Communism does not work - I've been told, because it goes against human nature. (greed).
I don't really agree with that at all. There's much more to human nature than greed.
Communism does not work because in order to implement it, you need to curtail individual liberties. When you curtail individual liberties, someone has to be Big Brother to manage it all. The end result is inevitably fascism.
What happens when you have a nation turn to Communism? All the rich, connected, influential people who don't get murdered in the takeover, become the insiders, the cronies, the Party leaders.
What happens when a communist nation turns to Capitalism? The Party leaders are the rich, connected, the influential, who become the Crony Capitalists, the Gangsters, the Captains of Industry.
It's really only the Technocracy (essentially Constitutional forms of government) as a form of methodology, which has even tried to combat this problem. Law is designed to protect the people from themselves, and Law trumps power. In theory. Via oversight, ethics rules, careful policy. And even Technocracy is vulnerable: Military expediency is open to abuse, abuse of official secrecy, or need to circumvent or suspend otherwise good policy (like posse comitatus, miranda rights, due process, etc). Policy can become so complex that it is functionally opaque, even if the process is actually transparent. When the policy becomes opaque, then exceptions and loopholes become objects of abuse, and privilege is dealt and traded, power is brokered, and you have a system of Feudal Cronyism again.
Maybe some point in the future, IT can supplement Technocracy, so that convoluted policy can become accessible to effective oversight, and eliminate the abuse and power brokering. I don't see that happening any time soon. But it's a potential.
That or the space shuttle is inherrently flawed. Let's scrap the shuttle and make something better, before the next crew dies.
That's not at all what the panel said. Doesn't anybody RTFA anymore?
The panel criticized the lack of program management and system engineering skills in today's generation of NASA managers.
Basically, we're talking about managers who were selected with business backgrounds rather than engineering backgrounds.
The shuttle, like ALL technology, has strengths, weaknesses, trade offs, and dangers. The whole point of sound engineering processes and practices is so that engineers can accurately appraise, mitigate, and manage risks, and make the correct decisions on how to act.
The problem is that the organization's lack of skills in this area are not preventing that. Partially a result of budget cuts, which brought about a "brain-drain", and partially due to the political nature of the organization's appointees.
The criticism that the Shuttle is Inherently Flawed may be true - but ALL machines are inherently flawed. The reason why we're losing vehicles and crews is not because of technical flaws. It's because of organizational flaws.
I remember a meeting of the Chicago Society for Space Settlement* at the Adler Planetarium back in 1978 where space elevators were discussed. Even back then, they knew that carbon-fibers were about the only material that could potentially be strong enough.
It's taken a very long time to get here (I was just a kid at the time), and I pretty much have always dismissed the idea of space elevators, but it's kinda neat to see that the concept is evolving along the same vein as over two decades ago.
*(CSSS merged with the L5 society in the early 1980's.)
I'm just saying that I disagree with the idea that oil prices are going to "return to normal" - aside from the terminology "normal" - they're "normal" now. They're just 3 times what they were 2 years ago, and I think they're going to stay at the $60+ level, or likely go higher. I'm pessimistic enough that we'll see $100/bbl by this time next year, and that other factors are impacting supply to the degree that the traditional seasonal factors will no longer be significant drivers of petroleum.
I don't believe it'll hit $5.00. The reason gas prices are so high is because there were a bunch of outages [bloomberg.com] (fires, accidents, lockdown due to terrorist threats in Saudi Arabia, strikes in South America), and because OPEC underestimated oil demand for this year.
You're understating the following issues: No significant quantities of oil will be coming out of Iraq for a very long time. Saudi Arabia was recently caught overestimating their reserves and capacity (which they normally keep secret). Demand in "developing nations" is growing quickly - India, China, Pakistan, etc. Weak dollar, due to overzealous borrowing, and trade deficit. Lack of capacity expansion investment by most major oil companies.
The summer season, too, works against you. Every summer, gas prices go up.
Then why is this price-spike happening post 7/4? The Summer price-hump usually spins up around 6/1. Which it did. Then it goes up again 7/4, to nail the 3-day weekend-drivers. Then it usually goes up again just before Labor Day at the end of the summer. This year's spike is uncharacteristic of any use-habit-driven rises. This spike is driven by high demand, and concern that supply can not expand in response. There's no reason at all to believe that trend won't continue, until someone invents a Mister Fusion that I can mount on my car.
So much for "cruelty" or "flatulance-driven global warming" as credible reasons why some of the more extreme PETA folks want to put a gun to my head to force me to eat tofu.
If this meat can be grown without gristle, if; even it can be genetically modified to contain less harmful stuff, and more helpful nutrients, I say; I, for one, welcome our new lab-grown filet overlords!
I suspect, however, that the willingness of the population to accept these sorts of abuses is about used up, Wallstreet Journal editorials and Junk Theology misrepresenting itself as Science notwithstanding.
As far as foam-strikes go, they certainly were aware of the foam strikes, but they had no idea how much damage potential there was, until AFTER the Challenger disaster, they tested shooting chunks of foam out of an air cannon at a mock-up of the shuttle wing, and were shocked at the damage. They didn't realize how much damage the foam could cause at 500 mph. They didn't realize how much the foam would slow down in such a short distance. The calculations based on the mass of smaller foam chunks didn't support the theory that they could lose a vehicle. But the air cannon tests proved it conclusively.
Maybe someone should have done an air cannon test back when they first noticed the foam-shedding problem. But hindsight is 20/20.
Of course, you could send your private communications satellite after sufficient testing and regulatory rigamarole, but it would be on NASA candle.
Not really true.
One could always go to the French or the Russians to do spacelaunch. And NASA isn't really involved much at all in the commercial launch business the Air Force does out of Vandenberg.
And that was the 1990's.
Today, there are more options. Sealaunch, Japan is getting into the commercial launch business, and soon, players like SpaceX will be entering the field. Now, as far as heavy launch goes, options are still pretty small. Few of these other players are able to launch really huge satellites, but ESA just launched a really big one on an Arienne, and both Boeing and Lockheed are going to be launching heavies (Delta IV, Atlas V) out of Vandenberg, without any stinkin' NASA "interfering". (if that's what you want to call it).
Spacelaunch has always been, a very complicated, very risky, very expensive business. Players like SpaceX and Sealaunch are changing that for smaller payloads. But the infrastructure needed to loft the heavy stuff, for a long time, will be dominated by the USAF, NASA, and ESA.
Why can't we have a great public space exploration program AND great private space development?
because such an arrangement does not support extremist ideology at either end of the political spectrum, and would allow those of us in the middle to live and prosper free of conflict and power games on which the extremists thrive.
There's certainly a lot of promise for such technology.
For instance, Stephenson's aerostats could "fly" because they had a structure strong enough to maintain an inner vacuum, but light enough to be lighter than the air they displaced. Such technology, if applied on a large scale, could solve many problems we currently have with space travel. A vehicle so constructed could lift spacecraft out of the earth's atmosphere, allowing them to accellerate to orbital speeds using far less propellant. Conversely, the same vehicle would have enough propellant on board, in orbit, to possibly decellerate quickly enough, that it could reach sub-mach speeds while still outside the atmosphere, which works around the problem of the heat generated by attempting to use aerobraking to bleed off 17,000 mph of velocity.
This would have huge ramifications for how spacecraft are designed.
Even if this idea wasn't feasible, it's probably still possible that a much better material could be constructed for a craft like the space shuttle, in terms of being a more durable heat-resistant tile. Perhaps a more flexible ceramic, that could both expand and contract with heating to the airframe, and also deal with the thousands of degrees of heating without melting, and also withstand minor impacts.
There are a lot of possibilities with regard to the materials aspect of nano tech, for space flight. Some are already utilized, in terms of thin films, coatings, etc.
Discoveries uncovered by public funding should be GPL - (or similar - like public domain). If part of the research was government funded, and part was private, then either the specific ideas that were discovered by government should be public, or a pro-rata scheme should be written into the license of the patent.
The goal of government funding for R&D should never be to generate revenue directly. The goal should be to give private research a leg-up, which aids the whole economy, because R&D translates into more or less, productivity enhancement. If the government-funded R&D is locked down by sale and exclusive exploitation by a private entity, that productivity enhancement does not benefit the people who paid for the research, and is basically the equivalent of corporate welfare.
I would not be opposed to US-funded research being public, but only to US companies who hired US workers and paid US taxes - and protect such discoveries from exploitation by foreign governments or companies, or "US companies" who do not have a significant US employment or tax revenue base. (companies with headquartes in Barbados or such - to enjoy the protection of the US military and US law, but to avoid US regulation - ie: traitors).
Because I am who I am, I really like what you're saying.
But tell me, do you have any evidence of your accusation? I would like to propagate this argument, because it applies to nearly every technological endeavor. I know that at the software startup I began work at 15 years ago, the company had bright promise. Then they hired a "professional businessman" to run the company. He succeeded in running the company, technically, into the ground - but on the other hand, he succeeded in positioining the company for a buyout by a competitor, and we all made a lot of money - but the market was deprived of what was technically, a superior product. I see this story repeated time and time again. In fact, Dilbert is a cronicling of this pheonomenon.
Now - I can see the argument that a lot of engineers don't really have the business vision or people skills or negotiating power that a "professional businessman" does. On the other hand, "professional businessmen" tend to lack deep understanding of crucial technical issues that can sandbag their "vision". Your accusation levelled particularly at O'Keefe (and indirectly, at the philosophy that George W Bush governs our nation by: that we need businesspeople running government, not technocrats, or policy engineers, also known as "wonks" - even Political Science folks). I'd really like to see a detailed write up with concrete examples of how O'Keefe, in particular, was a problem in the way you describe. And I'd also like to know if you feel the same about Bush's latest appointee to head of NASA.
um, yeah. You do know, that had the internet bifurcated to commercial|academic model, the anti-government rebels who now control this country would have shut down funding for the academic Internet;
- because it competed with the commercial internet, and deprived private unregulated unsubsidized commercial internet companies (like PacBell or ComCast) a chance to compete on an open playing field without a government subsidized competitor.
- because it gave tenured liberal professors a channel to broadcast their evil communist takeover plans to their lackeys across the world.
- because it's too expensive and cuts into the funding for "more legitimate" government tasks, like payoffs to oil companies, or the development and construction of the next generation of weapons systems to stay ahead of all those axis-of-evil folks out there.
Yes it did. When the hype was at it peak, it was actually preventing companies (such as the one I was working at during that time) from looking into Sun solutions, and HP made its infamous decision to ditch the Alpha line of processors in favor of the upcoming Intanic line.
Me too. Both my employer at the time (in the top 10 largest software co's in the late 90's), and in terms of what our customers were demanding.
IA-64 hype killed Sun AND HP-PA projects. That's a fact. I sat in meetings and co-authored whitepapers discussing the strategic reasons behind our direction.
And Microsoft's on-again-off-again NTPPC and NTAlpha killed those platforms.
Another factor is the rise in popularity of aftermarket wheels and tires.
Most speedos are calibrated to count the number of turns of the wheel, and report the speed based on an assumed wheel-circumference (ie linear distance covered in one turn of the wheel). Change that circumference with different wheels, and your speedo will read inaccurately. Most people don't realize this when they choose perhaps the most popular "performance" mod for their car.
On the vein of the "imagine a beowulf cluster of these" - I reckon that were we to master this technology, we would someday have bacteria that can excrete carbon nanotubes, or perhaps even Hydrogen gas (for our Hydrogen fuel-cell-powered automobiles).
A- Just installed armored cockpit doors in airliners.
Even better: Allow the victims of the tragedy to sue the airlines for negligence. Faced with that payout, UAL and AA would have gone out of business (fuck em) and other airlines would take their place, and they would be smart enough to install armored cockpit doors, at their expense, pass the cost on to customers - hence, those who enjoy the convenience of air travel, will take the responsibility to paying for the security so that others don't have to suffer for it.
Without the US's technical developments used during the Iraq invasion, how many would have died, on both sides? Look at the casualty figures for this war, and previous wars, Vietnam, WWII, WWI, etc.
The abilities to blind an opponent, decapitate C&C, precision bombing, Sigint, etc. All saved countless tens of thousands of lives.
Technical escalation saves lives.
That's not to say that it's not equivalent to a more moral war - perhaps had we not posessed these technical capabilities, we might not have engaged in this war altogether, which would have saved more lives. Personally - I believe the Iraq war was a mistake. Buffoonery of epic proportions.
The fact that no side in a war is the "right hands" for such weapons doesn't change the fact that human hands will always hold weapons, and will always use them against eachother. The question has always been; if we have the ability to use them in the most moral way, will we? The answer is, no, not always. But with the ability to use them in "right" ways and "wrong" ways, at least there's a chance that it will be used in "right" ways.
Rwanda showed that even the simplest tools will be used by men to kill men. It's not the technology that's the problem. It's the will to do evil. Making treaties isn't going to change that either. The side that comes out on top will be the one that breaks the treaty in secret. The alternative is Big Brother installs a camera in everyone's basement to make sure that nobody's brewing anthrax. Someday, maybe there will be a technology that permits that as well. I'm not sure I look forward to that day any more than I like our bloody past.
Slashdot Mirror
meh.
Had Hitler as many years in power as Stalin, he could easily have surpassed Stalin's death toll.
Communism does not work - I've been told, because it goes against human nature. (greed).
I don't really agree with that at all. There's much more to human nature than greed.
Communism does not work because in order to implement it, you need to curtail individual liberties. When you curtail individual liberties, someone has to be Big Brother to manage it all.
The end result is inevitably fascism.
What happens when you have a nation turn to Communism?
All the rich, connected, influential people who don't get murdered in the takeover, become the insiders, the cronies, the Party leaders.
What happens when a communist nation turns to Capitalism?
The Party leaders are the rich, connected, the influential, who become the Crony Capitalists, the Gangsters, the Captains of Industry.
It's really only the Technocracy (essentially Constitutional forms of government) as a form of methodology, which has even tried to combat this problem. Law is designed to protect the people from themselves, and Law trumps power. In theory. Via oversight, ethics rules, careful policy. And even Technocracy is vulnerable:
Military expediency is open to abuse, abuse of official secrecy, or need to circumvent or suspend otherwise good policy (like posse comitatus, miranda rights, due process, etc).
Policy can become so complex that it is functionally opaque, even if the process is actually transparent. When the policy becomes opaque, then exceptions and loopholes become objects of abuse, and privilege is dealt and traded, power is brokered, and you have a system of Feudal Cronyism again.
Maybe some point in the future, IT can supplement Technocracy, so that convoluted policy can become accessible to effective oversight, and eliminate the abuse and power brokering. I don't see that happening any time soon. But it's a potential.
That or the space shuttle is inherrently flawed. Let's scrap the shuttle and make something better, before the next crew dies.
That's not at all what the panel said.
Doesn't anybody RTFA anymore?
The panel criticized the lack of program management and system engineering skills in today's generation of NASA managers.
Basically, we're talking about managers who were selected with business backgrounds rather than engineering backgrounds.
The shuttle, like ALL technology, has strengths, weaknesses, trade offs, and dangers. The whole point of sound engineering processes and practices is so that engineers can accurately appraise, mitigate, and manage risks, and make the correct decisions on how to act.
The problem is that the organization's lack of skills in this area are not preventing that. Partially a result of budget cuts, which brought about a "brain-drain", and partially due to the political nature of the organization's appointees.
The criticism that the Shuttle is Inherently Flawed may be true - but ALL machines are inherently flawed. The reason why we're losing vehicles and crews is not because of technical flaws. It's because of organizational flaws.
I remember a meeting of the Chicago Society for Space Settlement* at the Adler Planetarium back in 1978 where space elevators were discussed. Even back then, they knew that carbon-fibers were about the only material that could potentially be strong enough.
It's taken a very long time to get here (I was just a kid at the time), and I pretty much have always dismissed the idea of space elevators, but it's kinda neat to see that the concept is evolving along the same vein as over two decades ago.
*(CSSS merged with the L5 society in the early 1980's.)
However, capitalism gives mild psychopaths a legal outlet for their manipulative urges.
So does legalizing murder.
I'm just saying that I disagree with the idea that oil prices are going to "return to normal" - aside from the terminology "normal" - they're "normal" now. They're just 3 times what they were 2 years ago, and I think they're going to stay at the $60+ level, or likely go higher. I'm pessimistic enough that we'll see $100/bbl by this time next year, and that other factors are impacting supply to the degree that the traditional seasonal factors will no longer be significant drivers of petroleum.
Fair enough,
I don't believe it'll hit $5.00. The reason gas prices are so high is because there were a bunch of outages [bloomberg.com] (fires, accidents, lockdown due to terrorist threats in Saudi Arabia, strikes in South America), and because OPEC underestimated oil demand for this year.
You're understating the following issues:
No significant quantities of oil will be coming out of Iraq for a very long time.
Saudi Arabia was recently caught overestimating their reserves and capacity (which they normally keep secret).
Demand in "developing nations" is growing quickly - India, China, Pakistan, etc.
Weak dollar, due to overzealous borrowing, and trade deficit.
Lack of capacity expansion investment by most major oil companies.
The summer season, too, works against you. Every summer, gas prices go up.
Then why is this price-spike happening post 7/4? The Summer price-hump usually spins up around 6/1. Which it did. Then it goes up again 7/4, to nail the 3-day weekend-drivers. Then it usually goes up again just before Labor Day at the end of the summer. This year's spike is uncharacteristic of any use-habit-driven rises. This spike is driven by high demand, and concern that supply can not expand in response. There's no reason at all to believe that trend won't continue, until someone invents a Mister Fusion that I can mount on my car.
They will be back to normal soon, probably within a year.
Don't forget to tip Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy on your way out of Oz Dorothy.
So much for "cruelty" or "flatulance-driven global warming" as credible reasons why some of the more extreme PETA folks want to put a gun to my head to force me to eat tofu.
If this meat can be grown without gristle, if; even it can be genetically modified to contain less harmful stuff, and more helpful nutrients, I say; I, for one, welcome our new lab-grown filet overlords!
I suspect, however, that the willingness of the population to accept these sorts of abuses is about used up, Wallstreet Journal editorials and Junk Theology misrepresenting itself as Science notwithstanding.
dream on.
As far as foam-strikes go, they certainly were aware of the foam strikes, but they had no idea how much damage potential there was, until AFTER the Challenger disaster, they tested shooting chunks of foam out of an air cannon at a mock-up of the shuttle wing, and were shocked at the damage. They didn't realize how much damage the foam could cause at 500 mph. They didn't realize how much the foam would slow down in such a short distance. The calculations based on the mass of smaller foam chunks didn't support the theory that they could lose a vehicle. But the air cannon tests proved it conclusively.
Maybe someone should have done an air cannon test back when they first noticed the foam-shedding problem. But hindsight is 20/20.
Of course, you could send your private communications satellite after sufficient testing and regulatory rigamarole, but it would be on NASA candle.
Not really true.
One could always go to the French or the Russians to do spacelaunch. And NASA isn't really involved much at all in the commercial launch business the Air Force does out of Vandenberg.
And that was the 1990's.
Today, there are more options. Sealaunch, Japan is getting into the commercial launch business, and soon, players like SpaceX will be entering the field. Now, as far as heavy launch goes, options are still pretty small. Few of these other players are able to launch really huge satellites, but ESA just launched a really big one on an Arienne, and both Boeing and Lockheed are going to be launching heavies (Delta IV, Atlas V) out of Vandenberg, without any stinkin' NASA "interfering". (if that's what you want to call it).
Spacelaunch has always been, a very complicated, very risky, very expensive business. Players like SpaceX and Sealaunch are changing that for smaller payloads. But the infrastructure needed to loft the heavy stuff, for a long time, will be dominated by the USAF, NASA, and ESA.
Why can't we have a great public space exploration program AND great private space development?
because such an arrangement does not support extremist ideology at either end of the political spectrum, and would allow those of us in the middle to live and prosper free of conflict and power games on which the extremists thrive.
That's why.
There's certainly a lot of promise for such technology.
For instance, Stephenson's aerostats could "fly" because they had a structure strong enough to maintain an inner vacuum, but light enough to be lighter than the air they displaced. Such technology, if applied on a large scale, could solve many problems we currently have with space travel. A vehicle so constructed could lift spacecraft out of the earth's atmosphere, allowing them to accellerate to orbital speeds using far less propellant. Conversely, the same vehicle would have enough propellant on board, in orbit, to possibly decellerate quickly enough, that it could reach sub-mach speeds while still outside the atmosphere, which works around the problem of the heat generated by attempting to use aerobraking to bleed off 17,000 mph of velocity.
This would have huge ramifications for how spacecraft are designed.
Even if this idea wasn't feasible, it's probably still possible that a much better material could be constructed for a craft like the space shuttle, in terms of being a more durable heat-resistant tile. Perhaps a more flexible ceramic, that could both expand and contract with heating to the airframe, and also deal with the thousands of degrees of heating without melting, and also withstand minor impacts.
There are a lot of possibilities with regard to the materials aspect of nano tech, for space flight. Some are already utilized, in terms of thin films, coatings, etc.
Discoveries uncovered by public funding should be GPL - (or similar - like public domain). If part of the research was government funded, and part was private, then either the specific ideas that were discovered by government should be public, or a pro-rata scheme should be written into the license of the patent.
The goal of government funding for R&D should never be to generate revenue directly. The goal should be to give private research a leg-up, which aids the whole economy, because R&D translates into more or less, productivity enhancement. If the government-funded R&D is locked down by sale and exclusive exploitation by a private entity, that productivity enhancement does not benefit the people who paid for the research, and is basically the equivalent of corporate welfare.
I would not be opposed to US-funded research being public, but only to US companies who hired US workers and paid US taxes - and protect such discoveries from exploitation by foreign governments or companies, or "US companies" who do not have a significant US employment or tax revenue base. (companies with headquartes in Barbados or such - to enjoy the protection of the US military and US law, but to avoid US regulation - ie: traitors).
Because I am who I am, I really like what you're saying.
But tell me, do you have any evidence of your accusation? I would like to propagate this argument, because it applies to nearly every technological endeavor. I know that at the software startup I began work at 15 years ago, the company had bright promise. Then they hired a "professional businessman" to run the company. He succeeded in running the company, technically, into the ground - but on the other hand, he succeeded in positioining the company for a buyout by a competitor, and we all made a lot of money - but the market was deprived of what was technically, a superior product. I see this story repeated time and time again. In fact, Dilbert is a cronicling of this pheonomenon.
Now - I can see the argument that a lot of engineers don't really have the business vision or people skills or negotiating power that a "professional businessman" does. On the other hand, "professional businessmen" tend to lack deep understanding of crucial technical issues that can sandbag their "vision". Your accusation levelled particularly at O'Keefe (and indirectly, at the philosophy that George W Bush governs our nation by: that we need businesspeople running government, not technocrats, or policy engineers, also known as "wonks" - even Political Science folks). I'd really like to see a detailed write up with concrete examples of how O'Keefe, in particular, was a problem in the way you describe. And I'd also like to know if you feel the same about Bush's latest appointee to head of NASA.
um, yeah. You do know, that had the internet bifurcated to commercial|academic model, the anti-government rebels who now control this country would have shut down funding for the academic Internet;
- because it competed with the commercial internet, and deprived private unregulated unsubsidized commercial internet companies (like PacBell or ComCast) a chance to compete on an open playing field without a government subsidized competitor.
- because it gave tenured liberal professors a channel to broadcast their evil communist takeover plans to their lackeys across the world.
- because it's too expensive and cuts into the funding for "more legitimate" government tasks, like payoffs to oil companies, or the development and construction of the next generation of weapons systems to stay ahead of all those axis-of-evil folks out there.
Yes it did. When the hype was at it peak, it was actually preventing companies (such as the one I was working at during that time) from looking into Sun solutions, and HP made its infamous decision to ditch the Alpha line of processors in favor of the upcoming Intanic line.
Me too.
Both my employer at the time (in the top 10 largest software co's in the late 90's), and in terms of what our customers were demanding.
IA-64 hype killed Sun AND HP-PA projects. That's a fact. I sat in meetings and co-authored whitepapers discussing the strategic reasons behind our direction.
And Microsoft's on-again-off-again NTPPC and NTAlpha killed those platforms.
You'd have to be a masochist to run Final Cut Pro on Rosetta. Thank you sir may I have another!
either that or a MacOSXist.
Thank you sir, may I have another (mouse button)?
Another factor is the rise in popularity of aftermarket wheels and tires.
Most speedos are calibrated to count the number of turns of the wheel, and report the speed based on an assumed wheel-circumference (ie linear distance covered in one turn of the wheel). Change that circumference with different wheels, and your speedo will read inaccurately. Most people don't realize this when they choose perhaps the most popular "performance" mod for their car.
On the vein of the "imagine a beowulf cluster of these" - I reckon that were we to master this technology, we would someday have bacteria that can excrete carbon nanotubes, or perhaps even Hydrogen gas (for our Hydrogen fuel-cell-powered automobiles).
Scare tactics always work in US. Tell them, doom is near and people will do anything, even hire you ;)!
. . . by the way, did I mention that I'm an antiterrorism expert?
A- Just installed armored cockpit doors in airliners.
Even better:
Allow the victims of the tragedy to sue the airlines for negligence. Faced with that payout, UAL and AA would have gone out of business (fuck em) and other airlines would take their place, and they would be smart enough to install armored cockpit doors, at their expense, pass the cost on to customers - hence, those who enjoy the convenience of air travel, will take the responsibility to paying for the security so that others don't have to suffer for it.
Or to put it less tactfully: poor people breed faster than rich people
The tighter corellation was to the average education level of women in the population.
In other words, a College Education is the most effective birth-control method known to man.
Escalation kills.
That's bullshit.
Without the US's technical developments used during the Iraq invasion, how many would have died, on both sides? Look at the casualty figures for this war, and previous wars, Vietnam, WWII, WWI, etc.
The abilities to blind an opponent, decapitate C&C, precision bombing, Sigint, etc. All saved countless tens of thousands of lives.
Technical escalation saves lives.
That's not to say that it's not equivalent to a more moral war - perhaps had we not posessed these technical capabilities, we might not have engaged in this war altogether, which would have saved more lives. Personally - I believe the Iraq war was a mistake. Buffoonery of epic proportions.
The fact that no side in a war is the "right hands" for such weapons doesn't change the fact that human hands will always hold weapons, and will always use them against eachother. The question has always been; if we have the ability to use them in the most moral way, will we? The answer is, no, not always. But with the ability to use them in "right" ways and "wrong" ways, at least there's a chance that it will be used in "right" ways.
Rwanda showed that even the simplest tools will be used by men to kill men. It's not the technology that's the problem. It's the will to do evil. Making treaties isn't going to change that either. The side that comes out on top will be the one that breaks the treaty in secret. The alternative is Big Brother installs a camera in everyone's basement to make sure that nobody's brewing anthrax. Someday, maybe there will be a technology that permits that as well. I'm not sure I look forward to that day any more than I like our bloody past.