November 13, 2011

November 13, 2011 by yorksranter 0 comments

belated blogging

So Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…

November 13, 2011 by yorksranter 0 comments

belated blogging

So Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…

November 13, 2011 by yorksranter 1 comment

The world’s most expensive mobile network

By the mid-2000s the minimal cost-to-serve a mobile phone user had got down to the point where it was worth Roshan’s while to put base stations in places where British soldiers broke down 105mm light guns to carry them piece by piece up a cliff, in order to fire from the hilltop next to the…

November 13, 2011 by yorksranter 0 comments

The Penrith problem – structural incentives and mobile service networks

Eh, Charlie Stross’s blog is a machine for destroying time. Anyway. This post is going to be so wonkish it’s to not come back from. An occasional theme on this blog has been the intersection between the Bush wars and the mobile phone industry. In fact, looking back, that’s not been so much an occasional…

Weltbund zum Schutz des Lebens – Wikipedia
Die Idee zur Gründung der Organisation hatte der Schriftsteller Günther Schwab, ein ehemaliges NSDAP- und SA-Mitglied // right. riight.
Labour denies plan for UK to rejoin EU customs union
Brussels would potentially be open to such a proposal, a person briefed on the European Commission’s approach to the UK told the Financial Times, and it is monitoring what might be possible under a Starmer government. “It would be a massive negotiation, but there would be openness from the EU side,” they added. “There’s been […]
The Real Development was the Friends We Made Along the Way
Hirschman’s theory of unbalanced growth is rooted in empiricism, allowing policy makers to test and gauge the reactions of the specific context rather than applying some universal formula. It recognizes that development is naturally a chaotic, messy process, much closer to a “chain of disequilibria” than the result of a master plan. To paraphrase another […]
Israel shifts back to the Apache as UAV switch fails
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been attempting to attain early delivery of 40 US-made Boeing AH-64E Apache combat helicopters. The development follows the failure of an attempt to prove that unmanned armed systems could be a fully capable replacement for combat helicopters.
Canadian DNA lab knew its paternity tests identified the wrong dads, but it kept selling them | CBC News
"paternity guesswork"
How a Monaco hedge fund boss got tied up with an indebted English town
Last November, Warrington council’s audit committee was told that the fund was expected to provide a 6-8 per cent annual return. Wirral told the FT in March that its investment to date had returned just 0.6 per cent // look you fucking council pukes can't you just use the PWLB to do some public works […]
Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at World’s Busiest Airports - WSJ
couple of interesting things here: the guy running the operation was extremely close to the Emirates elite (shades of Chichakli), also the sort of celebrity-adjacent recruiting policy
“This way for modern banking”: Deutsche Bank logo turns 50
The logo’s creator, Anton Stankowski, who died in 1998, described Deutsche Bank’s logo as follows: “The visual motif is the polarity between the solid base and a future-oriented dynamism. The staggered diagonal seems to be symmetrical but is in fact asymmetrical. The sloping forward slash is arranged in such a way that it does not […]
Mum died after medics checked wrong patient's 'do not resuscitate' note, family claim - Manchester Evening News
"During those short hours she went into cardiac arrest, the hospital staff checked 'her 'records' and said she was DNR so she was left to die. Five minutes later the staff realised the wrong records had been checked and she wasn't DNR....We then also had another two occasions where people entered the room, one lady […]
Ancient Foxes Lived and Died With Humans - The New York Times
A team of researchers recently examined the fox’s bones, which were unearthed among the remains of dozens of hunter-gatherers. The team’s findings, published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, posit that this fox lived alongside the humans it was buried with.