October 2005

"The temporal decoupling provides a vehicle for distinguishing the bonus from a tip... it enters the world of social, rather than economic exchange, and can thus be construed as a gift"

based on incident reports from US soldiers, this seems consistent with the Lancet study's estimate of 98,000 for excess deaths from all causes

but to fund it, they'll drop their services in Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Slovak, Slovene, Kazakh, and Thai

"a system of fiendish complexity... Points are awarded for an array of targets, and the promotion and bonus prospects of an official below par will suffer"

"The nation's second-biggest port is effectively closed today with six ships facing a long wait to unload because of the chaos caused by Customs' new computer system."

"Night patrols are now impossible, de-mining has halted, troops have withdrawn from 18 of 40 posts, and the UN can only monitor - in a limited way - 45% of the border."

"The imperative to hold the purity of his line through the maximum of exposure turned Hemingway into a willing tool of Stalin’s secret police."

"the collapse of Rome seems to be one of those historical Rorschach tests in which quack amateur sociologists stare into the inkblots and see their own prejudices and crackpottery staring back out at them"

if another war is all that will save Blair and the Republican House majority, then there'll be another war

"The books I have read about Jannah clearly state the many beautiful women the men will enjoy. Nothing is stated about the men the women might enjoy..."

"the manual of RAF law states that a serving officer is justified in refusing to obey a command if it is illegal"

"Ninevah province, home to the mixed city of Mosul and the besieged city of Tal`Afar, is seeing some very strange numbers."

'...a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice; but of love, of Christian charity, [there is] not a trace'

"Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush’s term ends"

"The mandarin is an amateur, to the professional; a statist, to the libertarian; an elitist, to the populist; and a heathen, to the religious believer. What possibly could be worse than a society run by such people?"

"85 per cent of Malawians earn their living through subsistence farming, but only 20,000 our of 9.6m hectares of agricultural land is irrigated"

"controlling for income, growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide" (explained by crack)