RAFA: WE NEEDED TO PLAY MUCH BETTER

Wal-Mart stops sale of anti-Semitic tract

So, Wal-Mart will stop selling the infamous "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". Amazon.com still sells it, albeit along with quite the long discussion about what sort of books a bookseller should sell, and followed by a review which describes it as a "pernicious fraud".

Unlike amazon.co.uk, which does nothing of the sort. Some versions/editions have no synopsis at all, some merely parrot the publisher's rather disingenuous explanation for publishing the book: only the synopsis for the books by Sergius Nilus make it clear that the Protocols are faked.

Inaccuracy of food labelling exposed

I do find it strange that in a country that has an Advertising Standards Authority to make sure that ads are correct and not misleading [and which prevents you from saying "my widget is better than brand x's widget], food manufacturers are seemingly allowed to put whatever labelling they like on food products. What is the point of regulations that control lablelling of 'lean minced meat' but not 'minced meat lean'??

Proper, accurate food labelling is long overdue - the Americans can do it right, so why can't Europeans??

One of the interesting things about being at a different University [and this is the fourth I've worked for...] is watching how the academic year starts and how the new students react to their new environment - be they frosh, freshers or whatever else you call them.

It's interesting to sit on the subway surrounded by clearly nervous 17/18/19 year olds clutching their campus maps and campus guides and going through what must be completely incomprehensible course and program documentation.

If I didn't know any better I'd say I was feeling nostalgic...

But for a great bit of insight into what it's like starting out check out Aaron's Stanford experience - Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

Also see Keeping Score, on using credit scoring to set utility rates.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Journalist sparked palace scare

Translation: Lothian & Borders Police don't have enough officers to look after high profile events and the rest of us simultaneously. They'll have to choose one or the other, and the media will howl if it's not the high profile events/people/places, so the rest of us will have to live with officers being re-assigned and not dealing with local issues [like crime]. Lovely.

NetNewsWire 2.0 Betas

And don't forget MarsEdit too...

JPG Magazine

are now fixed, I think. TypeKey misconfiguration, not helped by their non-existent documentation. Anyay. :-)

You never know if it's true, but there is more and more evidence that the educational system in the UK is almost completely broken - or, more to the point, that the media and the middle classes think so.

On one hand you have 27% of parents paying for extra tuition as they think so little of what their children are getting [and the Telegraph is right to ask if "improved" exam results are the product of good teaching or of extra tutoring].

And on the other you have the people who are paid to 'run' the educational system - a job that've manifestly failed to do, going by the lack of skills of students entering universities, bleating that they don't want funding from sources they don't approve of - see Tycoon's bid to save sink schools snubbed - as it would weaken their grip on the educational system:

The strategy, apparently, being to fail most students.

That being said, there are [and always has been] a number of students who are determined to fail all by themselves. It will always be difficult to develop a really strong educational system in a society where so many are overtly hostile to education.

But on the bright side, at least things aren't this bad. Yet.

Blind workers face the sack

Hate to say it, but its been pretty obvious [at least to me...] for the last year or so that the whole Blindcraft saga had disaster written all over it... I'm not sure what is worse, the fact that significant numbers of disabled workers are going to lose their jobs, or the fact that the plant was allowed to lose almost £2 million last year... what on earth is the Council doing wasting all that money???

Methinks there are lots of people who should lose their jobs over this, and none of them are blind... except to opportunities to waste our taxes.

Now north-south divide applies to savings

Well, most people would have figured out that savings were closely linked to income, and that areas with the lowest income would probably have the lowest savings rate. Unfortunately this elemental fact seems to have been missed by both the Press Association and the BBC.

But then they've basically just regurgitated Lloyd's TSB's press release so perhaps that's not too surprising.

Well, there are a few new galleries up, not that I've highlighted them or anything as I am a lazy sod. Still, a gmail invite to whoever finds them first...

BBC - Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The New Series

I know it's long awaited and everything but...
the preview sounded absolutely dire, particularly in comparison with the original radio series.

Well, some of you will know about the rather long running and completely pathetic saga of my stupid Phillips handset, which has become posessed by something [still don't quite know what] and would just randomly turn on, turn off, charge, refuse to charge, or just plain crash.

Not fun trying to talk to someone and have your handset just crash mid-conversation and have to run to turn on the speaker phone before BT decides the conversation has run its course and hangs up for me. Also rather embarassing to have to start every conversation with a series of caveats about how this conversation may be inexplicably terminated...

So. The Phillips handset is on its way to the dump, and it has finally been replaced. [Not really available from John Lewis, although Argos did had them...] I have not yet figured how to stop the answering machine from picking up after about two rings but then I've not read the manual so...

I am wondering if the nice female pre-recorded voice will tempt people to leave messages thinking they've got the London Street Sauna, which is just down the road and whose phone number is somewhat similar to mine...

Twist a Pen, Open a Lock

Now I'm rather glad that I don't have one of the world's most over priced [and now apparently almost completely useless] bike locks... I wonder if your insurance policy will still cover you if you use one of these things...??

Guardian Unlimited | Economic dispatch | Power steering

It's quite funny watching the UK press moan and groan over the decline of Jaguar, and particularly about its poor sales in the US. Invariably, commentaries focus on price and the impact of a relatively strong pound on what the cars sell for in the US. What these articles never focus on is design - and if UK journalists knew half of what they think they know about the US they'd have a much better idea of what Jaguar's problem really is. Let's take a quick look at the Jaguar range from a North American perspective:

X-Type: looks like a Subaru.
S-Type: looks like a Saturn.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, actually: the S-Type really looks like a Ford Taurus, and let me tell you UK journalists, that is NOT a good thing.

XJ - now that looks like a Jaguar. Shame it's almost at the top of the range.

Back in the 'good' old days, every Jaguar looked like a Jaguar. Now that most of the range are fairly nondescript knockoffs of generic four door cars, no wonder nobody wants to buy them.

War & Security

soldiers say they're being strong-armed to re-enlist

First it was the National Guard, now it's the regulars...

Media face huge bill for trial failures

While I am loth to defend the UK media, particularly the tabloids, of course the media are being targeted - partially because they are seen to have deep pockets, and partially because this is a form of a very socially acceptable backlash against the more purient bits of the media under the guise of the media being forced to 'take responsibility' for a small slice of the havoc it causes.

Previously, the only people who actually paid the 'costs' of a court case in the UK are the taxpayers - certainly not the guilty, who have got away with paying peanuts for years. When Lord Archer got his comeuppance, I hoped that the £175,000 he had to shell out in costs would herald the start of more agressive attempts to making the guilty pay a more significant contribution towards the costs of their conviction. After all, you'd expect Gordon Brown and the Treasury to be well in favour of such a move, wouldn't you??

But then we get Terry Yorath - convicted of drunk driving and charged £40 in costs, and Tony Richardson, notable only as the boyfriend of Jennifer Ellison, charged £50 in costs after being convicted of being a drunken idiot.

What is the point of those token 'costs'? It will probably cost more to process and collect these 'costs' than the system will actually receive..

The latest in a long line of almost perfect newspaper front pages from the Daily Record...

iTunes under fire over UK pricing

And it only took them 3 months to notice...?? Was the math that difficult??

Humphrys censured by BBC for continually interrupting minister

The whole point of an independent media is to be critical: to think for itself, to question, to challenge, to ponder the assumptions and to examine the alternatives. It is becoming increasingly clear that the BBC as an institution is dying, with its paranoia over the seemingly endless debates about the extension of its charter, and its complete and utter lack of backbone over the Hutton report - when it would have been well within its rights to, at the very least, ridicule the good Lord's pompous witterings, if not to reject them out of hand as utterly risible. That it felt unable to do so says much about the BBC, and may turn out to be the point at which the ship floundered.

These issues have severely limited the BBC's ability to act as an independent entity and to set its own agenda as a public service broadcaster. The organisation is increasingly run reactively, responding first and foremost to outside criticism and seems to effectively be floundering in its own wake - a neat trick and one that's difficult to pull off. As an organisation, the BBC seems increasingly committed to the touchy-feely [e.g. Comic/Sport Relief] and the populist [phone ins, even if they've temporarily sworn off of reality tv] in search of a popular relevance that helps preserve the institution at all costs.

But what is the point of preserving a spineless media rump? If the BBC's flagship political program can be cowed and told not to bully ministers by asking serious questions, is there any real need for the institution any more? Private companies are more than capable [and more than willing] to provide us with mindless rubbish - and if the BBC isn't willing to provide an alternative intellectual counterpoint there's little need for its continuance.

Can Apple Play Europe's Tune?

Ah, no, Mr Mulligan of Jupiter 'Research'. The selection in a Virgin Megastore is dependent upon a wide variety of things, including the quality of its local competitiors, the state of Virgin's love affair with the DVD (still waning, it seems...), their interest in computer games and, most prosaically, the size of the actual store.

Online, however... music services should have everything. Within reason of course, which for the sake of argument I'll define as more than 95% of the music that has been released since, hmm, 1982 (i.e. the birth of the CD market) and say 80% of releases between then and 1960, which should cover the vast majority of what music is still in copyright.

And if the music's still copyrighted by the music industry, it should be available to buy online in whatever format suits me/you. If it's not, then the industry shouldn't bleat about people stealing/illegally downloading it.

And if it's not online, then the music industry should be rather leery of artists' whose royalties are being (virtually) witheld.

PS. remember that Hooverphonic album that I couldn't find in Edinburgh? Couldn't find it in Glasgow either, but did get it through an Amazon.co.uk reseller. Total VAT paid to HM Treasury: £0. Even Gordon Brown should be concerned that not enough music's for sale online...

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Scottish parliament building

Back in the late 90s when Scottish devolution began to be implemented, there was talk of building a new parliament to house MSPs, as the Royal High School was felt not to be suitable for a variety of reasons, some symbolic (as there was a desire to see a new beginning) and some practical (it was too small for everyone - though there was a perfectly good, indeed rather attractive, Art-Deco office block just yards away that was already used by the Scottish Executive, and the court that currently sat there would need to find a new home as well...).

But what would such a building cost?? Politicians (and, it must be said, civil servants) being ever economical with the truth, replied that a building with the required floorspace would typically cost around £40 million to build. Note that this wasn't the actual cost of the building that they were proposing to build: that hadn't even been designed yet. And this was just the construction cost - it didn't include many professional fees, VAT at 17.5%(And just why is the Scottish Executive paying VAT?? That point has always confused me...), or the costs of buying the land the building might sit on.

Despite all that, this figure has been taken as the original price for the building that Mirales was supposed to design. The fact that the final project was re-designed innumerable times as construction progressed, and is now twice the size of the original design after every vested interest who could possibly affect the final design made sure that they bloody well did - and that includes the media, who were unhappy about the media facilities and wanted them expanded - are of course merely small and irrelevant details. And then people go and confuse construction costs with final costs, and the two are vastly diferent (the latter includes fees, VAT, the cost of the land, and the costs of rennovating Queensbury House, and that wasn't cheap in and of itself).

Yet people still go on and on about £40 million being the original estimate. It was an estimate, but not the one for the complex that was actually built (and it is a complex, with 2 office buildings and the parliament buildings themselves, and there seem to be four of them).

Frustrated Ridley cuts ties at Weymouth

This is a shame, as there are few things more interesting than watching a football journalist trying to run a football team. At least Ridley knew a lot about football, a charge you wouldn't make against most of his erstwhile colleagues...

'More black teachers are needed'

Bet most of those 2.9% know how to proofread though...

Now that I'm in Glasgow most of the time and am surrounded by good newsagents, I bought a copy of Wired magazine for the first time in years. And you know what? I'd already read 75% of its' content even before I'd opened it... almost all the articles were already on their web site. Now admittedly this is probably much more of an issue for those of us outside North America, who are probably buying the magazine a month after it appears on their newstands, but I'll not be making that mistake again.

You can find copies of the US version of Esquire in Borders on Buchanan Street too, which is very good if, like me, your subscription copies have begun to mysteriously vanish in the post. Hearst did send me a free copy of seventeen but it's not really the same thing, is it?

that you don't really know?

on anti-Americanism in Canada

This rather entertaining, if ultimately ridiculous, entry and its associated comments is fascinating, fascinating in the completely wrong car-crash you-can-see-this-accident-coming-but-can't-not-watch kind of way. There are a number of really fundamental misunderstandings that are presented as facts, both by Grant and by the commenters, that do little but reveal how little many know about that large country to America's north.

Canadians and Americans are pretty much alike, particularly to the rest of the world who are none of the above. It's the differences, however, that are what's interesting and Canadians tend to be much more aware of the differences and adamant in defending both the gap between them and the right for those differences to be there in the first place. It's that 20%/15%/10%/5% that really matters to Canadians.

But some of the reaction to this is really juvenile. You can criticise America without being anti-American, although this is a rhetorical device which increasing numbers of Americans seem fundamentally unable to understand. Perhaps this is because of the increasing polarisation of US politics in general and of right-wing politics in particular: the reason however is pretty irrelevant. If you speak unwelcome truths, that does not somehow make them less true.

Being closest to the US, Canadians often find themselves in the invidious position of seeing first hand the differences between US rhetoric and reality. And they know that the gap between the two affects them, and usually negatively.

Mobiles kill off more phone boxes

No, this isn't really the story of the impact of mobile phones, it's the story of BT cutting costs and justifying it by blaming mobiles. Many people don't have telephones [which is why there was a need for phone boxes in the first place], don't have/can't afford mobiles, can't get a mobile reception, have dead batteries etc. and have a thousand and one reasons why they may still want to use phone boxes.

Saying that people can still use other phone boxes that are close by is a nonsense - it's pretty clear from this that BT isn't just thinning out its network, but completely pulling out of many rural areas. And even in a city, who besides BT knows where all the phone boxes in a neighbourhood are? Are they going to put maps up telling you how to get to the remaining phone boxes?

Now admittedly phone boxes are not free, and it does cost BT a small fortune in maintenance, as some boxes are repeatedly vandalised - the ones across the street from my old flat had their glass sides smashed in once a week, every week, for over a year - but that's a failure of the local police more than anything else.

The fact that BT is responsible for phone boxes is a bit of an anachronism, given that they used to be the monopoly phone provider - back then everyone indirectly contributed towards their upkeep just by using the phone network. Nowadays, with the deregulation of the phone system, that model doesn't work any more. Given that BT isn't allowed to subsidise the costs of phone boxes from its other revenues, OFTEL needs to step in to mandate a surcharge on all phones and providers to spread the cost of maintaining the service more widely. Otherwise we will end up with phone boxes/internet kiosks in the richer areas where the service is most profitable and nowt in the poorer ones.

Austria 2-2 England

There is a school of thought that when Alan Green calls a side a 'pub team' they are guaranteed to do something unpleasant [in footballing terms...].

Scottish Hospitality
And do bring an umbrella. It rains. A lot.

I regret to report that today the weather failed to perform as expected and it was not only sunny in Edinburgh, but it was even WARM. This is unheard of, at least this year...

The Artist's Statement
A, well... quite squalid tale of the effects of having a camera, a notepad, "homeland security" and being black in America...

I have noticed that a strange effect often comes over people when they notice that you have a camera in your hand, and some have some rather strange ideas about what they can tell other people in public what to do...

FSU to sign deal with Apple

So, students will get, for free, software which is already free. And they will be able to buy music online with a 0% discount. Ooh, what progress.

Well, nothing is actually in writing, but that wee detail hasn't really got in the way...