Friday, July 23, 2004

The Spectator.co.uk: "Miles Hudson is a military historian with several interesting books to his credit, especially his War and the Media (1981), written with Field Marshal Sir John Stanier. He gives his latest book the subtitle ?A Cautionary Tale?, and so indeed it is. It tells the story of the various forces sent to Russia in 1918?19 by the Allies for what seemed at the time good reasons. Each was a separate expedition within the vast geographical range of Russia?s western frontier. Eventually all of them ended in humiliating failure, and their presence was used by the Bolsheviks (or Bolos as they were often called at the time) as patriotic propaganda in their struggle to win their own power.

The British were of course not alone in this venture (except in the Baltic sector). The nationalities of the forces engaged were:
55,000 Czechs
12,000 Poles
4,000 Serbs
4,000 Romanians
2,000 Italians
1,600 British
760 French
28,000 Japanese (later increased to 70,000)
7,500 Americans
4,000 Canadians"

Thursday, July 22, 2004

BBC NEWS | England | Hampshire/Dorset | India trip 'exceeded wildest dreams' The parents of murdered student Hannah Foster have said their trip to India "exceeded their wildest dreams" as police arrested the main suspect.
BBC NEWS | Wales | South East Wales | Cardff 'Best friend' murder trial jury out
BBC NEWS | Politics | MPs lambast Whitehall IT 'waste': "An eight-month probe by MPs into government computer systems has found an 'appalling waste of public money'. "
BBC NEWS | England | Girl given dead foetus in bottle Great Britain 2004
The Observer | Review | Just a pretty face? Che Guevara.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town: "For years, the (US) military has offered its recruits free tuition, specialized training, and a host of other benefits to compensate for the tremendous sacrifices they are called upon to make. Lately, many of them have been taking advantage of another perk: free cosmetic surgery."

Binge, Binger, Bingest!

Britons think they are the biggest binge drinkers in Europe - but, when it comes to downing pints, the Germans are in a league of their own.
ThisisLondon
BBC NEWS | Education | School spending remains a mystery
Economist.com | BRAIN SCAN: "Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity."
BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft to pay $32bn dividend
BBC NEWS | UK | Business leaders 'may head police'

Friday, July 16, 2004

Telegraph | Opinion | The BNP is thoroughly nasty, so why did 750,000 people vote for it?: "A BBC reporter has spent six months under cover, at great risk to himself, in order to bring us the news that there are some very unpleasant people in the British National Party. Next, he will be telling us that he has discovered strong evidence of Roman Catholicism in the Vatican."
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Why is the US focused on Sudan?: "His stern rhetoric also signalled another plus point: in the midst of controversy over Iraq, Darfur is an issue on which the US can safely assume the moral high ground, with little international opposition. "

The imputation abover is truly despicable.
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Libya to open Darfur aid corridor THis is very significant I think.
BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | India school inferno kills dozens
The New Republic Online: Secretary to Hitler.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Amartya Kumar Sen - Democracy as a Universal Value - Journal of Democracy 10:3
spiked-politics | Article | Devolved authoritarianism: "by Dolan Cummings


It would have been easy to get the impression in recent weeks that the British government's obsession with smoking and smacking is distracting it from weightier issues. In fact, ministers have been keen to remind us that they are equally concerned about loitering, graffiti and young women vomiting in the street."
BBC NEWS | Business | US demand boosts India's Infosys
BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Armitage in India for Iraq talks Mr Chesty
Plame's Lame Game - What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife forgot to tell us about the yellow-cake scandal. By Christopher Hitchens

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Telegraph | Arts | Delete our cultural heritage?
Telegraph | News | GCHQ code challenge cracked by internet chatterers
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Zimbabwe 'returning to stone age'
BBC NEWS | Technology | Windows update hits a new delay SP2 now due August.
Telegraph | Opinion | Blunkett's ban will fan the flames
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sacred Books of the East, by Various, et al
--Blue Foundation-- news
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Simon Magus, by G.R.S. Mead.
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One day course "I What Will"

Monday, July 12, 2004

BBC NEWS | Technology | New PlayStation set for May debut
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Meet the (Bin Laden) in-laws
IOL: Townshend fuming over Fahrenheit row
IOL: Townshend fuming over Fahrenheit row
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Families re-enact famous US duel: "Descendants of US political rivals have drawn pistols at 10 paces, in a re-enactment of a 200-year-old duel.
On 11 July 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot dead the nation's first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers.
The modern-day rivals were Antonio Burr, a distant cousin of Burr, and Douglas Hamilton, a fifth-great grandson of the historical figure.
But this time, no blood was spilled and the two men later went for a beer.
About 100 descendants "
The Rootless Cosmopolitan Edward Said.

Friday, July 09, 2004

The New Yorker: From the Archives: "Marlon Brando, who was considered by many to be one of the greatest actors in American movie history, died on July 1st, at the age of eighty. Here, from 1957, is a long Profile of Brando by Truman Capote."
The Pamplona It amazes me that I did this in my youth.
Yahoo! News - Official's 'Dirty Girl' Quip Draws Fire: "State Education Secretary Richard Riordan jokingly told a child her name, Isis, meant 'stupid dirty girl,' prompting widespread criticism and posing a quandary for the man who appointed him, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger"
Telegraph | Opinion | Imitate the Army - don't butcher it

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Wired 12.07: VIEW: "Once upon a time, politics by other means took the form of war between state-sponsored armies. Then along came the creeping tide of international terror, whose practitioners play by different rules. Terrorists have little use for top-heavy chains of command, cumbersome procurement procedures, and pesky government oversight. They eschew conventional rules of engagement and international codes like the Geneva Conventions. Faced with such an agile enemy, beleaguered states are turning to a force that operates under a similar lack of constraints: private military contractors. Once the hired guns settle into the trenches, though, it can be hard to get them to leave."
BBC NEWS | Technology | Full Spectrum Warrior hits its target: "Full Spectrum Warrior is an excellent military action game that marks an intriguing departure from the norm.
Now available on Xbox, it was initially commissioned by the US military as a training aid.
'The army realised that a lot of their recruits would play video games in their downtime,' explains Greg Donovan, one of the game's producers.
'The game was originally never supposed to be seen as a consumer version. It was always supposed to be a training tool for light infantry.' "
spiked-liberties | Article | Crucifying public debate: " Unless we are able to be wrong, rude and offensive, about Allah, Jesus or even the home secretary, then the right to free speech exists only in theory rather than in practice"
The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "n October 24, 1937, Cole Porter went out for a horseback ride at the Piping Rock Club, in Locust Valley, Long Island?one of those swank playgrounds whose names he liked to rhyme in song and which signalled his fully paid-up membership in the Elegentsia. In the woods, the skittish horse, which the forty-six-year-old Porter had been warned against riding, shied and fell on him, crushing both his legs. According to Porter?a story that William McBrien, the author of ?Cole Porter: A Biography? (1998), finds ?difficult to believe??he passed the excruciating hours while he waited to be rescued composing the lyrics to an elusive verse of his song ?At Long Last Love.?"

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Mark Steyn on the new Iraq
Wired News: Tech Company Gets Hypersensitive: "The technology will lead to one of the first remote sensing devices that can provide readings from several feet away without physical contact, according to executives at Nexense. That could mean no more sweaty heart monitor straps and no more grabbing handles while running on a treadmill -- the device could get a signal through a wristband or a patient's feet. Devices that could use the Nexense technology include heart monitors, satellites, cell phones and automobiles. It could even help people stop snoring. "
Snoring! How's that for serendipity?
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / Operation everything: "In World War II, scientists from a wide range of fields attacked military problems with a potent combination of empiricism and mathematical models. When airplanes came back riddled with holes from enemy attacks, for instance, the intuitive response was to reinforce the armor where the holes were. But, noted the scientists, those were the planes that made it back. They didn't need more armor where they were hit. The real challenge was to figure out the places that had been hit in the planes that went down."