What does "guerrilla" war between interdependent states look like in the 21st Century? Very much like the war now going on between Estonia and Russia. Russia greek ajax s using the removal of a statue commemorating Russian war dead from Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) as a pretext to launch an information/economic war against Estonia in order to destabilize the state (the likely real reason is that Estonia is blocking the construction of a Baltic pipeline to Germany). So far: Oil shipments have been severed. Passenger rail service has been cut. Flash mobs have been generated both in Moscow (against the Estonian embassy) and in Estonia (through the mobilization of ethnic Russians living there). These mobs have been energized by a Russian propaganda machine that depicts Estonia as a fascist antagonist of Russia. Russian criminal bot networks (used for phishing and other types of criminal endeavors) have been rented to conduct denial of service attacks against Estonian government computers (to prevent normal functioning and stymie its ability to counter Russian propaganda) Of course, Estonia like Singapore and other small states, do have substantial asymmetric advantages against larger more complex big states in this type of war, if they would only use them. The key is to make the decision to become a micro-power, which requires resilience and a capacity to enlist commercial partners in defensive/retaliatory warfare, before being subjected to assault.

H ave any of you noticed how bad customer service has become in recent years? It is absolutely inconceivable when you place an order for three things and all three are incorrect and/or incomplete. It's unconscionable, but, unfortunately, load balancer ore and more it is becoming a daily reality in our lives. Most of these problems seem to have been created by individuals who suffer from a very common disorder, the delusion of adequacy . It is difficult to explain to people that this state exists; in fact, we Baby Boomers may have unwittingly contributed to it through our child rearing experiments. The everyone gets a trophy syndrome was intended to ensure that no child was made to feel like a loser. A noble experiment intended to produce happiness all around. The problem was, everyone felt like a winner . . . even when they weren't, and now we are all suffering from it because, like it or not, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have not honed their skills, not adequately practiced their craft, not developed their knowledge base who, worst of all, go blindly through life believing that they rock . Heck, they have the trophies to prove it! This delusional state doesn't just exist with kids. Unfortunately, many adults have their trophy rooms filled with decorative examples of their prowess, yet they can't write a complete sentence, finish a job on time or ―and this is especially difficult ―are incapable of introspection and blame everyone else for their shortcomings.

What does "guerrilla" war between interdependent states look like in the 21st Century? Very much like the war now going on between Estonia and Russia. Russia is using the removal of a statue commemorating Russian war dead from Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) as a pretext to launch an information/economic war against Estonia in order to destabilize the state (the likely real reason is that Estonia is blocking the construction of a Baltic pipeline to Germany). So far: Oil shipments have been severed. Passenger rail service has been cut. Flash mobs have been generated both in Moscow (against the Estonian embassy) and in Estonia (through the mobilization of ethnic fundraising auction ussians living there). These mobs have been energized by a Russian propaganda machine that depicts Estonia as a fascist antagonist of Russia. Russian criminal bot networks (used for phishing and other types of criminal endeavors) have been rented to conduct denial of service attacks against Estonian government computers (to prevent normal functioning and stymie its ability to counter Russian propaganda) Of course, Estonia like Singapore and other small states, do have substantial asymmetric advantages against larger more complex big states in this type of war, if they would only use them. The key is to make the decision to become a micro-power, which requires resilience and a capacity to enlist commercial partners in defensive/retaliatory warfare, before being subjected to assault.

It's the middle of the night and your child has been up all night, vomiting. What does the modern parent do? How about type stop vomiting into Google? Here's an interesting ethical dilemma for our age. It turns out that the top match for this search [at least until this post replaces it] is a page at pharmcatalyst dot com (no link here for obvious reasons) that promises to tell you which medicine to take if you pay them $5 via PayPal. They online lead oint out that there's a common over the counter drug that will help, but that drug manufacturers can't tell you what it is because the government won't let them. (I'll save you the money, it's doxylamine, the ingredient in Unisom. They encourage you to mix a tablet with Pepsi ). But wait! In most cases, most of the time, common vomiting is a body's natural and positive reaction to something in the environment. Check here: Nausea and Vomiting . And when it's not that, when it is something that should be stopped, you probably should be at the doctor anyway. Other than trying to leave a legacy for future midnight surfers, the purpose of this post is to help us think about whether charging $5 for information like this is ethical--and if you think it is, whether it is possible to do it successfully for long... We now take you back to our regularly scheduled programming.

W has done it again. This time the leader of the free world stood in front of a big screen tv reading lines from a paper in a badly executed propagenda act. Bush converses with rehearsed troops in Iraq via video . Before the president spoke via a video link, his event planners hand-picked 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry and one Iraqi soldier, told them what topics the president would ask about and watched them briefly rehearse their presentations before going live. The soldiers did not disappoint. Each one praised the president, the war and the progress in training Iraqi troops. Several spoke in a monotone voice, as if determined to remember and stay on script. It got more hilarious when white house pr guy answered journalist questions: "are you saying it was not rehearsed. Reuters has a story During the practice session before Bush entered the room, a senior Pentagon official, Allison Barber, stood at the podium and queried the troops about topics the president linksys nslu2 network storage link ater asked about, including the training of Iraqis and the level of progress. At her prompting, the soldiers raised their hands when the topic they were to answer came up. Barber insisted later the questions were not rehearsed. The military had been told ahead of time only about topics the president might want to talk about, not specific questions. "We just knew broad themes," Barber said.