Saturday, October 06, 2007

[osculation] it's the name of the game

Osculation - it's the name of the game and in each generation, they play it the same.

Here are some of the benefits:

# Kissing stabilizes cardiovascular activity, decreases high blood pressure, and lowers cholesterol;

# Kissing prevents cavities and plaque build-up by stimulating saliva production while preventing gingivitis through the calcium present in saliva;

# Kissing stimulates over 30 facial muscles which smoothes out skin and increase blood circulation to the face;

# Kissing burns 12 calories per five-second episode and three passionate kisses a day will help you lose one pound!

# Kissing prevents the formation of the stress hormone glucocorticoids which causes high blood pressure, muscle weakening and insomnia;

# Kissing does its part to vaccinate people from new germs. Saliva contains bacteria, 80% of them are common to all people with 20% unique to each person.

… and some of the drawbacks:

# Halitosis can't be caught from a partner through kissing [although it detracts from the enjoyment at the time];

# Meningococcus and Hepatitis B are very rarely caught;

# Glandular fever is more common;

# It's best to steer clear of cold sores.

So let's face it - kissing is plain romantic after all, your chance of disease is minimal [well, at an acceptable level] and there are so many known health benefits.

So get to it - the night is still young!

[nicht akzeptabel] wasserwerfer in bern

Ein Großaufgebot der Polizei rückte an und eine Straßenschlacht entbrannte. Die Beamten setzten Tränengas und Wasserwerfer ein. Laut Polizei wurden mindestens 17 Beamte zum Teil schwer verletzt. Nach Behördenangaben gab es 42 Festnahmen.

If you can't follow the text, the photo should say it all - State using weapons on citizens whose interests they are supposedly representing. The citizens might well have been out of order - I can't read all the text - but the response is sadly worrying.

[blogfocus saturday] crimewave in the sphere

Theme this evening is crime - doing it, thinking about it and writing about it.

1. First a crime in contemplation by Pink Acorn:

As I was reading the Sicily Scene Blog today I realized I have this huge, maybe 30 acre, pepper field right next door. As I scooted over to take this picture I saw my neighbor. We keep commenting how we are going to make a midnight run for some pepper samples ....but that never seems to happen.

2. Longrider differentiates between two often confused crimes:

Credit card theft is the act of stealing people’s money; identity theft involves taking on someone else’s identity for the purposes of obtaining money, property, work or whatever the thief decides to take; they take on their victim’s persona and pose as their victim in order to carry out their fraud on an ongoing basis – this is not simple credit card theft and is much less prolific.

Conflating the two is fraudulent and government does this for its own purposes; to defraud the consumer into supporting its insidious “solution” – identity cards and the national identity register that lurks beneath the surface.

3. Hercules shows that it's the hidden criminal you have to watch out for:

I always thought that crafty little bastard was up to something, blagging his way in to millions of homes across the world, pretending to be a lovable toy and then BAM, your kids are hooked on E!!! The term "off his face" Certainly does apply to this toy, doesn't it? In the news today Customs officers discovered nearly 300 grams (10.5 ounces) of ecstasy tablets hidden inside a Mr. Potato Head toy sent to Australia from Ireland.

4. Intervening to prevent a crime can be criminal, as Cllr. Gavin Ayling explains:

If people were not punished for intervening, if people could be sure the law would protect those who were acting in society’s greater interest, if people could defend others and themselves with force that the law currently considers ‘unreasonable’ from the safe confines of the courtroom, then (and only then) would people and society start to turn on those among them who were antisocial, violent and intimidating.

Like many things, it doesn’t seem that hard so long as you purge the pink fluff which takes the place of a spine in many politicians.

5. Ross Fountain is hot on the trail of the delinquent toddlers and came across this as well:

However whilst reading this story I spotted a link to an earlier story from May this year, "Criminal age 'should rise to 18' ". This is nuts, pure and simple and I guessed before I read it that it originated with the increasingly vocal pro criminal lobby group, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at Kings College, London. It is important to realise that 'youth crime' isn't a trivial subset of general crime. it amounts for a huge proportion of total crime.

6. Neocon comments on the Philadelphia Experiment:

This is a brave, if somewhat naive initiative... I wonder what happens when the first volunteer is gunned down. I know I wouldn't be out there without Kevlar and a K-frame.

Groups of volunteers will be stationed on drug corners and other trouble spots in a bid to stop the shootings and other crimes that have given Philadelphia the highest homicide rate among the nation’s 10 largest cities.

They will not be armed, will not have powers of arrest, and will be identified only by armbands or hats during their three-hour shifts.

7. James Cleverley looks at the Youth Service scheme:

There should be a balance between rights and responsibilities, young people should understand that not everything in life comes easily and pre packed. Labour have an obsession with the "respect agenda" seeming not to understand that respect has to be earned.

I would feel very uncomfortable if this kind of scheme was limited to military service, but the mix of activities is a healthy idea. I'm sure that there will be plenty on the left who will try to paint this idea as a big step back into the fifties but until they can come up with a better idea to tackle the fragmentation of communities and the huge increases in youth crime and anti-social behaviour they should keep shtum.

8. And lastly, the Anglo-Canadian Tea and Margaritas' gets unusually violent on crime:

I love animals and despise anyone who does them harm. I would see them strung up by their heels and publicly lashed if I ruled the world. Prisons for the guilty are far too soft. Colour tv, computers, diplomas!

The same as above goes for harming children and a several other horrible crimes.

Hear, hear! Hope to see you next Wednesday evening. Cheers!

[world cup] how many of the originals are left?

Click pic to zoom.

England team to play Australia: 15-Jason Robinson, 14-Paul Sackey, 13-Mathew Tait, 12-Andy Farrell, 11-Josh Lewsey, 10-Jonny Wilkinson, 9-Andy Gomarsall, 8-Nick Easter, 7-Lewis Moody, 6-Martin Corry, 5-Ben Kay, 4-Simon Shaw, 3-Phil Vickery (captain), 2-Mark Regan, 1-Andrew Sheridan.

Australia team to play England: 15-Chris Latham, 14-Adam Ashley-Cooper, 13-Stirling Mortlock (captain), 12-Matt Giteau, 11-Lote Tuqiri, 10-Berrick Barnes, 9-George Gregan, 8-Wycliff Palu, 7-George Smith, 6-Rocky Elsom, 5-Dan Vickerman, 4-Nathan Sharpe, 3-Guy Shepherdson, 2-Stephen Moore, 1-Matt Dunning.

[lizard queen] whitehouse here we come

In the Telegraph take on Hillary, there were some juicy morsels:

"Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar [an elite college founded for women]," sniffed Maureen Dowd.

Mrs Clinton's answers to every question, Frank Rich wrote, were "a rambling and often tedious Gore-like filibuster" and she seems "especially evasive when dealing with questions requiring human reflection". Her laugh had "all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer".

Nice stuff but the following commenter seemed to me closer to the truth:

Hillary Clinton will indisputably be the next President of the United States. She will move to the political center after she wins the Democratic primary. She is extremely intelligent and experienced. She will be a centrist akin to Brown and Cameron. David Cameron would defeat her if he was the Republican nominee in the USA. His oratorical prowess and charisma would resonate with Americans. His impressive green agenda would help to defeat Hillary. [Brien Comerford, United States]

Leaving aside the alleged connection with the giga-fund scandal, Peter Paul, Whitewater and Vince Foster, Jamie Gorelick, Nolanda Hill, Independent Counsel Robert Ray, bouncer Craig Livingstone, National Finance Director David Rosen and the $2m, Juanita Broaddrick, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Yucaipa, Web Hubbell, John Huang, the Lippo Group and Norman Hsu, leaving aside her health care policy, leaving aside the clearly partisan attacks by Giulliani, leaving aside the worrying and unknown extent to which she accepts the Saul Alinsky thesis, just what is it about this woman?

The travesty of the Starr Report and Wallace's Fox attack show the Republicans need to let the Clintons hang themselves, by themselves, not leave the GOP tactics open to a public perception of overkill.

And yet there is still something fundamentally wrong with the woman.

In the end, it might even be the symptoms and signs - the hyena cackle, the heavily scripted human warmth, the way former supporters and allies are coming out against her and her voting record, rather than the concealed disease itself which sinks her.

I myself wonder about the nuclear arsenal in her hands, in conjunction with the finance she's in thrall to and finally - that phoenix brooch. In the words of another Telegraph commenter:

May G-d help this country if this woman is elected to the Presidency. [Joan - Tennessee USA]

[economics 201] the nasty side of monetarism

In my tiny bit of trade work, we were discussing today Friedman's monetarism and a bit of Hayek, Lucas, Fischer, Sargent and Wallace.

For readers not much into macro-economics, Wiki gives a reasonable summary:

Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he called the Great Contraction, arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve.

"The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government."

Interesting the equating of the Fed with government, which it is anything but, especially these days. Interesting how some people still see the Fed as government today, when the FOMC runs the show. Interesting to talk of rational expectations and assume non-intervention when the FOMC is very much intervening by means of discount and other rates and where other economic triggers have deliberately been allowed to come into play by its governing body, e.g. sub-prime lending by domestic banks and credit institutions.

Nastiness like sub-prime mortgages and other such lending is not held to be part of either their brief or that of government and the question is why not, given that they can regulate the money supply itself. Sub-primes are a major component fuelling the economy and the likely outcomes are predictable in a macro sense.

Swinging over to our situation here. The manager of [hypothetical] Swift Supermarket has money invested through the banks and other agencies. He wants to pull it out of one fund and into another but is offered attractive rates to keep it where it is.

Rather than going along with this, he smells a rat - no one offers better rates without a reason and the grapevine says there's a liquidity crisis in the offing. He panics and his prices skyrocket, with people paying the increase short term but then faced with two choices - to pull money out of the bank to pay for household goods or to cut consumption drastically.

Everyone then scrambles to get cash into their pockets and with his supermarket now virtually deserted, he doubles prices to make what he can on what is left.

He closes and so do all the others, unless someone will bale them out. That's where this little fairytale ends.

Friday, October 05, 2007

[situation update] always look on the bright side

16:15 London time

Situation seems to be that it's giving me about 30 minutes typing time before the screen [videocard] goes down. The Mac doesn't come until the 12th. This could mean sudden cessation of blogging at any time in the interim which is a pity because the reader level has been wonderful these past two weeks and I've now got my Google Reader working a treat as of this morning.

All of that pales into insignificance compared to what's happening outside in the markets and on the streets. There is a very ugly mood and even a grandmother spoke of vostaniya or uprising today. The prices are now ridiculous - halfway to western prices but the salaries are stagnant at the level of two years ago.

Examples - milk is now [all in American currency in this post] $2 a litre, petrol $1 a litre, 200g of cheese $3, 1kg of mincemeat $9. Doesn't sound a lot but look at the salaries.

Qualified five year teacher $196 a month and pensioner $100 a month. Tax at 13% flat rate [good aspect] comes out of this money. It is not possible to eat meat in most households more than twice a week now.

Naturally the amount I pay on this flat doubled today. They say it's going to double again in November but with no increase in salaries [liquidity crisis, you know because the banks speculated with fiat money].

We're all very happy over here and thanks for asking. At least I seem to be out of the one week of flu now. Silver lining.

11:36 London time

Don't know whether you can read this or not - I can't and therefore can't check spelling but my screen ahs given out. New videocard needed but not obtainable as it's so old. Therefore new computer motherboard and different slots required

We have just had 40-80% price hikes over here so a new computer is not affordable, especially as I've paid for and am waiting for the Mac. Not good - maybe no blogging or at least a minimal amount. Don't know if this will post but if it does, you know the situation. Sorry.

[country spread] this morning

11:15 My crazed reader origin stats [crazed stats, not readers] - this will reverse [usually] by midnight with the Brits taking top spot but other countries [usually] stay much the same.

Now look how it's altered during the day. It's now 16:39 and as you can see, the Brits have taken top spot again. This will increase towards midnight. Interesting, huh?

[All percentages refer to the last 100 readers.]


[humour check] is this skit funny or not

This is one of the Python skits from the early 70s. Your reaction to it will speak volumes about you, yourself.

The skit itself

(Fade in - TV interview set. Interviewer sitting with man with large polystyrene nose.)

Interviewer (Michael Palin): Good evening. I have with me in the studio tonight one of the country's leading skin specialists - Raymond Luxury Yacht.

Raymond (Graham Chapman): That's not my name.

Interviewer: I'm sorry - Raymond Luxury Yachet.

Raymond: No, no, no - it's spelt Raymond Luxury Yachet, but it's pronounced 'Throatwarbler Mangrove'.

Interviewer: You're a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you.

Raymond: Ah, anti-Semitism!

Interviewer: Not at all. It's not even a proper nose. (takes it off him) It's polystyrene.

Raymond: Give me my nose back.

Interviewer: You can collect it at reception. Now go away.

Raymond: I want to be on television.

Interviewer: Well you can't.

Possible reactions

Rational libertarian [chuckling]: Python were classic, weren't they? Mind you, you'd better be careful who you show that to these days …

Left liberal [stiffly]: Dated, aren't they? I would have thought we'd moved on from this kind of cheap, racial stereotyping by 2007. Seems not.

PC devotee: This is the sort of crass, philistine pig-ignorance we've tried to eliminate from rational debate these days. You think it's very funny, don't you? Well, let me tell you you're nothing but an unreconstructed racist, a throwback to a former, darker time and I wish to have nothing further to do with you. Dear oh dear. Good day!

Russian or American [possibly]: Was there something funny just then?

Russians

I've just been running through the Dead Parrot Sketch with a lady friend and once she understood the words, she found the humour understandable and would like a copy of as much Python as I can give her.

Americans

I'd be interested to read in the comments section from my friends.

[economics 101] all life in terms of money

Scenario 1

As a non-economist, reading economists can be an entertaining business. Chris Dillow, for example, explains human relationships in terms of economics and sees co-habiting as a call option, irrespective of its moral standing.

The Financial Times, one of my favourite sources of often fictional entertainment, has conflicting points of view. Firstly, that credit squeeze and our darling Chancellor of the Exchequer:

Britain’s economy will be hit by the global credit squeeze, forcing the government to downgrade its growth forecasts ahead of a possible general election, the chancellor of the exchequer admitted on Thursday.

The media is being partly blamed for this:

For the allegation that is now being bandied about is that irresponsible media coverage played a role in turning this summer’s credit turmoil into a crisis.

On the other hand, other FT columnists seem to be talking up the economy:

Most emerging economies, on the back of buoyant global demand and high commodity prices, have expanded rapidly and are less vulnerable to external shocks. Robust earnings growth and reduced country risk have propelled stock markets higher and bond yields lower.

Scenario 2

We have a liquidity problem in our banks over here which is only just emerging. This has not yet affected the average customer, except in the refusal of loans. However, on the strength of the words "possible crisis", retailers who've been itching to raise prices have suddenly done so. And how!

Milk is 40% more today than last Friday. My computer I'm in the process of buying [things take ages in Russia], has suddenly jumped 81% in cost, irrespective of the fact that I've already paid. All goods have alarmingly surged in price.

There is absolutely no direct economic connection between the bank problems and the price hikes except the age old justification of greed and I ran this by a Financial Services client yesterday who was mystified and yet not mystified.

Conclusion

In my jaundiced opinion, the doom and gloom talk from the Treasury disguises something disquietening. There may be no economic justification for a global squeeze [see the last quote above] but the CBs and Treasuries are sure trying to talk us into one.

In other words, they know very well what's going down. Couple that with accompanying moves in the field of surveillance legislation et al, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and its corollary discussed here in Phil A's post plus the move to regional assemblies - and it's looking increasingly like a gang of criminals up there in charge of us all.

Actually, without putting a label on it, it's an agenda. Deliberate mismanagement by the CBs, particularly the Fed, allowing unbridled speculative trading, bubble bursting, credit squeeze in economies hocked up to the eyeballs, bank liquidity crises, baling out and debt creation of the domestic banks by the CBs, runs on the banks, calling in of credit debts, bank closures, massive unemployment, selective terrorist attacks preceding newly prepared legislation, strong man arising to sort out the mess, [Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill], inevitable war, suspension of the party system in favour of a combined government, evaporation of the bourgeoisie.

Call me a kook now in 2007. We'll see how wrong this scenario is in the next few years. If it does pan out this way, I assure you there'll be zero pleasure derived from it.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

[burma] human tragedy in the making

Y gwir cywilyddus ydy - a barnu o hanes rhyngwladol - bod yr unig rai sy'n gallu helpu pobl Byrma yn effeithiol ar hyn o bryd ydy'r Byrmaniaid eu hun. Ac mae hynny yn golygu llawer o fodau dynol byw yn dod yn llawer o gelanedd pydredig oer. Croeso i'r unfed ganrif ar hugain: yr un mor hyll â'r canrif blaenorol, ond ein bod bellach yn gallu ei wylio ar YouTube.

I failed to understand the idea was to only post once in the day. It does not lessen the night's thoughts on the matter.

[cecilia] you're breaking my heart

Simon and Garfunkel sang: " Cécilia, you're breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily."

If I could only get an unbiased non-feminist to explain this woman, Cécilia Sarkozy, to me, I'd be appreciative. Take her absence in Bulgaria today, after she'd negotiated the release of the nurses a month ago:

L'absence de l'épouse du chef de l'Etat à Sofia, où elle devait être décorée en même temps que lui pour son rôle en faveur des infirmières bulgares, a été très remarquée. L’intervention de Cécilia Sarkozy dans la libération des infirmières bulgares a été "en tous points remarquable, et d'une certaine façon décisive même".

In a nutshell, the EU clearly paid some sort of largesse to Libya, Cécilia did her part and got the credit for the release of the hostages, Nicolas did his part for the EU and all was sweet. But when the denouement was planned in Sofia, the heroine did not roll up.

Whyever not? And why didn't she attend the earlier Bush function, a move widely seen as a snub? French regional newspaper Le Telegramme wrote in its Monday edition at the time:

"What does the wife of the president of the republic want? To live her life as she likes, without constraint? In which case, why does she accept invitations, like that made personally by Laura Bush?" it added, saying that U.S. first lady Laura had personally organized the lunch with Cécilia.

Please allow me to state that I'm no stranger myself to such behaviour. Months ago I missed an award to be made to me at a university function and it did not go down well. The thing was, I was really sick at that time so Cécilia Sarkozy's sore throat - well, it's understandable that it might have been true at the time of the Bush invitation.

Except that she was seen shopping the day before and the day after.

Forgive me but this seems just a little too Princess Di to me and whatever you might personally think of The Firm, they do attend to their commitments. In the case of the Bulgarians, it does seem to me a bit of a slap in the face towards that nation.

Plus, there is the question of the re-election a few years from now. Marie-Ségolène Royal has not gone away and a much loved Cécilia would surely go a long way towards keeping France blue?

[atheists] and the statistics of religion


Chuckle - I do like Vox:

Mike doesn't do his homework:
Look at what the illiterate believe. By far most of them believe the bible is the word of God. Most of the barely literate believe likewise. As you move up the scale of literacy, you find belief in the Bible drops off.
Actually, the nation which has the highest percentage of atheists in the Western world, France, only ranks 27th in literacy; it's 99 percent rating is equal to that of the notoriously religious United States. Vatican City, meanwhile, has a 100 percent literacy rate; ultra-Catholic Poland ranks 9th, compared to secular Sweden's ranking of 28th.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the typical atheist approach to debate resembles that of the medieval religious philosopher. No facts, no evidence, just a logical structure constructed upon a baseless assumption.

Now that's going to set the cat among the pigeons.

[gold or silver] as long as it's commodities

Sackerson reports:

"Central banks have 10-15,000 tonnes of gold less than their officially reported reserves of 31,000" the Chevreux report announced. "This gold has been lent to bullion banks and their counterparties and has already been sold for jewelry, etc."

"Start hoarding," said Paul Mylchreet...

And the CBs are not pro-active in this matter? It seems silver is a better bet. This current release of gold smells distinctly off.

Seeking Alpha looks at silver, as does AME, who note:

… volatility is your main problem. Thus you should not put money into silver that you may need to call on …

and

Trading in silver options is for experts and even they will avoid margin because of the volatility factor; this is not for the average investor.

You need to progressively pick up small amounts and see it as long. It's not a market consideration - it's a long term safety consideration.

Fin24 looks at platinum and this is current:

"Platinum metal demand is thus dominated by two superb drivers; supportive environmental legislation and the burgeoning Chinese consumer."

Reuters looked at nickel in January so that's a possibility too.

It depends how you see the situation, either as an oncoming bear market or as something more dire and the recent Fed rates seem to suggest the latter, combined with all the other non-financial societal moves going on.

If it is more dire, than commodities funds would not seem so wise although defensive industries might be a reasonable strategy.

Bear market or something a bit more fractured?

[incarceration] looking for alternatives

The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday with how much discretion U.S. judges have to give lenient sentences, including in crack cocaine cases.

Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben, seeking to win longer sentences for … two men, urged an approach used by many appeals courts. It demands that a sentence varying significantly from the guidelines be justified by a rationale that is equally weighty.

Justice John Paul Stevens wondered if that test was too vague: "How do you measure the strength of the justifications?"

The Jailhouse Lawyer would no doubt have much to say on this and to put it in simplistic terms for the layman such as myself, the argument seems to boil down to whether:

# sentences should be statutory and if so, who determines which crime carries which sentence;

# sentences should be discretionary for justices and if so, whether this should be cross the board or whether it should be within defined limits, with "weighting" given to certain offences. The "three strikes and you're out" approach is part of this argument.

I don't know the answer to this but what I do know is that with the move to the new feudalism, there are going to be many more citizens incarcerated than formerly. The frightening new U.K. Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the U.S. equivalent will see to that.

Just look at Phil A's post for a start.

So perhaps it's time to think more laterally than the fines and/or incarceration which dominates and if taken too far, leads to prison hulks and transportation to Australia. I don't mean either corporal or capital punishment either.

Forbes ran an article on this, offering ten alternatives, including:

...drug treatment, faith based inner change [which I personally know to be the most efficacious], pay for prison stay, community based project for violence prevention, rich crims teaching in poor schools, car ignition interlocks, living in a slum for a period of time, chemical castration, abolish prison and invest in housing, facilities etc., billboard naming and shaming...

My own view is that elements of these, like community service for the victims or class of victims seems advantageous but this wouldn't work for crimes on the self, such as drug use, which perhaps should be decriminalized.

The very best way is for the individual to fill the hole of envious malevolence and materialism with spiritual wholeness but nobody seems to want to know about weirdo things like that.

Prison hulk on the Thames

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

[blogfocus wednesday] failure to find a theme

1. Colin Campbell needs no words here to convey the message. Click on the pic to get the idea.

2. Tuscan Tony rebuilt a different kind of house:

Not all my property adventures have been as replete with success as the Sussex one; I plunged deep into the market for my first foray in 1990, paying a princely £68,000 for the pictured terraced house in Dorking [below right]. I then proceeded to spend every weekend for the next 4 years restoring it lovingly. I did the loft conversion and put in the Velux, reroofed it, put in new pine floors throughout, replastered, put in new kitchen and bathroom, mostly aided and abetted by the first Mrs Tuscan. All work was done by me personally (idiot), and I learned more than I needed to know about the building trade.

4. L'Ombre recalls the joy of his non-Parisien house:

French people can be amazingly helpful and when we moved in we had almost exactly this experience:

When my uncle bought his Provençal house he called on his neighbour, a farmer in his sixties, and jokingly apologised for the fact they now had "des anglais" next door. The farmer merely responded, "Heureusement, vous n'êtes pas Parisien."

3. The Swearing Mother is also not Parisienne but is still moved by France:

The sight of the waiter bringing lunch, weaving through crowded tables, tray held high, makes you do a double take and wonder why this scene feels so familiar. A badly maintained front door, instead of looking scruffy and in need of attention, suddenly makes you want to paint it. And I don’t mean with two coats of Dulux, either. Everywhere you look, something is begging to be immortalized on canvas, and it's very likely that someone already has.

4. Meanwhile, Bag makes the logical connection between granddaughters and KGB records:

On the way back to the car with a poor wet little girl who had not coped too well with the delay. I overheard someone coming from another shop close to this one who were also unable to validate the cards and was looking for cash. Makes you think how dependent we are on the infrastructure that has built up over the last few decades. Technology. Not very good to us at the moment with the use our government is making of it. Just think, all those tax records, DVLA data, KGB records on us all.

5. Speaking of Stalinist records, Benedict White outlines how you'll be tracked down in the near future in Gordon's Britain:

Yesterday's Mail on Sunday carried the story that the government has passed legislation that requires telephone companies and Internet service providers to keep records of when and where telephone conversations and emails were sent. This will include tracking data on where mobile phones are.

6. Ian Parker shows the alternative - the stormtroopers:

Meanwhile, the Conservatives today published their plans for a homeland security force made up of two battalions and headed by a permanent leader. Former intelligence chief Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who led a national and international policy group for the Conservatives, said: "We feel there needs to be a small force which is readily available, properly trained and has a command centre dedicated to looking after our territory at home."

HatTip Postman Patel

8. And finally, Tiberius Gracchus, in his usual insightful manner, gives an insight into Ian Curtis:

Curtis was, by the film's account, an appalling husband. He was unable to repay Debbie. Locked in his own world of creativity, he refused at times to even answer her when she knocked on the door of his room, refused even to climb the stairs to go to bed with her. He is so self focused, that at one point he even asks her whether she wants to sleep with other men. There are enough indications in the film to demonstrate that Curtis by the end found that he was dependent on Debbie but not attracted to her.

And while you're there, don't forget Dave Cole's gingerbread haka or Courtney Hamilton's teenage smoking. See you on Saturday I hope.

Tuscan Tony's palace - isn't it lovely looking into other people's backyards and seeing what they're up to?

[puberty blues] chinese medical science

China claims early puberty stunts growth. That's interesting - now I'm wondering about li'l old me all those years back.

How would you rate Chinese medical science? Advanced? Weird? Primitive? Inscrutable? They say this about why early puberty is becoming more prevalent:

# You are bombarded with sexual scenes on TV now. Such scenes stimulate children too and triggers hormone secretion;

# Such hormones are often found in fast food, which accelerate children's development;

# The problem is more serious in major cities than in the countryside because urban children are better fed.

Hmmm.

[three lovely ladies] this is for you

Привет!

Айнур Гусейнова, the darkly exotic, like golden honey;

Ильмира Файзуллина, the smiling beauty with glasses;

Юлия Сафронова, the frisky closer of doors;

To you

Я вам даю этот "пост", девченкы, с любовю.


[russian crisis] liquidity is the issue

The reason you haven't heard of it yet is most likely that it's in the pipeline still and thus early days. Seems it's going to be like yours over there but there are internal mechanisms here now which weren't here in '98. Have to wait and see. The election is the main news.

[horror movie] your own caption, please

From Timofeller

[bacn] the new scourge of the inbox

Update Liz Thursday

Apologies to The Age for lifting their article holus bolus but it does say it all. Also, regulars know I don't go cutting and pasting MSM articles but this time I must do so and not leave any of it out.

Today I received an invitation from Facebook to hug a vampire or something. I've had invitations for drinks, to play scrabble and so on and so on, all of them from people I know and feel close to. It was the only reason I followed it up - these were friends I knew who'd also been sucked into this sort of thing.

They'd say it was just a bit of fun and using the tools Facebook had lovingly provided. I'd say, like Second Life, it was a deliberate time waster. Not by my friends, you understand but by the purveyors of such schemes.

Facebook is just one example of schemes inserted into the net for what purpose I know not. MyBlogLog is clear enough - it signals that a reader has arrived and is useful this way. But what exactly does Facebook offer, beyond the spurious?

I haven't time to be doing this stuff - it's a problem finding the minutes in the day as it is. That's why this article caught my eye:

Just when you thought you were finally starting to get on top of the spam epidemic, a new email scourge is clogging inboxes around the country: bacn. Unlike spam, bacn (pronounced "bacon") is solicited email, but that which you do not want to read right now, or even at all.

Coined at a US blog conference earlier this year, bacn spread across the blogosphere like wildfire and is now part of the geek vernacular. It includes messages from social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, subscribed newsletters, surveys and flight bargains.

"If you're active in the social networking scene on multiple sites, multiply several LinkedIns by multiple Facebooks plus mailing lists you signed up to a couple of years ago - it can be a real problem," said Paul Ducklin, head of technology at security firm Sophos.

Facebook's incessant notifications of friend requests, wall postings, private messages and, particularly, invitations to install plug-in applications like a graffiti wall are often cited as the most annoying bacn.

As a remedy, the social network recently announced it would soon allow users to opt to receive all Facebook notifications in a single daily digest email.

For other forms of bacn, Philip Routley, product marketing manager at security firm MessageLabs, advises people to filter emails based on the sender's address or keywords.

"My suggestion would be to setup a rule in your Outlook that filters bacn into a separate folder," he said.

"Therefore at the end of the day or at lunch time you can jump into that folder and read any emails that you want to."

For those who don't use Microsoft's Outlook email program, Google, on its official Gmail blog, has published instructions on how to filter bacn into special folders in its web-based email service.

Alternatively, Routley advises web users to create multiple accounts on free web-based email sites like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. They could then use a different address for every social network or mailing list they signed up to and all of the bacn generated by them would stay clear of their primary email account.

What really worries me is that if I don't do this stuff - hugging vampires and so on - my friends will see me as a bit of a wet blanket and will start to ignore me, especially deprioritizing coming to read my site. This, I suspect, is part of the psychology of bacn.

What it also does is highlight another - perhaps the greatest necessity of all - prioritizing one's time to best effect and to the benefit of the greatest number.