broadstuff

In the course of tweeting the events around the trial, conviction and sentencing of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, I wrote: "I do wish everyone would stop saying 'the black community' though." I expanded in a followup: "Clarifying my 'black community' tweet: I hate the generally lazy thinking behind the use of the term. Same for 'black community leaders'. This led to a reply from my local MP Diane Abbott, in which she said: "I understand the cultural point you are making. But you are playing into a "divide and rule" agenda."

We went back and forth for a few tweets more and then Abbott sent out the tweet that caused the furore: "White people love playing 'divide & rule' We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism." Nothing much happened, until late night, when I began to get a flurry of replies from non-followers. On Thursday morning, MP Louise Mensch retweeted it with her addendum: "you what? <~~~ #racism". Abbott has since apologised and Thursday afternoon deleted the tweet. The remainder of our conversation is still on Twitter.

@bimadew I understand the cultural point you are making. But you are playing into a "divide and rule" agenda.

@bimadew Ethnic communities that show more public solidarity & unity than black people do much better #dontwashdirtylineninpublic

@StephanieBusari @bimadew I am not talking cultural differences. I am talking political tactics. #dontwashdirtylineninpublic

White people love playing 'divide & rule' We should not play their game #tacticasoldascolonialism (This was the one that was accused of being racist and was deleted)

Tweet taken out of context. Refers to nature of 19th century European colonialism. Bit much to get into 140 characters.

Let's call this what it is. It's pretending. It's not genuinely being offended. It's artifice, completely made up in order to get a bit of publicity for people's vexatiously contrarian columns and to get their godawful faces on television. If you're genuinely wounded by Diane Abbott's comments, I pity you. You're beyond saving. It's a wonder we white people manage to stay in control of everything in the world ever if we're so bloody sensitive -- we should be sitting in a cupboard crying all day about what the nasty lady said about us. But it's not genuine hurt; it's the sensing of a mistake by a political rival, and the careful depiction of a representation of what these woeful human beings think being offended actually is, in order to capitalise on that.

"Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters."

Firstly, Twitter is a very bad tool to have any nuanced discussion on.

Secondly, Your opponents will gleefully seize on any phrase and edit it to suit their purposes of attacking you (that's par for the curse), but it is so much easier not to see (deliberately or no) the nuances of an argument of a few twts, compared to something with more words in it - even an interview transcript on TV would have more opportunity for Ms Abbott to argue she was misunderstood.

Thirdly, a slip (freudian or otherwise) can undo weeks, if not months of careful PR image building and lead to a story out of nothing like #blackbusters

Fourthly, once out the story metamorphoses into a metastory - no one is taking about what Ms Abbott or Mr Milliband actually said now, its all about being racist or foolish, so no amount of Spin Doctoring can put these back in their boxes, they will just have to wait out the storm

- I now own a tablet and a smartphone, so the dedicated mobile site is irrelevant for me. I am far from alone.

- Mobile sites by and large have lower functionality and a crapper user experience

- There seems to be an increasing number of sites recently wanting to point me to their mobile site (and i know from previous experience once you are there you are stuck - there is usually no way back)

The problem is that the funding world is set up to reward behaviors of 22-year-old guys. Living on very little salary, working very long hours, making your whole life your company, traveling at the drop of a hat — these are things people do when they do not have families. It’s a life that guys who are not even in a startup choose because it’s fun for guys. Women don’t choose that kind of life.

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The thing is, women in their late 20s are the happiest they will be in their whole life. They are very happy. So I don’t think they are walking around wishing they could do a startup. I don’t think they care.

1. Pay more money at the beginning. Women want a good house, good clothes and a cushion for emergencies. This is not sexist, this is basic research, and yes there are exceptions, but we have to talk in generalizations if we are going to talk about women as a group. Women shop more than men; women get more pleasure from buying stuff than men do. Whatever. Who cares? Women earn more than men do, so it’s a moot point. Except in the VC world, where the entrepreneur has to “bootstrap.” Women don’t like that. So VCs would have to give up on the bootstrapping mentality if they want women to do startups.

2. VCs would need to give up on speed. They would need to decide that their rate of return on investment can be slower, and they would need to learn how to invest in companies that could go a little slower. Such companies would want to take short breaks during summer vacation, for example, when the kids are home. VCs would have to be more patient, with a family-friendly policy toward growth and exits.

3. VCs would need to raise their own funds differently. You say, “Slow and easy? Then it’s not a startup!” And that might be true. But if we are really missing so many opportunities because women’s ideas are not getting through to market, then the market is probably so desperate for these ideas that VCs can afford to let them develop more slowly. And if someone would get to the market faster, well, then we are not really missing out on having women’s ideas in the status quo, are we?

And in the meantime, let’s stop pretending that the stuff of startups is the stuff that most women want for their lives. Women should use a more current blueprint for their lives—one that takes into account what is important to women rather than what is important to men.

- VC's have not so far felt the need to worry about female VC's, what will tip them over?

- Is the 22 year old male entrepreneur the only fundable model?

To predict red light behavior, MIT’s car geeks looked into all sorts of variables. Where you or I might think, “tricked out ride … tinted windows … young driver … we’re in New Jersey … yep, he’s going through the light,” MIT tracked more concrete data and found it could confidently separate potential violators from compliant cars by tracking vehicle deceleration (or lack thereof) and distance from the traffic signal. For all this to work, says MIT professor Jonathan How, the algorithms need a new generation of smart cars with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, or short range transponders that constantly report location, speed, direction, rate of acceleration, and brake status.

It’s unclear how many lives would be saved each year if the red-light running algorithm makes its way into a future generation of cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The most would be 700; last year there 32,788 US traffic fatalities. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are 2.3 million car crashes at intersections each year, with 7,000 deaths; 700-plus fatalities are the result of running red lights. But no predictive model is 100% accurate, drivers won’t always listen to good advice, and half the deaths are probably also logged as drunken driving or no-seat-belt fatalities as well. (Fatalities, like success, have many fathers.) Cut DUI fatalities with tougher enforcement and you’ll take a big bite out of red light fatalities; the MIT algorithm ought to cut the toll still further.

Dentist Stacy Makhnevich requires patients to sign a form handing her copyright to any online reviews. Should the reviews not glow in the dark, she allegedly has them removed for breach of copyright. This seems entrepreneurially nifty, if legally shifty.

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Organizations, though, can be formed on both sides of an argument. Indeed, a body called Public Citizen has taken out a class action suit against Makhnevich.

The suit claims that not only did the dentist make use of the legally questionable Medical Justice forms, but that she charged an unhappy patient $100 a day because he wrote negative reviews (about her billing practices, not her dentistry) and refused to take them down.

It seems that the two sites where negative reviews were posted--Yelp and DoctorBase--also refused to have the reviews removed

Now, in 2011, the scene and perhaps the economics, are starting to change. The tech scene itself is bigger, there is more potential money around. There’s just more heat. I daresay a few people are eyeing up the market.

But even in standalone media terms it’s not a ‘straight’ play. Most of the European tech blogs are either run by people who also consult on the side, or, as in the case of TheNextWeb, are attached, like a Pilot Fish to a their host shark, to a large annual conference. However, recently, a couple of things have changed.

Other big guns have parked their tanks on the European lawn. GigaOm now has a European writer, Bobbie Johnson (based in Brighton), so does WSJ Europe (Ben Rooney, in London), VentureBeat has Ciara Byrne in Amsterdam and The Next Web (especially with Martin Bryant in Manchester) has done a pretty good job internationalising in English (although good luck trying to monetize that Dutch language blog guys). Wired UK‘s magazine’s site has become an important adjunct to the print title. Some might say it’s already the ‘Vanity Fair’ of tech. So, leaving aside the economics of online publishing, in editorial terms alone, pan-European coverage of tech and startups has never been better.