Japan

Japanese novelist Natsuo Kirino (a pen name) is generally categorized as a crime fiction writer, though given the range and depth of characters she writes about, crimes are incidental to the designs of her plots. Given the social and personal forces her characters struggle against, murder, robbery, or fraud are inevitable, even necessary. She’s as much a crime writer as, say, Jim Thompson is a crime writer, though her tendencies are more those of Flannery O’Connor, as Kirino herself admits.

One of the truths of human history is that mankind has a tendency to go to war for some pretty stupid reasons; my personal favorite was the 17^th century's War of Jenkins' Ear, though in the 19^th century the United States and Canada nearly went to war over a pig, which probably would have trumped the unfortunate Mr.

The robot gear in the picture above is produced by a company in Japan called Cyberdyne.  According to the Cyberdyne's site, the Robot suit "is expected to be applied in various fields such as rehabilitation support and physical training support in medical field, ADL support for disabled people, heavy labour support at factories, and rescue support at disaster sites, as well as in the entertainment field."

In an ode to Stanley Kubrick and "2001: A Space Odyssey," the suit is aptly named "HAL."

Via Economist

Last week I talked about a few stories from 2009 that didn’t receive the attention that perhaps they should have. This week I’ll take a look forward and discuss a few of the events likely to shape global politics in 2010.