Wanna know why we're still waiting for the Semantic Web brimming with open data standards? This graphic is a clue... 
I pass on without comment this interview with Bjørn Lomborg.
Valleywag now has a category called Tony Robbins - to take the piss, of course. I see far too many people who should be intelligent enough to know better within the tech industry who buy all this neuro-linguistic programming, New Age horseshit. Isn't there anyone out there in Web 2.0® land who believes in that funny thing called reality? Tony Robbins is infamous for running seminars which taught people how to do carnival stunts like firewalking, and selling them a nice line of bullshit on top about unlocking your personal motivation - rather than revealing the far more interesting and simple explanation - that wood and charcoal are very poor conductors of heat and your feet aren't much better 'cos there's a thick layer of skin on your sole. A friend of mine did a firewalk a while back, and it required no New Age bullshit or motivational rubbish from Tony Robbins type hucksters. It's called physics, kids, and it bloody well works.
On the same note, that sham artist Sylvia Browne recently visited Boston and Rebecca the Skepchick was in the audience. I particularly like the description of Browne as being equivalent to "a mutant bullfrog" and a "soul sucking harpy". If napalm has a purpose, Sylvia Browne surely is it.
James Randi has some real kooks in this week's Swift - including Uri Geller, 'bioenergetics', Miss Cleo's (aka. Youree Dell Harris) psychic phone transcript, an "intuitive healer" from Phoenix, Arizona, another psychic from Florida who has been imprisoned for being a scam artist, and coverage of the Bob Averill story - the guy that got expelled from art school for telling another student that leprecauns aren't real.
Practical justice 
You know that "innocent until proven guilty" thing. It is just a principle. In reality, it doesn't usually quite pan out that way.
Salon has an article by Jody Jenkins describing the state bureaucracy rumbling on it's accusatory, never-apologise mode.
I think that if the government had to pay the victims of false allegations, we'd see a far better hit rate amongst the police and the various bureaucratic enterprises.
What you'd do is simple - if the offence has a monetary tariff, you'd pay back, say, a third of it to the falsely accused victim. And you'd up that to two-thirds plus costs if it gets to court.
If it's an imprisonable offence, pay the people about £500 for each year on the maximum tariff (and cap 'life' at 25 years for the purpose of compensation) - and reduce that to £250 if it doesn't get to court.
That way if you are accused of, say, murder, you'd get £6,250. And if it goes to court and you are found innocent, you'd get £12,500.
It's far too easy for the government to launch criminal investigations against people - and there's no motivation for them to get it right. It seems that more stringent punishment is necessary for things like police and government corruption, bribe-taking, evidence planting and - oh, shooting innocent people on Tube trains.
The scales of justice are heavily weighted on the side of the government. And what's really galling about that is that we all end up funding this incompetent machine.
Be sure to read the Jenkins article the whole way through. If it doesn't make you angry, you need to check and make sure you've got a pulse.
