Rhetorical Questions

Whatever else he is, Command Sergeant Major John Wayne Troxell, the senior enlisted adviser to General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, is at the very least appropriately named. The élan with which he recently wrote about the American campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) would be worthy of the protagonist of any Hollywood Western.

Facebook and Censorship: A Paradox

It provides, whether we like it or not, the backdrop to much of our lives. In the age of social media, Facebook, the ageing titan, the weary juggernaut, still retains its prominence. Its policies matter, just as they affect the lives of its billions of users – in both big and small ways. And something which may seem small, but is actually rather significant, is Facebook’s policy towards news and images. Some websites – many of them irritatingly modern and faddish – derive most of their traffic from Facebook shares, using it to generate millions of clicks.

Online Media and the New Boredom

We’re all bored, we’re all so tired of everything
We wait for trains that just aren’t coming
We show off our different scarlet letters –
Trust me, mine is better

Taylor Swift, “New Romantics”

We are all bored. Well, not exactly all of us – but boredom is everywhere; being bored, which, so our mothers told us, used to mean that we ourselves were boring, seems to be more ubiquitous, more pervasive, than ever.

The Perils of Over-Reaction

David Cameron has had, by his own admission, a rough week. Under pressure from newspapers, fellow politicians and thousands of baying voices on social media, he has disclosed the extent of his investment in a hedge fund headed by his father, and the nature of his reasonably modest investment is now the stuff of frenzied and febrile speculation.