The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known."

No one rerecommended this similar perspective on the same issue.

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

Late at night several times a week, Terrill powers up the 4-foot-tall, 300 pound device and reaches for a remote control packed with two joysticks and various knobs and switches. Standing on a nearby corner, he maneuvers the machine down the block, often to a daycare center where it accosts what Terrill says are drug dealers, vagrants and others who shouldn't be there.

He flashes the robot's spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot's sound system.

"I tell them they are trespassing, it's private property, and they have to leave," he said. "They throw bottles and cans at it. That's when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches."

OMG, I can't believe he actually built it, and I can't believe it actually works.

Who needs security when you have a robot? | ajc.com

Simplest and safest is bribery. I don't know why we don't do it more often. Almost makes me believe the guys running things are secret war nerds themselves, because otherwise they'd do bribery as a way of bringing down "rogue states" all the time. Just do the math. Right now, November 12, 2006, the official cost of Iraq is around $340 billion. Suppose we'd just bombed Iraq with dollars; we'd be the heroes of the world, and every family in Iraq would be - are you ready for this?-$70,000 richer. That would make Iraq one of the richest countries in the world.

Kinda puts the spending in perspective, don't it? This article is great. I am so glad Jello introduced us to eXile. eXile is one of the coolest things on the web.

eXile - Issue #251 - War Nerd - How To Win In Iraq - By Gary Brecher

Clinton is obviously very agitated. I think he over-reacted to the question. At the same time, I have no respect for efforts to blame him for not doing enough. Conservative commentators have been busy pointing out after this rant that NRO and other sources supported his missle strikes, but at the same time, I don't really know who the fuck these people think they are fooling when they say that mainstream Republicans weren't accusing him of "wagging the dog." Its infuriating to me that people claim an actual military conflict was an attempt to draw attention away from something that was transparently intended to draw attention away from something. Dumb.

Clinton PWNS Chris Wallace on Fox News - Clinton Interviewed on Fox News Sunday - Google Video

This commercial is badass. I don't know much about Areva. But this commercial is just really fucking cool. Reminds me of something Edward Tufte would do.

I guess this is part of the campaign to build new nuclear reactors. You know what? It worked. I'm now pro-nuclear. That pretty cartoony happy-fun nuclear commercial has me sold. Also, I want to play sims now.

Areva TV Ad: Super Cool

] As a squad from India Company passes by a way with a
] spray painted rocket propelled grenade launcher -- a real
] RPG round explodes against it. One Marines' face is
] burned by the powder and hot gas -- another has caught
] shrapnel in the leg, a third has been shot in the finger
] by the small arms fire that followed. The Marines are
] outraged. They turn their M-16's on the building to the
] west where they believe the shooter is hiding. But that's
] just an appetizer.

Kevin Sites Blog: Fallujah Street by Street

] Unfortunately, our leaders do not understand the Fourth
] Generation, so it appears we are about to throw this
] opportunity away. We continue to bomb and shell Fallujah,
] which pushes our enemies toward each other. We seem to be
] readying an all-out assault on the city, which will have
] the usual result when Goliath defeats David: a moral
] defeat for Goliath. Many Iraqis will die, the city will
] be wrecked (as always, we will promise to rebuild it but
] not do so), and any losses the insurgents suffer will be
] made up many times over by a flood of new recruits. Never
] was it more truly said that, "We have met the enemy,
] and he is us."

The man who wrote the Marines combat manuals drops the knowledge bomb. Linked from Gibson's blog...

William S. Lind On War Archive

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of oil giant Yukos, was seized by special forces at a Siberian airport Saturday. He was sent to Moscow and charged with a $1 billion (30 billion rubles) fraud and tax evasion.

Yukos -- as well as Russian businessmen and politicians -- said the arrest of Khodorkovsky, whose wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine at $8 billion and has funded two liberal opposition parties, was politically motivated.

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Putin bags another Oligarch. He's really consolidating his power. He effectively ended freedom of the press when he toppled Berezovsky's media empire, and renationalized the last independant television station... and then following Nord Ost, he has threatened to revoke freedom of the press for "bad coverage" when he is criticized. Now out goes Xodorkovsky. There will be more to come. Putin will never step down as President. When Bush says he can see into his soul, I believe it. One motherfucker to another.

The Oligarchs are all evil, bad men. Thieves on probably the largest scale the twentieth century has seen. But where Putin conquers, he does not bring reform. He replaces the toppled gang with his own... the FSB. The domestic branch of the former KGB.

Russia markets rocked by arrest: Putin bags another Oligarch

] A country’s potential to warrant a U.S. military response
] is inversely related to its globalization connectivity.

There are some excellent observations in this article about the way that 911 focused the US military establishment on real problems and the way that military organization is changing. However, I'm not sure if I buy the primary premise, that lack of connectivity produces threats. The guy lists Yemen as an "end of the earth" from a globalisation perspective. I'm not expert on the middle east, but I'm pretty sure that observation is about 180 degress from correct. If I recall correctly, Yemen is one of the most cosmopolitain places in the Middle East, where immigrants outnumber naturalized citizens like 10 to 1. They are really really well connected.

So why are they a threat? Because, and really he does get to this in the essay but I think this point deserves much more emphasis, telecommunications and transportation technology have ended the relationship between ideology and geography. To be sure, if you grow up in a place that is poor, oppressed, and war torn, you are more likely to consider violence as an option then someone who grows up comfortable. However, is it really possible to remove right wing militia or left wing black blocs from the global security equation? Are these people less dangerous then Al'Q?

The lines will be drawn idealogically and not in terms of nationality, whether we like it or not. I think the fact that this guy is still leaning toward drawing lines on a map is evidence that he hasn't fully groked what is going on.

To paraphrase the Matrix, "There is no map."

The Pentagon's New Map

] Peace in a country like the Ivory Coast is a myth. It's
] tribe vs. tribe, religion vs. religion, till one side
] wipes out the other. And if that never happens, then the
] sneak attacks and small-time massacres will just go on and
] on. And if that seems terrible to you, try this thought on:
]
] Maybe they LIKE it.

An informative if also informal brief on the basic problems in Africa.

eXile #157 - War Nerd - Live from the Skeleton Coast - by Gary Brecher