Ove the last few years, I've dabbled in Facebook, but frankly never really wanted to share all the trivia of my life with others, and nor did I want to know the trivia of other peoples' lives. Periodically, Facebook seemed to make changes to the privacy settings of the system, and therefore my account, and I have been getting increasingly annoyed at having to delve into what's frankly quite an arcane settings system to rectify the situation.
So after news reports of what seemed to me to be a rather intrusive set of changes to the way Facebook streams trivia and tittle-tattle between users, I decided to suspend my Facebook account. In part this decision stemmed from the stories about Facebook's cookies tracking users' web activity in a way that was rather difficult to close down. I chose to suspend rather than delete my account because I thought that perhaps I would want to return to the fold, and read updates on peoples' lives, their travails, and above all their bonkers Facebook games. Well, perhaps not the latter.
It's been over a month now, and I've not missed Facebook at all. But. I notice that some web companies such as Spotify now require a Facebook account to register. This is no big deal to me, my music listening habits aren't really going to benefit from Spotify membership - while I think I've increasingly embraced the digital music era, the way I think of and listen to my music collection is somewhat rooted in a vinyl LP mindset.
However, during my daily perambulations round the internet I follow a good many links, many of these to news sites where the comments are often of interest. In general, I tend not to leave comments of my own (unless it's a subject I'm particularly interested in), but I often like to see what the regular readers of the site have to say. Some sites I've visited recently have required readers to have a Facebook login - not only to post comments, but in some cases to read comments.
This is a little sad, I think. It's assuming all internet users are going to buy into the loss of privacy that the Facebook mindset leads to.
(The links to Facebook on this site currently point to a page saying "This content is currently unavailable" - if and when I finally knock my Facebook account on the head, those links will go).
Uncategorised
The New Humanist magazine reports that Nadine Dorries has won their 2011 Bad Faith award by a landslide (Bad Faith Award 2011: it's Dorries by a landslide). As New Humanist says:
It's been a fascinating race for the award this year, as for the first time in its five-year history one of the candidates took note of the fact that they had been nominated and began a campaign to ensure they emerged victorious. As many of you already know, Dorries, who was nominated on account of her twin attempts to change the law on abortion counselling and introduce abstinence-based sex education for girls, noticed she was in the running shortly after we opened the poll, and published a post on her infamous blog ("70 per cent fiction and 30 per cent fact") stating that "it's scary to think how many people out there hold such extreme views dressed up as acceptable in an online glossy magazine".
Dorries, often characterised as the Member for Mid-Narnia, is actually my MP. The Government's boundary changes seem to be threatening her constituency, so maybe future bids for the award are limited. Anyway, well done Nadine!
This week, Cyclingnews provided an update of the much-delayed CAS hearing on Alberto Contador's doping 'positive' (Contador Doping Verdict Expected In January | Cyclingnews.com). More delay in finishing with this bizarre case:
Alberto Contador’s fate should be announced in January, according to AP, who reported Monday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) would reach a verdict in the first month of 2012.I've blogged here before on this extraordinary case. Way back during the 2010 Tour de France, one of Contador's samples revealed traces of clenbuterol. Strangely, the levels detected were below the levels at which a testing laboratory is required to be able to detect. This seemed to me to be something anomalous, as a rider with such low levels in his system could be found positive or negative, depending on which testing laboratory his sample was sent to. Wikipedia reports the issues around the positive test thus:
The UCI issued a statement reporting that the concentration was 50 picograms per millilitre, and that this was 400 times below the minimum standards of detection capability required by WADA, and that further scientific investigation would be required. Contador was provisionally suspended from competition, although this had no short-term effect as he had already finished his racing programme for the 2010 season. Contador had been informed of the results over a month earlier, on 24 August. Later the amount discovered was clarified as 40 times below the minimum standards, rather than the 400 times originally reported by the UCI. Contador's scientific adviser claimed that he would have needed 180 times the amount detected to gain any benefit in his performance.The muddying of the issues around the level of clenbuterol certainly confused the issue. But the main thrust of the investigation seems to revolve around the allegation that a blood transfusion may have been administered. My concerns here relate to whether justice can be served when the legal procedures are so drawn out. I'm not taking a stance on his guilt or innocence, but rather whether it is appropriate to call a positive for such low levels of clenbuterol, and whether a doping case to be resolved. Contador was involved in the Operacion Puerto scandal, though was exonerated by the investigation. But the whole fiasco around the Fuentes doping ring seems to have resulted in very few convictions against cyclists and athletes from other sports (particularly athletes from other sports). Strangely, many (if not all) of the allegations linking riders to blood bags could have been resolved by DNA testing. DNA testing was used to clobber Jan Ullrich and (I think) Alejandro Valverde, but it seems contrary to justice to single out only a few of the accused for this treatment. All this seems to signal a desperate need for improved and coordinated international efforts to combat sports doping.
The infamous pepper-spraying of protestors at UC Davis has gone a bit viral it seems. Here's a video of the cop casually spraying peaceful protestors. This isn't some harmless spray. On the Scoville scale of chilli heat, where the pretty damned hot habenero chilli scores around 350,000 Scoville units, these sprays deliver a whopping 2,000,000 to 5,300,000 Scoville units. It's not trivial.
Anyway, some rather wonderful photoshop images are doing the rounds. Here's a favourite:
