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Top Physicist Advocates Scientific Self-Censorship
spamania writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is running this article about a new book by Britain's astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, that advocates restricting scientific research in certain fields in the interest of public safety. In "Our Final Hour", Rees lends a sober, respectable voice to the oft-irrational ranting about nanotech, biotech, and other fields."
http://www.goatse.cx
1. Depleted uranium munitions fired in Iraq don't require cleaning up because they disapate instantaneously on impact and pose no long term threat to people or the environment.
Jeez, I guess the UN science teams who detected DU munitions fired by US aircraft over the former Yugoslavia seven years earlier were just imagining things.
Nice to know that, after bombing a society to hell and back in the name of "liberation", the US military doesn't even feel obliged to clean up its own mess.
2. Saddam Hussein was the biggest user of chemical weapons since World War II.
Isn't it funny how the US military conveniently forgets Vietnam whenever it wants to? Agent Orange any one?
Only last week my girlfriend read an article about how third generation birth defects are all too common in Vietnam, almost 30 years after that war ended; about how, on aborted missions, US bombers would ditch their weapons packages over reservoirs before returning to base; and how the US government denies any link between use of chemical weapons then and the ongoing damage to that county.
And let's not forget that it was the US that sold Saddam most of his chemical stockpile, even knowing his reputation for brutality.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
>>Would a law against using aircraft for suicidal terrorism have stopped Al Queda from taking down the WTC? Nope
Nope indeed, but bombing them back to bedrock seems to be doing the trick.
I think science should focus on eradicating all traces of religion first, then we can all pursue academia for the sake of discovery.
If you're so in favour of self-censorship, why don't you STFU?
You know, the comic Transmetropolitan already covered most of this. They had disassembler nanobots that could destroy buildings, cities, even the world, that could be made by altering the legal codes on your own personal maker (Think Replicator). However, the cops had SUPER disassemblers, nanobots specifically designed to disassemble other nanobots, for use when people became THAT antisocial.
Restricting science won't do anything but prevent the cure. But thats been said a thousand times.
In the case of the Palestinians, you are assuming that they could make a coherent verbal arguement. They only know the Arab/Muslim way: anger, suicide martyrs, etc. If the Palestinians weren't so terrible themselves, they would have long since had their own state. However being non-violent is more than Arabs can bring themselves to be.