Redcurrant morning

Elation at last night's footie will last at least until the Highbury match, when Arsenal will return to their former selves. What happened? That's the best that I've seen Ljungberg play this season and Gilberto ever. Our best two players were Fabregas and Eboue (who completely logged on Robinho), but everyone played well. The first English side to win in the Bernabeu, without an Englishman in the side! Which brings me to Alan Hansen.
He claims that we have to "start buying English players again", yet somehow we managed to win without having Chris Sutton up front. According to the Scot, Wenger's "young players are too young and his old players are too old", but my feeling is age has nothing to do with it, particularly as Hansen's most famous lack of prescience was that "you can't win anything with kids" and that Milan reached last year's Champions League final with Cafu, Costacurta and Maldini at a combined age of about 473.
Hansen's article may have been a bit of a Phil Space piece, but my most eloquent response can only be 1-0 to the Arsenal...

Que sera, sera...

Morning karatekas; it's a chilly one isn't it.
So after all, the news we all expected came in today that Wembley won't host this year's Cup final. A bit of an embarrassment for the Evening Standard which just 5 days ago praised the new stadium in a blatant plug. "Wembley's grand design is well worth the wait", Michael Hart told us; can't seem to find it on the This is London website now. Just a statement on how Multiplex, responsible for building the stadium, are disappointed the the FA doesn't have 100% confidence in them. Does someone at the Standard have a stake in the deal? No more comments about the Athens Olympics now eh.

Ha ha ha

From: Human Resources
To: London Staff

Dear All,

Our company is going to be considered for inclusion on the Financial Times "UK's 50 Best Workplaces" list which is published in May this year.

The Great Place to Work Institute who are responsible for compiling the list will send you an email with a link to an employee survey regarding employee opinions.

This is an independent survey, so feel free to be honest and candid. No one from the company will see your responses.

If you have any questions about the authenticity of this survey pleace contact : [email@greatplacetowork.co.uk].

Thankyou for your participation.

Phone tracking

This article's quite interesting, albeit a little too full of conspiracy theory and fear-mongering. Describes how to track someone's whereabouts through their GSM phone. You may have read it already, but since it doesn't tell you which sites allow you to do this, I thought I'd point you in the right direction.

Bad two verse

It's Valentine's; as everyone knows
A time for poets to compose.
I'm far less romantic than any rose
So this is how my sonnet goes:

Ain't iambic pentameters curious
constructions! Scansion should not present
much difficulty but, in this event
words sound contriv'd if not plain spurious
(especially when endurious
attempts are made to rhyme). Consent
to form won't necessarily prevent
disharmony. Despite my furious
travails, it's not the metre which assails
me. Sesquipedalian form curtails
the opportunity to raise a laugh:
five feet of philology fail to fire
much comedy when witty words require
one syllable, or fewer, maybe ha-
lf?

An interesting article to tide you over

Extended browsing

Winners of the extend Firefox contest should be announced next week. Some of these extensions really do contribute considerably to the browsing experience: I particularly recommend from the shortlist the All-In-One Sidebar (which is great even on a small screen if you constantly mess about with your browser), IE Tab (though its concept as a contest entry seems to be shooting the browser slightly in the foot), Viamatic foXpose (even better than tabbed browsing!) and Web Developer (for really advanced browsing).
There are a few other extensions that you should definitely consider in addition to those shortlisted: Nuke Anything Enhanced which allows you to remove objects (such as Flash adverts) from the webpage; OpenBook which enables you to manage your bookmarks better; Print Image, Print / Print Preview and Resize Search which are simple but invaluable tools that will hopefully appear in the core product one day; StumbleUpon, which I've mentioned before and puts a bit of fun into browsing; and Tab Mix Plus, which is one of the best extensions I've seen, albeit it with a bewildering array of configuration possibilities.
Take some time to take a look and improve your browsing experience (notwithstanding this blog of course).

Do Not Abuse

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Taking DNA samples from criminals is undoubtedly useful when it comes to diagnosing crimes. You simply swab the evidence, do a look-up against your criminal record database and go and pick up the culprit. There are of course ways to destroy DNA evidence on the crime scene -- chlorine in particular -- but generally it should put the fear into criminals who're on a register that they will be caught if they leave a single hair behind.
But that's about using evidence from the scene against people who have shown themselves to be a menace to society and may therefore be suspect: repeat offenders, particularly in violent crime. It is utterly different from rounding up any old person, taking a sample of their DNA and telling them that they have criminal propensities which are held against them for life. This is what's happening in the UK.
Currently the police can use any powers they choose -- mostly under prevention of terrorism -- to stop you, take a sample and hold it indefinitely. So it is that we find that those on the database represent less the targetted group of suspects from the original design, than a reflection of prejudice on the part of members of our police force. Accordingly, 37% of black men are held on the index (versus 9% of white), while there are 24,000 children have their DNA records stored indefinitely, irrespective of even charges being pressed. You simply have to be stopped and your DNA can be taken.
Why should anyone fear their presence on the list if they're not going to commit a crime, is the typical response. There are a number of issues, notwithstanding assumption of criminality being an infringement of our civil liberties. As biometric data is stored on passports and ID cards, the police will be able to track you wherever you travel -- indeed prevent you travelling should they choose, with no justification required. Moreover, this data can be shared, willfully or unwillingly. It may be stolen, or sold to insurance companies vetting your health or other profiles. If you don't believe me, you should see how wide the electoral register or your credit history are spread: political parties in the UK even used credit records to profile swing voters at the last general election.
I'm not trying to sound like there's a conspiracy theory out there where a police state is trying to monitor our every move: for a start the logistics in retaining so much data would be vast. There is nevertheless an erosion of values of liberty.
Slowly, progressively, irrevocably, the police and government request ever more pervasive rights. Each preceding erosion acts as a justificaiton of the next. We will, within 10 years, be carrying ID cards that hold this data and many people will have access to it, but it will do nothing to serve us.

Cartoon Violence

We've been enduring some more debate about "freedom of speech" recently; and as usual it stands on shaky ground, advocated unthinkingly by the blasé or in bad faith by the malevolent.
I have long been of the opinion that freedom of speech is not an inaliable right; indeed it is not enshrined by European countries in the same way as it is in the US constitution. You should earn your right to express your opinion. What gives anyone the right to spout any old bollocks? Or to libel someone? There should be a degree of self censorship, a sense of responsibility that we take to inform ourselves before we opine.
This means that if we say something malicious, we may be punished, just as the BNP tossers should be for their racist claptrap. Here they took time to gloss the Coran and foment prejudice, willfully and spitefully. But because we're so used to people reiterating nonsense on our TV screens everyday -- I'm not just looking at Fox here -- under the banner that they are allowed to express themselves, which juror who holds sympathy with some elements of BNP fallacies on multiculturalism and who sees a need for debate is going to convict these deeply spiteful and dishonest people?
But I didn't even want to talk about them; I wanted to talk about cartoons.
If ever there was one area of expression that needed to be informed, it was satire. What's the use of mocking someone's behaviour if it's so wide of the mark as to be unrecognisable? Unfortunately, the cartoons printed in Danish and French newspapers showing Mohammed as a bomber draw some resonance with their audience. They are more or less funny and more or less offensive. And so we have on the one hand police pulling aside young Asian men at Euston under an obscene prevention of terrorism act, and on the other Egyptians who fear that they can't travel to the UK because they are Muslim.
I digress, since my point is how the editors who publish these cartoons stake a claim to be allowed to do so. If we see cartoons in European papers mocking Jesus, we know people take offence, but we live in a suitably liberal society that most Christians recognise their way of life may be mocked and there is value in it. Many Muslims protesting about these cartoons do not live in such a liberal society and moreover do not wish to live in one. Their values should not be allowed to impose on our own society's values however.
If you see an inconsistency in this response to two arguments for freedom of speech, one for the BNP and one for the Danish press, look again. The former is indefensible because it impinges upon the way we should live our lives in tolerance; the latter is defensible because the reaction is based on intolerance. This is not to say that I agree with the cartoons themselves; one of the issues that Europeans have to face in this kind of religious satire is that when they mock Christianity, they mock a culture to which they themselves belong; they can argue that they're laughing with Christians. When they mock Islam, they are laughing at someone else.
Generally, my response to the cartoon is as such: the Danish paper should have been allowed to publish the cartoon but shouldn't have felt the need to; this was exacerbated in the case of France Soir which was well within its rights to publish, and there was no excuse for the owners to sack the editor; the reaction in some parts of the Muslim world has been wholly and unjustifiably racist against Danish society in general.
In summary, the whole episode simply reflects human stupidity. Can a cartoon really provoke such a violent response? When will these stubborn people from all parties recognise that they have to live with each others differences? There's ample scope for satire in that subject matter.
You can find some excellent comment and cartoons on Cagle's Web Log.

• Cartoon 1
• Cartoon 2
• Cartoon 3
• Cartoon 4
• Cartoon 5
• Cartoon 6
• Cartoon 7
• Cartoon 8
• Cartoon 9