I have become one of the contributors to the official University of London External System Blog. My welcoming post has been already published and more is to be expected at least once a week. If you hold any interest in this mode of study, please visit the blog from time to time.
I have updated the About page accordingly.
Cory Doctorow, a writer, a Boing-Boing contributor and one of the most interesting thinkers on copyright, copyleft and social aspects of intellectual property, explains why music streaming services will never become an effective substitute for downloading, ending up as a complementary service instead:
Climategate or, as Wikipedia calls it, the “Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident”, has been all over the Internet for some time now and I do not feel like adding anything substantial to the discussion. However, the editorial in this week’s Nature has provoked quite a strong reaction on my side. The editors write:
The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ’smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.
This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen
This line from Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd” has been used to illustrate the problem of white collar crime in a fascinating three-part mini-cycle of the “Thinking Allowed” podcast produced by BBC Radio. Laurie Taylor does a magnificent job of uncovering and discussing the technical, cultural, political and moral whys and hows of British and American financial crimes perpetrated by respected professionals working for both private and public sectors of the economy.
Below are direct links to the mp3 files of relevant episodes of the podcast:
This is already all over the Internet but I could not help myself posting it here:
The Tax Poem
Tax his land, tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor, tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow, tax his goat,
Tax his pants, tax his coat.
Tax his ties, tax his shirts,
Tax his work, tax his dirt.
Tax his chew, tax his smoke,
Teach him taxes are no joke.
Tax his car, tax his grass,
Tax the roads he must pass.
Tax his food, tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his sodas, tax his beers,
If he cries, tax his tears.
Tax his bills, tax his gas,
Tax his notes, tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes, he has no dough.
If he hollers, tax him more,
Tax him until he’s good and sore.
Tax his coffin, tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
“Taxes drove me to my doom!”
And when he’s gone, we won’t relax,
We’ll still be after the inheritance tax.
