- Blog
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Abu Ghraib Reading
2023 UPDATE: when I read my old posts from this period I’m surprised and sometimes apalled at how apparently forgiving I was of the solecisms and straightforward lies of those who supported the various hideous adventures of the Americans and their ‘coalition of the willing’ in the middle east and Afghanistan (and elsewhere). Of both…
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Ivan lives
Ivan and I were partners for years – we started a web site design firm called Webmedia together. Later he went mad and spent three or four years in a bath chair spitting and making inappropriate suggestions to the nurses. Apparently the electric shocks have been working, though, because he made it to Blacks for…
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Staff development
The thing about those Mirror photos, I think, is not that they always looked like fakes (which they did) but that they really looked more like pages from a training manual: fig. 12a: (humiliation) correct technique for urinating on detainees, fig. 22b: (coercion) use of rifle in producing confession, fig. 31f: (disorientation) use of hemp/hessian…
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Invisible content
Try this simple test. Go to the BBC Radio 4 web site and find the RealMedia streams for Misha Glenny’s excellent series of talks about European expansion, Brave New Europe. Start with the alphabetical list of Radio 4 shows. Now try browsing to the right section of the site (news? Factual? History?). No luck? Now…
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But is there a redemption penalty?
I can’t tell you what a relief it is that God has finally entered the highly competitive sub-prime lending market (from today’s slightly-more-entertaining-than-usual spam).
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My Mother-in-law
I’m not saying she’s strange, but it turns out she’s been keeping a collection of battered 1970s American license plates in the loft. Nobody knows why… And while we’re on the subject, here’s a marvelous license plate site.
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No, really. I’m fine. I didn’t want any Google shares anyway
Like I said, me and Warren Buffet, we won’t be buying any Google shares in the company’s upcoming IPO. Of course, he could actually buy some if he felt like it. I’m not allowed to because I don’t live in the USA.
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Kitchen sink ethnography
There was something on the radio the other day about mantelpieces. An academic has been making a close study of what people keep there – she reckons they’re a good way of understanding the way we order our lives. I’m sure she’s right but I wonder if we couldn’t learn more – especially now –…