Profiles in Wanktankery: GWPF

November 29, 2009 in politics

This is why the wanktanks (thanks, Brett!) anger me, and why they should anger you. In today’s Obscurer: The intriguing fact that the global warming trend of the late 20th-century appears to have come to a halt for the time being has led to growing public scepticism about claims of impending climate catastrophe. In view [...]

chopper

November 29, 2009 in stupid procurement

Can anybody tell me why this isn’t a bigger story? Essentially, the government is buying 20-odd new Chinook helicopters for the RAF support helicopter force, and transferring the existing “green” Merlins to the Navy’s commando helicopter squadrons. This means a significant increase in helicopters, and relief for the Navy support helicopter squadrons, who have been [...]

Avient; still tolerated, but for how much longer?

November 29, 2009 in aviation

Old friends Avient have got it wrong, losing their newly acquired MD-11F in an accident on take-off from Shanghai. We’ve blogged about this lot here, here, here, and here; I also happen to know they sometimes read the blog. There is much material on PPRuNe as well – try here. The weird bit about Avient [...]

not such a giant database

November 29, 2009 in ID

This is hilarious. Computer Weekly reports on Sir Joseph Pilling, Identity Commissioner, and discovers that he didn’t have to apply for the job. And he’s very proud that the National Identity Register now contains 538 people. That’s almost one-and-a-half records a day for a year. (Where are we on that “300 day delivery timetable” again?)

more “cyberwar” nonsense

November 29, 2009 in China, Internet

Also spinning off that post, I’d like to reiterate a couple of points from this post and this one. As far as I can see, not much has changed since Beijing was identified as the world’s biggest concentration of compromised Windows machines; Spamhaus ROKSO looks pretty bad for the big provincial networks in ChinaNet and [...]

a trick question

November 29, 2009 in Pakistan, politics

Cracking post of Londonstani’s; perhaps he should retitle as Continuity Abu M? However, it leaves me with one really big question. If I was a Taliban leader under Pakistani protection, I’d be really worried about moving to Karachi unless I knew whose side that city’s various armed factions were on. They’re various, as I say, [...]

making the pie higher

November 29, 2009 in press

Well, ha ha. But I’d like to flag another case of Really Bad Data Visualisation from the Murdoch world. It’s in this story from the Scum; mysteriously, the famous paywall still doesn’t seem to be functioning, but the paper isn’t in the habit of publishing any of its graphics online. This is possibly because they [...]

Good luck, Phil. Again

November 29, 2009 in mastur/metablogging, torture

Phil Carter quits; more here. I rather wonder if it had some connection to this. Is it any consolation that the Obama administration has a better class of resignations? I think not. Meanwhile, another voice of sense is silenced by trolls. I said a while ago somewhere that CNAS was likely to be to this [...]

links, the light alternative to writing

November 28, 2009 in Iran, nukes, open source, prediction, RepRap

Ill-coordinated links. Great news in RepRapping – South Korean scientists have succeeded in getting bacteria to make polylactic acid. PLA is the RepRap project’s favourite feedstock because it’s a reasonably tractable, general purpose plastic that can be synthesised from starch. The synthesis is not exactly simple, which is why outsourcing the job to germs is [...]

content is free, feet cost extra

November 28, 2009 in hacker

So how’s that ContentFree Comment doing? Rather well in the last week or so. Here’s Melanie Phillips: If this is from a legitimately constituted country… And again: Jewish leadership organizations have sold out to rubbish and Tom Gross…British Jews controlling the Labour government, and Israel’s Climatic Research Unit at the material is a world Jewish [...]