Verse of the week: “Now ‘tis the spring, and weeds are shallow rooted; Suffer them now, and Grow o’ergrown the garden And choke the herbs for Want of husbandry” –Shakespeare, Henry VI Long-time readers of these posts will be familiar with Chauncy Gardner, a fountain of horticultural knowledge with whom this writer periodically consults. I …
Les Gelb
by | 2019-09-02 | No Comments
Lyric of the week: “Hark, now hear the sailors cry,Smell the sea, and feel the sky,Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.” — Van Morrison Quote of the week: “Fail alone; succeed together.” — Les Gelb Les Gelb, who died over the weekend, had a stunning resumé. The Pentagon. Brookings. The State Department. …
Abu Musa Island: The “Beating Heart” of Iran in the Persian Gulf
by | 2019-08-29 | No Comments
by Cyrus Jabbari, CNS Graduate Research Assistant Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for eight years until April 2019, referred to Abu Musa Island as Iran’s beating heart at the beginning of this year. Recent military deployments and actions taken by the IRGC on the island indeed suggest …
Guest Post: the Odds of Simultaneous Multiple Independent Detector Failures
by | 2019-08-28 | 2 Comments
Not long after the August 8 explosion at Nyonoksa in northern Russia–and the initial report of a spike in radioactivity in the nearby city of Severodvinsk–something else unexpected happened. Multiple radionuclide (RN) detectors inside Russia, part of the International Monitoring System of the CTBTO, stopped relaying their data to the CTBTO in Vienna. The Russian …
