One of the slightly odd things that emerges when one looks at the history of health problems in the developed world is that, although the incidence and severity of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, has steadily declined, the incidence of allergic and auto-immune conditions, such as eczema and asthma, has increased. In some cases the increase is quite significant.

A student of mine, apparently taken by my enthusiasm for design, once asked me how I had come to the field. This gave me pause, because as I tried to formulate an answer, I found myself pushing further and further into my memory. Finally, I told the student, "It's a long story," because I realized it all started when I played in my parents' gravel driveway as a child. I think the story is interesting, not because I love talking about myself, but because of how natural a progression it was.

There's many time management systems and software tools that include the concept of priorities. But priorities change with time and circumstance. Priorities can be useful, but not if you're constantly re-evaluating them to keep them accurate. I think we can get around this conundrum with a combination of due dates and measuring one or both of two other characteristics: impact and effort.

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.

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