03.31.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 2.58 pm by niltiac
This is an old article but I missed it at the time: Britain is using an extensive network of cameras to track every journey taken by every car and keep it on file for reference by the police and security services. It’s not quite as freaky as the report that schools are fingerprinting pre-school children but it’s still pretty disturbing. This sort of thing is so open to abuse. Citizens shouldn’t have to justify themselves to governments, it’s the other way around.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11.03 am by niltiac
My pathetic attempt to observe Lent has officially failed. Too many reasons to make an exception and too many exceptions proved fatal. Luckily, I’m not Catholic or I’d make a pretty bad one.
I wanted to do this partly to see what my willpower was like and now I know. Can I give up meat or alcohol? I’m sure I could if I really wanted to. Can I do it on a whim without a true inner commitment? No.
If I could change the rules mid game, I would give up ice cream and cigarettes instead. It’s too cold for ice cream and I don’t smoke.
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03.30.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 4.49 pm by niltiac
I thought I’d link to this hilarious column written by one of my former editors from my time at The Australian IT. I do look at Aus IT but not religiously and I actually found the article by following a link on Squash, which is a blog run by another former colleague from a completely different job. The Australian doesn’t have RSS feeds, whereas Squash does.
So why am I linking to it? Well one because it’s very funny, especially to people who know a bit about the internet and blogging. And two because I can and it makes it part of the “great online conversation” in spite of itself.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 2.52 pm by niltiac
UK schools are fingerprinting children to keep track of library books. Has the world gone mad? This surveillance society is creepy.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9.43 am by niltiac
My friend John speaks Chinese and has a number of Chinese friends and last night they took a group of us to a Sichuan restaurant, Angel’s, in Kilburn. If you want authentic Chinese, this is the place to go. There is also an all-you-can-eat Cantonese buffet in a different room of the same restaurant but the restaurant’s specialty is Sichuan food. This is not Chinese at its most subtle – judging from last night’s dining experience, Sichuan food is very oily and very spicy and very meaty. It’s good but best avoided by anyone with a sensitive palate or gut! We had enormous quantities of food on the table and all went home laden with leftovers. The service was very good too. It was a fun night.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9.28 am by niltiac
I’m greatly entertained by the court case between Apple Computer and Apple Records, the music label owned by The Beatles, over whether Apple Computer is allowed to use its logo on its iTunes service. iTunes does not carry the Apple name but the service is covered in Apple logos and Apple Records say this breaches an earlier agreement that Apple Computer would restrict itself stay out of the music arena. It’s got all the ingredients of a great drama. There’s the symbolism of the battle of two icons, one from the 20th century and one from the 21st and the sitcom appeal of barristers downloading tunes and playing them in court and the judge offering to exclude himself on the basis that he owns an iPod. If they don’t cut a deal soon, and that seems unlikely, this is going to provide months of amusement.
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03.29.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7.55 am by niltiac
I won’t name names since to do so would diminish her husband’s music cred but I have one friend who is a huge fan of Boney M. I was introduced to the 70s songstress on a road trip to Hotham, a ski resort in Victoria, one year.
So I’m sure this friend will be interested to know that I was in Covent Garden the other day and I saw a poster advertising an upcoming musical featuring songs by Boney M. (Cue drum roll).
I’ve now searched for it online and it’s all true. Apparently it was due to open in May and has been delayed until late August.
This sounds like the perfect excuse to visit me! The delay gives you all the more time to organise your tickets. You know this means you.
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03.28.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7.43 pm by niltiac
I have posted before about the discovery of Royal Society minutes from the 17th century in a Hampshire home. The documents were going up for auction and were expected to fetch more than a million pounds, which the Royal Society could not afford. The documents are written by Robert Hooke and give insights into the workings of the Royal Society at the time and Hooke’s relationship with Isaac Newtown. The Royal Society had appealed for a white knight to purchase them on their behalf (even though one could argue they already owned them) and now their wish has come true. This Reuters article refers to it as Hooke’s journal rather than Royal Society minutes but from the descriptions of how it was found they appear to be talking about the same thing. Good news all round then.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 1.19 pm by niltiac
Apparently young Brits are so time poor that they have a combined total of £400 million of uncashed cheques in their wallets because they can’t get to the bank. It doesn’t help that the lunch hour is now an endangered species.
I don’t really understand why cheques are so common here. There are very few upsides. They waste people’s time because you have to queue at a bank. They delay payment – it takes time to post a cheque and then three days for it to clear. And you have no control over when money gets taken out and have to ensure that the funds are left in the account even if the recipient decides to sit on it for months.
In Australia, cheques are rare. A cheque book is not standard with a bank account and there are tax implications for a cheque account that do not apply to a normal savings account. As a result, most people don’t have a cheque book and it is far more common to pay people with electronic funds transfer through phone or internet banking.
Here cheque books are standard with a current account and for whatever reason, they are exceptionally popular both for business and personal transactions. For example, if you buy something off eBay, people will pay either by cheque, which is slow, or by PayPal, which costs money, even though there is a perfectly good alternative of electronic funds transfer, which is fast and free. It’s considered safe in Australia (people can only use the details to make deposits not withdrawals) but not here – not sure why.
In Australia, when I did freelance work it took one to two weeks after invoicing and I received my payment through electronic funds transfer. Here, standard terms are thirty days from publication and payment is by cheque.
Of course, if someone owes me money I don’t want them NOT to send me a cheque unless they are planning to pay me in some other way. The only thing worse than a cheque is no cheque.
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03.27.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 9.02 am by niltiac
Europe, like Australia and Japan but unlike the United States and the developing world, has a birth rate below replacement levels and an ageing population. We are told this is bad because declining population and economic decline usually go hand in hand and in the future we will be left with a very small number of workers supporting a large older population. This economic headache is a concern for governments when they are setting policies on things like pensions, the state retirement age, childcare, maternity leave, and so on.
(An aside: The complaint is always framed that ‘women’ are choosing to have fewer children, even though it’s usually a joint choice).
On the other hand, we desperately need to reduce the world’s population if we want to maintain our standard of living AND avoid turning the planet into an uninhabitable rubbish heap. Earlier this year I posted about a website where you could calculate your environmental footprint and therefore how many Earths we would need if everyone lived like you. The other side of that equation is of course population. We could all fly around on our private jet planes quaffing caviar if there were fewer of us! Okay, I’m exaggerating but you get the point.
I want to improve the quality of life for the poorest people in the world but I also hope that the trend for affluence and a lower birth rate to go hand in hand (found everywhere except the US) also catches on as the poorer countries develop. While I also recognise that consumption in the developed world is probably too high, I don’t think a global population of six billion people and rising is sustainable anyway.
It strikes me that what goverments and economists should be doing rather than wringing their hands about low birth rates, is finding an economic theory that will work with negative population growth. Firstly, because the reality is we have low birth rates and secondly, because the world needs lower birth rates.
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