she said, I want you for my own,
but it would break mother’s heart now if we were to wed
and she’d hate to be left all alone.

So he wooed her and wooed her and wooed her;
she wouldn’t say yes there and then,
’cos her mother had said she was much too young,
so he wooed her and wooed her again.

He was a lad in his sixties,
she was about fifty-three;
and he was still crazy to wed,
but her ma still warbled the Isle of Capri.

And when he was grown to his eighties,
he told her he’d done his best;
and though he’d been faithful for sixty-nine years,
he was only a man like the rest.

So he wooed her and wooed her and wooed her;
she wouldn’t say yes there and then,
’cos her mother had said she was much too young,
so he wooed her and wooed her again.

He was a hundred and twenty
and she about a hundred and four,
and he had entirely given up hope,
’til her ma went and married once more.

At last, the girl said she would wed him,
and though it may sound very weird....
the poor sod had waited for so many years,
that he flew down the flue with a beard.

Still he wooed her and wooed her and wooed her.
The wooing had gone to his brain
and he had to lay off for a year or two,
until he could woo her again.

Elsie Carlisle: Radio Sweetheart No.1 [IMPORT] Audio CD, 1999 Living Era ASIN: B00001IVKA amazon.co.uk amazon.com

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour052009.php#commitment_problems_240509

fossil media prestige rags spurned by net savvy readers

Why pay for badly reported news on reprocessed dead trees when the internet gives a better breadth of news reporting and ideas? Why pay for advertising in biased and unpopular fossil printing when the net is the growing audience?

“The Times and Sunday Times are losing a million pounds a week. The New York Times is selling and renting back its own headquarters to stay solvent. Guardian Media Group is losing £83,000 a day...” [Quoted from order-order.com]

“Times Newspapers, publisher of The Times and Sunday Times, reported that losses jumped 17% from £43.9 million to £51.3 million in the year to 29 June 2008 - before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and recession hit the advertising market.” [Quoted from thisislondon.co.uk]

“The Guardian and The Observer lost £26.8 million before various one-off write-offs in the year to March 2008.” [Quoted from timesonline.co.uk]

“Newspaper publisher Independent News & Media's annual profit turned into a loss in 2008 as the health of the newspaper industry continued to worsen.” [Quoted from bbc.co.uk]

Why kill trees when you can read the news digitally?

“The New York Times Company and Washington Post Company are launching pilots with Kindle DX this summer”. [Quoted from corporate-ir.net]

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/behaviour052009.php#net_v_fossil_press_080509

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2009, 08 may
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variable words
prints as increasing A4 pages (on my printer and set-up)