Unintelligent Design

Apparently one of the books Al Qaeda used as a textbook for budding jihadis in their Afghanistan training camps was Menachem Begin's The Revolt.

I keep thinking that they ought to have some knee jerk fire-and-brimstone objection to the idea of using a book by an Israeli author in this context. But I guess either expediency trumps ideology or they can justify it as "learning from the enemy". Possibly both.

(Info from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, as referenced in Buda's Wagon - which also credits Lehi with the first effective use of the car bomb, back in '47).

Psydoll
The Glebe
Stoke-on-Trent
Saturday Oct 20th 2007

...yes, I know it's a little way out of Coventry. But it's a Saturday night, and if the band have come all the way from Tokyo, I'm sure a few Coventry people can make it a few miles to the gig, right? :)

Heh. Three weeks with barely a post, followed by a very busy Sunday evening... sorry 'bout that.

Then again, I've been a shambling zombie-morph for at least three weeks, which hasn't made me terribly good company - online or in person. This weekend has been mostly sleep. Sleep is good.

There's been a certain amount of reading in recent days, too - partly because after 12 hours of contact lenses, books seem to irritate my eyes less than screens do. Finished Making Money (the new Pratchett) and Crooked Little Vein (the Warren Ellis novel). Dipped in and out of Fergus Henderson's Beyond Nose To Tail, started Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb and almost finished Karen Armstrong's very readable biography of Muhammad.

If I can manage not to run myself into the ground again (...fingers crossed...) I might actually post a bit more this week. We'll see. :)

Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield are about to launch a webcomic - FreakAngels.

Visually, it seems to be a little bit goth/steampunk - and it sounds intriguing...

I have sofas. They're very comfortable.

This is an improvement on the previous state of my lounge. :)

Applied for my own job today. We'll see how that goes. Work is a little bit hectic right now.

I've also managed to break one lens of my glasses in half. Careless. Really not sure how I did it - it means I'll be wearing contacts far more than I'd like for the next few days.

Warning: Contentious subject matter.

I may be missing something, but I still fail to understand how the two are compatible. Anyone out there care to share an opinion on this?

( Ramblings... )

It's now officially Monday. Infest is over.

I have beer. :)

Infest. Day the second. Or the first full day, if you want to look at it that way.

...and in the beginning, there was breakfast. Although I'm sorry to report that the Bradford Hilton no longer serves haggis. On the plus, side they do still offer porridge with treacle and whisky...

Later in the day there were bands, there were numerous heartfelt apologies to Jed Phoenix (after trying on a pair of trousers proved too complicated for a certain person...) and there was silliness.

Still not entirely in the mood for a festival, but Apoptygma Berzerk were certainly worth seeing - as were Synnack and Thirteenth Monkey. The Apoptygma cover of House of Love's Shine On was a nice touch, too.

More later. Sleep now.