General

On Closed Information Loops

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Apparently we are all busy fleeing from, unsubscribing from or de-friending people who espouse differing political opinions on the social media sites that we frequent. Or so says Howard Kurtz, writing in The Daily Beast in an article entitled “Unfriending Over Politics”:

“According to a fascinating survey by the Pew Internet Project, 9 percent of those who frequent social networking sites have blocked, unfriended or hidden someone because they posed something about politics or issues that the user disagreed with or found offensive.”

I find this interesting because it doesn’t chime with my personal experience at all. While I will never know how many people have spat out their morning coffee and hurriedly de-friended me after reading one of my rants on Facebook, I do know that I have never even thought of doing this to anyone else. Well, with one disclaimer – I once defriended someone after she posted a comment in which she eagerly anticipated the death of Margaret Thatcher, a callous thing to say but really only the straw that broke the camels back in terms of that particular connection.

facebookdislike
Computer, cross-reference my friend list with the electoral register…

 

Perhaps I am the exception to the rule, but I rather like hearing contrary opinions expressed on Twitter and Facebook. I like dissenting and hearing other people disagree with me. Sometimes it makes me change my mind, and other times it makes my own arguments stronger. Life would be so dull if we lived in a world where everything that you posted was automatically “liked” by everyone else, with no dissent or discussion. But apparently this is the world that a lot of people are slowly moving towards.

Of course, we have observed this phenomenon for some time in terms of the traditional media, the newspapers and television news. With ever more options at our disposal it has never been more easy to gather one’s news from friendly sources and voices with whom one shares the same biases, prejudices and political leanings. I am guilty of this to some extent myself. As the US Republican Party has drifted ever further to the reactionary right over the course of the Obama presidency, I have found my television news habits shifting from a blend of CNN, Fox and MSNBC to the significant exclusion of Fox News and a slight decline in MSNBC viewing, compensated for by a large reluctant increase in CNN. And in terms of UK politics, when The Times Online went behind a paywall, my first instinct was to gravitate to The Daily Telegraph as a natural substitute, over The Guardian or The Independent.

However, I try to always remain very aware of the political biases of the news sources that I consume, and to compensate for them by reading or watching alternative outlets too. This is really important if we are to avoid buying in to the two-dimensional caricatures of our political adversaries that the television talking heads often perpetrate. Most Republicans are not racist, backward people harbouring a cultural resentment against President Obama and interested only in their own economic wellbeing, and most Democrats are not union-beholden thugs committed to subverting America and establishing a socialist economic model in the United States.

But at times you could be forgiven for holding one of these opinions, given the poisonous rhetoric and lack of balance that exists almost everywhere now. Take CNN for example, the only major cable news network that makes an honest effort to tow a middle-line and avoid political bias in its coverage – they are consistently beaten in the ratings by FOX and MSNBC, each of whom have carved out a lucrative niche catering to and reinforcing the preexisting leanings of their viewers.

Should we go back to the old days, when the trusty voice of Walter Cronkite or the generic BBC News announcer was the sole source of information and the undisputed truth? Surely not – though it is hard to see that movements like the “birtherism” movement in the US, questioning President Obama’s citizenship, would have prospered were it not for a television news network ready and willing give such radical voices succour and airtime.

Surely we would all do well to take time to watch and read the news from alternative perspectives sometimes – and not just to laugh at the crazy stupid liberals/conservatives, but really to watch and see the world from another perspective. We don’t have to change our minds, but we can change our tone and improve the level of public discourse in our respective countries.

On Drive-Thru ATMs And Stale Tortillas

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Drive Thru ATM

 

I read an interesting piece by Peter Foster in today’s Daily Telegraph, titled “The quaintness of America, the backwards superpower”.

The basic gist of the article (written, it should be acknowledged, by a self-confessed admirer of the US) is that while America remains the world’s preeminent economic and military power, in some areas it lags behind the rest of the “modernised” world. He goes on to give several examples of this backwardness, citing the prevalence banking cheques as a payment method, the widespread existence of ATM fees, the use of imperial measurement units, the state of the roads, and – perhaps most shockingly of all – the continued use of corks rather than screwcaps by the American wine industry.

Now perhaps we can forgive Peter Foster his perspective based on the fact that his biography states that he is “the Telegraph’s US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing…”

I have also spent time in Beijing, and would certainly agree that if you stick to the glitzy, brand-new parts of the city (as you would likely do when covering “the rise of China”) and you are able to successfully block out the people riding rickshaws along the side of the motorways, then yes, parts of America are likely to lose some of their gleam by comparison. However, the litany of complaints about America, and the fact that the US is singled out, makes me wonder when was the last time the author spent any time in his home country.

In America, if you want to do some banking in a hurry, you can go through the drive-through ATM in almost any town. No parking on double yellow lines, sprinting to the ATM in the rain and hoping that your car hasn’t been towed by the time you withdraw your cash, as is the case in Britain.

In America, there are more drive-through restaurants, pharmacies, (rather dubiously) liquor stores, drive-by trash cans and any number of other modern conveniences that mean you don’t have to leave your car to conduct normal business. You can probably argue about whether this is a good or a bad thing, but the Americans certainly have one over on us in this sphere.

And when the time comes to refuel your car, the chances are that you can pay at the pump in America. Remember that handy invention? I think they tried to introduce it in Britain in a few places, and then the machines broke, were never fixed, and have been covered over with signs, poorly written in felt tip pen, telling you to pay inside and join the long line of other people in the convenience store. Truly the way of the future.

There is a picture at the top of the article showing Buzz Aldrin saluting the US flag on the surface of the moon, with the caption “Sure, they can do this, but they can’t work out how to pay for stuff with a debit card”. Seriously? Mr. Foster, are we even from the same country? I can’t count the number of times I have gone to a fast food restaurant, or the cinema, or any number of other places in Britain only to be told “the credit card machine is broken, cash only, sorry” by some dead-eyed employee. Again, there is usually also a badly-written sign informing me of the same fact, carefully tucked away where it is almost impossible to see when placing your order. In America, I can wave my McDonald’s card at the little sensor at the drive-through window and it automatically debits my bank account. Nice.

And let’s look at consumer goods and food. If I buy a loaf of bread from the supermarket in Britain, it is sealed with a little sticky strip of plastic which loses its adhesive qualities after about two uses, after which time you either have to try tying the plastic bag and squashing the bread in the process, or leaving it to go stale. In America, the same loaf of bread comes with a little trusty wire device that keeps on working until long after the bread has been consumed. If I buy a pack of tortillas in Britain – well, first of all, they will look and taste terrible, because decent Mexican food cannot be had in this country for love or money. But secondly, the tortillas will be kept in a sealed plastic vacuum pack, which, once punctured with a knife to access the tortillas, cannot be resealed. The result, once again, is stale tortillas. In America, the same tortillas actually taste good, and come in a ziplog bag so that you can reseal them.

Stale tortillas, British-style. Yum.

 

I opened this pack two days ago, and I could use the remaining tortillas inside as an effective lethal weapon in a pinch. And yes, I could have bought my own zip-lock bag to preserve them, but the point is that I shouldn’t have to!

Oh, and say you want to buy your loaf of bread and your tortillas and it happens to be after 6pm on a Sunday. Good luck finding somewhere that is open in Britain. Sunday trading laws, sorry. In America, I would just nip to Target. Or Wal-Mart. Or one of the many other stores where they have correctly interpreted the phrase “Open 24 Hours” to mean “we don’t leave our stations at 5pm on a Sunday and go home to watch TV, and if you haven’t had the chance to do your grocery shopping yet, well that’s just tough luck”.

Mr. Foster also takes exception to American cable TV, finding the online channel guides to be very confusing compared to “the standard Sky TV menus that most English readers will be familiar with”. Well, shock horror, a country of 300+ million people has lots of regional and national cable/satellite TV providers, rather than the Sky/Virgin duopoly that exists in Britain. Yes, in America the providers may go to war with the content providers sometimes, meaning that you lose your favourite channel from the airwaves for a couple of months while they stare each other down, which is hardly ideal. But at least the American consumers have choice. We still think that’s a good thing in Britain even if we don’t practice it ourselves, right?

I could go on. At one point I thought about starting a blog that focused exclusively on the many ways in which British consumers are shortchanged and under-served compared to their American counterparts. The point is that it works both ways. Britain and America both come across as rather tired and shabby if you have spent a lot of time in the glitzy new developments of Beijing and Shanghai. But I don’t know many people who would willingly up sticks and leave to go there, for all the tea and Mag-Lev trains in China.

And in conclusion – well, I don’t actually have time to write a conclusion. It’s 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and I haven’t done my grocery shopping yet, giving me 45 minutes to run into town, throw some badly-packaged food into my shopping cart and get in line at the checkout.

We Choose To Go To The Moon

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

 

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon [interrupted by applause]. We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too.” – President John F. Kennedy, Rice University, September 1962

I have recently been re-watching the excellent television mini-series “From the Earth To the Moon”. Executive produced by Tom Hanks and in much the same style as the film “Apollo 13”, it tells the story of the entire Apollo space programme, from its early beginnings and the tragedy of Apollo 1, through the enormous triumphs of Apollo 8 and 11, the lucky escape of Apollo 13 right the way through until the end of the endeavour. If you have not seen it, it is very well worth watching.

I have been a project and programme manager by trade for the past six or so years, and the exploits of NASA and particularly the Apollo programme have always held a particular fascination for me. In past job interviews I have joked that while most people look at the first moon landing and wish they were an astronaut, I was probably the only one who was moved to become a project manager! Of course, I would not have minded being an astronaut at all, and do very much hope to fly in space some day. But I suppose one of the things that has always excited the geeky part of my brain is how human beings can come together and organise such a complex programme to achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon – in the 1960s no less, when the technology and computer processing power in even my humble, malfunctioning BlackBerry vastly outstrips that which was available to NASA at the time. How do people organise themselves to run such a huge project, and plan and track all of the millions of individual actions and steps that must be successfully completed in order to achieve the desired outcome?

I post the above video for a couple of reasons. I am a (very) amateur scholar both of the history of the Apollo space programme and the life of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and rewatching my television series and flicking back through some of my books about the space programme made me think about more recent human achievements.

I was born in 1982. What great accomplishments of the human race have taken place in my lifetime? I might think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of communism, and the spread of liberty and prosperity that is still occuring as a result. I might also think of the cooperation of many nations to construct and inhabit the international space station – though no humans have left low earth orbit since that final Apollo flight, this is still a remarkable technological achievement. Or on a more micro scale I might think of the successful mapping of the human genome, with all of the promise that this holds for curing diseases in the future. There are probably many more that I have overlooked, and I would be interested if any readers would care to suggest some of them in the Comments section.

But all of this brings me back to President Kennedy’s speech on September 12th, 1962. How many people became scientists because of the unmatched human endeavour that followed this speech? How many people became engineers, or mathemeticians, or pilots, or astronauts, and how many people’s lives have been changed because of the new technologies and discoveries that resulted from it?

And in these hard economic times, when so many of the western powers seem to be retrenching and lowering their ambitions, what are we doing now that will inspire people, or challenge them, or make them proud of us in 40 years’ time?

We Choose To Go To The Moon - John F Kennedy - JFK - Apollo Program

On Being A Conservative, Seriously

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Looking back, I have just noticed that the first three substantive posts that I have made to this blog might tend to cast me in the light of being somewhat left-wing. This would come as a great surprise to my family and friends in the UK, who probably either groan and roll their eyes whenever I post one of my conservative diatribes on Facebook, or else have already quietly unsubscribed from my newsfeed.

As I attempt to achieve a balance on this blog between US and UK current affairs, hopefully my true political leanings will start to emerge more clearly. When I write about social issues in the United States I am likely to appear far more of a Democrat than I would when I start writing about economic issues. Similarly, when I write about economic issues in the United Kingdom I am likely at times to sound quite far to the right even of the Conservative party, and especially of the present Conservative/LibDem coalition government. This is due to the difference in terms of the leftmost and rightmost boundaries of mainstream political thinking in our two countries.

I wanted to make this small disclaimer before I am categorised as a left-wing activist based on my early posts!

On Being A Good Catholic

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I decided to join the Roman Catholic church at eighteen years of age, and went through the Church’s RCIA programme (the Rite of Catholic Initiation of Adults), which required attending weekly lessons with the parish priest over a period of six months. I look back on the night that I was confirmed into the Church as one of the happiest and most sacred moments of my life, and though the strength of my faith (and my weekly Mass attendance)  has seen several peaks and rather more lows in the intervening decade, I still consider myself a member of the Church, and I always intend to be.

Many people have made similar conversions to the Church, notably two of the current Republican presidential contenders, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. It is said that there is no zealot like a convert, and though I may be the exception to the rule, Gingrich and Santorum appear to prove it rather well with many of their public pronouncements. In many respects, both men are probably better and more observant Catholics than me, at least now (Gingrich), and I don’t presume to judge them at all. What I will do, however, is call them out when they claim to represent the only political party that will defend Catholic teachings and priorities. Because that is pure, grade A baloney.

Said Newt Gingrich of the ObamaCare requirement for employers operating in the public sphere, serving the public and employing people regardless of their religious affiliation, to offer health insurance that includes access to birth control:

“I frankly don’t care what deal he tries to cut; this is a man who is deeply committed. If he wins re-election, he will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after he is re-elected.”

(Yes, I fear that the O RLY owl is going to be a frequent visitor to this blog).

Really, Newt? Wage war? I’m curious to see Obama’s glistening new clone army sitting in storage, waiting for Inauguration Day in January 2013 when they will be activated and unleashed to desecrate churches and force people into unwilling same-sex marriages across the land.

If I could talk with Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum, I would say: the protection of life should not end at the moment of birth. I will never understand my Church’s current teaching on contraception – especially when male sexual enhancement drugs, in vitro fertilisation and other techniques that can result in the creation or destruction of a fertilised embryo are given a free pass, while contraception, the morning-after pill and stem cell research are not. But I can appreciate the consistency of the argument that all human life is precious, is worthy of respect, and that none should be taken unnecessarily. My own views on abortion are not yet fully developed, but I know that I would want it to be as rare as possible, and yet readily available at least under some limited circumstances (such as the survival of the mother, rape or incest, or in the case of catastrophic developmental anomalies). I understand your policies for caring for and protecting life while it is in the womb. But what effect would your policies have once these children are born? Is it important, as you so often say, that they are born into loving (married, heterosexual) families who are ready for a child, or does it not matter if they are unwanted and abused, or end up in the custody of the state until they reach eighteen years of age? It’s all very well advocating strongly for a new life until it reaches the nine month threshold, but what then?

And to the Bishops, I would say: why do you deny holy communion to politicians who advocate for general public access to abortion services (while not supporting the practice themselves), but welcome with open arms those who support the death penalty, fight measures to improve social justice, support the torture of enemy prisoners or beat the drum for pre-emptive wars around the globe? You diminish your public standing, your credibility and the importance of these other important Church teachings when you do so.

Andrew Sullivan makes a similar point in his excellent blog, with regard to the current enthusiasm in Republican circles to go to war with Iran:

“I’d also argue that pre-emptive war based on an enemy’s alleged intentions, when it publicy declares the opposite, or based on inherent evil or insanity is counter to just war theory. Certainly the rhetoric of Santorum and Gingrich on this subject is a profound attack on Catholic just-war teaching. But don’t expect the Bishops to make any fuss about that. War and torture seem trivial issues to them, compared with access to contraception or gay rights.”

(http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/03/is-an-iran-war-morally-justifiable-.html)

Seriously, maybe I missed this in my RCIA classes. Will a Republican (since they are the ones who claim to have the direct hotline to God these days) please let me know which of these Church teachings it is okay to brazenly defy while still declaring myself a proud standard-bearer for the Church, and which are so inviolable that I would be literally declaring war on Catholicism if I dare to dissent? Thanks.