blarg?

Some grim reading that I found fascinating, no particular order:

• From Crooked Timber some time ago, “Is there a general skill of Management?” The first line is “Synopsis: Yes.”
• Peter Klauser’s Principles of the American Cargo Cult.
• From the Naval War College Review, autumn 2003: Feral Cities – The New Strategic Environment by Richard J. Norton
• From the American Society for Microbiology,
  Emergence in Asian Countries of Staphylococcus aureus with Reduced Susceptibility to Vancomycin.

• From the IEEE Spectrum, an article on the commodification of warmaking called Open Source Warfare.
• Via Warren Ellis, news of the pending arctic methane eruption
• From National Geographic, something 14 billion miles away is pulling everything towards it, and whatever it is, it doesn’t look like it’s actually part of this universe.
• This is Foreign Policy’s 2008 list of failed states. Anyone in the pool pick Somalia?
• From a while ago, this is what’s left of an abandoned book depository in Detroit, and maybe that’s what the future looks like.
• A TED Talk for you: Shadow Cities, and, A Guided Tour Of The Ghost Map, and finally,
• From National Geographic, The Empty Prairies.

Good times, good times.