friend of the built environment

Are we doing stupid things like this…

…Or this?

Not a whole lot of Americans are taking it very seriously, but Russia and Georgia are at war, and it’s getting even less than the scantily-covered American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. A couple months ago the US was actively pursuing membership into the NATO alliance of Georgia. Under the terms of the [...]

Yep, Georgia’s quaking in it’s boots. This should solve the recruitment problems in the US army, I suppose, since so many rednecks are thoroughly convinced that the Russkies are marching on Atlanta.
As someone else noted, “Russophiles know they live in the matrix; Russophobes think they’re free and laugh at the poor Russians, not realizing that they’re laughing [...]

Anyone wanting a fairly straight-forward explanation of what’s going on in the Caucuses without having it filtered through the propaganda machines at either end of the current mainstream press should read this.

A good interview with former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, which provides another good perspective that the mainstream media is simply failing to broadcast. An especially astute observation about why Russia matters to the West:
“I see Russia as part of Europe, more than as part of any other constellation…  And we in Germany and Europe should [...]

It’s interesting that, despite having much better scientific screening resources in place, America still bans healthy homosexual men from donating desperately needed blood, whilst most of the rest of the developed world, including Russia, whose social attitudes toward sexuality are somewhat more conservative, allow it.

In answer to Anatoly’s future-shock piece, Shifting Winds, I thought I’d come up with my own thoughts on what the world might look like 10 years from now.
The major game-changers to expect are of course an increasingly rapid decline in fossil fuel production across all sectors as peak is passed; increased economic volatility in all [...]

Hat-tip Anatoly: The list of the Hawttest heads of state. Our cuddly friends in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia feature. They obviously found the magazines stashed under my bed.
I wish they would give a ranking to Medvedev. Putin scores hawtness points for always showing up shirtless at the lake with his rod (fishing rod, you dirty people!), [...]

Reading Sean and Anatoly’s analyses of Victory Day and its association with Stalin’s rule in Russia today made me ponder the future impact of 9/11 on the minds and morals of a future US.
In many senses, 9/11 began a series of events that culminated, in the latter days of the first GWB term, in what [...]