Here is a towering example of modern American freewheeling public speaking. Bruce Sterling shares with us in a ramblingly insightful way all sorts of ideas and insights about technology and its impact on us. This sort of thing would shrivel and die if you attempted to write it down in advance. […]
Back in Belgrade in communist Yugoslavia in 1984 or thereabouts, the then Ambassador and an unusually smart Ist Sec Econ pored over a diplomatic despatch that sought to draw attention to the dismal state of the state’s finances. The basic problem was that Yugoslavia did not have Honest Money. Yes, […]
One of the themes of this blog is the idea of Uncertainty (and indirectly Causation) and how policy responds to it. Take this example: … insofar as this new set of norms or something like them come into force, they will have Consequences. Some of those will, as defined by […]
It’s not usual that the world gets a chance to see almost live the words of a judge handing down a sentence. Yet today’s sentencing of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce gave us that rare chance. Here are the words of Sweeney J. And powerful words they are too. When […]
Remember this? … let’s also agree that we are at a technological and civilisational turning-point. For now these high-precision UAV/drones and their supporting networks are still controlled by a handful of states. Good. But the technology will leak and get cheaper and better. Not so good. In due course the […]
Over at Backbencher Lee Jenkins takes a look at some issues surrounding ‘international intervention’ from a libertarian-inclining standpoint: Yet international relations is a sphere refreshingly free of ideology. States are motivated less by values and ideals, and more by a narrow set of objectives and interests… Once you acknowledge what motivates a country’s […]
UPDATE: More fine examples added – see below Unless you have really been paying attention for a very long time, you will have missed my various attempts to share examples of diplomatic themes appearing in great rock lyrics. And the time has come for a former senior diplomatic practitioner (ie […]
Now and again this site alludes to my brief glory days as a chess player, or at least an avid chess follower. So yesterday I was pleased to be invited by Grandmaster Nigel Short to the 2012 London Chess Classic at Olympia. This huge event features all sorts of different […]
Here I am at Commentator on the ghastly Leveson Report: First, the Leveson report fails to grasp the most important feature of the current ‘press’ scene, namely that the industrial model of newspapers is busily dying. We are moving back (or more precisely forward) to something much more like the […]
My post about looking at terrorism in terms of both legitimacy of outcomes and legitimacy of process has prompted a friendly reply from Eddy Canfor-Dumas (Head of Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues, of which John Alderdice is a Co-Chair): An interesting response to what I think […]
