10 years on: constraints added

January 10th, 2012

Since I wrote this brief piece on what happens after the NHS collapses: http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/28/apres-deluge-moi a raft of constraints have been introduced – or are asserted to be about to be introduced.

It wasn’t something I said that set that off was it?

Neo-liberalism: sounds plausible but didn’t work.

January 8th, 2012

the BBC’s Newsnight economics editor, Paul Mason:
“A deregulated banking system brought the entire economy of the world to the brink of collapse. It was the product of giant hubris and the untrammelled power of the financial elite. Basically neoliberalism is over: as an ideology, as an economic model. Get over it and move on. The task of working out what comes after it is urgent . Those who want to impose social justice and sustainability on globalised capitalism have a once-in-a-century chance”. Mason P. Meltdown. The End of the Age of Greed. Verso. 2009

Via Bevan’s Run

Removing a patient from a gp list is a last resort

January 7th, 2012

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/05/removing-patients-from-gp-lists-is-a-last-resort/. Indeed so. Rare. We are trying to make our lists bigger, for various reasons, and losing a patient doesn’t do that.

Pinternet needs to handle Creative Commons well

January 7th, 2012

pinterest.com is a nice idea and shiny, but must assist and persuade its users to give credit for CC material such as my picture of a box of macarons.

macarons
Mine! CC use with attrbution.

There is, or should be a synergy between what they seem to be doing, and what the Creative Commons movement is trying to make easy. BUt copyright still exists, and in a reputation economy acknowledgement is mandatory.

EOS 7D

December 27th, 2011

Canon EOS 7D review on photo.net

The solstice: Christmas Puddings

December 14th, 2011

Figgy’s Puddings. A local firm Yum. And a nice bowl.

Cameron on EU seems inconsistent

December 11th, 2011

The Economist: http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2011/12/britain-and-eu-summit

What’s Occupy Wall Street about?

December 10th, 2011

“let me tell you about what they’re talking about. They’re complaining that Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody’s held responsible for that. Not a single person’s been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over two centuries. They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country, and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and the other party caters to them as well.” Grayson, L.

Top-posting and liability in emails

December 4th, 2011

Let us be clear to start with that I don’t like top-posting, and that I even more don’t like the practice of leaving the whole of a thread of correspondence appended below the line or paragraph or chapter one adds to the top.

However, rather than simply saying it is bad and should stop, lets consider what it means if I send you a wodge of correspondence, with a comment and over my name.

Do we have reasonable grounds to conclude that if there is some assertion or fact or argument in the mass of text I’ve sent you, that I have not and need not have read it?

I think in some circumstances we do not, and life might be complicated in ways which simply excising all previous commentary except anything I wish to positively bring to your attention, whether by quoting it to you, or by commenting on it.

So chop it out.

Later:
In another place and under the Chatham House Rule (of which there is one, no s), a sage remarked that

There are many pitfalls associated with not trimming the long threads that can build up with top posting.

Scrolling through such screeds often finds things that I’m sure the most recent authors really did not want disclosed and which are sometimes used to great advantage.

Often early material has nothing to do with the current subject but people have just
been lazy using reply-all rather than starting a new thread as this is an easy way to copy to and cc lists which are intended to be *nearly* the same
in a new email. (AKM: This could result in secrets from one conversation being passed on to members of anotehr conversation, which could be very embarrassing. ).

It may also be interesting to observe who has been added to or dropped from the recipients as a thread develops.

AKM: A general principle remains, that sending something out over your signature whch you have not read is amazingly dumb.

Money (xkcd graphic)

November 22nd, 2011

Excellent graphic about alarmingly large numbers of whatever money is

I suspect money is fungible promises, and states get into serious trouble when people doubt promises against them will be delivered.