Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
"Hiro is painstaking as he holds up every piece of fake intelligence to scrutiny, revealing both its falsity and the propaganda use to which it was put. Every excuse advanced by Bush and Blair for the invasion is shown to be hollow, as they seek to conceal the main reason for their pre-emptive strike: the desire for regime change. In some of the most telling passages, Hiro reveals the key roles played by the sinister group who surrounded Bush, such as his deputy, Dick Cheney; Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; the under secretary of defence, Douglas Feith; the defence adviser Richard Perle; the president’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove; and, of course, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Meanwhile, the senior man, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, was largely isolated from Bush’s gung-ho squad. Despite his policy disagreements however, he performed important tasks on behalf of the warriors, none more so than his lengthy speech to the UN Security Council in the build-up to the invasion. Hiro’s point-by-point rebuttal of Powell’s allegations is masterly."
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold….On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."
"There was an overwhelming view expressed by stakeholders involved in this Report that the proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence."
Following on from the recent survey of Americans that demonstrated the triumph of Faith over Reason, we now appear to have a similar phenomenon emerging in Canada.
A recent survey reveals that 32% of Canadians who have read the Da Vinci code believe that the theories outlined in the novel are true – particularly that a holy bloodline exists and that this secret has been protected through the ages by a dedicated secret society.
Perhaps it’s time to put on the tin foil hat – there are obviously aliens beaming this stuff down to the western world and softening our brains…
P.S. I’m proud to note that I still haven’t succumbed to reading the Da Vinci code…
That book was not as bad as it’s predecessor, "Angels and Demons" which informed the reader that an electron was anti-matter and that copernicus was murdered by the Church.
Ha! Dan clearly knows his stuff. Still, his financial future is clearly secure. Just goes to show that talent isn’t everything – being in the right place at the right time when the fickle finger of fate points to you has a lot to do with things.
New Scientist this week has a story about a novel interface for calculators. The demonstration movie is particularly striking. I assume that it will work out-of-the-box on Tablet PCs.
I think that indeed this interface is more "natural" for those of us who do not use calculators all day and every day. Practitioners have presumably already made the necessary learning to adapt to the calculator interface. For more infrequent users (e.g. me), this new interface would really help – and it ties right back into how I learned mathematics with pen and paper.
A good interface should disappear when you’re using it – it should never, ever, get in the way. That’s one of the reasons why I hated with a passion the old Reverse Polish interfaces on the original HP calculators, and why I still end up with wrong answers on today’s calculators – the interface is fighting with what I learned with pen and paper.
I’ve downloaded the software, and am trying it out on my PC, which has a graphics tablet. If this works, then I’ll be able to consign the Windows Calculator application to the dustbin of history…
P.S. I simply adore the title of the web page at the University of Swansea.
This is fascinating. I can’t believe they’re going to adapt the calculator interface like that.
Well, it’s really only a research project at this point, but I would hope that it is picked up and implemented in products. There is already a product for the Tablet PC – see http://www.xthink.com – but that does not have the key innovation – that of rendering the numbers on the fly. Instead, you write out the equation fully and then select the "calculate" button – onyl then do you see if your input has been recognised correctly. With the University of Swansea interface you see the recognition happening as you input the equation – I think this is a much better approach.
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