Libertarianism cont..

I've been picked up by www.crescatsententia.org part of who's argument I think I waded into yesterday. Or maybe the day before. At any rate its clear that when arguing with lawyers you should expect your paragraphs to be 'unpacked' . I think they're lawyers anyway, they describe themselves as

"The brand of pseudo-intellectual pageantry practiced by the hitherto unnamed coterie of jackasses, otherwise known as Crescat Sententia, is a load of unconscionably boring and particularly malodorous [excrement]."
-Assprat Pretentia

which probably seemed a good idea at the time. Plus at least one of them went to the other place so I suppose we have to show some sympathy.

Still, Tony assures me they have readers so I should probably reply. I mean you lot didn't come here to read about Nolberto Solano did you? Crying shame. I suppose I should unpack their stuff till it's all over the floor....

"Firstly, a number of Libertarians (I'd wager it's the vast majority) certainly believe themselves capable of failure." Well yes, but that wasn't what I said, I said falling, to the safety net under discussion. The real question is not do you expect to get the job and the receptionists' phone number, but to spend a portion of your life long term unemployed, or disabled, or unwaged and caring for a sick parent. If you did you might consider 4-8k$ a little low. I mean the guys panhandling on the street probably clear $10 a day and that's nearly $4000 - (maybe they get a Christmas bonus).

Incidently living for $4k in America strikes me as pretty tough. I mean you're going to be homeless. I guess that's the point though, force the scrounging beggars to get a job. Lord knows they got themselves into this mess on purpose. Probably trying to pay for a drug habit they couldn't handle. Didn't they know drugs are only for responsible folk?

Still I'm probably playing the 'search for hidden assumptions game' there, which seems to be off limits. I apologise, that's the kind of argument I reserve for Screwtape.

And while I'm sure it is possible to hold down a drug habit and a job (crack whores manage it so I guess lawyers could too) I doubt its easy. I mean its bad enough looking at the productivity loss you get when your staff take fifteen minute smoking breaks, imagine your horror when your project manager explains that if he doesn't shoot up he won't make it through the day. You'd have to add it to risk analysis too, you know, chance that the lead programmer has a bad trip over the weekend and spends six months having his brain put back together (at who's expense?) or worse, comes into work anyway and starts pressing the buttons that 'just feel nice'.

Odd too that here in Holland, many of the social problems are down to excessive libertarianism. There's not a lot of poverty here, the safety net is as high as the taxes. Indeed despite being resolutely somewhere in the middle on most issues the Dutch have created a pretty impressive left wing state. I mean trains run on time, and so do the buses. There's little homelessness and almost no teenage pregnancy. Most of the crime stems from the almost legal drugs and their failure to properly integrate their immigrant populations. Not to mention the slave trade running through the libertarian paradise that is the red light district.

Which reminds me, the drug addict I talked to while waiting for the bus the other day (she spoke great English, everyone does) assured me that she wished to god the drug laws were stricter. She'd been on drugs for ten years.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. So lets leave it there. I'm sure someone will come along and unpack it.

Medievalism

OK, I can hardly claim that this is related to the Bush administration or anything else, but over in Georgia they're trying to ban the use of the word evolution in schools.

If this passes just for one day I want to be fourteen years old and taking either biology or english in Georgia high school. Now its easy to see the fun you could have in biology but english...

"Miss, what does e v o l u t i o n spell?"

They should hand it over to Monty Python

Because nothing else could be as surreal as watching the BBC report on itself. The wierdness index peaked with the report on Greg Dyke speaking to senior journalists, delivered by BBC senior journalists who were reporting as if they hadn't been there.

The guy on news 24 interviewing a crisis management consultant was pretty wierd. Right now the news is covering possible replacements for Dyke and Evans and doing a brilliant job of pretending they don't have a stake in the outcome.

If anyone ever doubted the BBC's commitment to honest and dispassionate reporting they should just watch this. Its amazing. As for Blair, this could end up being a huge pyrrhric victory.

See?

Well there's a surprise

New Director General of the BBC.

Good grief

Tony has gotten involved in a debate about libertarianism, liberalism, conservatism and god knows what else. It's too much not to get involved.

Original article
Then this
Then this

Libertarians may be fun, but they shouldn't be allowed to run countries. People who don't believe in safety nets also tend to believe that they themselves will never fall. Likewise those who believe they should be allowed to ingest anything they damn well please also tend to believe that they won't be the ones mugging grannies to pay for it.

Conservatives shouldn't be allowed to run countries because they believe that while people do fall there's an invisible hand waiting to catch them.* Liberals and the moderate left are fine though, plus you can take them home to meet your parents.

Incidently has anyone else noticed the medievalism creeping into some Republican thought, someone will be talking about the deserving and undeserving poor soon.

* The reason you never see the invisible hand is because it ususally isn't there - Joseph Stiglitz

Still an imperfect market

The transfer market in the premiership still seems to be supremely dysfuntional. In the last week my club (I own them, no really) Newcastle United have sold two players.

One was Carl Cort, who we sold to Wolves for £2m. Cort is young, and was once reckoned to be the next big thing. So much so that three years ago we gave Wimbledon £7m for him. He's been injured almost ever since and has only played a handful of games.

The other was Nolberto Solano, who's captain of Peru, one of the most accurate crossers of the ball in the Premiership and a dab hand at free kicks and corners. He's also never been in trouble, rarely gets booksed, scores the odd goal and is generally a midfielder that most of the league would like to have. It seems we're selling him to Aston Villa.

He will also cost £2m, which seems like a bargain.

My suspicion is that either there isn't actually a 'market for players' at all, just a lot of individual markets 'the supply and demand for Carl Cort' rather than 'The supply and demand for strikers' or that the individual circumstances of buyers and sellers are disrupting the market no end.

Meanwhile the ever on the money nufc.com have just put up a tribute to 'wor Nobby' as he was known

158 league starts, 14 as sub, 29 goals.
19 FA Cup starts, 2 goals.
10 League Cup starts, 2 as sub.
26 European starts, 4 as sub, 7 goals.

Thats a fantastic record for a midfielder. If all ours performed that well we'd have won something by now.

I'm dreaming of a January Christmas

Because if we had January Christmas' then so many more of them would be white. Yesterday it snowed in my home town of Newcastle (and for about an hour in Amsterdam) today I woke up to snow covered roofs and a clear winter sky. Exactly the weather Tony is wishing for in New York I think.

Sheesh

"Hi, Martin:

Since Blogger seems to have introduced Atom feeds, can you turn yours on? I'd like to syndicate your site."

Expect me to be syndicated soon at Three years of hell. (to become the devil)

You know you're in trouble when

The Onion horoscope starts to make sense

Aries: (March 21—April 19)
Your financial outlook isn't a pretty picture, but it does have a certain dark, Brueghelian magnificence.

Give me my sociology degree!

Shamelessly pillaged from Three Years of Hell is this wonderful link. (press refresh to see why) Now all that stands between me and late night arts punditry is a machine capable of generating answers that would fool the panel of the late review. Tony Parsons and Germaine Greer, your time has come!

Investors in Spaaaaaaaace

Dubya might want to go to Mars, but one American is already ahead of him. Elon Musk has been planning on making the trip for a while, and even though the initial goal of his firm is simply to dominate the satelite launching business one of his long term dreams is to get to Mars. The company he's set up to do this is called SpaceX

I met Elon at business school (he was talking, I was listening) and asked him why, did he just wake up one day and decide 'rockets, thats the thing for me!'. Turns out he did, he always liked rockets when he was a kid and now he's a billionaire - Elon owned Paypal until it was bought by E-bay - he wants to build rockets.

Now while Elon has a cool name and a rocket I'm pretty sure he's not a bond villain. Still, the fact that he has these things means someone might be.

Oh, the thing that got me thinking about this was Dana Blakenhorns excellent a-clue.com newsletter. Read it regularly.

Fun toys

A link shamelessly pirated from the worlds only Google Consultant is this one for Good Keywords, a handy tool from Softnik Technologies.

Just as good programmers will usually handful of preferred aps and bits of freeware that they use to get through the day a savvy internet marketeer should have his or her own tools to make sense of environment or fine tune their executions. This is one such tool, if you're engaged in keyword optimisation I'd highly recommend having a play with it.

Web Traffic is not normally distributed

A little more work and the return from her daily slog of my better and more mathematically gifted other half has confirmed that web traffic is not normally distributed. Or at least the sample I've got in front of me relating to four months of data is not normally distributed.

The site follows a pattern you see on most B2B websites (and a lot of B2C ones) in having a big slump in traffic every weekend.

**drat** Just noticed that the traffic almost halves in November and December from it's earlier levels. Have to see if this is genuine (unlikely) or down to a change in how the logs were taken or the site was designed... Still, I don't think web traffic is normally distributed...

Is web traffic normally distributed?

I've broken out MBA textbooks and software to apply some serious analysis to web traffic. My opening data set is about 4 months of traffic from my old employers website, and to add some punch to my analysis I can rely on the excellent Web Abacus tool to manipulate the data.

So, is it normally distributed? This is the first question I need to answer if I'm going to be able to apply sensible analysis to web traffic. So far the answer is irritatingly negative. Despite drawing two graphs that look pretty normal to me (for visits and visitors) and one that doesn't (for page impressions) the p-value for all three (which tells me how normal they are) remains stubbornly 0.00.

Next up I'm going to try the following tests.

What happens if I ignore weekends?

Update : This makes very little difference. Both weekend and weekday traffic is not normally distributed.

What happens if I do each day separately?

Update : Friday traffic might have been, saturday and thursday traffic wasn't though.

What happens if I strip out traffic from spiders and other robots?

Update : Now we're getting somewhere! And once we threw away weekend traffic we could conclude that traffic was normally distributed during weekdays in November.

Right, time for lunch and when I come back I'm going to try and turn these results into something more useful and better supported...

Good things happening

At the Said Business School website a project I was involved in a while back has seen the light of day. The 'Experience an Open Day' page and its associated 'Experience a lecture' stuff are intended to take some of the great things that go on inside the business school and show them on the outside.

This is one of the best ways to sell a company to anyone, show them what it's really like and teach them about it. Of course it's much more effective if your company is good, and a waste of time if your company is bad. Still, bad companies can't be fixed by marketing so there you go. The key though is that there are many good companies supplying most products, MBA students can choose between at least 50 top flight MBA's all offering similar levels of education and networking opportuities. Very few business schools choose to open themselves up though, in taking these first steps Oxford has become more open than most. The hope now is that they can do more and become the most open school in the world.

If they do that, applications, funding and so on will be no problem at all.

Jobs a good un

One of my old clients has just picked up an award for delivering great customer service. Its not unexpected though, BSH are a great example of an organisation that is completely focused on delivering what its supposed to. From a well run call centre to an SAP system that employees are happy to work with the company is relentlessly efficient and customer focused.

When I was working with them they talked about their success rates in dealing with first time enquiries. They said they weren't going to discuss them in public as rival providers would simply fudge their figures to look competitive. Their strategy was to wait untill the industry / consumers noticed for themselves how much better they were.

I guess that's happened now.

Dean knifed in Iowa

Have you ever been to a political conference? I have, it was the NUS conference of 1995 or 6, I forget. Anyway as some folks are all too aware there are few places more viscious than the political arena. It's populated by cold and ruthless men who have learned that a smile is something you put on in the morning. That conference, in '96 was about the death of the student ultra left (communists and co) and the ascension of new labour. In some small way I was putting the boot in for the moderates. I was idealistic about it too, damn militants.

So Dean has lost Iowa. He lost for a bunch of reasons, but he didn't lose by as much as people think, and he was the victim of his own negative campaigning. See Dean killed Gephardt, killed him stone dead, but in any system that has second preference voting the dead get a second chance and they can use it to drag you down with them. That it seems is what Gephardt did, the observers blogging at Daily Kos report that Gephardts' followers stonewalled Dean supporters as soon as they saw their man on the ropes and decided to use their second life to bury the man who killed them. Its viscious, but its predictable, but only Dick Gephardt and his friends won't have been surprised by it.

Meanwhile the Kerry and Edwards folks both thought they were drowning, fighting for survival, so when they knew they were in trouble in a given caucus they did the only thing that made sense to them and helped the other drowning man swim to safety. Result, well you can read about it in the papers.

Deans' ultra smart organisation seems to have not thought hard enough or long enough about the game, the rules within which this stuff gets settled. A while ago they started 'using the hill' pushing down on candidates behind them. They should have realised that when you push someone you give him a chance to grab hold and take you down with him.

So Dean has been knifed and his nascent campaign have been given a much needed baptism of fire. If they survive and win this will have done them a lot of good. If they don't well, politics has always been a bloodsport and I guess I'll have to find another fox to support.

Nelly vs the Cure,score draw

Rap star Nelly's new single is brought to you over the Cure's 'Lovecats'. Now in the past some rap tracks have done this kind of thing and delivered. The only good thing Puff Daddy ever did involved ripping off Led Zeppelin, Eminem made Dido famous by sampling her on Stan (Which was miles better than anything she ever came up with). This however does not deliver, and while it does get going occasionally - like when Nelly shuts up and a woman takes over the microphone - it basically sucks.

Ah well. At least MTV makes a change from CNN.

With friends like this...

Even I don't believe this critique of the Bush administration from Salon. (click through the ads to read). Retarding the economy deliberately to keep wages low... thats a real conspiracy theory.

End of a liberation?

Riverbend is not happy. The Iraqi governing council has just decreed that family law in Iraq will henceforth be Sharia law. Claims that Iraq is going to end up with a secular state are looking increasingly ridiculous.

A few years ago I went to Tunisia, which thanks to a post WWII socialist president (who subsequently became a dictator) is a remarkably liberal islamic country. Teenage couples wander around openly in major cities (she will always be wearing long trousers / jeans though) the economy is doing well and those who want to wear a veil do. I don't know much about Tunisia but I get the feeling that their democratic failings aside they're probably the kind of model people should be aiming for with Iraq.

Also from the Iraqi blogs comes Salaams account of inflation. This was a major feature of my MBA Macroeconomics course, our Israeli professor apparently having been scarred for life by hyperinflation in Israel. That was a while ago though, so he got the guy who used to run Argentinas' economy to come talk to us about inflation instead.

The bizarre thing in Iraq is that at the moment they're technically deflating the dinar. It's rising against the dollar at pace. However no-one uses Dinar's they all keep money as dollars. Prices however are in Dinars so a strong Dinar means more dollars to pay for the same thing = inflation. I have no idea how this plays out, but if inflation takes hold in Iraq things are going to be very bad on a macroeconomic level for some time.

What they really mean

Ever wondered what political ads are really trying to say, what the real message behind all the policy wonkery is?

Bush in 41.2 seconds (video download)

Features strong language and parody.

Update : Just to keep this non-partisan (who am I kidding) Mark Fiore's latest cartoon is a nice take on the Democratic Primary.

Iowa located

All this fuss about the Iowa primary has lead to me finally finding out where the place is. Its towards the top, in the middle, a bit to the right. That puts it above Kansas and to the west of Illinois.

I suspect its one of the 15 or so states I haven't been to. Before anyone reading this gets all excited about me now knowing where things are get out a map and point to Groningen, go on!

Daft but fun

There are all kinds of reasons why this kind of market shouldn't work - and I'm not sure that they do. Still, oodles of pointless graphs and speculation.

Web Statistics

Following up on yesterdays post about Deming I have begun combing the web for examples of people who have applied statistical techniques to web traffic. Most of what I've found is about estimating the loads on servers and capacity planning, typically at a scale far beyond what I'm interested in.

However over at Useit.com I found a Jakob Nielsen column on the application of regressions and standard deviation to traffic analysis. Since this is the first thing I'm planning on doing in these experiments it makes encouraging reading.

Another thing I wish I'd read before last weeks job interview is this piece on six sigma standards for the web. While Jakob is comparing apples and oranges here when he moans that the web is 100 000 times less efficient than six sigma there are useful ideas in it.

If he was being a little more honest he'd note that six sigma relates to processes, specifically repetitive ones in industrial environments. Making it as easy to buy something on an e-commerce store as it is to put the round object in the round hole on the assembly line is a worthy goal, but not a useful one.

Kill Clare

Clare Short should of course have resigned over the Iraq war like she was supposed to, but she didn't. Since shes now heading the resistance to top up fees in universities and one imagines getting ready to lay into the Prime Minister over the Hutton report that may yet turn out to be a good thing.

Which probably explains why the Sun have decided to mount a hate campaign against her. As gutter politics goes this is exceeded only by the sewer journalism that accompanies it. Tim has more... (archived here)

Kill Bill

Quentin Tarantino loves music. He likes songs. That's why his soundtracks are the best in the business. Kill Bill opens with black and white credits set to Nancy Sinatra's 'Bang Bang', all of it. Not the bit that fades in and then goes away, or the bit that gets drowned out at the end by the first dialogue, all of it. Tarantino lets the music he uses breathe, which is why it comes to be so closely associated with the film and becomes so very very popular. Little Green Bag defined Reservoir Dogs, and songs like 'Son of a Preacher Man' and 'Bustin Surfoboards' by The Surf Tornadoes (it's that instrumental surf guitar one) defined Pulp fiction. Kill Bill Chapter 1 is defined by the Nancy Sinatra song and whatever rock and roll songs the Japanese punk band were playing. They rocked.

So right from the off with it's inconic soundtrack and pulpy credits this is a Tarantino film. It's even got Uma Thurman in it, this time with natural blonde hair. The plot is pretty simple, once upon a time Thurman's nameless character was part of 'The Deadly Viper Assasination Squad', an all female assasination squad comprising protoges of the titular Bill. At some point Thurman's character got pregnant and engaged. The wedding however was interrupted by the rest of the squad who killed the whole wedding party and (they thought) the bride, their motivations are unknown. However Thurman (henceforth 'The Bride') lived and is now set on exacting a bloody revenge.

The rest of the film is fights linked together by flashbacks. The flashbacks are good, explaining the history of each of the Deadly Vipers and what has happened since the Brides' wedding. In an acknowledgement of the films comic book origins one is even produced as anime. The fights are better though, especially since guns are out and Samurai swords are in.

The pick of the bunch is the 'Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves' (it's all a bit Sergio Leone) where the Bride cuts down one by one the lieutenants of Lo Ren. There is no music, no soundtrack and the fights are all over very very quickly without acrobatics or gymnastics. The tension and drama are incredible. Then there is an absolutely enormous, heavily soundtracked fight, which is fun, but less good. Oddly enough the final outcome reminds me of the ending of Robin and Marion but there you go.

According to the website the fight choreography was by Master Yuen, who is also responsible for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Matrix and a number of early Jacky Chan films. I suspect he wasn't involved in the last two Matrix films, which were ruined by laboured action sequences and a lack of imagination. This film shows just what is possible with the genre.

Kill Bill chapter one is a fantastic film if you like this kind of thing. Namely Samurai swords, stylish fights, excessive amounts of fake blood, great dialogue and a kick ass soundtrack. See it soon.

An accurate account of Iraq?

Ted Kennedy has recently given a speech in which he describes how he thinks the decision to invade Iraq was made. It's worth looking at not because there's anything very new in it, but because it's all there, expressed with remarkable clarity.

Dr Deming

I've just been reminded by a piece in the Harvard Business Review that if anyone can help me apply statistics to web analytics it's Dr Deming. The man who made Japan what it is today - namely efficient.

I've been struck recently by how much of web analytics is basically counting, I know of no off the shelf package that will run a regression or tell you the standard deviation in your daily traffic. Yet these are powerful statistical tools which aren't all that hard to understand.

I spy a gap in the market, and finally an incentive to unearth the MBA textbooks from the storage room they have been consigned too. (principally because they were shipped here in a 40KG book box and we live on the 4th floor, wheras storage is at ground level.)

Page Rank 5?!

My pagerank has soared from 2 to 5, how the bloody hell did that happen? My old blog took ages to get that much. Crickey, that's almost a valuable commodity.

Hire me, I'll link to my next employer for free...

I mean search for monograph and see what happens.

Day One

Of the ninety day fitness program was today. I've done this before and it's murder. It is however going to get me out of the house and make me use the weights I bought at the weekend in a constructive manner.

It might also make me look good, but last time my appearance remained virtually identical even though my physical strength, speed and stamina all benefitted enormously.

Slow Company?

I used to like Fast Company magazine. It was focused, it was punchy, it had an agenda. OK it was hardly a heavyweight one and it pandered to the worst tendencies of business gurudom but you knew what it was about. If you had ten minutes to kill and wanted to read something interesting about how to do business (as opposed to business news) you could go there.

I've just visited their site for maybe the third time in a month. On none of these visits have I got past the first page. I just didn't know what to click, and when I bothered to look closely at what was there there wasn't anything to interest me.

For all I know fast company may still be a fine magazine. However their website is now so bad I'll never find out.

Job Interviews

Just had my first Dutch job interview with a blue chip. Now in business school you get taught about things like European labour markets and how they're inflexible and don't give companies enough control over the workforce and restrict management and so on. I mention this because the terms and conditions conversation for this job went like this

Them : We're a big company, so we don't negotiate salaries. Every job is fixed to a position on the Hayes scale. What would you be looking for in this role?

Me : xx thousand

Them : Thats fine. Now to explain what we offer...

You get your annual salary
Plus a 'thirteenth month' bonus in December
Plus another months bonus in May
Plus a small tax free amount each month for expenses
Plus a group performance bonus of maybe 5%
Plus an individual bonus which might be 1-2%
Company laptop and mobile phone
No company car
We offer 25 days holiday
Plus up to 16 days holiday which was agreed in lieu of past pay rises forgone. You can take those or be paid for them, or trade them in for 'stuff'

Now either I missed the bit about them getting my immortal soul or this is a quite incredibly generous compensation package. I was completely sold on the job anyway, since it appears to offer me the chance to do many many good things with a corporate website and have an impact on a whole company. Now of course I just have to brace myself for any disappointment and start looking for other jobs to do when I don't get this one...

Must be a blue moon

It's not often George Bush does something I agree with, but this might be an exception. Legalising America's huge migrant underclass will doubtless improve their living and working conditions, and will certainly provide a boost to the US economy.

My business school professors were always keen to point out that under globalisation the movement of goods had become free, but the movement of people had remained restrained. Changing that would do a lot to improve global productivity. Interesting though that this is a bill which Bush will need Democrat support to pass, and which will face most opposition from the Republicans. My only question is 'why has he done it now?

Dean is saying that this doesn't go far enough - which is probably true, but I'm not sure any US presidet could go much further at the present time and come out with legislation enacted on the other side.

Bush in 30 Seconds

Moveon.org's design an advert competition produced these finalists. Personally I wouldn't go for the ones on the war, they're too contentious to change minds. I'd go for Childs Pay, Desktop or Wake Up America from this list. They address domestic policies that affect all Americans, and they do it in a powerful way.

In my country would be great if only it would drop the reference to 'Religious Extremists' you never changed anyones mind by insulting them.

Operatic Raptures

I've just installed Opera (again) and I have to say the new version is very impressive. Previous versions felt a bit too different for me to start using them on a regular basis, but right now my browser of choice is up for grabs...

Fencing reprise

I was never very well up on the technical terms of fencing. I mean, I never knew there was a proper word for 'forcing your way through someone's guard with brute strength', but there is, it's called 'Froisement', and the wonderful thing about fencing is that weaker opponents can easily avoid this kind of thing.

Anyway you can learn all you need to about fencing here because there really is very little to it. It's putting it all together that's the tricky part.

Interview!

First Dutch job interview on the way - to manage the web presence of a global multi-national. It's a job I'm sure I can excel at - now I've got to impress the jury. Time to read up on distributed content management systems, hosting arrangements and workflow I feel. Plus do some serious thinking about brand and communication issues and all kinds of other stuff...

Back to arms

Last night I revived one of my old hobbies, taking up mask and foil to return to the world of fencing. It has been about five years since I've fenced and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly things came back to me. Of course my footwork is terrible, my timing is shot, I miss my parries, what little point control I had has deserted me and my muscles ached after the warmup, nevermind any actual bouts, but I did get better.

Hell, I even won a fight or two (and lost some rather heavily but that's to be expected).

So, in case you're in Amsterdam and have the urge to take up a sword I recommend The Salle Van Oeveren who are based at the rebuilt and very lovely Frans Otten Stadion

The greatest show on earth

Yes kids, it's time for the US presidential election, complete with TV adverts making their case in that calm, measured reasonable style we've come to know and love

In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ..." before the farmer's wife then finishes the sentence: "... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."

Say what you like about party political broadcasts in the UK, but at least they try and address issues.

On a related note we all know comparing Bush to Hitler is dumb. Just to prove how dumb this strategy is at least one republican is now comparing Dean to Hitler and Lenin among others. In the spirit of the thing I'm comparing the author to a moron.

Online finds

This big list of recruitment agencies offering english speaking jobs might be useful.

Oh Bollocks

Liverpool away. Not exactly the FA cup draw I wanted after seeing Newcastle shrug off recent bad form and 32 years of south coast misery to beat Southampton in the FA Cup third round. Man Utd got Northampton or Rotherham depending on who wins the replay.

Happens every bloody year.

Well, OK, maybe it doesn't. But it feels like it does.

Predictions

Writing for Salon pundit Joe Consanon points out this piece of punditry from 1992. His point, pundits are usually wrong. Which since he's a pundit means...

Skating

We went skating yesterday, on our brand new viking skates. These are traditional Dutch skates, as opposed to more standard hockey skates, and feature much longer blades. They're designed for use outdoors, and in the favoured Dutch ice sport of speed skating.



I'm not a good skater, I go skating once or twice a year at most, and yesterday the new look skates didn't help much. Still they are more comfortable than the usual kind, and by the end of our session I was approaching my usual level of competence. The hope is that soon it will freeze up outside enough that we can go skating in the great outdoors.

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar

Despite the post below I've had a wonderful new year. On new years eve we went to a house party for which my better half had promised to make Oliebollen (Oil Balls). These are deep fried dough balls with raisins, apples and sultanas, and they're much fun to make and more fun to eat. Defying all claims that it was impossible I made one shaped like a dinosaur, and ate it.

New years day was spent with the family of my better half who gather round to talk to each other, play games and exchange news. It was a lot of fun, and included a swift tour of Amersfoort as part of the party games. Some years ago my better half was hosting one of these gatherings and determined that instead of sitting around all day the family should head out into the streets on a kind of treasure hunt / quiz. Even better she spied the chance to get rid of a cup she had been given by a friend and *really* didn't like. That cup became the annual trophy.

Thanks to my heroic efforts in Amersfoort that cup is now safely back in our hands, and I plan to give it pride of place in our home. Hurrah!

Today we're going skating on my new skates (more about those later)

Fireworks and New Year

The Dutch are a nation of sensible, sober folk. They like beer, but not to excess. They live in very sensible houses, are extremely organised in a slightly German kind of way and have the kind of serious outlook on things that probably comes from building your own country. Right up till new years eve.

At this point the Dutch go quite startlingly mad. There is somekind of national pyromania that lurks just below the surface in Holland and on the only night on which fireworks are not banned all hell breaks loose. We spent new year at a very nice houseparty. For several hours it was normal, but as midnight approached explosions began in the streets - the kind rockets and bangers make. As midnight got closer the explosions came closer together, and peeking out through the blinds and the mist you could see the odd shower of stars and chemical glitter.

Come midnight it was like something out of WWII. The crackle and snap of bangers, the whoosh of rockets and the thumping explosion of big fireworks mortars. Official advice to asthmatics is to stay inside. Our whole party rushed outside, bags of fireworks appeared from nowhere and we started to contribute ourselves.

In the UK there are relentless safety campaigns around bonfire night, some with graphic images of what can go wrong if you

Throw fireworks
Return to lit fireworks
Ignore the safety distances
Don't have a bucket of sand on hand
Set off fireworks near buildings

our party, and pretty much everyone else on the streets (and there were many) did all of these things. Bicyclists wheeled around corners to be confronted with catherine wheels and rode straight by. One father walked his three young sons yards away from a rocket in a bottle and didn't give it a second glance. The whole thing was a display of insane irresponsiblity from a group of people I'd have expected much more from.

I don't think I've been so shocked in a very long time.

My other half seems to feel like I'm overreacting. This after all is normal behaviour here. But in amonst all the fireworks was the constant sound of sirens. The emergency services must have been rushed off their feet that night. All those British commercials of the burned and the blinded kept running through my head.

On a more prosaic note everyone complains about kids in the streets with firecrackers in the weeks around christmas. They have big firecrackers here, you can here them from streets away. They also throw them in waste bins to set things on fire - no one can understand why.

I can. It's because once a year adults demonstrate that the grown up thing to do with fireworks is to behave like reckless kids. When we got home yesterday our recyling bin was burning away merrily. Apparently this happens every year.