Recently, on CBC Spark, host Nora Young interviewed Luis Suarez about quitting email at work. You can also see Suarez's Web 2.0 Expo talk at Youtube. It got me thinking about the role of software in our lives -- especially in our work lives, and that regardless of how many new applications and systems are popping up, we're still missing the Next Big Thing -- maybe.

My father died in 2008, of colon cancer. He went into hospital April 17th and he died June 8th at the age of 91. For those seven weeks " most of which he spent in the palliative ward -- he showed remarkable grace and dignity, in spite of what was happening to him and around him. There was relatively little physical pain, thanks to the drugs they administered. At first, the doctors held out some hope that they could do something to help him. There was a battery of extensive and conclusive tests conducted immediately upon his admission to hospital. By April 19th, they knew his condition was terminal, because the cancer had spread aggressively to his liver. And that's when my dad started asking, calmly and seriously, for a morphine overdose.

As copyright folks know, fair use is messy, case-specific, and fact-intensive; it's a muddy standard and not a crystal rule. Thus, it's generally something that ought to be handled by juries, upon which we depend for resolution of tough fact issues. However, I don't think that Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum was correct in arguing that his fair use claim should go before a jury.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage.

This evening, BBC2 are running the first of a series of two programmes about the state of dementia residential (and presumably nursing) care in the UK. Gerry Robinson, a successful businessman, who, in 2007 brought us Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? returns to focus his attention on what might be done to improve the care that is meted out to those who live in 24 hour dementia care.

Xenotropic murine leukemia virus related virus (XMRV) has been implicated in prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Because XMRV is a retrovirus, it has been suggested that it might be susceptible to some of the many drugs available for treatment of AIDS. Of ten licensed compounds evaluated for activity against XMRV, just one, AZT (azidothymidine), was found to inhibit viral replication.

With the amount of travel that we do, I have to say that my mind already rests easier knowing that I have a Reboundtag. Should my luggage ever decide to take a tiki-tour of the world without me, it should find its way back once a baggage handler locates it, realises it's travelling on its own and logs its whereabouts on the Reboundtag website. Then, wherever I am, I can find out where my bag is (New Mexico/ Indonesia/ Glasgow) and tell the baggage handlers where I want it to be sent and when.

Imagine if the rules for carbon emissions constraint by different countries were applied to wages and taxation within the community: Those who are poorest would be hardest hit, needing to return to wages of a few years ago ... and as most would be young "developing" workers, that might be before they were working, or working for a pittance as a trainee. Meanwhile, the wealthiest might well be getting more money, based on their income from boom times when they were ripping everyone else off through commissions on dodgy derivatives. There'd be a bloody revolution.

Many conservatives seem to think that the suspects we have in custody do not deserve a trial, as they are seen as Prisoners of War. POW's do not have a right to trial, and are normally interned for the duration of the particular conflict. And that might pose a problem here, as technically the war on terror will never actually be over, and these prisoners were never soldiers of a particular country. Not to mention the fact that we have already arrested, tortured, and even managed to kill some of those we believed to be our enemies, and the only problem here of course is that we managed to arrest innocent people, and even kill some of them while in custody. So, indefinite detention seems a rather imperfect solution to the problem.

I am a poster child for public health. Why do I say this? Because I live in a state where there is a low-income, public healthcare option. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was able to utilize this option for my treatment. It worked, and it worked extremely well.

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