Quotulatiousness

November 30, 2009

Doctors urged to advise patients on reducing their carbon butt-print

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Environment, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

The Climate and Health Council in Britain is urging GPs to provide their patients with information on how to reduce their carbon output:

The Council has been recently formed to study the health benefits of tackling climate change and promotes a range of ideas from reducing your carbon footprint by driving less and walking more to eating local, less processed food.

It wants to raise ‘health’ on the agenda of December’s UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

They believe that offering patients advice on how to lower their carbon footprint can be just as easy and achievable as helping them to stop smoking or eat a healthier diet.

Other proposals include for all developed nations to pay an extra five dollars a barrel on oil and a tax on airline tickets. This would go into a special fund to develop low-carbon alternatives to existing technologies, they say.

So, after waiting for however many weeks to get that precious 2.5 minutes of actual patient-doctor interaction, two minutes will now be composed (in a Freudian slip, I originally mistyped that as “composted”) of Climate-Puritan hectoring. That’ll do wonders for both the environment and for doctor/patient relations.

November 26, 2009

Red flag checklist

Filed under: Environment, Politics, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:28

The recent Climate Change/AGW revelations (which the Climate Czar is still assuring people won’t actually change anything) are of great interest to climate skeptics, but the systematic perversion of the normal scientific methods shows how easy it has been for a particular viewpoint to be lauded as the consensus. Here is a list of suspicious behaviour which could be red flags for scientists trying to circumvent normal checks and balances:

(1) Consistent use of ad hominem attacks toward those challenging their positions.

(2) Refusal to make data public. This has been going on in this area for some time.

(3) Refusal to engage in discussions of the actual science, on the
assumption that it is too complicated for others to understand.

(4) Challenging the credentials of those challenging the consensus position.

(5) Refusal to make computer code being used to analyze the data public. This has been particularly egregious here, and clear statements of the mathematics and statistics being employed would have allowed the conclusions to be challenged at a much earlier stage.

November 23, 2009

Digital Economy Bill should be called Digital Disenfranchisement Bill

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:16

The proposed British legislation called the “Digital Economy Bill” is going to be very bad news, says Charles Stross:

I’m a self-employed media professional working in the entertainment industry, who earns his living by creating intellectual property and licensing it to publishers. You might think I’d be one of the beneficiaries of this proposed law: but you’d be dead wrong. This is going to cripple the long tail of the creative sector — it plays entirely to the interests of large corporate media organizations and shits on the plate of us ordinary working artists.

Want to write a casual game for the iPhone and sell it for 99 pence? Good luck with that — first you’ll have to cough up £50,000 to get it certified as child-friendly by the BBFC. (It’s not clear whether this applies to Open Source games projects, but I’m not optimistic that it doesn’t.)

Want to publish a piece of shareware over BitTorrent? You’re fucked, mate: all it takes is a malicious accusation and your ISP (who are required to snitch on p2p users on pain of heavy fines) will be ordered to cut off the internet connection to you and everyone else in your household. (A really draconian punishment in an age where it’s increasingly normal to conduct business correspondence via email and to manage bank accounts and gas or electricity bills or tax returns via the web.) Oh, you don’t get the right to confront your accuser in court, either: this is merely an administrative process, no lawyers involved. It’s unlikely that p2p access will survive this bill in any form — even for innocent purposes (distributing Linux .iso images, for example).

As I’ve said before, we’re rapidly moving to a world where it will be difficult to have a normal life without network access . . . this bill will create a new underclass of non-persons, all to benefit the dinosaurs of the media conglomerates. And introduced by a _Labour_ government, no less.

We are already at the point where it is a reasonable and sensible thing to say that access to the internet is a human right (at least in the west). Mandelson’s three strikes provision will deny innocent people access to the internet (for all it will take is accusations that do not need to have proof), which for more and more people will be the practical equivalent of being exiled from the country. No internet access would mean children can’t get access to school work, parents can’t get access to their bank accounts, and everyone will be cut off from large parts of their social circle (more and more people depend on email, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to stay in touch).

Due process? That seems to have been lost in the rush. Proportionality? That’s been gone for years.

November 16, 2009

Orwell vs. Huxley

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Victor sent me this link with the cryptic comment “Oh shit”:

Orwell_vs_Huxley

November 13, 2009

Veterans chase would-be robber out of Legion

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:43

A Royal Canadian Legion branch was the target of an armed robbery. The would-be robber must have thought these old gaffers would be easy pickings, as he walked in while they were counting the cash from this year’s poppy drive. He was lucky to escape:

A would-be thief brandishing a gun likely wasn’t counting on an 84-year-old veteran and a fellow member of his Toronto legion putting up a fight when he tried to make off with their poppy money.

But police say that’s what happened Thursday when a man walked into a Royal Canadian Legion in the city’s east end as members were counting the money from this year’s poppy drive.

They refused to give up the cash and instead chased the suspect and tackled him.

However, they were unable to stop him from getting away.

John Dietsch, the 84-year-old Second World War veteran, says he thought of the veterans who served in the military – and the time they spent selling poppies – when he stood up to the man.

Red light cameras are great . . . for increasing traffic fine revenues

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:09

For driver safety, not so much:

In Los Angeles the LAPD claims accidents are down after they installed cameras, but are they telling the whole truth or just trying to make money off motorists?

We crunched the numbers and the results may surprise you.

“Your data is shocking to me,” Sherman Ellison said.

Ellison is a ticket attorney and part time judge, who believes the cameras are there for one reason.

“No question. Purely a revenue generating device,” Ellison said.

Is it money or safety? We wanted to know actual numbers of accidents at red light camera intersections to see if they really went down.

When we asked, the LAPD became very defensive. The sergeant in charge told me in an e-mail, “The city would hope that it is the goal of KCBS/KCAL to discuss the positive aspects of the photo red light program.”

So we filed a public records request. The department charged us more than $500 for a computer run. When we got the numbers back, they told a different story.

We looked at every accident at every red light camera intersection for six months of data before the cameras were installed and six months after.

The final figures? Twenty of the 32 intersections show accidents up after the cameras were installed! Three remained the same and only nine intersections showed accidents decreasing.

If the reason for installing red light cameras was to increase public safety, they’re a failure. If, however, the real reason for installing them is to increase municipal revenue streams, they’re a slam-dunk success.

November 11, 2009

Murdoch’s brilliant, evil master plan

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

Lore Sjoberg has cracked the secret plan that Rupert Murdoch appears to be following:

The audiences for traditional newspapers are getting older, more crotchety and increasingly dead. Most people don’t want their news to come with such hassles as a cover price, ads or dissenting opinions. How to bring in a younger, hipper audience that’s willing to spend money just to prove that they have money?

Murdoch, that crazy mad genius, realizes that the only way to attract this lucrative demographic is to establish street cred. He’s going underground, reinventing news as an exclusive club that you can’t find just by entering a search term.

Presumably, Murdoch’s New York Post, for example, will be renamed to something hip and enigmatic, like Velocity or Unk. The new URL won’t be publicized. To get it, you’ll have to know somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody, or know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, or show a lot of cleavage. There will be a long line outside the website, just like an exclusive club or World of Warcraft right after an expansion release. A moderator will check out your online presence and won’t let you in unless you’re a mover, a shaker, a player, a spender or showing a lot of cleavage.

Once inside, the website will be dark, noisy and disorienting, just like an exclusive club or a MySpace page. There will be a two-drink minimum. I’m not sure how that will work, actually, but if anyone can force people to buy $10 beers while browsing the web, it’s my man Rupert. People will pretend to be reading stories about police standoffs and Knicks games, but they’ll actually be looking around to see who else made it in. And all that affectation and posing is like unto money in Murdoch’s pocket.

Reasons to avoid seeing Disney’s Christmas Carol

Filed under: Economics, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

Jim Carrey seems to be channelling his inner Friedrich Engels here:

Talking with the Chicago Tribune to promote A Christmas Carol a few days before the film’s release, Carrey released the following burst of political flatulence:

“I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we’re going through,” says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. “Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed…”

Making certain that many people reading the interview will resolutely avoid seeing the film, Carrey describes the protagonist as follows:

“Scrooge is the ultimate example of self-loathing,” Carrey says, noting that, after playing the title character in Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” he was merely “going to the source” in fleshing out Scrooge. “Beware the unloved, I always say,” Carrey continues. “They’re the ones that end up being the mean guys. It comes from that deep, spiritual acid reflux within them. With Scrooge it infects his whole being.”

Whereas Dickens presented a reasonably nuanced view of the issues the story brings up, and did so with an appropriate narrative tone, Carrey makes the latest film version sound like a ham-fisted socialist diatribe, hardly a strategy for drawing middle American families in great numbers.

November 9, 2009

QotD: Society must be protected

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:03

I think this does not go nearly far enough. Clearly the company behind Red Bull should be closely regulated as it is only a matter of time before someone drinks one and jumps off a building and falls to their death because contrary to their claims, Red Bull does not in fact ‘give you wings’.

In short, as people who are not ‘experts’ are moronic halfwits incapable of telling reality from advertising hype, we must simply turn over all aspects of our life to government approved self-important technocratic prigs qualified ‘experts’ who can determine what we are permitted to see.

We must ‘do it for the children’ of course.

Perry de Havilland, “All your images belong to us”, Samizdata, 2009-11-09

November 8, 2009

Over-exuberant celebrations

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:51

Ticker tape? Heck, I’m just going to dump all these financial records out the window to celebrate the World Series:

Auditor Damian Salo attended the Manhattan parade honouring the baseball World Series championships. He tells The New York Post he found all sorts of personal financial documents in the mountains of shredded paper tossed from skyscrapers as the players rode up Broadway.

They included pay stubs, banking data, law firm memos and even some court files.

The founder of one financial firm, Alan Sarroff, says his company reprimanded one “overzealous” employee for throwing records out the window that should have been shredded.

November 5, 2009

Rick Mercer on Canada’s Economic Action Plan

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:40

October 30, 2009

Even CBS News has difficulty with the “jobs saved or created” claims

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:02

The formula for deciding how many jobs are created or saved doesn’t come close to passing the giggle test:

When the WH demanded that those who received Spendulus money “report” back on how many jobs were “saved or created,” they insisted upon a nonsensical rule: If a single dollar of Spendulus was spent on an employee’s salary, whether that employee was a new employee or an old one, that gets counted as a job “saved or created.” If he’s a new employee, that job was created. If he’s an existing employee, that job was saved.

For $1.

Yes, $1. Because the nonsensical rules the White House told these people to count “saved or created” jobs by simply stated: If any employee’s salary is paid, in whole or in part (any part!), count that as a job “saved or created” by the spending.

And then report that number back to us.

Note that the White House’s rules do not seek to discover which jobs really were “saved or created.” To come to that conclusion, one would need a set of more rigorous rules — which excluded some jobs from the “saved or created” category, rather than attempting to include them all under that rubric.

The criteria for deciding are so unrealistic that it would be possible to claim that 787 billion jobs were saved or created . . . and it would be valid under the reporting formula.

October 23, 2009

Worst. Promotion. Ever.

Filed under: Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:52

Behold the culinary crime that Microsoft is committing in Japan:

Microsoft is celebrating the release of Windows 7 in Japan with a Burger King promotion for the Windows 7 Whopper: Seven patties stacked on top of one another in one sandwich. Given that Microsoft has been criticized for releasing top-heavy, bloated operating systems, this could be one of its worst promotional ideas ever.

Windows_7_Whopper

The Windows 7 Whopper weighs in with about 1,000 calories, and likely packs enough cholesterol to require immediate surgery for anyone foolhardy enough to try eating one. It’s a full five inches thick, and costs the equivalent of $8.50.

Check your homework, says the dog

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Brenda and Robert Vale recently published Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, where they made the case that your pets are a greater environmental burden than a typical SUV. Cocoa the dog begs to differ, having checked their math:

Conclusion

0.61 hectares to feed the soulless Toyota Land Cruiser.

0.062 hectares to feed your best friend.

That’s 10 times as much for the Land Cruiser than for me. I could have sworn the professors said the dog required twice as much land as the Land Cruiser. They were only off by a factor of 20.

Bad professors, BAD. Don’t make me rub your nose in it.

When a poll goes very wrong

Filed under: Britain, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Lester Haines reports on a poll that didn’t go quite as the sponsors expected:

An online poll enquiring as to the possible existence of God has somewhat backfired on Christian outfit The Alpha Course, with 98 per cent of the popular vote currently saying he doesn’t:

poll_gone_wrong

According to the Sun, The Alpha Course kicked off a multi-million pound advertising campaign back in September to promote its particular road to enlightenment, described as “an opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting”.

The poster and ad drive was a response to a Humanist Society campaign last year suggesting there was “probably no God” – a view shared by the vast majority of the 154,500 online votes at time of publication.

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