Literally - Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton’s website, FreeSpeech.org.nz is banned in China. Surprisingly, so is Pacific Empire. Bernard’s blog Section 14 has been very critical of China, but China is not often mentioned on this little blog.
Test your own URL at the Great Firewall of China website - the results might shock you. […]

Free Speech, East Asia, Politics, New Zealand | 14 Comments »

Few of you will know that exactly 4 years ago, I arrived at university determined to get my degree and begin a career as a Marine Biology. This story basically sums up why: “Amazing specimen of world’s largest squid in NZ.”
The Colossal Squid, Mesonynchoteuthis hamiltoni, is the world’s largest invertebrate. Maximum size is […]

Science, New Zealand | 7 Comments »

Just taking the chance to highlight some new (or new-ish) links on the blogroll.

Global Voices Online
Haft of the Spear
Hidden Unities
Simulated Laughter
Small Wars Journal
Soob
The Strategist

And some underrated blogs:

Somewhere Along the Way - experiences of a New Yorker in NZ

Shloky - cutting-edge analysis and links.

And finally, a few miscellaneous links:

The Degree Confluence Project. Attempting to photograph […]

Linkage, World | 10 Comments »

Blair announces new gun-crime measures after fourth murder
Monsters and Critics.com - 18 hours ago
London - Following the deaths by shooting of four young men in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced harsher penalties for possessing firearms Sunday.
In an alternate universe:
Following the deaths by shooting of four young men in London, British Prime Minister Tony […]

Police, Politics | 1 Comment »

It’s always worrying when something like this happens - a direct attack on the connections between two nuclear-armed rivals. Attacks on India seem to be increasing in frequency as well as severity.
This latest attack appears to have used simple incendiary devices rather than high explosive, but to deadly effect (at least 64 killed, mostly […]

Terrorism, South Asia | 20 Comments »

A few months ago, I installed a Gravatar plugin, only for Gravatar to go down a couple of days later.  It’s been a long wait, so I was pleased to find out that Gravatar 2.0 is now fully operational.
If you don’t know, Gravatar is a free service whereby you can upload an image of any […]

Meta, Technology | 1 Comment »

I’ve just pre-ordered a copy of John Robb’s Brave New War. I’ve been reading his blog, Global Guerrillas, since 2004 - it introduced me to a huge range of concepts from 4GW to systems disruption, black swans, cascading failure and netwar.
Here’s the blurb:
In Brave New War, controversial terrorism expert John Robb argues that the […]

Infrastructure, Black globalization, Terrorism, Middle East, Non-state actors, 4GW, Energy | 1 Comment »

When I saw the AP headline “Boyish US Envoy Becomes Hearthrob in China,” I knew immediately who it was about. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, Christopher R. Hill - chief nuclear negotiator with North Korea -made a brief visit to Wellington last year, and one of my lecturers arranged a roundtable discussion […]

US, East Asia | 6 Comments »

Ok, it’s storytime kids.
One day, a pamphlet turns up in your mailbox. The pamphlet starts by telling you about a study showing that tap water is highly acidic and nigh-undrinkable. In fact, you shouldn’t drink any tap water. Instead you should buy bottles of water from a particular company - the one […]

Parables, Religion, Skepticism, Science | 1 Comment »

Washington Post:
A group called Motorists Against Detection claims to have done $40 million worth of damage by destroying 1,000 speed cameras since 2000. The group’s fugitive leader, who identifies himself only as Captain Gatso (after the company that makes the speed cameras), said in a telephone interview that he and his 200 followers had […]

Europe, Non-state actors | No Comments »