Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.

Date: March 2005

South Africa is to change the name of its capital city, Pretoria, to Tshwane, as part of a move to make place names more African

This isn't really news, since Tshwane has been the official municipal name for a while now. And Tshwane is semantically appropriate. But making the place more 'African'? Doesn't that imply that African-born whites who speak English or Afrikaans can't call themselves African? By the way, read down through the comments below; there's some pretty disappointing racism coming from both sides. #link

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Miyazaki's Porco Rosso is out now on DVD

Back in the mid-'90s I used to read a magazine called Super Play. If you don't know it, it was an unofficial magazine for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; for those who do, I'm sure you remember it fondly. You see, what was different and special about Super Play was its focus on 'grey market' Japanese import games, which went hand in hand with regular reports on other facets of Japanese pop culture like manga and anime -- those alluring alien ideas that made each issue compulsive reading for me. I was never a big gamer, but the likes of Super Play, and the irreplaceable Digitiser on Teletext, made me feel like a part of the greater gaming world, appreciating my interest regardless of my lack of skill (and boy, was my skill lacking!) and neither was afraid to step away from the console for a while. It was in Super Play that I first read about Porco Rosso, in a context where it wasn't too weird to discuss a cartoon about a pig flying a warplane. I still miss Super Play. #link

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A California judge has said that bloggers should not have the same protection afforded to journalists under US law

I'm not sure what to make of this. You can't go making wild accusations with 'anonymous' sources as your only evidence, but these sites in question were reporting responsibly (providing information of public interest, at least to that segment of the public with an interest in technology) and not doing anything different than what a mainstream publication would do (PR embargoes be damned!). #link

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Cruel… but Usual

Gary Younge’s thoughtful commentary in today’s Guardian takes Britain’s foreign policy to task, comparing the abuses at Camp Breadbasket — Britain’s Abu Ghraib — with the British Empire’s long history of colonial oppression, highlighting the refusal of the establishment to acknowledge that cultural chauvinism is alive and well:
>Tony Blair described the photographs [of Camp Breadbasket] as “shocking and appalling”. He told the Commons that “the difference between democracy and tyranny is not that in a democracy bad things don’t happen, but that in a democracy when they do happen people are held and brought to account”.
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>The difference between “democracy” and “tyranny” may be lost on a man suspended from a forklift truck by a foreign occupier. Similarly, the difference between what is intended by “shock and awe” and what constitutes “shocking and appalling” may be lost on the soldier impaling him, not least when his commanding officer has told them to go “Ali Baba hunting” for those looting supplies and “work them hard” if he finds them.

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