2005 April | John Leach's Blog

Sgt. Akbar gets death penalty
April 29th, 2005

In Marchs 2003, American soldier Sgt. Hasan Akbar rolled two grenades into a tent of fellow soldiers and shot at them as they tried to escape, killing 2 and wounding 14. A military jury of “nine officers and six noncommissioned officers” found him guilty this week and he was sentenced to death.

And the punch line? Lt. Col. Michael E. Mulligan described Akbar as “a hate-filled murderer who waged war on troops he did not know in the middle of the night.“*

pH irony indicator level: 7.3

* I can’t find another reporting of this exact quote so it’s probably incorrect. It seems this is just a summary of what was said, which included “He is a hate-filled, ideologically driven murderer”, which is still amusing.

Tags: death, irony, murder, soldier
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
BBC ignored weapons claims
April 18th, 2005
The BBC has been accused of failing to investigate claims that the US used banned weapons in Iraq. Is it ignoring the story or has it done its best to seek out the truth?

Well, they’ve:
- not mentioned that the US have already admitted to using modified napalm
- stated (falsely) that Human Rights Watch investigated these claims and found nothing (something HRW deny, as they do not have the freedom to conduct investigations in Fallujah)
- Ignored multiple media reports (rebroadcast on the BBCs very own worldwide monitoring service) stating that “the occupation forces used poisonous gas”
- Ignored investigations and reports made by Iraqi medical staff and officials at Iraq’s health ministry
- Stated, falsely, that their reporters had full access to all military documents and briefings and heard nothing of banned weapons
And it’s clear that they’ve only published this Newswatch article because they’ve been repeatedly pressed by Medialens.
Tags: bbc, bias, iraq, media, wmd
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Savages and Cannibals
April 15th, 2005

Last night it was suggested to me that when the British empire was exploiting and murdering the people of (amongst other countries/continents) Africa, we saved them from themselves as they would repeatedly war with each other. We brought stability to these “savages”.

Obviously my cynical and suspicous mind immediately suggested, perhaps, that not all was as it seemed (especially as “what seemed” had no doubt been extracted from British “history” books).
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: africa, british empire, kenya, may mau, savages
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Compact flush card
April 12th, 2005

One of my 256MB compact flash cards containing some photos went through the wash. It was a colours cotton wash at 40 degrees with a spin cycle at the end and then into the tumble dryer for 60 minutes or so.

It still seems to work perfectly, though some of the colours in the photos look a little lower saturated (read: ‘washed out’). If this were a floppy disc I’d expect extreme data loss (though, at 1.44MB, that’s less that one lost photo), and when I’ve washed CDs before, they were completely destroyed.

I bet if this were a microdrive it’d be broken too.

Tags: compact flash, flash card, microdrive
Posted in Personal, Photography, Tech | 1 Comment »
Amsterdam irony
April 11th, 2005

We were wandering around Amsterdam looking for a bar to have a drink in (yes a drink) and found one with a pinball machine, which made it an easy decision. As we walked in through the candy-floss-thick plume of smoke and approached the bar, the big shaven head bar tender showed us the herb menu. We instead looked around for what beers were on offer, noticing the shelves fully stocked with Pringles crisps and M&M’s chocolate.

After a minute or so the bar guy asked: “You’re not schmoking?”

Us: “Uhrm, no, just a beer.”

Him: “Schmoke first, beer later. If you’re not schmoking then you must leave.”

Us: “Heh, seriously?”

Him: “Seriously. Leave.”

I see now that he knew we’d only have one beer each and spend a measly 30 euromonopoly dollars in the pinball machine, rather than buy his overpriced marijuana then spend all the money we had on crisps and chocolate to sate our munchies.

Back home in the UK we would have been thrown out of a bar for smoking the illegal weed, whereas in Amsterdam we were thrown out for not. Then again, alcohol does account for 50 times as many deaths as all illicit drugs put together, so the guy was probably just thinking about our health.

Tags: amsterdam, marijuana
Posted in Personal | No Comments »
water cooler
April 6th, 2005

I managed finally, after lots of prodding of the site manager, to get a water cooler installed down here in our department. The water supply down here tastes funny (and is usually warm) so I complained. Unfortunately they’ve plumbed it into the same water source as the tap (duh, I did warn them of this) but with it being cooled, I can no longer taste the fun.

Increased efficiency due to being properly watered: 10%.
Loss of efficiency due to many more trips to the toilet: 2%. Bonus!

I wonder if I can get them to install a urinal down here now. Obviously not in the kitchen, that wouldn’t be hygenic, but there is space in the server room.

Tags: cooler, tap, water
Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »
Photos from Amsterdam
April 5th, 2005

A few photos from around and about Amsterdam, but the majority are from the ARTIS zoo. I’ve uploaded them to the usual place. You can see how tiny my hotel room was, Tux advertising ice drinks, and this bear showing the crowd what he thinks of them.

The zoo was rather depressing. Many of the animals had very little space and looked so sad. So many people were tapping on windows and annoying them too (even using flash photography in the aquarium). This guy was a complete dickhead. Clicking his fingers and shouting at animals to take photos of them. His horrible daughter had learned the same behaviour from him. I clicked my fingers and shouted until he turned around and then I took a photo of him myself. He didn’t get it at all.

I’ve got more stories from Amsterdam which I’ll write later.

Tags: amsterdam, animals, gorilla, zoo
Posted in Personal, Photography | No Comments »

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