The Mercury 25 May 2010

Firstly, it turns out it was all der meeja’s fault and the meeja should quietly hang its head in shame while a round table of currently unspecified diameter (to be advised in good time) is prepared (as soon as we find a nice bit of timber that isn’t in little pieces).

Secondly, there are chairs to be organised, and some time after that with any luck everyone will have forgotten about the whole not-bulldozing-the-forests-for-woodchips thing, the market will have picked up a bit and it can be Business As Usual, at least until the next crisis.

It was an excellent combination of cracking autumn day and late deadline on Monday, so we packed the tackers in the car and walked the Benchmarking Birchs Bay sculpture trail run by Fleurtys Cafe down past Woodbridge.

It’s a beautiful bushwalk (if a bit steep when you’re pushing two kids in a pram) and the sculptures are excellent. Worth a look if you’ve got a lazy few hours. The cafe does a might fine flat white too.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Mark Fiore’s political animations for as few years. While some people think it’s the evolution of the newspaper political cartoon, I personally think it’s an entirely different beast. Nonetheless, it’s an entirely legit form of satire, as Fiore recently proved by winning a Pulitzer prize.

Obviously mobile devices are where short animations of this type are really going fly, and naturally a Mark Fiore iPhone App makes sense. However, Apple didn’t feel the same way and rejected him from the App Store with the following letter:

Dear Mr. Fiore,
Thank you for submitting NewsToons to the App Store. We’ve reviewed NewsToons and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:
“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.” Examples of such content have been attached for your reference.
If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that NewsToons does not violate the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.
Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

I’ve been using Macs for a long time, and I do think that Apple make might fine computers, however, they clearly don’t have the first idea when it comes to satire.

As Apple look like they’re attempting to rule the world as far as convergent media is concerned, this is a pretty alarming development and I really wish they’d pull their heads in – somewhere below turtleneck level if at all possible.

Info via Gizmodo.

Tom Jellett: damn fine drorer. Here is his latest book (he just drew the pictures and got someone else to write the words on account of his being quite lazy). I suggest you go and buy one right now or your children will hate you.