May 2010

Just a couple of disorganised thoughts on this. There’s a sort of integrated cultural package of denialism out there; rather like Michael Berube’s Wingnut Software Package. Key components: Computer hate. I encountered people complaining that the Eyjafjallajokull ash cloud was being forecast with “the same computer models that forecast global warming”. No doubt we’ll soon…

Read More notes on denial culture

Quietly, as the election campaign goes on, the NHS IT programme has gone from “heading for the rocks” to “sailing into the cliff”. Has NPfIT put us back 10 years? asks the NHS chief in Rotherham, who’s taken the recently announced option to bail out of the project and deploy something of his own choice.…

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Apple’s internal security team may be scary – and especially the name (Worldwide Loyalty Team). But they are as nothing, in terms of creepiness, to this Microsoft web page, which provides the criteria against which MS employees are assessed for their use of humour and the targets they are given to improve. You will not…

Read More killer meme watch

Jamie Kenny mentions Thailand’s “black clads”. Who they? Reuters has an excellent article that gets into this question. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE MEN IN BLACK? Witnesses and grainy video footage revealed armed men with assault rifles and M-79 grenade launchers appeared under cover of darkness on April 10 during a heated standoff between…

Read More they’re protecting us, but we don’t know who they are