No doubt you’re already aware that you can watch 4oD Catch-Up on our new improved channel4.com (and if you haven’t tried it yet, what are you waiting for?). All the content is streamed which makes it really easy to use, you shouldn’t need to download anything - simply find what you want to watch and hit “Play”. Oh, and non-Windows users will be pleased to know that 4oD Catch-Up on channel4.com is now Mac and Linux compatible.

From around the end of June you’ll also be able to watch all our archive programmes on channel4.com. Which means all your favourites will be in one place and available for free.

- Channel 4 email to 4oD users

A quiz, dear reader. Does this represent:

(a) the end of months of brand confusion within Channel 4 between the download-based 4oD service and the streaming-based Catch-Up?

(b) a victory for consumers on a par with iTunes’ abandonment of DRM?

(c) a bit of an embarassment for the BBC?

(d) all of the above?

And the answer is (d), sort of. While the sheer range of stuff available on 4OD has always been impressive, the software was horrible, thanks both to the nasty, malware-esque Kontiki peer-to-peer software underpinning it and the bizarre Internet Explorer-based front-end Channel 4 put on top. One can’t blame Channel 4 for quickly switching, for the most popular, recent content, to a streaming system instead. The BBC made the same switch in the first few months of iPlayer. But while the BBC only ever offered recent programmes, Channel 4 still had that archive available. So 4oD struggled on, unloved and uninvested in, as a download service with horrible software. To confuse matters further, the 4oD name was also used in introducing Catch-Up streams and on digital TV.

Now Channel 4 has finally rationalised its offering, in the way that probably offers the simplest solution for consumers: the archive material is being integrated into the streaming service, creating a single portal for both recent and archive Channel 4 shows. Best of all, the pay wall is coming down. And the whole thing steals the thunder of the BBC, who are dragging their heels over their longstanding plan to make archive material available online.

This doesn’t mean that the new 4oD will be as pleasurable to use, or as popular, as the iPlayer. But it does mean 20 years of classic C4 programming instantly, freely available for consumers without any software installation. That’s a good thing.

Jacqui Smith’s down-to-earth nature and soft approach seemed a breath of fresh air in the early days of Gordon Brown’s government. Now she’s stepping down, her tenure appearing, to many, one of disappointing underachievement. The parallels with the government she served in are inescapable. 

Bet you a tenner I’ve got one of them almost word for word.

- Stephen Bayley: Reject the Prince of Pastiche and his ludicrous architectural prejudices [Observer]

Filing this one away in case I ever forget why reading just the headlines and the standfirst of news stories never really tells you what’s going on:

Swine flu could affect third of world’s population, says study

Researchers say swine flu will spread around world within nine months, as UK confirms three more cases

The swine flu virus will infect a third of the world’s population if it continues to spread at its current rate, scientists warned today, as three more cases were confirmed in the UK.

In what the journal Science described as the “first quick and dirty analysis” of swine flu, a study by researchers at Imperial College London predicted the virus was likely to cause an epidemic in the northern hemisphere in the autumn.

One of the authors, the epidemiologist and disease modeller Neil Ferguson, who sits on the World Health Organisation’s emergency committee for the outbreak, said the virus had “full pandemic potential”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “It is likely to spread around the world in the next six to nine months, and when it does so, it will affect about one-third of the world’s population.

OH MY GOD. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

“To put that into context, normal seasonal flu probably affects around 10% of the world’s population every year, so we are heading for a flu season which is perhaps three times worse than usual –

Oh.

– not allowing for whether this virus is more severe than normal seasonal flu viruses.”

That strikes me as rather a large “not allowing”.

So: scary headline, story that confuses more than reassures. Standard stuff, really.

I don’t have the time today to do a complete, detailed response to Philip Pullman’s silly piece in the Times a few weeks ago, which has just come to my attention. But let me just quickly tee up the most obvious objections. The piece invokes William Blake to argue that civil liberties are so under threat in today’s UK that democract is effectively a sham.

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

This is a kind of ad hominem argument: that is to say, it doesn’t put forward an argument at all, but simply presents a widely admired author as being on one side of an issue and expects its readers to follow suit out of sheer admiration. It’s the trick every politician pulls when invoking Lincoln, Reagan or Churchill in their speeches: somebody you admire once believed something similar to what I believe in superficially similar circumstances, so you should agree with me. There’s not one sentence - in a 1100-word article - of actual argument against the slew of liberty-infringing laws the article rails against. The effect - the removal of the article’s rhetoric from the reality of the issues at stake - is deepened by the fact that the figure invoked is not even a politician, philosopher, or moralist. He’s a writer - a gifted one, certainly, and one whose writings touched on issues of morality and the role of the state. But not a true political thinker of any stature. There’s not a philosophy being invoked, to which many people nowadays subscribe, which this writer invented or embodied. This simply tells us that a great poet disliked tyranny. Should the fact that Blake diagnosed and condemned sham democracy give us pause today? Well, let’s see what else he advocated. A proto-socialist, he railed against the excesses of capitalism at least as surely as those of government. Do the Times readers enjoying this article subscribe to those aspects of his views, too?

Not that Pullman ought to be concerned with any of this: he is himself, after all, an author. An author, to be precise, of children’s books - highly enjoyable ones, admittedly, with some interesting, if jumbled, religious allusions. But children’s books nonetheless. For him to look to other writers for inspiration in constructing his view of the world, and of politics, is perfectly natural.

But for a serious national newspaper to print it is not. This is a complex issue, deserving of a detailed, nuanced analysis. The list of allegedly freedom-restricting statutes Pullman reels off at the end of the article is just that, a list, and each individual bill contains its own balance between the needs of security and those of liberty. You might well think the government has got that balance consistently wrong. Let’s have a look, citing examples, providing evidence. This is the debate that’s needed; this is the debate it’s a newspaper’s job to provide. Not to give a platform to an author delivering what amounts to a rallying cry for the converted - not intended to win over doubters, but to inspire true believers with the faith that a poet they like would be with them.

Assuming, of course, that Blake would be with them. For an argument could easily be constructed that to compare the democratic situation in Blake’s time with ours now is so callously unfair as to border on the offensive. How can the lines “You are not to be trusted with laws / So we shall put ourselves out of your reach” not mean something utterly different in an age of universal suffrage? No-one can know for sure how Blake would have responded to the threats - both to security and to liberty - that we face today. Even detailed, clear philosophies like those provided by Locke or Marx are hard to apply usefully a century or more on from their writing.

And if this article ignores the immense progress in freedom made in recent centuries, the modern liberty movement also takes a disastrously narrow view of freedom in the context of the present. What about the many positive steps in the last decade? The adoption of the Human Rights Act? The loosening of alcohol licensing is probably a more regular source of joy in the lives of many britons than the presence of CCTV is a worry. What about my freedom to marry my boyfriend? The freedom to travel easily across Europe? The freedom of women and men to work part-time? Blake’s vision of liberty was broad enough to econompass practical, as well as legal, freedom. Why isn’t Pullman’s?

For me to pull out the old caricature of latte-sipping Islington liberals as the only people worried about these things would be engage in an ad hominem argument of my own. But like most stereotypes, it containts a kernel of truth. Only those whose lives are free of discrimination and material want can afford to take  such a narrow view of freedom.

Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in "Defiance"

Two films currently out demonstrate the tensions thrown up by the globalisation of culture. Take first Edward Zwick’s film Defiance. On paper, this sounds like a worthy winner, Oscar material: the tale of three Jewish brothers who take up arms - quite vigorously, by all accounts - against the Nazis in the forests of Belarus. With an solid cast - Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and not-totally-unknown Liev Schreiber play the brothers - it’s picked up respectable reviews and should have been a success. Casting aside the old myth of Jewish quavering in the face of tyranny, it was to show the world that once provoked, Jews can make implacable enemies.

Then events provided rather better evidence of that fact.

Now, Defiance is caught up in the maelstrom of the Gazan conflict. The film has taken a measly $4 million worldwide so far, after a fortnight of release. This is despite heavy advertising in London (and, I assume, other major cities). Now, I can’t say for certain that this is less than expected, or that its popularity has been hit by the Gazan affair. But it seems almost impossible that it wouldn’t be, at least in Europe.

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in "Slumdog Millionaire"

By contrast, Slumdog Millionnaire has combined critical and commercial success with its fairy tale of modern India. Much of the praise has accrued to its director, Danny Boyle. But I noticed at the end of the film an interesting credit: “Co-director (India): Loveleen Tandan”. My god, I thought to myself. Is it all a sham? Has Boyle just stuck his name on a project from his cosy editing suite in Scotland while an Indian director does all the work? My suspicions deepened when I read that many of the actors didn’t speak English. Surely Tandan must have played the leading role in working with the young cast.

Fortunately, the story seems less suspicious than that. Slumdog is in fact Tandan’s directorial debut - she’s known as a successful casting director, having cast films including Monsoon Wedding and Brick Lane. And it was in that capacity that she came on board Slumdog. As the challenges of finding an Indian cast became clear, however, her influence led to decisions that really shaped the film. It was Tandan who suggested that the film would benefit from being partially in Hindi - the fact which gives much of it a gritty intensity which balances its vibrant pallette and fairy-tale plot. Tandan also wrote much of the Hindi dialogue. Boyle, to his credit, saw her capacity to ensure the film’s serious engagement with its Indian location and actors, and made her co-director.

Slumdog seems to be a genuinely successful example of global collaboration. But I can’t help but wish Tandan’s contribution had attracted more press attention. Let’s hope if, as seems likely, the film garners some Oscar nominations, Tandan is there on the night to pick up her share of praise.

UPDATE: It transpires that Defiance was only released in most US cities and some of Europe yesterday. Making that $4 million figure less disastrous. It’ll be interesting to see how its opening weekends are affected by the ongoing Gaza situation.

Another vanity publisher is the last thing the newspaper sector needs. Alexander Lebedev, the wealthy former KGB agent, is close to buying one of the most influential London titles from Daily Mail & General Trust. Owning the Evening Standard, he correctly surmises, will be “a good way to waste money”. If he hopes the trophy asset, which could lose £17.5m this year, will confer compensating non-cash benefits, in the form of influence and prestige, he may be disappointed. That type of money can buy lobbyists-a-dozen and acres of rolling advertorial. Either way, such determination to bankroll a zombie paper bodes ill for profit-oriented rivals hoping to eke some small change out of their own titles.

The FT is missing the point, I suspect. It’s over-optimistic to believe that a quasi-national, quasi-quality newspaper like the Standard can be dragged back into profit by vigourous cost-cutting. The effects of penny-pinching on a newsgathering operation - and its quick, detrimental effect on sales - can be seen at the Mirror. The truth is that this kind of trophy ownership, however problematic, is the only way serious news operations are likely to be sustained in the decades to come.

On this logic, there is little reason for DMGT, which regrets having failed to sell its regional newspaper titles, to stop there. It makes no sense, for example, for it to continue to prop up London Lite, its probably marginally loss-making free evening paper. Associated Newspapers, the DMGT subsidiary that also publishes morning freesheet Metro in the capital, launched London Lite in 2006 as part of a defensive move to protect the Standard from the London Paper, a News Corp-owned rival. Now that it will soon be largely shot of the Standard, DMGT can safely jettison all this other baggage. Shame Mr Lebedev won’t take that too.

Again, the point entirely missed. London Lite is not just dependent on the Standard for its raison d’etre, but for almost all of its content. It will go to Lebedev, and if it closes it won’t be for a few months I’m sure.

Beware the Kennedy analogy… The differences between Kennedy and Obama are far more striking than the parallels. Kennedy was the arrogant and spoilt brat of a politically ambitious male chauvinist multi-millionaire father, who gave his four sons a patrician sense that they had a right to rule, and screw around when they felt like it. Admittedly, Jack Kennedy had to struggle against poor health throughout his life, but his personal battle cannot be compared to Obama’s ability through merit and determination to surmount a peripatetic upbringing in an impoverished single-parent household for much of the time. Kennedy may have broken a glass ceiling as the first practising Roman Catholic to become president, but he did not see himself as a standard bearer for other Catholics. His breakthrough is as nothing compared to Obama’s triumph in winning the White House as a black man, and a proud representative of all of America’s non-Anglo minorities. In depth and scope his life experience far exceeds Kennedy’s pampered youth…

…the books the two men have written show that the only genuine intellectual, as well a writer of great sensitivity, is Obama. Kennedy was intelligent but in spite of all the Camelot trimmings he did not have the curiosity about ideas or the ability to view issues critically which define an intellectual.

Listening today to “I’m alive” by Stretch ‘n’ Vern - which is essentially a mash-up of “Boogie Wonderland” and “I’m Riffin’” by MC Duke - I got to thinking about the avalanche of lazy sample-heavy hits that dominated the charts in the 90s. It’s clear now that what seemed at the time like a total breakdown of all remaining value in the music world was, in fact, basically a technology problem. Sampling and PCs had made it a straightforward matter for young, aspiring DJs and producers to cobble together fun versions of forgotten songs with minimal effort; but the technology hadn’t yet developed to distribute such fluff for free. Now, we find mashups on music blogs, pay nothing for them, and they don’t seem annoying, just fun. In retrospect, Danger Mouse’s digital release of the “grey album” was the turning point. And it also demonstrates that giving such easy-come stuff away can launch a lucrative producing career.

The old ‘Skins’ trailer reminded me of how I wished my teenage years had been: colourful, joyful, sexy. The new one reminds me of how they actually were: bored-looking drably-dressed kids causing trouble in a shit pub

The Economist’s spoken word edition has no truck with any of this “bleeping” nonsense. (Skip to 1:30)

“He hasn’t called him a crook!”

We’re now supposed to believe that Obama is at best insufficiently appalled at Blagoyevich’s behaviour - which, let’s not forget, is still legally unproven - and at worst implicated in it, because he uses calm language. And talk-show guests talk openly about Obama’s camp “admitting whatever it’s done”, apparently without feeling the need to admit that so far there’s not a shred of evidence Obama’s camp were involved with Blagojevich in anything other than entirely standard ways.

I can’t think of a more perfect example of how the desperate need to fill 24 hours of news a day has maddened America’s political culture. Not exactly news, I know, but I’m still frequently shocked.

“This is nothing to do with Obama. But some people are going to try to make people think this has something to do with Obama. So this is bad news for Obama. What is the Obama camp going to do about this bad news?”

US Media FAIL.

September 2008: David Foster Wallace commits suicide. Mere weeks later, Axl Rose reappears from relative obscurity with the long-awaited Chinese Democracy.

Coincidence?

Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. But, by and large, a capitalist society does not honor its intellectuals.

 Intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people, the ones with the highest merit, and that society should reward people in accordance with their value and merit. But a capitalist society does not satisfy the principle of distribution “to each according to his merit or value” …the market distributes to those who satisfy the perceived market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply is. Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus. [emphasis added]

Robert Nozick, “Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism?”

Now, look. Like much that comes out of the Cato Institute, this twenty-two-year-old essay contains its fair share of gleeful left-baiting. But this is a salient point. Bloggers, journalists and authors declares the intellectual* the new aristocrat, with over-educated millennials able to work the way they want, in fascinating fields, achieve social status and wealth, and still have time left over for surfing. But is this borne out by the evidence, or is it - as I suspect - mostly clever kids’ wish-fulfilment?

The brilliant PhD candidate who struggles to get funding; the intelligent, thoughtful young journalist who chafes at the tabloid leanings of his paper; the idealistic young lawyer who rails against his profession’s less ethical habits, or its disinterest in work/life balance. All the stuff of alientated twentysomething cliche. Can’t all of this be summed up, quite neatly, in the realisation Nozick describes above?

*Also known by the handy new phrase “knowledge worker,” which is essentially an attempt to replace “intellectual” with something that doesn’t scare off employers.

Washington Supreme Court Judge Richard Sanders has admitted that he was the one who stood up and yelled “tyrant!” at U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech in which Mukasey later fainted. At a black-tie dinner on Nov. 20, the AG defended the Bush administration’s war on terror. Sanders, who said he felt compelled to voice his disagreement with those policies, said he had already left the event before Mukasey’s collapse, and did not learn of it until the next day. 

Proof that New Yorkers really are the bestest, funniest, most damn full-of-life people in the world. Listen to this and I defy you not to smile throughout.

American RadioWorks: New York Works

Hello Philly,

I am glad to be here today for this voter registration drive and for Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.

I’ve spent 35 years writing about America, its people, and the meaning of the American Promise. The Promise that was handed down to us, right here in this city from our founding fathers, with one instruction: Do your best to make these things real: opportunity, equality, social and economic justice, a fair shake for all of our citizens, the American idea, as a positive influence, around the world for a more just and peaceful existence. These are the things that give our lives hope, shape, and meaning. They are the ties that bind us together and give us faith in our contract with one another.

I’ve spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no healthcare, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities, the distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful.

I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and in his work. I believe he understands, in his heart, the cost of that distance, in blood and suffering, in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president, he would work to restore that promise to so many of our fellow citizens who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning. After the disastrous administration of the past 8 years, we need someone to lead us in an American reclamation project. In my job, I travel the world, and occasionally play big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I’ve continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of people’s hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.

They will, however, be leaving office, dropping the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis in our laps. Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow citizens. That is where our future lies. We will rise or fall as a people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don’t know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back.

So now is the time to stand with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

Bruce Springsteen, Vote For Change rally, Philadelphia, October 4

I’ve never really decided quite where the irony-balance lies in this song. After all, David Byrne is as self-consciously urban (in the pre-MTV, racially neutral sense) as anyone. Certainly, as someone who regularly chafes at British culture’s knee-jerk for a nostalgic vision of country life, I can’t help but thrill at such unabashed horror at a back-to-nature future that many people at least claim to long for.

But that line in the last verse - “as it fell apart, nobody payed much attention” - hints at a darker interpretation. After all, one of the central ironies of the modern environmental movement is that the very close-to-nature lifestyle which some of its proponents call for is probably exactly what we’ll wind up with if the kind of “civilisation” Byrne eulogises here continues to run out of control.

Anyway, it’s funky. Enjoy.

Genre trends in music - synth pop in the 80s, guitar rock and dance in the 90s - are as much about what the record companies promote as what people want to play. If the internet breaks their control, will the wave of fad after fad - already going at absurd speed, with genres lasting a year or two at most - break down completely?