Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
Japan tried desperately to pump billions upon billions of yen into its economy during the 1990 to jump start an economy ailing after a terrible real estate bubble that popped at the end of the 1980s. Twenty years later, Japan has a…
An US intelligence official confirmed to Financial Times that Pakistan shared with China samples of material and photographs of the US stealth helicopter that crashed during the raid on Osama bin Laden. The helicopter seems to be engineered to avoid radar detection.…
Iceland surprised the world when it announced that it will include in the draft of its new constitution suggestions made by the citizenry via social media. A website and a special Facebook page were used as main means for collecting public input. The…
A recent high speed Chinese train crash in Wenzhou highlighted the inequities ordinary Chinese face in everyday life. The actor Ge You comments poetically on the neglect with which the victims were treated: “If a higher-level leader died,” he wrote, “there would…
Air Canada AC34 reported a fire in the galley shortly after take off, on July 28th. The airplane dumped most of its fuel before it landed back safely in Sydney. Partial flight path, as reported by flightdata24.
An Air Canada Aircraft on its way from Sydney, Australia to Vancouver and Toronto had to interrupt its flight and dump its fuel over Hornsby, Sydney due to a fire on board that could not be contained immediately. The fire seems to…
China announced in a semi-official way that it has two aircraft carriers under construction in Shanghai. This is a surprising piece of news since the two new ships seem to be in addition to the “Shi Lang,” which is under refitting in…
The first surprise is that for the past two years 3D movies earned over half of box office revenues. Yet the technology dissappints. My son said it the best: “There was only one scene in Captain America that deserved to be shot…
If convicted, Anders Behring Breivik, the Norvegian accused of killing over 70 adolescents and adults in a series of terrorist attactk, will probably serve a limited sentence (20-30 years) term. He might even end up in Halden prison, where the inmates cook…
It takes the sweetness of a six year old to get over such a terrible incident… Amplify’d from www.nydailynews.com A 6-year-old girl attacked by a shark off North Carolina earlier this month is expected to make a full recovery.And little Lucy Magnum…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign Affairs Over 30 people died in a collision of two “high speed rail” trains in China. The incident was very sensitive. It highlighted that the recent extension of the Chinese fast train network might’ve not taken into account…
The Oslo / Utoya suspected mass murderer Anders Behring Brievik published a very short time before he is believe to have killed over 80 adolescents an online pdf book titled 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence. The volume is a disjointed…
More than 80 people were killed execution style by an individual wearing a police uniform on Utoya Island, 35 kilometers northwest of Oslo, the capital of Norway. The killing followed a devastating bomb blast in the center of Oslo, which is suspected…
Are you in front of an information booth, at the mall? Do you want to do a Google search without a keyboard? The Google voice gizmo by Breakfast, an open source hardware project, has something for you. The device uses Arduino boards…
Bryan Pijanowski, the head of the Soundscape Ecology Project at Purdue University, and Sorin Adam Matei, the author of this blog and the founder of the Ubimark publishing initiatives have set up a mapping site, http://Ubimark.info, to collect and map everyday sounds…
Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn, III announced on July 14, 2011 that in the wake of a massive hacking incident that resulted in the loss of over 24,000 sensitive files from a Department of Defense contractor internal network, any major…
Three devastating explosions in three busy areas of Mumbai (Zavari Bazaar, Davar West, and near Mumbai Opera House) have produced by the latest accounts over 15 deaths and 100 wounded. The crowdsourced (collaborative) mapping project at http://maps.myindia.bz/mumbai/ invites you to add new…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign Affairs Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has been assassinated by a close security guard and member of the family. The Taliban claimed responsibility and the Pakistanis have reasons to rejoice. “Tuesday morning, AWK…
The European leaders are a step closer to admitting that Greece needs to default on its debt. A special fund will buy back Greece’s debt, although this will not solve the economic problems of Europe. The euro might cease to exist as…
Via Scoop.it – Foreign AffairsIf Italy loses its footing, Europe will come tumbling down. Things are not looking good at all. “Italy, long a bystander to the euro-zone’s debt woes, was thrust into the maelstrom Monday, as investors fled the country’s bonds…
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current eventsThe worrying parallels between East Germany and Greece.Show original
Are we on the verge of bringing forecasting of meteorological precision to military and counter-terrorism operations ? Wired Magazine speculates: In a paper published last week in Science, researchers present an equation to describe how fatal attacks escalate – whether it’s a…
The 2011 La Concha (New Mexico) fire that engulfed as of June 28 over 60,000 acres of Ponderosa pine and mixed coniferous forests keeps creeping toward the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The latest data released by the US Forest Service Incident Information…
Via Scoop.it – Mad Max Societies: Post Apocalyptic Technology and SocietyWar is not just about outkilling the enemy, but also about underspending him. If we keep spending 500,000 dollars a year to support each soldier in the field, as it seemed to…
Via Scoop.it – Mapping current eventsVenezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, holed up in a Cuban hospital for what appears to be radiation therapy for prostate cancer, reportedly telephoned a meeting of his ruling party’s leadership, a move that did little to quell growing…
Both Nebraska nuclear power plants have been partially covered by the waters of the 2011 flood. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear plant came under threat after a protection berm collapsed and a turbine room was inundated. At the time of the incident the…
Lech Walesa had this word of wisdom for the Tunisians: Lech Walesa chuckles as he recounts a conversation he had in April with reformers in Tunisia, cradle of the Arab Spring. “They told me they want to purge everybody linked to the…
Al Jazeera filed this video report on the DYI armament mini factories set up by the Libyan rebels in Misrata. Improvisation is the name of the game and some contraptions are truly dumbfounding. My favorite: the pick up truck mounted airplane rocket…
The New York times announces that Pakistani secret services seem to take revenge on those that helped US’s raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central…
The moment of truth A Newsweek photographer got access to a local police station in Ukraine, where he was allowed to photograph crime suspects during their preliminary interrogation. The snapshots in this slideshow were taken when or just before the suspects “confessed”.…
Italy’s deeper troubles magisterially analyzed by the Economist…. Italy is indulgent towards its children in some ways—it is not unusual for them to live at home until they are in their 30s—but hard on them in others. “A typical Italian family these…
“News” from The Associated Press via Report: Students don’t know much about US history.
In an industry where the highest valued companies (Microsoft, Apple or Google) can count their age in mere decades, IBM goes all the way to the 1880s. Hollerith’s counting machine, whose patent was later purchased by what will become IBM, pioneered…
Despite the controversies that surround continued public support for the NPR/CPB there is much talk in Washington nowadays about creating a public funded, yet potentially politically controlled national Internet wireless network. The network will be funded from allocating some of the proceeds…
With the recently passed April 14 anniversary of the Fort Sumter occupation by the Confederates we have entered a period of four years of remembering the 150th anniversary of the many and bloody Civil War battles. The memory of the 600,000 dead…
Ilyaas Kashmiri, a Pakistani terrorist at times associated with the Pakistani secret services was killed in a drone attack in the tribal region (South Waziristan Agency area) of Pakistan. It is quite possible the he was turned in by his former handlers…
Springfield tornado is now officially rated as an EF-3 on a scale of 5. An EF-3 event can easily level strong frame homes. The Joplin, Missouri tornado was an EF-5, or “devastating”. Intensity map of the Springfield tornado path, similar to the…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the May 22 tornado that scythed a path through Joplin, MO “devastating” assigning it the maximum level of intensity EF-5. It is the deadliest since 1950, when modern record keeping started, and 8th in recorded…
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The unexpected tornadoes that landed in Springfield, Massachusetts on June 1, 2011, one of which sucked water from a local river and was declared an EF-3 (on a scale of 5),…
Joe McNally’s Blog via Seal Teams.
Just like at Stonehenge. the sun only sets twice a year in such a way as to be seen from the eastern end of the numbered streets that run East – West. New Yorkers rejoice: Scores took to Manhattan‘s streets Tuesday to…
A class of Mexican kindergarteners braved a drug cartel shootout right under the windows of their school by singing “When it will rain chocolate.” The teacher, maestra Martha Rivera Alanis, told them to lay down and put their little faces on the…
“No, you can’t!” A semi-funny non-verbal communication situation that might or might not convey the meaning of the situation. At the Pittsburgh Summit, 2009 President Obama introduces his wife to Dominique Strauss Kahn (DSK), who at the time was still the director…
The devastating series of tornadoes, of which the F-5 (maximum intensity) event that hit Joplin, Missouri left in its wake over 130 dead was the most terrifying, raise the question if tornadoes are becoming more destructive and if 2011 is a record-breaking…
A gigantic tornado in Edmond / Piedmont Oklahoma City is captured live by a local television camera. The super size, multi vortex tornado cell was at at least half a mile wide. The tornado was part of a cluster that affected the…
After a great start, with great positive reactions on Twitter, President Obama’s Middle East speech has become only a few days later a more controversial proposition, both for social media audiences and for newsmakers. According to Social Mention, a social media monitoring…
NEW: Read latest update on social mention sentiment analysis of President Obama’s Middle East speech Textual analysis of the rhetoric and of the social media buzz created by President Obama’s speech on the future of the Middle East (see transcript of Middle…
The book “DSK: Les Secrets d’un presidentiable” (Secrets of a presidential contender) affirms that Dominique Strauss Kahn, the recently resigned IMF head arrested for sexual assault at Sofitel Hotel in New York, was a customer of the Paris swinger (wife swapping) club…
NBC report on what the French think about the IMF head arrest. What is missing from this report is the question: why didn’t the scandal occur earlier and why not in France? The fact that the scandal took place in the US…
Little did @stefmara Twitter user and Neil Monday know that their pictures and videos of the space shuttle Discovery launch from Kennedy Space center, which they captured on their Iphones while flying from Orlando, will make world wide news. Here it’s one…
The latest Pew Poll on religious life in America announces that religious affiliation in America has become a choice, not a consequence of birth circumstances. According to the report “roughly 44% of Americans now profess a religious affiliation that is different…
Japanese Electric power company officials confirm worst case scenario at Fukushima powerplant Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have been pumping water into at least three of the six reactors on the site to bring their nuclear fuel rods to a…
An airplane trying to land at London international airport in a driving rain is hit by lightning and keeps flying undaunted. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy