It's all got rather Kafka-esque as I try to resolve the ongoing Drosophila importation crisis!  It transpires that the people who have decided that importation of Drosophila should be covered by legislation aimed quite properly at preventing the import of diseased farm animals are a subsidiary of Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) called Animal Health.

Now clearly these people have a vitally important job, particularly in light of recent outbreaks of bluetongue, foot and mouth and the potential threat of avian influenza (to which we can add the problems currently afflicting honey bees).  But nowhere on their website do I see indication of why they feel they need to hold up my harmless flies, which are not an agricultural pest, transmit no disease, are not harmful, and in any case would be unable to survive outdoors anyway.  To add to that list of characteristics, these are weak strains carrying recessive lethal mutations.  This is how they describe themselves and their responsibilities:

Animal Health is the government's executive agency primarily responsible for ensuring that farmed animals in England, Scotland and Wales are healthy, disease-free and well looked after.

We also have responsibility for managing outbreaks of notifiable animal diseases, and in this way we support the farming industry, helping it compete successfully worldwide, protect the welfare of farmed animals and safeguard public health from animal bourn disease.

The agency become Animal Health on 1st April 2007 following the merger of the State Veterinary Service (SVS), Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate and Egg Marketing Inspectorate and the Wildlife Licensing and Registration Service.

We are sponsored by, and work on behalf of, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Scottish Executive and Welsh Assembly Government across Great Britain implementing the animal health and welfare policies primarily on farms, at livestock markets and during transport.

We also work for the Food Standards Agency to protect public health by ensuring that dairy hygiene and egg production standards are met.

We also regulate the trade in endangered species.

None of this seems to put the importation of research invertebrates under their control.

I spent an hour or so on the phone to them this morning, but I've been unable to make them budge.  I'm not quite sure what to do.  Perhaps we need to make a trip to the USA so we can bring them back as pets (and therefore exempt under the European Directive I was quoted).

I am beginning to feel like a character in a Franz Kafka novel, so I've tagged this blog article "humour".  If I didn't laugh, I would cry.

Over the weekend I've been playing around with Wordpress, having set up a blog over at wordpress.com, where you can set up a blog spectacularly quickly (as you can over with Google's blogger.com).  As a fairly experienced Joomla! user, I found the hosted blog slightly restrictive (for example I would have to pay a daily rate of $0.04 just to be able to edit the theme's css file).

I ended up doing a test installaion on my notebook, firstly using a dedicated database, then trying out incorporating its database within my main Joomla! database.  It turns out to be pretty straightforward to migrate content (though I imagine one would exceed the import limit quite quickly on an active blog).

The installation process is spectacularly straightforward if you have a bit of experience in dealing with MySQL databases.  The software is a modest download, and the installation really does take only five minutes!  I suppose this comes from the more restricted feature set.  The admin side of Wordpress seems pretty intuitive to me.  Perhaps Wordpress is the Mac of the blogosphere - pretty, intuitive, slightly restricted toolset, while Joomla! is the Linux dude of the blogosphere - highly tunable, expandable, flexible, but at times less than intuitive.  It will be quite interesting to see how Wordpress compares with the software I'm using on this Joomla! site (MyBlog partnered with JomComment).

For what it's worth, my intention had been to set up a satellite blog dealing with atheism, and particularly focussing on longer pieces, though publishing less frequently than I do here.  It's now online and accessible via the header menu of this page, with one brief article and three in the works.  Watch this space! 

The Chairperson of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council has announced an alternative therapy 'crackdown', according to the BBC news. How interesting:

It will not judge clinics on whether therapies are effective, but rather on whether they operate a professional and safe business.

According to the news article, there are over 150,000 practitioners of CAM in the UK. How many of these practitioners will apply to the register is unknown, but it is voluntary!

Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter's Peninsula Medical School, said: "There does need to be more rigour in the regulation of complementary medicine as there will certainly be cowboys out there. "However, I have concerns that the regulator does not have mandatory powers and is not looking at the efficacy of these therapies."

Health minister Ben Bradshaw has clearly been hoodwinked, as he welcomed the establishment of the CNHC.

 "Members of the public who use these therapies will be able to check whether the practitioner they're seeing is registered with the CNHC," he said. "If they are, they have the reassurance of knowing that they have had to meet minimum standards of qualification and that they have signed up to a rigorous code of conduct."

So, let's see. The CNHC register is an entirely voluntary affair. It will not judge on the effectiveness of the quack remedies. It will merely evaluate the safety of the practitioners. Can a quack remedy that may induce a patient to forgo effective conventional medicine be truly classed as safe?  It is sad that the "rigorous" code of conduct does not include evidence that the quack therapy actually works. 

The CNHC has been set up "to enhance public protection, by setting standards for registration with CNHC."  Ofquack, as we might think of it,

...has been developed with the help of complementary healthcare practitioners and with support from the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health. The Department of Health has consistently supported the CNHC throughout its start-up period and is committed to establishing the CNHC as the national voluntary regulator in the complementary healthcare field.

I await comments from the bolgosphere with bated breath...

First up, The Quackometer with "Ofquack's Toothless Squawk", in which the amusing URL http://www.ofquack.org.uk  makes an appearance...it's a very lucid exposition of just what's wrong with Ofquack, and builds on a track record of related articles.

The Windows Internet Explorer (Pre-Release Beta 2 Version 8) Privacy Statement makes for interesting reading.  Some excerpts follow (emphasis mine)

Suggested Sites

Suggested Sites is an online experience designed to show you which websites you visit most, and to provide you with suggestions of other websites you might be interested in visiting. When you turn on Suggested Sites, your web browsing history is sent to Microsoft, where it is saved and compared to a frequently updated list of websites that are similar to ones you visit often. You can choose to pause or stop this feature from sending your web browsing history to Microsoft at any time. You can also delete individual entries from your history at any time. Deleted entries will not be used to provide you suggestions for other websites, although they will be retained by Microsoft for a period of time to help improve our products and services, including this feature. Any websites you visit while InPrivate Browsing is active will not be sent to Microsoft.

When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with some standard information from your computer such as IP address, browser type, regional and language settings. To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included. For example, if you visited the Microsoft.com search website at http://search.microsoft.com and entered "Seattle" as the search term, the full address http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=Seattle&qsc0=0&FORM=QBMH1&mkt=en-US will be sent. Address strings might unintentionally contain personal information, but this information is not used to identify, contact or target advertising to you.

Statistics about your usage of Suggested Sites will also be sent to Microsoft such as the time that websites were visited, which website referred you, and how you got there (e.g., by clicking a link or one of your Favorites). This information, along with the website addresses and past history, will be used to personalize your experience, as well as improve the quality of our products and services. Microsoft will not use any information collected to identify, contact or target advertising to you.

All quite interesting.  Ans what doesMicrosoft say about the security and storage of this personal information?  (Again, emphasis is mine)

Security and Storage of Your Information

Microsoft is committed to protecting the security of your information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. For example, we store the personal information you provide on computer systems with limited access, which are located in controlled facilities

Information collected by Microsoft as part of providing you with Internet Explorer's features may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries, or agents maintain facilities, and by using a Microsoft site or service, you consent to any such transfer of information outside of your country. Microsoft abides by the safe harbor framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of data from the European Union. Except as described in this statement, personal information you provide will not be transferred to third parties without your consent. We occasionally hire other companies to provide limited services on our behalf, such as packaging, sending and delivering purchases and other mailings, answering customer questions about products or services, processing event registration, or performing statistical analysis of our services. We will only provide those companies the personal information they need to deliver the service, and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose. Microsoft may access and/or disclose information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Microsoft; (b) protect and defend the rights of Microsoft (including enforcement of our agreements); or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, users of Microsoft products or services, or members of the public.

It's not clear to me from a quick squizz through the document how long Microsoft plan to hang on to the data that they collect from users' browsing habits.  One point to note, is that at least this is something that has to be switched on (i.e. it's opt-in, not opt-out).  BT-Phorm could learn from this at least.