Recently I read a book about how to think like a rocket scientist. It’s easy reading and gives some excellent advice on how to approach problem solving.
One of the approaches it suggests is to always step back and look at the big picture. It then goes on to discuss how one would apply this kind [...]

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But China is unlikely to provide a true accounting of its military build-up because that could actually fan foreign fears amid the widespread belief that Beijing dramatically under-reports its military spending, experts said.
“Chinese leaders are likely concerned with sparking a new round of ‘China threat’ arguments if a real figure is disclosed, because that real [...]

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September 4, 2007: President Vladimir Putin, a former secret police (KGB) officer has given the Russian people what they want. That is, a market economy that actually grows and works, and enough of the old Soviet police state to keep the crime rate down. Putin regularly scores very high in opinion polls, despite state control [...]

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If Russia remains dependent on a natural-resource economy, it will again become a colossus with feet of clay. Indeed, it will not be nearly as powerful as the old Soviet Union. Only if Russia succeeds in productively reinvesting the gains from its petro-economy will it achieve sustainable modernization.
But this also will require successful political modernization, [...]

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By reputation, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is said to have a fondness for foreign movies. It may be a decent bet that Groundhog Day — the goofy 1993 film in which Bill Murray relives the same day over and over again — is among them. The difference is, Murray does it in Punxsutawney, [...]

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Are the warships from the United States, India, Japan, Australia and Singapore that are exercising together this week off the east coast of India harbingers of a new military alliance in Asia to contain China?
Beijing may suspect they are, despite assurances from participants that the aim is sealane security, not alliance building.
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The birth rate reached a 15-year high in Russia in the first six months of 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated at a traditional Monday meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with government officials. According to Medvedev, 142,000 babies were born between January and June 2007, a record number since the collapse of [...]

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In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of making money ‘the Jewish way.’
In the past few years, sales of “success” books have skyrocketed, publishers say, and now make up nearly a third of the works published in China, and perhaps no type of success book has been as well marketed [...]

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BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday denied a report that its military had hacked into Pentagon computers, saying the allegations were “groundless” and that Beijing was opposed to cybercrime.
The Financial Times, citing unnamed officials, reported Monday that the People’s Liberation Army hacked into a computer system in the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates [...]

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By George Friedman at StratFor.Com
U.S. President George W. Bush made an appearance in Iraq’s restive Anbar province on Sept. 3 — in part to tout the success of the military surge there ahead of the presentation in Washington of the Petraeus report. For the next month or two, the battle over Iraq will be waged [...]

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