Recommended job search site

As someone currently looking for a job, (anyone hiring for Technical Lead / IT Manager or CTO at the moment?) I have been using a wide variety of job search sites with mixed results. Incase anyone else is in the same situation, the site I have found that consistently returns the most relevant results and has the most flexible search (especially for Scotland) is ScotRecruit, the Scottish branded version of Jobsite who brand themselves as "The original, award-winning UK job search and jobs by email service". I guess my computerised job matching service I thought up in 1989 and got an award for in the Shell Livewire competition and my picture in the local paper doesn't count then? :-)

Seriously folks, there are loads of sites out there. Try this one first.

They have even lead the field and created a very useful page on the age discrimination legislation which is about to come into force in the UK.

Worst contact centre award

Having been on hold to the Orange contact centre (I guess that's what you would call it, I might call it a non-contact centre) for approx 2 hours and still not been able to speak to anyone, I would like to nominate Orange wwww.orange.co.uk for the worst contact centre of the year award. I've already been transferred 5 times on the call I'm on and I've comfortably managed to log into blogger, enter this article and post it in between the last two transfers.

Congratulations Orange, by the time you connect me you'll be able to read this article I'm just about to point you to.

So will everyone else on the Internet, including your prospective customers.

My site gets tens of thousands of visitors a month and through this blog is syndicated on many RSS feeds. Enjoy the publicity.

Religious Miracle

In new developments in the Pope Vs Islam story, this breaking news just in.

Muslim leaders, many of whom accepted the Pope's apology, are now concerned that the violence of recent days is now getting out of hand. Certainly the murdering of a nun and the firebombing of churches are against the core message of Islam which is a peaceful religion.

Noone wants to see the good name of Muslims tarnished by a tiny percentage of followers which use their religion as an excuse for violence and illegal acts.

The leaders go on to say that they understand how the West can often find it difficult to understand Muslims when the press pick on events like this and give the impression that Muslims will take to violence and illegal acts despite all that is said in the holy books regarding respect and understanding.

In order that the violence of recent days is put in its proper context, the religious leaders of Muslim groups and nations are today calling for an end to the illegal violence and are organising peaceful marches and protests, filled with the peaceful believers who comprise the majority of the Muslim faith and whose peaceful values and respect for other human beings are being misrepresented by the media focus on a few violent and isolated protests. This mass statement, which will emphasise the peaceful nature of Islam will be a silent protest against the Muslim minority who seek to misrepresent the faith as a whole.


Praise Be This Miracle.

Religious clarification

I was going to write a longish blog about the Vatican braces for Muslim anger reports.

However, I found this quote from the Dilbert Blog sums it up:

My favorite story of the week is about Pope Benedict inadvertently insulting Islam in a speech. He quoted a Byzantine emperor who called Islam “evil and inhuman” but made it clear that it wasn’t his own opinion.

In response to being labeled evil and inhuman by a dead Byzantine emperor, a group of Muslims did what anyone would do in that situation: They firebombed two churches in the West Bank.

This is funny on so many levels that I hardly know where to start.

Maybe we need to breed more atheists?.

Seriously, isn't it great how the Pope can issue a religious text to clarify what he said so that we can understand it better. Just think of the fun that would ensue if we could treat the bible the same way.

How about this for a starter

"Dear faithful. I thought up this religion to impose some order and fairness on early civilisation. Now that you have learnt these rules and adapted your own, you need not be bound by what was written in a dated book 2000 years ago, especially as society has moved on since then. Kindly disregard the stuff about the universe being created in 6 days and women and gays being inferior. Yes, you can have equal rights, that's what I meant really.

I hope you don't meet up with sentient beings from other planets in the future, because I completely ommited that in the bible, sorry everyone makes mistakes even those with complete power over time and space."

We won blog of the day

The author of Blog of the Day came across this site in a search and picked us for the award! If anyone knows of any other blog awards then please feel free to submit the site :-)

View the award

Subsequent to winning that award, we also won this blog of the day award.

Craig

American dates and 11th September

Why do Americans write dates backwards?

This is article the first about writing dates backwards. The one after this will be article the second. If I write eleven, the eleventh one will be article the eleventh.

No, wait a minute. Won't it be "the first article","the second article" and "the eleventh article"? If it's days of advent, it's the first day of advent not advent the first. In a few days it will be the eleventh day this month. The _eleventh_day_of_the_month. It makes sense, so much more so than reversing it to say day the eleventh. So why will everyone in the US write it backwards as September the 11th rather than something that is consistent with other American English usage, and say the 11th of September?

Let me remind you of an American film. "Born on the fourth of July". Not "Born on July 4th".

Let me remind you of an American song.

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle do or die.
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam's Born on the Fourth of July.
George M. Cohan

Despite the fact that July 4th wouldn't rhyme, it seems that Americans can write the day the other way round, when it suits them.

Take a look at numbers

12345. Twelve thousand, three hundred and forty five. The digits go left to right in order of decreasing significance.

Or a UK date

7th September 2006. The elements go left to right in order of increasing significance.


Now a US date

07/09/2006. 7th of September or 9th of July? If the latter, it's the only number I know of that has the least significant element in the middle rather than the end.

It's worrying that this practice is spreading to the UK. After all, if people get mixed up with dates written "best before 08/07/06" on medicine and they think this means August the 7th, they might get a surprise if it really meant the 8th of July.

Especially in the run up to the 11th of September, the UK media is now uniformly calling it "9/11" rather than "11/9". We don't need this confusion in the UK as well, it's bad enough as a programmer trying to deal with US jumbled dates without people in the UK using two date systems at the same time.

That's my grumble anyway. What will I be doing on 11th September? Preparing for my 2nd daughter's 5th birthday the next day. That's daughter the 2nd, birthday the 5th in American format :-)

Gordon Brown: Last prime minister of the UK?

It seems almost a foregone conclusion that Gordon Brown will succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister. Without a vote from the public, without him seeing even lead his own party, the most powerful person in the land will be replaced next year with a process approaching a coronation rather than a meaningful contest. Such is the nature of UK democracy.

I have nothing against Gordon Brown as an individual, and under normal circumstances after the Iraq war I think many would be grateful for some change at the top to draw a line under that episode. I also think that he's done a decent if uninspired job as chancellor and although his Chancellorship has seen the longest period of sustained economic growth in UK history, 4 years of this was under the Tories and there has been general growth worldwide, not just in the UK.

However, there is a big difference between being a capable number cruncher, largely keeping quiet, and an inspired leader.

Recently, the Labour defeat in the Dunfermline and West Fife 2006 by-election, after a campaign largely led by Gordon Brown in a constituency in which he lives, cast doubt on his ability to win elections on his own. As a Westminster politician, he has no authority over issues such as transport which are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Yet, he became involved in devolved issues by stating these, would be reconsidered and he would build a new bridge. Seven months later, the tolls are still £1 and cause traffic jams as cars build up to queue at the tolls. Tolls which are decades behind other countries, that have long since implemented automatic toll collection schemes.

Since Fife is the only place in Scotland with bridge tolls, why not just remove them?

Here's some more examples of things that need simplified:

Class 2 national insurance contributions. £2.10 a week. Why bother? It probably costs as much to collect it and chase the non payers as any benefit derived from it.

National Insurance. It’s an income tax by any other name. Get rid of it by merging it with Income Tax.

Child Tax rebates. An excuse to spend millions of pounds on an IT system that doesn’t work. An excuse to miscalculate payments and overpay people who can’t afford to pay it back. An idea that was singularly unoriginal and was copied from the US, complete with all the bureaucracy that goes with it. It wastes £1.3 billion per year. The lack of joined up IT means that you have to fill in the figures for your earnings rather than just looking it up on the tax return computer.

Car Tax. What a bureaucratic nightmare that is and how much money is wasted on chasing payment, filling in forms, advertising on TV and paper shuffling. I couldn’t buy my current car because of the car tax nightmare. The previous owner was registered disabled and had registered the car as owned by a disabled person. They don’t pay car tax and so the vehicle was exempt. I go to buy the car, pay for the tax at the post office and can’t because the system won’t accept my full payment as the vehicle is recorded as being exempt. I can’t pay nothing either because I don’t have disabled exemption. So a 100 mile round trip was necessary in another car (remember, mine isn’t taxed) to the regional licensing centre and someone has to stand in a queue and sort it all out. Is this helping Britain to keep moving? Unnecessary journeys and paper shuffling? For goodness sake if you want disabled people to be exempt from paying them to register themselves on the vehicle licensing computer and then they get the exemption, after all it’s the person who is claiming the exemption, not the car.

Inheritance tax. See this article in the Scotsman calling the government's tax changes “grossly unfair”. This is in a country where many middle earners pay 40% income tax + 9% national insurance whilst at the same time the super rich like the Rolling Stones pay a derisory 1.9% tax on income. Surely we should have a fairer tax system than this?

Pensions. We have a pensions crisis but is the £160,000,000,000 hole in pension funds due to taxation helping to fix the problem or making it bigger?

Lets be prudent he says. Not when it comes to splashing out on Iraq. Or the millennium Dome. Or IT fiascos costing hundred of millions of pounds. How many hospitals would that misplaced prudence buy the nation?

The risk here is that unless Labour is inspirational, it will only feed into the hands of their main opposition - namely the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland. If Labour does not want to lose the Scottish elections in 2007 then now is the time to act.

It could be that Gordon Brown is the one who indirectly delivers independence for Scotland. We live in interesting times.

Government demonstrates IT incompetence yet again

BBC NEWS | Politics | £141m benefits computer shelved: "It is the latest in a long series of computer problems for the government."

Too right. I put this onto Reddit with some rather choice language and it made the front page.

The government even has a Project Management method called PRINCE2 and a site all about it. So was the method at fault for the £140m problem or the people in charge? Why in the light of these overruns is there no accountability? After all, the 2nd First Minister of Scotland was forced to resign over a sum which is a tiny fraction of the above.

Lets not forget the £6.8Bn NHS upgrade overruns, the ID card running into delays and overruns, 1 month after I said it would and of course the gun register unfit for purpose 10 years on.

Clearly the taxpayer should be expecting better value for money in these projects so that instead of funding overruns the money can be spent on schools, hospitals, etc.

Rip off Britain

There are so many examples I could give to illustrate Rip Off Britain. Ever since I first went to the US in the 1970s, many consumer goods are so much cheaper there.

Clearly over priced goods have an effect on the economy as people will buy less of them. I am interested in other examples of rip off Britain and the government's stance on this.

Here's my example from something I was looking to buy:

WN311B PCI card for NetGear router: Typical UK price £113 plus postage

Now compare it with the US: Typical US Price $96

The US price in dollars is cheaper than the UK price in pounds.

Now for a more direct comparison. Convert the US price to pounds £50.67. Add the rip off tax known as VAT (no sales tax applicable on US internet sales remember). This would make the US price with VAT £59.53. Lets call this £60.00

So the UK Rip Off margin is (113-60)/60 * 100 = 88%. 88% markup!!

Alleged cost of importing and postage $53

And of course where there is no importing or postage, the differential is even less excusable. In this BBC article on iTunes pricing, the UK price is 55% higher than the US price and 93% higher than the Canadian price.

Welcome to Rip Off Britain

Early History:
The UK Internet list, 1992, founded to keep UK Internet prices low.
Rip off prices in 1992
Rip off prices in 1993
More rip off prices in 1993
Rip off prices in 1995

Since Labour came to power, we have
Rip off insurance APR, 1999 and
High training prices 2006, because we're worth it?

Who is responsible for ensuring Britain stays competitive?

The VisitScotland connection and jobhunting

Trying a bit of reverse marketing here to see whether posting to Google Groups: uk.jobs.wanted and also to Ebay.co.uk in an unconventional attempt to get me ahead of the crowd and in front of the right people. After all, with so many agencies not even bothering to acknowledge receipt of a CV or follow up, it's one way to get remembered. Many just ignore you. Some respond. One major agency however has contacted me through some third parties and commented "I would like to congratulate you on such a fantastic CV", which is certainly a lot more feedback and effort than others put in. So I'm reciprocating the effort and rather than just emailing the agency to say thanks I'm taking a few hours out of my day to meet them in person.

Maybe if other agencies were as attentive, they might get further. Back to the VisitScotland connection or visitscotland.com where I currently work - if only job searches were as flexible as the accommodation searches we've designed for that site then job hunting would be so much easier.

Craig

Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

Following on from my Wiki Religion proposal, I came across a great site that makes us think about religion, a truly excellent work. Please read Why Won't God Heal Amputees?

SNP set to seize power at Holyrood

As reported in Scotland on Sunday today. Blogging it here as the BBC has completely ignored the story. Rather than covering a story that would mean the start of break up of the UK next year, we are treated to another episode of the Tony Blair when will he go soap opera. Ah, good old English Broadcasting Company!

Scotsman.com News - Politics - Poll: SNP set to seize power at Holyrood: "ALEX Salmond is on track to take Scotland to the brink of independence, according to a startling new poll which shows the SNP has opened up a clear lead over Labour.

With just eight months to go until the Holyrood elections, the party has established a four-point lead over its nearest rivals, and appears to be pulling away."

World gone nuts

The scene: A person on vacation walks into a late night store to buy some nuts.
Present: The person, a shop assistant and a selection of tasty nutty snacks placed out of reach.


The story goes something like this

Shopper: I fancy a bag of salted peanuts, do you have any?

Assistant: You look under 21, can I see some ID?

Shopper: What the? Well, all I've got is my driving licence

The shopper shows his driving licence to the assistant, who checks it

Assistant: Thank you John <funny middle name john would rather not use> Doe, I see you're old enough to buy nuts, but unfortunately due to strict local laws we are outwith the permitted nut selling hours and there are severe penalties for serving nuts late at night, or early in the morning and especially on Sundays.

Shopper: What a ridiculous local law, why can't an adult buy nuts on a Sunday morning - what if I was having a picnic or barbeque?

Assistant: Well you might think so sir, but believe me nuts are a real problem for a minority of the population. First off, we've got small children pinging them and choking on them so it's an offence to give nuts to any young children. Then we've got teenagers congregating in public places eating them and making a general nuisance of themselves so we've banned outdoor nut eating in many places. Not to mention the health risks - did you know that you can be ill if you eat several large bags of nuts a day - see the healthwarning notice on the bag! Besides that there's the obvious allergy problem so even though it says "this is a bag of nuts" on the front, we still need a notice in small print on the side saying "may contain nuts". There's also people who can be addicted to certain foods, let me show you the local notices detailing meetings of nuts anonymous and al-a-nut for friends and relatives. We've also banned nuts in all the local schools because obviously if one child might be allergic then all the children must be banned from taking nuts in.

Shopper: That's mad. Surely the health benefits for the many shouldn't be affected by an allergy affecting a few. What if one child was allergic to bees, would you ban the children from taking in fruit incase it attracted bees to the playground? Surely it makes no sense to ban nuts because you've got all these other nut contaminated products that are just as deadly. Statistically, more children are hurt by dogs but you let the dogs run free in a park where children are playing.

Assistant: That's the rules Sir, we have dedicated nut free areas.

Shopper: I'd better watch out then when I'm walking back to my holiday cottage that I don't enter a nut free zone.

Assistant: Yes, and if you had a car you'd need to drive with the bag of nuts in your boot - people have been known to eat nuts when driving and a loose nut falling between your legs is such a distraction that we've made driving with an open bag of nuts in the car an offence. We've also found that nuts are a major cause of teenage pregnancy, once they get under the influence.

Shopper: How can nuts lead to pregnancy?

Assistant: Well it started harmlessly enough at a party. Everyone was enjoying themselves normally, drinking alcohol and behaving themselves when some troublemakers snuck in with some peanut butter paste in a squeezy bottle. All of a sudden they were eating it, someone got some on themselves and before long they were covered in the stuff. One thing just led to another and the situation got completely out of control. Especially when they started spinning the empty bottle. We had to put a bar on the use of nuts at underage parties.

Shopper: Thanks for telling me, it sounds like there's a lot of red tape around a product that for most people is healthy when taken in moderation. I can't even buy nuts on my way to work as their sale before 10am is prohibited.

Assistant: Yes, because of the health risks and the powerful anti-nut lobby the nut industry is heavily regulated. You can only buy nuts at certain times of day, consume them in certain indoor places and you have to be of legal age to buy them. Exceptions are granted for religion, where you can take nut loaves and fish into communion. The religious minority are keen to ensure that the only nut eaters on a Sunday morning are those in church.

Shopper: Oh, that's perverse. It's obviously far too complicated. All I wanted was a snack, I'll take a packet of crisps instead.

Assistant: Certainly sir, and are you wanting something to drink with it? They are a bit salty.

Shopper: Oh, OK then. I'll take a litre of whisky.

Assistant: Fine then, here you go. Clearly as you are not unduly the influence I see no reason why I shouldn't be serving you alchohol regardless of the time of day or day of the week. You might be surprised but in other places they actually have the same sort of laws for alchohol that we do for nuts, it's completely bonkers.

Shopper: I completely agree, it's totally nutty.

Why not see what the policicians said.

Crowdsourcing the world's best email service

I've been looking around for a decent e-mail provider for a while. I haven't found one. Well, I have in parts but not all in the same place at the same time. So I thought, why not crowdsource this idea and build one?

Background

Thunderbird has proven that open source can take on Microsoft as an email client.

SpamAssassin has proven that open source can take on spam.

There is I believe a gap in the market for high quality email services to individuals. The major corporate anti-spam players do not serve the individual user. Many ISPs roll their own solution with mixed results. The GUI to many mail systems is also of variable quality. Email has a vast user base. Even if there is a great solution out there, few seem to know about it.

Solution

My ideal solution would have:

1. A great user interface, at least as good as atmail for Firefox


2. A great anti-spam solution based around spamassasin rules and avoiding
challenge-response. As good as barracuda who appear to be the market leader (possibly with barracuda or roaringpenguin or similar as the engine)

3. POP3, SMTP and IMAP access. Especially IMAP for speedy access to 'held' mail from a mail client. No slow websites when you're using your mail client!


4. The ability for users to set their own spam threshold since a Doctor working in sexual health is likely to have a different spam threshold to a parent wanting to control their children's email. Similarly if you are actually researching spam, being able to discuss spam without said mail being blocked is problematic.


5. Signing of important mail to pre-clear it through spam filters. This is important for at least two classes of mail. One is legal/business critical mail which must get through without delay. The other is where there is a financial penalty if the mail is undelivered.


6. Auto-whitelisting any email address you send to, so that I don't send someone a mail and then a reply from them is held.


7. A semi-reasonable ability to detect forged email addresses so that even if I whitelist an address, really what I am doing is whitelisting that mail address when sent from that company's servers and not the same address as forged by a spammer.


8. A demo of the user interface that you can play with to get a feel for it before you sign up


9. To keep my existing email addres and domains and to be able to send and receive email using my existing email addresses.


10. Free from advertising, or I can opt into advertising and get a share of the advertising revenue.

Way forward

So what would the world's best email comprise and how much would you be prepared to pay for it? Perhaps it could be branded and franchised to e-mail hosting companies. Is there anything out there already that matches these requirements? I've looked at Gmail but it doesn't do much for me.

I asked those folks over at Cambrian House to see if they can build one. The link is below.

Please support this idea at Cambrian House.

Still looking for a job

Incase anyone is still wondering, I'm still looking for a job and I'm open to reasonable offers.

Just incase Amazon down the road is reading this! (Hi Guys)

Seriously, I've had a few interviews and received glowing feedback from interviews and had numerous 2nd interviews. However, having been on a shortlist of 1 at least three times its rather frustrating when all of a sudden the job "goes away". Reasons have been:

1. Someone internally turned down the job 6 months ago but has now changed their mind and we're recruited them instead.
2. Completely out of the blue and much to the frustration of all the managers we've now got a company wide hiring freeze. Sorry, we don't know how long it will last.
3. We've rewritten the job spec.
4. We thought we had investment for the position, but in fact we're still negotiating it and this will take some months.

and so on. Indeed one positive thing out of this is that having impressed Amazon.com enough for them to get back in touch a year later, and for the aforementioned reasons missing out on jobs through no fault of my own, the agencies that put me forward for those jobs I was in a shortlist of 1 for are now really keen to put me forward for other positions knowing that I'm a very sellable candidate. I've even had major agencies writing to me via LinkedIn wanting me on their books because they've been impressed with my work.

In the meantime, several of my ideas on Cambrian House are doing OK so any votes you want to send their way are more than welcome! The Intelligent Search Spider and tell us how you want to search would both go some way to fixing broken job search sites, of which I now have plenty first hand experience.

Hopefully something will come of all this soon before I get laid off due to my work transferring to Austria in October.

For something as important as this, surely searching for a job shouldn't be as difficult and actually getting a job shouldn't involve this many people spending so much time for no return.

Suing the spammer

I am getting extremely fed up indeed with the large number of unsolicited sales calls I'm getting to my mobile phone and my wife is getting to her phone regarding "upgrading our phone contract". We don't have upgreadable contracts as the tarrif we are on is rental free. Our numbers are on the Telephone Preference Service and have been so for years, and the registrations are still current. Yet, 4 times on Friday she was called. Even more irritating is that usually said companies hide their number (you can't unfortunately ban anonymous calls to a mobile) and when they do present a number you invariably get a standard message with no option to speak to a real person and complain about it.

Until Friday that is. For the moment, I'll keep the details confidential but we received 4 calls from the same number and they didn't hide their details. I called them back to complain and got the standard greeting of "we'lll phone you back again" and no option of speaking to a real person. However, they did give the company's name (I hadn't heard of them). I called said company to complain and they said they would phone me back. They didn't. Then I got through and they gave me some rubbish about even though I'm on the TPS list, I also have a data line and that was the number they were calling. I've confirmed with my telecom operator that I don't have a data line number. 5 days after they were supposed to call me back and explain themselves, I had to call them again for an explanation.

I spoke to someone who gave me the usual rubbish about "we collect our data from various sources but we can't say where we got your details from" blah blah blah. This is an irrelevant point since a TPS listing overrides such lists unless I have explicitly opted in to receive communications and no I don't tick the 3rd party box. In any case, my wife's number isn't used for anything except emergency calls and friends so there's no reason for a company to have it.

I refer said telephone companies to this widely publicised legal case under the same relevant law. Nigel Roberts, like me a Chartered Engineer with a background not only in IT but an interest in legal matters, won £300 damages as a result of that case involving email spam. I feel a test case involving phone spam will be the only thing that will make the industry stop random dialling and annoying people on the "do not call" TPS list. I have been in regular contact with Nigel Roberts following his victory, which used the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003 to sue the spammer. Invariably the phone spam companies also claim that they can't tell me who gave me their details because of the Data Protection Act. Since when was the DPA a device for concealing a crime? Evidently they have never heard of a Norwich Pharmacal order then, just what you need to get round that difficulty.

The real truth is that the phone spammers either don't record where the details come from or are simply indulging in random dialling.

We will see when the supervisor calls me back after I asked the person I spoke to for their company's legal address (well obviously I can get this from the companies house website but at least I've got to speak to a manager this time).

The £300 that Nigel Roberts won would be useful, but it's as much for the publicity that I'm doing this since this would seem to be the only way to get the message to the industry that enough is enough.

Craig

Kneejerk reaction detector

"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities"

Tony Blair, sometime prior to 11th September 2001.

Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday rammed home that he saw identity cards as a "major plank" of the new Labour Party General Election manifesto.

Tony Blair, sometime after 11th September 2001.

Kneejerk reaction anyone? The same goes for the current situation with carryon baggage on flights. Carryon being the operative word here as it certainly is a carry on when you aren't allowed to take on a book. What do they think will happen? It's a bit difficult to conceal something of any size in a book isn't it. Let's play "Who wants to be a terrorist" now. You can phone a foreign tent, ask the Axis of Evil or have your motherland invaded by a superpower and partitioned 50:50. You have four choices, remember to choose carefully. OK, let's begin. You need to hide a few pounds of explosive material somewhere and a detonator. Where do you put them?

1. In between pages 666 and 667 of "Bomb making for novices", causing the book to expand to 10 times its normal size.
2. In between pages 1 and 1000 of your autographed copy of "Bin Laden: caves of the world an insider's guide." with a special large cut out section that security will see on an X-ray, or if they open the book or pick it up and notice its making a funny sloshing sound.
3. A schematic of an aircraft with your large bomb carefully wrapped inside, together with Afghan postmarks to carefully disguise it and make it look like a Genuine Parcel.
4. Somewhere else.

Not wanting to give too much away here, but I think "Somewhere else" might be the preferred option. Still maybe they think People With Books will be able to attack the crew and render them entirely helpless by shredding the book at high speed and dispensing mass paper cuts to the entire inflight crew before they have had time to react. Uh-oh, better ban all those in-flight magazines too then. And the safety notice as that's made of laminated plastic and could be carefully used as a weapon by creatively reflecting the reading light off the laminate and a spoon and into the flight crew's eyes rendering them paralysed.

All equally ridiculous and absurd I'm sure you'll agree.

You know it's a kneejerk reaction when you can still take your duty free booze on board and you can't take a bible. A 1 litre glass bottle and a paperback book. Which do you think represents a more dangerous weapon?

Never mind, all will be solved in the post-ID era when we all have ID cards. You'll be able to tell the terrorists quite easily then as they will have "I am a terrorist" on their ID cards. What? They won't? I thought that was the whole point?

I should read more. Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 anyone?

Wiki Religion

When I read the classic letter to Dr Laura on religion and homosexuality, I thought it was one of the funniest put downs I've ever seen of people who take the bible too literally.

The bible is full of contradictions. Is it an "eye for an eye" or is it "turn the other cheek". Is it "a plague about your houses" or "the meek shall inherit the earth". Who knows? Certainly in a book that says one thing and then another it's easy to find something in there for everyone which is maybe why it became so popular. Oh, that and the religious persecution. And of course the fact that if you questioned religion in the dark ages you might have been put to a nasty death. Or burned for witchcraft. Or stoned. Not to mention the religious wars which have, lets face it, been one of the biggest preventable causes of death in the last 2,000 years. Hmm, maybe not such a good record on "turn the other cheek" then. "Love thy neighbour" might be a problem too. Freedom of thought is often too dangerous a concept for many religions.

Actually, it's not that hard to explain away some of the contradictions. If you look at the overall message of the bible, it tells the initial story of the creation, the explanation of how man came to live on earth and associated with that the folklore which comprised the old testament tales is reflective of those circumstances which were were pretty lawless. If the best that the Creator of the Entire Universe can do to fix things is flood the earth then I guess this speaks volumes. Anyway, the ten commandments saw the first set of order being established and of course much of the old testament points forward to the arrival of birth of Yehoshua and the New Testament (or should that be Testament 2.0, after the first one came out of beta). In testament 2.0, we have "I am the way, the truth and the light" prevailing, and so does an enhanced order using these revised morals and attitudes. So the bible tells the story of increasing order and structure in society and a movement from lawlessness to civilisation. This in part explains away many of the contradictions. However, many remain. The "creation in 6 days" bit is a bit of a problem for scientists. As is "the entire human race began with two people whose children then committed incest". Not to mention "Every species on the planet can fit in a boat", not to mention all the stuff about homosexuality which started me off. Oh and while I'm at it there's also "we have refrigerators now, so you can forget that nonsense about eating cloven hoof animals" and "we're a bit cleaner these days so circumcision is really legalised child abuse" or "perhaps we should look at the cannibalism of communion in a different light".

Never mind, it's useful to take a leaf out of Christianity's book (remember the 10 commandment where the structures got revised and remember also the revision with Testament 2.0?). So I propose we start a Wiki Religion where people can edit the text freely like WikiPedia and then we can have a modern up to date and entirely relevant religion free from 2,000 year old dogma. After all, the bible can hardly be considered to be the work of a deity when you see all the censorship and revisions it has been through.

Where would you start? Ah yes, the beginning. Anyone want to put it in a wiki and see what happens?

We might find out there's more in common between the peoples of the world than the differing religions currently at war with each other would have us believe.

Who knows, Jesus might even be let into a nightclub.

I wonder what they'll call this religion? "Common Sense" or maybe even "Science".

Amen.

Friday round up

A quick round up of some interesting sites I've visited lately:

Israel and Hezbollah, media bias?

Video showing Sky news getting a well deserved slaughtering from George Galloway. Winner of the "Don't mess with me, I know what I'm talking about" award.

1984, more police state

The Guardian reports that British children, possibly as young as six, will be subjected to compulsory fingerprinting under European Union rules being drawn up in secret. The prints will be stored on a database which could be shared with countries around the world.

Business, redefined.

How turning the rules of business upside down and letting employees set their own salaries is making one company very successful and having people beat a path to their door to learn more.

Friday fun

Entertainment for the end of the week

Star Trek inspirational posters (funny).

Alternative office inspirational posters.

Milk is better for you than you think.

Undergarment disfunction from the author of Dilbert.

Games

Best free game I've seen online in a while (looks like Half life).

No gods

Following the spectacular Tommy Sheridan victory, the party he founded is now likely to split and in the words of the BBC

All the party's key posts are up for grabs. The stage is set for a political bloodbath.

Regarless of whether you are a supporter of the SSP, the words of Aristotle would seem appropriate:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

and certainly Tommy Sheridan is one of the most respected politicians, even if you disagree with his point of view.

With the Scottish Parliamentary elections now only 9 months away, perhaps a split in the SSP will help the SNP in the common quest each party has for Scottish Independence.

In the words of Brian McNeill, sung by Dick Gaughan

And I'm damned sure that there's plenty live in fear
Of the day we stand together with our shoulders at the wheel

Perhaps we will stand together in May, to touch the sun.

It's not just what you're born with
It's what you choose to bear
It's not how big your share is
But how much you can share
And it's not the fights you dreamed of
But those you really fought
It's not what you've been given
It's what you do with what you've got

One of my favourite quotes, from What You Do With What You've Got by Si Kahn.


Heros sought for May, no gods need apply.