Tag: War on Terror

They had an election in Nigeria. While they were getting ready to vote someone tried to blow up the Electoral Commission with a truck bomb. Truck bombs are pretty common these days. In Iraq and Afghanistan and a dozen other countries a truckload of flammable gas is a 100% effective, 100% lethal weapon. Truck bombs… Continue reading More Norman Wisdom than Osama Bin Laden

Psychologists, ethnographers, market researchers, coppers: correct me if I’ve got this wrong. I think profiling works like this. You start by watching the behaviour of lots of people (more likely a representative sample). From your laborious, systematic observations, you infer characteristics so that you can say, with some certainty, “this behaviour = this characteristic”. Then… Continue reading What is profiling?

He’s not an attractive man is he? He reminds me of a PE teacher I once knew – a cruel, self-important man we laughed at when he wasn’t looking (funnily enough, he wound up in prison too…). Anyway, since the man is an obvious jerk and since he’s probably about as dangerous as… er… Jodie… Continue reading Abu, meet Rula

Is it possible (advisable, acceptable?) to blog Beslan? Blogging is such an utterly trivial thing to do with your time that even mentioning the apocalypse that overtook that town in North Ossetia must be wrong. Is it? I don’t know. It certainly feels crass to me… Would silence be worse, though? Of course, even worrying… Continue reading Beslan