This event has become Team Grumpy's annual season-starter.  It's a well run two up team time trial event run on the R25/24 course.  This course uses a dual carriageway section for the first half, before switching to the old road running roughly parallel to the dual carriageway, but which is quite a bit hillier, with several short but quite steep climbs.

Over at the Team Grumpy blog, we'd been doing a count down to this event, ruminating on training and preparation.  In the event, we finished our "rigorous" training programme off with quite a lot of Belgian beer, takeaway curries and (on the evening before the event, pasta).  Two evenings-worth of system abuse was not, perhaps, the ideal fine-tuning of our finely-tuned physiques (in particular, I've had trouble keeping and/or getting the weight off), so we were feeling a little apprehensive and 'inwardly disturbed' on the way over to the course.

The Register reports (Phorm unleashes legal attack on critics) that much-criticised former spyware company Phorm has unleased legal missives in the direction of Which?, who conducted a user survery which supposedly found that internet users were deeply unhappy about the intrusive and possibly illegal Phorm system, which scans all internet activity in order to extract keywords for targetted advertising.  According to The Regiser,

News articles based on a survey indicating public opposition to Phorm's web snooping and advertising system have been withdrawn after the firm made legal threats to their publishers.

The BBC reports (Protest officers seized balloons) that some unusual items were confiscated from a power station protest group.  Supposedly items are meant to be confiscated to prevent offences being committed, but a FOI request reveals that along with the aforementioned balloons,

items taken included blankets, a walking stick, a clown outfit and soap.  [...]  A mountain bike, cycle helmets, bin bags and party poppers were also taken from protesters entering the camp site.

I'm visiting friends in South Wales, and I'm using their BT internet connection.  This gives me the first check that the BT-Phorm warning system is still working (it is - if you're on BT, you'll see the grey box with warning script on the right.

If you see this warning, click on the  InPhormation Desk link for more information about what Phorm, BT Webwise and deep packet inspection are, and why yo should be worried.

This morning, Ben Goldacre, the Guardian columnist and Bad Science blogger) has written on the difficulties and dangers of datamining to identify criminals and terrorists (Datamining would be lovely if it worked).

He's written this on the back of an IPPR report (The National Security Strategy: Implications for the UK intelligence community), and he's raising issues of accuracy and false positive rates - clearly analogous to evidence-based medical trials, which are closer to his usual blog fare.  Goldacre quotes the author of the report:

The Cramps' Lux Interior died earlier this month.  There's a story at the Mojo website (Lux Interior: October 21, 1946 - February 4, 2009)

I've inserted a video of my favourite Cramps track below the fold

Two reports in the press highlight the database dangers the UK is sleepwalking into.

The Guardian reports (DNA details of 1.1m children on database) that the details of over a million children remain in the national DNA database,  despite over half of these individuals having no criminal convictions.

 This cute little fish is Macropinna microstoma. The green objects under the transparent carapace are its eyes: the dark blobs above its mouth are olfactory organs.

 [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM9o4VnfHJU 480x295]

Here's a clip from Newsnight, in which Jeremy Paxman chairs a debate about the dangers of social networking.  Baroness Greenfield doesn't come out of it too well.

 [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8LlUME-IM 480x295]

Cyclingnews.com has a newsflash story concerning a new professional road cycling team to begin racing in 2010 (Britons announce professional road squad), Team Sky.  Clearly building on evidence of success on the track over the last few years, British Cycling have moved to set up a British-based road squad.  Sponsorship for four years is from Sky, who already play significant role in the development of UK cycling.

Dave Brailsford clearly has a number of riders targeted for the 25 man squad: