Funny name incident

It is an oldie, but never the less is still funny.
Mel Gibson (if I'm not mistaken) was a guest on a popular Israeli daily TV entertainment
show "Good Evening with Guy Pines"”. The host introduces himself and the guest to the audience, then Mel asks Guy: "Guy Pines? (pronounced Peenes) Really?"

Old thing, new face

I've listened to the latest album from VanZant "Get right with the man". A very nice rock indeed, a bit country like but still good. But what a pity that such good artists got involved with such crooks like SonyBGM. With all the respect I carry toward the artists, I feel really bad about giving money to that SonyBGM scum.
I have a suspicion that the artists are their hostages as well. These people remind me the mob from the twenties of the previous century. Same tactics of racket intimidation and extortion, just they are using an army of lawyers and crooked politicians to do the dirty work while keeping the law on their side.

The Sky News disgrace

Sky News just presented a perfect example for my previous post.

You all might know, already, about severe condition of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon. To cover this Sky News arranged a discussion on Ariel Sharon himself and some speculations on what will come next.
It was the most biased "discussion" I have ever heard in my life. For about 10 minutes that I had the patience to watch it I watched so called experts compete in who will make a bigger monster of a sick and probably dying man.
One of the "experts", a round faced man with thinning gray-white hair, was telling the audience how for the last five years Ariel Sharon "has put a veil on the world eyes", putting an emphasis on how many have gasped when G. W. Bush had called him a man of peace. That meanwhile Sharon was securing Israel true interest - the west bank, effectively expanding the west bank settlements while pretending to oppose it, and cutting of Jerusalem and Arab towns and lands by building a security fence. Apparently leaving Gaza, but controlling it from the outside. The orator also declared that Israel will have a hard time finding a leader that could do the same trick.
In that discussion they also made a brief "history lesson" how Sharon has oppressed Palestinians in the course of his life, that there is a memorial on the Jordanian border where Sharon has passed with his tank brigade, how he ruled with absolute harshness while being military commandant over Gaza and how could the forget about Sabra and Shatila. That he was declared unfit for administrative posts. These exerts also reminded the audience that the Palestinians are scattered and divided without any real leader, that their only income is international help and how easy target they were to Sharon.

There were other things that I couldn't remember, but the point is clear...

Objective? Even sided? You must be joking!

What have been bothering me and many other on the blogosphere, is that the media in general is politically biased, including the titles that claim to be, or considered objective.
The bias is often so obvious, that I wonder how the hell those titles manage to keep their reputation as objective.

I have noticed some of the most common "techniques" that the media uses in creating a biased article report etc.

• Putting on the same moral ground two sides that no descent, self-respecting man with common sense would. Therefore misleading the non competent target audience that constitute most of the public.
  
• Telling half truths or putting the emphasis on only one side of the issue. The most common use of this technique is to make a big headline like "X sues Y for z" while only at the end of the report/article the audience/reader would find the crucial circumstances that would put the issue into the right perspective.
• Deliberate use of words discriminating one side over another.
• To air/print unconfirmed damaging information, and when it turns out to be incorrect to publicize a hardly noticeable confirmation of the opposite. Just if you would print a big headline on the front page saying "X accused in doing Y" while the notice that the person X was completely exonerated would be printed somewhere in tiny add in the middle end of the paper, somewhere nobody would notice.

Most of the techniques are legally proof and nevertheless they don't smell right.

Sony is proving Cory Doctorow right again

When Cory Doctorow in his Microsoft DRM speech said that DRM is bad for business and gave Sony as an example, he didn't know how right he would be. Reading peoples responses from different sources over the internet, I see that many are deeply disappointed by Sony's actions and are going to refrain from buying Sony's products in the future. It's not just the music CD's, but their electronics and computer divisions are going to suffer from the consequences of this affair. And not just them. Quoting one of the blogs: "Nobody would want to pull a "Sony" now".