When a printer is a gun

Scaramanga's career in hairdressing was short lived

You remember the scene in “man with the golden gun”? Christopher Lee, who plays the assassin, Scaramanga, is having a terse conversation with his corporate backer and whilst he talks he plays with his lighter, pen and cigarette case. The conversation draws to a close and Scaramanga, who has assembled his golden toys into a gun, resigns from corporate service in a brutally abrupt manner. A work of fiction and one with no small degree of panache perhaps, but a not quite a useful insight into the dangers of emergent technology. 

Files from the dead and information in-memoriam

Somehow a funny caption seems inappropriate.

An excellent article here at gizmodo.co.uk stopped me in my tracks today. The author tells of a job reading, reviewing, summarising and then destroying files within a social security department of a local authority. For 18 months the author waded through a vast room of literally thousands of files, the files of children who had died in the care of that local authority. The dead room as it was known. Anyone who has worked in legal RM or for any hospital records unit or for any local authority will have a taste of what this is like, though not the distilled horror of reading bland summaries of dreadful circumstances. The mere thought of this job gave me a palpable feeling of dread and a cold sweat.

Anti-social media. When social goes wrong and anonymous isn't

Get back under your fucking bridge.

In some parts of the internet there is a prevailing atmosphere of nasty. Have a look at the less salubrious areas of Facebook, twitter or in the comments section of any news organisation and you’ll get the measure of the beast. Highly misogynistic, racist, bulling, territorial, hate filled garbage. It’s unpleasant to stumble into accidentally, like something nasty you scrape off your shoe into the gutter on a hot summer day, it’s a lot scarier, threatening and horrible if directed at you, like the nastiness on your shoe is replaced with an industrial scale muck spreader on auto-feed. 

Clever investment, cool stuff and why bigger isn't better

I use this when I want to get out of doing the dishes.

There are times when one despairs of sensible investment in the UK. The talk of throwing over £40 billion into HS2 and the ongoing debate as to the best location for airport expansion in South East England can easily lead one to think that all politicians are obsessed with big dumb investments and value posturing in front of vast steel and concrete white elephants above prosperity and opportunity for all. Then you read about some under reported but very clever investments HMG has made in UK high tech industries. Like the £36m various bodies like the office of the Mayor of London and SE development agencies put into Inmarsat ( read more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23380147 ) or the £60m HMG Treasury put into the SABRE engine ( more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23332592 ) which are two or three orders of magnitude smaller than the grand gestures proposed for UK transport infrastructure, but have the potential to deliver vast benefits for the UK in terms of wealth, opportunity and advancement.

Records management, risk and cricket.

WG Grace makes everything relevant so he does.

W G Grace once said some very fine words about doing the obvious thing no matter what the circumstances are, in essence bat first, no matter what, if you can. 

‘When you win the toss – bat. If you are in doubt, think about it, then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague – then bat.’ W G Grace.