March 2006

This is a motorbike a long way from home. It’s built by Royal Enfield in India and is based on a British design from the 1930s. Here’s the interesting bit – back in the 1950s, farmers who bought them began to do interesting things with the bikes. For example, they removed the original petrol engine…

This looks interesting. Via.

Not just GSM, but perhaps even fixed-mode WiMAX (802.16-2004) too. IEEE Spectrum has a fantastic feature on the success of mobile telecoms in Iraq, contrasting with the far worse progress of the copperwire system and (as reported in last month’s issue) the disastrous failure of electricity restoration. Before going on further, can I just point…

So long, darling, and don’t let the hedge fund hit you on the way out. The ruthlessness of these people is still somehow surprising, but it makes sense. Berlusconi left him to twist in the wind, so did his alibi the shipowner, now Tessa. The Blairite tradition of disgrace being a passing phase (see Blunkett)…

The Kenya Standard is open for business once more. On that theme, a comment.. Kenyananalyst to me More options 2:45 pm (2 hours ago)I find it inconceivable and foolhardy that: 1. The President hasn’t still found it fit to commenton something supposedly touching on our national, andby extension, his own security. 2. That Hon. Michuki…

Worrying news has reached me from various sources that the San Air General Trading BAC-111 s/n 61, 3C-QRF, formerly used to bring arms into the DRC, host secret meetings with Libyan spooks and ferry around the girls of Hustler magazine, may yet escape from Bucharest before being condemned under the UN freeze list. The story…

We will catch up with and outstrip America – Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.

David “Stupid Network” Isenberg reflects on the common phenomenon that the only worthwhile thinking at a conference occurs during lunch. Very true. I’d go to a conference made up of a continuous lunch. Rather like this bunch of nutters, some of whose events I attended in Vienna.

Now there’s a phrase from the 90s. Remember Michael Howard’s Criminal Justice Act? Road protests? Setting Sun? Well, if you do you probably, like me, can’t imagine how it came to this. It seems you are these days more likely to be the target of biometric surveillance if you are in a nightclub than anywhere…

Just received the following anonymous advice regarding Mrs. David Mills and her unfeasibly frequent mortgages. Hambros is a past tense merchant bank of course; it bit one over the Co-Op takeover scandal and got taken over by Societe Generale of France. “SG Hambro” is now SocGen’s UK private banking brand, and it would not be…