This is from the London Paper — a free commuter paper. The idea is for readers to comment on whether they want to read more from particular readers. Good idea. But what if the idea was applied to journalists? What if readers rated everything a journalist wrote? What if his or her pay then depended on the results?

It could happen. It would be a very bad idea.

I am not in the habit of cut and pasting whole articles but I’m getting so hot under the collar about Swine Flu that this article is perhaps worth it. The article is by Professor Peter Curzon, a Professor of population and security at the University of Sydney. He is also a Professor of medical geography at Macquarie University. The article first appeared on news-medical.net on 1 June 2009.
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Is a flu pandemic looming and if so should we worry? It is now 41 years since we experienced the last pandemic of flu and many think that we are overdue for the next one. But have we over-reacted to the present outbreak of swine flu?

Like Bird Flu it would seem that we are faced by not one pandemic but two. The first is an epidemiological one comprised of cases and a few deaths from a relatively mild flu virus. The second is a rapidly emerging pandemic of human fear and anxiety, largely orchestrated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), governments and the media, and one which threatens to overwhelm the epidemiological pandemic.

Certainly we are faced by a new flu virus that seems to be very contagious between people, particularly teenagers and young adults, and one that is spreading quickly around the globe. We are also in the southern hemisphere about to enter our winter flu season and given that this virus is still evolving and moving we do not really know what it might do. But did we really need to construct this all pervading environment of fear and panic?

Have we learnt nothing from our over-reaction to SARS and Bird Flu when the media’s reaction totally swamped the epidemiological realities of two relatively small but significant epidemics among wildlife and transformed them into the Black Death of the 21st century?

Perhaps a certain amount of fear is useful, forcing people to consider precautionary behaviour and adopt personal avoidance strategies, but the line between what is ‘reasonable’ fear and something which produces widespread fear, anxiety and panic is a very blurred one and frequently over-stepped by the media.

While it is not in the media’s brief to enquire into the impact that their stories have on people, there seems little doubt that the media plays a defining role in how we see swine flu. While some media stories aid awareness and place such issues on our agenda, the temptation to sensationalise through emotional headlines, images and language is often irresistible.

We saw it with SARS and Bird Flu and in many respects we are seeing it repeated with swine flu. But what are the epidemiological realities of this flu outbreak?

So far the disease has spread to 53 countries producing a little over 15,500 cases and approximately 100 deaths. Up to this point 91 per cent of all cases have been in Mexico, the USA and Canada, and 98 per cent of all deaths in Mexico and the US.

Elsewhere the virus has been fairly mild and responded well to antiviral treatment. In a globalised interconnected world where millions cross international borders by air everyday, many perhaps incubating respiratory viruses, why are we surprised by the rapid diffusion of swine flu?

One of my major criticisms of Australia’s reaction to any anticipated pandemic is that there appears to be little understanding of the production and communicability of fear and how fear might be understood and ‘managed’ during the pre- and actual pandemic period.

To a large extent this stems from the different ways in which experts and ordinary people see risk and exposure. To experts, risk and exposure are quantifiable dimensions simply arrived at by comparing those exposed to a particular threat with those not exposed.

But to ordinary people, risk and exposure are emotional, intuitive, socially constructed things, very much influenced by the way we construct our view of our world, as well as by the reaction and opinions expressed by people around us, and by our reaction to media influences and government pronouncements.

There seems little doubt that most people harbour deep-seated fears about contagion and infection which are a mix of rational and irrational fears, and that while government pronouncements and media stories play an important role in informing and advising us, they may often play on our fears and ignite hysteria.

When we are consistently told that we are faced by an extraordinary viral threat that may strike down 25 per cent of the population, that people will be quarantined in their homes and should consider stockpiling food and antivirals, that 10 million doses of vaccine will be produced but that it may take three months, and confronted by headlines like “Killer Flu is Running Wild”, rationality is very quickly thrown out the window and replaced by emotion.

Further, when we are told that there is no magic cure, confidence in medical science and the government rapidly evaporates. It would also seem that most people are highly sceptical about government claims that it will protect them if a pandemic crisis does emerge. In consequence they fall back on their own resources and place self and family first.

No one disputes that governments should not follow a policy of active caution and plan for a possible pandemic, but we need to be convinced that we haven’t over-reacted, that authorities understand how people see such threats, and how government policies may impact on their lives. Critically, we also need to know more about the communicability of fear and how ordinary people react to pandemic threats both real and constructed.

One of the great ironies of 21st century life is that we seem to be more moved by the tempest than the gentle rain and what might be, rather than what is.

Swine flu is important, but where is the widespread public interest in the dengue epidemic in North Queensland that has so far produced more than 1,200 cases, or the thousands of whooping cough cases in NSW?

Here are my top tips for failing with greater frequency and style:

1. Fail as often as possible but never make the same mistake twice.

2. Set up failure targets for each and every employee.

3. If something fails kill it fast (and cheaply) and move on.

4. Set up an annual noble failure award*

5. Think like a kid sometimes – keep asking “Why?”

6. Hire curious people and don’t get too hung up on experience.

7. Ensure that teams have a mixture of ages, sexes and disciplines.

8. Do things that don’t appear to make any sense.

9. Go the wrong way on purpose some times.

10. Never follow lists of rules.

* If this is too successful you will obviously have to stop it.

Interesting piece by David Rowan in The Times last month (I read everything after everyone else).

Apparently there are 15 million members of Second Life but there’s a good reason why the early adopters have moved on — it’s got too mainstream. Since big business (Coke, BT, Toyota) and governments set up shop there, it changed the nature of the site from sought-after cool to yesterday’s dull idea. Like Twitter, it became boring when everyone else started doing it.

Even so, its currency is stable and the game is profitable for its owners, Linden Labs. Much the same might be said for any cool brand; Twitter, eBay, Friends Reunited and Facebook swiftly became mainstream. But social networks need more than 100 users to generate the same revenue as that generated by a traditional media customer, such as a newspaper subscriber. With these figures, a site has to become mainstream to make any profit at all. Cool gets the attention, but only the continued visits of the rest of us will make it worthwhile.

Did you know that you can buy a pen that not only transfers your scribbling to a digital file but also records any conversation made whilst you are writing. Useful? Frightening? Maybe both.

But this is nothing. In the future it is entirely conceivable that every thing that you say in a meeting will be recorded for posterity and will be searchable by anyone. This could be quite useful. If you miss a meeting you’ll be able to find it and watch it later. If you are threatened with a lawsuit you will be able to defend yourself by proving that certain things were said or were not. But then again do you really want your every utterance to be remembered forever?

What if you make a particularly stupid suggestion in a meeting and minutes later it ends up on Youtube for all to see? Or what if companies use verbal expression and body language software to analyse when people are lying? Talk about total recall. Scary.

We’ve had the Spanish flu (1918-19), the Asian flu (1957) and the Hong Kong flu (1968-69). More recently we’ve had SARS, bird flu and most recently we’ve had (or probably haven’t) swine flu. There is also seasonal flu that appears every winter and kills about 250,000 people annually.

The phrase “community of anxiety” was coined in 2004 by the writer Ian McEwan in a novel called Saturday about the events surrounding 9/11. A similar idea is that of information pandemics. The idea here is that fear and anxiety are spreading throughout the world, fuelled primarily by digital communications (i.e. interconnectivity) and low-cost travel.Fear can start with a single email, spread to a blog and end up on Twitter. The result is global panic on a scale hitherto unseen and outbreaks can be difficult to contain because drugs don’t generally work.

In early May the World Health Organization talked about the need to stockpile food and water due to the swine flu outbreak and raised the threat level to 5 out of a possible 6. Meanwhile, airports were installing thermal scanners and newspapers were revelling in the story as it grew every more scary and spectacular. The whole world seemed to be running for cover wearing a variety of (mostly useless) facemasks. Fear was spreading fast, fed by a mixture of confusion and impotence.

Of course the threat is real enough. The 1918 outbreak killed somewhere between 20-50 million people in less than 18-months while the Black Death in the 14th Century wiped out 1/3 of the European population in just two years. Even the Asia and Hong Kong pandemics killed about 1-2 million people apiece. But we are confusing what’s possible with what’s probable and the reason that we are doing this is that there is a collective feeling — a mood if you like – that something big and nasty is coming our way. This is partly because of a string of events, ranging from 9/11 and climate change to the economic collapse have left us feeling unsure about what’s next. It is possible that a pandemic will eventually emerge. It will probably start in an over-crowed Asian city and travel economy class on a jet to the US and Europe. We might be able to intercept it or we might not. The science surrounding such things is uncertain.

Interestingly though, there also appears to be a sense that we deserve things like this to happen to us in some way. We are collectively guilty (because we borrowed too much money or damaged the planet with our selfish, materialist ways, perhaps) and we need to be punished. There is also a warped sense of curiosity at play. What would the world look like after a genuine pandemic?

Another example of the fear factor was the jet that flew low over New York in early May. People automatically assumed another terrorist attack was taking place and panic whipped around Manhattan like wildfire.
It turned out to be someone talking some photographs but by then it was too late. And this, perhaps, is the point. Information now flows around the world too fast and there is not enough time to properly react or to separate fact from opinion, anecdote from analysis or sensation from science. It is now also next to impossible to figure out what to believe. There is too much information and much of it is unreliable. Thanks to Web 2.0 the old hierarchy of knowledge, where source related to trustworthiness and reliability, has broken down. We just don’t now whom or what to believe.

Furthermore, the people that we used to trust (scientists, politicians, religious figures and so on) are now so widely distrusted that we ignore them or take anything they say with a large pinch of salt. So far swine flu is killing about 0.1% of those that it infects. The mortality rate for the 1918-19 varieties was 2.5-5.0%. So far very few people have actually died. This could still change but I doubt it. Nevertheless, the sense of doom and gloom and impending apocalypse remains.

So United Airlines has decided to charge really fat people that want to fly extra.The idea is that if you can’t fit into one seat you have to buy two. Will the idea get off the ground? With 2/3 of Americans clinically overweight some people are calling this action discriminatory but I can’t see what the fuss is about.

Why should I have my plane trip turned into a sumo wrestling contest simply because the person sitting next to be can’t stop eating cheeseburgers? This has happened to me twice. Let’s just say that there is ‘flow’ under the armrest.Actually, I’ve got a much better idea. Low-cost airlines are now starting to charge people for baggage so why not charge passengers by body weight? Even better, people with anorexia nervosa could sell the bits of the seats they don’t use to clinically obese people, thereby creating a kind of secondary trading market for seating.

Where will this end? Maybe sports stadiums will start doing the same. What about cinemas, automakers:the list goes on.

PS – I’m joking.

I’ve never watched Britain’s Got Talent, but a clip of Susan Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables on YouTube has left me (and a few million other people) speechless. Why?

I think it is because she is a human being. She has not been airbrushed, photo shopped or edited. She is the real deal. She is something that people can relate to minus the fakery and spin.
She is, in a word, authentic.

Had she been blonde and beautiful her voice would have been lovely, but it would also have been expected. What shines through here is raw unadulterated talent. And people aren’t expecting that. Ms Boyle also challenges conventional definitions of beauty. Last time I looked this video clip had been viewed around 40 million times on YouTube. Perhaps authenticity is back?

Evolution is generally thought of as a very slow process in comparison to human life spans. Consequently we, as humans, make no difference to the evolution of life on earth. However, from a purely biological perspective this is far from true. Approximately 95% of the terrestrial world is now actively managed for the benefit of the human species and as a result the new epicentre of evolution is mankind and man-made environments.

These new environments consist of our crops, our waste, and us, with human pathogens sitting at the very top of the food chain. Over 50% of all species on earth are now parasites and for a growing number of these parasites we humans represent the ultimate gourmet experience. In other words, as we expand environments and numbers, the evolutionary possibilities for microbes also grow. Hence new pathogens like HIV emerge.

We are already seeing weeds evolve to mimic the chemical properties of agricultural crops so as to avoid man-made pesticides. Similarly, insect pests are developing resistence to avoid new pesticides. The most immediate issue arising from such developments is antibiotic resistance, whereby parasites evolve in ever more virulent forms to resist our best efforts to kill them. So what then does the future hold? One scenario is that we will take a whole host of new pests and pathogens into the future with us and, ultimately, it will be the smallest species that survive simply because big species like humans will be unable to evolve fast enough to cope. In other words, from an evolutionary point of view, the future belongs to pathogens, pests and their invited guests.