Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Iran war: One miscalculation after another
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/03/2026
» Still not four full weeks into the war, and already Donald Trump's "short-term excursion" -- decapitate the Iranian regime with a surprise attack and impose harsh terms on the defeated survivors -- has morphed into a global economic crisis and a region-wide war that could destroy the wealth of all the countries on both sides of the Gulf. At the very least.
So difficult to choose: Canada or the Quad?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/09/2023
» First Prize: Two Fabulous Days in Beautiful Delhi! Second Prize: Four Days In Delhi!
Starship: The Iterative Design Methodology
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2023
» 'Obviously, this is not a nominal situation," said John Insprucker, a senior engineer at Space-X, who was doing a webcast on Thursday's launch attempt of Elon Musk's gigantic Starship rocket. So why did Mr Musk's employees, hundreds of whom were watching live, cheer when it blew up only four minutes into flight?
Earthquakes, Turkish politics and culpability
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2023
» If you are trying to dodge the blame for a great disaster, the best policy is to say that it was God's will. So Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visiting one of the 6,000 buildings that collapsed on their sleeping residents in eastern Turkey last week, said: "Such things have always happened. It's part of Destiny's plan."
Vinland history: a question of dates, timing
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/11/2022
» 'If the 20th century AD were dated at the same resolution as the 20th century BC, the two World Wars would be indistinguishable in time; and the Montgomery Bus Strike might post-date the release of Mandela." So wrote the Exact Chronology of Early Societies' (ECHOES) team of palaeohistorians at Groningen University in the northern Netherlands -- and then they fixed the problem.
What shall we do with climate refugees?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/08/2022
» You wait ages for the bus, and then three come along at once. Books are a bit like that, too, although in this case it's only a pair of them, both tackling the question of what to do about all the "climate refugees". (The United Nations' International Organization for Migration estimates that 1.5 billion people may be forced to move in the next thirty years alone.)
After Merkel, who will fill her 'sensible shoes'?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/09/2021
» Last January Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) were ahead in the German opinion polls by 15 points. She was stepping down after 16 years as chancellor (prime minister), but she was still by far the most trusted politician in Germany. Indeed, she is universally known as "Mutti" ("Mummy").
Time for a new discourse on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/09/2021
» A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window.
Iran: Yet another nuclear bungle?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/02/2021
» The self-esteem of two-year-olds and nation states is too fragile for them to admit they were wrong, which makes it hard for them to move on from blunders. That's why the toys don't get picked up and the broken treaties don't get fixed, and why there may be a tantrum (in the case of two-year-olds) or a nuclear war (in the case of the United States and Iran).
When English turkeys vote for Christmas
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/12/2019
» Down on the turkey farm, the Scottish and Irish birds noticed that the smiling man in the festive costume was holding a hatchet behind his back, and hid. The Welsh turkeys looked confused and huddled together squawking. But the English turkeys marched bravely up to the chopping block, confident that this would be a Christmas to remember.