The war in Iraq has been won

THERE is a reason Iraq has almost disappeared as an election issue. Read More

Media Casualties Mount As War Success Continues

The ranks of print, web and broadcast pundits and journalists continue to be decimated by enemy action as the war progresses. The total number of casualties are becoming almost uncountable, and are overwhelming the limited field emergency facilities. This reporter got a first-hand view of the devastation and tragedy in a visit to a typical field hospital. Read More

The Evolution Of Democracy

Twenty years ago, a political science professor at the University of Michigan came out with a seminal book titled the Evolution of Cooperation.

In it, he described how cooperative strategies could have evolutionary-beneficial consequences, and thus be selected for. In particular, via a series of computer game tournaments in which algorithms were submitted to play an extended iterated prisoner's dilemma, he identified a strategy that was the most successful called "Tit for Tat" (TFT). (Read the link for information as to how the game works.)
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New Labor Law

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Searching For The Best Engine

A global effort is underway to invent a better way of finding things on the Web. Could Google be vulnerable? Read More

Brits outsource health care

Rejecting 'free' health care in favor of Malaysia


One difference in the attitudes of Canadians and the British is the Canadians get offended if I knock their health care.

Brits agree.


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Polish analyst raps politicians for involving bishops

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Polish polls and the press

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History remembers the final result and the aftermath

Everything else is smoke and noise. Bush/Cheney resolved to unleash some whopazz on the jihadis after looking upon the ruins of lower Manhattan. I expected no Presidential power to be left not pushed to the limit to go after these clowns, everywhere. Read More

The ways of Washington

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.Read More

The Social Singularity Continued

There are some questions that are so dangerous that most people simply refuse to consider them. However as our technology begins to offer new tools, some of our unthinkable questions may well be answered within a mere generation. Read More

HITLER'S LEGACY: ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST

A transcript of a very informative lecture by Matthias Kuentzel. A short synopsis can't do the lecture justice, but the basic point is that while there was always anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world, it also was based on the notion of Jews as an inferior group that Mohammed had defeated militarily. Anti-Semitic visions of powerful Jews being behind the world's problesm, and plotting to control the world, found most prominently in the Hamas charter, entered the Muslim world via the Muslim Brotherhood, who in turn took those ideas from the Nazis, which spent significant effort and money propagating them in the Middle East. This all started well before the creation of the State of Israel, belying the notion that the Israel-Palestinian conflict caused modern Muslim anti-Semitism. Thanks to Scholars for Peace in the Middle East for the pointer. Read More

US exports

Exports are now the prime driver of the US economy.

Your Wish Is My Command

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Mission accomplished

With most Sunni factions now seeking a deal, the big questions in Iraq have been resolved positively. The country remains one, it has embraced democracy and avoided all-out civil war. What violence remains is largely local and criminal. Read More

Czech President Vaclav Klaus,

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."Read More

Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness

Science Daily — Psychologists from the University of Toronto and Harvard University have identified one of the biological bases of creativity.Read More

Saddam Risked His Life for WMD Secrets

The Washington Post reports on a story leaked to Spain's El Pais about a meeting between President Bush and the former Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar weeks ahead of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It's interesting to note how Bush discusses Saddam's signals that he might accept exile from Iraq.

El Pais provides the Spanish language transcript here. And here's Bush on the chances that Saddam Hussein might choose exile instead of war [translation mine]:

...The Egyptians are talking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he's indicated that he'd be ready to go into exile if he's allowed to take $1 billion dollars and all the information he wants about weapons of mass destruction. Gaddafi has told Berlusconi that Saddam Hussein wants to leave. Mubarak tells us that in that case, there's a strong possibility that he'd be assassinated.
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We are not trying to win the elections, we are trying to have elections

The main goal of Russian foreign policy is to raise the oil price, no matter what - that's why the tensions in the Middle East are so important to Putin Read More

Hungary issues entrepreneurial permits to prostitutes

In an effort to bring prostitutes into the legal economy, officials said Monday that Hungary will allow sex workers to apply for an entrepreneur's permit - a move that could generate government revenues from an industry worth an estimated $1 billion annually.Read More