BBC lacks impartiality

When a news service is also a commercial media how do journalists and editors in the organisation maintain a semblance of impartiality.

'Slow lane' for copyright thieves

*Thieves*

Here's a fantastic one on CBBC take this fantastic POLL

Do you download music illegally? [ ] Yes [ ] No

If it's illegal, call the police.

It's not like they don't know :

The UK's Intellectual Property minister David Lammy has said the government will not force internet service providers to pursue file sharers. "We can't have a system where we're talking about arresting teenagers in their bedrooms," he told The Times newspaper.

If the top IP honcho in the country says it's legal it must be, he's a very professional lawyer, he became the first Black Briton to study a Masters in Law at the Harvard Law School in 1997 and is a member of the UK Privy Council.

BBC news has an agenda when it comes to downloading. Who do you know that calls a copied CD stolen goods. Can I steal that DVD from you. No-one, it's not normal.

Communications Data Bill

The Telegraph said "Details of every email sent and website visited by people in Britain are to be stored for use by the state from tomorrow as part of what campaigners claim is a massive assault on privacy."

As did almost every other news outlet, I even posted that link myself.

A few days later I posted a link to the legislation myself.

Having mulled it over for a few days about what I was going to do to protect myself from it's outrageous data retentions, I started looking for shell accounts to route my web traffic over ssh from the U.S. to at least put some legislative barriers to snooping in the way. I re-read the (draft) legislation as realised that it doesn't store "the details of every ... website visited" at all. It stores the endpoints and durations of phone calls, VoIP calls and dial-up connections and the endpoints of email, which is hardly the same as storing every URI I visit.

So I wondered, what happened in July

Oh yeah, now I remember

34th G8 summit

Film Fun

Amongst other production activities we've been scouting locations. It's been fun to be out in the countryside taking photos of gravel and pylons.

I really enjoy the nuances of the script and filling in the unspoken stories of the cast. I've never really been close to a writer before, I hope I'm not pen struck :) I like how the writing gives the characters thread on which to dangle their existence. Though explicitly unstated through the dialog, each is an agent in their own destiny. When desires juxtapose consequences are exposed. I also enjoy that each person's strength is their weakness and / or vice versa. I wonder if these things are a concious act of the creator a priori the unfolding of the story or if they are a consequence of the creative process or even if they are something I'm imposing through my interpretation. It's certainly good for the actors to have a well to draw characterization from.

The whole thing has fanned my directorial yearnings, that supressed and unpersued ambition. Interesting.

Flying cows

UK Beef consumption :613800000 Kg anually
UK pop. 60000000
10.23 kg each

200kg meat per cow
400l methane per cow

So thats 20.46l methane per person per day from cows
7467.9l methane per person per year from beef cows

36.4 kgs CO2 per kg beef

372.72 kg CO2 beef per person per year

1232000000000 kg co2
6000000000000 pkm

These are estimates for 2050 but the actual figures don't matter, it's their ratio that's required.

So flying costs 0.205333 kg co2 / km

Flying 1813.5 km is the same CO2 as an average person's beef consumption.

A return flight that distance covers France & Germany from the UK, Malaga every 2 years of no eating cows.

There's a catch The Royal Comission Environmental Pollution - The Environmental Effects of Civil Aircraft in Flight says :
3.35 The total radiative forcing due to aviation is probably some 3 times that due to the carbon dioxide emissions alone.

So that's 604.5km - Nottingham -> Newquay , return!