I miss the quality of writing I find in the Guardian. There are a few American newspapers that may equal it. The Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the NY Times. But with the exception of the Monitor I don't find these other papers as consistent as the Guardian.
I stumbled across this article about the severely flawed SA80 (the British army's main battle rifle). It's a pretty thorough history--really an expose--of a subject that has become a scandal. (It reminds me of the Pentagon Papers although the scale of the incompetence in the UK doesn't match that of the Bradley debacle.)
The rifle has been some twenty years in development and it's still a poor design. So poor that mention of its flaws recently made it into the brilliant show MI-5 (you can't fire it left-handed).
Posted by artandscience at March 19, 2004 03:21 PM