Walsingham

Ros, with respect for your usual intelligence, your analysis is pure balls. Parallels between pirate attacks and naxalites? The failure to interdict in blue water has everything to do with weak RoE and huge expanses of ocean, not the pirates dressing up as tuna to blend in or the security forces being tactically inferior. Nor can I accept any notion of the 'causes' being addressed by a political developmental process as I guess you advocate. The program explicitly deals with this and I am a little alarmed that you missed the point. Attacks may have been precipitated by disorganised locals in response to abuse by merchant ships. But the phenomenon has changed entirely as the ransoms and scale of piracy have exploded. The 'cause' at present is cash payouts of hundreds of millions of dollars. It's not a question of giving them fresh water and schools any more, if it ever was. I can't accept the notion of a maritime cordon either. With each piratical operation netting millions there is really no reason at all why a gang should not travel overland to a nighbouring state, embark in a ship there, and commence to return only once aboard a hijacked vessel. The solution must be multi-layered and incorporate elements of each solution suggested so far. The phenomenon at sea sust be attacked vigorously and with the full weight of established law, not with one eye on the newspapers, and invokiing the full weight of the harm done to the global economy and the environment by these attacks. This must be coupled with attempts to identify and punish the sophistictaed international groups who are obviously laundering the money. And at the same time physical attacks on the pirate bases must kill sufficient numbers and key individual pirates to send an organisational and psychological shock through them.

I don't know why, but I read this with a slightly threatening tone. But yes, it would make sense. It's just because I'm built like an attack hamster.

My experience of big companies is not that the yare evil, but there is a general acquisitive lean towards getting as much of everything as possible. No one person is saying "let's be over greedy megalomaniacal bastards" but the decision making architecture ensures it happens. This is obviously a pretty mild thing. But unless you smack them on the snout for it now, the lean will just continue.

Again I'd like to remind listeners that obyknven is LoF wearing a t**s disguise.

I've only read The Handmaid's Tale, and that was awesome. I'm assuming you've read other books of hers though. No, I've actually only just heard of her, although I did hear that The Year Of The Flood was a sort of 'unofficial' sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. No one I know have read any of her books, so I thought I would get the low-down here before spending my mulahs. Then wouldn't it make sense to read the first one, which I can attest to being great? Handmaid's Tale. Although I don't recommend it for a laugh. It's a pretty depressing book, with some neat sci-fi thrown in.

I'm going to step a degree further right, in case anyone's tracking me, and suggest that NOT invading countries with oil while stampeding towards countries with none nor any other mineral assets is going to make not one single currently unhappy 'intellectual' any more happy. You're still going to find a hundred other reasons why America is evil, and we are it's little dancing puppets. There is a word for a plan which costs massive amounts of blood and treasure and isn't an improvement. That word is 'bollocks'.

Well, that's one of the sanest looks at gaming piracy I've ever read. But it's not quite as exciting as hearing about how a few thousand shoeless bastards* are costing the global economy - and the environment - billions. *Backed by large syndicate investors, with a specialised stock market in support of them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0109..._Sea_Gangsters/ BBC radio, may not work for non-UK listeners. But try and persevere.

UK Ministry of Defence official discussion on unmanned vehicles. Includes moral discussion alongside look at the battlefield of the fuuuuuutuuuure.

I've only read The Handmaid's Tale, and that was awesome. I'm assuming you've read other books of hers though.

Enoch just clarified an analogy for me. Basically what happens is someone offers you a trip to a private beach, and discounts on fabulous swimwear. Then when you are at the beach it turns out they are charging perverts for the privilege of staring at you from the bushes. It's creepy and wrong, and you shouldn't put up with it.

Of course it's narrow, it's a two-line off-the-cuff remark I wrote while flushing the mental toilet between switching chapters in my dissertation writing. If i understand you correctly, you just called me a mental toilet. But since I'm recovering from a pretty vile hangover I can't technically refute the allegation.

Yes. Because the best thing we could do is bomb the crap out of schoolchildren. ~~ Bombing is the only way to go after someone, that's for sure. I can see now how you guys got your empire. I can honestly never work out if you're 14 or 40.

FFS, Morgoth we've been over this a million times. Wars cost money. If they aren't remotely beneficial to the economy of the country funding them, then ...er... they don't ****ing work. But that still doesn't mean it's only about money. You might just as well look at a paediatrician and say "You heartless c***. Why don't you help kids for free?"

I'm amused that Nightshape thinks I'd have anything as modern as air conditioning.

I know the media are making it sound like Vietnam, but so far as I can tell it really isn't. 1. Numbers - simply too few to train anyone in infantry skills. They really must be going to teach them staff skills. It's still useful. But it's not anything like the tales of combat advisors tagging along in the early days of Vietnam. 2. With basically every rebel in the field when would you train them? Would they even react well to being told to soldier in the professional sense? I think not. 3. Everything I've ever read about urban fighting suggests the only way to learn it is to do it. The rebels are already doing it. Let them get on with it. 4. Finally, it's the logistics and operational control which the rebels are getting bongo'd on. So by sticking to just that we can achieve a lot of 'good' without anyone coming home in a casket. ~~ I think the really interesting thing is how fast the merc-lead training got shot down.

Considering that the (well, at least on the non-strategic level) main purpose of management is to guarantee the efficiency of work, I'd say that you were on the money - at least if you assume that by cutting them loose today, they are going to remember it next week and work at least the same amount they would've done if they'd stayed at work. I'd gently suggest that even that's a bit narrow. If a couple of days off now simply make them less stressed and it avoids a bout of flu then it's a win. Never mind intangibles like them just not being bloody miserable.

Does anyone mind if Steve Jobs stays the hell away from my undercarriage? I agree that people don't seem to give a ****. Yet if the government did this there would be an uproar and riots! I loved the justification in the license people sign: that Apple needs to be have the data so it can improve its advertising! By all means track me like a pet poodle, provided it means I get my cortex palpated more expertly! I don't have, and strongly resist using a smartphone. I have a simple ruggedised phone, with a large battery, and most of the time it's turned off.

Displaying the leadership skills for which I am justly famous, yesterday and today we've all got ad hoc holiday. The way I figure it, losing a couple of days may be uneconomical, but it's inhumane to keep people indoors with this sort of weather. They don't work well at the time and it misses an opportunity to build loyalty and goodwill. I should write some sort of management text about The Hobbit and the Art of Management.

Gloriously sunny day today. Mix of work and pleasure. Had great singing lesson this evening, at which I brought up that quote about Bruce Lee which I saw on here, and had a long discussion even after the lesson about it. Am sitting up late watching the moon, and remembering Spain.

Buffy and Angel were fantasy. I honestly can't begin to articulate my response to this.

Back, and to the left...

Can't agree with you either, Hurlshot. I don't see anthing wrong or weird about shutting down a school which preaches extremism. You yourself mention how a lack of education is key to the phenomenon. But if kids are being reared in 24/7 isolation and brainwashing, how can you educate them? Exploit loudspeakers? Skywriting? You have to 'break' the hold over the kids to get access to them. That hold is the school, surely? Of course, accessing schools in another country is a wee bit tricky. Setting up better schools is even more problematic, since your schools are in turn vulnerable to the extremists you are trying to combat. Don't forget that these ****ers consider it quite consistent with honour to throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for daring to get an education.

I haven't seen any of those bugs since I installed Dead Money. Except sometimes coyotes do that revolting thing where dogs scoot around on their backsides. But at enormous speeds. Only happens if you observe them from a long way away. Made me stop using the binoculars.

I think I heard of it, but nothing besides the name, mate.