Tourist season is upon us. My three best overheard tourist quotes (ever, so far):

Lost dad on bus this morning: I tried asking the driver where the railway station was. I tried train. I tried statión. I tried in German. But hell, they're probably more likely to speak Russian around here anyway.

Proud dad of exchange student: So after you get registered, Mindy, we can go look for all that Viking stuff they've got here.

Child to father: Daddy, there are lots of places around here that change money into Euros!
. . . posted by Diana 5/28/2003 01:38:59 AM

Friday, May 16, 2003

Reading between the lines of this story on second-order effects of wireless communications, it seems that societies with different initial levels of punctuality are converging on the model of "fifteen minutes' grace period, and call if delayed" as the use of mobile phones here. (Summary without the ad noise at TechDirt Wireless.)

On the same topic, it would have been interesting to attend Society for Phenomenology and Media's mobile communications conference here this week, but as of Tuesday they still had not posted a complete programme, though there's one there now. This is the academic syndrome a colleague described (speaking of someone in a different part of the university) as "So-and-so is very bad at announcing things, especially in advance."
. . . posted by Diana 5/16/2003 07:34:16 AM

Sunday, May 11, 2003

There is - has been for some time, in fact - a forum for recovering adult children of Daily Mail readers. The Daily Mail is a British tabloid (owned by the same company that runs the Metro free-paper empire) that is so tabloidy I can't believe it exists and I certainly can't believe that people read it non-ironically. But then the New York Post was hard to believe too.

The website fails to give the full impression of an actual copy of the newspaper, which is a running drumbeat of Toryism, double entendres, Page Three girls, Royalty worship, Royalty bashing, celebrity worship, celebrity bashing, plutocrat worship, plutocrat bashing, warmongering, warm puppy stories with a message, yearning for the good old days, and did I mention the worship? And the bashing?

But all this is just background for what I think of as the quintessential Daily Mail story: A mother leaves her children alone for a little while and returns to find them drowned, abducted, abused, mutilated, killed. Her remorse is probed for pages under the headline: "I Only Took My Eyes Off Him/Her/Them For A Minute."

Contrast this to the American version, in which the grieving family is, to be sure, hounded by the press, but their real interest is the community response: "Neighborhood Organizations Start Vigilante Program / Hold Rock Concert For 'Jimmy' Fund / Call For Safe Streets." This was apparent in the 9/11 coverage, where the city was reconstructed by the press as a community pulling together. The Onion got it just right with "Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American Flag Cake," and Donna Tartt got it just right in the paragraph of The Secret History on the community response to Bunny's death.

There are occasional tragedies and violent crimes involving children in Finland, but they are downplayed in contrast to the weekly headlines about celebrities who want children: "My Life Is Not Complete," "Finally Expecting," "Baby Changed My Life." Press interest falls off after children are born - in a small natalist society, it is the job of women to produce new citizens and the job of the state to keep them safe. There is no law here against leaving underage children alone.

The national tabloid presses generally leave fathers and potential fathers in peace, but this is made up for the the charmless advertisements in the global business press suggesting that male parents are being insufficiently competitive if they aren't setting up trust funds and taking the Concorde home to see their kid's softball game.

In other news: more on second-order effects of mobile phones, from tech porn weblog Gizmodo.
. . . posted by Diana 5/11/2003 12:00:00 AM

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