February 9, 2005

Can anyone explain why over the weekend the Ranter posted 250+ unique hits a day? My stats provider was down for several days and now they’re back up it’s clear there was a hell of a lot of traffic. Any ideas?

Information Week reports on the approaching European directive on RFIDs. There’s a public consultation going until the 31st of March, so if you don’t like the idea of being tagged – write to this address and tell ’em so.

There’s a new UN Security Council report out on West Africa! An event of sheer joy for fans of mystery gun-runners, diamonds and such. (You can get the document here (pdf).) As well as much interesting information on a wide range of subjects, the report includes a detailed description of one particular flight, which might…

The New Yorker has a long article on “extraordinary rendition”, the secret transfer of CIA detainees to countries where torture is common. It’s worth reading, especially for the degree of nonchalance displayed by some persons, and also for this horror-nugget: “According to Margulies, Habib was held and interrogated for six months. “Never, to my knowledge,…

Over in the shabbily luxurious senior common room that is Crooked Timber, they’re discussing the role of search engines (the internet’s swiss army knife) in economics, society and culture. Not only that, but one of them’s been asked to edit an issue of a scholarly journal devoted to the topic. A suggested topic is the…