Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Wired Magazine points out that technology deployed to catch terrorists will inevitably be used for other purposes as well.
It’s hard to argue that it should not be - if the technology exists to catch those doing wrong, why not deploy it?
It is probably true that ‘minor’ transgressions will ever more be detected and [...]
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
They say a drowning man comes up three times. I don’t know if that’s true, but on his latest trip to the surface Mr Blair said (in reply to the latest call for his resignation) that the national interest was best served by a strong economy and low unemployment.
Since the economy is in poor [...]
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
As slow and inefficient as western systems of justice can be, there’s probably little good reason for people to be kidnapped off European streets by American agents, or at least so the Germans say. I find it hard to disagree.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
There was a long-running series of advertisements when I was younger featuring a couple who met and shared a love of instant coffee (Nescafe in the UK, Taster’s Choice in the US).
But whereas these old (and very British) advertisements mixed coffee and romance with the subtlety of, let’s say, a sledge-hammer cracking a nut, an [...]
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
This comment on Niall Ferguson’s piece in the Telegraph caught my eye:
Speaking as someone who moved from the
Canadian education system to the British one, I
recall being stunned when I was told that 70%
and above was an A*. Where I had come from,
85% and above was an A, and 95% and above was
an A*. Surely allowing [...]
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A long and interesting piece on education has been written by Niall Ferguson. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here is some of it:
[In the past] Those who just scraped home in terms of literacy and numeracy could also expect relatively comfortable lives as clerks. And those who inherited wealth and [...]
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Should we send more people to University? If they’re paying for themselves, perhaps that’s none of our business.
Actually, though, even with the new fees, I suspect that this is not the case. Most Universities are having problems with their undergraduate teaching, and there have been some high-profile closures of various university [...]
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
I don’t know which NHS official decides that loss of sight is an acceptable outcome, but I’m willing to bet his salary would pay several years of the necessary treatment.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
There is shortly to be a smoking ban in England and Wales, as there currently is in Scotland, New York and other parts of the US. As a non-smoker, I will no doubt find the environment significantly improved. But I am dismayed that the justification for all of these bans: the Washington Post [...]
How do you prosecute those who might intend acts of terrorism, without rather ugly investigations into the thought (and religion) of individuals? It’s a problem faced in the US and elsewhere. The old principle of punishing acts and not minds seems important here.
Unfortunately, to an extent, in an era where violence [...]