Breakfast Links: Britain, Nuts & Peregrine Falcons
Wow, I say this a lot - what the hell is wrong with the UK? They loves them their citizen surveillance systems. To recap: flying cctvs, lip reading software, loudspeaker cctvs. Now they’ve equipped privately employed wardens with head mounted cameras. First off, privately-employed? You know we don’t approve of the privatization of police forces… Second off, wtf? How many ways can Britain watch and record its citizens? Many ways, I guess.
UPDATE: Found this BBC piece talking to a deputy chief constable in Britain (via curly15). At least someone there is worried about all this surveillance. Key fact - there are 4.2 million CCTV’s in Britain - 1 camera for every 14 people. Apparently there weren’t enough street corners to mount more, so they took the logical next step and started mounting them on people. Unbelievable.
So, anyway, the British are nuts. But so are the fans of Jericho! I never watched the show, I didn’t even realize it was cancelled, but the fans did and they have embarked on a mission to send CBS as many nuts as they can - so far they’ve sent over 6 tons of peanuts to the network. Six. Tons. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but I would love to see what CBS does with 6 tons of peanuts.
Now you know I loves the animal cams, right? Well, apparently NYC doesn’t just have Pale Male, we’ve got Jack and Diane (not two american kids doing the best they can). They are, in fact, a mated pair of Peregrine falcons living the high life down on Water Street. More than that, they’ve had some babies (dirty birds!). More than that, they’ve got their own web cam. The cam doesn’t seem to be that exciting flicking between 3 different views, but I didn’t see anything in any of them. Maybe I’ll try again at night or something. But there’s a photo gallery of the chicks and they’re really, really cute.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:52 am
you didnt link to jack and dianne! see that this is fixed asap!
what do we pay you for?
May 24th, 2007 at 10:13 am
OH NO! I will dock myself one week’s blogging pay. No! Make it a month’s!
I’ve also added the link back in.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:30 am
[...] so you know I’ve spent no shortage of words on the UK recently. I mean, they just make it so easy, what with all their flushing their [...]
June 15th, 2007 at 6:26 am
[...] approved!). Then not one but two birds, a hawk and a falcon (presumably a red-tailed hawk and peregrine falcon, as that seems to be what we’ve got here) didn’t quite make it on their maiden flight - [...]
September 8th, 2007 at 10:48 am
[...] know how Britain’s been doing all the craaaazy stuff with the video monitors? It seems they’ve had a long history of being Big Brother to [...]
February 15th, 2008 at 8:22 am
[...] I think they are overly concerned with “anti-social” behaviour. What with all those CCTV’s they love. Now I’m reading about that Mosquito device that emits some annoying high pitch sound that [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
[...] requested allowed the clips out, but that was enough. First good thing I’ve heard come out of Britain’s love of surveilling it’s citizenry. Oh and the song’s good, too. [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 7:25 am
[...] I think that’s going to be the last one. So when the next one comes around, I’m shocked again. And again. And again. Well, now, enter Budgens, a London supermarket chain who is - in secret - [...]