When (Old New and New Old) Worlds Collide.

I am very late to the table with this link, but oh well. A friend of mine in the department passed along this recent controversial essay, Robert Kagan’s “Power and Weakness”, on the philosophical underpinnings of foreign policy differences between Europe and the US today. I don’t agree with everything he has to say (the Morrison and Worley responses here point out some key flaws, for example – is all of transatlantic difference really reducible to a question of disparate power?), but it is food for thought nonetheless.

Big Time Sensuality.

Upon the release of Bjork’s greatest hits, the New Yorker pauses to appreciate Iceland’s finest.

Ghosts in a Machine.

Particle physicists plan to build a “neutrino factory” in the UK. I almost spent a summer in high school searching for neutrinos in a Spanish mine (as part of a mandatory science thesis), until at the last minute I switched to an astrophysics project instead. Examining cosmic background radiation for fractal patterns…very trendy at the time.

So much for Kid Icarus.

In an attempt to stop online gambling, all computer games have been banned in Greece. (Via Pigs and Fishes.) Ah, Greece, where they put you in jail for Tetris and give you a medal for Table Tennis.

An Oxford Stroll.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Oxford, interactive. Also, those well-to-do folks out there looking for a more substantive piece of Middle Earth’s history should go here. (On a related note, how great is it to finally have Fellowship legitimately on DVD? No more “Property of New Line blah blah blah” scrolling over the best parts.)

Category: Europe