NYPress. It’s The Pipelines, Stupid. “A handful of small attacks made against Saudi infrastructure will push oil well over $100 a barrel,” says John Robb, an independent analyst and author of the forthcoming book Global Guerrillas. “Twenty or so a month will keep it there. We are about to see the rise of a shadow [...]

BBC Radio. John McCain. “This is worse (than Vietnam).” “There is no plan B (in Iraq).” [John Robb's Weblog]

Here’s are some questions I have been asking myself. What is the role of elections if the state is in failure? If the elections bring in a new government that can’t revive the state, what will that mean? We need to remember that this election is going to be a demonstration of the value of [...]

Slower arrival at fires in US is costing lives. While cities and towns are closing fire station, America's firefighters are taking longer to get to fires. This first installment of a Boston Globe investigation examines the effect on public safety. [Boston Globe -- Front Page]

Bush plan similar to 401(k). WASHINGTON– President Bush's advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security, and the accounts would resemble those of many company-sponsored retirement plans, with just a handful of investment options. [Boston Globe -- Front Page]

Security Nominee Gave Advice to the C.I.A. on Torture Laws. President Bush's nominee for homeland security secretary advised the C.I.A. on the legality of coercive interrogation methods. By DAVID JOHNSTON, NEIL A. LEWIS and DOUGLAS JEHL. [NYT > Home Page]

Shiite Faction Ready to Shun Sunday's Election in Iraq. A radical cleric's refusal to endorse the election foreshadowed a less than overwhelming voter turnout in Iraq. By DEXTER FILKINS. [NYT > Home Page]

Rails as an Automation Archetype: Mike Clark has interviewed David Heinemeier Hansson on automation in Rails. [snip -ed] We basically try to make it so that the only thing you need to create is application-specific functionality. All the infrastructure is already configured and ready to run. That means it’s much, much easier to get off [...]

The Sexual Network of a High School. Sociologists from Ohio State University (OSU) have mapped the structure of the adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents over 18 months. And they were quite surprised by the results, which showed that, unlike many adult networks, there was no core group of [...]

P&G to buy Gillette for $55b. Gillette Co. , which grew from humble beginnings over a fish market on the Boston waterfront to dominate the world's shaving market, agreed to be acquired by the much larger Procter & Gamble Co. in a $55 billion deal that will create the world's largest consumer-products conglomerate, executives familiar [...]