Imagine the shoe is on the other foot. Say there's a separatist movement in Kamchatka that's seized some statigic Russian base - maybe even one that has nuclear material. The Kremlin decides the best response is to launch something in a westward direction that looks-like-but-isn't-really a ballistic missile from the caucuses. Do you think that Gates is going to just ho-hum assume that the Russians wouldn't possibly launch a strike on us?
a conventional response... that looks a whole lot like a nuclear response.
This is idiotic, why develop a conventional weapon that looks like a nuke - you know you're never going to be able to use it in any situation that wouldn't warrant a nuke - and in that case, just use the nuke.
It's an almost-balistic-missle based in California... can you imagine any part of the world we might hit that wouldn't result in frenzied meetings in Moscow where Russia has to decide if this is a nuke or not? Juarez maybe? Does anyone ever want to take that chance and don't we have cruise missiles in Indian Ocean?
I think interstellar travel has to proceed the ability to detect alien life. If that's the case, all bets are off on the time line from discovery to arrival.
I don't know if it's safe to assume that space is lonely.
To my mind, the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we don't see aliens because they don't have any reason to bother with us - and we're unable to intercept or unable to recognize their communication technology.
It could be that once we get out of our solar system we find a universe teeming with life - of course then we'd probably be at the bottom of the ladder (though probably not the bottom of the food chain - if they wanted to eat us they would have already.)
Who wants water when you can have hydrogen and oxygen?
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, so no alien lifeform is likely to be without that, and oxygen is the third most plentiful - although the earth does have an unusual concentration of available O2 - so they may come to mine that.
I suspect that any alien life form that didn't evolve a respect for life would have either annihilated itself in warfare or destroyed it's home planet before extending out into space.
Open hostility as a survival strategy really breaks down when you're sufficiently powerful - see MAD.
On the other hand, it's also possible that once they left the confines of their planet the utility of playing nice diminished.
I did elaborate. I can intentionally kill someone in self-defense, but it's still not murder.
And then there's the death penalty, which is not only intentional but premeditated and demanded by the old testament. You can't ban intentional killing and then require that adulterers be stoned.
As to who makes the determination - well that would be the political powers in control at the moment. Yeah, that pokes holes in the neat absolutism that religion tries to profess, but I'm more comfortable with that than saying genocide is ok if god tells you to do it.
Do you go alone? How much does that 6 hour flight cost? $200? $300? Does that include your bags?
See, I make 8-10 hour drives 6-8 times a year, but I do it because it's cheaper, especially when I'm traveling with someone as I usually am. 8 hours in a car and it's only marginally less convenient than flying - and not because of security. A trip that takes about six hours to drive takes what 4 to fly including driving to and from the airport, waiting to check in, getting there early, waiting to pick up your bags, etc. etc. And thats if your flight leaves on time. Then you get there and you don't have a car. That might be fine in Vegas, but in most places that means you have to rent one - another $60-100/day oh and you have to wait for that too.
If you drive thats what, $100-150 in gas?
Flying starts to make sense if you can't make the trip in a day. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense economically - and that's why flying is down.
Even if you really value your time, 6 hours is about the break even point - trips shorter than that you're just wasting time in an airport.
Don't get me wrong I think it's security theater too, but if it were really impacting the number of people who fly we'd be hearing it from the cash-strapped airline industry.
I'd be surprised if security theater accounts form more than 0.5% of the decrease in domestic air travel. People just don't care. Air travel is down domestically because prices are up and theres a recession. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now tourism may have suffered because the US is perceived (accurately?) to have become less friendly for foreigners - but the airport rigmarole is only tangentially related to even that.
I'd agree, but I'd think if we were running a covert bio-weapons program there'd be pretty tight controls on it - tight enough that if some got mailed to a congressman we'd get the right guy the first time.
This whole thing stinks, but I still don't buy the even more conspiratorial we did it to pass the patriot act - does anyone really believe that a few people getting sick on September 20th 2001 is the real impetus behind patriot?
As far as I can tell all the cars in that article were confiscated for street racing, and possibly other things like stolen parts (the vin number fell off?)
I don't doubt that the police can seize and even destroy your car for certain offenses, drugs, drag racing etc. but I still maintain that it's awfully hard to "illegally modify" your car with the exception of violating the clean air act by going to straight pipes.
Article One of the Biological Weapons Convention, to which we are a party, is, "Never under any circumstances to acquire or retain biological weapons."
Well considering that at the time Moses revived the 10 commandments he was on a quest to wipe the Canaanites off the face of the earth - I'd say yeah, the 10 commandments implicitly allow warfare.
it's more like intentionally and unjustifiably cause someone to become dead.
If I come home and you're beating and raping my wife, you better believe I'm intending to kill you - but because killing in defense of life is justified it's not murder.
But now we're talking Old Testament, 10 commandments law. Jesus' teachings and example would tend to indicate that you can't even kill to save your own life, though it's a little tougher to parse whether or not you can kill to protect someone else. Probably for pragmatic purposes than anything else, most christian doctrines throughout history have taught that you can intentionally kill other people to protect someone else's life - and this is how we get to the just war theory...
The way I see it there are three possibilities. When the anthrax events were taking place, you'll recall that this was high-grade weaponized anthrax containing silica, that indicates a high level of technical competence. So that leads to the first possibility, a sufficiently competent person can, on their own, weaponize anthrax from a culture. This, to me, is the most frightening, but also the least likely possibility. If one person could do it, someone else would have. I don't doubt that there are sufficiently motivated and financed terror groups who would have repeated the procedure if this were possible. This stuff was supposedly (although there are contradictory statements) better than the soviet weaponized anthrax.
The second possibility is that Ivins had nothing to do with this, except possibly supplying the culture to a third party - a third party who stopped the attacks for some unknown reason.
The third - and this is where I put on my tinfoil hat - is that the US maintains stores of weapons grade anthrax in contradiction to our biological warfare treaty obligations that someone, probably Ivins, pilfered.
Nah, Christianity found it's peaceful resolution in the wake of the destruction of the 30 years war. After the population of western europe was decimated by religiously motivated violence eventually (after 30 years) the powers at be, both political and sectarian decided that whether or not you pray to Mary isn't worth fighting for.
I agree with your analysis, but Christianity has been that way for about 85% of its existence - so while it may not have started that way "true" Christianity is described by its history, not by what it could have been. (c.f. communism)
I don't think techno-savy hard-line muslim is any more a contradiction in terms than wealthy hard-line evangelical christian. From what I've read, the internet is a pretty fertile recruiting ground for islamic radicals.
Now as far as the "reading this post part." I dunno, maybe the anti-communist propaganda we fed them when we were still friends makes them think that they can get some of the randroids who dwell here to come over...
I spent some time looking over the California Vehicle code and couldn't find any references to NOS at all. Neither apparently could an attorney who wrote this blog post (page 3).
It's probably illegal to actually use nitrous on a street in CA - reckless driving, speeding, racing, etc. But I can find no evidence that it's illegal to have such a system. There's a lot of misinformation on what exactly it means for a car to be street legal and I wouldn't take a cop's word for it that he knows in casual conversation either, he'd probably struggle to figure out what to actually cite you for - and on that note IANAL.
But now my interest is piqued - I haven't been able to locate any authoritative sources one way or another - if you have one, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine the shoe is on the other foot. Say there's a separatist movement in Kamchatka that's seized some statigic Russian base - maybe even one that has nuclear material. The Kremlin decides the best response is to launch something in a westward direction that looks-like-but-isn't-really a ballistic missile from the caucuses. Do you think that Gates is going to just ho-hum assume that the Russians wouldn't possibly launch a strike on us?
a conventional response ... that looks a whole lot like a nuclear response.
This is idiotic, why develop a conventional weapon that looks like a nuke - you know you're never going to be able to use it in any situation that wouldn't warrant a nuke - and in that case, just use the nuke.
It's an almost-balistic-missle based in California ... can you imagine any part of the world we might hit that wouldn't result in frenzied meetings in Moscow where Russia has to decide if this is a nuke or not? Juarez maybe? Does anyone ever want to take that chance and don't we have cruise missiles in Indian Ocean?
I think interstellar travel has to proceed the ability to detect alien life. If that's the case, all bets are off on the time line from discovery to arrival.
I don't know if it's safe to assume that space is lonely.
To my mind, the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we don't see aliens because they don't have any reason to bother with us - and we're unable to intercept or unable to recognize their communication technology.
It could be that once we get out of our solar system we find a universe teeming with life - of course then we'd probably be at the bottom of the ladder (though probably not the bottom of the food chain - if they wanted to eat us they would have already.)
I guess the aliens never heard of Zeno.
Who wants water when you can have hydrogen and oxygen?
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, so no alien lifeform is likely to be without that, and oxygen is the third most plentiful - although the earth does have an unusual concentration of available O2 - so they may come to mine that.
I suspect that any alien life form that didn't evolve a respect for life would have either annihilated itself in warfare or destroyed it's home planet before extending out into space.
Open hostility as a survival strategy really breaks down when you're sufficiently powerful - see MAD.
On the other hand, it's also possible that once they left the confines of their planet the utility of playing nice diminished.
Intent is a necessary, but not sufficient requirement for murder.
I agree that murder is subordinate to kill, but not all intentional killing is murder.
Here's an example:
1) The soldier took deliberate aim and killed the enemy.
It's intentional, but you still can't substitute murder.
I did elaborate. I can intentionally kill someone in self-defense, but it's still not murder.
And then there's the death penalty, which is not only intentional but premeditated and demanded by the old testament. You can't ban intentional killing and then require that adulterers be stoned.
As to who makes the determination - well that would be the political powers in control at the moment. Yeah, that pokes holes in the neat absolutism that religion tries to profess, but I'm more comfortable with that than saying genocide is ok if god tells you to do it.
Do you go alone? How much does that 6 hour flight cost? $200? $300? Does that include your bags?
See, I make 8-10 hour drives 6-8 times a year, but I do it because it's cheaper, especially when I'm traveling with someone as I usually am. 8 hours in a car and it's only marginally less convenient than flying - and not because of security. A trip that takes about six hours to drive takes what 4 to fly including driving to and from the airport, waiting to check in, getting there early, waiting to pick up your bags, etc. etc. And thats if your flight leaves on time. Then you get there and you don't have a car. That might be fine in Vegas, but in most places that means you have to rent one - another $60-100/day oh and you have to wait for that too.
If you drive thats what, $100-150 in gas?
Flying starts to make sense if you can't make the trip in a day. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense economically - and that's why flying is down.
Even if you really value your time, 6 hours is about the break even point - trips shorter than that you're just wasting time in an airport.
Don't get me wrong I think it's security theater too, but if it were really impacting the number of people who fly we'd be hearing it from the cash-strapped airline industry.
WTF
Dammit - every time I think I've figured out a way to get into the Guiness book, I always find out somebody's already done it.
Only they don't call them donors - they call them fetishists.
I'd be surprised if security theater accounts form more than 0.5% of the decrease in domestic air travel. People just don't care. Air travel is down domestically because prices are up and theres a recession. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now tourism may have suffered because the US is perceived (accurately?) to have become less friendly for foreigners - but the airport rigmarole is only tangentially related to even that.
I'd agree, but I'd think if we were running a covert bio-weapons program there'd be pretty tight controls on it - tight enough that if some got mailed to a congressman we'd get the right guy the first time.
This whole thing stinks, but I still don't buy the even more conspiratorial we did it to pass the patriot act - does anyone really believe that a few people getting sick on September 20th 2001 is the real impetus behind patriot?
As far as I can tell all the cars in that article were confiscated for street racing, and possibly other things like stolen parts (the vin number fell off?)
I don't doubt that the police can seize and even destroy your car for certain offenses, drugs, drag racing etc. but I still maintain that it's awfully hard to "illegally modify" your car with the exception of violating the clean air act by going to straight pipes.
Article One of the Biological Weapons Convention, to which we are a party, is, "Never under any circumstances to acquire or retain biological weapons."
Well considering that at the time Moses revived the 10 commandments he was on a quest to wipe the Canaanites off the face of the earth - I'd say yeah, the 10 commandments implicitly allow warfare.
it's more like intentionally and unjustifiably cause someone to become dead.
If I come home and you're beating and raping my wife, you better believe I'm intending to kill you - but because killing in defense of life is justified it's not murder.
But now we're talking Old Testament, 10 commandments law. Jesus' teachings and example would tend to indicate that you can't even kill to save your own life, though it's a little tougher to parse whether or not you can kill to protect someone else. Probably for pragmatic purposes than anything else, most christian doctrines throughout history have taught that you can intentionally kill other people to protect someone else's life - and this is how we get to the just war theory...
Well at least the quotations attributed to Jesus by his proselytizing disciples some 30 to 60 years after his death.
I agree that the article is misleading, but I disagree that waste dumps for coal fly ash are safer than nuclear waste dumps.
This story never made sense.
The way I see it there are three possibilities. When the anthrax events were taking place, you'll recall that this was high-grade weaponized anthrax containing silica, that indicates a high level of technical competence. So that leads to the first possibility, a sufficiently competent person can, on their own, weaponize anthrax from a culture. This, to me, is the most frightening, but also the least likely possibility. If one person could do it, someone else would have. I don't doubt that there are sufficiently motivated and financed terror groups who would have repeated the procedure if this were possible. This stuff was supposedly (although there are contradictory statements) better than the soviet weaponized anthrax.
The second possibility is that Ivins had nothing to do with this, except possibly supplying the culture to a third party - a third party who stopped the attacks for some unknown reason.
The third - and this is where I put on my tinfoil hat - is that the US maintains stores of weapons grade anthrax in contradiction to our biological warfare treaty obligations that someone, probably Ivins, pilfered.
Nah, Christianity found it's peaceful resolution in the wake of the destruction of the 30 years war. After the population of western europe was decimated by religiously motivated violence eventually (after 30 years) the powers at be, both political and sectarian decided that whether or not you pray to Mary isn't worth fighting for.
I agree with your analysis, but Christianity has been that way for about 85% of its existence - so while it may not have started that way "true" Christianity is described by its history, not by what it could have been. (c.f. communism)
I don't think techno-savy hard-line muslim is any more a contradiction in terms than wealthy hard-line evangelical christian. From what I've read, the internet is a pretty fertile recruiting ground for islamic radicals.
Now as far as the "reading this post part." I dunno, maybe the anti-communist propaganda we fed them when we were still friends makes them think that they can get some of the randroids who dwell here to come over...
I spent some time looking over the California Vehicle code and couldn't find any references to NOS at all. Neither apparently could an attorney who wrote this blog post (page 3).
It's probably illegal to actually use nitrous on a street in CA - reckless driving, speeding, racing, etc. But I can find no evidence that it's illegal to have such a system. There's a lot of misinformation on what exactly it means for a car to be street legal and I wouldn't take a cop's word for it that he knows in casual conversation either, he'd probably struggle to figure out what to actually cite you for - and on that note IANAL.
But now my interest is piqued - I haven't been able to locate any authoritative sources one way or another - if you have one, I'd be interested in seeing it.