I put the Paris photos up and in the process bought a Flickr subscription. They’re good people and they probably deserve it.

Some Highlights

The demolition continues at Versailles

Cheesy Eiffel Tower

At the Louvre

Awesomely unexpected art

The album on Flickr.

I’ve been on holiday to Paris (photos soon, I promise) and have moved house and now finally have some internet access at home again.

House is very stressful because the heating is broken and two visits from engineer people who should know about these things haven’t resulted in hot water yet. Also BT seem to have managed to somehow activate a phone line to our house that only works in my bedroom and none of the other sockets in the house. Many things to sort out.

Thankfully, the proposal to create a total ban on abortion in South Dakota was defeated in the referendum on the law held at the same time as the Midterms.

Hopefully this will send a message that the majority of people think that this type of law is complete barbarity.

It’s not been all roses, however, as recently Nicaragua’s national assembly voted in favour of ban abortion under any circumstances (BBC article), though at least it’s not completely dogmatic: they are not going to prosecute a nine year old who had an abortion after being raped. Good to know that they actually feel the need to confirm that.

Everyone should read the following articles, taken from the Guardian’s special on abortion last Friday.

• Time to speak up
  
• The doctor said to me: ‘Couldn’t you just go through with the pregnancy?’
  
• America’s Abortion Battlefield
  
• The pro-life death sentence
  

The first is a wake up call to those of us, such as myself, who have assumed that the right to an abortion is a given; that no-one could seriously call into question the fact that a woman could choose to have an abortion. Whilst this may be the case in the UK and much of secular Europe, in other countries it is far from being the case. The most worrying country that seems to be questioning the right to abortion is the US. Living in a mostly secular democracy, it’s easy to forget that the US is, especially in the so-called Bible Belt states, on its way to becoming a de-facto theocracy.

At work last Wednesday we had a talk from Eugene Spafford, a professor of Information Security at Purdue University. It was about the current state of security in computer applications, systems and networks at the current time. Essentially, he made the point that it is pretty woeful at the moment: all of us are besieged by viruses, malware, spam and phishing attacks. Following are my thoughts on his talk; I’m doing this from memory so hopefully I haven’t made errors.