The bottom half of the internet

“
I work as a freelance feature photographer for the most prestigious, international newspaper and their website. Note: I’m not a reportage photographer, shooting spot news, etc.

All the same, I am strictly disallowed from submitting any pictures with any retouching whatsoever. Any means even straightening verticals, taking razor nicks off the necks of famous (or not) people. Nothing. And they mean it. Their editorial reputation is more important to them than ‘balancing the light in a dark alleyway.’

I don’t always find this easy, or even desirable, as a visual artist. I love P’shop and use it extensively. But I shoot old style for my good buddies, and in some ways, it’s a good discipline.

And finally: I agree with Nick Dunmur (who I’ll admit I know and like… but still) the retouching is poorly done. It detracts from the images, crushes the story.

As for Olivier Laurent (who I don’t know…but still): he plainly has no understanding of the nature of a news photograph versus one created for advertising. The BJP clearly has no standard, and OL lacks experience. Those who know nothing should say nothing.
”

—

Habitant, The Independent, The best photograph of the year – or a big fake?

10:01 am • 16 May 2013

“As I am nearing 40 with the BRCA gene, I have been trying to decide when not if. I have not had the courage to face the mastectomy concept, I am just trying to decide on the hysterectomy. Thank you so much for the article. Angelina Jolie is the world’s icon of a beautiful woman, so when she has the courage to do something like that and share it with the world, then, the simple press and exposure helps the rest of the BRCA carriers to be viewed as less “extreme” when we do face the decision to do life altering and possibly life changing surgeries.
When people hear about me doing something, they may be more like, “Oh yeah, I have heard about people doing that before” as opposed to, “That’s crazy talk.” I can’t say thank you enough.”

— Judy, New York Times, My Medical Choice

9:57 am • 15 May 2013

“My then 6-year old daughter and I met both these ladies on a train journey to Scotland. It is one of the defining moment of her childhood, she was so in awe of them and still cannot beleive that two women wrote and drew this character. I think she believed that Angelina was real, she could not have been made up by anyone. Their kind few words and attention towards her (she was motion sick), also taught her that truy gifted people also have good manners and dignity and are never haughty.
From my point of view I have always thought there is much more to Angelina than meets the eye. One can be overwhelmed by the cuteness of it all, but underneath, issues of self-esteem, jealousies, and the difficulties of friendships are dealt with. And I love that boys are not completely left out of the picture.”

— Rosaleen1968, How we made the children’s favourite Angelina Ballerina

3:02 pm • 14 May 2013

“
“I’m a banking law professor at a reputable law school in the UK (I’m also a New York attorney and have considerable expertise in the American banking sector) and I can simply say that “”most”” of the NY cases have found that there IS lying, but no fraud by the banks. Hence, there also cannot be any criminal actions based on fraud: Let me explain the situation pre-banking crisis:

A bank will create various products of security backed assets (generally prime / sub-prime CDOs - basically “”a whole load of mortgages”“). They will then: (i) request a credit referencing agency to give a rating to this set of CDOs; (ii) do their own research on the riskiness of these CDOs (iii) find a buyer whilst touting the rating given by the credit referencing agency (iv) issue a Credit Default Swap (CDS) basically a “”insurance policy”” to the buyer of the CDO.

Normally, the credit referencing agency will give a higher rating, a better rating, than the bank’s own research. The bank will be more cautious, and will issue the CDS based on their own research rather than the agencies.

Generally, the purchasing bank of the CDO would take the selling bank “”on its word”” on the transactional documentation. The selling bank would naturally, being a SELLER, speak very positively about the assets that it wishes to sell. The Courts found, in general, that it was the purchasing banks responsibility, as a large (and in most cases) an institution with billions of dollars worth of assets to research what it was buying.

Therefore, the selling bank, and its employers BANKERS, were not fraudulent even if they engaged in lying when they sold the CDOs.

To put it in terms that most people would understand: A very rich automobile dealer approaches another automobile dealer and says “”I like the look of that red Rolls Royce car you’re selling”“. The selling automobile dealer says “”that is a fine car, Sir”“. Please, feel free to take it for a test drive or have your mechanics look at it”“, but I do have an independent verification certificate issued by “”werateanycar.com”“. The very rich automobile buyer says “”no need to worry, I will buy the car without doing any of my own research whatsoever, because I trust a man with a top hat who sells 2nd hand cars”“.

In the above scenario, would you say that the selling automobile dealer is at fault?”
”

— Lordprotector666 The Untouchables: How the Obama administration protected Wall Street from prosecutions

5:03 pm • 13 May 2013

Below the Line with MostUncivilised: 'I met my partner over CiF'

Our weekly feature showcases notable personalities in the Guardian’s commenting community. Today: MostUncivilised

Couple of great new series on the Guardian this week - first the US is running commenter profiles - find out more about that pesky bottom half.

Second, the Guardian’s Comment is Free section is featuring one top comment a week - take a look at this first story on parenting a child with Asperger’s here.

You may have noticed BHOTN has been a bit sparse of late - this isn’t at all due to a lack of brilliant comments on news sites, oh no. Purely due to the busyness of the site’s creator. In the meantime, please follow these links to enjoy the fruits from the Guardian’s fabled Cif community. And keep sending in submissions you’ve seen elsewhere too!

5:09 pm • 10 May 2013

“My son’s dyslexia was only diagnosed in Year 6, so he has some catching up to do. I want to keep him on as academic pathway as possible, so I am having him tutored to catch up on basic reading and writing skills so he can catch up more easily. I think he will catch up in a relatively short time, and if he does, I probably won’t carry on with the tutoring, I would never have gone down the tutoring path if he didn’t have problems with literacy. A friend of mine has a child in private school, at 5 years old the majority of the class have tutors. The reason? So they could be ‘top’ of the class.”

— giftedamateur, guardian.co.uk, 26 April 2013 16 tutors, seven parents and two pupils on the private tutoring boom

5:40 pm • 26 April 2013

“Haven’t a clue about Japan, but I live in China and have two stepsons who go to high school here. Their school day starts at 8.00am and runs till around 4.30pm. When you factor in a two hour lunch it’s not too much longer than the UK (the article says 9-3 is the norm in the UK, that wasn’t the case when I was at a state secondary school 15 years ago when most days began at 8.45 and finished at 3.45.) Regarding holidays over here, my lads get a little over two months in the summer and one month for Chinese New Year, maybe 13 weeks a year in total (no half terms), which works out very similar to the UK. Regarding Asian schools ‘expecting more’ from their students, I haven’t found this to be the case with this particular Chinese school. It’s not one of the better schools in the area so perhaps this is why, but there doesn’t seem to be any undue pressure on them, no more or less than I was under at the same age in a UK school. Maybe this will change in the final year when they take their university entrance exams. From what I’ve seen a lot of the pressure on school children in China comes from pushy parents rather than teachers or school admin.”

— Walks, guardian.co.uk, Michael Gove proposes longer school day and shorter holidays

5:54 pm • 19 April 2013

“Great. I was up near St P’s - an amazing number of people, no dissenters, cheering and applause as her coffin passed”

— ID2937581, guardian.co.uk, Margaret Thatcher funeral: crowds applaud as cortege passes

12:09 pm • 17 April 2013

“
I would sadly agree with the sentiments above.
Having served on a jury in a rape trial, I can vouch for how difficult it can be: it was one person’s word against another. And we were told that the suspect was facing a life sentence. Both had been drinking. And the accuser’s version was factually inconsistent.

The female jurors were much harsher against the accuser than the male jurors, and refused to believe her on the key issue if she was not 100% truthful about everything. They thought she was “gaming” (still dont really know what that means….)

Being a devil’s Advocate here, I am not sure, but perhaps if there were different degrees of rape, as we have different degrees of murder, many people would plead guilty at an early stage instead. I am no expert, but there could be a clear spectrum of crimes with appropriate tariffs. It need not be a soft option either- just one that reflects reality in the sentencing after the verdict anyhow.

Once a perpetrator has lost his/ her good name from reckless penetration, it makes it much easier to secure a conviction if (s)he is stupid/ wicked enough to be reckless a second time in the future. After all, conviction and naming is what we need to protect people, keep these criminals out of schools etc.

But it will never happen in my lifetime. “Rape is Rape” is a powerful lobbying slogan, as Ken Clarke discovered to his regret.
”

— PutneyCommon, 25 March 2013, guardian.co.uk, Rape myths not behind low conviction rate, says leading family lawyer

10:30 am • 5 April 2013

Comment on The Times

Rosa T, January 03, 2013 My years of sexual abuse at the hands of a paedophile master :

I am as certain as I can be that my son was abusedat school during the early 1980s.Both my sons went to prep school near Abingdon. The elder of the two by a couple of years never experienced anything untoward, nor did he even hear of anything, unless you count the piano teacher leaving his hand accidentally-on-purpose on the pupils’ chairs as they sat down, LOL . As he said to me, he just wasn’t attractive in that way.

My younger son was certainly attractive in that way. He was confident, clever, cheerful, hugely musically gifted, and like an Easter chick with his fine pale hair. He was never much of a sportsman so I was quite surprised at his inclusion in the school cricket first IX.He didn’t have his own cricket bat and the cricket coach bought him one. I understand that the coach had been a professional cricketer. I think he bought other boys small gifts, but can’t be sure. He also gave them other gifts, books etc. and on one occasion he took my son to a sports shop in Abingdon and bought him an Adidas red-and-white strip. At the time I never thought anything of it, just what a jolly nice chap he was.

My son’s character changed dramatically after his older brother left. He became tearful, withdrawn, and told me he was being bullied by some of the other boys. I complained twice to the head but nothing was ever done. At this time there was no suggestion of wrongdoing by the coach. During the following vacation I had a phone call from the headmaster, to say that there had been an allegation of sexual abuse against the cricket coach. As far as I can recollect he stressed that police had assured him there was nothing to worry about, but he said thatthe coach would be leaving, to be on the safe side.

The coach himself contacted me and came around to my house. He was very upset about the allegation, but did not say who had complained. He took me out to lunch. He was very anxious to know if my son had had anything to say about it but I reassured him that he would have told me if there was anything wrong. I now know that I was seriously mistaken in that assumption. In fact I was sympathetic towards the teacher. Just shows how naive I was, but none of the other parents I spoke to believed the allegation either. Years later my son revealed that the other boys had bullied him because he was being gay with the cricket coach, which he vehemently denied.

When school resumed the following term, after the cricket teacher had left, I asked the school secretary what had happened. It was she who told me that the allegation was made by a former pupil, subsequently resident with his mother in USA. The boy had been abused in the States, at school I believe, and during his sessions with police/therapists there, alleged that the offence had happened before, naming the cricket coach. Abingdon police were alerted and had visited the headmaster at the school. The secretary told me that everyone involved at the school assumed that the boy was a fantasist and liar, and that no-one believed him.

The cricket coach left and we all forgot about him, and my son took up a music scholarship at secondary school. He got his musician’s union card at 17, left school the following year and had a couple of years out, working as a warehouseman at a couple of large grocery concerns, teaching & playing violin, and teaching music and art in Delhi.He went to Oxford to read fine art and was said to be very talented. Late in 1992, he died as a result of a fall from a window at his lodgings during the early hours.He had taken LSD experimentally, although he had never been an habitual drug user.

In 1997 The cricket coach appeared in the media as a convicted paedophile, and received a sentence of several years. I knew nothing about this until much later, when his image appeared on TV in connection with a news item about paedophilia, together with an image of a young boy wearing I think an Adidas strip, and which I caught accidentally. It was a great shock to me, and only then did I know that this cricket teacher had indeed been a pederast. Newspaper reports that I saw did not give much detail about his crimes, but some of his grooming activities were to buy sports strips for the youngsters, and to make obscene videos of his victims.

We all knew much more about grooming behaviour and paedophilia/pederasty by the late 1990s. We certainly know now how paedophiles seduce their prey, how they create confusion and guilty loyalty; how they instil secrecy, furtive admiration coupled with disgust. The victims experience a corrosive feeling of shame and helplessness, and the lasting destruction of confidence and self esteem. There is no surprise that victims seldom tell.My son’s altered behaviour during his last year at the prep school at last made sense, as did - at least partially - his later bouts of depression.

In 2010 I decided to write my son’s biography, and as I had moved house very shortly after his death I had kept and filed all his letters and documents without going through them in detail. Until then it had been too painful to read everything, but when I finally did I came across three letters to my son at his secondary school, from the paedophile.

Innocent enough one might think, mostly chat,j ust one friend to another.

Except for some frequent references to the Adidas sports outfit which he had bought for my son, and this chillingly gleeful little sentence.

“THAT video has been watched so many times that I have lost count and I should think that soon it will be worn out. Never mind we can always add to it!”

Ben Whitelaw, Community Manager at the Times has written about this comment left on the Times website here.

12:01 pm • 4 April 2013