Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
To quote Sam Gamgee: "Well, I’m back"…
Martin and I went to Barcelona for a week. We just love that city. I’ll try and post some impressions from the week once I’ve had a chance to absorb what else has been going on in the world, and had a chance to sort out the hudreds of photos that we took.
One bit of good news is that Microsoft has reversed its decision to take a neutral stand on the anti-discrimination bill that failed by just one vote in Washington state and will now actively support it again. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer explained:
After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda. Since our beginning nearly 30 years ago, Microsoft has had a strong business interest in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest and most diverse workforce possible. I’m proud of Microsoft’s commitment to non-discrimination in our internal policies and benefits, but our policies can’t cover the range of housing, education, financial and similar services that our people and their partners and families need. Therefore, it’s appropriate for the company to support legislation that will promote and protect diversity in the workplace.
Accordingly, Microsoft will continue to join other leading companies in supporting federal legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation — adding sexual orientation to the existing law that already covers race, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability. Given the importance of diversity to our business, it is appropriate for the company to endorse legislation that prohibits employment discrimination on all of these grounds. Obviously, the Washington State legislative session has concluded for this year, but if legislation similar to HB 1515 is introduced in future sessions, we will support it.
Glad to see that Microsoft has done the right thing.
…What would it be? To mark the fact that 2005 has been designated Einstein Year, Sandy Starr at spiked and science communicator Alom Shaha have conducted a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators – including 11 Nobel laureates – asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing.
Professor Gerardus ‘t Hooft’s response is typically Dutch…
Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, delivered a speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Summit on Global Issues in Women’s Health on April 26, 2005. He took as his theme Women and HIV. His speech is well worth reading, because it conveys some of the seriousness of the issue, together with his anger and despair at the inability of the world to grapple with it. A short extract:
Just a few weeks ago, I was in Zambia, visiting a district well outside of Lusaka. We were taken to a rural village to see an "income generating project" run by a group of Women Living With AIDS. They were gathered under a large banner proclaiming their identity, some fifteen or twenty women, all living with the virus, all looking after orphans. They were standing proudly beside the income generating project … a bountiful cabbage patch. After they had spoken volubly and eloquently about their needs and the needs of their children (as always, hunger led the litany), I asked about the cabbages. I assumed it supplemented their diet? Yes, they chorused. And you sell the surplus at market? An energetic nodding of heads. And I take it you make a profit? Yes again. What do you do with the profit? And this time there was an almost quizzical response as if to say what kind of ridiculous question is that … surely you knew the answer before you asked: "We buy coffins of course; we never have enough coffins".
It’s at moments like that when I feel the world has gone mad. That’s no existential spasm on my part. I simply don’t know how otherwise to characterize what we’re doing to half of humankind.
Do yourself a favour. Read the speech and think about what you can do to help make a difference. Then do it.
…as soon as possible. I’m going to be travelling for a few days, and I doubt that I’ll have time to dive into Internet cafes to keep up the stream of consciousness here. So you’ll just have to bide your time… Tot ziens.
The WEEE Man is made from the amount of waste electrical and electronic products that an average UK citizen will throw away in a lifetime, if he or she carries on disposing of products at the current rate.
At the risk of being flippant, the multiplication factor for Americans is probably 2.65.
…the concentration camp at Dachau was liberated by US troops. This post from Orac should be read, lest we forget.
I feel such a ham trying to complete games such as NeverWinter Nights in single-player mode, that I’ve never dared venture out into the multi-player version.
Perhaps what I need to do is ease myself into it gradually. For example, shuffling fridge magnets in a group – like this.
In the last entry (on the Animarus Rhinoceros Transport) I spoke of the marriage between Art and Engineering. That put me in mind of this amazing boat lift, which I suppose is more a marriage between Engineering and Art.
I love the marriage of art and engineering – particularly when it results in the feeling that you’ve landed in some strange universe… Check out the video, and then follow the link to the main page to find out more about Theo Jansen and his beasts.
Now, I run Windows here at home, but I’ve always been interested in what Apple were up to with the Macintosh. Actually, my interest predates the Macintosh – I did an in-house review of the Lisa for work, way back in 1983. And for a time, my first home computer was an Atari ST running as an Apple Macintosh using the Spectre GCR emulator developed by Dave Small. But eventually I went over to the dark side (as some of the Apple enthusiasts would say) and adopted the Windows platform, starting with Windows 95.
Be that as it may, today sees the launch of the latest incarnation of Apple’s Macintosh operating system, in the shape of OS X 10.4 – the "Tiger".
And, over at Ars.Technica, John Siracusa has done a really magnificent job of reviewing the operating system. It’s a long review (21 pages – and apparently the PDF version available to subscribers weighs in at over 100 pages), but well worth reading. He shares my passion for metadata, so I’m pleased to see that metadata is at last beginning to take its rightful place in the file system fabric. I can see parallels here with what Microsoft have done with the metadata in Windows, and what they want to do in Longhorn.
And the Macintosh operating system is built on Unix. One of the bad things about Unix was the severe restrictions of Access Control Lists (ACLs – who can do what to which files). While the Macintosh OS extended the capabilities of ACLs, it’s only now, with Tiger, that Apple have finally introduced the same flexibility as Windows offers with its ACLs. In fact, now Tiger gives the ability for a Tiger server to participate fully in a Windows network.
I suppose, in summary, my impression is that Apple and Microsoft are engaged in a game of leapfrog. It appears, reading this review, as though with the release of Tiger, Apple has finally caught up with some of the fundamental platform capabilities of Windows, and in some areas – the metadata and the GUI in particular, exceeded what Windows is currently capable of. I expect Microsoft to try and pass Apple when theyr release Longhorn late in 2006.
…the triumph of Faith over Reason. NBC did a telephone survey recently in the US on religion and American life. I find the answers to question 14 more than a little alarming:
Which do you think is more likely to actually be the explanation for the origin of human life on earth: evolution or the biblical account of creation?
Evolution 33%
Total biblical account of creation 57%
Don’t know/none of the above 10%
So, let me get this right, nearly twice as many Americans surveyed thought that the book of Genesis is literallly true as opposed to the demonstrable facts of evolution?
Now, that’s scary…
Following the publication today of the Attorney-General’s advice, this should be an interesting show to watch…
Excerpts from a February 2004 letter from Microsoft’s manager of government affairs in the state, DeLee Shoemaker, to Rep. Ed Murray (my emphasis):
"Our employees know that they will be treated fairly, without being subject to prejudice or discrimination. An essential element of those policies includes the company’s anti-discrimination policy that expressly states that it will not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
"Unfortunately, not all Americans experience this basic protection in their employment. It remains legal in 38 states to fire someone because of their sexual orientation. This is not only bad for business, it is bad for America. House Bill 1809 would simply and fairly extend to Washingtonians the fundamental right to be judged on one’s own merits. And it does so without any undue burden on our business environment.
"Microsoft strongly supports passage of HB 1809 and the additional protections it provides in our state’s law against discrimination. The principles it fosters are consistent with our corporate principles in treating all employees with fairness and respect."
All good stuff, except when the bill came up again this year, Microsoft switched its stance to one of neutrality, claiming it wanted to focus on issues more directly related to its business. Somehow the statement in the letter from 2004 that discrimination is "bad for business" got lost in the rush to focus.
I find it interesting that, despite Microsoft switching its stance, there were other big-name companies in the Washington area who saw no difficulty in continuing to support the bill. Companies such as Boeing, HP, Nike, Coors and Levi Strauss.
Microsoft folding up its tent in this fashion has left a very nasty taste in my mouth. My MSDN subscription comes up for renewal next month. It’s not going to be renewed. A small gesture, but mine own.
It would have been nice to have been proved wrong.
It would have been good to be able to say, mea culpa, I got it wrong about good old Tony. Forget about the fact that I’ve previously written that I’ve come to dislike and distrust him with a passion – he really is the man for the job of Prime Minister; someone who holds himself to the very highest of standards and who would not, ever, mislead the country.
Except that, it would appear that not only did he mislead the country on the legal basis for taking it into the war in Iraq, he also misled his own cabinet and parliament colleagues. Today, The Guardian has published a leaked version of the summary advice from the Attorney-General given to Tony Blair on March 7. As the Guardian states in its leader today:
It is little wonder the government struggled so hard to keep secret the attorney general’s March 7 advice on the legality of war. It is, in more ways than one, an extremely troubling document. The extracts we publish today bear little relation – in tone or content – to the so-called summary which was presented to both cabinet and parliament as they weighed up the morality and legality of going to war in Iraq just 10 days later. The March 17 document was stripped of all the nuances, qualifications and caveats contained in the March 7 opinion. It could not conceivably be regarded as a summary of the earlier advice. Both cabinet and parliament were – to put it at its mildest – kept unforgiveably in the dark. It looks rather worse than that: it looks as if they were deceived.
As a result of this damning charge, Blair has now released the complete March 7 document – something that up until this point he has adamantly refused to do. And indeed, it is "an extremely troubling document". It bears precious little relation to the dumbed-down final version that was put before the cabinet and parliament on March 17. Something happened in those ten days that changed the almost obsessively careful language of the original document into one that essentially said: "Nothing to worry about, chaps – let loose the dogs of war"…
So, previous Labour voters, the choice is yours – do you ignore the smell of Blair and vote for Labour with a clothes-peg clamped to your nose, as Polly Toynbee advises, or do you look at the alternatives, as Frances Beckett suggests? Increasingly, I would be drawn to the latter (as long as it’s not of a Conservative, BNP or UKIP flavour).
Two weeks ago, I mused on how news was being presented to the public by the media in the context of the "war on terror" and used the reporting on the Kamil Bourgass case as the example. In that piece, I referred to an article, written by Duncan Campbell, that appeared in the Guardian that day.
Now it appears that the article has been pulled from the Guardian’s web site "for legal reasons". At least, that’s what Justin McKeating over at Chicken Yoghurt is claiming. And just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean to say that they’re not out to get you.
Well, at least the article by Jon Silverman is still there on the BBC website, and the article published on the 14th April by The Register makes for interesting reading.
And over at Europhobia is the definitive list of responses to idiots who mouth that tiresome variant of the "If you’re not with us, then you’re against us" rubbish. Absolutely right.
Over at Chicken Yoghurt, Justin McKeating documents the whole sorry tale. Read it and weep. And then politicians wonder why people lose their trust in them…
I took Vincent’s advice and went cycling. Bought a few plants at a local garden centre. In order to continue the celebration of Spring, I’ve uploaded a few more photos taken in the last couple of weeks around the neighbourhood. See Spring Day 2.
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