personal, photography, science, thoughts

Twittering about New Technologies

The other day I came across a new (to me, anyway) expression: “declarative living”. You can find a quick explanation of it on Squidoo. The example of this to which I was introduced by Kelly is Twitter.

Let’s say it again: “declarative living”. I’m sad to say I’ve never heard so many round things in my life. And me who is so often a second-wave early adopter of new technology too. I really cannot see the point, with a passion. Please someone explain to me the purpose of living in the pockets of someone the other side of the globe who I’ve never met (and likely never will meet) 24/7?

It seems to me this is all about depersonalising and dumbing down everything — the modern opium for the masses — and selling us crap we don’t want or need to keep us occupied and not thinking or meddling with what the “great and the good” want to get up to next. (Iran, anyone?) It is false progress. [There’s a whole new topic on “false stuff”, but that’s for some other time.]

What worries me (possibly even more) is that in the last few months I seem to be turning into a Luddite like my father before me. Only father (who died last year at the age of 86) started being a Luddite before the age of colour TV. [How he never had apoplexy I don’t know as I discovered going through his papers after he died that he had belonged to an organisation against the introduction of digital computers — and this back in about 1970! Then I went on take my career in IT.]

Don’t get me wrong. I love things like flickr, weblogs, conferencing (ah the good old days of bulletin boards; been there since before PC was born!) and IM. I just don’t get this “let’s wear our whole lives on our sleeves all the time” stuff. I mean, why am I interested in real time that Kelly is cooking spaghetti or looking for her boots? Why would anyone be interested except Kelly and maybe the dog? Where does all this stop and privacy start?

But debating this with Kelly and others on her Kellypuffs weblog has made me think more about this. Indeed that is the good thing about the passion being expressed: it does make us think about what we are doing, what we really believe in and what is actually important. And each one of us will come up with different answers to those questions — none of which are intrinsically right or wrong; they’re just right or wrong for us at this time.

I guess where I’m really at is: just because we can do it, doesn’t mean it is worth doing or that we should do it. Developing the technologies may be an interesting (even useful) research exercise, but that doesn’t mean it has to/should be unleashed on the great unwashed as if it were the next best thing to sliced bread.

For me it would be more to the point if the effort the IT industry is putting into all this pseudo-progress-stuff was focused into something actually useful for humanity rather than just generating more CO2 to no purpose.

medical, memes, science

Friday Five: Plague

1. How are you feeling?
Grumpy. I’ve had this horrid fluey coldy virus on and off since last November (see here); can’t shake it off. Now on the second round of antibiotics in the hope they’ll kill off the edges so I can kill off the rest.

2. When is the last time you went to the doctor?
Yesterday. See above. But then as I have type II diabetes I get checked up on by the medics far too often.

3. Ever broken a bone?
Nope, but come pretty close a couple or three times.

4. Ever had surgery?
Yes, several times, tho’ nothing horrid or really major: appendectomy, sinus operation, arthroscopy on both knees (at different times), bladder exam, fingernail removal, vasectomy. Didn’t enjoy the appendectomy ‘cos it was a long time ago and anaesthetics weren’t so good so I felt grim afterwards. Most of the others have been interesting experiences though. Now how sad is that?! 🙂

5. When is the last time you were in a hospital?
Last August when I had a fingernail permanently removed, although it was only day-care and under (heavy) local anaesthetic.

[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Fiver]

amusements, photography, quotes

Monty Python


Wat Tyler Country Park, Essex, originally uploaded by Whipper_snapper.

Weird. Very Monty Python. It suggests a whole new set of meanings for that lovely piece from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony … You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! … I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d put me away!

books

Books We Never Finish

There was a news item on Monday about the books which people start and never manage to finish. The actual survey itself covered both fiction and non-fiction, but the way it was presented on breakfast time TV anyone would think that there was only fiction. Anyway, why does it matter if one never finished a book? Why the fetish that starting a book means you have to plough on to the bitter end. I don’t read a lot of fiction these days (yes, I know I should) and many of the non-fiction books I do read I never do finish – many of them I never start properly either but dip into them, and again, and again, which works for me and is I think just as valuable.

Anyway what books have you started, never to finish? I’d be interested to know. Here are a few of mine:

  • JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit. Don’t think I ever got past page 2.
  • JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings. I once managed to get as far as page 50 in something like four attempts.
  • Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone. Final volume of the Gormenghast trilogy. I gave up half way through as it was just too depressing and I couldn’t face any more.
  • Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. That old favourite of never finished books. Admittedly I was trying to read it at age 14.
  • James Joyce, Ulysses. Another favourite of the never finished. I read most of it but found the last part tedious in the extreme, but again I was reading it in my teens.
  • DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Another I tried reading in my teens and found so deadly boring.
  • Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses. Another favourite of the never finished list which I bought because I object to being told what I can/can’t read. I don’t think I got as far as page 20.

Some of these appear on the “official” list. And they are the only ones from the list I’ve even tried reading, with the exception of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves which I only ever dipped into and found boring.

Here’s the BBC News report with the top 10 fiction and non-fiction lists.

amusements, quotes, thoughts

Fortune Cookies

2 Comments

Came across the following fortune cookies in a box of Italian chocolates over the weekend.

The night is silent, and in its silence dreams are hidden

Love me because without you I can do nothing, I am nothing

You shine in my heart like the moon in the night sky

Let us enjoy our love as long as we may

A magical night of bliss begins and ends with a kiss

amusements, memes, quotes, science, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #124

From New Scientist, 3 March 2007 …

Viral notices

At the end of last year, we voiced the fear that we are being exploited by viral notices for the purposes of propagating themselves (16 December 2006). Lindsay Brash observes that the notice we mentioned then — “Please do not remove this notice until 23rd July” — “demonstrates the rapid evolution of viruses and the sophisticated tricks they can employ on their hosts. By stating a date, the notice fools humans into thinking it must be legitimate, and they let it be.”

In fact, Brash goes on, it’s even cleverer than that: people “are so gullible that they are not likely to remove it until some time after the stated date. But by then they will forget when they first saw it and, to be safe, leave it until the next 23 July. Fantastic!”

And in James Penketh’s school there is a notice with an even more subtle survival strategy: inducing complete cognitive breakdown. It reads “Take no notice of this notice. By Order.” If he took no notice of this notice, he asks, “would I know to take no notice of it?”

Justin Needham, meanwhile, has found an example of the suicide notice: “Please leave these facilities as you would wish to find them”. Every time he spots one, he writes, “I am tempted (and sometimes succumb) to tear it down. That’s better, just how I wish to find the facilities — with no patronising notices.”

current affairs, freedom of speech, thoughts

Child fingerprint plan considered

According to a report on BBC News website this evening:

Biometric ID cards will include fingerprints, plus eye or facial scans. Proposals to fingerprint children aged 11 to 15 as part of new passport and ID card plans are being considered.
…
Under existing plans every passport applicant over 16 will have details – including fingerprints – added to a National Identity register from 2008. But there was concern youngsters could use passports without biometric details up to the age of 20 … This could happen if they are issued a child passport between the ages of 11 and 15, which would be valid for five years.

The challenge that officials have been asked to find an answer to, is how do you make sure that people who are 16 and over have got biometric details recorded in their passports.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the proposal “borders on the sinister” and added it showed the government was trying to end the presumption of innocence. “This government is clearly determined to enforce major changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way never seen before.”
…
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said “It is a measure of ministerial arrogance that plans are being laid to fingerprint children as young as 11 without having a public debate first.
…
Campaigners have long battled fingerprinting of children in schools, a practice they estimate happens in about 3,500 establishments. From this month guidelines from privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner will urge schools to get parental consent before taking biometric data. But under the Data Protection Act schools do not have to seek parental consent, and calls to outlaw the controversial practice have been rejected by the government.

I can choose not to have a passport (for instance) and thus not have my biometric data recorded. A child under 16 cannot by make such a decision as, by law, they are a minor and thus they cannot give their consent. Surely no-one should be fingerprinted, or have any other biometric (including DNA) information taken without their explicit consent.

Yet again this government seems to be ignoring both existing, long-established, English law and our civil liberties on the spurious premise that it will help in the “war against terrorism”. We need to resist this at every turn.

photography, science

Eclipse of the Moon


Moon, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Here’s a picture of the full moon I took last night about an hour or so before the eclipse started. I was spectacularly unsuccessful with the shots I took of the early phases eclipse, and I didn’t then try the totality as I couldn’t get a good clear view.

However here are a few good shots of the eclipse from various of my contacts:
From fotofacade: www.flickr.com/photos/fotofacade/409230083/
From andyp_uk: www.flickr.com/photos/andypiper/409225738/
From Colin Barnes: www.flickr.com/photos/collicky/409277977/.

Enjoy!

amusements, words

Neologism

Reported to me by an acquaintance a guy on a radio programme yesterday saying that his boss had asked him to:

come down and throw a few things in the ideas wok and stir-fry up some solutions.

I’m just speechless.