Sold Short
Posted in In the news, faith, Northern Rock, e-commerce on September 18, 2008 at 9:01 am
How can it be right for a bunch of rich guys to make money out of MAKING misery for the rest of us?
By selling short (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_selling) you can gamble on a share price falling. The problem is if you are big enough you can influence the price down just by selling, so by selling short you push the price down and increase your odds (guarantee would be pushing it) of making a profit. Even worse if the target is a bank (like Halifax / HBOS) as you push the share price down little people (in financial terms) panic and remove cash and so the circle is made more vicious. The price falls more and some people make lots while the rest of us run the risk of our bank crashing and see millions wiped off our pension funds.
Fortunately HBOS now looks safe - I say fortunately as that is where my savings(*) are but not so fortunate for the thousands that will be looking for work once the merger has maximised its efficiency savings…
Short selling seems to be a way for the rich to gamble and the richer you are the better the odds which doesn’t seem fair but what seems criminal is that the rest of us suffer as a consequence. Isn’t there a way to stop it?
(*Savings - don’t worry I don’t really have savings they are just offsetting my mortgage!)
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X factor Rant!
Posted in In the news, faith, media on September 4, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The X factor is back. That people watch it I can believe, that intelligent caring people watch it I believe but only because I have witnessed them doing it. The humiliation of obviously incapable people for the purpose of entertainment is obscene.
We used to open our mental hospitals for the public to go and laugh at the deranged but society has thankfully moved on. Or not, it seems to have moved back as now we televise them and get Simon Cowell et al get to poke them with sharp stick to make them cavort some more. It may just be an emotional stick but I don’t think even the Victorians allowed that sort of thing.
I expect it is quite funny, Mr Cowell can probably be quite witty and the contestants deserve it - no they don’t. Laughing at someone who thinks they are going to be great entertainer when they patently lack basic social skills has no more merit than laughing at someone who thinks they are Napoleon. I appreciate not all the contestants are mad but some obviously are.
I personally would rather watch a public execution - at least the victims have been convicted of something.
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Cleaning up Standards
Posted in faith, Men and Women, music on September 2, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Sorry, I’ve been catching up at work and on the forum for Greenbelt http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/ so I haven’t shared much of my festival experience here. So I’ll share a couple of things of how technology changes the experience of such places.
Firstly, being a lanky lad I have usually been able to get a decent view at gigs. Things that stopped me were usually being held aloft - either banners/flags or people on their mates shoulders or, for those atmospheric moments, people waving their hands in the air. These days people are always waving their hands in the air holding up cameras / phones. I never think to take a camera and my phone is too old for a camera but I suppose a record would be nice, I did voice memo a few songs onto my PDA - don’t sound too good though! It is a bit of a worry that apart from the keeping a record thing people have such short attention spans maybe they just need something to fiddle with.
The other thing was a reflection on our need for electricity. I have already said their are places you can pay to have your phone charged but because this festival is at a racecourse some events are in buildings and where there are buildings there are power sockets. So, in every stair well there are groups of people sat chatting while they “steal” a charge from an unused socket. That I can cope with, eminently sensible. What I can’t cope with, as a man who has been attending festivals since the 70’s is the is people (oh to hell with ageism and sexism, lets be honest - teenage girls) sitting in the aforementioned stairwells with hair straighteners. When I was their age we hardly washed (is that something I should be boasting of?) It’s a festival, you camp in a field with one cold water stand pipe tap between hundreds. People are so clean now even I have to make the effort an wash my hair - sticking my head under a freezing cold tap. If you want to know what it feels like just grab a handful of hair and scalp and pull until your skull is fully exposed.
I guess festivals are the same as all communities - standards change over the years.
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Greenbelt - animation software, techies and luvies
Posted in Open Source Software, faith, Blogs on August 29, 2008 at 9:57 am
Well I’m back from http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/ and a fine time I had. although it is an arts festival I’m always interested in the technology. They have a venue called The Tank where some splendid guys set up a load of PC’s as an internet cafe, you can pay to get your phone charged and they run workshops on presentation skills, web site building, pod casting … I didn’t see a blogging workshop this year (as you can tell from my lack of blogging skills!) but I have attended the presentation stuff in the past and this year I made a stop frame animation film with my son. They are usually keen to push OSS but the stop frame stuff was IBM’s I believe. My son uses Monkey Jam at home which seems to do the job!
I have to say that the efficiency with which The Tank runs implies the techies are more organised than the luvies but as I’m keen not to differentiate between “creatives” and “techies” maybe I hadn’t better push that 
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Signs and Wonders
Posted in In the news, Funny, faith, media, Men and Women on August 20, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I’m off on yet more holidays - this time to
A Christian arts festival - but there is plenty of IT about. I may even be down for the stop frame animation workshops - I’ll let you know when I get back!
Here’s a thought before I go
The Mail, how distasteful, but I heard about it on R4 so that’s better. Some 65 year olds object to be seen as old and infirm BUT they still want signs up telling drivers to be considerate to them. Some people just want their cake as well as eating it!
Maybe I should object to the “men” symbol, after all it doesn’t look much like me - I’m not black, seldom spread out like that and I don’t have a completely round head. Still it’s better than the “women” symbol - apparently all women wear skirts and only have one leg.
What would a symbol for programmers look like? Well, many of them do have completely round heads…
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Noahs Blog
Posted in Funny, faith, Blogs on July 10, 2008 at 9:43 am
Blogs, they are a bit weird aren’t they? And I guess I should know. This is one quite amusing…
even if this one isn’t - if you see what I mean!
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When compromise goes bad…
Posted in faith, Men and Women on July 7, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I’ve always been keen on compromise. It seems a grown up way to settle things and admits everyone may have a bit of the truth. Consequently I have quite admired the way the Church of England have held it together over the ordination of women. Obviously I have ridiculed them a (un)fair bit too. The truth is so easy to see here (though some may see if differently!) and most of the opponents seem to go out of their way to make themselves targets. If there is a media equivalent of wearing a sign saying “kick me” it must be something like defending the power base of the status quo in plumy accent whilst sounding arrogant and hard done by at the same time. If you can do it about the unsuitability of woman kind whilst dressed in an outrageous frock all the better.
However, if you devote your life to promoting a faith within an organisation and the organisation moves the faith out from under you I have some sympathy. So I did quite admire the deal done that said a faith that encompasses the ordination of women and one that doesn’t are both valid within the Anglican communion. All those who had signed up under the old regime could work out there time without having to move their faith whilst (parts of) the church could move on.
All very good, I thought, before this weekend, when I found that my friend is training for ordination alongside people who aren’t going to accept her ordination. Yes, the mad lot are still taking on new priests who won’t accept the ordination of women. Der, an accommodation for those already there is a nice move. The problem will work itself out in a generation (a long time when it is your generation but short in church or world history). To continue to take people on… But I guess that was part of the compromise, if you accept that their view is valid then how can you deny new people with that belief?
Fortunately faith has a lot more going on than church politics, unfortunately the politics not only gets in the way it gets most of the headlines.
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