kierenmccarthy.co.uk

One of the bizarre but wonderful things about living in Los Angeles is that when all your friends are freezing cold or trapped under the snow in January, you get to walk in the sun and witness the most extraordinary sunsets.
Last night I saw the makings of an extraordinary sunset and jumped on my bike [...]

There’s nothing like a big event to get people thinking, particularly when that event is the inauguration of a president who brings with him the hopes and dreams of a generation.
Barack Obama will be sworn in as 44th President of the United States in nine days on Tuesday 20th January. There are also a range [...]

It may be worth declaring a conflict of interest straight off: I can’t stand David Frost.
As a child, he instilled a strange kind of lonely hatred on Through the Keyhole – a formulaic game show in which the preening host would constantly insert amusing anecdotes about some famous person he had interviewed decades earlier.
And [...]

So British superband of the moment Coldplay is being sued in Los Angeles for plagiarising guitarist Joe Satriani in their hit Viva la Vida. Joe says that the song – also the title of Coldplay’s fourth album “incorporated substantial, original portions of Plaintiff’s composition ‘If I Could Fly‘.”
Read the actual court document detailing the [...]

I was at the United Nations in Geneva last week to watch what was happening to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as it prepares for its third outing, this December in Hyderabad, India.
Actually I was there for a different reason – an ICANN consultative meeting on the future of the organization the morning before the [...]

I have been itching to do some writing but have been caught up with other things: friends visiting, fixing up the van, and work. So I’ll quickly going to knock up a list of blog posts I want to write so I don’t forget next time I am in front of a laptop, have 20 [...]

There are many reasons why people don’t surf. The biggest is probably that very few people live close to an area of sea that produces waves that can be surfed on. But there are others: it’s bloody hard work; it requires a significant amount of co-ordination; you are guaranteed to take in at least three [...]

I forgot to add that I also found two fantastic video clips that demonstrate the sheer madness of the TV news in the United States.
One shows the mindless self-absorption the media has with itself in such an extraordinary way that it could easily be mistaken for genius satire.
[youtube]KBRUalssp0Q[/youtube]
And the other is John Stewart doing [...]

Forgot to say last week that the “US news: utter utter rubbish” rant I wrote a fortnight earlier appeared in a slightly more professional format on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site on Wednesday under the headline: Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish.
The title I sent them was: “Why TV news in [...]

It’s a funny thing living in the United States of America as a visa holder. As neither citizen nor green card possessor, you are an “alien” or, more accurately, a “legal alien”.
This no-man’s-land status brings with it certain absurdities. When I arrive back from a trip abroad, for example, I am questioned as if [...]