The left has argued to keep the options open. This is largely because the right has argued to close them off. I don't think anyone on the left is cheerleading abortion as a great and wonderfull experiance that every woman should have, but it's an option that I think we should keep on the table.
Having a choice is fundamentaly a lot more multi-faceted than simply telling people "no"
But if you want to do much of anything in space you have to have stuff to do it with (space is noteably lacking in stuff... in fact, it's pretty much empty space... hense the name). You can get that stuff from Earth, but Earth is big, heavy, and has people living on it who don't like to have really big stuff fall out of the sky on them.
The Moon, in contrast, is smaller, lighter, and doesn't have anyone living on it. Thus, if stuff falls out of the Moon's sky, it's unlikely to land on anyone's house/car/boat/child/garden. Thus, if you need to get stuff into orbit and it can be produced on the moon - it's a hell of a lot cheeper to build it on Luna and ship it from there.
Colonization has to do with positional advantage. Everyone thought it was easier to find gold in the Americas than it was in Europe, so they went to America. Unless there's suddenly a world ice shortage, there's no terribly compelling reason to go to Anarctica. The moon has a shallow gravity well and lots of stuff (rocks) on it -- that's a good enough reason to go there, provided we have any orbital industry of any significance.
I think the likelyhood of finding a carcinoginic addictive plant that can be dried, rolled up, and burned, thus generating smoke that we can suck into our lungs to give ourselves various terminal illnesses is fairly low -- at least on Mars.
Democracy is not an absolute good. Democracy may be the ideal form of government for some peoples, but it is not necessarily the ideal form of government for all peoples. To force a people to adopt a democratic form of government denies them any say in what form of government they feel suits their culture best... and that in and of itself in undemocratic.
It is also worth noting that Democracy isn't even all its cracked up to be among those that seek it out. Of the governmental systems that have been implemented on this small ball of rock, Democracy has given rise to more brutal and more genocidal dictators than any other.
Adolph Hitler arose from the Wiemar Government, considered the most democratic of its time.
Moussolini, Bonepart, and even Saddam Heussain used democratic systems to obtain, compound, or secure their own power.
It is the classic pattern of neo-conservitive thinking to distil complex issues to black and white absolutes in order to make a snap judgement. Is a fetus alive? The issue of where life begins and ends is a complex scientific, moral, spiritual, and ethical dilema. We can not state that a fetus is alive any more than we can state that a dog has a soul. We can take dogmatic and argumenitive positions -- but ultimately there exists no "right" and "wrong" answer to the question -- there may never be such an answer.
The war in Iraq may be for oil or otherwise -- personaly I suspect it's simply happening because Bush wanted something to continue the rally round the flag syndrome that followed 9-11. Unquestionably there would be serious consequences if the energy economy dried up overnight -- but I don't see that happening. That said, there is but so much oil out there and it will run out someday -- we need to be investing in alternitive energy sources and the Bush administration has singularly failed in that task.
Getting back to the topic at hand -- the militarization of space is inevitable. Wars are the defining moments of the relationships between states interacting in an anarchical system. When war breaks out, states seek to acheive security through any means necessary -- be that nuking the opponent into the 4th century or starving him out. Space is the next logical step.
War is not likely to go away soon. As space technology becomes more accessable and less expensive (as technology is want to do) more countries, some hostile, will have military access to space. The US must therefore seek to protect its own interests there at the earliest possible convenience... to do otherwise would be an abdication of its responcibilities as a government.
Now you can like that or not -- but ultimately a state must seek security above all else, both for the present and the distant future.
We will militarize space for the same reason we gave France the bomb, for the same reason the Soviets put missiles in Cuba, for the same reason Germany attacked Russia (twice), and for the same reason that Rome destroyed Carthage -- like any state -- we seek security and will decide upon whatever course of action gives us the best shot at that goal.
Not only that, but thanks to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, there's real debate in the nuclear engineering community as to wether or not the standard US nuke (name is escaping me ATM) even -=works=-.
That said, after a certain point, the number of nuclear weapons doesn't matter. The Russians can have 10,000 or 100,000,000.... unless they can find, target, and kill our nuclear subs before they launch, the size of the arsonal doesn't prevent a 2nd strike... that's why nuclear parity is so stable.
The risk then are people that have 5 or 6 nukes. They are in a "use it or loose it" situation -- game theory states that they, when pressed, should fire their weapons because the consequences of not firing them are the loss of their nuclear deterant and the ability of their antagonist to engage in unlimited nuclear warfare.
Of course, this is all predicated on them not fighting with someone with a large nuclear arsonal in the first palce. Game theory also states that it's really really stupid to go to war with someone who can turn your whole country into a glass parking lot or a nice warm lake.
Short and to the point -- systems with small nuclear powers are more unstable than those with big nuclear powers. If Israel and Iran both have a few dozen nukes, the Mid East is a bad place to invest. If they both have a few thousand and 2nd strike capability, the infrastructure isn't going anywhere soon.
Christianity teaches that Jesus was both God and Man. To suggest that life could exist elsewhere, particularly sentient life that could be assumed to have a soul, implies that God created those other critters too. Since they're probably not terribly similar looking to us, this draws into question the whole "made in his image" thing.
The Bible doesn't talk about the creation of life on other worlds -- and it doesn't talk about evolution either. Why would you assume that the religious right (which is so enthused about the concept of evolution) would have no issues with another sentient creature that obviously also shares God's blessing?
Lots of ways to make it harder, though none that are totaly effective.
Since retinal scans rely upon the pattern of blood vessels in the eye, it should be possible (though I'd imagine hard) to tell if a heart is pumping blood through those vessels
Similarly, you can sense temperature and a pulse in a person's thumb.
I'm sure a dedicated crook could find a way around that, but he's have to work a lot harder.
Why not make the door for the airplane pilot bullet proof and locked from the inside. That alone would have stopped 9-11
You don't really think that do you? Seriously, there's traffic between the cockpit and the cabin all the time - so there has to be a communications link
How many people that you really want flying an airplane would be able to handle the execution of dozens or (on large planes) hudreds of people? How many eight year old girls would it have to have their throats cut before you or anyone else opened the door?
Sure, it might be the best thing for the country to prevent the hijacking of a plane like that - but the country and any victims in question are far away and poorly defined in our minds. The little girl with a razor blade to her throat standing in a pool of her fathers blood is right outside the door.
I'm not sure I'd want to be able to condem her to death to save the aircraft. I'm not sure I'd want someone with that level of detachment flying my plane.
This is hard stuff - and no simple solution is going to solve it.
Actualy that's exactly what the UN is. At the moment, international law defines a soverign state as one that has the ability to enact and enforce the sole rule of law within its boarders and has representation at the UN.
While your thesis with reguards to China is accurate, you over simplify things.
The Soviet Command Economy wasn't terribly interested in a spending war with the US nor is there a great deal of evidance to suggest that increased military spending was responsible for the Soviet Collapse.
There is a huge amount of evidance to suggest that the reforms of Gorbiachev were largely responsible for the Soviet Collapse.
Contrary to popular belife, the construction and development of nuclear weapons technology isn't terribly difficult - just hugely expensive. If you've got access to the materials the actual know how isn't too far off. The major scientific leaps at Los Alamos are the foundation of so much peacefull work today that the weapons development is almost trivial.
A few things about China --
1 - Its generaly considered a good thing when you've got more than one major power. Unipolar systems have shown themselves to be highly unstable. 2 - China is a Maoist Oligarchy, not a Communist Dictatorship (such a thing is a contradiction in terms). 3 - Taiwan isn't a country... at least it's not internationaly recognised as such. China considers it to be an estraged provice. As long as they're buying Big Macs and Coke, we're unlikely to make too big of a fuss over the nomenclature surrounding Taiwan. 4 - Sure, Chinese students can go back over to China. But it's not as if what they're studying is classified. US Students can post that same material to the web. US Students can be hired by a Chinese firm. Are we going to start restricting the travel of anyone with a masters in Electrical, Mechanical, Computer, or Nuclear engineering now?
The problem with your argument is that you're relying on a ficticious bunch of altruistic distributors who don't want anything in return for their bandwidth/services.
In reality, the distributors want something - they want the copyrighted work. Now there is the origional altruistic individual, who donates his bandwitdth or whatever to distribute the file. But everyone else has to download the file in order to distribute it. Now some of those people might have their own legal copies of a particular work, but we can safely assume they don't have that copy for - say - prerelease films.
So if the *AA sees you uploading portions of a file, X, for which there is no publicly available licence, they know you've necessarily downloded those portions or are the origional distributor.
Either on is actionable. The protocol you're using is one desinged to download the entire file -- not just a pre-agreed upon fragment. As such, you can likely be prosecuted for your possession of that file.
Moreover, because the sharing networks have each indivual hosting a large number of file fragments, it's harder to claim Fair Use for partial work distribution.
In short - these programs encourage the agrigation of the data by the host. As such, it's not legaly unreasonable to investigate further based on the evidance given by a single fragment.
Analogy -- you go out a buy a large amount of cold medicine. Now, you could be shopping for a bunch of friends who all have the cold. Or you could be running a meth lab. While the cops can't get a warrant for your arrest based on that, they can get a warrant to search your house.
It's not realisticly impossible. Admittedly, the possibility still exists for tampering while the containers are enroute, but that raises the level of difficulty enormously.
Verify that containers are safe upon departure from foreign ports.
Expensive? Yes -- but routing containers much as we do IPSec isn't impossible, just hard.
There is a great deal of circumstantial evidance to say nothing of off the record comments from highly placed sources in the US government (president Nixon among others) to suggest that the Soviets had a low yeild weapon assembled in the Soviet Embasy.
Beyond that, little data exists... but diplomatic cover is necessary, particularly for the unsophisticated (but effective) devices the USSR produced.
Special Interests are fundamentaly necessary to the functioning of our government. Look at what your typical congressman has to spend on staff. Look at the sheer volume of legislation he's expected to have an opinion on. Those numbers won't line up.
Special Interests provide a necessary service, namely they distil information and give their point of view. Take two opposing points of view and, idealy, you'll be able to make an informed decision.
Money buys access in Washington because there's only so many hours in a day. Access buys power because it takes time and energy to do things like write legislation.
First off, the "suitcase nuke" as its called is a fairly unrealistic senario. While the USSR is rumored to have developed some of these portable nuclear devices (Nixon even commented on one that was thought to be in the basement of the Soviet Embasy) they were never created in quantity.
Now nuclear landmines are another creature alltogether. Both the US and the USSR created substantial quantities of these little gems which, which technicaly man portable, aren't exactly the kind of thing you'd be able to stroll about New York with. (they weight a LOT).
Much as the Neo-Cons hate to hear it, the major nuclear risk to the United States the shipping system. We're not talking UPS or FedEx here, we're talking cargo containers. There's more than enough space in a cargo container to pack it full of automotive parts with a nuclear land mine in the middle. Liberaly apply some lead sheilding and you've got yourself a covert nuclear device.
Since a tiny precentage of cargo containers are inspected upon entry into the US, this is unlikely to be noticed by US authorities, who will be too busy stoping cancer patients and bananna enthusiasts.
Even more ironic is that the shipping system will allow your nuclear cargo container to be delivered to the city of your choosing in just a few days.
It's the perfect perloined letter. Mr Poe would be so proud.
The Bush administration is, as the texas expression goes, all hat and no cattle. They're beefing up security where it doesn't matter so that they can look like they're doing something. In the mean time, the real issues are going unaddressed because it's either "too expensive" or "too difficult" to do anything meaningfull.
I wonder how expensive and difficult a smoking crater in the middle of Chicago would be? Don't think it could happen? Every bomb dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan has left mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, brothers and sisters weaping for loved ones. Eventualy, one of these people we've pissed off is going to have the resources and know how to strike back.
Narnia was pitched towards children. If we were talking about the Great Divorce or one of Lewis' works intended for adults, I'd be inclined to entertain this notion.
Far more likely, Lewis chose the name because Turkey is exotic and far away sounding to kids. The ancestor post said it best -- his childhood imagination concocted something much tastier than the real thing.
Edmond could have just as easily have asked for Baclava.
Some countries have signed treaties saying they won't claim/weaponize space. Of course, some of those same countries signed treaties saying they wouldn't try to develop anti-ballistic missiles.
Under international law (specificly the treaty of London, 1600) a settlement, colony, or claim is only valid if the country in question has the means in palce to defend it.
In other words, should China (which didn't sign that whole "won't claim space" treaty) land on the Moon and claim it for China, it won't be recognised as Chinese property unless they bring along some effective means of keeping other people off of it.
Functionaly this leads to an anarchical environment. Wasn't such a bad idea in the 1600s, but when you're talking about the idea of carpet nuking someone's moon base into smoking oblivion to invalidate their claim to the place... well... things are different.
Gambeling sites are fast becoming the cancer of the web just as SPAM has become the cancer of the inbox. Even my personal site, perhaps the least relevant bit of web real-estate out there, has become a target for gambeling advertisers. I've written and installed filters, I've systematicly deleted blog comments from spammers, and yet they still try to plaster my humble and non-indexed blog with their advertising refuse.
I've started collecting "bad words," URLs that correspond to blog spammer posts - every single one of which comes from a gambeling site. At present the count is up to 2205 blocked unique URLs.
I know it's not just the gambeling sites, but since they're the only ones I've encountered thus far, I'll blame them for now.
Where. Where in my post did I say it was a good idea for kids to have laptops in schools? Where did I say it was a good idea for teachers to stop assigning real work and start assigning crap? Where did I say that we needed to give our allready over medicated and under education children more distractions in schools?
But access at home? Suddenly there's a host of resources open to them. And yes, some kids will discover the great joy of internet pr0n. Many of them will spend a lot of time playing games or downloading music and movies.
But they'll also be able to find pretty much anything at the drop of a hat.
The assessments of knowledge in our culture have changed. It used to be about what we know. Now it's about what we can find on short notice.
To be fair -- you think that the government providing WiFi has anything whatsoever to do with their ability to monitor you?
That said, high speed internet access is rapidly becoming as essential to the growth and development of the mind as public education. Kids with high speed net access preform better in schools. That's not necessarily a causal relationship, but it's something worth investigating.
Slashdot Mirror
Poison gas was not used in quantity, but it was used -- particularly by Japan against the Chinese.
The Soviets used biological weapons against the Germans - a topic similarly taboo after WWI. Read Ken Albik's autobiography for more on that.
The left has argued to keep the options open. This is largely because the right has argued to close them off. I don't think anyone on the left is cheerleading abortion as a great and wonderfull experiance that every woman should have, but it's an option that I think we should keep on the table.
Having a choice is fundamentaly a lot more multi-faceted than simply telling people "no"
But if you want to do much of anything in space you have to have stuff to do it with (space is noteably lacking in stuff... in fact, it's pretty much empty space... hense the name). You can get that stuff from Earth, but Earth is big, heavy, and has people living on it who don't like to have really big stuff fall out of the sky on them.
The Moon, in contrast, is smaller, lighter, and doesn't have anyone living on it. Thus, if stuff falls out of the Moon's sky, it's unlikely to land on anyone's house/car/boat/child/garden. Thus, if you need to get stuff into orbit and it can be produced on the moon - it's a hell of a lot cheeper to build it on Luna and ship it from there.
Colonization has to do with positional advantage. Everyone thought it was easier to find gold in the Americas than it was in Europe, so they went to America. Unless there's suddenly a world ice shortage, there's no terribly compelling reason to go to Anarctica. The moon has a shallow gravity well and lots of stuff (rocks) on it -- that's a good enough reason to go there, provided we have any orbital industry of any significance.
You forgot "devlop a sentient computer" and "drop socking great rocks on Earth"
I think the likelyhood of finding a carcinoginic addictive plant that can be dried, rolled up, and burned, thus generating smoke that we can suck into our lungs to give ourselves various terminal illnesses is fairly low -- at least on Mars.
Orbital Power Stations
It's not just for Sim City anymore. Solar collectors are inefficient because they have to deal with the earth's atmosphere.
Planetary life is a stuff rich, energy poor environent.
Orbital life is an energy rich, stuff poor environment.
Hauling shit into space -- expensive. Sending energy back to earth -- inexpensive.
And check it out -- we're about to have an energy crisis!
There's lots of money to be made in space -- but there's lots of money to be made on earth for less risk (right now).
But back in the 1970s there was lots of money to be made in computers -- not a lot of people were doing it yet, but that doesn't mean it wasn't true.
Give it a few years - the corporation is heading into space, it just hasn't gotten there yet.
Democracy is not an absolute good. Democracy may be the ideal form of government for some peoples, but it is not necessarily the ideal form of government for all peoples. To force a people to adopt a democratic form of government denies them any say in what form of government they feel suits their culture best... and that in and of itself in undemocratic.
It is also worth noting that Democracy isn't even all its cracked up to be among those that seek it out. Of the governmental systems that have been implemented on this small ball of rock, Democracy has given rise to more brutal and more genocidal dictators than any other.
Adolph Hitler arose from the Wiemar Government, considered the most democratic of its time.
Moussolini, Bonepart, and even Saddam Heussain used democratic systems to obtain, compound, or secure their own power.
It is the classic pattern of neo-conservitive thinking to distil complex issues to black and white absolutes in order to make a snap judgement. Is a fetus alive? The issue of where life begins and ends is a complex scientific, moral, spiritual, and ethical dilema. We can not state that a fetus is alive any more than we can state that a dog has a soul. We can take dogmatic and argumenitive positions -- but ultimately there exists no "right" and "wrong" answer to the question -- there may never be such an answer.
The war in Iraq may be for oil or otherwise -- personaly I suspect it's simply happening because Bush wanted something to continue the rally round the flag syndrome that followed 9-11. Unquestionably there would be serious consequences if the energy economy dried up overnight -- but I don't see that happening. That said, there is but so much oil out there and it will run out someday -- we need to be investing in alternitive energy sources and the Bush administration has singularly failed in that task.
Getting back to the topic at hand -- the militarization of space is inevitable. Wars are the defining moments of the relationships between states interacting in an anarchical system. When war breaks out, states seek to acheive security through any means necessary -- be that nuking the opponent into the 4th century or starving him out. Space is the next logical step.
War is not likely to go away soon. As space technology becomes more accessable and less expensive (as technology is want to do) more countries, some hostile, will have military access to space. The US must therefore seek to protect its own interests there at the earliest possible convenience... to do otherwise would be an abdication of its responcibilities as a government.
Now you can like that or not -- but ultimately a state must seek security above all else, both for the present and the distant future.
We will militarize space for the same reason we gave France the bomb, for the same reason the Soviets put missiles in Cuba, for the same reason Germany attacked Russia (twice), and for the same reason that Rome destroyed Carthage -- like any state -- we seek security and will decide upon whatever course of action gives us the best shot at that goal.
Not only that, but thanks to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, there's real debate in the nuclear engineering community as to wether or not the standard US nuke (name is escaping me ATM) even -=works=-.
That said, after a certain point, the number of nuclear weapons doesn't matter. The Russians can have 10,000 or 100,000,000.... unless they can find, target, and kill our nuclear subs before they launch, the size of the arsonal doesn't prevent a 2nd strike... that's why nuclear parity is so stable.
The risk then are people that have 5 or 6 nukes. They are in a "use it or loose it" situation -- game theory states that they, when pressed, should fire their weapons because the consequences of not firing them are the loss of their nuclear deterant and the ability of their antagonist to engage in unlimited nuclear warfare.
Of course, this is all predicated on them not fighting with someone with a large nuclear arsonal in the first palce. Game theory also states that it's really really stupid to go to war with someone who can turn your whole country into a glass parking lot or a nice warm lake.
Short and to the point -- systems with small nuclear powers are more unstable than those with big nuclear powers. If Israel and Iran both have a few dozen nukes, the Mid East is a bad place to invest. If they both have a few thousand and 2nd strike capability, the infrastructure isn't going anywhere soon.
I know lots of Christians who get mad about this.
Christianity teaches that Jesus was both God and Man. To suggest that life could exist elsewhere, particularly sentient life that could be assumed to have a soul, implies that God created those other critters too. Since they're probably not terribly similar looking to us, this draws into question the whole "made in his image" thing.
The Bible doesn't talk about the creation of life on other worlds -- and it doesn't talk about evolution either. Why would you assume that the religious right (which is so enthused about the concept of evolution) would have no issues with another sentient creature that obviously also shares God's blessing?
Lots of ways to make it harder, though none that are totaly effective.
Since retinal scans rely upon the pattern of blood vessels in the eye, it should be possible (though I'd imagine hard) to tell if a heart is pumping blood through those vessels
Similarly, you can sense temperature and a pulse in a person's thumb.
I'm sure a dedicated crook could find a way around that, but he's have to work a lot harder.
Why not make the door for the airplane pilot bullet proof and locked from the inside. That alone would have stopped 9-11
You don't really think that do you? Seriously, there's traffic between the cockpit and the cabin all the time - so there has to be a communications link
How many people that you really want flying an airplane would be able to handle the execution of dozens or (on large planes) hudreds of people? How many eight year old girls would it have to have their throats cut before you or anyone else opened the door?
Sure, it might be the best thing for the country to prevent the hijacking of a plane like that - but the country and any victims in question are far away and poorly defined in our minds. The little girl with a razor blade to her throat standing in a pool of her fathers blood is right outside the door.
I'm not sure I'd want to be able to condem her to death to save the aircraft. I'm not sure I'd want someone with that level of detachment flying my plane.
This is hard stuff - and no simple solution is going to solve it.
Actualy that's exactly what the UN is. At the moment, international law defines a soverign state as one that has the ability to enact and enforce the sole rule of law within its boarders and has representation at the UN.
So yea, that would be exactly what the UN is.
Do you have perfect video recolection of every event that's occured in your life? Of course not, the brain filters information based on relevance.
For reasons that continue to trouble me, the brain seems to be worse at this than Google.
While your thesis with reguards to China is accurate, you over simplify things.
The Soviet Command Economy wasn't terribly interested in a spending war with the US nor is there a great deal of evidance to suggest that increased military spending was responsible for the Soviet Collapse.
There is a huge amount of evidance to suggest that the reforms of Gorbiachev were largely responsible for the Soviet Collapse.
Contrary to popular belife, the construction and development of nuclear weapons technology isn't terribly difficult - just hugely expensive. If you've got access to the materials the actual know how isn't too far off. The major scientific leaps at Los Alamos are the foundation of so much peacefull work today that the weapons development is almost trivial.
A few things about China --
1 - Its generaly considered a good thing when you've got more than one major power. Unipolar systems have shown themselves to be highly unstable.
2 - China is a Maoist Oligarchy, not a Communist Dictatorship (such a thing is a contradiction in terms).
3 - Taiwan isn't a country... at least it's not internationaly recognised as such. China considers it to be an estraged provice. As long as they're buying Big Macs and Coke, we're unlikely to make too big of a fuss over the nomenclature surrounding Taiwan.
4 - Sure, Chinese students can go back over to China. But it's not as if what they're studying is classified. US Students can post that same material to the web. US Students can be hired by a Chinese firm. Are we going to start restricting the travel of anyone with a masters in Electrical, Mechanical, Computer, or Nuclear engineering now?
The problem with your argument is that you're relying on a ficticious bunch of altruistic distributors who don't want anything in return for their bandwidth/services.
In reality, the distributors want something - they want the copyrighted work. Now there is the origional altruistic individual, who donates his bandwitdth or whatever to distribute the file. But everyone else has to download the file in order to distribute it. Now some of those people might have their own legal copies of a particular work, but we can safely assume they don't have that copy for - say - prerelease films.
So if the *AA sees you uploading portions of a file, X, for which there is no publicly available licence, they know you've necessarily downloded those portions or are the origional distributor.
Either on is actionable. The protocol you're using is one desinged to download the entire file -- not just a pre-agreed upon fragment. As such, you can likely be prosecuted for your possession of that file.
Moreover, because the sharing networks have each indivual hosting a large number of file fragments, it's harder to claim Fair Use for partial work distribution.
In short - these programs encourage the agrigation of the data by the host. As such, it's not legaly unreasonable to investigate further based on the evidance given by a single fragment.
Analogy -- you go out a buy a large amount of cold medicine. Now, you could be shopping for a bunch of friends who all have the cold. Or you could be running a meth lab. While the cops can't get a warrant for your arrest based on that, they can get a warrant to search your house.
It's not realisticly impossible. Admittedly, the possibility still exists for tampering while the containers are enroute, but that raises the level of difficulty enormously.
Verify that containers are safe upon departure from foreign ports.
Expensive? Yes -- but routing containers much as we do IPSec isn't impossible, just hard.
There is a great deal of circumstantial evidance to say nothing of off the record comments from highly placed sources in the US government (president Nixon among others) to suggest that the Soviets had a low yeild weapon assembled in the Soviet Embasy.
Beyond that, little data exists... but diplomatic cover is necessary, particularly for the unsophisticated (but effective) devices the USSR produced.
Special Interests are fundamentaly necessary to the functioning of our government. Look at what your typical congressman has to spend on staff. Look at the sheer volume of legislation he's expected to have an opinion on. Those numbers won't line up.
Special Interests provide a necessary service, namely they distil information and give their point of view. Take two opposing points of view and, idealy, you'll be able to make an informed decision.
Money buys access in Washington because there's only so many hours in a day. Access buys power because it takes time and energy to do things like write legislation.
First off, the "suitcase nuke" as its called is a fairly unrealistic senario. While the USSR is rumored to have developed some of these portable nuclear devices (Nixon even commented on one that was thought to be in the basement of the Soviet Embasy) they were never created in quantity.
Now nuclear landmines are another creature alltogether. Both the US and the USSR created substantial quantities of these little gems which, which technicaly man portable, aren't exactly the kind of thing you'd be able to stroll about New York with. (they weight a LOT).
Much as the Neo-Cons hate to hear it, the major nuclear risk to the United States the shipping system. We're not talking UPS or FedEx here, we're talking cargo containers. There's more than enough space in a cargo container to pack it full of automotive parts with a nuclear land mine in the middle. Liberaly apply some lead sheilding and you've got yourself a covert nuclear device.
Since a tiny precentage of cargo containers are inspected upon entry into the US, this is unlikely to be noticed by US authorities, who will be too busy stoping cancer patients and bananna enthusiasts.
Even more ironic is that the shipping system will allow your nuclear cargo container to be delivered to the city of your choosing in just a few days.
It's the perfect perloined letter. Mr Poe would be so proud.
The Bush administration is, as the texas expression goes, all hat and no cattle. They're beefing up security where it doesn't matter so that they can look like they're doing something. In the mean time, the real issues are going unaddressed because it's either "too expensive" or "too difficult" to do anything meaningfull.
I wonder how expensive and difficult a smoking crater in the middle of Chicago would be? Don't think it could happen? Every bomb dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan has left mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, brothers and sisters weaping for loved ones. Eventualy, one of these people we've pissed off is going to have the resources and know how to strike back.
Narnia was pitched towards children. If we were talking about the Great Divorce or one of Lewis' works intended for adults, I'd be inclined to entertain this notion.
Far more likely, Lewis chose the name because Turkey is exotic and far away sounding to kids. The ancestor post said it best -- his childhood imagination concocted something much tastier than the real thing.
Edmond could have just as easily have asked for Baclava.
Some countries have signed treaties saying they won't claim/weaponize space. Of course, some of those same countries signed treaties saying they wouldn't try to develop anti-ballistic missiles.
Under international law (specificly the treaty of London, 1600) a settlement, colony, or claim is only valid if the country in question has the means in palce to defend it.
In other words, should China (which didn't sign that whole "won't claim space" treaty) land on the Moon and claim it for China, it won't be recognised as Chinese property unless they bring along some effective means of keeping other people off of it.
Functionaly this leads to an anarchical environment. Wasn't such a bad idea in the 1600s, but when you're talking about the idea of carpet nuking someone's moon base into smoking oblivion to invalidate their claim to the place... well... things are different.
Oops! Point taken, though it's most often a problem with "poker" than anything else.
Gambeling sites are fast becoming the cancer of the web just as SPAM has become the cancer of the inbox. Even my personal site, perhaps the least relevant bit of web real-estate out there, has become a target for gambeling advertisers. I've written and installed filters, I've systematicly deleted blog comments from spammers, and yet they still try to plaster my humble and non-indexed blog with their advertising refuse.
I've started collecting "bad words," URLs that correspond to blog spammer posts - every single one of which comes from a gambeling site. At present the count is up to 2205 blocked unique URLs.
I know it's not just the gambeling sites, but since they're the only ones I've encountered thus far, I'll blame them for now.
Where. Where in my post did I say it was a good idea for kids to have laptops in schools? Where did I say it was a good idea for teachers to stop assigning real work and start assigning crap? Where did I say that we needed to give our allready over medicated and under education children more distractions in schools?
But access at home? Suddenly there's a host of resources open to them. And yes, some kids will discover the great joy of internet pr0n. Many of them will spend a lot of time playing games or downloading music and movies.
But they'll also be able to find pretty much anything at the drop of a hat.
The assessments of knowledge in our culture have changed. It used to be about what we know. Now it's about what we can find on short notice.
To be fair -- you think that the government providing WiFi has anything whatsoever to do with their ability to monitor you?
That said, high speed internet access is rapidly becoming as essential to the growth and development of the mind as public education. Kids with high speed net access preform better in schools. That's not necessarily a causal relationship, but it's something worth investigating.