MoD 'can be sued' over SAS deaths

This kind of story makes me very upset. If there is one thing everybody knows, it is vital for troops to be well supplied. I have spoken before about the importance of equipment, and for this stupid government to sit on their fat arses and not do anything is simply criminal. You can end up with having more bloody admirals than ships, but not enough to have basic vehicles?

Disgusting behaviour on behalf of the MOD. Sending our chaps out there to fight and giving them marshmallows to drive on. I do hope this is taken to court. I quote:

The families of three SAS soldiers and a female corporal killed in Afghanistan when their Land Rover hit a landmine have a strong legal basis for suing the Ministry of Defence under the European Convention on Human Rights, according to a senior barrister.

John Cooper, QC, gave his advice after it emerged yesterday that the commander of SAS troops in Afghanistan had resigned, accusing the government of 'gross negligence' over the four soldiers' deaths.

Major Sebastian Morley claims the Ministry of Defence repeatedly ignored his warnings that soldiers would be killed unless alternatives were provided to the Snatch Land Rovers, known as 'mobile coffins' by the armed forces because of the poor quality of their armour.

In his resignation letter, Morley, commander of D Squadron, 23 SAS, accused the MoD of a 'chronic underinvestment' in equipment. He is said to have described the MoD's failure to buy better equipment as 'cavalier at best, criminal at worst'.

 

MORONS!, IDIOTS!

Erection ad pulled 'in Egypt weapon row'

You cannot make this up. One is using patriotic songs to push for erectile disorder medicines? lol.

Technorati Tags: Egypt,Humour

Blood Service in the Dining Room?

I went last week to Swansea University to teach couple of classes and while Christian was taking me to have a coffee, I noticed this sign on the wall. Its just the juxtaposition of Blood Service in a Dining room which was mildly interesting and funny. I am sure they would be beset with vampires? Very civilised of them :)

And no ordinary blood for you, its Welsh Blood!!!

 

Technorati Tags: Universities,Humour

Now that's what I call as a burger!

I want one! Its the El Diablo Venezuelan burger!

Pandering to fundamentalism in the land of my fathers

Bauls are somebody who I have admired for a long time, albeit from a distance. Its that mystical angle which always appealed to me. It has a very long history and is a very powerful singing medium in the sub continent to pass on religious, political and social thought.

But then typically, some idiot religious fundamentalists in Dakka raised their ugly head and demanded that some statues of these Bauls be torn down. But that's fine, I guess, for a land which is known for its culture to reject culture is perhaps very appropriate. It is also perhaps very appropriate that that country is the country with the lowest average height above sea level. I dont know who to swear at, at the ignorant moron religious fundamentalists who demanded this or the ignorant, stupid, weak, cowardly moronic, illiterate government bodies who gave in. (forget about wastage of the money).

And yes, sculptures are important, they provide the link of my culture and history to my child. If you start letting these bastards interfere with my culture and history, you turn them into zombies and extremists. And I demand a say on the grounds that its Bangla culture they are talking about, Bangla history and Bangla people. Bloody idiots.

A schools minister should have a modicum of common sense, ours doesnt

One of the issues that the UK has is that it is blessed with a Schools Minister who has hay between his ears. Every time he has been asked to take a stand, he never fails to sleep and every time he has taken a stand he slips. Take his recent statement, we should let people know what the Muslims did for us. Why? Because

"One of the major reasons for the alienation of British Muslims is a lack of clear identity. This can leave them vulnerable to messages from extremists."

Lets see if we can use commonsense. So if this is a major reason, not the only one, but a major reason, then we should see other minorities also suffering from the messages from extremists, right? Given that the UK has been imperialistic towards a pretty wide variety of people in its past and even currently, we should be seeing pretty much every bloody minority in the country going about with nail bombs, right?

No, you blithering idiot, it has nothing to do with the lack of clear identity and you cannot do anything about it by teaching just that. His solution?

"This offers a whole series of remedies and an education for the rest of us. It is very important for the whole country to understand the hugely positive impact that Islamic inventors have had upon the world, and for Muslims to take pride in it."

This is science (obviously, this Minister has nothing to do with it), and science builds on every scientist, it has nothing to do with religion. Are you going to then institute a session or a Hindu History month to help push the idea of Hindu mathematics, science, technology, astronomy and the like so that the British Hindu population which lacks a clear identity can be helped? Oh! sorry, the British Hindu population is having fun with being good citizens, buying houses, going to Ibiza and puking their guts out and so on and so forth.

Christ (and pun intended, because I need divine assistance to handle the fact that morons like this are responsible for the future education of my children), what an idiot.

This guy needs to be castrated

I found this story unbelievable. And if true, this man should be castrated and made to go about town with a placard with his crimes emblazoned on it.

Bastard.

An 11-year-old girl has been set on fire by a relative in India's northern city of Jaipur for wearing lipstick and being inappropriately dressed.

Police say the girl suffered burns over 90 per cent of her body and her chances of survival are bleak.

They've arrested her great uncle who allegedly poured kerosene on the girl and set her alight yesterday.

Investigators say the 55-year-old man, a conservative Muslim, told the police he was enraged at the girl wearing lipstick and being scantily dressed.

But relatives have accused the man of trying to molest the girl and setting her on fire when she objected.

 

Technorati Tags: India

four ways of spending money

This was brilliant.

• You spend your own money buying something for yourself—you therefore try to get the best possible product for the best possible price.
• You spend someone else's money buying something for yourself—you still try to get the best possible product, but you are not so concerned about the price.
• You spend your own money buying something for someone else—you are deeply concerned about the price, but you are not nearly so worried about the quality of the product.
• You spend someone else's money buying something for someone else—in which case, who gives a shit?

The Corpus Clock & Chronophage

 

something that makes you go hmmm, what an amazing human invention. hats off to these chaps.

Kindling the e-book revolution?

In the dim and distant past, I have used the Palm Pilot as well as the Sony Clie before as my e-book reader but after having moved to a blackberry which did my PDA bits, I never could get back to getting an e-book reader. In an ideal situation, if the blackberry can give me windows functionality, a very good camera (5-6 MP) and some kind of e-book reader capability, I would be happy. Just one device to carry around, but in the meantime, I either had to read on my laptop or on my home pc.

 

But recently, on holiday in the USA, I was gifted a kindle by my brother in law and his sister. This is one of the best gifts one could have hoped for and I immediately started drooling over it.

 

 

The Kindle comes in an attractive box, it looks like a book itself. Nice packaging. Something that you can easily plonk into your bookshelf without any issues, looks pretty neat, those letters and symbols floating around?



The package is clipped closed with a rubber band and opening it shows you the kindle on the right and a storage compartment on the left which contains the leather case, the charger, USB cord and the manual.



Took it out, charged it up (see the white charger? shades of Apple?). This was in the USA and I have an amazon.com account. So when I powered it up, it asked me for my amazon.com account, put that in and viola, I was up and running.

 

 

Can you see the little round button on the right hand side? looks like a wheel? It is a wheel and click mouse. The lone channel on top of the wheel with a small silver pointer running up and down is the main guidance mechanism. Pressing it brings up a context sensitive menu, you can go to the Kindle Store (I am in the UK, so the wireless network doesnt work, but in the UK, you can subscribe to newspapers, blogs, magazines and the lot, brilliant stuff).

 

It seamlessly connected to the Amazon.com website via the wireless cellular link, showed me my purchases and recommendations, and so on and so forth.

I did a download for my son and it was again seamless, a chapter came down, he read it and it was quite easy.

 

As I would be in the UK, I would not be able to connect wirelessly, so have to do the USB business. So connected to Many Books, a site with free books in kindle and mobipocket format books and downloaded the top 10.

 

Here's the Count of Monte Cristo book. Pretty crisp to read. There are 2 buttons on the right, for next page and back. On the left, there are 2 buttons, back page and next page.

 

 

You can change the text size, this is the default big ass size, which I reduced as soon as I could. The battery life is amazing. I have been carrying it around for the past week in India without charging and have read it for about 15 hours now, and the charge meter has rarely shifted. Oh! yes, I did have a problem with it, it froze at one point. But being a good old windows user for a long period of time, simply opened the kindle's back flap, got out my trusted paper clip and gave the reset button a damn good shove. Obviously nothing happened. Still frozen. So swore at it, banged it on the desk, prayed to Ganesh, poked the reset button for 5 seconds and it worked.

 

I have downloaded the mobipocket creater to convert my e-library to the mobipocket format. The Kindle comes with 200MB of built in memory which is good enough for about 100-150 books, I guess. I have few cd's full of scanned and downloaded and free and gifted and and and books and every weekend, there is a pleasurable time reading and converting those books. There is also a slot for an SD card, where you can store music and additional books if you need, although I dont see the need for it. I use my mobile phone to listen to music.

 

All in all, very neat device, very hardworking and rugged (have dropped it, travelled with it jammed in my backpack for 1 week, swore at it, read it in the bog and in the dusty environs of Gurgaon, no problems) and is quite well readable in all angles and lighting.

 

And yes, you can read this in the bath, you have to be careful, of course, dont drop the thing into the bath, but then, you would not do that to a paper book either, would you? Some drops of water did splash on it, but a simple wipe took care of that. Only quibble? It just doesnt smell the same, but you can annotate and clip away to glory..

 

Oh!, the screen saver is just brilliant, the images that it throws up are very amazing, old authors, old wood cut impressions of printing presses, exotic and strange word definitions, very good. Good first impression. Anybody who is a logophile and/or a bibliophile would love this.

 

Technorati Tags: Bibliophilia,Logophilia,Reviews