Daily archives: May 2, 2006


I Will If You Will

The Sustainable Consumption Roundtable says that people want to adopt greener habits, but believe individual action is futile and the Government should take more radical action promote green lifestyles.

“Going green can be smart and stylish,” commented SCR co-chair Ed Mayo, “but it is not yet simple.

“We want to call the bluff of politicians, to take action to make the sustainable choice the easier choice.”

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Heavensent 2.4

Mov had taken his team farthest forward. Both guards on the ground were moving away from them. When the autogunner in the near tower dropped from view, Mov signalled and his team set off in a crouching run for the bridge. Lensman followed a couple of counts later.

The first squad went right, pausing under the guard tower to strap charges to two wooden legs and throw incendiaries onto the platform. Then they crossed to the fuel tanks. The gauge read quarter full. They left one man to open the taps and plant the charges that would flood the assembly area with flaming oil.

With one squad member to either side of the door, Lensman held out his mini auto and turned the handle. The door swung open after a hard push. Lensman ducked down and swept left to right. There was no one in this room, but there were sounds from the one beyond. Lensman was halfway to the next door when it opened. He fired a three shot burst at the level of the handle, then raised his aim and fired again at the head of the silhouette in the door frame. He rushed through the door, firing a long burst at the confused officer behind a desk. “I’m out.” His seconds crashed through to the next room as he changed magazines.

Mov heard the shooting. There was no need, or time, for subtlety any more. He kicked the armoury door open and ducked in. There was no one inside, he made his way to the far door. The support gunners had opened up on the barracks. Out of the armoury, by a corner of the barracks, was a body- a fifth guard taken out by Kess.

There were more shots from the canteen, then Lensman’s squad appeared at the rear door. The support gunners stopped firing, folded up their guns and made their way to the bridge. Charges were thrown through windows on every building, alternating explosive and incendiary, and the guards bodies brought into the barracks. There were pack donkeys in a pen behind the barracks. The few that hadn’t been killed in the strafing were loaded with two bomb lobbers, two stonks and as much ammunition as possible. Kess found a baby long rifle and claimed it for himself. Then shells were primed with timer fuses and packed around with explosive.

The whole encounter had taken less than a thousand counts. They took the hard packed trail to the far side of the valley and were in a vantage point to watch the destruction. First the tower platforms caught fire, before explosions buckled their legs and toppled them. The fuel on the assembly area caught flame as explosions rocked the buildings. Then the armoury went up, a blossom of red and yellow sending debris hundreds of spans into the air and levelling trees in the surrounding forests.

“I think that will be quite convincing.” Rey told Lensman.

Heavensent 2.5
Heavensent 2.3
Heavensent 1.1

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Taking back the Bible

I once got into an argument with an American Christian that was alternately amusing and exasperating (violence is okay, perfectly natural in fact, but sex is evil and corrupting). At some point he claimed that a “secular mind” couldn’t possibly comprehend how important the Bible is.

Which is bollocks. The Bible is a big book of allegories and fables that are best understood as such rather than taken as historical truth. Which is where Douglas Rushkoff is coming from with his new comic from DC- Testament.

As I’ve always understood them, and as I try to convey them in my comic book, the stories in the Bible are less significant because they happened at some moment in history than because their underlying dynamics seem to be happening in all moments. We are all Cain, struggling with our feelings about a sibling who seems to be more blessed than we are. We are always escaping the enslaved mentality of Egypt and the idolatry we practiced there. We are all Mordechai, bristling against the pressure to bow in subservience to our bosses.

But true believers don’t have this freedom. Whether it’s because they need the Bible to prove a real estate claim in the Middle East, because they don’t know how to relate something that didn’t really happen, or because they require the threat of an angry super-being who sees all in order behave like good children, true believers – what we now call fundamentalists – are not in a position to appreciate the truth and beauty of the Holy Scriptures. No, the multi-dimensional document we call the Bible is not available to them because, for them, all those stories have to be accepted as historical truth.

via BoingBoing

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Single point of failure

Single point of failure
Single point of failure,
originally uploaded by spinneyhead.

I’m not sure i like my new official title, even if it is being used to mean ‘Only person who knows what the hell is going on in this database.’ Now that IT has finally noticed my project they have deployed a few staff to understand it and ensure that support isn’t outsourced after I leave.

It seems to be a recurring theme. IT is seen to only do big projects very slowly, so a department gets me to build them a system in a couple of months. This system then becomes so large and important (and in this case unstable in ways I don’t understand) that IT notices it and raises a fuss about not being brought in to do it. This time they’ve even introduced Business User Computing Guidelines for any departments that get ideas above their station in the future.
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