January 2010

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on the British wanktank movement. Here’s an example of the US version. It turns out that the people responsible for a break-in at U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu’s office, who apparently posed as telecoms company technicians in an attempt to “tamper” with the phones, were led by a character who…

Read More now that’s what I call wanktankery

Patrick “unseasonably mild” Wintour’s predictably friendly piece on Blair going before the Iraq inquiry is unintentionally disturbing: No prime minister is indifferent to his or her legacy, and however much he feels stale controversies are being aired with little new public evidence, he knows tomorrow will be important for him, and his future public life…

Read More spiritual healer

So, are the Americans really “prioritising foreign soldiers over aid” in Haiti? Thankfully, the national press tried to answer this question with facts. Well, not really. Spencer Ackerman and Laura Rozen actually asked intelligent questions rather than the usual “Two days after the giant earthquake destroyed all port facilities, critics asked why UN aid was…

Read More Haiti: “forklift drivers without borders” doesn’t sound so good on TV

Rather less depressing; Wired reports on the array of open-source IT tools for disaster relief getting their first use in earnest in Haiti. I remember when your main source for things like Google Earth overlays of aerial photos was Kathryn Cramer, and that was in the United States. However, there’s something I saw that wants…

Read More what these people need is…an updated frequency allocation table