Messages for 2007 from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI.
Dec 312006
Dec 312006
The story of Saddam and his downfall here. His life in pictures here. A longer and more thoughtful article on the legal impact his trial may have long-term.
Plus his end here.
Dec 312006
This short report from MSN today gives some idea of the true cost of nuclear power. For example, we discover it takes a century to fully decommission a nuclear power station.
Dec 312006
Not so much plain speaking as discursive speaking from Hazel Blears in today’s Sunday Times. Thinking aloud is always refreshing in a politician. It bodes well for the future. It shows a desire to share process in public, not simply conclusions reached in private.
More background here.
Dec 312006
Reinventing is better than inventing. Maybe good inventing is never anything but.
Dec 312006
David Cameron promises the Conservatives will become the party of the working people.
Dec 292006
Dec 292006
This story from Forbes and Associated Press is about John Edward’s reinvention as US presidential candidate.
Dec 282006
A new security dawn – or nightmare – as described by the BBC yesterday. The thesis of the article is that Microsoft’s Vista operating system will become the subject of organised crime, as security holes will open up and identity theft will proliferate.
It’s clear that mass attacks on all and sundry will soon be replaced by far more focussed attacks on you and me – the more information we leave by the wayside, the more information the criminals can trawl. As Big Business has got to know our ways, so Big Crime will do the same.
It’s the Godfather all over again – the legitimisation of the criminal and the criminalisation of the legitimate. Yet I can’t help feeling that jumping from one supposedly leaky operating system to another supposedly safer is no solution in this personalised world of spammers and hackers we are about to enter. Anyone who wants to get you will get you if they want to. Anti-virus or not, the solution is not with the operating systems. The solution must be elsewhere.
The new dawn must be a different one.
Dec 282006
A bright idea – wide-screen spectacles.
Dec 282006
This article from the BBC today describes an imaginative way of meeting the needs of gifted and talented children:
Gifted refers to capability in academic subjects, talented covers visio-spatial or practical skills such as in games and PE, drama or art.
The scheme works as follows:
The government is arranging “e-credits” for schools to access extra lessons for an estimated 800,000 gifted pupils.
The £65m scheme is part of its drive to ensure all children in England with special talents are given extra help.
[...]
The e-credits system is to be run by the not-for-profit CfBT Education Trust from next September.
It says each pupil would initially receive the equivalent of a number of credits – worth about £80 – which their schools could use to buy extra lessons from companies, independent schools, universities or learned bodies.
More money would be welcome, however.
Dec 272006
Dec 272006
Dec 272006
An interesting report from the BBC today on Fernando Lugo’s bid for power in Paraguay – all of a sudden, the Papal authorities threaten sanctions:
The Vatican has made public its displeasure at the decision of a retired bishop to run in Paraguay’s 2008 presidential elections.
Papal officials released the text of a letter handed last week to Fernando Lugo warning him of possible sanctions.
Mr Lugo said on Monday he hoped to lead an alliance against President Nicanor Duarte and had left the priesthood.
The Pope “can either accept my decision or punish me. But I am in politics already,” the 55-year-old said.
My immediate reaction is that anyone who defends the poor has a right to represent the poor. I have very little knowledge of the background to this case and wonder exactly why the Vatican is so unhappy.
Dec 272006
This story from the BBC is about a parrot with a vocabulary of 950 words and a sense of humour.
The question is, is this simple mimicry? Or is it more than that? Or is simple mimicry all that we ever do too?
Are we ever any deeper than a copy of what we see?
Dec 262006
The following quotation from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg caught my eye today:
“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.”