The coming aporkalypse, or why we don’t need to worry about the swine flu epigdemic

Ok, so the media is firing on all scare-mongering cylinders over this whole swine flu snoutbreak. The threat level was raised today to 5 out of 6, which seems to mean that you might not want to travel unless it’s really urgent, say a holiday or business trip. Presumably 6 means only go to the airport if you really have to see of a loved one or need a tie and the airport is closer than town.

Let’s get this into context, this is definitely more hamdemic than pandemic, there have been 20 cases across Europe(1), of which no-one has died. In Mexico itself only 99 cases(2) have been confirmed as H1N1, and the swine flu has claimed just eight lives in Mexico, whose health spending per capita was recently rated 25th out of 25(3). 50 people in China have died of hand-foot-mouth disease(4), presumably from over exposure to this(5), and yet there is no cobra meeting to decide when we should change the threat number.

Tamiflu, of course, probably does nothing against hand-foot-mouth, whereas those extra supplies manufactured for bird flu are probably getting close to their expiry and what better market than a public scared of an over-exaggerated threat.

Besides, swine flu’s been in Sheffield for years(6)…

*Can’t get the links to work properly so here are the old school sources:

1. http://www.euronews.net/2009/04/30/europe-prepares-for-swine-flu-pandemic/
2. http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/world/eyauididmhau/
3. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_tot_per_cap-care-funding-total-per-capita
4. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/12/content_11174256.htm
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmHClIHgnRI
6. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2205108364#/photo.php?pid=30379508&op=1&o=all&view=all&subj=2205108364&aid=-1&oid=2205108364&id=1019065705

Tags: aporkalypse, epigdemic, hamdemic, rant, scaremonger, snoutbreak

On Becoming a Respectable Businessman

I am scared.

I’ve started a small business. I am now officially self-employed, which means I have to wade through a self-assessment tax form in 11 months. Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs recognises my business as being called A.Sine(9) Software, which will cause no end of problems trying to describe how to spell it over the phone.

Sadly it also means that 27% of my earnings are sliced off the top. The interesting part is that in trying to set up a business account with the Bank of Scotland I have to formulate a business plan, project my cashflow over the next year and have a business manager come and view my workplace (which is where I’m sat right now with a cat on my knee and a metric ton of comics, fiction and reference manuals on the shelves behind me). All this is becoming terribly real, and very confusing, but if you’re thinking of striking out on your own it’s not so daunting and I’m starting to feel quite proud of my little cottage php industry. I can recommend visiting the HMRC’s new business pages and their excellent helpline: 0845 915 4515 for those kicking off a side job.

Now I’m off to finish that site I’ve been working on for 2 months -_0

Tags: business, coding, scary

Five oh, no, nos…

Following on from my colleague Mr Neil (here below), I feel rather moved to brain-spurt this very night…

I’m afraid to say I have gradually become rather anti-police. That might sound shocking to the likes of ya’ll, but I think there are a few things that have contributed to my feelings of anger and frustration toward their, sadly essential, profession.

I wonder if they're retractable...

For starters there’s the increasing armaments they carry, we seemed to go from truncheon and whistle to asp and taser in the blink of an eye. One moment I see a bobby on the corner with his new pepper spray, then next me and Neil see two coppers in Matlock town with semi-automatic side arms. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for giving them stab-proof vests and something to subdue an over enthusiastic larcenist with but I’m of the opinion that if it’s something I, as a law abiding citizen of reasonable years, can’t posses then neither should it be something carried routinely by those keeping the peace.

Next, it’s the new powers they constantly ask for. Example; When they wanted to lock people up for 90 days without charge (never mind actually convicted you of something, they don’t even tell you what they think you’ve done) the Government were all like “Well they say they need it so that’s good enough for us”, seeming not to realise that they were are supposed to be the check in this whole balancing equation. Otherwise we’d just hand-out the tasers and tell them to “protect us from everything, even ourselves, in anyway you feel necessary”. Lines must be drawn and the people who enforce the law shouldn’t be the ones asking for or making the law.

Thirdly, the way they use powers given to them. Neil, below, briefly covered a couple of the more notable efforts. The shooting of a Brazilian electrician 7 times in the head, the unprovoked battering of citizens at a (or infact, anywhere near) a generally peaceful protest against the G20 and the kind of things that have landed us in this “financial crisis”. Another recent example would be the dispersing “The Climate Camp” by use of anti-terror laws to arrest more than 100 people who, before the police showed up, it appears were having a peaceful protest/hippy type anti-pollution camp out. I’m sure you can all think of at least one more of these yourselves.

The final reason of my quadrilogy of reasons is that I don’t think anyone who seeks such power should ever be granted it. Ok, so then you have the problem of exactly who do you get to be the bigger lad that’s on our side against the bullies in society. I’m not saying I have the solution, but something I have thought in life generally, those who want power over us want it for a reason and only very rarely is the reason a selfless one.

Those of you out there wanting a conclusion here are about to be sadly disappointed, please draw your own and post in the receptacle provided below.

Ado

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/apr/19/police-activism

Tags: anti-terror, brain spurt, law, police, politics, power

Jail Time

It’s good to see hardened criminals put in their place. Shooters of Jean Charles de Menezes? Still free. Street Photographers? Images deleted without court order; HA! Officers brutalising protesters? Still walkin’ around. Admins of The Pirate Bay? Locked up like they deserve!

Hokay, I’m trivialising. I’m not anti-police (my sister’s fiancée is a copper) and I know folks that work in the force and they’re all sound folks. Saying that though, the G20 riots were a bloody mess of mismanagement and bizarre savagery and require us all to think about the fundamental changes to police procedure that are creeping into effect. Why did officers cover their faces and conceal their ID numbers?

That’s a question for another time though, I want to talk about The Pirate Bay staffers being sentenced to jail for a year, and the fantastic statements given by Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi:

We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.

That man needs a medal and a suspended sentence. Copyright is fucked, let’s face it. We all breach copyright regularly, especially residents of the UK. I’m fairly sure that my Sky+ box is actually illegal. I know the copies of CDs I make to put on my iPod are illegal, and I think the backups of my music are probably fair game for a civil case too. But that’s the problem, every person thinks as media as ‘theirs’, whilst companies view it as their own and only grant you a license to view/hear/use it. Why shouldn’t we copy media, change it, improve it, destroy it and do as we damn well please?

It all be down to cash, grasshopper. If remittance was offered every time we download a song nobody would have a problem with TPB, but when their revenue stream is disrupted our corporate friends get upset. When they get upset they get litigious, and when they get litigious huge sums of remuneration get bandied about. Is the amount of stuff downloaded via TPB really worth £2.4m? I think it’s probably not. Without dispersal like this a lot of people wouldn’t have bothered. How many people have watched your copy of Firefly for example? Should each of them have to pay the price of the boxed set to watch it?

I know free access to media is unsustainable, but surely we can come up with a better way than criminalising free access to media whilst keeping distribution locked to physical products or digitally restricted ones. Copyright is broken and needs a fix that the people and the corporations can agree on, after all we pay their wages.

In the mean time of course, TPB is still up:

But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That’s the only thing hollywood ever taught us.
-The Pirate Bay

Tags: copyright, copywrong, digital rights, freedom, police, torrents

Dave Arneson

As you may have heard the second founding father of Dungeons and Dragons died on Tuesday.

Dave Arneson created D&D along with Gary Gygax (who sadly passed away last year) and was responsible for some of the touchstones of the game that persist today. Despite being employed by TSR briefly Dave left to pursue his own projects and had to fight a lengthy legal battle to be recognised as one of the creators of D&D. He continued to develop his own projects, and for a time worked as a lecturer for Full Sail University.

By all accounts Dave Arneson was a wonderful human being, a wonderful inventor of stories and an unsung hero of the RPG world. He will be missed by his loved ones and mourned by those who will now never have the chance to meet him.

You know recently I’ve been reading Ansel Adam’s autobiography and with Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Gygax and now Dave Arneson all gone I feel like all the wise old men are slowly dissappearing from this world. I suggest you learn what you can from the ones left before it’s too late to tell them how they touched your life.

A year ago my Grandad became very ill whilst on holiday, forcing him, my Nanan, Dad and Mum to stay with him at intensive care over Christmas. I’m told most people believed that he wasn’t going to pull through,but fortunately he recovered. He’s now very weak and has trouble walking but he still cuts my hair and breeds canaries in his back yard, and I now realise that in a few years he probably won’t be there anymore. I now treasure every minute I get to spend with him and absorb every tidbit of information he deigns to reveal. Even the slightly disturbing facts about where he used to hide his chewing gum.

I leave you with a quote from a man vastly more pithy than I:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

-Mark Twain

Tags: D&D, deaths, games, RPGs

I Broke Everything, Then I Fixed It

Eagle eyed (well, those with eyes; and those with screenreaders actually) readers will have noticed that the main page of Stuporcollider has been a bit broken recently.

My bad.

Do you want to know what was wrong? Really? Can you handle the complexity? Well strap yourself in, here we go!

"

You see that? That’s ASCII character 34 (or 22 in hex. I heard you at the back), commonly known as the speech mark, quote mark or double dash (I work with strange people). Here’s a well formed link:

<a href="http://link.com">This is a link!</a>

and here’s what I wrote:

<a href="http://link.com>This is a broken link!</a>

Spot the gargantuan cockup? Took me an hour to find it. My apologies are boundless. See how I placate you with Michael Bay eating a bowl of cereal?

Tags: cockup, neil sucks at html, site maintenance