I was sent a link to this the other day - ‘Master Plan The Movie’, about Google having too much access to too much personal information.

While graphically beautiful, the piece itself is a bit weak, and possibly even in danger of smelling like a nutjob conspiracy theory and therefore undermining a valid concern.

Google are known to have an informal motto ‘Don’t Be Evil’ - but are they abiding by it?

I found a very interesting, and seemingly balanced article on Wired entitled Google vs Evil.

Some quotes from the article, but it’s worth reading in full:

The world’s biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don’t be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business.

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Ireland will be having elections sometime between now and the Summer, I am registered to vote but know nothing about politics - so I have two questions.

• Where can one find a dummies guide to how government & elections actually work in Ireland?
• Who the hell should I vote for?

When it comes to question 2, please bear in mind that my absolute ideal candidates are as below:

Hunter S Thompson

In 1970 Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado on the “Freak Power” ticket promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen, Colorado “Fat City.” The incumbent Republican sheriff whom he ran against had a crew cut, prompting him to refer to his opponent as “my long-haired opponent,” as Thompson had had an “incident” with an electric razor (see the Gonzo Papers vol. 3).

With polls actually showing him with a slight lead in the race, Thompson appeared at Rolling Stone magazine headquarters in San Francisco with a six-pack of beer in hand and declared to editor Jann Wenner that he was about to be elected the next sheriff of Aspen, Colorado and wished to write about it. Thus, Thompson’s first article in Rolling Stone was published as The Battle of Aspen with the byline “By: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (Candidate for Sheriff).” Despite the publicity, Thompson ended up narrowly losing the election.

Jello Biafra

In the fall of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco as a prank, using the Jello ad campaign catchphrase, “There’s always room for Jello”, as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert. As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign t-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp’s previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, current U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours.
Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well known signs held by supporters said “If he doesn’t win I’ll kill myself” and “What if he does win?” His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits and a citywide ban on cars (although the latter point was not considered abnormal by many voters at the time, as the city was suffering from serious pollution problems).

Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to keep their jobs by running for election voted on by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.

During a TV interview (reproduced on The Early Years home video and DVD), he had this to say to those who thought less of him running for mayor: “For those of them who have seen my candidacy as a publicity stunt or a joke, they should keep in mind that it is no more of a joke, and no less of a joke than anyone else they care to name.�

He finished fourth out of a field of ten, receiving 3.5% of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner). In reaction to his campaign (and that of Sister Boom-Boom, a drag queen who also ran for mayor and handily won the third place spot above Biafra), San Francisco passed a resolution stating that no candidate could run under any name other than their given name.

Gay Byrne called for a debate on the legalisation of drugs, of course several people immediately had a seizure at the thought of actually talking about possible solutions to any drug problem…

From the Irish Independant:

Junior Minister Noel Ahern, who is responsible for the Government’s drug strategy, said any talk about legalising drugs was “irresponsible” while anti-drugs campaigner Grainne Kenny said the comments had been “a grave error of judgment”.

At least, according to the Irish Times, not everybody reacted with predictable horror:

The deputy lord mayor of Dublin has welcomed comments by former broadcaster and chairman of the Road Safety Authority Gay Byrne on the legalisation of drugs.

Mr Byrne told the RTÉ Radio 1 Conversations with Eamon Dunphy programme that he was coming round to the view that illegal drugs should be legalised because attempts to deal with the problem through law enforcement had “demonstrably failed”.

Speaking today, Labour Cllr Aodhan O Riordain agreed with Mr Byrne that a new approach to drugs was needed.

Noel Ahern, the minister of state responsible for drug strategy had these highly intelligent remarks to make on the whole incident:

“Drugs are illegal, and that’s the right way to have them. Any talk about liberalising drugs is irresponsible.”

I was walking home the other night and saw the above poster on a billboard. Having seen it I felt the need to answer it - yes, out loud. I found myself telling said billboard that I didn’t want a political party that cared about my happiness but that I wanted one that would be prepared to make the tough decisions needed to make this country better. The kinds of decisions that generally lead to unhappiness in the direction of such a party.

Maybe it was because I was angry when I saw it? Maybe it’s because the advertisement is stupid?

Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell explained that the Gardaí mistook an important Interpol letter about suspects in a child porn case for a circular, according to the Irish Times today.

He admitted that the error may have resulted in the loss of vital evidence, but he went on to defend the Gardaí - because they had admitted their mistake.

Mr McDowell said while human error was to blame, if people “working hard” made mistakes this should not always result in disciplinary action. “They appear to have gotten a letter from Interpol, and [to] have either forgotten the significance of it or else misread it. They took it to be a circular.”

Rumour has it they were extremely busy trying to hunt down a meteorite that had hit a phone line somewhere between Westport and Castlebar.

The Gardaí explained that the message was one of 180 transmisisons they received that day, and that “It is regretted that it was not actioned at the time.”

Don’t you love that language? “it was not actioned “.

You may recognise this tactic from your home life, it allows you to dodge the question of personal responsibility and infer that the object in question is somehow at fault.

For example:
Mother: What happened that plate?
Child: It got broken.

In another article in the Irish Times, the ISPCC were quoted as saying that research shows there is a direct link between individuals accessing child pornography and the direct sexual abuse of a child - a US study was referred to which apparently indicated that 36% of people who access child pornography abuse children.

The seriousness of a failure to act on information of this kind cannot be underestimated. I sincerely hope that the investigation that takes place ensures that information like this cannot be misinterpreted as a circular ever again.