Robotperson

Robotperson regulars will know what a big fan I am of Adam Curtis’ 2005 documentary The Power of Nightmares. It was a superb look at how American neoconservatism dovetails with radical Islamism (watch it here – that’s an order). This Sunday Curtis is back. The Trap – whatever happened to our freedom? is a three-parter, […]

Nice intro to a piece on Ming and the Lib Dems in this week’s Economist made me laugh out loud on the train this morning: Nobody can say that Sir Menzies Campbell has had an easy first year as leader of his party. As poisoned chalices go, the leadership of the Liberal Democrats 12 months […]

Beautiful writing on the Doha trade talks in last week’s Economist: To trade wonks versed in psychoanalysis, President George Bush’s embarrassing slip of the tongue last month was revealing as well as amusing. The Doha round of global trade talks, which he referred to as the “Darfur round”, is, like the bloodied province of Sudan, […]

The Independent reports that every day, cluster bombs used indescrimitely by the Israelis on Lebanese border villages kill 4 and injure many more. Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) […]

One for Pete: the Rock cursor Atomic ballroom. Nice. Snackonomies. Sort of an IA joke Infographics pool on Flickr (with submissions of variable quality) highlights a nice NY Times graphic on the political pushes and pulls in the Middle East Stef promises Robotperson an authentic set of stormtrooper armour if he wins the lottery. Although […]

Bruce Schneier with a cooly reasoned take on the recent terror scares: The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the […]

The Sunday Times tells us what the Israel / Hezbollah conflict in the Lebanon is really all about: The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington. What is at stake is not […]

If you missed Rob Newman’s history of oil one-man stand-up, which is highly likely given it was tucked away on More4 (NTL 166), here’s a link to the whole 45min show on Google video. More funny than Mark Stewart, and if anything, more political. The show covers familiar ground to regular readers, i.e. that the […]

BBC reports on the global dollar sell-off. There’s a good explanation of why in their ‘see also’ sidebar. A falling dollar is one of the signs we’ve been looking for to flag the coming political crisis <cough>. Update: Perhaps not after all.

Aljazeera on the Iranian oil bourse, a commodities market for oil that, uniquely, would be priced in Euros rather than the US Dollar. Background here. The debate over the ultimate financial impact of trading oil in Euros rather than dollars is a complex one, but according to many experts, such a move could lead to […]