Monthly Archives: November 2010

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Arab Delegates Came To Beirut To "Unify Telecom Policy"

Did they really come to Lebanon? The country with ridiculously primitive mobile services riddled with inefficiency and now burdened by espionage?

Delegates from 14 Arab states gathered in Beirut Monday to unify ranks over radiocommunication policy, a move that Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas said would bolster “the interests and the security of the Arab nations.”

To the clueless Minister Charbel Nahhas, telecom technology is not about communication and openness, it’s about “interests and security”.

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Iran On Wikileaks: Zionist Conspiracy

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast:

“This is a very suspicious plot. They have planted some Western and US crimes in them to present them as credible [...] the enemies of the Islamic world are pursuing a project of Iranophobia and disunity. This project only protects the interests of the Zionist regime and its supporters,”

What nonsense. It’s always about “they”. You know, the faceless people who sit in dark alleys and decide the fate of the world.

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The Speed Radars Are Working

The ISF on the results of installing speed radars:

Accidents decreased by 18.4 percent, injuries decreased by 22.6 percent and fatalities dropped by 50 percent

They said they compared the figures of October (before installing the radars) with those of November (after Installing the radars). While I don’t dispute that the radars have something to do with the improvements, the statistics strike me as shabby. Is the time frame representative enough? (The first week right after the installation of the radar could have witnessed unusually cautious driving) Did they control for other factors (Was November 2009 better than October 2009?)

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"How The World Is Really Run"

David Rothkopf is impatient with the exaggerated reactions of shock:

The dark shadowy world of diplomacy and international intrigue is working just about precisely as you suspect it is.[...] The WikiLeaks cables shine light on dark corners of international affairs only to reveal that for the most part, what is going on is what we thought was going on.

We’re witnessing a sort of Facebook-ification of diplomacy. Remember how we were first shocked when we saw drunk pictures of very respectable people, only to later get used to it, realize they’re people too and find it cute that we used to be shocked? Maybe Wikileaks did a service to those involved after all.

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New: Comment Highlights

Sometimes some of you guys come up with the most informative and awesome of comments. If the they are very well worked out and detailed, they could be reposted as separate posts (with permission of course).

But sometimes, you makes interesting little observations that are 2 or 3 sentences long, and deserves to be highlighted. This is why I played with the css and came up with a way to highlight parts of your comments.

I hope that will be helpful to the readers in making the discussion a more compelling experience.