Category: Networks

is linked by this nice little summary on techno-blog Saltire Blogging by Steve MacLaughlin:

The best curling stones are all mined from the same location: the Ailsa Craig. The Ailsa Craig is a towering island of granite rising 1100 feet from the surface of the Firth of Clyde off Scotland’s west coast. The Ailsa Craig is sometimes known as Paddy’s Milestone as it sits between Scotland and Ireland.

Take a walk on the wild side and check out technoblogs.

The Nando Times: Pentagon says new office won’t deliberately spread lies

WASHINGTON (February 20, 2002 3:55 p.m. EST) – Pentagon officials on Wednesday denied planning to use a new Office of Strategic Influence to plant erroneous information in the news media to promote U.S. war goals.

“The Pentagon does not issue disinformation to the foreign press or any press,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.

Too bad – I was looking forward to some standard-issue, government-produced fiction; the civilian stuff’s getting too predictable. But it probably would have read like government cheese tastes.

— Americans win last four games to reach semis

OGDEN, Utah — The American women’s curling team clinched an Olympics semifinals spot with an 11-2 victory over Norway on Monday.
Continue reading “Curling babes in final four”

David Boaz on Scotland & Afghanistan compares the two backward, mountainous, religion-obsessed countries, highlighting the contributions of Scots to the development of modernity:

The Scots pioneered the social sciences: the scientific study of history and human nature. By the late 18th century, the most important books in Europe were Scottish books, beginning with Francis Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy and Lord Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man and going on to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, and more.

And not just books: the inventor James Watt, the architect Robert Adam, the road builder John MacAdam, the bridge builder Thomas Telford, and later Scots such as Alexander Graham Bell and Andrew Carnegie demonstrated the practical side of Scottish philosophy.

Boaz suggests Afghanistan can take the Scottish road.

David Horowitz takes down the David Talbot column I posted recently here: Axis of snobbery

It’s time for the intellectual class to begin reassessing its self-exposing snobbery toward George W. Bush. This reappraisal has already begun to take place. A February Tarrance Group poll reveals that 65 percent of American college students are now “glad that George Bush is president.” Only 18 percent wish it was Al Gore.

It’s well worth a read, since he amplifies and supports my main points.

My speculation that hawala is small potatoes is contradicted by this WaPo story Al Qaeda’s Road Paved With Gold :

In small shops and businesses along the border, the money and gold, taken from Afghanistan’s banks and national coffers, were collected and moved by trusted Taliban and al Qaeda operatives to the port city of Karachi, Pakistan, according to sources familiar with the events.

Then, using couriers and the virtually untraceable hawala money transfer system, they transferred millions of dollars to this desert sheikdom, where the assets were converted to gold bullion.

And so much for the theory that they hate us because they’re poor.

is the subject of an excellent collection of historical insights at the Kolkata Libertarian, complete with charts and maps. It begins with:

An unhurried tectonic shift is in progress in South Asian politics, driven into the limelight by the events of 9/11 in the US and 12/13 in India. By many in the Palestinian and Arab media, as well as in the West, it is viewed with deep suspicion, some anger and sadness.

Bottom line is that historical ties between India and the Israeli people run deep.

BTW, Cochin’s Jew Town is empty now, as all the old-timers have moved to Israel. There are probably more Jews in Kerala ashrams now than there are in Cochin, for what it’s worth.

is on display in the in-depth discussion between Sgt. Stryker and Steve Den Beste on Iraqi war scenarios. Nowhere else can you find this kind of well-informed and timely discussion, but another fine pair have the Blogosphere abuzz today, at Samizdata and Live from the WTC.

isn’t figure skating or hockey, it’s Curling:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s finals coverage of the Labatt and Nokia Brier, Scott Tournament of Hearts and World Championship have held steady with an average audience of 1.2 million, one million and 1.2 million respectively over the last decade. (Source: CBC Research Nielsen) Not bad considering the traditionally most-watched sporting event of the year is the Grey Cup averages three million viewers, while the Stanley Cup finals average between 1.5 and 2.5 million.

Canuck curlers see this Olympics as make-or-break time for their sport in terms of winning new fans, but they’ve not been helped by the whiney crybaby figure skaters who’ve hogged so much bandwidth NBC cut their Curling coverage completely last night.

Justin Slotman shares my enthusiasm for the Sport of Kings, which he says is for Queens too; in the Castro, for sure.

Seth Stevenson, writing on Slate, gushes with admiration for the Sport of Kings:

Meanwhile, the United States-Japan women’s curling match was a treat. Down 6-1 halfway through the match (a huge deficit by curling standards), the U.S. team came back to win with a series of astounding shots. They snuck their stone through tiny openings between the Japanese rocks, curved it around into place, deftly bumped the Japanese stones out of the way, and so on until the game was won by a final score of 8-7. Said ESPN.com: “This is as dramatic as curling gets.” And nobody cried, and nobody wore sequins, and nobody made a secret agreement to hurt someone else’s feelings.

I should do the MTZ treatment on this.