In response to
shortfalls in organ donation, policy is undergoing a serious rethink in several countries. In
Australia, the government has just lifted a ban on animal-to-human transplants. In the UK, the Chief Medical Officer has called for
presumed consent, while in Israel a new law gives donor card carriers
a legal right to priority treatment if they should require an organ transplant. Many are looking to
Spain, which leads the world, having seen the number of deceased donors per million people - a commonly used benchmark - increase from 14 in 1989 when a new system was put in place to 34.2 last year. Interestingly,
people committing suicide have a higher rate of donating organs than average.
posted by MuffinMan
on Dec 21, 2009 -
99 comments
The British government has announced plans to
make Ordnance Survey map data freely available online. The
Ordnance Survey is the government-funded agency which maps the country at high resolutions. Unlike the US Geological Survey's public-domain data, Ordnance Survey maps are proprietary, and licensed only under restrictive terms and for hefty fees, including to local governments; setting the data free is said to produce a £156 net economic gain. (
Previously)
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posted by acb
on Nov 17, 2009 -
37 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
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posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
Comparemyradio.com analyses the playlist data from all the major UK radio stations. If you want to know who's playing the current
number one, what's the
overlap between Radio One & Two or whether you should bother checking out
Radio Six, this is the site for you.
posted by Hartster
on Oct 27, 2009 -
6 comments
The Works of
Swede Mason: "
Jeremy Clarkson," "
Get in the Back of the Van," "
Jungle All The Way," "
Bill Wyman's Metal Detector," "
Put the Lotion in the Basket, *" "
Got The Sucka," "
The Gobshite, *" "
Squashed Thingy," "
Spare Me The Madness," and the pair of tracks based on
Neighbors deaths "
Coffee And Croissants" and "
Todd....Dead."
[more inside]
posted by flatluigi
on Oct 13, 2009 -
14 comments
The
British postcode system, one of the things which Britain arguably does better than anyone else,
is 50 years old. The system divides the entire UK into alphanumeric postal districts organised in a hierarchy, with the first one or two letters denoting a postal area (typically a city or the environs of one, though London has several). Unlike systems elsewhere (such as the US, Australia, and most of Europe), it doesn't stop at the neighbourhood level, with each 5-to-7-character full postcode denoting a segment of a street. This makes it useful for applications other than addressing mail, such as navigation; as such, you can enter a postcode into
Google Maps or a satellite navigation unit and be shown exactly where it refers to.
[more inside]
posted by acb
on Oct 3, 2009 -
126 comments
New Documents from the Soviet Archives reveal that as the Warsaw Pact was falling apart, Margaret Thatcher called Gorbachev to inform him that:
The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.
In the same way, a destabilisation of Eastern Europe and breakdown of the Warsaw Pact are also not in our interests.
This backs up assertions from former
German Chancellor Kohl's new memoir that Thatcher put up obstacles to German Re-unification, fearing the rise of a Fourth Reich.
posted by empath
on Sep 10, 2009 -
78 comments
Roxy Freeman was born into an Gypsy family. For years, her family travelled around Ireland in a horsedrawn wagon, without electricity or formal schooling, getting by on picking fruit and selling horses they bred, before settling in Norfolk. Roxy taught herself to read, devoured books, and, after travelling the world for a number of years, decided to go to university, a move which would require her to completely change her way of life. Living in a flat in Brighton, a way of life which she finds bizarre and alien, she
has written about her childhood, her family's culture and the difficulties and prejudices she encountered, for the Guardian.
[more inside]
posted by acb
on Sep 7, 2009 -
14 comments
Filament aims to be a
different kind of women's magazine. They plan to "cover a wide range of topics [but absolutely no beauty or diet articles] that inspire and engage , and [give women] gorgeous boys the way
[they] like to see them."
Their
first issue is out and featured a mix of articles, fiction, poetry and pics of shirtless boys. For their second issue, they want to include a pic of a man with erection, but their
printer bailed because the printer was afraid of a backlash. The magazine has also had issues with
distributors because many of them don't want to deal with a women's magazine with a man on the cover.
Via (NSFW)
Erotica Cover Watch (NSFW) which is a blog dedicated to ending the
preponderance of (naked) women on the covers of erotic books, and is trying to get more
men and couples on the covers.
posted by nooneyouknow
on Aug 13, 2009 -
82 comments
The Guardian ran a series of articles looking at the state of high-speed rail travel today. France intends to
double its length of track over the next decade, and China is planning
a massive rail-building programme, including a high-speed line which will halve the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai to 4 hours.
In Germany, domestic air travel is rapidly going extinct, and Spain's network has made
day trips between Madrid and Barcelona a possibility. The USA, which has long neglected its rail network, is
planning up to 10 high-speed lines. Meanwhile, Britain's only high-speed line goes to France, but there is talk of
a 250mph line from London to Birmingham and beyond, possibly by the early 2020s. Meanwhile, the CEO of France's rail operator, SNCF,
weighs in on what the UK should do.
posted by acb
on Aug 7, 2009 -
49 comments
The
Daily Express reports on a UK Government Announcement to expand the use of
Family Intervention Projects. However, the Daily Express exaggerates the report somewhat,
the article stating (apparently wildly incorrectly) that the UK Government "plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV supervision in their own homes".
Other reports in the UK press make no mention of CCTV. Nonetheless, the alarmist Express article is widely
picked up and
discussed on the internet, pushing many people past 10 on the Orwellometer. Then Mefite FfejL uses Twitter to ask Ed Balls, the minister responsible, if the CCTV aspect of the Express article is accurate.
[more inside]
posted by memebake
on Aug 4, 2009 -
34 comments
"Working in art film or commercial cinema is like dancing through a mine field, and every broadcaster is now racing down market in a desperate attempt to survive. But what is happening at the BBC is the real scandal: it is bigger than all the rest combined, it is free from direct commercial pressure and its public service obligations carry cultural responsibilities. There are no excuses." Veteran producer
Tony Garnett, has launched a
blistering attack on the current process of drama commissioning at the BBC
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Jul 15, 2009 -
17 comments
