Blockbuster

Some people have way too much time on their hands. Nevertheless, I think you should check out this version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, done in Lego. Who said he was looking less black?

Freedom my arse

Big Brother is watching you, and it's destroying the evidence.
Firstly, the Cabinet Office is actively engaged in destroying emails that would have implicated David Blunkett -- and possibly Alistair Campbell's not-so-dodgy dossier -- before the Freedom of Information Act kicks in in January.
Secondly, the government is refusing to release advice on the legality of identity cards, having nevertheless allowed a House of Commons debate to try and make them law.
For all its pontificating about Open Government, Freedom of Information and Data Protection, this government and our recently deposed Home Secretary have implemented some of the most Orwellian legislation, amid a torrent of doublespeak. And if you complain, you're a wooly liberal or have something to hide, according to Charles Clarke.
Actually, it's the government that has plenty to hide, not least doing favours for friends at our expense or sending people to die in a foreign country under a false pretext. Let's all sit idly by while they do it.

Age shall not wither

The youngest children are all observation and no analysis, while our elderly tend to be all analysis and no observation. Don't we have room for both?
Infants only acquire their reasoning ability slowly: if I push my fingers in the plug socket I'll get a shock, if I do it again I'll get a shock, let me see what happens if I push my fingers in the plug socket...
As the senses dull, the elderly abandon their capacity to examine anything but move straight on to passing judgement. Things and people are good or (more usually) bad, irrespective of any facts we might be bothered to observe.
This might lead us to believe that the period in between offers a healthy balance between looking and learning. But our adolescence is so overcome by peer pressure and hormones that we think Busted are the saviours of rock. And just as adulthood offers us the chance to escape these shackles and breathe the air of independent thought we indulge in media and dodgy blogs that show us what we know already and tell us what to think about it.

Stop Press!

There's a pillow fight tonight just after 6pm outside the National Gallery: http://www.mobile-clubbing.com/pillow.html

Virtually a white Christmas

Here's a festive link: make your own virtual snowflakes.
Yes, I have been very busy.

The Union of the Beast

If you are worried about the end of the world and the part the European Union is going to play in it, you are probably Ian Paisley. The right reverend honorary doctor tells us that the 1999 Parliament of Europe is fulfilling Revelations, by showing a harlot riding a beast on its currency and promoting the Tower of Babel. But most strikingly, the seat bearing the number of the beast has been left unoccupied: "The Antichrist's seat will be occupied. The world awaits his full and final development. The Lord will destroy him by the spirit of His mouth (the Word of God) and by the brightness of His coming (2 Thes. 2:8). The coming of the Lord draweth nigh." I couldn't have put it better myself.

Pyrrhic victories

A certain Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in the third century B.C., attacked the burgeoning Roman Empire on the Italian mainland in order to defend his fellow Greeks. Though he won a couple of battles, he sustained such heavy casualties that he lost the war. This coined the term Pyrrhic victory, one that I am becoming familiar with in practice rather than as a matter of historical interest.
Having emailed our boss with collective concerns about changes to contracts -- see my Contract Tennis entry of December 6th -- the company has backed down and is now offering us benefits without any of the drawbacks. However, as mouthpiece for my disgruntled colleagues, I am perceived as the ringleader. Plutarch called Pyrrhus the fool of hope: any ideas that I had that our tribunes would engage with their minions constructively have been dashed; I'm now looking for an exit strategy.

Old fruity

This may be close on fifty years old, but it was still news to me. Did you know that the original lyrics to Tutti Frutti went:

Tutti Frutti, good booty
If it don’t fit, don’t force it
You can grease it, make it easy.

Little Richard was an old fruit playing to the New Orleans gay scene and had to rely on a producer to rewrite one of the seminal songs in Rock and Roll...

Privateers and pirates

As I ponder the malevolent machinations of my own employer, I went to see the latest in a series of liberal documentaries to emerge from the States: The Corporation. This film has a pretty powerful anti-capitalist manifesto that exposes the evils corporations do and how they get away with, but is so long that you forget what's been said within half an hour. My most enduring memory of the film is the back pain from very uncomrtable chairs.
One of the more striking tales was of water privatisation in Bolivia where the people finally revolted and renationalised these services through a militant struggle, having to overcome armed riot police to have the water they needed to drink. This was contrasted with corporate representatives selling air pollution licenses as commodities so that not only water but air is privatised in North America. Where do you draw the line?
While it's clear (to me at least) that depriving people of water or health because they don't have the money to pay for it is morally reprehensible, it's not clear why people should be allowed to make a profit out of food. If the air should be state-owned and provided for common good, why not not land? The problem is that our notion of democracy has become synonymous with aspiration: it's no longer about having basic liberties but about being able to own things and make as much profit as anyone else. And while our corporate media continues to tell us that communism has failed, show me a place where capitalism has worked and where no one has been disenfranchised.

Contract tennis

Having decided to lay a bunch of people off for their own incompetence, my munificent masters have decided to present me (and others in my position following our incorporation) with a variation in terms of employment. We will work 7% more hours each week and have to give two months' notice, in exchange for which we will receive a 3% pension contribution and some healthcare options for which I'm ineligible. I also get one day extra holiday a year due to length of service and have a month to sign this. Our initial response was -- collectively -- something less than positive. This has nevertheless been tempered as follows:

Thank you for this email; it goes a long way towards clarifying our concerns and has certainly improved our collective perception of the variation letter. While the general consensus is that the offer is attractive, it does contain fundamental changes to our current contract that need further discussion. We want to raise these collectively so that they can be addressed in an open and practical manner, but there are different priorities that may require some individual negotiations. We appreciate that these kinds of mergers will inevitably entail new ways of working and we're keen to participate in this process and highlight some points.
A number of us are overdue or imminently due performance and pay reviews. We feel that outstanding appraisals should be addressed before we consider variations to the contract and that these will help to inform a smoother integration.
The proposed new benefits offer advantages over our existing contracts, but there is scope to clarify how these are taxed, their coverage and portability, and how individuals might opt in or out if they already pay for some of these benefits themselves. There are a number of other more or less tangible benefits that [the new company] offers which aren't mentioned in the letter but probably should be presented as part of this package, such as sickness benefit, share issue, budgets for training, opportunities to work from home, and how rewards for results will work.
Some fundamental variations in the new terms will need further discussion. It's not clear how the increase in number of hours is offset by the proposed benefits. Holiday allocations have not been normalised so that anyone at [the previous company] for less than two years will lose out under the new terms. The increased length of notice period is another concern and the new variation letter should show reference to our current contract. We would also like to see more emphasis placed on personal development: how will the new structure allow us to progress within the company, both in terms of training and responsibility? For example, extra hours in the contract might be allocated explicitly to personal development.
We would like to engage these issues in a positive and constructive way and discuss how changes to our contract will enable us as a company to progress following the merger.

But even after this effort to be constructive, we should perhaps refer our employers to the Wilson and Alcan cases that will slap down their bollocks straight away... I await a response with baited breath, not least because it'll come to me as I was the muggins at the forefront of this collective bargaining nonsense. I have already set my RSS feeds to collect from CW, Monster, et al.

Presentational discontent

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fundamental of content management is to separate presentation from content. So how do you go about making a presentation about content management that says anything useful? Talk about content management discontent?

[Oh no, I'm sounding like that woman in Sex and the City.]

This subject is my "field", I should point out. So it came to pass that I was volunteered to speak at Olympia about it this morning to an undefined audience. And it went very well thank you. No substance but no discernable discontent and lots of people proffering business cards. If you're the blindest bit interested, I can email it to you.

You can tell it's Taser

With the U.K. government poised to arm police with Taser stun guns despite the fact that they killed seventy people in North America last year, I cast my mind back to a recent story from Florida, where two children were stunned.
The first was a six year old who had a piece of broken glass when he was at school and threatened to cut his leg with it, apparantly. So the policeman stunned him. The second was a twelve year old girl skipping school was picked up by a police officer, but ran off. When she ran across the road, the officer stunned her for her own safety. Given that a Taser can immobilize you from seven metres away with 50,000 volts of electricity, I wonder just how safe it is, even with police guidelines in this country that allow you to shoot someone dead for carrying a table leg and go on strike if you're suspended for your actions on full pay.
As the mother of the first child points out: "If there's three officers, it's nothing to tell a 6-year-old holding a glass, if you feel threatened, 'Hey, here's a piece of candy, hey, here's a toy. Let the glass go,'". But police may feel, as in this case, that using the gun is the only option.

Individual biologies

As I learn to live with cancer -- there are some tough lessons on this syllabus -- it becomes increasingly clear that for all I discover about tumours and treatments, this objective approach will tell me little about how my own cancer might be cured. Because when you're looking for a cure, it's not about a given percentage success rate for a particular therapy or trial (especially for so rare a form of tumour as mine); the individual biology of your cancer is what counts.
My oncologist characterizes the idea that if 70% of treatments work then you have that chance of success as a neanderthal approach, and I can see his point. For example, it's no use putting patients through the most effective radiotherapy if they have lots of small metastases: it would take years to target all these mini tumours, during which period there would be further spread. The reason why people are put through mass courses of chemotherapy is not because the oncologist knows that it will work for those patients, but because it's statistically successful. Oncologists need more time with each patient to determine the correct solution: therapy shouldn't be a mass market but a heavily tailored solution.

Behind in my blogging

My recent reticence has not been entirely on purpose, or through lack of things to pontificate over. It is due to a number of factors:

1. I've been really busy at work, preparing presentations in addition to my normal job and trying to get a contract out of the HR dude.
2. I've been really busy outside work, Christmas shopping mostly.
3. I've had a lot on my plate with hospital visits; though results have turned out to be very good, it was touch and go for the last few months.
4. My bloody PDA has broken down again. It may fix itself (has done so before) but I expect I'm going to need a new one.It will need the following:
   1. PIM (address book, calendar, memos, expenses)
   2. a decent OS, onto which I can load applications like AvantGo (or some other Plucker) and Vindigo;
   3. an application that allows me to edit Word and Excel files on the PDA itself, and ideally Powerpoint too;
   4. preferably Wi-Fi with a web browser;
   5. a flash memory card from which I can play MP3s;
   6. some kind of password manager.

Any ideas? Comment them down here...

Time for (inter)action

Some quick links today, for you to interact with:

• Geek off;
• Work off your frustrations;
• Drown your sorrows.

Patent polling

The Polish government is refusing to support an EU directive on software patents, ZD Net reports. This follows on from Microsoft, Oracle and others implementing ridiculous patents. The news comes as Microsoft chief executive, Steve Ballmer -- aka scourge of open source -- is threatening to sue anyone who uses software where you can double-click. Good to see that the latest members of the EU are standing up to those who claim everything is already their intellectual property.

Stuck for something to do tonight?

Take your iPod / mp3 player / Walkman / whatever other mobile music technology you have and get yourself down to Paddington station, where there will be some mobile clubbing tonight!
For more details, go to www.mobile-clubbing.com.

How to win friends and sack people

This is a bit of a fucked company kind of thing. If you're losing £X,000 a month because you engendered a series of mergers and acquisitions without thinking about the pragmatics of how you continue to deliver your service, the easiest way to recoup is to sack the people whose fault it isn't and then implement a restructuring exercise three months later. As part of this restructuring, make half the people who remain renegotiate their contracts.
But the dilemma really comes with who and how you sack. The favourite here seems to be, ditch anyone who has a personality (which at least leaves me safe). Not content with an office devoid of charm, we need to ensure that the staff exhibit similar characteristics. Then as morale plummets, send out an email to the office Christmas party. They led us to the edge of the abyss then took a giant step forward...
The key thing of course, is that this is evolution, not revolution; we will own the company and make it a great place to work. There will be no more corporate clichés... quality will be our buzzword. By the way, we're sacking our tester.

Arafat lacked no bottle

Now you know I'm not one to gossip...
but according to the satirical French paper Le Canard enchaîné, Yasser Arafat suffered a cirrhosis of the liver, which is why cause of death was never reported (according to Le Monde).
This was not caused by alcohol consumption, according to medical sources, but an uninformed public would certainly have drawn that connection. Since Arafat didn't drink, but suffered from lesions in the liver, there were suspicions among Palestinians that he had been poisoned. There was no evidence of this according to the paper: causes of death were multiple and complex. Yet explaining these medical nuances to a world ripe with prejudice was untenable: the Middle East is not ready for truth.

What blogs are for...

Joachim du Bellay, French Renaissance poet, was celebrated for his self-consoling verse, particularly Les Regrets:

Je me plains à mes vers, si j'ay quelque regret,
Je me ris avec eulx, je leur dy mon secret,
Comme estans de mon coeur les plus seurs secretaires.

He used his poetry as keeper of his innermost secrets, then published it to his literate public.
And so it is with blogs, as we relate what secret cause we have for joy or sorrow to anyone who would read them. Such moments particularly materialize after company meetings that refer to restructuring and diminishing roles. I wait -- with not too baited breath but a very healthy dose of cynicism -- for the outcome of this all, which I will divulge to my own keepers of secrets before long.

Robo-roach

Boffins in francophone Europe have developed a robot cockroach to rid households of such pests; is killing these bugs insecticide?

Timesheets Las Vegas

Bright-eyed client gonna set new goals to which you can aspire:
Got a hold lot of projects ready to run, so set your budget up higher.
There's a team of a thousand waiting out there
Squandering budget, devil-may-care
And I'm a project manager with time to spare so
Viva los timesheets!
Viva los timesheets!

How I wish that there were more than seven and a half hours in the day!
But even if there were forty more I'd manage your budget away.
There are Gantt charts and risk logs and spreadsheets too,
The critical path's been explained to you
All you needs in place to do it Prince2 so
Viva los timesheets!
Viva los timesheets!

Viva los timesheets and our invoicing system based on accrual
And all your budget down the drain
Viva los timesheets that turn uptime into downtime and downtime into uptime
But don't change your mind or we'll make you pay it all again!

Gonna keep the project running, gonna spend all your money and use up all your time
If you wind up broke well always remember to push back that deadline
I'm gonna give it everything you've got
So keep some contingency in your pot
For us to deliver on the dot

Viva los timesheets!
Viva los timesheets!

Politique démocratique et hypocrite

The French have a problem with politics; even the term politicien evokes the sordid and untrustworthy; better be un homme politique. Unable to come to terms with the fact that Bush has four more years of leading the planet into disarray, they forget that for their own presidential elections the voters narrowed the candidates down to a crook and a racist, fortunately opting for the former.
Now the debate has turned to the new European constitution where we see a fine example of French democracy at work, as each party splits itself down the middle over whether to be in favour or oppose it. And what are the benefits and disadvantages contained in the new Treaty of Rome? No one knows and no one understands, because as usual it's a battle of intellectual rather than practical debate. No one could legitimately acuse French politicians of being a camel short of a caravan, but aloof and unsympathetic to the everyday concerns of the population, certainly. So if you're looking for another nation where an uneducated bigot who brings economic and diplomatic downfall to his country gets elected on the basis that he has a common touch, look no further than France.

Remembrance

It's sadly selfish, but true, that the 11th November no longer signifies Armistice for me; two years ago to the day I had surgery to remove my cancer. The pain is hard to recall (my anaesthetic was pretty useless for about twelve hours after the operation) but I do hold vivid memories of having tubes pulled out of me and the general disfunction of my innards after they'd be cut apart and sewn back together again.
And emergent from all this is an underlying antipathy for smoking and all else carcegenic. So on this day I think of that pain and that of the people around me and treat every breath each smoker inhales as a slap in my face and theirs.

Fat of the land

Having just returned from the south of France, it's striking how few people there are overweight, particularly in comparison with where I live in London where probably two-thirds of the population is obese (and the other third emaciated). This French sveltitude is even more striking when you consider the local diet: lots of courses of meat, cheese, desserts; and lest you Atkinsites say otherwise, loads of carbs: breads, patisseries, rice, pasta and all sorts of potato-based dishes. So where are the fat people?
Most authorities recognise obesity as a symptom of poverty; it's pretty obvious when you see how people live that a French peasant is better off than your typical chav. But does the way people eat affect how much they consume? An all-you-can eat restaurant is as inconceivable to your average rural Frenchman as eating an unbattered chicken thigh not served from a bucket would be to most people where I live.
Though it is certainly on the rise, the fast food culture of huge portions in one rapid course remains the exception in France where people take two hours for lunch that will have a minimum of four courses: starter, meat, vegetables (typically served separately), probably cheese and then fruit or some other dessert. While many may mock the vast plates and apparently tiny portions of nouvelle cuisine, few leave a French dining table feeling unsated. Bigger simply isn't best; it's just bigger.

Spun out

Microsoft has won a contract to provide software for 900,000 NHS computers. Apparently this is a money-saving deal as an open source solution couldn't possibly be cheaper than paying Microsoft licenses. But my issue with this contract (which the Beeb doesn't report) is that it's for nine years. So the government is committing our health service to using technology that it cannot possibly predict the worth of. To give you some examples: nine years ago Internet Explorer barely had a ten per cent share of the internet browser market, Netscape was by far the biggest thing; a new version of Windows was about to be released that would allow applications to truly run simultaneously (this had previously existed only on Macs); the .mp3 file format was not yet distributed; and no one had heard of Flash memory, central to the ubiquitous digital camera and mobile phones.
How can a contract that commits to such ridiculous unknowns possibly be momney-saving?

Dynastic democracies

It has been pointed out before -- but I'm going to do it again anyway -- that the U.S. will potentially have close to 40 years of just two families running the White House:
1988 - 1992 George Bush Snr
1992 - 2000 Bill Clinton
2000 - 2008 George W. Bush
2008 - 2016 Hilary Clinton
2016 - 2024 Jeb Bush
This doesn't even show the impact of the Kennedys on the scene.
But the U.S. is far from the only democracy to elect such dynasties. After close to fifty years of independence inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, India this year elected his granddaughter by marriage, Sonia, having previously voted in her husband and her mother-in-law. Yuri Andropov ran the Soviet Union in the 1980s thanks to his KGB connections but the Russians have just given another former KGB man, Putin, a mandate for four more years.
In case you thought it was the vast scale of these democracies that made it so difficult to break this dominant order down, take a look at the U.K. where from 1979 to 2010 we'll have had three Prime Ministers, two of whom (Thatcher and Blair) will have been in power for almost thirteen years each: that's more than three U.S. presidential terms.
I doubt that this is due to a populace who believe that it's better the devil you know. The establishment selects and promotes candidates in each of these countries. Without the support of the establishment, the candidates are barely seen in the national media, get no airtime and their views aren't covered. And woe betide them if they cross the establishment that put them there. Bush must pursue Zionist hawkish policies, Blair must appease the CBI, Putin must crush the Chechnyans. The establishment can put you up there and bring you back down again as it did to Thatcher, or use you and spit you out again as Sonia Gandhi has found.

You should be thinking about this.

Now, more than ever, is the time to make a will. Not just because it's one of those things you should have done ages ago, or perhaps you did ages ago but really need to update. But because through November thousands of solicitors are taking part in Will Aid, where you make a typical contribution of £65 to charity and get a proper will drawn up. You should do this now.

North & South

Today there will be an inevitable election crisis in the United States, as results are scrutinized, voting machines inspected, the electoral college questioned and various highly-paid lawyers attempt to disenfranchise the poor. Fear not my USanian chums! For a viable future, look to your past: reestablish a separate Union and Confederacy.
The Confederate states -- those from the South or those that start and end in a vowel -- will have Bush to lead them. They'll ban teaching of evolution from their schools and sustain their economic viability through protectionist trade policies and arms manufacture.
The Union under Kerry will legalise gay marriages and sign the Kyoto protocol, appointing liberal film stars to the Senate and Bruce Springsteen as secretary of state for political correctness.
And the rest of the World will no longer have to put up with thousands of soldiers on their soil, because the Union won't pander to the hawkish lobby while the Confederacy won't know where their countries are.

Trial by Fergie

Manchester United are submitting a dossier to the Football Association demonstrating that Arsène Wenger had stockpiles of pea soup ready to be deployed as ballistic missiles, despite inspections of the Old Trafford dressing rooms by independent monitors. Even more damaging, Thierry Henry was only 45 minutes away from being sent off after repeatedly falling over Gabriel Heinze. While Alex Ferguson has claimed that last weekend's events link Arsenal unequivocally to the destruction of Wembley's twin towers, his critics maintain that Ferguson is deliberately isolationist, creating a climate of paranoia to further his power base amid economic difficulties at home.

Having kittens over allergies?

I'm not an animal lover (that's probably the French in me) but I do know that some people who like pets suffer from the disgusting bugs they carry around with them unless they're cooked to rare at gas mark 6. Fear not, oh hypersensitive Brits, for soon you will be able to acquire a hypo-allergenic cat to soothe your ills.

When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie...

This is surely the only comment required on Sunday's soupendous Pizzagate fiasco.

Foxy politics

Fox (prop. R. Murdoch) is well known for its extremely biased coverage of all things political and its anti-Democrat stance. (In fact, we're likely to see more of this kind of thing in the U.K. with the increasing reach of Sky News on free to air digital broadcasts and the Mail group of newspapers stake in ITN.) But it's interesting how the media attempts to damn those who it opposes while trying to look like it's not engaging in character assassination. Check out this Fox story, for example, which suggests Kerry isn't the all-American baseball fan he claims to be. No need to tackle the issues, no need to question his war record: if he's a point out on the score, he's not Presidential material. Of course, he does actually know where Vietnam is...

Shifting sands

Having found that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons but did show incontravertible proof of possessing the intention to make them, it appears that we should excuse some intelligence dossiers having a word or two out of place. Or even just a letter: didn't they mean Iran?
The U.S. wants to impose sanctions on Tehran for pursuing a nuclear energy policy that could allow arms research. There is no claim that Iran has instigated a weapons programme, but they do seem to possess that sanctionable intent.
European efforts to migrate Iran to more advanced nuclear energy techniques that wouldn't be suitable for weapons have been met with dismay by the U.S. State Department, who fear that this will give Iran time to develop a bomb.
Of course there are few qualms expressed about Pakistan or Israel, who have implemented this technology already and tested it. The message seems to be, if you want a nuclear weapon, you'd better not show it until you've actually developed it (and the means to fire it into a neighbouring country).

Because they're worth it

While MPs are only now having to divulge all their expense claims, you are able to check up on their activity (or lack of) through this useful site.

Gunners goners in Europe?

Ahead of the match in Athens, I thought I'd set out my stall on how Arsenal and others are likely to perform. And I can't see Arsenal winning the tournament.
The defence lacks strength in depth, both in personnel where if Campbell or Touré were injurerd the team would really suffer and on the pitch, where the bulk of the defensive onus is placed on the centre backs and Vieira. There isn't enough defensive capacity in the rest of the team to sustain a successful European campaign. The teams that best meet those values are Chelsea and Juventus, with Milan and Manchester United being other contenders.
In the league it's different however. I can't see anyone beating Arsenal, even when they suffer injuries; they score goals from every part of the pitch. I realize this was the case two years ago, but this time Arsenal's rivals aren't strong enough to capitalize on any slips.
But the managers who have made the biggest impact in the Premiership remain Moyes and Santini. Moyes has demonstrated what you can achieve with little skill -- he's ideally qualified for the Scotland job -- while Santini has turned Spurs around by doing the blindingly obvious effectively. Why Pleat and Hoddle failed to realise that the Spurs midfield couldn't run and that the defence was a shambles is beyond me, but Santini has addressed both from the outset. He's such a miserable git though.

By the book

I'm often struck by the force of conviction that people with religious faith have that they are right. But why shouldn't they be self-righteous when they have a book that justifies all they say, be it the Torah, Coran, Bible, Guru Granth or whatever? Because there's no suspension of judgement, no further investigation, no intellectual exercise; just a displacement of confidence away from the self to text that has been interpreted for them.
It's little coincidence that the times of the greatest religious fervour have produced the least progress in human knowledge. The industrial revolution saw the greatest decline in church attendance in Britain, while the Cultural Revolution in China (little red books this time) hardly compared favourably with increasing levels of education in neighbouring Japan.
Marx may have looked on religion as an opiate, assuaging those in poverty that they would be rewarded after they died. But its hallucinogenic qualities are no less evident as it blinds us to resolving issues (west bank, stem cell research, capitalism) that should be considered in a little more detail.

Polyglot profanity

The web is a worldwide community, a source for people of diverse languages to communicate with each other. As such, this on-line dictionary of abuse has to number among my favourite sites.

90 percenters

I've recently been assessed for my Karnofsky score: here's how it works.

Trade fare

Do you think there's a trade fair for trade fairs? Where stands compete to see who provides the most lurid jelly beans and salesmen in suits recount patronizing blandishments about things you never asked about in the hope you'll forget a pertinent question. Then lumber you with a carrier bag full of glossy documents you'll never read and non-biodegradable plastic. Such is the fare of corporate ennui.

Vive la différance

So farewell Jacques Derrida, France's most famous philosopher of recent times, whose work by its nature compounded its own miscomprehension. To understand Derrida, I think you have to see him in the light of structural linguistics and scepticism.
In the 1960s, the over-riding notion of how language worked was based on minimal phonetic pairs, called phonemes. At its most basic level language could be broken down into these pairs s/z, t/d, p/b etc. so that we understood language by these sounds: bat is different to pat is different to pad is different to bad... you get the idea. (This can be seen through tonal distinctions made by the Chinese tones: mă or mā, incomprehensible to many English-speaking ears, or in Castillian Spanish making no distinction between b and v.) Since all language was made up of these minimal pairs, by extension any text could be broken down into linguistic pairs: subject / object, active / passive etc.
Derrida did not wholly subscribe to this view, however, but drawing on sceptical philosophy of suspension of judgement deemed that we understood language not because of these minimal pairs, but because one piece of language was different to another. So cat was different not just to cad but to dog as well. All language is made up of this vast array of differences, so that we understand language with reference to other elements of language; meaning is deferred until it can be conceptualized with reference to other meaning. Derrida coined the term différance to describe this semi-deliberate delay in understanding something until it is distinguished from other things. It was a play on words (it means both difference and deferral) that practically every other academic has since tried to imitate. (There is linguistic evidence of this too, in the way that language evolves: a word used 300 years ago is unlikely to mean the same as it does now: what's the first thing you think of when you see the word web?)
The corollary of such deferral of meaning was that everything you did and everything that influenced you also had an impact on how you understood language. To get to the root meaning of a text therefore, you had to deconstruct it of all these layers of meaning that were sitting atop it: political, cultural, emotional.
Derrida was extensively mis-read, glossed over (as here) and misunderstood, possibly not least by himself, to the extent that some took deconstruction to be a denial of objective fact; though I'm not sure that Derrida ever said this. I think his thought was an asset to the way in which we might choose to view the world, where our preconscious emotions are layered with meaning as we try to express them and the moment we release text for others to read or listen to, they are no longer our own but a construct of the culture in which they are consumed.
A bit like a content management system.

Not on the agenda

In Not On The Label, Felicity Lawrence describes food deserts, areas where out-of-town supermarkets have left behind urban wastelands where it is impossible to walk to shops and buy fresh fruit and vegetables. The inhabitants of these areas are mostly the poor and car-less who take taxis they can't afford to buy poor quality processed food from supermarket giants.
Yet oppression of the poor is not just through denial of access to everyday healthy requirements, but can be seen in the way government runs filthy segregationist trunk roads through deprived areas of east London like Bow where people are too poorly educated and disaffected to complain.
The legacy of Thatcherite Britain is this new proletariat: semi-literate subscribers to a benefit hegemony where second-class health and education are a brand of poverty. These people have been abandoned to fast food and Blockbusters by all political parties in favour of an aspirational and self-deluding middle England who turn a blind eye to the fact that they are the next in line.

Tortuous human rights

I don't normally like to reference self-righteous Guardian articles (preferring to preserve the pontification for myself) but this is well worth the read.

It's news Jim, but not as we know it

Let's see how long this stays online. A web renegade has restyled BBC news to demonstrate what it would be like if its content actually linked to information relevant to the body of the content it was discussing. More links to more sites giving news a much more interactive nature, rather than the prescriptive sourcing BBC uses at the moment. All those who herald BBC as the self-styled best practice merchant on the web, take note.
To see it in action, click on a story and follow some inline links.

Sub-standard

A Canadian submarine has broken down in the Atlantic stranding its crew, only four days after they acquired it from the Royal Navy. The Canadian navy used to manfacture its own submarines until the industry went under. No compensation will be due as the British warranty doesn't hold water, but the Canadians aren't the only disaffected party; the president of Real Madrid has also complained about a disappointing English sub he bought.

Sheepish? Show pride!

Regular readers of this blog will know of my interest in endocrinology; but this article from the archives may be of more general interest. Apparently 8% of rams are gay. This is due to impact of a cell group within a ram's brain that means it prefers the company of other rams. The Church of England declined to comment.

Ring tone your body

This story has been sitting in my draft pile for a while but I'm still no closer to adding any value to it, so just read it for yourself!

Palm bears fruit

This is what I've been after: the impressive mobile email connectivity of RIM's Blackberry on a Palm OS device. I get to keep all my lovely Palm software and read my email wirelessly; and edit attachments...

Iron curtains and glass walls

Pervez Musharraf's recent observation that a new iron curtain was being drawn between the Western and Islamic worlds is a valid one, pointedly allusive to Israel's security wall against the Palestinian territories. How can anyone believe that segregation will bring about lasting peace? But as ever the issue is not just prejudice -- on both sides, if you look at Sunni criticism of Allawi for being un-Islamic by meeting an Israeli government official -- but prejudice compounded by poverty. Islamophobia and the collapse of Africa will persist while they continue to serve the vested interests of global conglomerates, with oil companies (in particular Shell) holding the poor in their thrall. It's a new mediaevalism.

Tune Easier

I've spent the last week gazing over fuschia bodies and rolling flab (or should that read golden sands and rolling dunes?) of the Tunisian coast. The resort location made tourism more difficult than anticapated, though we did manage to find our way to the impressive Bardo. The isolation seemed to suit most visitors however, who seldom ventured from the hotel lest they miss out on the Louis Armstrong impersonator on his bontempi.

And foxes might fly...

On Wednesday evening our local police officer was meant to discuss with residents how best to tackle drug abuse, burglary and other crime on our inner London estate. He didn't show, despite having a month's notice to make the meeting. Why not? Because he was moved to Parliament Square to control people running riot over the withdrawl of their privilege to hunt foxes with dogs. While these people whinge about no longer being able to trample all over people's property with the excuse that they want to savage an animal that eats their rats, I have to walk past urine on the stairwell and abusive children every day. How bad did they say the countryside is being treated?

Re: tiring

As the cabinet reshuffles thanks to Andrew Smith's timely resignation just before he was meant to present the pensions bill, I came across the article proposing some radical action for the pension time bomb. It made me laugh, but in a serious way.

Similar Minds

Here's a fun / sort of interesting thing to do while your colleagues and clients are off playing polo; indulge in a little introspeciton. There are a wealth of pyschometric tests out there, some more serious than others. I particularly liked discovering which leader I'm most like.

Pending patience

This is getting ridiculous. I have previously commented on the mad rush to patent technologies under as general terms as possible, with the largest players (Oracle, IBM and in particular Microsoft) being the main culprits. But now Microsoft is claiming that it has invented using a keyboard to access hyperlinks. Excuse me while I barely contain my contempt. This patent was filed in 1997 (though submitted only a week ago). Did I imagine using a keyboard to navigate a Lynx browser in 1993 at least a year before Internet Explorer was released? Wasn't Lynx highlighting a link the same as giving it a focus? What is this all about? Shall I patent the internal combustion engine? A comprehensive list of patents Microsoft is currently applying for can be found here, with some of the other main perpetrators also described.

Bush by numbers

An interesting tirade from the Independent into Dubya's double standards.

Keeping tabs on tags

Thought I'd point you in the direction of this article from The Register about David Blunkett's proposal to track offenders outside prison. It offers some more technical insight into how the scheme would(n't) work.

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Yet more on my cancer, which seems to be pre-occupying me somewhat. There's a cure. I am absolutely livid that no one has pointed this out to me before or offered me the chance to pursue it, but there is a cure.
Typically with neuroendocrine pancreatic tumours, octreotide is prescribed to control spread (meta-static disease). This can be measured because the tumour is functional, that is it takes up the octreotide. This treatment even reduces the spread of the tumour in 6% of cases: very successful in this field. Interferon is also used, either in alpha or beta form. It appears that it's rarer to prescribe this, as it has some side-effects and shows no more benefit than octreotide, but if the tumour is non-functional (like mine) and won't take up octreotide, this is an alternative for controlling (though not curing) metastatic disease.
But I've now discovered that if you combine interferon with somatostatin, there's a much better rate of progression according to this Swedish study. Seven of eight patients involved in the trial benefited from this combination of drugs with partial response or stabilization. A previous study had also shown how even non-functional tumours benefited with a 50% response that lasted for nine months.
There are multiple side effects and it would probably mean three injections a day without any guarantee that it'd work or how long you might be injecting yourself. But with new methods to measure spread this is an option that I will certainly raise with my oncologist, rather than just waiting for the inevitable.

Birthday

Today is my birthday; they're smoking cigars -- or at least according to the Sugar Cubes they are. It's also two years to the day since I realised something was seriously wrong with me as the symptoms of jaundice set in: itching, irritiability, diarrhoea, lethargy. So it's an anniversary to celebrate, as five-year survival rate for men in the UK with pancreatic cancer is 2%; I'm 40% of the way to beating the index.

Aniseed and Valium

Today was another PET scan: more fasting and having radioactive glucose markers injected into your veins. A PET scan works by having a hormonal marker attach itself to cancerous cells which show up as radioactive when passed through a scanner. On top of this, there's a CT scan: high-definition imaging to show exactly where in the body the cancerous cells are located.
You always get valium to relax you before the scan; not because the claustrophobia might get to you but because you don't want to have your muscles taking up the marker and returning false positives. Normally with CT scans, you have to drink iodine diluted in lemon squash to improve the imaging, but this would interfere with the PET so isn't distributed. Apparently the boffins have discovered that aniseed performs the same trick without the interference, so that's what I had to drink today.
The PET is a long drawn-out business: it's full body so takes upwards of an hour and you have to lie motionless (and not say anything) for an hour beforehand while the marker takes up. I remain unconvinced that any amount of valium will prevent me from thinking about the results, which I won't find out for six weeks.

Super (nintendo) pants

Not sure if these pants are aimed at couch potatos, geeks, or just those who want to be played with... Anyway, you can order them here.

Food pyramid

This article from the Financial Times describes how the notion of the food pyramid is under review in the U.S., with much lobbying from all sides. The food pyramid shows how much of our diet should be carbohydrates, protein, fruit, etc. and schools in the States have to follow its recommendations when providing for children. With a third of the U.S. population overweight or obese, it's important that the administration gets this one right, but already interested parties have entered the fray. The Atkins group is trying to reduce the level of carbohydrates the government recommends, while sugar and particularly salt producers feel they could be under threat given the current diabetes rates. The pyramid needs some refinement too, as there's currently no distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats and the standard portions all vary anyway: one portion of fruit is not equal to one portion of leafy vegetables. It begs the question, who understands the pyramid anyway? Show us how much of what food we should be eating on a daily basis for a balanced diet! If nobody can grasp what the pyramid means, the debate about what should be in it will be pretty pointless.

To whose company?

It's coming up to a fortnight since the company I work for was acquired (by a company that itself was simultaneously merged or acquired). But just because we're in the big league now doesn't mean that our bosses have lost the personal touch or no longer care for our welfare. Not only have they offered us a chance to socialize with our clients by playing polo with them next month, but witness these (paraphrased but accurate) emails from CEO:
To: London-Staff
Date: 17/08/04
Subject: Staff Satisfaction
As part of my personal commitment to the health and wellbeing of all staff, I have arranged (on your behalf) for daily delivery of 100% pure fruit smoothies from the juice bar. They are delivered here for £3 per large (1.25 pints) or so.
The plan is to select one variety daily. They will be delivered here by 10.am.
You can do it every day or as often as you like.

---

To: London-Staff
Date: 18/08/04
Subject: Re. Staff Satisfaction
In response to your questions:
1. The smoothies are not free. They cost £3 each.
2. Flavours will be chosen by group preference.

Pregnant pause

According to an article in the American journal Fertility and Sterility, the later in life a woman has her last baby the less like she is to contract ovarian cancer. Hormonal factors mean that you're 58% less likely to contract ovarian cancer if you have carry your a pregnancy to term after the age of 35. And if you have four children, you reduce the risk by 64%.

ISA without the IFA

Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) were introduced a number of years ago now as a way of encouraging people to save money and invest in the stock market. You can invest up to £3000 per tax year in mini-cash ISAs, but in addition you can invest up to £3000 per tax year in a mini-equities ISA. Equities (shares) can offer you potentially far higher rates of return than cash, but there is risk involved and it is rather reliant on you picking the right fund.
However if you go to an independent financial advisor (IFA) looking for an equities ISA, you're going to pay a hefty sum up front for investing in a well managed fund. Up to 5% of the sum could go into fees and that comes straight out of what you were investing. A good way around this is to find an online funds supermarket, such as the Fidelity Funds Network. I've used this to buy an ISA and saved myself close to £100, so it's probably worth a look if you were considering this sort of investment.

Personal similes

A simile in the first person singular is art; in the first person plural it's politics; in the second person it's philosophy, in the third person it's journalism. Observe:
I am just like a fly trapped in a jar.
We are just like flies trapped in a jar.
You are just like a fly trapped in a jar.
They are just like flies trapped in a jar.

4th generation, 3rd dimension

"The fourth wave of LCD technology is here", according to Sharp and temporarily my scepticism has deserted me.
Sharp has developed a monitor that gives images a 3D effect without having to wear special glasses. You can view games and design applications in 3D and possibly three-dimensional pivot tables in Excel, which seem to be de rigueur in accounts at my new company...

What is Moore...

Just saw on Channel 4 News -- but haven't been able to find on the web yet -- a very funny extract from Fahrenheit 9/11 that had been cut from the film's release. It shows Dubya's new favourite to head the CIA, Porter Goss, admitting on camera that he's completely incapable of being recruited by the agency. He claims that he doesn't have the language skills, the technical ability or the expertise in the Middle East to add value to the CIA. Perhaps the Republicans will put this down to false modesty?

---

Updated: check it out here.

Seductive additive

So Prozac has now been found in the nation's supply of drinking water; are we so surprised? Viagra is regularly found in the nation's spam.

Tender exchanges

I'm feeling a little tender about Microsoft at the moment; note that's tender about not tender towards. My imminent office move involves migration to Exchange and I'm not looking forward to it. As a consequence of using Exchange, we're not being forced to use Outlook as our mail client; it's just that if we use anything else we won't be able to use the office calendar or book meeting rooms.
And Outlook is pants. The interface is too involved, yet doesn't offer most of options of many other email clients. Message filtering and contact handling are weak and performance is particularly poor.
And that's without even considering security; apprentice hackers cut their teeth on VBScript in spam designed to trip up Outlook, and I have my doubts that Service Pack 2 will do anything to remedy this.
It goes hand in hand with any Microsoft technology; there's even a virus for Microsoft Pocket PC handhelds, and don't get me started on the IIS web server.
While it possibly isn't Microsoft's fault that there are so many viruses, bugs and general issues with its software -- and I don't want to be yet another one to jump on the Open Source bandwagon for no reason -- we are supposed to be technology savvy. There are good reasons for using Microsoft Windows as an operating system and even for Microsoft Office, but there are plenty of valid alternatives to Outlook and Exchange. If even we're capitulating, what hope for anyone else out there?

Microsoft support

Found a bug in Internet Explorer: the last cumulative update prevents your browser from remembering the text size setting, which always reverts to medium. So I tried to submit this to Microsoft support...
All I could find was the Microsoft Wish site, which allows you to suggest enhancements to Microsoft products. This is the automated response you get:

We want to personally thank you for submitting Microsoft your suggestion. [...] Because of the volume this web site receives we can't guarantee that you will receive a personal response, but rest assured that your submission was received, reviewed, and routed.

I appreciate that: they'd like to thank me personally but probably won't be able to. Who said Microsoft had grown too big?

Handheld against terror

I'm not saying you should be worried. But having seen the Home Office distribute their Planning for Emergencies leaflet -- has anyone actually received theirs yet? -- and the U.S. government decide that now is the time to act on four year old intelligence, I thought it my duty to point out these two anti-terror applications you can keep with you at all times on your Palm PDA.
Family Disaster Planner 2004 reminds us that "Disaster can strike quickly and without warning. It can force you to evacuate your neighborhood or confine you to your home. [...] Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster, but they cannot reach everyone right away." You should be reassured by the fact that it was updated for military action in Iraq.
But how prepared should you be for the terrorist threat? Code Orange 2004 has the answers! It details the Homeland Security Directive and the five threat conditions for possible terrorist attack.
Your local official may not be there to help you when anthrax strikes, but your PDA will be.

The Underclass

Despite how many years is it now of new Labour, we see little in the way of redistribution of wealth. Indeed the underclass of sink estates, poor education and few prospects is still there, disaffected, hating asylum seekers and watching Big Brother as if it were Life on Earth. And they have nothing; indeed less than nothing. As this article from the excellent Motley Fool shows, half the population own only 3% of non-property wealth, but have a substantial share in the nations £3,000,000,000,000 debt. But who gives a damn about the chavs apart from the BNP?

Something of the knight about him

As we continue to endure the fiasco at the Football Association, we see the Mail call for Sven's head, the Guardian want Geoff Thompson out, and many others want to see the back of David Davies. All right, so the whole thing is a public relations cock-up, but what do we expect from the FA?
Yet one person is emerging to head the newly streamlined FA: the erstwhile boss of Sport England, Sir Trevor Brooking. I'm not sure whose job he wants: Chief Executive (Palios), Chairman (Thompson), Executive Director (Davies) or Manager (Eriksson); probably a combination of all the executive posts. And I think he'll get it. He has loads of media connections and is universally approved of, from the right wing hard arses to the liberal beatniks to the red tops. No one seems to know why however.

Canker in the Apple

Steve Jobs, Chief Executive and co-founder of Apple -- the computers, not the record label -- has had a neuroendocrine tumour resected from his pancreas, just like me! Not sure what my conclusion should be; my blog seems to be lagging a bit...

Intersexual Olympiad

Transsexuals will be allowed to compete in the Athens Olympics, according to this recent article in Le Monde. Hormone treatment will no longer be tantamount to doping and even though testosterone-charged women might have an advantage over some female competitors in the power events, tests to determine sex will not take place.
Athletes who have changed sex before puberty will be allowed to compete freely, while those who've had a sex change post puberty will be considered on a case by case basis. All formerly male competitors in female events must have had their testicles removed, be recognised legally as female in their own countries and have been receiving hormone therapy for at least two years. As yet no transsexual athlete has come forward to participate under these conditions.
Interestingly, Le Monde reckons that when gender testing was first introduced in the 1960s, around 60% of women's world records were held by "intersexual" athletes.

Straight Outta Shoreditch

A little over a week ago, I discovered that the company I work for had been bought by another, which it seems had been acquired by another, which in turn had merged with another. What does this mean for we employees of a thirty strong privately owned Shoreditch agency, suddenly thrust into the pan-European publicly listed limelight? It means we're moving to Clerkenwell.
For those of you who don't know London, this represents a step away from the inverted snobbery of artiness imposing itself on urban poverty to a more salubrious world twixt media West End and commercial City. A change in tone for the company and de facto for me.
My attitude is resolutely wait and see, greatly aided by the general haze: no one seems sure about anything, even the current company name. Who knows if there's a plan for the new organizational structure, how we'll transfer work or even where we're going to sit.
Our bosses tell us that everything will remain the same (contracts, roles, teams) but are unclear over how to reconcile this continuity with their claim that this is the greatest career opportunity any of us could have in our industry in the UK. How can everything continue with no changes and simultaneously offer us so much opportunity?
As Lisa Simpson reminds us, "opportunity" in Chinese is the same word as "crisis".

Resumption

My blog has been silent over the last ten days because of the death of my father-in-law. Another cancer sufferer. It might be appropriate to relate something poignant, but my attempt to do would likely be facile or self-indulgent, so I remain silent on this though the blog resumes.

Words of power, words of lurve...

Having come across a hard-hitting article in that bastion of journalistic probity, the Evening Standard recently, I recounted to a twenty-something colleague over lunch yesterday how there's a disproportionate ratio of single women to men in central London; something like 5:4. Finding a single straight guy was tough, according to the article, though I was somewhat cynical about how people were trying to find him.
Lo! that evening I behold my colleague in the clutches of another, pressed back against the wall of a bar in new-media-land. My acerbic observations wield unanticipated power...

Cyber-loafing

Is my general demotivation due to my body having very little pancreas, so that my hormones and blood sugar levels are up the spout, or just to being bored of same old?

Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

I'm an ENTJ accoding to a neo-Jungian pyschometric profiling technique. While the 3% of the population to which I belong live outside traditional boundaries and need to think ahead of the curve, I can't help but feel that it makes me sound like an utter wanker.

The heat is on

Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 over the weekend and was left with mixed feelings. There are so many shameful aspects about how the Bush administration led the U.S. and others to war that it was difficult for Moore to make a strong thesis for the film: it seemed to jump around a bit and not come to a strong conclusion. Nevertheless, Moore lets the people most affected do most of the talking: the soldiers, their families and the Bush administration. While we've seen or heard most of this stuff before, it's still impressive to learn how profit drove the invasion of Afghanistan, or see Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice deny categorically that Iraq had WMD in 2001, then state exactly the opposite two years later. Yet the film lets Blair gets off scot-free, while even Cheney and Rumsfeld get away with token rebukes.
The over-riding impression the film left me with is that if you're poor, no one will stand up for you. The poor bomb those even poorer than themselves to escape their own destitution; yet when they are disenfranchised, no one will take up their cause. Then when the rich need them, the poor defend them. Who said Marxism was discredited?

Race for life

Helen ran 5 kilometres in about 35 minutes on Sunday, along with 7,000 other women in Blackheath. These were all people who knew a cancer sufferer and had decided to do something about it by raising money for Cancer Research UK. For someone like me, it was amazing to see that so many people cared; and to see so many people achieve their target was excellent. Helen could barely jog for a minute when she started eight weeks ago, but with some support from her friend Clare who came up from Brighton to run with her, they more than deserved their medals.

Cool...

There are some pretty impressive ice cream flavours on offer in Japan. Just one cornetto of whale, perhaps with a touch of raw horseflesh...

Eastern blocks

Rothko urged us not to think of the lines in his paintings as a division between two blocks of a similar colour, but rather as a join between these masses. This may be what appeals to me so much about central Asia, apparently caught between Europe, Arabia, India and China, but really the bond between them all, sewing them together with a strand of silk. I long to see Samarkand, Kashgar, Isfahan without knowing anything about them. But Rajastan, St. Petersburg, Jordan, Guatemala all need to be seen too; those blocks of colour are waiting for me!

A cut above the rest?

Here's a gadget I view with some circumspection. While the SmartKlamp is neither a gadget I might have made use of nor intend to, I'm sure it's something that will be favoured by incisive Rabbis.

Virtuous wealth

I've been reading some of Plutarch's Lives on and off recently...
Plutarch tells us that Lycurgus, who established systems of law and economy in ancient Sparta, believed that the happiness of a man consists in the exercise of virtue and not in power or wealth. The biographer describes the Spartan lifestyle that Lycurgus instituted (redistribution of wealth, meritocracy over plutocracy, communal eating and working for the good of the state; this must surely have influenced Marx and Engels) but makes little mention of Sparta's serendipitous use of helots, state-owned slaves who allowed citizens to pursue virtue without needing to worry about chores; this must have influenced Stalin.
Anyway it makes me wonder, if happiness cannot be achieved through power or wealth but only through virtue, does that make virtue and wealth mutually exclusive? While Lycurgus redistributed wealth to correct Spartan morals, the economy had been based on inheritance of land rather than entrepreneurship. But in a capitalist free-trade economy if you give others what they want, you could plausibly become virtuous and wealthy at the same time: this would constitute a Thatcherite beatification of Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates.
Of course, these two are a long way from sainthood, given the way Gates treats his competitors and Murdoch controls information to further his own political ends. And if they were to give up some of their wealth to fund clean water, vaccination and literacy their virtue would be even greater; but that is true for all of us. So at what point does our wealth make us unvirtuous and therefore unhappy? And at what point does our poverty make us virtuous and therefore happy? Is there a practical way for us to become happy without giving up our comforts? Or is that just called income tax?

Smacks of inappropriateness

The bill that proposes smacking be banned or partially banned depending on what's enforceable misses the point. Why is it that legislators never ask themselves questions? Why do they think they need to protect children against smacking from their parents? Why do they think that people who look after other peoples' children don't need to be allowed to smack? If the government focussed on developing parenting skills then parents would not need to hurl abuse at their children, beat them, swear at them or treat them in the otherwise shabby manner that I see every day in south-east London. If their parents spoke to them in a way that they expect to be spoken to -- if they showed any care for their children whatsoever -- then we wouldn't get conservatives complaining about how those children should be beaten and liberals complaining about the abuse they're suffering. Evidence of physical abuse can still lead to prosecution without this new bill, but the underlying problem won't be addressed.

The message to Southwark Council

It's like a jungle sometimes: it makes me wonder from how I keep from going under. Broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stairs, you know they just don't care. I can't take the smell, can't take the noise, got no money to move out; I guess I've got no choice. Scooters out the front, wasters out the back, chavs swear at kids in the upstairs flat. I tried to get it fixed but couldn't get far coz the neighbourhood officer's a useless tart.

Unreconstructed advertising

Google runs Blogger.com, so the banners at the top of my blog's web pages are based on what Google thinks is relevant content.
Unfortunately, Google has no concept of irony. Hence you'll find related searches for Halliburton and Francesco Totti. But some of my favourites (to compound Google's sense that its assessment of my Blog is accurate) are links to the Iraq Reconstruction Contract Database, Iraq Revenue Watch, and undoubtedly: Deployed to Iraq? Check your Life Insurance with NAAFI Financial.

Against all odds

Their record before the tournament was impressive, but I didn't expect them to get so far; they had a foreign manager with a track record of success, but still I doubted them; beat teams they'd never beaten before along the way, but I still doubted they'd get to the final; the Portuguese have really impressed.
And the Greeks have done all right too. Beaten the favourites (France) and the best team there (Czech Republic). All right, it's with football that makes George Graham look adventurous, but it's the result that counts.

A whisker away

I grew a moustache last night. Ok, so I didn't grow it last night, but I shaved the rest of my unkempt face and kept the moustache just to see how it would go.
The effect was not entirely the desired one. Rather than the anticipated George Harrison-esque appearance, I bore a closer resemblance to a Belgian paedophile.
Still, you've got to experiment, if only to blog about it.

A nation state with no domain

Iraq may have regained its independence -- albeit under occupying powers -- and Saddam is about to stand trial, but its virtual identity is still under Texan corporate control. InfoCom controls the .iq domain, and Iraq has asked for it to be restored.

Duty of care

This article from Le Monde relates two harrowing accounts of prisoners held in Iraq.
The first story tells of a man who had been in the bomb disposal squad of the Iraqi army during his military service but had absconded before the war started. He went to Bagdad after the Americans had taken control of the city to arrange his wedding, but found a car bomb outside his hotel. He reported it to a member of the police, who in turn denounced him as a terrorist sympathiser to the U.S. army.
Despite any evidence, he was then transferred to Abu Ghraib prison where he was starved, hooded, shaved, beaten, held in stress positions and pissed on. One of the prisoners had his sister raped in front of him. On his release he had to sign papers recognising that U.S. forces' "duty of care" towards him had ended.

XP SP2

Microsoft now appears likely to release Windows XP Service Pack 2 by the end of July. SP2 is essentially a giant security patch, designed to protect your PC from having spyware and adware being installed on it, or from being controlled by an external machine.
Microsoft will make SP2 freeey available even if you have a pirated copy of XP, as leaving machines exposed is considered a greater risk to the company than rogue software. The download is likely to be in the order of 300Mb however -- practically as big as XP itself -- so expect hundreds of thousands of simultaneous downloads to slow the internet down somewhat.

Charlotte Rambling

Went to see Marivaux's The False Servant at the National Theatre last night. Great translation by Martin Crimp, shame about the performance.
Why is it that directors feel that plays have to mean something? All this was meant to be was a comedy. Unfortunately it was read as:

Lust and avarice trample on the finer feelings of love in this subversive take on sexual manners and the cruelties of courtship.

There's no doubt that it's tricky to transfer 300-year-old jokes to the contemporary stage, but when you miss so many opportunities for the comic in the way you stage a play, you can't expect people to enjoy it. Even the actors didn't seem to care: Charlotte Rampling in the lead got her lines wrong three times.

Was it in his briefs?

Here's a story of when to kill a mocking bird became to spank a monkey. I wonder if the judge was the only one to get off this charge...

Melomania

Despite their adulation at Glastonbury, the Scissor Sisters are rubbish. I had toyed with the idea that they were electro-funk pranksters, but now I realize the error of my ways: they are Elton John for chat-room adolescents. While I never had any intention of braving the festival mud, I did spend Saturday trawling for music, wading knee-deep through Selectadisc genres. What is downbeat? Does that question make me ignorant or just old? Do people really know the difference between ragga and reggae and roots hall? Would I find Otis Redding in 60s or Northern soul? And just what is French-type stuff? It's not French by the way...

Patent blog

Another patent of interest, by Microsoft again. This time it's for using the human body as a conductive medium to power an output device. It's likely that Microsoft will want to use this for electronic credit card technology, but I wonder if they'll now start claiming royalties on experiments using a van der Graaf generator?

Are women a minority?

It's a long-standing issue for French feminists that one of the three tenets of the Republic -- liberty, equality, fraternity -- has no relevance for them. A new law to equate sexist or homophobic harassment with race crime is now being accused of offering greater protection to gays than to women. Sexism appears to have been added as an afterthought after the justice minister Dominique Perben explained that the law was designed to protect all minorities.
But it is the meaning of the word minority that has changed, rather than the need to protect smaller groups. People are minorised when they are discriminated against, not because they are fewer. Blacks in South Africa and women in France are not in the minority but have been discriminated against. The privileged are in a minority but already have plenty of laws to protect them.

The least worst place

This story in the Register about the Kafka-esque rebranding of Camp X-Ray is well worth the read. It made me laugh.

Innovation against type

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, iBiz are promoting a virtual keyboard for use with SmartPhones and PDAs. It's a unit that you plug into your device which then projects lasers onto a surface and measures your keystrokes, relaying your typing back to your computer. Not sure how well it works in bright light, but it looks pretty damn amazing:

Healthy choices?

Both Labour and the Tories are advocating choice as the way to improve the health service, the main difference being that the Tories are more overt in subsidising the wealthy and private enterprise at the expense of the rest of us. Perhaps we'll get Tesco's to run a hosiptal that one in eight of the population will all flock to.
Instead of introducing an illusion of choice -- most people will choose their local hospital or the one that specialises in their condition, which is what happens now -- parties ought to focus on improving public health instead of the health secretary telling us it's all right for the poor to smoke.

Now the Labour party is also planning to withdraw control of schools from local authorities, despite the fact that this has failed everywhere it's been implemented, most pointedly where I live in Southwark.
My grandmother used to say that education was the one thing that couldn't be taken away from you -- particularly poignant given that she had so much taken away from her -- but it appears that you can get it taken away if you never get it in the first place.

Aftermath

So it wasn't a foul, but Terry was off-side. England's only other chance in normal time was Costinha's mistake leading to Owen's goal; no passing yet again. Only Ashley Cole emerged with credit.
Once ahead, no one came to pick the ball up off the defence and for the umpteenth time we saw defensive substitutions backfire. Sven should have brought on Joe Cole rather than Phil Neville to carry and above all keep the ball.
Portugal deserved it, but Ronaldo's still a smarmy diver.

No quarter spared

So tonight's the night for England to show what they're capable of. I really don't think Portugal are that great, but England's left flank has been hopelessly exposed all the way through the tournament and there's still no genuine holding midfielder to play against Deco. Both teams are crap in the air.
The winners of this match will play either the Netherlands or Sweden, who play on Sunday. Portugal have rigged the tournament so that as long as they won their group they will always get maximum possible rest and their opponents would get the minimum. Ticket allocations have also been biased, with some games offering 9:1 ratios of support for one team or another, not just the hosts.
The French are up the swanny meanwhile, with the only player who gives balance to the side, Sagnol, out for the rest of the tournament and Vieira and Gallas also injured. This is likely to mean Thuram at full back and the return of Desailly, so any opposing centre forward will fancy his chances.
How could the World Cup semi-finalists be knocked out of the tournament by three teams that didn't even qualify for the tournament?

Where there's smoke...

If you're still smoking, you should be interested in an extensive survey conducted over the last fify years that shows smoking knocks 10 years off your life. You're twice as likely to die before you get to 70 if you smoke, probably through cancer, heart disease or a stroke. If you've seen these diseases and you're still convinced you can handle them, ask yourself whether you can handle coming round after diagnosis and telling your family how ill you are. If you're still in any doubt, this is an example of what they'll take out of you.

(Just like) handing over

If you thought things in Iraq were improving before handover to an Iraqi authority (what price the Palestinians getting such autonomy?), a United Nations audit into handling of Iraqi oil revenues has found processes to be "open to fraudulent acts". The maths show a $4bn hole in development funds, while the $11bn that have been spent has been strongly criticised. There is meagre Iraqi involvement in the process so far, but since the officials responsible are returning to the U.S. next week, Iraqis will soon be able to find out just how fraudulent administration has been.
We also note that while the Americans have been given the right to use "all necessary measures" to provide security (interpreted by Donald Rumsfeld as sleep deprivation and the use of dogs), U.S. officials have told Iraqi authorities that its interim government will be bound by human rights. In other words the Iraqis will be in charge of the country but won't be able to take charge of restoring human rights, and the Americans can still do what they like.

Mysteries of our time

• Why does ITV's opening sequence feature Adrian Mutu? Did Romania or Chelsea qualify for Euro 2004?
• Why is Petr Cech the only player who ITV commentators refer to by both first and second name?
• Why does a senile old codger like Barry Davies still have a job when he can't tell who any of the players are and in desperation complains about Portuguese TV replays?
• How is Joe Royle an "expert summariser" when he thinks Paul Gerrard and Jamie Redknapp are playing for England?

Secure as your Palm

You can now install Pretty Good Protection on your Palm OS PDA to protect that data you shouldn't be carrying around on it. PGP encrypts information to prevent your data being hacked. I'll give it a try and let you know how it works out...

Capital approach to online hate

The growing problem of xenophobic material being disseminated online, either through email or through websites, has engendered two quite different approaches to tackling the problem according to The Register. While the EU aims to make online publishing of racist material illegal -- this would be in line with German and French bans on Holocaust denial -- the U.S. attitude is rather different: "Rather than fear the purveyors of hate, let us confront them in the marketplace of free ideas." It is true to say that legislation may not prevent racists making use of the web, but this kind of capitalist approach has never worked either. The web should not be reduced to a market and racism is not a vertical. It seems that some people will view everything in terms of money and power and call it freedom, while disenfranchising those who want to make the web an inclusive and informed community.

911 over 17

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been given an R (restricted) rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, despite Michael Moore's assertion that kids of 15 and 16 who could be sent to Iraq in the near future had a right to see what was happening there.
Meanwhile the group Move America Forward, a group "tired of the constant stream of America-bashing" has launched a stop Michael Moore campaign trying to put pressure on the film's distributors. They want to make sure Americans hear the "good news". And there was me thinking that was what Fox was for.

Exemplary conduct

Home Secretary David Blunkett tells us he's still determined to "nail" Gary Mann. Mann was sentenced to two years in Portugal for recent hooliganism, but his deportation order failed to comply with international treaties and so he had to be released on his arrival in the U.K. Given that Mann's conviction remains subject to appeal and that having the Home Secretary announce to national media that he wants to punish Mann irrespective of the terms under which he was deported, Blunkett's comments are rash and tiresome, though not out of character. He panders to the populist lock 'em up agenda without any consideration for the legal implications.
While everyone wants to see hooligans convicted, it's obvious that this has to be done properly. Blunkett's bandwagonesque sticking his oar in makes him unfit to oversee prisoners' appeals and policing methods. A little more humility and a lot more care is required: if communication between the U.K. and Portuguese legal systems had been properly managed, Mann would already be "nailed".

Euroverrated!

Most over-rated players at Euro 2004

1. van der Meyde - whinging and unproductive.
2. Totti - even before his spat, so overhyped.
3. Trézéguet - no movement off the ball.
4. Steven Gerrard - real drive, but gives the ball away so often...
5. Paulo Ferreira - £13m for a full-back who gifts goals to the Greeks!

Those who have the inexplicable confidence of their manager:

1. James - Paul Robinson didn't have a great season but is still a better keeper.
2. Desailly - could be replaced by Gallas, Silvestre, Boumsong, Mexès...
3. van Bronckhorst - don't the Dutch have a left-back who can run and tackle?
4. Raul Bravo - another left back who can't defend.

Offside tactics

If there are any of you who have read more than couple of postings to this blog, you may have detected a tinge of antipathy towards the Dutch style of play at Euro 2004. They were a little more fluid (but just as tetchy) against the Czechs with Arjen Robben and Clarence Seedorf key factors in their improvement. Yet Dick Advocaat's short-sightedness manifested itself after an hour when he withdrew Robben for the defensive midfielder Bosvelt. The Czechs had already taken off their right back, Grygera, so why take off your left winger? The Czechs no longer needed to defend that flank and the substitute, Smicer, went on to score the winner.
Van Nistelrooy's goal was shambolic. He was about ten yards offside in the middle of the penalty area when the ball was played to an onside Robben on the wing. All he had to do was cross the ball for an unmarked van Nistelrooy to score. If that wasn't in an active area then every team in the world will leave one centre forward on the edge of the six-yard box and simply pass to wingers. It's a crass and ill-conceived rule: there is no benefit to football in making scoring easier.

Express Yourself!

When Gaultier designed the pointy bra for Madonna to express herself, did he mean this?

Iraq in $

Now that the 9/11 commission has found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States", it's worth looking again at how contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry were awarded; U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney was in charge. Cheney had been managing director of a company called Halliburton from October 1995 to August 2000.
In November 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon secretly asked Halliburton to plan for reconstruction of Iraq's oil supply, paying the company $1.9 million for the study. Five months later, the Pentagon chose a subsidiary of Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) to carry out the plan that the parent company had defined. The work was awarded under a discretionary process so there was no invitation to tender; an email showed this was sanctioned by Cheney. Halliburton's stock rose from its then value of $71.3 million to $2.4 billion within nine months: more than thirty fold.
In addition, Halliburton won a further $1.2 billion tender for work in Iraq despite being under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting irregularities during Cheney's directorship.
Even though Iraq was not implicated in attacks against the U.S., Cheney had already planned to kill thousands – not just Iraqis but Americans too – and make a profit out of it. And lest we forget, our government sanctioned this too.

Why English fans drink beer

Beer wouldn't have made Swiss match less tedious, but might have made it seem shorter. Beer-drinking can be the only reason why the media is so positive about the result. It was only when Hargreaves came on that there was any real drive. Despite Paul Scholes' refusal to defend, this was an good result for England to take into the final group match.
France performed below par again and Desailly must surely now be dropped; Gallas should be in the centre with Sagnol (who can actually cross the ball) at right back. The team needs to allow Henry to drop deep and wide, and Trézéguet belongs on the most over-rated players list to appear shortly.

More patent palavers

This time it's Oracle who've filed an all-encompassing patent in the U.S. for a "self service system for web site publishing", or web content management system as it's otherwise known:

A web site creation and maintenance system permits distributed control and centralized management of a web site. [...] The web site system permits a site administrator to construct the overall structure, design and style of the web site. [...] The web site system permits content for the web site to originate from multiple content contributors. The publication of content is controlled by content owners. [...] The user, through use of only a web browser running on the user computer, transmits the parameter to the web site database. In response, the web site is updated at the database in accordance with the parameter.

Does this mean that Vignette, Documentum, Interwoven et al. are going to have to pay Oracle royalties for all the licenses they've sold?

Done Loading

Having previously referred to Microsoft's attempts to patent the double-click and to do lists, the British Technology Group (BTG) are getting in on the act with a patent on downloads, including virus fixes and product enhancements. BTG are apparently looking to get companies like Microsoft to pay royalties.

Patently monopolistic

For people in any doubt as to why Microsoft are so despised, it's because they've got to where they are by shafting everyone else as hard as possible.
The company's latest wheeze is to secure worldwide patents for as wide-ranging intellectual property as they can get away with. This now includes double-clicking and electronic to do lists. Any other company developing software to make use of this functionality will do so under Microsoft licence. This is compounded by governments supporting this kind of practice, most notably the Irish who recently renegotiated European patent law to allow Microsoft to get away with this short of nonsense.
The open source community's distrust is not misplaced.

The future's bright, but it's not orange

We've heard a lot about the next generation of Dutch superstars -- van der Vaart, Snejder, Robben, etc. -- but on their showing last night it was the Germans who can look forward with greater confidence. The full-backs Friedrich and Lahm were particularly impressive, as was the centre-forward Kuranyi. This may be a tournament too early for them however.
Are the Dutch the most over-rated team in Europe? Zenden can't cross the ball, van der Meyde kicks people but can't hack being kicked, Davids is past it, none of the defenders can tackle... their style of play is really poor.
Who do we like so far: still the same as before the tournament: France, Czech Republic, Denmark. Possibly England if Robinson is picked and plays well.

Bus Why-Fi

While we wonder why German bendy buses become combustible on London's streets, Paris buses are being kitted out with Wi-Fi. Parisians don't have Oyster cards however. These are real gadgets: wave them at a screen and they credit or debit your account. Finally we see some innovation in our transport system and you don't need a PDA to use one.

Euro 2004

It's worth noting that while Kilroy claims 16% of the vote gives him a mandate to "wreck" the European parliament, the Lib Dems polled 15% of the vote on a pro-Euro, pro-integration slate. Could the UK be less anti-European than the Express newspapers would have us believe?
I'm going to let the whole UKIP thing go now.

What Flash was made for?

When you don't have rights to reproduce video replays on the net,
seems you can always use Macromedia Flash. This is a pretty wicked application, with the ability to view the action from all angles.

Under-Channelled Aggression

The Eurostar offered another cliché on my dual nationality. I'm embarrassed when the French vote Front national, but twenty minutes out of Paris and the train bar was full of Englishmen too pissed to even stand. You simply never see the French like that; in fact they find it as incomprehensible as it is shameful. My disdain was compounded by idiot posh English who understood neither French nor football shouting out what they thought was going on in the England vs. France match. You'd have thought that if they were going to listen to French radio commentary they'd at least have found out the French word for goal.

Hypocynical

So Fernando Couto has 100 caps but still can't tackle. A great performance from the Greeks but Portugal's golden generation seems a little leaden.

La plume de ma tante cordiale

I'm getting excited now... Sunday's match looms large and I'm pretty sure that I'll be supporting both teams. The win is more important to France, who need a boost after the World Cup and are likely to find Croatia tougher opponents than England will. The main thing is that both teams qualify from the group and when one loses, it's in a blaze of glory and not hooliganism.
As an addendum, I drew Croatia in the company sweepstakes so now have three teams to shout for in the group.

Pop your bubble!

Try downloading this to your PC and setting it as your background. It's kind of de-stressing...

They KIP

While Max Clifford and Richard Desmond shepherd the ovine for the European elections, we note that Kilroy won't even attend parliament if elected and Joan Collins has never voted.... let's hope UKIP supporters (rascists who won't admit to being rascists) are equally committed on June 10th.

Where did I put that carrot?

I've had four separate people I manage tell me this week (and it's still Wednesday) that I've been cracking the whip. But in a meeting this morning my bosses told me that I need to crack it some more.
Fair enough, as I'm not averse to driving people hard, but I need to give them a bit of a positive incentive too. Who's going to provide me with that? Meanwhile I will revert to my sjambok.

Piers Blair

Piers Morgan, when pressed whether photos of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were authentic, declared that they were an accurate representation of real events. Compare now with Tony Blair's statement that Saddam Hussein was "someone who still retained complete determination to pursure WMD business; I would be very surprised if that turned out to be wrong". And he could pursue that determination within 45 minutes.

Communications Skills

I'm sure it's unprofessional, but I thought I'd share this email from a competitor company who deal in communications and process (this is the complete mail):

For info [Dave] is off on leave for next few weeks, [Gary] is taking over as PM here.
Please ensure all communiciation is fed via [Gary] re the outstanding work.
Re Majordomo changes, we note you have implemented some or all of there?
Please laise to advise which if not all. (Had anticipated some liaison here beforehand..)
We are planning to conduct tests and validation of MD changes before commencing andy repete security pen.tests, which may render the current timescales as difficult to achieve.

Ie Friday meeting

RSVP

So farewell Ronald Reagan

You supported the Taliban in Afghanistan by giving them arms for heroin; you supported the Iraqi state with chemical weapons technology to use against the Iranians; you sanctioned Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip; you supported coups against democratic governments in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Angola. But you're best remembered for Reaganomics and playing opposite a chimp.

Trans-Pennine Urban Myths

So why did Cantona leave Leeds for Man U? Rumours of an affair with Lee Chapman's wife Leslie Ash have been greatly exaggerated. Perhaps Cantona was having an affair with Chapman himself?

UKIP

Don't get me started on this lot: racists and fascists by another acronym. A vote for them is tantamount to a vote for the BNP or Front national. Close the borders! Ban all asylum seekers! Sever links with the EU! Will they have a mandate to annexe the Sudetenland?

PET hates in the pea-souper.

I have a tumour the size of a pea whose behaviour is inscrutable. It's too small for x-rays or ultrasounds, or even for CT scans. It doesn't secrete hormone markers required for a labelled somastatin or octreotide scan; so only Positron Emission Tomography can penetrate the fog surrounding my pancreas. But even these PET scans struggle with my cancer.
Tumour and technology are lurking in and around my body; which one will jump out first and surprise the other?