Category: in the news

Baltic Belly

Posted on

Yay! Microbiology makes the headlines again. For all the right reasons. Sort of.

Numerous reports across the media this morning on this paper which appears to indicate that Vibrio spp. gastrointestinal infections are on the rise in the Baltic states due to climate change and the rising temperature of that sea.
Vibrio is the genus that causes cholera and other nasty bowel disturbances. It’s nothing new, even in temperate climes, but it’s generally more associated with warmer areas, especially – as I recall from my days in the Oxford lab – the entirety of South East Asia. Holidaymakers generally brought more than just memories and a ceramic elephant back from Thailand.

Some Vibrio yesterday (they’re not actually this big though)

It seems that for every degree that the Baltic sea temperature increases, the number of Vibrio cases rises by almost 200%. Not much of an issue there to be honest, because we’re starting from a very low baseline, but since the Baltic “represents, to our knowledge, the fastest warming marine ecosystem examined so far anywhere on Earth” and appears to be getting about 6-7 degrees warmer each century, it may serve as a decent model for other infections and geographical locations.

Changing patterns of infection due to the local environment is nothing new. Malaria was once present across Europe and North America, yet we only see imported cases these days. (That said, I once contracted malaria in London, but that was in a lab at Imperial College.) (Don’t try this at home.)

Anyway, even if you are travelling to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia or Latvia, don’t panic too much. The likelihood of you getting cholera is very, very small. Although, if the photo above is anything to go by, you may want to avoid the local sausages just to make sure.

“This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature”

Posted on

Something is wrong here. If someone believes, even fleetingly, that a feature on your platform is a bug, that’s a problem.

And I think that the bug feature that I read about this morning which has apparently been rearing its ugly head on Facebook recently is potentially going to be a big problem.

ZDNet reports that Facebook has been automatically publishing posts under people’s name and placing them at the top of the News Feed for their friends to see. Now, while that might seem annoying, it probably doesn’t really present any sort of problem – that is, unless the content that Facebook is publishing under your name is politically controversial:

One associate whose name was attached to a rabidly right-wing political post said she disagreed vehemently with the sentiment it expressed, and she couldn’t imagine why it appeared under her name.

Or just plain embarrassing [screenshot]:

A colleague of mine and a friend of mine had both “liked” drugstore.com somewhere along the way. No problem, right? Wrong.

Drugstore.com recently ran a somewhat racy promotion for the “Date Night Gift Pack from K-Y: Including $10 off 2 movie tickets, Yours & Mine Lubes, and K-Y Touch Warming Oil,” and the ad implied that my associates liked the K-Y products. To say that my colleague and my friend were mortified would be an understatement!

Now, that could be a little distressing on a personal level, but imagine that you were using your Facebook account in a professional purpose and your clients or colleagues get suggestions that you are recommending sexual lubricants. Ouch!

Facebook’s response to the ZDNet article confirms that this can happen to anyone who Likes a page – any Facebook page:

To help people find new Pages, events, and other interesting information, people may now see posts from a Page a friend likes. These posts will include the social context from your friends who like the Page and will respect all existing settings.

We’ve warned you before about who you share your social media account details with, but it’s a bit difficult not to share your Facebook account details with er… Facebook. Personally, I’m not a huge Facebook user, but I do see its value and its uses. However, I can only see that this bug feature will dissuade users from Liking pages, which is the primary way that Facebook now works. Own goal?

ZDNet continues:

Even worse, if you’re the recipient of these messages, there is no way to prevent them from appearing in your News feed. You can hide individual stories as they appear, but you can’t block the page from posting again, and again, and again. And even if you remove the friend completely from your news feed, the forcibly shared posts appear. The only way to stop it is to unfriend the person whose Facebook identity is being misused.

If you’re concerned that inappropriate content might appear in your friends’ News feed under your name, you should immediately go through the list of pages for which you’ve clicked Like, and Unlike any that you think pose the potential of embarrassing you.

I’ve pored through Facebook account settings and can find no way to disable this kind of sharing. There are settings that control whether your name is attached to ads, but these aren’t ads. If they were, the word “Sponsored” would appear alongside them. (And if they’re unlabeled ads, well, that opens another can of worms, doesn’t it?)

In the meantime, I’d go for that middle paragraph option above. [Profile -> Likes -> Go to individual FB page -> Hover over LIKED button -> Click Unlike from dropdown menu].

The trouble is, with sites as innocuous as drugstore.com (think of it as a Boots or a Clicks pharmacy) posting “dodgy” stuff as you, where do you draw the line?

For your peace of mind, I promise that 6000.co.za’s Facebook page will probably never post dodgy stuff on your behalf.

Jacques on the dangers of “drive-by charity”

Posted on

It’s Nelson Mandela’s 94th birthday and those in South Africa and beyond are being asked to donate 67 minutes of their time to a charity or good cause of some description in honour of the 67 years of Madiba’s struggle for human rights.
This annual request is a big thing in South Africa, because the birthday is a big thing in South Africa, because Mandela is a huge thing in South Africa. If you engage with anyone here via any means today, you will be asked what you are doing for your 67 minutes.

Daily Maverick Opinionista and all-round bearded intellectual Jacques Rousseau does have a word of warning for us though:

…even though nation-building exercises like Mandela Day can frequently appear to be little more than an excuse for some warm and fuzzy sentimentality, my hope is that this year – and today, July 18 – can remind us that 67 minutes of our time, on one day of the year, will probably make no difference at all.

It’s perhaps not meant to make a difference in any case – at least not in isolation, and not because of any particular activity you might perform during the 67 minutes that we’re being encouraged to donate, in honour of Mandela’s 67 years of service to South Africa. The 67 minutes spent assisting some charity or another will be appreciated, but are unlikely to make a lasting difference unless we use the day as motivation to become more engaged in general.

And, surprise surprise, once again he’s correct – at least, for me, in the most part.
All too often, people do their 67 minutes each year because they are afraid of being socially ostracised if they don’t, rather than out of any genuine sense of social duty. And yes, far more could be achieved and far more people helped if individuals extended their charitable work beyond 67 minutes and beyond July 18th each year. It would be nice if that happened.

But then that sentiment applies to a lot of things in this world which are never going to happen.

So, at risk of being accused of pessimism, but actually taking a more realistic stance, I’m all for “drive-by” charity if that’s all we’re going to get. Because any action is better than none and with so many people working for 67 minutes – even if it is just 67 minutes each year – stuff will happen. The scale here is important, sure, but with the most desirable outcome patently out of reach, doing something is surely better than doing nothing.

If you are going to do your 67 minutes today, well done. If you’re going to actually go back and do more before next July, then take a bow. But even if you fall into that former pool, you’ve done something and you’ve made some small difference. I don’t see any problem with that.

Oleg some distance from reality

Posted on

So yes, England beat Ukraine and head happily into the quarter finals at Euro 2012 with absolutely no controversy surrounding their passage. Well, except for that perfectly legitimate goal scored by Marko Devic and not given by Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai.

Here’s the screenshot of that moment:

And here’s what Ukraine coach Oleh Volodymyrovych “Oleg” Blokhin said about it:

We scored a clean goal in the 63rd minute, as the ball crossed the goal line by over a metre.

Now, while I have heaps of sympathy with Blokhin and Ukraine (cos remember I have experience of this stuff here and here plus loads of other times I didn’t bother to document), I was unaware of the measurement of a Ukrainian Metre, which appears to be about twenty times smaller than a usual metric metre. Perhaps some hangover from the Soviet Union?

Incidentally, at the same press conference, Blokhin also had a pop at a journalist , saying:

Let’s go outside and have a man conversation.

Presumably, such man conversations involve a great deal of posturing, bravado and comparison of the length of their members; the size of which is something Ukrainian guys are famed for, although it now seems that they may have been measuring in local centimetres, thus diminishing the statue of their claims (and other things) somewhat.

Presumably there’s a Ukrainian Kilometre as well, then? Visitors to that country must think it’s HUGE, when Kiev to second city Kharkiv is listed as 9600km. That’s, like, bigger than Africa (but not if you measure Africa in Ukrainian kilometres, obviously).

But back to reality. Three things to ponder here:

1. Yes. There should be goal line technology in place and only now (that England have been advantaged by it) has Sepp Blatter seemingly woken up to that fact.
2. Were England cheating by having two goalkeepers on the field of play? Sky Sports suggests that yes, they were:

3. If the goal had stood and the match had finished 1-1, England would have gone through and Ukraine would not have gone through: pretty much exactly what happened anyway.

Going Gaga

Posted on

Big Concerts has come out with a Big Announcement that they are going to make a Big Announcement on Monday morning.
Care should be taken here, since the last Big Announcement by Big Concerts was that Celtic Woman were to play in South Africa. (If you don’t know who Celtic Woman are, then you join the rest of us. Welcome.)

Speculation is unsurprisingly rife that it could be Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, the Foo Fighters, or indeed a return visit from Celtic Woman. And then there’s the Lady Gaga thing.

Let’s have a quick look at how Big Concerts is advertising their Big Announcement:

And let’s compare that with the typography on the Lady Gaga “Born This Way Ball” site:

Similar? Not similar?
Coincidence? Not coincidence?

If it is her, she’d better not wear that meat dress. She’ll get braai’ed.