I’ve been reading Bruno Latour’s Aramis, or the Love of Technology, a postmodernist account of the failure of a massive French project to develop a Personal Rapid Transit system. Latour’s book contains chunks of fiction, interviews, historical documents, and authorial comment, broken out by the typography – the experience is more like reading a long…
Read More project failureOoh, more Iran-war nonsense, this time from none other than mouthpieceful Russia Today, via this thread. There seems to be a meme floating around that there was a war between Russia and Georgia because the Russians intervened to prevent the Americans using Georgian airbases to attack Iran (obviously, a war with Iran is the universal…
Read More Not Just Armies, But AntonovsThere hasn’t been much progress on my long-term beef with Martin Kettle for a while. But it’s worth remembering that if the Guardian has a major leading article that isn’t a business/economics story, it’s probably him. And Saturday’s second lead (behind a rather competent finance story) bears the Kettle hallmarks. Forty years ago the Royal…
Read More The Guardian Is Not Serious About CVFHa. Ha. Ha. Looks like Kelvin McFuck won’t be standing after all. Too risky, eh? There we were, thinking he was a heroic fighter for all he thought was right, not to mention a formidable enterpreneur, and a man confident in the backing of the deadliest nonkinetic weapon system on the planet. After all, heroism…
Read More fully recyclable cellulosic macro-feline predatorThis NYT story is nonsense. Various rightwing barkies have taken the opportunity of the French armed forces’ deliciously 007-esque mission to rescue the sailing yacht Le Ponant to tout the following story around the media: the Royal Navy has been ordered not to detain pirates under any circumstances, for fear that they might something or…
Read More The Bombardment of Walthamstow Rages OnRare feature, this, but the Observer has news: the Stevens report says, apparently, that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her phone calls the night of her death. A couple of questions: didn’t they have anyone better to bug? And, more importantly, what was the French government’s position on this? The Obscurer makes the…
Read More Sunday Princess Diana BloggingLe Monde reviews a new French book on the arms trade and our friend Viktor. Trafics d’armes : enquête sur les marchands de mort by Laurent Léger. The publisher is Flammarion. Another review here suggests that the author succeeded in interviewing Michel Victor-Thomas, the French aviation identity who co-founded TAN Aviation Network NV in Ostend…
Read More Book alert!Over at Slugger, they are discussing an alleged proposal from the UDA that the government give it £1 billion to end its campaign of violence and convert itself into a legal organisation. At one level, you’d be forgiven for spitting coffee on your keyboard at such shameless blackmail. But there is a valid point here.…
Read More Ending an army