Toxic Wife Syndrome

The new generation of gold diggers see it as their responsibility to be high maintenance and do nothing.

The danger signals of a wife going toxic are all too plain:

— She gives up work to care for the children and then sends them to boarding schools as soon as they outgrow their nannies.

— She demands wall-to-wall help with a maid hired to work up to 14 hours a day six days a week.

— Cooking and housework are strictly out of bounds.

— They have to live in a country mansion, forcing the husband to commute daily to London.

The best Goatse Story Ever

Don’t you know what a Goatse is?

Basically, it’s a picture disguised for a while as something innocuous, and when enough people are looking at it, or when they least expect it, you change the picture to a horrible, disgusting one of a huge distended arsehole. It’s one of the most shocking things IMHO you can find on internet ever.

This story will give you the run down on the best goatse I’ve seen so far. Warning it’s not safe for work 🙂

UK MOD Whitepaper on Nuclear Deterrent

The UK MOD and Foreign Affairs has published it’s stance on Nuclear deterrent. Interestingly it shows that allthough the UK is the NPT signatory with the smallest arsenal, it’s ordanance is still considerable at 160 warheads and delivery systems. It has decreased in size by 50% since the Cold War and decreased effectiveness by 75%. The UK is the only NPT signatory to have reduced itself to a single delivery system (namely the submarine), forgoing land based silo’s, ship based launchers and air launched weapons.
The paper explores why the UK needs a nuclear deterrent, presents rebuttals to commonly voiced objections and the history of the UK nuclear deterrent rationale.
The option reccommended is to stick with submarines, but as the current Vanguard class is reaching the end of it’s service life in 2020 and is looking unscaleable, the proposed solution is to replace the class with an entirely new class of conventionally powered submarine.
The UK wants one submarine continuously on patrol. In a fleet of submarines, at least one is always in the shipyard for a period of three / four years for refit and repairs. This means the UK requires a fleet of three or four submarines to be able to maintain a continuous patrol of one.
Astoundingly, this tiny fleet will be the entirety of the UK nuclear deterrent.
(warning: PDF link)

Pentagon FY 2008 Budget

The Pentagon has released it’s budget (yet again, stunningly huge!) on internet.

This link goes to the full summary of tables – for those who are interested in all the numbers for all the different elements that go into an armed forces.

There are some interesting thins in there, such as Iraq Freedom Fund, Defense for $50,000m and the $1,700,000m for the Iraq Security Forces Fund (with a similar amount going to Afghanistan). They are expecting to spend $165,343,662m on operations and maintenance and $101,678,734m on procurement. Huge numbers.

The rest of the gunk and pr stuff can be found here.

Paper doesn’t prove who you are, you do.

Maine has rejected the US Federal Real ID act – a digital, machine readable ID card that will be required to do just about anything in the US despite the usual fearmongering about terrorists and protection. It seems Maine is citing cost as an issue, but also lack of interest. Have they realised that it’s not the piece of paper (which is eminently forgeable if it’s machine readable) that proves who you are, but the person itself that is who he/she is?
Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana and Washington state are also debating the act and opposing it to some degree or another.
There is hope for the US yet!