Monthly Archives: May 2008

Smug and Selfish

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I often wonder about terms like “left” and “right wing” and how well they actually describe people. When you look at different nations the terms mean even less. For example in the US “Left of centre” is still reasonably “right wing” by (traditional) UK standards and weirdly we have a left wing government which is implementing more right wing policy than any in living memory. So I wonder, do the terms still mean anything?

It gets even more confusing when I apply them to myself. Personally, I exhibit left and right wing traits. More than that, I mix wanting to be filthy rich with wanting the general standards of society to be improved. Are these reconcilable? I have no problems with government taxation (I actually think tax is a GOODTHING™®) but the thought of government interference with my life is abhorrent. One area where I was concerned that I had strong left-wing tendencies was in the newspapers. Out of habit, I read the Guardian newspaper each Saturday, which is certainly a “leftie” newspaper. Fortunately, today I find myself seriously add odds with some of its other readership. Maybe I am still a “right winger..”

In the “Money” Supplement, there is a section where people write in with a problem and others give advice on how to solve it. It is normally pretty cheesy stuff about which fair trade presents they should buy for some wedding. Today it was about some one who was struggling to cope with the increased petrol costs and was asking for advice as to how others cope.

As you may have imagined (if you’ve ever read the Guardian), the responses were nearly all along the lines of “it serves you right for driving a gas guzzler” and “Stop whining, there are people worse off in Nigeria” (or where ever). One even suggested the questioner doesn’t “have to live 25 miles from [their] place of work.”

What self satisfying, smug, arrogant nonsense the answers are.

Infuriatingly, this is typical of a certain group of the UK society, most of whom are Guardian readers… They appear to be of the opinion that the massive fuel price rises are a GOODTHING™®© because it will combat climate change and (as most are well off enough to not actually be affected by the increased prices) any side effects are easily tolerable. This is not a “socialist” view point as the whole set up massively disadvantages the poor over the wealthy. Like most things, there is the assumption that a some of money which one person feels is insignificant must be insignificant for everyone else – yet at the same time it carries the idea that the increase will make other change their lifestyle to one the first person feels is “better.” It really annoys me.

Take an example of some one I know very well. This person is very hard working but, to be honest, not very well off. Earning low end of the average wage, this person has to pretty much accept any job offered to them. At the moment, they work 32 miles from where they live. The area is not well enough serviced by public transport to make that viable and, like most people, they own a car that is a few years old (and is used for family tasks at the weekend). Now, with today’s prices they are paying £1.19 per litre of fuel. The round trip journey is 64 miles, and is a mix of traffic. Their car is reasonably economical but, because of the nature of the journey, they rarely get better than 30mpg from it. As a result, each day they are using 10 litres of fuel per day. The simple journey to and from work is costing them nearly £3000 per year. Shocking. This is a only a £600 a year rise over last year, but when you live close to the margins, £600 means an AWFUL lot.

Now everyone has choices. My friend has choices. They could change jobs, but there aren’t any closer. They could move house, but being poor they cant afford one closer to work, they could cycle but it would take hours and they’d have no where to change at work, they could change cars to a more efficient one but (again) they are poor and cant afford a new car.

Switch the example to me. I am not rich (far from it, sadly), however I am better off than my friend. I drive a much more un-economical car to work (albeit a much shorter distance). I live a less environmentally friendly life and, to be honest, if you try to change me through taxation you will leave people like my friend destitute on the streets before it has any effect on me.

How, in the real world, do things like increase fuel prices have any real effect on changing people’s destruction of the environment?

In a similar manner to increasing alcohol tax, forcing shops to up the price of “party drinks” and the like, it has no real effect on the people clamouring for it. All it does is massively disproportionately punish the poor. You don’t even have to be rich to ignore these measures, because the poor will break before the middle classes begin to suffer.

Back to my rant about the Guardian. It is nice to think there is a whole swathe of supposedly “Left wing” Guardian readers who are happy to see poor people suffer even more because it massages their “climate change guilt.” No wonder the Labour party have become right wing neo-Nazis.

Finally, a good MP

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There was a depressing 1984-in-2008 story that wasn’t already blogged to death here (because there are far too many. I have to pace myself.) Here’s the Register’s version. The Register heading and sub-heading give you the flavour of the story:

The New Order: When reading is a crime
Download a book, get arrested

A student downloaded the AlQaeda Training manual, which was on his Politics reading list. He asked his friend – who was on the University staff – to print it for him. The University spotted it in the print queue and called the police. Student and staff member were detained for a week and the member of staff is now about to be deported for “irregularities” in his application to live in the UK, after ten years here. (Yes, you’ve guessed it. They were muslims.)

I’m not going to go into the civil liberties aspects of this. They speak for themselves. Some of the comments on the Register article expressed them better than I can.

Instead I’m going to look on the bright side. This grim and shameful affair has highlighted the fact that there is still a sane and courageous UK Labour MP. No really. Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham South.

He described the original arrest as a “dreadful cock-up”. The subsequent deportation was a blatant attempt “to try to justify the abuse of that power under the Terrorism Act. If we allow this to be done in our name, in our silent collusion, we become the architects of our own totalitarianism. We live in fear of speaking openly. We live in fear of enquiring and researching openly… We live in fear of the quiet unannounced knock on the door and we live in fear of our own shallowness, in terms of the willingness to stand side-by-side with each other in order to defend the very basis of an open democracy that we claim that terrorism is a threat to.” (From the Register)

Somebody make that man Prime Minister.

This is his home page. I was even deliberately looking for something to stop me posting a fan-post here – to spare my own shame at having to applaud a politician. As far as I can determine (there’s only so much you can read on an MP’s website, ffs) – he doesn’t put a foot wrong. For example, here is a 2007 article he wrote about the Blair and the Iraq War.

However, I found out, from an article in which the Independent was singing his praises last year, that he is resigning at the next election. He is “to carry on campaigning on “green” issues outside Parliament.”

Bah.

An Anonymous Coward comment on the Register article:

don’t believe that this bloke is really “New Labour”! That is the first and only anti-Stasi/ Stalinist/ Big-Brother statement I’ve ever heard from New Labour – it is obvious that he’ll never make the cabinet and that he’ll brought back in line by the Whips.
It was nice while it lasted…

Wowee science week

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Wow number 1
A cursory check hasn’t turned up any other blogs that deal with this one. So, here’s a link to BBC post about a fossil fish that presents evidence of live birth.

The 380 million-year-old specimen has been preserved with an embryo still attached by its umbilical cord.
The find, reported in Nature, pushes back the emergence of this reproductive strategy by some 200 million years.

In your faces, yet again, young earth creationists. Though I suppose it’s another of those incomprehensible god-tests where he sticks evidence that contradicts the book of genesis just to sort out those people who prefer evidence to myth so he can put their names in the “go straight to hell for doubting the magic words” book

Wow number 2

Monkeys have been able to control robot arms to feed themselves, using the power of thought alone.

I’m not the world’s greatest fan of messing about with the bodies and brains of animals but the implications of this research are pretty amazing.

Does this mean that we can finally carry out the 100 monkeys with typewriters experiment?

Wow number 3

Mars. How great that it looks like an abandoned farm planet.

Small whines.. I have to moan a bit about the false colouring, which makes the enterprise seem a little spurious. Why didn’t they use colour cameras? (Yes, space bandwidth, and so on. I don’t care. I want full-colour images.)

And I could have done with fewer pictures of the lander. It’s a bit like taking a holiday in Angkor Wat and then putting yourself in the foreground of every photo.

Aside from these tiny gripes about the presentation, seeing the surface of Mars is fantastic.

Crime fictions

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It’s almost a truism that anyone who makes a tear-stained televised appeal for help to solve a murder will probably be arrested within the week. It seems as if the more extravagant the grief that is willingly expressed on camera, the more likely that the person is guilty.

Even the BBC has noticed. Today it published a feature on the phenomenon .

And, now, I’ve stumbled across true-crime-in-the-media. 2.0:
Barbora Skrlova on MySpace Assuming this is an elaborate joke, albeit in poor taste, I am compelled to look for MySpace profiles of other notorious figures.

For instance, Myra Hindley seems to have half a dozen.

I type in Fred West and get a “Server is too busy” message a few times.
(Quick break to panic at the idea that half the global population has been taken with a lunatic desire to see which really evil people have a MySpace profile.) Then I find there’s an ill-starred 13 pages full of Fred Wests. Lose interest when I consider that most of them might indeed be real humans who just happen to be called Fred West. Then again, a fair number have headlines such as “Get a load of my floorboards”

On firmer ground with Rosemary West. After a good few innocently but unluckily named real US females who just happen to be called Rosemary West, I find a MySpace profile purporting to be from Fred West’s soulmate. In fact, there’s a link to a more convincing Fred West impersonator in her friend space..

What about Josef Fritzl? That one is actually quite scary. I can’t even work out if its meant to reference the Austrian maniac or the name is just a coincidence.

Michel Fourniret? The server times out. Then I get a
“We weren’t able to find a ” Michel Fourniret ” on MySpace”
message, which probably won’t be true for long.

(In case this name isn’t familiar to you, he’s the male half of a French version of a Rosemary-and-Fred-West couple. She lured young women for him to rape and murder, in exchange for his promise to murder her ex-husband. The family that slays together, stays together…….)

I can partly understand why sane people might create web pages for the truly evil. (Apart from an adolescent desire to shock people.) These sorts of crimes make most of us so uneasy about the nature of what it means to be human that humour becomes a necessary defence mechanism. Otherwise, it’s impossible to contemplate the things they have done.

All the same, I have to suspect that at least some of these tributes aren’t ironically post-modern comments on the nature of notoriety. Some of them have been put there by the very same sort of unspeakable beings who do such crimes.

It’s usually baffling how these spectacularly homicidal people find each other to begin these partnerships in crime.. Rosemary and Fred West; Michel and Monique Fourniret, the children who killed James Bulger; Myra Hindley and Ian Brady…… Do their eyes meet across the proverbial crowded room and they see the spark of a potential partner in homicide? Does it “take one to know one?”

Blimey, interactive web 2.0 must do away with so much of the uncertainty for such people. They could start by putting up profiles of their psycho role models …

How religions spread

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Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests. (New Scientist article about research by James Dow.)

Now who could argue with software? It’s not as if software can only give out results in the way it’s been programmed to or anything….

By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish

Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks.
Another contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious. (From the New Scientist article)

I am basing my opinion on a cursory reading of a pop-science version of real research that I have only skimmed (and I expect some more careful reader will comment to challenge my surface arguments with facts.) But, I take this to mean that the algorithm seems to indicate that telling convincing lies has evolutionary advantages. No surprise there. Otherwise politicians would have long been extinct.

But, are lies about gods in some other even-more-genetically-advantageous category than just regular lies? This experiment appears to favour the religious only when others help them:

Under most scenarios, “believers in the unreal” went extinct. But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished

So, this research actually implied that belief in lies was not a successful survival strategy? Unless the goalposts were moved to make it one?

I assume that the arbitrary attractors could arise from activities such as like embedding lies in interesting stories. Some myths are somehow compelling. Narrative is attractive. (The attractiveness of narrative is itself something of an evolutionary mystery.) All the same, I am largely unconvinced by the explanatory power of the arguments, the choice of variables and the specific values assigned to them

However, science being science – i.e. developed through experiment and debate rather than through accepting erroneous beliefs because they come with clear but arbitrary attractive signals – I can test it out. The software can be downloaded under the GNU public licence. This is so admirable a way to conduct and spread research that I have to tip an oversized conceptual hat to James Dow.

Speeding to sanctuary

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Someone being chased by police for speeding sought sanctuary in a Northern Ireland church. And, amazingly, found it.

When police tried to follow they were blocked by members of the church.

You have to remember this is Northern Ireland before you move next to a church and start a whole new career as a criminal mastermind.

The last instance I could find of someone claiming the medieval right of sanctuary was the case of Viraj Mendes who took sanctuary in a Manchester church about twenty years ago, to avoid being deported back to Sri Lanka. He had a rather more morally defensible position. He was afraid he’d be killed in Sri Lanka. He wasn’t just dodging a speeding ticket.

In any case, sanctuary didn’t even work for him in the end.

The stand off lasted 760 days before police battered down the doors with sledgehammers and removed him.(From the BBC)

Disappointingly for that new master-criminal career, the BBC said that

the right of sanctuary had no legal force for centuries

(Try telling that to the congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church in County Tyrone.)

Those who refuse to learn from history

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Just a taste of what happens when elected representatives start fuelling anti-immigrant hysteria….. A masked group, armed with sticks rampaged around a district of Rome, smashing up shops owned by Indians and Bangladeshis and disappearing before the police arrived.

The assault comes as Silvio Berlusconi’s administration launches a crackdown on illegal immigration, and days after a mob firebombed Gypsy camps in Naples. Last month crowds at Rome’s town hall welcomed newly-elected mayor Gianni Alemanno with fascist salutes..

(With my limited understanding of Italian, I translate that as “German Johnny”, a mite ironic to be the name of an Italian neo-fascist. )

Here’s a link to that story, with a disturbing picture and some pretty disturbing content. For instance Berlusconi reportedly greeted this unpleasant manifestation with the claim “We are the new falange”

As I mentioned recently, anti-gypsy feeling is so extreme in parts of Italy, that the church associated with St Francis of Assisi hired armed guards to keep gypsies away.

Tobia Jones, in a 2 may Guardian article suggested that the apparent re-emergent fascism was mainly a presentation issue and made possible by well-meaning attempts to bring together the still-warring Italian left and right. And, and according to Jones, Berlusconi is just a populist “bread and circuses” magnate, allegedly. (Together with Jones’ references to the “Italian character,” it looks like an almost “‘Allo,’allo”- level of resort to national stereotypes.)

I hope it is just my own unfounded pessimism. Maybe fascists salutes and shouts of “Il Duce!” aren’t really as terrifying as they seem. But I am left thinking “Control of mass media, populist appeal, use of emotionally charged nationalist motifs, and a convenient ethnically-different scapegoat sub-population? Sounds as close to fascism as dammit to me.”

Fundamentally flawed

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English smugness yet again proves deeply unfounded. This time I’m talking “fundamentalists.” A Channel 4 Dispatches programme (probably a repeat of last week’s) presented by David Modell showed some of these people in action using their disturbing political and social influence over the Human Fertility and Embryology bill. Modell claims there are an estimated 2 million of these people in the UK.

Modell summarised what he found in a Telegraph article. There’s also a Youtube link (It has five sections so I’m not turning this blog into a giant Youtube rip off. You can look at it there if you choose.)

Phew, that means I can throw away the notes I made and rant about to a few highlights. Lowlights may be a more accurate word.

For instance, there are 45 “government-approved” “faith schools ” teaching a US curriculum. Here’s Question 5 on their “science” exam paper at Carmel School*. “How many days did it take god to make the world?” In case you are wondering where that comes up on the Science part of the National Curriculum, these schools are “independent”, so they don’t have to stick to the National Curriculum.

The head teacher has a good stab at refusing to be drawn on how old the earth is- claiming that is not his specialism – when pressed by the presenter. But the text book that they use says the earth is 6 to 10 thousand years old.

The head credits Tony Blair for “opening the door” to their sort of school. (Blimey, we are in agreement on something then, because I also attribute the spread of this nonsense to Tony Blair.) He said this created a time for them to “strike while the iron is hot.”

Another illuminating bit is where a sleekly presented – expensive hair and clothes and make up and nails and all that Stepford Wives crap – lawyer reins in the more extreme supporters at their House of Common demo against the HFE Bill – just because of the effect on their image, rather than the content of their message, with whichs he agrees. (Said visibly extreme supporters include members of the BNP, a woman screaming “baby-killer “at a pro-choice woman and a general ranter.) Here is what she says about herself on her site:

Andrea Minichiello Williams is a Barrister and Public Policy Director for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, an organisation with a membership of over two thousand lawyers. She was called to the Bar in 1988. Initially she specialised in Criminal and Family Law. Her primary focus is now religious liberties, public law, and life issues.
She’s co-founder of Christian Concern For Our Nation (CCFON), which has over 30,000 supporters. CCFON is committed to making Christians aware of the need for a strong Christian voice proclaiming Biblical truth in the public arena.
Andrea has also been closely involved with a number of religious freedom and life cases, many of which were high profile cases where Christians have defended their right to speak biblical truth. She directs the Christian Legal Centre, which refers cases to Christian lawyers who will support individuals throughout each stage of the legal process.

(The sort of “religious freedom” cases they specialise in seem to be ones like the schoolgirl who refused to take off her “promise ring” or the airport worker told not to wear a cross.)

She and her cronies meet Lord Tebbit (of hated Thatcherite memory) and when he shows remotely willing, they pass him a pre-written Motion to present to the House of Lords. Their legal tactics and apparently lobbying skill come direct from the US Alliance of Christian something or other. Oh yes, and their funding. 🙂

(Apologies for not paying attention. I wrote “ACDF” in my scribbled notes. I suspect it might be the Alliance Defence Fund but having read the page about them that I’ve linked here, I sincerely hope not.)

One last gem, a group of middle-aged Stepford wives in Sussex were shown, oddly, praying to satan. 🙂 They start out addressing “god” but the joint prayer turns to satan as they conjure him to back off and give him explicit instructions to keep away.

My head is spinning at the theological implications of this. So they don’t just believe there’s a magic fairy godfather (the abrahamic god) who will grant your wishes when you talk to him sycophantically. They also believe that he has an evil twin goblin godfather (satan) who will will grant your wishes if you talk to him bossily. (Maybe they are confusing how to deal with supernatural entities with the way they address their husbands.)

If these supernatural entities supposedly respond to the demands of their puny human devotees, why do they think satan will obey one of his enemy’s serfs? Shouldn’t he at least demand they accept some faustian deal first?

(Sorry, that is a reference to the myths of medieval believers. Obviously, the medieval mind was a degree of magnitude more sophisticated than the thoughts of these 21st century people.)

* I think that’s the website for the school featured in the programme. I had to trawl through lots of other schools (mainly Catholic ones called Mount Carmel) so I wasn’t sure if it’s the same place but the words “The curriculum is the tried, tested and proven Accelerated Christian Education.” suggest it is…

I downloaded the prospectus 😀 /
😡

More database state stupidity

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This is becoming a bit too much of theme. So, with apologies for the nagging, a brief rant on yet another BBC article about the database state:

Plans for a super-database containing the details of all phone calls and e-mails sent in the UK have been heavily criticised by experts.

Well, duh. I’m no “expert”. So I’m not going to criticise this for its inherent insecurity. Or the enormous cost of feeding and maintaining such a database.

I’m not even going to criticise this plan for its blatant attack on civil liberties. That should be screamingly clear to anyone with more than a dozen working brain cells.

Instead, I’m going to take the anti-terrorist claim at face value and assume, for the sake of argument, that this is not a cynical manipulation of public fear to gain draconian powers. So, I’m sticking with the sheer stupidity.

I’m going to assume that the expensively-educated people in the upper reaches of government have somehow failed to grasp some basic things about the plotting process. Maybe they should watch more TV and movies and read some detective or spy fiction.

Do terrorists really send emails to each other’s home email addresses, saying “Bring the semtex to 23 Green Street on Thursday at 3:00 o’clock?” I’m not saying it’s impossible that this happens. I just think it would be in the low single figures on a probability scale of 1 to 100.

Even without going into the far reaches of steganography and secure encryption and the dozens of effective technological ways to obscure information, the simplest of agreed code words can convey any amount of meaning. “Happy birthday!” could easily mean “Bring the …. etc”

Phone calls? Do terrorists have to call each other’s home phones? There are still a few call-boxes, for a start. Anyone can get hold of a used mobile and then use it to call another used mobile. Phone theft is hardly unheard of. Your stolen mobile phone can have arranged a dozen dastardly plots before you’ve even noticed that your bag’s been dipped. Blimey, people could even break into your house and use the phone.

Plus language. Anyone with any facility in an obscure language could openly discuss their plots on an open and attributable phone connection for 6 months before the government’s listeners get round to finding a security-cleared speaker of idiomatic Finnish to translate.

The embarrassing dictionaries of youth slang that appear occasionally in the media are testament to the fact that even speakers of a common language may have no idea what a subcultural group are saying. If you are anything like me, your conversations with close friends and family will be basically impenetrable to anyone else, with obscure catchphrases and references to long-ago lame jokes that don’t need spelling out for the recipient but would be (suspiciously) meaningless to a listener.

In any case, a serious terrorist or master-criminal would surely choose to pass messages face-to-face to their co-conspirators, in the face of electronic surveillance.

So these measures are so dumb as to be completely pointless, in terms of their supposed objective. A suspicious person might think that this suggests there is another agenda.

But, let us be charitable and assume that the WAT is being conducted by morons. In that case, may I politely suggest the “talk and resolve the issues” route….. Yet again………

Power points

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Another leaked secret wiki-leaks style memo in an occasional series. I bring you the top secret Powerpoint manual issued to the leaders of all educational institutions, companies and government agencies*

The 10 rules of giving a Powerpoint presentation:

  • Don’t bother to check that the projector works before the room is full. Log in to the Windows desktop first then search for your presentation. This will build rapport with your audience.
  • Use a preset background. These make text so readable and they are so attractive to the eye to a captive audience. A dark background is always a good choice with navy text. Yellow swirls can complete the viewer’s experience.
  • Preset transitions are also always appreciated. Why not try a different fade-in for each slide. And bring in every paragraph separately. This was groundbreaking in 1996 and it’s just as great now.
  • Some presentations fail to impress by being too short. Use at least 30 slides, if possible.
  • Always schedule your presentations at convenient times.  If it’s not possible to span the standard lunch break, time your presentation for the half-hour just before lunch.  No one will mind at all if you overrun.
  • Read every word on every screen. I cannot repeat this enough. Many people whom you employ may be unable to read. Others may be secretly blind, hiding that fact by expertly touch-typing their sales reports. Spare them the agony of endless bluffing. Read every word on the screen. Twice is even better.
  • Pace the speed of your reading. Read at least twice as slowly as the time that it takes the least literate person in your audience to read the words twice.
  • Keep to a huge font size when you are presenting in a small room. Tiny fonts go down well in larger venues
  • Use acronyms wherever possible. Always use at least one acronym that you can’t remember what it stands for. This gives your audience something to ask about at question time.
  • Everyone enjoys seeing banalities spelled out in a bullet point format.  In a meeting room.   If you are presenting unpleasant facts – such as redundancies – the experience of sitting through a well-planned Powerpoint presentation will soften the blow enormously.

***************************
Inspired by the devotion to Microsoft Powerpoint that I share with Andrew, XanderG, heather-the-other, who all mentioned Powerpoint’s unique blessings when they commented on the previous post.

One lap

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I love Linux. It’s not as if I use it much but I love the idea of it. Open source. Free collaboration. All that.

I am less enamoured of the techy-boys-toys attitudes that seem to infect a lot of Linux-users, or the unlimited contempt that they can show to anyone who knows ever so slightly less than them about operating systems.

The recent developments in the one-laptop-per-child project which will now see it offering Windows, as well as Linux, seem to be causing a lot of dissent. This was described on the BBC as the OLPC project “getting in bed with… the Great Satan”

According to the BBC report, the purists in the OLPC movement see Linux as at the heart of the project. Well fine, but is this project supposed to be about spreading access to technology and internet communication or is it about creating a world full of Linux nerds? Because, to most people, even to most techies as Ivan Krstic pointed out, computers are not ends in themselves. They are just tools.

Some of us like messing about with tech (to a degree..) Most people don’t. A television that you couldn’t operate without degree-level knowledge of electronics engineering would be pretty unpopular. Why assume that every third world kid will suddenly become someone who is happy to mess about with a kernel for weeks?

Most people in the world use Microsoft products. Nearly everyone of us has to use Microsoft in work. Surely that makes a Microsoft operating system a reasonable component to put in a product that aims to cover the world.

Or are the kids who get these laptops only to be allowed to use predefined worthy educational products on them, while their first world equivalents are playing games?

I’m not exactly the world’s biggest fan of the OLPC project anyway, but I don’t think it stands or fails on the nature of the operating system.

IMHO the OLPC has always been liable to turn out to be another top-down western attempt to solve the problems of the poor countries – our solutions to which usually turn out to benefit the rich countries.

Dying of consumption

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Green is the new black…..

“Eco-clothing, fair and far from square” (The Times)

The Guardian has a whole Eco-store

The Independent has an eco-living section in its store

And so on. Some of these products would save energy. Some are made out of natural products by hand…. Some of these products are complete crap. They are all basically spreading the message- spend more, buy more goods to save the environment.

A graphic on the BBC that shows how much space there is for everyone on the planet. There were 8.91 hectares for each person on the planet in 1900. There are 1.83 now. This, in itself suggests a species that’s too successful for its own ecosystem so is well on its way to extinction.

Being humans rather than pond snails, we aren’t just passive victims – we could solve many of the resulting problems. We all have to consume things to survive. But is ever-more fashionably “green” consumption really the direction we should be going in?

It’s a “guilt-trip you, then offer you a way to buy your way out of the guilt, then sell you something” solution.

Which is pretty much a solution that meets the needs of manufacturers to get customers, but I have to admit to extreme scepticism about its value to the environment.

Though even “green” consumerism has an edge over the general direction of government environmental policy which seems to be based on the counter-intuitive idea that the rich don’t cause ecological problems. Because – when they don’t involve denying there are any problems – government policies on the environment usually consist of making people pay more for energy, fuel, water, sewage disposal, garbage collection and road use. (As well as building shiny new eco-friendly nuclear power stations, of course.)

My today’s-favourite piece of eco-*** comes from Nigel’s Friendly Eco-Store.

Life’s a Picnic – an eco bag and cutlery set, for an eco picnic and day out
This great eco friendly picnic set is great for spontaneous and carefree picnics with a conscience. Fitted into a jute bag with Life’s a Picnic print are plates, cups, glasses, cutlery and napkins – all fully biodegradable/compostable. …….
Every part of this eco picnic set comes from sustainable plant sources and is ethically produced. The plates, cups, glasses and cutlery can all be re-used several times, if gently washed and dried after use. Available for four or eight people

So, forgive me if I’m misunderstanding here – too busy counting all the “eco” words – this is a disposable paper picnic set? You can use it a few times if you are very careful. Wow. That’s so much more planet-friendly than that stuffy old earthenware or metal picnic set that you can re-use thousands of times…..

Parentkind

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Interestingly, today I received an email from some one called “researcher” who appears to have taken offence at a post Heather made last month titled “Shoot the messengers.”

Oddly, the total message included read:

Check your information first before you slate companies – re Parentkind and The Parent Organisation

Now, all I can think of is that “researcher” is someone with a vested interest in these organisations, but I can confirm that Heather did indeed check her information re those organisations, so I am left all confused as to the point Researcher was trying to make.

Researcher – if you are reading this, please feel free to explain further.

[Edited: 28 december 2008: Obviously “Researcher” doesn’t read the blog and didn’t feel the need to explain any further….]

Loyalty you just cant buy

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What must be the corporate Holy Grail is having a customer base so loyal to your product that it doesn’t matter what you do to them, they will just suck it up, keep paying you and ask for more. Before the Internet, I am not sure I ever encountered any examples of this loyalty, I am not even sure it existed.

As with much of life, the Internet changed everything.

We, consumers, are often subjected to watchdog type programs saying we should stand up and complain about bad service more – and I agree. For too long people have sat in quiet anger while companies have taken advantage of them.

With this in mind, it is ironic how some internet “companies” (for want of a better word) have managed to develop an almost slavish fan base who will defend them from even the slightest criticism.

Take Flickr as an example. Today it is having some massive database problems. It has been playing up for at least the last three hours, maybe longer. This is not the first time it has happened, and every few weeks it has has a few little “hiccups.” For most people, on free accounts, this is just something you would expect to live with – you get what you pay for some might argue (not me but that is another rant).

However, for people who have paid US$25 per year for a pro account things are, I think, quite different. The amount of money paid is not the issue. The fact is Flickr have taken a payment for a service. If they are unable to provide that service then they should be held accountable in the same manner as if it was a US$25,000 a year account. For some people in the world, US$25 is a monstrous amount of money so there is no argument to say it is “cheap” so we should expect a poor service.

Now in the flickr help thread, there is quite a mixed bag of comments (and hundreds of them). Basically though, they fall into some clearly defined camps:

  1. People who are outraged and annoyed with flickr for failing to provide them with a service they have paid for.
  2. People who, for whatever reason, feel the need to defend flickr no matter what.

There are some people who appear “neutral” but they generally make comments that fall into the latter camp, such as:

Get a life [aimed at complaining comments]. And learn that in that life nothing is perfect. Suck it up and be patient. (link)

What a day for this to happen! The day after I signed up , but I must add to the chorus saying, ‘Thank you Kevin for letting us know what’s going on’, there are many many sites out there who would simply leave their users in the dark. (link)

No problem Sir. Thanks for informing us… fail in the system is very normal, because it is created and made by man… very human. Dont worry. Thank you… and take your time (link)

These are not neutral posts – the are basically people who are happy with bad service. I am all for having some tolerance over problems but tolerance is not the same as cheerful acceptance. “Take your time” was too annoying for words. The idea that flickr is great simply because other people wouldn’t tell anyone is nonsense as well.

On the side of the slavish Flickr Fans there is one commenter who really stood out- SF Lights. This person has made dozens of posts basically flaming anyone who complains about the service and then, when people make the inevitable threat to go elsewhere he points out there is no where else to go. Some examples:

Guide [a commenter], you can feel free to leave and go to a more mediocre photo sharing website. (link)

Seriously, learn your facts before posting ignorant crap here. (link)

Byebye Panos, Be sure to upload a video on whichever other great photosharing website you….oh wait, there aren’t any. (link)

He really does come across as annoying. One commenter (Panos) seems to think SF LIghts is flickr staff and I have to say I agree – It is weird to think of a paying customer making authoritative comments like this.

All in all, you have to read the thread to get a full feel for how much the flickr supporters are willing to bend over for this. The idea that their wonderful flickr could ever be at fault seems alien to them. The idea that you should be able to expect a service you have paid for to be fit for purpose seems alien to them.

Just to finish, I actually think this is a trivial fault – it takes about two minutes longer to upload pictures and sometimes you have to refresh a few times to get a page. However, imagine you were in a restaurant and had to order each item of food three of four times… Would you complain? Would you say it was the best restaurant ever?

Cameras and Security

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A comment on a recent post, by someone apparently called Video Surveillance, got me thinking about some common misconceptions. In case you are wondering, I the link I munged goes no where of any value – it certainly doesn’t continue the “story” began in the comment.

The odd thing is one of the concepts the commenter (bot?) has brought up. Do video cameras make you safer?

With crime on the rise many people and business are looking for added security.

Well, I agree with this. There is a very strong argument that crime being on the rise is a misleading claim, but the fact is people think crime is on the rise, so they are looking for added security. Sadly, people who are easily misled into thinking crime is on the rise, are also easily misled over how to improve their security.

Video surveillance is one the top ways to improve the security of your belongings and loved ones.

Well, after a good start this amazing claim. Here I strongly disagree. This is the standard “marketing” crap pushed out by people selling woo to the public. Tell them they should be scared, then lie about your product solving their fears.

As with all the best lies, there is an element of truth. As part of a robust security package, video surveillance will improve your overall security, slightly. I am not sure what “top ways” means, but it certainly is not the “best way” or the “most cost effective way.”

Security is a many headed beast, and it will mean different things to different people. The best that can be claimed about video surveillance is that it offers a “deterrent” effect in that people who SEE a CCTV camera may be less inclined to commit a crime because they know the chances of being caught AFTER the event are slightly greater. The same can be said about a robust lock or a big thick door, however. A functioning, real, burglar alarm which is actually responded to is more effective than a CCTV system.

Here we hit a crux of the problem. For CCTV to be anything other an an “after-incident” investigation tool it has to be monitored 24/7 by people capable and willing to respond to an incident within an effective time scale. I could set up the best CCTV system in the world to monitor my house, but if I didn’t lock the door when I went on holiday it would be useless. CCTV is defeated by the simple expedient of wearing a hood – what sort of security system is that. Without monitors and responders it is the most pointless security system (do you really want to watch a video of someone breaking into your house?). With monitors and responders it becomes prohibitively expensive.

All in all, selling CCTV as “security” is tricking fools out of their money. CCTV has value in identifying criminals and will have some deterrent effect but it certainly is not a remotely cost effective method of improving your security.

If you want real, tested, cost effective security advice, my rates are reasonable 🙂