On the other hand, totally self-reliant (though not "renewable" by any stretch of the imagination) armies without supply lines have been done to death.
Incidentally, the Afghans will probably find all about them in their history books. Well, the history books that haven't been burned (yet) by those muslims, taliban and otherwise.
* I mean mongol horse contests, not... euhm... muslim late-night activities.
Well, in Japan, for one thing, it's not nearly as prevalent. I know there are elephants ("there are no gays in Iran, where did you get that idea ?", or "islam has nothing to do with executing gays" (and all sorts of shit about some new york mosque being fundamentally different in ideology than the other paedophilic stealing slavery-supporting gay-killing rapists, which anyone with half a brain knows it isn't)) and flies in the room. It seems a lot more productive to remove the elephants first.
Iran's doing this to a few thousand people yearly, for 30 years and counting. Japan, as far as we know, did it to a few hundred since (after) WWII.
Of course we shouldn't expect much from muslims that claim "there are no gays in Iran, I don't know where you got that idea". Surely this "allah" guy I keep hearing about can protect one measly "power station" ?
We've all made links in cat5 > 200 meters that work perfectly fine. Granted, perfect reliability is something else, but for a backup link in a datacenter that charges an arm and a leg for fiber connections and < 10% of that price for copper... I've even been known to stick that link in a 10G copper interface card to see if it'd work (even if it didn't work). But I've had reliable gigabit copper links over > 250meters operational for years.It helps a lot if they're the only ethernet link in a metal cable tray.
And the opposite as well. Ever had an ethernet link inside a bundle of VDSL links ? The link was barely 30 meters, but the error counters mounted faster than the traffic counters. And the link stayed up, so the routing protocol saw no need to reroute. Now that was a bitch to deal with. Especially since we couldn't replace the cable with cat6.
If your network design can't deal with signal loss on individual links, especially when known beforehand that said links are located in a warzone, you have other problems than theoretical maximum link distances. And even in general : hardware WILL fail, so prepare for failure instead of investing untold resources in preventing it.
international community tends to frown on the use of nuclear weapons
Aside from the fact that nuclear weapons are woefully ineffective in killing (ask the muslims, they've killed millions on several occasions, and they're simply using the cheapest thing they can find : children, knives, improvised explosives and ak-47's. With just the children and knives they've killed the entire population of northern africa, all the way to northern india. Historical estimates of how many were killed in these jihads start at 300 million and go up to 1.5 billion. I'd like to see you do that with a nuke).
Nor did anyone else kill with nukes, even when that was possible. Soviets had nukes, never used them. And not because of MAD, the US wouldn't have retaliated if the USSR nuked afghanistan, it would simply have been one more "internal matter" the US simply overlooked, like so many others.
Why do you have this ridiculous idea that everyone cares about "getting frowned upon" ? Did it stop Hitler ? Actually the "international community" at the time was cheering Hitler on. Did it stop Stalin ? Did it stop Mao ? Did it stop Kim Yong Il ? All of these genocidal maniacs were cheered on by the "international community". Reading the history books one can deduce the patter, say you're doing what you're doing for "social justice" and "progressives" like you will support the genocides (just like your supporting the genocidal palestinian state, for example).
Let's try this another way : can you name ONE genocidal maniac that was stopped, NOT by the US, but by the "frowning of the international community" ?
One ?
One teensy tiny single and very lonely little example ?
Obviously using civilians as human shields is what's exposing them to danger.
Of course that's always made ridiculous. "So the party shooting those poor victims isn't to blame ? That's ridiculous !"
Of course, what is a commander to do if he gets shot at from within a crowd of protesters ? Or surrounded ? The Geneva conventions are clear : he is at liberty to return fire indiscriminately if he considers his unit in danger. There is no recourse for "the victims". In an extreme interpretation, you are at liberty to nuke a kindergarten if there was a rocket launcher inside it.
If you want to be protected under the Geneva conventions, you HAVE to vacate ANY area where fighting *might* occur. Whoever chooses to stay,... And, of course, if any side blocks anyone from leaving *THEY* are responsible for the consequences.
Of course, that would make, say hamas, the plo and the large majority of palestinians responsible for the people shot by Israeli forces (and of course, for any reasonable person, they are the responsible party). Same with the (mostly faked) "attacks on North Korean 'citizens'"
You see, these rules and laws were created in a time where people actually cared about some amount of realism.
This is simply what I'm saying. Could this "law" (it's not a law, technically, and of course a sovereign state is at liberty to do what it wants no matter the treaties signed) be abused ? No doubt about it.
Cooling systems, for instance, tend to be big, and more or less have to be either aboveground(for massive air exchange) or next to a nice cool body of water. And, since they are cooling systems, hiding their IR output is going to be a trick. If you lose your cooling system, you have not that much time to drop the moderators into the core and shut the thing down, or get a nice pile of molten radioactive slag that has to be entombed more or less forever.
Unless, of course, your enemy is just waiting for you to do something like this, and when obama lights 2 cigarettes at once, they'll dump radioactive waste on some kindergarten (you know one that muslims consider a lesser-beings-kindergarten, like one for women), and claim his cigarette did it.
If a bomb hits ONE pole of the security fence around the gardener's house... they'll poison a neighboring country and claim the US (/Israel/gays/lesbians/women/non-muslims/satan/...) did it.
Perhaps the right response would be the most trivial of all. Use the random bombings technique they use, but against them. Start blowing up anything smelling Iranian in foreign countries... Claim it's their oppression that's causing the bombings (talk about a plausible explanation !).
Actually Saddam had claimed it to be operational quite a few times at that points. Israel attacked just after the last component that was absolutely necessary for it's operation was installed. Perhaps something similar is happening here ?
And then... Iran dumps nuclear waste in the nearest orphanage and tells the world your bombs did it.
What you're saying is a great idea, with a press that checks it's facts and or honest enemy. On both counts, our own press and Iran can be considered to be somewhat lacking... and we all know what the entire world press is just dieing to believe...
ONLY civilians that are NOT involved in the conflict have any kind of protection (aside from the red cross, and even they become fair game if used as human shields).
Any invading force is perfectly at liberty, within the Geneva conventions, to shoot anyone used as a human shield by either side. Needless to say, the responsible side for the kill is the one that used them as human shields, not the side pulling the trigger.
At which point did WWII partisans ever become a threat the third reich"?
When they were killing soldiers left and right, blowing up transport and supplies, generally holding up whole divisions that could have been at the front?
Holding them up ? Oh dear. For how many minutes ? Perhaps a day ?
I am very proud of what these extremely brave people did. But let's not kid ourselves here. They were not a factor on the ground.
They were, at no point, capable of even attempting to attack any significant groups of German soldiers.
Really, read a book or two. There where literally thousands of attacks on significant German forces, in Russia, in the Balkan, in France.
There were, as even you yourself imply in your first statement, limited attacks against German interests, and unguarded shipping lines. And attacks in Russia don't count, for obvious reasons.
That works so well that these Empires still thrive and survive, and are seen as admirable examples we should look up to. Idiot.
The last version of what arguably still was the Roman government was removed from this planet less than 80 years ago by Kemal Ataturk. Assuming they won't turn out to still have a few cities in their grasp (and, frankly, the current Turkish government seems hell-bent on reintroducing this exact type of government, and might actually succeed).
That means these tactics managed to keep a functional state structure stable enough to survive... well take your pick :
15 centuries (western only, and it is certainly not considered insane to argue that medieval Europe, at least in the cities, was mostly a continuation of the Roman Empire, making this number closer to 22 centuries, or even 27, if you're really flexible) 25 centuries (total) 29 centuries (total + the state that integrally copied the government system)
You realise that America is the longest existing democracy right ? What age is it now ? 2 centuries since the civil war (which interrupted the democracy) ? 3 centuries and change if couting from independance ?
Compared to the Roman government, the US is barely stable at all. All other governments on this planet are, as compared to the Romans, a joke, and a rather short-lived joke at that. There are few governments on this planet TODAY, where one can find old people (say 70 years) that have not seen their government destroyed. In the roman empire there were families that have not seen significant changes in government organization for 30 generations. Can you even imagine how someone like that would think ?
Hell, there are species on this planet that haven't lasted as long as the Roman state. A lot of them.
At which point did WWII partisans ever become a threat the third reich ? Or even to small groups of soldiers ? Sure they were able to slightly disrupt some shipping channels, and pass information to an external invading force, but that's it.
They were, at no point, capable of even attempting to attack any significant groups of German soldiers.
And the groups collaborating with the nazi's dwarfed, in almost all of Europe, the resistance.
Personally I find WWII history supports my point, it does not contradict it.
Let's just state the plain, obvious, unpopular truth:
Why do you think Vietnam/Iraq became such nightmares?
Simple : because America refused to do what was necessary. Refused to do what the enemy did. America is always attacking half-assed. America was literally attacking to free Iraq. Because America is fighting an enemy that doesn't respect any rules, uses civilians as cannon fodder and shields, massacres entire cities on mere suspicions, rapes children (just like a certain religion commands) and worse. And America fights them with pink gloves.
If America attacked truly to get at the oil, and wanted to destroy any attempted guerilla force, they could easily simply do what everyone has done before America : every time an invading soldier hurts his toe on a wooden splinter (or worse), you pick out 100 Iraqi's from whatever family is rumored to have something to do with the attack, and include their neighbors for good measure. You shoot them one by one in the town square, or alternatively slowly cut their throats (as the enemy does). Anyone gives the slightest hint to not follow the invader's ideology, you do the same. Anyone publicly so much as thinks about fantasizing about throwing a shoe at an American cell phone, you do the same.
No guerilla force will survive for a week under those conditions. And before you say "that's just terribly bad", quite frankly this would still be within the "human rights treaty" (unless the enemy forces play by the rules, civilians are fair game. Any civilian is only protected as long as he can keep both fighting forces away from himself and his house. That means that armies are supposed to declare war, tell eachother where they'll fight, fight at that location, and everyone else surrenders to whomever wins, WITHOUT resistance. Any deviation from that plan allows both sides to kill any civilians).
That's not how warfare has actually happened, not in the middle east, not anywhere else. Killing anyone who blinked is how Napoleon did it, that's how Ataturk did it (in fact he was a *LOT* worse), that's how the Saudi's did it (they were also a lot worse, if not quite as bad as Ataturk), that's how Saddam did it, and let's not talk about our friends, the Iranians. What hitler did to jews, Iranians did to their *own* children (and worse).
If America loses to guerilla warfare, in Iraq or Afghanistan it will be because stupidity and attempting to push "freedom" where it just won't go.
than the most politically stable country in the world (which the US is *not*) where they do.
And you find Britain to be a gun-free country ? Have you visited London recently ? Just walking around in London is about the same level of danger (people shot/total people) as an African "war zone" (e.g. Rwanda 15 years ago). All but one US city have less than half that (Chicago, if you're wondering).
There isn't a gun-free zone on earth, thanks to crime. Just a whole lot of people that like to pretend, then get shot...
G&T's paper in E&E refuses to accept that the presence of another object nearby at temperature will cause the temperature of a hotter object to be higher than it would without. Making a mockery of the laws of thermodynamics which REQUIRE that this be true.
Euhm... no they don't. They only require this to happen for total internal energy. They require that the sum of all energies remains constant, nothing else. Say the earth (or it's athmosphere) would grow 10^-6 % in volume, mass or well, a long list of things. That would cause an (enormous, at least compared to global warming, ie much, much more than 2 degrees) temperature drop.
But since the earth is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, generally speaking a rise in energy, or a drop in energy, could result in ANY effect on surface temperatures. That's what physics, you know, really says.
Sorry if it doesn't support your favorite political dogma.
If you can get your hands on fissionable material you can build a bomb. Getting your hands on the fissionable material is the hard part. The rest is just engineering.
Fortunately, no. Or else Iran would have had a bomb 20 years ago. Heh perhaps the shah would have used one on the paedophile khomeini. There are many known locations where you can pick fissionable material off off the ground. One of those is even in Iran.
The problem is that for a neutron cascade ("the bomb"), you don't need fissionable material. What happens in a nuclear bomb starts with one nucleus falling apart. This produces 2 fast neutrons. IF both of those neutrons hit the correct fissionable material, it will cause 2 nuclei to split, producing 4 neutrons. Then 8. Then... we all know where this is going.
So far so good. There is one problem, though. If you're the size of a neutron, hitting your neighbor nucleus is like attempting to hit the moon, if it were in the andromeda galaxy. It's just not going to happen. Of course there are many neighbor nuclei, increasing your chances. But if the neutrons hit non-U235 nuclei, nothing will happen.
So in a bomb you must make sure that there are enough U235 nuclei in the vicinity. That translates to concentration. How much concentration ? 98% pure at least, preferably more (if you want to be sure it blows up).
Easy enough, let's separate them. Unfortunately, U235 is never found alone, but generally in ore form (bonded to oxygen, for example). You need the pure metal U235. Furthermore it's at least 5% U238 and smaller concentrations of various isotopes. So you got to separate these things out. This is easy enough until you get to having only uranium nuclei, of various weights.
You need to appreciate just how similar U235 and U238 (for example) are. They are nuclei with the exact same magnetic field. Same magnetic moment. They react to the same light frequencies. Everything is the same, except the weight, but that isn't all that different either. U235 and U238 differ about 1.2% in weight. The only known way to separate them is to vaporize them into a highly positively charged plasma, then throw that plasma into a strong magnetic field, where the flow will start to rotate around the center of the field. This will create a minute difference in isotope concentration : less than 0.1% more U235 in the center, slightly over 0.2% more on the other side (the problem is thermalization, constantly remixing the isotopes). That's what's happening in those big tubes the US dislikes so much. Then the purified output of centrifuge 1 can go into centrifuge 2, restarting the process, slowly increasing the purity of the isotopes. You need to connect about 3000 in series.
It is not known exactly how efficient this process is. But it is known that about 200 kg of ore (5% uranium) is needed to create 1 kg 95% U235 (which is what the first nuclear power plants ran on). Undoubtedly it's at least 10 times that for 98%, but... (the "losses" of this process are the fuel for it. You use the less pure output to fire a nuclear reactor to power the whole purification system, which eats a LOT of power).
Fissionable uranium, explosion-grade, is not easy to get. Not even if you're sitting on tons upon tons of fissionable material.
You wouldn't say that if you bothered to check the actual amounts invested.
ITER : EUR 7 billion and counting. Expecting to hit at least 10 billion euros (to the tune of 1 billion a year, and at least a few bloggers claim that they've already consumed, under different names, more than the projected EUR 10 billion) HiPER : well whatever they got, it was only enough to produce 2 books with people who were all full-time paid on other's dime (generally universities). Potentially some amount of initial funding will be provided "in 2011 or 2012".
This is not "spreading risk". Except perhaps in the wall-street/government sense of the word.
The whole point of ITER was to "demonstrate" that the science is settled. Apparently "the science" is fully settled. Nevertheless they've made several serious design flaws, and are seriously behind schedule (and below expected results for what they've done too). Nevertheless, they're charging ahead, and all smart people hope they succeed.
Btw, there are fusion reactors in most large hospitals, for neutron production. They're called "fusors" and they're basically a rolled up television display. Additionally these (very simple) devices are used for scientific research in most universities. They're very reliable, but have Q levels around 0.1 up to 0.3 for professionally constructed ones.
Imho, I think the American research plan is smarter than the European one. At the very least for the simple fact that Europe is throwing all their eggs in the same (proven to be somewhat unreliable) basket. America may be underfunding fusion research, absolutely, but at least America's underfunding 5 different attempts (including steam-based fusion, my favorite). But there are others, and there are even hybrid machines (meant to do research and to produce fusion, e.g. Z-pinch, or the Z-machine). Also there are several American tokamaks, just in case that's the solution after all.
The tokamak approach banks on pushing back to all forces that act on a fusing plasma, and it's like placing 2000000 small propellors on the ground to control a raging thunderstorm. I'm not saying it will never work, but I'll be utterly amazed. There are other approaches. Hydrogen bombs, on the plus side, they're proven to be effective. On the downside... well ask some pacific ex-islands... they know. Then there's inertial confinement fusion, where you generate a number of (relatively) small forces that converge on the same point. For a short time, huge forces will act on this small point, generating fusion. Steam-based fusion is an example, but so is laser fusion, and essentially Z-pinch too. There's also the polywell, an evolution of the only type of fusion rector in commercial use, the fusor, which is a fusor with a magnetic field to replace the fusor grids (google "should google go nuclear ?"). There's even a few attempts that involve principles that boil down to shooting high pressure gas in what's essentially a funnel, resulting in huge pressures just behind the end of the funnel. And I don't really understand how the Z-pinch is supposed to work.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, totally self-reliant (though not "renewable" by any stretch of the imagination) armies without supply lines have been done to death.
Female horses : transport, self-replicating, meat, milk and cheese. And a lot of fun at parties too*.
Incidentally, the Afghans will probably find all about them in their history books. Well, the history books that haven't been burned (yet) by those muslims, taliban and otherwise.
* I mean mongol horse contests, not ... euhm ... muslim late-night activities.
There are others with your plight
Sincerely,
John Q. Viagra
Do they declare which party THEY vote for ? Seems somehow relevant.
Well, in Japan, for one thing, it's not nearly as prevalent. I know there are elephants ("there are no gays in Iran, where did you get that idea ?", or "islam has nothing to do with executing gays" (and all sorts of shit about some new york mosque being fundamentally different in ideology than the other paedophilic stealing slavery-supporting gay-killing rapists, which anyone with half a brain knows it isn't)) and flies in the room. It seems a lot more productive to remove the elephants first.
Iran's doing this to a few thousand people yearly, for 30 years and counting. Japan, as far as we know, did it to a few hundred since (after) WWII.
I also wonder how they can do this without laughing at themselves.
"the worm was not targeted at us, or our nuclear facilities, it had no effect"
and now ...
"we arrest spies due to the worm"
Ok the, so, which is it ?
Of course we shouldn't expect much from muslims that claim "there are no gays in Iran, I don't know where you got that idea". Surely this "allah" guy I keep hearing about can protect one measly "power station" ?
We've all made links in cat5 > 200 meters that work perfectly fine. Granted, perfect reliability is something else, but for a backup link in a datacenter that charges an arm and a leg for fiber connections and < 10% of that price for copper ... I've even been known to stick that link in a 10G copper interface card to see if it'd work (even if it didn't work). But I've had reliable gigabit copper links over > 250meters operational for years.It helps a lot if they're the only ethernet link in a metal cable tray.
And the opposite as well. Ever had an ethernet link inside a bundle of VDSL links ? The link was barely 30 meters, but the error counters mounted faster than the traffic counters. And the link stayed up, so the routing protocol saw no need to reroute. Now that was a bitch to deal with. Especially since we couldn't replace the cable with cat6.
If your network design can't deal with signal loss on individual links, especially when known beforehand that said links are located in a warzone, you have other problems than theoretical maximum link distances. And even in general : hardware WILL fail, so prepare for failure instead of investing untold resources in preventing it.
So the tactics work ... but ... wait for it ! ...
the
international community tends to frown on the use of nuclear weapons
Aside from the fact that nuclear weapons are woefully ineffective in killing (ask the muslims, they've killed millions on several occasions, and they're simply using the cheapest thing they can find : children, knives, improvised explosives and ak-47's. With just the children and knives they've killed the entire population of northern africa, all the way to northern india. Historical estimates of how many were killed in these jihads start at 300 million and go up to 1.5 billion. I'd like to see you do that with a nuke).
Nor did anyone else kill with nukes, even when that was possible. Soviets had nukes, never used them. And not because of MAD, the US wouldn't have retaliated if the USSR nuked afghanistan, it would simply have been one more "internal matter" the US simply overlooked, like so many others.
Why do you have this ridiculous idea that everyone cares about "getting frowned upon" ? Did it stop Hitler ? Actually the "international community" at the time was cheering Hitler on. Did it stop Stalin ? Did it stop Mao ? Did it stop Kim Yong Il ? All of these genocidal maniacs were cheered on by the "international community". Reading the history books one can deduce the patter, say you're doing what you're doing for "social justice" and "progressives" like you will support the genocides (just like your supporting the genocidal palestinian state, for example).
Let's try this another way : can you name ONE genocidal maniac that was stopped, NOT by the US, but by the "frowning of the international community" ?
One ?
One teensy tiny single and very lonely little example ?
The point, obviously, is that the attempts "ENTIRELY non-U.S funded and controlled" are basically zero.
There's some tokamak work in China (of dubious quality, as several cases of fraudulent results have been exposed already).
And there's ...
Well, you got me.
And ferrari's are really cheap if one factors in that sometimes you have to run from a raging tyrannosaurus ...
Same argument.
Why do people ever make the argument that apple devices (anyone of their devices, really) are "cheap" ?
That's like saying Ferrari's the cheapest brand once you require 400 kph+.
Who cares ?
Actually you should see what microsoft has created with microsoft visual foxpro. It's a beautiful product, certainly much more so than access.
Just my 2c.
Obviously using civilians as human shields is what's exposing them to danger.
Of course that's always made ridiculous. "So the party shooting those poor victims isn't to blame ? That's ridiculous !"
Of course, what is a commander to do if he gets shot at from within a crowd of protesters ? Or surrounded ? The Geneva conventions are clear : he is at liberty to return fire indiscriminately if he considers his unit in danger. There is no recourse for "the victims". In an extreme interpretation, you are at liberty to nuke a kindergarten if there was a rocket launcher inside it.
If you want to be protected under the Geneva conventions, you HAVE to vacate ANY area where fighting *might* occur. Whoever chooses to stay, ... And, of course, if any side blocks anyone from leaving *THEY* are responsible for the consequences.
Of course, that would make, say hamas, the plo and the large majority of palestinians responsible for the people shot by Israeli forces (and of course, for any reasonable person, they are the responsible party). Same with the (mostly faked) "attacks on North Korean 'citizens'"
You see, these rules and laws were created in a time where people actually cared about some amount of realism.
This is simply what I'm saying. Could this "law" (it's not a law, technically, and of course a sovereign state is at liberty to do what it wants no matter the treaties signed) be abused ? No doubt about it.
Cooling systems, for instance, tend to be big, and more or less have to be either aboveground(for massive air exchange) or next to a nice cool body of water. And, since they are cooling systems, hiding their IR output is going to be a trick. If you lose your cooling system, you have not that much time to drop the moderators into the core and shut the thing down, or get a nice pile of molten radioactive slag that has to be entombed more or less forever.
Unless, of course, your enemy is just waiting for you to do something like this, and when obama lights 2 cigarettes at once, they'll dump radioactive waste on some kindergarten (you know one that muslims consider a lesser-beings-kindergarten, like one for women), and claim his cigarette did it.
If a bomb hits ONE pole of the security fence around the gardener's house ... they'll poison a neighboring country and claim the US (/Israel/gays/lesbians/women/non-muslims/satan/...) did it.
Perhaps the right response would be the most trivial of all. Use the random bombings technique they use, but against them. Start blowing up anything smelling Iranian in foreign countries ... Claim it's their oppression that's causing the bombings (talk about a plausible explanation !).
Actually Saddam had claimed it to be operational quite a few times at that points. Israel attacked just after the last component that was absolutely necessary for it's operation was installed. Perhaps something similar is happening here ?
Ahmadinnerjacket is certainly not above lying.
And then ... Iran dumps nuclear waste in the nearest orphanage and tells the world your bombs did it.
What you're saying is a great idea, with a press that checks it's facts and or honest enemy. On both counts, our own press and Iran can be considered to be somewhat lacking ... and we all know what the entire world press is just dieing to believe ...
You might want to *read* the geneva conventions.
ONLY civilians that are NOT involved in the conflict have any kind of protection (aside from the red cross, and even they become fair game if used as human shields).
Any invading force is perfectly at liberty, within the Geneva conventions, to shoot anyone used as a human shield by either side. Needless to say, the responsible side for the kill is the one that used them as human shields, not the side pulling the trigger.
As I said, READ it.
At which point did WWII partisans ever become a threat the third reich"?
When they were killing soldiers left and right, blowing up transport and supplies, generally holding up whole divisions that could have been at the front?
Holding them up ? Oh dear. For how many minutes ? Perhaps a day ?
I am very proud of what these extremely brave people did. But let's not kid ourselves here. They were not a factor on the ground.
They were, at no point, capable of even attempting to attack any significant groups of German soldiers.
Really, read a book or two. There where literally thousands of attacks on significant German forces, in Russia, in the Balkan, in France.
There were, as even you yourself imply in your first statement, limited attacks against German interests, and unguarded shipping lines. And attacks in Russia don't count, for obvious reasons.
That works so well that these Empires still thrive and survive, and are seen as admirable examples we should look up to.
Idiot.
The last version of what arguably still was the Roman government was removed from this planet less than 80 years ago by Kemal Ataturk. Assuming they won't turn out to still have a few cities in their grasp (and, frankly, the current Turkish government seems hell-bent on reintroducing this exact type of government, and might actually succeed).
That means these tactics managed to keep a functional state structure stable enough to survive ... well take your pick :
15 centuries (western only, and it is certainly not considered insane to argue that medieval Europe, at least in the cities, was mostly a continuation of the Roman Empire, making this number closer to 22 centuries, or even 27, if you're really flexible)
25 centuries (total)
29 centuries (total + the state that integrally copied the government system)
You realise that America is the longest existing democracy right ? What age is it now ? 2 centuries since the civil war (which interrupted the democracy) ? 3 centuries and change if couting from independance ?
Compared to the Roman government, the US is barely stable at all. All other governments on this planet are, as compared to the Romans, a joke, and a rather short-lived joke at that. There are few governments on this planet TODAY, where one can find old people (say 70 years) that have not seen their government destroyed. In the roman empire there were families that have not seen significant changes in government organization for 30 generations. Can you even imagine how someone like that would think ?
Hell, there are species on this planet that haven't lasted as long as the Roman state. A lot of them.
You seriously need to read up on history.
At which point did WWII partisans ever become a threat the third reich ? Or even to small groups of soldiers ? Sure they were able to slightly disrupt some shipping channels, and pass information to an external invading force, but that's it.
They were, at no point, capable of even attempting to attack any significant groups of German soldiers.
And the groups collaborating with the nazi's dwarfed, in almost all of Europe, the resistance.
Personally I find WWII history supports my point, it does not contradict it.
Let's just state the plain, obvious, unpopular truth :
Why do you think Vietnam/Iraq became such nightmares?
Simple : because America refused to do what was necessary. Refused to do what the enemy did. America is always attacking half-assed. America was literally attacking to free Iraq. Because America is fighting an enemy that doesn't respect any rules, uses civilians as cannon fodder and shields, massacres entire cities on mere suspicions, rapes children (just like a certain religion commands) and worse. And America fights them with pink gloves.
If America attacked truly to get at the oil, and wanted to destroy any attempted guerilla force, they could easily simply do what everyone has done before America : every time an invading soldier hurts his toe on a wooden splinter (or worse), you pick out 100 Iraqi's from whatever family is rumored to have something to do with the attack, and include their neighbors for good measure. You shoot them one by one in the town square, or alternatively slowly cut their throats (as the enemy does). Anyone gives the slightest hint to not follow the invader's ideology, you do the same. Anyone publicly so much as thinks about fantasizing about throwing a shoe at an American cell phone, you do the same.
No guerilla force will survive for a week under those conditions. And before you say "that's just terribly bad", quite frankly this would still be within the "human rights treaty" (unless the enemy forces play by the rules, civilians are fair game. Any civilian is only protected as long as he can keep both fighting forces away from himself and his house. That means that armies are supposed to declare war, tell eachother where they'll fight, fight at that location, and everyone else surrenders to whomever wins, WITHOUT resistance. Any deviation from that plan allows both sides to kill any civilians).
That's not how warfare has actually happened, not in the middle east, not anywhere else. Killing anyone who blinked is how Napoleon did it, that's how Ataturk did it (in fact he was a *LOT* worse), that's how the Saudi's did it (they were also a lot worse, if not quite as bad as Ataturk), that's how Saddam did it, and let's not talk about our friends, the Iranians. What hitler did to jews, Iranians did to their *own* children (and worse).
If America loses to guerilla warfare, in Iraq or Afghanistan it will be because stupidity and attempting to push "freedom" where it just won't go.
than the most politically stable country in the world (which the US is *not*) where they do.
And you find Britain to be a gun-free country ? Have you visited London recently ? Just walking around in London is about the same level of danger (people shot/total people) as an African "war zone" (e.g. Rwanda 15 years ago). All but one US city have less than half that (Chicago, if you're wondering).
There isn't a gun-free zone on earth, thanks to crime. Just a whole lot of people that like to pretend, then get shot ...
G&T's paper in E&E refuses to accept that the presence of another object nearby at temperature will cause the temperature of a hotter object to be higher than it would without. Making a mockery of the laws of thermodynamics which REQUIRE that this be true.
Euhm ... no they don't. They only require this to happen for total internal energy. They require that the sum of all energies remains constant, nothing else. Say the earth (or it's athmosphere) would grow 10^-6 % in volume, mass or well, a long list of things. That would cause an (enormous, at least compared to global warming, ie much, much more than 2 degrees) temperature drop.
But since the earth is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, generally speaking a rise in energy, or a drop in energy, could result in ANY effect on surface temperatures. That's what physics, you know, really says.
Sorry if it doesn't support your favorite political dogma.
If you can get your hands on fissionable material you can build a bomb. Getting your hands on the fissionable material is the hard part. The rest is just engineering.
Fortunately, no. Or else Iran would have had a bomb 20 years ago. Heh perhaps the shah would have used one on the paedophile khomeini. There are many known locations where you can pick fissionable material off off the ground. One of those is even in Iran.
The problem is that for a neutron cascade ("the bomb"), you don't need fissionable material. What happens in a nuclear bomb starts with one nucleus falling apart. This produces 2 fast neutrons. IF both of those neutrons hit the correct fissionable material, it will cause 2 nuclei to split, producing 4 neutrons. Then 8. Then ... we all know where this is going.
So far so good. There is one problem, though. If you're the size of a neutron, hitting your neighbor nucleus is like attempting to hit the moon, if it were in the andromeda galaxy. It's just not going to happen. Of course there are many neighbor nuclei, increasing your chances. But if the neutrons hit non-U235 nuclei, nothing will happen.
So in a bomb you must make sure that there are enough U235 nuclei in the vicinity. That translates to concentration. How much concentration ? 98% pure at least, preferably more (if you want to be sure it blows up).
Easy enough, let's separate them. Unfortunately, U235 is never found alone, but generally in ore form (bonded to oxygen, for example). You need the pure metal U235. Furthermore it's at least 5% U238 and smaller concentrations of various isotopes. So you got to separate these things out. This is easy enough until you get to having only uranium nuclei, of various weights.
You need to appreciate just how similar U235 and U238 (for example) are. They are nuclei with the exact same magnetic field. Same magnetic moment. They react to the same light frequencies. Everything is the same, except the weight, but that isn't all that different either. U235 and U238 differ about 1.2% in weight. The only known way to separate them is to vaporize them into a highly positively charged plasma, then throw that plasma into a strong magnetic field, where the flow will start to rotate around the center of the field. This will create a minute difference in isotope concentration : less than 0.1% more U235 in the center, slightly over 0.2% more on the other side (the problem is thermalization, constantly remixing the isotopes). That's what's happening in those big tubes the US dislikes so much. Then the purified output of centrifuge 1 can go into centrifuge 2, restarting the process, slowly increasing the purity of the isotopes. You need to connect about 3000 in series.
It is not known exactly how efficient this process is. But it is known that about 200 kg of ore (5% uranium) is needed to create 1 kg 95% U235 (which is what the first nuclear power plants ran on). Undoubtedly it's at least 10 times that for 98%, but ... (the "losses" of this process are the fuel for it. You use the less pure output to fire a nuclear reactor to power the whole purification system, which eats a LOT of power).
Fissionable uranium, explosion-grade, is not easy to get. Not even if you're sitting on tons upon tons of fissionable material.
And quite frankly : thank God this is so.
You wouldn't say that if you bothered to check the actual amounts invested.
ITER : EUR 7 billion and counting. Expecting to hit at least 10 billion euros (to the tune of 1 billion a year, and at least a few bloggers claim that they've already consumed, under different names, more than the projected EUR 10 billion)
HiPER : well whatever they got, it was only enough to produce 2 books with people who were all full-time paid on other's dime (generally universities). Potentially some amount of initial funding will be provided "in 2011 or 2012".
This is not "spreading risk". Except perhaps in the wall-street/government sense of the word.
The whole point of ITER was to "demonstrate" that the science is settled. Apparently "the science" is fully settled. Nevertheless they've made several serious design flaws, and are seriously behind schedule (and below expected results for what they've done too). Nevertheless, they're charging ahead, and all smart people hope they succeed.
Btw, there are fusion reactors in most large hospitals, for neutron production. They're called "fusors" and they're basically a rolled up television display. Additionally these (very simple) devices are used for scientific research in most universities. They're very reliable, but have Q levels around 0.1 up to 0.3 for professionally constructed ones.
Imho, I think the American research plan is smarter than the European one. At the very least for the simple fact that Europe is throwing all their eggs in the same (proven to be somewhat unreliable) basket. America may be underfunding fusion research, absolutely, but at least America's underfunding 5 different attempts (including steam-based fusion, my favorite). But there are others, and there are even hybrid machines (meant to do research and to produce fusion, e.g. Z-pinch, or the Z-machine). Also there are several American tokamaks, just in case that's the solution after all.
The tokamak approach banks on pushing back to all forces that act on a fusing plasma, and it's like placing 2000000 small propellors on the ground to control a raging thunderstorm. I'm not saying it will never work, but I'll be utterly amazed. There are other approaches. Hydrogen bombs, on the plus side, they're proven to be effective. On the downside ... well ask some pacific ex-islands ... they know. Then there's inertial confinement fusion, where you generate a number of (relatively) small forces that converge on the same point. For a short time, huge forces will act on this small point, generating fusion. Steam-based fusion is an example, but so is laser fusion, and essentially Z-pinch too. There's also the polywell, an evolution of the only type of fusion rector in commercial use, the fusor, which is a fusor with a magnetic field to replace the fusor grids (google "should google go nuclear ?"). There's even a few attempts that involve principles that boil down to shooting high pressure gas in what's essentially a funnel, resulting in huge pressures just behind the end of the funnel. And I don't really understand how the Z-pinch is supposed to work.
The French giving up on their stupid language ? We'll have to conquer them first.
I wonder if Chuck Norris is free on friday.
Or, in this case, Stevie Wonder will do fine.