27Sep04 — 0

Return Of The Genome

Saturday’s Telegraph magazine’s weekly Social Stereotype invented a media-friendly academic called “Damian”*, so it’s perhaps not the best time to tell you that I’ve been commissioned [dahling!] to do the cover story for an upcoming edition of geek glossy Linux User. It will be an update of this piece about the human genome project(s) that I wrote for them in 2001 [warning: 300K PDF with complex background image]. This older article is a good place to start if you are reasonably computer literate and would like to read a layman’s guide to (intellectual property issues in) the human genome project. Both that and my new one assume that the reader also has some familiarity with the idea of open source software. You should also be aware that those-in-the-know refer to the good guys who write free software as “hackers” and to computer vandals, of the sort who write viruses and break into computers illegally, as “crackers”.

It happens that we in Britain make some wonderful free software for manipulating gene data, but there is a danger that we are about to make a lot less of it. I argue that this would be A Bad Thing. I believe that free or open source software, creative commons licensing, and the creation of a viable gift economy are vital to the future of the Left and of human civilization, but that argument is mainly for another day.

In the meantime it would make me very happy if you did these three things:

  1. Read the article and tell me about any errors in it before it progresses to the proofing stage. [I’m afraid you’ll just have imagine the pretty pictures that will accompany the print version.]
  2. After getting a flavour of the content from the first few paragraphs email me with a title, because I haven’t thought of one yet.
  3. After a few more paragraphs realise that this essay is pretty long to read from the screen and decide instead to buy a copy of the whole magazine at WHSmith when it comes out.
  4. Find the whole thing so interesting, informative and entertaining that you then buy five copies for your friends—or, ideally, take out a subscription to Linux User, citing my work as your motivation.

Lest PooterGeek’s reputation for frivolity is damaged by my posting this kind of thing, I should point out now that I am also now one of Google’s top five recommended sources for pagan lesbians. Oh yes, and I promised my guitar teacher I would bless his band with my awesome Google karma: go see SoulPower, featuring Dave Cartwright!

[*Though the “Damian” in the Torygraph is a historian who looks like he’s rolled from Ampleforth to Magdalen without ever having tasting the business end of a chav trainer.]

26Sep04 — 2

Terror In Cambridge

Location, location, location: not living in an area of the World currently suffering under UN monitoring means that these are the two most frightening things that happened to me yesterday…

1. My guitar teacher wants me to learn the off-beat strumming of Supertramp’s Give A Little Bit. To do this I have ripped the song to my hard drive and been running the recording at half speed but the same pitch. I want you to imagine the crunchy granola, hippy-whiney vocals that performed The Logical Song and Dreamer stretched out digitally, but anchored in the same key. The squealing of slaughterhouse pigs doesn’t come into it.

2. I bought some myself zinc tablets in an no doubt doomed attempt to ward off the various viruses this October’s influx of students will bring with them. There was a glossy magazine for sale on the shop counter. “Dr” Gillian McKeith, of Channel 4’s pseudoscientific bollocks You Are What You Eat programme, is on its cover, plugging her new trademarked range of “health food”. Under this picture

fraud

[click to enlarge]

was the headline “Dr Gillian McKeith Confesses, ‘Yes I Have A Big Libido'”.

26Sep04 — 1

New Yorke New Yorke

Ten years ago when I was in a funk metal band called Tick Tick Boom, screaming about terrorists (as opposed to now, making jokes about them on the Web), our terrifyingly loud, half-Indian drummer Neil Kumar cultivated a running gag about how, one day, Frank Sinatra would cover some of our angrier numbers in a swing style. Neil would grab a mic and do a brilliant impression of Frank crooning about death and geopolitics. I thought of this today when twentysomething nu-jazz munchkin Jamie Cullen came on Radio 2 doing Radiohead‘s High And Dry, accompanied by his own solo piano playing—though it is one of their quiet ones.

[I link to a Radiohead fansite because the band’s official site is a maze of twisty pretentiousness—fine if you’re sixth former with time to burn.]

[Would you believe my Chambers actually includes this

“prog n (also “progressive rock) a genre of rock music, popular esp in the 1970s, featuring complex and often lengthy compositions incorporating elements of classical music and jazz, with lyrics inspired by science fiction, fantasy and mythology.”

?]

26Sep04 — 0

Will He? Won’t He?

The British don’t do dating. They get pissed and shag. Americans do do dating. Here are some pages of advice for women, explaining the elaborate formulae men use to help them decide when to call a woman after the first date. I realise this is of purely academic interest to readers, but here’s how I decide when to phone after the first date:

Did I like her?

Yes

That was fun. I’ll ring her on Thursday because there are still some corrections to do on this article and I’ve got a guitar lesson tomorrow.

No

God, she was boring. At least when I finish correcting this article I’ll have more time to practise those barre chords for that guitar lesson tomorrow.

24Sep04 — 6

We’re Safe For The Moment

It was for real. Britney is indeed married. I loved this quote from the songstress:

“I believe you can marry in your heart and that means much more than a piece of paper. You can write anything down on paper, but the real truth is love. We know we have that. I’m really upset that somebody someplace decides to ruin a special day that I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl“

said Britney Spears, 22.

24Sep04 — 7

It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World

Hollywood nymphets cower in the jungle, vainly trying to hide their voluptuousness from James Brown as he looms in the background, poised for another brush with the law. Is this the best pulp book cover ever? (via the comments of Harry’s Place)

UPDATE: Damn! As Dave points out, we’ve been rumbled and they’re blocking our direct access to the covers. Go to this page and, er, click on “Pagan Lesbians”. It might take a little while for the picture to appear.

24Sep04 — 0

Utter Genius

I ache to do a Boris Johnson parody, but it is impossible. There is no second-form-at-Greyfriars phrase I could write, no bonkers opinion I could put forward that wouldn’t leave people thinking “that’s probably just a quote from the man himself”. I bet even Craig Brown thumps his head against his writing desk in torment from time to time, frustrated by the man’s sheer, sheer Boris-ness. He is beyond simple party loyalty, beyond the reach of pastiche. Follow the link and ask yourself every couple of paragraphs, “What hope has satire against this?” [Article also available without registration here, but in a really squinty font.]

23Sep04 — 1

In These Shoes?

Talking of Catholics and movies, Maoi recommends Imelda at “Firecracker Philippines“, the UK’s first Filipino film festival, which runs from tomorrow, Fri 24Sep04, until Sun 26Sept04. The promoters promise “Six of the best recent film [sic] from the Philippines—five of them UK Premieres!”

23Sep04 — 1

Unlikely Pleasures

Just back from Leasey’s where she didn’t have to strap me into the harness to watch a chick flick starring Cher. With my psychosexual make-up, the incantation “Winona Ryder plays a Jewish girl who desperately wants to be Catholic” is more effective in overwhelming artistic judgement than “Halle Berry runs around wearing a leather catsuit and brandishes a whip“. Bob Hoskins’ accent was terrible; Mermaids wasn’t bad at all. The chicken stuffed with Philadelphia cheese and chives that Leasey cooked also turned out to be up there alongside her vegetarian spaghetti bolognese in Leasey’s repertoire of improbably tasty meals. Thank you very, very much.

Of course, if Nigella had done the cooking…

22Sep04 — 5

Just Tell Me “No”

I used to have a Sega Game Gear.I bought it from an affluent, young family who begged me to take it away from them before it destroyed their lives. They’d got it for their son, who turned out to be more interested in catching toads and sitting in cardboard boxes. Mummy and daddy then became addicts. This was understandable. It ran possibly the best version of Sonic The Hedgehog ever written. Fortunately a burglar took it away from me after I had completed all the levels, but before I became another victim. It is important from now on that someone is around to slap me whenever I go shopping in a place where this is going to go on sale.

22Sep04 — 0

Biting The Hand

This is a fun, skeptical report on the various genome projects. I didn’t catch it when it first appeared in Ha’aretz:

” The circumstances which led to a visit by the head of the U.S. National Human Genome Institute astonished scientists in Israel. Collins has received many invitations to participate in scientific conferences in Israel, but finally arrived in the country as part of a scientific-economic mission organized by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Hatorah, a religious institution located in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, which promotes, among other things, repentant return of Jews to their religion, and prevention of interfaith marriage. Collins, himself, was surprised to hear about Aish Hatorah’s activities. ‘Your politics are complex,’ he muttered in embarrassment. He came to Israel because, ‘this particular invitation was presented in a fashion that seemed pretty irresistible. It was clear this was going to be an interesting gathering of experts … It was also made clear to me that this is something that my government wants me to do.'”

May the Lord deliver scientists from “complex politics”. I think Collins should have given a talk on the genetic effects of “preventing interfaith marriage”.

22Sep04 — 8

A Bit Of Good News

One of the nice things about writing this ‘Blog is that, even on the quietest days, there’s a fair chance that my dad will drop by, so that PooterGeek will get one hit at least. Some of you probably know that he has had radiotherapy this year. Yesterday he was told that he now seems to be clear of the cancer that this was intended to treat. He must take credit for nudging the NHS at first, but they did a good job. And good on you also dad, for putting up with the misery of being a target for ionizing radiation.

22Sep04 — 2

The Dangers Of An Israeli Accent

Listening to Radio 4 this morning I heard Humphrys ask Ehud Barak, “Would it be right for Israel to kill Yasser Arafat?”
I almost fell over at the reply, “Arafat is toast.”

What Barak actually said was , “Arafat is a terrorist”. Let’s hope anyone who has to translate his words into Arabic has sharper ears than me. You’ll probably be able to listen for yourself here later.

Judith, make sure that son of yours mixes with the right sort at the gan.

21Sep04 — 0

Brooke Bond

My Palm Pilot doesn’t have enough memory for me to say that every friend of Auriol‘s is a friend of mine, but I’ve added a couple of her family members to the “Friends of PooterGeek” over there → and down a bit ↓ .

21Sep04 — 7

‘Blogging With The Enemy

And now long overdue thank-yous to a couple of Tories.

Thanks to Anthony Wells, who, I think, is political secretary to Michael Howard. He linked to my post asking Labour voters what it would take to get them to put a cross in the Conservative box. Thanks are also overdue to Backword Dave who drew it to Anthony’s attention. It pains me to admit that I admire Anthony for tackling this. He’s obviously come a long way already to get to where he is, but I suspect he’s going to go a lot further if he continues to be so savvy.

Thanks to Iain Murray for linking approvingly to me again, having reflected on the Tories polling woes himself.

Now I am going to be cheeky and tell them where they are going wrong.

No matter how much Conservatives try to persuade smartypants urban types like the PooterGeek crowd that they back the sorts of open, radical, meritocratic, and permissive policies we seem to like; we know in our bones that the Tories cannot implement them because the base of their support is the Stannah stairlift, waxed jacket, string-’em-up brigade.

More than one reply to my question brought up the subject of massive EU farming subsidies, for example. Right-leaning free traders and hardcore Europhobes might support their removal, but the Conservatives know that solid Tory rural voters would disappear if the party threatened to withdraw their handouts. The British farming lobby might not burn sheep like its French counterpart, but the Conservative Party might as well try to say no to a knife-wielding junkie as refuse Mr and Mrs Barbour their fix. This is rational. It would make no sense to alienate reliable Countryside Alliance-type supporters in the hope of appealing to people who are, by definition, turncoats.

Both Anthony Wells and Iain Murray have (commendably) tried to work out what it is people don’t like about the Tories, but I think they are both doomed. When you keep getting turned down, the mirror is rarely the best place to look for the cause of your problem. As an outsider, I’d say that the public memory of the Conservative Party in power is stained by three things:

1) the Poll Tax—not so much a policy as a self-administered ritual sword,

2) the damage Thatcher(ism) did to public services—ordinary people do not trust the Tories with the NHS or schools,

3) Europe—the British don’t like the EU, but not as much Conservatives wish (and the ones who truly hate the EU are tempted by the UKIP).

Changing the name of the party would be a good idea—for once, I’m not being sarky—and, much as I sneer at ideology, if you adopted and promoted a consistent set of policies built around what the focus groupies would call your “core values” of freedom, choice, and personal responsibility that would help. Paradoxically, your current efforts to be popular on all the big issues are preventing you from being consistent; in aggregate the majority is always inconsistent, but you needn’t be. There’s still an awkward tension between, for example, your attitude to the market and your attitude to the family, your authoritarian approach to law and order and your professed commitment to personal freedom.

A deeper problem is that, at the next election, 40 percent of the electorate will be pensioners and, hard as it might be to persuade people that you have turned away from the dark doings of your past, it’ll be much much harder to persuade younger, floatier voters that you are prepared to take on your own fogies (both old and young). Manage that and it’s goodbye Labour.

Four more years of us lot then.

21Sep04 — 0

You Missed A Bit

Norm rightly links to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s report on Kofi Annan’s speech to the UN. He might have been prompted to do so by Annan’s elegant rhetoric; he might have been prompted to do so by Annan’s breathtaking hypocrisy. Either way, Norm, doesn’t link to another ABC Website story from that page, headlined “Australia set England stiff chase“. Puzzling. In related news, no wonder Liverpool found it difficult scoring last night; would you cross this man? (You probably wouldn’t want to cross this one.)

21Sep04 — 0

Google Bible

I’ve reviewed this book about Google for the UK UNIX Users’ Group. I can’t link to the review because they don’t release the stuff from their magazine until months after it appears in print. In summary, it’s good enough that I would have paid for it if they hadn’t given me a free copy.

21Sep04 — 10

Impeach Boris Johnson’s Hair

Backword Dave links to Boris Johnson’s ‘Blog which, like so much else about him, I’m not sure isn’t a pisstake. The real issue is of course his coif.

It is not so much that it is silly (though the arrangement of the strands is at odds with reality): it is rather that all the wigmaker’s arts have been discarded in a cunning double-bluff designed to communicate to the public a vast untruth.

The British people believe, as do others, “No one would have hair like this by choice!” Millions assume therefore that Johnson’s Hitler-as-a-blond-gonk barnet is natural. I know a fellow baldie when I see one, however.

The charge against Johnson’s hair is that it wilfully misrepresents the state of his scalp to the Commons and to the country. Impeach it now!

20Sep04 — 3

Bllokocs

You might have received something like the following in your forwarded-email-funnies recently:

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

One of my MRC/Cambridge sibs posted a partial debunking to the Web last year.

20Sep04 — 3

NB

Right now, tens of thousands of older brothers are telling their younger sisters that Natasha Bedingfield (down from number 7 in the UK singles chart* to number 11 yesterday) is “teenybopper crap” and that Green Day (straight in at number 3) are punk kidz keepin’ it real. That Bedingfield bint doesn’t even write her own songs!

Given that Green Day’s songwriting is responsible for the dazzling critique of Bush’s America that is American Idiot

“Don’t wanna be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America.

“Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow.
For thats enough to argue.

“Well maybe I’m the FAGGOT America. (not fuck-head)
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.”

we should be grateful that Natasha gets serious professionals in to help her, instead of hamfisted pretenders who compose like they’re on bad cocaine. The Observer says:

“[“American Idiot” is] the kind of sub-Michael Moore rhetoric that looks absolutely appalling on paper—‘sing along to the age of paranoia’—yet which makes an undeniable, juvenile sort of sense when married to a harmless baseball boot of a melody. You’d have to be the most miserable, punk-hating spoilsport to bear them any malice”

That’ll be me then.

Apparently it took four people to write Bedingfield’s sassy I-can’t-write-a-song-about-you song, These Words. The result is up there with Elvis Costello’s Accidents Will Happen and Bernie Taupin( and Elton John)’s Your Song as a paradoxical confession of creative inarticulacy. Plus, you can dance to it. As long as she doesn’t start inhaling the praise and persuades herself that she can write hits on her own, Natasha’s going to go a long long way. Lord, deliver her from “creative freedom”! In ten years time those older brothers will be claiming they could see she her potential right from the beginning—and not just down the front of her dress in some lad mag.

[*You know you’re an old fart when you read that the presenter of the chart show on Radio 1 is called “Wes” and the only musical Wes you can think of is Wes Montgomery.]

20Sep04 — 1

Facilitating Empowering Networks

I am a member of The British Association. This excellent organisation exists to link scientists in the UK with the untrained laity. The Cambridge branch has stopped holding meetings because of lack of activists to organise them. Everyone in this town can manipulate partial differential equations and sketch out a timeline of the Precambrian anyway. I still get their magazine, though: the heartstoppingly named Science and Public Affairs. There was an insert in it this month, carrying an article about getting more people with “ethnic minority backgrounds” into science. Normally the BA’s publications are clear and simple, but this piece had been infected by the vocabulary of the diversity industry. I quote verbatim:

“Over a two-year period, the BA and ACNST will be developing an effective national framework to facilitate empowering networks and sustainable partnerships by engaging ethnic minority groups and the science communication community in consultation and dialogue.”

As a scientist from an “ethnic minority background” my response to that is: “Fuck off back to where you came from, and don’t talk to me until you’ve learned some Anglo-Saxon.”

20Sep04 — 0

Grainy

I don’t believe that adults find it harder to learn than children; just that adults find it harder to be wrong. Learning is about being wrong over and over again until you are almost right. As I get older I find it harder and harder to make things that I’m happy with. There are presently about fifteen discarded or incomplete draft posts in my ‘Blog database, for example.

My singing teacher is mystified by my wanting to be taught to sight read; she tells me that I sing pieces by ear that her other students can’t manage with the notes in front of them—not that my intonation can’t be improved. Last week I repeatedly made the same mistake in a sight reading exercise. I became so frustrated and tense that she made me stop and do an unfamiliar song from Les Misérables just to calm me down. (Thanks to her pointing out its subtler harmonic ideas, I’m beginning to understand that there’s more to that musical than first meets the ear.)

One of the reasons that I love M Night Shyamalan’s films is that he makes wonderful, wonderful mistakes. He has a child’s faith in flawed ideas. He piles mush into baroque fortresses and it’s only after I’ve left the cinema that the normal flow of my thoughts washes his creations away, but never completely. While I’m in the dark and he’s pushing the grains of light into shape I’m happy to sit and watch. The Village is another one of his flawed, grim fairy tales, and it’s well worth seeing and hearing. The look, the sound, and the words of the movie are intensely stylized. One reviewer wrote about “King James English”; they all raved about Roger Deakins‘s cinematography. The New York Times mocked that the cast used “the subjunctive with breathtaking precision”. Because everything is so staged it does come across occasionally as a play adapted for the screen, but, even at its clumsiest, The Village still more sophisticated than most things London theatre has to offer. It’ll give you more to think about. I recommend you watch it back-to-back with Shaun of the Dead.

20Sep04 — 2

A Thousand Deaths

If being successful with women is about getting a lot of them to have sex with you then the secret of success is telling the right lie at the right time. [I would say that, wouldn’t I?] I’ve watched experts in action. Their methods are simple: intoxicate and deceive. They know what a woman wants to believe, and for a moment, the right moment, these operators believe it themselves. Often they believe the con more completely than the mark. Often the mark wants the world to believe she was conned—just as a good girl will act more drunk than she is so that she has permission to be a bad girl.

Sebastian Horsley used to write for the miserably unerotic Erotic Review [—imagine snooty wannabes rejected by The Spectator trying to offend their parents and you’ll get the idea]. He prefers paying to dissembling. I think much of his cyncism about the relations between men and women is a pose, but, sadly, there’s too much truth in what he writes.

UPDATE: I had an email about this post this morning and should clarify: what I find “sad” is that so many men and women still find it necessary to deceive themselves and others in order allow themselves to enjoy sex.

18Sep04 — 11

Money Saving Tip

Just back from seeing HellBoy with the Anonymous Economist’s posse. It was the perfect reverse of my experience with Riddick. That one was supposed to be expensive rubbish; this one was a Hollywood blockbuster that the critics had given us permission to like. They were wrong again. It was so empty and lazy that I can’t even be bothered to review it. Just don’t be tempted to give the bastards responsible any of your cash.

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