One of the great things about the UK is that we don't have people of the calibre of Sarah Palin running for high office.  As light relief from the latest banking news, here is a flow chart which illustrates Sarah Palin's undoubted debating skills (original source blog).  For further entertainment, generate your own Sarah Palin interview.

This week's edition of Nature has a brief paper (doi:10.1038/nature07390) reporting on the identification of an HIV positive tissue sample collected in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in what was then the Belgian Congo, and now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Sequence data derived from the tissue was used to investigate the chronology of the appearance of HIV from its likely simian origin.

This is a piece of research which hit the news services (see for example this page at the BBC news website).  The research has a number of features which earmark it for media interest: an important virus, a serious disease with a global spread, and a simple take-home message as to the origin of the virus.  This raised my interest and I looked at the paper.  Incidentally, the paper raises issues to do with complexity of statistical analysis: I imagine many readers such as I, and the journos who wrote articles in the press, have little or no chance of understanding what an "unconstrained Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method" is, and are similarly limited in one's real critical analysis of conclusions reached by that means!  I am forced to assume that all is above board in the statistical and computational aspects of this paper, and that the referees have done their job!  In addition, it's always interesting in studies of ancient DNA (and cases where sample preservation was not originally intended to preserve nucleic acids) to know what measures were taken to ensure that contamination with modern DNA did not happen.

We've known for some weeks now that the Tour de France organisers have been re-examining a bunch of samples from the 2008 race, and recent indications were that 14 of these were sent for detailed analysis to look for traces of the EPO variant of choice in the prop peleton, CERA.  Athletes had believed that various characteristics of CERA, and its dosage regime would render it undetectable.

That this was wildly optimistic was revealed by a series of positive tests, as reported by cyclingnews.com.

Cyclingnews.com reports that Alexander Vinokourov, dumped in spectacular style during the 2007 Tour de France for blood doping (which fuelled a spectacular return to form after an injury-plagued race) is planning a come-back.  He says he's likely to return to the Astana team (the same team now run by Lance Armstrong's mate Johan Bruyneel and which Armstrong will ride for in his comeback season).

Has the world gone mad, or just Vinokourov?  It was Vino and his fellow team mates that earned Astana such a reputation for doping that they were excluded from the 2008 Tour de France.  Vino's ban for doping was astonishingly light, at a mere 12 months, and was the subject of a CAS appeal by the UCI, who suspended it following Vinokourov's retirement.  What responsible cycling team would touch him, even with a ten foot bargepole?

The Times online reports that UK Government ministers have agreed in principle to spend £12 billion to enable GCHQ to monitor every phone call , every email and all our browsing habits.

If true, this must be unprecedented in peace-time, and exceeds even the East German Stasi in its level of monitoring the population.  It's an extremely worrying development, particularly given the draconian powers HMG have pushed through in recent years.  We are presently living in a State where merely reading material deemed inappropriate can result in prosecution.

4 good reasons not to take part in the BT Webwise Trial An excellent summary from the Open Rights Group explaining many of the issues at stake.  Includes many useful links.

Wikipedia has a pretty good synopsis of Phorm, its history and its system.  (This is the page that Phorm itself tried to edit to paint them in a better light).

The BT support forum has a thread for BT/Webwise questions.  There are never any answers, but it's worth looking at.

So Frank Schleck transfers 7000 euros to Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, who he claims never to have met, has never sought to make use of a prohibited substance or method. Should I send him my bank details so he can send me 7000 euros? (Report at cyclingnews.com)

Seriously, how stupid does he think we are? What was the payment for, then?  He goes on to offer a DNA test to match the blood bags retrieved during the investigation.  Whats that?  The blood's not available for testing?  That's OK then.

I got my MAC, now to switch to a new ISP, an ISP that respects users' privacy, and which won't deal with Phorm.

I also finally got a response to my email requesting my web pages not be scanned by Phorm, a request that was NOT sent to an obviously Phome address, but which was read by at least 12 Phorm employees.

I have to confess to being something of a novice with mobile comms.  I have steadfastly refused to have a mobile phone on the grounds that I don't want people phoning me up!  The various acronyms associated with mobile comms still confuse me a bit, and I have never sent a text message! However, I find myself travelling quite a bit, and within the UK, it seems  to me that in British hotels internet access is often just another way to extract cash from the guests.  (This is is contrast to my experiences in the USA and Japan).  One criterion I had for selecting a system was that some support for Linux should be available.  Browsing various fora, I decided to have a go with the Vodafone system.

Vodafone have a quite a large website covering development of drivers etc for their mobile devices including the USB modems.  The associated Betavone Forge site has a forum which was very helpful in getting the system working on Linux (Ubuntu 8.04).