Possible titles for our Barack Obama book:
An orthographic, fisheye-like view of Washington DC and the Middle East.
Enterprise Resilience Management Blog: Singapore’s Resilient Strategy
No one can doubt that Singapore’s economic miracle has become permanent. Its resilient strategy is positioning Singapore for an emerging future rather than trying to get the country to cling to its successful past. It jump started its strategy by importing world-class scientists, building world-class facilities, and ensuring that its standards are as high as any around the globe. It’s a great lesson in resiliency.
Unfortunately for Singapore, it is a classic example of a single point of failure. I respect Steve D. & Enterra, but in the proliferated 21st Century, resilient assets must be distributed assets. Singapore, by definition, isn’t.
Technorati Tags: resilience, Singapore
The ‘New Middle East’ Bush Is Resisting
The Arab people do not respect the ruling regimes, perceiving them to be autocratic, corrupt and inept. They are, at best, ambivalent about the fanatical Islamists of the bin Laden variety. More mainstream Islamists with broad support, developed civic dispositions and services to provide are the most likely actors in building a new Middle East. In fact, they are already doing so through the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, the similarly named PJD in Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and, yes, Hezbollah in Lebanon.These groups, parties and movements are not inimical to democracy. They have accepted electoral systems and practiced electoral politics, probably too well for Washington’s taste.
Whether we like it or not, these are the facts. The rest of the Western world must come to grips with the new reality, even if the U.S. president and his secretary of state continue to reject the new offspring of their own policies.
Fair enough.
Tiger killed after escaping holding area at Tampa zoo
TAMPA - A 14-year-old endangered tiger was fatally shot when it threatened to enter a public area at Lowry Park Zoo after escaping its holding cell by a latch left unlocked, zoo officials said.Enshala, a Sumatran tiger, was being secured shortly before the zoo’s closing about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday when she slipped through an open door and in to a construction area, said Lex Salisbury, the zoo’s president and chief executive officer.
Zoo veterinarian David Murphy shot a tranquilizer dart at the animal, but she became agitated and lurched at Murphy and a 7-foot wall separating the area from the public, officials said. That prompted Salisbury to shoot the tiger with a 12-gauge shot gun. When the animal continued moving, Salisbury fired three more shots, killing the tiger.
“I feel sick to my stomach that I had to do it,” Salisbury said. “I’ve known this cat since it was born. And it’s the last thing I would want to have to do.”
Shades of To Kill A Mockingbird. I’m glad the man responsible had the cojones to do the job.
Technorati Tags: tiger, Gregory Peck, To Kill A Mockingbird
Rectangular cartogram of world population by Bettina Speckmann at Technische Universteit Eindhoven.
Online Glacier Photograph Database
A terrific resource.
Personally, though, I think it is far more important that we concentrate on the global change between our ears: homo sapiens has a mixed record at accepting and adapting to inevitable change.
Technorati Tags: global change, glacier
The Jill Carroll Story: Q&A - csmonitor.com
Q. “What is it that those of us who have never been through such a thing [as a kidnapping] need to understand, or can never understand?”
– Kate, Rockville, MarylandA.”It seemed to me that people didn’t seem to understand how it really affects you, mentally. How you have to be so complicit and be so … you just have to be able to do whatever it is they want you to do to survive. People seem to think you should stand up for your … if they want you to do something that you find to denounce your country, for example, you should just say, “oh, no, I can’t do that.” That’s suicide. People need to understand that, … I think they sort of forget that, literally, these are people that will kill you at any moment. So, especially after a few months or a few weeks, you are not thinking normally. Even after a few days you are not thinking normally at all, and you are just in sort of a massive survival mode. So, on the one hand, you are thinking hard all the time, and trying to find ways to survive, and try to relate to these people and make them see you as a human, and at the same time you have to be so complicit and you have absolutely no control over anything. When you sleep, when you eat, when you go to the bathroom, what you say, whether you stand up, whether you sit down, nothing. So, over time, you lose yourself. You don’t have any self-will, or self-determination, or decision making ability, or ability to say no. All those boundaries we have in a normal life are gone. And you are just whatever anyone else around you wants you to be. Because you know that’s how you have to be to survive. People seem to forget, when I came out, why I was so … why I was what I would describe as mushy, or complacent. You do whatever you have to do to survive. And they do whatever they want to you. And you have to let them do whatever they want to you, if you ever want to get out. Aside, of course, from killing you.”
Technorati Tags: Jill Carroll, Iraq, terror
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