Taking the piss

How ‘safe drinking’ experts let a bottle or two go to their heads

When the report defined any man who drinks more than 21 units of alcohol a week, or woman who consumes more than 14, as a hazardous drinker, the authors were relying on limits that have been set in stone for the past 20 years. Yet these guidelines have no basis in science. Rather, in the words of a member of the committee that drew them up, they were simply “plucked out of the air”.

The safe limits were introduced in 1987 after the Royal College of Physicians produced its first health report on alcohol misuse. In A Great and Growing Evil: The Medical Consequences of Alcohol Abuse, the college warned that a host of medical problems – including liver disease, strokes, heart disease, brain disease and infertility – were associated with excessive drinking. The report was the most significant study into alcohol-related disorders to date. But Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journaland a member of the college’s working party on alcohol, told The Times yesterday that the figures were not based on any clear evidence. He remembers “rather vividly” what happened when the discussion came round to whether the group should recommend safe limits for men and women...

You say tomato...

EU summit - Who are you going to call?

They cannot both be right. For the Spanish prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the European Union treaty agreed in Lisbon in the early hours of Friday October 19th will “open new horizons” for the EU, finally giving the 27 member block the international profile it deserves. But Gordon Brown, attending his first EU summit as Britain’s prime minister, had earlier announced that the new “reform treaty” was a modest piece of housekeeping, that merely tweaks the way decisions are taken after a dozen new members have been absorbed in the past few years. He called it clearly less significant than previous EU milestones such as the 1992 Maastricht treaty (which ushered in the single European currency).

Put it away dear

New Law Spells Death For Social Porn?

Social networking didn’t just revolutionize the way we interact online (and caused a lot of very, very ugly profiles to appear); it has also revolutionized porn. Believe it or not, YouPorn, a site that lets its users post erotic/pornographic images and videos of themselves is currently the most visited adult site out there. It’s bigger than CNN, and that’s a lot of traffic. But, the proposed changes to a US law 18 U.S.C. 2257 might be the end of sites like YouPorn, because they would require every performer (this would include social networks like YouPorn) to disclose about his/her age and identity. Want to post that raunchy picture of you and your girlfriend in the bathroom? Your ID, please.

Slimey fat tosser 0 - Bloggers 1000

I mentioned a while back in a comment on MoT that I'd post something on the Usmanov/Fasthosts/libel law story. There are two reasons why I haven't. Firstly I've had a nasty bone infection and secondly, I really couldn't be arsed.  But here is a very brief summary of my thoughts. I haven't bothered linking to all the sources, if you don't know the details you'll find them here.

Changing the libel laws would have made no difference to the outcome of this story. The appeal to Fasthosts was that their terms and conditions had been breached. Most people don't bother to read the T&C of their hosting company or blog provider. They should. They would see that it would be perfectly possible for a great many blogs to be shut down quite legitimately without any consideration of the laws, libel or otherwise. Nudity, bad language, offensive remarks, copyright infringement the list is endless.  The truth is most hosting companies don't give a toss about these things and aren't even aware of them amongst their millions of customers...until someone makes a fuss. Then they have to make a decision. Is it worth the hassle to defend their customer or should they just dump him or her and forget about it? That is a commercial judgement and a change in the libel laws won't make a jot of difference.

In the US the hosting company is not regarded as a publisher of the material it hosts. But the blogger or webmaster would still be liable for prosecution for any material posted on his site wherever the servers were based and whatever his nationality. So moving hosts outside the UK provides some protection but not much.

Fasthosts have been criticised for having no backbone. Well they haven't. But, the truth is, Fasthosts couldn't care less about free speech. They are in it for the money. They are not interested in defending a customer in his fight against the state, fat oligarchs or anyone else. That's life.

Fundamentally, the libel laws are not going to change. If anything things look set to tighten up on the internet. I think we'll look back to the late 90's and early 2000's as a golden era of freedom on the web. Big business is taking over. Its all about monetizing and advertising. And you know what? Most people are going to go right along with it. As for restrictions to free speech, I worry more about the actions of the state than that of oily businessmen.

If you are going to publish controversial or contentious content you need to find a web host which is happy to accommodate you. The law in this country considers the hosting company to be a joint publisher of material it hosts so common sense would suggest at the very least not using a UK based webhost. There are webhosts specifically set up as defenders of free speech and failing that maybe bloggers and activists concerned about the issue should think about setting something up for themselves. You can set up your own server and even, if it comes to it, use your computer as a server.

In the end all the material that was temporarily taken down is back up X 1000. One of the offending articles by Craig Murray has been reproduced by many bloggers all over the web including this page I set up on Blogger.

Free speech lives on and the attempts to stifle the voices of dissent have backfired. That is the most important and the most reassuring aspect of this whole saga. Let's try and keep it that way.

Maybe bigotry is genetic? (Or even long-windedness!)

Ministry of Truth: Defending Jim Watson

Some of Watson’s ‘off the cuff’ comments will understandably make people feel queasy and, in places, there is the smack of the prejudices of an old man about them, but that shouldn’t be allowed to distract us from the fact that the questions he poses about race, genetics and intelligence are essentially valid ones and ones that can be addressed by scientific inquiry. He is there to be proved wrong, and I rather expect that he hopes that that is what will happen.

Jim?! Is Unity on intimate terms with the man? Maybe, anyway Unity feels the need, as do some other bloggers, to defend the silly old Nobel laureate against attacks of racism. Once again Unity provides one of his tediously long-winded blogposts in which we end up (having reached the state of losing the will to live) far, far from the real point of it all which is this:

Watson's past achievements mean absolutely nothing when it comes to assessing his comments on race. He is now not so much a geneticist as a eugenicist. He's been spouting this crap for years, from suggesting aborting 'gay' foetesus to the hope of future genetic screening to weed out the 'stupid'. From his belief that women are less intelligent than men (something to do with brain size) to rehashing that age old fear that grips the heart of so many American white males - the sexually rampant 'nigger' with the big, black cock. Now he opines that Africa is a basket case because its inhabitants are stoopid.

Should he be banned? Hell no. I oppose all forms of censorship and everyone should be free to make themselves look foolish in public (isn't that the main purpose of blogging, after all?). But let's not get too upset about all this. It's not as if there's a giant academic conspiracy to  deny us the real genetic truths out there, you know, stupid blacks, dopey wimmin and those fucking poofs.

You want to defend free speech? Great! But there are plenty of far more worthy causes out there than this silly, delusional old cunt.

See also DSTP4W

Update: And Village Voice

What's in a name?

brainscannr


Just type in your name and Brainscannr will show you an image of "your true brain, the emotions that run your life".

Seems like my brain changes depending on what I call myself.

Via AWV

Is there a more annoying minister than Dawn Primerolo?

Drug 'rewards' given to addicts

Heroin and cocaine addicts on the government's treatment programme are being given drugs as a reward for clean urine samples, the BBC has learned. The National Treatment Agency (NTA), which runs the £500m-a-year scheme, admits the practice is "unethical". Its own survey of almost 200 clinics in England found users were being offered extra methadone, a heroin substitute, or anti-depressants for good behaviour.

The scheme has about 175,000 registered users of which around 20,000 never even begin treatment. Around 120,000 do not complete their treatment and fewer than 10,000 leave the scheme drug free (with around 70% of those relapsing within twelve months). The scheme costs £500,000,000 a year. That's a cost of £167,000 per successful (still drug-free after 12 months) case. And Primerolo says  this represents 'great steps forward'!

Hear her getting defenestrated on this morning's Today programme:

This is a fucking disgrace!

Priests Protesting Torture at Fort Huachuca Jailed

Louis Vitale, 75, a Franciscan priest, and Steve Kelly, 58, a Jesuit priest, were each sentenced today to five months in federal prison for attempting to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Both priests were taken directly into jail from the courtroom after sentencing. Fort Huachuca is the headquarters of military intelligence in the U.S. and the place where military and civilian interrogators are taught how to extract information from prisoners.

The priests attempted to deliver their letter to Major General Barbara Fast, commander of Fort Huachuca. Fast was previously the head of all military intelligence in Iraq during the atrocities of Abu Ghraib. The priests were arrested while kneeling in prayer halfway up the driveway to Fort Huachuca in November 2006. Both priests were charged with trespass on a military base and resisting orders of an officer to stop.

Hirsi Ali - Voice of reason?!

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب

Reason: Do you see eye to eye with high-profile AEI hawks such as former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton?

Hirsi Ali: Most of the time I do. For instance, I completely and utterly agree with John Bolton that talking to Iran is a sheer waste of time."

Hirsi Ali: ...only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Via Lenin

The original interview in full: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Islam, immigration, civil liberties, and the fate of the West.

Leopard - 9 days to go

Mac OS X Leopard

Suffer little children #346

Lifers as teenagers

Last December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Speed dragons

China Taking P2P to the Next Level?

With a relaxed regulatory environment unlike the US, Chinese developers have created file-sharing protocols that offer downloads 50 times faster than BitTorrent and real-time streaming of DVD quality video.

It's no secret that China is emerging as an economic powerhouse in its own right, developing a burgeoning manufacturing industry that produces everything from cars to iPods, but it's also rapidly developing a P2P and file-sharing services industry that people of other countries like here in the US could only dream of.

In a recent interview with Kaiser Kuo, Ogilvy China's digital guru and web 2.0 expert, discussed the rapid growth of P2P and file-sharing services in China in contrast to the United States where its growth has long been hampered by copyright concerns and the lack of effective DRM restrictions.

China's relaxed regulatory environment in regards to copyright infringement and enforcement and has made it possible for P2P services to be where Kuo says some of the "finest minds have gone" and developed "incredibly fast protocols on their own."

...in the US and pretty much anywhere else the MPAA and RIAA are allowed to have their way, content seems to take precedence over its distribution, thus hindering the development of new P2P and file-sharing services for consumers. The effect is that digital distribution is stifled to a snails pace, and that we have one of those rare cases where laws impede technological advancement and progress.