Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Not a billionaire, yet enjoying the limelight… Married for the third time, now to a Londoner, Jimmy Wales enjoys life among the glitterati of the world. A very entertaining and at times informative profile in the New York Times… High-minded or not,…
The Supreme Court decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, rested on the idea that in certain situations states know best. Supreme Court strikes down Defense of Marriage…
Mr. Snowden, the former Booz Allen employee and NSA contractor who has released details about a classified data management program has left Hong Kong for Moscow with help from Wikileaks, aiming to take refuge in Ecuador, under the wing of the leftist…
According to Voice of America: “After only two days of voting, Roman Catholic cardinals elected Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pope to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. He has chosen the name Francis and is the first pope from…
A team of British medieval archaeologists from University of Leicester goaded by a member of the Richard III Society has uncovered the skeletal remains of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, who was killed at Bosworth and buried in the Grey Friars church…
At approximately 13:15 local time on 1 February 2013, a suicide bomber detonated a bomb at a side entrance to the United States embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara, killing…
Perusing the Iraqi Sigact files acquired by Wikileaks, I found much to my surprise not only that WMD were found in Iraq, but that there were used at least several times on the battlefield. These typically involved Chemical Improvised Explosive Devices made of 150/2/5…
Several Western workers were taken hostage in Algeria by Islamists, at the Tigantourine gas plant facility raising the specter of the a regional war with Al-Qaeda in Maghred, which seems to be behind the attack. The leader of the movement is Mokhtar Belmokhtar,…
The relative popularity of the contenders in the 2012 US Presidential campaign can be measured not only by traditional polling methods, but also by the buzz the contestants create online and in social media. One efficient tool is Google Trends, which indicates…
Note: This post and the charts will be updated throughout the evening. Come back often for more recent details. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were relatively close in number of Google News searches, which is an indicator of social reach on online…
Neil Armstrong died on August 25 of heart failure following surgery. A former military pilot, he landed the moon landing module with only 16 seconds of fuel left. A Purdue undergraduate student (as was the last man on the moon, ) and…
Mars Rover Curiosity has landed at 4.59S / 137.44 E coordinates, in Gale crater, not far from a ridge, on a smooth flat plain. It landed just like it was expected within an elipsis just a few kilometers wide. This photograph released…
The Olympics bring together people from around the globe and sometimes it ends in love. That’s what happened to Katy and Matt Emmons, both Olympic rifle shooters who met at the 2004 Athens Games. Matt Emmons talks about the Olympic love story…
Although Greenland, just like most of the northern hemisphere has been under a succession of record breaking head domes, the recently reported news that most of the Greenland ice sheet is melting needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The NASA data…
The news from Spain is dire: its local governments are bankrupt and we can expect a domino effect. The cause? Overspending: Spain’s debt hangover follows an era of cheap credit that the birth of a common currency helped create. When the eurozone…
We finally have a solution for global warming. A discussion on the board The Straight Dope about the likely effect of a nuclear war brought up the hypothesis that a nuclear war on a large scale could produce a mini-nuclear winter. Why?…
Chinese cyberspace and social media are rife with rumors about a lingering or barely averted coup. The rumors are associated with the recent sacking of an important provincial Party secretary, the Congqing boss Bo Xilai (see details). The scion of a…
One of the most powerful Chinese regional Party bosses and scion of an old Communist family has been dismissed and his political fate remains unknown. A report published on an unofficial Chinese site reveal much of the current debates and infighting at…
In a an extremely detailed report to be delivered to the computer security conference, Imperva, an IT security consulting company describes how the hacker Anonymous group launched Operation Pharisee to bring down the Vatican web site. The report is to be presented…
Prediction market Intrade evaluates The Artist’s chances to win the Oscar for best movie at over 90% and Dujardin’s chance to be awarded best actor at 70%. In the meanwhile, HSX indicates strong bets in the same direction. Sources Traders aim to…
privacy (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee) The Obama Administration proposed on February 24 a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that would regulate how private corporations and business entities handle private data. The announcement includes: A Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights The Consumer Privacy…
Miriad internal conflicts throw Pakistan into an never ending cycle of mini-civil wars: families killing their women for “illicit affairs”, human right activists beaten to death for testifying against abusive police practices, politicians assassinated without any retribution. The Economist draws the line…
A BBC correspondent laid eyes on a very insightful report on the continued strong relationship between Pakistan and Taliban leaders. The conclusion remains the same: we seem to be at war with Pakistan without being able to acknowledge it. The BBC’s Quentin…
April 15 is the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912. The wreck of the ship was found in two pieces, the bow and the stern, by Ballard in 1985, who released the precise coordinates of…
Following the successful social media exercise of predicting the outcomes of the nomination race in Iowa using Google Searches and Tweets, here is a preview of what could be in store for the candidates in New Hampshire. Google search trends in the…
This self-updating chart provides the latest trends in Google searches for candidate names. According to this post, search frequency seemed to be related to candidate “pull.” Santorum was not a surprise at all for those that followed the social media buzz closely. What…
Mashable hints that Twitter might have caught a whiff of Santorum’s possible dash in the last straight line before the finish in the Iowa caucus. There is something to say about it. Romney lost the lead not only on Twitter but also in…
The first 10 years of Chinese membership in WTO and of trade with the US at almost no import/export tarrifs: Chinese rural poverty rate declined from 10 to 3% US families could spend an extra $600 a year on cheaper goods US…
What is the entropy level of this team? (Apud Paulo Coelho and many other internet peddlers of humor)
Digital Humanities Showcase: Walter Lord’s Day of Infamy mapped Walter Lord’s meticulously documented book “Day of Infamy” recounts the trivia of every day life at Pearl Harbor on that last morning of peace, December 7, 1941, when the Japanese planes attacked the…
On my way to lunch I pass by the extraordinary gem that is the Purdue Art Gallery. An unpretentious room, painted white, with no outside windows, the gallery exhibits on a regular basis the highest quality art, from all corners of the…
The Altantic Monthly publishes a terrifyingly insightful article about Pakistan’s nuclear shell game. According to it, what keeps the Pakistani leaders up at night is a highly unlikely US air strike, not a predictable (by past incidents) Jihadi suicide rush on the…
From The New York Times – MEDIA DECODER BLOG An organization formed by Congress to market the United States to international travelers is moving ahead under a new name. They need to know about http://alterpode.com
From The New York Times: CULTURE AND CONTROL: Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper “Murong Xuecun, a popular Chinese novelist, often runs afoul of censors, which has pushed him to become a vocal critic of censorship in China and…
Ai Weiwei, whose artistic vision partially inspired the iconic “bird’s nest” stadium, which changed the image of Beijing from a cookie cutter apartment building factory to an emerging world metropolis , has also been known for his vocal opposition to official Chinese…
The El Hierro volcano of the Spanish Canary Island Archipelago has started bubbling again, this time under the sea. The locals have discovered with amazement that their turquoise sea has turned dirty green and bubbling like a jacuzzi. The sad part is…
Gaddafi’s hometown and loyal city Sirt has fallen to the rebel forces and Gaddafi was killed after being gravely wounded while trying to escape in a convoy. Death is confirmed by this cell phone image and by the Al Jezeera video below.…
UPDATE: Gaddafi was shot and killed on October 20 in Sirt. See Gaddafi killing video and map. The news from Tripoli, Libya is not good. Mass graves of over 1000 prisoners killed in cold blood 15 years ago are uncovered around the…
A quiet, almost rural street in Monroe, Michigan (about 35 miles south west of Detroit) was rocked by a violent explosion on Tuesday, September 20th, around 5PM. The explosion damaged a car and injured a lawyer and his two sons. Early results…
A P-51 Mustang WWII plane nicknamed “Galloping Ghost” piloted by Jimmy Leeward (74) crashed in the stands of an air show at Reno-Stead airport, Nevada on September 16, 2011. There were 11 known dead and over 50 wounded. Reno Nevada Ari Crash…
Abdel Majid Mlegta is the man who single handedly turned the siege of Tripoli by the rebel forces from a stalemate into a quick, over night victory. Operation Dawn Mermaid, a joint operation of rebel forces on the ground and NATO bombing…
Reuters reports that a large Libyan army convoy arrived on Monday in Agadez, Niger. The troops were until recently part of the southern Libyan military contingent. Local authorities claim that Gaddafi might be somewhere close and is also considering joining his troops…
Irene might’ve not destroyed the Manhattan skyscrapers with over 100 mph winds and 10 foot high tide surges, as some Godzilla-meets-King Kong extreme weather scenario aficionados dreamed, but it did do a lot of damage in the coastal areas of many seabord…
Irene landed in the New York metropolitan area with less force than expected but it still carried a punch. Various areas of the city were flooded, from Battery Park, to Hoboken and parts of Long Island. Manhattan took the hit, however, in…
Update: Sandy related map and article Pictures of Irene flooding in Manhattan Irene has made its first landfall last night in North Carolina at a weaker than expected intensity 1. As the cone of probable impact covers much of New York…
UPDATE: NYC Evacuation and Hurricane Irene Possible Landfall Map NOAA predicts that even if it remains an intensity 1 or 2, hurricane Irene might flood a good part of lower Manhattan, including Battery Park and Ground Zero (World Trade Center). The later,…
The Libyan Civil War battle for Tripoli continued on August 23. Gaddafi loyalist troops were reduced to smaller pockets around or near the former center of power. A dangerous situation has developed around Rixos Hotel, which has been occupied by Gaddafi’s elite…
One of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif, was seen by the CCN correspondent Matthew Chance in person at Rixos Hotel, despite rebel claims that he had been captured on Sunday, August 20, 2011. And he has the picture to prove it… MSNBC reports about…
Since the beginning of the libyan rebellion, the foreign press has been forced to stay at the Rixos hotel, in Tripoli, not far away from Gaddafi’s residence and headquarters, at Bab al Aziza (See map below for details). Until recently, the hotel…
The girl walks down the street defiantly, clutching her shawl. Young, and not so young, men stare, catcall, and grab their crotch. The place is Florence, the year is 1951, the photographer Ruth Orkin, and the mood is of budding feminism fighting…
The federal gas tax, which amounts to about 18.4 cents a gallon, is set to expire and it needs a special act of Congress to be renewed. The tax was created to fund the Federal Highway Administration and to maintain the inter-state…
MSNBC opines that the recent massive stock sell-off reflects the panic that dominates the small investor scene. If truly irrational move, this panic might indicate that this is also a good time to invest. Thursday’s big sell-off, which saw the Dow Jones…
“Flash mob” phenomena, which were heralded early in the day as a harbinger of a new civic spirit, have been subverted by some nefarious minds and are used for committing criminal acts. A “flash mob” is a group of people who do…