Christmas comes early, but not for the Big Easy

Walking through Selfridges on Saturday, I notice an entire Christmas department has opened. This is.. .August 27th.

And in other news: good luck, New Orleans. Along with Boston, it's one of the two American cities I've always wanted to see and somehow never have. And as Katrina rampages in, it's possible I never will.

Not Normal Behaviour

Reading: Stuart Staples' Not Normal Behaviour. It's an amusing account of one man's decision and subsequent year of training to enter an Ironman Triathlon. (The Ironman distance is an ultra-endurance event involving 3.8km in the water, 180km on the bike, and a full 42km marathon to finish.)

In some ways, the book is oversold - marketing blurb paints Staples as a soft suburbanite, when in fact he was a fanatical athlete at the time he made the decision. (Which makes a huge difference - I used to think Sprints would be enough; now I do Olympic distance with plans for a half-Ironman in 2006.) But the book contains enough laughs to compensate. He talks about the joy of body marking (you DO feel good when you're getting your race number inked on your skin) and T shirt poker - the agonising decision of which previous race T shirt to wear when registering, so everyone knows you're not a novice.

(I've stood in a queue wearing my Salford ITU T shirt, and had a look from a guy in a Hawaii Ironman shirt that said 'Ha! I see your Salford, and raise you an Ironman Hawaii!' I had to fold.)

He keeps perspective throughout, always remembering that whatever the distance he's still competing in a stewarded, marked, organised race, not exploring the rainforest solo. A good read.

Lollipop Land

Something I've been meaning to do for ages: wrote up my notes on How to run a successful meeting. When you charge a day rate, someone wasting three hours of a day with a useless meeting is something you get snippy about.

For me, that snippiness manifests as ultra-sarcasm - if someone's wandering off into meaningless flights of fancy and wishful thinking instead of contributing to the meeting's conclusion, I interject with the phrase "...and while we're in Lollipop Land, I'd like a pink-maned pony to ride across the candyfloss clouds." Why I came up with such an effeminate expression I've no idea - and I've even less idea how My Little Pony somehow whinnyed its way into my lexicon - but it works.

Anyway, here's the guide.

Going French with my Tri preferences

As my triathlon count climbs, I notice more and more Saucony kit appearing in my cave. (The 'cave' is my garage, which has no car in it.)

I've always used their trisuits - the seams and taped bits just seem to be in the right place to hold my 75kg meat puppet together - and recently I've added one of their tri bags, a clever little backpack that unzips all the way round and rolls out into a ready-made transition area with all my kit in the right place. (Using this, I would never, for example, have to return to T1 while wheeling my bike out because I've forgotten my race number, oh dear me no.) And among my other kit too, I notice a big drop in Ironman shorts and tops in favour of the French. Hmmm.

Police lies revealed over innocent's shooting

So... the facts come out. In accordance with prophecy.

He wasn't wearing a heavy 'suicide bomber jacket'.
He wasn't running away from police.
He didn't vault the ticket barrier.
He wasn't warned before getting shot.
He was restrained but got shot anyway.
And the policeman who ID'd him was pissing at the time.

Practically every part of the police's justification for shooting dead an innocent Brazilian has now been proven to be just a cover up. Where the hell are we living... Los Angeles? To have made a mistake is bad, but perhaps understandable. To have lied, repeatedly, to cover it up is unforgivable. And my already-low opinion of the police just hit rock bottom.

The institution of the Police is honourable. All too often, the actual people doing the job are not. It's a power-crazed cabal of sneering, bigoted thugs far more interested in their own promotion prospects than any obligation to society.

As elsewhere in New Labour's Britain, laws and justifications are written for the convenience of the State rather than the protection of the people.

Britain continues to sleepwalk into a police state, and far too few give a damn.

Very modern frauds

A thought: what would happen if eBay or PayPal really did want to confirm my credit card details? All they'd get is a bunch of phishing reports.

Microsoft rakes it in from spam

This made me think. Are we winning the war against spammers?

My Inbox's spamload peaked around 2003 I think. On the rare moments I've opened up without my two layers of spam protection (first line of defence at Makepeace's servers, then another wall around my own hard disk) I still see about 30 a day, but the torrent is definitely slowing. Diminishing returns for spammers: now everybody knows about spam, even one response in a hundred thousand isn't enough to make it pay.

Heartening, because I think it was touch and go for a while. There's a tipping point in any medium where your audience figures fall off a cliff; people will only take so much intrusion before they deem the content unworthy of their time. For US TV it's when ad breaks exceed 22 minutes per hour; the big networks discovered this in the late 90s. For email, I'd guess it's when 90%+ of all messages are unsolicited. A lot of people were very close to that point in the last few years - and many must have thought about giving up on email as a communications medium. But email has survived that long time in the dark tunnel - and now it looks like it's safely through to the other side.

Triathlon site bonks out

Three days after the London Triathlon, the official site is still out for the count. It can't deal with a mere 8000 competitors (max) trying to get their results? That's bad.

Brazilians scoop out £38m

You've got to admire the planning that goes into bank robberies like this one. £38m, nobody hurt, the haul in untraceable used notes. But on the flipside: think how much benefit these guys could bring to the world if they used such enormous engineering and organisational talent for legitimate enterprise?

Blair the crusader

Hmm, looks like the PM's got it in for Muslims - in addition to the Iraquagmire, he's looking to ban a couple of moderate Muslim organisations. Which makes me think: could Blair himself be on a mission from his god - just like Dubya or bin Laden?

Look at the evidence. Faith is the reason Blair and his buddy Stateside get on so well; their political philosophies (if Dubya's approach can be called a 'philosophy') are very different. But Blair is openly religious - unusual for a British politician - and has the same sense of his own righteousness as any evangelical preacher on US TV.

Could the entire Middle East campaign have a secret agenda no different to al-Qaeda's: to provoke war between two peoples in the name of their imaginary friends? After all, it's just become obvious they're heading into Iran within three years: my guess is Blair will extend his premiership until that happens.

If this mess was about politics or economics, there'd be a chance reason might prevail. But if it's all about religion, there's no arguing with them - because religionists, inflated by religion's grandiose image of itself, will never conceive they could be wrong.

Tri London triumphs

The London Triathlon!

Where it all started for me - my first and favourite event. Big with plenty of newbies to reassure in the swim assembly area. A great swim, with even a few waves to break things up. An interesting bike, with a terrific 45km/h swoooosh through a darkened Blackwall Tunnel. A sociable run, threading through crowds around Excel. A race where it's okay to be a Tra-la-laa Triathlete (i.e. where you're not concerned with results, and just sort of skip along enjoying the event.)

But a criticism: judging from the noise on the floor, everything seems to have got too... big.

The BTA needs to think seriously about the direction of Tri in the UK. Like most amateur Triathletes, I'm ambivalent about the British Triathlon Association: all it seems to do is promote its own insurance policy and put out a truly terrible magazine that must cost a fortune to produce, yet carries zero content. But like it or not, the BTA is Britain's triathlon body, so these thoughts are addressed to it. BTA, take note:

Some discipline with entries would help. Three races this year - Windsor, Salford, and London - seemed oversubscribed given the social infrastructure available to deal with them. Transition areas get clogged, Elites get annoyed, and swim sections turn into carnage. (Memo to Salford: 450 men ranged along an 80m pontoon? Ain't gonna happen.) The restricted rack & reg time for London meant a 6.30am swim start wound back to an alarm clock at 3.30am - and every half hour kills the enthusiasm of perhaps 1000 athletes. It's great the sport is expanding - but let's go for variety of events rather than size.

Let's avoid an 'avian flu' pandemic. Costumes, decorations, and other accoutrements of that dread species the 'charity runner' are making inroads into Tri; it's only a matter of time before a giant chicken lines up on the pontoon. Let's stamp this one out. Triathlon is a sport not a circus.

(Surely we don't want a situation like the London Marathon, where unless you can raise £2000 for charity or have the surname Radcliffe your chance of gaining entry is less than one in six? Charities are terrific - I've raised £600 for them myself - but let's think a little more about the athletes, and a little less about holding the guns of guilt to their heads.)

Support regional races; the big ones don't need help. As Triathlon turns into a mainstream sport, activity and sponsorbucks are coalescing around a few big events - notably the London Tri. They're terrific events, but remember this sport grew from dedicated people around the UK organising small races on a shoestring. Smaller organisers like Big Cow need - and deserve - more support.

But all in all: this sport is working. More people interested in this amazing activity, Britain fostering one of the world's top squads, and Triathlon confirmed as a full sport for the 2012 Olympics. As the 2005 season starts cooling, I look forward in hope.

Day goin' smoothly by

A sunny day, a doable work schedule, the Bank of England's cut my mortgage by £30 a month, and some squares of Green & Black's Orange Spiced Chocolate with tea. A rare day of calm in my home office.

Iran: just change one letter

With John Bolton confirmed as the USA's Ambassador to the UN (somehow had a good laugh over that one) and recent election results putting a hardliner in Iran's top spot, the scene is now set: we're 100% likely to see an American invasion of Iran within three years.
Of course, it can't happen until Iraq has been abandoned to its civil war (which is just getting rolling) but it won't take more than a year after that - after all, they only need to change the q's to n's on the invasion plans, a task even Dubya could handle.

Presumably it won't have British support this time - I can't imagine even Blair going for that, unless as a last-ditch attempt to create some sort of legacy (he'll be handing over to Brown around then.) But the USA will go ahead anyway. The only thing that could stop all this? Something Saddam said a few years back: 'America cannot take 10,000 body bags'.

Hate to admit it - but he's right. If American casualties in Iraq pass 10,000 (the 40K dead Iraqis don't matter of course) public opinion will put a halt to this decade's military adventurism.

It's a strange world when another 8,200 dead Americans looks like the best of all possible options.

War of the Worlds

Hmmm... not too sure about Tom Cruise's latest epic.

The effects are great, but - there's a sense of studio about them. Little Dakota Fanning is creepily brilliant, but Tom's the only other character, and he doesn't do half the job he's capable of (we need another 'Magnolia' if you're ever to get the Oscar you deserve, Tom). And the crowd scenes don't seem crowded enough, as if they couldn't afford enough extras.

Next, the story misses an important couple of conflicts - that would've made great setpieces. Where, for instance, was Thunder Child, the gunboat that heroically sacrificed itself and took two tripods with it, letting the passenger boat get away? A US Navy vessel would have fitted well with American sensibility... as would the young Curate, holding up his crucifix to the devilish aliens (imagine a TV evangelist). But neither scene is in the film. And much more could have been made of the man in the ruined house, trying to dig out a new world underground. There's no real narrative structure to this film - odd since the book's 27 chapters give a beginning, middle, and end in three neat sections of nine developments each, an unusually transparent story outline.

Finally, the film ends in a real let-down. HG Wells tempered the book's lack of a final epic conflict by making it character-centric: he resolves to give his life to the Martians and approaches a tripod. But there's no hint of suicide in Cruise (despite the way it would have fitted the character.)

So - too many missed chances, and too few redeeming features. Better luck next time, Tom.

The lowdown on carbon nanotubes

Reading: Carbon Nanotubes and Related Structures, by Peter J F Harris. I've always been fascinated by atomic-scale engineering - let's face it, the premise of Drexler's Nanosystems is breathtaking - and it's always good when someone puts in the numbers, so you can stop fantasising and start crunching what might actually work. All molecules are beautiful, but nanotubes and fullerenes have a hard-edged architectural integrity that floppy DNA and tangled proteins don't have.

The oddest thing of all is that Drexler and others imagined molecular-scale structural components in the 80s - but never imagined that a few years later, we'd discover nature has build the best possible ones already. Nanotubes can be twisted, doped, and manipulated into practically any electronic or mechanical configuration a nanoscale machine might need; all we need now is that assembler to start clicking them together...

Great body day

You know 'great hair days'? I'm having a 'great body day'. Somehow, all the bits came together this morning, a combo of a Tri on Sunday, no alcohol for ten days, tons of veg in the fridge and several early nights. Flat stomach, smooth skin, toned muscles... the meat puppet ain't looking bad.

Most desperate co-branding attempt of 2005

So I can get a body sculpted like a Jedi Knight, or Natalie Portman? I'll take Natalie.