Author: Daniel Kennelly

By Feb 04,2009

The Taliban as Aliens

I can understand why Daniel Larison is outraged at Ralph Peters’ column arguing that as a mental exercise we ought to think of Taliban as being alien life forms. Given...

By Feb 03,2009

The Shoe Fits

The shoe-as-insult bit has now gone global: China denounced a protester at Cambridge University who threw a shoe at Prime Minister Wen Jiabao but nevertheless hailed his visit to Britain...

By Feb 02,2009

The Fundamentalist Psyche

I’ve dismissed the notion of a “fundamentalist psyche” before, but only in cases in which I believed its bearer was misusing the term to score some sort of political points...

By Jan 29,2009

Atmospheric Hacking

Wired has an interesting write-up of a study comparing the potential of various “climate hacks”–that is, geoengineering schemes for dealing with climate change. These “hacks” essentially fall into two categories:...

By Jan 22,2009

No thanks, Mr. Roboto

I appreciate the Japanese enthusiasm for robots. I really do. I just wish they had chosen a less auspicious name or classification number for this security robot: The prototype T-34,...