Mum, there's crap in my food...

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I avoid processed foods wherever possible and I’m a mildly obsessive packaging reader. I'm a bit of a foodie, have relatively good 'food knowledge' and am very aware of additives and ingredients used in food processing. I won’t buy foods that contain gunk like high fructose corn syrup, palm oil and modified starch and I’ll avoid dextrose, artificial sweeteners and the like. In fact, I'll buy raw ingredients wherever possible. And I have always had a mild aversion to American food products because of the increasing prevalence of GMOs and hormones in the US food supply.

So I was mildly surprised to find out a whole load of scary stuff about food that I didn't know.

For instance, I didn’t know that industrialised food production in the US has reached the level where there are now just thirteen abattoirs in the entire USA. Yes, thirteen. You can only begin to imagine the scale of them. Or that practices such as feeding cheap corn to cattle lie behind the massive growth in E. Coli infection (73,000 Americans get sick every year from E. Coli) throughout the American food chain – all the way down to greens such as spinach.

A good European boy, I’m strongly opposed to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in my food, but I didn’t know that over 80% of all soybean production in the USA is now derived from genetically modified seeds from Monsanto – one genetic modification being to make the seed resistant to a herbicide used on soybean plants that is sold by, wait for it, Monsanto.

And I didn’t know that 1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will suffer from early onset diabetes – attributed to the amazing prevalence of highly processed sugars in the national diet.

These facts come to you courtesy of Robert Kenner’s thought provoking documentary Food, Inc. I watched it on the flight back from the UK and I would recommend it as required viewing for anyone considering buying any American food product. The film is all the more scary for its reasonable and balanced tone and for the cheap shots it doesn’t take.

It’s possible that at least part of the film’s reasonable tone is down to the fact that you can be held liable in at least two US states (Texas and Colorado) for making false or disparaging remarks about food.

Food defamation. Seriously.

In fact, this very law is referred to in the film when one of its interviewees, food safety advocate Barbara Kowalyck, gets cautious about commenting – the Oprah beefburger lawsuit is trotted out to show how a single comment about beef on TV turned into a multi-million dollar suit. The Oprah suit is, however, just one of many that have been lodged by representatives of US agro-industry against food producers, campaigners and others in a concerted effort to ensure that people learn as little as possible about the way that food has been industrialised in America.

By the way, here are some common processed food additives that are made out of good old cheap American corn, over 60% of which is apparently grown from genetically modified seeds today:
Cellulose, Xylitol, Maltodextrin, Ethylene, Gluten, Fibersol-2, Citrus Cloud Emulsion, Inosital, Fructose, Calcium Stearate, Saccharin, Sucrose, Sorbital, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Di-glycerides, Semolina, Sorbic Acid, Alpha Tocopherol, Ethyl Lactate, Polydextrose, Xantham Gum, White Vinegar, Ethel Acetate, Fumaric Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Baking Powder, Zein, Vanilla Extract, Margarine, and Starch.

Yum yum!

BTW, as we're talking about rubbish in your food, here's what they put in Pringles, here's what they put in Aquafina water and here's some stuff that'll put you off eating foods with palm oil in them.

Wonderful Life

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Flying into Lalaland, it’s always nice to have the last few minutes of the film you’re watching chopped off by the playing of the compulsory Dubai promotional video. The old promo, which used to show scenes of people enjoying themselves in Dubai’s iconic resorts to the soundtrack of some bird breathlessly delivering adjectives like ‘delicious, delightful, exciting’ in a series of sexlessly orgasmic gasps has now been replaced by the same sort of footage but played over a backdrop of 1980s band Black’s, ‘Wonderful Life’. The adjectives are now displayed as subtitles, which at least dispenses with any danger of DTCM being accused of attempted subtlety.

I have to confess to finding this film mildly irritating. It’s not the content or even the fact that you are quite literally strapped to a chair and forced to watch it that gets my goat. It’s that someone over at DTCM thinks it’s clever to play a promotion for Dubai to a planeload of people that are already committed, in a most fundamental way, to going there.

It never fails to have me thinking about the wasted opportunity to actually communicate with people that this slice of barminess represents – the chance, for instance, to tell them a little more about Dubai and what they could actually do in their time here, perhaps even to communicate something of the moral and social environment they’re about to enter. You could even inform people and help them get more out of their Dubai experience - for instance on how to get around, some of the major sights to be seen, what’s going on in the city right now. They could be produced as a series of short films featuring a presenter, perhaps even as a monthly magazine programme which would, incidentally, avoid the irritation experienced by frequent flyers who have to watch the same thing again and again and again. It could even be made – you might want to sit down for this bit – watchable.

But alas, no. Strapped into your chair, personal electronic devices switched off for final approach, you have no choice but to watch Tiger Woods (who is still, apparently, A Good Thing in Dubai) and friends loving the 'wonderful life’.

Oh, by the way, here is an extract from the lyrics of Black’s happy little ditty, a song of guilty loneliness. It is, perhaps, an appropriate soundtrack...

Here I go out to sea again
The sunshine fills my hair
And dreams hang in the air
Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes
You know it feels unfair
There's magic everywhere

Look at me standing
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine
No need to run and hide
It's a wonderful wonderful life
No need to laugh and cry
It's a wonderful wonderful life

The sun's in your eyes
The heat is in your hair
They seem to hate you because you're there
And I need a friend
Oh I need a friend to make me happy
Not stand here on my own

I need a friend
Oh I need a friend
To make me happy
Not so alone

Another BTW, BTW: the original video of Black's 1980s songette, shot in black and white, is here. I do find the first frame fascinating... And yes, thank you, it is good to be back.

Radar, radar everywhere

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It's interesting to see the backlash against fixed radar on British roads. The most recent news, albeit broken in the fascist's friend, The Daily Mail, is that Wiltshire town Swindon has scrapped fixed radars. Getting flashed on a British road means a £50 fine (about Dhs300, which is a snip compared to the rather more lavish fines doled out in the Emirates, which start at double that and rise depending on how much faster you're travelling.

Swindon's town council reacted to the news last October that the lucrative fines revenue would go direct to central government in Whitehall by withdrawing the lot of them, thereby underpinning the popular view that fixed radars were more about revenue than road safety.

Since the move, Swindon's roads have actually become safer - quarterly statistics show no fatalities since the radars were removed (the quarter before, with radars, there was a single fatality). Over the same periods speeding fines went down from 2,227 to 1,033 - hardly a surprise - the 1,033 fines came from mobile camera deployments.

This news adds to the increasing chorus from those in the UK who believe that fixed cameras have no effect whatsoever on road safety - an argument that could well apply to the streets of Dubai, where higher fines and stricter enforcement have undoubtedly had an effect on road mortality rates. The question as to whether having the highest penetration of fixed traffic cameras in the world today is about revenue or safety is one that does tend to nag me.

The Mail also carries the story of an unknown radar bomber who has taken the motorist's ultimate revenge, which I quite enjoyed. It's here.

BlockBerries

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So Etisalat and Du have put their heads together and decided to block the evil BlackBerries. From this day on, no longer will the UAE's population be able to access gambling, pornography,drugs and *gasp* Voice over IP sites.

It's interesting that the telcos rank VOIP alongside gambling and porn - an insight into telco morality, if you like. What are the worst things the UAE's telcos can think of - the most mind-corrupting, society-challenging, youth-destabilising things possible? And Skype is right up there with the worst things that the Lord of Mordor could possibly imagine.

You do have to wonder, don't you? The telcos, according to the report carried in The Paper That Tells It Like It Is, Gulf News, are acting unilaterally and not waiting for 'Nanny' regulator the TRA. Damn right they are - because while three of the four categories are culturally arguable, the fourth, VOIP, is a purely commercial decision that is contrary to the interests of the people that these telcos are supposed to be serving.

At least they're not forcing people to accept spyware...

Language

Image by jovike via Flickr

Language is a funny thing: when you're writing, sometimes you have to stop in mid-flow and cast about for the right tword, the mot juste. Sometimes your choice of word can be telling - and make the difference between how things appear. Sometimes a word can give away what you're really thinking and not what you'd like to project - what you'd like people to think you're thinking.

There are two words that are part of my everyday life that I believe are telling in this way. They're used by my bank, HSBC. No doubt selected thoughtlessly and dashed down in seconds as a tiny part of the greater job of building a sprawling empire of flawless customer service, they do rather give the game away.

When I use telephone banking, a service that I truly appreciate as it has meant I have had to make only infrequent visits to the branch and therefore have been largely able to avoid interacting with the drooling, slack-jawed incompetents that infest the place, I frequently make transfers between accounts. When this process is successful (which is quite frequently, as no member of the bank's staff has the chance to insert themselves between me and the computer), I get the message 'Your request has been processed.'

This is a screech to a stop moment for me every time. It's my money and you're providing a service to me in return for which I pay you. So it's not a request really, is it? It's an instruction. I am instructing you to do something, not begging a favour. I'm wearing the big boots, I'm the customer and it's a bloody instruction to you regarding the arrangement of my assets.

When I use an ATM to take money from my account (again a process that is frequently successful for precisely the same reason that telephone banking works - its totally automated and as long as you don't want to do anything in any way slightly unusual or intuitive, you're onto a winner) and the ATM confirms that I'm about to get my money, it tells me 'Your withdrawal has been accepted'.

Again, I apply the old locked brakes here. Accepted? Like an officious dame ticking a box to confirm that I don't have any threateningly anti-social tendencies and can, indeed, use the swimming pool, my bank is accepting my request to take some of money out of my account. And here was me thinking that my instruction was being processed.

I'm the punter, not a beggar in front of a mosque. Those two little weasel words are a constant reminder to me that HSBC's view of our relationship is somewhat different. To paraphrase the bank's intensely annoying UK advertising campaign:

Customer Beggar Beggar Customer

GeekFest and Beirut

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So the dust has settled on GeekFest 3.0. How was it? Well, at least today you get better than the last post-GeekFest report, which can be summarised as 'W00t'.

Attendance was down last night, which rather wrong-footed Saadia and I as we had catered for 150 people following last GeekFest's awful F&B shortages (We estimated 100 geeks and at least 200 pitched). Last night we allowed for 150 and we think something like 80 people actually pitched, the same as at GeekFest 1.0. So everyone got particularly well fed, and that included the stunning spicy prawns, which were stunning, spicy and prawny. In short, they did what it said on the box.

Woah! Attendance down? Is GeekFest dead?

Don't think so, really. Last night was a 'dry night', so many people stayed home or went to home party events. It was also a holiday night for many, the first public screening of Avatar, the last night of DIFF and the thirteenth Monday after the summer solstice. Add to that a number of people had already flown home or were over-busy with homegoing preparations and you get a growing number of Tweets yesterday that said 'Won't be doing #GeekFest tonight'.

What we did have was a smaller, more 'hardcore' audience that stayed around longer and chatted harder.

The GeekTalks were smashing - the Shabib boys were engaging, entertaining and intelligent, Omran Al Owais' ideas for mosque design in the C21st were amazing and deserve to be put into action - that someone is willing to bring change to religious practice that is yet true to the spirit and intention of observance was quite stunning. That Omran met with 'Not Like This' as a response from authority is no surprise, depressing though that be.

Jack Frizzell's talk about ZU's newsletter/web/social campaigns was great - it was an engaging look at how you create a grassroots community tool of real value, bring people together, drive participation and change the way stuff is done. Brilliantly, Jack also shared measurement of the success of the programme he's been running, which in itself drew a round of applause.

Dan Stuart's view of online education and translating formal learning activities into a way of structuring your personal online interests, interactions and engagements was another way of looking at stuff that I, for one, do 'organically' - but he tied together these things in a way I hadn't thought about. For that, alone, I found his talk worthwhile.

However, you can actually have too much GeekTalk. The problem is that The Shelter's theatre seats, max, 50 people and everyone wants into the talks because the atmosphere in there is electric - a casual, bum on the floor audience with great speakers who have something interesting to say and Q&A that is a real 'bounce-around' of ideas and attitudes.

Trouble was this time around that the audience knew that moving meant losing your place, so there was no movement of people between talks. Which meant that many people simply couldn't attend talks they'd really like to have seen.

What's the solution? Not sure. GeekFest Dubai will ALWAYS be held at The Shelter. Transferring the talks to the main room means breaking all those groups and conversations up - so I think, at least for now, we'll keep the talks in the cinema. What do you think? How do we let people sit in on the talk that they really, really want to attend when seats are like gold dust? Without bringing in regulation and thought police stuff?

Quietly, two brilliant graffiti artists were decorating the outside 'garden' area of The Shelter throughout last night's event. I loved that this GeekFest's art event was unheralded and, in the main, unnoticed. We think an art event should be part of every GeekFest now, even if you have to look really, really hard to find it. Again, would value your opinions.

Thanks are due to the TechnoCase peeps. The LG screens were sweet and the svelte LG surround-sound speakers played the evening's DiscoBallBreaker-provided soundtrack nicely. The AMD graphics stuff was stunning and had Geeks smashing cars or zooming into 3-screen panoramic views of the earth all through the evening, so that was nice. The TechnoCases are meant to engage conversation and AMD's gaming stuff certainly had the gamer boyz and gurlz drooling, slack-mouthed and generally paddle-fingered. Which is, as conversations go, slightly sad. But then you can never really talk with gamers...

The big news of the night is something that we didn't quite get around to sharing. Because we're shit at running community events, basically.

Yesterday we committed to running GeekFest in Beirut, Lebanon. The plan is to hold the first event at the end of January 2010 - Saadia and I will be working with the amazing (to steal a catchphrase) Alexandra Tohme, whom many will know from her work at Zawya Dow Jones, to pull the event together. We're very much in the back seat on this, Alex is driving it and owning it and is to blame for it in every way. In fact, Saadia and I are really just there to take the credit and will obviously disown Alex in a nanosecond if it isn't all just awesome. Alex is better known on Twitter as @alexzawya.

GeekFest Beirut will be the same as Dubai. UNorganised. And it will be bloody fantastic.

*(Ten demerits if you Googled '13th monday after summer solstice' because I made that up just for the hell of it)

UAE Sets Up Cyber Crimes Unit. Uh Oh.

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The UAE government is to set up a new department to combat cyber crimes such as financial scams, hacking, fraud, fake companies , extortion and pornography, according to today's sizzling Gulf News.

This is a good thing. The new department will be recognised by the Federal Courts and likely will be set up in Sharjah and, says GN, will be charged with drafting laws and regulations for the online world, as well as with the job of co-ordinating with law enforcement bodies. This is also, potentially, a good thing. The UAE's judiciary does not the benefit of a legal framework that recognises the online world and currently could fairly be said to rely heavily on court appointed experts when it comes to cases that have online aspects to them.

Quoted in a call-out box in GN's story that discusses 'e-police patrols', however, a major in the Abu Dhabi police says, "When there is a malicious rumour doing its rounds, or when there is a major security issue, the police can perform undercover operations online, just as in reality."

Now, when there is a 'malicious rumour' in print, its a matter for the National Media Council to regulate and is governed by media law - as far as I know, the police aren't patrolling Gulf News.

Can we consider a 'malicious rumour' online to be a different kettle of fish , then? There's certainly a grey area here - is online commentary to be regulated as media or public order?

Abuser Generated Content

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I have been following this story on Australian marketing uber-blog Mumbrella and watching it develop for some time. It has been a not unamusing saga based around a not unamusing car: the Toyota Yaris.

Basically, Toyota Australia ran a pitch for agencies to come forward with a smart social media campaign to promote the awful car. Each agency was given $15,000 to pitch with. The whole pitching exercise was something of a 'look how cool we are we get social media' exercise in itself and was much followed by a slightly aghast ad/media industry. The winners of the pitch, Saatchi and Saatchi, came up with the idea of running a 'clever video competition', donating $7,000 of its pitch money to the winning clever film, $3,000 to the second and $1,000 to the third place. Nice to see Saatchi billing $4,000 for a whole campaign, no?

And that would have been that - a typical story of client that doesn't really understand that the world is changing working together with an agency that still believes that social media is another type of megaphone to carry a one-way message - but for the film that won the competition. A competition, incidentally, that was not judged by the public (SOCIAL media, geddit?) but by a jury consisting of as yet unidentified jurors, according to Mumbrella.


The winner, 'Clean Getaways' turns out to be a clip of notably egregious sexism that even stands out in an Australian (here's ya birthday present, Sheila) environment. The gag 'she can take a good pounding' is just one high point in a film that sees a father discussing his daughter with her boyfriend in a slew of doobel orntondre references. User comment has been fast to tumble forth, including accusations that it is offensive and degrading to women and is 'vulgar objectification'. You can find an excellent writeup of the whole thing on Mumbrella, linked above. The video has now, sadly, been removed from YouTube. Because the thing to do when social media backfires is, of course, delete it all and pretend it didn't happen...

Toyota's reaction to this furore? The company's laughingly named 'manager of direct marketing and social media' told Mumbrella that he didn't see it was an issue as this was not an advertisement but was user generated content. So the users did it, see?

It is my humble opinion that the gatekeepers in the game prove that Saatchi and Toyota didn't 'get it', by the way. Jury bad, public opinion good. The trouble is that when you pick something 'social' in private, you then have to share your 'pick' in public. It would have been so much smarter to have user generated selection involved in this competition to find user generated content. But then it would have been smarter to look at social media as an ongoing investment in a process of change rather than as a tactic.

It is broadly accepted that Toyota has, as one commentator noted wittily, shot itself in the face.

GeekTalks

Last GeekFest saw the introduction of GeekTalks, 15 minute chats held in The Shelter's cool li'l private cinema from people with something sensible, interesting and certainly not commercial to say. We're hoping to carry on that tradition with four more GeekTalks taking place this GeekFest at The Shelter, Al Quoz on Thursday 17th December. People will start pitching at GeekFest from about 7pm onwards, the talks start at 8pm and space in the cinema is limited.

This time around, we're to be hearing about the future for mosques, University publishing and social networks, the new Brownbag.ae and personal learning environments.

The speakers aren't set by us - the idea is that each speaker nominates his or her successor. This means we're not 'gatekeepers' and also, we hope, introduces some interesting diversity.

Thanks to some user feedback from people who got cold bottoms last time, we're adding some beanbags for when the seating runs out.


Omran Al Owais
Prayer Mat: Prototype Zabeel Park Mosque

In this presentation, I will be highlighting on how we can evolve a mosque design and avoid the typical Jumeirah style dome and useless old dated ornamentation. I want to bring Dubai and UAE culture into creating a newer style that we can spread to the world and stop importing Marrakesh architecture. Also, in this design, it will be fused with a built in museum, which displays the history of the prayer mat.

Emirati architect and designer Omran Al Owais is the Creative Director/founder of CENTIMETERCUBE architects/publishing and is a passionate Mac advocate. He’s our nomination as a GeekTalker on Catalin Marin’s behalf.


Jack Frizzell
Creating an Online Newspaper and Social Network

Inside ZU is currently an online communication platform - WordPress Multiuser - which we are using to move from email notification to two-way communication. It encourages open communication and community. The next stages will move us into online collaboration, citizen journalism and content creation and publication through the use of BuddyPress and other free technologies. Inside ZU is currently only for all students, all faculty and all staff at Zayed University.

Zayed University, until recently, was a University exclusively for Emirati women. During the past 5 years, the University has opened its doors to male military personnel, and now male and female international students while expanding its post-graduate programs. The issues of a multi-site educational institution, religion, gender, age, technology adoption and educational background and the required social and technological support and strategy required to succeed are the focus of the talk.

Jack Frizzell hails from Zayed University where he edits Inside ZU and lurks in the Provost’s office. He is James Piecowye’s nomination as a GeekTalker.


Ahmed Shabib
Making a better brown bag

Brownbag.ae was launched as an online retail platform that let people browse and buy a wide range of commodities such as groceries, movies, food and drink, magazines and books. Next year, Brownbag will be relaunching with new partners and products and delivery of any product ordered from the site to anywhere in Dubai City within an hour – at any hour. Ahmed Shabib will be exploring challenges of online retailing in the Middle East as well as looking for feedback on the new platform.

Ahmed Shabib is CEO of Brownbag and one of the chaps behind The Shelter. He’s speaking because Tom Gara didn’t nominate a speaker so The Shelter did! :)


Dan Stuart
Creating a Personal Learning Environment

If you're a geek, then you're online, and if you're online then you’re most definitely doing some or all of networking, sharing, commenting, reading feeds, self-casting, clipping, commenting, absorbing...and suffering under the noise. Social Media and Web 2.0 are great social venues, but also amazing tools for personal learning. If you’re already active online, with a bit of thinking, arranging and customizing you can shape your online pipes into a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). PLE’s are not single apps, but a self-defined, self-moderated set of online tools – the ones you already know and love – with the control to select, combine and use the tools as you see fit to shape your own learning experiences. The goal is use this PLE to gather and process info, and act on your learning.

Blogger and serial online adventurer Dan Stuart works at Bayt.com. He’s Narain Jashanmal’s nomination as a GeekTalker.

If you want to know more about GeekFest, you'll find the info here or you can follow @geekfestdubai on Twittter.

I'm Dreaming of a White GeekFest!

Well, it's that time again. GeekFest 3.0 is around the corner and we're looking forward to another evening of sublime Geekery at The Shelter in Al Quoz. GeekFest 3.0 is to take place from around 7pm on the evening of the 17th December 2009 and you are more than welcome to join us there!

GeekFest is intended to be an offline social for online people and should be interesting for anyone who's involved in the online world and in using technology to create, educate, entertain, inform or just play around.

The event remains resolutely UNorganised and so nobody gets told what to do, where to go or anything like that. The speakers at the GeekTalks are responsible for starting and ending on time, the TechnoCase people have signed clauses that they won't hassle the geeks so there's no overtly commercial stuff going on, although there is always the invitation to have a chat. Various things have fallen together and we're hoping to have a couple of minor surprises on the night, but it's not like we've done anything clever.

Why bother coming at all? It's a good question, especially as it looks like GeekFest will fall in the middle of a holiday. I can only say that I have been amazed at how many interesting, engaging and smart people I have encountered at the last two GeekFests and can only expect this one to be the same. Oh, and the garden's open at The Shelter so it's a much nicer place to hang out for those of you with vile, disgusting personal habits. Smokers are welcome to use it, too.

GeekTalks
The speakers from the last GeekFest were asked to nominate their successors so that Saadia and I aren't 'gatekeepers'. Two of 'em didn't so we found our own. We have four GeekTalks scheduled to run from 8pm-9pm or so and these will take place, as they did last time, in the funky cinema roomy thing at the back of The Shelter. More details will be shared soon as we're being teases.

The GeekTalks were incredibly popular last time and it pretty quickly got to standing room outside the door poking your head between other people's shoulders only, so if I were you, I'd get a towel laid out on a seat in there early.

TechnoCases
This time around, the Technology Showcases will feature super chip chappies AMD (who will, I think, be playing with some funky video card stuff. If it's the one I saw at GITEX, it'll fill gamers' hearts with stuff) and also consumer electronics supremos LG.

Food and stuff
As usual, food and drink supplied by The Shelter's very own mOre Café will be available and in true Chris Anderson spirit, will be free because we've gouged the TechnoCase people.

Location
The Shelter is in Dubai's Al Qouz industrial area. Here's a map!

Registration
Are you kidding? Just turn up...

If you want to get updates and stuff, you can follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter and there's a GeekFest FaceBook group too, for no particularly good reason. You can also email either myself or Saadia Zahid at the addresses given on the GeekFest Twitter page if you've got any questions, want to hold a TechnoCase at the next GeekFest (looking like Feb 2010) or just want to blame us for something.