Ants

Strumigenys sibnya Bolton 2000. Worker. Holotype, California Academy of Sciences. Collected by B. Malkin 1949, Macambrara, São Tomé.

Lighters

Nothing sophisticated about cigarette lighters here ... no expensive Ronsons or classic Zippos just cheap disposable plastic lighters that tend to go bust before fuel runs out. Manufactured, like our soap, toothpaste etc, in the far east. Not sophisticated? Are you sure?

First in our selection is the bog standard disposable lighter. The strike mechanism goes kaput or the flint flies ballistically across the room before the fuel runs out ... leaving just one option - dispose of it.

Second in our selection is the bog standard lighter but with a tiny LCD light. A lighter with a light. The light components take up approximately a third of the lighter leaving a reduced fuel capacity so the lighter function always ends before the light - my children bug me all the time for my "used" lighter. This LCD is really useful when there is a power cut and you don't have matches and a candle on hand (ok - so where the fuck did I leave the lighter?). So it is somewhat recyclable. The model in our photo seems to be aware that among its many functions, one is prejudicial to "Health". Who would buy a lighter if they didn't smoke?


So here's a bigger version. The light mechanism is completely separate from the lighter and is, as our photos show, completely detachable from the lighter. This is cool - you can throw away the lighter part when it is exhausted and keep the light. The light is more powerful than our first type. Its only disadvanatge seems to be it breaks up into its component parts when you drop it.

Our fourth lighter should not be called a cigarette lighter. The lighter comes in a series - I have three, I'm not sure if there are more or not. They don't have the immensely practical LCDs of the former two but boast fine displays of the leaf of a cannabis plant. So, rather, they are not "cigarette lighters" but rather "joint or spliff lighters".

Giv - with Rose Oil

This is definitely one for the girls ...

"Rose oil gives a luxurious and smooth skin feeling. With feminine perfume for a romantic personality".

Although I've been using this gloriously pink addition to Giv's range of beauty products, my body hair has not diminished and Morais has not remarked on any feminine traits developing.

I have also just noticed that it is "International" (top right) ... indeed, if it makes its way from Indonesia to our tiny country of São Tomé e Príncipe!

Aphorisms XIII

"I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I never did anything out of the blue".

David Bowie

Urban Exploration.

"a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities ... just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."

Joseph Hart "A New Way of Walking" Utne Reader 2004

Living in a country of volcanic origin and without natural caves, I had to satisfy my trogolodyte urges (I was once a caver) via the web. I finally came across what trogolodytes, rock climbers and the simply curious do when they are limited by geographical circumstances to urban environments. They explore their environment. Amongst the urban explorer community there is a preoccupation with buildering (climbing buildings freehand) and tunnels (river, drainage, sewage, transport, catacombs etc etc). I abseiled down a mobile telephone antenna tower, took on the tallest building in São Tomé (the apartment block on whose grondfloor was the central bank ... almost got arrested ... various bridges etc).

However, Peter Karzil took me further. As well as the "traditional" aspects of urban exploration mentioned above, through his website Urban Adventure in Rotterdam (still there) now replaced by his blog of the same name. From the latter I learned the term "pyschogeography" which I promptly looked up on Wikipedia. Psychogeography was first defined in the 1950s by Chtcheglov and Debord and was principally interested in urban environments.

Although Hart's definition above limits itself to urban environments, Debord's definition of psychogeography is broader - how the geographical environment effects individuals. The writings and photos of Peter Karzil well illustrate this - human and urban influences on the rural environment and how nature adapts to and is even used in the urban environment.

The film The Tunnel took me to Silent UK's recent exploration of the UK Post Office's London underground railway system that had remained inaccessible to urban explorers for decades and decades ... since it existed!

Last week boingboing posted on Becky Stern's "visit" to the derelict Packard automobile factory in Detroit ... notable information "there were no fences or signs to warn people away" and "...included the first use of reinforced concrete for industrial construction in Detroit. When opened in 1903, it was considered the most modern automobile manufacturing facility in the world ...". Becky's flickr set is here.

These influences, combined with long term broken down motorised transport means I walk more and am renewing my interest in urban exploration (hence the post Urban Landscapes below)

A Pile of Papers

Urban Landscapes

This and the following shots are of a wonderful abandoned building in the centre of São Tomé. It belonged to the Portuguese father of a regional businessman (and friend of Morais). The groundfloor, even in my time, was a shop.






Nothing really breathtaking about this next photo but note how the horizontal beams forming an integral part of the building's superstructure, are rock!


These wonderful lamps are found hanging from buildings (and occasionally on top of a lamppost) all around the centre of the city.




This crazy window is halfway up the stairs to my office.


Yes, the Chinese still make paraffin tilly lamps!


An abandoned electricity sub-station with appropriate warnings.


The climate and nature's microorganisms make art.

Art Gallery

Here's some artwork Jaime and Kezia left on my computer - I have just discovered it. I think it's kind of cool.

MPs put the boot in ... again

Now the UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee produces The National Programme for IT in the NHS: an update on the delivery of detailed care records systems.

This follows on from last week's report by the Public Administration Select Committee A Recipe for Rip-Offs - Time for a new approach which we reported on here.

The latest report (again only in html) recommends that the detailed care record database system is scrapped according to the BBC piece.

Ironic that on the one hand eveyone is condemning Tory-Lib proposals for NHS reform and on the other the NHS IT initiative, in its many aspects, is coming under such flack.

Kezia's First Rorshach

A bird, an orchid ...? Morais thought a bird or an aeroplane. But the two blue blodges at the top reminded him of people genuflecting. What does it remind you of? All suggestions both beautiful and profane are welcome!

Certainly more colourful than Rorshach's mask in The Watchmen which was constantly changing ...


"The fluids remained in constant motion, being affected by heat and pressure, however the black and white colors never combined to form gray. The patterns formed by the fluids also maintained a constant symmetrical pattern down the midline of whatever shape the fabric had been formed into."

One of my favourite novels.

WHO IS WATCHING THE WATCHMEN?


And check out Rorschmap here and here.

Jaime's 12th

Jaime was 12 years old on Saturday.


Nanda forgot to bring 12 birthday candles ... so he had to make do with one whopper!

A Recipe for Rip-Offs

This has just been published by the UK Parliament's House of Commons Public Affairs Committee:
Public Administration Committee - Twelfth Report Government and IT- "A Recipe For Rip-Offs": Time For A New Approach". Unfortunately only available as html pages and not as an entire pdf. We will therefore give you the Summary ...

"Information Technology (IT) plays a fundamental role in the provision of public services. However, despite a number of successful initiatives, government's overall record in developing and implementing new IT systems is appalling. The lack of IT skills in government and over-reliance on contracting out is a fundamental problem which has been described as a "recipe for rip-offs".

IT procurement has too often resulted in late, over budget IT systems that are not fit for purpose. Given the cuts that they are having to make in response to the fiscal deficit it is ridiculous that some departments spend an average of £3,500 on a desktop PC. This Government, like many before it, has an ambitious programme aimed at reforming how it uses IT. This Report sets out what the Government must address if these reforms are to succeed where previous attempts have failed.

We found that government is currently over-reliant on a small "oligopoly" of large suppliers, which some witnesses referred to as a "cartel". Whether or not this constitutes a cartel in legal terms, current arrangements have led to a perverse situation in which governments have wasted an obscene amount of public money. Benchmarking studies have demonstrated that government pays substantially more for IT when compared to commercial rates. The Government needs to break out of this relationship. It should do this by:

i. Improving its own information. The Government's own information about its IT is woefully inadequate. This lack of data means that governments have failed to benchmark the price it pays for IT goods and services; this data must be collected centrally to allow the Government to obtain the best possible price from the market.

ii. Publishing more information. The Government has already started publishing large amounts of information about its expenditure as part of its transparency agenda. The Government should go further and make public not just information about how much its IT costs, but also about how its systems run. All IT procurement contracts should be published in full to ensure transparency and restore trust. This would allow external experts to challenge current practices and identify ways services could be delivered differently as well as more economically.

iii. Widening the supplier base. The Government must expand its supplier base by promoting fair and open competition and engaging with innovative SMEs. To widen the supplier base the Government needs to reduce the size of its contracts and greatly simplify the procurement process. It must also adopt common standards and ensure that systems interoperate to eliminate over-reliance on a small group of suppliers, and commoditise where possible. Most importantly, departments need the capacity to deal directly with a wider range of suppliers, especially SMEs.

iv. Working in an "agile" manner. The challenges that government seeks to address are constantly changing. Often the IT systems that government develops are already out of date before they have been implemented. The Government needs to move towards the use of agile and iterative development methods which enable IT programmes to adapt to changes.

Above all, to address these challenges successfully, the Government needs to possess the necessary skills and knowledge in-house, to manage suppliers and understand the potential IT has to transform the services it delivers. Currently the outsourcing of the government's IT service means that many civil service staff, along with their knowledge, skills, networks and infrastructure has been transferred to suppliers. The Government needs to rebuild this capacity urgently.

Finally, we outline our own vision for how the delivery of public services online could be reformed through a combination of data release, giving individuals control of their own personal records, engaging users in the design and continuous improvement of services and opening up the delivery of online services to a greater range of organisations.

The Government has set out its own milestones for success in its ICT Strategy. We shall be returning to this topic to monitor the Government's progress against these targets, and the recommendations set out in this Report."

The government did not want to tell me how much it was paying Microsoft for deliverables in the NHS IT programme when I made a FOIA request.

Split up the Happy Family

Since November 2010 a foreign spouse overseas cannot join her spouse legitimately in the UK unless s/he passes an English language test.

This stinks! Just imagine ... Kezia's leukaemia relapses, I take her to the UK, Nanda who does not have UK citizenship is obliged to speak "basic English" ... whatever that means. Well, what it means is this ...

"1.2 Will there be a procurement exercise?

We are using the existing list of test providers approved for the purposes of Tier 2 of the Points Based System as a basis for the new spouse list. We have written to Tier 2 providers inviting them to indicate their willingness to be included on the new approved list for spouses and to confirm that they provide appropriate A1 speaking and listening tests. Those who provided a favourable response have been automatically confirmed as a test provider for the spousal route. Existing Tier 2 providers were appointed through an open competition and offer English language tests at the same level (A1) required for spouses.

We intend to undertake a full procurement exercise for providers of English language tests in the near future. The date for this procurement exercise has not yet been set."

At present English Language Test providers are as would be predicted - Camridge ESOL (University of Cambridge), City and Guilds, ETS (American), Pearson, Trinity College London.

Three couples are taking this to court as racist etc. See the BBC report here.

See the Home Office regulation here

Funnily enough São Tomé e Príncipe is one of the countries listed as exempt as it does not have a Test Centre. I am surprised Somalia is not on the list . you mean one of the test providers listed above has a test centre there!!!! Here are the others:

• Angola²
• Burkina Faso²
• Cambodia²
• Cape Verde²
• Central African Republic²
• Chad²
• Comoros¹
• Congo4
• Democratic Republic of Congo4
• Dominican Republic5
• Equatorial Guinea²
• Eritrea4
• Gabon¹
• Guinea³
• Guinea-Bissau¹
• Ivory Coast³
• Kiribati¹
• Lesotho¹
• Liberia³
• Madagascar²
• Maldives¹
• Rwanda4
• Samoa¹
• Sao Tome Principe¹
• Seychelles¹
• Sierra Leone³
• Somalia¹
• Swaziland¹
• Togo¹
• Wallis and Futuna Islands¹

Soon they'll be doing away with Language Line saying that all immigrants speak English!

First Libyan 419 Scam?

From: Salim Fadi Salim of Libya

Hallo, As-Salum'Alaykum.

Please I want to come to your country from Libya with my family and I need your help. I have luggage with significant asset worth few million American dollars I want to send across to your country through diplomatic carrier ahead of our arrival but destination. Please can you receive the luggage on my behalf and welcome us as your guest when we arrive to your country?

Please reply to this mail and help me with your particulars to enable the agent helping me (Mackenzie Logistics) to register and book the luggage for shipment/airfreight to you.

I would like to speak with you but the war has effected most actives services, telecommunication network, hospitals, schools etc, however my number is 00218 917884074, sometimes the phone works but most times it doesn't, you can try to call me maybe I will be lucky, but send your
direct number so I book call to you through satellite payphone service.

Please I apologize.

Thank you (Shuran)

From Salim Fadi Salim of Lib

Al 3 Fajjar, LBY, Gregarage Tripoli, Libya

Chinese Pornographic Kitsch

Not sure if these cigarette lighters are made in Taiwan or mainland (PRC) China but they are being sold in Africa.

Cuts in Vaccine Prices

From the BBC Drug firms cut vaccine prices to the developing world.

See also the GAVI Alliance press release here.

This can only be for the good!

Anti-Pharma

From boingboing ... this is marvellous especially given Indian, Brazilian and South African efforts to develop their own drugs. I wonder how much success it will have ...

"Jamie Love sez, "Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced legislation in the US Senate that would use prizes to reward medical R&D, and eliminate all drug monopolies. It includes an open source dividend of $4 billion per year."

Both bills would eliminate all legal barriers to the manufacture and sale of generic versions of drugs and vaccines. The more ambitious bill is the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act, which would apply to all prescription drugs. The narrower proposal is the Prize Fund for HIV/AIDS Act, which would only apply to treatments for HIV/AIDS. The Medical Innovation Prize Fund would create a prize fund equal of .55 percent of US GDP, which is more than $80 billion per year at current levels of U.S. GDP. The HIV/AID Prize Fund would be funded at .02 percent of U.S. GDP, which is equal to more than $3 billion per year at current levels of U.S. GDP.

The federal government and private health insurance companies would co-fund the prizes, according to formulas set out in the bills. The cost of the prize funds would be more than offset by the savings from the introduction of generic competition for products.

Both bills have some similar features to Senator Sanders' earlier prize fund bills, but there are also a number of changes. Among those changes are the introduction of an open source dividend element to the bills, which would have at least 5 percent of the prize money going to persons or communities that put knowledge, data, materials or technology into the public domain, or provide royalty free and non-discriminatory access to patents and other intellectual property rights. Annually, this would be more than $4 billion for S. 1137, and $147 million for S. 1138, at 2010 levels of GDP, as an incentive to open source research."

Original article here.

If Music Could Talk

I have never blogged this ... to my shame. The son of Xeni Jardin (of boingboing fame) is DJ Carlito of Richmond Independent Radio (WRIR). He has a radio show each Sunday If Music Could Talk, 2 hours playing a most eclectic and phenonemal mixture of the world's music. The show has been running for years, and is marvellous. Very little talk ... just solid world music. Every programme is downloadable.

I'll put up a link ...

My only objection is the "If" ... Music Can Talk!

The Tunnel

The Shining with Jack Nicolson was full of shocks. A masterpiece, it shocked but was as full of laughs much more than scare.

Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now was the first truly scary horror movie I ever saw. Full of suspense which didn't really come to a terrifying conclusion until the end.

Now I come across The Tunnel.

As an ex-caver and sometimes "urban explorer" this appealed.

"In 2007 the New South Wales government suddenly scrapped a plan to utilise the water in the disused underground train tunnels beneath Sydney. In 2008, chasing rumours of a government cover-up and urban legends surrounding the sudden backflip, investigative journalist Natasha Warner led a crew of four into the underground labyrinth. They went down into the tunnels looking for a story – until the story found them.

This is the film of their harrowing ordeal. With unprecedented access to the recently declassified tapes they shot in the claustrophobic subway tunnels, as well as a series of candid interviews with the survivors, we come face to face with the terrifying truth.

This never before seen footage takes us deep inside the tunnels bringing the darkness to life and capturing the raw fear that threatens to tear the crew apart, leaving each one of them fighting for their lives."

It is a free download although the makers would appreciate donations.

At the same time I discover that urban explorers have finally got into the London post office's underground railway system ... a kind of Golden Egg of UK urban exploration.

Aphorisms XII

“Thinking is the hardest work there is. That’s why so few people engage in it.”

Henry Ford

Digital Opportunity - A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth

I mentioned this report last week. I spent some time on it this weekend but at 140 pages could not get through it all and the NAO NHS IT report.

However, here are its principle recommendations which seem reasonably ok to me ...

Recommendations

1. Evidence. Government should ensure that development of the IP [Intellectual Proprerty] System is driven as far as possible by objective evidence. Policy should balance measurable economic objectives against social goals and potential benefits for rights holders against impacts on consumers and other interests. These concerns will be of particular importance in assessing future claims to extend rights or in determining desirable limits to rights.te

2. International priorities. The UK should resolutely pursue its international interests in IP, particularly with respect to emerging economies such as China and India, based upon positions grounded in economic evidence. It should attach the highest immediate priority to achieving a unified EU patent court and EU patent system, which promises significant economic benefits to UK business. The UK should work to make the Patent Cooperation Treaty a more effective vehicle for international processing of patent applications.

3. Copyright licensing.

• In order to boost UK firms’ access to transparent, contestable and global digital markets, the UK should establish a cross sectoral Digital Copyright Exchange. Government should appoint a senior figure to oversee its design and implementation by the end of 2012. A range of incentives and disincentives will be needed to encourage rights holders and others to take part. Governance should reflect the interests of participants, working to an agreed code of practice.

• The UK should support moves by the European Commission to establish a framework for cross border copyright licensing, with clear benefits to the UK as a major exporter of copyright works. Collecting societies should be required by law to adopt codes of practice, approved by the IPO and the UK competition authorities, to ensure that they operate in a way that is consistent with the further development of efficient, open markets.

4. Orphan works. The Government should legislate to enable licensing of orphan works. This should establish extended collective licensing for mass licensing of orphan works, and a clearance procedure for use of individual works. In both cases, a work should only be treated as an orphan if it cannot be found by search of the databases involved in the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange.

5. Limits to copyright. Government should firmly resist over regulation of activities which do not prejudice the central objective of copyright, namely the provision of incentives to creators. Government should deliver copyright exceptions at national level to realise all the opportunities within the EU framework, including format shifting, parody, non-commercial research, and library archiving. The UK should also promote at EU level an exception to support text and data analytics. The UK should give a lead at EU level to develop a further copyright exception designed to build into the EU framework adaptability to new technologies. This would be designed to allow uses enabled by technology of works in ways which do not directly trade on the underlying creative and expressive purpose of the work. The Government should also legislate to ensure that these and other copyright exceptions are protected from override by contract.

6. Patent thickets and other obstructions to innovation. In order to limit the effects of these barriers to innovation, the Government should:

• take a leading role in promoting international efforts to cut backlogs and manage the boom in
patent applications by further extending “work sharing” with patent offices in other countries;
• work to ensure patents are not extended into sectors, such as non-technical computer
programs and business methods, which they do not currently cover, without clear evidence of
benefit;
• investigate ways of limiting adverse consequences of patent thickets, including by working with international partners to establish a patent fee structure set by reference to innovation and growth goals rather than solely by reference to patent office running costs. The structure of patent renewal fees might be adjusted to encourage patentees to assess more carefully the value of maintaining lower value patents, so reducing the density of patent thickets.

7. The design industry. The role of IP in supporting this important branch of the creative economy has been neglected. In the next 12 months, the IPO should conduct an evidence based assessment of the relationship between design rights and innovation, with a view to establishing a firmer basis for evaluating policy at the UK and European level. The assessment should include exploration with design interests of whether access to the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange would help creators protect and market their designs and help users better achieve legally compliant access to designs.

8. Enforcement of IP rights. The Government should pursue an integrated approach based upon
enforcement, education and, crucially, measures to strengthen and grow legitimate markets in
copyright and other IP protected fields. When the enforcement regime set out in the DEA becomes operational next year its impact should be carefully monitored and compared with experience in other countries, in order to provide the insight needed to adjust enforcement mechanisms as market conditions evolve. This is urgent and Ofcom should not wait until then to establish its benchmarks and begin building data on trends. In order to support rights holders in enforcing their rights the Government should introduce a small claims track for low monetary value IP claims in the Patents County Court.

9. Small firm access to IP advice. The IPO should draw up plans to improve accessibility of the IP system to smaller companies who will benefit from it. This should involve access to lower cost providers of integrated IP legal and commercial advice.

10. An IP system responsive to change. The IPO should be given the necessary powers and mandate in law to ensure that it focuses on its central task of ensuring that the UK’s IP system promotes innovation and growth through efficient, contestable markets. It should be empowered to issue statutory opinions where these will help clarify copyright law. As an element of improved transparency and adaptability, Government should ensure that by the end of 2013, the IPO publishes an assessment of the impact of those measures advocated in this review which have been accepted by Government.

Ants

Every morning as I wait for Morais to give me a lift to work and watch a chain of ants walking up and down a pillar from his upstairs to their nest under the ground. As they march backwards and forwards they meet each other and seemingly give each other a peck on the cheek ... I can only assume this is some kind of mechanism to give each other a navigation signal that they are on the right path.

Yesterday I found this quote from boingboing when it was a paper "zine" rather than a website:

"I look at a little ant as a machine, and I look at a computer as a kind of plant and to do that will help us to harness this new complexity in the machines we're making. And it may also help us understand the biology we already have."

Kevin Kelly editor of Wired in 1995

Open Source Science

See this succinct article on open source science.

Liver

This was a horrrible food at school dinners when I was a kid but I have suddenly found an incredible delight for it (along with kidneys, heart, brains, sweetmeats).

Liver marinated in red wine done with onions and garlic in olive oil and butter is a delight!

So I say to Morais today I'm going to buy some liver for the weekend and he (also a fan of such morsels) asks "Pig . cow ... or human?"

I replied "Any! Come on even human has to taste similar!"

Then boingboing shows me this.

"Police in Russia have arrested a man who admitted eating an acquaintance's liver, after following a trail of severed body parts—limbs, a head—across Moscow. When they found him, he was eating the liver with potatoes. (Reuters)"

NHS reform is a Stunt

See this about the current government's plans for the NHS and its "consultation".

Dichloroacetate

boingboing reports more rumour-mongering about Dichloroacetate - the supposed wonder drug for curing all types of cancer. We reported on this as far back as 2007.

Totally quack stupid!

And Another ...

Review of Digital Rights in the UK ...

Another Damning Report

The UK National Audit Office publishes another report criticising the massive NHS information technology initiative. Press release here.

The Egg-Bot

I would love to have one of these! Links here and here.

Save Our NHS

Just received this from 38 Degrees:


Dear Angus,

Today, GPs issued a stark warning about Andrew Lansley's NHS plans. They warned we're "moving headlong" towards a more US-style health system based on "an insurance-type model" [1]. That'd be the end of the NHS as we know it - we can't let that happen.

GPs, nurses and patients' groups all know that protecting our health service is a matter of life and death. [2] But they can't save the NHS on their own. Hundreds of thousands of us need to work together to push the politicians to rethink their dangerous plans.

Over 265,000 of us have signed the Save Our NHS petition so far. In the next few weeks, we need to deliver the petition to hundreds of MPs. The bigger the petition, the bigger the impact we will have when it lands on politicians' desks. Can you help us get past 300,000 signatures this week?

Please can you forward this email to your friends and ask them to sign the Save the NHS petition? They can sign by clicking here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-petition

On Facebook? Click here to share the petition on your profile:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-facebook-share
On Twitter? Click to tweet a link to the petition:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-twitter-share

Our campaign has already helped push the government to announce a pause in their plans for the NHS. But there is a risk they will try to push ahead with minimal changes. We need to keep the pressure up, and that means keeping the petition growing.

We know that when we work together behind a growing petition we can transform things. When over 500,000 of us signed the Save Our Forests petition we forced the government to back away from their plans to privatise the forests. Now we need to convince our MPs that we won't let them press ahead with these dangerous plans.

Please forward this email to your friends now and ask them to sign the Save Our NHS petition at:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-petition


Thanks for getting involved,

Johnny, David, Hannah, Becky, Cian and the 38 Degrees team

Bin Laden Hagiography

The US military may have dumped Bin Laden's corpse into the ocean so that his tomb does not become a shrine, and refuses to release photos of his corpse claiming it would be a security risk, but the conspiracy theories (particularly concerning the relationship between Pakistani and US security services) and folklore are beginning to blossom.

I particularly liked this ...

"Osama Bin Laden had some interesting items sewn into his clothes, according to CNN.

Osama bin Laden had 500 Euros (about $745) in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing when he was killed, a source present at a classified briefing on the operation Tuesday told CNN Wednesday.

The numbers, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, were for a Pizza Hut and a 24-hour taxicab service in Highbury, North London."

So was he planning an attack on a north London pizzeria with a minicab courier or did he just have culinary nostalgia from his days studying in the UK?

boingboing reported previously this explanation:

"By various reports, we are now learning that marijuana grew along the outside walls of Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Was the Al Qaeda mastermind a stoner? He and his buds were said to have "bought a lot of food," and frequently placed bulk orders for Coke and Pepsi with a local grocer— so there's that. And, those glazed and distant eyes. But I doubt it: if ever there were a persona more harsh than mellow, it was this fellow.

And, oh, alright: truth is, it's not unusual to find patches of wild cannabis growing in this region."

Although I am not entirely in sympathy with Bin Laden and his philosophy, it is good to hear that he was supporting Hemp History Week.

Munchies? Can someone give me contacts for pizzerias in Attarabad?

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies II

Cory Doctorow of boingboing informs us in his Guardian column that Joe Karaganis, lead author and editor of the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies report we discussed in our last post, is now on a lobbying tour.

It is somewhat of a shame this does not seem to include the emerging economies the report discusses. However, I guess he needs to go where the power and money brokers are.

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies

See this report.

To me this is as an important an issue as the manufacture of drugs against HIV in the "3rd World".

I know my friends and colleagues throughout Africa are downloading music, films and software using every which means they can. We cannot afford the prices that Europe or the See this report.

To me this is as an important an issue as the manufacture of drugs against HIV in the "3rd World".

I know my friends and colleagues throughout Africa are downloading music, films and software using every which means they can. We cannot afford the prices that Europe or North America fork out on music, paper or software.

When I get round to reading it all, I'll probably post some more.

A shame that at 440 pages long we cannot afford the paper or ink to print it!

Through the Looking Glass - a pile of papers

Dearest Madalena

You were very kind about me taking the piss in my post yesterday ... so much so I had the whole office laughing!

Why?

Because if Kezia looked up at my colleague Americo, she wouldn't see a double-chin, she'd see a big fat belly!

And talking to Madalena right now ... it seems she showed her entire office!

So I shouldn't feel so bad after all. I respect people who can take the piss out of themselves!

"Kettling of G20 protesters by police was illegal, high court rules"

... is a headline on the 14 April's Guardian website about police kettling tactics during demonstrations at the G20 summit on 1 April 2009 and "during which Ian Tomlinson, a bystander [on his way home from work], died after being struck by an officer."

The inquest into Ian Tomlinson's death continues but this ruling, although not ruling out the use of kettling in certain situations, does condemn it on this occasion.

Adults are Ugly

Somewhere (boingboing?) I read that small children generally consider adults as ugly owing to the angle of their visual perspective when regarding an adult i.e. upwards with an excellent view of our double chins etc!

Well this photo of my, in fact quite beautiful, friend Madalena with Kezia at the latters birthday party last week exemplifies this perfectly!


Sorry Madalena! I myself am hardly photogenic!

Kezia's 7th Birthday

... and mine as a father.

Giv - with Warm Olive Oil

The advertising agency for Giv soap never ceases to amaze me ... "Warm olive oil is rich in protein & natural oil ingredients, making your skin healthy and shimmering. With exotic perfume for an exotic personality." Hints here of the effects of Daly's Skin Shimmer. Now we all know olive oil is good for you. Why warm, as opposed to cool, olive oil has an additional quality I really don't know. And the ingredients list olive oil "extract", whatever that is. However, what is really interesting about this soap is its colour. The last time I bought Marseillaise olive oil soap, it was, as you would expect, olive green in colour. Not so with Giv ... see below.




Is this a new variety of olive?

And I am now really mystified as to which variety of Giv their model is using - a different one each day? She must be elegant, exotic, energetic, refreshing etc etc all at the same time! Sounds like the woman of my dreams!

Laurie Penny - Lies in London

Laurie Penny's New Statesman piece on the police actions in Trafalgar Square after the TUC-organised March for the Alternative has generated 600 or so comments, many of them critical about both the protestors behaviour and her own standards of journalism.

Too many to read unless you're one of the increasing unemployed and can afford a good Internet link ... but this, from Kitty Wildmoor, struck me as apt given my age:

"I am an adult of 44 years and I was there in trafalgar square, with my friends in their 30s and 40s. We were there because we wanted to be counted with the younger protestors, demonstrating that we are all in it together, and having our photos taken for the intelligence services' photo album. We are not deserting you, but the reality for many of my friends of similar age is that they have young kids and could not bring them into that situation. But there are many many of us 'adults' who are absolutely standing square with you in spirit and principle."

So she is old enough to remember the miners' strike of the 1980s when my sister-in-law on a picket line at a mine got her hip broken by a picket-breaking truck.

Bradley Manning's Nationality

It appears Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked thousands of US government diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, is in fact of dual nationality, US and British, owing to the fact his mother is British.

I first read this on boingboing last week - and was amazed by all the comments showing erroneous knowledge of UK nationality law.

Bradley's father is 100% US nationality, his mother has UK nationality (and II assume US nationality by marriage). Under UK law Bradley has UK nationality.

Why? A child born to a UK mother is automatically of UK nationality, wherever s/he was born. Not so, the child of a UK father with a foreign mother. As a UK Citizen and father to a child with a non-UK (and for that matter non-EU) mother to pass my UK nationality to my child I have to be "married" to the mother. Hardly proof of genetic fathership but I guess it will do.

To pass on my UK nationality to our daughter Kezia I had to marry her mother. When Kezia came down with leukaemia, although she did not have a UK passport, the nearest UK embassy was satisfied she was a UK citizen on presentation of her birth certificate and mine and Nanda's marriage certificate. She (and her mother) was duly issued with an emergency travel document.

To be a UK national/citizen you do not need to have a UK passport. Hence the UK has recognised Bradley Manning's UK citizenship and is correctly making representaions to the US government expressing concern about his detention and requesting consular access.

Why it has taken so long I don't know - I can only assume that Bradley's mum, supporters and legal advice were unaware of UK nationality law.

Kettling - Lies in London

In the days before the massive Trade Union Congress' anti-cuts demo, March for the Alternative in London on 26 March, the UK Parliament's Joint Human Rights Committee published a report in which the police came under heavy criticism of their "containment" strategies (popularly known as "kettling") whereby groups of demonstrators considered by the poice as "troublemakers" are surrounded by a cordon of police for hours and hours without arrest, without food and water, without access to public toilets (oh come on the government is shutting them down anyway!). And the innocent public passer-by, shopping on a Saturday morning, gets caught in the Kettle as well.

I recently wrote about the new Internet web-application Sukey which aims to frustrate the police kettling strategy by informing demonstrators on their mobile phones of everything from the location of police concentrations to the location of public toilets. It relies on live information provided by the public.

The TUC Anti-Cuts demonstration, with c. 300,000 participants or more, seems to have passed off relatively peacefully. To such an extent, that media coverage (certainly from afar) seemed to be somewhat pauce.

However, there was "trouble" under the eyes of Lord Nelson and his Lions in Trafalgar Square which was ascribed by the police and authorities and the mainstream media to around 150 troublemakers, hooligans, anarchists etc including members of the Anti Cuts Protests organisation.

To quote from boingboing (in turn quoting the New Statesman's journalist Laurie Penny):

"Up to half a million people marched peacefully on London last week to protest cuts to public services, but local media coverage dwelled almost entirely on stories of mindless violence and criminality. In a follow-up to an earlier article published at the New Statesman, Laurie Penny wonders why the press is so eager to echo official accounts — and so eager to attack critics of the police."

Link here.

Earlier it was reported ...

"Forget what you've seen on the BBC and Sky about yesterday's protest/"riot" in Trafalgar Square; the New Statesman's Laurie Penny was on the barricades (and apparently, there was a moment when the barricades were on her), and she's seen something altogether different from what the mainstream coverage depicts. If you read only one account of the protests, make it this one (and you should really read more than one!).

Laurie Penny reports "Minutes after the fights begin in Trafalgar square, so does the backlash. Radio broadcasters imply that anyone who left the pre-ordained march route is a hooligan, and police chiefs rush to assure the public that this "mindless violence" has "nothing to do with protest."

The young people being battered in Trafalgar square, however, are neither mindless nor violent. In front of the lines, a teenage girl is crying and shaking after being shoved to the ground. "I'm not moving, I'm not moving," she mutters, her face smeared with tears and makeup. "I've been on every protest, I won't let this government destroy our future without a fight. I won't stand back, I'm not moving." A police officer charges, smacking her with his baton as she flings up her hands.

The cops cram us further back into the square, pushing people off the plinths where they have tried to scramble for safety. By now there are about 150 young people left in the square, and only one trained medic, who has just been batoned in the face; his friends hold him up as he blacks out, and carry him to the police lines, but they won't let him leave. By the makeshift fire, I meet the young man whose attempted arrest started all this. "I feel responsible," he said, "I never wanted any of this. None of us did"

What really happened in Trafalgar Square?"

bonigboingl ink here, New Statesman link here.

I hope Sukey can push out an international edition as soon as possible to help the citizens of the Middle-East.

I look forward to seeing reports on the nationwide "All Together for the NHS" demos on Friday 1 April. Watch this space.

Update Monday morning: nothing on the BBC.

All Together for the NHS II