All politicians are collectivists. They don’t care about privacy.
– Professor Ian Angell, quoted on ZDNet
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July 21st, 2006 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Reuters journalist Paul Hughes chose to spend a holiday with his wife in Beirut. just as the violence broke out. Here’s his vivid take on what it is like in that city at the moment. When it comes to covering events in Lebanon with a salty mixture of black humour, PJ O’ Rourke, of course, remains the master. July 20th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although I have lived in Belfast for a very long time, I have rarely written about it, primarily because of hate-mongering gits who turn any mention of Northern Ireland into an excuse for personal attack and pointless flaming. So… if you are one of them, go away. This article will bore you and any attempt to discuss politics will be deleted on sight. Few of our readers have the slightest knowledge of Belfast outside of what is written over drinks in the Europa Hotel bar or from live media feeding frenzies where a handful of rioters get photographed, filmed and interviewed by a small army of bleeding-lede starved media mavens. This creates a distorted view of our town and has virtually no relationship to the daily lives of anyone who lives here. The ‘exciting’ Belfast is long gone. This is not to say we do not have some problems with hooligans, particularly around July 12th…  Reporters at the Europa missed this one! What the reporters do not bother to show you is that this is an incredibly beautiful place. When we get a perfect day like today, It is simply stunning. That is what this article is about. Nothing newsworthy. Nothing political. I simply went shopping, about a mile or two of walking on foot, and took a few photos to share with you. Since the small size allowable on the front page does not do the images justice, I have made them clickable for those who really want to get the full impact of the high resolution images.  The geography of Belfast is dominated by the Belfast Lough and the hills on either side.
 There are a fair few churches about.
 Even a wee neighborhood shopping center looks nice in the summer sunlight.
 There are parks and parklets everywhere.
 There is a bird sanctuary just the other side of this railway bridge.
 If you had any doubts about the location of these photos, the Hercules and Goliath cranes at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in the far distance beyond the bird blanketed tidal flats would dispel it. If there is any point to this article other than a hot day diversion, it is that journalists are trained to see and report what is ugly and mean in life while bloggers are free to show what is fun and beautiful and good with nary a worry about getting sacked for it. Now… where did I put those extra icecube trays? July 20th, 2006 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an example in the Telegraph that demonstrates yet again that we are all prisoners to the meta-context (frames of reference) within which we understand things and explain ourselves to others.
… is the title of a piece by Francis Harris, reporting from Washington. And what is he writing about? Bush has vetoed a bill increasing government-funded research using human embryo cells. So Bush is not turning his back on ‘science’ at all, but rather is turning his back on providing tax money for activities that some taxpayers regard as murder. Personally I am all for stem-cell research and I do not any moral problems with the use of human embryos for research, but I fail to see why people who take a very different view should be forced to fund something they regard as child-killing… but then I would rather see no scientific research whatsoever funded with taxpayer’s money. But within the meta-context that constrains Francis Harris’ views, to oppose tax-funding for certain types of research on moral grounds is to turn your back on ‘science’ rather than turning your back on what you may regard as ‘murder’. Just as a thought experiment, ponder this: if Bush managed to get a law enacted that allowed for the testing of dangerous experimental drugs on the inmates in Guantanamo Bay, would the title of Francis Harris’ article be “Bush backs laws supporting the advancement of science”? Somehow I do not think so, yet logically it should be. July 20th, 2006 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
David Miliband, Britain’s Environment Secretary, gave a glimpse of what a future of total state regulation might look like by laying out the idea of individual ‘carbon rationing’ . It would allow the state to keep track of all your ‘carbon related’ economic activity and thereby regulate, well, damn near everything by deciding how many ‘points’ your activities will deduct from your ration. By introducing rationing in effect green extremists are floating the idea of putting the entire nation on what amounts to a de facto war footing in which the state controls ‘fair’ use of scare resources, taxing people with more money for their ‘unfair’ carbon use. Make no mistake, this is not about environmentalist voodoo science, it is about controlling people and this is the tool they are going to use. July 20th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
A victory in the Netherlands for freedom of expression:
– The Times (from the Reuters report) Good for the court. Even easy-going Dutch society is prey to populism, it seems. Without constraint on ‘democracy’, then eventually non-majoritarian views will squeezed out; not defeated in argument, but denied even consideration. Worth noting (1): Solace [can anyone find a web-site? I will link it if so], who would rather nobody hear the views of the PNVD, made their claim based on some putative ‘rights of children’. I would like to know quite how it enhances anyone’s rights to exclude from the political sphere discussion of policy on the age of consent, pornography, the treatment of animals, or the use of drugs – those questions that have aroused populist ire. Have any actual children complained? And if so, how have they been injured by ideas? Worth noting (2): What is causing most frothing at the mouth both there and here is the idea of lowering the age of consent from 16 to 12. But that is the most plainly arbitrary, indeed vapid, of all the fringe policies on offer. While opponents can not bear the idea of even discussing a change, the precise age (unlike in Britain or the US) has not been agressively and rigidly policed in the Netherlands, and prosecutions of cases without actual rape or breach of trust are very rare. Those exceedingly law abiding teenagers who can not wait until they are 16 can hop on a subsidised train to France (15), Germany (14), or Spain (13) for a dirty weekend. (His Most Catholic Majesty’s Kingdom of Spain is not generally pointed out by moralitarians as on the brink of social collapse – but then 13 is a rise from the Franco era, so perhaps it is more democratic…) July 20th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Silicon.com carries a story about one of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ new IT projects. Apparently the “Aspire” project will come in at double the estimated 3 to 4 billion pounds. There is no hint of what the real-world functions of Aspire are supposed to be, but apparently this is part of the department’s attempt to cut the proportion of its costs that are IT below 20% at the same time as reducing its headcount by 12,500 (out of 90,000). Readers who are in business may wish to pause at this point and admire the insanity. Breath the heady aroma of that pompous project name. Note lightly in passing the apparently conflicting goals. Savour a budget for a re-tooling exercise (if that is what it is) of £40,000 a head. Stretch your generosity (it’s good for you) and see that mere billion variance in the estimate as a calculated ±15% derived from risk analysis, not cluelessness at all. Then marvel as the costs bust the error-bars by multiple-sigmas… A Titanic of a project! How unlucky could they be? So far so paradoxical. Business as usual for the government department that purports to oversee your every penny, and guarantees suffering if you can’t account for the office biscuit budget, or provide a full itinerary for a business trip taken five years ago. What’s sort of gobsmacking is this – the National Audit Office (NAO) finds things to praise:
I’m not sure I want to know what “re-competing” is. July 20th, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
For information on the public meeting on Regulation of Investigative Powers Act consultations, check out Blogzilla. July 19th, 2006 | Comments are closed
The MV-22 Osprey programme has survived so many fatal crashes and attempts to kill it in congress that perhaps it should be renamed the MV-22 ‘Rasputin’. Yet still it continues, though I see that one of the two MV-22s flown from the US to Farnborough a couple days ago had to divert to Iceland because of engine difficulties. Yet every time I look at the amazing disc loading on those things, I wonder how the hell they intend to use them? Given that when hovering the downwash has been known to knock people off their feet and send fast moving debris flying in all directions, how is this kite going to replace the CH-46E and CH-53D? An aircraft designed for unprepared LZ special operations that has to hover high to avoid downwash related problems and which cannot auto-rotate if damaged fills me with grave foreboding. Although the range and speed are very impressive, I wonder if this aircraft will not just be too hot and too inflexible for practical operations at the current state of technology. July 19th, 2006 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a very interesting editorial in the Arab Times that takes the view that Hezbollah is a blight on Lebanon. Moreover the writer, Arab Times chief editor Ahmed Al-Jarallah, clearly dislikes the fact that it is the Lebanese people, not Syria and Iran, who are paying the price for Hezbollah’s lethal antics. He is none too flattering about the Lebanese government either.
Read the whole thing for a very clear Arab opinion of where the blame should lie for the ongoing horror… and it is not Israel. July 19th, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The man who brought us the ultimate tough private eye, Mike Hammer, has died at the age of 88. I quite liked Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled fiction, though goodness knows it never pretended to be Henry James or Proust (and was all the better for it, probably). Bob Bidinotto has a nice article saying farewell to the old fella. Here is a report over at Bloomberg. I am sure Hammer is laughing over a large bourbon somewhere before going out to tangle with treacherous dames and cut down the bad guys. July 18th, 2006 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
As I write this, I am reading a Reuters report saying that Britain could have the highest temperatures in recorded history later this week – possibly up to 39 degrees Celsius as warm air from Continental Europe moves north. Phew. Whatever the cause for a run of hot summers in recent years, there is no doubt now that working in Britain during the summer months would be a lot less pleasant were it not for the invention of air-conditioning. Mind you, it seems that Britain still has not quite figured out how to manage AC systems properly. In my time working in London, the systems have been frequently unreliable although my modern office in London’s Docklands is excellent. London’s Tube does not have it (the excuse I hear is that the tunnels are not large enough for the technology to work efficiently). Even so, the use of air conditioning seems to be spreading, although I don’t have reliable statistics to hand but just personal experience over a decade or more of going to different offices in town. Here is a story about how a hospital in Belfast is supposedly the first major building to use AC. (Belfast?) July 18th, 2006 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
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