Author: p6admin

Another day, another human rights activist dead in Russia

This is getting to be a bit repetitive…  

The head of a children’s charity was found shot dead in Chechnya today, a day after she and her husband were abducted by armed men. The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and Alik Dzhabrailov were found in the boot of a car in a suburb of the capital Grozny, the human rights group Memorial said. The murder of Ms Sadulayeva comes less than a month after a gang kidnapped and killed Natalia Estemirova, another prominent rights activist in the turbulent southern Russian region.
chechenRamzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, will likely face some additional pressure after this latest killing.  Kadyrov is often accused of removing some of his opponents, and the head of the charity where Sadulayeva worked recently accused Kadyrov of orchestrating a campaign of murder and intimidation.]]>

Watch France 24 on your computer with a desktop widget

When it comes to IPTV, the US has Hulu, and the rest of the world has the really cool stuff. France 24, the France’s government-funded answer to CNN (and in English too)  has been doing some cutting edge stuff like being one of the first ‘live streaming’ applications for the iPhone.  Now they have a desktop widget that will put France 24 on your desktop with relative ease.  Just click to get the widget and turn your PC into a tv (albeit with only one channel)]]>

The half a billion dollar subway line with three stops

Total cost: €320 million, or about $500 million US. And this is a pretty interesting station in that it serves only the Brandenberg Gate and Bundestag, so some are calling it the Chancellor’s line. 130609BER802 Maybe we should just build new cities. Start with the subway systems under basically farmland or deserts and then build the rest of the city atop of the existing tunnels? Might be cheaper. Meanwhile, DC’s Streetcar effort remains hopeless stalled at about two blocks of work. The streetcars are stuck in the Czech Republic, having spent the first few years of their warranty in storage in the factory because DC doesn’t have anywhere to put them yet.]]>

The Queen goes Swan Upping–what the heck is Swan Upping?

Swan Upping‘ this week.  Great, wtf is swan upping? swan-upping-banner Apparently about 800 years ago the Monarchy declared ownership of all untagged Mute Swans on the Thames.  Every year these Swan counters go up and down the river claim what is rightfully the property of her Majesty.  Of course they no longer take them for dinner or funny hats, it’s more of a census that is used for environmental purposes. This year the Queen will be joining the count, along with several school children.   This is actually the first time she’s watched the census.  Guess she was too busy. Anyway, for those in England here is where you can see the count. Monday, 20 July 2009 Eton Bridge to Cookham Tuesday, 21 July 2009 Cookham to Marlow Lock Wednesday, 22 July 2009 Marlow Bridge to Sonning Bridge Thursday, 23 July 2009 Sonning-on-Thames to Moulsford Friday, 24 July 2009 Moulsford to Abingdon Bridge]]>

How to build a radio while in a Japanese POW camp

Fascinating interview here about how some British POW’s cobbled together a radio receiver while in the middle of the jungle from random spare parts they had lying about the prison.  

    The resistors were another problem. We found out that we could use the impurities in some of the tree wood and the bark, particularly cinnamon bark which was available by getting through the wire only about 2 feet and we could normally pinch that while the Japanese sentry was moving around.       We used a piece of string with the material rubbed on it from the burning of the cinnamon bark with some impurities in it (we didn’t have a chemical analysis); we weren’t very fussed because most grid-leak resistors were about a megohm or thereabouts and we had no means or any way we could measure a megohm, so it was largely a trial and  error thing to see if it would work. We made a number of these bits of string and tied them round different things to dry  them out to get the thing going. Eventually about an inch, three quarters of an inch to an inch, was about the right order of things to get about a megohm resistance. They were the two main things.
  I wonder if POWs today would have the same skill set. Heck many folks don’t even learn morse code anymore.]]>