Strangely Perfect

Block ACTA and Stop ACTA! Truly, our freedoms are at stake.  While notionally an idea to prevent copyright theft, it’s real purpose opens the floodgates for any undemocratic organisation to walk over our freedoms (such as they are) for which our forefathers slugged their guts out.  Read this, then either; walk away (wondering in a [...]

A Cracking Week Off? I had a week’s holiday of sorts last week.  On returning I found that this website had been cracked. (I already had intimations that something was wrong because of site stat failures and an email from @Justin Asking, sometime commenter to this website and others).  Anyway, so it was.  Unfortunately, I [...]

Guidelines for a Better World Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.  Perhaps I should re-phrase this as: The Rules of Law and International Diplomacy are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made It’s a strange world out there.  Two recent political events [...]

Bloody Sunday The Saville Report, probably the longest and certainly the most expensive enquiry in the UK ever, is now out.  The ramifications are continuing, despite the Prime Minister trying to draw a line under everything.  See Bloody Sunday report published History On that day in 1972, 13 folks were killed, and overall, in what [...]

Students die in India as bus plunges into river The above headline is awful enough for the people involved, but in reality, it’s subject, a road crash, is common enough in my own country, the UK. What is really bad is how the BBC is reporting this.  They should know better but essentially, they’ve reported [...]

“Lord” Ashcroft Then It’s ten years since Ashcroft “gave assurances” that he would reveal his er.. something or other, to William Hague – according to William Hague in his famous Paxman interview – See Below: “Lord” Ashcroft Now Today’s news is that if the tories win the forthcoming election, (and in a statement today, he [...]

Introduction You may not have noticed the co-incidence yesterday, but an Iranian aircraft crashed and the US Space Shuttle took off.  the co-incidence was in  the strange reporting that envelops such events. Iranian Crash This, as air crashes go, was pretty ordinary – something went wrong, it crashed, everyone died.  You’d expect some reasoned discussion, [...]

Crikey! I Never Realised! Maybe certain days have relevance above their station and mere numerical nomenclature?  Who knows.  So read on.  See what happened today! 622 AD  – The Hijra of Muhammad Muhammad runs away from Mecca to escape persecution.  From this point forward, huge swathes of the globe took up Islam, Islamic empires spread [...]

New Jaguar XJ In common with most cars like this, it’s a lovely looking machine – a style marvel; sleek and vapid, mercurial. It’s also a waste of space and a waste of effort. It’s two tonnes of mass for a 400kg payload is pants.  An ecological disaster zone. Money for Old Rope Not only [...]

Atlantic Ocean Floor Profile Following the (as yet unresolved) crash of the Air France airbus on flight AF 447, much has been made about the ocean floor having huge cracks and being very uneven.  Most atlases, online and TV news reports say this and back the statement up with visual imagery of the bathymetry.  See [...]

The Rise of Internet Porn One of the chief drivers of change in the technological arms race of the internet has been the porn industry.  Most of the ‘benefits’ that users and owners now expect e.g. interaction, user activity sensing, easy and secure anonymous on-line payments, on-line adverts and click-through promotions, on-line community spaces, forums, [...]

Humphrey Hawksley in an article on today’s BBC News website has reported the (blindingly obvious, some might say) results of a 25-year American study into the effects of air pollution (specifically vehicle and industrial) on life expectancy. City air pollution ‘shortens life’ Basically, it’s bad! I live next to an A-class road, busy with holiday [...]

Not being a frequent foreign traveller, my recent stop in Eisenstadt, Austria, at a 5 star hotel open my eyes a bit.  A peculiar quirk, for me, was the toilet, with a shelf, in the room’s en-suite bathroom.  I’ve since found that it’s called a “shelf toilet”, a German invention to ease the inspection of [...]

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 [...]