Multi-Polar

Developing economies—spearheaded by China and India—are challenging the collective dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan, giving rise to a "multi-polar" world economy. This study looks at the drivers and characteristics of this latest phase of globalization and the implications for businesses looking to achieve high performance.

Following Not Leading

A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence. ...

In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation.

In 1998 Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, said of the U.S.: "We are the indispensable nation." By backfiring, the unilateralism of Mr Bush has proven her wrong. The US, it turns out, is a dispensable nation.

Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size.

Chafing

Looks like Russia's alternative to GPS is now nearing completion at least as far as coverage of Russian territory is concerned. Plans are underway to further expand the system. This doesn't seem like a big deal, really, but it's a signal of how other countries are coming to chafe under American hegemony and looking for practical ways to undercut it.

Now the Americans have clearly lost the thread.

[T]he Americans are really just horribly out of it, they're like some giant fundie Brazil, nobody takes their pronunciamentos seriously or believes a word they say... Whereas the world is much more seriously global now. China and India are real players, they're part of the show and they matter.

Equation can spot a failing neighbourhood

If you worry that your neighbourhood is going downhill, there could be a way to spot the signs before it happens.

A way of predicting civil war

THE dictator General Pervez Musharraf leads a country on the brink. As the war in Afghanistan intensifies, he is torn between appeasing the US and pacifying Pakistani rioters baying for his resignation. The danger his country faces is obvious, but researchers in the US have devised a system they claim could predict much earlier any countries approaching civil war.

ET too bored by Earth transmissions to respond

Social physics – the application of mathematical techniques to societies – also provides good material potentially interesting to the alien. "We know that every human social network behaves as a gas, what we don't know is how universal that is beyond Earth."

Was Hari Seldon pulling our leg?

If we look at the stories themselves, we see them explained by the characters as consistent with psychohistory. But their explanations may not be correct. Consider the first Crisis: Hardin chases Anacreon off Terminus by appealing to Anacreon's three neighbors. This is, we're told, the only possible solution-- which it may well be. There is no discussion, however, of what might have gone wrong.

Rove Librarian

The Bush people, they told me, have been scoping out research facilities, taking a look at how institutions try to set themselves up to house both archival records open to a wide range of researchers and provide a productive working environment for fellows. The person leading this effort was nobody other than Karl Rove. . . . Rove is personally going around to these libraries, meeting with their directors and checking out their facilities. According to one colleague, he seems to know exactly what the square footage of the building will be and where it will be located on campus (From the Bush Library Blog, from William Gibson's blog).

Kondratieff Cycles

According to Kondratieff, technology maturation, saturation and decay are communicated in cycles, called Kondratieff waves.

The Mathematical Structure of Terrorism

Taking into account the entire history of any given war, one finds that the frequency of events on all scales can be predicted by exactly the same exponent.

Dear Wormwood,

The first time, hold off on deploying troops for a few days. Allow this scandal of "negligent" delay to spur spontaneous popular demands for a military presence. This will ease the subsequent military occupations of other cities.

Love,
Screwtape

The First Casualty

The so-called War on Terror is simply the latest manifestation of the new order of things, of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation, the old republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.

Airport-borne Disease Model

The mathematical formulae that describe people’s movement through global air travel could be harnessed to control the spread of deadly diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) or influenza, researchers say.

Asabiya

In the second century BC, the Greek writer Polybius proposed that societies are like organisms, which are born, grow, age and die, leading him to predict the decline of the Roman Empire 600 years before the event. The idea of a mechanical science of history became popular in the 18th century, and by the 19th century was held by most "progressive" thinkers. Turchin's title (War and Peace and War) alludes to Tolstoy's speculations in War and Peace that history is deterministic, directed by "forces" such as those invoked by Isaac Newton.

A Jamaican Speaks Out

In these islands, which have been losing language at an ever-increasing rate - and with that loss, the ability to think - you should never forget a writer's first duty, which is to be the custodian of the language. In that, you're carrying a torch. Don't expect it to illuminate too much of the darkness in your time.

But pass it on when you get old to the new crop of young writers - because there'll always be talented young writers - and they in turn will pass it on; and so on.

One day, when the time is right, it will start attracting more and more kindred spirits, more fellow-torch bearers; and this Dark Age won't last as long as it otherwise would.

New Dark Age

...[F]ar from being in technological nirvana, we are fast approaching a new dark age. That, at least, is the conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead.

Shifts in public opinion follow law of magnetism

To model the consequences of imitation [behavior], the researchers turned to the physics of magnets. An applied magnetic field will coerce the spins of atoms in a magnetic material to point in a certain direction. And often an atom's spin direction pushes the spins of neighbouring atoms to point in a similar direction. And even if an applied field changes direction slowly, the spins sometimes flip all together and quite abruptly. The physicists modified the model such that the atoms represented people and the direction of the spin indicated a person's behaviour, and used it to predict shifts in public opinion.

Galactarium?

The new HOMESTAR claims to be the world’s first optical planetarium for the home. Designed by Takayuki Ohira, who already was known for his ‘Megastar’ line of planetarium systems for museums, the HOMESTAR line can produce a star map with even higher fidelity and brightness. It’s set to launch in July for around $200. (via gizmodo)

Plasteel?

It is called metallic glass. In the past year, researchers have made metallic glass three times stronger than the best industrial steel and 10 times springier.