h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We're doomed! Doooomed, I tell ya!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126986.300-regulate-armed-robots-before-its-too-late.html

and

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126975.200-why-robots-cant-be-trusted-with-weapons.html

anti terrorist spending

Poster for BNP anti-immigration campaign features Spitfire...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/04/polish_spitfire/

...from Polish squadron.

The joys of having children

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/newsbeat/newsid_7961000/7961224.stm

"They say he'll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling."

that's freaking hilarious.

An interesting slant on the build-up to our economic problems at

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/24/thomas_geoghegan_on_infinite_debt_how

on video, streaming audio or downloadable MP3. You have to scroll down a bit, ignoring the first video to the buttons below the headline "Thomas Geoghegan on “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy”. It's an inteview about an article in Harpers that you can't read without paying for it.

Geoghegan is an Illinois lawyer, but his points are relevant outside the US. He brings the thinking of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynesto bear on our situation.

Not exactly a news story but I am mildly amused/offended by the BBC's QI fact of the day (on the top left of their website homepage) referring to Sir Isaac Newton.

Among his character "flaws" the fact that he was a homosexual is in the same sentence as the fact that he was a hypochondriac, obsessive, neurotic with no friends!

Oooops - here's the link http://www.qi.com/

btw, on the Obama/Chirac letter issue - it's not quite as it seems (surprisingly)
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/03/23/obama-writes-letter-to-chirac-blogosphere-goes-crazy/

So it *is* as it seemed -- Obama was just snubbing Sarkozy. Come on, maybe Dubya wouldn't have known that Nicolas is the new president (or that we have a president at all?), but Obama seems knowledgeable enough.

no, it *isn't* - he was responding to a letter from Chirac in his capacity as head of the Jacque Chirac foundation.

Yes, but he didn't write to Sarkozy first. (I misunderstood the controversy, I thought that 'what it seems' was that he didn't know who was president. Next time I promise I'll read the link carefully though )

didn' have to write to Sarkozy first - he's already had one meeting with Sarkozy last year when he did his european tour and has one planned for early April this year as a formal meeting.

The biggest snub was seeing Brown first!

Indeed

Still I do not think that it was completely innocent of Obama to write now to Chirac. As far as I know, Chirac and Sarkozy are not very good friends.

There is no Obama/Sarkozy/Chirac story. It is made up through a misreading (indeed, non-reading) of the facts by certain bloggers and papers with a particular point to put across.

Cupboard is bare - Bank of England to Brown
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5966450.ece

"The fiscal position in the UK is not one that would say, 'Well, why don’t we just engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion?’."

Surprise hike in consumer prices

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7959564.stm

Where the hell is the "surprise"? The £ has crashed about 35-40% in the last year and we buy most of our manufactured goods from abroad.

** Bank of England to Brown **
“I cannot recall such a sudden severe and sychronised downturn in world output”, Mr King said.

Gordon Brown gets a kicking in Europe

http://playpolitical.typepad.com/uk_conservative/2009/03/daniel-hannan-mep-accuses-gordon-brown-of-sounding-like-a-brezhnevera-apparatchik-giving-the-party-l.html