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KuiperCliffKuiperClifftechnology, culture, ethics, surveillance Articles
Watch Fitna the movie here
2008-03-29 18:11:00 I can scarcely believe I’m giving airtime to this anti-Muslim propaganda but since LiveLeak pulled it, I figured that being informed is better than being ignorant. Here it is: If you’re accessing this through an RSS reader, you may need to click through to the original page. More About: Movie , Watch , The Movie
?Fitna? the movie on LiveLeak
2008-03-28 18:04:00 You can watch Fitna, Geert Wilders’ controversial movie on LiveLeak here (in English; actually here). It’s a pretty unsubtle 15 minutes of Huntingtonian, ‘Clash of Civilisations’ rabble-rousing with little to commend it. Any right-thinking Muslim would dismiss it out of hand, or use it as a tool for pushing the moderate Islamic agenda, but unfortunately ... More About: Movie , The Movie
NATO Bucharest Conference papers
2008-03-28 17:29:00 Ahead of the Bucharest conference at the beginning of April, Chatham House has today co-published the Bucharest Papers covering: ‘NATO and Afghanistan: Saving the State-Building Enterprise’ by Daoud Yaqub ‘NATO Expansion and Modern Europe’ by Bruce P. Jackson ‘An Evolving NATO: Pro-Democracy or Anti-Russia?’ by Robin Shepherd ‘NATO and Global Cyber Defense’ by Rex B. Hughes Obviously, the last one ... More About: Nato , Conference
Antilibrary
2008-03-28 12:34:00 Off the back of a post by Zenpundit regarding Umberto Eco’s ‘antilibrary’, Soob posed the following question: “What are three to five books on your shelf that lay unread and what knowledge do you hope to retrieve from them?” This is kind of a haphazard tag, but here are my five: 1. Robert Dixon, The Baumgarten Corruption: ...
Ali, Finkelstein, Heinsohn
2008-03-28 11:53:00 Countering Tariq Ali’s rose-tinted view of anti-Vietnam protests in 1968 in last Saturday’s Guardian, ‘Where has all the rage gone?‘, Daniel Finkelstein in The Times (’1968 violence: blame the bulge‘) drew attention to the work of Gunnar Heinsohn . The ‘bulge’ in question is a demographic one, characterised by high numbers of young males leading ...
Stephen Walt on Iraq
2008-03-28 09:43:00 Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University’s JFK School of Government has recently made himself unpopular in some quarters with the publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with John Mearsheimer). Now, Harvard’s Belfer Center has released Walt’s ‘Five Years and Counting: Ten Unpleasant Truths About the War in Iraq ‘. Walt: I opposed the invasion of ... More About: Stephen
Luvvy
2008-03-28 09:07:00 For years, Private Eye magazine has run a ‘Luvvies‘ column, “devoted to gems from the acting profession”, and full of smugness and, well, luvvy-ness. The sort of people for whom life is but preparation for that Oscar acceptance speech. Enter, somewhat obliquely, Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg of Wigton, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s ‘In Our Time‘ ...
Combustible Dust Explosions
2008-03-27 14:32:00 Terrorism? Floods? Hurricanes? Nuclear conflagration? Nope. Combustible Dust Explosions and Fires: Since the recent preventable and predictable horrific Dixie Crystal sugar refinery explosion in Port Wentworth, Georgia, it now appears that a deadly hazard in the workplace exists nationwide regarding combustible particulate solids. Prior to this incident I had no idea of the magnitude of the ...
Planet X is back ? the Kuiper Cliff explained?
2008-03-27 14:10:00 How did I miss this? Not that anyone’s actually found the mystery object that might just be causing that big old drop-off at the edge of the solar system we call the Kuiper Cliff , but … The Planet X hypothesis has come to the fore once again, as researchers in Japan propose in a new paper ... More About: Back , Planet X
Cities in Flight: Floating Island
2008-03-26 09:20:00 ‘Floating Island ‘ by if destroyed still true (via chozabu2): . More About: Cities , Flight
Conference: The Fall
2008-03-25 20:38:00 I don’t quite know what to make of this, but I can imagine Mark E. Smith either chortling maniacally into his pint or spitting blood on the floor. The University of Salford’s Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Centre is hosting a conference on 9th May titled “Messing Up The Paintwork: A Conference on the Aesthetics ... More About: Fall
Spectrum Holes
2008-03-25 18:56:00 From Milcom Monitoring Post (via Danger Room): So what are frequency Spectrum Holes ? A spectrum hole is a term that I coined many years ago for a lack of activity on a frequency within a portion of the radio spectrum. When you have valid frequency assignment in a spectrum bandplan that has no reported/monitored activity or known ...
Space Archaeology - Apollo 11 revisited
2008-03-25 18:43:00 About a year ago I wrote a piece that proved quite popular about the Apollo 11 moon landing, accompanied by a map of the astronauts’ movements about the lunar surface. Strange Maps has published a similar traverse map superimposed onto the outline of a football (soccer) pitch which illustrates well the relatively small area across ... More About: Space , Archaeology
Blogroll: Centauri Dreams
2008-03-25 17:00:00 I’ve added Centauri Dreams to the links on the right. In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. More About: Blogroll
Retro-Future: Dark Roasted Blend
2008-03-25 16:49:00 A brilliant series of three retro-future posts by Dark Roasted Blend . Part One: “To The Stars!” Part Two: “Glorious Urbanism” Part Three: “Mind-Boggling Transportation” More About: Future , Retro
Osbert Lancaster
2008-03-24 22:19:00 The difference between communist and fascist architecture, as sketched by Osbert Lancaster (via anArchitecture)
It?s Easter
2008-03-23 19:03:00 Holy Family by Klone and Zero Cents (via Moonriver) More About: Easter
Horizon Scanning
2008-03-20 10:31:00 Hot on the heels of UK government’s consideration of future security threats come this article in the Journal of Applied Ecology (via New Scientist): Forget genetically modified crops ? the great environmental concerns of the future should be nanomaterials, manmade viruses and biomimetic robots. So say researchers, policymakers and environmental campaigners, who have identified 25 potential future ... More About: Scanning , Horizon
Reading: Synchronizing Information, New Media in Conflict
2008-03-19 16:03:00 I’ve already sent this the way of the new Insurgency Research Group blog, but I figured it belonged here too. Matt Armstrong (MountainRunner) wrote a good piece, Synchronizing Information : The Importance of New Media in Conflict , on the USC Center on Public Diplomacy website a couple of weeks ago. In Armstrong’s own words: The effectiveness of information ... More About: Reading , New Media
Conference: Asymmetric Taliban Strategies
2008-03-19 15:26:00 Countering Asymmetric Taliban Strategies in Afghanistan, at RUSI, London, 26th March 2008. Speakers include Steve Tatham and James Shinn. NATO forces in Afghanistan possess an overwhelming advantage over their opponent insurgent forces in firepower. Yet, despite this, they have been unable to defeat, or decisively rout the Taliban forces. Although the insurgents might be militarily weak, ... More About: Conference
Conference: Ubiquitous Computing by 2020
2008-03-19 15:16:00 OK, so I’ll try and do these in advance in future but it’s worth mentioning it anyway. The Royal Society hosted a discussion meeting From Computers to Ubiquitous Computing , by 2020 on Monday/Tuesday this week. Highlights included the following: Gaetano Borriello on the Allen Center’s RFID Ecosytem Project Andy Hopper on how to green ICT for all ... More About: Conference
War Tubas
2008-03-19 14:45:00 Hell yeah! Last month Coming Anarchy posted this photo of 1930s Japanese ‘war tubas’, a sort of military listening device, presumably keeping their ears open for incoming aircraft: They followed it up this morning with the Russian version (originally at Soviet Russia) which were constructed as anti-zeppelin devices: For those of us old enough to remember ...
UK government?s National Security Strategy
2008-03-19 13:00:00 On the back of criticisms by Demos last year, Gordon Brown will reveal details of UK’s first National Security Strategy at PM’s questions today. It’ll probably miss the point of various factors likely to impact on Britain’s security, but it should be an interesting statement anyway. For an apolitical treatment of the likely security risks ... More About: Government , National Security
Reading: De Landa?s 1000 Years of Nonlinear History
2008-03-19 11:37:00 I can recommend Manuel De Landa’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (2000) with few reservations. His basic thesis is this: In a very real sense, reality is a single matter-energy undergoing phase transitions of various kinds, with each new layer of accumulated “stuff” simply enriching the reservoir of nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear combinatorics available ... More About: Reading
KuiperCliff is back
2008-03-18 22:00:00 Howdy folks. After a long absence KuiperCliff is back on the trail. I’ve been recuperating on the porch with a gallon of Bloody Mary and a bag of doggy biscuits, wondering what it would take to get me back in the saddle. Well, a self-inflicted kick up the ass was the order of the day, ... More About: Back
Over and Out
2007-08-05 18:50:00 My lack of recent input into this blog has been hanging over me like the sword of Damocles of late, while I’ve been mulling over what to do with it. Essentially, I don’t have the time to keep up with it at the moment, at least not to a standard I’d like. This is a ...
Away again
2007-06-21 15:04:00 Long time, no post. Work’s taken me to the delightful little town of Kells, Co. Meath in Ireland. Wikipedia has the following to say about the place: In recent years the town has expanded considerably with many Dublin commuters moving to the town. It was recently voted Worst Town In Ireland in a poll of ... More About: Away
Cities in Flight: the London Underground overground
2007-06-12 15:17:00 It appears that Transport for London have been commissioning artwork. Thin Cities commemorates 100 years of the Piccadilly Line, which connects Heathrow in the southwest to the suburbs in the northeast. A series of pieces were produced, most of which are pretty insipid. More interesting is the Station of the Future competition TfL ran, which ... More About: Underground , Flight , Round
On not meeting an astronaut?
More articles from this author:2007-06-08 15:45:00 Every once in a while, something happens that ensures that even the most smart-assed of us get taken down a peg or two in the eyes of our peers. Last week, at a loose end, and with neither a job nor regular access to the internet, I resorted to reading books full-time. I ploughed my way ... More About: Tron , Astro , Meeting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
