Peter Risdon

The black spot is huge, nearly 10,000 kilometers across, making it roughly the size of the Earth. It’s composed of dust, basically vaporized whatever-it-was-that-smacked-into-Jupiter. Probably an asteroid; a comet would’ve been spotted before the impact (because they are brighter), and no one saw it. The impactor itself was probably several hundred meters across, and the [...]

A memo for bloggers:
In the first case of its kind, the Court of Appeal has endorsed website disclaimers. Mistakes can be excused by warning notices, it ruled. However, the judges based their decision, at least in part, on a misunderstanding of how people use websites.
The case confirms that a website can owe a duty of [...]

There used to be an informal grouping called The Repeal Club, back in the early 1980s, of peers in the House of Lords dedicated to, well, repealing unnecessary and destructive legislation. Douglas Carswell is now trying an experiment in Open Source politics:
Britain is over regulated. Laws, regulation and red tape stifle individuals, [...]

… anyone who chose to attack a Labour MP with a black pudding deserves some notice
That they do. A personal list of 5 English radicals from Edward Vallance.

Norm is, of course, right:
Criminalize certain forms of mere speech, and newly offensive discursive tropes – euphemistic, oblique, metonymic – will find their way into the world as a replacement.

These sentences, from a piece by Neal Lawson, have been the subject of some debate:
Markets, the mechanism of choice, are designed to allocate the spoils to the winner. That’s OK with supermarkets and car makers – it’s not OK for the state. We can’t have and can’t allow schools and hospitals to fail and be [...]

I started reading The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst last night, a book I bought ages ago in a second-hand bookshop, mainly because it was co-authored by Nicholas Tomalin, one of the best journalists of the late twentieth century, a man killed tragically early while reporting from Golan in 1973, and one who deserves [...]

Babes of the BNP, revisited.

Human sacrifice is clearly a potent forcing agent in climate equilibration. Furthermore, analysis of the climate record suggests its decline has been a key driver of rising global temperatures. The Aztec (and other) priests were right. Only sacrifice will ensure humankind’s survival.
Given this outcome, should there not be an independent review of the United Nations [...]

The rape of female prisoners prior to their execution in Iran has been commented on recently, following the publication in the Jerusalem Post of an interview with one of the Basiji – the militia that was so deeply involved in the violent suppression of the recent demonstrations in Iran:
He said he had been a highly [...]