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They have tried false beards, make-up, wigs, sunglasses, plastic surgery. None of it has worked. So time for something really radical:
Allow me to assist. How about ‘Not The Conservative Party’? August 10th, 2004 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. August 9th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yesterday I visited Warwick (both the castle and the town) – it was an interesting trip, but an odd thing happened that may amuse some people. I was in the crypt of St Mary’s Church Warwick and (observing my condition and the condition of the two friends who were with me) I said:
There was an odd silence from my two friends, and turning round I saw three, rather sun burnt, bald men – three thick set men, with tattoos. I looked at them and they looked back. They smiled and I smiled and no fight resulted. I wonder what the odds of this event were. The crypt was a small place and no other people were there. August 9th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the conceits of the press here in the US is that the First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” somehow grants them special status and immunities from laws that we plebes have to comply with. Not too surprisingly, the establishment media sees itself as the “Fourth Estate,” Americanized as the fourth branch of government (after the legislative, executive, and judicial branches) entitled to its own kind of sovereign immunity. They are wrong. If the freedom to publish is restricted only to a certain limited or identifiable class, then it isn’t really a freedom at all, but is a privilege. One of the more common expressions of the misconception that they belong to a special privileged class is the belief among journalists that they are entitled to defy court orders. Specifically, they believe that the First Amendment somehow guarantees them an immunity against having to identify their sources. One of the micro-scandals plaguing the Bush administration has been the entirely hoked-up l’affaire Plame. In a nutshell, when former ambassador and Saudi shill Joseph Wilson began lying in public about his fact-finding mission to Africa regarding Saddamite nuclear ambitions, someone in the Bush administration may or may not have “leaked” the fact that his wife works for the CIA and got him the gig. This was scandalous because his wife may or may not have been an “undercover” op, so that leaking her identity may or may not have been against the law. Valerie Plame was so concerned about being outed that she and her husband arranged for a nice photo spread in Vanity Fair. The scandal was hoked up because the press knew from the get-go who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and identity, but nonetheless went on a rampage about a coverup and the need for a grand jury to investigate the White House for this dreadful breach of national security. In effect, the Washington press was demanding a grand jury to discover what they already knew. This bluff has been called – the grand jury quite logically subpoenaed the testimony of two reporters who had fingered the White House for the leak.
A timely reminder that freedom for all is not a privilege for the few. August 9th, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Keynesian economics may have gone out of fashion, but it is still here with us today in a different form. That is the theory of ASI president Madsen Pirie, who writes that Keynesianism has been privatized by the current UK government. Keynesian economics used to be about government spending being used to flatten the business cycle. Now the privatized Keynesianism is about pushing private citizens into doing it. As Pirie writes:
Or will the privatized Keynesianism inflict the same long-term damage on the economy that the old Keynesianism did? August 9th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Washington Post reports that the State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error. Under State Department specifications finalized this month for companies to bid on the new system, a chip woven into the cover of the passport would contain a digital photograph of the traveler’s face. That photo could then be compared with an image of the traveler taken at the passport control station, and also matched against photos of people on government watch lists. But federal researchers who have tested face-recognition technology say its error rate is unacceptably high – up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting. They then proceed to make a case for fingerprinting that has a lower error rate. Yeah, that will make things much better. While face recognition is set as a standard, countries could add one or two other approved biometrics: fingerprints and scans of the eye’s iris. Several European countries are considering adding fingerprints to their passports. And branding with fire. Oops the last one wasn’t in the news. Rebecca Dornbusch, deputy director of the International Biometric Industry Association is quotes as saying:
Oh really, and how about the most secure revenue stream to the International Biometric Industry Association. August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Radio Userland is more popular with tech bloggers. radio.userland.com August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Expression Engine is a powerful content management system and is particularly suitable for ‘high end’ group blogs that are full featured and expect heavy traffic. www.expressionengine.com August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
noun. A spambot is online code which automatically generates larg numbers of unwanted messages and directs them at members of the public. Within the context of blogging, it is code which enters unsolicited comment spam. A spambot can enter dozens or even hundreds of unwanted spams in a matter of minutes into the comments of an unprotected blog August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
technical A Turing Test is a test which determines if the party on the other end of a remote communication is a human or a computer program (also known as a ‘Captcha‘ (qv)). This is germane to blogging because many comment sections on blogs use non-machine readable systems prevent spambots from entering comment spam. August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
noun. ‘Spam’ is unsolicited online messages generally of a commercial nature, usually delivered as e-mail (i.e. virtual junk mail). Comment spam however is when someone posts off-topic commercial remarks with links in a blog’s comment section. Some comment spam is overt but just as often it takes the form of innocuous remarks such as “I agree with your article!” or “Hey, great site!” in a blog’s comment section: the spammer’s ‘payload’ being in the personal details link, which takes you to a dubious (often pornographic) site. One reason comment spam is a major problem is that if readers visit the spammer’s link(s), their site often tries to install browser hijackers, tracking cookies or other adware/malware on the duped reader’s computer. Most comment spam is entered by spambots rather than actually people. Increasingly blogs are using technical means such as Turing tests, pre-publish moderation or registration in order to prevent spambots from polluting their comments sections with Viagra ads, online pharmacy scams and links to Russian porn sites. August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
History is a flexible commodity. More like therapy really:
There is plenty of this kind of eulogising in the Guardian. Stange is it not? The very same people who would have been spitting at John Kerry and calling him a “fascist baby-killer” in the 1960’s are the same ones who are now getting all misty-eyed and choked up over his Vietnam war record. August 8th, 2004 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
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