Being a behemoth: how Microsoft (and 9 others) make their billions

Great article

Seumas!

Cycle ride home as tracked by Google Latitude

My cycle ride home (KML data exported from Google Latitude running on my Nokia E72 and imported into Google Maps).


View Cycle ride home 20100816 in a larger map

Google Latitude location history

I thought you might be able to do this - track Google latitude location history. Interesting and slightly unnerving, have just turned mine on.

Fitzrovian Engineering

Snoopy Theology

Side of house landscaping project - phase 1

Assembly Rooms tent in PSG

Fitzroy meet up

We should do this actually. Where and when though? I personally think we should have a bbq in my back garden in Edinburgh.

mypccare scam

Interesting. We've had three phone calls from different people local to here, saying that someone phones up saying he's from Microsoft and there's something wrong with their PC. Seems like a persistent guy. The website www.mypccare.info (be careful visiting these kinds of sites: don't do it in IE!) seems at first glance to look legit, but a closer look shows it's pretty shoddy.

Anyway, whois tells me that the domain was registered by Abhishek Jaiswal in Calcutta. Not as UK as that flag on the website suggests then. Googling for the text on the page, shows the exact same quote on a list of similar "support" sites.

The scam is that they try to get you to allow remote access to your computer. People have lost lots of money through these types getting access to their financial information. Be careful out there!

I've been busy-ish

Hi guys, long time no post from me. I've been...well, all over the place...

I'm now mainly involved with a local Internet radio station: Siar FM (we've just recently renamed).

Actually, I'm going to be a guest on a show going out on next week. It's at 11am or 6pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have a listen! Cool show. A woman from KMUN Astoria, Oregon, was touring through the islands and I suggested she record one of her shows from our wee studio. So it's a mix of Gaelic, Blues and Jazz stuff (with a couple of poems).

Anyway, I'll try and tune in a bit more often, particularly since there's that £100 in the beer fund (at least, I assume that's where the adwords cash goes ;-)

Cabinet of Horrors

Okay, apologies for the ghastly image. But interesting, I think, that many of the most stridently right wing and revolting cabinet members (Liam Fox, Eric pickles, philip hammond) are actually those that went to state schools. As someone said to me a couple of years ago - we don't have anything to fear from Tory Etonians. It's the grammar school boys who do all the damage.

This is great - 3 cheers for Courtney Love!!!

Hole – Skinny Little Bitch

Cycles attached to these railings will be removed

Cycles attached to these railings will be removed

London Orbital

It's taken a couple of months, but I've finally finished "London Orbital" (which is more than I've managed with anything else by Iain Sinclair). Must admit, felt more relieved than satisfied to have finished it. I liked the idea of the book (an off-beat attempt to walk the M25) and where he's coming from, and found many of the digressions illuminating but find his writing style to be too dense and heavy going to really enjoy it, and his propensity to conceptualize everything into some kind of grand inter-connected metaphor just ends up being a bit tiresome.

Goodbye to Widdecombe

I don't know if it's a sign that I'm getting old, she's got better or the world has got an awful lot worse, but the news that Ann Widdecombe is retiring from the House of Commons left me feeling (ever so slightly) regretful. Ten years ago she was a figure of utter hatred and I would have been thrilled to see the back of her, but now she seems more like an eccentric old aunt.

Garden in Jamaica Mews

Palm trees in the New Town!

We're monitized!

Cheque arrived from Google this afternoon.

Longniddry

Taken with my new Nokia E72 yesterday afternoon.

MadMen yourself

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

CHOON

A Life Elsewhere. First 3 minutes especially.

The Dunning Kruger effect

I came across this reference to the Dunning Kruger effect. "The paper compares people's skill levels to their own assessment of their abilities. In hindsight, the result seems self-evident. Unskilled people lack the skill to rate their own level of competence. This leads to the unfortunate result that unskilled people rate themselves higher than more competent people." This poses the question - am I so competent that I downgrade my abilities, or am I just incompetent?!

BitNami: Open Source. Simplified

This is good!

1963 as seen from 2010

Just watched Episodes 1 & 2 of Madmen series 3. Total genius. Urgently need to move to upstate New York and start commuting to Madison Avenue.

Are environmentalists bad for the planet?

Just caught the end of quite an interesting Analysis on Radio 4, in which Newsnight's 'Ethical Man' asked whether environmentalists were bad for the planet ? His point being that the green movement's hard line approach makes other people hostile and resistant to environmental issues. It's a debate worth having, I think. Personally, I like the sound of most of what they have to say, but agree that most of the population are so offended by the implications of a lot of it that it makes them resent and reject the whole issue, often angrily. Think I'll Listen Again and get the beginning.

2010 as forseen in 1972

Somebody's unearthed a child's book from 1972 which predicts how we will all live in 2010.

Ah takes me back

The Buckfast Code

The Secret Life of Chaos

Did anyone see The Secret Life of Chaos on BBC4 last night? Excellent documentary on chaos theory. You'll have heard some of it before (Turing, Mandelbrot etc.), but it was a very watchable and well put together overview, nicely directed, and not much actual maths! They get into the relationship between chaos and evolution, and there's a fascinating bit where some maths geniuses develop a programme that enables a computer to learn how to make a little virtual avatar guy walk around without falling over. What they actually do is produce 100 different avatar-controlling programmes, then let the computer evolve a better programme through natural selection. It ends up with a far more sophisticated ability to control the avatar than a human would have been able to programme from scratch. It's repeated a few times (see the link), including next Saturday (17th) at 8.30pm, or is on iPlayer.

Will Self on catastrophe books

"Just because we've been crying wolf for decades now it doesn't mean that there isn't a whole pack of them, it just means they haven't come to blow your house down yet."


(I just read elsewhere that 'catastrophe' literally means a 'down stroke' in fortunes.)

mathematical constants

If I was going to make two sure-fire predictions for the future, they would be that the world is going to get warmer, and that some weirdo will calculate an even higher number for pi.

Best of the Fitz 2009

Google Analytics may possibly say otherwise, but Fitzrovian Tuesdays has been a vibrant and important part of the cultural landscape for much of the last decade, and 2009 was no exception. As ever, and in no particular order, below is my traditional list of highlights from the last year:

1) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/01/when-central-bankers-rescued-then.html

2) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/02/diana-and-acteaon-to-stay-in-scotland.html

3) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/05/edna-unveiled.html

4) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/09/well-bit-of-good-news.html

5) http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/2009/10/barmy-nutters-party.html

Another Ice Age?

Climate change sceptics often protest that in the 1970s, scientists claimed we were heading for another ice age. Those who believe in the threat of global warming generally counter that there were only a very small number of such claims, which the sceptics deliberately keep bringing up in order to muddy the waters. The famous piece that is meant to have inspired the sceptical line of argument was a cover story in Time magazine in 1974. I just Googled it, and was surprised to find that it's on the Time website here. They must have digitized their archives. Interesting to actually read the original.

Here's someone's blog post showing that there were far more papers predicting warming, even in the 60s and 70s.

In Order to Edit

Yowsa.

Morrissey on Desert Island Discs: suicide is 'honourable' - Telegraph

Morrissey on Desert Island Discs: suicide is 'honourable' - Telegraph

They F*** You Up

This is brilliant. Completely unnerving but brilliant.

Muji Lego

Thought it was time for a frivolous post, so - Muji Lego. Every north London home should have a set. What's with all that papery stuff? They seem to be missing the point.

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air

I've posted about David JC MacKay's Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air before, but as I said in a comment to the last post, I've now read the whole book. Thought I'd summarise some key points in case you can't face the whole thing.

In summary, MacKay says: "First, we electrify transport. Electrification both gets transport off fossil fuels, and makes transport more energy-efficient. (Of course, electrification increases our demand for green electricity.) Second, to supplement solar-thermal heating, we electrify most heating of air and water in buildings using heat pumps, which are four times more efficient than ordinary electrical heaters. This electrification of heating further increases the amount of green electricity required. Third, we get all the green electricity from a mix of four sources: from our own renewables; perhaps from "clean coal"; perhaps from nuclear; and finally, and with great politeness, from other countries’ renewables. Among other countries’ renewables, solar power in deserts is the most plentiful option. As long as we can build peaceful international collaborations, solar power in other people’s deserts certainly has the technical potential to provide us, them, and everyone with 125 kWh per day per person."

Or, in a bit more detail, he also provides a 10-page synopsis.

And here's one of his proposed possible energy plans (plus a diagram summarising some alternative plans).

Some other bits worth looking at:

His calculation of total possible UK renewable energy. His is the column on the left, compared with some more conservative estimates. (He is deliberately ignoring economic, political and practical factors at this point and concentrating only on possible energy output from renewables.)

And if you're wondering what you could do, here's some bits about how he reduced his home energy consumption by two thirds (turning down the thermostat and reducing draughts have the biggest impact), more here (5 pages or so). For buildings, he's particularly into heat pumps, more detail here. And some stuff on gadgets here, and why articles about standby and unplugging mobile phone chargers have the emphasis wrong (though you should still switch off gadgets and unplug chargers anyway).

Oh, he's got a pretty good blog too, which I hadn't realised.

Doom and Gloom

I think we've had it. Little prospect of the politicians agreeing anything tangible at Copenhagen, nevermind anything like what's needed. Meanwhile, the scientific prognosis seems to get worse and worse, while the general public continue to show astounding levels of uninterest and scepticism about global warming. I just don't see how we're going to get out of it.

Mundane Science Fiction

Just heard the editor of this book on radio 4 talking about 'mundane science fiction', a term I hadn't heard before. Meaning fiction derived from existing or imminent scientific research, rather than the far-fetched stuff of the movies, with teleportation, light-speed travel etc. (essentially fantasy magic). The anthology paired research scientists with writers to inspire the short stories. (Indirectly, also reminded me of the excellent insultingly stupid movie physics site.)

Barmy Nutters Party

Watching that absurd pillock Nick Griffin gurn and sweat his way through Question Time last night like an odious, boss-eyed toad poured into a suit inspired me to have another look at the BNP membership list that was leaked last year (http://wikileaks.org/leak/bnp-membership-list.txt).

Bizarre bunch, with a few more surprising weirdos among the run-of-the- mill bampots and utter tossbags. As well as the expected nightclub bouncers, body builders, martial arts instructors, ex-servicemen, former policemen, prison officers, army surplus store owners and military history buffs, I counted around 30 musicians, 15 proof readers and 10 artists (self-defined). There are 15 or so former Tory councillors/local party officials/canvassers, about 5 of the same from Labour, a couple of Lib-Dems, a bunch of UKIP defectors, another bunch of defectors to UKIP and about 10 assorted shop stewards and union reps. There's even 3 former Green party activists - part of a weird environmental/conservationist/heritage fringe, who are presumably dedicated to preserving England's green and pleasant land just as it was for the 'indigenous' Britons during the last ice age. Worrying number of people who are into camping and fishing and stuff too - next time I take to the hills I'll be a bit more suspicious of anyone else I meet.

This all comes from the 'Interesting Notes' column, which also contains the following curiosities:

"Will not be renewing 07 (objects to being told he shouldn't wear a bomber jacket)"

"member describes himself as a witch: potential embarrassment if active"

"Pubic speaker [sic]. Has two suits of medieval 14th & 15th century armour and can joust for rallies"

"Hobbies: amateur radio & 'church-crawling'. Quaker"

"Former policeman (anti-terrorist branch, Met)"

"Media worker (Sky TV), background in PR/advertising. Pleased to offer advice"

"Semi-professional multi musician (traditional/British folk). Pagan. Classic motorcycle enthusiast. Huntsman"

"Active Odinist/member of Pagan organisations. Hobbies: folklore"

"Ex-Conservative and then Lib-Dem councillor, ex-chairman of local Green Party and UKIP member Minister of Religion. Cert. Ed. Hobbies: steam railways" [missed a couple of parties out there]

"Hobbies: artist: oil painting (willing to paint pictures for raffles, etc). Writer: screenplays"

"Will not be renewing 07 ("Jehova God only real hope for mankind") Company director"

"Specialist in pre Raphaelite style portraiture."

"Hobbies: sewing crafts, knitting, animal welfare, military history"

"Hobbies: walking, cycling, bird watching, church architecture/history, bell ringing"

"Activist Tour guide (Peterborough Cathedral). Writer for local paper (church/village history). Runs a Christian singing group. Vegan/supporter of organic produce. Members of the Woodland Trust, National Trust, VIVAI, Anglican Society, Open Doors, British Israel World Federation"

"Hobbies: military vehicles - owner of a WW2 jeep. Singer with a ladies' barbershop chorus and quartet. Solo singer: Vera Lynn act."

"Will not be renewing 07 (embarrassed by revelations in Private Eye re. councillors)"

"Composer/musician/lecurer. Doctor of Philosophy (Composition) PhD. Cert. ED:FE, BA (Hons), BTEC computer software. Soundtrack writer, ethnomusicologist. Hobbies: music (performance), rambling/hiking, ornithology, history, poetry"

"Osteopath (Classical). Reflexology. Former lecturer in osteopathy. Advisor on posture/diet/nutrition/health matters. Hobbies: marathon running, camping, motorcycling, folk music. Writing (health issues). Working with nature/conservation organisations" [and lynching...]

"Retired chiropodist. Devout Christian lay preacher (non-conformist churches: Baptist, United Reformed, Presbyterian etc). Hobbies: walking, Scottish country dancing, horse riding, writing, poetry."

"activist - Makes kites with BNP logos etc."

Nutters.

Oh, and in case you happen to have a stamp, an envelope and something really unpleasant to put in it handy, Nick Griffin's address is on there too. (It's in Wales, not England, strangely.)

Awwwwwwww!

Hoglets born in hotel reception

(Just round the corner from us).

#122 Moleskine Notebooks

More on the Stuff White People Like blog I posted a while back on Fitz, now a bestselling book. Turns out it was written by a young Canadian (white) guy to amuse his friends and just took off. As he says, "the more I started writing, the more I realised that I wasn't writing about other people, I was writing about myself. And I was full of far more self-loathing than I had expected." We need to work harder at the Fitz (without the self-loathing if possible)! Google Analytics not too encouraging so far..

(I have several Moleskine notebooks)

Maybe things aren't so different in France

France Telecom executive resigns after employee suicide tally rises to 24.

Well, a bit of good news...

In the face of pressure from the Fitz and others, Heritage Lottery Fund have come up with some dosh for Bletchley park after all...

Why we're all doomed

Check this out. A campaign has been launched in the US called CO2 is Green, with an 'educational' off-shoot, Plants Need Co2. Grauniad piece about it here. Now, compare the profile of the nice cuddly environmental expert here (on about page of Plants Need CO2) with the biog of the same bloke here. Curious that he forgot to mention his chairmanship of the US Oil and Gas Association, US Natural Gas Supply Association or Honorary Directorship of the American Petroleum Institute in his biog on 'Plants Need CO2'. Must have slipped his mind. These bampots are admittedly of marginal influence, but every little seed of doubt they plant helps to delay Americans facing up to the fact that they produce a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions each year. Don't know how the b*st*rds can sleep at night.

Vive le Sarko

Maybe it's because he hasn't exactly enjoyed excessive growth himself (with his stack heels and specially chosen short people in photo ops), but Nicholas Sarkozy has commissioned and endorsed a report by Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen that criticises the obsession with GDP growth. “For years, statistics have registered an increasingly strong economic growth as a victory over shortage – until it emerged that this growth was destroying more than it was creating,” says Sarko. You've got to hand it to him - not the most likeable bloke, but this is good. (He and Angela Merkel have also been good on the whole financial crisis, and are pretty good on the climate talks.)

And here's Jonathan Porritt talking about it, while revealing for the umpteenth time that the Treasury (mostly under Brown, alas) has frequently been malign, obstructive and anti-progressive.

Recession Road

This looks great but not yet had time to read it, alas.

Why I believe again

A N Wilson, back in the fold.

Keith on Keith

Just watched the Keith Allen program about Keith Floyd on the Channel 4 website. I say watched - actually had to abandon it about 1/2 way through because it was so dire. Nice countryside around Avignon though, kudos to Floyd for going to ground (as it were) in a lovely part of the world.

Why I love the EU

Great stuff from the EU. But cue hysterics from the CBI, Human Resources professionals and everyone else dedicated to keeping this country as stressed, over-worked and miserable as possible.

Nothing to be frightened of

Anyone read this? I'm just about to - on my desk courtesy Amazon today.

To balance things out I'm also reading Tintin: The Complete Companion in tandem with reading Tintin stories to Jenny at bedtime. To pick up a conversation from a while ago, I don't think Herge was fascistic at all - just a product of his times.

Glum Councillors

This is the sort of thing the internet is supposed to be for.

Climate scepticism - on the rise!?

God this is depressing. There are dozens of reasons for this: a scientifically ignorant population, a hopeless and incompetent media, insufficient leadership from government, the ability of lobbyists and business interests to spread confusion, and a nation of people that just don't want to face up to truths that at best will require big changes in their lifestyle and, at worse, are terrifying. What the hell is to be done?

Iconic ironmongers to close doors

This is a shame, I've done quite a bit of lunchtime ironmongery shopping in this place over the past couple of years.

Government rejects Bletchley rescue petition

Very poor.

Loch Tay from Ben Lawers

By a couple of m'colleagues who had a bit of a hill walk a couple of weeks ago. Almost as spiritually significant as Kinross Services...

Malwarebytes

Just a quick useful bit of IT posting - Malwarebytes is very good at removing malware from PCs. Best of breed kind of thing.

Edinburgh

Anyone in town for the Festival? Have signally failed to get down to that London this year (so far).

Grey Skies

http://open.spotify.com/track/0dkAnXwATMm8xQmbxabZ68

Antichrist

Just reading the review of this movie disturbs me somewhat.

Yo

Just checking in. How is everybody? I'm going to do some renovation work on my commuter bike over the next few days and will post a picture of it when it is done. I was embarressed by the ammount of rust on it when I met Colin last time.

Without Hot Air

Heard this Cambridge physicist bloke on the radio. He's written a free e-book about how much energy we use, and how much alternative energy provision we'd have to bring in to cover it if we don't reduce consumption.

Gross National Happiness - again

The Bhutanese have had a lot of mileage and publicity out of their GNH idea over the years (including on this blog), but I didn't realise how seriously they took it. It's actually a constitutional requirement to consider the impact on happiness of any proposed political proposal, and they have devised a complex methodology for monitoring it:

"the Bhutanese produced an intricate model of well-being that features the four pillars, the nine domains and the 72 indicators of happiness.

Specifically, the government has determined that the four pillars of a happy society involve the economy, culture, the environment and good governance. It breaks these into nine domains: psychological well-being, ecology, health, education, culture, living standards, time use, community vitality and good governance, each with its own weighted and unweighted G.N.H. index.

All of this is to be analyzed using the 72 indicators. Under the domain of psychological well-being, for example, indicators include the frequencies of prayer and meditation and of feelings of selfishness, jealousy, calm, compassion, generosity and frustration as well as suicidal thoughts.

“We are even breaking down the time of day: how much time a person spends with family, at work and so on,” Mr. Dorji said.

Mathematical formulas have even been devised to reduce happiness to its tiniest component parts. The G.N.H. index for psychological well-being, for example, includes the following: “One sum of squared distances from cutoffs for four psychological well-being indicators. Here, instead of average the sum of squared distances from cutoffs is calculated because the weights add up to 1 in each dimension.”

This is followed by a set of equations:

= 1-(.25+.03125+.000625+0)

= 1-.281875

= .718

Every two years, these indicators are to be reassessed through a nationwide questionnaire, said Karma Tshiteem, secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission, as he sat in his office at the end of a hard day of work that he said made him happy."

(From the New York Times.)

Edna unveiled

It was my old schoolfriend Richard Maclean! I found out as - being a bit irritated with Edna's witticisms - I restricted comments to site members only and he emailed me to complain...

So not Seumas but relatively close geographically speaking as Richard's based in Inverness.

JG Ballard

JG Ballard has died. A sad loss. Perhaps the world had become too much like his dystopian fictional one.

Gazza on Match of the Day 2 this evening

Making sense and looking reasonably well. Hurrah!

And in a similar vein...

America cheers as satirist delivers knockout blow to TV finance gurus.

Interestingly, mad Max (see below) upbraids Jon Stewart for not raising this sooner. Is Peston right to say that the British press has been much better at reporting on the markets and appreciating the seriousness of the crisis?

Global banking fraud

Tom sent me this article by Patrick Wolf in the FT the other day, which is a pretty sobering assessment of the implications of the current financial meltdown. The era of financial liberalisation has resoundingly failed, and it's not clear what will replace it. Poverty and suffering is likely to increase on a grand scale, and there's a serious risk of geo-political instability, more wars, the rise of extremist politics etc. And this from a guy who wrote a book a couple of years ago on how anglo-saxon style liberal democracy was the inevitable model for the world. 

This morning I heard this guy - Max Keiser - being interviewed on Radio 5. He also does a show on the BBC World tv news channel, and on Resonance FM (which is worth checking out more generally, by the way).  Now, there's more than a touch of the blogging crank about him, but he was refreshingly angry about the whole economic situation and incredulous about how governments are dealing with it, and how we're all complacently going along with it. I checked out one of his slightly shrill podcasts, and beneath the bluster he makes a lot of good points (as far as I can tell). For instance:

• Banks are effectively holding governments to ransom - give us more trillions or we'll blow up the economy. And we're going along with it. But while governments are desperately attempting to stabilise the situation for the good of their countries as a whole, the banks (and other large companies) are still motivated by corporate self-interest - they want the cash to continue to enrich themselves.
• Similarly, a couple of pharma companies in the US got a massive chunk of Obama's bail out in order to do a merger, and promptly sacked 17,000 people (would need to check the facts on this one) - not really the rationale for giving it to them in the first place.
• The whole 'toxic bank' model doesn't just get the bad assets off the balance sheet at vast expense for the taxpayer - it enables the banks to re-package the bad assets and sell them on (again) as commodities, and take fees for doing so. (This was part of what led to the problem in the first place: banks' liabilities - i.e. dodgy mortgage loans - were getting repackaged and sold on, so they ceased to be regarded as liabilities and instead became assets - and thus were not subjected to the same degree of risk analysis, as there were profits, commissions and bonuses at stake.)
• He reckons that media reporting on financial markets should be approached in the manner of a scandal sheet - trying to uncover fraud and bad practice, which has always been extremely widespread, but is only now getting a lot of attention. His view is that in the last 25 years, the dubious practices of dodgy 'bucket shop' stockbrokers have become standard practice throughout the financial industries. There is sharp practice at all levels, but everyone with a stake has been complicit, but kept schtum for as long as they were making cash. For instance, execs at Citibank and Goldman Sachs or somewhere were selling their customers financial products, but taking short positions on the same products themselves because they believed they would underperform. Similarly, they were also shorting on their own company's shares - in order to make cash for the company. Financial institutions invested in Madoff even though they must have known what was going on, because they still made massive returns. And so on.
• Quantitative easing essentially involves the government borrowing money to buy back its own loans. Hm... Historically, this kind of behaviour generally results in uncontrollable inflation. 

 I don't know how on the money his analysis is (to use an appropriate phrase), but he's certainly right that we should all be furious about what's going on and very politically engaged with it all. There's a lot at stake - and I don't mean wealth necessarily, but the state of society. But it all seems to complicated, and the sums of money involved so unreal, and nobody knows what the solution is, so we're just watching it all happen and hoping it will all turn out ok. 

By the way, he says buy gold. 

The Fitzroy - as good as ever

Colin and I had a beer last Wednesday in the Fitz. You'll all be pleased to hear that it is exactly the same as always. John, Seumas - any chance of a Fitz get-together this year?

They Rule

Anyone had a go at this? Interesting concept, though struggling to get any particularly striking results.

Meetup

Great site, what a good idea.

Fight global warming even if it's untrue

I quite like this line of argument, that was published in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph from Cafod. Of course, the sceptics were out in force the next week, but it makes sense to me. 

Fight global warming even if it's untrue

SIR – The longer I work on climate change, the less important I think it is whether or not the warmists or the sceptics are right. This may seem a rash statement, but hear me out. Just imagine a future where the majority of the world's climate scientists are proved wrong and global warming does not occur at the rates predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If we hadn't listened to them, we might enjoy the satisfaction of saying "told you so", but we'd still be living in a pretty miserable world. That world might not be much warmer but, my goodness, it would be beset by a host of other serious environmental issues: diminishing water resources, rampant deforestation, massive soil erosion, uncontrollable urbanisation and the frightening loss of biodiversity.

Peoples lives would be threatened and whole ecosystems destroyed because we hadn't bothered to address the causes of this environmental degradation under a global economic system that, in its current state, can only grow if nature dies.

Now imagine a world where we had listened to the climate scientists and started to change our resource-consuming behaviour and address the inequities of the global economic system. Although the warming still didn't materialise, we would have addressed a host of environmental issues and be living a largely pollution-free existence.

We may even be saying thank you to the climate scientists who, although they got it wrong, provided us the opportunity to create a cleaner, brighter and fairer world.

Dr Mike Edwards, CAFOD

And I think they should go ahead with the Severn barrage!

Spotify

Do you guys know about Spotify? Link to free sign up sans invitation here.

Diana and Actaeon 2

Diana and Actaeon to stay in Scotland

Hurrah! Some mealy mouthed labour MP (or MSP or whatever) on the Scottish news just now complaining about the use of taxpayers' money - bah to him.

Btw, i've granted all you chaps admin privs so you can hack around with FT

Oversight, should have done this a while ago. Everyone is now able to tinker with gadgets etc should they so wish.

Is anyone else here using Google Reader?

Because you can add a shared item widget into blogger which shows a feed from your google reader shared items (looks to right).

Bookshelves. Finally.

Have worked out where to get some decent bookshelves for the living room. Vitsoe. Thank god. Can die happy. Or at least with a decent shelving system that will integrate with the shelves I put up myself.

When central bankers rescued, then ruined, the world

John Lanchester seems to have been picking up some work for the New Yorker lately. This review of a book about central bankers is up to his usual standard - although he's Americanised his style a wee bit, or the editor has. Turns out his dad worked at HSBC in Hong Kong when he was a kid, which might explain his fascination with the global financial system over the last couple of years - over and above the more obvious reasons.

Mu Mu!

One for you John? Bill Drummond on the death (he hopes) of recorded music from Radio 3's 'Free Thinking Festival'. I heard this on the weekly Radio 3 Arts and Ideas podcast, which often has interesting stuff on it, despite the annoying presence of Philip Dodd. 

I increasingly find I don't care one way or the other what happens to recorded music - despite devoting about 15 years of my life to being absolutely obsessed with it. What a waste of time - I could have been doing something useful instead.

What is Stephen Harper reading?

Cats aside, this is the best website I've seen for a while - brilliant stuff from the writer Yann Martel

Apropos the below

The latest environmental disaster - Google

Sorry guys, to do the first global warming horror story of 2009, but this was a bit alarming. It seems that Google searches use up an incredible amount of energy. Like pretty much everything we do in the modern world.

This is probably as retrograde as anything in terms of cool

But I'm quite liking lolcats. It's related to the failblog thing and is (ummm) lots of pictures of cats with funny
captions. They've evolved their own lolcat-speak...





I've also spent yesterday evening playing with Windows 7 on a tablet PC. It's not bad (see below)...

Productivity plummets

The office has discovered Fail Blog.

Atheist Advertising

I like the look of this campaign. I agree with the sentiment of course, but also the quite cheery tone of it. The UK's high-profile public atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens) can be a bit of a turn-off with their truculence and aggressive materialism. I think this is a bit more gentle and positive.

Best of the Fitz 2008

Another year over. Much has happened, both good and bad, but frankly it's not been a vintage year for our blog. In 2004 we had an astonishing 302 posts - in 2008 it was down to just 30. Has Facebook killed the Fitz? Or have we all got better things to do - if so, I'd like to know what. Anyway, there was still plenty of good stuff and, for the record, here are my personal favourites in no particular order:

1) Rainy Edinburgh Morning from the No. 30 Bus

2)Christian the Lion

3)The Best Documentary Ever Made

4)The Drugs Don't Work

5)Happy pi Day

The Mouse hits 40

Interesting that the Mouse is now 40. I don't think I saw one until the early 1990s, which shows I guess how long even the most brilliant of inventions can take to be widely adopted.

If a thing's worth doing...

...it's worth overdoing. I bring you Edinburgh by Camera Phone, the blog.

Rainy Edinburgh morning from the No. 30 bus

From Fitzrovian Tuesdays

Playing around with Picasa web albums in accordance with my adoption of all things google. There's no "blog this" option, oddly...

Google Artist Themes

These are really good. I'm moving over to Google for all my internet "stuff" as my Yahoo account is overflowing with junk and Google are now completely winning on style...

On the McCain campaign trail..

Ok, I promise this will be my only post on the subject of the US election. I haven't got anything to add really other than what we've known since 2000 - that half the American electorate are completely bonkers. This piece on the sober, highly conventional CNN website it home to me once again. It seems that as crazy as Mccain is, many of his supporters are another couple of steps even further removed from reality.

Iain Banks on climate change

I was a bit surprised when I read Iain Banks's book on whisky to discover that he's a complete petrol-head, with a string of sports cars, land rovers etc. The book was more about cars than whisky.

However, he's now got rid of them all for environmental reasons and owns a solitary Toyota Yaris instead. Here's a short  interview he's done with Friends of the Earth.

If only there were more like him and fewer Clarksons.

Although I do sometimes regret that by the time I was old enough and earned enough to think about being into cars, the environmental evidence discouraged me from doing so.

The dark side of David Foster Wallace

Sad to hear that David Foster Wallace has commited suicide. I have to admit I never made it to the end of Infinite Jest, but I did enjoy a book of his essays that I once read.

The Rorschach Test

This actually looks like it might be quite good: http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

Visually faithful to the graphic novel, anyway.

Hammershoi

On at the Royal Academy. It's only till 7 Sep though so I don't imagine I'll make it down, which is a shame as I'd really like to see this. And the Hadrian one.

The Best Documentary Ever Made

YouTube is amazing - I'm so glad I've found this documentary about a Japanese professor trying to track down Einstein's Brain. Apparently they removed it in Princeton medical school during his autopsy, and kept it for research - but it went missing when the guy in charge of the project moved on. The Japanese prof just keeps approaching random hospital staff (or doctors with the same name who he's found in the phone book) and saying 'I rooking for Einstein brain', to their complete bafflement.

For years I've had a hazy memory of it, but it seemed so bizarre that I wondered whether I'd dreamed it or imagined it or something. Now I know that the doc exists as I remember it - although whether it's genuine, or a clever pastiche, or a profound art film, I'm still not certain. (Sketchy details on IMDB.)

Where it gets questionable is when he tracks down the guy who did the research to some town in Kansas, but doesn't know where he lives. He asks a local resident if he knows where to find him - and it turns out to be William Burroughs (see part 5 - 2:45)! Then when he does find the old researcher, he has the brain in a jar - and cuts him a slice on his chopping board to take home. You have to take a look.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6
Conclusion

Christian the Lion

Must admit to being delighted by the latest Youtube hit. It IS genuine, isn't it?

13 in a Volvo

Don't mean to racially stereotype, but no surprise to me that this chap seems to be an orthodox Jew from Tottenham. I've seen plenty such huge families crammed into Volvos around Stamford Hill. Although what was he doing in Wales?

Leaving New York

What a song, and what a video. Manhattan Island almost as much a spiritual home as Fitzrovia and Kinross Services I think.