By John | February 24, 2008
The Observer claims to have obtained a confidential report commissioned by the Pentagon:
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk [...]
By John | February 24, 2008
Maybe, one day, it will be possible to run Palm applications on an iPhone. Style Tap have produced a proof-of-concept demo. It may seem strange to want to do that, but some people have Palm applications which they would like to continue to use. You can use Parallels or Fusion to run Windows applications on [...]
Posted in Apple, Computing |
By John | February 23, 2008
When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to or [...]
By John | February 22, 2008
Unfortunately, the Brits don’t write communiques like these any more – if they ever did:
Dear Citizens of America,
In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all [...]
By John | February 21, 2008
The USA wants to introduce “democracy” in Iraq, but not in Pakistan:
The US and Britain are pressing Pervez Musharraf’s victorious opponents to drop their demands that he resign as president and that the country’s independent judiciary be restored before forming a government.
In a strategy some Western diplomats admit could badly backfire, the Bush administration has [...]
By John | February 17, 2008
The British education system has been hopeless at teaching foreign languages for years and the number of pupils taking a foreign language at school has dropped by around 10% since the government in its wisdom decided to make it optional to study languages in school last year. Now, the BBC reports that:
Oral tests could be [...]
By John | February 10, 2008
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a stark warning on Sunday to Europeans, saying that their safety from terrorist attack by Islamic extremists is directly linked to NATO’s success in stabilizing Afghanistan. After weeks of calling on NATO governments to send more combat troops and trainers to Afghanistan, Mr. Gates made his case directly to [...]
By John | February 4, 2008
While I was at University, I had the chance to work in Umeå in northern Sweden for 13 weeks, which was long enough to get a taste for learning about a different culture and to find learning a foreign language actually useful. Although I did pick up enough Swedish to get by, it has been [...]
