Carter Doctrine (1980): “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force…” Anyone who’s [...]

Just a quick update on some of the events that have been happening around the big wide world lately (most will sound familiar unless you’ve buried yourself in a hole for the past week or so): Georgia/Russia: As expected, “ceasefire” never really means ceasefire, and the saga continues. On the one hand I wonder what [...]

Repurpose: to give a new purpose or use to (Pronunciation: rē-ˈpər-pəs) I saw this word online and thought, huh that’s a new one. Actually (if you hadn’t already noticed), I’m kind of a geek, and I love encountering new words. Japan’s version of this concept is encapsulated in their 3R initiative, but somehow (at face [...]

(You won’t get the title unless you read the blog post referenced) There was a time about six years back when I was completely obsessed with personality types — I tend to delve into these sorts of obsessions for a day, a week, a month then set them aside for years and revisit them every [...]

Since the dawn of web 2.0 (the term was coined in 2004 though the phenomenon it describes has been around for longer) there has been an explosion of internet tools aimed to facilitate information sharing and interaction among end-users. All in all, the choice is amazing. Unfortunately, it’s not a given that in the end [...]

After months of foot-tapping and nail-biting (wait, who are we kidding), Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda has finally reshuffled his cabinet — that’s the terms for giving under-performing/unpopular ministers the boot. Media has dubbed the move a “last ditch” effort on Fukuda’s part to improve his public approval ratings, but that is of course assuming that [...]