The Guardian reports on UK proposals for EU-wide vehicle surveillance (Big Brother is watching: surveillance box to track drivers is backed - dated 31/3/09, so presumably not an April Fool!):
The government is backing a project to install a "communication box" in new cars to track the whereabouts of drivers anywhere in Europe, the Guardian can reveal.
It appears that the James Randi Educational Foundation have had their YouTube account suspended - no reason is known. The JREF are an outstanding bulwark against the rise of paranormal and supernatural ideas in society, internationally. The blog and forum at the JREF website make for excellent reading. I cannot for the life of me see why this decision can have be made. The JREF's mission, as quoted from their website:
The James Randi Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1996. Its aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today.
This mission statement seems eminently reasonable to me. You can write letters in protest, though I guess it would help if we knew why the JREF's account had been suspended. Perhaps the JREF trod on too many toes -from what I've read, YouTube tend to react quickly to takedown requests, but can be persuaded to reverse their decision, as in the case of David Colquhoun's video work.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Cn_gjevik 480x295]
I happen not to think that watching "adult" movies is a particular sin (if one is that way inclined, well....), but the recent furore over the Home Secretary's expenses scam claims actually annoy me for another reason. That is that the culture of claiming expenses seems so ingrained that everything is thought of as fair game by the average politician.
A report at the Daily Telegraph indicates some of the items on Wacky Jacqui's claim (Jacqui Smith's other household expenses claims):
Sunny Intervals; Temp: 3°C; Wind: NNW 3mph; Hum: 58%; Press: 1014mB; Vis: Very good
We awoke to a cold and frosty morning - with very little wind to make our racing hard - and all the predicted precipitation was noticable by its absence. Our customary preparation of Thai curry and Singha beer was having side effectsas we set off for the race HQ in Cheddington, but once we gained entry to the hall, we quickly got ourselves and our bikes sorted, and set off to the start. Gerry had decided to usehis Xentis wheels, and left the H3s in the car as reserve. As you'll see, this is significant.
To reach the start, riders need to cross two narrow bridges with traffic lights - it was just after the second of these that our plans unravelled. Hearing a muffled exclamatio, I looked behind me, to see my erstwhile team mate doing a U-turn. Surmising (correctly as it turned out) that he was having a technical problem, I did the same, only to get stuck at red lights on both bridges. By the time I got far enough that I was worried about missing our start, Gerry was nowhere to be seen. I returned to the start with about 2 minutes in hand, and anxiously looked back along the road. With Gerry absent at our appointed start time, I somewhat reluctantly decided to ride solo.
As reported by the BBC (Extent of council spying revealed),
Councils in England and Wales have used controversial spying laws 10,000 times in the past five years, figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show.
The Register reports (Penguin-free Linux 2.6.29 kernel released) that the new Linux kernel release has ditched the usual penguin mascot, Tux (below), in favour of a new one.
The new mascot, Tuz, is apparently a Tasmanian devil, and has been selected for this release to publicise the plight of the Tasmanian Devil, which is suffering from a particularly nasty infectious tumour disease (see for example my article In the Journals - Tasmanian Devil Tumours). The new mascot's quite cute, particularly as he's sporting a penguin beak mask (El Reg suggests it's hiding a facial tumour).
The fallout from the revelations of just what is on the Great Australian Firewall blacklist continues, even as Wikileaks is still submerged. The Age reports (Labor's blog-watch plan hits Whirlpool of dissent) reports the latest utterances of Stephen Conroy, the minister behind the assault on internet freedom:
THE Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with documents singling out a website critical of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy for special mention.
This is the kind of story that fuels my worries about the database state we in the UK are walking into. The Guardian reports that The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has examined a sample of 46 UK government databases and found significant issues (Right to privacy broken by a quarter of UK's public databases, says report).
46 databases, including the new ID card database and the DNA fingerprint database were examined to see whether they met standards of privacy and effectiveness, Of these, 11 were found to be so failing they should be scrapped.
A list of websites supposedly blocked by the Great Australian Firewall, most of which (but by no means all) are porn sites, has been posted at Wikileaks. Since the list was posted, there have been recurring reports that Wikileaks has been blocked or shutdown. It's also possible that high traffic in response to this and other stories has overwhelmed the Wikileaks servers.
According to Wikinews, blocking is taking place (Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia):
Cyclingnews.com reports that a German laboratory has developed a test for genetic doping. This is quite interesting, as there have been reports that genetic doping, if not in widespread use at the moment, may well be the next battlefront in the war against doping.
I have always understood that genetic doping would probably involve either insertion of genes for biochemical factors that might alter or enhance physiological response to exercise (either impacting endurance or the capacity to respond to training stress), or transient expression of such genes. Likely target tissues would be muscle groups. These sorts of techniques carry considerable risks - insertion of exogenous DNA into the human genome can have dangerous consequences - in particular one might worry about the potential to induce cancerous tumours.