Eideard

A founding patron of the Taliban in Afghanistan died in the hands of a younger generation of militants in the tribal badlands of Pakistan in the last few days, a victim of the vicious forces he helped create, Pakistani officials said Monday.

Brig. Sultan Amir, known by his nom de guerre, Colonel Imam, was captured by the Pakistani Taliban in northern Waziristan last March. Whether he was killed by his captors, or died of a heart attack as reported by the Taliban, remained unclear.

The demise of Colonel Imam comes 10 days after another veteran figure in the emergence of the Afghan Taliban, Gen. Naseerullah Babar, 82, died after a long illness at his home in Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan.

The death of the two men signified the end of an era of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan that began in the 1970s, stretched into the American-backed mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet occupation and was followed by the coercive Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s…

Colonel Imam formed a close bond with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan…

A weathered figure with a long white beard and white turban who looked to be in his 70s, Colonel Imam was initially trained by the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1974, and completed a master parachutist course with the 82nd Airborne Division…

A senior Pakistani government official in the tribal areas, Tariq Hayat, said Monday that he had been informed by a Pakistani official in North Waziristan that Colonel Imam was dead. The militants were demanding a ransom for the return of the body, he said. Only after the body has been reclaimed would the cause of death be known, Mr. Hayat said.

Chickens coming home to roost land in the Pentagon about as frequently as any other center for the training of imperial flunkies.

RTFA for the details. If you have watched American policy in South Asia for a spell you ain’t about to be surprised.

Mom says, “Oops!”

You can’t blame Gail Davis for hanging up on the person who called her to congratulate her on downloading Apple’s 10 billionth app and winning a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate. Her husband and her both don’t have iPods capable of using App store items.

“I thought it was a prank call,” Gail Davis said to Cult of Mac. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”

However, the call – which came from Apple’s VP of iTunes Eddy Cue – was completely legitimate. Her 14 and 17 year old daughters had downloaded the free Paper Glider app on their mother’s account and told her mother this was the real thing.

They had downloaded the app around 9:30AM their time (UK), 1:30 AM PST/4:30 AM EST. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a genuine call,” she said. “The girls were getting quite tense. They never would have forgiven me. They would have held it against me for all eternity.”

One of Cue’s colleagues called back, and the Davis’ family will be using the prize money to, you guessed it, download more apps.

Har! Hanging up is definitely something I’d do.

Holy smoke!

A council is proposing to save money – and combat global warming – by heating a leisure centre and swimming pool using heat generated by the crematorium next door.

Redditch council in Worcestershire says it can save £14,500 a year by warming its new Abbey Stadium sports centre with heat from the crematorium’s incinerators that would otherwise be lost.

The council, which says it is the first project of its kind in the UK, is holding briefings later this week with faith groups, funeral directors and members of the public to discuss the scheme.

But some local people are concerned. Simon Thomas, of Thomas Brothers funeral directors, said: “I don’t know how comfortable people would feel about the swimming pool being heated due to the death of a loved one, I think it’s a bit strange and eerie.”

Council leader Carole Gandy defended the plans, saying it would save money and energy. “I’d much rather use the energy rather than just see it going out of the chimney and heating the sky. It will make absolutely no difference to the people who are using the crematorium for services…I think it will save the authority money and, in the long-term, save energy which is what we’re all being told we should do.”

Be careful about all that common sense stuff, Ms. Gandy. It will get you in trouble every time.

“Look what I just got from Intel!”

Pope Benedict gave a qualified blessing to social networking Monday, praising its potential but warning that online friendships are no substitute for real human contact.

Amazing insight, dude – for someone who defines women, gay folks, members of most other religions and atheists all as inferior beings.

The 83-year-old pontiff, who does not have his own Facebook account, set out his views in a message with a weighty title that would easily fit into a tweet: “Truth, proclamation and authenticity of life in the digital age.”

He said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity,” but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones…

The vast horizons of new media “urgently demand a serious reflection on the significance of communication in the digital age,” he said.

What part of communications matches the weight of “pronouncements” inside the corporate Catholic Church?

The pope did not mention any specific social networking site or application by name, but sprinkled his message with terms such as “sharing,” “friends,” and “profiles.”

Not a whole boatload of difference from the agitprop Madison Avenue crap ranging from my favorite laugher – renaming the War Department – to reactionary demagogues still trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare after decades and calling the process “reform”.

The leaders of India’s main opposition Hindu nationalist party were stopped on Monday from traveling to disputed Kashmir to hoist the national flag, the party said, for fear of provoking violence in the sensitive region.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party said the plan to fly the flag in Srinagar, the summer capital of revolt-torn Kashmir, to mark India’s Republic Day on Wednesday, was a patriotic right, the government dismissed it as a political stunt ahead of state elections this year…

Officials in Kashmir fear that the BJP’s plan to hoist the Indian flag as a symbolic show of control over the region could reignite separatist protests in which more than 100 people were killed last year.

Does anyone believe the BJP cares who dies for their ideology?

India’s Republic Day has traditionally been a lightning rod for anti-Indian protests in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir which is at the heart of hostilities between India and Pakistan…A nervous calm prevails in Kashmir after last summer’s anti-Indian protests, the worst in two decades. Between June and November, young men and women had almost daily hurled stones at security forces on the streets.

Close to 50,000 people have died since the insurgency broke out in 1989. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the separatists with money and arms, a charge Islamabad denies.

Reality: India ended up with Kashmir by less than virtuous conniving between the Brits and loyal Raj flunkies at the time of partition. A leading candidate in the history of stupid political decisions.

Meanwhile, the BJP illustrates the long-term strength – and criminal hypocrisy – of populist, nationalist ideology. Welcome to the Tea Party, folks.

Fraser Speirs is head of computing and IT at Cedars School of Excellence

Cedars is a small independent school in Greenock, Scotland, with 105 pupils in Primary 1 through Secondary 5 (roughly equivalent to kindergarten through 12th grade in the United States)…But while we’ve been using Apple hardware at the school for a while, we’ve never done so on the scale we’re attempting now.

Before we started this latest program, we had 24 Macs (12 iMacs and 12 MacBooks) for 105 pupils. The problem was that those machines were in hot demand. Teachers wanted them available all the time and everywhere. We never reached the point of fights breaking out over the MacBooks—but it was close.

In my role as head of IT at Cedars, I convened a meeting in January 2010 to discuss the situation. We thought about buying more laptops, but nobody was really happy with that: They are heavy and bulky, and keeping them charged and running had been a problem…

Then the iPad was announced.

We have now deployed 115 iPads in school—one to each pupil and staff member. The iPads stay with students all day. Children aged 10 and older can take them home at night. We told teachers they could get keyboards; to my surprise, none have taken up that offer…

I had one requirement in mind when we were planning the deployment: We wouldn’t tell anyone what the iPads were for. Too often, school computers are bought for specific pedagogical purposes—video editing, podcasting, or simply learning about computers. We didn’t do that. We simply made the iPads available, without telling anyone what they should do with them. It’s been interesting to see how teachers and students have responded to that freedom…

RTFA. Follow the unexpected turns and advances achieved – a bit to everyone’s surprise. Fraser Speirs says: “We are now at the stage where the iPad is embedded in the way we do business at the school. When we first started, we thought we could guard against misuse by threatening to take away the child’s iPad for a day or so…We might as well make them sit in the hallway and face the wall for the entire day. I did not expect that we would reach that point so soon.”

Note: there’s an interview with Fraser Speirs in episode 12 of iPad Today.

Two lost hikers in Annadel State park were rescued Saturday evening by the Sonoma County sheriff’s helicopter, thanks to the light from their cell phones.

“We were able to locate them because they shined their cell phones up at us. We have night vision goggles on board. That kind of stuff stands out like a spotlight,” said Sgt. Dave Thompson.

The sheriff’s helicopter was in the area on another call just after dusk…when a 911 call came in at 6 p.m. from two lost hikers…The two young women who had hiked or jogged into the park before dark after parking their car on Carissa Avenue called authorities to say they were lost…

The sheriff’s helicopter was able to locate the two young women relatively quickly on Orchard Trail. The chopper landed and took them back to the deputies waiting outside the park…

“They were definitely dressed for a walk or run in the park. They had on summer clothes and short sleeve shirts,” Thompson said. “As temperatures drop, you can start to get into trouble if you’re out there overnight.”

He said the women, in their late teens or early twenties, “were definitely a little cold, a little disoriented. They were certainly happy to be located.”

Cellphones rock. Back in the day, the reason I got my first cellphone was that our local sheriff’s office had moved to an early arrangement utilizing cellphone towers to get a rough location on folks who were lost or injured in the wilderness. Which comprises a lot of what is northern New Mexico.

I had recently crashed my mountain bike on a trail in the Caja del Rio that I later learned probably hadn’t been traversed in two years. Almost broke my ankle. Intimations of mortality are a bear!

Google just dealt Demand Media’s IPO prospects a nasty blow.

In a post to the Official Google Blog, the company said that users are complaining about “content farms,” and that “we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear.” The company says “people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content,” and that “we can and should do better.”

Notably, Google does not actually promise it will take any action against companies like Demand Media. But what Google does is almost worse: vaguely suggest that it might someday do something to smash Demand Media’s business.

Google just introduced lots of fear and uncertainty into the minds of any potential Demand investors. That can’t be encouraging for Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who has to be hoping investors enter next week enthusiastic and chipper about his company’s prospects.

I was going to save this for Monday morning; but, realized that would make me almost as guilty – in my own small way – of inspiring FUD about the prospects of Demand Media‘s IPO. Small – not only defined by the traffic at this, my personal blog; but, because I rarely post about markets and equities over at the “big blog”.

The reason for posting about Google’s notion is that I think they are serious about limiting the crud we all are infested with: comment spam, crappola from dweebs pretending to be opinion sites, etc.. I think they are capable of making a difference. It’s why – like many other geeks – early days of fiddling with gmail turned into a solid commitment after I discovered most spam was actually ending up in the spam folder. A boon and productive.

Laura Hall looks nervously into the tape recorder. “I feel like I’m at the police station,” she says. Hall knows a lot about police stations. The 21-year-old is Britain’s most notorious drunk – the only person in the country with an order banning her from all pubs, clubs and off-licences. She is the poster girl for Booze Britain. Newspapers have revelled in the stories of her 40-plus arrests, her numerous assaults on police officers, her two prison sentences, the number of pints and vodka shots that will see her through a night out. Last year district judge Bruce Morgan said of her 29 drink-fuelled convictions: “I don’t think I have seen a more deplorable record… A female with a record like this – it’s absolutely despicable and represents all that is rotten in society nowadays.”

At the pub next door to the railway station in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the barman tells me all about Laura Hall. Is this one of her locals? No, he says, but they know what she looks like, and what to expect if she comes in. What’s that? Verbal abuse, physical abuse, the works, he says.

But Hall hasn’t been drinking for six months now. She has been in rehab in Portugal, and is now hoping to make a fresh start. Although she saw doctors and a psychiatrist in Britain, she was not offered a place on an alcohol rehabilitation programme on the NHS. It was only when the private clinic in Portugal contacted her that she believed it would be possible to kick her habit.

Hall’s story has been used as a parable of a country in decline, but while it might reflect some disturbing patterns among today’s youth, it is also highly unusual. She did not come from a broken or dysfunctional family, she did not suffer abuse, she was not penniless or destitute. Her parents had good jobs (her father runs a building company, her mother is a health visitor), her twin sisters have no issue with drink. As a little girl she looked angelic and dreamed of being a ballerina.

Hall says it’s just something in her. She first had a drink at 13, and that was it. She can’t remember what she drank, just the effect it had on her. “I felt something had been turned on inside me. I wasn’t scared to do anything. I was more confident. It gave me a great feeling.” Yes, she got a hangover the next day, and, yes, it put her off. But not for long…

Read the rest of this entry »

Poo isn’t something generally talked about in polite company but like it or not, all of that human waste has to go somewhere. In smaller rural communities, it usually goes to wastewater lagoon systems; the alternative is mechanical treatment plants which process waste far more quickly but are expensive, labor intensive and often use chemicals. Enter the “Poo-Gloo,” or Bio-Dome as it is officially known – an igloo-shaped device that can reportedly clean up sewage as effectively, but far more cheaply, than its mechanical counterparts.

The Poo-Gloo, developed by Wastewater Compliance Systems, Inc., uses a combination of air, dark environment and large surface area to encourage the growth of a bacterial biofilm which consumes the wastewater pollutants. It is claimed that Poo-Gloos can treat pollutants just as quickly as mechanical plants while operating at a fraction of the cost – hundreds of dollars a month rather than thousands – and can be retrofitted to existing lagoon systems.

The Poo-Gloos work in clusters, with two dozen or more arranged in rows fully submerged at the bottom of the lagoon. Each Poo-Gloo consists of four concentrically nested plastic domes filled with plastic packing to provide a large surface area for bacterial growth. Rings of bubble-release tubes sit at the base of every Poo-Gloo and bubble air up through the cavities between domes. The air exits a hole in the top of each dome. As air moves through the dome, it draws water from the bottom of the lagoon up through the dome and out the top…

Taylor Reynolds, director of sales for Wastewater Compliance Systems says that most of the projects he quotes are between US$150,000 and $500,000, a far more palatable option for an average municipality than the $4 million to $10 million they are quoted for a mechanical plant…

The Poo-Gloo is not just for consuming poo, however. Wastewater Compliance Systems is in the process of filing patents for other applications and markets, hence the rebranding as Bio-Dome, which the company agrees is “less fun” but more appropriate for their diversification.

A significant topic in our household – since we’re only a couple of miles from the city’s wastewater treatment plant. Founded on a less-than-successful design decades ago, the vapors attendant upon it’s function are also less-than-desirable. Something that would be a significant issue in our little community outside the city limits – if we weren’t favored by the prevailing winds.