Field Notes, First Drafts, & Foreign Correspondence
Avatar: The New World, James Dyer, Empire Magazine
Backstory: Jodorowsky’s Dune, Simon Braund, Empire Magazine
The Age of Enhancement, David Edmonds, Prospect Magazine
Design Tools Mimic Nature For Stronger Products, Katie Scott, Wired UK
Monsters and Mentalities of the Renaissance, Bettine Bildhauer Times Literary Supplement
Atrocious Normalcy, Adam Kirsch, The New Republic
Aftermath, Ben Brantley, New York Times
Megalopolisomancy, Annalee Newitz, Future Metro
German Geothermal Project Sets Off Earthquake, Nicholas Kulish and James Glanz, New York Times
Fibres in a Cave Point to Ancient Craft Work, Henry Fountain, New York Times
Next Steps For Geoengineering, James Wilsdon, Seed Magazine
Google Working on Newspaper-killing Paywall, Michael Masnick, Techdirt
Recording Industry & Japanese Gov’t Working on Cell Phone Killer, Michael Masnick, Techdirt
Technology Doesn’t Equal Journalism, Michael Masnick, Techdirt
“Next-Gen” Wi-Fi Approved, BBC News
Xbox Speeds Up Research Results, BBC News
Robots to Revolutionize Surgery, Jane Elliott, BBC news
On the Digital Frontline of Policing, Ramon Goni Santalla, BBC News
Countdown To a UK Space Agency, Sudeep Chand, BBC News
Africa’s Internet Journey, Rory Cellan-Jones, dot.life
Gov 2.0: Army Announces Apps For Army Competition, J. Nicholas Hoover, Information Week
VA Pulls the Plug on Disputed Study of Gulf War Illness, Eliot Marshall, Science
This, in today’s Guardian:
A cabinet minister last night raised the spectre of a return to 1930s fascism, warning of “parallels” between rightwing groups planning protests in Muslim neighbourhoods and Oswald Mosley’s incendiary marches through Jewish areas of east London in the 1930s.
Read the rest here.
Underestimating Al Qaeda, Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker
It’s Always The Fixer Who Dies, George Packer, The New Yorker
The Architect of 911: Mohammad Ata, Daniel Brook, Slate
Reality Check: Human Terrain Teams, Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy
An Agenda For NATO: Toward A Global Security Web, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Foreign Affairs
Where’s Bin Laden? Peter Bergen, The Af-Pak Channel
Sci-Fi Surgery, Michael Conroy, Wired UK
SAS Trains Lybian Troops, Thomas Harding, Daily Telegraph
The Odd Couple: Carl Jung, Wolfgang Pauli, and Mystic Numbers, Georgina Ferry, Times Literary Supplement
MI6 Officer Investigated Over Torture Allegation, Richard Norton-Taylor & Ian Cobain, The Guardian
It wasn’t until I read Dan Drezner’s note on the date – 9/11 – that I realized I was starting my personal blog on the eighth anniversary of 11 September 2001. Completely unintentional. Drezner offers a couple of good points on threat inflation and resilience. Me? The personal referent for this was that 11 September 2001 coincided with my first day of teaching, for an undergraduate course on non-Western history. I had three early morning classes in a row, 25 students each. Students in the first session were muttering about the news, although nothing was clear at that point. By the time the second session started, people were better informed, but I was still completely clueless. When a couple of them related what they’d heard, I cancelled the lecture, then went back to my apartment and stayed glued to the tube for the next 24 hours.
MICHAEL A. INNES 