France Telekom offers a service to access the French Minitel system from the Internet in order to ease some 20million citizens’ transition to the internet. (from Forbes.com)
Archiv der Kategorie: media
The One With The Tschador.
Remember the friends episode whith the Tschador? Well, you probably won’t, because there wasn’t one. But today, Salon.com has an interesting review of a documentary about the perception of American entertainment in Arab countries called “Besieged by Friends“
Shorter Denis Boyles.
Denis Boyles over at the National Review Online reviews last week’s European Press for the literate American conservative. Here’s a summary :
“Germans are sissies for not agreeing with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that calling the “annoying socialist” Martin Schulz a Nazi is indeed really funny. Why? Germany is Unpatriotic/ Antiamerican/ LEFT/ EVIL to its core as it was against the war in Iraq. And Silvio Berlusconi was for the war (boy did we kick Saddam’s ass!). And he’s also rich, powerful, and never has to actually pay for the illegal stuff he did, aka self-made, which is really cool in my book. But those sissies on the European LEFT/EVIL, just can’t see clearly. They’re always lamenting about justice (bleah). Europe needs more RIGHT people like Mr Berlusconi. Disclaimer: Beware – Europe is in the hands of THE EVIL/THE LEFT! Ceterum censeo THE LEFT/THE EVIL should be destroyed.”
Blogdex. Berlusconi.
Looks like Europe is becoming more important in Blogosphere –
Weiterlesen
Italian Press Review.
The Guardian has compiled and translated a nice collection of commentary from today’s Italian newspapers regarding Berlusconi’s loosing his cool. It’s quite interesting to see the constrasting perception of reality – compare yourself (the Guardian has more quotes):
La Repubblica (left-leaning) Editorial
“As Silvio Berlusconi drifts tragically further each day, yesterday he crashed into Europe, propelled by his lack of culture, his bravura that is so popular in Italy, flexing his muscles, for lack of competence, and incapable of responding to accusations over his howling conflict of interests. … Yesterday can be considered the official date of the beginning of the decline of Il Cavaliere. But also, the result is extremely bitter for our country, which is paying an unjust and disproportionate price for Berlusconi’s errors and personality.”
La Stampa(centre) Editorial
“A joke can ruin everything. He should not have opened the way for endless poisonous polemics with a joke that was so twisted in its irony that it was incomprehensible.”
And now, the Berlusconi Press…
Il Giornale (owned by Berlusconi family) Editorial
“Berlusconi did well to react to the insolent man who insulted him, the Italian government, its ministers, and all of us. He did excellently, in his own way, with his own style and in his own time.”
Libero (owned by former editor of Il Giornale) Editorial
“Berlusconi should not give in to the pressures that will surely come in the coming hours. Maybe Schulz is not a Kapo (concentration camp guard), but he is a villain. And villains deserve not only irony but contempt.”
Is Google God?
Thomas Friedman must have had too much sun lately. In today’s NY Times column he wonders if Google is like God citing citing Alan Cohen, a V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider, who clearly had too much sun lately –
“If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too.”
How he twists that story to say something about American national security is rather impressive. But how he does that and nonetheless misses the real point that ITC is not only challenging “national security” but the very notion of “national” is even more impressive.
And The Winner Is…
Spiegel Online has all the winners of the magazine’s 2003 pupils’ magazine competition. Looking at the winners’ (semi-)professionally produced magazines and online publications makes me partly jealous and partly reminds me of the good ol’ times when desktop publishing still meant typewriter, paper, pen, glue and carpet knive. And yes, that was in 1992…
The Banality Of The Good.
Sometimes I wonder how Timothy Garton Ash finds the time to talk to people given the amount of well-written, thought-provoking stuff he publishes – in “Elf” (English As Lingua Franca), to help foster a European public sphere. Today, Eamonn Fitzgerald links to his latest piece in the New Statesman. I think he is clearly more right than wrong, but I do have some objections I will share with you tonight.
Living History. Deleting Posts.
After Blogger decided to shred two of my planned entries today I have settled for one involving only very little typing.
I was in Washington, DC, back in 1998 when the Starr-Rreport was released, and I have never in my life seen so many journalists per square-centimeter.
I only had a tiny disposable camera with me, and the reddish part in the right hand side – yeah, that’s my middle finger.
I guess Hillary Clinton will have a more interesting account of that part of her living history. Der Spiegel has some German excerpts from her biography/political re-positioning in this week’s print edition.
I am not particularly interested in this kind of books, but I did have a brief look at the excerpt. I can’t help but wonder. What does Hillary Clinton really mean when she writes about she and Bill managed to get on after, well, you know –
“The Key to understanding our marriage is certainly our common history. But to be true, our relationship is too profound to be put into words. Maybe I could express it this way: In the Spring of 1971 I began a conversation with Bill Clinton, and more than thirty later we still talk to each other.”
“We still talk to each other?” Now here I can’t help but wonder if I believe this is a positive or negative verdict about their relationship…
Note: As this is a re-translation from German, I don’t know what she actually wrote. Last week’s Wolfowitz-oil quip should be a sufficient reminder of the perils of translation.
Ausstoepfeln.
Timothy Garton-Ash’s “Unplug Yourself: Media Is Matrix” essay in German. From Sueddeutsche.de