the corner office

It's always obvious with hindsight:

Police in Germany hunted a sinister phantom killer for two years after finding the same DNA at 39 different crime scenes - only to discover that the source was a woman who made the cotton buds used to collect the sample.

(BILD, via)

Corrupt politicians are nothing new... so Jacqui Smith's expense claims saga wouldn't really be worth commenting on, except for the fact that in her claiming frenzy she accidentally claimed for two adult movies on a pay-per-view TV service. Apparently watched 'when she wasn't at home'. But when hubby was. Tsk tsk.

I also enjoy this line, from Conservative MP Mark Field, regarding her second home allowance:

"She says it's all within the rules, which I'm sure is right... but the reality is it's not within the spirit of the rules.

"If she doesn't recognise that I think she's really a bit too stupid to be Home Secretary."

Hehehe. I love British politics.

It's a free country, if the masses gathering in London for the G20 get their jollies protesting, good for them. But everyone knows it's a waste of time. And imagine what good they could do to help the poor and downtrodden if they put as much effort or money into charitable work.

And of course, the exact same can be said for the G20 summit itself.

(and this blog post about altruistic people and their biological inclination to want to punish those who aren't altruistic, as well as those who don't appear to want to punish those who aren't altruistic, makes for interesting reading).

Update: of course, the voices in my head started arguing soon after I wrote this. Do I think all protests are pointless? No. In this case however, I think the protests are misguided, directed at the wrong people even if they weren't, and an excuse for many to vent anger and posture - which, is fine, but as I said, doesn't help people actually in need.

Freedom struggles aren't that important if they threaten those special 'business' relationships. This makes me ashamed to be a South African.

I took a day's leave on Friday and went into the SA consulate to apply for a new passport. Wasn't looking forward to it, the consulate have a pretty bad reputation for being as dreadful, unfriendly and unpleasant as visiting Home Affairs back in SA. In the end it went rather smoothly, I'd made triple-sure all my paperwork was sorted, and the people who helped me were quite friendly, so I can't complain.

On top of that, I bumped into an old friend whom I haven't seen in about 7 years, standing in the queue. And since the forms and fingerprinting rigmarole was over sooner than I expected, I was able to do some walking and window shopping in London, and get home in time to try out a pub up the road from us, and discovered they have Brakspear on tap. So all told, Friday was a pretty good day.

Speaking of software behemoths, Google released Street View for a number of UK cities today. I know it's been around in other countries for a while, but I've never looked at it before. Crikey.

It goes without saying the privacy issues are pretty significant. I checked out a friend's house, and there their car was, in the driveway. Now what would he - or his wife - or their friends - think, if another car was parked in that driveway? Do you like the idea of people who see your home address, being able to virtually see where you live and draw various conclusions about you from it?

On the one hand I can understand an argument that security through obscurity is no security at all, that there's nothing stopping someone who knows your address from driving past your home anyway. On the other hand, I can fully understand that our current expectations of privacy are based on the presumption of certain physical constraints, which no longer exist. As with many other things, I'm not sure that we have the legal and cultural equipment to deal with some of the realities that technology is now offering us.

I presume Google has an army of lawyers who don't think it's a problem - or who think it's worth taking a chance, at least.

That aside, it feels like Sci Fi. Plain Google Maps was somewhat revelatory, but this is something else. There I was, my boss showing me his house and the street he lives on. Imagine you're planning to move, and being able to check out the street (and neighbour's houses), without leaving your home. Imagine being able to confirm directions, or reconnoitre a street before arriving for an appointment. The implications and possibilities are mind-boggling.

(I'm also thinking about how much data Google has amassed for this. That's mind-boggling - and a little frightening, too).

I saw a quiet article a few pages into the City A.M. this morning: is IBM going to buy Sun?

Interesting to see how that pans out, if it does. It would mean, amongst others:

1. IBM owns the Sun JVM
2. IBM owns MySQL
3. IBM owns Netbeans
4. IBM owns Glassfish
5. IBM owns Solaris

Hrm indeed.

I've never been very good at the whole degrees-of-family thing. I've never really bothered to figure it out, and whenever someone would say 'so-and-so is a third cousin thrice removed' I'd just nod. I'm lazy that way.

This week, however, I got a friend request on Facebook from a distant family member, whose branch of the family moved to Canada many years ago. I was chatting to my aunt about it and she said 'she'll be your second cousin'. This didn't feel right, because on my father's side of the family, most of my cousins were my parents' age, and their children were our age, and we always referred to them as our second cousins.

Feeling rather ashamed at my lack of mastery of this whole degrees-of-cousins thing, I decided to educate myself (thanks Wikipedia) and put an end to my ignorance, once and for all.

As it turns out, my aunt was correct, but calling your cousin's children your second cousins is a common (but incorrect) usage of the term, and they're more strictly first cousins once removed. Overall, it works like this:

A system of degrees and removes is used to describe the relationship between the two cousins and the ancestor they have in common. The degree (first, second, third cousin, etc.) indicates the minimum number of generations between either cousin and the nearest common ancestor; the remove (once removed, twice removed, etc.) indicates the number of generations, if any, separating the two cousins from each other.

Wikipedia has a pretty graph which sort-of explains it better. The trick of it is that because the degree refers to the minimum generations between either you or your cousin, and the common ancestor, you can have a first cousin once removed no matter far out the common ancestor goes. Between your nth cousin and the common ancestor, moving up the generations reduces the degree and increases the removed.

Did that make sense? I'll probably have forgotten it by tomorrow as well.

I have not spent the rest of the week eating Doritos and watching YouTube. I've been hard at work, at work. I intend to start working on my noble-intentions list this weekend. In the meantime, I'm sitting here trying to muster the energy to be productive at something, anything, but failing miserably. I think it's time for bed. After this blog post, of course.

One night this week I was thinking about some old work colleagues, especially one colleague whom I haven't spoken to in a couple of years. The next morning, I got an email from him saying 'hello, why don't you ever mail me?' It's happened to me before, and even when it's true, the 'wow, I was just thinking of you' reply always sounds a little thin.

I saw a new brand of pizzas on special at Tesco yesterday, so thought I'd try 'em. Only when I was sticking the pizza into the oven, did I notice that instead of being made with cheese, it was made with a 'cheese flavour analogue'. Easily the most disgusting thing I've seen or tasted all decade. Didn't finish a bite before throwing it out and having a sandwich for dinner. Supermarket frozen pizzas are pretty low on the budget ladder, is it really necessary to cost-cut the cheese? San Marco pizzas. Ugh, avoid. I'm tempted to write a letter. I'm scared they'll reply by sending me more pizzas.

Ronwen and Leo are doing the visit the Mother Kountry thing, so I have the run of the place for a while. I have noble intentions and a long list of things to do while they're away.

I have spent my first 36 hours of freedom eating Doritos and watching YouTube.