Series of New Year’s Eve bombs in Bangkok

Developing news story. A breakdown of events can be found here. More here at Counterterrorism Blog.
Update (article here), a spokesman for Thaksin:

“There has been an attempt to connect former prime minister Thaksin and the old political regime to the incidents,” he said.
“We absolutely deny any links between Mr Thaksin [...]

PLoS ONE may be a little too accessible

I’m curious to see how the new online open access journal PLoS ONE will fare.  Papers are published on the site along with reader options to enter annotations and discussion, presumably for response by the authors.   I noticed only one article with a  discussion posted so far, and it doesn’t seem to have been all [...]

One last poke at Jon Carry

Forgive me for linking to just one last poke at John Kerry but it was too good to pass up, since it also pokes the media. Ouch.

Winning the information war in Iraq

I’ve just added a new link to my blogroll for “My Sandmen,” for its posts about the MSM role in the battle for hearts and minds. Two posts to read are here, and here (contain reprinted material with credits). Today’s media plays a very different role in war than in the past. [...]

A year of hemorrhagic fevers and emerging diseases

Looking back on 2006, there were a lot of big headlines in health, science, and politics—all the topics I like to write (and whine) about.
As the year comes to a close, I’m relieved to see indications that a moderate Muslim community is finding a voice here, and apparently in Iraq (although I must say the [...]

More weird search strings that led to my blog

It’s been awhile since this post so it’s time for an update to the weird search strings that led to my blog. I do get a lot of mundane searches for things like “Iraq” and “Qassam” or “biological weapons,” but here are some interesting ones collected in the past few weeks. Oy!
controlling your [...]

NORAD Santa tracker is operational

I have no idea why I (being a grownup and all) enjoy NORAD’s Santa tracker every year, but like a total goofball I always do so I’ll share it with you. It looks like Santa is already on the move.
This year’s celebrities with little Christmas messages on the NORAD site include Battlestar Galactica’s Edward [...]

NYT: what former CIA employee wanted to tell you about Iran

Everyone’s up in arms about this op-ed piece that was reviewed and redacted by the CIA, and apparently, the White House (see related discussion here). When I first saw it and read the first couple of paragraphs of the op-ed, I was shocked—as it appears many others have been. “Holy shit! The government’s [...]