…But other than that, they’re swell fellows. CusterBattles in more trouble. Especially this: Ballard also noted that Custer Battles employees didn’t use metal detectors and ignored suggestions that an interrogator look over paperwork while a two-man team inspected each vehicle. “What horrified us most of all, however,” Ballard wrote, “was their refusal to open the…
Read More Incompetent, deceitful war profiteers..Shorter Times: Everything you know about the Operation Ore child-porn investigation is wrong. In information given to Interpol and in sworn statements submitted to British courts in 2002, Dallas detective Steven Nelson and US postal inspector Michael Mead claimed that everyone who went to Landslide always saw only a front page screen button offering “Click…
Read More Against mass surveillance, againSoldiers in Iraq, dissatisfied with the limited and censored Internet service available officially, build their own. It’s impressive, even though the main demand is to download filthy pictures and order foodstuffs forbidden by the chain of command – which, I suppose, gives it a sort of charm. As one of Robert Graves’ comrades said, marching…
Read More The trench art of networkingIn Trafalgar Square on Sunday, something remarkable – artificial life, or a stab at it. Dutch artist Theo Jensen has been building curious walking machines, strandbeesten, out of lengths of plastic pipe selected by a computer program that simulates an evolutionary process. After a while, he took them out to the beach to race, and…
Read More StrandbeestenSt. Helena, the British island in the Atlantic Narrows where Napoleon was confined, is not well known as a centre for dubious financial activities, unlike many other bits of residual empire (the Caymans, Gibraltar, Turks & Caicos, British Virgin Islands etc). This appears to be changing. A website has appeared advertising something called safeholder.com, which…
Read More St. Helena and a Nonexistent StateAs the Burschenschafter say in the intervals of slashing themselves and preparing careers in rightwing politics, lieber als des Hofrats Segen war mir des blanken Säbels Schlag. (Roughly, “More than the professor’s blessing I loved the drawn sabre’s stroke”) We see here, for example, that the sword still seems to hold a special place in…
Read More Cold steelThe North Koreans are attention-seeking again, flaunting the possible launch of some sort of rocket that possibly might be the putative Taepodong-2 ICBM. And, apparently, the US government is thinking of shooting it down with their ballistic missile defence system. Well, system. Experimental test rig would be more accurate. This is incredibly stupid. Fortunately for…
Read More Missile Defence and DeterrenceIt’s not religion, nor is it race. It’s class, class and geography. This we see in the Observer’s two-page spread on how their intrepid young female Muslim reporter (yes, I think Nick Cohen just came) spent a whole month in “the community the 7/7 bombers came from”, also known as Leeds. The first thing that…
Read More What divides Britain?Back in the 1990s, before foreign fighters and eye-catching initiatives, one of the catchcries of the Labour Party as it arrived in government was “evidence-based policy”. This meant, as far as anyone knew, that the government’s activity would be subject to review on the basis of results, and that choices would be made according to…
Read More Evidence-based stupidityThis is great. It’s a site that uses the international Automatic Identification System broadcasts from shipping to plot all the ships off Liverpool, as far up as Belfast and Stranraer, as far over as Dublin, and even in the Manchester Ship Canal, on a map. Better yet, there’s even a mashup version using Google Maps,…
Read More Live-Rpool Docks