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Adolescents who spend more time playing online strategy games than concentrating on their studies may be making better choices for the future than their parents believe.
Historian Niall Ferguson has been running scenarios about what might have been through Muzzy Lane’s Making History game with the help of his 13 year old son. And according to Clive [...]

A talk by Joshua Epstein and Donald Burke on how agent-based modelling can help us “take advantage of the social structure to eliminate [an] epidemic…

Last week, the Kremlin signed a deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that apparently stymies the mooted Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which the EU was hoping would free up some Turkmen gas from the bear hug of the Kremlin. Instead, it looks like for the time being, all Turkmen gas will be exported via Gazprom.
There was a [...]

A neat study reveals the economic benefits of mobile phones in developing countries:
“As phone coverage [in Kerala] spread between 1997 and 2000, fishermen started to buy phones and use them to call coastal markets while still at sea. (The area of coverage reaches 20-25km off the coast.) Instead of selling their fish at beach auctions, [...]

All week, season ticket holders at Liverpool Football Club have been up in arms at a denial of their “right” to a ticket for next week’s European Champions’ League Final. Yesterday, meanwhile, Prince sold out tickets for seven London gigs in twenty minutes (and crashed his booking system to boot).
For most events, ticket prices [...]

Noah Pollak’s National Review article, posted on Michael Totten’s blog today, reminds me of our internal debates during the Lebanon war last summer (when I was working for the UN) about peacekeeping options for south Lebanon.
Pollak’s article, subtitled “The UN organisation is ineffective as it is unaccountable” is a standard piece of UN-bashing. Pollak argues [...]

 A gaggle of UN agencies have just published a report on biofuels, says the Guardian this morning (see also previous Global Dashboard posts on biofuels). Although the report presents a mixed picture of upsides and downsides, it’s clear about the food security risks:
Expanded production [of biofuel crops] adds uncertainty. It could also increase the volatility [...]

When Gordon Brown takes over as PM, there will be no shortage of clouds on the international horizon. Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan will vie for his attention, of course. But he will also need to push for a breakthrough on the slow burning drivers of instability.
Climate change, resource depletion, fragile states, global economic imbalances, infectious [...]

 A new survey undertaken by the US Defense Department’s Mental Health Advisory Team, which interviewed over 1,700 soldiers and marines deployed in Iraq between August and October last year, has some alarming findings. According to the Washington Post,
More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should [...]

The NY Times magazine published a piece last December [free log-on required] describing how web 2.0 applications are revolutionising information sharing in the US intelligence community. It’s a must-read. Here’s a taster:
In the fall of 2005, [two evangelists for better use of open source information in the intelligence community] joined forces with C.I.A. [...]

Map of online communities and related points of interest…

 If you haven’t already made the acquaitance of Michael Totten, then you should. Totten is an itinerant blogger who seems to wander around the Middle East on a semi-permanent basis, chatting to people and making YouTube videos. He’s financed in this fascinating endeavour by a small army of readers who donate through PayPal.
The results of [...]

US chat show presenter Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Senator John McCain (here) is interesting for what it says about US perceptions of statebuilding and peace support operations. Towards the end of an interview focused almost entirely on Iraq, Stewart gets one of the bigger audience rounds of applause of the night when he asks [...]

Wired.com has a piece today saying that:
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. [...]

The generation of Russians who are now in their twenties have a choice, a really defining choice for their country.
They can either go up the cul-de-sac of chauvinist nationalism, or they can seriously try and improve their country, its economy and its governance.
The Russian government is trying, through its management of Russian TV and through [...]