So how easy is it to short sell?

Pretty easy.

1) Watch BBC news to see the result of the vote on the bail out.
2) When news arrives that it has not gone through, log on to Paddy Power.
3) Bet ten pounds the DOW will close below 10566 at 5-6
4) Profit. DOW closes at 10404 10365.45*. Collect £18.33, gain of £8.33

Not bad for ten minutes of no work.

* The DOW was even lower after wrap up calculations.

After waxing about the bright lights of the 21st Century only yesterday, the most unbelievable story straight out of the 14th Century hits the radar:
The Knight’s Templar are taking the Pope to Court, demanding that the spanish court recognise the magnitude of the plot against their order. Extraordinary.

You know you’re living in the twenty first century when you discover via a blog entry on Groklaw that 88% of all content uploaded to YouTube is original content and the amount of content being uploaded daily outstrips the amount of content generated since the beginning of time (or, well 1966) by all three major US networks combined.

The source of these and many other fascinating facts are An anthropological introduction to YouTube which is a 55 minute presentation from anthropologist Dr. Michael Wesch of Kansas State University about the YouTube phenomenon and how it’s contents are constantly cross-pollinating across blogs, being remixed, reworked and germinating a well of new and exciting media which could well eventually crush the old media business models entirely.

Hence Viacom’s legal action against YouTube owners - Google.

They might well win some money in the battle but they will certainly lose the war as YouTube is just the start of what can be done with a bit of time and imagination and not an awful lot of money - Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, for example, is the product of boredom during the writer’s strike and “less than $100k” which is buttons for the size and scale of this straight-to-internet show in which the lead antagonist Dr. Horrible keeps foiling his own plans for World Domination by blogging about them.

I know I’m living in the 21st century because I’ve just watched a 55 minute video on YouTube anthropology (which I highly recommend) and plan to watch Dr. Horrible shortly. And I’m blogging about it.

xkcd captures the feeling nicely.

Digging around my hard drive the other day I found an old short story I wrote a few years back. Here it is…

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The ninja attack was swift and unexpected, a flurry of blows exploding out of the darkness taking all of the skill and wit my master had ever bestowed upon me to fend them off. Luckily my katana was to hand and in a dancing blur of blade work I dispatched my foes then collapsed on the floor breathing heavily and nursing my wounded wrist.

That would be a much more exciting explanation of what happened but in fact I simply slipped on the wet changing room floor at the hotel’s pool and landed heavily and awkwardly on my left wrist, causing a closed fracture in my left scaphoid radius*. So i spent four hours last night in A&E and am now proudly sporting a plaster cast around my first ever broken bone.

Ouch.

* My mistake - it is the much easier to heal radius that is fractured, not the scaphoid.

Alyn Smith, Scotland MEP for the Scottish National Party, has replied to my letter about MS OOXML.
Update 8 May 2008 22:08
Alyn’s policy adviser has now sent a letter on his behalf to Meglena Kuneva, the European Commissioner for Consumer Protection essentially cc’ing my email and asking if the commission is aware of the issue and what they are doing about it.
Update 14 May 2008 14:47
I have received a reply from Struan Stevenson of the Scottish Tory MEPs which has been added as a comment on the original thread. They are also asking the commission for more information on why this has been allowed to happen.
Update 15 May 2008 09:56
A further email from Struan Stevenson has arrived, appended to the comments; The Directorate General for Competition has this matter on their daily agenda and has written to all EU National Standards bodies, the investigation is open and on going.

Wednesday 7th May 2008

As I type this the Today program on Radio 4 is covering the upcoming Ping Pong match between the Chinese president and Japanese Prime Minister, covering diplomatic niceties and pro-Tibet protests. Here are my experiences of almost meeting President Hu and protests in Japan.
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Monday 28th April

Our second day in Hakone is not quite as frantic a chase around the major sites. We have two places on our tourism hit-list today: The Open Air Museum and a swim-suit wearing communal bath we can splash around together in.
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Sunday 27th – Tuesday 29th April 2008

Last time I came half way around the world, by chance my friend Richard from Glasgow was also in Tokyo, flown out on short notice by his company and we spent a most enjoyable evening together. This time around Gavin and Jessie are also out here on holiday, indeed by this stage they’ve been here for a week, largely enjoying the sights in Kyoto which I insisted they make the main part of their trip, feeling as I did that I could happily have spent much more time in the ancient capital. They have arrived by Shinkansen back to Tokyo station and made it round to Shinjuku and meet us at the planned spot. Natsuko has worked things out with military precision. Together we embark the Romance Car limited express train to Hakone.
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Friday 25th – Saturday 26th April 2008

The basic problems with traveling to the other side of the globe are of course manifold. Firstly there is the inhuman time one must get out of bed when getting a plane from Edinburgh airport that departs at 6am – for a check-in sometime after 4am but before 05:40 at the latest you need to jump out of bed, shiny and fit, at around 3 and be on the road half an hour later. There are advantages, though they are few, this is the only time of day when one may get along the Clydeside Roller Coaster (the stretch of road formerly known as the Clydeside Express Way) and the M8 in a spanky quick time – it is much easier to get through the neck of this bottle when there is nothing else in the way. Care must be taken not to be so relaxed, however, that one falls asleep at the wheel – this would be a poor start to one’s holiday.
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