Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

The UK currently has an opt-in system for organ donation. That means that unless you have specifically opted-in to donate your organs after you die, the NHS cannot have them. Sort of. Actually, whether you are signed up or not, they just ask the family. The NHS advice that making your views clear can be helpful. But actually, it is fairly irrelevant.

So a graph like this might look pretty scary:

But actually, it is not a complete disaster, because they will just ask the family anyway. I still think it would be worthwhile for the UK to switch to an opt-out system though. In general, you get higher donation rates in countries with an opt-out system.

If they also just ask the next of kin, it is not immediately obvious why this should be the case. Perhaps the relatives are less likely to say no if they do not feel the individual felt strongly enough to opt out, or perhaps there is just a general culture of that being the done thing. I am just speculating, I have no idea.

To me though, I wonder why there would be an opt-out at all?

What is the point? I cannot think of a good reason why the NHS should not just have a free right to help themselves to my organs after I am dead.

Perhaps you could make the argument that the family don’t like the idea. Or that it makes some people uncomfortable with the idea that their organs will be removed after they are gone. But organ donations save lives. Are these the reasons that are worthy of condemning someone to death? I would argue they are not.

Since August last year, we have lost 18 restaurants in Leeds. That would not be so bad if it was the rubbish restaurants that had closed. But it never is. Quality has basically nothing to do with the success of a restaurant and marketing has everything to do with it.

Recently we have lost Curry Leaf (my favourite Indian), La Grillade (my favourite French), Cafe Italia (my favourite Italian) as well as many other great kitchens including Saengarun and Norman’s.

Meanwhile so many low quality chain restaurants continue to churn out their mush. It makes me sad.

Louis Theroux is my favourite documentary maker. When I read in the BBC Magazine that he had moved to LA and was planning on making some documentaries on his experiences there, I awaited them with much anticipation.

They were not my favourite documentaries he has ever done, but still enjoyable. The dogs one was fairly predictable. It also puts in perspective the destruction of a giraffe in Denmark. One pound in South LA is killing dogs by the dozen on a regular basis. Why are people not up in arms about that? Not to mention all the animals we eat…

End-of-life care helped explain how the United States manages to blow quite so much money on healthcare. Some of the people in there were correct – why not try everything to fight for life if you have the choice? But on a societal level, you do have to wonder whether those resources could be better spent elsewhere. It must be a tough decision for the people who make those kind of budget calls.

The most thought provoking I found was the sex offenders episode. It was pretty clear that nobody thinks these people deserve a second chance. However, if you are going to adopt that kind of attitude, why let them out of prison in the first place? Or put them to death. That is something the US still does of course.

I do not know how this compares to the UK system. I can, for example, get a list of all the sex offenders in my area from a handy site called “UK Paedos Exposed”. However, this seems to be built from user submissions, rather than state-published data. That is a pretty sick website, but not on the same level as the state-run database you can find in the US.

This is available from the UK government, but only if you are a parent or carer and want to check a specific individual. However, The Sun newspaper claim to have plotted every convicted sex offender on a map.

Meanwhile the open access in the US, as Theroux points out, leads to apps like “Offender Locator” that allow you to find them.

I keep coming back to this video:

To my mind, this was a crushing defeat for Vanessa Vine.

I had not formed an opinion on fracking before I saw this video. But after watching this I went away and read the report by the Royal Society. They say that with the correct regulation, it is safe.

In the debate, she puts forward anecdotes and slurs Peter Lilly’s character. This makes for great sound-bites but intellectually means nothing and in fact actually significantly reduces her credibility.

Peter Lilly counters her arguments and provides hard evidence from the Royal Society.

The argument from vested interests does not even stand up either. Peter Lilley is a dick. An absolute shit human being. Here is his voting record. But Vine is unable to make any of these things stick. Meanwhile Lilley correctly points out that Vine does have a vested interest because she is is anti-fossil fuel and lives near a potential fracking site.

The end result of this is that I am siding with a man who owns shares in an oil company. I do not see how that can be considered a win for the anti-fracking side.

I, on the whole, support tuition fees. Why? Because I do not think that poor people, with less earning potential than myself, should have to subsidise my education. If someone is working really hard driving a taxi every day, why should they pay for me to go to some fancy-pants university and get a piece of paper that entitles me to earn more money than them?

But I am not entirely decided on the issue. There are lots of good reasons to support not having tuition fees. For example, it probably puts people off going to university (I have not checked the stats, but I imagine this is the case). That argument in itself has factors that both support and oppose tuition fees.

The alternative, as well as realise though, is not a free education. I cannot be “free”. It has to be paid for in a capitalist economy. The alternative is an education paid for by the state, and thus reclaimed from taxes.

Either way, some one pays.

You could argue though that in a progressive tax system, the same person pays. Imagine these two scenarios:

Scenario 1, tuition fees. I pay £20,000 to go the university, except I do not pay it, because it is a student loan, taken by PAYE when I start earning. So I pay nothing up front to go to university. I go, do my degree and then graduate. Then I get a job and if I earn plenty of money I repay my student loan via the PAYE tax system. If not, I do not pay it.

Scenario 2, no tuition fees. There are no tuition fees so I pay nothing up front (just like above). i go, do my degree and then graduate (just like above). Then I get a job and if I earn plenty of money I pay a higher tax because the government has to fund all the education (as above). If not, I do not pay it (as above).

The scenarios above are basically the same. Either way, university is free at the point of access and funded by reclaiming the money using taxation. What difference am I missing?

What do the greats have to say on the subject? Adam Rutherford reminded me of this inspirational message:

For me however, the entire message of life is much better encapsulated in these two lines:

1. You are reading this.

For 2-14, please see 1.

I would go into a lecture about how much time we are all wasting on BuzzFeed, but quite frankly I have a lot of BuzzFeed articles to get through so I just do not have time to write that right now.

People often talk about SMART targets. Inevitably people talk about how achievable and realistic are basically the same thing. The reason is that this is actually a common misconception about the acronym.

To understand it, we need to put it on context. SMART targets were originally developed for business and therefore that is the background that they are placed in the context of.

There are a number of alternatives for SMART and I will go through them below.

Assignable
Rather than achievable (because we already have realistic), you can have assignable. Who will do it? Can we give it someone and have them take ownership of it?

Agreed
How about agreed instead? This is useful for when setting performance goals in a business environment. A target is not SMART if either the manager or the employee is unhappy with it – it has to be agreed.

Relevant
We can also leave A as achievable and change the R from realistic to something else. How about relevant? Again, very useful in a business context and probably very relevant for your personal goals too. Why is this target is important? What is the motivation for doing it?

Conclusion
Those are just a few of the alternatives to SMART. Wikipedia has done a good job of cataloging all the alternatives. Personally I like relevant for setting personal goals.

It’s difficult to discuss Apple v Android without everyone digging in their heels and becoming self-righteous. Of course we all really know that they have different advantages and disadvantages but it was interesting to see some slides from a recent talk by Benedict Evans talking about the growth of mobile.

When it comes to tablets, iPad make up around 25% of sales. But when it comes to internet traffic, iPad makes up 80%. That is incredible. What it shows is that even though people are buying Android tablets, they aren’t using them.

Based on those figures, you get this breakdown. For every 100 tablets bought:

• 25 are iPads that people use
• 6 are Androids that people use
• 69 are Androids that people do not use

You have to factor in that it doesn’t work exactly like this. iPad users could simply be heavier data users, but even if this is a consistent trend, it doesn’t really change what the above represents – people just don’t use Android tablets. They buy them, then they put them in a drawer and don’t use them. People do use iPads. To me, that suggests the extra cost of buying an iPad is worth the investment.

Last weekend, we went down to Corporation in Sheffield to attend the Alternative & Burlesque Fair.

Was it worth it? No. To be honest, I found it so disappointing that I’m not sure I would have even gone to it even if it had been in Leeds, if I had known what it was like.

I don’t think the stalls were are numerous as I was lead to believe and there was nothing particularly interesting there. There were also some stage shows, but the one we saw was just a burlesque dance. That’s probably expected given the name, but the reality of it is that it is just stripping out of slightly fancier clothing.

At £5 to get in, it is not worth a visit in my opinion.