Saturday, September 19, 2009

[thought for the day] saturday evening

The issue of race is consuming the U.S., if the media's to be believed, which I don't.

It seems to me that Washington Rebel, through Irish Cicero, at Theo Spark's [sounds like a racehorse pedigree], has it right when he quotes Booker T. Washington [how derivative we bloggers are]:

"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.

Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."

The picture [above left] was carried at the top of an article on race issues in Hollywood and now it's the blacks who see this relationship in the picture as taboo. They have this "pride" thing going, you see, where whitey is considered to be of inferior stock.

My attitude to blacks can be gleaned from last evening's listening or from this evening's.

There's a distinct difference in culture and style between races ... and in some things, such as soul, rhythm and winning sporting events, I don't think the black can be beaten. Women have told me they're not bad as lovers either. In other things, they're often too laid back to be of much use.

If you look at the Crystals this evening, the question is what's black and what's white? What's a negro and caucasian's offspring to be called? What about a native American [Red Indian] with a grandchild of an African negro? Who cares? One can still have unworthy thoughts about La La Brooks. I'd have been burnt by the KKK as a nigger lover long ago although I'm sorry to disappoint that I'm not a long-haired hippy.

As Shakespeare observed - what's in a name and what's in a label? The attitude the person displays is the issue, not the names he uses. The way he uses the name is relevant, not the actual name he uses.

Now I deliberately use the name "black" as a direct consequence of the following, in the Irish Times, of April 25th, 1998, when Whoopi Goldberg was quoted as saying:

I dislike this idea that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called an African-American. I'm not an African. I'm an American. Just call me black if you want to call me anything.

Couldn't agree more. And I'd go further and reiterate that there are differences, just as there are between men and women, adults and children, those differences should be celebrated and they add to the rich colour of life [pun half-intended]. For goodness sake, a dark-skinned Italian is different to a freckly, white-skinned Anglo-Saxon. Does that stop anyone making love?

It's an act of PC insanity to pretend differences don't exist but it's a trickier question whether those differences make ... er ... a difference in your attitude.

Fourteen years ago, a black youth demanded of me:

"Are you cussin' me, Man?"

"Yes."

"What!?"

"You asked me a question and I'm answering it. Yep, I'm cussin' you, as you put it."

"You admit you're a racist?"

"No, I'm not racist in the least. Why would I keep the company of people like you if I was racist? But I am cussin' you because you just said a very pratty thing - totally moronic, in fact. Anyone can do that and you just did."

I imagine he went off and reported me to someone for racism. The colour of his skin was of no consequence - he was actually a good looking person. But his sense of victimhood was a pain in the butt and it was a very black thing to throw at whitey. And I've known plenty of lazy blacks and plenty of lazy whites too.

So what?

I think we need to get real on this issue, instead of using it as a big stick to bash someone with and to gain ourselves advantage in society.

[philosophers] who's the odd one out and why


Name them and say who would not be "of the club", had there been a club. Say why.

[late evening listening] adenoidal tales of love

That wall of sound was really something - and those powerful voices! The sheer innocence of those days is decades away if ever again. Can you imagine any modern singer being able to belt this out so plaintively?







I really hesitate to put this link in because there are nasty people out there and there are jailbait overtones but as it's a good cover of the Crystals and Ronettes, I'll take the chance.

[ecoxenophobia] prejudice of the month


Is it the season for silliness? I thought that ended when the kids went back to school. Here's the first of two really classic examples:

Michelle Obama yesterday described health-care reform as "very much a women's issue" and said the current system was preventing women from achieving "true equality".

Right, I understand. Men have no place in healthcare. We're robust and macho and need no provision - therefore that's why we're so racist about the issue in America, even though many of us are not in America.

Understood.

And of course, with logic like that, it really is preventing women finding "true" equality, only ... if there are no men involved in healthcare, then does the hegemony of women constitute "equality" or "positive obliteration"?

The second is this beauty from a conservationist:

The campaign to eliminate alien species like grey squirrels and rhodendrons from Britain is a form of "eco-xenophobia", according to a leading conservationist, who claims native plants and animals are doing just as much damage.

Eco-xenophobia. Yep, that's a good one - prefixing the phobia of the month with "eco" to produce a new issue PCists can rail against, presumably with the gayist, feminist and racist war already won.

[exiting britain] book your ticket

I need a pic so I'll pinch Sackers' one.


It ruins my whole plan for a Prejudice Saturday theme but one can't go past Sackerson when he waxes lyrical:

It'll be far worse for Britain, a country where the management has never quite lost that 1066 sense of being quite unconnected with the indigenous peasantry subjected to their cruel alien rule.

This is why our overlords find it so easy to flee the country to take their place in the new pan-European aristocracy currently under construction, an unlovely amalgam of big-business swindlers, venal politicians and their marketing men.

[silent saturday] tasty

[district nine] discrimination against aliens


Today's theme is prejudice and discrimination and where better to start than with the Nigerians?

Information Minister Ms Dora Akunyili [the Ms being a dead PC giveaway for a start] is up in arms about a film, District Nine, which she says portrays Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes.

She's right to be concerned. Ms Susan Whatever and her call to the dearly beloved to give her their bank details because she has a hard life in Nigeria is hardly criminal. A scam to part thousands with their money, of course but hardly criminal.

Malawian actor, Eugene Khumbanyiwa who plays a gang leader with the nickname of Obasanjo, also the surname of former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, says of the District Nine furor in Nigeria that the film, which depicts people wanting to eat aliens to gain superhuman powers, should not be taken too literally:

"It's a story, you know," he said. "It's not like Nigerians do eat aliens. Aliens don't even exist in the first place."

I do feel Mr. Khumbanyiwa is being quite Alienist here, spreading disinformation about the Alien community in Nigeria and elsewhere. Aliens have a perfect right to live in our society, free of any discrimination on the grounds of tentacles, cannibalistic propensities, treating humans as prostitutes or because of the green colour of their hide.

Just as the wolf has a perfect right to harass the sheep without fear of discrimination or the cat has a perfect right to harass and worry the mouse and the bird without having to suffer vilification and humiliation, so the Alien should not be subject to the obnoxious and highly prejudiced mental illness of Sigourney Weaver.

[jihad japes] holding out for those 72 virgins


There's a pretty blogger with a lot of pro-activity [which my mate admires] and with a pretty neat blog too. One thing which puzzles me is why she is so supportive of our troops in Afghanistan and at the same time, is railing against Islamophobia, which [officially] put the troops there in the first place?

"Islamophobia" is one of those weasel words, one of those emotive catchcries, easily delivered by the mindless or the clever and cynical, which assumes and insinuates that there is something sick in anyone who opposes Islamicization and in Islam itself, the way the Imam's teach it - assumes and insinuates it without allowing right of reply.

So here is the reply to that weasel word.

Quite frankly, there is a problem. That problem can be seen here, for a start and the comments on those posts leaves the MCB in no doubt of the depth of feeling on the issue in this country. Against that, on the personal front and leaving the political issue aside, I've had Muslim girlfriends, was considering marrying a Muslim and was also considering becoming one.

Islamophobia is not a dirty word but it's dirty in the way it's just been sprayed around at anyone who opposes the takeover of our society by Islam, which is Islam's stated aim.

So sorry - no, we're not putting up with that.

This politico-social movement, masquerading as a religion, spawns terrorists, the whole world is aware of it, even the buddhists and sikhs and that's why our troops think they're over in Afghanistan [whether the real reason is that or not]. The aim of those troops who are laying their lives on the line daily, is to free the world of terrorism, by hitting at its source.

Every political issue has its black humour and this one of the takeover of the world is no different. Do you remember the following two clips?

From the Underdoug:



Another for good measure:



Now, are those clips racist or Islamophobic or what are they?

Like the Muslim cartoons in Denmark, they're just how one side of the conflict sees the other. So what? The Muslim media includes the most "appalling" vilifications of us and do we worry about it? Are we crying WASPaphobic or losing sleep over it? We might occasionally imagine a concerted rocket attack on all the major mosques which have supplanted peaceful churches the world over and which built on their very sites, particularly in Jerusalem, to give them some of their own back but we're not actually thinking of doing that in practice.

So we mock terrorists and the founder of the movement which created them. What are we inciting? We're inciting people to oppose and block Islamic expansion in our land. Not to stir up hatred of the ordinary Muslim but to cease planning permission for expansion, on the grounds that anywhere this has got a foothold in a community, anywhere in the world, it's led to trouble. From Darfur to London, the story's always the same.

It's to demand of the Muslims and the Jews and the Chinese and the Indians and Canadians that when you're in our land, you respect our heritage and do things with that in mind. It's to say to any minority group: "The tail does not wag the dog."

Who is "we"? Anyone out there who agrees with this point of view, that's all.

Friday, September 18, 2009

[thought for the day] friday evening


If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

[Eubie Blake]

[odd one out] who and why

As the title suggests, name all four, say which is the odd one out and why:

[late evening listening] dearieme presents eubie blake and alberta hunter

Have you ever walked into a room and there was something happening, such as two people at a piano and everyone around seems to have shut up and is listening intently, almost in awe and you think to yourself - these two are quite special? Then they start playing and you see you're in the presence of excellence?

Eubie Blake composed the melody to the Charleston Rag and in fact was ragtime itself around 1914 and later.

He said:
So one day I was playing; ­ my mother'd gone out to work, see ­ and what she was doing home that time in the morning, I don't know. She came in, says ­ and heard me playing: "Take that ragtime out of my house!" That's the first time I ever heard the word "ragtime." And she made me; she made me stop.



He claimed his age was four years older than he was so that when he died at 100, he was, in fact, 96.

The lady in the clip is Alberta Hunter, a famous jazz singer of the age who performed with most of the greats of the day. One aside is that she is a lesbian community icon today and was as public about it as one dared be in that day.

Here's another side to Eubie Blake from 1932:

[population] any truth in this


What are the implications, if true? Should pro-active measures be taken? Are "They" already doing that?

[match tricks ten] try before you check

What is the smallest number of matches you can remove so that no square of any size is left?


Check the solution here.

You might also like to try:

Matchtricks 1
Matchtricks 2
Matchtricks 3
Matchtricks 4
Matchtricks 5
Matchtricks 6
Matchtricks 7
Matchtricks 8
Matchtricks 9

Oltre queste sbarre ancora posso parlare. Ascoltatemi

The Jailhouse Lawyer posts on a subject close to the heart today:

Oltre queste sbarre ancora posso parlare. Ascoltatemi

Continua in Inghilterra il dibattito sui diritti dei detenuti, in particolare su quello-sancito dalla legge- di tenere un blog. Il “guardian on line” lascia parlare direttamente uno di loro. Lo fa pubblicandone un post, quello che egli tempo fa aveva previsto prospettivamente potesse essere addirittura la sua ultima possibilità di parlare in rete








Italian to English translation Besides these bars I can still talk. Listen

It is understood that the MoJ sought legal advice following Ben's post in the Guardian Comment is Free. It is further understood that the MoJ now accepts that its attempt to silence prisoner Ben's blog was a mistake.

Special delivery for Knee-jerk Jack Straw...


[women] and the need to know all


A British study of 3000 women aged between 18 and 65 has found that four in 10 were unable to keep a secret, no matter how personal or confidential the news was. Researchers found that they will typically spill the beans to someone else in 47 hours and 15 minutes.

Six in 10 end up telling someone completely uninvolved so the person the secret belongs to won't find out. Three quarters say they are capable of keeping a secret, and 83 per cent consider themselves 100 per cent trustworthy within each particular friendship group. 40 per cent saying their husband was their ultimate confidant.

Hee hee. Anyone brave enough to comment? :)

[free enterprise] between a rock and a hard place


This story at Jams is one reason one cannot go for unfettered enterprise.

When I think of free enterprise, I think of someone like you or I starting up a little business with a loan and what we've saved up, running the risks, paying reasonable taxes and slowly building up custom - I had such a business at one time, in screen printing.

I do not think of Exxon or Trafigura in Jams' post raping the land and surrounding seas and pillaging the people. I do not think of JPM and GS bringing on the global crisis and making a killing on it or CEOs lining their pockets and giving themselves increased bonuses whilst everyone else is on the breadline.

To run in horror from these monsters , straight into the hands of the Big Statists and the command and control economics of Brown which has been so beneficial [not] is equally as bad.

So there obviously needs to be a climate in which small and medium business can flourish and yet the monsters with the big money can't take over the nation's large enterprises and turn them global. While incentive is the only way to make the economy grow and working for one's family is the best incentive known, resulting in employment and a productive atmosphere, the world of the monster capitalists needs to be eradicated.

We're between a rock and a hard place and I confess I don't know the answer to the dilemma. It's certainly not in greater governmental stringency and neither is it in letting the monsters behind the government loose on the country.

There has to be a middle way.

[bermuda triangle] and now we swing back to the rational

The Avro Tudor IV - so bad, only BSAA ended up flying it


So, two of the planes might have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle due to mechanical error:

The plane's poor design may well have been to blame, according to Don Mackintosh, a former BSAA Tudor IV pilot. The cabin heater mounted underneath the floor where the co-pilot sat is his prime suspect. At the time, aircraft heater technology was still in its infancy. "The heater bled aviation fuel on to a hot tube - and was also fairly close to the hydraulic pipes," he says.

A pressure switch should have allowed the heater to operate when it was in the air but it was unreliable and was often deliberately short-circuited by staff, allowing the pilot manual control. The switch prevented inflammable fuel from flowing, but if the heater was switched on manually, gas that may have collected could have ignited.

Captain Peter Duffey, a former BSAA pilot who went on to become a captain of British Airways Concorde, also believes that the proximity of the heater and the hydraulic pipes was significant. "My theory is that hydraulic vapour escaped from a leak, which got on to a hot heater and caused an explosion," he says.

All right, let's not swing wildly to the theory: "No, no, it was the Bermuda Triangle," or wildly the other way to: "No, no, it was all mechanical - everything on all disappearances can be explained away because of this particular case."

The Avro Tudor IV was a pretty poor design, by all accounts. Fine - that's why those two went down.

Now, what about 1945: December 5, Flight 19 (5 TBF Avengers), lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19? What about 1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002, lost with 3 crew and 29 passengers, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami?

What about at the end of the war, some almighty atmospheric project like HAARP's antecedents or even Woodpecker brought closer to the States - remember the Cuban crisis was not so far away and the Cold War was just getting started. Why could that not have exacerbated an already problematic aircraft without needing to resort to the metaphysical explanation?

[gordon] saves the world again

Brown calls for worldwide spending cuts

WTF? He has enough trouble running his own country, doesn't he? You can just see the wheels turning in that brain:

"Er ... let's call for cuts, not that we've ever bothered with them ourselves, preferring to spend Britain into decades of public debt but it's the only way to stop Cameron, you know."

"Oh Prime Minister, you're so statesmanlike," chirps Harriet, "not like that horrible woman I left off my list."

Brown is flattered and has a rush of the Jim Hacker to the brain. "Yes, Harriet and I'm going to tell all the other countries to do it too."

"Er ... Prime Minister ... some of those countries aren't as badly off as we are -"

"Nonsense, my little sycophant - they all need me to save them. They all thanked me profusely in parliament for saving them. I got a standing ovation."

"There was certainly a lot of laughter, Prime Minister."

"Yes, yes, I see it now [hand slips inside jacket] ... Gordon Brown rescues the world from the brink one more time." [Wanders over to the window and gazes over his realm.]

[debate] don't make me laugh



Oh my goodness - do they ever stop and look at themselves? Can they stop and truly examine themselves?

Now seriously, let's look at Pelosi.

Right, she's the speaker of the house.

Right, she noticed that Carter weighed in with an entirely unnecessary attempted connect between Wilson calling out the non-President for lying and somehow that being related to the old chestnut "racism".

Why make an argument when you can just throw in a single weasel word to make your argument for you? With absolute incredulity, I then watched certain bloggers actually try to defend Carter - unbelievable stuff.

Now, in the light of that and even seeing how her Prez, himself, has tried to extricate himself from this unnecessary irrelevancy, Pelosi weighs in with the gay card:

"Pelosi likens healthcare protests to anti-gay rhetoric."

Why?

Why bring in completely irrelevant but highly emotive issues to a debate ostensibly connected with health? What has racism to do with health? Or being gay? Why not bring in ageism or feminism while they're there?

About the only label they don't bring in [whilst they turn around, amusingly, have fits of victimhood and get angry about labels applied to them] is political correctness. I wonder where these people learnt to debate - who taught them the rules of debate? If they were to join debating societies - they'd be called out and marked down for each irrelevancy and for not arguing to the topic.

In the public arena, with no shame it seems, they just throw in any old buzzword which springs to mind or which appears to be currently stirring up trouble. It's the same technique as a marital discussion where one side suddenly brings in issues form yesteryear to somehow bolster the case.

They're all at it, from Segolene Royale to Carter to anyone you like in Nu-Labour. They always try to swamp debate, true debate, in a flood of emotion which is meant to beat into submission any attempt by the wider world, the ordinary men and women, to debate the facts and figures.

I did a blog post once on immigration [shows how central to my heart it is that I rarely blog on it]. Wham - in came Paul Kingsnorth, having never been to my blog before, accusing me of racism, which Tiberius promptly put him straight on.

It's this flood of emotion, accusing me of "putting someone down" and all sorts of things, except for the actual facts at issue, which blur and curtail any meaningful discussion. On a blog where meaningful discussion is the aim, as it is with many of your blogs and fora, then that obfuscation just gets in the way.

Notice I said "they" and didn't use any labels? :)

Thursday, September 17, 2009

[thought for the day] thursday evening


The vivid peas burn green against saturated carrots, nestling next to something yellowish that might be fish in breadcrumbs.

[Traction Man, via The Englishman in "The Slop hits the Fan", describing an NHS hospital dinner/lunch/breakfast - no one is quite sure.]

[star-crossed lovers] who are they

Who are more knowledgeable about the world - the Brits or the Americans? There are two American ladies and two British ladies in the pic below. All were famous as lovers. Who are they, clockwise, starting top left?
Try to do it without checking comments.

Click pic to enlarge

[late evening listening] voices which have ceased

Mary Travers [least worst youtube of a great song]:



Judith Durham [another songbird]:

[spam] and the imperious command of the telephone


Lord T focuses on an issue affecting us all:

It seems that the recession is hitting really hard. At home the amount of junk mail I get through the post has doubled over the last few months. Items from the general junk mail suppliers is pretty constant but the amount from people I have had some dealings with has increased significantly.

In addition I have received a cold call every night for the last week. Most were the usual cold callers but again two were from companies I had dealt with in the past that I had not spoken to for a while and I’m not convinced I gave them my number in the first place. Data miners, Grrr.

There are two approaches we can take. One is to bring in super-improved spam filters and pay for expensive software to gird our blogloins with the armour of computer-slowing technology ... or two, we can cease to worry about it.

It's not what the issue is but how you feel about it that counts.

Thus, when Mrs. Susan whoever opens with, "Dearly Beloved," from her home in Nigeria or when the British Tobacco Lottery tells me I've won a million pounds and all I have to do is claim it by giving my bank details or when someone sends "κάτι που γράφεται στα ελληνικά", then it just goes straight to the bin and never gets a second thought.

Paraphrasing the truisms of Dr Phil again, the trick is not to let anyone else impose his/her reality or constructs on you. When someone says he/she feels betrayed by you, that is his/her construct. When someone appeals to your compassion or greed in a scam, that's his/her problem ... unless you click on it.

Manifesto

I will not be hustled or bullied into doing anything I don't want. I will not feel remorse for something I never did - there's enough of that for things I actually did do - and above all, I will not be told how to think.

This extends even to the telephone. Why should I answer it? Why? It is an imperiously toned command to drop what I'm doing with someone I really do wish to be with and attend to something I have neither solicited nor do I particularly want.

This is where answer machines or services are good. If it is a worthy person who phoned, then naturally you'll phone back as quickly as possible or if you can see the name in the display, then you will interrupt your doings and answer it.

But there is no automatic obligation I feel to answer a phone or a knock on the door.

One consequence of this seemingly selfish policy is peace of mind. Peace of mind leads to calm and to feelings of well-being. Feelings of well-being brush off onto others we have contact with and inevitably lead to a pleasant time for all.

Win-win.

[thoughtful thursday] chuckle - i can think of some things to say about this

[join the dots] bailout in indonesia queried


The stories continue to come in from around the world on this issue. What has changed? Has banking become more corrupt or is it that the media has now had the shackles rmoved and are reporting on it finally? If so, why now? What's behind the obvious PTB authorization of bad press for bankers?

This one is form Jakarta:

When the global financial crisis was at its height last November, Indonesia's Century Bank faced a severe liquidity crisis. Spooked depositors ran on the mid-sized consumer-oriented bank, depleting its capital base and raising fears financial contagion would have a domino effect on other wobbly financial institutions.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his team of technocrats responded by providing Century Bank a financial lifeline soon after its management declared the bank was insolvent on November 21, 2008. The initial 700 billion rupiah (US$70.9 million) cash infusion was designed to allay depositor fears and provide sufficient liquidity for normal operations.

But subsequent government funds funneled through the bank drove the total bailout bill to over 6.76 trillion (US$677.4 million), four times the amount approved by parliament. That's raised questions among analysts and opposition politicians why a middle-sized bank required so much capital to be stabilized.

It certainly would raise questions but an even better question is why it happened in Britain and the U.S. simultaneously and then why it also happened in far flung corners of the world along exactly the same lines, even in Iceland.

Any investigator worth his salt looks for connections, common factors, in any possible crime he's investigating - it's basic police work to do so and to establish motive and modus operandi.

OK, so again - what's the connection between a U.S. housing crisis and a Jakarta bailout? How does the script come to be the same? Does the word "global" hover on the tip of your tongue?

[tahiti] nice native art in the background

[priorities] of some blog readers

The posts are a bit crowded in line today but I just had to run this.

Jams often gets upwards of 30 comments on a post at his blog and in fact, his current fun item entitled "What and where am I - there's a prize in it" has attracted, at the time of writing, 29 comments.

Interestingly, the post before, on the Trafigura crime of dumping toxic waste on the Ivory Coast capital [an issue I'll take up probably tomorrow morning] got how many comments, do you think?

That's right - zero, nol, zilch, not one, before mine.

[genesis of the virus] cohen and other pioneers


Robert Lemos, of CNET News.com, on November 25, 2003, had an interesting article on the genesis of the computer virus, which I found in researching Fred Cohen and abridge here:


"Of all the accomplishments in the annals of technology, Fred Cohen's contribution is undeniably unique: He introduced the term "virus" to the lexicon of computers.

The University of New Haven professor used the phrase in a 1984 research paper, in which he described threats self-propagating programs pose and explored potential defenses against them. When he asked for funding from the National Science Foundation three years later to further explore countermeasures, the agency rebuffed him.

Two decades later, countless companies and individuals are still paying for that mistake … Little has been documented about the origins of the virus. Its early iterations were not created by malcontent teenagers or antisocial geeks but by campus researchers, system administrators and a handful of old-school hackers who thought that the ability to reproduce their programs automatically was a neat trick.

The result is a tale of technical genius, academic naivete, bureaucratic arrogance and humans' penchant for tearing down institutions simply for the sake of doing so.

Sarah Gordon, senior research fellow at Symantec Security Response, says:

"Even if (viruses) are not designed to be intentionally malicious or dangerous, if they get outside of a controlled environment, there can be unexpected results."

That was precisely what happened with the fathers of the computer virus. Cohen had an inkling of much of the future when he first thought up the idea in November 1983 as a University of Southern California graduate student. During a weekly seminar on computer security, he conceived of a program that could infect other systems with copies of itself.

"All at once, a light bulb came on, and I said, 'Aha!'" Cohen recalled. "Within a few seconds, I knew how to write the program and that it would work."

His adviser at the time, Len Adleman--well known as a creator of public-key encryption and the "A" in a popular form of the security technology known as RSA (Rivest, Shamir & Adleman)--suggested that the programs were the digital analogy of viruses. The name stuck.

The birth of a concept

In a paper published the next year, he defined a virus as "a program that can 'infect' other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself." Cohen proved that such a virus could spread through any system that allows information to be shared, interpreted in a general manner and given away, despite the presence of security technologies.

To demonstrate its potential dangers, Cohen created a test program to see how quickly the virus could spread and undermine the security of a mainframe computer system. He implanted the program in a command that presents Unix file structures graphically, then conducted five attack runs.

The virus managed to "gain system rights"--essentially seizing control of the computer--within an average of half an hour. The shortest run took five minutes.

"It could spread with all the security technologies out there at the time," Cohen said. "The concept showed that the least trusted user is the weakest link, and the program can quickly spread up to the most trusted user."

Cohen's work provided a concrete definition of a virus and showed how other programs, such as worms, are a subset of that definition.

Von Neumann

But a few viruslike programs existed before his research, and many of its theoretical underpinnings were established by John von Neumann, one of the founding fathers of computer science.

Born in Hungary in 1903, von Neumann was responsible for seminal work in many branches of computer science, mathematics and physics, including logical analysis of a strategy called game theory and the newly born branch of quantum physics. Between 1948 and 1956, he extended much of the work of one of his peers, computer scientist Alan Turing.

Turing established many of the theoretical foundations of computers when he created the Universal Computer, a logical construct that could solve a wide variety of problems by using a processor and a tape to store programs and data. Computers still use the basic division of labor Turing identified: processors and storage.

Von Neumann expanded Turing's concept to the creation of a universal constructor, a system that could replicate itself. This self-reproducing automaton, as he called it, used tens of thousands of elements--each of which could be in any of 29 states--to create another automaton on an imaginary grid. The system was so complex that it took more than 40 years for even a limited version of it to be implemented in hardware.

Survival of the fittest program

In August 1961, researcher Victor Vyssotsky invented a game, dubbed "Darwin," in which small programs competed with one another to dominate a digital landscape. His colleague Douglas McIlroy programmed much of the game, including the code that would run the simulation. The third researcher, Robert Morris Sr., created a lethal digital creature that evolved and passed along its successful attack to its progeny.

"It was clear that by tinkering the rules to introduce a bit of uncertainty into the game, we could have revived it after Morris' devastating entry, but we had other things to do," said McIlroy, now an adjunct professor in the computer science department at Dartmouth College. The game ran on an IBM 7090 system and was largely forgotten, [running] in artificial environments. It took a different game to help introduce viruses to computers and spread infections worldwide.

The real thing

That game was "Animal," a program akin to "20 Questions," which became highly popular among mainframe computer operators in the 1970s. The game would ask a person to think of an animal and then ask questions for clues as to the type of creature it was. If the program guessed wrong, it would ask the player to provide a question and an answer that would differentiate the new animal.

John Walker, a UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Calculator) systems programmer for a large multinational firm, created his own version of the game in 1974, improving it so that erroneous information one player enters could eventually be corrected by another. The game was an immediate hit.

"It … got me thinking on how best to distribute the game. That's when I thought about making it self-reproducing."

In January 1975, Walker created another program, "Pervade," which would hitch a ride with a new version of "Animal." Any time someone played the "Animal" game, Pervade would also start running to check directories, duplicate itself in any directory that didn't already have a copy and overwrite any older versions.

Walker recalls reflecting on the implications of the program for a couple of months to ensure that he hadn't made any damaging errors. Then he released it.

Within a week, UNIVAC administrators at another corporate office started reporting that "Animal" had suddenly appeared on their system. Weeks later, other companies discovered the program on their systems as well.

"A few months later, a lot of people started talking about it, and that meant more people were asking for it," Walker said. "It propagated as much by word of mouth as by copying itself to new directories."

The Pervade program stopped working when UNIVAC released a new version of the operating system that changed its directory structure. But Walker insists that a modified copy of his program could have easily overcome its new security features.

"UNIVAC was putting forth all these security methods, and here was an example of a threat that all the defenses couldn't do anything about," he said in comments Cohen would echo a decade later.

Walker went on to found Autodesk in the early 1980s, and he remains the largest individual stockholder in the company.

The new generation

Rich Skrenta was a Pittsburgh-area ninth-grader in 1982, he knew a lot about the Apple II and loved to use software to play practical jokes on his classmates. The then-teenager supplied his friends with Apple II programs to which he had added some custom "features," such as the machine's ability to shut down automatically after being used just a few times or to display a taunting message.

"After I had done this a number of times, no one would take games from me anymore," said Skrenta, now the president of his own, soon-to-be-launched search start-up, Topix.net. "And so, I was puzzling on how to get my tricks onto their disks."

That's when he got the idea to write a self-propagating program that would infect Apple II disks. Skrenta's idea for "cloner" programs--he didn't employ the term virus--would infect a popular command on the system disks used by the Apple II. The program he created, called Elk Cloner, counted how often a disk had been used and, on every fifth run, made the computer shut down or perform some other "trick." Every 50th time the computer started up, Elk Cloner would display a little poem.

Four years later, two Pakistani brothers, Amjad and Basit Farooq Alvi, created the first computer virus to infect IBM PCs. Known as the Brain virus, the brothers used the program as a piece of true viral marketing: Each copy caused a message to flash on the screen, advertising the brothers' company, Brain Computer Services of Lahore, Pakistan.

By the end of 1990, about 200 viruses had been identified. Today, that number has jumped to more than 70,000. Although less than 1 percent of those viruses have compromised computers on the Internet, more than 80 percent of companies suffered a digital infection, according to the Computer Security Institute.

Symantec's Gordon said most virus creators--not unlike their predecessors--still don't understand the ability of the programs to spread throughout the Internet. "They tend to be curious--often articulate individuals with a variety of relationship and interaction styles," she said.

Cohen, however, said the scientific heavy lifting for today's Internet viruses was done in the 1980s. Everything else, he said, is just mechanics.

"Everything that we know now was known then," he said. "Everything we see now is just an engineering solution based on old science.""

[lamb to the slaughter] children vote to slay a pet sheep


This has elements of the bizarre and as it involves a lamb and schoolchildren, it is bound to cause trouble.

For a start, allowing a "council" of primary school children to have the power to vote on a matter of real killing should immediately focus attention on the teacher[s] who set this up. This smacks of the very worst of PCism and its disconnect with sanity.

A primary age child, no matter what the exercise in democracy that is being carried out, should in no way have the real life right to determine whether a creature should live or die.

That is utter madness.

Sorry but the demise of Marcus the sheep is of less overall concern itself here because it would be hypocritical, given that we eat lamb, chicken, beef, pork or fish every day, to bemoan an animal death, especially for humanitarian reasons.

But to virtually put the knife into children's hands, the power of life and death, years before they have the emotional and intellectual maturity to decide on these things - and even then the issue of capital punishment is debatable - that is really quite disturbing.

What makes it worse in this case is that the children had named the animal, raised it as a pet and then the teacher put the idea into the kids' minds to kill it. Worse than that, they were "sending the sheep away" to be slaughtered, to spare them the necessity of seeing the blood and guts.

Therefore, the values they are being taught, that are being reinforced, are the computer game values of "it's fine to kill, to have the power of life and death because you never have to see the actual consequences". They're the values of "let's drop an atom bomb but we'll never see the consequences of our actions because we're in a sanitized cocoon".

It's teaching kids the disconnect between a decision, a behaviour and it's consequences. That is no better than teaching kids to be good little sociopaths for that's what sociopaths are characterized by - the inability to perceive anything wrong or the full implications of their actions. Those kids who voted that way - and don't tell me it was a "free" vote at 13-1 because I know teachers and the way kids are subtly manipulated [usually for good] and such an overwhelming vote was clearly the consequence of the way the case had been presented to them - that is simply wrong.

That is the disconnect between Nu-Labour's appalling social meddling, on the grounds that someone came up with a brilliant new idea in order to score brownie points, it is the disconnect which would see the pension funds robbed and gold sold off - no concept of consequence or consideration of possible unintended fallout for actions taken.

That is the lesson these kids have been taught when they should have been taught the exact opposite.

Always remember that if it hadn't been for the English, you'd all be Spanish


Tally ho, old chaps! Lovely to be over here where I've been asked to write something about the Irish referendum. The one our great masters hope they manage to get right this time. That's the trouble with giving two options, though: you're giving people the chance to pick the wrong answer.

It appears that, confident that if people actually knew the truth about the treaty and these 'promises' they'd vote NO, the Irish establishment have decided to resort to their favourite weapon: lies.

Luckily it's quite amusing because the very low key Irish MEPs involved are clearly mentally retarded or masters of irony.

I'll guide you through an example shortly, but first of all let's return to Flanders and Swann:
The Irishman now our contempt is beneath
He sleeps in his boots and he lies through his teeth
He blows up policemen or so I have heard
And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third

See, it's supposed to be a joke but the Irish have taken this whole 'it's the EU or English Imperialism' rather seriously.

From the Irish Times today:

NO CAMPAIGN: IRISH MEPS have clashed angrily with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) over the British party’s plan to post “racist” leaflets to all Irish homes attacking the Lisbon Treaty.

UKIP confirmed yesterday it had begun posting some 1.5 million leaflets, which should arrive in people’s letterboxes between September 17th and 21st. It also accused Irish MEP Marian Harkin of “hypocrisy” for inviting fellow MEPs to donate funds to the Yes to Lisbon campaign.

“Yet again, the hypocrisy of the Yes side knows no bounds. When someone from outside Ireland who is opposed to the treaty speaks out, then it is foreign interference. But here they are invited to do the same,” said UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who plans a visit to Ireland next week to campaign for a No vote in the referendum.

Actually the leaflet is produced by the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group in the European Parliament. Not UKIP.
The UKIP leaflet (sic) on the Lisbon Treaty, which is reproduced on the website www.euinfo.ie, alleges Lisbon gives the EU full control of immigration and warns that Turkey’s entry to the EU will lead to more mass migration of cheap labour. It portrays an image of a turkey with a medallion around its neck with the message: “Free movement for 75 million people.”

Turkey's entry into the EU will do. It's not tricky - it's sort of like osmosis but with people and we've had a rather good demonstration of it with the A8 countries in 2004 and, more recently, Bulgaria and Romania. Of course the Irish Europe Minister Dick Head Roche said that Nice would have no impact on immigration but then he's hardly known for his truthful comments.

And what's with this 'alleges' crap, eh?
Lisbon gives the EU full control over immigration (Arts 79 and 67 TFEU)

Unless the Irish Times don't think that the text of the treaty is the real one?
It also alleges that Lisbon may create an “EU supreme court to overrule our values”, transform Ireland into an “EU province” and damage the economy.

Again, that's because it will. Lisbon grants the EU Court of Justice the power to order the harmonisation of national indirect taxes if it decides that this causes "a distortion of competition" in the EU market (Art. 113 TFEU)

The NO vote also stopped the CCCTB (Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base) which, if introduced, would shaft Ireland as it's currently so competitive and thus has a lot of Foreign Direct Investment.

But of course, it's when the loony MEPs get involved that it really gets unintentionally hilarious:
At the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Labour MEP Alan Kelly said UKIP was out of touch when it came to Europe and bordered on insanity if it thought Irish people would listen to them when they canvassed here. “I presume they’ll come over with their imperialist rhetoric. The thought of their smug smiles turns my stomach . . . 700 years was enough,” he said.

What can you say?

I presume they'll come over with their imperialist rhetoric

Sublime, simply sublime! Never mind the fact that the person he's talking about is actually promoting Irish independence from the EU, it's a sad state of affairs when these useless little jobsworths with no chance of getting even an internship in a private company have to drag everything back to William the Third, as the song goes. Or even Henry VIII.

Ms Harkin said the image of a turkey in the UKIP leaflet was outrageous and racist. She rejected criticism made by Mr Farage that she was “hypocritical” for inviting fellow MEPs to donate to the Yes campaign.

How is a Turkey racist? Is she confusing Bernard Matthews with Bernard Manning?

And I'm sure she did reject that she was being a hypocrite. To them the EU is so knicker wettingly orgasmic that the concept of anyone not wanting to say YES and pay money to help their appalling campaign is not going to penetrate the skulls of said MEPs. Just take a look at what she did:

The criticism from UKIP came after Ms Harkin sent an e-mail to all 736 MEPs asking them to consider contributing to a new campaign group called Europe for Ireland, which has been set up by Irish people in Brussels to lobby for a Yes vote. In the e-mail, Ms Harkin said many people had asked her if they could help in the referendum campaign.

“National referendums are, by definition, an internal national matter, even where, as in this case, the repercussions have an effect across Europe. That being said, Irish people resident in Belgium and indeed all over Europe have set up a Europe for Ireland group to promote a Yes vote to the Lisbon Treaty whatever way it can within the rules,” she added.

Unless you don't like the Treaty, think it's outrageous and an insult to every single Irish person that they are having another referendum and would like the peoples of Europe to be able to live in a prosperous, democratic country than a bloated EU mega state with a terrible anthem and soldiers who can't do drill. Because if that's you then you're an imperialist beast with no ability to read a Treaty document and the fact that you want to tell the truth to these people is sickening.

I mean, where do you get off with trying to inform voters what they're making a decision on?!?!

Get away with you. Feck off.

[one way to go] it's hell out there

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.

[W.C. Fields]

[match tricks nine] try before you check









With 12 matches make 7 squares.

Check the solution here.

You might also like to try these:

Matchtricks 1
Matchtricks 2
Matchtricks 3
Matchtricks 4
Matchtricks 5
Matchtricks 6
Matchtricks 7
Matchtricks 8

[wordless wednesday] was it always like this

[late evening listening] dearieme presents gymnopédies

Dearieme with Satie:



Something I found to round it out:

[wednesday quiz] back in harness


1. What is the area of A-0 paper, in metric?

2. Did the first traffic lights appear in New York, Detroit or Hamburg, in 1919?

3. What is digamy?

4. In Roman numerals, what is the letter M with a bar over it?

5. Which was the first credit card?

Answers

One square metre, Detroit, a second legal marriage, one million, Diner's Club

[the way of the left] and that of normal people

And here is the essential difference between the Left and normal people - the Left always jump to weasel words and catchcries such as "racism" when it has zero to do with racism and all to do with whether a man has lied or not:

Former US President Jimmy Carter says much of the vitriol against President Barack Obama's health reforms and spending plans is "based on racism". Mr Carter told a public meeting there was "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president".

Republican lawmaker Joe Wilson was rebuked on Tuesday in a House vote. He shouted "You lie!" while Mr Obama was delivering an address on healthcare to Congress last Wednesday.

Now I take Mr. Wilson's accusation as meaning, according to the English language, that he felt Mr. Obama tells lies. Ann Coulter has this to say about the Left:

Liberals always take the side of the enemies of civilization against civilization. In the view of The New York Times, every criminal trial is a shocking miscarriage of justice -- except the ones that actually are shocking miscarriages of justice.

In the interests of fairness, let's examine Carter's statement again, in the light of Wilson. Regular readers here, including the sensible left, would agree that many do not want a black as a President. That, by definition, is racist. However, lying can be done by anyone and this man, in terms of his role of president, not as a black, has lied.

So why does Carter play the racist card? Why not accuse Wilson of being a wife beater or a closet Abba lover or something like that? The answer, of course, is that racism is the popular issue of the moment, so if he can't refute Wilson with facts, he has to use the emotive slur, thereby also upping his street cred with blacks.

[meredith kercher] will she be avenged

Perugia, Italy


This piece was originally published on September 15th, as a filler and though it found its way into google search, it was not well researched at that point. Therefore it needed to be rewritten and reposted today, this time with proper research behind it, especially as the trial has been reopened. 


Update December 5th here and earlier, December 2nd here.


This link takes you to all posts on the new blog mentioning Meredith Kercher.  To save you the trouble, the best analysis, leaving my posts aside, is that of the latter commenters on Why I Think Amanda Knox is Guilty, where everyone leaves aside the infighting and starts to look again at the evidence itself.


The thing I like about this analysis of the Meredith Kercher story is that it doesn't sensationalize or take any particular stance. It presents the evidence as far as it can whilst the story unfolds.

Pretty girl turned bad

No wonder the media were going to latch onto it and play it for all it was worth, possibly to leap to the defence of the accused, as most of the reports seem to be doing now. No wonder, when the Foxy Knoxy myspace moniker came up, the media then swung round at the time and vilified her, dropping her real name and using only the moniker.

In a grotesque media circus, Italians, in a poll, voted her personality of the year – the alleged perpetrator, not the victim - and even the guards and lawyers smiled at her and she smiled her winning smile back.

The guards now call her Bambi, for her innocence and see themselves as being in the presence of a celebrity. That is plain bizarre.

Ann Coulter questions the way so many people seem to be getting behind Knox and making her into a mini-celebrity when, in fact, she is an alleged murderess in the most gruesome manner.

Call me a party pooper but Knox's irresistible charm I find eminently resistable and you'll see why below.

The story in summary

Two language majors were taking time out in Perugia, Italy to study. One, an American girl, found a place to stay, through an Italian woman. The American went away on a trip to Germany [* flag] and when she came back to Perugia, an English girl was in the house, along with two Italian girls [* flag].

It's a university town so the scene is the piazza, study, working to make ends meet, the usual thing - indiscriminate, casual sex, taking up with anyone interesting, no judgement, low self-pride. Low-lifes abounded in the town. Students call it fun.

Amanda Knox worked at a bar, which was run by a Congolese, Patrick Lumumba. He describes her as flirtatious and not looking after her customers and was about to sack her. She comes over as a person who only wanted the money for the job but wanted the pleasures of partying at the same time.

Her roommate, Meredith Kercher, of whose character nothing except the usual eulogies have come through, describes Knox as sloppy, refusing to do any chores and generally being useless. Meredith reportedly was fearful of some of the men Knox would bring back home, confronting her in the kitchen next morning, complete strangers.

This is contrasted to how her American friends describe Knox - vivacious, kind, sporty and outdoory. She's described as obedient to her mum.

Why the focus on her and not on, say, the men in the story? As Richard Owen of The Times says:

"I think, inevitably, it has come to be seen, as no doubt will be seen in future when books and films are made about this story as they inevitably will be, as Amanda’s story essentially."

Story continued

The two students began at the university in September, partying, studying and so on until Hallowe'en. Knox had met "a 23-year old-Italian computer engineering student named Raffaele Sollecito. He's a prominent doctor's son with his own apartment, a collection of exotic knives and an expensive German car." She seems to have fallen for him.

"Meredith, the roommate, had found a boyfriend, too. A guitar player in a band who lived in an apartment beneath the rental house." Seemed to be a less outgoing type than Knox, maybe more stay at home.

On Hallowe'en there was a party and next day they slept it off, next day being All Saints Day. In the evening, "Meredith went to visit her English girlfriends for a quiet evening of pizza and a video. One of the friends walked her partway home a little after 9 p.m." Knox and Sollecito had turned their mobiles off at 8.40 p.m.

Sometime the next morning, the following seems to have occurred:

Meredith's mobile had gone missing and a lady found it in her garden [*flag], contacted the police, the police had traced it and were bringing it back to her, as her supposedly stolen goods.

When they got there, Knox and Sollecito were in a deep embrace in the garden [*flag] and a window had been smashed [* flag], which the couple drew attention to. When the police went inside, the door to Meredith's room was locked. They got through and her body was on the floor, face down, a duvet was over her and her throat had been cut in three ways – one was a sharp nick under the chin, one was not mentioned other than it required a short blade and the other was right through the neck, requiring a long blade.

Forensics

Forensics placed four people in that house on November 1st - the victim who came home sometime in the evening, Amanda Knox, Sollecito, strange in himself and then someone they'd picked up, "Rudy Hermann Guede, a 20-year-old Ivory Coast born Perugia street hustler and general hangabout."

For some reason, either forced or voluntarily, no one really knows, Meredith appeared to have been on her knees and someone had been having sex with her from behind. At some point, a knife went "from left to right" through her throat and she ended up sprawled on the floor, drowning in her own blood.

Later, DNA from both Meredith and Knox was found on the kitchen knife at the house - the former's on the blade, the latter's on the handle. Guede's DNA was inside Kercher but doesn't appear to have been on the handle. Guede's DNA was in a handprint under the victim's head. There were bloodied footprints of either Knox or Sollecito. Ann Couler says:


Kercher's bloody bra strap at the crime scene that had abundant amounts of Sollecito's DNA on it.

A shop manager reported, in the next two days, seeing and hearing Knox and Sollecito loudly discussing buying lingerie for Knox and they'd been laughing and joking about what they planned to do. At some point, it is reported Knox said, "I can't keep this up much longer," whatever that means.

Developments

The police arrested the two suspects but the fourth had not yet come through forensics and when this happened, he was picked up in Germany [* flag]. The theory was that there'd been some sort of orgy, it went wrong, they killed Meredith. The theory was modified to include Guede, probably having sex with the victim from behind but someone had held a knife to her throat at some point and then the stabbing was done after that. A possible torture scenario.

Knox

Her behaviour towards the police and in court was reported by all as being obnoxious, harpy-like, contrasting with her later behaviour of all smiles.

She is reported, by friends and family, as being kind and willing to help anyone, a good girl who was very outdoory, liking sport and the company of friends.

However, a different picture emerged upon investigation. The family was dysfunctional and her mother had trouble keeping it running when the husband departed the scene, she remarried a very young man and that sent Knox crazy. She began to compete for the attention of men.

Patrick Lumumba, the café owner who employed her in Perugia, described her as a "Queen Bee", needing constant attention from men.

She's reported elsewhere as not forming good relationships with other women. A video on the net shows her seemingly normal and joking and a girlfriend is taking it but in the room are all boys apart from that. Another pic shows her drunk and loose in a room full of boys.

She'd boasted herself, in an email, that she had an Italian on the train to Perugia and when the AIDS question came up – standard procedure for Italian police, she couldn't remember how many lovers she'd had but settled on seven.

She was described as not just taking drugs for recreation but "right into them" in an extreme way.

There were reports back home that she shunned the usual girly haunts and hung out where the boys were, even doing their sports with them – hence the soccer.

One incident was shortly before she left for Italy. She threw a party and late that night, police were called because the partygoers were throwing bottles and smashing neighbours' windows. The only person arrested was Knox and she was fined in court for her actions that night [* flag].

She claimed that as she was going away, it didn't matter what she did. All of this paints a different picture from the innocent abroad her family and close friends wish to portray.

Then came the Foxy Knoxy Myspace saga, the short story she wrote on a girl being raped and how a woman had to be taught what she wanted, plus the fashion pose photo which shows her as cold as ice. Personally, I think there are far more significant things in her actions than that.

Knox's stories

Her story changes as the evidence changes. At first, she claimed she was with her boyfriend at his house. Then when it was shown he had not done as he claimed that night, she said she had been at the house after all, she'd met her boss, Patrick Lumumba, at a tennis court, had brought him back to the house, he went into Meredith's room [and this bit was at least plausible because Knox had introduced the two at the bar and they'd hit it off].

Her theory was that Lumumba had locked the door, Knox heard screaming, had put her fingers to her ears and couldn't remember any more.

In court later, after it was shown that there was no DNA or other evidence of Lumumba ever having been at that house, she suddenly changed her story, said she'd made it up about Lumumba and went back to the tale of being with the boyfriend. Now she claims, he must have gone to the house, raped and killed Meredith, come back and put the hilt of the knife in her sleeping hand.

In all this, she never mentions Guede although he was clearly at the house. In one of the flags above, he fled to Germany. She went to Germany too in the early days, for some unstated reason. Had they met and was her silence over him to protect him? Yet she seemed infatuated with Sollecito or at least under his spell, as far as her character would allow love.

Knox describes Meredith's death as "yukky".

In a bizarre twist, her own family came over for the hearing, her younger sister wearing inappropriate attire for something so sombre and the family posing for photos in fornt of the murder house, along with statements of "Amanda will be home by Christmas, once all this has been cleared up."

One other snippets which might be relevant - it came out that her story was that they had got to the house, had seen Meredith's door locked and had turned and gone out again.

State of play

Guede has already gone down for 30 years. The other two are still in custody and the trial has resumed this September, after a two month hiatus.

My thoughts

I don't like her one little bit, this Knox, for much the same reason as a law enforcement officer who commented on one of the news stories that he knew that type [Knox] very well from his 30 years or so in the force – appearing to be an angel, to be plausible and using the little girl smile to maximum effect but actually cold blooded and with a disconnect between her thoughts and her actions.

He said that this is the classic profile of the psychopath – the inability to distinguish between what is appropriate and what is not, the inability to see consequences for her actions.

It's this disconnect which is the most troublesome part. In her prison cell, she pretends to rock climb up the bars and sings at the top of her voice, then, when the guards come to take her to court, she turns on the Foxy Knoxy [her own construct from her website] and charms the men. It was noted that she'd always make a beeline for the men, supposedly her main means of defence, in her eyes.

And yet it is a woman coroner who has drawn attention to problems with the DNA on the knife. I've read this up and it seems that it's a Defence ploy, that the evidence seemed straightforward enough. She has just come into court dressed in white as the little hometown girl, which drew a stinging response from the family of Meredith.

My own bona fides are that I've been in the business of character assessment in RL for more decades than I care to say. From a distance and with the mind uncluttered by things like romance and love, nothing much impresses me and I most certainly do not trust disconnects and anomalies.

The support or distrust of millions does not constitute Knox's guilt – that will have to be established or not in court. However, one thing which strikes me is how this was a fairly open and shut case, except for one thing – it centred, from beginning to end, around Knox.

It was her changes of story which dragged it out to the second year, her making eyes at all the men, including the judge who was reported to have smiled back at the smile she gave him and which one reporter described as "disturbing", which occupies centre stage; it was her story all the way along. It's she who is "personality of the year" in Italy, not Guede, not Sollecito, both of whom have been placed at the scene and might well have done it all themselves.

This is all about Amanda Knox, centre-stage and Queen Bee.

And the flags above – where were the Italian housemates in all this? Why were the two lovers in an embrace in the garden when the police got there next morning, instead of seeking help and announcing that they'd found her housemate murdered? Where is Meredith's own boyfriend in this, the one who lived below the house in a flat?

The mobiles – how had Meredith's mobile found its way into that woman's garden and why did the couple switch off their mobiles at the same time that night, even though Meredith did not return for another hour?

Knox's conviction in Seattle for that wild party and her overall demeanour are a flag. That sort of thing would normally get a stern warning but she was arrested and taken to court. This suggests to me that she went at the police with a torrent of abuse and they decided to go for due process in return.

In the end, she's certainly not a nice person, she didn't "suddenly change" when she got to Italy – that sex on the train there was significant. In fact, she comes over as a particularly nasty piece of work but that still doesn't make her a murderess.

The trial goes on.

Meredith Kercher

I find it sickening that that other girl should have hogged all the limelight because of an alleged criminal action when the victim herself is the one whose name should stay in the memory. She should have been "little Bambi", not the other one. She should have her photo all over the net and be spoken of in connection with the case.

Saint? Who knows? Who cares? She was a student who had her life snuffed out in a gruesome way. Her killer[s] need to be punished and not sympathized with because she happens to be pretty.

End of story.




Meredith Kercher - may she find peace and her people find closure as soon as possible.