Hopefully Interesting

"The difference between fact and fiction is that fiction must be believable."--Mark Twain When looking back at history it's hard to find too many examples of successful conspiracies that didn't accomplish their goals fairly quickly.  Often conspiracy theories have a greater effect on history than conspiracies themselves.  But of course that makes actual conspiracies that lasted over many years and ended up accomplishing what they wanted all the more interesting. As I was reading The Sleepwalkers , a book about Europe's slide into World War I, I came across the most spectacularly effective conspiracy.  Back around the start of the middle of the 19th century Serbia got its independence from the Ottoman Empire in the  Congress of Berlin .  It fought several wars to gain much of the territory it felt was naturally part of Serbia. During this time there were many groups in Serbia devoted to Serbian expansion.  The main one was the Black Hand, a group fo...

Earlier this month  Opportunity  completed day 4000 of it's much extended 90 day mission.  When I heard about this I thought about the  saddest xkcd comic ever , but I discovered that someone  extended the comic  to a much more cheerful ending. Continuing the xkcd theme, remember that comic with the complete solution for Tic-Tac-Toe ?  It isn't quite as rigorous but Texas Hold'em has also been solved . I'm generally pro-nuclear power , so I'm excited by ways to make nuclear power cheaper and safer . You can argue about most of the discoveries in the European Age of Exporation.  One the one hand the inhabitants clearly already knew about the Americas, Lake Victoria, etc.  On the other hand I don't mind saying that I discovered an excellent Szechuan restaurant recently despite the fact that I'm fairly confident that the owner and cook at the very least had known about it before I did.  Still, there were some places discovered that ac...