Month: February 2006

Good post from Dave Pollard about the consequential costs of homeland security and the war on terror post 9/11.

Particularly liked this para :

[The significance] of the horrific attacks of 9/11 was not their high death toll or visual spectacle, but their ability to provoke a knee-jerk reaction in American conservatives that a recurrence of those attacks must be prevented at any cost. That cost has so far included the bankrupting of the US treasury, a widening of the disparity in quality of life between the rich and the poor to a gulf, and the opportunity cost (what otherwise could have been achieved by peacetime spending) of over a quarter trillion dollars per year.

“At any cost” – is just too simplistic a response to any real-world situation.

Thanks to Leon for spotting this. A TV Advert for Powergen (UK Energy / Electricity provider) where the main character (played by Simon Day – ex Fast Show “Tommy Cockles”) is seen reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by torch / flash-light.

(You need to pay a subscription to download the full clip, but you can see the image and play the small broadband flash video clip, in the link above. In our area, Powergen sponsor the weather forecasts, so the series of ads are easily tracked down on TV.)

About the same as what it’s like to be a bat apparently.

“Seeing” is about spatial (relative topograhical) awareness, not vision.
We see with light, Bat’s with sound, (electron microspcopes with electrons) and it seems Rats with smell.

Could I also just point out the significance of “stereo”.
Reality is in the difference (between the ears, eyes, nostrils, warring nations, whatever)

Some stunning photos by Feng Jiang. [Also via Matt]

I’ve not found time to do much sightseeing in my business visits, but I recall on one flight over mile after mile of this terraced mountainside, mentally calculating the billions of man-years that must have gone into creating that hand-crafted landscape fitting so perfectly with the stunning natural landscape.

Jiang doesn’t give any locations to caption his pictures, (not even on his powerpoint version) ? That mountains and lakes boat trip looks like one of the advertised tourist locations.

I see Bill and Bill agree with me, on Google’s China move.

A good visual indication of the effect – to compare Google.cn with Google.com – from Russell Brown’s public address, via Matt.