the corner office

There was supposed to be a family gathering this weekend to see my aunt and uncle who were due to fly out from South Africa yesterday. It looks like we won't be doing that because of the volcano.

Volcano.

Here's an interesting statistic:

Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now.

(via)

.. and today it's the Tories buying votes with a kick-back for being married. You may have studies saying that a society with 'married' couples is less messed up than a society without, but it strikes me as sheer cargo-cultism to believe that people being married makes a society better. Maybe the causality is the other way round?

Regardless - what people like David Cameron don't understand is that sometimes it's better for families to not be together. Creating financial incentives for marriages means parents are more inclined to get and/or stay together when they're unhappy, which isn't good for the parents, or their children. And if they're not happy, how can you in good conscience believe that's better for society?

I'm so sick of that fscking word. I can't open a newspaper or read a blog or see a news program where it doesn't crop up. Enough already!

From June, the Times is going to start charging for access. I'd normally have linked to the article but now there's not much point. I enjoy reading the Times, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay to read it online. Call me cheap, but there are plenty of other free online newspapers, and as long as they're free, I'll stick with them. And when they're all charging for access, maybe I'll subscribe to one, or more likely, I'll spend less time giving a hoot about what's going on in the world and more time actually get some work done.

Also, I often link to articles in the Times, and it's not that I think I'm offering some kind of Links For Discerning Types establishment here, but paywalls mean it's not worth linking to the site because people might not be able to read the articles. Another annoying thing is that all the articles I've linked to in the past will now be unaccessible. And that's not cool, either.

Ah well.

Dear The Times.

Apparently:

All public services could be delivered online within four years under an ambitious pledge by Gordon Brown to create a paperless state and save billions of pounds, The Times has learnt.

Your reporting makes it sound as if this might remotely, within the vaguest proximity of what passes for human reality, be possible to pull off (by which I mean, make it happen in 4 years and save billions of pounds). Yet in truth, this is a bit like David Cameron promising to rejig gravity on Sundays so that we can just float up to the loo instead of having to trudge up all of the stairs to get there.

By reporting this tosh you encourage the politicians to keep doing it. Please stop.

Sincerely,
Colin

First bike commute of the year. Since the Great Timetable Shuffle of (December) 2009 the early morning and evening trains are shorter (length-wise) and more evenly spaced (temporally) so they're more cramped. Not so good for squeezing bikes onto. SouthEastern Fail.

Still, it's incentive to get back up to doing the entire distance to avoid one of the train rides. If this Glorious Spring Weather persists, I'll be riding most days from now on and it shouldn't take long.

But first, certain parts of me need to toughen up again.

The Karate Kid was on TV a couple of weeks ago. Now Leo goes around saying 'wax on, wax off'.

Fractals are maths being beautiful. Mandelbrot sets are infinite, meaning you can zoom into an image, going deeper and deeper and never stopping. The following video is just a 'camera' zooming into a fractal. And zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming:

From the source:

The last two minutes are very intense! The final magnification is e.214. Want some perspective? A magnification of e.12 would increase the size of one actual single particle, to the same size as the earths orbit! e.21 would make that particle look the same size as the milky way! e.42 would be equal to the universe! This zoom smashes all of them away. If you were “actually traveling” into the fractal, your speed would be faster than the speed of light.

It goes on for a bit, but for a fun optical trick, stare at it for a minute or so, then look away.

(via, via)

I grew up in South Africa in the 80s and I remember a news clip, an image that has stayed with me to this day. It was footage of a woman being necklaced. As she stumbled over with a burning tyre around her neck, people ran up and kicked her. Many years later, I remember seeing news footage of a man being stoned to death, somewhere in Africa. Another horrible image of a huge rock bouncing off a man's skull, other stones finding their mark, as he fell over, approaching death.

The Jon Venables story raises difficult questions, but when I hear the hordes demanding to know his identity, the newsreaders feigning outrage, it is those images of mob justice taken to its natural conclusion, which come to mind.

Lock the dude up in a cold grey cell for the rest of his life, if needs be, but handing him over to the mob is never the right thing to do.