May 2003

"the figure-8 loop you get when you mark the position of the Sun at the same time each day through the year"

"Novell challenged SCO's assertion that it owns the copyrights and patents to UNIX System V... the asset purchase agreement entered into in 1995 did not transfer these rights"

"Sami stands in the middle of a sweltering street, telling some cars to go here and others to go there, determined to make the traffic of Baghdad - and his life, too - just a little bit better."

a privileged media enclave, erratic prices, the power out in Nasiriyah, Pepsi and shampoo as "aid", ... and the CIA is employing ex-Mukhabarat agents

stories about rainwater tanks and marsupial fossils come before the resignation of the governor-general

"requests to inspect conditions under which prisoners are being held have been met with silence or turned down"

"So we hate ourselves, buy lots of stuff, and place our trust in governments that we wouldn't trust to lie straight in bed if it wasn't for the fact we need 'em to keep the wogs out."

"Is there an ethical distinction between lying to get your country out of a war and lying to get your country into one?"

Two "reputable" Australian companies spammed me today: I rang one, only to be told I "supported chopping down trees", and the other came from someone at a computer company who sounded like they should have had a clue. Sigh. I'm now getting around 200 spams a day, with 10 of them getting past SpamAssassin.

"those on the free-market right who see the Bretton Woods institutions as expensive, statist bureaucracies are mirrored by those on the left who view them as agents of neo-liberal oppression"

"If you make money out of selling software, then it's quite possibly difficult not to turn into Microsoft"

"Children are being trafficked into domestic service in Britain to clean houses and do chores without pay. The victims are mostly west African girls"

"filters designed to block pornography could also also cut out 55% of references to condoms, 50% of safe sex sites, 60% of gay health sites and even 32% of pregnancy sites"

(But some of the "paleo" criticisms of Bush etc. are spot on - and no one else seems to be making them.)

"it is reported that the combination of high-voltage rock and happy-smiley children's songs can break the will of the hardest terrorist or rogue element"

"SCO would, for understandable reasons, prefer that the courts remain ignorant of the history, outcome, and implications of the BSD lawsuit."

"they aren't doing this for fun. They are doing it to earn hard cash, funds their families need to buy food."

"The other way that Samba could come to an end is for people to stop installing Microsoft Windows on their desktops. That would really be the best result, but I'm not holding my breath."

"the strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves"

"Last month, the increasingly bold Taliban forces took and held two district towns along the Pakistan border for a week"

"The American civil administration in Iraq is having a shortage of Bright ideas. ... Trial and error on a whole country?"

"US military guidelines developed after the first Gulf War required any soldier coming within 50 yards of a tank struck with DU to wear a gas mask and full protective suit"

"It does have one industry that appears to be flourishing: poppy production for the international heroin trade"

70% Protestant or Catholic, "no religion" up to 16% (from 1% in 1971), substantial increases in Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism

"million-dollar lottery winners and people who are paralyzed report roughly similar levels of happiness"

"White sap from the African milkbush is used by children as a gooey toy or as glue in their schoolbooks, while adults use it to make herbal remedies"

"the US has successfully liberated the people of Iraq from meaningful involvement in decisions about their own future"

"The Pentagon group's idea was, essentially: Let's just assume that there is a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and let's assume that they have made weapons of mass destruction"

"House rules allow for the arrest of members who thwart a quorum, although the act carries no other criminal or civil sanction."

"The ministry will offer 100,000 computers at first but they plan to ramp up to a million in subsequent phases"

"This is not simply a question of protocols and interfaces. Entire pieces of software are becoming open standards of sorts."

""peace has not always headed Israel's list of priorities and war has not always headed its neighbors'"

"The 680-tonne corvettes have not moved since they were built as part of an order from Iraq in the early 80s."

"The former telephone exchange was on fire yesterday after being looted again, and there were big blazes elsewhere round the city"

"As the embargo stretched out, the chance that an irreplaceable part had gone missing somewhere along the technological "food chain" became practically infinite."

"what this resolution boils down to is legitimisation of an illegal war and of an open-ended occupation. It gives them a free hand in Iraq. What it will give Iraqis is much less clear."

"Germany may think it's the sick man of Europe, in dire need of reforms it shrinks from making. But Germany feels like one nation again."

"Symbols carved into tortoise shells may be the oldest words yet discovered. The findings may also shed light on the ritualistic practices of Neolithic China."

"War sucks big time. Dont let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom."

Spain wants somewhere cushy, with "no demonstrations"; Bulgaria, Honduras, and Nicaragua need someone else to pay; Poland wants a UN resolution; which leaves "maybe" the Netherlands and Denmark -- and stable bastions of democracy Albania and the Ukraine

"So no WMDs -- and no apologies! You've been had, John Q. Public, and it's for your own good! Same for you, Coalition of the Willing!"

"The estimates of the extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty provided in the World Bank's Development Reports for 1990 and 2000/01 are neither meaningful nor reliable."

"CS is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia"

"Oracle has begun actively recommending Linux to customers over all other operating environments, including the Unix flavours and Windows."

students and civil servants, led by "a prominent Afghan philosopher known for outspoken criticisms of the communist regime of the 1980s, the Mujahideen governments that replaced it and also the Taliban"

"Umm Qasr has been handed to the Spanish, whose soldiers rarely venture far beyond their heavily guarded headquarters"

"failure to hold broad-based consultations at central and local levels is provoking resistance, sometimes armed"

"Its targets are almost exclusively military" ... its supporters "want self-determination and basic services"

"For 15 years, the three al-Ani brothers have run a taxi business from their adjacent houses, opposite the local school"

I'm Warner's Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups - which sounds like a book I'd want to read

"Banks have proved themselves to be the most hazardous economic institutions known to man ... Unfortunately [they] seem to be necessary"

"Unlike the British in Basra, they have made no attempt to establish eye contact with the local people or talk to anyone except the mayor and his officials."

"You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation"