Strangely Perfect

Workers and ordinary intelligent users of the Post Office Royal Mail system (“the post”), must be very worried by the latest news about the holistic vertically integrated business that was “the post” being further split up and creamed off. see 50,000 jobs at risk in break-up of Royal Mail or Royal Mail faces call to [...]

Many moons ago, before Crawling Chaos, I had an interest in astronomy.  In those days, only professionals took photos of stars and it was hard, as you needed plates and plate holders stuck on the back of your telescope, and a dark room to develop pictures.  Telescope needed to be motor driven to track the [...]

One of the features of a transition to a police state is that those who should defend our liberties transfer their allegiance to the executive of the state. – quoting Craig Murray here. Following the disgraceful result in the de Menezes “inquest”, if that’s what the most recent government whitewash can be called (see Hutton [...]

Many moons ago I read the short story with the above title. Although not one of Pohl’s best works, it has nevertheless left an obviously lasting impression on me. Written in the mid-fifties, it’s a future tale of consumerism gone mad. In the tale, it’s illegal not to consume as much as possible.  The hero [...]

Truly this car is the pits. -and here’s how.. The engineers seem to have responded with the most short-term planning possible to a demand from the BMW marketing department to make the company look green now that sales of their monster cars are down 40%.  Some “ad” bloke has said “clean electricity, that’s the way [...]

Our weirdly bipolar government, will spring a few surprises today for most people.  (The realisation that bi-polar disorder affects organisations as well as individuals fully explains their behaviour and thus, holds no surprises for me, any more ). Coloured comments added later on Wednesday, 3rd Dec 2008. Predictably, even though a few thousand gambling bankers [...]

Following on from a rapid two day whizz oop North (where it’s grim), I can confirm that it is indeed cold and wet. Time constraints meant I couldn’t visit anyone except close family.  Some may be glad at this eventuality, some maybe sad..   The low point of the trip I’ll leave for another time.  [...]

Taj operation finally over, casualty figure very high – reports NDTV.com Justifiably, the world sighs with relief. Some are glad that the shooting has stopped. Some are glad the killers are dead. Currently, the dead number ~200, the killers, 11.  A ratio of ~9:1 killed per killer. In recent years there seem to have been [...]

It’s here on Wikileaks! Text and xls spreadsheet – it’s all here. The Wikileaks site went a bit awry earlier today and then fell over completely (as of 20081119 20:31 GMT).  There sure are a lot of people who want to know lives round the corner!   ;-) It’s back up now (20081120 20:24) Wikileaks [...]

Yay!  Today, 15 Nov 2008, with only a few weeks of his tenure as US President left to go, he still can’t stop saying one thing and doing the other. Bush warns over ‘protectionism’ is the news today.  This is at the Washington meeting of 20 countries, the G20, which represent 85% of the global [...]

Finally it’s starting to dawn on a few people that battery powered cars are not the way out of our low-carbon energy conundrum. Bolivia holds key to electric car future.  In this piece, the BBC note that Lithium, the 3rd element in the periodic table, a major power source for everyone’s laptops and mobile phones, [...]

Amadeus Meets His Nemesis in the Land of Make-Believe Photo Details These were all taken on my recently repaired Fuji Finepix F30.  Everything was on auto and with virtually no flash used.  It’s a shame it doesn’t have variable zoom and aperture when in video mode.  I could have done with that. Hopefully, you’ll get [...]

This is what I have taught my disciples morning and evening, and yet they begin to harbour doubts and abandon their faith. Foolish men are likely to forget the promises they have made when the crucial moment comes.  -  The Opening of the Eyes – The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol.1, page 283 Yay! Carnival [...]

Ahoy there! Now we are fully sated in our lust for fresh information on the Credit Crunch and the US Presidential elections, we can now see what’s really going on in the world as the news organs adjust focus for something else to talk about as Ross and Brand are old hat now. Apart from [...]