Oh, to be in Scotland

Oh to be in Scotland, now the vote is here.

I used to live there.

Oddly enough, I was first female taken on as a general reporter by The Evening News in Edinburgh. The paper was in its North Bridge offices back in those days, with Fleshmarket Close beside and Jinglin Georgies the place where all the journos hung out. I was a bit of a hippie but the gruff News Editor, Max McAuslane, called me "hen" and took me on without hesitation. I soon learned that he had a special claim to fame as the young journalist who had the international scoop on the discovery of Rudolph Hess's parachute landing in Scotland in 1941.

I worked among some wonderful journos, Jim Gilheany I recall and the jovial Jimmy Scott. As a footloose Australian, I was always fascinated that so many journalists had never left Scotland.

I loved Scotland and the Scots - as well I may, carrying my family name of Scott as a middle name.

In those days working on the Evening News, I could walk to work from our little 10/- a week top floor digs on The Pleasance and its view of the Salisbury Crags out the window made up for the fact that the loo was down on the stair and there was no bathroom.

Winter days in Edinburgh meant one walked to and from work in the dark, cobblestone streets often glistening in the rain and shops glowing yellow light. Summer days were long and softly bright - presenting dusk skies of the most magical orange and amethyst hues.

The Evening News was a good way to get to know a city. Having admired Edinburgh from afar as a really important historical big city, the surprise was to find that it was also a very provincial city. The stories I was assigned on the paper seemed very parochial and lightweight compared to what I had been doing in Australia, let alone on AAP/Reuter in Fleet Street. Once I was sent out to report on a burst water pipe.

Then again, as a newbie in Scotland, I had a bad start. On one of my first days I suffered the great embarrassment of coming back from the law courts with no story. Not yet tuned in to the dense Scots brogue, I simply could not understand what the protagonists were saying. "N'argh branergh, ach ey'n nicht bleet..." My pencil poised over my notepad, a sense of panic descending...

A few weeks later, this would not have happened. I soon spoke the language.

When I did present with a big exclusive I had lucked upon due to my association with the Royal Medical Society, the aforementioned News Editor announced that it was too important for a woman and he brought in his senior male reporter. As much as I argued that, according to the rules as I knew them, the journalist who gets the scoop also writes the scoop, sexism ruled the day and the times. As the first woman, I was decidedly token. My ire ran deep. When my working visa ran out, I did not try to stay. I went travelling again and, on return to Edinburgh, wrote for underground arts magazines, moved to the New Town, married my young doctor, gave birth to my first son and then, heaven forfend, moved to Aberdeen.

Five years of my life belonged to Scotland all told. I loved it deeply. I loved the Scots. Back then, they were talking devolution. It was a deep-rooted yearning I thought a bit impractical.

But their history was long and violent.

They had the tribal memory of Culloden. They saw "the borders" very strongly as just that. They spoke dismissively of Sassenachs. They had a strong sense of their feisty independent Highlander identity.

And, once in their midst, sharing stairs and sometimes poached eggs with them, I could only love them.

As passionate, sweet patriots, their place is secure in my heart - and, let's not forget, in my genes.

I tips me cap to their quest for independence and imagine that, despite the no of now, they will not give up.

The Face(book) of progress

Who dreams up these nonsensical questionnaires?

What rock band are you? What era should you have been born in? How English are you? What flower are you? What is your spirit bird? What sort of wine are you? What superhero should you be? Are you a proper snob? What flavor of jam are you? To find out, one is presented with some quaint choice questions with pictures and - ta-da! You're very 60s, you have an owl, you're Batman, you're tart quince...

You are a Facebook lemming! We all are. I fall for this brain fluff, too.

This current epidemic of question content is part of the Buzzfeed market grab, social media marketing. It is the current thing.

It arrives in our Facebook faces beside conventional news sources which now, instead of factual breaking news headlines, offer:

Amazing video of what Russians are doing in the Ukraine

11 faults politicians would like to have

Who went faster? The cops or the robbers?

15 ways not to use energy

Tony Abbott upset the palace. What did he do?

500 ways celebrity cult gossip dominates the news

A $5m credit card bill. Why?

10 things that will make you laugh.

Best-ever recipe for boiled egg. Etc etc.

All this is the result of a lot of desperate enterprises to grab a market in new media. All of them are under the impression that the social media target market is pretty damned dumb and can only be lured to information if the information is promised in the form of trivia.

And so we discover our information revolution is upon us as a tidal wave of infotainment tid-bits.

Let's not forget cat videos. They have been beloved since the Internet was a kitten. They're a running joke, very funny and good for the soul. So, the social media information purveyors have grabbed them like a fist full of dollars and re-presented them to the world as their very own viral phenomenon and a magnet to their ad-laden sites.

They stop at nothing.

And they have a marketplace of wide-eyed and willing players who are having too much fun to notice the cynical game afoot which promises to turn our computers into a spamland of endless sales, promotion and greed.

And to think that, just a couple of decades ago, when the Internet was being explored by the scientists, academics and geeks, the excitement flowed from the idea that it could be the great free sharing of knowledge. It was for a while. Until the men in suits found it.

Street View dilemmas

Google Maps have released Street View and caused quite a flurry in the world of citizen's rights and privacy. As we all leapt online to look at our homes and see just how well the Google camera cars performed, a general kerfuffle of anxiety erupted.
There is a lot of concern among some people about vulnerability to crooks "casing" their joints from afar, checking entrances and exits. Indeed, if one adds the satellite imagery to the street view, one does get a pretty comprehensive look at properties. A boon for the real estate trade. A boon for people trying to sell roofing, too, perhaps. But the general paranoia is a bit much, I think. The photos are old. They are not live. Car number plates and people's faces have been cleverly blurred. This is not spying. It is not Big Brother.
It is, however, a comprehensive mapping of the world. And it is a joy for squizzy people - for those who think they can tell a lot about a person by the house in which they live. I, as you can see, am decidedly secretive and inscrutable.

Things which fascinated me about this development were, firstly, the revelation (which somehow I have missed these last years) that Google Maps were in fact developed in Australia by Google's Sydney team.

Secondly, despite my unfortunate brush with Google guards when I went to pay homage to its home in Silicon Valley, my experience here in making contact with the media office to find out about Street View was unbelievably prompt and friendly and helpful.

I was a bit peeved, I have to say, when responses sought to the new facility were met with legal caution, criticisms of Australian privacy laws and of Google - and the call for reform of said privacy laws. It sort of took the wind out of my own sails - and demonstrates howone's own opinions so often end up buried under the informational process known as news-gathering.

Oh, Google, you let me down.

How to lose faith in Google.
Just try popping in on its Mountain View HQ in California. If you loved Google before, you will have the old blood running cold afterwards.
I guess I was just naive to think I could swing past the Google building and take a couple of photos.
Well, I'd seen the stunning Yahoo building towering triumphantly out there in Silicon Valley and I had taken a zillion photos of the Oracle building - probably the most elegant and superior high tech establishment in the country, if you ask me. Its sleek blue cylindrical glass towers reach around a lake where a fountain plays in cheerful circles. It is a huge complex and, if there is security, it is pretty low-key.
Google, on the other hand, is the great paranoia security hell.
You can't even drive up the driveway. Security guards stop you and tell you that you will be trespassing if you cross the line into the staff carpark."The campus is private land", one told me when I asked if I could pop in and take some photos of the building.

Yes, we're talking a building here. Just a couple of exterior shots.
I wasn't asking for a the latest search secrets or even a guided tour. I was not trying to find the "Visitor Lobby" marked on the exterior signpost or to see if I could purchase a Google cap, although, had things worked out that way, certainly would have left the place wearing a Google cap, if there is such a thing.
But, as it happened, I was asking just to take a quick snap of the entrance to the building.

I was simply told that I was not permitted to take photographs anywhere on the property.
"You can go to the public field and take a photo from there," he said. "That is public".
Oddly, the field had a sign in the middle of it saying "Closed for Repairs". This had struck me as the funniest sign I had ever seen in a field. Not that it would have stopped me, had there been a way to get to the field.
The problem was that there was no where to park. Even to get to the neighbouring field.

You can't stop here,' the security guard insisted.
"But the whole parking lane right down the road has banned parking," I said.
It was not the security man's problem. All he had to do was to make absolutely sure that people like me did not go anywhere near the Google building. Even if we have identified ourselves and explained our humble mission.

It was an odd thing, the parking ban in the street. Amphitheatre Drive has only a few buildings on it - large outfits on huge chunks of real estate. They are on one side of the road only. Opposite is wasteland with a spectacular view of the mountains.
There is what looks like a parking lane along one side of the street - but it was entirely roped off and dotted with witches hats and signs insisting that there would be no parking. This covered the road for hundreds of yards both before and after the Google property. Half a mile or more. There was even a police car stationed at one point. This was serious no parking.
Apparently, some way further down is an Amphitheatre - for which parking is discouraged on the road to protect the businesses...the one or two of them on their vast acreages.

It surprised me that Google had no visitor parking lot....in fact, a lot of things were surprising me.

What happened was that I suddenly felt my faith in and loyalty towards Google shrivelling within me.
Suddenly the negative comments about the wicked Google empire started to make sense.
Only a world with something to hide would hide.
Paranoia belongs to people with agendas.


I felt like a complete idiot.
A few months ago I had written a vast weekend magazine spread on Google - its wonderful rise and the fair and emancipated way it treated its employees and kept the spirits up. How Google had ethics as well as the best staff conditions in the world.
My boss read my piece and said that he did not believe Google was wonderful at all, that I had been conned by Google propaganda.
I was furious. Google has had a few problems - but, as one who hooked straight into the search engine when it evolved, as one who was thrilled to be an early starter with Gmail, as one who looks for the changes in the home page and touts the brilliance of the search algorithm, I was confident in my judgements. I could mention legal issues on the Google record, I told the boss, but I simply would not turn my article into any form of Google-bashing. I genuinely admired Google and I wanted the article to reflect this. It went to print - and it did.

Now I feel two inches tall.
The boss was right.
Google is not quite what we have assumed. Google has a friendly homepage but an unfriendly interface.

Google will not let its fans take a photograph.
Not just a fan, but a card-carrying visiting journalist from overseas. I had mentioned to the guard that I was an Internet writer from Australia - "just want to take a picture".

But the guards were there with rules to follow. Keep everyone out except employees.

OK Google. I got the message. I got more than the message.
I am as offended and alienated as you intended me to be.

I now will not laugh at those who say that you are moving towards becoming the new Microsoft, the evil empire.
Perhaps you now are too powerful.
Perhaps we do need to be concerned.

Media screws the message

One thing I find deeply irritating in my beloved America is the media's preoccupation with health scares. The old control-by-fear policy seems aggressively ubiquitous in this country. There are fresh scares every day - and endless marketing of drugs to either deal with or add to the scares.

Today a research finding on antidepressants and pregnancy has hit the media - with absurd results.

From the Los Angeles Times we get reportage headlined "Study shows antidepressants increase birth defects" with a story whipping up worry about pregnancy and depression treatment.
From the Associated Press comes a report headlined "Antidepressants pose low birth defect risk".

As one who reads two papers in the mornings, I reeled when I found these conflicting treatments of the same report. The AP report was carried in the Boston Globe, the other in the Nashua Telegaph. AP's was a much shorter report and it avoided the hysteria-raising of the Californian counterpart. How could this be?

Editorial sensationalist policy versus dispassionate reportage?
You can bet your bottom dollar on it.