Posted: January 5th, 2010 | Author: Alex | Filed under: politics, words | No Comments »
This post on the PR Watch discusses the accusation that Barack Obama avoided using the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ in his recent weekly address. The idea was apparently discussed in a debate on Chris Matthews’s Hardball (a US political talk show on MSNBC) on January 2nd. The notion that the word ‘terrorism’ is taboo for the Obama administration has also been floated elsewhere by conservative political commentators.
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Posted: August 4th, 2009 | Author: Alex | Filed under: politics, social policy | No Comments »
Clearly today is a bad day for the public understanding of simple numbers.
Could the author(s) of this article (headline: ‘I don’t: number of ‘gay weddings’ plummets’) please look up the term ‘backlog’.
Not that you need look far, since despite the headline the reason is given by Peter Tatchell halfway through the article.
‘After civil partnerships were legislated there was a huge surge of couples who had been together for decades who suddenly wished to take advantage of the legal recognition.’
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Posted: June 21st, 2009 | Author: Alex | Filed under: government, politics, social media | No Comments »
Since before social media was a term anyone knew, we’ve been used to the idea that ‘content is king‘ on the web. Any blog post (and now any Twitter post that stands a chance of being re-tweeted) should contain some new information, analysis or synthesis to avoid being lost in all the noise. This was true back when many individuals and organisations thought it was fine to build flashy websites with nothing useful on, and it’s still true now that the web is littered with dead blogs with nothing to say.
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Posted: November 5th, 2008 | Author: Alex | Filed under: politics | No Comments »
There’s been no shortage of analysis of Barack Obama’s victory speech in blogs, broadcasts and newspapers today. As far as I can see, though, this aspect of the speech hasn’t received much attention.
Speaking of the very immediate challenges facing America - `two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century’ - Obama said this:
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.
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