The former president of world cycling's governing body Hein Verbruggen has admitted that for years it warned Lance Armstrong and other riders when they came close to testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

Verbruggen, who is still an honorary president of the UCI, and his successor, Pat McQuaid, have come under increasing pressure since Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France victories and admitted doping throughout each of them.

In an interview with the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland published on Wednesday, Verbruggen said dozens of top riders and team managers were invited to the UCI's headquarters in Aigle "one by one", where the UCI's chief doctor Mario Zorzoli gave them presentations on its anti-doping strategy and information about suspect values.

i.e. they coached riders on how not to go over the limits.

Time to dissolve the UCI.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

BBC: Davos 2013: IMF official says fixing banking still slow.

The entire banking industry still makes up more than 60% of the world's annual economic output, said Mr Zhu.

This is ridiculous.  We've got the bark wagging the dog.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Dell is planning to release by mid-year a computer that's all of 3.5 inches long and 1.5 inches wide. It's not much bigger in girth than a USB stick, and is similar in design.

This Wi-Fi enabled device is designed to be plugged into something, most likely a monitor or TV. It has two USB ports for a keyboard and a mouse and, alternatively, Bluetooth capability. It displays at 1080p and can support touch screens.

The device will be powered by an ARM system-on-a-chip manufactured by an undisclosed vendor.

(Find out what ARM is here.)

And it's about freaking time.  

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

{/grumble}

keep to the Fen Causeway

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

Migeru Shimbun is out! http://paper.li/MigeruBlogger/1351816577 ... ▸ Top stories today via @Frances_Coppola @EvaOrue

It's the triumph of the web and the social media by Sergio Di Cori Modigliani

"It's the virtuous face of the Internet, it's turning what makes sense, upside down. It's that silent civil revolution that is often pompously discussed, in an academic, statistical way, a high-tech way of selling stuff to young people and discounted stuff to everyone. Long live e-commerce.
It's the virtual world that influences the real world.
It imposes change because of how it is.
It's the defeat of the nostalgic reactionaries, of the Luddites, of those who hide behind the senescent cloak of "oh yes when I was a lad ..." because -from this tiny massive victory- the so-called "silent majority" come out defeated, replaced for ever by the new chaos caused by the comic strips on Facebook, by the stolen quotes, by the bilious rancorous outbursts, shouted out, spat out in the spasmodic search for a Meaning: the new noisy cacophonous majority, the multicoloured and blundering lot that we all are.
To give us back a Meaning to our civil existence.
It's the silent revolution that the media mafia don't talk about and don't give credit to. Because they cannot.
Because they will not.
Because, if they were to do so, they would be signing their own documents of surrender, their inevitable retirement and their subsequent removal to the attic, beaten by the history of human progress.

...

According to them, according to the mummies, we are all "populism".
It's what historians have always called "popular outrage".
We will never again see these people in parliament: Scilipoti, Scajola, Belsito, Rutelli, Rosy Mauro and Alfonso Papa.
It was the anger of the people that sent them home.
It's been our bulimic anger that has forced the mummies to have electoral committees.
They are starting to understand that the count down has started for them.
They are starting to realise that we are sending them all home.
And this is just the beginning."
Sergio Di Cori Modigliani

A Frenchwoman jailed in Mexico in 2007 for 60 years for kidnapping is to be freed, the Supreme Court has decided.

Florence Cassez had denied the charges and many irregularities have been found in the case, including a staged televised police raid.

Three judges on a panel of five voted to have Ms Cassez released immediately because her rights had been violated.

The case provoked tensions between Mexico and Paris and French President Francois Hollande welcomed the news.

This has been a cause célèbre in France for the past couple of years.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

The solution is not more of the same.

Among the proposed "Youth Guarantee" measures I see:

1. More training which is ineffective if it is outside the paid-work environment.
   
2. More information to be provided about jobs yet it is hard to provide information about jobs that are not there!
   
3. Proposals to address poor signalling which amounts to making one's CV look better for jobs that are not there!).
   
4. Wage subsidies to address slow job growth barriers: of all the measures proposed this is the only one that seems to focus on the demand-side of the labour market.

That is, directly address the shortage of jobs. Wage subsidies have a long record of failure and operate on the flawed assumption that mass unemployment is the result of excessive wages.

...

The overwhelming problem that I see with the Youth Guarantee proposal is that it seems to skirt around the main issue - a lack of jobs. It seems to be about full employability rather than full employment.