May 15, 2011

The National Rail website has borrowed the sensible URIs from traintimes.org.uk. Although it does seem a bit of a miss that there’s no shortener like – say – tra.in, as those are by definition quite long strings. The website that identifies the satellite a dish is pointing at, or tells you where to point the…

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So that Michael Lewis – you know, the one who writes articles about how stupid Icelanders were. Via The Oil and the Glory, here’s what he was saying in January, 2007, just as the last bulls in the US housing market’s dizziest bubbles finally cracked and the big plummet began. Here it is. But the…

Read More Don’t read Michael Lewis articles, do check if he’s still writing

(Alt. title: Look, it’s like a society but smaller!) OK, so you may remember the case of Startupbritain.org, a well-publicised eye-catching initiative that turned out to be little better than spam paid for with a government grant to some whose-kid-are-you types. It seems that the whole pointless wankabout was kicked off when one of the…

Read More Acid Helvetica titles do not make you a decent person

Here’s an interesting story about a successful response to the seizure of a ship, MV Full City, by pirates in the Indian Ocean. Indian, Chinese, and Turkish (NATO) ships responded, and the pirates abandoned the prize after an Indian Navy aircraft (slightly ironically, a Tupolev Bear) overflew the ship. But the really interesting thing isn’t…

Read More A control room full of computers

Following up this post, here’s a really interesting piece in Dawn on the Indian-Pakistani nuclear balance and the implications of the COLD START doctrine. It’s an especially good point that if India really wanted to punish Pakistan after a “Mumbai II” terrorist attack, they could do so very effectively and much less dangerously through economic…

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