MishMash

Michael Moore responds

Pete & Mieke recently got me to watch Bowling for Columbine, which I did for the most part in open-mouthed incredulity. Michael Moore now has a section on his web site where he replies to attacks.

Via Kuro5hin.

EU Patent law debate rumbles on

The European Parliament has voted in favour of a legislative resolution on the patenting of "computer implemented inventions", but with amendments which the Commission have already said are unacceptable.

Question: If, as is so often stated, this legislation is only about clarification, what is the Commission's objection to the additional clarification which the Parliament requests be included?

Note: Spanish and Irish MEPs are among those quoted as making the point that legislation to halt the tendency to issue too many patents. Countries with a particular interest in the little guy getting a fair deal.

The latest threat: the Bruichladdich

It seems that those dodgy folks of Islay have been attracting the attention of US spooks. The Bruichladdich distillery received an email from the Defence Threat Reduction Agency asking that he mend one of the webcams at the distillery, according to the Times.

Ursula Strearns, a spokeswoman for the [DTRA], said that such facilities were of interest because the difference between distilling a good whisky and making chemical weapons was "just a small tweak".

Yet more power

Dad, commenting on More power cuts: Denmark, Italy:

The polution locally was dire. It suited the politicians well to shift the power generation to the coal fields and shift electricity instead of coal.

OK, and in this the total energy requirement may be reduced, since coal is heavy stuff to drag around the country.

The theory of the CEGB was that it allowed power to be produced by the cheapest available means for what was needed.

And "cheapest" in this context might well be a near synonym for "most efficient".

Drax burnt coal in a system that was only efficient flat out. So it delivered base load. Various hydro power stations stood buy to turn on during commercial breaks when a million kettles were turned on at once. At night, the power from Drax could be used to reverse the hydro power flow at Dinorwic, Loch Ness and Cruachan and pump water back up the hill for the next surge.

One problem in that in this picture is the absence of low grade energy (like, for example, solar energy for heating water and air), and the tendency of everyone involved to forget (deliberately, on some parts) that the cheapest energy is the energy you don't use. I wasn't seriously suggesting moving coal fired power stations back into town, but it seems fair to say that when our cities were beset by smog, the residents had a pretty clear idea of the impact of their heating "systems".

As usual, there's more to say (I haven't even tried to respond to the railways comments). I suspect that feedback is an important concept there, too. But it's tea time.

More power cuts: Denmark, Italy

I missed last weeks power cut in Denmark ("some residents said their first thoughts were of a possible terrorist connection"), but found it linked from the BBC News article about last night's in Italy.

In the discussion following the article about Denmark, there is some pondering about whether these, and the earlier cuts in North America and London, could be connected, with implication of terrorist involvement. Great how people jump to the fantastic explanation, or perhaps the explanation which places the blame elsewhere, rather than suspecting that, for reasons which surely boil down in a democracy to individual culpability, the structure or capacity is at fault.

It occurs that the centralisation of power generation (rather than collecting and generating power as locally as possible) not only increases vulnerability to this sort of thing, and to the domino effect failure that saw tracts of North America plunged into darkness, it also removes the individual responsibility for the implications of our demand for power.

This ties up my long standing gripe about the idea that electric cars are good for the environment, and applies, I think, to the use of hydrogen as a "power source" that some are so optimistic about. Batteries and hydrogen are time/space shifting tools; a combined forward shift for energy and backward shift for pollution. They hide the implications of the energy used, they don't change it. So instead of us having to breath fumes in the streets, they go up a chimney to cause plausibly deniable pollution elsewhere.

More generally, the separation of demand and supply -- mediated by money -- is what enables us to ignore the impacts of the choices we make, and the power of the corporation over the media and over national governments is such that, in general, we don't see the impacts at all, and don't even realise we have a decision to make.

Systems without negative feedback tend to spiral out of control.

Waving flags

Pete sent me a link to Banksy's web site, which I hadn't come across before. I thought this was particularly nice.

Banksy is a South West based graffiti artist (and he is most definitely an artist), for those that haven't noticed.

Which reminds me that they were talking about graffiti, I think, on Today the other day, having a silly argument about whether it was art, or vandalism. Since when were art and vandalism opposite ends of the one scale? Why can't it be both?

SEPA angling for communications data access

SEPA have issued a press release to the effect that they are included in a list of organisations to gain access to communications data (who sent X to whom, but not the context of X) under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This is a reappearance of measures which the Home Office withdrew last time round in the face of a public outcry. By the sounds of it the new pass is improved, but not perfect.

The Home Office "recently consulted" on this Order, apparently. I hadn't heard anything about it, which means that either STAND have stopped sending out emails, or I've dropped off their list somehow.

Something else for the to do list.

DNA database, and minor ID card update

Pete says, "you go away for a week and there goes the neighbourhood..."

So the police are intent on removing our civil liberties (no real surprise there), and will no doubt be heartily supported in their quest by the good Mr Blunkett. On the bright side, however, Brown and Prescott are reported to be against ID cards, so Blunkett may not have that one so easy.

The Grauniad reports that:

Mr Morris suggested that the public would be happy to come forward and volunteer their genetic code.

"Experience has shown that the general public come forward in their thousands when they believe their sample will help police to detect a serious crime," he told the Times.

Which I am curious about. Surely it is only having the DNA of the person who actually committed the crime which can really help with detection, and then only if you have solid reason to believe that the DNA sample you have found at the scene is from said criminal; having anyone elses at best eliminates that individual as a suspect, and even that only, again, if there is solid DNA evidence. The key word here is "believe", I think. The public will believe anything if they're frightened enough.

How much would this database cost?

He said a compulsory database would enable the police to solve crimes more quickly, and prevent them happening.

Solve them more quickly, eh? Solve them at all, perhaps. And as for stopping them happening? I'm not convinced.

Anyway, this public will not be happy to come forward.

Keep 'em in the dark, it's only fair

There's something deeply depressing about the fact that arguments like this one don't get laughed out of court (or kangaroo court, in the case of the WTO):

EU farm ministers agreed last month to move from a blanket ban to a stringent system of labelling when GM ingredients are used either in foodstuffs for human consumption or in animal feed.

But the US says that will still discriminate against its farmers, given the much more widespread use of GMOs in US agriculture.

So, you're saying that for the general population to know what they are eating puts you at a competitive disadvantage, so the general population should be kept in the dark. Nice.

Remind me again, is it the individual who needs protection against the corporation, or the corporation who needs protecting from the individual?

Easy exams

So, the annual flurry of discussion about the general and increasing uselessness of exam results as measures of [whatever it is we think we are measuring] continues. Too many people are getting A grades at A level, we need a better discriminator.

Well, far be it from me to excuse the general dropping of exam "hardness" (be quiet at the back, and don't try to tell those who sat a mixture of old and new exams (in Scotland) that standards aren't dropping), but it does seem that Universities and employers are managing to discriminate quite well, albeit to an inevitable chorus of complaint one way or another.

The BBC quotes Geoff Lucas, secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, as saying,