Times for discrimination

Perhaps there should be a small graffito on the News International pay-wall: Mac-users not welcome.

The story so far:

Malcolm finds it convenient to pay for one of the Times subscription schemes: it saves a bit of money.

As part of that subscription, Malcolm finds he is entitled to be a "member" of the Times+ scheme. Over a period of many months, he has found that beneficial just the once: getting a discount to the British Library exhibition on Henry VIII.

The present:

It was inevitable, perhaps as an initial "come-on" later to be chargeable, that subscribers should be invited to access the on-line resources of the Times and Sunday Times (soon to disappear behind the pay-wall).

That led to Malcolm reconsidering the "benefits" of this involvement.

Why! here's one! An invitation to download an audiobook:

This month, you can download Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, the huge bestseller that evocatively imagines the story of the girl behind one of Vermeer’s best loved paintings.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is set in seventeenth century Holland and follows the spirited Griet, a girl sent to work in the house of masterful painter Vermeer, inspiring him to produce one of his most magnificent works.

Times+ members can download their free audiobook of Girl with a Peal [sic] Earring, worth £10.99, by clicking on the download links on the right.

Except a large part of the potential invitees are excluded from that offer.

Go two stages further and find this:

WARNING: You are trying to download content for Microsoft Windows Media Player that requires a license. You must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8 and make sure ActiveX is enable [sic] in order to download this file.

Now:

• Malcolm, as frequently rehearsed here, is proudly and loudly a Mac-user.

But:

• Microsoft suspended development of Internet Explorer back in mid-2003, with version 5.2.3.

So:

• There is, therefore, no obvious way Malcolm (and other Mac-users) can access this download.

Go to the fountain-head!

Malcolm therefore e-mailed customerservices@timesplus.co.uk.

So far, the only response is an automated one:

Thank you for your email. This has been passed onto the relevant department for their attention. Should your enquiry require an answer you will be contacted within three working days.

Yes, it bloody-well does require an answer.

Added:

Response received:

Unfortunately, the audiobooks in the Culture+ Harper Audio promotion are available exclusively on Windows platforms and devices at the moment.

Despite our best endeavours, we have been unable to secure an alternative solution that will provide the quality and value that we would wish to offer. However, we will continue in our endeavours to find an alternative solution that will support more platforms and will if, and when, we secure this we will heavily advert the fact on the site.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

That makes News International involvement with iPad look iffy.

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Malcolm loves railways

He has reflected this previously, noting his trips in Britain, Spain, Italy and the USA. Doubtless we soon may be regaled with Eurostar and Belgian Railways.

So, he was cheered that Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, was inducing his investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, to put up $34 billion to take control of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation. Now, if we'd known that was on the cards, and we'd divied up the odd grand yesterday to buy shares, we'd have made twenty-odd cents in the dollar on the deal. Heck: that's business, my friend.

A hard head ...

The calculation is in the strategic importance of the BNSF. It is the second-largest rail conglomerate in the US. More to the point, it hauls all those lovely consumer goods from the West Coast ports (LA, Long Beach and Seattle) to the mid-west hubs (Chicago, St Louis and Kansas City). Heading back west, the trains are lugging grain and soya for the Chinese market. In that respect, Buffett is on a one-way bet that the US economy is on the up, and that China will continue to demand food imports..

A more intriguing thought is that Berkshire Hathaway has significant holdings in other rail operations: some ten million shares in Union Pacific and two million in Norfolk Southern. The one owns 27,000 miles and operates a further 6,000 miles, of track across 23 States; the other 21,000 miles across 22 states. Now, if only some bright spark would suggest that they combine operations to offer a decent passenger experience ...

... and a romantic heart?

Malcolm now recalls a night spent in Needles, on the Colorado River, where California is about to trip over into Arizona (and, not far out of your way, into Nevada). He was there because that was where Route 66 ran, and Malcolm (as has repeatedly been evidenced here) has read and re-read his Steinbeck, in this case chapter 12 of The Grapes of Wrath:

... out of the broken sun-rotted mountains of Arizona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks and that's the end of Arizona. There's California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it, Needles on the river.

Well, as Malcolm recalls it: the "pretty town" now exists as a staging post on the Interstate.

It has a choice of a handful of chain motels. So Malcolm was bedded in the Best Western Colorado River Inn.

For the purposes of this piece, its significance was the "back-side" of the joint faced south, and the BNSF track. So the night was punctuated by the iconic moaning of freights heading east and west. Just one train would have been the Amtrak Southwest Chief, out of LA at 6:45 PM and through Needles (the station is a single unattended platform in a freight yard) in the early hours.

For the heart-throbbing romantic in Malcolm it was all rather disappointing, except for the ten miles or so of Route 66 between two ramps on and off Interstate 40.

So, in the hope of something better: here's a small cheer for Mr Warren Buffett and his investment.

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Not the Isle of Wight ferry * ...

This is not a pretty story. In a way, it's shocking.

It is not for dining-table conversation, though it came up (to coin a term) inconveniently (to coin another) before Malcolm sat down to one of those spag bols that the Lady in his life thinks suited to a Friday evening (preferably with a couple of bottles of Cabernet).

Even so ... on with the motley

Malcolm noticed the highlighted quotation on today's New York Times feed:

"Sometimes it smells like a barn coming out of the faucet." - LISA BARNARD, on contaminated water at her rural Wisconsin home.

The full story is on-line here.

For those who simply must take a short cut, the essential story concerns the pollution of the water supply by agri-business dairies.

OK, OK: you're all ahead of the game, now.

Nearby Lisa Barnard's home in Morrison, Wisconsin:

There are 41,000 dairy cows ... and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.

For Malcolm, though, the real choker was the location of Morrison, Wisconsin.

It is in Brown County.
_____________________________________

* The headline is a typical Malcolmian esoteric reference. It might be beyond the frame of reference of those who did not win first prize in life's lottery (i.e born English, © Peter Ustinov).

The ferries between the Isle of Wight, the main port of which is Cowes, and the mainland were, in the good old days, owned and run by the Great Western Railway Company, whose livery was chocolate-and-cream. Hence this:

Q: What's brown, steaming and comes out of Cowes backwards?
A: The Isle of Wight ferry.

Boom! Boom!

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