Pessimism: if we keep burning the coal, eventually keeping warm will be the least of our worries. Where’s your discount rate now, Timmeh? Stupidity: can we get out of this Bruce Sterling novel now please? Blame: it’s Coalistan vs. Everyone Else. Logistics: China can’t lay railway track fast enough to move as much coal as…
Read More pessimism+optimism = futureHere’s a question for you: when you’re not reading blogs, what else do you do?
Read More 2002-style blog community bleg!Adam Greenfield responds, and anyone who uses the BOAC speedbird as their avatar is probably worth listening to: “But that becomes a political problem, something almost all geeks seem incapable of understanding, probably because its a social rather than a technical problem.” Well, “geeks” may be incapable of understanding that, Cian, but that happens to…
Read More oppression in softwareAckerman links to an interesting piece from Antonio Giustozzi (direct here); one of the things that comes over strongly is the degree to which the expansion of the Taliban hasn’t been driven by the acquisition of public support, still less by conquest, but rather by branding, co-option, and freelancing by significant leaders in Afghan society.…
Read More their lawThe Rolling Stone piece on McChrystal is actually surprisingly thin in terms of information. I give as an example this gem: After arriving in Kabul last summer, Team America set about changing the culture of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO-led mission is known. (U.S. soldiers had taken to deriding ISAF as short…
Read More sometimes, style is contentSo the England Zombies are looking more like Fast Zombies again. If I’ve bored you by talking up James Milner, I’d like to take this opportunity to claim my bragging rights. Here’s something interesting; back at the weekend, in the depths of self-loathing, the Obscurer published a table showing the teams with various statistics, including…
Read More fast zombies shoot!Here is a really fascinating interview with David Dunning, of Dunning-Kruger Effect fame. As a taste, the incident that inspired Dunning: Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight. What made the case peculiar is that he made no visible attempt at disguise. The surveillance tapes were key…
Read More how Dunning met KrugerShia rage in Basra, over electricity that goes north to Baghdad. Joel Wing has more, including that the trouble spread to Nasiriyah. He also provides a short history of the Iraqi grid since 1991, including the fact that the first Gulf War reduced capacity to the level of 1920. A few years ago, even suggesting…
Read More re-re-wind….Anyone know who this is? SHARJAH // A former associate of the suspected international arms dealer Viktor Bout, had his appeal against his conviction for murder postponed yesterday because of power cuts which hit parts of Sharjah. AS, 47, was just one of around 90 cases due to be heard at Sharjah Appeals Court which…
Read More A Bout sidelightI’ve finally got around to reading Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban and Descent into Chaos. They are as good as everyone says. Specifically, there are perhaps three things that set Rashid apart as a writer on Central Asia. (His contacts book is outstanding, but then, he’s not the only one.) First of all, he writes about Central…
Read More writing about Afghanistan, rather than about Brunssum or Qatar