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09:49 pm
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You just couldn't make this up
The government has decided to create a "major youth leadership program". What's it called i hear you ask...?
The Youth of Today.
(Apologies to non-British readers who won't get this joke).
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09:26 pm
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Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye and Hair-Color Screening
Interested in people's opinion about this. Since they are selected the embryos in question rather than altering them it doesn't get into the whole genetic engineering debate. It's hard to be pro-IVF / pro-abortion (where the choice is not to select an embryo at all) and then say that this kind of selection is bad.
Thoughts?
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11:18 pm
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Al Franken wins!
W00t!
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01:33 am
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Iran
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01:15 pm
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One more example (as if one was needed)
It wasn't getting married yesterday (for the second time in a week) that's made me feel old(er).
No, it was while I was chatting to the sweet old lady at the swimming pool today and realsing that the reason she was smiling was probably because I reminder her of her son rather than her grandson...
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12:26 am
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Political change in the new era
I was only watching Clay Shirky's presentation about mass communications at TED@State yesterday and now in Iran we have exactly what he was talking about coming true.
I'm mesmerised by the twitter feed for #iranelection which is putting through at least 10 tweets a second constantly and apparently hit 211K tweets per hour earlier.
The are protests kicking off worldwide as we speak - several in US cities and I walked past a 300 person very vocal one outside the embassy in London on the way to a debate this evening.
Comics are coming out almost as fast as news.
I'd still say that there is a more than even chance that this will end up as a Tiananmen Square rather than a Berlin Wall but look how far China has come since then towards cultural and economic ties with the West (if not actually political change at home).
The protests in Iran are huge and, according to CNN, still getting bigger.
It's going to end ugly but will still have been a world-shaping phenomenon.
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03:35 am
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Caprica
Being as up to date as ever I only found out tonight that the pilot for Caprica has been out for over a month - even though the show isn't due out till early next year.
It really irritates the crap out of me that the show is so good in terms of acting, design and everything else that makes up a show with high gravitas and pure quality and yet has do many things that already wind me up.
( Annoyances ).
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01:37 am
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In which our protagonist strugles for maturity
You would have hoped by now that I would no-longer find this sort of thing funny. Sadly, not the case,
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04:58 pm
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In which our protagonist is annoyed by social mores
Bimbled around Enfield town a bit today. Seems the age at which it is socially acceptable to be glued to a mobile and ignore all the people you are with in now 10 and under.
Still, that's not as annoying as seeing the roughly 12 year old girl wandering in B&Q who was doing a very good minor rock-chick / geek-girl look and realising that as a guy over the age of 16 there was no possible way for me to say "that style is really working for you - nice one" without getting into all kinds of trouble. Sometimes social customs are a pain in the ass.
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07:56 pm
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Teh interwebs
Yesterday was a very good day on the web. An excellent 365 Tomorrows story, a real laugh-out-loud cartoon from Wellington Grey and one of my now all time favourite XKCDs.
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10:19 pm
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Unlikely but...
I'm reading the excellent Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (of Blink and Tipping Point fame). The section I'm currently reading is referring to work on international cultures by Geert Hofstede.
The is where a lengthy questionnaire is put to large numbers of people from different countries in an attempt to determine the attitudes of that culture on average.
Some of the scores calculated include:- Low vs. High Power Distance - the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.
- Individualism vs. collectivism - individualism is contrasted with collectivism, and refers to the extent to which people are expected to stand up for themselves and to choose their own affiliations, or alternatively act predominantly as a member of a life-long group or organization.
- Masculinity vs. femininity - refers to the value placed on traditionally male or female values (as understood in most Western cultures). So called 'masculine' cultures value competitiveness, assertiveness, ambition, and the accumulation of wealth and material possessions, whereas feminine cultures place more value on relationships and quality of life.
- Uncertainty avoidance - reflects the extent to which members of a society attempt to cope with anxiety by minimizing uncertainty.
Now, I find this fascinating but would rather not attempt to read the "600 page phone book" as one Amazon review put it that this is collected in. Like my philosophy research I am keen, but lazy. :-)
Is there any chance that people either have come across this before in a more accessible way or that they know someone who might have an idea where I could look?
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06:03 pm
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Signing the Pledge
I've signed the No2ID Pledge.
I've been vacillating about this for ages but it comes down to:- This is going to be hugely expensive, won't work from an IT perspective and certainly won't fix any of the things the government says it will do (terrorism, crime, fraud, etc)
- The idea of a centralised Audit Trail leaves me cold - especially when you add the not-sci-fi possibility of number plate tracking and facial recognition via CCTV
- While the implementation would likely be simply a costly semi-failure if imposed today it does create a ready-made system ripe to be abused by any future more authoritarian government.
( Slightly longer version )
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12:15 am
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No2ID
At the Convention on Modern Liberty I went to a talk run by the folks at No2ID. This pressure group started off protesting about proposed ID cards but now spends more time discussing the "database state".
One of the things I picked up was the No2ID pledge.
This says:
I, <full name of pledger> made the following pledge on <date in words>, <year> as witnessed by <full name of witness>:
I solemnly and publicly promise that:
• I shall not register for a national identity card
• I shall not supply personal details or fingerprints to a National Identity Register
• I shall not apply for any document or service if joining the National Identity Register is a condition of obtaining it
• I shall not co-operate with any Identity and Passport Service interview concerning my identity I also promise by my example to encourage others to do the same.
Signed, <signature of pledger>
This has been sitting on a table at home, unsigned, since I got back. While I'm deeply concerned at the attacks on liberty that have happened or are proposed by the UK government I'm finding it hard to sign this for a number of reasons. Firstly to sign this and then back down and accept an ID card later would be maximal hypocrisy so signing it is binding and if ID cards were ever to become mandatory it would imply my breaking the law. Secondly I can see both sides of the centralisation of information by the state - although I agree that it's heavily leaning towards the "not working" / "not worth it" side at the moment.
So, I decided that I would only sign it if I could find / pursuade five people I know who have already signed one or would be willing to. If I could persuade people to sign one then my arguments must be making sense.
So, to start with, has anyone reading this already signed one - or would like to hear more about it...?
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12:11 am
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Remember vinyl?
Does anyone have (or know someone that has) a turntable hooked up to a PC that can digitise a 7" single of mine to MP3...?
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04:13 am
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I'm very happy for Andy
( Look, a cut - MAJOR Battlestar Galactica spoliers likely )
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10:55 pm
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Abandoned jail and probation computer project cost £155m
Arrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
'The chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, Edward Leigh, said the problems with the project, to ensure that the services could share information, were "in a class of their own. This committee hears of troubled government projects all too frequently," he said. "But the litany of failings in this case are in a class of their own. All of this mess could have been avoided."'
Indeed, if anyone in the IT department of the LPS had ever agreed to give me the time of day rather than try to get me sacked for posting about how frustrating it was to work there in my LJ.
I've never, ever, worked in a place where everyone was appalling to any subordinate who had any kind of enthusiasm as they assumed they were after their job. I can only hope it doesn't reflect the whole public sector...
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09:06 pm
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Website to allow public to see local criminals
Okay - I've got mixed feelings about this one.
One the one hand it (1) publicly marks petty criminals even more as outsiders - 'them' - making it even harder for them to try fit into normal society, (2) it potentially increases the notoriety of criminals so they may actually gain from it & (3) doesn't reflect that the vast majority of non-violent petty crime is done to get money for drugs.
For the last reason alone I am completely sure this will be useless as a deterrent (as I'm sure the government knows - they just want to be see to be "doing something" - no-one even did badly for looking Tough of Crime (or drugs)).
On the other hand all of this information is in the public domain anyway so anyone could make a website listing it - so why shouldn't the state?
Tricky one.
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06:42 pm
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Posting again
I used to dump a whole load of links into my LJ that most people (you-know-who-you-are aside) never read. These days I know put those in my Google Reader feed (which, to my knowledge, no-one at all reads - ah, so much for technology).
There are a few things that are still worth an LJ post but, this time, I think they are worth a post each.
This one is about an article in the Guardian by Charlie Brooker previously posted up by Andy. Charlie is sick of politicians - which is hardly unique or even all that new. He talks about the "Summer of Rage" oft quoted from the original ridiculous statement from Jack Straw (the same Jack Straw who has already written two articles decrying the Convention on Modern Liberty).
Personally I wish that Mr Brooker was right and there will be some kind of middle class uprising but, like all the follow-ups to the convention I suspect it's sadly just more voices in the wind...
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12:33 am
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Podcast
Just finished listening to this - it's superb : StarShipSofa BSFA Nominee Ted Chiang mp3
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10:59 pm
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Links
I know I've not posted links in here for ages (if people are interested they can subscribe to my Google Reader RSS stream) but there's a bunch of stuff that's come up recently that I'd like to share.
Dollhouse and sexual exploitation. Alas, I'm not the only person not finding Dollhouse terribly enthusing.
We Are Fractal Sheep - a very interesting essay on how even when you corral a particular type of people (geeks for example) they will re-organise themselves into the familiar pre-existing patterns (producing a sub-set of "jocks", etc).
Italy agrees citizen patrols after outcry - because legalising mobs always works out well.
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