
Mike Dunn's tumblelog- politics, foreign policy, photos, cycling and things.
Here’s a hierarchy of resilience hacking:
- Fixers. People that can repair existing equipment to maintain its previous function. (these people are the staple of almost all disaster fiction).
- Makers. People that repurpose existing technology through the implementation of alterations to change its function. A corollary to Makers are people that improve existing products/systems (make them more powerful/better/faster).
- Creators. People that create new tools or unique systems from scratch using raw materials (think fab lab hacks).
Counterterrorism officials estimate that Zazi is one of 100 to 150 westerners who have gone to the Pakistan border region for terror training in the last year. Their ability to filter in and out of the isolated camps has fueled fears that “sleeper” operatives bearing U.S. or western passports are traveling back and forth with ease to train and plot attacks destined within America’s borders.
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“All you need is a shack or a house to learn how to fabricate explosives using homemade or commercially available ingredients,” said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University and a longtime government adviser.
Hoffman adds that in these harder-to-find camps, “they’re not training insurgents, they’re training terrorists for deployment to the west … Some of them may be deployed in the insurgency, but I think its obvious that their value to these groups is not fighting on the battlefield in South Asia but in being deployed back to their home or adopted countries as sleepers.”
[via]
In several columns, I’ve noted indignantly that we have worse health statistics than Slovenia. For example, I noted that an American child is twice as likely to die in its first year as a Slovenian child. The tone — worse than Slovenia! — gravely offended Slovenians. They resent having their fine universal health coverage compared with the notoriously dysfunctional American system.
As far as I can tell, every Slovenian has written to me. Twice. So, to all you Slovenians, I apologize profusely for the invidious comparison of our health systems. Yet I still don’t see anything wrong with us Americans aspiring for health care every bit as good as yours.
Bucket Of Rags This Year’s Must-Have Christmas Item
Sorry, Onion Radio News, but American Apparel’s reality outpaces even your parody:

Swine Flu Mortality (click the picture to see bigger but suffice to say the only disease that’s killed fewer people recently is leprosy). [via]
George Monbiot nails the worrying rise in climate change denial in the face of scientific evidence, before making a less convincing case for old age being the key characteristic of climate change sceptics.
The government is said to be reacting to calls from Iranian seismologists, who have long warned that Tehran lies on at least 100 known fault lines, and would not survive a major quake intact.
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However, Qom is the spiritual home of Iran’s conservative Islamic establishment. Moving the capital nearer to Qom could be seen as a sign of the conservatives stamping their authority, says Mr Dudley.
A Ministry of Defence source said that the meeting at Birmingham airport had nothing to do with the rendition of prisoners, whatever the allegations about the plane’s past use. “This was routine military liaison between two allies,” he said.
Sure.