Momus writes in Wired of the robomediation of society:

...the process by which bank tellers are being replaced by ATMs, telephone operators by automated touch-tone and voice-recognition systems, soldiers by gun-toting Talons, financial journalists by report-writing programs and the taciturn guy at the video rental store by the wall-mounted DVD automat. If it's bad for humans to be reduced to robotic inauthenticity, isn't it preferable that real robots should step in to execute our mindless tasks for us?

He compares the "disintermediation" provided by certain web services, for example buying your car insurance or flights direct without the need for a broker or agent, with this alternative means of cutting out the middle men - in this instance replacing them with a middle robot.

I hadn't thought before of ATMs, automatic phone machines and their ilk as robots, but in a general sense I guess these are the heralds of the robot age. Momus goes on to point out that 4 million household "robots" are expected to be sold this year, increasing to an estimated 39 million by 2010. He argues the potential importance of such devices in a country with a rapidly greying and shrinking population like Japan. He also takes a more tongue-in-cheek view of the potential advantages of the robotisation of service sector jobs in the UK:

...British people are spectacularly bad at services -- shining examples of Sartrean sincerity and authenticity, they're unlikely to wish you a great day if they aren't having one themselves. The sooner these grumpy, reluctant, inefficient people are replaced by robots, some might say, the better. (Unemployed, the British can go off and do something usefully authentic and human, like inventing some new kind of punk rock.)

Anyone who has come from a more service-oriented country (ie anywhere outside Europe and many countries within), and been confronted with the horrors of the modern British high street will know the unfortunate truth of the above, but he's right about the by-products. Punk at least should make us proud to be British.

Neal Gabler in the LA Times has some theories why the movie magic has gone:

Eighty-three percent of the respondents [to a recent survey for the Motion Picture Association of America] said they were satisfied with the content of the films they saw, but 60% nevertheless expected to spend less of their income on moviegoing in the future, citing dissatisfaction with the moviegoing experience and the emergence of better alternatives for their time and money.

Gabler sees the lives of celebrities taking over from the movie plots of yesteryear as the cultural icebreakers in the national conversation, and movies increasingly as a machine for manufacturing celebrity. Movies have, of course, always powered the star machine, but are now being overshadowed by the celebrity manufacturing sweatshops of reality TV, which are proving cheaper, dirtier and much more productive in this sordid industry. Jennifer Hudson's Oscar win makes her the first to cross the divide from reality celeb to movie star. Who would suggest she will be the last?

However, I disagree with Gabler's hypothesis that first the cult of celebrity, and ultimately the internet-powered cult of the indidividual are doing away with the movies as the centrepiece of popular culture. A far less intellectually seductive culprit suggests itself - the good old TV.

Shows such as 24 and Lost now typically cost more that $1 million dollars an episode to make, and have all the glitz of the movie blockbuster. There has been a brain drain from Hollywood as the best scriptwriters in town follow the money to the TV studios - these are the Paramounts and MGMs of our era. An hour a week in front of the television in exchange for having to watch a fistful of commercials has usurped the increasingly expensive trip to the cinema. DVD sales of films may be falling, but watch the box sets huddle together at the top of the bestsellers lists and you'll see where the modern viewers loyalties are really shifting to.

Simon Barnes, writing in the Times, sums up the real importance of Ireland's Six Nations victory over England at Croke Park yesterday:

It was an occasion that had all the furniture of hate, but hatred itself went missing. A million anticipatory words were written about it on both sides of the water. If there was an incitement to hatred implicit in all this, the people who came along didn’t pay attention. Bugger history, this is now. This is sport and we don’t know what happens next, so don’t talk to me of the Troubles and the past; all that matters is Ronan O’Gara versus Jonny Wilkinson. Life really should be like that.

Croke Park! Home of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the only sporting organisation in history developed on explicitly political and subversive lines. You couldn’t play Gaelic sports if you played football or rugby, or if you were a policeman.

Croke Park was also the site of the massacre of Bloody Sunday, as you will have read a thousand times — 14 people killed by the British in 1920. Croke Park has been sacred to the memories of oppression and the GAA has long been defined not so much by a love of thrilling, violent and exotic sports as by a hatred of the British.
...
Then the tune [God Save The Queen] was played and the England team and the 7,000 England supporters sang along, and there was not a whistle or a catcall or a boo. Why should there be? This was just sport, was it not? Then, extraordinarily, a round of applause; not for the song but for the silence, the palpable feeling that the end of an era was being celebrated. And then the Irish anthem, The Soldier’s Song, deafeningly, and after that Ireland’s Call. Two anthems, because this team represent both the Republic of Ireland and the chunk in the north that is part of the United Kingdom. Complex matters, for which no one cared a jot on Saturday evening in Dublin.

Daily Kos has a sobering article on the likely effects of a new flu pandemic:

The current H5N1 virus going pandemic at its current case fatality rate of over 50% at attack rates of 35% is. A third of the world is ill and half of them die. This is a proposition written in serious peer-reviewed medical journals (see What Hospitals Should Do to Prepare for an Influenza Pandemic and The Prospect of Using Alternative Medical Care Facilities in an Influenza Pandemic, for examples). To utter such a thing is to be accused of 'fearmongering', of being a Chicken Little, but this is the reality... it's a threat that's being discussed all over the medical literature, and if it is upsetting to hear, nonetheless, it is merely a
reflection of how professionals react to the knowledge of what's happening today in SE Asia (Indonesia) and Africa (Egypt).

The article continues by examining the likely effect on the distribution of goods and services of such an epidemic. Simple advice:

• Keep a couple of weeks of non-perishable, easy to prepare food in the house
• Keep a good supply of fresh bottled water at home
• Make sure you are well stocked up with pain relievers, cough/cold medication, stomach remedies and (last but by no means least) hand sanitisers.
• Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly (min. 20 seconds) with soap and warm water, particularly after going to the bathroom and after sneezing.

Let's face it, this general advice is worth following whether there is an outbreak or not. It will at the least ensure that whatever personal or public emergency comes up you will be able to comfortably stay housebound for a while, and the last item will do no harm in helping prevent the spread of any number of medical complaints.