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Many of the DOD press conference transcripts are yawn inducing… but not this one. On June 16th, Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, Commander Multi-National Forces-Corp Iraq gave one of the most candid and informative presentations I have yet seen. This is good stuff. Read and enjoy. July 7th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the Beeb’s latest gaseous emanation regarding global warming. Now, I am no climate scientist, but I harbor a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, one factor impacting on the Earth’s climate just might be – now, I’m just throwing this out – the sun. I find discussion of the sun’s impact on global weather to be oddly absent from the reams of paper speculating on how minute variations in various gases here on earth may affect climate, rather like speculating on how adjusting the air pressure in your tires a few ounces might affect fuel efficiency without ever considering the, well, fuel you are putting in the tank. I have noted the occasional article exploring the correlation between temperature variations and solar activity, and so I read this with interest:
However, the scientists made sure that the reigning anti-materialist orthodoxy of those providing their grants was not called into question by these merely scientific observations, scurrying to observe:
and
The notion that non-human forces might occasionally affect the Earth’s weather can not quite be denied:
but of course if this truth were recognized then it would quite knock the props out from under the latest rush to regulate under the banner of Kyoto and global warming. Even when evidence of the obvious – that the sun’s output is what really controls global temperature, and that global temperature swings regardless of human activity – is presented, it must be spun so that human agency, and thus the need for regulation, is paramount. Laugh or cry? I can not quite decide. July 6th, 2004 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
So the loathesome (second post down) John “interesting” Kerry has chosen John “even less interesting” Edwards as his running mate. This is obviously a bad move as people will confuse them, and maybe even vote for someone else called John Nondescriptname instead, but on the other hand, their policies seem to be mostly about saying whatever crowd-pleaser pops into their heads at the time, so perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to make people so confused they can’t keep up with all the turnarounds, and surrender their powers of reasoning altogether (unless that happened already). Here are some of the things they said about each other in the past. Notice the recurrence of the word “different”. Now see if you can spot which statement belongs to which John. Answers on Fox News.
This one is easy:
And my personal favourite (remember, John is criticising John here)…
How very unintentionally right he is. July 6th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I recently wrote about Belinda Stronach’s Conservative Party candidacy in Canada. Reader Jim Bennett reports:
Canada could use the touch of an Iron Lady. It will be interesting to see if Belinda can grow enough to fill those shoes. July 6th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am still catching up with my email backlog after a week in which my server was ‘under attack’ by a storm of spam. High on my ‘must read’ list are the transcripts of the various DOD press briefings. I found a gem in this briefing from Saturday, given by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations; and Dan Senor, Senior Adviser, CPA. In the words of Dan Senor:
Virtually anyone who reads Samizdata would understand tax rates this low necessarily lead to economic growth and the betterment of all citizens. Could we perhaps borrow Paul Bremer for a year or two? I believe he may be in need of a job… July 6th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Samizdata.net will probably be moving away from Moveable Type and to Expression Engine some time in the not too distant future. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has made this move with their own blog or who has experience using Expression Engine. It has been obvious to us for a while that MT is groaning under the weight of Samizdata.net (the comments are agonisingly slow for example) and a full site rebuild now takes about 4 hours! We really do need to move on to something better! July 6th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some readers will have observed that I fight an often lonely battle against the forces of the militant lesbian, anti-humanist, fascist, tree-hugging puritan conspiracy to wipe out masculinity. We know as a scientific fact that the best lovers are larger men. I have previously commented on the sexual inadequacy of skinny types. It is therefore clear that the current obesity obsession in this country is part of a nefarious conspiracy aimed at wiping out Great Britain. Was Henry VIII skinny? Did Winston Churchill eat tofu? Help is at hand in the form of a marvelous new book Eat What you Want and Die Like a Man: The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. The reason for this masterpiece is set out in the Foreword:
This is not a serious cookery book, says the author. No doubt he could be sued by the pinch-faced little people. July 6th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Until a week and a half ago, British people were watching the European Championship football championship between the national teams of the best footballing countries of Europe, the English in the hope that England would win the tournament, and the Scottish in the hope that England would be eliminated early and embarassingly. Neither of these things happened: England played decently but not spectacularly and were eliminated on penalties in the quarter finals. If England had stayed in the tournament the number of cross of St George flags attached to people’s cars in this country would have steadily increased, it would have been impossible to go into a pub and had a discussion of anything else, national euphoria may have even broken out and, sady, there would have been a somewhat unpleasant yob element on the streets shortly after closing time. As an Australian, I think I would have found that (and the fact that the English would have been gloating for years if not decades) a bit much, so I am glad that it didn’t happen. Instead, I watched the rest of the tournament (which finished yesterday evening) with interest both on television at home and in pubs with much smaller crowds than would have been the case if England were still participating. The story of the tournament was that the large heavyweight countries of Europe were eliminated relatively early, and the teams from the smaller countries excelled themselves. In yesterday’s final the host nation Portugal (regarded as a good side from before the start of the tournament, although not one of the extreme favourites to win it) took on Greece (who at the start of the tournament were absolute rank outsiders who most people would not have picked to win a match let alone the tournament). And as it happened, Greece won a perhaps a little dull and defensive (but with lots of heart) 1-0 victory, and a team that had never won a match in the finals of either the European Championship or the World Cup before are now champions of Europe. (The slightly desperate question of whether the Olympic stadium in Athens will be complete in time for the start of the Games in six weeks now has the added question of whether the Greeks will have stopped partying by then. I was in Sydney four years ago for the 2000 games, and at this point we were just coming to grips with the fact that the games were almost upon us. We didn’t really start partying until the games actually started. It was not hard to find a place to watch yesterday’s final, because it was on two terrestrial television channels (licence fee funded BBC1 and advertising funded ITV1) simultaneously as well as satellite channel Eurosport. This followed what happened earlier in the tournament, which is that the matches have been divided evenly between the two broadcasters. Half the matches were on the BBC, and the other half on ITV, and who got to show which matches was decided more or less randomly. Neither network has been able to gain an advantage over the other by advertising itself as “The Euro 2004 channel” or anything like that. This may seem curious. Why is what should be one of the biggest sporting events of the year on two television stations simultaneously? Given that lots and lots of people are likely to want to watch it (or would have if England were playing) would it not be of lots of value to advertisers and therefore wouldn’t the organisers of the tournament want to make huge amounts of money by auctioning the television rights to the highest bidder. Well, actually no. Well, actually probably yes, but this is not permitted. → Continue reading: How watching the European Championship football tells us a lot about the history of British television. July 5th, 2004 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
On Saturday afternoon, a gorgeous looking Russian seventeen-year-old called Maria Sharapova won the Wimbledon Ladies Singles title, and the media have been in raptures ever since. Personally I was enraptured ever since she won her quarter final against a Japanese lady. But when Sharapova beat Serena Williams in the final, the world really noticed. When Sharapova plays, she looks like a Bond girl. When she has won, she immediately becomes a giggly American schoolgirl. She is, from the female gorgeousness point of view, the biggest thing in tennis since the now somewhat ageing Anna Kournikova. Plus, she can really play. (Kournikova never won Wimbledon, or anything else big that I recall. Not that I ever cared.) So, I was not surprised when our very busy-with-other-things but still very caring and concerned editorial supremo asked me last night to dash off a posting about the lovely Maria, so that we could have a picture of her up here.  However, underneath all the drooling from the likes of me and Perry, there is a more serious story here, which is why it took me a bit longer to write this than I promised last night. Yes, Sharapova is gorgeousness personified, and long may it last. But there is more going on than this. → Continue reading: Maria Sharapova comes to America and wins Wimbledon July 5th, 2004 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
The odious dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has long been able to rely on the lack of loud criticism from many of his neighbouring African neighbours, afraid perhaps that they are seen to be lining up with their old white colonial oppressors against Zimbabwe. Well, if this report at Reuters is any indication, the coyness on the subject may be changing. More and more African nations are speaking out at the murders, pillage and looting carried out by Mugabe’s henchmen. Zimbabwe is a humanitarian catastrophe, occuring in slow motion before our very eyes. The sooner that the more decent regimes in that troubled continent apply the necessary pressures to help bring this bastard down, the better. July 5th, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
This has been on Fox News for a few days now, but it made me laugh: the individual behind the first WTC bombing, now under lock and key, is going on health-strike:
Still, things could be worse- at least the Sheik is not expecting retalliation about other, more significant wrongs. Being forced to drink Tetley’s rather than Twining’s is one thing, but not being able to leave the building in order to blow up places is another thing altogether. Really quite a serious constraint, when you think about it. I suppose if he was angry about bigger things than tea, Abdel-Rahman would be beating himself up even worse than by eating M&Ms. A few dozen Krispy Kremes, perhaps? The ones with lemon-custard inside are especially good. Then again, so are the raspberry jam ones. Tough call. Perhaps this sort of thing could become a trend as more major terrorists get arrested. On the one hand, we could be seeing suicide-bombers all over the place blasting people to smithereens because some mad old cleric wanted the central heating turned up a couple of degrees. On the other hand, there might be a drastic reduction in the costs of keeping said evil lunatics alive, if they all manage to kill themselves by refusing their blood-pressure medication and overdosing on tubs of lard. Coming soon: Saddam gets angry about being tried for murdering all those people, and shaves off his beard to incite retaliation against the US. While eating M&Ms and refusing to take aspirin for his headaches. July 5th, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across this recent lyrical effort by reader (and recovering ex-NASA employee) Chuck Divine in another forum. With his permission I am sharing the fun with you.
July 5th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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