Pots and kettles

I see the payday lenders are being criticised for letting people take out loan after loan when it is clear they cannot pay the money back.
Isn’t this what every Western government has been doing for years?

Why don't my e-books play video?

I read books on screen. It is convenient, simple and cheap.
But why are e-books not designed?
If I buy a book in a bookshop, it will have a particular typeface and chapter headings.
If there are pictures, they will appear at the relevant point in the narrative and they will probably fill a page.
If I read the same book on my Kindle, the typeface is in one of the Kindle’s standard typefaces, as are the chapter headings. And the pictures, if they appear at all, will appear as tiny images, sometimes all together the end of the book.
Why don’t publishers take advantage of the new medium and use video instead of the static pictures in a physical book? Why no sounds files in my Leiber and Stoller biography?
Why is the index not displayed as clickable links to take me to the relevant page?
Is it that publishers see e-books as an annoyance, something cheap and tawdry which is eating into their traditional business?
They would do better to see them as an opportunity.
If video and sound would make a book too large to download in a reasonable time, why not store the video and sound files in a cloud and give people who buy the book at the publisher’s price, or with the publisher’s app, access to them.
I want to hear Riot in cell block #9 when I read my Leiber and Stoller autobiography.
I want to see Bobby Charlton scoring when I read The footballer who could fly.
I want to see Eddy Merckx flying up mountains when I read Half man half bike.
Come on publishers, bring books up to date.

Seeing through the Windows

Windows 8 is interesting. It moves away from the traditional Windows Start menu and into the world of clickable icons.
For decades Microsoft have made millions because the world has been compatible with Windows.
Most companies use Windows, so most commercial software is created to run on Windows.
Windows is on most of the computers we buy to use at home, so most of the software written for people at home has been created to run on Windows.
And most of the printers, scanners, cameras and other devices we buy come with software created to run on Windows.
The world works on Windows.
Or it did until Steve Jobs showed non-geeks how to download music and Google’s Android made millions of phones cool.
Now people are as happy to touch apps as they are to start a program from a menu. The Windows spell has been broken.
I bet there are more programmers writing software for iPads and Androids than there are writing code to work on Windows PCs.
Windows 8 shows Microsoft have accepted this. Why is it taking so long for the people who make printers and other peripheral bits of kit to provide an app as well as a Windows CD for people to set them up and use them?

Why go from A to B to C when A is all we need?

The Independent had an interesting story this morning under the headline:
The scientists who turned fresh air into petrol
A bunch called Air Fuel Synthesis up in Stockton does this alchemy by:

a. producing hydrogen from water and air by electrical hydrolysis

b. grabbing carbon dioxide from the air and combining it with the hydrogen to produce methanol

c. using the methanol to produce petrol for cars and aviation fuel for planes

The new bit is b. a and c have been done commercially for some time.
But grabbing the carbon dioxide is tricky, inefficient and expensive. Air Fuel Synthesis have produced five litres of petrol in two months. They hope to make this operation more efficient and cheaper, but that could take several years.
Why bother? We can power vehicles using hydrogen now. London has a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses and Honda have a fuel-cell car which works a treat and is waiting only for a few hydrogen pumps to appear alongside the unleaded ones at your local filling station.
Why spend years developing refineries to turn hydrogen into petrol to feed our present gas-guzzlers when all we need is a few new tanks and tankers?
It is suggested that capturing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will slow global warming. Not if we put it straight back into the atmosphere by driving to Tesco.
I know everybody hates change, but it is surely less of a change to put liquid hydrogen into your car from a pump and drive off than it is to plug an electric car into a socket, wait eight hours and then drive off.

On cormorants and humans

I read that anglers want cormorants to be killed to stop them eating all the fish.
Fish are food for cormorants. They are sport for anglers.
In the animal world, big eats small. Strong kills weak.
In the human world, we are supposed to be more civilised. Big and strong are not supposed to kill small and weak - not unless you are a member of a government, or a bunch of religious fanatics.
Cormorants are fantastic hard-working, team-building birds.
If anglers run out of fish, they could take up golf or running or any one of a dozen of other sports which would take them out of the house and into the countryside and wouldn’t involve impaling anything with barbed hooks.
The anglers are just like the farmers who want to kill badgers to reduce the risk of their cattle getting diseased. We think we have the right to kill animals which threaten the animals in which we have an interest.
I'm a veggie. I don't want to kill any of them. I know they kill each other. I think we ought to know better.

Witch watch

Every time I read a newspaper, or hear the news on radio or TV, someone or some organisation is being pilloried.
This clearly should be documented, otherwise the flood of tutting this week will make us forget the dreadful goings-on we tutted about last week.
To this end, I am starting Witch Watch. This will attempt to identify every witch who is identified and sent to the bonfire.

Update Nov 12 2012: The witchfinder mob turned on the BBC because it pulled a Newsnight programme about Jimmy Savile and child abuse. Now it’s turning on the BBC because it didn’t pull a Newsnight programme about child abuse on Wales.Businesses have risk committees to ensure they don’t go off the financial rails. It is clear they now need witch committees to work out what to do when the mob turns up at the plate glass entrance with flaming torches.George Entwhistle wasn’t a bad director general. He didn’t have time to establish whether he was bad or good. He simply didn’t have a witch committee with a plan.


Update later in Oct 2012: The mob howling for blood were told Jimmy Savile was dead, so they tried to burn down the BBC instead, on the grounds that Savile appeared on BBC television. For the only sane voice in all this frenzy of righteousness, read Simon Jenkins in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/jimmy-savile-witch-hunt-paranoia

Update Oct 2012: Jimmy Savile is a posthumous witch. Everyone in the pop business was chatting up schoolgirls in the 1960s. 

Update Aug 21: Clearly witchfinders go on holiday in August. Isn't it nice.

Update July 19: Nick Buckles of G4S is the new pariah. He screwed up the Olympic security contract, therefore G4S must be totally incompetent and should have all other contracts cancelled. 
The Olympics will be fine. Security will work fine. And in a week or so, another witch will be found and we will forget all about Mr Buckles.

To start it off, I nominate the dudes of Barclays Bank as today's witches. 

Watch this witch space.

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound

The people who are insisting that governments should stop being austere and start growing their economies must still believe that governments have some control over economics. 
It is clear from the endless summits and agreements that they don't.
Their solutions all depend on someone coming up with large sums of money, whether it is to bail out banks, or countries, or to pay for jobs which don't need to be done.
Economics is controlled by those who make a buck out of it. ‪And crises are great for them.