Kind of encouraging.

I failed somewhat in not plugging this beforehand, but last night was the climax of a second ecumenical new year 24-7 prayer week for the city of Bradford, this time ending with an awesome four and a half hour Prayer and Praise Evening at the cathedral.

This year’s venue was Youth Base on New Hey Road, BD4. It’s a much smaller building than the one we used last year, but the prayer room was on the top floor, with an amazing view out over the city. On returning from the cathedral last night I stopped briefly to read the latest 24-7 e-bullet and clicked a link to this page, which expresses everything way better than I could hope to. I’d not heard any testimonies of time in this prayer room, and I wasn’t expecting to find one there. I wept and praised. It’s still an exciting time to be in Bradford.

Look at this. Almost exactly one year on, and it’s like I’m living my life in stupid little circles. Somewhere, when trying to get my head round what freedom from a spirit of rejection meant, I think I got the wrong end of the stick. I’m wondering how many more times I can put myself through this, and how to get to that point where I don’t need to. I must have wasted hours rehearsing improbable scenarios in my head when all that’s likely is some kind of less endearing Holden McNeilesque explosion, in which all the things that logic dictates would be better left unsaid end up on the floor in a tangled knot of gibberish half sentences.

These signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

Mark 16:17-18

About a year and a half ago a friend prayed to cast out a spirit of fear out of me, and that I would instead be filled with the Holy Spirit. I never mentioned it to anyone as I didn’t really understand what had happened, but I assumed I was free of it, and all was good. For a while it definitely helped, and I grew closer to God. I guess in the end though either it wasn’t gone, or I let it back in, because the other week I had cast out of me spirits of fear, rejection, shame, lust, cynicism and scepticism.

Two months ago, if you’d told me I was going to have any real life experience with the demonic I would have been highly doubtful. It’s not that I didn’t believe in it, it’s just that it’s the kind of thing that happens to other people, in countries a long way from Bradford. I’d not given it much credit, or even much thought. I’d probably’ve assumed that anyone who said they’d had any involvement with deliverance ministry/exorcism in the UK was a bit of a weirdo, or at least that they were connected to one of the slightly crazier fringes of Christianity. All involved in what happened to me, though, were people who I’ve known for a number of years, for whom I have the deepest respect and whom I trust implicitly. They’re not weirdos.

I was at a Christian weekend away, it was Saturday lunch time and there was a break in the programme during the afternoon. I was planning to go for a walk—see some of the surrounding area. God had other plans. One of the leaders from Transform had been giving a seminar in the morning, but I knew she was doing something that I’d already heard both at Transform and at a previous event, so I went to the alternative talk on the Holy Spirit instead. As it turned out, I’d heard that seminar at Transform a few weeks before as well, but somehow at the end I felt that while I knew everything that’d been said I somehow still didn’t get it.

I grabbed one of the speakers just as she was leaving and asked if she had time to talk. I kind of got the impression that she didn’t really, and we stopped next to the exit of the place we were staying. I was saying that I felt like the guy in Mark 9:24 who says to Jesus I believe; help my unbelief. We’d had all this teaching on the power of the Holy Spirit and the authority we have in Christ, and I believed that God will do amazing things, but somehow I still didn’t believe that I will see God do amazing things through me. We talked for a while, and in the end I was saying that I just wanted evidence of something small, in a non-threatening setting, before I tried anything big in front of lots of people. She pointed out that actually that wouldn’t be faith, but I guess I kept on along those lines, ’cause eventually she called me on it, and told me to pray for her and see if God had anything to say. After a few failed moments trying to think up an excuse I gave it a go.

I actually physically couldn’t do it. It was quite the strangest thing I’ve ever encountered. I started just by thanking God for her, but as I tried to go further I started shaking, and then I started coughing. Now, apparently this is a good sign of the demonic. She sent a passer by to find the vicar who was giving the main teaching for the weekend, but he never showed up, so I guess they didn’t find him. Another friend was coming past at the time, so she grabbed her and together they ushered me off into a side room with a little more privacy. They continued to order the spirit of fear out of me in Jesus’ name, and I continued coughing, and started choking and coughing up stuff. One of them produced a bin from somewhere and said something along the lines of it’s normal to throw up now if you need to. So I spent the best part of the next hour and a half with my head in a bin. I wasn’t actually sick, but I coughed up a lot of stuff, and my nose ran lots, and I generally didn’t look very pleasant. Apparently some of them came out with an unearthly bad smell, but I didn’t really notice—I had my head in a bin. Apparently I bent into shapes that aren’t natural for a human being, but I couldn’t see, as I had my head in a bin (I did have a sense that I was at least in shapes that weren’t natural for me).

After the fear spirit came out one of them prayed against anything else that was in me, and stated that nothing had any power over me because I am owned by Christ. I kept coughing, so they prayed that God would reveal anything else that was inside. I guess the rest all came from Him, because then one of them named rejection, He gave me the word shame, they named lust and cynicism and I named scepticism. One by one they came out, and after each was an intense feeling of liberation. After most I sat up breathed a sigh of relief and said how much better I felt—then more came, and my head went back in the bin.

I’m told the word which in the Bible is translated possessed is actually much better translated oppressed. It’s not that spirits (usually) force you to do things you don’t want to do, so much as they stop you from fulfilling what God wants for you. Since that day I’ve felt like I’ve been on one massive spiritual high. I keep expecting it to end, the way it normally does after some kind of big event, but that hasn’t happened. Every time I think it’s nearly over God does something else awesome and I get excited all over again. I’ve felt so much more free, particularly I’ve felt free to pray for things, and as a result the last few weeks have seen a phenomenal amount of answered prayer.

Apparently this more than likely means that there is something or things in my life which allowed all of these demons to get in. For some of them, that’s quite obvious. For others it’s not so. I’ve got quite a lot to work through, and I’ve not got very far, but I can say without doubt now that I believe in the absolute authority of God.

The thing for me to be careful of now, I guess, is not to see the demonic in everything, or to assume that every human problem is as a result of the demonic. Clearly in some cases it will be, but equally clearly in other places it won’t, and just because it was for me doesn’t mean that it will be for everyone.

The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, He’s dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.

Mark 9:26-27

It seems quite obvious that everything I’ve written here of late has been quite trivial. There’ve been updates, because I’ve got loads of really exciting stuff I want to say, but somehow I can’t get the words out. Either I can’t bring myself to write them yet, or the right ones are somewhere out of reach of my mind.

No more we doubt Thee, glorious Prince of life;

Life is naught without Thee; aid us in our strife;

Make us more than conqu’rors, through Thy deathless love:

Bring us safe through Jordan to Thy home above.

Thine be the glory, risen conqu’ring Son,

Endless is the vict’ry, Thou o’er death hast won.

Edmond Budry tr. Richard Hoyle

I am fully aware that, yes, finding people who qualify as celebrities under the definition given last Wednesday probably wouldn't be all that hard. It would require, however, a knowledge of minor celebrities in obscure fields, of which blogging is just one of many. The definition of celebrity is very subjective, and we needed some way to quantify it. This seemed as good as any. If you think you qualify, make sure all ten sites mentioning you show up on a Google search for your name, then address your request for an invite to Martin. Bare in mind that anyone for whom there has been a deliberate attempt influence the result will not be accepted.

A few weeks ago I decided to revisit the copy of Escape from Monkey Island that I’d had lying around for years. I finally finished it (for the first time), but I was a little disappointed—it didn’t quite do justice to the earlier games. I started looking around for what was going on in the adventure game genre today. The answer appears to be not much, but I did come across a game called The Longest Jouney, which sounds very interesting. I’ve not managed to find it on sale anywhere yet, but I thought this comment on developer Ragnar Tornquist’s blog was worth reposting. I can relate.

The web devours voraciously. Especially time. It eats time. Every day, millions of hours, consumed and stored inside its bloated maggot stomach. Some day the web-maggot will spew all those lifetimes, those endless oceans of time, out through its infinitely expanding anus, creating a wave that will wash across the universe like a Biblical flood, reverting everything to absolute zero, the beginning, the end...

Or maybe I just ought to spend less time online. It begins with honest research and it ends, bleary-eyed, with www.screenhead.com. At least TV was an honest time-eater. You plonked yourself down on the couch, you didn’t pretend you’d be working. I sit down with my coffee in the morning, boot up my PowerBook and Word, and five minutes later I’m neck deep in Ain’t-It-Cool-News getting annoyed with Talkbackers and trying to remember why there’s an empty Word document running in the background.

Celebrity

One for whom a Google search on their name returns 10 or more individual third party web sites referring directly to them.

In November last year George Bush came to Britain to meet a few important people, and was met also by more than 100,000 protesters aiming to make him feel unwelcome. While I disapproved of Bush’s exploits in Iraq, I didn’t really like the tone of the protest and instead formulated a plan to invite him to dinner while he was in the country. I never got round to writing the letter, but I was reminded of the idea while watching the coverage of the US elections last week. I’m not sure exactly what happened next but, taking inspiration from Dave Gorman, there’s now a bet running in our house to prove that we can get 10 celebrities to come for a meal. The rules are as follows:

1. Celebrity will be defined as above. Any content created by the individual concerned won’t count. Neither will anything created with the deliberate intent of causing a current non-celebrity to meet the definition criteria. (Please don’t be tempted. This is important—there’s at least two pints riding on it.)
2. If a celebrity has more than one name then the total results for each name may be added together provided they each clearly refer to the same person.

I feel like I should write something, but I’m not really sure what to say. The last couple of months have been absolutely amazing. I really want to share as much of it here as I can but, as I’ve once again been slack with the updating, I’m not sure I’ll manage very well. I really want to post here more often, but I also want to do a lot of work on both the underlying structure and the visual design. I struggle prioritising the changes and then I end up not making any of them. With a little help through prayer I’m trying to discipline myself a bit better and introduce some more order to my life, so hopefully I’ll get better.

Anyway; the last few months have included: Soul in the City, Greenbelt, Vocal Training, the start of Transform, and then this weekend—my first with Martin Scott’s Company Of Prophetic People. Mainly things that I’ve already mentioned at least in passing, but none of which I’ve really expanded on. Each of those things is really deserving of it’s own entry, some more than one, but to do that would take forever so I’ll try to summarise here.

1. Soul in the City was just amazing. I was on the prayer team for Week B at the Gilwell Park camp site so I wasn’t out on projects like the majority of those present. Instead I was part of a team of four with responsibility for the 24-7 prayer venue on-site. It was an awesome privilege to take prayer requests from the hundreds of young people on site every night, made even more exciting by the way they would return night after night to tell us how prayers had been answered. And as if that wasn’t enough we had youth leaders coming by with stories of how the prayer room was getting their groups excited about prayer for the first time.
2. Greenbelt is deserving of something more than the rant about the trains that I already posted. As always there was more going on than I could possibly cover. For whatever reason I didn’t seem to make it to that many bands this year. Obviously, I saw Delirious? and quite a few other acts were pretty good, but nothing that really made me think wow! The real highlights for me were in the speaker programme—specifically Stephen Sizer, who’s book on Christian Zionism I’ll definitely be buying once it’s published, and Shane Claiborne, of The Simple Way.
3. Somewhat disappointingly, I had to leave Vocal Training early, and even more so that meant that I missed the day of teaching on prayer entirely. For those who don’t know, Vocal Training is SPEAK’s summer training event. It was great to see so many people, and to reminisce about Greenbelt with those who had been there. As a result of both conversations held there and speakers heard there I have added yet more stuff to my Amazon wish list.
4. Transform: I’ll probably manage to write more about this at some point over the next year, as it is going to be dominating my life. So far it’s been amazing, so good in fact that it was actually worth leaving Vocal Training for! It seems much longer, but we started exactly one month ago with a week away, staying at Westwood Christian Centre up in the hills near Huddersfield. The venue was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, and the teaching what I’d waited two years to hear. There are eight of us on the course from both Leeds and Bradford, with placements on a variety of projects in both cities. The longer it goes on the more I realise how little I know of the city in which I have lived for the past four years.
5. Company of Prophetic People is a training course in the prophetic which I am taking as part of my placement time on Transform. On Saturday afternoon I had my life described to me by three people who I’d just met. I feel I should have something really profound to say about my experiences over the weekend, but I can’t explain them. I’ll be doing this for the next year, so hopefully by the end I’ll have managed to put some words to the excited feeling.

It’s that time of the week again when I send out prayer requests to the SPEAK Network. I’ve been a bit slack with them of late, and even more so with posting them here, but here are the two requests I’ve received for the week of 4^th October:

1. For the Big Dress campaign:
   • Sharon and Hannah from the Network Support Team are about to write to some celebrities who they hope will want to support the Big Dress campaign. Pray that they will be able to clearly and concisely explain the Big Dress and how it relates to trade justice, and that the celebs will want to get involved and support what we are doing.
   • Letters will also soon be going out to the network and loudspeakers to ask for donations for the Big Dress. Please pray that these will be well received, and that people will be generous with their money. Please also pray for other avenues of funding that are currently being pursued, including applications to outside organisations.
   • Please pray that someone would want to take on the role of Big Dress Tour co-ordinator when the Big Dress goes on tour round the UK and further afield.
2. The new SPEAK mailing should have been dispatched at the weekend but wasn’t quite completed. Pray for the Norwich group: that they manage to get it packed soon and that God would be with them, and that they would enjoy their time together stuffing envelopes. Thank God for their willingness to serve the network in this way, and pray that He blesses them.

The intention of the SPEAK prayer e-mail list is to enable people from across the Network, and groups in particular, to support each other in prayer. If you’d like to sign up, or if you're a member of a SPEAK group that you think should be represented then please drop me an e-mail. Prayer requests for next week by Monday (11^th) evening please. It’d be really great to hear what some groups have planned for this term.

Dear Sir Richard,

Thankfully I don’t have to travel on your trains very often, but every time I do I can’t help but feel sorry for those that use them regularly. Last Friday I travelled out from Leeds on the 11:10 to Cheltenham Spa and returned yesterday on the 11:12 from Cheltenham to Leeds. Whilst neither train was late, I can honestly say that your Virgin Voyager trains are easily amongst the worst designed pieces of engineering I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.

First off, the trains are far too short. How anyone ever thought that four carriage trains would be adequate on busy Intercity routes formally served by 125s is quite beyond me. There simply isn’t enough space, either seated our standing, and this problem is further emphasised by the plethora of other design faults.

Secondly, the onboard information systems are just useless. Most of us are used to a system of information on paper tickets and notices replaced after each journey, but you have done away with that in favour of an entirely electronic system. One of the major benefits of indicating seat reservations with tickets in the seat backs is that one can instantly tell at a glance from either the platform or vestibules whether there are any free seats in a given carriage. Using your digital displays one must examine the screen above each and every seat individually. Your end of carriage displays vary constantly, but never appear to show what one wants at any given moment. You have scrapped the paper notices indicating train routes, and there isn’t even a toilet availability indicator like those found on older trains. I recommend fitting large colour coded lights to the seat backs (red for reserved, green for available) and large clear signs indicating the coach letter, leaving the displays free to show route information. Oh, and why, oh why, are your carriages numbered A, C, D and F?

Finally, despite having spacious toilets, the remainder of the Voyager train feels unusually cramped. The aisle between the seats appears narrow. There is very little leg room. Seat backs feel steep and the table appears too low, yet there still isn’t room for a soft drink bottle from your shop to fit in the cup holder without hitting the back of the seat in front. Overhead luggage racks are too small for anything more than the smallest of bags. There’s barely space to move in the shop, let alone space for a queue, and anyone queuing through a doorway will find the doors constantly closing on them. And I’ve never managed to use the at seat audio, as the controller is just too awkward to use when sat next to a stranger. I don’t understand quite how, but the corridors between coaches feel even more cramped when standing than on the old slam-door trains still operating around my parent’s home on the line out of Charing Cross. I think it has something to do with their being less doors and an almost total lack of either natural light or fresh air.

I hope you find this constructive, but for the meantime I would be prepared to take a longer journey where possible rather than suffer the ordeal of these trains again.

It seems that some spammer has started spoofing this domain in the from fields of the junk he’s sending out. In 24 hours I’ve received over 1000 bounce messages from addresses I didn’t write to returning messages promoting various erectile remedies. If you were the unfortunate recipient of one of these messages, then I’m sorry, but it’s nothing to do with me. Annoyingly, this also means I’ve had to remove the default e-mail alias on sphericalbowl.co.uk, so if you want to e-mail me you must now use only the james address at this domain, or your message will likely be bounced.

I’m off to Greenbelt in the morning, so they’ll be no updates over the weekend (not that I imagine you were expecting any anyway).

I have a long list near my computer of interesting topics I would like to write about, and a few vague ideas about what I want to say. Recent experiences, world events, social commentary, that sort of thing. All of those, though, are far too difficult to write about, and make maintaining this site seem a bit too much like real work. It’s far easier just to make trivial observances every couple of weeks. So, I’m sorry to those of you who might be expecting something worthwhile—maybe I’ll get to it eventually. In the meantime, here are some thoughts about a few films I’ve seen recently:

• First up: I, Robot. Of those of you that know me, many will have heard me complaining at great length about this film in recent months. I take it all back. While it’s no cinematic masterpiece and there are boring moments, it is entertaining and it’s not the offence to the memory of Isaac Asimov that I had expected. Asimov’s robot stories date from a time before microprocessors, and before widespread knowledge of the realities of computing. Asimov’s robots are genuine thinking machines, not programmable computers who can do only what they are told. In writing an updated story for a twenty-first century audience the film makers have altered the few things that now appear inaccurate in Asimov’s future vision. The biggest change, and the one with the greatest potential for offence, is the sacrifice of something Asimov portrayed as benevolent to modern paranoia for the sake of a more dramatic plot. However, despite these differences, the film does owe more than I had expected to the book, and the robot code names introduced at the start of the film will immediately tell those who know the book what kind of territory we’re in.
• Stigmata: This film I did find to be offensive, though I don’t know enough about the issues it attempts to cover to comment on it in great detail. I’ll be adding them to the list I mentioned earlier for possible exploration in the future. I know it’s not theologically sound and, despite not being a Catholic, I didn’t like the way it presented itself uncovering the truth about some kind of genuine conspiracy.
• And finally, The Village: This one I actually liked. In my opinion it’s far and away M Night Shyamalan’s greatest work to date, though a quick glance over the IMDB message boards shows that not everyone agrees with me. It has been said by many that Shyamalan’s recent work is cursed by the success of The Sixth Sense, which has left millions of viewers playing guess the hoodwink rather than enjoying his films. The Village has definitely been a victim of this, which is a shame as Shyamlan’s filmmaking has matured immeasurably in the last five years. Whereas the whole appeal of The Sixth Sense hung on those last few minutes, The Village is a complete film with a story to tell rather than just a surprise to hit you with at the end. It seems there are almost as many interpretations of what the film is about as there are viewers, but to me it was a beautiful tale of loss of innocence. That moment in all our lives when we discover for ourselves the truths in the legends our parents taught us. If I’ve a criticism it’s that for what seems like a religious community we know surprisingly little about their beliefs or the part they play in village life. Really, though, I’m nit-picking and if you can put aside your pre conceptions I guarantee you’ll love this film.

After something of a last minute decision, I’ve spent the last week at Soul in the City. Hopefully I’ll have something to say about it soon, once I’ve managed to collect my thoughts, but for the moment, here are this week’s SPEAK prayer requests:

1. Pray for the big dress campaign:
   • Pray for financial provision for the campaign. £15,000 is needed for an inflatable frame to give the dress shape and allowing it to be easily transported and erected.
   • For members of the Network Support Team who will be giving interviews to BBC local radio stations. Praise God for the opportunity, and ask that He will speak though them and that it will open up further opportunities for coverage for local groups and the dress.
2. Continue to pray for Vocal Training. Numbers are currently too low, and the Network Support Team need to decide whether to cancel. Whether or not the event goes ahead, there will be a financial loss, which SPEAK cannot afford. Pray for God’s provision.
3. Pray for wisdom and guidance for Zanna and Louise from the Network Support Team who will be attending a festival in Holland this weekend to talk about SPEAK and what’s going on in the UK. Pray that this will open up new opportunities there.
4. Pray for Rik, who’s trying to start a SPEAK group in Lancaster. Ask that God will provide a few committed and enthusiastic people to work with him.

I did something silly. They did just slash the prices though. Here’s hoping they can keep up with demand this time…

Thank you to everyone who sent me positive feedback on the first SPEAK prayer e-mail last week. I’d been hoping that over time we would begin to see prayers answered and that reporting them in subsequent e-mails would be an encouragement to the whole Network. Amazingly, there’re successes to report already!

Prayer points for this week:

1. Praise God for the successes in preparing for Soul in the City. Some of the Network Support Team prayed that the first people they phoned would have the stuff they needed, and they did! Continue to pray that everything else will come together as Zanna, who’s been organising it, is going on holiday.
2. Pray for an administrator to work in the Network Support Team. They urgently need someone with the passion and the skills to start as soon as possible.
3. Pray for SPEAK’s financial situation—they're struggling a bit just now.
4. Pray for people to go to Vocal Training, God especially, but also people in the network. The speakers are amazing and have much to teach us.

At the SPEAK Flower Model event back in April I volunteered to co-ordinate a Network Prayer E-mail that would go to strategic people in the network every week. I’ve finally managed to get my act together enough to send something out, but it’s now July—not the best time for student groups. The plan is to run on a test basis until September, and then go for a full launch, sending this to SPEAK groups up and down the country. Anyway, here are this week’s prayer points:

1. Vocal Training, September 3^rd-7^th, that it will be a key time of inspiration and information for the network.
2. Summer Festivals, for the stalls telling people about SPEAK.
3. SPEAK has just been asked to run a prayer walk and repentance service as part of Soul Survivor’s London Soul in the City event. It’ll be running 7-9pm in on 27^th July and 3^rd August with up to 1,000 young people.
   • Thank and Praise God for this amazing opportunity for SPEAK to have a huge impact upon the next generation.
   • Pray that the young people would hear and be able to discern what God thinks and feels about the injustices caused by the arms trade, debt and world trade; that they would be stirred to act.
   • Pray for the logistics of the event: For a good relationship with the police who need to be contacted about having a service in Trafalgar square and that Trafalgar Square would be available to use for the service; for the timing of the whole event, moving 1000 people around 3 prayer stations; that many people will volunteer to help steward; that a sound system and globes will be provided; that we will find a photographer to photograph the repentance service to hand to a government leader.
   • Pray for strength and peace for all those working on this event, as time is short.

OK, first off it seems that I once again find myself in the position of having to apologise for the infrequent updates. Sorry about that.

Secondly, I’ve thus far resisted the temptation to post the above button on this site; partly because it wasn’t something I really saw as within the site’s scope, and partly because the fact that I believe in the BBC more than most other media organisations doesn’t really warrant the phrase I believe in the BBC standing on it’s own. However, it seems that the government have hired yet another blairite Murdoch crony with no clue about new media to try and tear the corporation down. This time I have to say something.

The Graf Report was commissioned by Tessa Jowell in August of 2003, just over a month after the death of David Kelly, and a matter of weeks after the opening of the Hutton Inquiry. The author, Philip Graf, was Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror until 2002. BBC media correspondent Torin Douglas reports that Graf’s report pleases almost all, and then goes on to cite Hugo Drayton and the British Internet Publishers Alliance. The BIPA is an alliance of some of the largest old media conglomerates who’s sole objective for the last six years has been to attack the BBC’s online dominance, with little regard for the clear fact that the BBC leads because of the superiority of it’s content. Hugo Drayton, for example, is from the Telegraph Group. Other BIPA members include Capital Radio, EMAP, Guardian Unlimited, Independent Digital, News International and Trinity Mirror. Unsurprisingly, where they’ve even bothered to cover it, Graf’s report has received a resounding welcome from the whole of the mainstream British press—and the greatest praise comes from a political lobby group who for three years worked on Graf's behalf!

The Independent reports that the BBC web site is now used by a quarter of the adult population of the UK, and also that Simon Waldman, director of Guardian Unlimited, had been hoping for a rather more drastic response from the BBC. There is no specification of exactly what he would have liked, but unsurprisingly (again) there are hints that a dramatic slashing of the Beeb’s online presence and a fair number of redundancies would have been considered a good place to start. Guardian Unlimited is the ninth most popular web site in the UK. bbc.co.uk, I think, is the first.

Does Graf’s report please almost all? It seems to me that, like Hutton before it, Graf pleases everyone bar the licence fee payer. We know that the vast majority of web traffic is over web sites owned by only a handful of companies, and don’t get me wrong, that’s something I’d like to see change. Once upon a time there was a dream that web would bring true freedom of speech, unhindered by the bias of trans-national corporations. Make today a day for independent web sites.