When William Rees-Mogg, the utterly traditionalist former Times editor, not only has a (newspaper) blog, but reports that a (real) blog, ConservativeHome, has revealed significant information about the internal workings of the Conservative Party, you can just feel the foundations of the traditional media shifting…
Yes, the move is now finally complete (even if all of the rough edges haven’t yet been smoothed off), and this is the new site, where all new posting will occur.
There were the usual hiccups and odd happenings getting to this point. The process of importing content from Blogger to WordPress is theoretically extraordinarily simple – little more than pressing a button, but for reasons I am utterly unable to explain, the first two times I did it, only posts from 2004 were imported. The third time that I did exactly the same thing – more in exasperation than hope – all of the posts arrived. And they say computers are logical.
There are still some issues to be ironed out here; if anyone can tell me why as it is loading the righthand sidebar is the right width (180), but it then suddenly pops out much wider, I would be extremely grateful! UPDATE: it was one of the blogring codes that was causing the problem. I’ve just cut several of them out, but will try to work out a final solution eventually.
If anything else about the site really annoys you – or you’ve got some helpful suggestions – please leave them on this or any other post. (I’m also looking for recommendations for a WordPress plug-in for preventing spam comments, if anyone has a recommendation.)
One of the advantages of this move has been the addition of categories to the site. You can now look at all of the Femmes Fatales in a row just by clicking on that category in the right-hand sidebar. I’m gradually going to go back to recategorise other posts – so you will for example be able to look at just the feminism posts, or just those relating to early modern history. (Although I haven’t got very far back on those yet.)
Enjoy!
A piece today in the Guardian about an address to the Lords by Baroness Susan Greenfield expressing far-reaching fears about the effect on the human brain of the digital world.
The brilliance of Baroness Greenfield’s speech is that she wades straight into the dangers posed by this culture. A recent survey of eight-to 18-year-olds, she says, suggests they are spending 6.5 hours a day using electronic media, and multi-tasking (using different devices in parallel) is rocketing. Could this be having an impact on thinking and learning?
She begins by analysing the process of traditional book-reading, which involves following an author through a series of interconnected steps in a logical fashion. We read other narratives and compare them, and so “build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys… One might argue that this is the basis of education … It is the building up of a personalised conceptual framework, where we can relate incoming information to what we know already. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance.” Traditional education, she says, enables us to “turn information into knowledge.”
Now this is the comment writer’s version of the speech, but on her account it does seem to be – as one commenter says – an astonishingly Luddite one.
That was the “basis of education” in the 20th-century, but a historically specific one. It was heavily text-based, but that was a function of relatively cheap print, a trend that began in early modern times, when the equivalent of the Susan Greenfields of the time were of course exclaiming about the dreadful effect on the human mind of all this flood of print.
The brain is an astonishingly plastic organ, and no doubt those of children and adolescents are developing different to they were a couple of decades ago. But it is developing in the world as it is now, FOR it is now. Damn good thing too!
But some aspects of the human psyche probably don’t change much. An army major in Australia is commendably trying to save the memory of the men mentally crippled in the trenches of WWI, who suffered just in the ways that veterans of Vietnam and more recent conflicts do.
Madness and the Military: Australia’s Experience of the Great War, by Michael Tyquin, is the first comprehensive study on mental illness in World War I. It shatters the stereotype of the tough Anzac, an icon that he argues Australians look up to today – but which never existed.
Major Tyquin says of the soldiers who were “mentally shattered” by the war – some of whom recovered, though many did not – “I think we’ve erased them from our public memory. We like to celebrate Anzac, and I use ‘celebrate’ now because I think we’re getting away from the original intent.
… that the site has been down for a few hours. What the instructions I found for importing a Blogger blog to it don’t say is that the process wipes out the Blogger template.
And of course there were other complications. (Aren’t there always with such things!) The import process has only taken posts from 2004, not 2005 or 2006. Any helpful suggestions as to what to do now to get the rest of the posts over will be gratefully received.
Here is where it is all going – not the final look yet, but heading in that direction.
From the Guardian:
Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although “active” web users make up only a small proportion of Europe’s online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.
The article goes on to say that half of European web-users are “passive”, not contributing to content at all, while a quarter only respond when prompted. But of course if you turn those figures around the other way, it means one-quarter of web-users are now actively contributing to the media, and thus, the article argues, exercising an influence on society – which compares to the old days or old media, when a tiny fraction of a percentage point were contributing. That’s a pretty substantial democratic leap.
A nice companion piece to this: an interview with Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, with a short list of its “coups”.
The Times is reporting today that in the last year for which figures are available (2004) 40 offenders (who admitted the offence) were cautioned for rape, i.e. they got a bit of a talking to down at the police station, and that was that.
It is one of those stories to which the first reaction is horror, but listening to various explanations this morning (very young offenders for whom psychiatric treatment has been arranged and even younger victims, or crimes that occurred decades ago) I suppose there may be cases where it is appropriate – at least it puts the attackers on the sex offenders’ register, which helps to protect others. And it may save victims giving evidence in court – although of course that just highlights what an ordeal that still is.
***
Of course many women around the world get even less protection – attempts are now being made to save the life of an Iranian woman, Nazanin:
Amnesty International has said the woman was 17 when she reportedly admitted stabbing to death one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj in March 2005.
Now 18, Nazanin was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.
Amnesty International and human rights workers said they had been unable to contact her family, and did not know whether legal appeals were scheduled.
***
An interesting comment piece in the Guardian not so much for its contents – a fairly standard debate about “the Enlightenment”, what it was and what it is today, but the fact that it is structured pretty well entirely as a reaction to Guardian blog material.
About