Honey, I’m Home
I am home after three days working in Yorkshire. The sun was out the first two days and our surroundings were beautiful and very rural. During one meeting I spotted a pheasant walking about on the small hill outside and predictably enough I saw plenty of sheep, cows and even deer. I do not live far from nature here in Glasgow, but it is nice when you do not get a constant background hum of traffic.
And I got a lot of knitting done during meetings, in the evenings and on my epic five-hour-long train journeys.
Harmony is working up really well. I am past the first lace chart and the rib section and well into the second lace chart. It is my sort of project, really - lace charts, fine gauge yarn and a staggering amount of knitting to be done - and I'm happy to sit knitting it.
Harmony is my only project at the moment, though, so I will need another project to keep my sanity. I have a gazillion ideas in my head right now (most of which involve completely insane fair-isle, thank you Ben) but I may have to stick to summery yarns right now which limits me a bit.
I have been catching up on the Eurovision Song Contest - I was stuck on a train during the first semi-final which was heartbreaking and had to rely on text messages from Other Half ("Poland's a pervy Hungarian animated short film") which was fun, but Clearly Not the Real Thing. You can still catch me talking ESC on BBC World Service's Digital Planet but for me it is now all about the second semi-final. I have high hopes after seeing energetic songs (and Belgium/Russia) making it out of the first semi-final, so I'm hoping the trend will continue with Turkey, Romania, Azerbaijan and Denmark qualifying easily with a surprise surge of love for Cyprus. I also think Armenia will do well.
Just before leaving for Yorkshire, I followed an amazing thread on MetaFiler. MeFi is a decade-old message board and one night a user posted that two friends of his had found themselves in a potentially dangerous situation - could anyone help? Newsweek has a comprehensive look at the story, but you will want to read it all unfold on the MetaFilter site. Best of the web, for sure, and proof that social networking has more to it that celebrity tweets and Farmville..
Losing Its Reputation
"Denmark is losing its reputation for being a good world citizen." - Naomi Klein
Danish police arrest 150 demonstrators as world leaders arrive at Copenhagen conference. Mainstream groups such as Friends of the Earth have been barred from the conference centre ("Every delegate from the international environmental campaign group arrived at the centre this morning to find their badges were no longer valid."). This follows the highly controversial preventive arrests by Danish police earlier this week, the arrest of a German spokesman for Climate Justice action, police raids on climate campaigners and, lest we forget, a warm welcome for President Mugabe by Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
"The Copenhagen conference is fast becoming an international shambles." - Andy Atkins
For me, I welcomed the incredulity on the BBC news readers' faces as they interviewed a spokesperson, Henrik Suhr, for the Danish police force, the use of "preventive arrests" and Mr Suhr's insistence that "if you do not want to be arrested, you should not be demonstrating" (let me draw your attention to the UN's own Universal Declaration of Rights and, in particular, Articles 19 and 20). The BBC journalists' reaction were very different to the type of journalism I had grown used to in Denmark in the last decade or so.
And as I'm typing this, a climate deal seems increasingly unlikely.
Twenty Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago today my mother woke me up early. She was crying. Last time she woke me up crying, Olof Palme had just been assassinated. This time, though, my mother's tears were not angry, horrified and sad tears. She was crying with joy. The Berlin Wall had fallen.
I went to school that day. My teachers cancelled all our scheduled classes and were bust talking amongst themselves. My German teacher - the great-grandson of Paul Gauguin, by the way - sat us down to watch news reports coming in from West Germany. I still recall another teacher crying in the school yard. She was part-German. Today I suspect her German family might have fled here from the East as they never visited any of their relatives until the early 1990s.
Today it is difficult to explain what life were like before the end of the Cold War. I lived in Denmark, a small country just north of both East and West Germany. Occasionally you'd hear stories about people escaping from East Germany across the southernmost Baltic Sea to southern Denmark. Occasionally you'd also hear about people travelling the opposite direction. Swedes were paranoid about Soviet submarines and Danes were paranoid about East German spies within Danish political ranks. I was just a child when it all changed but I could definitely tell something had changed. At school they stopped teaching us how to react in event of a nuclear war, for instance.
Twenty years ago today.
One Small Step or One Giant Leap?
Yesterday marked the first time I could vote in Scotland.
I clutched my polling card, brought ID with me and walked down to the polling place fully expecting to queue for maybe five or ten minutes. I was the only voter, of course, and in no need of ID either. I told the poll official that this was my first Scottish election and that I was very excited. She laughed and asked if I had brought my camera as she'd be happy to take my photo. Then I walked into the wrong room through sheer excitement, but finally managed to vote.
Excitement? Quite apart from the joy I always get from seeing democracy at work, I think that yesterday marked the day when I felt I finally have a voice here in Scotland. I'm that tiny bit more Scottish now. A bit more 'home'.
And then I visited a handknitting pirate who showed me how to needle-felt. The technique involves sharp, barbed needles and obviously I stabbed my thigh a couple of times. I ended up with a little pin cushion which looks quite like a Microsoft icon circa 1996, but I don't really think needle-felting is my thing.
However, then the Pirate showed me how to use a drop-spindle and - holy caramel - I was instantly hooked. I was so hooked that I immediately found a good deal on eBay UK for a drop-spindle kit complete with fibre. It'll arrive tomorrow with any luck. Again, as with knitting, I think it is the feeling of connecting with tradition and history which hooks me.
Knitters’ Picnic – Worldwide Knitting in Public
This year's Worldwide Knitting in Public event in Glasgow is going to take place on Saturday the 13th of June in the Kelvingrove Rockery, Kelvingrove Park at 1pm.
We'll be having a picnic, so bring blankets, water, sunscreen(!), knitting/crocheting projects and something to nibble on. In case of rain, the tentative backup plan is to meet in the main hall of Kelvingrove museum. Non-knitters are encouraged to show up and be assimilated.
(The other week I remembered Glasgow knitters idly chatting about a picnic months and months ago. I revived the topic on Ravelry and, yes, I've somehow ended up "hosting" this event. Let that be a lesson to you all)
Not Quoting Sixth Sense, Not Quoting Sixth Sense
Dead Ronald Reagan appears to wife, Nancy:
She told Vanity Fair magazine: "At night time, if I wake up, I think Ronnie is there, and I start to talk to him... And I see him."
(..)
And she mentioned that the present First Lady, Michelle Obama, called for advice on running the White House.
Mrs Reagan's suggestion was to hold more state dinners - the Reagans held more than 50, compared to just six while George W Bush was in office.
"Just have a good time and do a little business. And that is the way Washington works," she told the new first lady.
A Beautiful Day
It's going to be a beautiful day so the bluebirds sing.
I have booked myself a short, but much-needed flight home to Denmark in May. I need to spend time with the Danish part of myself, I have decided. Going back is always odd because it invariably ends up being a long series of meet-ups with everybody I have ever known in Denmark. I cannot remember the last time I spent a few hours in Copenhagen just, you know, hanging out with myself. I am not complaining. It just feels strange after having spent fifteen years in Copenhagen and suddenly the way I engage with my city is transformed. I think this is something most expats experience.
Linkage, then:
+ When I read "Glasgow Artist Restores Lost Mural" on the BBC website, I knew exactly who and what they were talking about. Wooh!
+ Cover Versions: "Classic records lost in time and format, remerged as Pelican books."
+ Speaking of which .. Pelican paperbacks. I used to own a lot of them.
+ Art-House Book Trailers. Just as vile as the name suggests.
+ CraftGawker. Look, be inspired, create.
+ This Is Not A Riot: An effective, non-violent response to riot police. (I miss going to demonstrations)
+ The Fall of the Spanish Hapsburgs, or why marrying your first cousin is a bad, bad idea. See also this pictorial guide to the Spanish Hapsburgs. Ouch.
+ As seen everywhere on the web: Uncomfortable plot summaries. To wit: "Groundhog Day: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker."
+ And as seen on John's blog: "Over the weekend, sharp-eyed Cassini-watchers on unmannedspaceflight.com noticed a series of way-cool photos on the mission's raw images website." Mindblowingly cool photos.
I finished reading The Time-Traveller's Wife. It was rather "girly". I have also begun yet another knitting project: Geno in duck's-egg-blue milk-cotton. It's rather lovely and very summery.
AmazonFail Aftermath
The Amazonfail aftermath, then.
Amazon itself says that the company suffered "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" following speculation that the company had been hacked or been pressured by right-wing groups to create a "family-friendly filter". The New York Times covers the story nicely if you are looking for a a good summary. I still have not received a reply to the email I sent Amazon yesterday, but I'm not high on the list of priorities which is as it should be.
If you wonder why all this de-ranking of books was a big deal, this write-up explains why sales ranks matter so much:
“It’s not because customers put any stock into the Amazon Ranking number. It’s that the Amazon Rank affects a books’ visibility on the bestseller list, on the “If you Like ___, you might like __ feature” and so forth. It is akin to the bookstore removing the books from the shelves and requiring you to go to the Customer Service desk and ask for the book or author specifically. Visibility is a huge factor in sales and anyone who doesn’t believe that is kidding themselves.”
What I personally will find interesting to watch over the next weeks and months? The lessons that businesses will learn from this fallout. NeedCoffee wrote a good primer on Sunday and net.effect makes some very, very interesting points about corporations vs. cyberactivism. Expect to see a lot of analysis.
Finally, two points I would like to make.
My first point is that people find a lot easier to believe a Lone Hacker claim than to believe that a trusted corporation might be messing up. I was surprised and then intrigued to see how quickly the Twitter crowd (not to mention media persons) took to the hacking claim coming from a dubious, if known hacker on a LiveJournal community. With a bit of plausible-looking coding and an explanation of how he hated teh gays, he had people believing him. The DailyKos and MetaFilter linked to him saying "this could well be the reason for Amazonfail." It took nearly an hour to have the by-then news story debunked and even then people continued to post it for hours to follow.
My second point is that Amazon has pretty much monopolised the online book-buying brain. Yes, there are alternatives but they do not appear to function as well or offer as much as Amazon. I don't like feeling that dependent upon one company.
So, I asked for alternatives yesterday and many of you mentioned The Book Depotsitory. Tracey S. Rosenberg recommended Better World Books which is new to me (actually, she has been mentioning it a lot to me over the years but I was busy buying from Amazon). Others mentioned Powell's as a good US alternative, but its shipping fees makes it less attractive for overseas buyers. Keep those suggestions coming in.
Amazon Fail
Let me introduce two new concepts to you: Amazon Rank and Amazon Fail.
In short: "Amazon.com de-ranked a number of books (..) on the basis of “adult content.” According to the Amazon Dictionary, this definition includes books that have anything to do with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) characters, authors, issues, or references. In addition to de-ranking these titles, they have also been hidden from [general] search results." (from)
It appears that Amazon's gaffe (or as they call it, a "technical glitch") can be traced back to at least February 2009.
Interestingly, Amazon makes a distinction between GLBT books and heterosexual books. Jezebel has a post which sums up the distiction very succinctly. As for Amazon's initial explanation that they were simply de-ranking books with "adult content", you might find the list of de-ranked books interesting:
- Michel Foucault’s “The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1″
- E.M. Forster's "Maurice" (US critical edition; the imported edition isn't de-ranked)
- Eve Kosofsky Hedgwick's "The “Epistemology of the Closet"
- Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”
- Rita Mae Brown’s “Rubyfruit Jungle”
- Sarah Waters’ “Tipping the Velvet”
- John "Torchwood" Barrowman's "Anyhing Goes" biography (hardcover; paperback's unaffected)
- Stephen Fry's "Moab is my Washpot"
More information here. At the same time Amazon continues to sales rank explicit heterosexual erotica, sex toys and Ron Jeremy's memoirs. Not adult content or just not GLBT enough for the techhnical glitch? Interestingly Jean Genet is equally unaffected - presumably because he is not listed in the GLBT category?
I wonder if Amazon has implemented other nice little "glitches"/filters or whether this is the only one?
Other online book-buying options for UK-dwellers/Europeans: The Book Depository - Blackwells - Borders. Please feel free to leave other retail options in the comments.
(ETA: re-written and tidied up)
The Right Direction
Congratulations are long, long overdue to Francis and his husband.
On a related note, this makes me very, very happy and hopeful for the US (via):
The times, they are a-changing.