Links
- Two jailed in Northern Ireland over police officer's murder.
I heard the policeman’s wife on the radio. She spoke calmly about how getting the murderers off the streets was good for the community, and positively about the people who had bravely given evidence (at least one had to be given protection).
The odd, disturbing, and intelligence-community-related thing is that army intelligence had a tracker device in the car of one of the murderers, and at first they refused to reveal its details to the police undertaking the investigation. The police had to threaten to get a warrant. Then when they did provide the data, it turned out to have sections mysteriously missing. You have to sympathise with the PSNI here: they had both the Continuity IRA bampots and the army working against them.
'Dark Arts' involved in MI6 officer's death.
So what, this GCHQ codebreaker on secondment locked himself inside a bag using magic? I’m surprised that they’re even considering that it might not be murder here; or at least that someone has covered something up. More importantly, there’s the fact that the DNA evidence got messed up by a typo. Surely there’s got to be a better way?
Police officers deleted records of crime gangs
And then there’s this business about the corruption in the Met. Evidence allegedly deleted on the orders of crime gangs? That’s some scary stuff. I’m pretty sure that when the Serious Organised Crime Agency was set up, it was meant to be anti-organised crime.
2001: The aliens that almost were
An interesting piece on Kubrick, Clarke and collaborators trying to design the aliens for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Via Daring Fireball.
We Are The Clash: The Last Stand of a Band That Mattered by Mark Andersen & Ralph Heibutzki — Kickstarter
Google is Buying Sparrow, but not Updating the Apps
This is annoying. The only thing that was stopping me from making Sparrow my default mail client on my iPhone was the fact that it doesn’t do rotation to landscape mode yet. Now it looks like it never will.
It’s rarely good in the long run when big software companies hoover up small ones, it seems to me.
A British Court Bans a TV Broadcast
The most chilling thing about this is not so much banning the broadcast; there could conceivably be a legitimate reason for that, though it’s hard to imagine a good one. Rather it is this:
For legal reasons, the Guardian cannot name the judge who made the ruling, the court in which he is sitting or the case he is presiding over.
This meta-blocking smacks of the "superinjunctions" that we heard a lot about a few years back (but which strangely seem to have dropped out of sight recently).
Bash - how to recursively find the latest modified file in a directory
From the mighty Stack Overflow, some useful tips on using find with dates.
Weird Law-Enforcement Things
There were three slightly weird law-enforcement- or intelligence-related stories in the news today:
No real connection between these, I just heard about them all today.
Penguin Pete's Blog - Using Bash To Solve A Brain Teaser
[Great use of Bash scripting to do a maths puzzle, but demonstrating lots of useful features.](http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=using_bash_to_solve_a_brain_teaser&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)
Link: Writers’ Bloc – a Literary Band
Writers’ Bloc – a Literary Band « East Kent Live Lit.
Some nice thoughts on what my friends in Edinburgh get up to with their spoken-word performances and chapbook publishing.
I really must get up for one of their performances.
Link: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo
How good scripts get turned into bad movies: Screenwriting Tip Of The Day by William C. Martell - Romeo to Rambo
Link: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett
"The first step is waking up." Brilliant: How to Write a Story, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Link: "Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended"
"... But May 2010 offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape politics for the better. It must be seized."
Fascinating list of signatories to this letter in The Guardian: “Long-standing party loyalties, even in a less tribal world, are not easily suspended
Link: An Awesome Interpretation of Avatar
Brilliant analysis of what could have been "really" happening in Avatar. Don't read if you haven't seen the film.: An Awesome Interpretation of Avatar
Link: A Self-Referential Story
"Sentient sentences": an astonishing piece of work.: A Self-Referential Story
A quote from Amanda Palmer: asking for money for your art is not selling out
ASKING FOR MONEY FOR YOUR ART IS NOT SELLING OUT.selling out is when you go against your own heart, ideals and authenticity to make money.
selling out is an action, a 180 from a stated position.
i don’t consider pop stars to be sell-outs. the lady gagas, britneys and madonnas of the world are UNABASHED about why they got in this game: fame, money, über-success, chart-topping hits.
but if neil young were to suddenly hire the matrix to write him a thumpin' dance album and then appear on saturday night live snogging bob dylan, i’d have reservations about his integrity.
From Virtual Crowdsurfing
Link: Do I know where hell is? Hell is in "Hello"
God save us from crazy religious nutters.
The title is taken from ‘Wandrin’ Star', by the way.: Do I know where hell is? Hell is in “Hello”
Link: A report on FT.com: The man who invented exercise
Amazing story. Hard to believe that the benefits of aerobic exercise were unknown as recently as the 1940s.: A report on FT.com: The man who invented exercise
Novelist Joanna Kavenna points out that I was wrong
Ok, I was wrong when I said that no other genres had disparaging abbreviations.
"I don't understand what chick-lit means, and to a degree it's just used to dismiss quite a lot of writing by women," she says. "It's a blanket term that renders a wide variety of literature frivolous. It's used either to dismiss the writing or to avoid thinking about it." Stephen Moss interviews novelist Joanna Kavenna on her seven unpublishable novels, and eventual success | Special Reports | guardian.co.uk Books
Looking forward to hearing this
My favourite author and a favourite TV writer: together again for the first time!
Iain Banks has now taken a look at the recording script of my BBC Radio 4 adaptation of his novella ‘The State of the Art’ and pronounces himself pleased.
From Paul Cornell’s blog.