February 2004

9NEWS.com – Story Some of the Transportation Security Administration’s highly trained security screeners have taken their zeal for total security one step further by apparently attempting to make sure terrorists were not hiding in their heads. Or something. “The Transportation Security Administration is not saying exactly who x-rayed themselves or when because of privacy reasons,…

The Conservatives have issued a new “report” on the future of the BBC. It was prepared by one David Elstein, the former chief executive of Channel 5, and was commissioned while IDS was still in charge. Many people forget just how aggressively US Republican the IDS Tories were – very close to the neocons, enjoying…

BBC NEWS | Business | UK 2003 growth revised up to 2.3% So what did happen to all the recession porn we were subjected to last year? Within a week, we see forecasts for growth above 3% this year and now upward revisions from last year. The forecast range everyone said was a wild gamble…

Rybkin ‘Best Speaker in the History of the Duma’ Interesting biography of the disappearing candidate. “In his verbal attacks on President Vladimir Putin, stern-voiced presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin laces harsh rhetoric with poetry and flowery metaphors. But his oration skills are hardly an advantage when he is effectively banned from Russian radio and television. The…

In the interests of good practice, I recently had this blog checked with an XHTML 1.0 validator – only to discover that there were supposedly 463 errors (57 pages of printout) in it. But it worked. Now, after several days of poring over the code, the error count is down to 308 and we have…

An excellent blog has begun linking to us. Thanks

A Secret Hunt Unravels in Afghanistan (washingtonpost.com) The Washington Post has a fascinating series of articles on the secret war between an obscure sub-group of the CIA and al-Qa’ida before the 11th September attacks, when counter-terrorism wasn’t fashionable. “The rest of the CIA and the intelligence community looked on our efforts as eccentric and at…

Excellent article via Calpundit: The Seven Signs of Bogus Science. An amusing work prepared by a scientist who was asked to prepare some criteria to guide judges in evaluating allegedly scientific evidence. If you’re short of time, the signs are as follows: 1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. 2. The discoverer…

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Well, it would seem that the government hasn’t entirely capitulated to the mob press over putative migrants from the new member states of the European Union. Now, every other country with the paradoxical exception of Denmark has demanded “transitional agreements” allowing them not to let people from the Central European countries in for up to…