tonyhaile.com

This week I went back to Gaza. I sat watching a young American woman on a barely-lit stage exploding old memories with each name she uttered against a background of bullet-ridden concrete. My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the writing of a young American observer killed by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza [...]

Johann Hari on why John Stuart Mill has never been so important as today.

Photographs taken during the recent solar eclipse.

If I ask you to picture someone who has successfully reached the South Pole twice, most recently solo and unsupported from Hercules Inlet. If I also add that this person also broke the previous speed record for the route, and that they are planning an even more demanding expedition for 2007, does a certain image [...]

Robert Sungenis is on a mission. In a bid to dislodge that uppity duo Galileo and Copernicus, he has just finished a book in which he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth is at the centre of the universe, that it does not rotate and that the sun goes around the [...]

Be careful what you say in your sleep, you might just accidentally divorce your wife.

Let me start with a disclaimer: Bribery is bad, really bad. In fact, it should only ever be used with small children. The trouble is, when you sometimes operate in areas that have a morally ambiguous  business environment combined with a weaponised bureaucracy, the requests can get pretty persistent and persuasive.
Having had to get past [...]

Moving on from the monowheel, this is powered by Hydrogen fuel cell and is quite simply sex on a wheel.

In a scene reminiscent of the 1931 trial of Al Capone, Miss Leanne Black of Thatcham, Berkshire threw her toys out of the pram when she found out she would be doing time. Am barely restraining myself from using the word ‘fracas’.

Scientists in California are studying a woman with perfect recall. This would be quite a handy skill for our tent lecture series in Antarctica.(Via)

Ben and I occasionally engage in Photoshop wars. This was in response to accusations from third parties that we spend way too much time together. As you can see from the photo, Ben is a lot more keen on the idea than I am.

An interesting piece on how the body has evolved to handle acute stress. We’re pretty amazing when it comes down to it.

In another big day for the private space industry, Spacex is to launch their Falcon 1 rocket today. Fingers crossed!
Update: looks like they lost it. Remember, there is no such thing as failure, only results.

A fantastic article by Josiah Ober on what we can learn from Classical Athens about the true strengths of democracy. (Via).

When I was 17 years old, having been a little bit rebellious and caused my parents numerous sleepless nights, I decided that learning a bit of discipline would probably be very good for me. With this in mind, I decided to apply for a highly-prized one-year commission with the Army. Also, for some reason the [...]

The excellent Jon Stewart skewers Bush’s speechwriters and their Thesaurus addiction.

An event I was gutted to miss was the recent Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On at the LSE, which had such luminaries as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet riffing on each other’s work. Luckily the transcripts and recording are now online. (Via).

I am lucky enough to rent a beautiful Victorian house in vibrant/violent Kentish Town. I’ve been there a few years now and have had (with my flatmates) the bottom two floors, while the top floor was taken by a man in his sixties called Michael.
Michael had been a librarian at the University of London and [...]

Kerry McLean has been building monocycles since the 1970s. I’m not sure if I want one on my Christmas list, but it is very cool. Watch video.

After mishandling the homosexual clergy debate, Archbishop Rowan Williams gets it right and hits out at schools teaching creationism.

Ben and I both managed to catch what I assume to be the Ebola virus yesterday (or whatever that monkey had in Outbreak, you know, the one off Friends). This has manifested for me in a small headcold and for Ben. . . .well lets just say if you stuck a stake through his stomach, [...]

According to the US department of Health and Human Services’ Body Mass Index calculator, I am only 5lb shy of being technically overweight. Maybe I should cut the size of my cous cous portions. . . .

Met up with Ben, his brother Steven and lawyer and all round sports demon Mark Lloyd for a bike session along the Surrey Hills. Unfortunately this necessitated cycling across London just to meet them. I’ve been doing more cycling recently as it seems to mimic the kind of grind we face on expeditions pretty well [...]

I’ve added a Gallery page to the site (thanks to the Saunders brothers for their help on this) and will be uploading photos as and when the need strikes me. Feel free to browse and leave a critical comment or three in Flickr.

Today is my father’s birthday. 59 years ago today in a mudhut on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), he came squealing into this world and became the scion of the Haile family. I have always been fascinated by his childhood, spent in an alien country during the sunset of the British [...]