Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves
– W. S. Churchill
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January 20th, 2003 | Comments are closed
 …or how to ensure your kids are more technologically literate than you. One of the best ways to motivate someone is to present the person with a challenge. For children, forbidding something works equally well, if not better. So when I came across this product in one of those little catalogues that come with Sunday newspapers, I immediately realised its potential to do an amazing service in further advancing the technological awareness of the young generation.
So far, so good. But if parents led by the desire to curb their children’s TV-viewing habits succumb to the advertising and purchase such devices en masse, pretty soon many a technologically gifted whizkid will be popular, spots or no spots. Not only ways to disable the screenblock will be devised, but kids will be ‘instructed’ in how to do that themselves without their modifications being detected. Part of the solution will have to be the inability of parents to notice the ‘adjustment’. Aren’t you just grateful to the screenblock inventors for broadening your children’s technological horizons? January 20th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although attention is focused on the nightmarish regime in Iraq, please spare an angry thought for the vile rulers of Zimbabwe, who are still starving and murdering sections of the population felt to be ‘disloyal’ to Robert Mugabe. George Bush, supported by Tony Blair, will clear up Daddy’s (and Donald’s) mess in Iraq by spending several billion dollars and sending a few hundred thousand troops to see the end of Saddam Hussain… Blair could do something about tyranny in Zimbabwe for a fraction of that price if he had the moral fortitude. For all his many and varied sins, Saddam is not (currently) killing and dispossessing British subjects, which cannot be said for Robert Mugabe. Will the British state please stop spending my appropriated tax money on funding the comforts of former Taliban asylum seekers and, given that I suppose it is too much to expect my money back, start sending crates of rifles and ammunition to opposition groups in Zimbabwe. January 20th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Glenn Reynolds put me on the trail of this one: EMP weapons. I personally don’t know what all the fuss is about. New Scientist published an article a year or three ago which shows how to build one of these in your garage. Perhaps getting things right for targeting from a moving cruise missile and accurately controlling the output energy are the special part… but the main concept is dead easy. If you are interested, go dig it up yourself. I’m not going to tell you how. Once WWIII is over with… perhaps. January 19th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner warned the British public today in a television interview that Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qa’eda remain at large in Britain and pose a continuing security threat. He believes that Osama bin Laden and his henchmen are seeking to make use of existing terror networks in plans for further attacks.
Presumably, this has nothing to do with Britain’s policy on asylum seekers that allows a Taliban soldier who fought British and American troops in Afghanistan to be granted asylum here because he fears persecution from the new Western-backed government in Kabul (as already mentioned by Perry in the post below). Although this is the first known case of a Taliban soldier being granted asylum in this country, I have no doubt that many have entered Britain with false documents and identities. They may need not bother anymore. Unless the policy changes, the successful application may open the doors to hundreds of other similar requests. I wonder whether in few months’ time the police chief will insist that his officers are ‘on top of’ the situation. It seems that the left hand does not know what the right is doing. Indeed, the state is not your friend. January 19th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have long known that the world is essentially a madhouse with no locks on the doors, but when I read that a former Taliban soldier who fought against British and US forces in Afghanistan will be given asylum in Britain because the pro-western government in Kabul is ‘persecuting’ him, I start to really wonder at what the word ‘asylum’ really means. Did rational people object to former members of the National German Socialist Workers Party being ‘persecuted’ in the aftermath of World War Two? A few days ago, American bloggers Andrew and Sasha arrived in Britain, neither of whom have ever fought against British soldiers, or called for the death of Christians and Jews, or joined any organisations like Al-Muhajirun which aims to make Britain a muslim caliphate… …and yet they were nevertheless detained at the airport upon arrival in the UK on Thursday and grilled for nine hours before being provisionally allowed into the country. In fact Sasha’s blog was examined by the Immigration agents and its content used as the excuse to initially deny her entry. It is strange that the content of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad’s website does not seem to get him kicked out of the country. The state is not your friend. January 19th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sometimes the lads at NASA are slow learners. Back in 1989, George Koopman of AMROC offered to replace the dangerous Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s) of the Space Shuttle with a safe, throttleable hybrid version. NASA wasn’t interested and not long after George’s tragic death in a car accident, AMROC folded. But never fear! Fourteen years later, NASA has discovered hybrids! Better late than never I suppose. Why, you may ask, am I making such a big deal about a hybrid replacement for the SRB’s? They fixed all the problems on the Shuttle after the Challenger didn’t they? No. They did not. Not because they didn’t want to, but because there is one problem inherent in the STS design which can’t be fixed without a big change: SRB’s cannot be shut down. Once those candles light, there is no survivable abort until they have burned out and SRBSEP has occured. (That’s “Solid Rocket Booster Seperation” in laymanese). You can’t do an early SEP either. I’ll try to explain why. The current SRB’s are basically very large skyrockets. So large they have to be built in segments (with O-ring sealing gaskets in between the bolted together sections) because quality control on pouring the fuel/oxidizer mixture inside would be a nightmare on something that big. The stuff must be perfectly regular inside and have no voids (bubbles). There is a shaped void down the centerline which must be of the right shape. The SRB’s are ignited from the top and since the mixture contains both the fuel and the oxidizer, once they start burning, there is no stopping them until the gunk is all gone. There is a way to stop the thrust however; there are explosive charges that blow the endcaps at an appropriate time so that dropped SRB’s don’t go flying off on their last legs somewhere they shouldn’t; opening the tube can also act as a brake. The recovery chutes are up there as well. January 19th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Julius Blumfeld, a home educator himself, believes that it may be a while before the right to home educate in Britain is seriously eroded. (“Ask me again in ten years time.”) But I recommend also this rumination by Michael Peach about the future of home education in Britain, and on how to defend it. Says Peach:
So far so good, in other words. Which is also pretty much what Blumfeld had said:
But as Blumfeld had gone on to say:
As I say, Blumfeld preceded that by saying that in in ten years time things may have changed, and home-education might have become a “libertarian issue”, i.e. a political battleground. Ten years? Peach thinks that things may be about to get nasty a lot more quickly than that. → Continue reading: The British home-education debate – is it about to hot up? January 19th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I don’t care how hungover you are. Get thee hence to the newsagents and buy, yes buy, a paper copy of the Mail On Sunday today. They have a story about some TV chick the German Chancellor is shagging. You care not about the paramours of foreign potentates? Buy it anyway. The point is that it’s a test case about whether British courts are supreme or whether the EU can over-rule them. Apparently Lover-boy Gerhart has got an injunction to suppress the story in Germany and is claiming that under EU law that means he can suppress it here too. January 19th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The stories are circulating. President Bush will announce backing for the NASA Prometheus Project during his January 28th State of the Union Address. This is an effort to design and build an advanced, nuclear based rocket engine for manned solar system missions. It is a major step forward for those of us who have spent our lives fighting to open the high frontier. My preference is for everything to be commercial and private, but I recognize there is simply no way on Earth this kind of propulsion system can be privately built in the political reality we live in. If built, it suddenly makes the Moon an economically feasible place to do business and Mars a place that is reachable for settlement within our life times. Given what I know of some of the people whom the Bush administration brought in for space policy, I expected good things. Even though I have been aware of such ideas being floated for over a year now, I was not prepared for goodness on this scale. I intend to buy one of them a pint the next time I’m in DC. January 19th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Or more accurately, the day after the night before. Two separate parties yesterday involving a large contingent of Samizdatistas has resulted in rather meagre output today. 
Proper decorum was observed at all times
Brian Linse, our pet pinko from California crashed
Sober discourse was the byword at this gathering as usual Normal output will resume tomorrow… January 18th, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across this little comment on man’s foibles in the middle of the chaos known collectively as “the holidays”. At the time I couldn’t do more than check the validity of the article which, I’m sorry to say, was accurate. While the date would now classify it blogospherically speaking as an archeological anecdote, I felt the issue it addresses is still poignant. This article appeared in a local US newspaper on Nov. 15, 2002 but it’s importance may well be global.
As with any criminal act, there is something we as a society can learn. The lesson here is obvious: the bruised male ego can be a violent thing. The more tickilish question, and the one we must answer if we are to prevent future attacks of this kind, is what finally triggered the assault? Was it ridicule (ha ha. your butt’s hairer than mi-ine!) or was it envy (my butt’s hairer than yours! nah na nahna na.)? Its a sensitive issue. January 18th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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