A brief period away...

A brief period away while I take care of business. In the meantime...

Check the twitterscope for regular headlines and status reports.

Check the Tumblr account for photos, music, video, or comment. All photos by myself. All music is by friends or creative influences. All video by myself or pulled through the tubes from elsewhere.

Recently Read

I've recently read a number of books which I intended to review at great length here on the blog. It never happened. So as an alternative to long exhaustive book reviews I will be posting short 100 word summary-reviews of relevant texts and sometimes novels (cheeky) here on the blog over the next few weeks. Your thoughts, comments, and suggestions of similar reading are welcome and actively encouraged.

Contained in the biography...

Searching for 'Daniel Fogg' and 'blog' in Google yields no results leading to my page. Understanding how the Google search algorithum works, I do not find this surprising. However, I came across the website of another Daniel Fogg. Although this character does not seem particularly interesting (something in the name perhaps), he has a mean eye for a good quote.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw - writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

A quick note on my tubing system...

As this blog develops I aim to deliver more than my current offering of written comment and analysis. I will be hosting downloadable and streamable video and audio from here onwards. As I am unlikely to be the creator of this content, this probably places me in contravention of numerous copyright and intellectual property laws. More so as most of the content I will be posting will be difficult to obtain in a blog-friendly format anywhere else. So I would like to present this disclaimer as an appeal to any disgruntled content providers.

Your content is posted here with no intention of deriving profit, influence, or any personal gain from it's distribution. I am including this content on the blog in the spirit of fair use. I do not seek to undermine your copyright or the intellectual property of the content's original creator. I am posting this content to provide further information to the readers of this blog, and to act as further reference to the ideas and comments contained within the blog. If, as a content provider, you feel I have unfairly used this content within my blog, please contact me requesting the content is removed and I will be happy to assess the legitimacy of your complaint. If I feel your request is valid, I will remove the content from my blog.

A developing theme

A theme is developing in my posts, that of Russia and international security. This is partly intentional as I find the security situation that Russia (and the world as a result) currently finds itself in as utterly fascinating.

As the ultimate practitioners of realpolitik the Russian state, steered by the siloviki who control it's upper echelons, has awoken from the slow-times endured during the 1990's and appears to be 'back in the game'. Although countless UK/US commentators would have you think otherwise, a strong Russia is not necessarily a malign Russia. The country's slide towards authoritarianism over the past 8 years is well documented and doubtlessly a cause for concern. But we should remember, this is Russia! Previously a world super power, with the largest land mass on earth, 25% of fossil fuel reserves, the second largest nuclear arsenal on the planet and widely accepted as having produced the finest, although at times unscrupulous, intelligence service of the modern age. With all this power apparatus under it's control, you better believe that after sitting on the bench for over a decade Russia wants back in the game.

So in this blog I will be charting Russia's continuing rise, and possible stagnation, on a daily basis. This not to say I will be writing solely on this topic, far from it. I will be addressing topics like cyber-security, online and digital culture, Middle Eastern security, and the global private security industry. But if you are expecting 15 posts per day on Sarah 'Whiskey Tango' Palin's family, you may find yourself disappointed.

A heroic attempt

I've been mulling over the idea of heroic failures recently. Wikipedia, that tome of communal knowledge, offers the following definition:

"[A] heroic failure describes a person or group failing to accomplish their goal, but somehow gaining the moral upper hand or becoming ennobled in the attempt."

There's something deeply comforting in this idea; something very human. The thought that even if you fail to achieve your goal, you have still succeeded or achieved in some way.

And with that comforting thought, I conclude my first post. :-)