Cold War, the sequel

The grand-grandsons of Napoleon’s mutts took over Animal Farm. And they are rich.

Let's face it and stop being naive: the Caucasus is Russia's backyard. The whole region holds an immense economical and geostrategical value for the ex/new/never ceased to be superpower. In the old times, when the vetuste, archaic Soviet Union exported almost nothing, we still could think that the problem was most of all ideological. But not anymore. It's about money.

Were the Americans really expecting that the Russians would let Tbilisi regain total control of the region? No, they weren't. They were just trying to stir things up a little, maybe to test Medvedev's strength, and at the end it's up to Europe to try to calm things down and pick up the pieces (one quarter of our energy depends on it) . And up to the Georgians and the Ossetians to bury their dead. It's "those Washington bullets again". Or Moscow bullets.

(In a country where L'Essentiel is such a success, it was very plesant to find a decent defying article about this subject here. It's the online edition of the Woxx, l'autre hebdomadaire.)

New Renault Mégane

A journalist named Bruno Thomas was jailed in France for publishing some photos of the future Renault Mégane (Auto Plus magazine). In Beijing and Paris, they have their ways with press and Internet freedom. Anyhow, it's too late, now. The damage is done. Industrial espionage. A big German carmaker is said to have started a new design department called FBG Projekt. The Fat Bottom Girls Project.

Referendum in Ireland: "NO" to the Treaty of Lisbon

That's why democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.

The Irish voted "No" against the end of restrictions on abortion, and to keep the country’s traditional neutrality and the low tax rates responsible for the rise of the Celtic Tiger. Not against the Treaty. Now what?

UP-Robots: the birth of useful personal robotics

According to Forbes, robots are going to be the next tech bubble. There's nothing really new going around the net these days, just fights over taking control of the next big thing, which is probably going to be old after a couple of months. Facebook is already going down, with lesser new subscriptions every day.

A bubble is something that, by definition, is supposed to burst, sooner or later. The trick is to ride it while it's still full (of air), and to put your money in it while it's still taking shape. Robots are going to happen, sooner or later. They are going to take over a lot more of tasks around our houses, our places of work, our cities, our fields, our factories, even in our nice little battlefields abroad...

Of course this is already happening, what's new is that it's going to happen right before our noses. Technology is getting cheaper, and something is going to hit big time our supermarket shelves and start a new trend, simplifying something that we do everyday. It's not going to be a gadget. Gadgets are expensive for what they do and boring after a short time. This is something that we are going to buy and hold on to for no less then five years, like a TV set or a laundering machine. Everybody is going to have one. It's going to interact with us and with our houses, it's not going to kill our cat or molest our children and it will talk and walk and do something really cleaver.

During the next 2 to 5 years Auchan is going to start selling it.

If you know what it is, put your money in it.

Quote of the day, from the same Forbes' article:
"Will Microsoft merge with Yahoo! in the same way that a shark merges with a surfer?"

(A deleted scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)