'Nother Solent

PET stands for "polyethyleneterephtalate, used to make clear plastic beverage bottles such as used for Coca-cola and most plastic-packaged bottled water," writes Greg.

Taphortheinphomate.

And David Gillies writes:

as several of your readers have no doubt informed you,
PET (polyethylene terephthalate)

Thanks for the gap. I could do with that gap.

is the plastic they make coke bottles out of. It's also known as polyester, Dacron and terylene. The bottles are 'blown' by high pressure air forcing a billet of molten plastic into a mould. Hence 'PET blower'.

I used to love the 'let's go through the round/square/etc. window' segment on Play School where
they would show a production line making widgets. It's always been a source of fascination to me the variety of machinery involved in industrial production. Most fascinating from a philosophical point of view are the 'machines that make machines' (be it a spring winding tool or a semiconductor chip fab).

Aaaah, you too. The bottle factory. The squirty chocolates. Von Neumann went through the round window, trust me.

Postal voting fraud and intimidation.

Over several centuries Britain has developed well-oiled and trusted systems for for allowing people to exercise their right to vote, or not to vote, in a way free of intimidation and malpractice.

Can't have that.

Laban Tall has up two posts on the subject.

D-day intelligence failures.

A reader writes:

In addition to your examples, the most significant intelligence failure concerning D-Day was probably the failure to detect the German 352nd infantry division in the Omaha Beach area. Unlike many of the units defending other sectors of the coast (“Osttruppen,” made up of east Europeans, including Russian pows, not surprisingly lacking motivation), the 352nd was made up of “real Germans.” That fact, combined with possession of the most defensible terrain in the invasion area, explains the near defeat of US forces at Omaha. Compare the easier time at Utah, only partly explained by different terrain.

BTW, despite being able to guess this reader's name I have kept to my policy of only quoting the name stated in the body of the email. This is because the possible consequences ("Surfing on company time? You're fired!") of stating a person's name when he or she wanted it kept quiet are worse than those of the opposite situation.

If the reader who sent this email is happy to have his name stated, let me know.

Used side pet blower sought.

I got to this site while looking for a book on sewing machine repair. It's an internet trade site for used industrial machinery, based in India.

I had visions of a vast machine blowing clouds of dogs, cats and guinea pigs laterally over the landscape. However on closer inspection "side" turned out to be "Sidel", presumably a trade name, and "pet" turned out to be P for plastic, E for extrusion and T for Totally beyond me what it means. Never mind. In India businessmen (and at least one businesswoman, judging from the names) are using the internet to get tea bag packaging machines, dry milk production lines and knuckle joint presses from sellers to buyers. You don't have to know what a knuckle joint press is to know that you are watching India's poverty melt away.

A very belated correction.

Probably I get about a five-hundredth of the mail that Instapundit gets but since I'm about a six-hundredth as good as coping with it, I have problems. I may perhaps possess a spam filter. I think someone said something about something being included with the upgrade. The fact that I don't know tells you all you need to know.

The only spam filter I'm really sure of is my deleting finger. The moving finger deletes anything in capitals from THE DESK OF Mrs Dead Dictator and having deleted, moves on. Not all thy piety or wit can lure it back to uncancel half a line, but fortunately AOL do have a box for recently deleted emails.

I was dismissing a whole pile of stuff from last month unread when some twitch of conscience made me go back and look at this one:

I think you've been misled by not being able to see Jeff Quinton's site - the terms he lists are terms that showed up in searches for *his* blog, not
"the top 10 search requests".

The fact that his site is a political blog that discusses Nick Berg extensively, and hits near the top in Google for most of the combinations he lists, is very relevant here - I'm sure people in general are still busy searching for (terms that I shan't list, thinking about it, as they'll
probably trigger your spam filter. Mostly relating to unclad pop and sports stars and/or free music, anyway).

Best,
John B

John B is referring to this post. I stand corrected.

Incidentally, when I'm on top of things I do read all the emails that look as if they are from normal people. In May I wasn't on top of things. I mean, except for the chair. And that was on top of the floor. I had to be on top of them or I would have fallen to the centre of the Earth. Nor can I guarantee to read all emails from normal people when on top of irrelevant things like Mont Blanc, although I will make every reasonable effort.

Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pinelogs hither
Thou and I will see him dine when we bear them thither...

I could get all proper and start a lecture with the phrase, "It's all very well..." like all those people who go on about complicity in a system of underlying socio-economic injustice while explaining their conscientious objection to the carol singers giving a round of Good King Wencelas. But I won't. Good for you, Chirac.

Let's think "US subversion - works every time!"

In a letter to the Guardian, Stuart King of London writes:

For Ferguson, the force that will bring the Iraqis to democracy is the US. Think of the 1940s, we are told - the restoration of democracy to Japan and Germany. Well let's also think 1950s - the US-supported dictatorships in South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere in south-east Asia. Let's think 1960s - support for dictators like Somoza of Nicaragua. Let's think 1970s - support for Pinochet. Let's think 1980s - support for the Contras to overthrow the democratic government of Nicaragua. Let's think 1990s - support for the warlords, jihadists and oppressors of women in Afghanistan.

But at the heart of Ferguson's argument is the idea that the Iraqi people aren't up to running a democracy. We are told the only way they were going to get democracy "this side of the 22nd century" was courtesy of the US army. If the US and its allies pull out, we are likely to see "descent into chaos". Ferguson obviously thinks it's time we donned our pith helmets and picked up the white man's burden again.

OK, so the Awful Examples are South Korea, Taiwan, Nicaragua, Chile. Um... aren't all those countries now democratic? As you know, I'm fairly pro-US but even I think its a teeny bit irresponsible for the Guardian to provide a platform for quite such effective propaganda in favour of the more dubious activities of the CIA.

Normblog has a funny post about the sheer irrelevance of a Guardian article by Richard Norton-Taylor on why the Iraq war and D-Day were utterly, completely, different. It was 'cos D-Day intelligence was better, and the Iraq war had an unfavourable impact on the transatlantic alliance (don't see that one myself) and the EU project. Do read the original article. It really is as trivial as that. It's like me saying the Iraq War was so like WWII because it toppled a dictator with a moustache, and basing my defence of it around the moustache.

Never one to scorn sheer irrelevance when looking for something to write about, could I just also point out that intelligence for D-Day wasn't so always so hot.

"When they [US Rangers, having scaled the cliffs of the Pointe du Hoc as medieval soldiers once scaled castle walls] got to the casemates, to their amazement they found that the "guns" were telephone poles. Tracks leading inland indicated that the 155mm cannon had been removed recently, almost certainly as a result of the preceding air bombardment."

- The Victors by Stephen Ambrose

It is also sad to reflect that the epic struggle waged by Terrence Otway and his men for the Merville Battery would probably never have been launched had the Allies known that the guns there were not of sufficient calibre to really threaten the landings on Sword beach.

War's like that. Real bummer. Still, you do get to topple bad guys with moustaches.

On a more disturbing note Normblog also links to an article on the leaked (US) Justice Department Memo on interrogation and asks:

The Defense Department is denying that the memo had any influence on policy and practice. They need to be able to back that denial up. Can they?

All private land to be abolished in Zimbabwe.

As Damian Penny says, "I hope there's a lot of grass in Zimbabwe, because that's all the people will have left to eat before too long."

God have mercy on Zimbabwe and let Mugabe die soon.

Transit of Venus - live.

This page from Amargh Observatory updates every sixty seconds. As I write, at 9.46am British Summer Time, Venus is about halfway across.

The planets are real. Space, finite but unbounded space, is really out there, and that is what you see by looking up at night. I've been reading implausible fiction about space for three quarters of my life but that doesn't make it any less real. There may really be aliens.

Intruders alert! Intruders alert!

Ray from "Davids Medienkritik" and Erik from "¡No
Pasaran!" and three French friends went along to the anti-Bush protests that took place in Paris on D-day (truly, as La Rochefoucauld said, tout arrive en France) carrying signs that saying "Sometimes the cowboy is right" and "We are all Americans now."

They were arrested.

Twenty-five years ago

I thought calling him "Ronnie Ray-gun" was the height of insightful political commentary. Sometimes I'm a slow learner. This complex and original assessment of a complex and original man, from Oliver Kamm, is the real thing.

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Harvre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold..."

I quote Eisenhower over at Samizdata.