Strangely Perfect

Introduction Professor Noel Sharkey from Sheffield, better known as one of the judges on the BBCTV show “Robot Wars” knows a thing or two about robots and artificial intelligence.  He’s made a plea for more debate about the use of robot planes in warfare. (see link) He’s said, “An international debate is needed on the [...]

Is This the Worst Science Project Ever? The Daily Telegraph, short of stories this summer now that the expenses scandal is dead, has published a picture of Angelina Jolie under the heading: Women getting more beautiful, say scientists: (see link) According to some work done by  Finnish Philosopher/Psychologist Markus Jokela, …attractive women have more children [...]

Exploring the Simultaneous Nature of Cause & Effect Star Trek: The Next Generation: Finale, Episode – “All Good Things…” I’ve just watched the double episode finale to the TNG Picard series just after the cyclists finished their ascent of Mont Ventoux in this years Tour de France.  It was “All Good Things…”(see link, link & [...]

I can’t vouch for the information as I don’t live in Turkey, but I’ve just found out that Turkey has blocked Google.com Google Groups from internet access for it’s citizens.  See: Turkey & My Foreign Perspectives with Bea Vanni: Goodbye Google Alert: Hello More Bans for Turkey While my Turkey blog is less frequent these [...]

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, [...]

A Secret Shared: – Is Not  a Secret One Third of Second-Hand Hard Drives Contain Secrets This is the astonishing findings from research conducted by three Universities, from Wales, the US & Australia (see here). In an absolutely random sample of second-hand discs bought at computer fairs and places like eBay, 34% had secret, classified [...]

Pre-script Comments are now closed on this posting as Google Treasure Chest is dead. However, the problem has not gone away – the menace continues. For further information, all chat on this and subsequent scams is now here: Google Revolution, Different Name, Same Scam! and here: More on Google Profits and Pacific Webworks/ How Internet [...]

Moon Craters with Panasonic Lumix TZ5 These pictures were taken this evening, by myself ,after finding my body clock not in time with the clocks going forward last night!  I chose a nice blue camera from the range. The two full-size clips show: the Earthshine quite clearly lighting up the mare on the Moon (the [...]

WARNING:  This Posting Contains Illegal Pictures I Can Be Imprisoned for Publishing Them. A little realised consequence of Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and the ramping up of common hysteria across the English speaking western world is, bizarrely, that it’s now illegal to take pictures of people commemorating, in a patriotic symbolic way, the lives and [...]

This is not a rant comparing the US military against others for effectiveness.  It’s purely my observation of events and appearances surrounding the current (10 years!) piracy problem on the high seas. This is the homepage of the US 5th Fleet above. All clean and big and modern and powerful and heroic (Take My Breath [...]

I hope everyone is fully aware by now about my opinions on anonymous commentary and spammers.  Er.. yes… they’re shit.  And what I do is fully explained in my site privacy policy, here. Anyway, my Russian friend left a little note, which I’ll leave, here, because in itself, it’s pretty innocuous.  However, visitors to my [...]

Admiral Mark Fitzgerald told the BBC that  Somali pirates ‘hard to defeat’.  So even though NATO want to install missiles all over Europe to counter a mythical threat, and even though they have highly advanced RADAR, monitoring and communication systems, they still can’t manage to do what the Royal Navy did very effectively 200 years ago [...]

The “news”, Phone taps ‘prove Georgia’s case’ that Georgia’s President Saakashvili has discovered phone tap evidence that “proves” he was trapped or lured into his Invasion of South Ossetia by the Russians would be more credible if it had come out at the beginning of August.  But really, I mean; even I, with no Eastern [...]

I said in a post 5 days ago, that because the Space Shuttle is old and due to be retired, the USA was intending the Russians to take up the slack for 5 years of maintaining flights to the ISS (International Space Station) until the new rocket is ready. I also said that in light [...]