You will hear all kinds of people in authority say that immigration, or population growth, is causing people to turn into racists and vote BNP, either just because (the rightwing version) or because of “pressure” on public services (the Decent Left version).Therefore, they usually say, we need a stingier immigration policy. If you’re reading this,…
Read More The Swamping MythOh yes, gleeful leftie hacker tournament after the BNP did a 0.16 megarecord datafart. My effort contains absolutely no personally-identifying data; it’s made with this guy’s count by region and population data from National Statistics, to show the number of BNP activists per 100 citizens in each UK region. People kept asking for that kind…
Read More don’t compromise, visualiseThis is fascinating; Laura Rozen has details of the Italian inquiry into the Abu Omar rendition case. You know the one – when the CIA agents foolishly brought their own roaming mobile phones and spent a fortune staying in Bondesque hotels. The really interesting thing is that the inquiry is throwing up more and more…
Read More the blog cabala and a wall of fireHere’s one political movement struggling with the technological environment, at the Washington Monthly: Frank Luntz, speaking at a panel discussion at the Republican Governors Association yesterday, noted Barack Obama’s enormous email list. “He’s got 10 million names and our candidate doesn’t know how to use this,” Luntz said, holding up a BlackBerry. “There is a…
Read More the third decade, our moveYou remember this post? It picked up off Thoreau@Jim Henley predicting that Dick Cheney would try to invoke executive privilege in respect of something he did after ceasing to be Vice President. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about this man it’s that whatever warped evil you attribute to him will be nothing compared to…
Read More let the cat/noncat out of the bagWell. Being a Republican Party lawyer, I always thought, would be a job that at least got you out of bed full of curiosity at what the day might hold. A garage stuffed with uncounted ballots that have to disappear before sun-up? Suitcases of Saudi greenbacks? An unmarked Gulfstream-IV full of Cuban mercenaries with compromising…
Read More a season of prodigiesAs I said here, much as I love ManyEyes, it would be drastically better if it accepted data in the same format (tab-separated columns of values) that it expects to be submitted as a form from a URL, so your visualisation could be based on a source of regularly updated information. If you can parse…
Read More technical noteSo Hazel Blears thinks blogs are terrible, rightwing, shallow, cynical, contributing only snark to the debate, no new ideas, no policy analysis, no organising. Her evidence for this consists of cites to Iain Dale and Paul Van Der Staines. Well, you can see how she got those ideas. I should, I suppose, Engage More Fully,…
Read More may the work speak for itselfIt seems that Andrew Gilligan has been stung by the phrase “Bendy Jihad”. So much so that he has devoted a whole column to moaning about it, or rather to moaning about anyone having the cheek to disagree with him. It’s a pity, then, that he couldn’t see his way to attributing his attack correctly,…
Read More Gilligan’s “Ibogaine Frenzy”; Assaults Wrong Man, Screaming NonsenseYer ORGANISE project. Right. There’s been some activity lately; specifically, there’s a new and more detailed spec (available here), a separate and improved section on the design philosophy (here), and some embryonic requirements/notes on implementation (here). Thanks to contributors. Meanwhile, something interesting; you look at stories like this and this with suitable awe. As Mark…
Read More Organise, and pissing off the right people