Laurent Murawiec
Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C., author of the just-released The Mind of Jihad
“Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place,” begins a WIRED piece by Bruce Schneier entitled The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists . In his article, Schneier rejects the “strategic model” interpretation of terrorism, an economic model of rational behavior used by some social scientists and experts in matters of terror; he bases his analysis on a paper by Max Abrahms , a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation: What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategies .
Abrahms tries to show that this model, often applied to the study of terrorism, is unworkable by outlining seven “puzzles,” seven purportedly flawed assumptions ...
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Darwin Letter FridayFrom: cambridgeblog.org
Post Date: 2008-09-19 07:30:33
September 19, 2008
As Darwin watches the preparation of the H.M.S. Beagle , he gets (understandably) excited.
It also turns out that Captain FitzRoy was popular with the ladies. Darwin fears that he will get seasick on the voyage; it happens to everyone. Little did he know how bad it would be, and that raisins were all he could eat for weeks.
In the second paragraph, Darwin writes of his admiration for “a Mr. Harris.” William Snow Harris was known as ̶...
more The Martin Gardner InterviewFrom: cambridgeblog.org
Post Date: 2008-09-18 07:49:54
Three years ago, Martin Gardner ’s good friend, MAA Editorial Director Don Albers interviewed him at length about his childhood, the roots of his fascination with math, and about his career. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the interview in chunks, because his story is absolutely fascinating.
* * *
On October 21 , Martin Gardner celebrated his ninetieth birthday. For 25 of his 90 years, Gardner wrote the monthly “Mathematical Games” column for Scientific America...
more Win a New Martin Gardner Book #3From: cambridgeblog.org
Post Date: 2008-09-17 06:10:06
Welcome back!
The entries are really coming in. Thanks to everyone for entering!
Also, check out the interview with Gardner that I’ll be posting over the next few weeks.
Last week’s question asked how many planes, re-fueling in midair, are required for one circumnavigation, assuming that a full tank=1/2 the trip, and no lost time for re-fueling. Plus, they all have to return safely.
I had to pick this entry by Andrew McFarland because the title cracks me up every t...
more God and TimeFrom: cambridgeblog.org
Post Date: 2008-09-16 11:30:35
What is God’s relation to space and time? Is there a way of reconciling theology and physics?
John Polkinghorne
Time is much more mysterious than space. We can move around or stand still at will, but no one can travel in time or arrest its inexorable flow. Or so it seems to us. Yet there are people who believe that the passage of time is no more than a trick of human psychological perspective and the real nature of temporality is what is called ‘the block universe’, the ...
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