Armor Geddon has posted a 60Mb video(the bottom one marked IED) of a patrol in Iraq, and how to deal with a suspected IED. Here is his account of the day.
Archive for June, 2005
IED Movie from Iraq
Thursday, June 30th, 2005Corruption in Ireland – Irishcorruption.com
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005Well my new weblog has been up and running now since the 15th of June, making it two weeks old today. As other have noted, it has ended up as the first result on Google for “Irish corruption”.
I have been watching the server logs very closely for these two weeks. I was surprised to see just how many gov.ie people came in to read the blog. I reckon in and around 90 visits were from the gov.ie domain, with many of those staying for up to 30 minutes to look around. As well as that I had visitors from heanet.ie, tcd.ie, ucd.ie, NUI Galway, tch.ie (Examiner or Sunday Business Post) and a large number of referrals from Indymedia, and over a dozen weblogs, some of whom link to Irish corruption but not to Gavin’s blog (fair enough).
In the two weeks visitors have numbered 825, with 2,150 page impressions. That really isn’t all that bad I think. Pagerank remains stubbornly at zero, but all in good time I guess.
And I must thank everyone out there for linkage and words of support, it really is much appreciated.
U2 Videos
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005I recorded some small low quality videos with my mobile phone – they are barely watchable so forgive me – but here’s two anyway.
Original of the Species (3GP file, Quicktime needed, or Realplayer with the codec)
Bono (and 82,000 people) singing Unchained Melody (briefly).
Back
Tuesday, June 28th, 2005Well the U2 concert was spectacular, some photos posted here. Now I just need time to recover and catch up!
U2 in Croke Park
Monday, June 27th, 2005Its a beautiful summers evening, Ash are playing, U2 will follow shortly. What a spectacular stadium. Hope Cork make it here for the all-Ireland hurling final!
I have posted photos here.
Giving justice its due: George Perkovich
Monday, June 27th, 2005The latest edition of Foreign Affairs is full to brim with excellent essays. One of my favourites is Perkovich’s essay on justice. It is wide ranging and well written, taking in various disciplines from economics to evolutionary psychology. I will post more about it once I get near a computer. Perkovich is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Bono and Rummy on Meet the Press
Monday, June 27th, 2005MSNBC have a transcript of Bono’s appearance on Meet the Press…
U2 Gig, Croke Park
Sunday, June 26th, 2005Im off up to Dublin tomorrow to catch the last U2 gig in Croke Park, I will try and get some posting done tomorrow anyway. I will also post photos of the gig when I get back!
Satellite photos of Ireland and the world
Friday, June 24th, 2005Google continue to update their satellite image database, Ireland is now in higher resolution, along with large tracts of the the rest of the world. Cork, Dublin and other areas are in very high resolution.
Here are some of the satellite maps websites:
Google Maps - Ireland
View Larger Map
Microsoft Live Maps – with aerial “bird’s eye” photography of major cities.
Software piracy ‘seen as normal’
Friday, June 24th, 2005This seems to be the widespread perception anyway:
Two UK university researchers found that people did not see downloading copyrighted material as theft.
Poll: In wake of Iraq war, allies prefer China to U.S.
Friday, June 24th, 2005In Britain, almost two-thirds of Britons, 65 percent, saw China favorably, compared with 55 percent who held a positive view of the United States.
In France, 58 percent had an upbeat view of China, compared with 43 percent who felt that way about the U.S. The results were nearly the same in Spain and the Netherlands.
The United States’ favorability rating was lowest among three Muslim nations which are also U.S. allies — Turkey, Pakistan and Jordan — where only about one-fifth of those polled viewed the U.S. in a positive light.
Only India and Poland were more upbeat about the United States, while Canadians were just as likely to see China favorably as they were the U.S.
Why is China seen in such a good light?
When did Bush decide to invade Iraq?
Friday, June 24th, 2005Fred Kaplan with a good piece on the Downing Street memo:
The key passage of the memo—which lays down the minutes of a July 23, 2002, British Cabinet meeting and was obtained and published by the Times of London just last month—is also the one that’s gained the greatest notoriety:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.“C,” as is now well known, was the code name for Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, the British foreign-intelligence service. Most discussion of this passage has focused on its final sentence and the meaning of the phrase “fixed around.” But the most interesting part, for purposes of this discussion, is the second sentence: “There was a perceptible shift in attitude.” When Dearlove had been in Washington some time before, war was not a certainty; yet during this most recent visit, the whiff of gunpowder was distinctly in the air.
It would be useful to know the precise timing of Dearlove’s “recent talks in Washington”—and of his most recent visit before that. Still, if his perception (or, perhaps, his American source, who would have been then director of the CIA George Tenet) is to be trusted, the Bush administration seems to have firmly decided on war sometime in the late spring of 2002.
This inference is bolstered by an article that Nicholas Lemann wrote in the March 31, 2003, issue of The New Yorker, shortly after the war began. In it, he quotes Richard Haass—then the State Department’s director of policy planning—recalling a meeting with Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, in the first week of July 2002:
Condi and I have regular meetings, once every month or so—she and I get together for thirty or forty-five minutes, just to review the bidding. And I raised this issue about were we really sure that we wanted to put Iraq front and center at this point, given the war on terrorism and other issues. And she said, essentially, that that decision’s been made, don’t waste your breath. And that was early July. … For me, it was that meeting with Condi that made me realize it was farther along than I had realized.
Marketers Scan Blogs
Friday, June 24th, 2005How to make money from us bloggers?
Now, a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other “consumer-generated media” — a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums — to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.
Confirmed: All Typepad blogs blocked in China
Friday, June 24th, 2005Rebecca MacKinnon has the story, all Typepad blogs have been blocked inside China. Gosh the Chinese are getting really worried…Rebecca notes:
All Typepad blogs, including this one, cannot be seen in China. (Note that Blogger has been blocked in China for some time.) I asked some people in China to attempt accessing this blog and a long list of other random Typepad blogs (including ones that never discuss China), without using a proxy. None could be accessed. Now all Typepad blogs wanting to be seen in China will have to migrate to another blog hosting service or onto an independent server. Meanwhile, Asiapundit has created a series of graphics like the one on the right which you can put on your blocked blog to help create awareness of the problem.
Recovery still has a way to go
Friday, June 24th, 2005Bill Clinton writes on the anniversary of the Tsunami in Asia in the IHT. Worth a look.