Freeborn John

That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends,
it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute new Government.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Blog move

Now here: http://www.peterrisdon.com/blog/ .

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Cognitive dissonance

Mine, this time. Political Betting suggests that opinion poll success depends on parties being in the news; recent Tory poll setbacks have ...

Friday, February 26, 2010

Broadband issues

Screenwriting software nowadays includes some very nice structures for collaboration online. So, there I was this morning, collaborating awa...

Rape - a case study

This has just happened to someone I know, slightly. Less than two months into his marriage to a Turkish woman, this man was accused by her o...

New hockey stick graph

Click image to see full size. By Zombie

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Mildly interesting

Ever tried to open a local file in Google Chrome? Eh? I fell back to Firefox.

The mandatory Darius Guppy post

Now, I see Guppy has been in The Telegraph. The thing is, um... that is... eyes feel heavy... I ... rtyuio dfghjkl; cvbnm, Hmmm? ...

Fettered democracy

Good post from Squander Two . Two related points from it: I'm all for constraining democracy within awkward undemocratic boundaries, as...

The view from UEA

According to The Telegraph : In a submission to Parliament's Science and Technology Committee, which is investigating the disclosure of ...

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Keeping in touch with customers using SMS

My replacement mobile broadband modem arrived today, which is nice. An hour later, I received a text from the supplier, telling me that the ...

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Avient Air in Venezuela

The above photograph was taken in Venezuela yesterday. It shows a McDonnell Douglas MD11 coming in to land at Barcelona airport . The liver...

James Paice MP on libel reform

I just received this email from Mr Paice, my MP (and generally one of the good guys): Dear Mr Risdon, Thank you for writing to me about EDM ...

Nooooo!

Another email from the libel reform campaign: Dear Friends, We’re grabbing this chance while we have a quiet 10 minutes to give you a bit of...

Quote of the Day

From Eric Raymond, in a post titled Who bears the cost of moral vanity : I was born and educated into the class that produces “gentry libera...

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Physician, heal thyself

Mick Hartley is, as usual, spot on in his criticism of a recent Peter Singer piece. But what strikes me is that Singer, a Professor of Phil...

Self defence

A characteristic snark from Blood and Treasure: Incidentally, I believe this is in line with current Tory policy on reasonable self defenc...

Simon Singh's weird idea

An email arrives from the libel reform campaign: Dear Friends, I’ve had an idea – an unusual idea, but I think it might just work. As you kn...

Irony alert

Sunny Hundal : People reading political blogs generally seem to hate nuanced positions, but I’m going to try anyway. For that it’s likely I’...

Surface stations

I just left this comment at John Graham-Cumming's blog . The Neo-Nazi revisionist bit refers to his use of the term "denier", ...

Monday, February 15, 2010

Error message

Friday, February 12, 2010

Cooperation

One of the areas of dissonance between right and left is the meaning of the word "cooperation". For the right, it means something ...

Global warming debates

Monbiot and Plimer interviewed. An evasive Plimer simply refuses to answer a basic question. Not at all impressive: In Australia later today...

Physics GCSE question

Patrick posts the following on his blog : Patrick's comment on this is exasperated rather than detailed - he has to teach this stuff. Bu...

Make mine a double

Strong coffee might increase the risk of heart disease. Within an hour of a single espresso, blood flow had reduced by an average of 22 per...

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

We are not Spartacus

My excuse is that I haven't been blogging much. Normally, I do chip in when there's a "We are all Spartacus" call on behal...

Solidarity

I didn't know this: ... after 9/11, people came together to hold a candle light vigil on Mohseni Square in Tehran in solidarity with the...

Evil oil companies spreading disinformation

Some fifteen years ago I saw a VHS video about Global Warming, produced by an environmental group in the USA. At the time, I was completely ...

The view from Iran

This is a fascinating post at Harry's Place. Q&A with a pro-democracy Iranian in Iran. If you go there now, you can ask your own qu...

Who said this?

We need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the farm bill immediately Guess Via

Governments and public goods

In an aside, Norm writes : Incidentally here, I am intrigued by the reactions to this of some Republican politicians - to the effect that O...

Monday, February 01, 2010

There is such a thing as a free lunch.

Thanks to R for the pic.

A shared dream

Coherent exposition of the anarchist position, from The Guardian : "We organise horizontally, there's no leaders amongst us. A misc...

Friday, January 22, 2010

Another quote of the day

Republicans must realize this evening that in America they benefit as there are only two parties. America is as fed up with them as they are...

Quote of the day

I’m excited that I'll learn about it in open court. Ezra Levant, writing about the latest lawfare attack against him in Canada. Read Le...

Adaptive systems

Interesting post here : In a Japanese laboratory, a group of scientists is encouraging a rapidly expanding amoeba-like blob to consume Tokyo...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Physics of Space Battles

... combat spacecraft would likely get around the same way the Apollo spacecraft went to the Moon and back: with orbit changes effected by d...

European Arrest Warrant

Deborah had been set up to drive a car packed with drugs from Spain to France. As she knew nothing about the drugs, the trial court cleared ...

Test your knowledge

Of Middle Eastern politics : 16. Israel has often been accused of “ethnic cleansing” of the Arabs in the “occupied territories”. The demogra...

Consequences of drug prohibition

The French health ministry issued a warning on Tuesday after eight people died and seven fell sick in two European countries from using hero...

Mass analysis

John King made an interesting observation: Scott Brown took off during the Christmas Day bombing incident and the candidates’ very different...

Pic of the day

This view shows color variations in bright layered deposits on a plateau near Juventae Chasma in the Valles Marineris region of Mars. Image ...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Fifty years ago

No thaw. A little more snow last night. Cannot unfreeze kitchen tap but unfroze the waste pipe by pouring boiling water down the straight pa...

The Incredible Sulk

The name fits Charles Johnson as well as it did Heath. He's just name-calling now: It’s looking like right wing tea party candidate Sco...

Unintended consequences

Of alleged media bias : Perhaps the best news for Brown, however, is the media's insistence in reporting that the race is "neck-and...

Busking

I was in Covent Garden once when a man placed a ghetto blaster on a nearby table, turned it on and started to sing. A woman appeared above, ...

Brown vs Coakley

They're voting today. Polling website FiveThirtyEight.com - which scored well during the Presidential election - is rating Brown as 3:1...

Haiti images

From Nasa: the fault line and the aftermath , from space.

Newton's apple

‘After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank tea, under the shade of some apple trees… he told me, he was just i...

The limit of scepticism

Phil Plait, who writes the Bad Astronomy blog and has just stepped down as President of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), rece...

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