G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world’s largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It’s about to get bigger, according to G4S’s UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK’s police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S’s shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

G4S boss predicts mass privatisation of UK police forces:
G4S, the scandal-haunted private security firm, is one of the world’s largest companies, with 657,000 staff. It’s about to get bigger, according to G4S’s UK/Africa chief David Taylor-Smith, who predicts that the UK’s police forces will begin to privatize, turning duties over from public employees (who are, theoretically, accountable to the public) to private mercenaries and security staff, who will be accountable only to G4S’s shareholders.
Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis report in The Guardian.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

Digitally Assembled Paintings by Russ Mills:






Artist Russ Mills creates these astonishing images using a wide variety of traditional methods including painting and drawing with ink and pencil, but also utilizing scanned textures including splotches of paint (or “painting disasters” as he calls them) as well as photography. The resulting paintings are sparse in color but seem to contain explosive amounts of energy as displayed in the rough brushes of paint and the almost perfectly manic pencil strokes. Of his work Mills says:

My work dwells in a netherworld between urban fine art and contemporary graphics, a collision of real and digital media it is primarily illustration based with a firm foundation in drawing, I focus mainly on the human form particularly the face, interweaving elements from the animal kingdom often reflecting the absurdity of human nature.

You can see many more paintings on Behance and limited edition prints are available in his shop.

If politics in Game of Thrones featured attack ads:

Mike Mechanic from Mother Jones sez, “So, basically, the folks in our DC office were sitting around shooting the shit, and someone asked: What would it be like if they had Super-PACs in Westeros? Well, it turns out somebody knew somebody who knew someone, which allowed us to professionally produce these ‘Game of Thrones Super-PAC Attack Ads.'”

Game of Thrones Attack Ads

Switzerland is one gigantic booby-trap:

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG has been exploring the bizarre world of Swiss self-destructing infrastructure, documented in La Place de la Concorde Suisse, John McPhee’s “rich, journalistic study of the Swiss Army’s role in Swiss society.” It turns out that the Swiss Army specifies that bridges, hillsides, and tunnels need to be designed so that they can be remotely destroyed in the event of societal collapse, pan-European war, or invasion. Meanwhile, underground parking garages (and some tunnels) are designed to be sealed off as airtight nuclear bunkers.

To interrupt the utility of bridges, tunnels, highways, railroads, Switzerland has established three thousand points of demolition. That is the number officially printed. It has been suggested to me that to approximate a true figure a reader ought to multiply by two. Where a highway bridge crosses a railroad, a segment of the bridge is programmed to drop on the railroad. Primacord fuses are built into the bridge. Hidden artillery is in place on either side, set to prevent the enemy from clearing or repairing the damage…

There are also hollow mountains! Booby-trapped cliff-faces!

Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them. There are weapons and soldiers under barns. There are cannons inside pretty houses. Where Swiss highways happen to run on narrow ground between the edges of lakes and to the bottoms of cliffs, man-made rockslides are ready to slide…

The impending self-demolition of the country is “routinely practiced,” McPhee writes. “Often, in such assignments, the civilian engineer who created the bridge will, in his capacity as a military officer, be given the task of planning its destruction.”

Various forms of lithic disguise

(Thanks, @MagicPeaceLove!)

[So. Hot. -egg]
Automated rubegoldbergian postcard-writing machine in a suitcase:
Melvin the Mini Machine from HEYHEYHEY on Vimeo.
Melvin the Machine’s latest iteration is a rubegoldbergian automatic post-card-writing machine that is intended to travel the world, penning brief postcards and firing them out:

Conveniently built in two old suitcases, Melvin the Mini Machine is a Rube Goldberg machine specifically designed to travel the world. Each time Melvin fully completes a run, he ‘signs’ a postcard and sticks a stamp to it – making it ready to be sent…

As soon as Melvin is set up for a run, he starts gathering geographical data, which he uses to determine where he is in the world. He will then publish that info on this site and through his Twitter account and Facebook page.

MELVIN THE TRAVELING MINI MACHINE

(via Wil Wheaton)