Shock horror!

This is the sort of thing the anti-globalisation brigade ought to take notice of. An African leader requesting greater freedom of trade. His argument is fairly straightforward, and eminently sensible - that production subsidies in parts of the world rich enough that few people depend on farming are making it impossible for subsistence farmers in poor parts of the world to export their crops. He's actually appealing to the WTO not to get out, or radically change policy, but to do what it's trying to do more effectively.

The thing is, there are massive problems with the current world trade system, but the problem is not that we have too few barriers to trade. It's that the US & (especially?) the EU have a hypocritical attitude to trade, expecting developing countries to remove all import barriers,while maintaining subsidies at home that are only in the interest of the tiny minority of Europeans and Americans who actually work the land; damaging not only to developing countries but also to our own home markets and environment. The villain, of this particular piece at least, is not the WTO itself, but the countries on either side of the Atlantic who are determined to have their free trade cake and eat it.

posted @ 9:15 AM -

Egg-chasing update

I didn't even end up listening to the rugby, because I suffered severe insomnia last night (something I'm very glad I don't get often, because it's awful), so when my alarm clock went off only a couple of hours after I finally fell asleep, I just pressed the button and drifted off again. When I eventually woke up the news was good though - England won what sounded like a very close, tight game. As the review says, bring on the World Cup!

posted @ 7:20 AM -

Derivative Work vs Fair Use

I'm looking at covering the work on this site with a proper copyright notice and licence, of the sort provided by creative commons. At the moment the only part that is explicitly copyrighted is the photography section, but this won't do. Most importantly, I need to say something more explicit about withholding rights to the work hosted here that is not my own - there's my grandfather's treatise on Jewish history, and a couple of websites I host for past clients - though all of this stuff was published online by me, and most was designed by me (some was in collaboration, and for my grandfather's stuff the only part I can really claim is an as yet incomplete job of marking it up and annotating it), much of the content was not written by me.

For most of my own work, there is an appropriate licence ready-made in the creative commons' collection. It allows others to copy and distribute copies of the material, for non-commercial use only, and provided that I am clearly attributed as the originator. It also permits derivative works, provided that the derivative work is published under the same licence terms as the original. The trouble is, I'm not exactly sure what is considered a derivative work. Anything I can interpret it to mean is fine for the photography, and fine for the static bits of text, but I'm concerned about what it means with respect to this page. If someone quotes something I've written here, does that make their work a derivative work from mine, or is that sort of thing covered by the fair use provisions that are exempt from the usual licencing conditions?

It's an important distinction, because I don't want to stipulate licencing requirements for other people who want to quote me. To do so would inhibit potentially interesting discussion, without actually benefiting me in any way.

posted @ 6:28 PM -

Chasing eggs

Tomorrow morning (UK time) we will get a preview of the likely Rugby World Cup final - New Zealand v England. I've been looking forward to this for a while - these are after all the top two nations in the world rugby rankings, and from what I saw of the Super 12 while I was in NZ, the All Blacks have a very large pool of mighty impressive players to choose from. I find it hard to imagine anyone else (except possibly Australia, but they haven't been at their best lately) providing a serious challenge for the Cup, so I think one of these two will end up winning it. It looks like both coaches have name full strength sides, so this should be a good show.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be able to watch it live. We don't have Sky Sports in this house, and while normally I'd prefer to go down the pub anyway, it's at 8am. If it were a football game of similar importance no doubt there would be the odd place somewhere in London (a Walkabout Inn being the obvious choice, but I phoned both the Islington and Covent Garden ones and neither were doing this) given a special licence to open early so they could show it. Because fewer people in this country are interested in rugby, the best I think I'll be able to do is listen live on BBC Radio 5, and then possibly catch a replay on the big screen at the Islington walkabout 4½ hours later.

This is a result of pointless UK legislation that I actually find quite annoying. Sports fans like to complain about events being restricted to subscriber TV, but I really don't see that as a problem (except when they go to digital only, because too few pubs even have digital). Sports federations make vast sums of money out of TV rights, and the TV stations have to recoup that outlay somehow - if it means we have to watch in the pub, so be it, and after all if this happened often enough I could always just shell out for Sky Sports.

What bugs me is when an anachronistic law removes the 'watch in pub' option. There could be an argument that certain pubs (like my local, which is surrounded by houses) would be disturbing their neighbours if they opened at this hour, but the Islington Walkabout Inn is on a busy, noisy road (Upper Street), between a couple of other commercial premises (restaurants or cafés; I can't remember exactly), which are unlikely to have anyone sleeping in them of a Saturday morning, and may even be open themselves. So why can't a bunch of people gather in one place and watch an event that happens not to fit into the 12 hour window in which it has been decreed that pubs may open?

Anyway, if you do get the chance to watch the game live do so, because it's bound to be quality rugby, and then make fun of me for not managing to myself.

posted @ 3:31 PM -

Slowly, slowly, the bad news seeps out of Iraq (Independent, Telegraph, Herald Tribune). Not much to say really, except that perhaps this might just possibly imply that not all of Iraq is pleased about their 'liberation'.

posted @ 10:23 AM -

New look

A redesign of this site is underway. So far only the front page has been touched. Tell me what you think. Obviously any technical problems are worth reporting, and the more information you can give me the better. I'm also not totally sure about the look of it myself, so if you hate it now would be a good time to let me know, seeing as I haven't yet invested all that much time in it, but am about to.

posted @ 8:20 PM -

What I've always wanted

A device to separate egg white from the yolk. In a spectacularly unappetizing way.

I was looking for daft domain names, and while fool.com turned out to be a financial services company (The Motley Fool - I should have known), I knew stupid.com wouldn't disappoint.

posted @ 7:40 PM -

More fonty goodness

Identifont helps you identify fonts by their distinguishing features, and lets you look up a font to see a sample and some more information, like related faces. Great if you happen to be trying to emulate the look of a particular old book, and then realise that the actual font it's set in is very obscure, so it's worth finding alternates to use for the web. Not so great is the fact that the first question in the identify a font expert system refers to the letter Q, and the book isn't about marsupials or olde English games.

posted @ 8:37 AM -

Hooray for Microsoft!

That took you by surprise didn't it?

However, Microsoft have a typography department. As befits such a department, they present their information in a far more agreeable way than most of the (rather cold) Microsoft website, but much more importantly, they have supplied a resource I've been looking for for years.

You see, when designing a website, it's easy to pick fonts that look great on one's own computer, but don't exist on the majority of readers' computers. If the designer does a thorough job, the font will get substituted with something at least of the same genre, which is not too ruinous, but it still messes up the exact spacing and proportions, and can make quite a big difference to the feel of a pageful of text. On account of this, I always try to avoid using obscure fonts for the web, because I like to be able to preview a page just as other people will see it. This is quite contrary to what I do when laying out documents I'm going to print, where I try to use unusual fonts so that my work looks subtly distinctive.

The trouble is, unless I deprive myself of the unusual fonts, it's very hard to keep track of which fonts came with my basic install of Windows (and therefore will be common across the web), and which I've acquired since (and will therefore be less common). Even worse, I have no idea at all of what fonts come with other operating systems. At last I've discovered this list of fonts installed by particular software courtesy of Microsoft Typography.

posted @ 1:52 PM -

Ambassador with these Tim Tams you are really spoiling us

Those of us with fond memories of Australia and/or New Zealand will be pleased to hear that Tim Tams are now available in the UK; stocked by Tesco in fact. I was particularly amused to read that the product launch was at the Australian Embassy - is this normal?

Now all we need is for Cookie Time, who produce the best cycling fuel ever (OK, so bananas are better in theory, but have you tried to get the smell out of a waterproof pannier bag after a banana squished in it?) to expand their UK distribution beyond one shop. Unfortunately, something tells me that if they get noticed outside NZ they might have to do something about the suspicious resemblance their deranged mascot bears to a certain Sesame Street Cookie Monster (who incidentally has been having a bit of a rough time of late).

posted @ 7:51 AM -

Forget Wembley

What we really need is a new national stadium for Black Pudding Throwing, a game which consists in trying to dislodge the most batter Yorkshire puddings from a 20ft high plinth on the pub's gable wall by throwing underarm a 6oz Lancashire black pudding.

posted @ 7:00 AM -

Don't ask me why. Found lying around on the rocks by Frank Kitts Park, by the harbour, Wellington, New Zealand



January 10^th 2003
Click on the image if you can't read the words

posted @ 3:53 AM -

Note to self: get to Maine at some point to see this.

posted @ 12:02 PM -

Because quite a few people have either asked where Cleveland is or made clear that they are at least a bit confused about its location, here's a map with Cleveland as near the middle as I could get it.

posted @ 10:36 AM -

A young person's guide to weapons of mass destruction

Link courtesy of Greg, who also has some interesting reflections on trailers

posted @ 8:13 AM -

They seek them here, they seek them there

They seek those weapons everywhere.

I am every bit as surprised as my government claims to be that WMDs have as yet to show up in Iraq, because without the benefit of access to classified information I had always assumed that Saddam's behaviour implied guilt so strongly that he must be hiding something. Of course it is conceivable that this was his last laugh - to lead the US and Britain on a wild goose chase so that after his regime fell it could posthumously show them up - but I find it implausible that he would have planned in that way rather than planning for ongoing survival, as he always did in the past. One thing that could be said for him is that he was consistent over a long period, which was one of the reasons I maintain he could have been contained without there being any need to go and invade Iraq.

I still believe, as I said in my tediously long anti-war rant in March, that Iraq had a WMD programme, whether it had produced anything dangerous yet or not. Not having found anything doesn't prove it's not there, though it does seem to me to imply that there wasn't the huge evil arsenal that was claimed to exist. I also don't really care whether anything is found or not - finding it won't retrospectively justify the war, any more than a lack of WMDs would convince any of the war's supporters that it was unjustified.

What I am concerned about is all the rumblings that have been afoot about fabricated evidence. We were fed a picture of Iraq's readiness (both in terms of technology and intent) to launch airborne death at all and sundry which at the peak of their paranoia were close to rivalling the four minute warnings from when I was very little (but note the hugely important difference - the four minute warning was a response to a real threat). Never mind that WMDs haven't been found yet, Iraq proved the more dramatic predictions wrong simply by not launching any. And far from being a greater threat to the world than I had suspected, it showed itself to be even more of a spent force by collapsing quicker than I predicted.

Now if it were a simple matter of my government being wrong I could accept that. Sure, it's embarrassing, but their case for war hung on more than just this one issue, so if it were this simple it would be a cock-up that their credibility could survive. What concerns me is the likelihood that someone, be it the boss or a lowly eager-to-please civil servant compiling reports, has wilfully stretched evidence to support a weak case. Somewhere along the line it looks suspiciously like Saddam's political oponents say he has x, y & z or even just it would really suit us to be able to show he has x, y & z has been spun into yes, I can unequivocally state that he has z, y & z based on top secret documents that you can't see for yourself, but I assure you they are reliable. Being wrong is forgiveable. Deliberately misleading the country is not.

This is why in America there is talk of whether lying to justify a war constitutes grounds for impeachment. It's also why there is going to be a congressional inquiry into the matter. But here in Britain? The government do not see the need for an independent inquiry. What, precisely, do they not see?

Remember what I wrote, just a few paragraphs above, about why I still believe there was a WMD programme in Iraq prior to the war. If Saddam had nothing to hide, he would just have invited the UN in, made a very theatrical show of giving them access to whatever they wanted to see, and embarrassed his accusers, almost certainly averting his downfall in the process. Likewise with Tony Blair - if he has nothing to hide he can let the inspectors in.

So come on Mr. Blair, give the public our inquiry. Embarrass the Guardian, the Tory Party, the Liberal Democrats; embarrass me, by letting this inquiry prove your innocence, and then stand up and say well that was a waste of time and money, wasn't it? You should have trusted me all along.

Oh. You can't do that, can you?

posted @ 7:09 AM -