2008

Cool; an application that uses rules you give it to generate weird and three-dimensional graphics. (Via Sterling, who else.) This comes to mind, though; what if it could generate STL computer-aided design files? They are the kind that the RepRap’s host software eats, I think. And making them in hardware, you have to admit, is…

Read More will you stop fiddling with that thing?

Strangely, there has been little mention in the media that the Government is talking Iraq withdrawal blues again. It’s being mentioned in news reports, in passing, as if this was certain already; the dates mentioned are some time next year. Well, that’s all good; but this of course raises the question of Iraqi employees. We…

Read More Iraq withdrawal; what about the Iraqi employees?

Packer vs. Kilcullen in the New Yorker. Here’s the key paragraph: Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe…

Read More a network of friendly militias

An interesting document was turned up in the course of the row about John Brennan, the CIA officer who was the Obama team’s original choice as intelligence chief before he was dropped as being insufficiently opposed to torture, under a volley of criticism from the blogosphere. (“Opposition was mostly confined to liberal blogs,” said the…

Read More Is this the CIA? Is this the IRA? Is this the UDA? No, it’s the Grauniad…

Quite a score for our reader “Ajay”, who I think is the first to spot that the Mumbai terrorist attack bears a very close resemblance to the coup plot in Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War, which makes it the third and possibly fourth case of someone actually using Forsyth’s book as a practical handbook.…

Read More the world’s deadliest novel strikes again