The Bewilderness

Google places its bets in the hope of renewal

Sometime in the last two years, there will be a realisation that Google achieved overstretch and shifted from a nimble, Internet company to a sprawling conglomerate. With its focus on many areas, it has been ambitious to obtain a dominance over all aspects of web experience, moving beyond search to social networking, operating systems and browsers. Their dominance in search has not allowed them to recreate this network effect in other areas. Increasingly, Google is jostling amongst new peers, protected by its market dominance in its core competence. Will it venture down the path where restless acquisition and multiple projects seem to tempt it?

A conglomerate with tentacles in myriad industries is not necessarily a good thing. It’s an inordinately tough act to pull off: GE has done it, but it took decades of work. And for Google it will mean giving up the culture of Internet innovation that made it a success in the first place. Conglomerates pour their innovation into management and process — that is, into improving what exists — not necessarily into creating what will be.

This misreads the fast changing pace and innovation of the Web: companies do not straddle industries, they create them. Conglomerates rarely work, and if Google has to sacrifice its core culture to achieve this goal, then such a beast will arrive sickly and soon succumb to sharper carnivores.

If I am right, Google could play a cannier game, placing many bets and allowing innovation to thrive, so that the new developments take place within its walls or can be co-opted. However, they have not yet learned to let go. Social networking will belong to other companies and the mobile network will be a competitive arena. It may take a few failures to learn this lesson, though splinters like Apple have no long-term future (keyman risk and cashflow seduction overcoming the lure of innovation once Steve Jobs goes).

Ramping up the rhetoric

Overshadowed by the Chilean earthquake, both Labour and the Conservatives have ramped up rhetoric in the face of political fatigue and public indifference. The electorate are tired of the campaign. Both of the parties have adopted strikingly similar stances: presenting the election as a choice between their ruination and what has been achieved/what could be achieved* (please delete as appropriate) I suspect that whatever choice the electors make, a short-term outcome will be ruin.

There was, for a while, a perception of shallow difference between the two parties, as we faced a battle of “cuts versus investments” or “investments versus cuts”. This has fizzled out: replaced by a greater danger for the Conservatives. Despite the damage Brown has caused, and the deceits that he daily airs, the electorate have gifted him a cloak of authenticity; whereas Cameron, who genuinely believes in some principled politics, has been damaged by a biased media carping on about slick salesmanship. Not helped by the asinine idiocy of his 2010 campaign, he faces a fearful outcome: that Brand Cameron is too tainted to provide that poll uplift for the Tories.

So, just before the starting gun occurs (and it may be tomorrow to drown out Cameron's speech), we face a political and moral inversion: where he who is false is considered a truthteller, and he who is principled, becomes tainted by unscrupulous scandal, and hos own unforced errors.

Labour tries to outflank

The Labour Party have decided to outflank the Tory party in the “masochist” strategy. Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has conducted a spending round that includes cuts to frontline services.

We know what their approach will be in terms of the media message: Yes, we have to make cuts which include frontline services, but this is necessary to defend frontline services. A complex and paradoxical message that could not resonate without difficulty. For unknown reasons, the electorate seem to view spending cuts as unpopular measures. Will this eat into Labour's poll ratings?

Both parties will be catching up with the market demands and an angry electorate. The Tories could do worse than examine the psychological reactions to change.

Scot free

The title of the Telegraph piece on the scandal at Stafford Hospital encapsulated much of what sums up Britain. The managers who presided over the scandal escaped scot-free, unaccountable, undisciplined and without financial or commercial penalty. Yet, those who escape scot-free are allowed to by a government that is anything but.

Within a few months we may get the chance to support getting away scot-free ourselves. But this will be an act of responsibility. Scot-free does not mean that we will not pay for their errors. In that sense, the Scottish will get away scot-free. Even better, if Salmond obtains a referendum on independence, the Scots will be free and so will we. Then their crash and burn tendencies, fostered by nipping at the teat of state, will be localised and not exported to other Kingdoms.

The theme of the next two months: scot free

Measuring the ancestors

Recent human studies have been undertaken on the Bushmen and the remains of an Inuit found in Greenland. The latter is important as an advance in technique and example:

Inuk’s genome, which is published in the journal Nature, is by far the oldest human genetic code yet read — all those completed previously used tissue taken from living people.

The achievement, by a team led by Eske Willerslev and Morten Rasmussen, of the University of Copenhagen, demonstrates a powerful new tool. It opens the way for other groups to use DNA from human remains to investigate past migrations and the ancestry of populations now extinct.

Perhaps other groups will be willing to allow examination of human remains that they imbue with some ancestral significance just to prove genetic descent.

Studies of bushmen also show greater genetic diversity due to stable descent froma hunter-gatherer population. The advantages of such a lifestyle are also identified:

The study is the first to sequence the genomes of individuals who still practice a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

It identified variants previously linked with higher bone mineral density, increased sprint and power performance and a greater ability to reabsorb chloride ions from the renal glomerulus, and a taste receptor gene shown to improve the ability to taste bitter compounds, which could reflect hunter-gatherers’ need to avoid toxic plants.

Genetic adaptations in the bushmen also make them ill suited to certain aspects of an agricultural lifestyle, including high-fat diets and exposure to malaria.

Hard to believe that two Bushmen have greater genetic diversity than myself and Mao Tse-Tung, but there it is.

It is a matter of character from now on

The Labour Party have been spinning Rawnsley's accusations with gusto: a well-prepared onslaught, designed to reverse the tar, by equating anger with passion, frustration with leadership. Alongside such a campaign was the list of denials of actions close to but not quite the accusations that Rawnsley authored.

With sympathetic coverage from Sky News and the BBC, they hoped to set the pace and drive the damage underground. It was a disciplined approach. Tonight it has probably failed, as the leaks start:

But Mrs Pratt, who founded the National Bullying Helpline after being a workplace victim herself accused them of failing staff by “going into denial”.

“I have personally taken a call from staff in the Prime Minister’s office, staff who believe they are working in a bullying culture and that it has caused them some stress.

The psychological flaws and issue of character may now come to the fore. If the Tories have any political gumption, they will set out Brown's personality as a key issue of the election. But character extends beyond the Prime Minister to the Labour Party itself. Aware of the potential flaws, understanding the damage this could cause, the socialist placed party above patria. Faced with the disaster that ensued, they now promote and lie to preserve their power, cowards and hypocrites to the last.

Britain's time: when, not if....

Ambrose Evans Pritchard is a guide to the 'political' side of financial reporting: a disciplinary approach that forms a redoubt of hardheaded geopolitical assessments. However, such approaches may be otiose if their conclusions cannot be backed up by hard facts. Pritchard has an occasional tendency to embellish by anecdote, an unnecessary extravagance when the truth speaks for itself.

Yet a decade of monetary union has created such a wide and self-perpetuating gap between North and South that everything in EU affairs is poisoned. German-Greek relations are the worst in my lifetime.

All this tell us is that AEP was born some time after the war. As Papandreou's interviews in Britain today inform us, the political class stands firm and will find some hot fudge to plug the market crisis. The ravens can caw but politics will not heed, yet.

That is the problem wedding macro-economic analysis and political response. The deflationary tourniquet that is the Euro-zone slowly strangles the life out of Club Med, yet political reactions could arise at a European or at a national level. As yet, the speed of events does not privilege us with the ability to suggest which road will be taken. Perhaps AEP is right and the linchpin is France:

Albert Edwards from Société Générale said governments should use their powers over the exchange rate under Article 219 to force a change in policy. "The politicians should take matters into their own hands and instruct the ECB to drive the euro lower," he said.

That can happen only once France thinks the dangers of Laval policies outweigh the dangers of defying Bundesbank orthodoxy. Until then EMU will be an instrument of slow deflation torture.

Think of the consequences: a stalling action designed to safeguard the Eurozone may turn markets to single countries that are more vulnerable. Britain's crisis may now have entered a time of when, not if: precipitated by the success or failure of any Eurozone response.

Cell senescence explored

A useful breakthrough in understanding cell senescence.

The Newcastle team, working with the University of Ulm in Germany , used a comprehensive "systems biology" approach, involving computer modelling and experiments with cell cultures and genetically modified mice, to investigate why cells become senescent. In this aged state, cells stop dividing and the tissues they make up show physical signs of deterioration, from wrinkling skin to a failing heart.

The research, published by the journal Molecular Systems Biology , shows that when an ageing cell detects serious damage to its DNA - caused by the wear and tear of life - it sends out specific internal signals.

These distress signals trigger the cell's mitochondria , its tiny energy-producing power packs, to make oxidising "free radical" molecules, which in turn tell the cell either to destroy itself or to stop dividing. The aim is to avoid the damaged DNA that causes cancer.

This is more of a confirmation; the FT warns that this will not cause an elixir of eternal life: a gratuitous obeisance to aging and death. I am sure that this was released before, and has not been picked up by Fight Aging.

 

Europe turns bailiff to fend off bailout

The credit rally has been dragging its heels since the beginning of the year, and now strong signals are beginning to drive the price of capital up, alongse other recessionary indicators. The next downturn, the one we all anticipate and no one dares prophesy, is almost upon us.

BusinessEurope, the EU-wide lobby, warned this week of a "very worrying situation" as it become harder to raise money at a viable cost, if at all. The group called on the European Central Bank to send a "clear signal" about its collateral policy. Fears of tougher ECB rules are a key factor causing market flight from Greek debt.

The sudden halt in bond issues is disturbing since companies have been relying on capital markets to raise money as an alternative to Europe's fragile banks. The ECB said on Tuesday that 42pc of small businesses in the eurozone had reported worsening credit conditions in the second half of last year, despite the emergency stimulus of the authorities.

There is no more good news to buoy up the markets and sovereignty blow-ups are travelling down the tracks.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard also reports that Greece is likely to lose key voting rights at EU level, as the Commission invokes the Lisbon treaty to impose austerity measures. Without separate corroboration, this is not a clear step on the part of Europe. An ultimatum of a month has been given to impose further cuts and investigations into unaudited deficit financing is ongoing. Whatever the mechanisms, Greece's political class has supinely accepted the demands of their peers and have embarked upon depressionary pip-squeaking, until political tolerance for such measures dies. If the Greek government falls, default follows.

The Labour government continues to reserve its judgement (a charitable interpretation) as it is unclear if it has the political courage or legal immunity to resist a Greek bailout. A welcome irony if the Lisbon Treaty proved a final nail in the coffin of Broon.

Climate change or 'climate change'?

Is this a pun on the part of the Torygraph correspondent, Richard Alleyne. The title of his piece reads: “Fog over San Francisco thins by a third due to climate change”.

When you read the detail within the article, none of the sources quoted refer to climate change.

"Since 1901, the average number of hours of fog along the coast in summer has dropped from 56 per cent to 42 per cent, which is a loss of about three hours per day," said the study leader Dr James Johnstone at the University of California.

He said that it was unclear whether this is part of a natural cycle of [sic = or] the result of human activity, but the fog is receding because of a reduction in the difference between the temperature of the sea and the land.

This must be an example of the phrase 'climate change' used in its literal and proper meaning, rather than as short hand for a politicised warmist interpretation. Is this bias on the part of Eichard Alleyne, or a hook to see if readers can tell the difference?