Yes, it's only February, but it seems pretty unlikely that anything will top this for sheer pointlessness and banality. Here's the pitch from the "Put People...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
Cheerful thoughts for the day
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician but of the man with the best bedside manner. - Eric Ambler Since...
Oh yeah, we’ve invented a death ray too
A press release emerged yesterday from USJFCOM (that is to say, United States Joint Forces Command, one of 9 Commands in the Dept. of Defense and the one...
Crew account of the Hudson river crash landing
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzHAkhStvHs[/youtube]
Resilience – a case study
60 Minutes had the first interview with the crew of the US Airways flight that crash landed in the Hudson over the weekend, including accounts of the crash...
Gordon Brown talks about the London Summit at Lancaster House, 9 Feb
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAU3qLFaJN4[/youtube]
An American DFID?
One debate that will run and run in the coming months is on the whether, why and how of reforming US foreign assistance - a theme that Barack Obama riffed on...
Export-led growth: not so resilient
As David just noted, this morning's Lex column in the FT is relatively upbeat about the dangers of protectionism, arguing that "the disaggregation of global...
Buzz Holling, father of resilience theory, wins 2008 Volvo Prize
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XX5qJaJDjSs[/youtube]
Joke of the week
Q. What is the capital of Iceland? A. About two krona. Shouldn't laugh, I know, given that we're next. H/t The Economist.
Twitter: your partner in panic facilitation
The vast potential of social networking technologies to aggregate people and effects is something that we've been interested in for a while now here at Global...
Don’t watch this if you’re scared of flying…
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gN78LLRZnzM[/youtube]
Davos summed up
Jeff Jarvis in Davos: Where’s the plan? I haven’t seen it here. I’m talking with other people who are getting more depressed as the day goes on and here, I...
A classic viral moment
[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM&feature=related] This video interview shows Derick Ashong, an Obama supporter, getting approached by a...
Kaiser Wilhelm II adds his two pfennig-worth to UK National Security Strategy horizon scanning
A few days ago, I did a post on the UK government's current horizon scanning exercise - part of the process leading up to its second National Security...
Like the liberation of Paris: the moment Hillary arrived at State
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cyunLLKXJV8[/youtube]
Ideas and foreign policy
Two trends that should be welcomed and encouraged: (1) the rising amount of time that foreign ministry policy planning teams from different countries are...
Saudi Arabia’s warning to the US
If you missed Turki al-Faisal's op-ed in the FT last week, then take a look. Entitled "Saudi Arabia's patience is running out", the language of the former...
Obama’s Al-Arabiya interview
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9QqA9vEJ3oE[/youtube]
US greens rebrand themselves as ‘Reality’. Smart.
[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PdHuB7Ovl2o[/youtube]
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What happens when you take up Bridge on their call to visit their schools?
It is said that one difference between British English and American English is that when Americans say "you really must visit us sometime" they hope and expect that you will, but when British people say it, they are certain you won't and they will be appalled if you...
The Ten Commandments of Referendums
Guest post by Quintin Oliver, of Stratagem International, @StratagemInt Hot off the plane from Bogota where he was advising on the upcoming referendum, Quintin Oliver tells us his ten commandments on referendums: Referendums are not elections - there are no candidates...