Mike Meredith

Emails: More or Less Stress?

Nov 132015

There was a story this morning about how normal people find a constant flood of emails very stressful because it is constantly interrupting whatever they are doing. As someone who has been emailing since 1987 (with a six month break), I find dealing with it less stressful than phone calls and desk visits because you can leave it until later.

It is definitely true that being interupted whilst trying to concentrate on some tricky piece of work can be somewhat stressful (and it is cumulative). One aspect that was not mentioned is that you have to discard everything you were thinking of and bring some other subject to mind; not always the easiest thing to do especially if you are deep in concentration.

Of course it is also unavoidable, and not always unwelcome. But back to emails,

Don't read emails when they arrive, and if you have a ping that announces each email that arrives, turn it off. Check your inbox regularly – on the hour, every half hour, or even every 15 minutes (although that is perhaps too frequent for when you are concentrating on something). You can change the frequency based on what you are doing – if you're concentrating on a project or for a deadline, check less often.

The point is you choose when to deal with emails.

Another source of stress is the amount of emails in your inbox; your inbox is not a "todo" list. Create a "todo" folder and move emails from your inbox into it, and concentrate on keeping that folder reasonably well processed. Your inbox becomes a cesspool of spam (there's always some that gets through), near-spam, and general information. Of course you can get much more organised than this!

And make your own decision on the priority of tasks given through emails. You may agree with the priority a sender sets on a task, or you may disagree, but you decide.

Ultimately the more control you take over your email, the less angst it causes you.

The Storm In The Red Cup

Religion No Responses »

Nov 122015

Starbucks (apparently a well-known brand of coffee shop for those of us who prefer to make their own coffee rather than pay over the odds for a infusion of caffeine) have introduced a plain red cup for the holiday season, christmas, Xmas, Mythmas, or the Winter Solstice (depending on what you want to call it). In previous years, Starbucks had decorated cups for the holiday season – decorated with snowflakes, etc. In other words generic seasonal symbols.

This year they have gone for a plain cup to encourage their customers to doodle.

For some reason the religious nutjobs (given their behaviour you can't really call them anything else) have taken umbrage at this – claiming that Starbucks are trying to take the Christ out of Christmas. Which demonstrates the emotional maturity of a toddler crying because she can't catch her shadow, as the Starbucks' seasonal cups have never included overtly religious symbols.

There is even one of the less rational Republican candidates for president (which equates to a gibbering megalomaniac) who thinks that we ought to boycott Starbucks over the issue.

When you come down to it, Starbucks has given these religious fruitcakes the opportunity to put Christ into the holiday season by giving them an empty space on their Starbucks cups to doodle their designs.

Ageism In Government Policy

Politics No Responses »

Nov 112015

As a middle-aged old fart, I probably shouldn't care about the blatent ageism expressed by the government towards young people; after all they're all piss-heads and wastrels who can always tap mummy and daddy for a bit of spending money. And if the worst comes to the worst, they can always move back home to a palatial suburban house in Surbiton.

A bit like how before the fine ladies of Dagenham got involved, women didn't need the same pay as men because they were just working for a bit of pin money; their husbands were the main breadwinners.

I could reasonably argue that young people need higher pay and benefits rather than lower pay and benefits because they are less well established than older people. But that is really rather irrelevant – giving someone lower pay or lower benefits because of their age is just as wrong as giving them lower pay or benefits because of their sex.

It is all very well saying that young people can always tap the bank of mummy and daddy, but welfare is supposed to be a safety net and not all young people have parents; and not all that have parents who are willing to fund their children.

Time for some of those young people to sue the government for age discrimination.

Random Thoughts on the Draft #IPBill

Computing, Politics, Security No Responses »

Nov 042015

The draft #IPBill or more conventionally the draft of the upcoming Investigatory Powers Bill. And some random thoughts on it …

First of all this is not really anything new, as this bill wraps up and modifies existing legislation regarding legal "snooping" in the UK. Whilst it is sensible to pull in multiple existing bills and incorporate the powers in just one place, it makes it a lot harder to see what is new. There could well be new draconian powers in this draft bill; in fact there probably are, but it is hard to see just what is new.

And there are few people I would rather trust less in drafting such a bill than Theresa May.

It is worth noting that the most draconian powers under this bill are not new; in fact once we analyse it properly it may be that there is very little that is really new.

Oh! And just to state the obvious: Ignore the spin at the beginning; it's the easiest section to read, but may be somewhat deceptive (either deliberately or because it over-simplifies matters).

There are new protections against abuse in this draft bill – specifically the Judicidial Commissioners who will sign off on warrents if they feel they are justified. However how much protection does a current or former High Court judge offer? Well one that co-operates with the government by reflex isn't going to be much help. We need one that is suspicious of government and protective of individual rights.

And there's an escape clause – an "urgent" warrent can be approved without a JC, although it only lasts for five working days rather than six months. Of course the JC gets to approve it (or deny it) after the fact, but this turns this protection into a fig-leaf. And of course the "national security notices" have no oversight before they are issued.

The other thing that occurs to me: What is the difference between a public telecommunications provider and a private telecommunications provider? I dare say that most people won't know when they connect to a network which they're on. And there are different provisions depending on whether the network is public or private – as an example it would be legal for a private telecommunications provider to intercept.

The purpose behind the #IPBill is supposedly to combat serious crime and to defend the "national interest" in security matters, but some of the provisions allow for economic considerations to be taken into account. So the government plans to sell our communications data to interested parties? Perhaps that's not what they intend, but it doesn't look like there's anything to stop them.

It is interesting to note that local authorities are specifically excluded from certain provisions – they of course are well known for taking previous instruments, and using them for purposes other that what was intended.

MP's have extra protection under this bill, and people are somewhat cynical about the reasons for this – perhaps thinking it's to protect Theresa May's porn browsing habits (Ew! I think I just threw up in my mouth just a bit). Actually, in theory it's not entirely unreasonable when you think of it as a measure to protect the privacy of the MP's constituents who may be discussing privileged information with their MP.

Of course that very quickly dies a death when you look closer at the list of MP's that are protected – all the MP's from the national parliaments, plus MEPs from UK constituents. If you raise a matter with your MEP, she may very well suggest speaking to another MEP – such as the MEP from from somewhere other than the UK if they happen to be the rapporteur (yes Dave, I finally remembered) for a particularly specialised subject area.

There is a fair amount of wordage within the bill dedicated to keeping warrents and retention notices secret – disclose such the existence of such things and you're looking at gaol time. I can see the argument for why such notices should be secret – for a certain duration, but they should be made public eventually so that their use can be judged in the court of public opinion.

Undoubtedly I'll think of additional points to make as I get further into the bill …

The Dangers Of Red and Processed Meat

General No Responses »

Oct 282015

In response to the WHO announcement of the dangers of processed and red meat, as a vegetarian I could say "I told you so". But that wouldn't be the case – I'm not a vegetarian for health reasons.

But what I can do as a vegetarian is comment on the issue from a position of neutrality, or at least slightly more neutrality than someone who is having his favourite food labelled as cancerous.

There's been a few reactions from butchers who comment that we're evolved to be carnivores; wrong! We're evolved to be hunter-gatherers which makes us omnivores. Hunter-gatherers don't have meat every day, and even if they hit a particularly lucky streak it wouldn't be every meal. Essentually we're evolved to eat meat on an occasional basis – perhaps every other day.

And even if we're evolved for a hunter-gatherer diet, that doesn't mean to say that such a diet is the best possible diet for us. Although hunter-gatherers probably (if they avoided all the accident risks of such a life) lived longer than their agricultural cousins and descendents, that doesn't mean they lived long in comparison to modern expectations.

Processed Meats

Apparently the biggest risk is down to processed meats. But which ones?

Even I know that there are many different ways to process meat; or cure it. And if there are many different ways of curing meat, there are many different levels of risk. There are those who say that the risks associated with processed meats are to do with cheap processed meat, and proper bacon and sausages are fine. They could be right, or completely wrong. Who knows?

So it would be helpful to identify what level of risk is attached to each different processed meat. Or even more craftily perhaps someone can discover a new way of curing meat so we can have safe bacon and sausages (well, you anyway).

In the meantime, eat processed meat in moderation and to be safe seek advice on what "in moderation" means.

Red Meat

The risk of cancer associated with red meat is much lower than the risk associated with processed meat. Of course lower doesn't mean no risk, but just about anything has it's risks.

And the less red meat you eat, the lower the risk.

Cooking

This is a tiny bit speculative. There are a group of chemicals called nitrosamines which are nearly all cancer causing. They are formed in various different ways (particularly ways involving sodium nitrate which is added to cured meat to make it look red or pink), including two particularly interesting mentions: frying and the combustion of tobacco (i.e. smoking).

It is possible that exposing certain organic materials above a certain temperature forms nitrosamines; in other words cooking meat in ways that produces burning or charring could produce nitrosamines.

So you may be able to reduce the risk associated with that big lump of steak by eating it rare.

Older Entries Newer Entries