theory

Bruce Sterling quotes a study into state failure which – counter-intuitively – puts Iceland and Canada at the top of the list of stable polities. It’s worse than that, though; they reckon Hungary is superstable , and they’re in the middle of an epic bank-currency-credit-mortgage crisis which has metastatised into a panic call to the…

Read More Stability

Reduced blog; I’ve been working on a version of FixMyStreet for Symbian S60 devices. If you want snark, how about this? I always thought that the BMW not-minis were telling in themselves. Objects are an ideology made manifest. The original Mini was a minimal car, one designed to be even cheaper than the ones sold…

Read More no-one ever gets the truth from plastic man

Here’s an interesting scientific paper about Palestinians and Israeli settlers. The experiments asked each group questions intended to judge how willing they were to compromise. Then, they asked the questions again, but threw in a side-offer, for example of economic aid or third-power security guarantees. Interestingly, all the groups split into two identifiable types; some…

Read More I don’t need you, I can’t buy you, I can’t hurt you…

This arse-awful gaggle of crap by Simon “Craven” Heffer has already been effectively fisked by Dave Osler among others, but I reckon there’s still some unexploited stupidity in there to be had. It’s actually even worse than this one. Basically, this article is an example of what Islamists would call takfiri thinking; takfiris are an…

Read More Tory Takfiri

I don’t like the “contraction and convergence” approach to stopping climate change. Why? Well, I have a number of reasons. C&C states that we should set a global CO2 target lower than present (contraction), and that poor countries should be allowed to expand up to it while rich ones cut down to it (convergence). The…

Read More Criticisms of Contraction and Convergence

Contrary to what John Robb says, the supposed plot (no explosives, information from a sooper source, mystery men) to attack a jet fuel pipeline into New York (JFK) airport does not bear out his theories as anything distinct from good old-fashioned counterinsurgency. Robbo is right that the pipeline was a good target, but I suspect…

Read More Limits of Robbism