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All I've been doing of late is quizzes and posting the results here. How utterly sad is that, eh? Well there's been nothing else of interest going on in my life, that I've not told anyone about already, anyway.
I guess I could say something about war reporting.
In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (known to them as Las Malvinas); this had the effect of pissing of the rightful owners (us Brits), and the then-Prime Minister, Maggie, sent in the troops to liberate the islands (plus the even smaller and less significant South Georgia).
I was 8 at the time, and, apart from the first Space Shuttle being launched in 1981, it's the first time I took the news seriously - up until then, it had always been that boring program adults watched after the kids' TV finished.
The reporting was detached, calm, and had dignified figures such as Brian Hanrahan (though I don't recall first-hand the "I counted them all out" soundbite) to relay the information back from 8000 miles away. I remember HMS Sheffield and the General Belgrano being sunk. I remember Port Stanley being taken. In terms of war reporting, it was the last hurrah of the old brigade, the old way of doing things.
1991, in fact the 90's, when you include the 1998 air-raids on Iraq, and the 1999 Kosovo campaign; with Afganistan tacked on as an addendum, the first Gulf War, with video-game coverage. The journalists filed into the briefing room and Stormin' Norman would bring up the latest grainy black-and-white pictures of a building marked out by crosshairs getting demolished. Back then, it all seemed brilliant, we could imagine every bomb dropped being like that, because we weren't told otherwise. Now we know it was something like only 10% of all munitions - not much at all.
Bang up to date in 2003, we have Gulf War 2, and 'embedded' reporters. Okay, it's not a new practice to put journalists with front-line troops - it was depicted in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Those were traditional, old-media hacks, though, and their reports had to be filed back home, then put into print days later. Now we're getting live, in-yer-face war, beamed directly into your homes by CNN, Sky News, and dear old Auntie Beeb. Some troublesome upstart called al-Jazeera is trying to tell the bad guys' side of things too, but that's all just militant propoganda fed to them by the leaders of Iraq's supposedly crumbling regime.
I just wonder what the next step will be. Live feeds from the video cameras attached to soldier's helmets? Will they be wired up so that we can talk to them, and make the next war a kind of live-action for-real FPS? Will we get "Medal of Honor: Live - Assault on Baghdad"? Just how far can it go - and just how far can it go before the viewers decide they've had enough, and pick up their newspapers to read about what happened yesterday instead.
I guess I could say something about war reporting.
In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (known to them as Las Malvinas); this had the effect of pissing of the rightful owners (us Brits), and the then-Prime Minister, Maggie, sent in the troops to liberate the islands (plus the even smaller and less significant South Georgia).
I was 8 at the time, and, apart from the first Space Shuttle being launched in 1981, it's the first time I took the news seriously - up until then, it had always been that boring program adults watched after the kids' TV finished.
The reporting was detached, calm, and had dignified figures such as Brian Hanrahan (though I don't recall first-hand the "I counted them all out" soundbite) to relay the information back from 8000 miles away. I remember HMS Sheffield and the General Belgrano being sunk. I remember Port Stanley being taken. In terms of war reporting, it was the last hurrah of the old brigade, the old way of doing things.
1991, in fact the 90's, when you include the 1998 air-raids on Iraq, and the 1999 Kosovo campaign; with Afganistan tacked on as an addendum, the first Gulf War, with video-game coverage. The journalists filed into the briefing room and Stormin' Norman would bring up the latest grainy black-and-white pictures of a building marked out by crosshairs getting demolished. Back then, it all seemed brilliant, we could imagine every bomb dropped being like that, because we weren't told otherwise. Now we know it was something like only 10% of all munitions - not much at all.
Bang up to date in 2003, we have Gulf War 2, and 'embedded' reporters. Okay, it's not a new practice to put journalists with front-line troops - it was depicted in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Those were traditional, old-media hacks, though, and their reports had to be filed back home, then put into print days later. Now we're getting live, in-yer-face war, beamed directly into your homes by CNN, Sky News, and dear old Auntie Beeb. Some troublesome upstart called al-Jazeera is trying to tell the bad guys' side of things too, but that's all just militant propoganda fed to them by the leaders of Iraq's supposedly crumbling regime.
I just wonder what the next step will be. Live feeds from the video cameras attached to soldier's helmets? Will they be wired up so that we can talk to them, and make the next war a kind of live-action for-real FPS? Will we get "Medal of Honor: Live - Assault on Baghdad"? Just how far can it go - and just how far can it go before the viewers decide they've had enough, and pick up their newspapers to read about what happened yesterday instead.
