Long Game

When it comes to anniversaries, al Qaeda has not always seized upon them as opportunities for attacks, but it has long seen them as tempting propaganda opportunities.

Another consideration is topical relevance. Al-Zawahiri’s 2010 message was actually rather bland, uninspiring and little more than a rehash of several points the group has made in the past. There were no stirring and inspirational calls to action, no new threats to the West, and no real meaningful discussion of the 9/11 anniversary beyond the message title.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group operating in Turkey, denied having any connection with a Sept. 16 explosion on a minibus near the city of Hakkari on Turkey’s border with Iran and Iraq.

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs. • Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. • Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. • Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign. • The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea. • Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume? • Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one? • The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. • Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

The investigators found similar results for various other issues, from nuclear waste disposal to gun control. Said one of the authors, “People tend to keep a biased score of what experts believe, counting a scientist as an 'expert' only when that scientist agrees with the position they find culturally congenial."

There is little hiding the fact that Cuba’s socialist economy has run out of steam. The more interesting question is whether the Cuban leader is prepared to acknowledge this fact and what he is prepared to do about it.

Cuba has been seeking an injection of capital to generate income while still trying to leave the capitalists out of the equation in order to maintain control. There is no easy way to resolve this paradox, and the problem for Castro in his advanced age is that he is running out of time.

You can bet that your grandparents lived through tougher life than you. And in all likelihood, you have more opportunities and comforts and fewer risks to deal with than your parents, as well.

A philosopher may have the most extravagant notions of reality, yet after he’s finished propagating his peculiar species of balderdash, he goes about his business like everyone else and, despite his absurd doctrines, has no difficulty finding his way home. “Nature is always too strong for principle,” is how Hume described the phenomenon.

Since much of Rand’s metaphysics supports notions allied to common sense, it has more potential to, by leading people astray, exercise a baleful effect. These bad effects stem from three aspects of the Objectivist metaphysics:

Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?

As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.” That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.

he kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties.

There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

But how did the campaign get so many people to sign up? By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf.

The results confirmed the widely held view that love can lead to a smaller support network, with typically one family member and one friend being pushed out to accommodate the new lover.

Abraham Lincoln was called a Negro. John Adams was referred to as a hermaphrodite. James Madison was accused of being French.

Gladwell's argument centers on the binary perception that in stark contrast to the civil war era, the youth of today seem quite content with banal exchanges, but just because he doesn't personally know any revolutionaries doesn't mean they don't exist and it also doesn't mean that they aren't using the Internet in ways that perhaps Gladwell himself can't imagine. It comes as no surprise therefore that he cites Evgeny Morozov (whose work I critiqued in Policy Innovations).

Russia announced on Monday that it would not build or assist with the construction of any new nuclear plants in Iran other than the Bushehr plant

Moscow did not make either of these moves out of benevolence or, in diplomatic terms, the need for international cooperation. Instead, these moves were a complement to — and a natural extension of — Russia’s resurgence in its near abroad and its view of the wider world.

Russia began 2010 by forming a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, a partnership that goes well beyond economic issues into the political and security realms.