comes from the University of Western Australia, where a very enterprising group of students have performed a “lip-dub” to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”. It’s really fun, believe me! And kudos to the students; choreographing this must have taken a lot of effort, and it paid off!
Thanks to Towleroad for this.
I decided that I was ambulatory enough to return to preaching at St. John’s Larcom Street, the neighbouring parish to mine. The Vicar was happy to oblige, so I preached a sermon for the First Sunday of Advent. The readings were: First Reading: Isaiah 2:1-5; Ps. 121; Epistle: Romans 13:11-14; Gospel: Matthew 24:37-44.
Instead of printing the sermon here, however, I would be proud to direct you to The Rev’d Jonathan Hagger’s site, St. Laika’s, where he has graciously printed the sermon and praised it.
Interestingly enough, when I wrote it I was not impressed with it, and nearly scrapped it to write something else. But, I decided that I didn’t have time to do that, so I felt I would have to offer it to the congregation and hope that I didn’t lose their interest in the first few minutes.
However, I think that praying for guidance, as I do before writing any sermon, helped a lot. The congregation was interested and listened through to the end. A preacher can tell when s/he’s gone on too long or too boringly, as the congregation begins to fidget, look around, close its collective eyes, and wait for the end. This congregation looked me straight in the eye and did not waver for the entire 7 or 8 minutes I was speaking. Afterwards, I got compliments from the other members of the sanctuary party and from the congregation, who even remembered what I said.
Now this is not to blow my own horn. It’s to say that whatever gifts we have, however, meagre, should be shared out in our communities. And that I, especially, need to always think that my sermons can be improved as complacency would make me a crap preacher.
There’s a general election looming in Singapore, where the ruling party has not lost an election since independence in the 1960’s. Democracy is thought by many to be expendable there, but just watch out
and many happy returns of the day!
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and many happy returns of the day!
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and many happy returns of the day!
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I was shocked, confused, bewildered
As I entered Heaven’s door,
Not by the beauty of it all,
Nor the lights or its decor.
But it was the folks in Heaven
Who made me sputter and gasp
The thieves, the liars, the sinners,
The alkies and the trash.
There stood the kid from seventh grade
Who swiped my lunch money twice.
Next to him was my old neighbor
Who never said anything nice.
Bob, who I always thought
Was rotting away in hell,
Was sitting pretty on Cloud Nine,
Looking incredibly well.
I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
I would love to hear Your take.
How’d all these sinners get up here?
God must’ve made a mistake.
‘And why is everyone so quiet,
So sombergive me a clue.’
‘Hush, child,’ He said, ‘they’re all in shock.
No one thought they’d be seeing you.’
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The news has just come through that Prince William and Kate Middleton are to marry next year. This will dash the hopes of millions of women (and perhaps millions of gay men).
Royal weddings are an occasion in the United Kingdom for an outpouring of nationalistic rejoicing. The last occasion on which this happened was Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1981. So we’ve been 20 years withouta long time between them.
What will happen? First, the poor lady will be inundated by paparazzi, newspapers, other media types, and will be hectored to within an inch of her life. This will be combatted by her husband, very fiercely. Second, I believe that the pressure will be off as far as William’s parents and grandparents are concerned. While the Royal Family in general are not terribly intelligent in an intellectual way, they do seem to learn from their mistakes in a corporate way. I suspect that William will continue his military career and his wife will act as a loyal serviceman’s wife. They will be living in North Wales (the island of Anglesey), which is where he is based. After seeing what the family did to his mother, I don’t believe that William will allow a rerun of that; he’ll protect her to the extent he can. Remember, she is university-educated (which Diana was not) and has been in “the world” in a way that Diana never was. She is not aristocratic; her parents are millionaires, true, but it is a self-made million and her background is distinctly middle-class. This will horrify some royal-watchers, but the vast mass of the British people will be happy to welcome Kate into the Royal Family.
I think the wedding will be low-key, no carriages through the streets, no out-of-control wedding garments, that kind of thing. The economic circumstances of the time mean that the Royal Family would be particularly tin-eared to insist on such stuff.
There will be some pressure to produce an heir and a spare, and I think that this will happen relatively quickly. That will relieve pressure on Prince Harry, of course, and allow him to marry at his leisure (or not, as the case may be).
The hounding has already started, with a BBC helicopter following the couple’s car as it speeds toward Clarence House near Buckingham Palace.
The other piece of news that has impressed itself on me today is the sentencing of Alan Shadrake to 6 weeks in prison and a fine of more than £9,000 for contempt of court in Singapore. Shadrake wrote a book called Once a Jolly Hangman, which concerned the manner in which the death penalty is imposed and administered in Singapore.
I’m personally not happy with this result; I don’t believe that a book of this sort is any more harmful to Singapore’s judiciary than the history of Singaporean justice has been. However, I can only believe that Shadrake is either colossally stupid, or is on a drive to increase sales of his book. Singapore is an easy place to avoid if you need to do that. Shadrake is based in Malaysia, and from there he could go anywhere he liked without touching down at Changi. However, he chose to go to Singapore, get arrested, be tried, and sentenced. Why be a martyr unnecessarily?
His lawyer says that Shadrake has been disappointed by the lack of support from the British public. There are two reasons for that. First, there has been a minimal amount of coverage in the news media here of the case. Second, Brits in general do not particularly want to support people who are stupid enough to deliberately put themselves in danger of this sort.
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I should think that if you’re going to skip out on a check at a restaurant, you would probably not want to remain in the area. If you do, you’d not be likely to try to stave off arrest in the same way that this woman tried.
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One afternoon the head pastor of an evangelical mega-church was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the roadside eating grass. Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate.
He asked one man, “Why are you eating grass?”
“We don’t have any money for food. We have to eat grass,” the poor man replied.
“Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I’ll feed you,” the pastor said.
“But sir, I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree.”
“Bring them along,” the pastor replied.
Turning to the other poor man he stated, “You come with us, also.”
The second man, in a pitiful voice, then said, “But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!”
“Bring them all, as well,” the pastor answered.
They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was.
Once under way, one of the poor fellows turned to the pastor and said, “Sir, you are too kind Thank you for taking all of us with you.
The pastor replied, “Glad to do it. You’ll really love my place. The grass is almost a foot high.”
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I’m sure you’re mostly familiar with Tom Lehrer’s song “The Elements”. Well, Daniel Radcliffe has been learning stuff other than magic spells at Hogwarts. Here he is, on Graham Norton’s show, singing (sans accompaniment, unfortunately) “The Elements”.
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I have heard of people with pica who eat their own hair. However, this gentleman got into a dispute with two others over a tractor sale, and he got a meal that he didn’t expect.
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fj said, in part:
Furthermore, this raising fees goes hand in hand with killing the block grant to universities, basically making them dependent only on tuition fees, strongly commercializing education as a product. It will kill less popular and artistic studies that do not have that return in the marketplace on money invested by the student, thus destroying that knowledge.
I don’t believe that the number of arts and humanities students in the United States has been lessened by the “commercialisation” of university education.
British universities need to take their heads out of the Middle Ages and start raising their own funds and endowments. For too many years they have been dependent on the state for all funding. This has made them into tools of whichever government is in power, and has made students totally dependent upon the government to fund their educations. This removes incentive, and prepares students for a life of indolence (if that’s what they want). It also means that alumni/ae are disinclined to contribute to their almae matres studiorum. The government has faced up to this, and assuming that they can fend off the students who believe that the world owes them a living and an education, this action will be a success.
What does need to be done is this:
First, establish a set of state universities which are subsidised to a greater or lesser extent by the government. Tuition fees would still be charged, but at a somewhat lower rate than at the redbrick establishments.
Second, set the well-established older foundations free to charge what the market will bear, subject to large scholarships for those who cannot afford to pay full tuition but who would benefit from the educational experience that these institutions can provide. These universities must step up their fundraising apparatuses to a professional level (note that the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge was the Provost of Yalethis is already happening in certain places) and set aside funds for scholarships. The government support for tuition (as opposed to support for research and development) should be tapered off and consist of loan guarantees by the end of the process.
Third, the government should make contributions to tertiary educational institutions tax-exempt, on the American model. What fat cat wouldn’t like a building at their university named after them? It works in America, and if the government would get its head out of its arse and recognise that the structure of charitable giving needs to be overhauled, it would work here too.
By the way, it is a general problem with charity giving here in the United Kingdom that people give money to animals and diseases, but not to anything else. The Church of England would be self-sufficient if the people in the pews actually believed what is the honest truth: the government does NOT contribute a farthing to the Church by law Established. It the universities could more easily tap into the fat cat funding stream, and divert some of the moggy-money to education, there would be no problem funding tertiary institutions.
The largest number of universities in all the ranking lists of world universities are in the United States. There’s a reason for this. Oxford and Cambridge are there mainly because of their antiquity, and because they have tapped the government for lots of research funding.
I have to disagree with you, fj, as much as it pains me to do so. The European model of state-funded tertiary education can no longer compete, even on its own territory. Changing it gradually to a student and alumnni/ae funded model, with government grants a distant third, is the only way to ensure that all those who want an education can get it.
And, by the way, I think that too many people end up going to university now in any case. Degree-inflation has made it impossible to get a good honest job without GCSEs or A-levels, and most employers now look favourably only on degree-holders. This is rubbish. We need to ensure that education in the United Kingdom is tailored to the wants and needs of the student, and the wants and needs of the labour market. As a Latin and Greek major, I was woefully underprepared for the labour market, and I have never actually taught the Classics. However, it did fit me for software testing and test management, and I’m glad I took it.
And as for debt? I had a lot of debt vis-à-vis my income, and I was terrified. But even on the meagre salary I got working at Columbia preparing transcripts for posting, I managed to pay it off. The conditions under which the student of England will be paying off his or her debt would have been awesome to me. I don’t believe that I would have started paying off my 1970-74 debt until the early 1990’s, which is when I started to make the equivalent of £21,000. Some students will never pay off their debts, legally, and the remainder of whatever they owe will be written off 35 years after graduation. I would have KILLED to have had debt with conditions that lenient.
I would have loved to have gotten a free education, or to have graduated with no debt. However, I was a gifted student from a relatively poor family, and the system I was educated in gave me many advantages because of that, and I received the college education that only two other members of my family had ever gotten.
I know it sounds very American, but, dammit, I am American, at core, and I can really see English tertiary education becoming much much better for everyone if changes are made in its funding patterns. No one likes to go from getting something for nothing to having to pay something for something. But the bankers and fat cats have eaten our free lunch, and we won’t get it back again until they’re all convicted of something-or-other and jailed good and hard, and that won’t happen until the coming of the Coqcigrues.
When I was a young nipper, students rioted over common public concerns like the Vietnam War or here in the UK, the Poll Tax. Yesterday, the student demonstrations over the imposition of higher student fees in universities turned into a riot. The students marched past Conservative Central Office headquarters in the Millbank Building, and some took it upon themselves to storm the building, break down windows and doors, swarm to the roof, and hurl at least one fire extinguisher off the roof, narrowly missing several people on the ground.
Now there is a long tradition here of students getting a university education for free. This ended several years ago with the imposition of tuition fees (covered by student loans) by the Labour Government. These fees are now expected to rise to £9,000 / year (around US$13,500) in the next four years, with the student loans expanded to cover them. The repayment of the loans will be gradual, over 30 years or so, and repayment will not kick in until the graduate is in work earning more than £21,000 a year (around US$30K or so). If the graduate loses his or her job, the loan repayments cease. After 30 years, any further balance will be written off. (Note for USans: most university education courses last only 3 years here, not 4. Thus, the total debt for tuition would be around US$41,000. Further, this only applies to English students. Those from other countries of the UK will not pay this much, if anything at all.)
Those of you who have been in higher education in the US recently will laugh at this. For some of you, the total debt of the English student over three years will be your debt for just one year of your four-year degree.
Now it would be lovely if we could afford to send 50% of English teenagers to university for free. We cannot. The numbers of students, combined with the national deficit, means that continuing to fund everyone’s university education is impossible under current conditions. One would think that businesses and the rich would be happy to suffer higher taxes for this purpose. One would be wrong. The rich and business would flee to lower-tax jurisdictions in an instant. Globalisation, which has involved removing many barriers to international business, has had the corollary effect of maximising the opportunities for businesses and the rich to move around to a place where their tax expenditures are minimal.
I am also of the opinion that getting something (a university degree) for nothing is not a good way to start one’s career. When I started at Columbia Univ. in 1970, tuition was $2,500 a year. It’s now more than $40,000. I had $1,600 of scholarships, and $500 in a loan from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This left my parents to fund $400 a year. I was left with a debt of $2,000 when I graduated. It was paid off by around 1980 or 1981 at $50 per month or so. If we accept that one 1970 dollar is worth 16 2010 dollars, that would have been US$32,000 in today’s money. Yes, it’s quite a lot. However, graduates tend to get better jobs and keep them longer. So repayment of the debt is easier for them.
The students should be cracking the books and not rioting. Demonstrations are natural: who wouldn’t be annoyed at the withdrawal of a state benefit that would hit him or her in the wallet? When these students end up being taxpayers, I expect that they will not demonstrate against higher taxes to pay for education, especially if those taxes hit them hardest.
Universities here (which have been slackers at hitting up their alumni/ae for cash, as the government has always provided most of their funding) need to get better at fundraising from grateful alumni/ae, and start building up cash funds out of which to fund scholarships for those who are most deprived among their students. They need to find students from poor backgrounds who can benefit from a university education, and fund them through their degree courses.
The government needs to ensure that the students do not suffer during their time at university, but needs to ensure that they have good jobs to go to, and that future students do not expect a free education, but appreciate that the goodness of education is made clearer through ensuring that they themselves help to fund it.
An elderly man is stopped by the police around 1 am. and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
The man replies, I am going to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body.
The officer then asks, Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?
The man replies, My wife.”
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What a wonderful idea! It’s a musical flashmob in the Great Court of Macy’s in Philadelphia. The largest pipe organ in the world and more than 600 singers present Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus to a store-ful of startled shoppers, some of whom are joining in. Bringing music out of the concert hall and into the public arena is a great thing. I wish they had something like this here in the United Kingdom. It was organised by Random Acts of Culture, and if they have an event near you, go! Here’s the video from Macy’s (once Wanamaker’s):
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You may recall from A Christmas Carol that a couple of charity collectors knocked on Ebenezer Scrooge’s door at Christmas to ask for a bit of money for the poor. Here’s part of the dialogue:
First Collector: At this festive time of year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.
Ebenezer: Are there no prisons?
First Collector: Plenty of prisons.
Ebenezer: And the union workhouses – are they still in operation?
First Collector: They are. I wish I could say they were not.
Ebenezer: Oh, from what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course. I’m very glad to hear it.
Well, the workhouses were indeed abolished at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, but it looks like the Coalition Government is going to bring them in again under the guise of getting the recipients of long-term benefit to do something useful to society to prepare them for gainful employment. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (a LibDem, no less) noted, it was intended to “support and encourage” and to get people back into the habit of getting up and going out to work. It also meant those who did it could demonstrate their employability to prospective employers.
There is a Puritan streak even here in England, which was famously hostile enough to the Puritans in the 17th Century to drive them to New England, where they flourished for many decades. People who receive welfare benefits, according to this school of thought, are almost all ungrateful scroungers. Thus, we need to ensure that they do something useful for society besides consume beer and fags and make babies destined to step into their shoes one day.
Now I am not saying that people who receive welfare are all down-and-outers who would gladly take any job that is offered to them. There are people who have decided that welfare is a better way to fund their lifestyles than working for a living. The Royle Family is a fictional example. I do not believe that most people on welfare are scroungers and layabouts. They are single parents whose partners have left them with children to care for. They are people with criminal records or drug problems who cannot hold down a job (when and if they can find one). They are people who have been on Jobseeker’s Allowance (=US “unemployment benefit”) for too long and move onto the long-term unemployed lists and thus onto welfare.
The Government, I believe, sees a double solution in this move. First, they get menial social jobs done by people who are currently at leisure and getting benefits. The kinds of jobs that the Work and Pensions Secretary have mentioned are such things as cleaning the streets, raking leaves, and the like. Local councils used to actually hire people at real wages to do these jobs. Now they’ll get them done for nearly nothing. Hooray for the ratepayers! Second, the Government believes (although it will not say it) that threatening welfare recipients with menial jobs will force them into taking real jobs with real pay.
Bushwah! The Wikipedia article on workhouses sums up beautifully both the Victorian attitude and this current proposal: “The workhouse system began to evolve in the 17th century as a way for parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief.” That is why they are bringing about this scheme.
Here’s what will happen. First, local councils will end up administering this program, and paying administrative costs for the privilege of getting unemployed people to sweep the pavement. This will not please the unions which currently represent the sanitation workers (along with other menial council workers). Second, if these new welfare workers injure themselves or others while on the job, who’s going to pay for it? Will council insurance premiums go up to cover this? Or will the Coalition Government step in to pay damages for any injury. Third, cutting people off from welfare for missing their “job” will also penalise those who depend on them for their livelihoods, such as children or perhaps elderly relatives.
So what is the Coalition Government supposed to do: let the scroungers continue scrounging? Of course not. Instead of pandering to the Little Englanders among us, they really should have tackled this another way—by helping to identify and cure the causes of the chronic unemployment. So for single parents, bring in better child care facilities. For ex-offenders, assistance in finding real jobs and laws against unreasonable discrimination against them in offering jobs. For the long-term unemployed, retraining for another job. And for everyone, job-creation schemes aimed at both the public and private sectors.
So instead of making Jim Royle sweep the streets, and Denise Royle answer telephones in the job-centre, perhaps the Government ought to concentrate on helping to provide job opportunities for those who are out of work, and provide training and encouragement (of the right sort) to those who have never worked, or who are at present unsuitable for work for reasons not health-related. These things are too hard for the government to do, so they are falling back on the Victorian workhouses. Even Margaret Thatcher at her worst wasn’t going to try to bring them back.
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I have been astonished at the interest here in the midterm US elections. Normally there is subdued coverage of any US election not a Presidential one. However, this year the BBC suspended its Radio 4/World Service broadcasts from last midnight to cover the election results, and the news that the Republicans have now captured control of the House of Representatives is top news in the bulletins.
Thinking about the results, I believe that they are troubling to me personally, but also predictable. They may even help the President win a second term. Here are my thoughts.
From the vantage point of the United Kingdom, US politics this year seems to have been dominated by nutcases. The Tea Party seems to be running high in the water, and their rhetoric of getting the government off our backs and reducing the amount of government in total is very attractive to people who feel overtaxed, under-represented, and aggrieved at government’s activities intruding on all our lives. However, in this rhetoric has been planted the seeds of their own destruction. Once they get in, the Tea Partiers will find that being in government makes them important, influential, and powerful. Rather than reducing the size of the government, they will want to increase it, so as to increase their own status. This happens every time someone who wants to “reduce the size of government” is elected to government. So in two years all these new Representatives and Senators will have been coopted by the system they were elected to slash and burn.
The President must bear some of the blame for the rout, of course. He has neglected many of the groups who elected him, and he spent too much time and political capital early on getting the health care reforms enacted. Now he will have little chance of repealing DADT or DOMA, thus permanently alienating the lesbian and gay and transgender people who worked to get him elected. However, he can now run in 2012 on a platform of accusing the Congress of doing nothing. Passing the blame over to Congress will be his salvation. In addition, if Sarah Palin were to be nominated for the Presidency in 2012, it is unlikely that even middle-of-the-road Republicans will be enthused about voting for her. Like so many Tea Party associates, she is ignorant, intolerant, and a rabble-rouser. Were she to be elected, there would be a serious problem with the Government of the United States starting at the top, possibly even greater than the rot which set in during the Nixon Administration. At least Nixon was passably intelligent.
Every time there is an election in the United States I feel relieved that I am here in the United Kingdom, where the National Health Service is sacrosanct and revered by the vast majority of citizens. I would never want to move back to the US and can foresee no circumstances in which I would do it.
Finally, every time there is a landslide one way or another, pundits (I’m not a pundit) say that the (Republicans/Democrats) are washed up, and a permanent (Republican/Democratic) majority is now assured. Bushwah. It has not happened any time after the Nixon landslide of 1972, and it won’t happen now. People do not habitually vote for one party or another any more, generally. They vote their pocketbooks and their ideology, and the party that seems to promise that the former will be heavier and the latter will be lighter gets their vote. When that doesn’t happen, they vote for the other lot next time. The Democrats are not a spent force, and the Republicans are not cruising back to power. The Tea Party will implode and fracture before the next election (believe me, it’ll happen). Some of those elected yesterday will turn out to be as corrupt as the last lot. The electorate will move toward the center-left, as it almost always does, and Obama will be re-elected.
As a yellow-dog Democrat (perhaps the last one standing…) I am of course annoyed that my party has lost control of the House. But the next elections are only two years away.
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and many happy returns of the day. For this week only, each year, you and I are the same age.
Margaret Hamilton, as the Wicked Witch of the West, got melted near the end of The Wizard of Oz, muttering “Wotta world, wotta world…” as the water turned her into a pile of clothing and a pointed witch’s hat. I’m not being melted at the moment, but I’m really conflicted about something, and I need to vent.
Facebook recently instituted “Groups” that, I believe, they intended to mimic those found on Usenet or in Google or Yahoo! Groups. Unfortunately, their execution of the idea falls woefully short of how groups in social networking ought to work. This is not a new concept to Facebook, as they have a history of privacy lapses and stupid changes that backfire on them. It remains to be seen whether Facebook Groups will crash and burn or not. However, what I see doesn’t make me feel very good about it. (Note: I’ve particularly tried to refrain from naming the group below…it would be easy for you to find out but it’s not important to my point so skip it, please, if you could…)
First, the creator of a Facebook group can add any of their Facebook “friends” to the group, without their permission and without prior notification. This is seriously not good. If someone were, for example, to create a Facebook group dedicated to child pornography, and add a whole load of people to it, there would be no recourse. You could report the group, and such a group would certainly be closed down. However, your presence in the group might raise some constabulary eyebrows. And other than immediately removing yourself from the group, there is nothing you can do about it.
Second, this group is intended to “shadow” a Usenet group that I used to follow. Earlier this year, I got out of the habit of following it as SPAM™, spew, and drivel seemed to be driving the interesting posts out. Now I’ve been added to the Facebook group, and while the SPAM™ is not there (as the group is closed) there’s a lot of stuff there that I don’t particularly need to see. This is not to disparage friends who contribute to the group, either on Facebook or on Usenet. But I’ve moved on. I already have enough time-sucks on line without another one.
Third, there is no filtering system, as there is in most Usenet newsgroup readers. So if someone decides to add one of their friends, who writes posts that you would rather not see, you have no protection against receiving that person’s posts or comments in your Facebook reading. I prefer filtering to be done online, rather than in my head.
Fourth, you can be added as an administrator to the group, again without your permission. What this means is that unless you dig down to find the box to uncheck in your “Settings”, you end up getting an email notification every time someone asks to be added to the group, as well as any number of other activities. I had a seriously stuffed Facebook folder in Thunderbird until I figured out how to stop the torrent.
Now I’m conflicted. I do not want to seem anti-social. The fact that this group is composed mostly of “Friends” (in Facebook-ese—I prefer to call them “connections”) means that if I removed myself from the group, in some deep cavern of my being I would feel as though I’d abandoned or rejected friends. No one likes to do that. But, folks, it’s all a psychological trick by Facebook to make you feel guilty about ending any connection you get on the networking site. In actuality, while I am friendly with almost all these people, and would gladly buy them a root beer if we were in a bar together, I have not met most of them in meatspace. I probably won’t meet most of them in meatspace, ever.
But, will they think I’m antisocial if I remove myself from the group? Already one member (added willy-nilly) has been described by other members as being enraged by being added without permission. Will people say that I’m unreasonably grumpy if I leave? I shouldn’t be concerned about what other people think of me or any actions I take (that are legal or moral), but still…
I harbour an unreasonable resentment that I have unwillingly and unwittingly been put in the unhappy position of either controlling my own online presence and seeming to be antisocial, or having to smile and ignore this stuff that has started to cascade into my Facebook feed.
What to do, what to do? Wotta world…wotta world…!
This article in Towleroad summarises the situation beautifully. Stephen Fry made a remark that was taken to denigrate women, but that he contended was a misquotation of a humourous aside. When a tweetstorm greeted him, he quits Twittera little short of a year after he first quit, in November 2009.
Now there is no one who admires Stephen Fry more than I do. An accomplished actor, humourist, technophile, authorso many superlatives and such a shedload of great work would normally ensure him a place in the untouchable pantheon that is online life these days. And yet, and yet he is what I refer to as a serial quitter.
I’m sure you all know at least one serial quitter. They are people who get very enthusiastic about somethinga group, an activity, a club, whatever. Then, after some slight (mostly imagined) to their person, or perhaps just something that they do not completely agree with, they quit the group, activity, club, whatever.
Oftentimes they rescind their resignation within hours or days of making it. Equally, often the group begs them to return, saying that, in effect, they didn’t mean it (pssst: they actually DID mean it ). Then the serial quitter unquits, until the next time.
I think that the serial quitter is looking for love and reinforcement from the groups they join and then quit. But that is not what Twitter is for. Twitter may serve as a vehicle for love for some celebrities: that’s why they flock there, get their accounts verified, and wait for the lurve to come flowing in. But, social networks are for communication between people. When you have nearly one million followers, communication is really only one way. The lurve comes flowing in, but nothing comes flowing back except Tweets (possibly written by the celebrity’s communications flack) not addressed to particular people but to the universe in general.
The Fryster’s main mistake was to actually read some of his timeline. His second mistake was to be indiscreet about, for example, movie sets he was working on. Leave the indiscretions to Wikileaks, Stephen. And, when you return (after all, you can’t really resign from Twitter, you can only take a hiatus) take it from me: send all the Tweets addressed to you or about you straight to DEV_NULL, and get a communications flack to vet everything you Tweet before it goes out into the Intarwebz. Oh, and don’t read reviews either. Just sit back and let the lurve wash over you.