2006 April

Victor, Parisian student, protesting the job contract that could have been in France: “It means that when I do get a job I will basically have to work as hard as I can to keep it.” Now that the French government has capitulated, I guess he won’t have to work hard any more. Lets get this in perspective, this was a law that suggested, after compromise, that you could be fired within your first year on your first job, providing there was a reason. – That’s all. This is not 19th century style worker exploitation, but stopping the contract will lead to it, because in a globalised economy the fact is that French jobs will now go somewhere where there is genuine exploitation. It was an attempt to help poor people get a start. And think how ridiculous this all sounds if you use being in a band as an…

Lubos Motl (a must read blogger) points out that climate change, is the new religion. First things first – climate change is very real and very worrying, if you look at the empirical data and spread of opinion amongst people studying it. It appears to be more truth than fiction – an idea bolstered by the amusing fact that the poster child (the inadmirable Crichton) of the ‘its fiction’ camp, is indeed noted for his science fiction. The problem is not that the truth is winning, its that its winning too easily and data is being amplified and distorted as it moves into the mainstream culture, and this does not help in the long term. What are the reasons for this? 1. Darwinism, is being distorted and muted by the negative feedback loop of people who want religious certainty and human primacy instead of evolutionary gradualism and primate-acy. Climate change…