plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Remember this from Great Expectations?

"Oh-h!" said I, looking at Joe. "Hulks!"

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, "Well, I told you
so."

"And please what's Hulks?" said I.

"That's the way with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me
out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer
him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are
prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name
for marshes, in our country.

"I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put there?"
said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. "I tell you
what, young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand to
badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise,
if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and
because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they
always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!"

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling - from Mrs. Joe's
thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last
words - I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the
Hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun
by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Seems hulks are back in (albeit Dutch) fashion:

Dutch float 'migrant prison' scheme
By Dominic Hughes
BBC News, Zaandam

In the middle of an industrial estate in Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam, stands the newest prison in the Netherlands.

Zaandam's floating prison
The prison is built by the side of an old wood yard

But the word "stands" is not quite right, because this prison is in fact moored on one of the country's many waterways.

And the inmates in this floating prison are not criminals but illegal immigrants, guilty of what the Dutch call an "administrative offence".

This is the answer to a problem the authorities faced in the late 1990s - how to separate illegal immigrants from ordinary criminals when you already have overcrowded prisons.

"It's easier to get a place on the water than to find land, plus it's easy to build," says Erik Nijman from the Dutch ministry of justice.

And he says a floating prison is also more flexible: "If we have a problem for example in Amsterdam, we can transport them over water."

I suppose the fact that these new hulks are for illegal immigrants whereas the hulks in Dickensian England were mostly populated by captured French sailors makes all the difference

Full story here:

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Funny That

In an ironic twist, a British team operating a World War II codebreaking computer has been beaten in a cipher-breaking contest by a German.

More info here.

Don't Throw Out Those Old Bike Keys, They May Come in Handy

From the BBC:

Bicycle lock key

With the help of Brian Burnell - a researcher into the history of the British nuclear weapons programme who once designed bomb casings for atom bombs - Newsnight tracked down a training version of the WE 177 nuclear bomb at the Bristol Aero collection at Kemble.

Tornado and earlier V-bomber crews trained with these, which were identical in every way to the live bombs except for the nuclear warhead.

To arm the weapons you just open a panel held by two captive screws - like a battery cover on a radio - using a thumbnail or a coin.

Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters.

The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees. There is no code which needs to be entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the Bomb.

I understand that the above image might not be completely appropriate to this blog entry, but I really do like these stamps. As Socrates remarked in The Symposium soldiers that love each other stick together. Socrates having done his Athenian military service, we can only conjecture, would have known.





More info here:

The LBR Photography Website is Live and Kicking!

Must see site!


LBR Photography's Must See Site.

http://www.lbrphotography.com

*(While this may look like as a piece of spam, I would like to remind the reader that I have no pecuniary or other interest in the advertised site and as I conveniently see it am innocent of the charge. The random fact that I am married to the proprietor of LBR Photography, a fact of which I still have difficulty believing said proprietor agreed to my proposal of marriage, is purely, I can't emphasize enough, coincidental. I must also add that my relation to the model pictured is, similarly, a coincidence.)

Fancy Taking a Crack at 1940s (albeit classified) Technology?

Turing is the one standing on the bus's steps.

Conservatively, the code breakers, Alan Turing a terribly tragic example, at Bletchley Park shortened the war by over a year. (Winston Churchill, who would know about these things, certainly thought so.) Fancy, however, using your 2.66 GHZ Quad Core screaming Meany to take on the Bombe a computer that employed over a thousand vacuum tubes (valves in UK parlance?

More info here.

and here.

If I can recommend a book or two on the subject, Sebag-Montefiore's Enigma (2002) is great for the overview, while Andrew Hodge's biography of Allen Turing, Alan Turing: A Biography (1992) is about as tragic a biography as they come.

This Revolver Goes to Eleven (really!)

From the Shooting Times: (not that I read such gun porn

The Model 500 from Smith & Wesson is the biggest, heaviest, most powerful factory-production double-action revolver in the world. It's built on an entirely new and massive S&W frame size. It fires the new .500 S&W Magnum cartridge, which is the most powerful factory load ever developed specifically for handgun use. The gun and the cartridge are both impressive product accomplishments, beyond the industry norm, and both moved together from concept to reality in less than a year.

So that's all right then...

In other news, Winchester was rescued from Chapter 11. Apparently, there's an appetitie for small arms ordinance in Iraq and Afghanistan these days.

More UberDollar Fun (for those who live in the Trailer Park, Ricky Excepted)

Ricky cries in Julian's Rye and Coke after exports to US collapse with sinking greenback.

Good news, however, for domestic consumers.

On a More Serious Note: Kristallnacht

1938 Interior of Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht

Tomorrow marks the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht (and coincidentally the day of my Aunt's birth). It's bad history to give exact dates for the start of such horrific man made tragedies. (Earthquakes are another matter). But Kristallnacht should have been notice enough to the world of the Holocaust that was to follow and warning enough to the Jews that could to up sticks from the lands that they had become, in some cases all too, comfortable in.

What's past is of course often as not seen in 20/20 as it is forgotten, but I can think of at least three other Kristallnachts (with the exception perhaps of 9/11) that have gone unremarked.

From the Onion, Where Else?

Cheney Regrets Buying Bush Laser Pointer

It's True: The Moon is Made of Cheese

Cheese Moon


Wait for it!

Wedgie Proof Underwear

It's been a busy week.
Let's rephrase that, it's been a crap week.

Watch Wilkipedia in the Making

Watch Wikipedia in the Making

Not quite as boring as some have suggested. I just learned about Manny Santos:

M

anuella "Manny" Santos (born August 15, 1989)is a fictional character in the Canadian teen drama television series Degrassi: The Next Generation, portrayed by Cassie Steele. Created by Yan Moore and executive producer Linda Schuyler, Manny was one of the series' original characters, appearing in its first episode, "Mother and Child Reunion" on October 21, 2001. Manny began as a flat character in the first two seasons of DTNG, more or less playing Emma Nelson's sidekick. In season three, Manny debuted a shocking new look and personality. Since then, she has developed the reputation of being the "school slut", being called that by almost every student at one point or another, as well as her own father. Drama has seemed to follow this young girl everywhere around the halls of Degrassi.

Currently, Manny is still attending Degrassi Community, she is in her senior year along with Emma Nelson, Liberty Van Zandt, Toby Isaacs, Peter Stone, Spinner Mason, Ashley Kerwin, Jimmy Brooks and Sean Cameron.

Our New Arrival

Bamboo. Hatched October 28th 2007

Kettle? Pot on Line 2.

Henry Kissinger once called Donald Rumsfeld the 'rottenest' person he knew in politics. Both are now war criminals abroad and unwelcome in the land of the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys.

Already facing war crimes charges in Germany, Donald Rumsfeld—like Henry Kissinger before him—now runs into a spot of legal bother in France.

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

...

Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activist point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.

"Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when US forces were hunting him down," activist Tanguy Richard said. "He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn’t pay."

Full story here.

300 Meets 1776 Meets Team America

Pink is the New Black

One of the Funniest Things I Have Ever Seen Posted on \.

"Lockheed Martin is planning on building a commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia Canada. The details are a bit shaky, but apparently the project is serious enough to attract 45 million dollars from the Federal government. The launch pad will specifically be built in Cape Breton, a mostly rural island characterized by low employment, thick colloquial accents, and kitchen fiddle parties. A PDF is available with pictures and a description of the planned orbital glider, the 'Silver Dart,' somewhat lacking the aesthetics of the X Prize winner."

More info here.


(The photo above requires some comment. Looking for a suitable image, I typed into Google's Image Search 'Space Lobster' and, along with the image, this is what I found:

The Invasion of the Space Lobsters’, a 7-minute animated film made by the Canadian Labour Congress and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was the talk of the conference with participants from as far as Sweden and Australia. The film presents the need for clearer language through an amusing and creative scenario of giant lobsters landing on earth and having problems communicating with the earthlings. Positive feedback on the film was so overwhelming that the film was shown three times over the three-day conference. Jack Horwitz from the NFB was on hand to answer questions about working with a large labour organization on a creative project.

More information on this by all accounts spectacular film which was, as I understand it, shown 3 times over 3 days, can be found here.)

And yes, I am still super keen on NK's new tome.

RSS in Plain English Courtesy of JPK

There's great stuff being posted on blogs these days. Here. compliments of JPK, is how to read what you want quickly and efficiently.

RSS in Plain English Courtesy of JPK

How Do They Maintain the Same Voice While at the Same Time Be So Percipient?

'Students First In Line' Program To Offer Job Training At Needy Schools

Naomi Klein's 'The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'

Out of sheer prejudice and a certain reluctance to purchase books at full whack, I had resisted buying a copy of Naomi Klein's new book The Rise of Disaster Capitalism until this week.

When I saw it for 30% off at Indigo, and remembered that I had my Indigo card on me, which gave myself a further 10% off, I took the hardback plunge.

I am now about a 1/3rd of the way through and am annoyed at myself for both not buying the book sooner and for, at least to myself, pre-judging it.

It is really -- and those who know me may be surprised at what I am about to write -- a very, very good and important work that will have much staying power. Not only is it a good story well told. It is also a story both horrifying and horrifyingly believable.

In a way it reminds me of Alasdair MacIntyre in that it shows what the effects of misguided Chicago policies are on the ground and does not simply build a case up in the clouds against the boys from Chicago. It is also why I am an Oakeshottian.

I will write more after I finish the book. But this is one book that is, for me at least, a must read.

Hats off Ms. Klein!!!