Do You Know What Tomatoes Taste Like?

Apparently few of us do. 

Scientists have figured out why tomatoes have such little flavour. 

According to This New York Times article by Gina Kolata, about 70 years ago, tomato breeders stumbled upon tomatoes that were totally red, and then seeing a profit potential, bred tomatoes from that gene line. 

Unfortunately, the gene mutation that made tomatoes as red as can be also switched off many of the flavour genes. That's why store bought tomatoes often taste like flour. 

Great. Looks like we'll all be growing heirlooms soon.

Oh, The Meritocracy of it all!

Compellingly written and well referenced article called Why Elites Fail by Christopher Hayes in The Nation. It's about meritocracy and how when it's twisted, breeds institutionalised elitism as well as shutting out real creativity and dissent.

I think a meritorious system isn't so bad, if you work hard you do well, regardless of your background. If you don't, you fail - also regardless of your background. That's all provided we get equal opportunity.

Which these days, we actually don't.

Hayes argues that this system often becomes usurped by those in positions of financial influence and power. 

That when we unquestionably follow people who seem to be at the top because they're smart/successful/well-payed and we want to ingratiate ourselves with them, it all starts to unravel and we get.. well... the system we have today. Yay!

What he seems to be saying is that true meritocratic systems will always move towards this sort of tragedy - I kind of wish he provided an alternative, or at least a glimmer into how we can avoid it. Maybe that's the next instalment.

Why haven't damaging feminine hygiene products been banned by now?

We've managed to get rid of some additives that were once in our foods, after realising they were bad for us -- I'm constantly amazed that certain products meant to make the vagina (there, I said it Michigan) more culturally acceptable have't been banned in the 21st Century.

Any doctor will tell you douching is bad, bad, BAD for you - and yet the products are still on the mainstream chemist shelves...

Well, this was a good opinion piece in the Guardian by Naomi McAuliffe who is downright annoyed at the new Femfresh advertising campaign which not only lauds dangerous feminine hygiene products, but refuses to use the word they're actually for!

For more about the Femfresh social media backlash, see The Huffington Post article.

And girls, if you're worried about it smelling 'down there' go see a doctor! Not a multinational company!

Should Twitterati Top 100 List be 50% Women?

This is a list that Foreign Policy compiled of the top 100 Twitter Feeds - the so called Twitterati.

On counting about 15 - from what I could gather in recognising names - are female.

Shouldn't there be more than that? Are there really only 15 influential women we want to hear from and the rest are men? Or is it that it's a representation of how little of the world's establishment women have a share of?

Woman with Mastectomy Wins Right to Swim Topless

Wow, this was awesome and amazing to read about. At the risk of posting yet another piece on breasts (should I just rename the blog?) This is an amazing story about a woman, Jodi Jaecks, who had a double mastectomy after cancer and couldn't wear a full length/top of a swimsuit because of pain, but swimming was part of her recovery.

She was banned  from swimming in Seattle, US, because of so-called indecency - but in the end won the right to swim bare-topped.

Really confronting picture and makes you rethink what the notion of gender and decency is and how it's defined in our culture..

At last, someone who justifies my negative outlook on life

Friends have always told me I'm a little too negative and I should think about the positive possibilies a lot more.. but here finally is a book which justifies my penchant for analysing and preparing for the worst.

The Guardian has published an edited extract of 'The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking' by Oliver Burkeman.

Hoorah! At last I am vindicated!


Psychologists always say those who are more positive have less of a grasp on reality. 


Now, I'm just off to analyse all the worst case scenarios and assume they're likely to happen..

Remember Toy Story? Here's how it happened...

The plot lines and character development of Toy Story and other Pixar films are always pretty tight - no matter what you think of the films themselves.

So it was with avid interest I read a blog which listed the Pixar rules of story telling - for those budding writers out there it's fascinating and a really good insight into how much work goes into crafting a story with multifaceted characters.

Australian Lawyer Libya Arrest: What's the full story?

I came across this story on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website - it's about an Australian UN lawyer and diplomat Melinda Taylor who has been arrested in Libya after interviewing Saif Gaddafi. She went in with international criminal court workers and she's now been detained in Libya.

I wonder though, what the full story could be? It seems extraordinary that the new Libyan government has detained someone working with the International Criminal Court and even more odd that there is no information about the circumstances, how long she will be held and no clear understanding of why the new government, which is meant to be working with the international community, would detain her.

It's really worrying - hopefully we'll know more soon.

Chinese Secretly Copy Austrian Town

Wow! Can we do that here?

Apparently the Chinese loved the town so much - they wanted to live in it! So they recreated the village of Hallstatt according to this news24 piece.

Man vs Woman vs Technology

I came across this piece which argues against the traditional belief that young men set the buying trend on new technology.

The Atlantic article suggests it's women who are the demographic tech companies should be focussed on as they are the ones who take up new technology faster than men.

It's an interesting article, but more enlightening (or depressing - depending on your perspective) are the comments that spew forth below the online piece. 

I was fascinated with how gendered the responses were and how upset some seemed to be by the article, viciously arguing against the idea that women might actually be making the decisions on new technology. 

Who knew men took the crown of technology take-up so seriously.

I'm just going to skip off now and help with the beta testing of my graphics card update while playing the latest video game and using the voice recognition on my iphone 4. Enjoy!

Jubilee Critique

I don't know how you spent the jubilee celebrations, but I mostly hid inside from the unpleasant yet characteristically British weather. I tuned in a little to the BBC's not-so-shining commentary of the river pageant but that's about it. Maybe with some sunshine I would have been more enthusiastic and visited the jubilee stalls at a nearby village which promised cakes and other goodies.

I did however indulge and absorb myself in some of the coverage and was surprised to find very little that was critical of the celebrations and the cost involved at a time when some of my hard working neighbours are struggling to find a job or pay the mortgage.

So it was with interest that I read this criticism here in the Guardian by Tanya Gold who is very unimpressed with the unquestioning celebrations that we've seen over the last week.

Her opinion piece titled "The Queen's jubilee was a celebration of pure fantasy", argues the monarchy is doing us no favours in these gut-wrenching economic times.

Get Organised! Loose Paper is the Journalist's Frenemy

It's everywhere. Paper, files, notes, notebooks, folders, mini discs, tapes, mp3's on the desktop, memory stick filled with random pieces, piles of articles, contacts on business cards, post-it notes stuck on your desk and contacts on bits of torn paper which you swore you would put into your contact book that hasn't been updated for far too long (suck in breath!). And the EMAILS. Oh my god, the emails!!

I know, I know, if you NEED to find something you probably could. But I also know that mass of stuff which you accumulate by virtue of doing your job irks you at best. At worst, it makes you feel like you're failing in one crucial aspect of your role as a journalist: to keep the information organised.

This has been me many times throughout my 13 year career and it's been a hard road and a hard lesson to learn: that keeping on top of the mass of information I acquire on a daily basis is crucial in helping me do my job very efficiently, quickly and above all, making me feel confident that I CAN do it well.

So, I thought I would share these hard-won rules with you. Even if you're not a journalist, anyone who amasses paper and information might find this useful. It's a long post, so feel free to scan to the subheading that interests you. Good Luck!

Basic Tenants:

1) Firstly, stop thinking that in order to be hyper-organised you need to make a decision about every piece of information you have and whether you should keep it, store it, record it or chuck it. It's not about that.

2) What it is about is making sure you can group the information you acquire into one spot. Order it and you order your mind.

3) When in doubt about what subject or topic to file something under - DON'T just file it under a subject that's similar or close enough - you'll never see it again. Find you have something that doesn't go in any of the folders that you have? Start a New Folder. In doubt about whether something fits under an existing folder topic or subject heading? START A NEW FOLDER. Even if there's only one thing in it. If you do this, it means when you come back to it and haven't looked at it in ages, it's easier to make the decision to throw it out simply because you've done the work of catagorising it. If you're at all not sure whether to keep something, throw it in your folder system under a relevant heading and at least it won't be in the way.

4) Labelling is key to this approach. Make the subject headings work for you - you're the one that needs to find this stuff. Make it instinctive and make it make sense to you - not anyone else, not what you think it 'should' be, and certainly nothing that needs to make sense to a stranger. Having said that most labelling is pretty self-explanatory (Eg: Medical Files, Tax Papers, Payslips, Articles, Business, Environment, Obama etc etc)

Loose Paper:
You may have a pile of articles you want to keep - you're worried you might need them again and can't bring yourself to throw them out. Fair enough.

Get an accordion folder. Group the articles under subject headings (whatever works for you, it could be different depending on what field you're in) Write the subjects and stuff each article under each section. Job done. Whatever you do, don't stuff them in a Manilla folder under the heading 'articles to keep'. Trust me, it doesn't work and you'll never look at them again.

Contacts:
So you have a bunch of contacts scrawled on bits of paper, post-it notes or on computer files and in emails. You always planned to enter everything into your contact address book or outlook program, but you haven't quite got there. Meanwhile the business cards have piled up and it's a little out of control.

Forget about centralising all your contacts for now. That's a big job. Get an Address book - old school style. Paste all the contacts written down on bits of papers and on post-it notes under the corresponding alphabetical letter. Bingo, one address book is done. Business Cards? Do the same, either in the same address book or  a new one for business cards only. You can get diaries that are just sleeves for business cards. Just make sure you pop them in alphabetical order, or some sort of subject system so that you can find what you're looking for later on.

Email contacts -- just start a new folder called 'contacts' and drop all the emails you had intended to transfer into contacts in that. Don't worry about filling out your Outlook address book. The thing about electronic storage is that it's searchable, so you don't have to put anything in alphabetical order especially when you're short of time - and let's face it, we always are.

The key here though, is to decide what your contact system will be here on in and stick to it. But keep it simple. As soon as you get that email contact, throw it in a folder. Make multiple folders if you want under subjects or letters. As soon as you get that business card - scan it in and email it to yourself - OR - decide you're going to keep a business card contact book. The ideal is to be disciplined enough to put it all in the one place from now on (such as a phone contact book), but keeping it under control is great as well.

Notebooks:
This is a toughie. Notebooks you see, often contain all of the above, which can make them daunting. Never fear though, it's also the reason they're an organisational asset.

The key with a notebook is when you start one - keep using it until it's full. Keep it in your work bag so you're never using a different one. Label the notebook with the year and month and role, and then when it's full, put the end month on it and file it away in a box. So for example, Anna Doe, ABC News, July 2011-->? And when you're done, scrawl the month and year (August 2011).

Make sure you file the notebook away in a box or pocket folder that has other notebooks from the same job and time frame. Don't just throw it in with notebooks from previous eras or for personal use.

As journalists we really should be keeping our notebooks, they're records of conversations, phone calls made etc.. If there are articles trapped in the back that you used at the time - fine. It's relevant to the content in the notebook so just keep it there, rather than filing it away in your articles folder. That way your notebook is a complete record of the story you were working on.

But the contacts: that is a different challenge. Do really make an effort to note down your contacts into your electronic system or book at the end of the day -- don't leave it any later - it'll pile up and you won't do it, or it'll take even longer trying to remember who the hell the person was. Even better to add it to your electronic system throughout the day.

But what about all those contacts scrawled in old notebooks that you've not transferred over. That's a tough one - you have three choices:

1. Cut them out and paste them in your scrap/business card contact book described above.
2. Hold your breath and enter them all electronically (props to you if you can do this)
3. This isn't a solution but - let it go. Chances are you won't remember what half those numbers are anyway. Just make sure you have a year or month label on your notebook or at least what role you were doing so that if you really need to search for an old contact, you know where to look. Then make sure from now on you keep your contacts together in one system - whatever that system is. You might even decide to list all your contacts at the back of your notebook and when the notebook is done, tear out the pages and pop it in a folder.

Computer Files:
Same principle again. New folder. Collection of MP3's from online news sites? Pull into a new folder. Interviews you've done? New Folder. Word documents you've started? New Folder. At it's simplest, just have very basic folders. Put all your word documents in one, all your MP3's that are your work in another. Leave it at that. When you are ready, you will start to isolate them even further and separate out articles you're keeping from your own writing. If not, at least you know where to look when you have to find something.

Again, the key is once you've moved everything into a couple of folders, start the system you WISH you had and stick to it. When you're ready, you will find you'll slowly start to sort the old stuff into the new system.

Flash Drive:
I tend to only keep material on flash drives that I either want a second copy of for backup purposes, or I want to carry around with me (my CV for example).

I would move all the material on the flash drives onto your computer desktop and just throw all the files into the loose folder system described above. Keep anything you want a second copy of/to carry around.

Don't use flash drives as a backup for all your material. There's not enough space so inevitably you will only have bits and pieces on the flash drive. Once you do have the material copied onto your computer, create a proper computer backup or copy all your files across to an external hard drive so you have a proper backing up system.

Emails:
Ahhh yes, the modern scourge and a journalists nightmare. Cure it with the ultra folder treatment.

The trick with emails is to think of it as paper. What did you do with those articles? You threw them in a folder. What did you do with those training papers, job prep notes, story notes and all those things you weren't sure how to catagorise? You created a new folder for any minor subject - no folder was too good for a sub-topic.

It's the same principle with email. Emails on one story? Create a folder for it and drag them all into that. Or if you prefer, emails all from the one country, or from the one department at work, or on the one subject  - start a new folder and pop them in. If you're not afraid of starting a new folder for any new sub-topic, you'll find your inbox will stay empty except for things you need to action.

If you find later on that you've started a new folder you didn't need, that you're having trouble finding emails because they're not in a folder with an instinctive label, or that you do want to group things together that you hadn't done before, no problem  - you can make the change later.

*Just remember when you label your folders in any of the above scenarios, you need to make the titles work for your brain - not what you think it should mean to a stranger, label it something that works for you.*

At the end of each day or if you have time - as you go through your day - drag emails that are dealt with from your inbox into your sub-folders. If there's a chain of communication - put the last one in a folder because you can see all the communication before hand - and delete anything else. Yup. Delete it. Only keep in your inbox things you still need to action/do something about. NEVER file these away - or you'll never do it! Out of sight is really out off mind when it comes to the Inbox!

But what if I have 1000 emails in my inbox - do I really need to go through and sort it?

No. Don't waste your time. Just drag everything into a folder and call it 'old email' or 2010-2012 and then start your folder system from the last, say, two days of emails, or from that day on. As you get a new email, think about your subject heading, make the folder and drag it in.

*Remember emails are SEARCHABLE. If you're looking for something, you can search the relevant folder, or your old emails folder. If you find you're referring back to a certain old email - pull it out of your old items folder and file it properly.

Ongoing research
If you're working on a project, use the above methods but have a separate ecosystem - like an accordion folder that everything for that project will go in. Articles get filed in a separate folder under that project heading and sub-headings as do all the notebooks - or if you're using your main notebook - tear the relevant pages out and file them away.


Except your contacts. Never separate your contacts if you can help it. Keep that all in the one system as it will mean that anytime, any place, if you want to find that person you spoke to two years ago, you can without digging up your old project folder.

Miscellaneous:
Anything else that comes up along the way - job interview preparation, training etc, follow the same principle, when it's a new topic or when you're in doubt Start A New Folder. Don't be shy or try to save folders, that's when you get into the trap of grouping things to the point that you're just throwing it in with everything and you'll have a hard time finding it.

---

Finally, remember if you've not defined your system early on, that's ok. Getting organised is a process and so long as you start doing these basic things, it will make it easier to head towards having all your contacts in your PDA or iphone, or whatever your dream organisational goal is!

Could Sourcing be the Answer to Britain's Journalism Woes?

As News International's ex-executives and editors are arrested and charged left, right and centre, the Leveson Inquiry continues to drill into why Britian's journalism culture has led it to a plethora of phone hacking and police corruption all in the interests of a front page.


Apart from those in power being in the pockets of journalists, police and vice-versa -- could anonymous sourcing be, well,the source of the issue?

This bit by Charlie Brooker's Newswipe explains it all.

If British Journalists had to TELL people where they got information from unless it was absolutely imperative they hide their source (Watergate style)...Then could we see the end of naughty journos and their even naughtier police officer and politician buddies?

Watch the video and see for yourself, but methinks Leveson needs a new inquiry with sourcing at its core...

Addendum: This has really got me thinking about journalism in Australia and I think we suffer from something similar.. the number of times I had to pick apart a story in the newspapers while I was working at the ABC, only to find that apart from not being clear on who the original source was, the details were wrong, or misrepresented and blown out of proportion. It always left me wondering whose bidding we were all doing...

Is Community Radio in Australia Flatlining?

Community Radio has always a been a healthy if not thriving sector in Australia - a rather rare occurrence since most wealthy western countries haven't managed to support a third tier of broadcasting.

So it was with much sadness that I read plans for 2SER in Sydney to abolish its talks coordinator  - with questions over how news and current affairs on the station can be maintained without a producer.

If you have had any experience as a journalist in Sydney you'll know that since the station began in 1979, it's trained many investigative journalists and many have gone on to do very well, often ending up as ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) correspondents.

That training doesn't happen by osmosis - having a dedicated talks coordinator who can teach concrete skills is vital - otherwise it's very hard to hone your abilities. Journalism and broadcasting rarely comes naturally - it's a learnt skill.

Broadcast journalism can be a closed shop to many budding reporters - quite often jobs don't happen unless you know someone. That's especially true in Sydney. 2ser offers the space for anyone from any background, with many connections or none, to learn to be a skilled journalist and use that to break ground into the mainstream. If 2ser stops investing in journalism I'm not sure who will be left to train the young-ins!

2ser has been in financial strife for some time and with FBI - another community radio station - starting up in the last decade it has lost listeners. The two universities who fund the station often look great in reports that identify the stations as excellent social capital assets - but sadly the kudos Macquarie University and UTS get (the two universities that co-own the broadcast licence), doesn't translate into increased funding.

You might say one station can't keep training the journalists of Sydney when no one pays it to do that. Fair enough. But each of the above universities have thriving communications and media courses and its students often find their way to the radio station to gain the practical training that just can not be taught in one course with 3 hours a week of face time.

With 12 staff positions it does seem strange to choose to abolish the one position that allowed 2ser to differentiate itself from the other stations it competes with. The station is keeping its music producer, so the decision is leading many to believe that talks on 2ser will eventually suffer from a huge loss in quality and therefore will lead to a reason to scrap them altogether - maybe just keeping a short breakfast or drive program if that.

With no one to steer the ship it can get very scary out there.

Here's hoping 2ser sees the light - and if not - the ABC and other broadcasters are going to have to quadruple their cadetship programs because young journos won't be getting their training in Sydney community radio no more.

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