Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Other good recent links

So much for the freelance economy
Wired muses pessimistically on the collapse of guru.com, an online marketplace where IT contractors and others were supposed to find people eager to outsource to them. Sees it as failure of 'e-lance' idea and restructuring of the firm rather than simply economic cycle.

State of content
This UK take on the same event puts it in the context of a current parliamentary enquiry into freelance conditions here, the IR35 tax changes etc.

IDC isn't too optimistic about the IT market, at least in the short term:
IT Spending Slowing Down in the Transport Sector, says IDC
Short-Term Contraction in IT Consulting Market, IDC Says

Wordspy
good Canadian site about neologisms

Meanwhile over in Utah...
canyoneering
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Pepys reloaded

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, reposted day-by-day as if it were a weblog. It's currently at 2 June 1660, and 3 June should appear later today.

It's the 300 anniversary of Pepys' death this year.

In fact by my calculations the actual anniversary is tomorrow - he died on May 26th, but when we switched to the Gregorian calendar (in 1752) we dropped 11 days.
posted by Ian Stobie.
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Water may stymie Arab-Israeli peace accord

Interesting background facts (and maps) from the independent US defence analyst Chuck Spinney. He thinks it's going to be very hard to have peace in the Middle East without dealing with the water issue, but at the moment the roadmap has little to say about it.

The problem is that Israel consumes more water than it can replenish within its pre-1967 borders. The West Bank and Golan are both crucial recharge areas, and Israel also uses water from Lebanon. Even if Israel had normal relations with its neighbours, water would still be a potential source of conflict.

Spinney suggests that Israel may ultimately have to rethink how it's using the water - over 50 percent goes on agriculture, but agriculture contributes no more than 3 percent of the country's GDP.

posted by Ian Stobie.
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Most bloggers "are teenage girls"
The Register reports on a survey done in Poland. "Over 60 per cent of Polish blogs are written by women and a staggering three quarters are written by teenagers or younger."

A survey published by Pew Research back in April about how Americans used the Internet during the Iraq war supports the view that weblog readership is low, and that weblogs are mainly of interest to the under 30s.



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Thursday, May 15, 2003

An ocean empty of fish?

Industrialised fishing has changed the world's oceans to such an extent that the sea can no longer be considered a natural system, according to a major 10-year-long study published in the science journal Nature. Stocks of the large predatory species have literally been decimated - only 10 per cent remain.

"We are in massive denial and continue to bicker over the last shrinking numbers of survivors, employing satellites and sensors to catch the last fish left," according to the study's lead author Ransom Myers of Dalhousie University in Canada. "We have to understand how close to extinction some of these populations really are. If present fishing levels persist, these great fish will go the way of the dinosaurs."

Co-author Boris Worm of Kiel University in Germany says "The impact we have had on ocean ecosystems has been vastly underestimated. It could bring about a complete re-organization of ocean ecosystems, with unknown global consequences."

Authors' press release
Plenty more fish in the sea? - Guardian
Great Fish Going the Way of the Dinosaurs - Environmental News Service
Few of world's large fish remain - Boston Globe

posted by Ian Stobie.
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Sunday, March 02, 2003

Attack of the heavyweight hawks

Amazingly, you can predict a country's policy on Iraq from how fat its people are. The Bush administration draws its support, at least in the developed world, from the countries with the fattest populations.

If you look at this 2002 health report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, what's striking is how close the correlation is.

Starting at the left hand side of Chart 5 "Obesity in the adult population across OECD countries", the least fat members of the OECD club are, in order:

Japan
Switzerland
Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Sweden
France
Finland

They are all also at the peacenik end of the spectrum on Iraq.

It's only when we get to medium-fat Spain that support for immediate war becomes a serious option. Then, as we move towards the developed world's most obese nations, the US and UK, the tone gets yet more hawkish.

This is clear from looking at the fat end of the OECD list, which is, in order:

Spain
Czech Republic
Canada
New Zealand
Australia
United Kingdom
United States

There are some exceptions that make the hawks/obesity correlation less than perfect. Canada and New Zealand only fit the pattern in general terms. Both sent troops to Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf War, but have reservations on this occasion.

Canada objects strongly to the US doctrine on regime change. It has said it won't send ground troops to Iraq, but may send other forces once the war is underway. New Zealand is likely to stay on the sidelines.

Nonetheless, the relationship is striking. The fatter its population the more ready a nation seems to be to commit troops to this war.

Background on OECD figures
Discuss
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Saturday, March 01, 2003

Iraq may have got rid of weapons already

The vast majority of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were destroyed soon after the Gulf War, according to a defector who has been publicly praised by Bush, Blair and Powell. What's more the Americans and British have known this since 1995, but have been keeping strangely silent about it.

These allegations have been made by Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge University lecturer who caused a furore recently by revealing that a UK government briefing paper on Iraq supposedly based on intelligence sources was plagiarised from an article written by a student.

The defector was General Hussein Kamel (also spelt Kamal), a son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein and former head of Iraq's secret weapons programme. He was killed when he returned to Baghdad in 1996.

Rangwala has got hold of the transcript of a debriefing of between Kamel and UN weapon inspectors in Jordan in August 1995. In it Kamal tells the inspectors what happened to Iraq's nerve gas and anthrax, and its nuclear and missile programmes.

Worldnet Daily plays this revelation up

as does The Scotsman

The Washington Post plays it down

as does The Guardian

And here's the transcript itself and Glen Ringwala's comments on it.

posted by Ian Stobie.
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Friday, February 28, 2003

New warning on identity theft

Job site Monster.com has sent users an email warning them of the danger of identity theft. Apparently fraudsters have been luring people into revealing personal information by posting fake job adverts

The danger of identity theft has been thrown into sharp relief by the case of 72-year-old British holidaymaker Derek Bond, who has just returned to the UK after being released from a South African prison, where he was held for over two weeks on FBI orders.

The FBI is now saying that another man who they are holding in Las Vegas used the entirely innocent Mr Bond's identity to cover his tracks while engaged in a telemarketing scam.

FBI agent John Lewis told the BBC on Wednesday morning "There are two people in custody at this exact moment in different parts of the world for the same offence. One is the right guy, and one is the wrong guy ... Mr Bond is owed an apology." Audio clip

Lewis thinks it a clear case of identity theft. "It is very frequent. In a sense, it is out of control, and obviously in this case it has caused one person an awful lot of harm."

One other interesting aspect of the case is how the FBI finally got the right man. Agent Lewis says that he received an anonymous phone call on Tuesday afternoon. The extremely well-informed caller said "I think you've got the wrong man in South Africa", and gave the real name of the fraud suspect, the name he was now using, and the address where he could be found in the US.

By this time the case of the obviously-innocent Bond was being widely reported in the British press. Rather than let it continue to damage UK-US relations and the credibility of US intelligence at this crucial time, it seems likely that some other part of the intelligence community took matters into its own hands and solved the FBI's case.
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Sunday, February 09, 2003

North Dakota found to be harboring nuclear missiles. reports the Onion
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Friday, February 07, 2003

Russians win top spot in UK music chart

What with peace-mongering Germans refusing to go to war and sylphlike Russian females riding high in the pop charts, national stereotypes are taking something of a hammering at the moment. The pop babes are Tatu, a teen duo of apparently lesbian tendencies who have just taken the number one spot in the UK singles chart, ahead of acts such as Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child and Fame Academy winner David Sneddon.

Tatu (called tATu in the US for copyright reasons) is a manufactured band in the modern tradition. Singers Lena (17) and Yulia (16) were selected by producer Ivan Shapovalov from 500 hopefuls at an open casting. Their real preferences about sex or anything else aren't easy to distinguish from the hype, but the teen lesbian angle is successfully generating plenty of publicity.

Official Russian management site
US record label (UMG/Geffen)
Better German site with more music (flash)
Good fan site

UPDATE: Russians still at top a month on
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Wednesday, February 05, 2003

China and US military still committed to space

Following the loss of the shuttle Columbia last Saturday there's been a lot written about the future of manned space flight - and most of it has been pretty negative. Either they'll be a long delay before such flights resume, or the commentators question the need for sending humans aloft at all. The future of the International Space Station looks bleak, and a mission to Mars looks unlikely any time soon.

But almost all this coverage has focused on the US civilian agency NASA, with perhaps the Europeans and the Russians getting a mention. What's been overlooked is the strong interest the US military still has in space, and the rapidly developing Chinese space programme - which aims to put a man in space by the end of this year or early next.

Chinese motivation seems to be a mixture of military and political.

China's Space Ambitions Keep Western Experts Guessing

China's Space Program Driven by Military Ambitions


Is China developing an anti-satellite capability?



Meanwhile NASA's plans to develop Project Prometheus, the kind of nuclear propulsion system that would be required to effectively explore the planets, now looks very uncertain.

Space tourism also looks less likely in the aftermath of Columbia's disaster.

However, the shuttle has always flown some military missions. Indeed, all but one of the seven astronauts who died in Columbia held military rank. If the civil programme slows down the pressure will be on the military to take over control of those things that really matter to it.

UPDATE: Pentagon sees space as military high ground

Call to weaponize space
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Tuesday, January 14, 2003

The Internet, at least, is innocent

Good comment piece by Libby Purves in The Times (of London) about the Pete Townsend case. It's written cautiously, to comply with UK law, but still clearly expresses an opinion.
posted by Ian Stobie.
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Strange death of the American press

What's happened to the quality of journalism in US newspapers in the 30 years since the heyday of investigative reporting at the time of Watergate? Matthew Engel argues in the Guardian that it's in devastating decline.

The papers are verbose, formulaic and wretchedly designed. "And political courage is especially rare", he writes. "The supposedly liberal American press has become a dog that never bites".

Worse, the papers have got boring. Even the best reporting tends to be of the plodding "he said, she said" variety, with the paper itself, still less the individual journalist, reluctant to express a viewpoint. It's no accident that newspaper sales are in decline while opinionated talk show hosts light up the airwaves and attract huge audiences.

"Amid the glorious patchwork of creativity in the American media - in Hollywood, TV, magazines, the net, advertising, even publishing - the newspapers are a drab and unimaginative exception." And there's little incentive to make newspapers more interesting - US newspapers operate pretty much as a series of regional monopolies.

Engel concludes that if there's a new Watergate scandal waiting to be unmasked today, it is unlikely to be discovered by America's newspapers. "If it emerges, it will probably come out on the web."
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Wednesday, January 08, 2003

UN prepares for half a million Iraqi casualties

About half a million people will suffer some form of injury and three million will become malnourished if war in Iraq goes ahead, according to a confidential UN planning document.

The draft report, called "Likely Humanitarian Scenarios", was prepared in December by an unknown UN agency. It has been leaked by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq, a UK group opposed to the war.

The report assumes that both a bombing campaign and a ground war go ahead, and attempts to assess the immediate impact on the population and the practical tasks facing those who go in to pick up the pieces later.

The main worries - apart from the direct effect of the war itself, are the destruction of the electricity system and the difficulty of moving supplies if the bridges over Iraq's many waterways are destroyed.

With electricity out the water treatment and sewage systems will probably fail. The report warns that diseases such as cholera and dysentery will thrive in this environment, and that "the outbreak of disease in epidemic if not pandemic proportions is very likely".

Unlike Afghanistan, which has similar-sized population of around 26 million, Iraq is overwhelmingly urban. The report notes that sanctions have made Iraqis more, not less dependent on the state - "the bulk of the population is now totally dependent on the government of Iraq for a majority, if not all, of their basic needs ... and they have no way of coping if they cannot access them".

New York Times report (may require sign-up)
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More stories from past months

November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001