Symbolic Forest

I mentioned in Saturday’s post that I’ve recently been pulling data off a hard disk I haven’t touched for more years than I care to think about, and saving the things that are worth saving. The original text of my degree dissertation, for example, which I thought I’d lost, and more than one terrible short story. Photos that are even older, that I’d had scanned in for one reason and another. I thought it might be worth sharing a few bits and pieces here.

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Keyword noise: The Guardian, photography, Outer Hebrides, Callanish, Calanais, urbexing, derelict, abandoned, archaeology, standing stones, stone circle.

The other day, various news media carried the story that Ryanair, the world’s most controversial airline, was planning to charge fat people extra. Because that was, apparently, what its customers wanted. They’d been polling and everything.

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Keyword noise: BBC, disability, discrimination, media, newspapers, overweight, publicity, Ryanair, television, The Guardian.

The band Camera Obscura are clearly going up in the world. I noted, a few months ago, that one of their songs had popped up on a Tesco advert. Never mind about that, though: today, they were on the front page of The Guardian, up above the masthead. Admittedly, only because a Guardian reader had written in with: why weren’t Camera Obscura listed in your recent “1000 albums to hear before you die”^* list? It’s better than not being there at all, though.

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Keyword noise: advertising, Butterley, Camera Obscura, Gavin Dunbar, indie, Indietracks, Midland Railway Centre, music, Ripley, Tesco, The Guardian.

About a year ago,^* I wrote about local elections, and why I wasn’t going to bother voting. I didn’t think it was a particularly good post myself, but it was good enough for The Guardian to quote it, so more people probably read that post (or that part of that post) than anything else I’ve ever put on the site.

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Keyword noise: council, elections, local elections, local government, The Guardian, voting.

I was a little doubtful when I saw, on the front page of Friday’s Guardian, the tagline “Steam trains – the great aphrodisiac”. I do like trains, but I wouldn’t say that about them.

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Keyword noise: culture, locomotive, railway, ritual, romantic, steam engine, steam train, The Guardian, Simon Jenkins, trains.

Tastes change as people grow up. Things you are a huge fan of will slowly fade away, and other things will come along to replace them. Your tastes will change, as you change.

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Keyword noise: Alexis Petridis, Belle & Sebastian, fan, Funny Little Frog, indie, music, obsession, Patrick Doyle, Sinister, The Guardian, The Life Pursuit.

According to this story in *The Guardian*, the government thinks that we shouldn’t be looking at websites that can show us how to kill ourselves. So, they want ISPs to stop us. Search engines should alter their results so that the first hit for “suicide” is The Samaritans. We shouldn’t be allowed to discuss ways to kill ourselves with each other.

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Keyword noise: censorship, filtering, information, openness, suicide, The Guardian, The Samaritans.

More from The Guardian: in the UK, an entire third of the 14-21 age group have started their own blog.

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Keyword noise: blogging, communication, hype, surveys, The Guardian.

I’ve already written about the new design of The Guardian, and came across as pretty positive about it. Indeed, I am pretty positive about its design, as a whole. There is, though, one thing that’s a bit rubbish. The Thursday Technology section.

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Keyword noise: Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, hackers, newpapers, redesign, The Guardian, New Scientist.

As I’ve been an avid Guardian reader for ten years or so – long enough to get very used to it, but not long enough to remember the old 1980s design – then of course I’m full of opinions on their new redesign. Or, at least, I was a week ago. I decided to hold off writing anything until I’d seen a full week of third sections; but now I’ve seen them all the novelty has gone, and I’ve settled back down to just reading the thing again.

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Keyword noise: Doonesbury, media, newspapers, redesign, The Guardian.