This appeared on the front page of today’s New York Times.
Category Archives: Beyond belief
Here we go again
From BBC Online…
Jesus had a son named Judah and was buried alongside Mary Magdalene, according to a new documentary by Hollywood film director James Cameron.
The film examines a tomb found near Jerusalem in 1980 which producers say belonged to Jesus and his family.
Speaking in New York, the Oscar-winning Titanic director said statistical tests and DNA analysis backed this view…
Ye Gods! Or should it be Ye God?
Pavement art
This, believe it or not, is a two-dimensional pavement drawing. Julian Beever specialises in astonishing anamorphic illusions drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of three dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint. Lots more examples (many equally hard to believe) on his site.
Do not try this while driving down the M1
Leading-edge Uselessness Department. Playing Xbox Live over Google WiFi While Driving.
The Conrad Black Appreciation Society
Well, well. Just fancy this…
This Web site is dedicated to the support of Conrad Moffat Black in his current battle with grandstanding U.S. prosecutors and a hostile left-wing press. More than that, it is our grateful and long overdue acknowledgement of His Lordship’s life’s struggle to confront, with unflagging courage, the Brobdingnagian forces of Canadian small-mindedness, parochialism, mediocrity and failure…
The cringing tone of this website suggests that it’s a spoof. For example:
From the outset, let us be clear about several matters concerning The Ad Hoc Committee for Conrad Black. First, none of us boasts the pleasure of knowing His Lordship personally, nor are we beholden to him in any manner, financial or otherwise. Several amongst us, however, have had the honour of an introduction to and a fleeting conversation with His Lordship in one social context or another.
No, we are not, strictly speaking, “friends of Conrad Black.” We are simply admirers of the man, beneficiaries in the broadest sense of his commitment to excellence, and–dare we say–fans of his indomitable style. Whatever transpires in the life of His Lordship over the next few months, he shall remain a blazing beacon of hope to those of us on this dull and dreary northern plain…
Nobody could write this sycophantic drivel with a straight face. So I wonder who is the joker behind it? Craig Brown?
Thanks to Pete for spotting it.
EU has plans for your privacy
From today’s New York Times…
PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people’s Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive.
In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.
A draft law in the Netherlands would likewise go further than the European Union requires, in this case by requiring phone companies to save records of a caller’s precise location during an entire mobile phone conversation….
Apart from anything else, it’s an idiotic concept because it wouldn’t apply to services based in the US. So people will continue to use Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail etc. Unless, of course, the EU proposes to make it a crime for European citizens to have a Gmail account.
The madness of King Tony
Perceptive observation by Armando Iannucci.
Am I going mad? I heard that Tony Blair thinks so. Not just me; everyone. You too. He thinks we’re all mad. Someone close to his circle told me recently that the reason Blair seems so resolute, so calm in the face of criticism, is that he thinks the media are just mad. And he confronts unpopularity with the knowledge that we, the public, are turning mad as well. The more we say: ‘He’s going mad’, the more it proves to him that we must be mad. Is that the logic of a madman?
I only mention this because I was struck by the madness of a remark Blair made last week. It was just as the High Court ruled that the government’s recent consultation with the public over what our future energy policy should be wasn’t consultative enough, and that he and his ministers would have to consult us on the policy again.
Asked if this would put on hold his plans to build more nuclear power stations, he said: ‘No. This won’t affect the policy at all. It’ll affect the process of consultation, but not the policy.’
Take a good hard look at that quote again. It’s mad. It’s based either on a belief in the possession of psychic powers so discriminating they can predict the outcome of a consultation before it happens (which is mad) or they’re based on the belief that words have no meaning other than the meaning one chooses to give them and that this meaning can change at any particular moment (which is at least three times as mad as the first example of madness).
A sane person would assume that a consultation about a decision would be part of the process of forming that decision.
He would indeed. Which is why Britain needs a new constitution. At present we have an elected dictatorship which can do what it likes so long as the Prime Minister has a working majority.
Cops and bobbers
A mother has hit out at police who refused to go after thieves who stole her sons’ motorbikes – because the pair were not wearing helmets.
Pauline Nolan, from Droylsden, Greater Manchester, said officers told her they could not pursue the offenders in case they fell off and sued them.
[Source]
Microsoft: recruitment news
Microsoft has hired Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. His job title? Why “Enthusiast Evangelist”, of course.
It reminds me of Apple in the good old days when the prevailing Silicon Valley joke was:
Q. What’s the difference between Apple Computer and the Boy Scouts?
A. The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
Apple had job titles like “Evangelist” then. Now they just have the Supreme Evangelist.
US military ‘planning’
This is a PowerPoint slide from a White House briefing by General Tommy Hanks in August 2002 explaining how post-Saddam Iraq would be managed in a series of orderly stages (‘Stabilization’, ‘Recovery’, ‘Transition’) which would require only 5,000 US troops in country by 2006. The presentation was obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act. It makes one wonder what these guys were smoking.
The NYT comments:
August 2002 was an important time for developing the strategy. President Bush had yet to go to the United Nations to declare Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons programs a menace to international security, but the war planning was well under way. The tumultuous upheaval that would follow the toppling of the Hussein government was known antiseptically in planning sessions as “Phase IV.” As is clear from the slides, it was the least defined part of the strategy.
General Franks had told his officers that it was his supposition that the State Department would have the primary responsibility for rebuilding Iraq’s political institutions.
“D.O.S. will promote creation of a broad-based, credible provisional government — prior to D-Day,” noted a slide on “key planning assumptions.” That was military jargon for the notion that the Department of State would assemble a viable Iraqi governing coalition before the invasion even began.