Burke's Joystick

“How could you possibly allow the election of a citizen of a socialist country as pope?!?" - Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB  [1] In the tumultuous events of World War III, perhaps the most tumultuous was the so-called "Polish Summer" of 1982.  While short-lived, largely the result of the brutal Soviet reprisals upon Poland, the Polish uprising of that hot August caused a great deal of chaos within Pact ranks while it existed.  It is now known that the cause for this revolt, also known as the 'Stanislaw Uprising", was the attempted KGB assassination of Pope John Paul II.  While initially blamed upon a Turkish "lone wolf", evidence quickly mounted to the contrary conclusion:  that this attempt on the pontiff's life was a tightly-controlled "wet op" locally orchestrated from within the Bulgarian embassy in Italy, specifically by Bulgarian military attaché Zilo Vassilev , but most definitely managed by the KGB from afar.  It i...

The man of system . . . is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. . . .  —Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759 If I was to identify one thing wrong with the current political  landscape (and economic, for that matter), it would be the mistaken belief that there is no right or wrong in the world of politics.  That is, many people seem to be of the bizarre opinion that, in the words of  Jeremy Bentham , "pushpin is as good as poetry".  This is, of course, compl...

No, this is not going to be about a nuclear war erupting in one of my Wargame: AirLand Battle games, although if there were nukes available in a skirmish game you might be reading just that by now.   No, rather this is going to be about one of those interesting and increasingly common events where a game crosses over into mainstream culture.  Have you seen this TV ad for Interstate Batteries ? Seems kinda familiar, doesn't it?