The British National Labour Party continues to destroy individual liberty. First our bodies are to become the property of the State, then we are to be branded like cattle. And now the latest terrorist recruitment campaign by the British government is to introduce an oath of allegiance for teenagers.

If it were me, I would without a moment’s hesitation decide to support anyone who promised to destroy the Royal Family and the Westminster government. Assuming there are some children with more than an micron of self-awareness in the U.K., I think this will go badly. It’s worth noting that the architect of this evil proposal, might be behind bars if he were a nasty Conservative.

However, keeping in the spirit of things, I offer my version of the oath of allegiance (with apologies to Babylon 5):

I WILL COOPERATE WITH THE STATE FOR THE GOOD OF THE STATE AND MY OWN SURVIVAL.

I WILL CONFESS TO ALL CRIMES OF WHICH I HAVE BEEN ACCUSED.

I WILL BE RELEASED AND RETURNED TO SOCIETY A PRODUCTIVE CITIZEN IF I COOPERATE.

RESISTANCE WILL BE PUNISHED.

COOPERATION WILL BE REWARDED.

I WILL COOPERATE WITH THE STATE FOR THE GOOD OF THE STATE… [repeat until brainwash complete]

Here’s something new from this morning’s Metro but for whatever reason, it’s not on the website.

I’ve been thinking about the significance of mathematics recently, what with Brian Micklethwait’s writings on the subject of teaching.

Professor Darren Crowdy, of Imperial College London, has apparently “fixed” a flaw in the Schwarz-Christoffel formula, which as the Daily Telegraph helpfully explains:

was independently discovered by two mathematicians in the1860s to enable them to translate the unusual and angular shapes of the real world, whether brains or aircraft wings, into a simpler circular shape so that they are much easier to model and analyse.

It sounds like a perfect answer to two questions I imagine Brian hears: “What’s Maths for then?” and “Haven’t they worked it all out yet?”

The whole story has a very Arthur Conan Doyle feel to it, I think:

“Its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It has been the most jealously guarded of all government secrets. You may take it from me that naval warfare becomes impossible withing the radius of a Bruce-Partington’s operation.”

In the interests of science I bring this up:

I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women “are only children of a larger growth,” wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

Charlotte Allen has things to say about women swooning for Obama, the Clinton “campaign,” why men are better at things that count etc.

You can generally tell which countries the French government is trying to get an arms deal going with by the amount of diplomatic effort going in.

So this story of a $40,000,000,000 contract to supply new air tankers for the U.S. Air Force indicates a serious amount of lobbying.

Bad news for the U.K.’s influence in the U.S.A.: previously, the lack of sufficient air tankers for the U.S. forces meant they had to arrange help from the R.A.F., for example before the invasion of Afghanistan. Presumably, once this contract is up and running, the U.K. becomes just that little bit more expendable.

For this reason, the U.K. government should have tried to block this deal. But I have no doubt that Nicolas Sarkozy would have innocently pleaded that the EADS contract was a “European” deal and how could the British be so cynical?

Indeed.

The most awesome junk email…

Suze Orman is not enforcing her intellectual property rights the Gestapo way by treating all her potential customers as criminals.

What does the author of The Courage to Be Rich and The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (*) know about money? The clowns, who claim that a nine year old kid who downloads a pop song is “costing” the price of a retail CD to a recording company, might do well to ask that.

Let’s see. She gives away over a million copies of her new book Women & Money. That must be a loss of $14,970,000 in sales at the discounted Amazon price! Well, no it isn’t.

Despite being available for a period as a free download, Women & Money was ranked number six on Amazon’s bestseller list when NBC talked about. When I checked just now (18:36 GMT) the book was UP to number two on the Amazon ranking.

I recently vowed to never buy a music CD, DVD, or download until the industry stopped treating me like a perp and more like a customer. I think I shall buy a copy of the Women & Money. Now that really is $14.95 in sales. I hope it makes a good gift.

(*) I have both these books and have used the latter when looking at specific money issues. I shall be reading both this year and reviewing them in due course. First impression is very good.

At least two of the games were affected by refereeing mistakes. In particular, England benefited from a six forward with more than one (I think three) players offside, which led to a drop goal to move to 9-3. Then there was the Paul Sackey throw-in to himself that clearly did not travel five metres, which was followed by and England try for 16-3. In addition in a rare first half attack by Wales, a superb bit of defending by Tom Sheridan to rip the ball out of the Welsh attacker’s hands inside the England 22 was fortunate, because the England player knocked-on. So a defensive clearance by England to the half-way line, should instead have been given as a scrum about 15 metres out to Wales.

16-6 down at half-time for Wales, when England should have had only 6 points and Wales denied a possible scoring chance too.

The fact that the luck of the officials’ errors was going almost entirely England’s way for the first 20 minutes caused me to stop watching until the very end, when, to be fair, I saw an inexplicable refereeing error favor Wales, when they were now winning.

The point is that if mistakes happen and consistently favour the team that is on top, this will tend to destroy the sporting spectacle.

The match between Scotland and France today was very enjoyable for me, but tinged with the recognition that France’s first try should not have been awarded. Cedric Heymans and Vincent Clerc combined to advance about 30 yards through the Scots defence by a mixture of jinking and a blur of passes, once of which, I think it was by the try-scorer Clerc, was immediately suspect. I noted during the rugby world cup last autumn that the standard of linesmen in particular appeared to be quite poor and that trend has been confirmed this weekend.

Ironically, tonight is the Superbowl, where a useful mechanism is in place for avoiding such problems. Each team coach in the American football  game has three time outs he can call to demand the review by the match referee of a decision. If the official, who looks at the play on a video screen at the touch line accepts that the challenge was good, the team making the complaint keeps the credited time out. If the coach is shown to be of the English soccer manager’s blinkered partiality, the team loses a time out.

As a result of this, the potential for sour grapes, and the opportunity to repair bad decisions, is created. Not all sports can do this, but American football is improved, I think, by this mechanism.

Using these studies to argue for male circumcision is like arguing that people should get their heads cut off so they won’t get their hair wet when it rains. Okay. Or a person could carry an umbrella.

Amy Alkon

… is the message going out loud and clear from Business Week. The company actually hires public relations people to get blogs to link to it, which is probably a bit daft, but it’s a coherent strategy. Then it hires lawyers to tell bloggers to stop linking.

Business Week’s content is often good , when I can be troubled to navigate the slow and ad heavy site, about once every three months. If you ask me, they need more linking. I love the following comment on Techdirt by Hellsvilla:

Right hand, please do come in and sit down. I have someone I want you to meet. His name is wrong hand. Watch him closely and slap the hell out of him when he gets out of line.

At stake is the ludicrous attempt by a company to put information on the Internet and then STOP people linking to it. It’s very simple: don’t provide permalinks, use flash pages. I promise I won’t link to you! I won’t read you either… come to think of it, how about saving some serious money and stop publishing online. No one will “steal your bandwith” then.

I hope Business Week is pleased that I haven’t linked to any of my favorite articles in their publication.

From Techdirt comes this curious tale.