Note: This column represents the opinions
of the writer and as such, is not purported as fact
At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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Time for another Friday feast of fun, frivolity and freaky stuff from
the best and worst of the web.
What happens when two F18 fighter-jets collide at high speed? You'd expect
lots of flames and smoke right? Well
these guys
were lucky enough to get away with it -- but I'd hate to be the one doing
their laundry.
The New Scientist magazine seems prepared to answer some of the really
hard questions. For example, if you were unfortunate enough to face
execution by beheading, would it hurt and
how
long would your head remain conscious?
If you're worried about the potential for a catastrophic nuclear conflict
between India and Pakistan, maybe you'll be interested to discover that
it might just have happened
once before.
Other Recent Columns
If you've just discovered Aardvark, check out some of the earlier
editions by viewing
the archives or by clicking on one of
this small selection:
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Look Who Came To Dinner
In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, governments
all around the globe have ramped up their intelligence gathering and monitoring
of telecommunications.
Of course this is a smart thing to do -- we don't want more acts of terrorism
to kill other innocent people and the terrorists have to coordinate their
activities some how, with the phone or Internet being the most likely
channels for such communications.
Just how alert the US and other authorities are to things which might affect
national security became clear to me after I put up the low cost cruise
missile page that I linked to last friday.
This week I've had several calls from US-based news organisations requesting
information and interviews about the viability of such a device and,
perhaps a little more soberingly, I've seen a marked increase in the number
of visits from the proxy at NIPR.MIL
which is the second-level domain for this website
The webpage concerned has attracted quite a bit of email -- including several
messages of Eastern European origin with suggestions that I might
like to relocate my development activities there.
Is my email now being intercepted and monitored?
I doubt it -- but I would not be surprised (or upset) if it was.
Should I now be paranoid when I hear clicks and pops during phone conversations
on a line that has, up until now, been nice and clean?
Frankly I don't really care.
I have nothing to hide and am certainly not involved in terrorist activities
so anyone monitoring my communications is probably going to fall asleep from
boredom pretty quickly.
It's sure nice to know however, that someone's paying attention out there.
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