Best of the web 10/01/09 – 16/01/09

(c) altemark

The Secret Life of Chaos

Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.

It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia – how did we get here?

And the best thing is that one doesn’t need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans – after watching this film you’ll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.

The Solitary Life of Cranes

Part city symphony and part visual poem, this award-winning film explores the invisible life of London, its patterns and its hidden secrets, through the eyes of crane drivers working high above its streets.

The result is a lyrical meditation about how our existence is shaped through the environment we inhabit, both for the drivers and the people they are watching far down on the ground below them.

Hack to Hacker: Rise of the Journalist-Programmer

You don’t have to look far to see how programming can grow naturally out of writing. Take Gawker Stalker.Launched by Spiers on a whim in 2003, it became a weekly column, then a more frequent feature, its own section and, eventually, an interactive map powered by Google‘s API. With some additional coding, it’s nowupdated directly by the users.

How to organise a backbench rebellion

Martin Salter was a trade union organiser before he became an MP, and is blunt about the end result he wants.

“I don’t start from the premise that a backbench rebellion is somehow glorious – I think if you end up voting against your own party it is a failure, and it is a failure on all sides,” he says.

MOT failure rates released

The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), an arm of the Department for Transport, yesterday revealed 1,200 pages of detailed statistics on MOT failures following a freedom of information request made by the BBC in July 2008.

VOSA initially declined to supply the material, but last month the information commissioner ruled that disclosure is in the public interest and overturned VOSA’s refusal.

A Pizza Strategy for Labour?

Step One, then, is admitting you have a problem. Step Two is doing something about it. And remember, Domino’s don’t have to make great pizza, they just need to make pizza that is competitive with, or no less unpleasant, than that offered by Pizza Hut and their other competitors. In the political arena, Labour don’t need to be good, they just need to be competitive with the Tories (aka Pizza Hut).

Selecting candidates: who do we want, and how do we get them?

All-women shortlists have certainly increased the representation of women (Labour women, anyway). But have they increased democracy? Those of us who back all-women shortlists must surely accept that they are a trade-off: representation is enhanced at the expense of democracy.

The One Show’s PPB On Behalf of the Labour Party

Nice to see the BBC’s One Show doing the Labour Party’s dirty work for it. Last night they showed a 5 minute film which might as well have been a Labour Party Political Broadcast. Click HERE and scroll in 14 mins 20 secs, and see what you think. They ask the question: Is David Cameron too much of a toff to be Prime Minister?

What US right-wingers say about Haiti

Here is US conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh on the earthquake in Haiti:

This will play right into Obama’s hands — humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community — the both the light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It’s made to order for them.

Later he also said: “We’ve already donated to Haiti, it’s called US income tax”. (video)

BBC: Radio 1 not tough enough on BNP

The BBC has admitted it Radio 1 was not tough enough when it interviewed two senior British National Party members who said footballer Ashley Cole was “not ethnically British”.

The BBC’s editorial complaints unit has ruled that the programme should not have allowed the pair to appear anonymously, and should have more strongly challenged their concept of British ethnicity.

Climate opinion after UEA

Following the UEA email hack, it’s become part of the media narrative that opinion is turning against man-made global warming. It’s usually worth checking any such media claim about changes in public opinion that have supposedly occurred following a series of news stories, particularly ‘dramatic revelations’. Even when people are aware of these stories, they are often not interested, or may be disinclined to believe them and change their opinion.

Testing the impact of the UEA story is tricky, because there are currently no public polling firms that have regular polls with consistently phrased questions about climate change. But data from two polls, one taken in early November, the other in early December, do suggest that the UEA story has had no measurable impact on belief in man-made global warming.

Still waiting for Tony…

The trouble is that time is beginning to run short. Reformers are desperate to see the issue dealt with before 10 February, when Parliament will rise for its half term break. After that, with an election looming ever closer, they fear the window of opportunity for changing the way the Commons works will slam shut.

UPDATE: Still no date announced at Business Questions on Thursday. But Harriet Harman did include this ominous little phrase: “…this is a complex matter on which the government will have to take a view about what is right to bring to the House.”

So will MPs get a chance to vote on all the Wright proposals, or will some be off the table from the start? I hope no-one is missing the internal irony of the Commons having to wait on a government decision about whether MPs should be allowed any influence on what they debate.

What does China censor online?

Beautiful visualization of the keywords and tags banned by the Great Firewall of China.

Find any gems of your own? Add them in the comments!