If I worked for the security services, I might be a bit worried about Wikileaks. But only briefly.

You see, what I would do is release some information to them: a good mix of real intel (that, despite its appearance, wouldn’t hurt that much), some stuff we know everybody knows already, and some made-up junk.

I mean, let’s face it: you’d be disappointed if, as the ruler of a foreign power, the US wasn’t spying on you. And we already know that politicians are the scum of the earth, and that Silvio Berlusconi doesn’t get enough sleep. People say nasty things about other people all the time; down the pub, in email, and in the embassy. How about some information that, actually, makes us look good—Hey, the Saudis asked us to nuke Iran, and we haven’t. Aren’t we good citizens?

As time goes on, I’d release more info, and successively weight the mix towards the third sort of material. I’d do this through multiple sources. Eventually, Wikileaks is publishing shite, and then you can discredit them publicly, throwing doubt on everything they’ve ever done.

Before that stage, however, I’d get the Secretary of State to stand up in TV and announce that we were taking ‘aggressive steps’—to shut down Wikileaks and increase internal security.

Who could blame us for that?

A while ago, there was much fanfare over at Nature Network as a celebrity of sorts started keeping a weblog there.

I like Nature Network. I’ve got a bunch of mates there, it’s possibly a bit cliquey but in a way that doesn’t exclude new, interesting people, and very few people are nutters, up their own backside or into the whole “let’s pick on creationists because it’s good for traffic” thing. A nice bunch, on the whole. Unlike the wankers at scienceblogs.com who bore me stupid.

So this cove has basically said ‘Thanks! I’m off to Scienceblogs.com!’ after a month or two. And points the NN bunch to his RSS feed.

Shrug. Yeah, whatever.

By the way, I’m posting pictures of the beard at Facebook and the Labrats.

Half-way. Yay!

Matt Stone has some unconventional Christmas cards at his place.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pommiebastards/sets/72157608162624010/

(see here)

There was a do about iTunes U the other evening. Interesting stuff, cool gadgets, lots of Kool-Aid, wine and canapés. USyd probably won’t do anything though—UNSW are already on board so we can’t possibly. Which is a shame: central admin have no bloody idea, even though the Faculties of Science are actually pretty keen on this kind of thing (they’re paying for me to go to this, for example).

Anyway, the important thing is that I scored a cool freebie:

Woohoo!

I — like I suspect just about every civilized person on the planet — have a thing about old maps and books. So I like to keep tabs on BibliOdyssey.

I sent the link to CK, giggling at the phrase

Holland is impolitely interrupted during breakfast as a stray bomb lands in his cup of cocoa.

CK writes back that his

great uncle was one of four Dutch soldiers to be injured during WWI. He was in an observation post when the Germans ‘accidentally’ lobbed in some a small shell. The explosion set fire to their store of cooking oil and he was a bit burned trying to fight the fire.

Good enough for him to claim a war pension for the rest of his life.

As far as I can tell, just about every male member of CK’s extended family did something in one of the two major unpleasantnesses in Europe last century, from sinking U-Boats single-handedly to rescuing 45,000 Polish refugees using only a rubber dinghy and a bag of flour.

Amazing.

English place names have a special place in my heart. To some of them we owe a debt that never can be repaid.

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Bentley Priory. And this piece of art is remarkable: