Intervening for Regime Change
They'll welcome us with flowers you know...
--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert
Green my Apple
Apple computers are a lot less green than you'd think given their image. Indeed when my employer Greenpeace ranked 14 global electronics companies in terms of how much toxic ewaste their products produce Apple ranked 11th out of 14.
That's why we're asking people to make Apple green
www.greenpeace.org/apple
(and don't forget to tag references to this campaign with greenmyapple )
Old blogs never die
Although in my case they sometimes disappear off line for years at a time. Still, I've republished the blogger archives of my old site- MBA Experience, at http://sbsmba.blogspot.com I'll put the rest of the site back as well sooner or later.
Another blog which has reached a close is Tony Rickey's excellent Three Years of Hell (to become the devil) . Since Tony claims I'm part of the inspiration for this I'm glad to see that he's got as much out of writing the blog as I did. I however, despite occasional thoughts of writing in the style of Hunter S Thompson (which I never managed) didn't come up with anything as stylish as Tony's take on the Screwtape letters.
I didn't manage the amount of inter-blog dialogue he did either, but that might be a sign of the times more than anything else.
Still Tony is done, and if you're wondering what a law degree is like you could do a lot worse than start here.
Oh dear...
Scepticism is mounting about the plot to bring down aeroplanes with binary explosives. I do hope we don't end up with another situation where mass arrests and mass publicity is followed by the quiet release of people against whom we have no proof, and who may well be innocent, or at the worst guilty of running off at the mouth to impress their friends.
While it's not surprising that Craig Murray thinks all may not be well with the arrests it's hardly comforting to see the Register weighing in with the suggestion that the plot was based on junk science.
And the conclusion is...?
Either this means the police have enough powers to protect us from this kind of thing or it means we need to be able to detain people for 90 days at a stretch with no charge and no lawyers.
Indeed once the dust has settled I'd like to know if at any point the investigators wished they'd had access to the kind of powers Blair suggested in the first draft of his anti-terror bill.
A chance to contribute
Can't say much about this yet, but our Mediterranean office is putting together some great stuff around the middle east crisis, and I get to be involved. Of course unless a ceasefire comes into effect soon focusing people's attention on ecology is going to be very difficult.
But if the bombs do stop falling we need to make sure the rebuilding is done in a way that's best for all involved.
Fantasy football pre-season
Today I've been getting on with the essential football pre-season ritual that is choosing my fantasy football team. I've been doing this for more than ten years now, and I have to say that if there's a drab midtable dogfight on TV knowing that the end result will actually matter when it comes to end of season bragging rights makes it that bit more interesting. I also think that by making you take an interest in other teams it makes you a bit more knowledgable about the game. But anyway...
This year my knowledge is at a very low ebb. While I saw quite a lot of Match of the Day highlights last season I saw few (none?) premiership games from start to finish. This makes it hard to build up the background knowledge that makes picking a fantasy side easy. So I've been doing something I haven't done for years - dropping last seasons results into a spreadsheet and looking for clues.
This is actually a good exercise in modelling. For a start it highlights the limits of models - your only data is based on past performance, but you're trying to predict the future. The variables are often linked - but in a hard to define way.
So I'd just decided not to bother with Manchester United defenders this season as Roy Kean's retired and the midfield won't give them much protection - when I remember they've signed Michael Carrick to replace him. To work a model would have to adjust for all kinds of things.
On the other hand the model has highlighted a few things. First top players are lousy value for money. The folks who worked out the prices put a big premium on the players who score the most points - so the best investments are in the middle level players. Similarly goalkeepers and defenders offer much better value for money than midfielders and forwards.
However the goal of the game is not to produce the most cost effective team - it's to score the most points. So at some point you stop trying to save money and like Roman Abramovich on a shopping spree you realise that you're never going to win the league unless you pay waaaay over the odds for the top players. It's around about this stage that I ditched the model and started tweaking - so and so out - so and so in...
End result of all this nonsense? A starting 11 of
Van de Saar
Finnan
Kishishev
Terry (c)
Ferdinand
Carragher
Mendes
Carrick
N'Zogbia
Bellamy
Ameobi
and on the bench
Bennet
Lennon
Morrisson
Horsfield
Logo 2.0
Todays consumer is hyper sensitive to changes in the cultural landscape, which they recontextualise into their own communications. < / web 2.0 >
Here's a bunch of people making fun of web 2.0 logos
.Con
I've been reading .con, a history of the .com boom and bust. It takes place at pretty much the time I was leaving university and going to work in the web industry. Indeed one of my old CVs mentioned having 'a ringside seat' on the whole affair.
I'd love to be able to talk to myself as I was then. I remember thinking two things
a) The .com bubble was clearly ridiculous and couldn't last
b) Internet business was the only way to do business
Clearly these positions would have been hard to reconcile, but I'm pretty sure that's what I was thinking. It was a kind of 'all those .com's are dumb, but this web thing is really going to work'. Clicks and Bricks was the buzzword for that state of mind I seem to recall.
In my defence the company I was working with at the time made a point of not dealing with .coms. We worked for real businesses who paid cash, not stock options, and most of the projects I worked on made money for someone - often a lot. So perhaps I did know what I was doing - but I doubt it. If I'd been working somewhere with stronger Kool Aid I think I'd have swallowed it all...
Duff in for how much?
Football finance is one of the most misunderstood things around. Even journalists who should no better have been trumpeting the 'Newcastle only paid #5m for Duff' story as if it's news.
When a transfer fee is announced it's in everyone's favour to exaggerate it. So the selling club will tot up all the potential add ons, extra payments, performance bonuses etc. in order to claim that they got an offer too good to turn down, while the buying club do the same to demonstrate their level of ambition.
The truth is that for most transfers there's a 50% cash payment up front with the rest spread over a few years. I seem to remember there's some sort of different regulation for payments relating to overseas transfers from the UK that makes them more financially attractive as well.
Anyway, the key point is that the stock market is the only place where what gets talked about is cold hard cash. We acquired an asset (Damien Duff) and we are committed to at least #5m. Future payments aren't mentioned - but I wouldn't be surprised if they're linked to appearances, champions league / UEFA qualification, international appearances or even goals scored. All of which could easily push the 'newspaper figure' up to the #10m talked about.
The other thing to look for is what it takes to balance the books. Like most assets player registrations are depleted over the life of the asset on the balance sheet. So assuming the reported 17m Chelsea paid for Duff was real and he was there for three years that leaves 6.8m to go, so the Chelsea accounts will only show a 1.8 million loss on the deal. More likely though some of the agreed #17m was still outstanding and we've got him for exactly what it cost for Chelsea to break even.
While I can't think of examples off the top of my head this is a very common pattern in football transfers, and one the press almost never notice.
I have a plan
Mostly it involves doing a lot more blogging than I have been lately. I'm aiming for a post a day. Not including the blogging I do for work
Well done that man
It's attracting some easy cynicism, but I can't see David Milliband's blog as anything but a good thing.
So far he's doesn't seem to be filtering hostile comments, there really is a dialogue and despite the civil service support there is the sound of a human voice there - which is, after all, the point.
Pair Programming
We've taken some babysteps toward pair programming here at work. The key thing holding us back being that we don't do much actual development, and that we work across so many projects it's rare for two people to be assigned to anything.
Even so, reading things like this makes me think we need to take the plunge sooner rather than later.
Keeping arms under control
I've just signed up to Amnesty's 'Control Arms' campaign. Amnesty are a group I've got huge respect for, they achieve a lot and speak with an exceptionally strong moral voice. Occasionally they get criticised for an overfocus on western regimes (especially the US) who aren't perfect while ignoring terrible dictatorships.
This is of course garbage. It's just that when Amnesty put out a report on terrible dictatorships they get ignored by the news at 10, but when they slate the most powerful man in the world, well that's news. It's not Amnesty's fault, it's down to the media, and ultimately the public indifference that they're working so hard to counter.
Anyway, signing up was easy, as was uploading a photo to become one of the million faces. They did ask for a bunch of personal info at that stage, which I didn't give to them.
They also score bonus points for making it really easy to place their banner ad on my sidebar.
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