New Laser System Targets Mosquitoes

An anonymous reader writes "In the Cold War the so-called 'Star Wars defense system' proposed using lasers to destroy incoming Soviet missiles. In a 2007 brainstorming session aimed at combating malaria, Dr. Lowell Wood, the architect of that system, proposed modifying his original idea to kill mosquitoes. The cover of today's Wall Street Journal contains an article that highlights this initiative as well as a few others, like using a giant flashlight to disrupt mosquitoes' vision and using the insects to vaccinate, in the war against malaria. The system is intelligent enough to avoid noncombatants like humans and butterflies and can even tell the difference between females, the blood-drinkers, and males. My favorite quote: 'We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of power.'"

Comments

Re:And then?

[CannonballHead]

Get this through your head: there is no "order of things." God/Gaia/Mother Nature does not exist and never did. Eden never happened.

Amazing logic :) Whether or not God exists is not necessarily the question here; however, "Gaia" or "Mother Nature" certainly does not. While there are definitely laws of "nature" and natural this or that, there is definitely not some conscious "mother nature" sort of thing.

And for the record, as far as this as it relates to the concept of God (assuming a Christian/Biblical concept of God), I don't think many monotheistic religions (and certainly not Biblical Christianity) will assert that the way things are now is "perfect" and humans should not touch it lest we disturb the perfect balance of nature. That seems to be more of a pagan, pantheistic or eastern religion sort of idea... or, I suppose, can vaguely come out of an atheistic evolutionary idea, but IMO that's also not being ideologically honest (it seems to me that an atheistic evolutionist would believe that humans are just part of the evolutionary chain and thus can't "disrupt" nature, they ARE nature, just like monkeys, rabbits, and fish.. and mosquitoes..). You seem inclined to that ideological position, though, so feel free to correct me on the worldview consistency there.

Anyways. Main point: assuming there is some perfect/balanced natural order that humans are disrupting seems like it would require a strange syncretism of "god" and paganism... i.e., that there is some impersonal force behind "nature" that keeps it running/balanced and disrupting it is dangerous. That's definitely not a traditional concept of "God," hence my disagreement with you associating it, there. Actually, the mother nature/gaia sorts of ideas seem to coincide more with RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights more than anything else I can think of (Druids and their 'deities,' the whole "true neutral" idea, the "balance," yin-yang eastern ideas, etc). Which as influenced the new-age movements, I suppose.

Re:I would be delighted... tsarkon on budget

[A nonymous Coward]

Google for "national debt". Compare the Republican years with the Democratic years. (For those who are too lazy, US national debt decreased yearly from WW II until Reagan hit in 1980. He doubled it, Bush I increased it some more, and it leveled off under Clinton. Bush II doubled or tripled it. Obama is going to increase it, but mostly to repair the damage done by Bush II.)

If social contracts level off the national debt and Star Wars and Iraq (twice) increase it, I'm all in favor of social contract spending.

Re:And then?

[MinistryOfTruthiness]

The "god" behind nature's balance is essential natural scarcity economics. Supply and demand. Move supply, and demand adjusts or moves to a complementary good.

The Earth is a dynamic system, and the fact that it's generally in balance is a product of the fact that plants and animals adjust to their surroundings. Push off the balance, and it wobbles around until it finds another balance point -- still balanced, but differently so.

We may or may not like the new balance point, but that's another discussion entirely. Likely over time we'll adjust right along with everything else because, simply put, there's no choice in the matter.