Two things. Marty Lederman of popular legal blog Balkinisation has just become the first blogger in good standing to join the Obama Administration. He’s going to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Council. That’s repellent schreibtischtäter John Yoo’s old job. I repeat, old Organ Failure Yoo has been replaced by Liberal…
Read More US flattened by self administered denial of service attackPhil Woolas is beneath contempt. I was going to say more, but it would be waste verbiage.
Read More a very short postSo, there’s this rumour-surrounded gadget that GIYUS wants people to install on their computers as part of the War on Terror. Obviously, I wondered exactly how it worked; did it analyse the Web sites you visit semantically, so as to target its talking points precisely? Did it use some sort of social recommendation mechanism? Also,…
Read More give IT yahoos United States (dollars)Having spent over £1 million collating the files of MPs’ expense claims in order to make them available under the Freedom of Information Act, the Government is now trying to pull off a last-minute parliamentary ambush that would exempt them entirely from this disclosure. They are attempting to use the provision in section 82 of…
Read More Action: Government trying to kibosh MPs’ expenses disclosureI’m increasingly annoyed by official-media consensus that young people will suffer more than anyone else from the recession. Not that I especially doubt this; I doubt the reasoning, which appears to be that they’ve all gone soft and they’re not like we were in my day. As a general principle, I believe this is usually…
Read More you can’t blame the youth of todayAs usual, the Daily Mash catches the zeitgeist. Clubbers ditch ketamine for elephant tranquillisers – “it makes you feel really elephanty”. In North London, meanwhile, they’re wanking on the streets. Seriously. So far this weekend, I was standing in a toilet in the Sir Richard Steeles* when I heard groaning. I cancelled the maniac. But…
Read More surrounded by wankersIt seems the UAE’s Antonov-12 ban is real. The shortage of inbound flights in the Viktorfeed continues; out of 57 overnight movements, in itself an unusual low, there were 10 inbounds after cleaning up the odd false positive. Here is a list: South-Airlines STH7002 Erbil Sharjah scheduled 1600Z Transaviaexport TXC1722 Kabul Sharjah scheduled 1500Z Safi…
Read More fly or dieSo Shriti Vadera thinks there are signs of improvement in the economy. The Tories have messed themselves, predictably. Hey, she rationalised the railways. But there are good reasons to think this: there are indicators. Notably, the spread – the difference in interest rates – between blue-chip and risky commercial paper is narrowing sharply. Similarly, the…
Read More reasons to be cheerful, part 3Bruce Sterling quotes a study into state failure which – counter-intuitively – puts Iceland and Canada at the top of the list of stable polities. It’s worse than that, though; they reckon Hungary is superstable , and they’re in the middle of an epic bank-currency-credit-mortgage crisis which has metastatised into a panic call to the…
Read More StabilityI’m getting reports that the UAE authorities have revoked permission to fly for all Antonov-12s, and the substantial fleet based on Dubai and Sharjah has been given notice to quit last night. Apparently the proximate cause was a spate of embarrassing and perilous runway excursions, as well as the recent loss of an Antonov-12 with…
Read More when you feel the heat you’ve got to move your fleet (2)