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.