links for 2009-06-15

"But these technologies are not just about raising a level of intimacy with someone one already knows. They are about putting out in the public domain full, often mouth-desiccatingly tedious, details of one's life for all to see. To me and millions like me that simply constitutes a self-inflicted invasion of privacy, and a shocking presumption that one's own life is of such enormous interest that everyone else must want to know about it". Oh Simon, you card, can you not see even a little bit of irony in you using your column in a national newspaper to tell lots of people you don't know what you personally think about Facebook?

"What was evident on Twitter this weekend was the accelerating effects of a continuous news cycle and appetite. Just as 24 hour news channels must stay on air with some kind of coverage, social media is even hungrier. And noise fills the void when events or facts can't".

The most likely answer to this is "A tournament England will never participate in, unless they win the right to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022, at which point as a nation we will almost certainly expect to win it", although I'd love us to be there in Brazil 2013 either as world or European champions.

The BBC is being blocked by the Iranian regime...

...which is no surprise, because on Friday the Biased BBC blog was complaining that the BBC was cheer-leading a 'moderate' being elected in Iran...

...although by Sunday according to Biased BBC the BBC thought-crime was propping up Ahmedinejad - despite being banned by the Iranian government. It is this kind of unembarrased 'flipping' of position which is one of the reasons I love reading Biased BBC so much.