The beaver is a proud and noble animal

I have just been cold-called for a mortgage offer.

In October 2005, before deciding to move to Hinxton, Katy and I called a few places to see what our chances of getting a mortgage were. This was in the era where people were giving money away hand over fist. We were told at the time that our prospects were not suitable (mostly because of my work visa shit). At the time, I had over 2 years left on my visa, but that was still not enough to satisfy the bankers.

Today, there are less than 6 months on my visa (now granted, it's going to be renewed without contest as soon as I get my passport renewed, but they don't know that) but apparently, my “circumstances” have changed enough that the mortgage company that called me at the office is really interested in offering me a free, no-risk mortgage consultation. They were reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllly interested. As in, almost begging.

The fact that the housing market is close to a meltdown has nothing to do with this.

Of course not.

You cynical people.

Police have warned families not to put presents under the Christmas tree in case they attract burglars. Cops say gifts should be kept hidden out of sight until just before it is time to open them. Inspector Adam Jenner, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: Putting the presents under the Christmas tree is an invitation to thieves. Empty boxes from expensive gifts should not be thrown out with household rubbish as it shows burglars exactly what they could steal.

The force also warns householders to beware of carol singers – in case they are crooks in disguise. Police Community Support Officer Richard Stamp said: There are many genuine carol singers, but if you are in any doubt keep the door shut. Ensure when answering the door to strangers you confirm their identity and never leave the door open and unattended, even for a second.

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I weep for future generations.

The more I see news like this, the more I dispair. The world will soon be a place where murder will be swept aside for a much more serious problem. By this, I mean of course the scourge of intellectual property theft.

Drive-by shootings in the inner city? Not a priority. After all, they're all animals and it's just natural selection. But a teenager downloading a non-DRM MP3? We can't have that!!! Throw the book at him! How dare he deprive the RIAA from its hard-earned price gouging?

Bitter much? Oh, yes.

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Christmas is known world-wide as a time for sharing, a time for giving. But for one charity, instead of Santa arriving with gifts, the copyright police turned up demanding money. Why? Because the charity allows children to sing carols on the premises and their kitchen radio is a little loud. You couldnt make it up.

Be under no illusion, being unlicensed to play music to the public is a very serious situation in the UK. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that if you use copyright music in public, you have to get permission from every single copyright holder to play their music. Or pay a fee to the right outfit.

Car maintenance chain Kwik Fit is currently tied up in a bitter legal battle with the UK Performing Rights Society (PRS). Its alleged that Kwik Fits mechanics allowed their radios to be played within earshot of the public – a truly heinous crime for which the PRS are demanding in damages.

According to a report, the PRS are at it again. The staff at a charity also received a visit from a PRS officer who declared that because a staff radio in the kitchen could be overheard by the public in their tea-room, they would need a license. The charity, Dam House, which was originally set up to save a historic building and offer community and health facilities, had to have a fund-raising event to raise the money for the license.

However, having purchased a license, this wasnt the end of the matter. The PRS then started asking more questions, and when they discovered that kids sing in a carol concert there at Christmas, they declared that the premises were under licensed. Yes, of course – the PRS wanted yet more money.

We got really worked up when they told us how much we would have to pay this year said charity trustee, Margaret Hatton. They asked us what facilities we had and we think they are charging more because they found out weve got a function room.

The next quote from Margaret really speaks for itself – has the world gone mad?

They told us the only way to avoid paying to sing the carols is if the kids are told to stick to old songs which are out of copyright.

Next thing you know someone will be saying Happy Birthday is copyrighted and you cant sing that to the public in the tea-rooms. Well, unfortunately it is, and legally you cant.

Elaine Hurst, another Dam House trustee explained: We know the recording artists need to be paid for their work but this is ridiculous.

Every TV owning family in the UK has to have a UK TV License by law, the proceeds of which go to fund BBC TV and BBC radio stations nationwide. To charge a charity money because the public can overhear a radio is crazy, especially when you consider the public already paid another license to be allowed to listen to the content coming out of its speakers.

James Watson, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans were less intelligent than whites, has been found to have more genes of black origin than most Europeans.

An analysis of Dr Watson's genome shows 16 of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than one such gene.

The study was made possible when Dr Watson allowed his genome – the map of all his genes – to be published on the internet in the interests of science and research.

“This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis.

“It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.”

Dr Watson won the Nobel Prize, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, after working out the structure of DNA in 1953. However, he provoked an outcry earlier this year when he suggested black people were genetically less intelligent than whites.

His critics savoured the latest wry twist of fate at the weekend. John Sulston, the Nobel laureate who helped lead the consortium that decoded the human genome, said the discovery was ironic in view of Dr Watson's opinions on race.

“I never did agree with Watson's remarks,” he said. “We don't understand enough about intelligence to generalise about race.”

The backlash against Dr Watson forced him to step down as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state, after 39 years at the helm.

He said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

The analysis of his genome by deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic company, shows a further nine of Dr Watson's genes are likely to have come from an ancestor of Asian descent. Dr Watson was not available for comment.

Is that your signature, or were you just testing to see if the pen worked?

I don't know why, but I'm so tired today I can't think straight. It's been a loooong week and, at times, not a very good one. I think that I've caught whatever bug took Katy down last week. Hopefully, it won't be as bad. I feel like I haven't had a good night's sleep in too long and it's making me a bit braindead. I've been staring at my screen trying to fire up enough neurons to start some debugging, but it's not working. I just want to go home and go to bed. Sadly, the universe doesn't work that way.

Fooey.

This year marks Fortnum & Mason's 300th anniversary.

From their FAQ:

In 1707 Hugh Mason had a small shop in St Jamess Market and a spare room in his house. The Fortnum family had come to London from Oxford as high-class builders in the wake of the Great Fire, helping to establish the St Jamess and Mayfair areas as the most fashionable in London. William climbed another rung by taking a post as footman in Queen Annes household – and the room at Mr Masons. The Royal Familys insistence on having new candles every night meant a lot of half-used wax for an enterprising footman to sell on at a profit so while the Queens wages paid the rent, Williams enlightened sideline melted down into enough to start a respectable business. The rest, as they say, is grocery.

To commemorate the event, they are selling, for this year only, The Tercenturian Hamper. It needs The Capitalization. You see, it's £20,000.

It contains:

Read More

Presented in a three-tiered English willow hamper set.

TWENTY THOUSAND POUNDS OMGWTFBBQ!!!11!11!11oneone!!1!

I've discovered a “feature” of my laptop display drivers. Apparently, it has a keyboard shortcut that allows you to rotate your monitor. This, for some, would be a good thing. Except when you're not aware of such a feature. Case and point:

IntelliJ, the java IDE I use to write code, has keyboard shortcuts for everything and they're sometimes hard to remember. Moving a line of code up and down is CTRL+SHIFT+UP arrow. Now, interestingly, I have discovered that CTRL+ALT+UP arrow flips my primary display upside down. If you try it again, you also flip the secondary display. In an attempt to get things in a sane state, where I don't have to unscrew my head to be able to work, I managed to rotate both my laptop screen and secondary monitor – except in different orientations.

This was problematic because, as I found out, when you flip the screen display, the mouse orientation also flips – just to be consistently useful. This is disquieting when one monitor is rotated by 180 degrees and another by 270. This means that mouse movements are different from one screen to the other (and also fun when control panels appear on both screens).

I was able to get it back to normal after a bit of fiddling. Needless to say, this “feature” has now been disabled.

Aaaah, the joys of modern technology.