Archive
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23 September, 2003 view
English Usage. I noticed that on the official website, and in the better newspapers, the Hutton Enquiry is actually spelt Hutton Inquiry (with an I). Curious as to what the difference was (if any) I had a hunt around the web, and found some answers here.
19 September, 2003 view
It's looking more and more like the Americans have got themselves into another Vietnam, even down to the soldiers on the ground starting to ask questions about what the hell they're supposed to be there for. Tim Predmore is a US soldier on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division, based near Mosul in northern Iraq. He asks who and what he has been fighting for, and I'm sure there are many others, both inside and outside the armed forces, with similar questions.
18 September, 2003 view
By now I think most people will have received an email containing the "jumbled letters" meme that's doing the rounds at the moment. For a lot more information from someone who's actually done some research into the thing (and other items to do with written language recognition), there's an excellent blog entry at http://www.bisso.com/ujg_archives/000224.html.
17 September, 2003 view
Bugger. A fire has destroyed two-thirds of the bikes at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, a place where I've spent many happy hours just wandering around looking at the machines. Not only did they have a unique collection of almost every British bike ever built, but they also had a number of one-offs such as Lawrence of Arabia's last Brough Superior and the superb Triumph Quadrent. A real cultural tragedy :-(
6 September, 2003 view
Former minister Michael Meacher has weighed into the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory argument big style with a very controversial article in today's Guardian. In fact he near enough accuses the US political machine of deliberately ignoring intelligence reports so that the attacks would take place, providing the perfect pretext to invoke the plans laid down by the US political right wing some years earlier.
Let's hope this blows the whole debate wide open again.
3 September, 2003 view
Before the war, President Bush told us Iraq was a throbbing hub of terror. It wasn't, of course. But it is now.
Jonathan Freedland expands on this theme in his article The blind prophet.
26 August, 2003 view
There's a fascinating diary published in The Guardian, written by Mike May, who was blind for 43 years from the age of three. Then he had his sight partially restored and the resulting diary makes for compelling reading.
21 August, 2003 view
Attacks in Iraq continue, whether it's the suicide car-bomber at the United Nations headquarters there, snipers and men with grenades taking opportunistic potshots at US military personnel, or saboteurs blowing up oil pipelines and pulling down power cables. But is this just the random work of a few fanatical remnants of the old régime, or was this whole idea of a guerilla-style campaign against an occupying army something that was planned carefully and deliberately by Saddam Hussein before the invasion? Ali Ballout, writing in the Lebanese Daily Star seems to be fairly certain.
15 August, 2003 view
Unbelievable. No, really unbelievable. The game of Lemmings, entirely written in DHTML (in other words, in Javascript). The work of someone who is either a true genius, or an utter madman -- I haven't yet decided which!
15 August, 2003 view
This kind of thing always makes me chuckle. After the Thai police, working with the CIA, arrest Hambali, reputed to be Al-Qaeda's top man in southeast Asia, neighbours who lived near him report that he apparently "kept a low profile" What were they expecting, a neon sign in his window saying "One of Dubya's most-wanted lived here", a car number plate reading "T-ERRORIST", or perhaps they thought he'd be out in his back garden with a balaclava and kalashnikov, taking potshots at the Stars and Stripes.
13 August, 2003 view
"A man has become the first in the country to be given an anti-social behaviour order banning him from using the racist term "Paki". Michael Guilfoyle, 31, of Ardwick, Manchester, was made the subject of the order ... if he utters the word again in public, or on the phone to council staff, he could face up to five years in jail. The order is effective for the rest of his life."
Now while i can understand the sentiments behind this decision, I can't help feeling that telling someone "you may not say such-and-such a word for the rest of your life" is more than a little bit Big Brother-ish.
13 August, 2003 view
"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day". Actually, it's an article about how there are now multiple standards for telling the time at use around the world today, and they don't all tell exactly the same time. Interesting.
8 August, 2003 view
Just returned from a few days break in Bruges which was relaxing and enjoyable. I'm have some photos available once I get around to copying them over to the web (they're only the usual touristy ones anyway).
Two places stood out for exceptional service, so they get a mention on the website! Firstly we stayed at the Azalea Hotel which is thoroughly recommended. Only a few minutes' walk from the centre of town but tucked down a quiet little side street, friendly and helpful service from the staff, and not ridiculously expensive, given that Bruges hotel rates are even worse than London ones.
For food, you could do far worse than visit De Vlaamsche Pot, Helmstraat 3-5 (off Nordzandstraat). It's a newish restaurant which specialises in (unsurprisingly) Flemish dishes. Quite a good place for a romantic dinner for two, certainly not dirt cheap but good food and an excellent atmosphere, and if you're lucky the owner's two pug dogs might be wandering around and begging at your feet for titbits!
2 August, 2003 view
Lurking in a tiny little link tucked away at the bottom of an Independent article, I found the official Hutton Enquiry website. This could be an interesting one to watch once things get going properly in just over a week's time.
1 August, 2003 view
Lurking in the dark recesses of the LondonGeek Wiki I found an excellent potted history of boo.com -- which pretty much explains everything about the dot-com boom, and why it collapsed. Or for the American perspective, the cult of Kibu story is equally insightful.
31 July, 2003 view
Statistics, damn statistics and lies. The Guardian explains why I have more than the average number of legs. Fun!
30 July, 2003 view
It was brought to my attention today by a post on Ixion that the AA now has a policy of charging its members for recovery from the scene of an RTA. Now I've paid the AA annual membership subscriptions for nearly 10 years, and as someone whose main form of transport is a bike I consider accident recovery to be a particularly important factor. Why? Well a low-speed collision between two cars may result in nothing worse than some chipped paint and dented bodywork -- the same low-speed collision involving a bike could easily leave the bike in an unrideable condition.
So I wrote to the AA asking them whether or not this was the case, and whether or not they really thought this was appropriate action for an organisation that likes to call itself "the fourth emergency service". The reply (from the Customer Services department) did indeed confirm this policy:
Thank you for your e-mail.
I can confirm that in the event of a road traffic accident, we would always recommend that you contact your vehicle insurer in the first instance. Many insurance companies do have preferred recovery agents for use by their policy-holders in such situations.
If your insurer is happy for us to recover the vehicle, we will do so. However, this will incur a charge as per our terms and conditions (please see extract below).
There was also a copy of Clause 13 of their Terms and Conditions, which reiterates this. It's quite a new clause though, as I'd have noticed it ages ago otherwise.
Anyway the upshot is that I've written back to the AA telling them that due to this specific policy I'll be cancelling my membership with them once its current period runs out. After all there are plenty of other recovery organisations around these days, many of which are cheaper than the AA anyway, with higher customer satisfaction as well. If there are any other AA members -- or prospective members -- who think that this is a ridiculous clause (what are we paying them for if not for recovery service?), then please do as I did and let them know that they're losing customers due to it.
28 July, 2003 view
When I was in my early teens, amongst the many sci-fi (and non SF) books that I read, one that made a big impression on me was Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon". Moving, inspiring and poignant, it was one of those books whose theme kept coming back to me in moments of quiet reflection long after I'd forgotten the details, and even the name of the story. So when I found the book in a bookshop a couple of weeks ago, I didn't hesitate to get it. Upon re-reading, even this many years later, it's still one of the most powerful stories I've ever encoutered. If you've never read it, go out and get it and read it immediately. You won't regret it.
28 July, 2003 view
The Guardian has an article by Gary Younge about the relative positions of both Bush and Blair given that: "Both lied to their electorates in order to prosecute an illegal war against the will of the international community. Interesting reading.
11 July, 2003 view
Fascinating article about the BBC Domesday Project back in 1986 written by one of the people involved in creating the system. For people of my age it's bound to bring back memories of being involved!
10 July, 2003 view
Hmmm, I seem to have grassed myself up to the RIAA. Here's the full text of an email I've just sent. Let's see what (if anything) happens ...
From: iain@deepsea.force9.co.uk
To: cdreward@riaa.com
Subject: Many gigabytes of pirated musicHello
I have several gigabytes of mp3s on my computer at home. Until recently it was comprised almost exclusively of music ripped from my own CDs and it was purely sitting on my server to make it easier for my wife & me to listen to our music on our computers.
Since you've started your infamous "let's sue everyone" threats, however, I've decided I'm going to make all of my tracks available to anyone who wants them, and I'm now a happy user of various P2P networks. I'm uploading anything up to a gigabyte or more of music a day, and what's more I will *never* buy another CD from any of your member companies until you grow up and start realising that just as home taping didn't "kill music" in the 70s, neither will file-sharing.
I'm sending this email just so you realise quite how counter-productive your actions are becoming. To quote a very famous track from an artist signed by one of your member companies:
"There's a million of us just like me
who cuss like me; who just don't give a fuck like me
who dress like me; walk, talk and act like me"You're going to lose. Have fun :-)
8 July, 2003 view
Britain is fast on its way to becoming the 51st State of the USA according to George Monbiot. Interesting article.
2 July, 2003 view
The Guardian is reporting Empire Magazine's list of the 10 Worst Movie Accents, and coming up trumps -- and deservedly so -- is Sean Connery's attempt at an Irish-American cop in The Untouchables. As with every other part Sean Connery's ever played, he simply uses his standard Scottish lilt with an occasional weird vowel thrown in to show willing.
26 June, 2003 view
A very insightful article in the Asia Times about the (in)security situation in Iraq, and why it's only going to get worse for the Americans and British. The sooner western troops get out of there the better, but that's not going to happen because the White House and Downing Street both know that without their "input" the Iraqi people are going to embrace the "wrong sort" of democracy and vote for a government that's not prepared to be the willing slave of US interests.
18 June, 2003 view
Sometimes the things happen that just beggar belief. At work yesterday I asked for some clarification on how a set of business rules were supposed to operate. This is the reply I received!
Hi Iain
This is fine. A way to ease the confusion would be to change the order of the categories. The new and old 1-7 are broadly comparable. If 8 and 9 become 15 and 16, and the new 14 stays as it is, then the new 10-13 can go back to being the old 8-11. The new 13 and 15 would then become 12 and 13. This way the genuninely new categories are given new numbers not used before and all the rest match the old categories in all but a few details.
Well that clears up everything!
4 June, 2003 view
Yet again from The Guardian. This time they have Richard Norton-Taylor giving exactly the questions to be asked about WMDs at Prime Minister's Questions today.
30 May, 2003 view
The Guardian has managed to track down Salam Pax (the pseudonym of the guy behind the Dear Raed blogs) and has an interview.
22 May, 2003 view
I've just started looking at a programming language called Ruby, for no particular reason other than that it looks interesting. Actually, it looks very interesting indeed, seeming to use some of the best features of Perl but in a completely object-oriented context, which is a form of programming that I've always liked. Probably because I was trained using good old-fashioned procedural languages, I find the freedom offered by OO methodologies are like a breath of fresh air. Anyway, I've found an excellent Ruby resource and I'll be trying to develop some sample programs soon.
20 May, 2003 view
"In training, they forced me to listen to the Barney "I Love You" song for 45 minutes. I never want to go through that again," one US operative told [Newsweek]"
US admits to using Sesame Street and Metallica for Psy-Ops in Iraq, denies it's torture.
I don't make this stuff up, I swear.
20 May, 2003 view
Worldcom. The telecommunications company that went bust owing $41 billion amid allegations of serious fraud at the top. The company that collapsed causing countless smaller businesses and individuals to lose everything (and here). The company that's still under a chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and has criminal prosecutions pending.
Worldcom. The telecommunications company that has just been awarded a $500 million contract by the United States Government to build a state-of-the-art telecommunications system in Iraq. Words fail me ...
20 May, 2003 view
Don't buy from Dixons or Currys. Generally good advice anyway (stick to the smaller, independent local stores, it's worth paying a few quid more), but this blog lists a catalogue of nightmarish disasters when one woman's telly went wrong.
16 May, 2003 view
Just out on The Register, regarding ntl:'s proposed 1 gigabyte-per-day transfer cap for its cablemodem users:
NTL boss Barclay Knapp was asked whether the cableco had seen an improvement in its network performance following the introduction of the cap in February ... he said: "In terms of broadband, we did get a lot of ... er ... I made a lot of friends with a lot of our high users in the sense that they felt free to email me directly about this 1 Gigabyte cap"
Yes indeed, I bet you made lots of new "friends" over that one. Still, it seems that their previous threats to cut off anyone exceeding the 1Gb limit have now softened, and it's become just "a guideline". Which is nice.
15 May, 2003 view
Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war. An all-American heroine, the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. It couldn't have happened at a more crucial moment, when the talk was of coalition forces bogged down, of a victory too slow in coming.
The only problem: it wasn't true. The whole thing was virtually made up by the Pentagon. The paragaph above comes from the truth about Jessica Lynch in today's Guardian.
12 May, 2003 view
At the weekend I noticed that someone on one of the P2P file-sharing networks was offering a file entitled Memento - Chronological Order.mpg. How bloody daft is that! Anyone who's seen the film will know that one of the key things that makes it work so well is its non-chronological nature -- or to be more precise the fact that it's basically shown in reverse chronological order. *sigh* some people really just don't get it.
12 May, 2003 view
Now if only there were a law in Britain against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, I'm sure the Iraqi people would have a case:
"Mary Archer also hints her husband may seek a role in rebuilding Iraq once he is released from prison"
Now that's definitely unwarranted. After all, they've only just got rid of Saddam, we can't inflict Archer on them. I can just imagine it: "here you go Iraqis, we'll teach you all about democracy and that kind of stuff, just follow the example of our very own ex-Minister for Disinformation and Lies"
7 May, 2003 view
Every so often something pops up on USENET that's just perfect.
7 May, 2003 view
Are we, as a society, too scared to take risks? That's the question asked by a conference in London and neatly summarised by the BBC. Personally I think I agree with the conclusions that society is reluctant to do so much due to the potential for harm -- which exists in almost everything. In part this is probably fuelled by the increasingly litigious world in which we live, especially in the United States where the huge punitive damages awarded can send companies, not to mention individuals, crashing into bankruptcy.
7 May, 2003 view
BBC News Online reports "Seal 'caused' shuttle disaster". That'll teach mission control not to go listening to Kiss From a Rose when they should've been watching what was going on!
6 May, 2003 view
We spent some of the Bank Holiday weekend visiting my sister who lives in Weston-super-Mare. On the Monday we went on an excellent little drive around Somerset, visiting Cheddar Gorge and Wookie Hole. Very enjoyable and not too touristy at this point in the season, and Althea (as usual) took literally hundreds of photos! I'll try to have those online as soon as I find a bit more disk space. Obligatory Crap Joke warning: I was rather disappointed that although you find foxes in a fox hole, and rabbits in a rabbit hole, there were no wookies to be found in Wookie Hole! Sorry. I'll get my coat.
The only downside was lunchtime -- we stopped at a small village called Priddy and went into a pub there, The New Inn, for lunch. Despite being only the second group of people in the pub, an hour later when we finally lost patience and enquired about our food, we were told that they hadn't even bothered to send the order to the kitchen! And we didn't even get an apology for this. So if anybody's ever in Priddy, don't go to The New Inn, where the concept of decent service seems completely beyond them. Just 50 yards round the corner is The Queen Victoria pub where not only do you get the food that you order, but you get it in a reasonable amount of time, and it's good food, too!
2 May, 2003 view
If you're not familiar with Britain, you may not be aware that the country is littered with memorials to those who died fighting the two World Wars. Just about every city, town and village has a war memorial, even larger companies will have one. For example, there is a plaque at Liverpool Street station in London which lists the names of hundreds of ex-railwaymen who died fighting in the two wars. I personally find them fascinating, not least because they're a constant reminder of the unimaginably large numbers of ordinary men (and some women) who were sent to their deaths, mostly needlessly. Interestingly it turns out the Imperial War Museum is in the process of creating a National Inventory of War Memorials, to try to comprehensively detail the 50,000 or more war memorials that exist in the UK.
1 May, 2003 view
The press are doing their usual hysterical nonsense about May Day, claiming that hordes of anarchists are about to destroy civilization as we know it, or something. The Evening Standard's website has a "follow the carnage as it happens" page ... only nothing has happened. Amusingly, at the moment they claim:
A protest by students in Totill Street, SW1, has failed to draw any demonstrators so far.
Which means that it's not a protest is it, really? (In case the original vanishes, here's a screenshot [177kb at the moment, sorry]). Even more curiously, according to Streetmap there isn't even a street in London called Totill Street. No wonder there's nobody there!
29 April, 2003 view
This one's doing the rounds at the moment. Apparently the Evening Standard doctored a photo of "jubilant" Iraqis to make the crowd look larger than it actually was. Interesting.
29 April, 2003 view
That mad jug-eared unemployed bloke's at it again:
"Prince Charles expressed concerns ... that the human race might be wiped out by a self-replicating "grey goo" as a result of emerging developments in nanotechnology."
He should stick to commenting on things that he actually knows about like how to reach your mid-50s without ever doing a day's work in your life, or talking to trees or whatever it is he does in his 24x7 spare time.
28 April, 2003 view
Finally, a sensible piece about SARS.
The new virus has killed around 260 people since last November. "In that period of time, tens of thousands could be expected to have died from flu and pneumonia," said Dr Peter Marsh, a social psychologist and director of the social issues research centre at Oxford.
25 April, 2003 view
To celebrate 50 years of Pearl and Dean, the Guardian has put together their list of some of the greatest cinema adverts.
23 April, 2003 view
Hans Blix, the chief UN Weapons Inspector, has lambasted the USA and UK for inventing specious reasons to start the Iraq war. Even more evidence (as if any more was required) that this whole sorry tale was nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, or the "liberation" of the Iraqi people.
Interestingly, it looks increasingly likely that the new-found taste for democracy in Iraq could backfire on American interests big time, as Shia leaders move in to fill the power vacuum. If the people of Iraq end up voting for a second Shi'ite Islamic state next door to the Iranian one, then the western governments will have very neatly managed to totally screw themselves. I wonder if Bush will appreciate the irony?
23 April, 2003 view
The BBC have got a quite nifty little set of animations showing how the political map of Europe has changed between 1900 and 2003. Interesting.
20 April, 2003 view
17 April, 2003 view
Robert Fisk's latest article asks what's really happening in Baghdad -- and why? Just read it.
16 April, 2003 view
Noam Chomsky is as passionate as ever in a recent article analysing the post-war situation in Iraq. Worth a read.
14 April, 2003 view
"Why should an American general come here? Iraqis should govern themselves."
"They say they came here to liberate us. We have paid a heavy price for the removal of Saddam Hussein, so the Americans should go now."
Just two voices amongst many in the Iraqi capital (and no doubt elsewhere in the country). America and Britain say the war is almost over -- in fact it's hardly begun.
14 April, 2003 view
With every day that passes it's getting harder and harder for the pro-war group to justify what's happened to Iraq. The fact that the country's armed forces -- including the supposed élite regiments -- crumbled so quickly, shows that Iraq was no real military threat to its immediate neighbours, let alone to a superpower half the planet away. And despite having sent in teams of specialists, the "Coalition" has yet to find anything approximating to a Weapon of Mass Destruction. What's more, the most senior scientific advisor to Saddam Hussein's government has willingly surrendered to the Americans and is said to be co-operating -- and he too insists that there are no WMDs left in Iraq.
The two real reasons for the invasion are becoming increasingly clear. When mass looting broke out in Baghdad, US Marines stood by for days on end watching criminal gangs tear the city apart. There was one building in the whole city that they did post armed guards outside. Not the hospitals, where patients were literally pushed off beds by looters so that the beds could be stolen, nor the museums, where priceless and invaluable artifacts from the dawn of western civilisation six millennia ago were smashed, no, there was only one place in Baghdad that the United States considered important enough to protect. The Ministry of Oil.
The second reason for the invasion is now becoming obvious from Bush's rantings about Syria. America is flexing its muscles, showing that not only does it have the military ability to destroy any country it wants whenever it wants, but that it's more than prepared to do so. The Bush doctrine seems now to be one of neo-Colonialism, where countries will either accept American beliefs and values (no matter how foreign they are to the indigenous traditions) or will suffer the consequences. All of which will ultimately result in vast inflows of wealth and prestige to the United States, much like the British Empire kept this small island as the world's most powerful nation for 150 years. But all empires crumble eventually, and as the saying goes, the larger they are, the harder they fall.
11 April, 2003 view
The Guardian once again has an excellent, incisive and thoughtful article, this time by Julian Barnes, which explains just some of the reasons why I still intend to go on tomorrow's anti-war match in London.
10 April, 2003 view
The domain name says it all. www.WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com. Mohammed Saheed al-Sahaf's very own fan club. Wonderful!
9 April, 2003 view
Adam C put together a whole load of publicity shots of the Suzuki GSXR 750 into one neat animated GIF to demonstrate how the bike's changed over the years.
9 April, 2003 view
A work colleague of my wife has recently returned from a trip to Shanghai. Her workplace has asked her to stay away from work for a fortnight in case she's become infected with SARS. Let's just look at this for a moment.
Shanghai is about 1500km away from most of Guangdong province, where the vast majority of Chinese SARS cases have been reported. And according to the latest official figures SARS is responsible for 103 deaths out of 2671 cases. And that's in the month or so since it was first recognised, so it's obviously not an extremely fast-spreading infection.
So to summarise. Someone has been with 1500km of a place where there's a low chance of catching an illness which, 19 times out of 20, won't prove fatal anyway. Yet they ask her to stay off work for two weeks. This is equivalent to asking someone who's visited London to be quarantined because there's an illness reported in Athens -- or for New Yorkers to be panicking because someone has become ill in Miami.
8 April, 2003 view
George W Bush, when told he was meeting Tony Blair in Northern Ireland, is supposed to have said that he's always been told Dublin is a beautiful city. Given that they're likely to be discussing the Northern Ireland situation, I wonder how much (if anything) he actually knows about the political situation there. It wouldn't surprise me if Dubya thinks that the Irish Republicans are overseas supporters of his own party ...
8 April, 2003 view
This is probably all over the blogs by now, but a Nigerian 419 scammer has been beaten at his own game. OK, it's only to the tune of US$3, but it's still very entertaining reading.
7 April, 2003 view
Google News seems to have decided that corporate press releases are valid "news" items. Hmmmm. And how long will it be before the size of a company's wallet (or the size of their lawyers) determines how important a "news story" is? Seems I'm not alone in worrying about this, judging by these letters to The Register on the subject. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any similar product out there. I know there are a number of content aggregation providers in the news world, but they either don't attempt to determine the relative importance of various stories, or else they require input from human editors. The Google News system -- at least until it started taking PR garbage -- was automated and reasonably intelligent, and also fairly unbiased.
7 April, 2003 view
So Tony Bush and George Blair (sic) are meeting in Northern Ireland to discuss the situations in both Iraq and Ulster. I can picture it now:
Bush: Say Tony, so you've got problems with terrorists too? No problem, lemme just make a quick phone call, I'll sort them all out for you ... what's that you say, we can't bomb Belfast and Derry? Why the hell not?!
7 April, 2003 view
America may be "The Land of the Free" -- but increasingly it seems to be the the case that you're only really free to agree with the Government. Which sounds to me suspiciously like the kind of "freedom" that the Soviet Union used to declare its citizens enjoyed. This article by a couple of anti-war Bostonians on holiday in Barcelona ends with them contrasting freedom of expression and opinion in Europe to the hostility they faced back in America when simply trying to maintain an anti-war stance.
4 April, 2003 view
Yay! NTK picked up on my counterstrike / Iraq war image similarity thing. It was here first, though :-).
Talking of NTK, they link to The 'Out Of Order' Project. Love it!
3 April, 2003 view
Here's a quick question: why does a Google search for "Bill Clinton" still return www.whitehouse.gov as it's highest-ranking result?
3 April, 2003 view
In news nearly as scary as the war, the WHO are reporting that SARS isn't under control in Hong Kong or China, and has the potential to become a global pandemic.
3 April, 2003 view
So Edwin Starr has died. How ironic that one of his most famous songs can't currently be played on many radio stations due to censorship.
2 April, 2003 view
There is a superbly written and very incisive article regarding the war by the outspoken Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy in today's Guardian. A snippet:
In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it?
Excuse me while I laugh.
31 March, 2003 view
Hooray, humour! One thing that you can say about big news stories is that gives the satirists something to get their teeth into. I love the images in this guide to Iraqi troops courtesy of The Rockall Times.
31 March, 2003 view
Seems like dolphins really are more intelligent than humans. At least the Americans' amazing mine-sweeping dolphins seem to be: when put in a potentially lethal situation they've got the brains to swim off and go hunting herrings, or female dolphins or whatever, rather than floating around waiting to get blown to smithereens! I wonder if their final set of squeaks and clicks translates as "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish"?
31 March, 2003 view
I've just finished reading this interesting article about what might happen in a post-war Iraq if the Americans finally win. If they do manage to create a genuinely democratic system there (and that's a very big "if"), what happens if the Iraqis then use that democracy to vote for a party that says "US Out Of Iraq, Nationalise the Oil Fields"? Will American oil business sit there and accept the will of the people if that means losing sight of hundreds of billions of dollars of potential revenue? It's a highly-plausible scenario, and an interesting one to contemplate.
Game?
Reality?
26 March, 2003 view
Robert Fisk, in his front page article in today's Independent once again exposes the brutal cost behind war. Regarding the missiles that struck the Baghdad market he writes:
It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car.
Two missiles from an American jet killed them all - by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be 'liberated' by the nation that destroyed their lives. Who dares, I ask myself, to call this 'collateral damage'?
25 March, 2003 view
Devious chaps, these Iraqis. Faced with overwhelmingly superior military might, they're not standing out in the open where they can get gunned down in their thousands, but instead are using guerilla tactics such as ambush and urban warfare. What's more, their pitiful weaponry, consisting largely of semi-automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, doesn't show up on radar. How are British and American generals supposed to target their computer-controlled cruise missiles on handguns? Don't they know there's a war on?! It's just not fair!
25 March, 2003 view
He might not agree with the anti-war protesters but David Aaranovitch's article in today's Guardian makes for some interesting reading. And regarding the fact that so many teenagers and children seem to be defying their parents, the schools, and the Government to protest, I don't think you can say it better than this:
Far better being an active citizen than a moaning passive consumer of the latest mobile phone.
Sticking with today's Guardian, George Monbiot ends up his column with the following claim:
The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.
An extraordinary claim? Not when you read the rest of the article. Turns out that not only has the Guantanamo Bay thing come back to haunt the Americans, but that their troops in Afghanistan have behaved with similar levels of barbarity to the Serbians in Kosovo. And what's more, this has been sanctioned -- or at the very least known about -- at fairly high levels of command.
24 March, 2003 view
Liberators or occupiers? Desperately poor Shi'ite villagers seem to have little doubt.
24 March, 2003 view
A rather thoughtful article from SMH Australia about why the military's tight grip on the US media could end up backfiring (no pun intended). Britain's Daily Mirror makes a similar point.
23 March, 2003 view
Getting away from the war for a moment, last night I had the opportunity to try out Bo Dean's BBQ in Poland Street, Soho, and I certainly didn't come away disappointed! Definitely well worth a visit if you're looking for somewhere different to eat, it's been started by one of the original co-founders of Belgo's and I can see this becoming just as popular. Delicious food, huge portions, and very friendly staff, and as you'd expect from something even loosely connected with Belgo's an excellent selection of quality beers and lagers. Just don't even think about going there if you're vegetarian, though.
22 March, 2003 view
I love this home-made placard!
21 March, 2003 view
Blogging direct from Iraq, Where is Raed? makes for compelling, if somewhat eerie reading.
21 March, 2003 view
Big respect due to Grigor McClelland, returning his CBE to Downing Street in protest over the war.
Meanwhile Will Self provides a remarkably lucid and well-written account of why we should continue to protest and march in the Evening Standard.
20 March, 2003 view
After work today I went along to Parliament Square to protest against the war. What a fantastic atmosphere! Getting off the tube at Embankment and walking up towards Parliament the whole street was just filled with schoolkids coming away from where they'd been protesting all day. As evening fell many of them stayed on, and the numbers just continued to swell as people left work and joined the protest.
At the peak I reckon there were probably about 10,000 people there, completely filling the square and for a while taking over some of the surrounding roads including Westminster Bridge. It was all very good-natured and friendly, with a number of sound systems setting up, and a very lively samba band, but at the same time there was also a lot of anger directed at the politicians cowering inside Parliament. I left shortly after 8 o'clock, and there were apparently a couple of arrests later on, but nothing major. Indymedia UK has got a couple of reports about it, too. [1] [2]
20 March, 2003 view
Shamelessly stolen from today's Guardian:
The Bush administration and British government have repeatedly blamed France's threatened veto for the failure to secure a second UN resolution authorising military action against Iraq.
What Washington has failed to mention is its own veto over many years to block initiatives such as opposition to apartheid South Africa, and even the prohibition of chemical weapons. [This article] is a partial list of UN resolutions vetoed by the US since 1972.
19 March, 2003 view
Today's news coming in about Washington's determination to stifle any voice except those it approves, is that independent journalists reporting on the war could be fired upon in a bid to prevent them reporting information that's not been OKd by the generals. This claim has come, not from a reporter on the fringe left, but from Kate Adie, one of Britain's most senior and most respected war journalists. And they tell us that this is a war for democracy and freedom ...
18 March, 2003 view
Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
Who said the above quote? Bush? Blair? JFK? Churchill? In fact it was Hitler's second-in-command, Hermann Goering, during the Nuremburg Trials. Food for thought.
18 March, 2003 view
As they're forced to flee Iraq before the Americans start bombing, the United Nations nuclear weapons inspectors report that there were absolutely no signs whatsover that Iraq was -- or even could be -- pursuing a nuclear weapons policy.
18 March, 2003 view
I've now had the opportunity to read Robin Cook's resignation speech in which he roundly demolishes most of the supposed arguments in favour of the war. For example:
Some advocates of conflict claim that Saddam's forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days. We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.
In fact all of the arguments that supposedly justify military action are similarly shot through with inconsistencies and hypocrisy. We've apparently been waiting 12 years for Saddam to disarm as per the UN resolutions, and patience has finally run out. Well then how about the 30-plus years that Israel has been defying United Nations Security Council resolutions? On a similar theme, the US Government has expressed its disgust at France's announcement that it would be prepared to use its veto -- yet just look at the number of times the United States has vetoed Security Council resolutions which would be critical of Israel. The sheer hypocrisy is astounding!
Perhaps George Bush and Tony Blair really are about to commence on a campaign to rid the world of tyrants. Saddam Hussein is often (and correctly) described as a ruthless dictator who would not hesitate to imprison, torture, and indiscrimnately put to death those he disagrees with, even his own citizens. But the "leaders of the free world" have to be consistent and take the same stand against all similar despotic régimes: and so I have no doubt we will shortly be hearing that bombing has commenced in Beijing ...
Or perhaps not. In actual fact, as is plainly clear, this forthcoming war is all about power. George Bush can bully and bomb Iraq into submission precisely because Saddam Hussein isn't seriously a threat, and in doing so profoundly alters America's relationship with the rest of the world. Not only are they now the sole superpower on the planet, but they've proved that they're not afraid to flex their muscles, and will have done so in what is economically the most important region of the world.
17 March, 2003 view
I heard on the news this morning that the latest shot fired as part of America's new-found hatred of all things French is that a Republican Senator is proposing legislation that would enable US servicemen's bodies buried overseas (for example in French war cemeteries) to be returned to the United States. I think that's a smashing idea, and in the spirit of reclaiming what's rightfully theirs, the French should reciprocate by asking America to return to them their statue. You know, the large green one of the lass with the torch and the book ...
12 March, 2003 view
Wow, Transport for London seem to have got something else right. Not only has the congestion charge made the streets of central London much emptier, but they've now addressed something else that is the bane of every motorcyclist's life: the sorry state of our streets. TfL have implemented an online street fault reporting system where you can electronically let them know about potholes, cracks in the road, abandoned vehicles, all sorts. As long as they actually act on this information, either by dealing with the problem themselves if it's one of their jurisdictions, or passing it on to the relevant council or the DTLR then I think it's a superb idea. Smashing :-)
11 March, 2003 view
The power of satire. Terry Jones' latest article for The Observer uses humour to put a powerful anti-war, pro-UN case.
26 February, 2003 view
As war seems to loom ever closer, it looks like we can say goodbye to independent, unbiased journalism for the duration of any conflict.
20 February, 2003 view
While browsing The Guardian's website I came across a link to a site that intrigued me. It's called bookcrossing.com and the basic idea is that it's a book tracking site. After registering, they urge you to select any books that you no longer want and after inputting the details you get given a unique ID for that book and they ask you to "release it into the wild" so that someone else can read it for free. They encourage anyone picking up the book to make a note on their site so that the book can be followed as it wanders around the country or even the globe. Interesting idea.
18 February, 2003 view
I've already linked below to a tongue-in-cheek guide to how Londoners speak, but for a slightly more realistic guide on how to "speak proper like wot I do," this is quite a nice guide to speaking like a native Londoner.
14 December, 2002 view
The company I work for recently went into liquidation, but we the employees decided we still wanted to have a Christmas do of sorts, so last night we went out for some drinks. It was really good seeing everyone again after a break of a couple of weeks and I think an excellent time was had by all.
20 August, 2002 view
On the off-chance you want to come to London and fit-in perfectly with the locals, you could do far worse than learn to speak the way the locals do. Made me chuckle a bit, that's for sure.
13 August, 2002 view
I've been spending a lot of time looking into XPath recently, and trying to find a decent online tutorial. The best I've come across seems to be the one here.
5 July, 2002 view
Don't ask how I came across this article. No, I mean it, don't ask. It makes me laugh though, and I think more people should read it!
12 June, 2002 view
Yet another excellent piece of analysis regarding the real motives behind Bush's "War On Terrorism" from the serious UK press.
5 June, 2002 view
In light of the recent build-up of military force in the Kashmir region, someone recently commented that they'd heard about Pakistani students in Islamabad asking what they should do in the event of a nuclear attack. This reminded me of the pamphlet circulated by the UK Government in the height of the Cold War called "Protect and Survive" and out of curiosity I did a websearch to see if any titbits from this amazing publication were preserved anywhere.
Well amazingly enough I found at least one site which contained not only the Protect and Survive booklet, but plenty of other material relating to that period of time -- a time during which I was a teenager and which therefore played a major part of my formative years. When I was growing up I knew exactly how I would die: it would be when World War III started and the nukes began raining down on London. The only uncertainty would be when exactly armageddon was due to take place. Playtimes at school were often filled by philosophical discussions such as "what will you do when (note when not if) the four-minute warning sounds?" That kind of thinking has also been preserved here.
3 June, 2002 view
Anyone looking for a way to spend a few hours somewhere different, within easy reach of north London could do worse than to visit the De Havilland / Mosquito museum just outside of St. Albans. It's sited at Salisbury Hall where De Havilland had their factory for many years and amongst other things contains the original prototype Mosquito as well as a variety of military and commercial aircraft. It's all run and mostly financed by volunteers, and whether or not you think planes are your thing it's really interesting. Go on, one Sunday when you're bored and can't think of anything better to do get yourself over there. You won't regret it!
29 May, 2002 view
Now this is quite interesting. A website that offers email forwarding facilities. So what? you might ask. Well the advantage of SneakEmail.com is that they allow you to create as many addresses for forwarding as you like, and you can delete them whenever you want. So if a spammer or other unwanted guest gets hold of your email address you can just remove it. Forever. Anyway go and have a look if you're interested, I think it's a nifty idea and probably pretty useful.
14 May, 2002 view
Yay! Today I finally got confirmation from Google that they'd activated my researcher account. I'm now able to answer Google Answers questions and get paid for doing so! And just to make the point, here's a nice graphical banner.
10 May, 2002 view
I got pointed to an excellent article regarding the problems with compulsory ID cards. It's written by crypto guru Bruce Schneier and has an American perspective, but the arguments he presents are just as valid for the debate in the UK.
28 April, 2002 view
The following fantastic paragraph recently appeared on the uk.media.tv.buffy-v-slayer newsgroup. The original post is here (WARNING! spoilers for those who haven't seen up to Buffy Series 6, Episode 17) but putting it into context doesn't really help a great deal!
But if the Asylumverse-Dawnverse-Buffyverse scenes come from a simple rewrite of the preDawnverse-Buffyverse then the existence of Dawn (an entirely Dawnverse-Buffyverse-nonAsylumverse character) would not cause the Asylumverse-Dawnverse-Buffyverse parents and doctor to consider Buffy deluded. She can *only* be deluded if she is, in fact, in the true Asylumverse-preDawnverse-Buffyverse. Therefore Buffy's talk with Willow has to have her history rooted in the "true" S1-S4 preDawnverse-Buffyverse.
20 March, 2002 view
This interesting article appeared in The Guardian yesterday and articulates a number of things that I've personally thought about how readily evidence from the 11 September 2001 attack on the US has fallen into the hands of the investigators. Too convenient? I don't know.
13 March, 2002 view
This week at work I've been listening to BBC 6 Music -- aka Radio 6 -- and I have to say I'm quite impressed. Intelligent music choices made by knowledgeable presenters: what a revelation! It's been a long time since a British radio station was like this, perhaps the early days of Virgin Radio, or Xfm before Capital took it over, but yeah, this is good. It's just a shame they've got a limited audience at the moment, they only broadcast over the internet or via digital radio.
10 March, 2002 view
Found this interesting little snippet on the Chumbawamba site. I don't have a reference for its sources (yet) but I'll see what I can find.
A shadow government has been living underground in a bunker in the USA since September 11th in case Washington gets wiped out. The Vice-President spends much of his time there. All this is based on a plan drawn up nearly fifty years ago under Eisenhower, but it took George W. Bush to actually put it into practice. Around a hundred civil servants are hidden in two secret bunkers in the eastern United States (from a possible choice of 40 such bunkers existant in the US as a whole).
I personally think that the paranoia and FUD in the US ever since September 11th is beyond amazing, it's downright scary. Yes, it was a terrible incident but in the grand scheme of things it was nothing. Around 3000 people died, all told -- that's a mere fraction of the number of children who die every day due to starvation or war. It's less than half the number of people lost to "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. Of course one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, so the USA was obviously not engaging in State-sponsored terrorism when it attacked civilians in Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, etc etc. Finally, this is what I really want to say to America and Americans:
Yes, you were attacked by terrorists. Get over it.
20 August, 2001 view
I went to Longleat yesterday (a recommended day out as it happens) -- but on the way back we popped in to an excellent pub. So good that I'm going to let people know how nice it is. It's called The Bell and it's on the A303 at Winterbourne Stoke close to Stonehenge. They had an excellent selection of both beers and food on offer, friendly staff... what more could you want? If you're in the area and fancy a break check them out!
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