Here is something cheery to take you through to the new year. Look at this map. It ranks countries by how much privacy its citizens have.

The UK is coloured in black. This means that it is among the “leading” surveillance societies. The only assessed countries to come out worse in the study are Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia. That’s right — in the surveillance stakes we are right up there with China.

The sliver lining in this is that at least Scotland — as opposed to Englandandwales — has a much better score. Nevertheless, to see the island of Great Britain coloured in black along with this who’s who of illiberal states (ah yes, and The Land of the Free™), is quite sobering. Whoever it was that said Britain was sleepwalking into a surveillance society appears to have been right.

Via Boing Boing.

I am making this the last in my series of posts looking back on the 2007 Formula 1 season. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit sick of writing them every Sunday. I skipped last week. Anyway, next Sunday is in a different year, and it’s a bit off to be looking back when everyone else is looking forward.

Anyway, I promised I would review Formula 1 websites, so here goes. Again, this is all in alphabetical order.

Autosport.com

A reliable source of Formula 1 — and other motorsport — news. It is also the most frequently updated of the F1 RSS feeds I subscribe to. So chances are that if something has happened, Autosport will have the story.

There is also a neat ‘Autosport TV’ feature, containing highlights of certain motorsport events. Bernie take note — this is how things will be done in the future, so don’t leave F1 lagging behind every other series!

Unfortunately, not all of the content on Autosport.com is free. But you can’t have it all. The website also performed badly on the day of McLaren’s WMSC hearing, when the website was down for huge parts of the afternoon, and then when it came back up it got the story wrong. Oh dear.

BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula One

The BBC’s F1 news website is as you would expect — solid, but not really in-depth enough for obsessives like me. Only the very biggest F1 stories appear on BBC Sport Online, and they seldom contain anything revelatory.

Having said that, there are some neat features from time to time. Heikki Kovalainen wrote a regular column. I also particularly enjoyed reading an article about Kimi Räikkönen’s playboy image! There is also some good video and audio content collected from the BBC’s output.

However, the stories and features also concentrate too much on Lewis Hamilton. I guess this is to be expected from the BBC, but it’s all a bit fawning and not very balanced.

As for the other features, again they are pretty good, although they haven’t changed much for several years. I would imagine that features such as the pitstop guide are excellent resources if you are just getting into the sport.

BlogF1

Ollie White’s BlogF1 was the first Formula 1 blog I started reading regularly. The posts strike a neat balance between news and opinion, although I personally prefer more opinion-heavy pieces.

I have to confess that nowadays my favourite feature of BlogF1 is the weekly caption contest. However, there are some other neat features hidden away from the main blog area.

There is a particularly comprehensive section on racetracks from around the world, complete with images from Google Maps. There is also a stunning complete list of championship statistics going all the way back to 1950, the inception of the Drivers World Championship.

F1 Insight

This excellent blog is, as its title suggests, very insightful. What I love about it is the fact that Clive doesn’t just churn out banal posts about the issues of the day. Instead, he finds an interesting angle and then writes about it, bringing to the reader’s attention an aspect that he may not previously have thought about.

To take some recent examples, there is a post questioning Sebastian Vettel’s reputation as a promising driver. And here is an interesting take on Fernando Alonso — is he going to be the greatest reputation-maker of all time?

In sum, F1 Insight is guaranteed to challenge the conventional wisdom, making it an essential read.

F1Fanatic

Without a doubt, the best Formula 1 blog around! What astonishes me is that you can visit the website every single day and there will be something new — even in the depths of the off-season. There was even a new post on Christmas Day, but you are just as likely to find three or four new posts per day even at this time of year.

The breadth of features is also breathtaking. Book and DVD reviews often appear. The Lapped Legends series takes a look at some of the less talented drivers and teams in F1’s history. And the ‘F1 in the Blogs’ feature is a must-read roundup of the best F1 blogging. The blog has also been known to hold competitions which I have been lucky enough to win!

Main writer Keith Collantine is clearly very dedicated to the website and infinitely knowledgeable about the sport. It could so easily fall into the trap of being a haven for stattos, but it actually strikes a perfect balance between geek heaven and accessibility.

Ah, and I have also had a guest post published on F1Fanatic. So obviously it’s a must-read!

Formula 1 Blog

This is the Formula 1 Blog as in Negative Camber and Grace, whose podcast I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The blog is rather different to their podcast. You would never guess that it was the same thing. The long, in-depth podcasts are accompanied by very concise, brief, pithy blog posts.

Despite the difference in style, the blog is great for all the same reasons as the podcast. Priding itself on being a “journal of opinion”, forceful opinion is certainly what you get.

One problem is that you have to be registered to comment. This is okay, and understandable in an age where upwards of 95% of blog comments are spam. But I tried to register and never got my confirmation email, so I am locked out (well, not really, but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of registering again). Okay, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit off-putting.

As well as the blog, there is a forum which I hear is buzzing. But forums are not quite my thing.

Formula1.com

This is the big daddy — Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 website. It has come on leaps and bounds in the past year.

The best bit is still the Live Timing facility. If you have access to a computer during a grand prix, having Live Timing open will keep you up to date, with access to pretty much all of the information you would want, updated in real time.

The news section is so-so, but this is more than made up for by the site’s other features. A particular joy is the technical section, which looks in detail at the developments each team makes throughout the season. There is also great information on each circuit, a fine image gallery, profiles on all the teams and drivers and — for the bravest among us — a good section on F1’s Byzantine rules.

Perhaps the strongest part of the website, though, is the database of past races results, stretching right back to 1950. An excellent, in-depth resource if you want to look up old race and Championship results.

However, this section suffers from a frustrating navigational quirk. Say I want to look up the past results of a driver. I can select the driver, say Kimi Räikkönen. Now I want to look at his results from 2002, so naturally I select 2002 from the drop-down menu. But this takes me straight to the Championship Table of 2002, not the results of Kimi Räikkönen. What a pain!

Little annoyances aside though, Formula1.com is better than you might expect. It is finally catching up with other motorsport series. Now FOM needs to move into offering video on the website urgently. An insipid, 30 second long ‘highlights’ clip (which inevitably focuses on the crashes rather than the racing) will not do. Bernie needs to offer more video content online in future. If he is going to take all the interesting videos off YouTube, he had better offer them on Formula1.com.

Fun F1

A fair attempt at an F1 humour website, although not the best.

GrandPrix.com

One of the best F1 news sites going. This website might not have the budget or the big-name status of, say, Autosport, but it undoubtedly has the contacts.

Often the stories are as much about rumours as they are about hard facts. But this is often to its advantage. I seem to remember that GrandPrix.com was the first website to announce that Kimi Räikkönen had signed for Ferrari. Some other websites laughed at the suggestion at the time, but GrandPrix.com was proved right.

It was also consistently ahead of the curve in the reporting of the Stepneygate scandal. You simply had to read GrandPrix.com to keep on top of the facts surrounding the issue. Remarkable reporting.

ING Renault F1 Team - Weblog

A fine companion to the Renault podcast. Once again it demonstrates that Renault are serious about reaching fans in ways that other teams don’t consider. The blog is properly done as well, not half-hearted and with a buzzing comments section.

The design is rather busy for my liking, but to be fair I am not the biggest fan of the content either (unlike the podcast, which is excellent). Nevertheless, this is a lesson to the other teams: this is how it should be done.

ITV Sport - F1

This season saw the ITV-F1 website turn from a reasonable, accessible guide to Formula 1 into a central cog of the Lewis Hamilton hype machine. No doubt it is good for raking in the advertising money, but it is awful for genuine F1 fans.

Nevertheless, there are some top features on the ITV-F1 website. For instance, there are regular columns from Peter Windsor and David Coulthard. And Ted Kravitz’s notebook is often worth a read.

Next year I expect nothing less than a Lewis stalking feature which will plot on a Google Map where Lewis Hamilton is at this precise moment in time.

Linksheaven

A reasonably good Formula 1 group blog.

Pitpass

A fine independent Formula 1 website. Like GrandPrix.com — a reliable news resource, although Pitpass has a much slicker design! I have to say though, it is rather annoying that you can’t copy any of the text if you want to quote it. I can’t think of any other websites that persist on using this user-unfriendly technique that treats normal users — even people like me who want to approvingly link back — as criminals.

I would also rather that the news feed did not contain stories about that awful tripe known as A1 Grand Prix. Yeah, that toytown motor racing series where drivers don’t win, nor do teams — but countries do. What a load of nationalistic gash!

Apart from that, the news reports are good. The opinion pieces are fine, but often come across as a bit curmudgeonly. And the endless predictions of the imminent death of Formula 1 do get tiresome after a while.

Sidepodcast

A great blog to accompany a great podcast! They have recently had a new lick of paint. That’s all I can say. A cracking read, just as much as the podcast is a cracking listen.

Sniff Petrol

The best attempt at a Formula 1 humour site. This site provides some much-needed light relief amid the turmoil and politics of an F1 season.

Highlights include Crazy Dave Coulthard (complete with entertaining descriptions of what Red Bull tastes like), D.I. Blundell’s latest report and the latest advice Michael Schumacher has given to his brother.

Times Online Formula One blog

Ed Gorman’s Formula 1 blog is easily the best of the MSM F1 blogs. I do hope it returns for the 2008 season. I imagine it will because apparently it has been very popular indeed.

I can vouch for that. I think I can thank the comments section of Ed Gorman’s blog for a few of this blog’s readers nowadays. It is still to this day one of my top referrers. Infact, it is the top referrer to this blog all year apart from Google Images UK. And this is all from the comments sections of two posts from October. Blimey.

One problem was that it came to be defined in terms of its (oddly) mostly Spanish readership clashing with Ed Gorman’s British perspective on events. Thankfully in the end the relationship appears to have become the more respectful, ‘agree to disagree’ type, rather than the antagonistic relationship it could have been.

I think that’s about it, mostly because I am losing the will to live. As are you, most likely. Er, any other suggestions, blah blah, etc.?

I’m in the process of writing the next post in my series about music and the internet, but it’s proving to be a bit of an epic. It is probably better to spread the posts out anyway. I doubt many people want to read my ranting and raving about the music industry between Christmas and new year.

In the meantime, here is a quick post to point out that I have tweaked the design a bit. I took account of the feedback you all gave me when I originally unveiled this design — all much appreciated.

MatGB wanted a darker background. I have made the background slightly darker, but you probably won’t notice it isn’t white. It is a very light grey. I tried darker greys, but it never looked right to me.

Clive thought the font size was too big. It is big, but for some reason Cambria is quite a small font (to my eyes at least). I did try to reduce it, but it just doesn’t work for me. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the column is so wide now that reducing the font size means having too many words on one line. So I’ve decided to keep the font sizes as they are. If you want a smaller font size, adjust the browser settings.

I have made the colours slightly more muted, as Duncan suggested. The original design had rather simple greens, yellows and reds colours. I have toned down the greens so that they are darker, and the yellow for categories has become a mellow orange.

I have fixed the tags page, so it is back with even more taggy goodness than before. I should point out that tags is a bit of a work-in-progress now. Over the years the tags have become quite messy, so I am having to tidy them up. It is quite time consuming though. I did ‘a’ a couple of months ago and yesterday I did ‘b’. So it’ll be a while until it’s perfect. But it works fine as it is really.

I have also opted to put the dates back in everywhere. I did feel lost without them.

There are still some weird spacing issues in both Internet Exploder and Opera. I guess this is to be expected since I designed it using Firefox. I’ve tried to sort out as many of the niggles as I could, but some of them have really stumped me. They are not too serious though, so I’m just going to leave them as they are.

“Only” 55% of this blog’s visitors use Internet Explorer any more anyway. Probably in 2008 IE users will finally be in a minority (for this blog at least). Seriously people, just use Firefox. It would make our lives so much easier.

I just have a couple more tweaks here and there to do (mostly getting a ‘credits’ section finished). So I am tentatively calling the design finished. Comments are still welcome though.

Record labels and video distributors had been ticked off by consumers for charging high prices for quite a while. At first the labels got away with it though. This was because they actually added value to the product. They were the only ones who were able to actually deliver the product to consumers efficiently.

However, with the advent of the internet and explosion of file-sharing, they are no longer the only people who can deliver content. It’s even worse than that. They are now woefully inefficient at delivering content.

The big question staring the record companies in the face has been: why should people pay £10 or £20 to buy a CD or a DVD when they could download it for free? Their original answer to this question has been to criminalise the very fans whose custom they depend upon. At every turn, consumers of music are accused of stealing music and killing the record industry.

Not exactly the best way to build a loyal fanbase.

Since that approach didn’t work, the record labels reluctantly dipped their toe into the digital water. But even this was a complete disaster. They insisted on releasing music that was crippled by DRM. This shackled the music, yet again making the consumer feel like a criminal.

The worst instances of DRM prevent people from listening to music on different devices. A high-profile example is music purchased from the iTunes Music Store, which can’t be played on any device unless it was made by Apple. That is like buying a CD released by Sony BMG and only being allowed to play it on CD players manufactured by Sony. It is outrageous, and it is a wonder that the music industry ever felt that it was a sensible approach. Sadly, the most blinkered companies still release digital music in this way.

Incidentally, kudos should go to Warp Records, who recognised from the very start that its fans wouldn’t like to be treated as criminals. Its foray into the digital download world, Bleep, sells music at the highest quality the MP3 format can provide and entirely without DRM.

Some albums are even available as lossless (i.e. CD-quality) FLAC files. And you are allowed to preview the entire track before purchasing. Some albums also come with exclusive artwork, screensavers and so on. Furthermore, a (comparatively) huge cut of the profits goes to the artists, which is where fans like to see profits go.

Now hundreds of independent labels sell their music on the service. Bleep has been a huge success, having sold over a million downloads. The majors should have realised that this is how it should have been done from the start.

The problem facing the record industry remains. Their expertise was in distribution, but this advantage was removed by the internet. Their solutions don’t address the fundamental problem. Why should someone buy a digital download when they can get it for free from peer-to-peer networks?

The worst solutions were never going to work because they made the consumer feel like criminals. The better solutions — like Bleep — work to an extent because they tickle the fan’s tummy, making him feel good.

Regardless of what the record companies would like to think, the internet has greatly improved efficiency and has made consumers better off. Unless they really like pretty boxes, a choice between buying a CD for upwards of £10 or downloading the music for free is a no-brainer.

Sticking plaster solutions such as reducing the price of CDs or releasing DRM-infected MP3s were never going to do. And you can’t un-invent the internet. In their current state, record companies are a complete anachronism. An entirely new business model is needed in order for them to survive. It is the only way. For some of them, it may already be too late.

But I think there is an answer. And I think they are catching on to it. But I’ll write about that in my next post.

There is a really interesting post about intellectual property and the woes facing the entertainment industry by James Graham. Given that I have been meaning to write about this issue for a long time, I may as well use this as the opportunity to finally get round to it.

But first, a couple of notes on copyrights and patents. James Graham says:

Both global patent and copyright laws have been extended in recent decades. The original idea behind such laws appears to have been forgotten and pure greed has taken its place. Globalisation means that the earnings potential from a new idea has massively increased; yet at the same time we’ve artificially increased it further still, and long lives will extend this still further. To take one example, J.K. Rowling, a rich woman who can afford the very best in healthcare, is likely to have a very long life. Let’s assume she lives to 100, in 2065. The copyright on her books will stay with her estate until 2135. That means that her great-great-great grandchildren will still be profiting from their ancestor’s books. Is there really any justification for that?

I quite agree. The traditional justification for strong copyright laws is to encourage innovation. You come up with a great idea, and we’ll make sure nobody else can profit from it.

Sound enough at first. But how long should this monopoly last? Is “life plus 70 years” or even “life plus 50 years” justified? Is 50 years even justified? Hardly.

Copyright was big(ish) news in the UK last year when there was a push by artists such as Cliff Richard, Paul McCartney and Bono (where’s his “altruism” now?) to get copyright extended from 50 years. Coincidentally (or not), Cliff Richard’s and Paul McCartney’s most successful recordings are soon to enter the public domain.

And let us bear in mind that this was for copyright on the recordings. So the copyright extension would have meant artists earning even more money from something that they did once, over 50 years ago, regardless of whether or not they even wrote the song. If only the rest of us could earn so much money for so long from doing a job just once!

So do strong copyright laws encourage innovation? It is difficult to imagine that Cliff Richard entered the recording booth in 1958 thinking about the money he’d be making from it in 2007. He will have been most concerned about the money he’d make from it in 1958 and a few years after that. Nobody but the most egotistical and talented musicians would imagine raking it in for any longer than 50 years.

Having copyright lasting “only” 50 years didn’t stifle innovation in the 1950s and 1960s — the rock n roll and beat music booms happened regardless. And looking at the subsequent careers of these early innovators of pop music, it is difficult to argue that these strong copyright laws have done anything but stifle innovation. After all, why would you bother to make more great music if you are still making money from 50-year-old music?

That makes sense when you think about it. Copyright laws essentially ensure that an artist has a monopoly. And monopolies are detested because of their effects on social welfare.

Cliff Richard isn’t concerned about innovation. His only incentive is to get his grubby hands on even more money. What a relief that the government rejected the proposal in the end.

So what is the optimal length of copyright? A paper by Rufus Pollock suggests that it is approximately 15 years. A far cry from the life plus 70 years for some works, or the 95 years that Cliff Richard called for.

It is a similar story with patents. The justification for patents is more or less the same as that for copyright laws. But research (PDF) by James Bessen and Eric Maskin (who I wrote about a couple of weeks ago) suggests that protection of intellectual property should be more “balanced”.

The ideal patent policy limits “knock-off” imitation, but allows developers who make similar, but potentially valuable complementary contributions.

Empirical evidence backs this up, as an extension of patent protection into the realm of software in the USA in the 1980s did not lead to an increase in innovation.

An interesting point about Rufus Pollock’s research is that he suggests that copyright laws should be weakened as the costs of production and reproduction decrease. And the past decade has seen a massive reduction in the costs of production due to advances in technology — particularly the internet.

And it is the entertainment industry’s complete inability to adapt to this reality that has left it in the mess it is currently in. That will be the subject of my next post in the series.

I hope you all managed to have a good Christmas. I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed Christmas so much.

In recent years I have enjoyed it just as a nice day off with a big meal. But beyond that I didn’t enjoy them much more than a normal day of leisure. So maybe I’d watch my new DVDs, but I would probably spend a great deal of the day on the internet anyway.

Perhaps it is because I have had such a tough year (not emotionally tough, but physically and mentally). Maybe it was because last year my brother wasn’t here, but it was probably mostly because I have become older, jaded and cynical.

Of course, when you’re young, Christmas is probably the most exciting part of the year. All those presents! Unfortunately as you get older this wears off. One day you find that you have the responsibility to give presents as well, with all the shopping hell that entails. And soon enough you might be earning enough to buy pretty much all of the luxuries you want.

For that reason, I always tell my parents to try and surprise me. They still want me to write them a list of what I want, but that is rubbish. Normally if I want stuff I can just buy them anyway. So I find myself not buying things just so that I can put them on my Christmas list. What a load of old bum. What is the point of knowing what you are getting anyway?

So I was quite pleased when my parents decided to buy me a poker set, which I completely didn’t expect. I didn’t even realise the big box was meant to be for me, so I just left it at first.

Apparently my father didn’t really want to get me it in case it encourages me to gamble. I think that’s a bit rich coming from someone who spends £2 on the lottery every week, but there you go! I doubt I’d ever gamble myself. I am pretty risk-averse and the odds are always stacked against you.

I have kind of hinted at getting a poker set before, but only as a sort of “ooh, wouldn’t that be amusing” kind of thing. I wasn’t dead serious about getting one. But I found myself getting quite excited about it, and we all played a game later in the evening.

I had never played a game of poker before, and I knew very little about it. All I knew was whatever I gleaned from watching Late Night Poker back in the day, which was very little. I only ever watched that because there was nothing else on, and I was mesmerised by the amazing under-the-table cameras.

My brother led us all by the hand, explaining the rules as we went along. My parents were knocked out quickly, and it was just the young’uns — me, my brother and his girlfriend — left. Time flew by really quickly. Before we realised it, three hours had passed and it was after midnight.

And in the end, I won my first ever game of poker! Muhahah!

And this evening, I won at Scrabble. This is in stark contrast to my record on Facebook Scrabble (won 2, lost 8). This winning streak is unusual, because normally I am just one big loser. I should ride the wave and carry these optimistic feelings with me into 2008. It’s a big year, so being optimistic is probably the only way I can get things done from now on, even though it goes against my instincts.

What else did I get for Christmas? Well, most of the other stuff was on my list. A few books to add to the ever-growing pile of books I haven’t yet got round to reading. Jackie Stewart’s autobiography (very hefty looking and thorough — unlike Lewis Hamilton, Jackie Stewart has lived a life), The Long Tail and Dead Children Playing.

My brother got me Dead Children Playing, although I had already bought it for myself and had got it wrapped up. Amusingly, I bought it partly as a backup for my brother in case I couldn’t find him anything better (eventually I got him this). That we both got it for each other is a sign that it was a good present, I think. We are keeping a copy each.

I also got a few DVDs — the F1 season review, 30 Century Man (a documentary about Scott Walker) and Taking Liberties (a documentary about Tony Blair riding roughshod over the constitution).

I have just watched Taking Liberties and I can very much recommend it. It concisely documents what is happening to this country under the Labour government and why it matters. It demonstrates that this affects a wide range of people and includes interviews from critics of the government across the political spectrum, from all of the major parties. If you don’t recognise the loss of freedoms that is happening in this country, you should watch this film and you will soon enough understand.

The film looks as though it’s only half of the story as well, because taking a look at the list of DVD extras, there is lots more to get through.

Back to normal tomorrow I think. I decided — two days off: Christmas Day and Boxing Day. But deadlines loom. Back to writing essays and dissertations tomorrow.

Yes, I am a liberal elite atheist trying to ban Christmas, and proud of it! Not really. Everyone else can celebrate it as much as they like as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons, and I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.

I am celebrating though. Wintervals are older than Christianity, and it isn’t difficult to see why. Winter is a terrible time of year, bereft of warmth and particularly sunlight. It is quite disturbing when you have sleeping patterns like mine and you end up sleeping through the entire day.

On this basis, I should really celebrate the Winter Solstice, like Adam Smith was a Socialist does. But seeing as everyone else celebrates on the 25^th, that’s good enough for me.

For me, this is an opportunity to enjoy yourself at a bad time of the year. One of the things I hate most about Christmas is the way people get so stressed out about it. People need to chill out a bit and enjoy the holiday instead of running around trying to buy tat which the recipient will, on average, value between a tenth and a third less than was paid for it (PDF).

I am not being smug about it because I have fallen into the trap as well. There must be some kind of sociological law that says the more you’re supposed to be on holiday, the busier you actually are. Just more lies from society. I don’t know why I don’t just exit now.

That’s why I haven’t been blogging much over the past few days, even though I have a million things to say. Story of the year. The busyness is partly as a result of my high-flying career in retail (!). But I’ve also got a mountain of university work to do as well.

In a way, I am lucky as an Edinburgh University student. Our winter exams are done and dusted by mid-December, so we don’t have them looming over us all Christmas. Having the exams that early has its own disadvantages of course, but at least Christmas is worry-free.

Not this year though. I have a 3,000 word essay to write about changes in Scotland’s population since 1945. The module is The Scottish Economy, which is very interesting, but also a damn nuisance because there is very little reading material compared to most other modules. I really will have to pull those 3,000 words out of thin air.

I’m also tearing my hair out about my dissertation. It’s due in towards the end of February. For various reasons, I never got the work done during the year that I was hoping to, so I am behind schedule big time. Well, I’ve written nine pages out of 30, but I’m sure to cover most of the material that will have to be edited down quite a lot anyway.

The upshot of all this was that I was in Edinburgh on Friday to take back some books that I haven’t needed for weeks and to do some reading for that Scottish Economy essay. I also got out some more heavy books. And lots of climbing up and down stairs was involved.

Then, sucker that I am, I went to do some Christmas shopping. Lots of walking up and down Princes Street was involved. And the stuff I bought was ridiculously heavy. I felt like a bit of a tube in the train station, as I battled with all of that stuff.

Worst of all, the combination of heavy shopping and heavy library books has left me with a plethora of strange pains in all kinds of parts of my body. I feel like a decrepit octogenarian. Next year I will probably stick to shopping in Kirkcaldy.

Incidentally, mad busy 24/7 shitlife aside, I will not be switching off the computer over the Christmas period as some people do. I don’t really see the point in that. For me, blogging is — and always should be (unless it’s a pro- or business blog) — a leisure activity. I enjoy it. So I won’t be stopping. There’ll be fewer readers around of course, but that’s their choice. (Proof, if ever it were needed, that blogging is sustained mostly by people who are skiving off work).

I am currently facing the same Christmas cards dilemma that I had last year. Only this time, instead of receiving five cards, I’ve received nine. Clearly, either nobody cares that I didn’t give them a card last year, or they have completely forgotten. Which kind of sums up the insincerity of exchanging cards.

Anyway, my mother is currently bullying me into writing nine reciprocal cards. I was going to give to charity instead, because let’s face it — giving to charity will do a lot more good. Besides, what will happen if I don’t give them a card? Will I end up in their bad books? It didn’t happen last year, so…

Well, I just flipped a coin to decide, and it turns out that I have to write out the cards. Bah.

In my previous post I wondered if Nick Clegg would do much to enthuse me. Well, in my view he’s got off to a good start.

He revealed on the radio that he doesn’t believe in God. What’s more, he seems to have a thoroughly sensible, tolerant approach to the whole religion issue.

What a refreshing thing to hear from a politician. It does often seem as though atheism or even agnosticism is one of the worst things a politician can be associated with among some circles. Tony Blair even seemed to think it was a liability to be the wrong type of Christian. C of E while PM, since resigning he has mysteriously become a Roman Catholic.

Paul Linford, for instance has said that Clegg’s non-belief is “certainly concerning for me as a Christian” (via Bob Piper). Never mind the millions of non-Christians in this country who have never seen a non-Christian PM! I wonder if he ever found Margaret Thatcher’s sex as concerning for him as a male.

In this supposedly tolerant society, I sometimes think we’d sooner see a three-legged Prime Minister than a non-church-goer — never mind a black or openly gay PM. I wonder how many leaders of the major parties historically have publicly stated that they don’t believe in God. I assume Nick Clegg must be among the first. Full credit to him for speaking the truth.

The second thing that has impressed me is the fact that he has enlisted Brian Eno to “reach out beyond the London beltway”. In particular, Eno is to advise the Lib Dems on how to appeal to young people.

This is good in two senses. Firstly, appealing to young people is good. One of the biggest crimes in the country today is to be a yoof, as you can see with the vilification of the hoodie, a convenient item of clothing.

Appealing to young people is a typical politician’s cliché. But this comes across to me as quite a serious attempt. Brian Eno is not some greasy pole-climbing politician looking to get good headlines in the Daily Mail.

The second sense in which is this good is… Brian Eno, man!

Brian Eno is 59, which has led some people to wonder if he is really the right person to appeal to youth. I’m 21, which is pretty young, although I guess I am not like most yoofs. But I think Brian Eno is great. The person who (as legend has it) invented ambient music has got to be awesome, right?

He has created some of the greatest pieces of music of the past thirty or forty years. A lot of young people respect this. I know I certainly do. Okay, there are various U2-related crimes, but that’s a tough gig. I mean, talk about polishing a turd!

Brian Eno should be respected for actually engaging his brain (one). He is the only pop musician I can think of who doesn’t just dribble out ignorance every time he opines about a topic other than music. In a world teeming with preening pricks like Bob Geldof and Bono, Brian Eno is a real breath of fresh air.

And, unlike Bob Geldof’s sojourn with the Conservatives (presumably David Cameron has some really nice biscuits and a good belly-rubbing technique), Eno’s association with the Lib Dems is principled. Remember Eno’s website from a couple of years back, Lib Dem This Time (rather broken-looking now)? Eno is also a long-standing supporter of electoral reform.

One other thing, and it’s related to what I said yesterday. It looks as though Nick Clegg has raised a few eyebrows by saying that he hasn’t heard of ‘Fairytale of New York’ and by citing a non-existent album (’Changes’ by David Bowie) as his favourite.

It does seem a bit odd. But what if the poor guy just doesn’t like pop music? I have written before that I don’t understand why we expect politicians to know these things. Sure, most people keep tabs on pop music. But we are all different, and we all have different interests. Maybe Clegg’s “gaffes” are just down to the fact that he doesn’t waste time on trivia.

I’m glad I have ruled out becoming a politician in the future. If I did, I would no doubt be asked what my favourite film was. I’d have to answer, “I dunno, I don’t really watch films,” because I don’t really watch films. Then I’d be crucified by a media (and society?) that wants mine to be a mirror image of the median voter’s leisure tastes.

The Liberal Democrats are pretty much the only political party I would consider voting for (well, I voted for everyone by Labour in the local elections in May because I was feeling particularly anti-Labour at the time, but you know what I mean). So the change in leadership is of interest to me.

In years gone by I would have described myself as a supporter of the Lib Dems. I guess I still am. But I’ve not been quite as enthused over the past year or so.

I’m not exactly sure what this is down to. Menzies Campbell’s time as leader of the federal party? Nicol Stephen’s rather rudderless leadership of the Scottish Lib Dems? My increasingly apathetic stance towards party politics? A bit of all three I guess. It will be interesting to see if Nick Clegg can get me to sit up.

The leadership campaign has yet again highlighted the dire nature of political discourse at the moment.

I have already seen two people interpreting the close result as evidence that the Lib Dems are deeply divided. The result was indeed impressively close, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Any leadership election that doesn’t see one candidate getting 100% of the votes is evidence of a divided party. It doesn’t mean anything.

All of the parties have well known divisions anyway. Blairites and Brownites in Labour, Eurosceptics in the Conservatives, gradualists and fundamentalists in the SNP. You wouldn’t expect anything else. No doubt a truly undivided party would soon enough find itself being criticised for being filled with flip-flopping robotic career politicians.

The alternative to having a leadership election is to have a coronation. In that case, everyone would throw stones at the Lib Dems for not having a leadership election. Plus, from what I gather, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne are actually rather similar ideologically. On this basis, you’d expect a close election.

Also, the bad side of the media is never too far away when it comes to the Lib Dems. There is an interesting post at The Yorksher Gob (via MatGB) on why it was a mistake to elect Nick Clegg. He was the media’s favourite, which means they can’t wait to crucify him.

It wouldn’t surprise me if some of those predictions come to fruition. The media has an agenda against the Liberal Democrats for some reason — probably because having a third party just makes issues so damn difficult to simplify everything into their favoured ‘he says’, ’she says’ format.

They spent years disseminating innuendos and speculations about Charles Kennedy’s drink problem. Then when the Lib Dems finally got rid of him? All of a sudden Charles Kennedy was the best leader since sliced bread, his colleagues knifed him in the back, the Lib Dems were the nasty party.

Before he became Lib Dem leader, Menzies Campbell was a well-respected ‘elder statesman’ figure. When he became leader? He was a dithering old pensioner who was practically unable to string a sentence together. Oh, and when they got rid of him on the back of relentless media criticism, once again the Lib Dems were the nasty party, unfaithful and disloyal.

It makes me despair. Tony Blair can dangerously erode our civil liberties and engage in an illegal, unjustified war that kills tens of thousands. Yet how is he presented by the media? Magical untouchable Teflon Tony! Meanwhile, Menzies Campbell was hounded out for being old.

Yes, I’ve decided to give the blog a new look again. I couldn’t wait to get this up, but it’s not quite finished. I still need to do a few tweaks here and there. (Surprise surprise, it looks a bit guff in Internet Exploder.) But it’s quite late now and I can’t bring myself to switch it back to the old theme, so I’m throwing caution to the wind and leaving it up.

I’ll update this post later some time in the afternoon explaining the thinking behind it all. In the meantime, if you spot any problems or if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.

Update: Okay, so now I have the time to post a bit about what I’ve done here.

Perhaps the first thing I should point out is the fact that, regrettably, some URLs have changed. Permalinks to posts and the like should still work perfectly. But you’ll notice that I’ve moved the pages in the navigation panel around a bit. I’ve also reorganised the categories (in fact, I haven’t quite finished that yet).

Speaking of categories, I have finally created a ‘media’ category. It never quite made sense for media posts to be listed under ‘entertainment’, particularly if I was writing about some kind of media coverage of a serious story. So I’ve gone ahead and separated them, and now television, radio and newspapers are listed under media. As such, some category URLs have also changed, so sorry about that if you had them bookmarked or something.

So why the change? Well, I am still very fond of the old design. It will probably make a reappearance somewhere — possibly on another blog. But perhaps I will release it as a WordPress theme for others to use — if I can find the time to make the appropriate tweaks to it.

Despite my pride though, I was always aware that a lot of people were not very keen on the previous design. And it has been there for almost a year. (Maybe this change will become an annual occurrence, a doctorvee Christmas tradition.)

Common complaints were about the dark background (apparently an acquired taste) and the bright links. So I’ve decided to swing back to a white background and rather more muted colours, if you can call green muted.

This is also the equivalent of growing a moustache to try and signify that you are growing up (not that many people grow moustaches these days, but you know what I mean). The previous design was deliberately jazzy and distinctive. But since then I have become a can’t-get-away-from-it adult. And in the next few months I will hopefully be finished with university.

So that means ditching the childish neon colours and adopting a serif font. I have spoken before about my devotion to Verdana, but I am afraid I have become rather tired of it. It is suffering from Times New Roman syndrome.

You know. It’s become a ubiquitous, default font. As such, it is used in so many pieces of ugly design. We have all stumbled upon badly thrown-together websites written in Verdana, just as we see too many passive aggressive notes written in Times New Roman.

I had become very keen on the recently redesigned websites for Times Online and Guardian Unlimited. Both use plenty of Georgia, so I was going to use that. Besides Times New Roman, it’s the only core serif font anyway.

But while I was designing I visited Modern Life which uses Cambria. It is basically the Vista version of Times New Roman, but lovely. I fell in love and decided to use the font on my blog. But as far as I know Cambria is only available on Vista, so for everyone else it is still Georgia.

A funny thing about Cambria is that it appears to be extraordinarily small, so the font size is rather large. But there’s nothing wrong with that I suppose.

Headings and some other bits and pieces are in Helvetica where possible, although Windows users (including me!) will have to make do with Arial. I know it’s a bit clichéd, and rather too ubiquitous, but you never grow tired of it. I do love Helvetica so I was keen to use it when I decided to give the blog a cleaner design.

I suppose now is a good time to talk about the general inspiration for the redesign. I was tempted to go back to a clinical, Helvetica-led design when I first saw screenshots for the new beta version of Delicious. Delicious is a very apt word. Mind you, the end result on this blog has ended up looking very little like the Delicious screenshots.

A more direct inspiration has been the beautifully-designed Lokesh Dhakar website. In fact, parts of this blog’s design have turned out to be embarrassingly similar. I first came across his blog when I read this guide to different kinds of coffee and it instantly struck me as an excellent design.

Layout-wise, I very much went for the ‘less is more’ approach. This has meant compromises in places, but I’ll go on to that. The main change is that I’ve moved away from a three column layout to two columns. I had read somewhere that multiple columns just confuse people, which makes sense. So it’s back to one sidebar.

I was keen to get everything lined up nicely with each other. This does make it look quite neat, but one problem is that the main column is quite close to the sidebar. The solution was to have a neat line running along the left of the sidebar, although I’m still not sure if it is enough. I toyed with using full justification, but decided in the end that the cons outweighed the pros.

Despite the intimate position of the main column and the sidebar, the page is wider than before. Making good use of the space available and all that. As such, the design only really works if your screen is at least 1024 pixels wide. But the same was true of the previous design. And people with smaller screens make up around 3% of this blog’s visitors. Sorry to those 3%, but the rest of us just get masses of white space.

On to the content. One thing you’ll notice is that categories are now taking pride of place above every single post. They used to be hidden away, only appearing in the sidebar of single post pages.

The reason I’ve made them more prominent is because over the years I have become more and more guilty about the fact that this blog is a bit of a ragbag of different topics. And the Formula 1 posts in particular are beginning to overshadow everything else. So having the category as the first thing of every post is just a heads-up for everyone, so that you know what the post is about and you can easily skip the posts you aren’t interested in.

Another new addition is subtitles. I saw this on a few other blogs and really liked the idea, so I’m going to give it a go. Inspired by this article, I did it using custom fields, a feature of WordPress that I have never really explored before.

Gone from the top of the post, however, are the date and the comments link. The date still appears there on single posts, but I am thinking of including them everywhere again. I already feel a bit lost without them (although I didn’t use dates much on any of the designs I used before the previous one).

I am also open to putting the comments link back up there, although the link still appears at the bottom of the post as expected. Any comments on this would be appreciated.

I have also taken the plunge and decided to add a ShareThis button, despite what I wrote about it a few months ago. I’m still experimenting with the position of this, so any ideas would be welcome.

Over to the sidebar. I’ve reduced the amount of stuff that’s there to a bare minimum. The latest comment is still there as I like to highlight the great discussions that go on in the comments, which is really what blogging is all about.

Twitter is still there, although I’ve reduced it to just the latest update rather than the last three. Delicious too has been reduced to just the five most recent links. I normally post to Delicious more often than five times a day, so this might be a bit odd. But there is method to my madness.

I made a decision a short while ago that this blog should concentrate mainly on original content. That’s just the way the blog has evolved, and I don’t really like to fob people off with YouTube clips all the time.

But it’s good to highlight interesting websites and videos. After all, that was the original meaning of the word ‘weblog’, celebrating its tenth anniversary this week. So I will create another home for them. Probably a tumblelog, but I will get round to that later.

The other prominent feature on the main page (and, indeed, every page, the big whore that I am) is adverts. An early version of this design had the adverts appearing in a garish green colour scheme, but I screwed my head on enough to revert to a more sane grey version. I am ridiculously proud of having the idea of paying homage to Associated-Rediffusion, which wouldn’t really have worked with the green scheme.

The part of the design I am most worried about is the comments. For some reason, I always find the comments section the most difficult to design, and this time was no different.

I decided to move the comment author information to the left of the comment rather than above. Part of this was to get the full size of the Gravatar displayed, which would take up too much room if you have it above. It is also a layout familiar to message board users, so no real issue there.

There is a problem, however, if somebody has quite a long word in their name. In a recent example, Bellgrovebelle is cut off, although there are worse examples. Thankfully, these are quite rare and hopefully not too distracting.

As has already been noted by Ollie in the comments to this post, there is an inconsistency between the sizes of the Gravatars and the Identicons. I’ve not worked too hard on this yet, although my attempts so far have only produced pixellated-looking Identicons. I am working on it though.

Other features I’m thinking about adding to the comments section are favicons and OpenID.

In the pages (about, archives, etc.) I have also removed a lot of stuff that I didn’t really consider important any more. I’m thinking of completely uninstalling the post popularity plugin as this blog now has a post ratings system which I prefer. As for the other stuff, see if you can work out what’s gone. I doubt anyone will be too upset.

One last thing. I am using some icons from the Silk set by Fam Fam Fam. I’ve still not quite finished this aspect of the design, as I’m not sure which bits should have icons and which shouldn’t.

I think that just about covers it. Sorry this post went on for so long. I would be grateful to hear any comments or ideas. And of course, if something seems broken then please let me know about it!

A few weeks ago I attended a talk by Eric Maskin, who this year was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.

Eric Maskin seems to be quite an interesting person. He lives in a house that was once occupied by Albert Einstein. I imagine that would make a great pub quiz question. Perhaps even more startlingly, Eric Maskin dresses up as Albert Einstein at Halloween.

Professor Maskin came to Edinburgh en route to Sweden to talk about voting systems, a topic related to mechanism design.

Arrow’s impossibility theorem implies that no voting system is perfect at satisfying a number of desired criteria. These criteria are:

• The Pareto principle — if everyone prefers x to y then y should not be elected
• Anonymity — every voter should be treated equally
• Neutrality — every candidate should be treated equally
• Independence of irrelevant alternatives — the ability of x and y to win an election should not be affected by the entrance of a candidate z
• Transitivity — if x is preferred to y and y is preferred to z then x should be preferred to z

That fourth one is probably the one that grates with most proponents of electoral reform. We can reel off instances where independence of irrelevant alternatives has been violated. For instance, had Ralph Nader not run in 2001 then Al Gore would almost certainly have become President of the USA. A fragmented left in France allowed Jean Marie Le Pen to enter the final run-off with Jacques Chirac in 2002, when there was every chance that Lionel Jospin would have won such a face-off.

Interestingly, Eric Maskin thinks that if the SDP / Liberal alliance hadn’t run in 1983, Michael Foot’s Labour party would have won the general election. What a thought!

Just thinking about this sent me under a dark cloud. The design of institutions clearly has a disturbingly massive effect. The voting system is much more important than the voters themselves, particularly when you couple this thought with the paradox of voting.

The system that Eric Maskin concentrated on is Simple Majority Rule. This method has voters submitting rankings of candidates, just as in Single Transferable Vote. Then you take these rankings and use them to compare candidates in a head-to-head scenario, two candidates at a time. By comparing just two candidates at a time, you get rid of the problem with independence of irrelevant alternatives. If one candidate is preferred over another by >50% of the voters, he wins the election.

Well, almost. Unfortunately, this system is susceptible to Condorcet’s paradox. For instance, >50% of voters may prefer Labour to the Conservatives, >50% of voters may prefer the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats and >50% of voters may prefer the Lib Dems to Labour. In other words, simple majority rule violates the transitivity principle.

The view of Eric Maskin is that to worry about transitivity is too pessimistic. For him, the Condorcet paradox is possible, but highly unlikely. This is because candidates can be lined up on a spectrum from left to right, and voters tend to vote in accordance with these positions.

As such, he suggests that simple majority rule is good as a least-worst voting system as it meets all of the desired criteria apart from transitivity which is unlikely to be violated. No other voting system works this well as often.

Of course, because the possibility of the Condorcet cycle even exists, there must be a tie-breaker. This is probably cause for a whole new debate in itself!

The talk provided some food for thought. For several years now I have been convinced that there needs to be a move away from the First Past the Post system. For the past few years I have been strongly in favour of Single Transferable Vote.

During the talk, one person in the audience specifically asked Eric Maskin about Single Transferable Vote. He said that STV can still violate independence of irrelevant alternatives, and pointed out that a similar system to STV was used in the 2002 French election.

I’m not entirely convinced that STV is all that similar to the run-off system used in French Presidential elections. The main problem with the French Presidential election (and the other examples that have been highlighted), as Proferssor Maskin pointed out, was the fact that voters were unable to rank candidates. Well, voters can rank candidates in STV.

Nevertheless, Condorcet cycle aside, I find the simple majority rule approach quite appealing. Yet we hear very little about it. If you are interested in electoral reform, I would say it is worth looking into a bit.

• Slides from Professor Maskin’s presentation (PDF file)
• An accessible article on this topic from the Scientific American (PDF) by Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin
• A more academic primer on the topic (PDF)
• More about Eric Maskin from Marginal Revolution
• Interview with Eric Maskin conducted by Adam Smith (heh). This interview does a really great job of outlining what mechanism design theory is and how it affects our everyday lives

Oh dear.

What astonished me when Tommy Sheridan was awarded damages in last year’s trial was the fact that a real-life Chewbacca defence was employed. It was his hairy body wot won it! Did Chewbacca like Scrabble and sunbeds as well?

In case you were wondering, I have decided against writing a review of F1’s ‘bigwigs’ — for the sake of my health. I just wrote a big rant about Max Mosley the other day anyway.

My next post was going to look at F1 websites. But this week Ollie White wrote a post about podcasts, so I thought I would move my post on podcasts to this week.

I’m a relative newcomer to podcasts. As a concept, they have grown much more quickly than blogging and I would bet that ‘podcast’ is more of a household word than ‘blog’ already. But they never really grabbed my attention because, for me, they are rather inconvenient to listen to, as I wrote a few months back.

Since I wrote that post, I have transformed into a big fan of podcasts though. This was partly because I replaced my ageing iRiver with a brand spanking new iPod.

I have to say, mega thumbs up to the people at Apple who have made keeping up with podcasts so easy! The iPod takes away so much of the hassle that existed with my old iRiver.

At first I only listened to podcasts on my commute through to university. But soon enough I found myself subscribing to more and more podcasts and not having enough time to listen to them all. Now I am such a podcast addict that I actually set aside some time every day to listen to them by going out for a walk (with the added benefits of exercise and fresh air that this brings).

So, from my mild scepticism in the late summer, I have turned into a full-on podcast addict. And right at the top of the list comes the F1 podcasts that I have gradually discovered. This post will review my favourites. They are listed in alphabetical order, in case you’re wondering.

AT&T Williams Podcast

As far as I know, Williams is one of only two Formula 1 teams who produced podcasts this year. Maybe it’s just me, but I would never have expected Williams to be so hip. They always seemed like a team that is mainly supported by middle-aged men, the kind of people who prefer Fifth Gear to Top Gear.

Maybe this is actually the case, because for me the Williams podcast is the least fulfilling of my regular listens. It is produced by USP Content — the same people who produce the excellent programmes for Radio 5 Live and Renault’s podcast. But the Williams podcast misfires a bit.

So what’s the problem? It’s just a bit too cheesy. It is a bit like a local radio programme. An example regular feature is ‘2007′ (pronounced ‘twenty-oh-seven’) where presenter David Croft talks to Alexander Wurz at 8:07 PM on the Saturday before the race. I don’t know, but that is quite a hollow feature to me. Yeah, neat pun, but it’s a bit meaningless when you’re listening at whatever time you choose. Besides, we don’t even know that the interview was conducted at 8:07 PM and apart from that there was nothing much to the feature.

The interviews, conducted by Tom Clarkson, were normally a bit too fluffy for my liking. I can remember actually cringing at some of the questions. It is probably reasonably entertaining for some fans. But if you’re looking for insight and analysis it is best to look elsewhere.

Worst of all, some kind of glitch towards the end of the season meant that the podcasts weren’t getting delivered (at least to me — and I remember Sidepodcast mentioning a simil