gamboling.co.uk

A suggestion that Fair Trade products could be tagged with RFID so that consumers can actually tell where they have come from.

How to rethink the digital divide

Bill Thomson here also talks about the $100 dollars laptop. An idea that seems to have been missed with this is the idea that they should be sold for $200.

Wait? I hear you say, why are you introducing rampant capitalistic tendencies to such a worthy product?

There are no new laptops on sale for $200. None. If there could be one sold for $200 then that one sold could fund one for a child in the developing world. The project is currently trying to get governments to fund the laptops, but if we could harness people’s greed the project could do even better.

well of course I can. Being incredibly late with things is part of my whole personality. But then so is being incredibly on times with things. What an enigma? What an oddity?

I tend to get distracted from the writitng unless there is a firm deadline. And I really love deadlines. Despite this leading to one of my most favourite quotes I really do actually love deadlines. I almost always actually achieve them in my actual life. And the most diffcult thing is that in my non-actual life – in my writing life I don’t have anyone telling me that I have to do something by a certain time.

At any rate I’ll tell you the quote then I’ll tell you my current favourite quote and then I’ll tell you why I don’t like favourites and then I’ll produce a quote to back it up and then I’ll actually let the quote out that I wanted to say in the first place. Because basically this article is to let something – a quote if you will – out into the open.

The first quote is from Douglas Adams and goes this way: “I love deadlines, I love this whooshing noise they make when they pass”.

My current favourite quote is this one from Miles Kington (who he – ed? I should do an article about him some day) which I like so much currently I’ve quoted three times this week. It goes like this: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomatoe is a fruit, Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

Joeseph Conrad knew a thing or two and he said that he “disapproved of favourites in public life” what he would have made of the channel four programs based on the theory of what are 100 hundred clips on a theme we can get cheaply is not on record but I can guess he can’t have been pleased.

Anyway, at any rate the reason I started this was to describe a conversation I overheard the other day on the tube. The conversation started by talking about baby names, but ended up talking about names of people at school. And one of the women in the conversation said that there had been two unfortunately named people at her school, and something about her demeanor meant that she really wasn’t making it up. So I listended and I listened hard.

The names she came up with were the following, and you must remember that these were people that she went to school with. First there was Friday Sessions. Which is bad enough. And then there was the most ultimate one (in fact she told the story backwards and ended with Friday, buth then that’s the benefit of writing folks) the other person she went to school with was called:

wait for it…

… Theresa Green.

I thank you.

So Tony Blair has just lost his first vote in the commons. It was on the complicated subject of the ammount of time that police should be able to hold a terrorist suspect before charging them. The government wanted the time changed to 90 days. And all the other sides wanted to use this to score points.

Now by that do not infer that I side one way or the other. But I do think that much more of the reason that he lost was because of politics rather than the personal beliefs of those who were voting. Because you’re not telling me the Tories wouldn’t have minded locking people up for ever without trial if they’d have half the chance especially if it was Tony Blair.

I personally don’t think the 90 days argument stacks up because of this reason as cited in Private Eye.

Australia:
Al-Qaeda death toll: 88
Period terrorism suspects can be detained without trial: 24 hours.

Spain:
Al-Qaeda death toll: 191
Period terrorism suspects can be detained without trial: 5 days.

America:
Al-Qaeda death toll: 3,000
Period terrorism suspects can be detained without trial: 7 days.

UK:
Al-Qaeda death toll: 52
Period terrorism suspects would be able to be detained without trial: 90 days.

It’s just so far out of whack with what is happening in other countries that I think I would prefer to see a slightly better debate of the issues than people just plucking numbers out of the air.

But I do think the reason that Blair lost the vote was due to political positioning rather than a logical answer to a free debate. If the vote were a free one more Tories would have voted in favour of it than did. But similarly fewer Labour MPs would have. So perhaps it made no differnce that it wasn’t free. Or perhaps the reason Tony lost was simply that he hadn’t changed the wallpaper on his teeth in a while.

Recycling seems like a very modern thing. But I think that actually it may have been around for a very long time.

In fact even the earliest of men must have been recycling when they picked their nose and ate it (the snot that is not their noses).

Well you may say that it’s disgusting. But at least it’s green.

It strikes me that there’s two things that pretty much everyone can agree on about Iraq. First that there’s a lot of oil there, and second that Saddam was a bad man.*

Now some people have followed this logic:
Saddam is bad so he might attack us, we should go and stop him first

And other people have followed this logic:
How will we ever be able to say to people you can’t attack us if we’ve attacked people without being provoked

I am really surprised that more people haven’t been saying openly:
Hey don’t you find petrol / gas really expensive? We’ve found this guy who has tons of it, and he’s really nasty. Shall we go get him?

The thing is of course that the people in the know can’t really use that argument, and the reason they can’t use it isn’t because of some left wing reason like: “they can’t admit they’re in it for the cheap oil because that sounds so crass”. They can’t say it for completely the opposite reason. They didn’t invade Iraq to make oil cheaper but instead to make it more expensive.

The thing is that America itself makes tons and tons of money from actually producing oil. And the thing about firms making things and selling them is that they will tend to make one or two people very rich and other people won’t be rich because they spent all of their money on the products. There are millions of people who use petrol but don’t make any money from it and a few people who although they use petrol they make a lot more from selling it.

The democratic system is supposed to act as a corrective to this system in that the millions of people have many more votes so should have all of the power. However that doesn’t really work because who gets to influence the politicians? Well the few of course because if you have lots of money then you must be important. Two bald reasons really:

1) You can buy the votes directly from the right by appealing to their capitalist tendencies.

And

2) You can guilt the votes directly from the left by appealing to their fear of making people redundant.

Anyhoo, many people have suggested that the war in Iraq is about Oil. Lots of people have suggested that it was revenge for Bush jr. for his Dad aka: oil. A few people have suggested the whole WMD thing. Some have even suggested the whole funding global terrorism thing. And so on. But mainly people nowadays think that it was probably the whole oil thing. But most people seem to have got the whole thing wrong.

America doesn’t want cheap oil. Americans want cheap oil but America does not.

The thing about oil production is that it’s really a cartel. OPEC control most of the worlds production, the IPAA (Independent Petroleum Association of America) is: a group of people that are independent and are not forming a cartel and advocate free trade and really really want prices to be right for the consumer and hope and pray that market forces will finally come to the oil industry because that would be so good… or something. It is a members club that contains most of the US Oil producers.

Bizarre as it is to relate, both George H.W. Bush and George Bush Jr. have both been members of the IPAA.

The thing is this, the IPAA were really mad about what the UN were doing in Iraq. Mainly, this was because, the UN had offered an oil for food program there as part of their sanctions. And this was, and this is a direct quote this time: “ By early 1999, Iraq was exporting 2.5 million B/D and had become the world’s swing producer of oil. As other countries reduce production, Iraq’s willingness to increase its production and sell at low prices keeps prices low. At a geopolitical level this role gave Saddam Hussein the victory he lost in Kuwait. He controlled oil prices and was able to punish his enemies – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and, by undermining our domestic production, the United States. It represented a clear failure of the UN sanctions at two levels – it had failed to provide humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people and it had given Saddam Hussein an oil weapon he could not win on the battlefield.”

Here’s the graph they used to show this:

The oil industry is really really rich, and they had one of their own in the white house. His dad had gone in last time and kicked Saddam out of Kuwait because if Saddam controlled Kuwait he’d be too powerful. But he didn’t need to invade because having a crazy guy like Saddam around kept a lot of Iraq’s neighbours on Americas side. It was good politics.

But how do you fight a body like the UN? You can’t really, they are a huge bureaucracy and so it’s all very complicated. You have to have meetings, sit down and argue things, and the UN will try very hard not to have some people fighting at the end. That’s hardly what the oil industry wants. They wanted action now, and they wanted things getting blown up at the end. The one thing the US Armed Services does very well is burn an awful lot of fuel.

And so the real reason that America went to war with Iraq is not that they wanted to steal a whole load of oil from the Iraqis but that they actually really, honestly wanted the Iraqis to benefit from the sale of oil. Because Saddam had lost his grip. He had stopped caring about really making lots of money from oil long term, and had decided to go on a splurge. He knew if he sold his oil cheap he’d actually really sock it to the Americans and the Saudi’s. Because the world price would go down. And by the time the wells in Iraq ran out he’d be long gone so it wouldn’t matter to him. He didn’t care about the long term future of his country he just wanted to win.

America invaded Iraq not to steal its oil for itself, but simply to put the oil of Iraq in the hands of somebody that would join a cartel and behave themselves. And this is not the left wing propagandists talking this is the IPAA themselves. They wanted to make sure the oil price would go higher so they could make some more money.

And bizarre as it is to relate, both George H.W. Bush and George Bush Jr. have both been members of the IPAA.

The odd thing about the oil industry is that there is actually a genuine crisis because of the threat of global warming. If global warming continues it will actually negatively impact on demand for oil. If the world is warmer then the world’s houses will need less heating. In fact the IPAA talk about this too: “A warmer than normal Northern Hemisphere winter – particularly in the U.S. and Europe reduced demand and failed to work off normal inventories that had been stored”.

There has long been a suggestion that oil directs America’s foreign policy but I believe that generally the policy has been being read backwards. America uses vast amounts of oil. It is not the desire for cheap oil that drives American policy, it is instead a need to control the oil price to stabilise it. This is why despite the House of Saud’s blatant human rights violations Saudi Arabia will never be considered an enemy. Saudi Arabia wants to control the oil price through OPEC.

And the reason for this is because while America consumes vast amounts of oil, it also produces it. And the production of oil in America has made certain people there incredibly rich and powerful.

If America didn’t produce oil but only consumed it there would be a different story. In fact it would be a difficult one to understand because oil played an important point in shaping America’s economic history. But if America was without an oil industry now, America’s foreign policy would be very different.

While America could, in this situation, try and control the oil price internationally by invasion I think that innovation and technology would be thrown at the task much more conclusively if they didn’t have any production of their own. Although we have heard lots about Hybrid cars and so on being bought in the US they were not developed there but instead were developed in the Asia / Pacific area. The Asia / Pacific area is the second highest user of oil in the world but has a low level of production of its own as can be seen from this graph provided by the Department of Energy:

So if you still don’t believe me that America went to Iraq to make the oil more expensive rather than cheaper then take a look at these following bullet points from the Department of Energy:

America:

• is the oldest major global oil producer;
• is formerly the Number 1 global oil producer;
• is currently the Number 2 global oil producer;
• has produced more oil, cumulatively, than any other country (180 billion barrels from 1918 to 1999);
• has produced more oil, cumulatively, than the current reserves of any country but Saudi Arabia.

So the oil industry had to make oil more expensive again. And they had one of their own in the White House.

Here’s the breakdown of monies generated in 2001 in the four largest oil producing states:

Alaska – $7,385,643,000
California – $7,539,055,000
Louisiana – $8,552,179,000
Texas – $32,135,420,000

I wonder which state governor would find it easiest to raise vast amounts of money from his buddies in the IPAA if he was running on a secret platform of removal of Saddam Hussein no matter what.

And bizarre as it is to relate, both George H.W. Bush and George Bush Jr. have both been members of the IPAA.

* Except Saddam himself, of course, who thought that he was pretty darn cool.

So… It’s November the 3rd today.

Which means:

1) It’s Pete’s Birthday
2) It’s Richard’s Birthday
3) It’s Katherine and my anniversary
and therefore
4) It’s not actually going to be a film night tonight – obviously.

so you may have to disregard my previous post – ahem.

Two apologies in one post? It can only be the film of the week.

Firstly, last week’s film wasn’t on when I said it was on which meant that nobody could go. And Secondly, I’d like to apologise for the late warning about this weeks film.

Nevertheless, here is:

Film #2: Corpse Bride

Director: Tim Burton
Year: 2005
Duration: 77m
Starring: Albert Finney, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard E Grant, Emily Watson, Johnny Depp
Location: Clapham Picture House
Time: 19:05

If you’d like to come along then please add a comment / drop me a line.

I have only recovered today from the whisky tasting that occurred on Friday evening. Suffice to say that the next morning I was not really able to think about Whisky without feeling decidedly less frisky than one might hope for.

A whisky tasting is not for the faint of heart because even if you have just a little bit of each then you can run into difficulties. And as it was this was after enough wine with dinner to make my father and I consider that a whisky tasting was a good idea.

So what did we have on offer? We were sampling the

[fill in with details of the other whiskeys]

We finished with the Laphroaig 10 Year old which had the most peat of the whiskeys on offer and is also the easiest to get hold of. Now I must declare my bias here. I have been a fan of Laphoaig for a long time, but haven’t actually had any for around a year largely due to having other whiskeys at home. So this was my first taste of Laphroaig in a while and so it was a rather pleasant kind of experience which may have biased the tasting.

The first thing that you notice about Laphroaig is that it has this incredibly peaty taste. For whiskey drinkers this can be a bit divisive. Some feel that the taste overpowers the actual taste of the whiskey whereas others feel the taste of the peat is so strong as to make this something that is palatable for them. I do know people who don’t like any whisky other than Laphroaig for this very reason.

In fact the current advertising slogan for marmite “you either love it or you hate it” was bought from the Laphroaig distillery. They had previously been using the campaign for their own advertising such is the polarising quality of Laphroaig.

So what’s the conclusion? I ended up having a full glass of Laphroaig in the end which I suppose makes it the winner, but it’s difficult to be sure about this. In fact the most interesting of the whiskeys on tasting was the Springbank refilled which had such a delicate taste. There was no way of going back to the Springbank even after a quick taste of the Laphroaig.

So at this point you may be wondering what happened in that section at the top there. The section which says “fill in with details of other whiskeys”. Well I was planning on getting the names of the other whiskeys. I could remember that there was one which had closed down, and that there were three which were in short blue bottles. So I asked my dad the names of those. And he said, did you remember the names of the other ones then?

I hadn’t even remembered that there were other ones! In total we had had 8 different whiskeys. And the problem I have now is that I can’t even remember what they actually tasted like.

I know a lot of people used to use the home button to go to google or whatever but now that browsers tend to have a google search bar in them what’s the point?

Personally I’d like a feature which allowed the home button to be used to be the home of the particular site that you’re on. The website developers could set it themselves in the html. Then if you’re deep in some site you could press home to go there (or some kind of keyboard shortcut). It’s much more often the place that I want to go.

I don’t even actually have a home button set, I just have a blank page. But for those that do actually want their browser to go somewhere when they start they should be able to set a start page too.

So apparently it started with my friend Nick driving somewhere the other night and listening to BBC Radio 1 when he heard the new White Stripes tune, which then once the singing started turned out not to be the new White Stripes song at all but was much more the new Pavement song, but Pavement are sadly no longer with us and this was surely no Stephen Malmus effort so what was going on, it turned out to be a completely new band called… Well that was the problem, sadly the DJ didn’t announce the name of the band at the end. All Nick could remember was that the song was probably called Mountain.

So what to do about that? Luckily the BBC being a very useful public service broadcaster have complete track listings of every show they broadcast on their website – a very very useful feature. So he was able to find out the name of the band and that was…

…well when I say it started with my friend Nick driving somewhere that wasn’t really true. Well I know, and so do you, I’m sure, that we could happily be going back to Nick’s parent’s first meeting, how Nick’s parent’s parent’s first met and so on, and go into the whole Irish, German not really English thing, but it’s best not to. That leads us back to the big bang or otherwise and that would help no-one. I could claim that there is limited space, but that would violate the infiniteness of the universe that is predicated by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.*

The actual story part of this story starts in an attic in the Mississippi Delta. A young man was looking through his grandfather’s effects and found a number of lyrics written on cracker boxes. He, as you would given half the chance I’m sure, called up as many friends as he could think of at the time – 5 – and got them to come over as soon as possible. They all made excuses to their respective parents, pretended they were going to each others houses while actually going to this attic. They almost got caught out due to one of them making a foul up, but his younger brother who wanted desperately to go along covered for his older brother and then was allowed into the band just to stop him ratting out the entire operation. Eventually they all arrived and decided to set the cracker lyrics to music. The only problem was that none of them had any instruments let alone knew how to play them. Luckily an old gypsy man who was passing nearby was able to show them, all too briefly, a small ladybird book of instruments.

This is how the group looked moments before they realised they were about to be photographed for this picture

The group got to work immediately chopping down trees and carving instruments from the wood and out of the very living rock (and to a lesser extent roll) that was lying about the place. Eventually, after a few peanut butter sandwiches, they were able to play something that resembled music. It was at this point that one of them, history doesn’t record which because it was busy doing something else, said “And what shall we call ourselves” and one of the others said, “Led Zeppelin”**.

After some negotiations they decided that as they were appropriating the lyrics of this old man they should name the band after him. This turned out especially well because this being the guy’s maternal grandfather he wouldn’t share the name with any of the band members. These guys were smart, they knew that naming it after somebody would be a recipe for disaster down the road.

It seems the moment to pause for a second and tell the chilling story of the band Baccara who had the “hit” record “Yes Sir I can boogie”. The band split soon afterwards, but still wanted to cash in on the fame. So one of the women from the group started a group called “New Baccara”. Not wishing to be out-done the other woman started “New Baccara 2”. This really pissed off the first “New Baccara” who changed her group’s name to “Baccara 2000”. “New Baccara 2” woman then went back to being just “Baccara”. And one of the less talked about Y2K effects was to strip off the number 2000 from anything that had 2000 attached to it, and so it was that “Baccara 2000” became “Baccara” as well in 2001. So both of the women are still Boogie-ing as “Baccara” which would be really confusing if anybody really cared.

So yes, I seem to have been sidetracked. The grandfather’s name was Roy Spinto and so they called themselves “The Spinto Band” and I saw them last night at the Dublin Castle, Camden Town. I may have embellished the story about how they came into being a bit but then so did they.

I’ve been to the Dublin Castle about 15 times but this was the first time I’d ever seen that many people there. And they all looked slightly, erm, different than usual. Everyone who was there was from the music industry. All trying to get a look at the next big thing, which if there’s any justice in the world will be, The Spinto Band.

Well that kind of ruins the conclusion of this review. But I’ll be totally blunt now: I really really liked them. You might not whoever you are, but I did. They probably aren’t for everyone. I’m afraid to say that I doubt that they will ever get a number 1 hit track. But they could come close. They are the kind of loveable cult band that should be massive. The kind of band that everyone who actually loves music loves rather than the kind who buy Britney albums love. But another caveat, ask yourselves did you like Pavement. Do you like the Flaming Lips? Some people don’t get this kind of music and then maybe The Spinto Band won’t be for you, or maybe they will. I can’t tell you the answer.

The main thing that you notice about the band straight away is that there an awful lot of them. If you’ve been keeping a running total through this article and have come up with 7 then you’d be wrong largely because I’ve kept a piece of information from you. The deadly secret of the band is that one of the members is missing. He was there on that fateful day in the Mississippi Delta when some crackers were eaten but now he is absent. I pressed one member of the band about this last night and they swore that he was doing the “artwork” for the band. But I could see right through this and decided to do some digging of my own. That’s right they’d buried him out in the Delta. Apparently there was a disagreement about the exact colour to use for some of the album artwork and that was the last he was ever seen.

So the cull has begun. Now there are six, but by the time they make the big time mark my words there will be a few fewer members.

Let’s examine each member in turn and see how they stack up:

Nicholas Krill Guitar / Voice
It was Nicholas’ grandfather who’s name is lent to the band and as he was effectively lead singer he seemed to be the serious core of the band. A bit angry and dangerous, but perhaps that was just because he had sinus trouble. When he asked if anyone knew any good remedy one of the journos shouted back “Crack”.

Thomas Hughes Bass / Voice
The second in command, but slightly more in the captain strange camp. He was very happily playing a kazoo with Jon Eaton in the last number. He is definitely the best dancer in the band.

Jeff Hobson Drums
With five other people going crazy in a very controlled way in front of you the drummer has to be almost the conductor. The band seemed incredibly polished and tight. I think that this is the first time I’ve ever mentioned a drummer in a review, but here goes: I believe he had a lot to do with the tightness.

Joe Hobson Guitar
Joe unfortunately seemed to be the most superfluous of the band. It was hard to tell exactly what he contributed but then there’s always going to be a bit of that in an operation like this. They were going for a complete sound thing and that would be difficult without Joe’s guitar.

Sam Hughes Keyboard
I couldn’t really hear the keyboards from where I was which was interesting. They seemed to be under the mix supporting the stuff on top. So I can’t tell you if Sam Hughes can really play, all I can tell you is that he’s a dynamite reviewer of soft beverages.

Jon Eaton Moustachioed Guitar
When Jon stepped up there at the beginning I thought he looked the most separate from the rest of the band. He was wearing a sweater and had the top button of his shirt done up despite it being on the warm side. At first it seemed like he was trying to be in the band but he wasn’t really cool enough. It wasn’t until he put on a fake moustache for the second track that I suddenly figured out what was going on. Jon is clearly off on his own journey and currently that journey has taken him two feet further to the left than anyone else – that is all.

So yes, I’d like to tell you to catch their next gig, it’s in Philadelphia I think. If you’re geographically challenged by this then why not buy the album. Nick did from the band yesterday, but I couldn’t get organised in time. Instead I’ve bought it from amazon and I encourage you to do the same. Check out a sample first though. To follow The Spinto Bands rise and rise check out their blog: The Spinto Band Crave attention

* Don’t worry about Nick’s family history – it’s all relatives.

** The legend of the Led Zeppelin’s naming goes something like this: The band was about to go out on stage for a tour where they had been booked but they still didn’t have a name. As some of the members were refugees from “The Yardbirds” they decided to call themselves “The New Yardbirds”. Keith Moon who was back stage suggested that the name was so bad that it wouldn’t even just go over like a lead balloon but would be worse, it would go over like a lead zeppelin. They decided that Lead Zeppelin was a much better name so went with that instead. They dropped the “a” in Lead so that people wouldn’t think they were suggesting that there was a whole squadron of Zeppelins but that they were the lead one and would therefore pronounce it differently.