To me Moebius feels rather unique. I'm no fan of mysticism but I appreciate Moebius's spirituality, in an ambiguous way: It feels good, and that is valuable, even though I don't take the philosophy behind it seriously from an intellectual point of view.
Moebius started with Major Fatal(Le Garage Hermetique). It was an experiment in freewheeling on intuition. There's no coherent story or style, just playing around and making things that look like a story. Sometimes funny, sometimes just beautiful. http://5.asset.soup.io/asset/2278/1541_9fd7.jpeg
A more recent picture like this (Starwatcher) just feels very nice to watchhttp://moebiusribbon1960.blog.nordjob.com/
Blueberry was much more conventional but it evolved into an excellent western. The story was not written by Giraud. This cover image is a remake of a scene with James Garner, but the original doesn't have the odd sense of peace and violence http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/erica/-----moebius/moebius06.jpg
I wouldn't call Moebius representative of french SF comics but maybe it's easier to see the common elements from a distance. There could be a strong sense of visual esthetic in french comics. Or spanish. Italian. Belgian.
I wonder what a child psychologist would have to say about that:) Possibly that your parents should pay more attention to what books they leave lying about. The graphics were by Gillon, which could explain the darkish atmosphere of the book. Masterful artist though. He also draws on a very large format. I've seen originals of his and an original page is about 1m high.
Forest is(was) usually more frivolous in style. Liked to put in a lot of conversation too. Wordy son of a bitch:) Most of it is only available in french.
Who's Forrest? Do you mean Jean-Claude Forest? Now that's a hidden treasure. I always had the impression he was completely forgotton apart from Barbarella - which again was known only because of the movie.
"Sur L'etoile" started out as a book for Citroen cars but grew into a series of 6 books in all(the world of Edena), and those were not publicity related in any way.
There was supposed to be a Dune movie and some work happened on it but it was abandoned.
Beg your pardon, nobody would go as far as stating there has been an irreversible decision to never a bomb. I could have been clearer concerning what they're saying vs my judgement of what they're thinking, but you need to be aware of the possibilities in order to be able to choose the best fit. Iran wants the option to build a bomb, but they don't want to build one. That is the military component of the civilian nuclear program(there is also the considerable nonmilitary component). It's a deterrence. It can be a remote option, an emergency exit that is very difficult to use. It would mean pulling the plug on the NPT and throwing out all observers. Actually building a bomb would be a very undesirable outcome. This is similar to Japan's position, although Japan really wants to be as close to a bomb as possible(the Japanese target is a build time of two months), which is different from Iran. Iran does not intend to try and get close.
Now if you go over the relevant statements that have been made, and there have been many, there are two factors to take in account. - stay on the safe side: you can never expand with certainty the statement that there is no decision to build a bomb, to the statement that there will never be such decision. - there are political reasons to phrase things as threatening as possible: you have to keep the pressure on Iran, and if your point of view diverges too far, in too many respects, from common viewpoints it will not be taken seriously. You certainly have to remain acceptable to the pressure groups.
So the preferred interpretation will tend towards Iran being poised to build one, and waiting for the right moment. Or trying to build one but being temporarily held back by the US. Or still being in doubt. So when the Haaretz article title says Iran is 'still mulling' they're really giving the most threatening interpretation. It's more threatening than the report actually. In the case of Panetta he's actually talking gibberish on the face of it, unless you're aware of it that he's talking to different audiences simultaneously.
"Hedging their bets" means they would like to build a bomb but not at any cost. This doesn't fit well with the history of the conflict. The real issue is whether Iran is allowed to be a regional player. The claim that they're building a bomb is 30 years old, and has been hyped by Israel in the last 20 years. It's not easy to navigate between the propaganda in mainstream media and the conspiracy thinking in alternative media. Why are you saying "secret enrichment plant"? It is a fully monitored plant. The reason the newer plants are well protected are both political and military. The reason is not "because they want a bomb". The reason is they want to be independent. If they hadn't been protected Israel would have destroyed them in order to assert their dominance. That's the reasoning behind bombing that syrian plant: assert your freedom to strike whenever you feel like it. The reason was not "we were worried about that plant". Not at all. Here's a very recent article about it by Larry Derfner: http://972mag.com/author/larryd/ The stories about secrecy are an interpretation. Iran's attitude has varied but since Ahmadinejahd they've been less flexible, more going by the book: if the NPT says you should announce a plant 6 months before you start moving nuclear material into it, then it will be six months. Iran just now gave the IAEA access to Parchin, a contentious concession on their part. Sure enough there is already a story of an anonymous IAEA expert saying Iran just wanted to delay access so they had time to hide their illegal activities.
That's the iranian position: you can have all the safeguards you want (usually that is additional protocol 3.1 to the NPT) provided we get to be accepted. And that includes nuclear enrichment. This position is unacceptable to the US and Israel because they want to keep Iran as small as possible and the nuclear en
The problem with the Iraq invasion from the US perspective is the ridiculous humanitarian mission of "liberating" Iraqis. It should have been a simple and relatively short mission of "destroy their military capability, search for wmds" which would have been done in a year, compared to a decade.
It was done in a year. In 1991 the nuclear weapons program was dismantled and the chemical weapons destroyed. For practical purposes Iraq's power was reduced enough to make them manageable. You don't need total absence of chemical weapons in order to normalize relations, they're nothing compared to nukes, although you can make it part of the agreement. You don't need a nice regime either, and Iraq was a pretty ugly regime. Iran is nothing like that. Syria a bit.
There was an intention to normalize relations but this was made impossible by internal US politics. Clinton then came up with the alternative to kill Saddam (using, amongst others, the IAEA) and then normalize relations. But that failed.
which proves the scientists' claim of course. If even the scientists can't get the first thing right about democracy, then how could anyone else be trusted with it.
The consensus is that Iran has not made any decision to build a bomb. This may sound incredible because this kind of statements only is made in a low key fashion so they are mostly going unnoticed. Sometimes they appear as little throwaway lines in articles with a general thrust that is always very anti-Iran. Panetta, Dempsey, Clapper, and in Israel Barak, Dagan, Pardo are on record as confirming this. It is becoming more visible because of the current tension between those pushing for war and those trying to avoid it.
Panetta on CBS news. Odd inconsistency in his tough talk about Iran. www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57354647/face-the-nation-transcript-january-8-2012/
Now it's always possible that Iran goes as far as possible within the NPT limits and then suddenly locks the IAEA out and starts making a bomb. It is always possible with every nuclear capable country. But that would be a very visible and costly move. And there is no indication they want to take that step. The assessment can be colored a bit "still mulling creating a bomb", but all that is behind it is there is no intent. It's not as if they're on the edge of taking a decision.
This is close to Iran's position on the matter. They stick to the NPTprotocol but if you want more intrusive inspections this will have to be the result of negotiations - or credible arguments to support being worried. A critical factor will be that the enrichment program will have to be accepted by the US. They have agreed before with an extension of the NPT protocol. That didn't help them much. They got labeled 'axis of evil' during that time.
The most recent incident was that the IAEA wanted to visit parchin. This had to do with a container to do explosives testing. The IAEA claimed it might be used for nuclear explosives. This track has been thoroughly debunked. The reality is, it clearly is for use in making nanodiamonds .
Infrastructure is more important than the technological challenge.
Richard Bulliett In "The Camel and the Wheel" explains how the camel came to replace the wheel in the middle east for almost 1000 years, an evolution in reverse. Carts with wheels may be more economic for moving things, once you have good roads. But if you have to calculate in the cost of the road and road maintenance then carts easily become more expensive, especially if the cart owner has to pay directly in the form of toll. You can't demand the same toll from the camel owner because they can easily find an alternative path.
merely restates the Whorf hypothesis (badly and out of context) and then proceeds to misapply it. a fault that also applies to Whorf himself and to the critics of Whorf. Just take the 'many words for snow' discussion. It is obvious that Innuit will have many concepts related to snow and ice, and many related words or compact reusable phrases. The example of many words for ice has been bashed with the claim tjhat 'they're not really words, more like small phrases', thereby completely missing the point. Having the compact reusable phrases again enhances the matching concepts and enhances communication about them. I think Whorf still underestimated our flexibility. Not having a word for something never makes it impossible to think something, but it does make it harder. Missing a whole framework of words and concepts may make certain thoughts very hard to achieve.
why is the US so worried.They are? Nobody worries about Iranian offensive power. It's a bit like during the time of Iraq. All the time there were stories about how dangerous Iraq was, and then there's this little comment of Wolfowitz saying he could take that country with 10.000 people.
No, torture can get you verifiable truths. So you have to have the right questions. If a treasure is hidden in a forest and you know who knows the location then the location can be extracted through torture and it can be verified. If you're asking "who is helping the resistance"(nowadays we call them terrorists) then you get a name but verification is hard. So there's a lot of additional torturing of additional people in order to get something verifiable. or not, you just keep working on unreliable information. "Where's the drop-off location" looks like something verifiable.
Part of the discussion will be about what will be your "typical torture case". As in what's the code to stop the atomic bomb that's hidden in newyork from exploding. The point there is that an imagined or at least very untypical case is used to represent a category. Therefore if you accept the representative example then you have to accept the conclusion. That is plain wrong and it often is very dishonest. The reality is massive use of low-yield strategies of just random torturing to see if it turns up something that you can build on. It's about of terrorizing the population and recruiting informants. I'm not saying that doesn't work either.
I'd rather focus on how low you'd go in order to score in a conflict, rather than whether it actually works.
This bothers me too. When you take a bunch of measurements, whatever their interpretation or value, and you make a nice visualization with them, it all becomes more real.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually didn't know which xkcd link.I was trying to make an odd twist that didn't come off. I'll console myself with the simpsons then :)
you know which one I mean, just imagine I put it here.
Don't be evil ...without cause.
To me Moebius feels rather unique. I'm no fan of mysticism but I appreciate Moebius's spirituality, in an ambiguous way:
It feels good, and that is valuable, even though I don't take the philosophy behind it seriously from an intellectual point of view.
Moebius started with Major Fatal(Le Garage Hermetique). It was an experiment in freewheeling on intuition.
There's no coherent story or style, just playing around and making things that look like a story. Sometimes funny, sometimes just beautiful.
http://5.asset.soup.io/asset/2278/1541_9fd7.jpeg
A more recent picture like this (Starwatcher) just feels very nice to watchhttp://moebiusribbon1960.blog.nordjob.com/
Blueberry was much more conventional but it evolved into an excellent western. The story was not written by Giraud. This cover image is a remake of a scene with James Garner, but the original doesn't have the odd sense of peace and violence
http://www.designboom.com/cms/images/erica/-----moebius/moebius06.jpg
I wouldn't call Moebius representative of french SF comics but maybe it's easier to see the common elements from a distance. There could be a strong sense of visual esthetic in french comics. Or spanish. Italian. Belgian.
Here's Silvio Cadelo in Italy ? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L8xXmJGGy_U/TZALHN0GziI/AAAAAAAAiw8/JdKZ1qydi-k/s1600/015_Silvio-Cadelo_The-Jealous-God.jpg . Looks similar if you don't look too closely.
I wonder what a child psychologist would have to say about that :) Possibly that your parents should pay more attention to what books they leave lying about. The graphics were by Gillon, which could explain the darkish atmosphere of the book. Masterful artist though. He also draws on a very large format. I've seen originals of his and an original page is about 1m high.
Forest is(was) usually more frivolous in style. Liked to put in a lot of conversation too. Wordy son of a bitch :) Most of it is only available in french.
Who's Forrest? Do you mean Jean-Claude Forest? Now that's a hidden treasure. I always had the impression he was completely forgotton apart from Barbarella - which again was known only because of the movie.
"Sur L'etoile" started out as a book for Citroen cars but grew into a series of 6 books in all(the world of Edena), and those were not publicity related in any way.
There was supposed to be a Dune movie and some work happened on it but it was abandoned.
The moebius site: http://www.moebius.fr/
The blueberry site: http://www.blueberry-lesite.com/
US intelligence
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html
and Israeli intellence, first paragraph
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-iran-still-mulling-whether-to-build-nuclear-bomb-1.407866
Both saying Iran has not made any decision to make a bomb. And yes, I know you expected another angle :)
Beg your pardon, nobody would go as far as stating there has been an irreversible decision to never a bomb.
I could have been clearer concerning what they're saying vs my judgement of what they're thinking,
but you need to be aware of the possibilities in order to be able to choose the best fit.
Iran wants the option to build a bomb, but they don't want to build one.
That is the military component of the civilian nuclear program(there is also the considerable nonmilitary component). It's a deterrence.
It can be a remote option, an emergency exit that is very difficult to use. It would mean pulling the plug on the NPT and throwing out all observers. Actually building a bomb would be a very undesirable outcome.
This is similar to Japan's position, although Japan really wants to be as close to a bomb as possible(the Japanese target is a build time of two months), which is different from Iran. Iran does not intend to try and get close.
Now if you go over the relevant statements that have been made, and there have been many, there are two factors to take in account.
- stay on the safe side: you can never expand with certainty the statement that there is no decision to build a bomb, to the statement that there will never be such decision.
- there are political reasons to phrase things as threatening as possible: you have to keep the pressure on Iran, and if your point of view diverges too far, in too many respects, from common viewpoints it will not be taken seriously. You certainly have to remain acceptable to the pressure groups.
So the preferred interpretation will tend towards Iran being poised to build one, and waiting for the right moment.
Or trying to build one but being temporarily held back by the US. Or still being in doubt.
So when the Haaretz article title says Iran is 'still mulling' they're really giving the most threatening interpretation. It's more threatening than the report actually.
In the case of Panetta he's actually talking gibberish on the face of it, unless you're aware of it that he's talking to different audiences simultaneously.
"Hedging their bets" means they would like to build a bomb but not at any cost. This doesn't fit well with the history of the conflict.
The real issue is whether Iran is allowed to be a regional player.
The claim that they're building a bomb is 30 years old, and has been hyped by Israel in the last 20 years. It's not easy to navigate between the propaganda in mainstream media and the conspiracy thinking in alternative media. Why are you saying "secret enrichment plant"? It is a fully monitored plant.
The reason the newer plants are well protected are both political and military. The reason is not "because they want a bomb". The reason is they want to be independent. If they hadn't been protected Israel would have destroyed them in order to assert their dominance. That's the reasoning behind bombing that syrian plant: assert your freedom to strike whenever you feel like it. The reason was not "we were worried about that plant". Not at all. Here's a very recent article about it by Larry Derfner: http://972mag.com/author/larryd/
The stories about secrecy are an interpretation. Iran's attitude has varied but since Ahmadinejahd they've been less flexible, more going by the book: if the NPT says you should announce a plant 6 months before you start moving nuclear material into it, then it will be six months. Iran just now gave the IAEA access to Parchin, a contentious concession on their part.
Sure enough there is already a story of an anonymous IAEA expert saying Iran just wanted to delay access so they had time to hide their illegal activities.
That's the iranian position: you can have all the safeguards you want (usually that is additional protocol 3.1 to the NPT)
provided we get to be accepted. And that includes nuclear enrichment. This position is unacceptable to the US and Israel
because they want to keep Iran as small as possible and the nuclear en
It was done in a year. In 1991 the nuclear weapons program was dismantled and the chemical weapons destroyed. For practical purposes Iraq's power was reduced enough to make them manageable. You don't need total absence of chemical weapons in order to normalize relations, they're nothing compared to nukes, although you can make it part of the agreement. You don't need a nice regime either, and Iraq was a pretty ugly regime. Iran is nothing like that. Syria a bit.
There was an intention to normalize relations but this was made impossible by internal US politics. Clinton then came up with the alternative to kill Saddam (using, amongst others, the IAEA) and then normalize relations. But that failed.
which proves the scientists' claim of course. If even the scientists can't get the first thing right about democracy, then how could anyone else be trusted with it.
The consensus is that Iran has not made any decision to build a bomb.
This may sound incredible because this kind of statements only is made in a low key fashion so they are mostly going unnoticed.
Sometimes they appear as little throwaway lines in articles with a general thrust that is always very anti-Iran.
Panetta, Dempsey, Clapper, and in Israel Barak, Dagan, Pardo are on record as confirming this.
It is becoming more visible because of the current tension between those pushing for war and those trying to avoid it.
Panetta on CBS news. Odd inconsistency in his tough talk about Iran.
www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57354647/face-the-nation-transcript-january-8-2012/
Israeli intelligence report
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-iran-still-mulling-whether-to-build-nuclear-bomb-1.407866
Barak
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/19/israel-tamp-down-iran-war-threats/
Even the NYTimes has picked up on it now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/middleeast/in-din-over-iran-echoes-of-iraq-war-news-analysis.html?_r=3
Now it's always possible that Iran goes as far as possible within the NPT limits and then suddenly locks the IAEA out and starts making a bomb. It is always possible with every nuclear capable country. But that would be a very visible and costly move. And there is no indication they want to take that step. The assessment can be colored a bit "still mulling creating a bomb", but all that is behind it is there is no intent. It's not as if they're on the edge of taking a decision.
This is close to Iran's position on the matter. They stick to the NPTprotocol but if you want more intrusive inspections this will have to be the result of negotiations - or credible arguments to support being worried. A critical factor will be that the enrichment program will have to be accepted by the US.
They have agreed before with an extension of the NPT protocol. That didn't help them much. They got labeled 'axis of evil' during that time.
The most recent incident was that the IAEA wanted to visit parchin. This had to do with a container to do explosives testing. The IAEA claimed it might be used for nuclear explosives. This track has been thoroughly debunked. The reality is, it clearly is for use in making nanodiamonds .
Close. The answer was taxes.
Infrastructure is more important than the technological challenge.
Richard Bulliett In "The Camel and the Wheel" explains how the camel came to replace the wheel in the middle east for almost 1000 years, an evolution in reverse. Carts with wheels may be more economic for moving things, once you have good roads. But if you have to calculate in the cost of the road and road maintenance then carts easily become more expensive, especially if the cart owner has to pay directly in the form of toll. You can't demand the same toll from the camel owner because they can easily find an alternative path.
Methane or hydrogen actually. You can verify by checking the color of the flame if you burn it.
I save it for the elevator
that joke is as old as humanity. They 've been pulling that one since men lived in trees(hence the elevators).
A real Jedi would have used his mindtrick so the thief would have thought 'there are no lightsabers to steal around here' and left.
merely restates the Whorf hypothesis (badly and out of context) and then proceeds to misapply it. a fault that also applies to Whorf himself and to the critics of Whorf. Just take the 'many words for snow' discussion. It is obvious that Innuit will have many concepts related to snow and ice, and many related words or compact reusable phrases. The example of many words for ice has been bashed with the claim tjhat 'they're not really words, more like small phrases', thereby completely missing the point.
Having the compact reusable phrases again enhances the matching concepts and enhances communication about them. I think Whorf still underestimated our flexibility. Not having a word for something never makes it impossible to think something, but it does make it harder. Missing a whole framework of words and concepts may make certain thoughts very hard to achieve.
why is the US so worried.They are? Nobody worries about Iranian offensive power. It's a bit like during the time of Iraq. All the time there were stories about how dangerous Iraq was, and then there's this little comment of Wolfowitz saying he could take that country with 10.000 people.
The idea wasn't for me to download recipes, but in vue of the title, to slashdot the site.
Wot, no links for downloading bomb recipes? Pity, We'd have slashdotted them.
No, torture can get you verifiable truths. So you have to have the right questions. If a treasure is hidden in a forest and you know who knows the location then the location can be extracted through torture and it can be verified. If you're asking "who is helping the resistance"(nowadays we call them terrorists) then you get a name but verification is hard. So there's a lot of additional torturing of additional people in order to get something verifiable. or not, you just keep working on unreliable information. "Where's the drop-off location" looks like something verifiable.
Part of the discussion will be about what will be your "typical torture case". As in what's the code to stop the atomic bomb that's hidden in newyork from exploding. The point there is that an imagined or at least very untypical case is used to represent a category. Therefore if you accept the representative example then you have to accept the conclusion. That is plain wrong and it often is very dishonest. The reality is massive use of low-yield strategies of just random torturing to see if it turns up something that you can build on. It's about of terrorizing the population and recruiting informants. I'm not saying that doesn't work either.
I'd rather focus on how low you'd go in order to score in a conflict, rather than whether it actually works.
This bothers me too. When you take a bunch of measurements, whatever their interpretation or value, and you make a nice visualization with them, it all becomes more real.