So what about that Public Data Corporation? I think it should be opposed with full force. Why? Well, the fact they want to structure it as a “corporation” is suspicious in itself – it’s going to be tempting to declare it a trading fund and force it to make profits, even if only in the…
Read More say no to the public data corporationIf the former Tunisian president’s plane overflew Malta going north, that doesn’t mean he’s going to France by any means. North of Malta is…Italy. Surely not…
Read More disgraced presidents piling up?OKTrends has an amusing post, but what I like about it is that it’s consilient with the process I defined here. My idea was that songs that were rated 5 might be good, but might also just be violently weird to the reviewer. By the same logic, the same must be true of the 1s.…
Read More a dance to the music of confirmation biasAlso a neat remix here, although my Internet link still tends to jam every time a comment comes up on soundcloud. Tangentially, I saw a poster for Jon Pleased Wimmin (of all possible DJs) the other day, which made me think “Bloody hell, I thought he was dead? Or at least rendered generally harmless?” So…
Read More not Thursday, so it must be a music linkDid you know the UK briefly had an independent imagery satellite between 2005-2009? You do now, and so do I thanks to Think Defence. Sample pix are here. The satellite was designed to return its data directly to a mobile ground station immediately after collecting an image, allowing far more timely delivery of the information…
Read More Brits In Spaaace! Brown Era EditionThings to do this week: withdraw all my savings from ING Direct and take them elsewhere. Seriously, read the whole thing.
Read More I want nothing to do with your company ever againNow here’s a worthwhile Canadian initiative for you, from here. And he names the guilty men.
Read More operationalising postmodernismBecause someone wanted this: a list of aircraft investigation resources. First thing: you always need to be able to map registrations to aircraft serial numbers (MSNs) and vice versa, as well as linking registrations to operators and vice versa. So you need to subscribe to one of several commercial databases that provide this information. Otherwise…
Read More a quick HOWTOReally excellent piece on the Al-Qa’Qaa munitions complex, its looting during the US invasion of Iraq, and the role of the estimated 40,000 tonnes of assorted explosives that went missing in the Iraqi insurgency and the civil war. Also, strategic geography – that area was on the demographic frontier between Sunni and Shia, on the…
Read More earth-shattering kaboomSo what about those North Koreans? As the SWJ put it, a small war in Korea was postponed. I’d query “small”, especially in the special sense they use it – it wouldn’t have been particularly small and it would have been defined by high-intensity battle – but perhaps they are really thinking of whatever would…
Read More big war postponed, small war still on the menu