Aside from: 1) probably ample water - rather essential for life in space (consumption and shielding from cosmic rays). 2) essentially infinite minerals for space construction located in a very shallow gravity well 3) a stable, defensible, base (ridiculously more durable than any space station) from which one could fire 'brilliant pebbles' cheaply. Once you have such a base, you could, with a repeatable launch system like a railgun, fire essentially large rocks at any point on earth for very little energy cost. Nearly uninterceptible (they would have only minimal terminal guidance and no actual warhead, speed+mass = destructive potential), they would form an unstoppable and near-infinite second-strike capability, better than SSBNs....yeah, the moon is nearly worthless.
You're right, we don't need the US to militarize space....since the Soviets already did. Look up Salyut 3, Polyus and Polyut programs.
Naivete isn't really a terribly credible defense strategy. Not for long, anyway.
The fact is that you cannot stuff Genies back into bottles, and you certainly can't legislate away tactical necessity; space is the new 'high ground'.
As long as the US was the only country with a functioning space program, sure, it's in our interest to mouth the platitudes of keeping space neutralized, but ultimately we have to recognize, for instance, that the north and south poles of the moon are two UNIQUE pieces of real estate - they both have LOS to earth (for communications) and sun (for power, if only reserve) at all times. That's fairly precious, both commercially and militarily.
I'm not saying that we should be the first to militarize space (as I mention above, it's impossible since the Soviets DID), but recognizing eventual military value is simply common sense. Prudence alone dictates that we need to make sure that the N and S moon locations are sites of AMERICAN-run bases. Sure, they can be multinational forever, but if the S does hit the proverbial F, better us than anyone else.
I know that every/. user is a member of the technoliteri elite who needs at least 50meg T1 connections to keep up with their burgeoning online empire of social "connections", games, movies, etc. but really, is that needed?
I have a 3 meg ADSL connection down, 1 meg up, and I'm absolutely fine. Got a 5-computer LAN and we can have one person playing WoW, another playing flash games, and a third streaming youtube vids - and STILL I get "quality 4" netflix streaming at the TV.
So would I like a 20 meg connection? Academically, yeah. Do I need it? No. Most people get streaming movies, rss/emails/texts, browse the web, watch youtube, perhaps play an MMO or online shooter. Do you really need a 20meg pipe to accomplish those things efficiently?
IMO that's the glory of capitalism - I can pay for a phat bandwidth, but I don't need it, so I dont.
In late 2006, the Texas Academy of Science chose to honor one Professor Eric R. Pianka, an eminent ecologist who studies desert ecologies, with its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Professor Pianka used the occasion to champion the notion, apparently without sanction of the Academy, that the Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged from the planet. He championed airborne Ebola as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action to bring this result about, he clearly implied that this was a right and proper future for our species and our planet.
(boldface mine)
I propose we start with Dr. Planka, and then see where it goes.
You're right, because Germany's never had an issue with totalitarian government taking over?
Sorry, man: that was just too easy.
Seriously, though, I doubt that there is a lot of 'exportability' of the lessons of these sorts of systems from one culture to another. There are just so many cultural differences in terms of risk-tolerance, respect for authority, etc that I don't think I can say with any validity that "Germany should adopt this US practice" any more than your assertion that German-style universal care would work in the US. The systems, and expectations, are different. Not that one's better, just different.
I certainly wouldn't maintain that the US system is better than Germany's. However, I'm curious about how your system avoids free-riders - what incentive is there for an individual to minimize costs to the system by their own choices? In the (former, pre-Obama) US system, your choices cost you money. As a later poster mentions, he was a climber and couldn't get insurance - I sincerely doubt that. People who replace lightbulbs on 1000-foot towers daily can get insurance. What he meant was that he couldn't get insurance that he could afford. To me this is completely fair: if you want to engage in high-risk activities, he SHOULD pay more because of the higher likelihood of later cost to the system. (But then, I'd assert that Americans put a higher value on perceived fairness of a system, than on compassionate delivery of service to the needy, but arguing about that is like arguing which is the best color, blue or red.)
I was going to refute just about ever statement you made, but I don't have time to write a dissertation.
The idea that Soviet/Russian tech is/was 20-30 years ahead of the West is ludicrous to the point of farce. To pick a specific example, the US deployed phased-array radars on mobile (naval) units nearly 10 years before the Soviets were able to get their land-based permanent installations working. And that was the 70s, with US ECM/ECCM dominance growing over the final decades of the Soviet Union.
The idea of stealth fighters ending up in WW2-era air/air turning dogfights is hilarious. They're more likely to literally run into each other. Not to mention that at least my cursory examination of the J-20 failed to find a gun port/system evident, so apparently the Chinese don't agree with you either.
Further, your assertion that the US was planning on fielding ~200 stealth aircraft in a potential conflict with China is sheer speculation on your part. Suffice to say that the context of a US/Taiwan vs China conflict has been the subject of a number of potential plans and the deployment of a wave of airfield and nexus attacks by stealth aircraft ala GW1 or GW2 is NOT one of them. That is NOT a tactic that anyone sane would try on a peer-level opponent. This is setting aside your assertion that it would be 200 stealth aircraft vs the entire Chinese airforce...a scenario that could only happen at Gen Con.
Helmet-mounted HUD and wide angle tracking were indeed copied from MiG29s. That's true. But considering the ability of the F22 to maneuver and remain controllable at nearly-absurd attitudes, as well as 2d thrust vectoring... well, even if you set stealthiness aside (and that's a big assertion), I would wager on the F22 against nearly any aircraft in nearly any setting.
Finally your assertion that for some reason the F22 would have to turn its radars on in an effort to detect the passive, stealthy Chinese aircraft both posits extraordinary (unwitnessed) developments in Chinese stealth capability, denigrates the F22's stealth capabilities itself, and similarly completely ignores the environment of a conflict. It's not 1917 - fighters don't go on giant solo sweeps and end up mano-a-mano dueling in midair gun battles. Add in US dominance logistically, doctrinally, as well as the US's now-extensive combat experience, apply this to the high-intensity, electronically intense aerial warspace that would exist in a China/Taiwan conflict setting and your scenario (already fancifully pro-Chinese) simply falls apart.
I don't disagree with your general conclusion - OBVIOUSLY fighting a peer-level opponent on their home ground, probably from almost-exclusively naval platforms is a difficult task. I'd wager no military on the planet today understands that as thoroughly as the US does.
I do dispute your assertion however that one Chinese testbed plane, exhibiting some rudiments of stealth features mimicking US systems that were decades old when the current crop of pilots was BORN, is some sort of game-changer. Not at all. To put in perspective, would a pilot flying an F-15 (first flight 1972) be terribly concerned by the threat of an Me-262 (first flight 1944)? That's the span of time we're talking about, technologically.
This is criticized by the typical/. crowd as "OMFG look at the fascist government spying on us!" but really it's exactly what many of you wanted, if you just looked at your expectations rationally.
Every iota of power you give government (and in the US we have nobody to blame but ourselves and our neighbors), understand that is an equal amount of control they give you.
Let's look at government-run health care: the moment you say that the government must be attentive to everyone's health care needs (regardless of their own stupid choices in life), you immediately give the government logical power over your health care as well: do you smoke? what do you eat? do you participate in risky sports? All of these things suddenly become part of the government's purview.
Further, if you insist that the government and the law is required to correct every (perceived or real) defect in civil behavior, then you concede that the law has the DUTY to observe every facet of civil behavior, everywhere. Need to make sure I have enough women in my company? Need to make sure I have doorknobs the right height for handicapped access? Someone used the "N" word you say?
Rather than being intelligent humans, who are expected to evaluate risk and make rational decisions based on that risk, we flee to the skirts of Mother Government. Some scary crazy dudes crashed some airplanes? Let's create a multibillion-dollar bureaucracy that will finger every crevice of 90-year old Norwegian grandmothers searching for explosives, but which dares not actually look twice at Muslim men in fear of lawsuits.
In fear for the children, we have moronic legislators working nights trying to figure out a way to regulate the Interwebz, instead of just expecting that parents pay attention to what their goddamn kids are doing, and what sorts of people they become, knowing that perverted and disgusting porn is out there, and really can't harm someone with a reasonable view of sexuality.
Also in fear for the children, we spend billions if not trillions chasing down trivial drug crimes (because they're the easiest to catch), and trying to stop the flow of drugs as if it's not an example of a nearly victimless crime. Can't we just let the potheads and crackfiends just destroy themselves and get it over with?
We claim we want a 'free' society, but then we demand to be protected from all risk. Essentially, the society that we have ASKED for, is the society that we are getting.
Hell, it's even in the financial market: instead of letting people get punished for making ignorant or greedy choices, we spend $1 trillion bailing out junk bond dealers and "rescuing" people whose mortgages left them underwater. Hey stupid, if someone says your $30,000 job can afford a $450,000 house, and you believe them? YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET. Further, we have a giant shell-game called social security that takes money from the workers to give to former-workers, so that nobody needs to save for themselves. As long as the pyramid holds up, we're great. We pay millions and billions to men who could be working but don't, to women who continue to drop litters despite abject poverty, and then millions more to incarcerate their permanently-damaged young. In this system, it's the people who work for a living every day, pay their taxes, and live within their means that are the idiots - we're stupid enough to continue paying these bailout taxes, and accepting a government that sees us as nothing more than a financial teat that they can continually pull for more money for 'the unfortunate' and 'the downtrodden'.
We've said "nanny state, please take care of everything for us!" - and empowered them to do so. Yet we're surprised that in turn the nanny state deploys its formidable resources to cover us with a stultifying blanket of surveillance and a Gulliverian web of laws.
"I wouldn't have done X, if they hadn't done Y first!"
Isn't "provocation" as feeble a defense as "I was seduced?".
Would you accept seduction as an excuse for your significant other screwing around on you? Would anyone? So why should society accept that as a defense?
I mean, you can't be tempted to do something you didn't want to do anyway.
There must already BE a solution to this from the DoD, or we'd have simply equipped all of our infantry with green laser pointers to make any enemy ground-attack by aircraft impossible, especially considering that a ground-attack track would be directly at the user, making the targeting of the pilot's eye that much simpler.
Seeing that we haven't done so suggests that there's some sort of glass coating or visor coating that pretty much prevents it.
I don't understand why the messages were 'occasionally delayed' - why not always delayed, to reinforce the experience? Seems like a relatively trivial way to make them really feel like they're out there.
Just to be clear, we're talking about whether cellphones and electronics may have an impact on avioncs, not whether Ariana Huffington is a self-important douche.
One of them is reasonably up for discussion. The other one's pretty much a certainty.
...but, while I generally just comply because it's simpler, MOST of those reasons you stated could hold EQUALLY well for non-electronic things.
Paying attention? Books are far more engrossing than electronics.
Projectile danger? Again, I've had books in my hand that weigh many times an Iphone or Blackberry, probably 100x the weight of the new Shuffles. Nobody's ever even vaguely suggested it should be put away.
Disorientation in a crash? Dunno about you, but I often use my phone as a flashlight in a pinch. Might be handy in a crash.
Sorry, but your 'explanations' sound distinctly like rationalizations. Maybe that's why they don't stick?
Well, the problem is that when you start to talk about issues like this, the people you're getting advice from have a vested interest in the answer.
Basically, lawyers have every selfish reason to counsel against civility and reasonableness.
Most likely someone waved this 'cool new mod they heard about' in front of the CEO. CEO said that IS cool, but isn't the name a little close - if we don't defend it, we lose the ability to defend it later. (Calls the company lawyer for advice) Lawyer: oh you can't accept that (paints horrific gloom and doom scenario where this mod ends up with the world tearing Blizzard to shreds), CEO thinking of his own fat paycheck reluctantly asks someone to please just take care of it. Lawyer, who knows he gets billable hours for every second he spends drafting the letter, agrees. *for purposes of illustration we're assuming everyone here is basically decent and not a cynical greedy pig; well, except the lawyer because that would just be totally unbelievable.
It's the accountants. Because in their naked (and blind) pursuit of profits, #3 looks to be the most wonderful step of all. "Look, we can make pure money and do nothing. We don't have to have pesky workers, complicated property ownership, and they've written us a hold-harmless from the liability issues, so we just sit there and watch the cash roll in!"
I watched this process in the early 1990s with (certain food firm with a giggly and squishy mascot hereafter referred to as "P") and it's subsidiary named after a large grass-colored fellow "GG"), one of the major US food brands, after they were purchased by a large British food and beverage conglomerate. They sold off their flour mills to ("the supermarket of the world") (to be operated under contract to P) and were selling off all their canning and food operations to small operators who would then produce GG-labelled product and send a royalty check to P. All P would have to do is occasionally go out and 'inspect' the facility to ensure they were making to GG's quality.
There's a reason a brand develops a reputation - the hard work and dedication of truly generations of committed employees. NOT so that later some whore-in-a-business-suit can come and sell the entire thing out leaving only a shell of a company collecting royalty checks from maquilladora-style companies across the border so they can clothe their product in the former firm's reputation.
In this Chinese case, it's not just themselves and their future that they're selling down the river, it's our national security.
I'm an ardent capitalist, but watching this made me sick to my stomach.
...this sounds like "smart vulture, er, lawyer shows elderly owner of paper how 'those damned kids' on the interwebz are 'stealing his content' without attribution, and explains all the hundreds of potential lawsuit targets that they can sue to stop this craziness".
It certainly doesn't sound like a reasonable newspaper owner who has any concept of how the DMCA or internet works.
Actually, I appreciate your reply - I enjoy engaging anyone in a solid, non ad-hominem discussion about genuine questions I have regarding GW.
I'd suspect that your initial compliment is either overstatement or strawman. For every glassy-eyed denier that looks out and says "heh, no global warming because lookit all the snow!", I'll point to ten frothing believers who look at the warming data since 1998* (or 1980, or 1960) as the incontrovertible Truth of global warming.
First, to your points: while perhaps 20 years ago your "97%" number may have been convincing, I no longer accept that a) really any source is objective (there is no news media that doesn't seem to have a bias one way or another) and even accepting that 97% as accurate, b) scientists are human too, subject to peer pressure, and are just as subject to herd-mentality as anyone else.
Second, no debate at all on the production of CO2, obviously.
Third, agreed on the premise of GHG as incontestable. However, I would raise a caveat that CO2 is the key bogeyman; let's be clear that water vapor is staggeringly overwhelming in its influence in the system.
Fourth, violent and extreme weather patterns: not sure that's a convincing line of argument as we're getting into weather not climate, but in terms of hurricanes (for example) the recent few seasons have been amazingly QUIET.
My debate about GW is mnay-fold, some may seem superficial to you but these go into my overall impression: 1) I utterly don't care about the last 10, 20 or even 50 years. That's not climate, and no worthwhile conclusions can be drawn from that period. A 5- or 10- or even 50-year trend can be the result of any number of short-term system inputs to the point that it's indistinguishable from static. 2) My initial exposure to the issue was An Inconvenient Truth, which was so riddled with gross errors of fact, convenient misstatements, begged questions, and histrionic narcissism that I admit my first impression was, and continues to be, negative. 3) "global warming" has now been replaced by "global climate change"...a telling 'adjustment' of language that smacks of retconning. 4) most importantly, look in the paleoclimate data.http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/datalist.html as well as the charted aggregate values on wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png (which I wish wasn't log-scaled'd in the x-axis, as I think it would show the results more naturally, as the current format overemphasizes the significance of recent values). Yes, temps are climbing. But why is today's rise somehow different intrinsically than that 5000 years ago? 7500? 100ky? Several times historically temps peaked VERY quickly, too. I find it unlikely that a circumstance that has repeated itself many times historically is THIS TIME due to humans. I just don't believe it. For that matter, the bulk of earth's history has been SIGNIFICANTLY warmer than now. If we're arguing what is "normal", the current cooling period might simply be over. 5) I'm not sure it's worth dissecting all the FUD that's been tossed around about climate change, but here's a few: Corals dying? Really? How does that reconcile with the fact that it's been both MUCH warmer and MUCH more CO2 historically, and they are one of the oldest lifeforms on earth. Sea level rising? Personally, I don't care - no human city was sited based on survivability over long timespans. All human contructs have an ultimate survivability of 0% once you extend the time frame out far enough. To suggest that humans in the prehistoric area plopped down settlements that were particularly convenient and thus grow the largest are somehow sacrosanct from wind, weather, and any number of other natural processes is basically absurd. 6) finally, regarding the basic credibility of the AGW prop
Thanks for proving me right. When I saw the header, I bet my coworker a cup of coffee that someone in 10 posts or less would try to use this data to attack 'deniers'.
You DO understand that the debate really centers on ANTHROPOGENIC global warming, right?
And GW != AGW, not by a long shot.
By the way, could you please point to a period in time when the climate DIDN'T change? Because I can point to several where it was significantly warmer than it is now...in fact, the vast majority of Earth's history. We're kind of in a cool-weather slump, so I challenge your implied assertion that this is abnormal for anything but modern man's conception of what the climate "should be".
It should make you fired up, but in a different way.
Look at what you said: Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids. So...Jenny McCarthy (famous for her diagnostic research?) went on Oprah (famous for its rigorous, investigative journalism?) and told people not to get a procedure that had been not just recommended but nearly mandatory for what, 40 years? And on THAT basis, they didn't?
Sorry, but dude, if people are THAT gullible and witless that they trust their child's LIFE to the pronouncements of Jenny McCarthy and Oprah....well, they probably were going to have trouble making it across the street alive too.
I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but at what point are people required to perform a little due diligence on their own lives? I mean, sure, we're not all epidemiologists or vaccine researchers, we can't all parse the raw data for results. But there are experts you CAN turn to (your family doctor, for one) for advice, and I don't know many of them basing their counsel on Oprah. And if you as a self-aware actor make the choice to disregard experts, that IS your choice. And the results - good or bad - are your fault. Sometimes, I'm sure, you'll be right. That would make your choice evolutionarily right, congrats.
Usually, however, I'd guess that you'd be wrong.
Looking at it objectively, one could say it was a 2nd-order Darwin effect. It's a bitch when it happens to be you though.
The alternative that you missed is that he's the 'target' of his own efforts of self-promotion. 1. Paranoia 2. marketing ability 3. the Left's general hatred of anything USA 4.... (probably something to do with black helicopters) 5. PROFIT!*
*and hot chicks from politically unstable countries.
This isn't just a/. meme, I believe this really IS his business plan.
My wife and I made a conscious decision that, given our educations, incomes, and places in life, that it was a suitable time for us to reproduce. We didn't do it because we looked forward to changing poopy diapers or looked forward to the tax benefits (in any case, IIRC to raise a child from 0 to 18 without living off of government subsidies is something like $250k - I doubt it's a profit-making proposition). We were both high-A students in high school and college. Neither has any history of genetic trouble.
Yes, I do believe that at least the bulk of our choices were about the quality of life we could give them, given reproduction is pretty much the POINT.
Assange is a selfish, greedy, self-interested prick, leaking things 'for the general good' = good
Yet our government(s), also run by selfish, greedy, self-interested pricks, NOT leaking things 'for the general good' = evil?
I wish my world was as black and white as some peoples'.
What strange bedfellows politics make.
Personally, I think Assange is a dick, and being a dick makes it harder to believe that his releases are unfiltered by his own interests....which would make him no better than the CIA disinformation programs, except perhaps better positioned in the media.
Look, I know the world isn't happy puppies and fluffy unicorns. Someone doesn't have to be a saint for their actions to be intrinsically and significantly good (cf. Oskar Schindler).
But Assange's actions are in a moral gray area for a number of reasons, and he loses the benefit of the doubt when he's an asshole. (And verging on the hypocrite if he in fact did insist that they not accept leaks from his own organization...)
Ironically, in the modern era the ONLY reason we used to promote the development of engineers and scientists was...so they could work for the military, building new weapons to fight the Soviets.
The rest of your post is incoherent - you say that China's 'power' is that there is no individual (which is arguably correct) and that the Western way is about respecting/protecting the individual and private property (again, generally right despite a worrying number of exceptions lately...), but then you say we need to change our "outdated" ideals about business.
Are you advocating the West change to a Chinese-style police state?
Currently, China has an advantage because it is making 1st-world goods and selling at 1st-world prices but having a labor force that will accept slave wages. That, coupled with a political system that for all of its smoothed edges and softened image still absolutely prohibits serious dissent, is unsustainable over time.
Certainly China has a transient economic advantage today...but the serious concern in the middle-long term is to hope that the bloody, brutal civil war that is inevitably coming somehow stays within China's borders.
...When dems were deciding who to run in '92, in spring Bush I's approval was over 80% from the gulf war, so all the heavy-hitters bowed out, thinking it better that some podunk governor could get beaten badly and they'd all come back for the 'real' election in '96.
Reading comprehension -1. Clearly modelling is a useful technique. Weather modelling - which clearly needs significant work - is a laudable goal. Tectonic modelling, a laudable goal. Economic, social, etc. modelling, all worthy efforts to analyse very difficult systems.
To claim it's imperative that we immediately start to build systems that will draw conclusions from yet-to-be-invented systems built on top of these models that are decades from completion themselves? Histrionic grant-fishing.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from: ...yeah, the moon is nearly worthless.
1) probably ample water - rather essential for life in space (consumption and shielding from cosmic rays).
2) essentially infinite minerals for space construction located in a very shallow gravity well
3) a stable, defensible, base (ridiculously more durable than any space station) from which one could fire 'brilliant pebbles' cheaply. Once you have such a base, you could, with a repeatable launch system like a railgun, fire essentially large rocks at any point on earth for very little energy cost. Nearly uninterceptible (they would have only minimal terminal guidance and no actual warhead, speed+mass = destructive potential), they would form an unstoppable and near-infinite second-strike capability, better than SSBNs.
You're right, we don't need the US to militarize space....since the Soviets already did. Look up Salyut 3, Polyus and Polyut programs.
Naivete isn't really a terribly credible defense strategy. Not for long, anyway.
The fact is that you cannot stuff Genies back into bottles, and you certainly can't legislate away tactical necessity; space is the new 'high ground'.
As long as the US was the only country with a functioning space program, sure, it's in our interest to mouth the platitudes of keeping space neutralized, but ultimately we have to recognize, for instance, that the north and south poles of the moon are two UNIQUE pieces of real estate - they both have LOS to earth (for communications) and sun (for power, if only reserve) at all times. That's fairly precious, both commercially and militarily.
I'm not saying that we should be the first to militarize space (as I mention above, it's impossible since the Soviets DID), but recognizing eventual military value is simply common sense. Prudence alone dictates that we need to make sure that the N and S moon locations are sites of AMERICAN-run bases. Sure, they can be multinational forever, but if the S does hit the proverbial F, better us than anyone else.
I know that every /. user is a member of the technoliteri elite who needs at least 50meg T1 connections to keep up with their burgeoning online empire of social "connections", games, movies, etc. but really, is that needed?
I have a 3 meg ADSL connection down, 1 meg up, and I'm absolutely fine. Got a 5-computer LAN and we can have one person playing WoW, another playing flash games, and a third streaming youtube vids - and STILL I get "quality 4" netflix streaming at the TV.
So would I like a 20 meg connection? Academically, yeah. Do I need it? No.
Most people get streaming movies, rss/emails/texts, browse the web, watch youtube, perhaps play an MMO or online shooter. Do you really need a 20meg pipe to accomplish those things efficiently?
IMO that's the glory of capitalism - I can pay for a phat bandwidth, but I don't need it, so I dont.
-4 years.
2006: http://news.iskcon.org/node/509
(boldface mine)
I propose we start with Dr. Planka, and then see where it goes.
You're right, because Germany's never had an issue with totalitarian government taking over?
Sorry, man: that was just too easy.
Seriously, though, I doubt that there is a lot of 'exportability' of the lessons of these sorts of systems from one culture to another. There are just so many cultural differences in terms of risk-tolerance, respect for authority, etc that I don't think I can say with any validity that "Germany should adopt this US practice" any more than your assertion that German-style universal care would work in the US. The systems, and expectations, are different. Not that one's better, just different.
I certainly wouldn't maintain that the US system is better than Germany's. However, I'm curious about how your system avoids free-riders - what incentive is there for an individual to minimize costs to the system by their own choices? In the (former, pre-Obama) US system, your choices cost you money. As a later poster mentions, he was a climber and couldn't get insurance - I sincerely doubt that. People who replace lightbulbs on 1000-foot towers daily can get insurance. What he meant was that he couldn't get insurance that he could afford. To me this is completely fair: if you want to engage in high-risk activities, he SHOULD pay more because of the higher likelihood of later cost to the system. (But then, I'd assert that Americans put a higher value on perceived fairness of a system, than on compassionate delivery of service to the needy, but arguing about that is like arguing which is the best color, blue or red.)
What?
I was going to refute just about ever statement you made, but I don't have time to write a dissertation.
The idea that Soviet/Russian tech is/was 20-30 years ahead of the West is ludicrous to the point of farce. To pick a specific example, the US deployed phased-array radars on mobile (naval) units nearly 10 years before the Soviets were able to get their land-based permanent installations working. And that was the 70s, with US ECM/ECCM dominance growing over the final decades of the Soviet Union.
The idea of stealth fighters ending up in WW2-era air/air turning dogfights is hilarious. They're more likely to literally run into each other. Not to mention that at least my cursory examination of the J-20 failed to find a gun port/system evident, so apparently the Chinese don't agree with you either.
Further, your assertion that the US was planning on fielding ~200 stealth aircraft in a potential conflict with China is sheer speculation on your part. Suffice to say that the context of a US/Taiwan vs China conflict has been the subject of a number of potential plans and the deployment of a wave of airfield and nexus attacks by stealth aircraft ala GW1 or GW2 is NOT one of them.
That is NOT a tactic that anyone sane would try on a peer-level opponent. This is setting aside your assertion that it would be 200 stealth aircraft vs the entire Chinese airforce...a scenario that could only happen at Gen Con.
Helmet-mounted HUD and wide angle tracking were indeed copied from MiG29s. That's true. But considering the ability of the F22 to maneuver and remain controllable at nearly-absurd attitudes, as well as 2d thrust vectoring ... well, even if you set stealthiness aside (and that's a big assertion), I would wager on the F22 against nearly any aircraft in nearly any setting.
Finally your assertion that for some reason the F22 would have to turn its radars on in an effort to detect the passive, stealthy Chinese aircraft both posits extraordinary (unwitnessed) developments in Chinese stealth capability, denigrates the F22's stealth capabilities itself, and similarly completely ignores the environment of a conflict. It's not 1917 - fighters don't go on giant solo sweeps and end up mano-a-mano dueling in midair gun battles. Add in US dominance logistically, doctrinally, as well as the US's now-extensive combat experience, apply this to the high-intensity, electronically intense aerial warspace that would exist in a China/Taiwan conflict setting and your scenario (already fancifully pro-Chinese) simply falls apart.
I don't disagree with your general conclusion - OBVIOUSLY fighting a peer-level opponent on their home ground, probably from almost-exclusively naval platforms is a difficult task. I'd wager no military on the planet today understands that as thoroughly as the US does.
I do dispute your assertion however that one Chinese testbed plane, exhibiting some rudiments of stealth features mimicking US systems that were decades old when the current crop of pilots was BORN, is some sort of game-changer. Not at all. To put in perspective, would a pilot flying an F-15 (first flight 1972) be terribly concerned by the threat of an Me-262 (first flight 1944)? That's the span of time we're talking about, technologically.
This is criticized by the typical /. crowd as "OMFG look at the fascist government spying on us!" but really it's exactly what many of you wanted, if you just looked at your expectations rationally.
Every iota of power you give government (and in the US we have nobody to blame but ourselves and our neighbors), understand that is an equal amount of control they give you.
Let's look at government-run health care: the moment you say that the government must be attentive to everyone's health care needs (regardless of their own stupid choices in life), you immediately give the government logical power over your health care as well: do you smoke? what do you eat? do you participate in risky sports? All of these things suddenly become part of the government's purview.
Further, if you insist that the government and the law is required to correct every (perceived or real) defect in civil behavior, then you concede that the law has the DUTY to observe every facet of civil behavior, everywhere. Need to make sure I have enough women in my company? Need to make sure I have doorknobs the right height for handicapped access? Someone used the "N" word you say?
Rather than being intelligent humans, who are expected to evaluate risk and make rational decisions based on that risk, we flee to the skirts of Mother Government. Some scary crazy dudes crashed some airplanes? Let's create a multibillion-dollar bureaucracy that will finger every crevice of 90-year old Norwegian grandmothers searching for explosives, but which dares not actually look twice at Muslim men in fear of lawsuits.
In fear for the children, we have moronic legislators working nights trying to figure out a way to regulate the Interwebz, instead of just expecting that parents pay attention to what their goddamn kids are doing, and what sorts of people they become, knowing that perverted and disgusting porn is out there, and really can't harm someone with a reasonable view of sexuality.
Also in fear for the children, we spend billions if not trillions chasing down trivial drug crimes (because they're the easiest to catch), and trying to stop the flow of drugs as if it's not an example of a nearly victimless crime. Can't we just let the potheads and crackfiends just destroy themselves and get it over with?
We claim we want a 'free' society, but then we demand to be protected from all risk. Essentially, the society that we have ASKED for, is the society that we are getting.
Hell, it's even in the financial market: instead of letting people get punished for making ignorant or greedy choices, we spend $1 trillion bailing out junk bond dealers and "rescuing" people whose mortgages left them underwater. Hey stupid, if someone says your $30,000 job can afford a $450,000 house, and you believe them? YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET. Further, we have a giant shell-game called social security that takes money from the workers to give to former-workers, so that nobody needs to save for themselves. As long as the pyramid holds up, we're great. We pay millions and billions to men who could be working but don't, to women who continue to drop litters despite abject poverty, and then millions more to incarcerate their permanently-damaged young. In this system, it's the people who work for a living every day, pay their taxes, and live within their means that are the idiots - we're stupid enough to continue paying these bailout taxes, and accepting a government that sees us as nothing more than a financial teat that they can continually pull for more money for 'the unfortunate' and 'the downtrodden'.
We've said "nanny state, please take care of everything for us!" - and empowered them to do so. Yet we're surprised that in turn the nanny state deploys its formidable resources to cover us with a stultifying blanket of surveillance and a Gulliverian web of laws.
Congrats. We're the idiots to blame.
"I wouldn't have done X, if they hadn't done Y first!"
Isn't "provocation" as feeble a defense as "I was seduced?".
Would you accept seduction as an excuse for your significant other screwing around on you? Would anyone? So why should society accept that as a defense?
I mean, you can't be tempted to do something you didn't want to do anyway.
There must already BE a solution to this from the DoD, or we'd have simply equipped all of our infantry with green laser pointers to make any enemy ground-attack by aircraft impossible, especially considering that a ground-attack track would be directly at the user, making the targeting of the pilot's eye that much simpler.
Seeing that we haven't done so suggests that there's some sort of glass coating or visor coating that pretty much prevents it.
I don't understand why the messages were 'occasionally delayed' - why not always delayed, to reinforce the experience? Seems like a relatively trivial way to make them really feel like they're out there.
Just to be clear, we're talking about whether cellphones and electronics may have an impact on avioncs, not whether Ariana Huffington is a self-important douche.
One of them is reasonably up for discussion. The other one's pretty much a certainty.
...but, while I generally just comply because it's simpler, MOST of those reasons you stated could hold EQUALLY well for non-electronic things.
Paying attention? Books are far more engrossing than electronics.
Projectile danger? Again, I've had books in my hand that weigh many times an Iphone or Blackberry, probably 100x the weight of the new Shuffles. Nobody's ever even vaguely suggested it should be put away.
Disorientation in a crash? Dunno about you, but I often use my phone as a flashlight in a pinch. Might be handy in a crash.
Sorry, but your 'explanations' sound distinctly like rationalizations. Maybe that's why they don't stick?
Well, the problem is that when you start to talk about issues like this, the people you're getting advice from have a vested interest in the answer.
Basically, lawyers have every selfish reason to counsel against civility and reasonableness.
Most likely someone waved this 'cool new mod they heard about' in front of the CEO.
CEO said that IS cool, but isn't the name a little close - if we don't defend it, we lose the ability to defend it later.
(Calls the company lawyer for advice)
Lawyer: oh you can't accept that (paints horrific gloom and doom scenario where this mod ends up with the world tearing Blizzard to shreds), CEO thinking of his own fat paycheck reluctantly asks someone to please just take care of it.
Lawyer, who knows he gets billable hours for every second he spends drafting the letter, agrees.
*for purposes of illustration we're assuming everyone here is basically decent and not a cynical greedy pig; well, except the lawyer because that would just be totally unbelievable.
It's the accountants.
Because in their naked (and blind) pursuit of profits, #3 looks to be the most wonderful step of all.
"Look, we can make pure money and do nothing. We don't have to have pesky workers, complicated property ownership, and they've written us a hold-harmless from the liability issues, so we just sit there and watch the cash roll in!"
I watched this process in the early 1990s with (certain food firm with a giggly and squishy mascot hereafter referred to as "P") and it's subsidiary named after a large grass-colored fellow "GG"), one of the major US food brands, after they were purchased by a large British food and beverage conglomerate. They sold off their flour mills to ("the supermarket of the world") (to be operated under contract to P) and were selling off all their canning and food operations to small operators who would then produce GG-labelled product and send a royalty check to P. All P would have to do is occasionally go out and 'inspect' the facility to ensure they were making to GG's quality.
There's a reason a brand develops a reputation - the hard work and dedication of truly generations of committed employees. NOT so that later some whore-in-a-business-suit can come and sell the entire thing out leaving only a shell of a company collecting royalty checks from maquilladora-style companies across the border so they can clothe their product in the former firm's reputation.
In this Chinese case, it's not just themselves and their future that they're selling down the river, it's our national security.
I'm an ardent capitalist, but watching this made me sick to my stomach.
...this sounds like "smart vulture, er, lawyer shows elderly owner of paper how 'those damned kids' on the interwebz are 'stealing his content' without attribution, and explains all the hundreds of potential lawsuit targets that they can sue to stop this craziness".
It certainly doesn't sound like a reasonable newspaper owner who has any concept of how the DMCA or internet works.
Actually, I appreciate your reply - I enjoy engaging anyone in a solid, non ad-hominem discussion about genuine questions I have regarding GW.
I'd suspect that your initial compliment is either overstatement or strawman. For every glassy-eyed denier that looks out and says "heh, no global warming because lookit all the snow!", I'll point to ten frothing believers who look at the warming data since 1998* (or 1980, or 1960) as the incontrovertible Truth of global warming.
*whups! Actually, global temps have gone down since 1998. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2008/040408_cools_off.htm
First, to your points: while perhaps 20 years ago your "97%" number may have been convincing, I no longer accept that a) really any source is objective (there is no news media that doesn't seem to have a bias one way or another) and even accepting that 97% as accurate, b) scientists are human too, subject to peer pressure, and are just as subject to herd-mentality as anyone else.
Second, no debate at all on the production of CO2, obviously.
Third, agreed on the premise of GHG as incontestable. However, I would raise a caveat that CO2 is the key bogeyman; let's be clear that water vapor is staggeringly overwhelming in its influence in the system.
Fourth, violent and extreme weather patterns: not sure that's a convincing line of argument as we're getting into weather not climate, but in terms of hurricanes (for example) the recent few seasons have been amazingly QUIET.
My debate about GW is mnay-fold, some may seem superficial to you but these go into my overall impression:
1) I utterly don't care about the last 10, 20 or even 50 years. That's not climate, and no worthwhile conclusions can be drawn from that period. A 5- or 10- or even 50-year trend can be the result of any number of short-term system inputs to the point that it's indistinguishable from static.
2) My initial exposure to the issue was An Inconvenient Truth, which was so riddled with gross errors of fact, convenient misstatements, begged questions, and histrionic narcissism that I admit my first impression was, and continues to be, negative.
3) "global warming" has now been replaced by "global climate change"...a telling 'adjustment' of language that smacks of retconning.
4) most importantly, look in the paleoclimate data.http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/datalist.html as well as the charted aggregate values on wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png (which I wish wasn't log-scaled'd in the x-axis, as I think it would show the results more naturally, as the current format overemphasizes the significance of recent values). Yes, temps are climbing. But why is today's rise somehow different intrinsically than that 5000 years ago? 7500? 100ky? Several times historically temps peaked VERY quickly, too. I find it unlikely that a circumstance that has repeated itself many times historically is THIS TIME due to humans. I just don't believe it. For that matter, the bulk of earth's history has been SIGNIFICANTLY warmer than now. If we're arguing what is "normal", the current cooling period might simply be over.
5) I'm not sure it's worth dissecting all the FUD that's been tossed around about climate change, but here's a few: Corals dying? Really? How does that reconcile with the fact that it's been both MUCH warmer and MUCH more CO2 historically, and they are one of the oldest lifeforms on earth. Sea level rising? Personally, I don't care - no human city was sited based on survivability over long timespans. All human contructs have an ultimate survivability of 0% once you extend the time frame out far enough. To suggest that humans in the prehistoric area plopped down settlements that were particularly convenient and thus grow the largest are somehow sacrosanct from wind, weather, and any number of other natural processes is basically absurd.
6) finally, regarding the basic credibility of the AGW prop
Thanks for proving me right. When I saw the header, I bet my coworker a cup of coffee that someone in 10 posts or less would try to use this data to attack 'deniers'.
You DO understand that the debate really centers on ANTHROPOGENIC global warming, right?
And GW != AGW, not by a long shot.
By the way, could you please point to a period in time when the climate DIDN'T change? Because I can point to several where it was significantly warmer than it is now...in fact, the vast majority of Earth's history. We're kind of in a cool-weather slump, so I challenge your implied assertion that this is abnormal for anything but modern man's conception of what the climate "should be".
"...no crew's going to remain completely celibate that long..."
Mark another argument for the all-Slashdot crew: willing to (and practiced at) remain(ing) celibate for years if not decades.
It should make you fired up, but in a different way.
Look at what you said: Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah and told parents not to vaccinate their kids.
So...Jenny McCarthy (famous for her diagnostic research?) went on Oprah (famous for its rigorous, investigative journalism?) and told people not to get a procedure that had been not just recommended but nearly mandatory for what, 40 years?
And on THAT basis, they didn't?
Sorry, but dude, if people are THAT gullible and witless that they trust their child's LIFE to the pronouncements of Jenny McCarthy and Oprah....well, they probably were going to have trouble making it across the street alive too.
I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but at what point are people required to perform a little due diligence on their own lives? I mean, sure, we're not all epidemiologists or vaccine researchers, we can't all parse the raw data for results. But there are experts you CAN turn to (your family doctor, for one) for advice, and I don't know many of them basing their counsel on Oprah. And if you as a self-aware actor make the choice to disregard experts, that IS your choice. And the results - good or bad - are your fault. Sometimes, I'm sure, you'll be right. That would make your choice evolutionarily right, congrats.
Usually, however, I'd guess that you'd be wrong.
Looking at it objectively, one could say it was a 2nd-order Darwin effect. It's a bitch when it happens to be you though.
The alternative that you missed is that he's the 'target' of his own efforts of self-promotion. ... (probably something to do with black helicopters)
1. Paranoia
2. marketing ability
3. the Left's general hatred of anything USA
4.
5. PROFIT!*
*and hot chicks from politically unstable countries.
This isn't just a /. meme, I believe this really IS his business plan.
Um, I think you're projecting.
My wife and I made a conscious decision that, given our educations, incomes, and places in life, that it was a suitable time for us to reproduce. We didn't do it because we looked forward to changing poopy diapers or looked forward to the tax benefits (in any case, IIRC to raise a child from 0 to 18 without living off of government subsidies is something like $250k - I doubt it's a profit-making proposition). We were both high-A students in high school and college. Neither has any history of genetic trouble.
Yes, I do believe that at least the bulk of our choices were about the quality of life we could give them, given reproduction is pretty much the POINT.
So what was yours, again?
So let me see if I understand this.
Assange is a selfish, greedy, self-interested prick, leaking things 'for the general good' = good
Yet our government(s), also run by selfish, greedy, self-interested pricks, NOT leaking things 'for the general good' = evil?
I wish my world was as black and white as some peoples'.
What strange bedfellows politics make.
Personally, I think Assange is a dick, and being a dick makes it harder to believe that his releases are unfiltered by his own interests....which would make him no better than the CIA disinformation programs, except perhaps better positioned in the media.
Look, I know the world isn't happy puppies and fluffy unicorns. Someone doesn't have to be a saint for their actions to be intrinsically and significantly good (cf. Oskar Schindler).
But Assange's actions are in a moral gray area for a number of reasons, and he loses the benefit of the doubt when he's an asshole. (And verging on the hypocrite if he in fact did insist that they not accept leaks from his own organization...)
Sorry, tough hop.
Ironically, in the modern era the ONLY reason we used to promote the development of engineers and scientists was...so they could work for the military, building new weapons to fight the Soviets.
The rest of your post is incoherent - you say that China's 'power' is that there is no individual (which is arguably correct) and that the Western way is about respecting/protecting the individual and private property (again, generally right despite a worrying number of exceptions lately...), but then you say we need to change our "outdated" ideals about business.
Are you advocating the West change to a Chinese-style police state?
Currently, China has an advantage because it is making 1st-world goods and selling at 1st-world prices but having a labor force that will accept slave wages. That, coupled with a political system that for all of its smoothed edges and softened image still absolutely prohibits serious dissent, is unsustainable over time.
Certainly China has a transient economic advantage today...but the serious concern in the middle-long term is to hope that the bloody, brutal civil war that is inevitably coming somehow stays within China's borders.
...When dems were deciding who to run in '92, in spring Bush I's approval was over 80% from the gulf war, so all the heavy-hitters bowed out, thinking it better that some podunk governor could get beaten badly and they'd all come back for the 'real' election in '96.
Reading comprehension -1.
Clearly modelling is a useful technique.
Weather modelling - which clearly needs significant work - is a laudable goal.
Tectonic modelling, a laudable goal.
Economic, social, etc. modelling, all worthy efforts to analyse very difficult systems.
To claim it's imperative that we immediately start to build systems that will draw conclusions from yet-to-be-invented systems built on top of these models that are decades from completion themselves? Histrionic grant-fishing.