OK, for the last (and first) time, I don’t use social networks. If you do that’s cool and I hope you enjoy it bigtime and it’s fulfilling fun and useful. But I don’t use them for a lot of reasons so please don’t send me an invite as it will be a waste of bandwidth. Really, don’t.
But some will ask why. Fair enough; as Jennifer Aniston says, “Here’s the science!”: Read more...
After a fourteen month break it’s time to take a look back at the extraordinary change that’s happened over this time. My last words were an epitaph for the wasted and destructive years of the George W Bush regime and now he, his party, and especially his cronies of the Eastern Establishment Republicans, have been un-ceremoniously elbowed out of the public sphere in disgrace. And, with so many squandered opportunities wasted, good riddance!
A new man, with a new skin color for the White House, will take up residence in about 3 weeks and that’s a good thing. Much good may come from this, or he may turn out to be mediocre to poor but his starting team does look spectacularly superb and he’s disappointing all the right fringe groups so far. Read more...
So last week Alberto Gonzales quit (read: was fired by the Pres). Following the utterly incompetent Donald Rumsfeld and the overly competent Karl Rove, one of the last of the toxic squares is gone only leaving Dick Cheney to fall on his sword. It won’t happen, I know, but it would be so good for the political climate in the USA and make a statement that those with the “We had to destroy the village to save it” mentality are finished. And “toxic squares”, you ask? Well there are four of them, they pretend to be uber-conservative, atavistically so in a social context. And they’ve done more than anyone but the Pres to simultaneously alienate useful, longtime friends abroad as well as conservative voters at home. Read more...
[img_assist|nid=11|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=162]It seems when trouble comes it comes in spades. Some of my favorite service providers are having trouble all at once. Skype, which has worked flawlessly for 2 years (3 maybe?) has had problems seeing its own peer-to-peer (P2P) network today making logins interminable, and now Google, whose Gmail is one of the nicest free apps on the net, has fallen foul of its own spam filter! Read more...
Sometimes I think it must be nice to be French. Discounting all the rhetoric about “Freedom Fries” and “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” (from The Simpsons for those fundamentalist evangelicals who wondered. And it’s a fabulous show in case there was any doubt), the French take most of August off, going to the beach, the mountains or just out of town to the country. Nice. Now, we’re off to Somerset tomorrow, ourselves, but only for a short break. There are things to do when you’re blessed with a protestant work ethic, and things have been being done as well. A short sample we’ve included below just to say we’ve not been just sipping Pimms and eating strawberries at Wimbledon. Read more...
The term military intelligence has long been considered an oxymoron (by everyone, excepting perhaps Tom Clancy and Dan Brown). Today’s press report from Guantanamo Bay proves this (I know, another Guantanamo story, but bear with me…). The problem is the rot goes all the way to the top. It isn’t rogue press officers or a “couple of bad apples” as a couple of idiots in the cabinet have said, it goes all the way up.
Three prisoners committed suicide by hanging themselves. The Base commander Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris said: “They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets. “I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us”:http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13527917,00.html.
Idiot! Read more...
Just a few minutes ago the British Atorney-General gave a speech on human rights. Like his American counterpart, his job is to advise the British government on the legality of proposed legislation, or governmental actions (such as going to war) as relates to treaties, international commitments and legal requirements of things such as the European Convention on Human Rights of which Britain is a signatory. Read more...
Jacob’s recently been being a toddler in the sense that he won’t eat anything but his favourite cereal, Daddy’s chocolate oatmeal or peanut butter and honey sandwiches. His parents, in spite of being assured “they all go through this” have been pulling their hair out trying strategy after strategy to counteract this.
Just a few minutes ago, though, he downed about half of Vikki’s cup of Lee’s special cafetiere coffee. This after eating a whole(!) Granny Smith apple! Read more...
www.alley.me.uk launched this morning (EST) officially as Lee’s UK-centric website. It marks the diversion of the domain which has always been attached to this site as a unified Alley website.
It will also be a showcase of design nous starting with a barebones template and featuring a different design addition at least once per week. In practice Lee isn’t that patient and will probably change or tweak something every day. Read more...
….I had last night at our friend’s Steve and Laura’s. Delicious!
Having endured so many bland dishes tasting of paste or some supermarket version of highly spiced mystery powder added to hamburger meat and taco shells, last night’s meal was such a nice surprise! And to think we had invited ourselves over for a bit of kitchen design help, we did quite well.
Cheers folks! It was really superb and we’ll be inviting you over for the first new-kitchen party, bubbly and all!
