Ed Dowding

Category: Crime & Security

How to be Good

Almost 40% of young people today grow up without their biological father present in their home. For African-Americans in the US, two thirds grow up without their biological father. This often affects young people’s moral and emotional development very negatively. A 2005 study of 3,400 middle schoolers in the US, for exmple, indicated that not ...

Investing In Lawsuits Beats the Street

There’s a company investing law suits and getting at 20% return. Whilst that’s quite a good idea in a way (it allows people to fight against those with bigger budgets) it’s also a sure sign that the system is broken. Here’s a proposed solution from a reader on Slashdot: Abolish legally binding precedent. The accepted ...

6 Reasons never to give up your biometric data or DNA

1. It permits lazy policing If you have someone’s record on file, you’re more likely to assume he’s a criminal. And if that DNA matches a sample which has been discovered during the investigation… well it’s jolly tempting to think that you might have your man. A connected spate of lazy policing happened recently. Having ...

DNA databases require so much regulation that abuse is inevitable.

Anyone who studied a little genetics in high school has heard of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine – the A,T,G and C that make up the DNA code. But those are not the whole story. The rise of epigenetics in the past decade has drawn attention to a fifth nucleotide, […]. And now there’s a ...

We are six years away from an energy crisis

The good news for Britain’s energy supply is that the sheer scale of the recession has cut our electricity demand and carbon emissions. An impending energy security crunch has been postponed.The bad news is that the recession will almost certainly delay investment in Britain’s energy infrastructure and encourage complacency. […] For the past two decades ...

How we measure progress and development

Economics has a great deal to answer for. A short while ago some people tried to work out what should be done with the economy. They wanted to formalise it and build in growth and progress as a goal. All very noble and worthwhile, and really very effective when you look at where we are ...

What cost the bailouts?

With reference to this conversation on facebook, wherein Crispin was suggesting that 5,000 days of lost workforce productivity (on account of the G20 demonstrations) could have been better spent, I was compelled to work out the following. —- Well if it’s maths that worries you… Total spend on bailout so far: £1,200,000,000,000 (1.2 trillion) But ...

An enormous civilisation discovered in the Amazon

I watched a great documentary last night about hunting for El Dorado. (Actually more like ‘El Dorado II’, because the main El Dorado story comes from a place called Muiscas in modern day Colombia, courtesy of conquistador ‘Jimmy the Cheese’, aka Jiménez de Quesada, in 1537). But this story is about another chap, Francisco Orellana, ...

Cambridge, Mass. City Council has voted 9-0 to remove security camera

Citing privacy concerns, the Cambridge, Mass. City Council has voted 9-0 to remove security cameras scattered throughout the city. ‘Because of the slow erosion of our civil liberties since 9/11, it is important to raise questions regarding these cameras,’ said Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge city councilor. Rather than citing privacy, WCBVTV is running the story ...

Tied up in knots

1. Heathrow runway ‘approval is due’ The government is expected to confirm approval for a third runway at Heathrow Airport later, the BBC understands. (http://is.gd/fVkJ) Your government doesn’t care about your long term future, so please take responsibility for it yourself. Only fly when you HAVE to. If you want to get away that much, ...

STILL not going to America

Visitors To US Now Required To Register Online Starting today, visitors to the US from 35 visa-waiver countries will be required to register online with the Department of Homeland Security in advance. The DHS is asking people to go online for the ESTA program 72 hours before traveling, but they can register any amount of ...

ID cards

Hopefully the billions pumped into those arseholes banks will make spending billions more on the military industrial complex those other arseholes who are going to make lots of money from ID cards can be curtailed. But just in case you thought the whole ID card card debate had gone quiet, read on at the BBC, ...