This is wrong; Gitmo will be closed. Binyam Mohammed will be returned to Britain, or put on trial in the USA. Either way the details of his treatment, and that of all the other inmates, will become public. What are Foggy Bottom and the CIA playing at? Get it over with Consider this BBC story.…
Read More BullSo how well would the Mayor of Winnipeg deal with an astronomical spring tide at the same time as a gale from the north in the North Sea? Eh? Eh? Does Winnipeg have enough million ton reinforced concrete gates? (If you heard this evening’s BBC Radio news you’ll know what I mean.)
Read More infrastructureI liked this (via): Although technically speaking releasing testosterone precursors on the world’s trading floors to try to rally valuations wasn’t criminal as such, the affected traders lobbied to declare it illegal. But governments liked the idea too much, and oxygen masks were forbidden. (Electronic traders were of course immune, but they knew floor traders…
Read More a genuinely sinister drugI’m not sure what Jaap de Hoop Schepper was going on about here, but I’m slightly distressed that people are *still* being all impressed that there are mobile phones in Afghanistan/Iraq; someone even brought this up for John McCain last year. Roshan has been going for what, five years now? And, of course, the kind…
Read More probably better than a snarky blog postWhat with things like this, the LibDems’ drive to collect members of the scientific-technical intelligentsia at a secret location in Kazakhstan (surely it must be a….), it’s surely time to shake up my ORGANISE project – a messaging and task scheduling system for organisations of all kinds that implements a Stafford Beer viable system approach.…
Read More ORGANISE: a reappraisalNeed to get contacts out of a Nokia phone and into something else? There are various standard things – the “switch mode” on the newer ones may help. But the PC Suite client (which still only seems to exist for Windows) doesn’t let you export data from the phone as anything but a .nbu (Nokia…
Read More getting contacts from an .nbu fileSometimes, at the moment, politics feels like an entirely unconscious business; just a matter of the right reflexes. Like B.F. Skinner’s religious pigeons (see also here). Tap the right kneejerk and get a pellet. Hence this exchange in a US military press conference: Q Yes. Do you have any evidence that there are more or…
Read More pigeon religionAfter MySociety’s triumph on the MPs’ expenses issue, this looks interesting: the Lib Dems are putting out a call for geeks. This was followed up by a survey being sent out; I’ve filled it in, so I may end up spending the next election twiddling bolts on Chris Rennard’s particle accelerator. Apparently, there’s to be…
Read More our futuristic “mailing list” technology will render your crude oppression meaninglessSuddenly, an awful wet crunching and groaning and sick heavy breathing. It’s…huge…festooned in the rags of a once-respectable suit, waving a bladeserver torn from a rack like a child’s toy…dripping with stale blood. No! The NHS IT Zombie has escaped, and it’s fortified itself by eating BT’s brains. Now it’s coming for us. DAATA! it…
Read More brrrains!This really is getting strange. The Tories look worryingly convinced of the wisdom of a plan to build a gigantic airport in the North Sea, split between two separate islands, because you never need to change the runway a plane is going to depart from…right? At the same time, the Government is considering a gigantic…
Read More the latent content of this airport, however…