I’ve finally got around to reading Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban and Descent into Chaos. They are as good as everyone says. Specifically, there are perhaps three things that set Rashid apart as a writer on Central Asia. (His contacts book is outstanding, but then, he’s not the only one.) First of all, he writes about Central…
Read More writing about Afghanistan, rather than about Brunssum or QatarI recently sent off another report through FixMyStreet, pointing at the horrible state of the roads round here. (I am more than a little disappointed with the Android client app, by the way.) Within a week, some of the worse potholes had been tar’n’gravelled. Meanwhile, even more seem to have appeared or worsened. What it…
Read More ticket punchingBasically, what Ian McMillan said. Never buck the Nameless Dread. It tells the truth. It may not be particularly expressive, but neither is a tail-warning radar and the two concepts are similar in function. It’s interesting how many people remember sharing school textbooks as a 1980s trope. It’s my generation’s version of “if you can…
Read More free school mealsNow this is truly remarkable. The Safer Birmingham Partnership has agreed to suspend its ANPR deployment. Hilariously, this is operationalised by putting bags over the cameras’ heads; no doubt the good people at Harry’s Place will be furious, as Muslims and RESPECT have at last succeeded in forcing something to cover its head. As supporters…
Read More retrospectively consultedA bit of Viktorfeed news. I’ve noticed, in the last few months – when the damn thing’s been working – that the traffic seems to be concentrating into relatively fewer operators, and ones with less horrible reputations. Ariana, Iraqi Airways, Southern Air. There are surprises, of course – what, pray, is Tropic Air? – but…
Read More all quiet on the ViktorfeedAnother story, but this time with real policemen – sort of. The interesting thing about the Safer Birmingham Partnership and its drive to cover Muslim areas of the city with ANPR cameras, using money from an “anti-terrorism fund”, isn’t so much the project in itself as what it reveals about the huge effort it will…
Read More parallel networksWe’ve not had any fake policemen for a while. This used to be a blog trope back in 2004-2006 – a major feature of the various wars that represented facets of the War On Trrr was the presence of forces made up of armed men either posing as policemen, or sometimes, policemen posing as nonpolicemen,…
Read More the fake policemen rob a bankGeoff Manaugh (as well as Worldchanging and basically everyone else in that line) has a post on a project at the RSA to think about the architectural consequences of RepRaps and other forms of decentralised industry. Like a lot of Manaugh’s stuff, it’s interesting…but it breaks off before confronting some of the more concrete impacts.…
Read More More reprapping futures, including BurmaI want one of these. There’s more here; the sheer coolth of a USB-based PCR analyser is hard to beat. Even if the potential for Wakefield-scale contamination fuckups is not to be denied. In general, I’m trying to get up to speed on things biotech. it is true that, so far, cyberpunk has been a…
Read More peering over the bows…I knew Andrew Wakefield was full of shit, in a conflict of interest, practicing crappy lab technique, a hypocrite who thought autism was caused by measles viruses when he was in Britain and mercury when he was in America, someone who dealt with people who were promoting quack treatments like giving your autistic kid chemical…
Read More thatcherite lysenko, and some very strange behaviour with goats and children