What shall we do with the information?

The Government has today announced a competition. They would like ideas from the general public of innovative ways that the terabytes of data the government has collected on us could be put to use. There's even a £20,000 cash prize.

Here's my suggestion. How about not losing the information?

On a related note, is the prize in any way related to this £20,000 prize?

Tags: government data competition innovative use lost data discs

Best. News story. EVER!!!

Do you know how long I have waited for a news story like this?

I have longed for the day when I could flick to the news and see a headline like this:

Our planet will not be sucked into a black hole made in a new physics facility, a report concludes.

That is AWESOME!!!

Ahem. Back to being serious.

Whilst I trusted that the Earth would not be in imminent danger - it would be extremely improbable for a black hole or killer strangelet to be produced that would last long enough to pose a threat to the planet - I also know that scientists love Dougals Adams, and the improbability of this event occurring put me in mind of the following:

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this — partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:

If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on!

He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air.

It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Dr Adrian Kent, of the University of Cambridge, has queried whether enough thought has gone into the risks of this kind of experiment. Granted, the risk of disaster is improbable, but Dr Kent's question is this:

How improbable does a cataclysm have to be to warrant proceeding with an experiment?

What is the threshold of improbability? How unlikely should the risk of total destruction be for an experiment to go ahead? Only mostly likely that the Earth will survive. Reasonably certain that almost everyone won't dissolve?

Any mad scientists (or not so mad scientists) want to weigh in here?

Next run?

OK, having done the BUPA race, I have my eyes on a half marathon - Run To The Beat.

Another 10K run would be a good training run as part of this. And by coincidence, the end of August sees another 10K run - a global 10K run.

The Nike+ Human Race, a 10K race pitting 24 cities around the world against each other.

Might be fun...

Tags: Nike Human Race 10K Run to the Beat running addiction

WTF?!?!?

Well, I had thought my first post of the day would be to lay into those supporters of Hillary Clinton who have decided that they would have someone Hillary virulently opposes get into the White House, rather than someone from her own party with broadly similar views. That's good for the cause of feminism, we'd rather see an old, rich, white man get in (ie, keeping the status quo). Score one for the sisterhood!

Instead, I'm flabbergasted by Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski, a member of the "we don't like immigrants" party, claiming that the "soft-touch pro-immigration, socialist BBC" are somehow responsible for increased attacks on Polish immigrants.

But Poles are "good" immigrants, because they are "white Christians" and here I am using Mr Kawczynski's words exactly as he used them.

So remember folks, you can be non-white, non-Christian, legally present in this country and working hard paying your taxes and still be evil. But a Polish immigrant claiming benefits would be good, because they are both white, and Christian.

With this statement, the Conservatives are now occupying the same ground that the BNP held during the recent London elections. They had shifted from their usual "we only like the white English" stance, to a grudging acceptance of Paddies and Polacks, since they are "white and Christian, innit". But if you are a darkie or a Mozzie, you can fuck off back to wherever you came from (hilariously, somewhere in Britain since these retards haven't figured out you can be native British and yet not white or Christian...).

Oh, for the avoidance of doubt, the offensive language in the paragraph above is for the purposes of satirising the attitudes of the BNP and their supporters, and does not reflect my opinions. Just in case you hadn't got that.

Back to the attitudes of the Conservatives. Mr Kawczynski believes the BBC have demonised Polish people, when in fact "nine out of ten immigrants to our country" are not Poles. According to Polish government figures, there are 2 MILLION Polish people IN LONDON ALONE. Let's assume that figure is incorrect, but that there are 2 million Poles in the whole of the UK. That means that there are 18 million immigrants from other countries. So one third of the population of the UK has arrived on these shores very recently? If we look to the last census, will we find that the population of the country is just above 40 million? No, we won't.

Because one third of the population of this country isn't an immigrant. Moreover, when discussing the "vast swathes" of immigrants coming to this country, the implication is left that they will stay. Every. Last. One. This isn't true. Most of them leave, and leave within a couple of years. The numbers of people entering this country is immaterial, the figure that counts is net immigration. How many are currently present.

But Mr Kawczynski does have a valid point when he highlights his "genuine concern about the handling of immigration by the media in this country". But the BBC shouldn't be the target.

Who is portraying Eastern Europeans as benefit cheats?

According to Mr Kawczynski this figure should be 20 million.

Here's a "bastion of the liberal elite" laying into the Poles.

Who is it that is trying to demonise Eastern Europeans again?

I guess Romanians aren't white and Christian enough...

And this is just the more "upmarket" of the right-wing conservative press. I don't even want to look at what The Sun has to offer. If Mr Kawcynski genuinely believes that it is "liberals" that are to blame for the increase in attacks on Polish immigrants, then he isn't monitoring his party's favourite newspapers very well.

All told, this was a pretty shocking and shabby attack by the Tories, fronting an "ethnic" candidate and defending a "minority group" so that they can pretend they aren't being racist, when in fact the underlying message is "white Christian good, all else bad". Still, if the Conservatives leach off the BNP support, at least we might see one bunch of odious cretins go extinct. And at least the Tories can be reined in.

Public "must back 2012 Olympics"

That's right folks, enjoyment is mandatory, and remember, if these Games fail it is YOUR fault for not being 150% behind them and supporting them.

Nothing to do with the fact that most of us didn't want them, that we were lied to in order to support it, that the IOC were lied to in order to say their votes, that the cost has spiralled to unrecognisable figures, that mandatory VAT was "accidentally" left off of the estimates when we were making the bid, that many, many improvements to London have been abandoned and put on hold in order to get these Games that will somehow benefit North, South and West London, when all the work is happening in East London.

Europe's largest outdoor playing area? Yeah, let's build over that for the Olympics, and pretend this promotes sport.

Let's steal millions from SportEngland, so that we have money for stadiums that no British athlete will win medals in because we nicked their funding in order to build the stadiums!!!

Let's not bother improving transportation links from West London to East London, yet still miraculously expect people to get across London from Heathrow. Newsflash for you - the trains from Heathrow are full to bursting by the time they get out of Hounslow, and that's just with commuters. How much worse will it get with Olympic traffic?

Never mind, CrossRail will be there to alleviate the strain. Except it won't start services until 2017...

So, please forgive me if I am less than enthused about an event that I didn't have any intention of watching, that I never wanted anyway, that will leave us with multiple white elephants, that saps money from grassroots sport, that results in building works on existing sporting grounds, that disrupts funding to vital public transport schemes and that does nothing for the country outside of a limited area of London. And even East Londoners may find themselves priced out of East London by the Olympics.

Tags: London 2012 Olympics white elephant over budget public must support