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Flagg707 has a speculative post at Futurejacked that I think most readers hear will find stimulating and fun to read:

Socionomic Trendspotting for 2009

A Continued Surge in Magical Thinking

Socionomics posits that during waves of positive social mood, “practical thinking” is dominant over “magical thinking,” and a belief in science and reason dominates. During waves of negative social mood the magical thinking, with its distrust (if not hatred of) reason and science rises to a dominant position in the mass social “mind.”

My personal interpretation of this is that magical thinking actually begins to manifest during the fifth wave of a postive mood surge – where faith and hope outstrips a reasoned evaluation of the economic “fundamentals” and continues into the waves of negative mood. Either way, we can expect a lot of anti-science and anti-rationality types of behavior to explode in politics and in university settings. Hopefully it won’t go as negative as it did in Kampuchea, but we are dealing with a downturn of historic proportions, so keep in mind that herds of humans are capable of staying irrational for very, very long periods of time.

….Expect a Wave of Independence Movements

I thought this would be a more dominant theme during 2008 than it turned out to be, with only Kosovo shearing off from Serbia and, at the very end of the year, the Ruthenians declaring independence in Ukraine. As Abkhazia and Ossetia were already de facto independent from Georgia, I won’t count them. I doubt 2009 will be as calm.

Socionomics holds that during times of negative mood factionialism increases and the various “tribes” that make up a country turn towards their subgroup and away from the idea of an inclusive and tolerant society. This is the stuff of independence movements, of civil wars, of hollow states and of a return to primary loyalties.

Read the rest here.

A Christmas present for the Son of Zenpundit was set up tonight….and I have to say, it’s pretty darn cool.

A little holiday humor.

WIRED magazine has a post up about reviving the idea of nuclear powered jetliners:

Bring Back the Nuclear-Powered Plane!

“We need to be looking for a solution to aviation emissions which will allow flying to continue in perpetuity with zero impact on the environment,” Professor Poll tells the paper. “We need a design which is not kerosene-powered, and I think nuclear-powered aeroplanes are the answer beyond 2050. The idea was proved 50 years ago, but I accept it would take about 30 years to persuade the public of the need to fly on them.”

A better ( and safer) idea than putting a nuclear reactor on an airplane  would be a nuclear-powered super zeppelin. The crash risk would be minimal and  such a super-zeppelin would have vast advantages in lift over an airplane and be able to ship large quantities of goods virtually anywhere on earth.  Or it could hover semi-permanetly as a SIGINT platform with capabilities of being an “aircraft carrier in the sky” for UAV’s.

Inventive, aeronautical and physics types feel free to sound off in the comments.

Of all the book reviews I have done at Zenpundit, this one will be the shortest.

Prodded to read War Nerd by co-blogger Lexington Green, I found Gary Brecher’s writing is a weird fusion of Robert Young Pelton crossbred with Dave Barry, yielding some sort of one-man, Mad Magazine of modern warfare but without the cartoons by Don Martin and Sergio Aragones. Beneath Brecher’s crafted shtick, however, lies a genuine grasp of military history and an analytical shrewdness with which I found myself nodding in agreement all too frequently.

Buy this book.