Rob's Blog

Even lower interest rates are on the way. And on the radio this morning I heard that “officials are denying reports that the treasury is about to print more money.”

This is rather like hearing that a football player is very happy where he is and has no plans to leave: it means he’s about to sign for a new club.

First NickM, and now Charles Stross have noticed that laws controlling pornography are becoming increasingly sinister. No-one really knows what is “extreme porn” and what isn’t. That drawings of bad things, or photos that look like bad things rather than actually being bad things, count just as much as actual bad things, means that these laws have created thought crimes.

The logical conclusion is the man convicted for having a rude drawing of Bart and Lisa Simpson.

The trouble with these laws is that you can never be quite sure whether you’re breaking them, and you are far more likely to fall foul of them if the wrong official takes a disliking to you. We are no longer equal under the law. I find this quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged apt:

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.

Now, go and check your old emails for that Simpsons picture, and your loft for old copies of the Sun.

I am running the Android emulator which is part of the Android SDK and am writing this post in the phone’s web browser. I can even copy a URL from one browser window and paste it into this one. This is very promising! I might just have to by a T-Mobile G1.

I’ve been on the verge of cancelling my New Scientist subscription for a long time, but it still contains a lot of news and interesting articles on cosmology and particle physics. But this week’s front cover could be the last straw:

“The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet.”

I think I know what’s coming, and if I’m right, that’s it. The notion that economic growth requires using more resources has been debunked a million times. I still haven’t forgiven my secondary school science teacher for inviting in a guest teacher to tell us that growth would have to end within ten years or else we’d run out of everything.

I have upgraded WordPress and the problem with comments seems to have been fixed! I think I will be more motivated to write posts if I think I might get comments. The old theme didn’t work any more. I don’t think I care that much. Maybe I will change the colours back at some point. I don’t think RSS feeds ever worked that well before; they seem to work now.

I quite like the new interface and I especially like the automatic draft saving feature.

Comments are still broken. I’m working on this.

The front page of today’s Metro carries a story about police who arrested a man for photographing them. I don’t find it particularly surprising.

Something very odd is going on with comments on my blog. The “allow comments” option gets un-ticked on every post seemingly at random. I’m not sure whether it’s a bug or an anti-spam plugin behaving in a way I don’t understand. So apologies if you wanted to comment but can’t. I certainly *want* people to be able to comment. It might take me a while to fix.

Did single tube journeys in zone 1 ever cost £4 *before* Oyster cards were introduced?

Update: The answer is no. In 2005, a single in zone 1 cost £2. So Oyster cards have not reduced the price from £4 to £1.50, rather the cash fare has increased to make you use an Oyster card. By the way, you still might pay £4 even with an Oyster card if the gate is open and you forget to touch out. This couldn’t happen with paper tickets.