abstractplain

NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. (Builds on starlogo)

Heh, The Onion, funny.

“Ainsley Harriot’s kickin mango dressing” is utterly superb! it’s doesn’t sound as good as “sweet chilli sauce”, or “grandma’s chicken salad”, but it’s good on pretty much everything we’ve had in our fridge so far. I think my flatmate bought this in sainsbury’s. no link yet.

“Bridging the worlds of NNTP clients and RSS feeds, nntp//rss is an application that will enable you to use your existing favorite NNTP newsreader to read your information channels” (via Kirsty D)

arch4j (architecture for enterprise java) is in early days, and doesn’t seem to have that much activity, but worth keeping an eye on. Examples: exception hierarchy, and messaging.

You can watch previous HardTalk programmes from the archive on the site. E.g. “Questioning the ethics of war” (23mins) - Mary Robinson, Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (she’s very polite, so ffwd five minutes), and, to balance, the relatively well-known “Kurdish survivor’s support for war” - Freshta Raper, a former resident of the Iraqi town of Halabja, talks to Tim Sebastian about why she believes a war against Iraq is justified. Ms Raper told Tim Sebastian that people in Britain are “naive and stupid” not to support a war against Saddam Hussein.

“Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein” - The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984. from the National Security Archive, which has many declassified documents released under the freedom of information act. The first link I gave is to the abstract, then you have to “go to the electronic briefing book” to get the full thing.

“Does the US support the Geneva Convention or doesn’t it?” A new article by George Monbiot, 25th March 2003. Here’s Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention.

A year-old guardian article by Michael Byers criticises Rumsfeld and the US’ treatment of captured Taliban fighters. The handling of these prisoners conveniently does not come under the geneva convention because they have been tagged as “unlawful combatants”, not prisoners of war. They can be (and are being) held indefinitely without trial.
After a year in custody, some 18 men were released yesterday (25th March 2003).

There is some clarification on the “unlawful combatant” categorisation at www.crimesofwar.org, and at FindLaw’s legal commentary.

watch last week’s (Iraq-special) question time before it gets overwritten with this week’s. i.e. watch it today, before 10.30pm Thursday 27th March. It was pretty good, but still throttled. (realplayer). There is a general Question Time web site which lets you email input to the program, amongst other things. Next program pits Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and hopefully Charles Kennedy or Michael Moore against Geoff Hoon (defence secretary) and Oliver Letwin (shadow home secretary).

They really need to get John Pilger, *, Noam Chomsky, George Monbiot, or Robert Fisk on that program - bigger picture. If you agree, or have other ideas, it’s very simple to suggest a guest.

*Pilger will require boxing gloves? - I hope this was just him on an off day. I can only imagine how frustrated he has to be at the moment, but… gotta keep communicating. (via stegan))

** Ah, Pilger is a popular suggestion.

Mike Clark’s JWhich will tell you where a class is being loaded from. Here’s an accompanying JavaWorld article. There’s also a WhichJUnit utility to help debug junit-related classpath problems. Simpler than my misguided JarSearcher in which I coded up all the zip-searching myself, even when the classloader does it all. There should be a test: “which muppet are you”.

casualties list, including iraqi civilians.

United States Changes its Name to “Coalition” humour at the wacky iraqi.

Harper’s Magazine: economic sanctions as a weapon of mass destruction

Searching for targets in Iraq

robin cook’s resignation speech

Bush Sr warning over unilateral action - listen to daddy.

talking fish warns of end of the world. (”The fish was eventually killed by Mr Nivelo and sold.”)

“shock and awe”, my ass - let’s not get too euphoric, this is the US shrink-wrapping terror once more.

In truth I’m more pissed off at the journalists than at Blair for their part in this; what are all the tv stations doing with all their air time, when they could be informing the country of the background to the situation, reporting on the legitimacy of this aggressive war, and (if they must speculate), looking at (say) the possible ways forward (inc the possible downward spirals)? Showing us pictures of the bombardment as though it were a fireworks display. If Robin Cook is to be applauded, then why don’t they seek his view as a largely respected voice against the aggression? (in fairness, perhaps he will not want to cause further aggro now that we are in many ways committed).

I think what was worrying about Tony Blair’s recent speech was the amount FUD he felt he had to mix in… “But this new world faces a new threat of disorder and chaos born either of brutal states like Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction or of extreme terrorist groups. Both hate our way of life, our freedom, our democracy.” (emphasis mine). Right, Mr Blair, it’s our freedom and our democracy they hate! Not, as the National Security Council reported to President Eisenhower in 1958, when he asked why there was a “campaign of hatred against us” that there’s a perception in the region that the United States is supporting harsh, brutal, and corrupt regimes, and is blocking democratization and development, and is doing so because of our interest in controlling the oil reserves of the region. And they said it’s difficult to counter this perception because it’s accurate. (Chomsky, 22/03/2002, “Peering into the abyss of the future”).

Blair winds up with “Dictators like Saddam. Terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, threaten the very existence of such a world. That is why I’ve asked our troops to go into action tonight.” At it again, can’t keep the two groups separate. He’s attacking Saddam, not al-Qaeda group, and I wish he would give sign that his justification for that attack can stand on its own.

Pitt: This leaves the Al Quaeda connection to talk about. Ritter: This one is patently absurd. Saddam is a secular dictator. He has spent the last thirty years declaring war against Islamic fundamentalism, crushing it. He fought a war against Iran in part because of Islamic fundamentalism. Osama bin Laden has a history of hating Saddam Hussein. He’s called him an apostate, somebody who needs to be killed. […] It would be ludicrous for Iraq to support Al Qaeda, either conventionally, as many have claimed, or even worse, to give it weapons of mass destruction… Pitt: Because Al Qaeda might turn around and use them against Hussein. Ritter: Not might Would! Saddam is the apostate, the devil incarnate. He’s evil in the eyes of these people. […] There are no facts to back up claimed connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

• interview with John Ritter, former US marine officer, former UN Weapon Inspector. (republican)

If there were a retaliatory attack by Iraqi subjects on US soil, and I hope that we will see no such escalation, I still get the feeling the media would call it a terrorist attack, that’s just how ass-backwards they seem want this to be.

“So our choice is clear: back down and leave Saddam hugely strengthened or proceed to disarm him by force.” …and you’ve brought us here knowing this would be the case. very Sun Tzu.

“These tyrannical states do not care for the sanctity of human life” - I don’t actually see US or British govt having much of a track record for giving much of a stuff for the sanctity of human life, either. (Witness the US’s sale of arms to Saddam for many years (knowingly, over the period he used chemical weapons on the Kurds)).

Finally, then, the bbc.co.uk talking-point on Blair’s speech is a very depressing reading, but informative about the mindset of some of the public. Very many of the respondents are behind him.

I shouldn’t sound off on something I know so very little about, especially without a comments system to allow reply and correction. (My hotmail address is, then, neillzero.) I am mad because war is an unpredictable thing and there will likely be high iraqi civilian casualties. Also, on a selfish note, because I feel Bush and Blair are, with their behaviour on this issue, risking serious destabilisation. I hope the attack is over very soon, the people of Iraq are indeed liberated without the loss of life estimated by some, (liberated from Saddam, and from our sanctions that they have suffered under for plenty time), that the govts follow up on their words about supporting post-war Iraq and that we can get to prosecuting the involved parties for breach of international law. By many educated accounts, if the allied forces suffer serious delay or casualties, we could all be in the shit.

Java Dev with Ant a demo project using Ant and XDoclet, amongst other things.

Exception Handling - The REPAIR Model. Interesting article by Robin Sharp, at SoftwareReality.com (nov 2002)

“Should I use business columns as primary key fields for tables in the database, or generate artificial primary key values?” Intelligent Versus Surrogate Keys, short pros and cons by Breck Carter. One of the main disadvantages of surrogate key use - their generation - will soon be less of a big deal with jdbc 3.0’s retrieval of auto-generated keys, if you are prepared to have this done by the db.

I thought it was a bit dodgy that the register promoted the fact that amazon.co.uk had clearly mispriced an item from ~£290 to ~£7. Relatively harmless if The Register know that amazon are definitely protected from actually having to honour the sale at that price [related]. Otherwise, I think it’s just like promoting looting. I’m not a fan of amazon’s normal prices, but don’t think the company deserves put out of business, should they ever leave themselves exposed in this sort of way.

updated: “the conditions of use clearly state there is no contract between Amazon.co.uk and the customer for an item until Amazon.co.uk accepts the customer order by e-mail, confirming that it has dispatched the item” - guardian article.

I have been enjoying the current Penny Arcade mini-story - “CTS”. This can be traced back through use of weapons and Hm. Ninjas! (pt1) to discovery.