Non sequiturs in support of science are just as weak as the non sequiturs used to support religious doctrine.
Evolution being true (or "proven" to the extent that science can "prove" anything) is essentially separate from the truth or falsity of theology in general, though, of course, it does have some bearing on the truth or falsity of a particular creation chronology one might consider part of a religious doctrine.
Believing that finding a vague inaccuracy in the Bible invalidates all religious doctrine is a strawman argument. On the other hand, using the Bible as "evidence" for religious truth is circular reasoning, i.e. "believe in God because God wrote the Bible, and the Bible says to believe in God!"
Because state laws set down requirements that children attend school, and use government money to support that school.
If we fill that school with religious indoctrination, we act to create an establishment of religion. Just as if we mandated church attendance as a requirement to hold public office, or to vote.
If ID could be taught in such a way that it is not religiously-based, then it would be allowed. But that basically boils down to a contradiction.
Uh, because your science fiction scenario has nothing to do with anything ever observed in the universe to date?
There are plenty of totally irrelevant fantasies that one could indulge in regarding the history of the universe and life on Earth. Part of being scientific is to actually limit oneself to ideas that have a basis in careful observation, and not just any fantasy that drifts into one's mind.
Intelligent design makes claims that are extremely sloppy in logic, if not utterly fallacious. Feel free to be stupid on your own time, or to teach your children to be stupid, but realize that is what you are doing.
Generally, it boils down to finding examples of complicated structures or systems in biology, and saying "see, this is complex enough that I don't think it could arise by evolution." It is a strawman---no biologist says that evolution has to result in structures that obviously arose from simpler precursors.
It is one step above young Earth creationists, who seek "geological evidence" to "support" their preconceived interpretation of the Genesis chronology. ID proponents are almost all seeking "flaws" in evolution to avoid threatening their preconceived notion that God played a crucial role in biological development.
Pardon me if I don't have much sympathy or respect for people who choose to support such stupidity.
The discussion is not whether Darwin's theory excludes "God", but whether "Intelligent Design" is scientific enough to be a goverment-mandated part of a science curriculum, or whether it is, instead, a creationist religious doctrine in a science costume.
If you think Darwin's theory excludes "God" in general, you are seriously obtuse. If you think the biological evidence suggests that God played any role in the development of life on Earth, you are straining credulity.
It's not the speed of light per se, but the fact that conductors need to conduct *current*, and the current is made up of electrons, which have a finite mass (and, therefore, inertia) a finite charge (and, therefore, a finite amount of current is created when one is moving), and a finite number of them in a given volume.
Metals work as good conductors through the visible because the electrons can move quickly enough in the metal to keep up with the changes in the electric field. With increasing frequency, at some point the electrons will be unable to keep up. This frequency is called the "plasma" frequency; roughly, omega_p^2 = 4 pi n e^2/m, where n is the number of electrons per volume, e is the electron charge, and m is the effective mass of the electron.
Above this frequency, the electrons cease to be effective Faraday shields against electromagnetic radiation. Instead, the acceleration of the electrons causes the electromagnetic radiation to be scattered and dissipate energy through Compton scattering.
Gamma radiation is far above the plasma frequency in all metals. To gamma rays, all material basically looks like a bunch of point charges to scatter off of. So you use something like lead which gets about as much electrons in a small space as possible.
Re:Port to common lisp or scheme already
on
The Future of Emacs
·
· Score: 1
Because RMS doesn't like Common Lisp, basically. He never has, and knowing how flexible RMS is, he probably never will. Also, GNU Emacs cannot be practically separated from either it's C substrate *or* the horrific elisp dialect and the nasty programming conventions that go with it.
Common Lisp people come back to this over and over, and some projects exist for Common Lisp-compatible Emacs-like editors, like Climacs and Portable Hemlock. You haven't heard about them because porting Elisp packages to them is basically a huge, impossible-to-reliably-automate task, with the payoff that you get an editor that does just as much as, but no more than, GNU Emacs, with some warm fuzzy feeling that makes *no* practical difference, because the packages will *forever* rely on elisp emulation.
# When you edit a REALLY REALLY large file, it just works. Even binary files.
Really? I last looked into this about 5 years ago, and found the 29(?)-bit integer encoding in my Emacs at the time made it impossible to visit a file over 128 MB in size.
This apparently will get bumped up to 256 MB. On 32-bit platforms, this is just about the biggest you could do with the GNU Emacs design. 64-bit systems work with larger files than this, but only by brute force.
Disk-based editing should, in principle, be able to efficiently handle arbitrarily large files, possibly using a mmap-like feature to load only a small window into physical RAM; the buffer design in Emacs, where "point" has to be located by a Lisp fixnum, and the whole buffer is present in (virtual) Lisp core seems to preclude this.
Or maybe my idea of REALLY REALLY big is your idea of REALLY REALLY REALLY big.
1) many hackers learned to type control keys before the right-hand control key was common, or on platforms where it did not exist. 2) even today, right-hand control keys are not universally available or consistently placed. 3) lots of hackers have not had ergonomically sound typing instruction.
The result is that Control-X is typically typed with the pinkie of the left hand holding control, and some other finger on the left hand pressing the x key. Placing control to the left of the home row lessens the twisting involved in this motion.
(I've been thinking about this recently; Lisp machines actually had lower-left and lower-right control keys, and a rubout (delete) key to the left of A. Which makes me wonder how the original Emacs users learned to type control sequences. I'm toying with the idea of using foot pedals to do control/shift/meta, but would be worried about becoming "that nut who carries his footpedals around from computer to computer.")
Emacs does not actually belong to the UNIX family tree. It belongs to the "MIT hacker" family tree, along with dead OS's like ITS and the Lisp machines. Emacs itself was originally developed on top of the ITS TECO editor; versions were written for the Lisp machines by other AI Lab hackers. The emphasis of text editing in the AI Lab culture was on "ultimate support for the programmer." E.g., Meta-period to immediately take you to the location where something was defined, "compile this S-expression", "navigate to the next S-expression."
Of course, since RMS was an MIT hacker, Emacs was a requirement for the GNU system. That he chose UNIX as the OS foundation of the GNU system was something of an historical accident.
"True" UNIX text editing basically boils down to ed (the standard text editor!) and the vi visual front end, with the *roff macro packages to support typesetting.
Wikipedia has much more detail on Emacs's historical development.
I feel Iraqis are unlikely to succeed in developing a stable multi-ethnic democracy with effective protection for civil rights anytime soon.
I know Iraqis are not ethnically what most people would consider white. I also think this has absolutely nothing to do with the first statement, or my reasons for believing it to be true.
Hope you don't totally miss the point of this post.
This almost certainly varies by jurisdiction, but where speech crosses the line to "incitement", or a "true threat" then it can become illegal. IANAL, but I believe the standard for "incitement" is that the speaker is intended to cause imminent unlawful action, and is likely to produce the action. And, for a "true threat" a statement which, in context, would be interpreted as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm.
So instruction on sniper shooting combined with, say, the home address of one person, pictured with a crosshair over his head, and inflammatory material linking him to something controversial like, for instance, providing abortions, could cross the line.
"Revisionism" is typically reserved for historical accounts which are meant to conform to a particular political dogma or, more rarely, to be self-serving, where those motives override the goal of "accuracy", whatever that means.
Simply inaccurate bullsh*t or libel doesn't count.
Isn't it a bit naive to believe that America can invade and dismantle a country, and democracy will just sprout up like a weed out of the rubble, although the country had never any experience with democracy or democratic institutions, and has been scarred by *decades* of brutal dictatorship along ethnic lines, and we have insufficient soldiers to maintain basic order?
Don't come back at me with "Hitler's Germany." Germany had multiple advantages that Iraq does not have
1) at least a history of the Weimar republic, dysfunctional as it was. Hitler had only been in power for 12 years. 2) a central part in the culture of the Enlightenment, great universities, and a tradition of first class technical and industrial development 3) "occupiers" who were culturally and religiously compatible with German norms 4) had become a country on its own, not from external forces, without a past of colonial subjugation. 5) No guerilla aftermath; occupation which was overwhelming in its presence, yet, in the Western sector, generous with reconstruction efforts. 6) A commitment from the U.S. and allies sufficient to maintain forces there for 50 years.
I put Turkey in the Near East; basically, Europe. But, I'll admit it is more democratic than Iran. Lebanon is a more ambiguous case.
Still, Iran is not a single-party sham like Baathist Iraq. Yes, it is seriously flawed, especially by Western standards, but their recently-elected president (and his predecessor) were elected in basically freely contested elections. You think Ahmadinejad was not democratically elected? Yet certainly he is not pursuing policies that are favorable to the U.S.
I don't see "victory" yet. As in "achieve the stated goals." Yes we cleaned up against Saddam's regular forces. Luckily, there weren't any WMD to be used on our troops. Now we're pinned down in urban warfare that is chewing our Army up slowly but surely.
"Not as bad as Vietnam in body count" is not equivalent to "victory."
As for democracy, what's the most stable democratic country in the Middle East, excluding Israel? Why, it's IRAN! Oh, boy. Good thing Iran is not a security threat. Someday, Iraq may be a Middle Eastern democracy, too! Now who's view is distorted?
Getting your town gassed by Saddam for political reasons is a totally different threat than "can't drive to the Baghdad airport without a convoy, or without being attacked by a U.S. convoy because I get mistaken for a car bomber." Guess which one pisses off a Baghdad resident more?
Plus, give them time. Once somebody solidifies power enough to eliminate general guerilla conflict, I'm sure they'll bring back the torture chambers and ethnic politics in full force.
And, don't forget to count the civilians killed during the U.S. invasion and occupation. They're just as dead as if Saddam killed them, and just as randomly and unfairly.
Step back for a minute and think what you are claiming. "At least we are not as bad as Saddam was in some dimension." Is "not as bad as Saddam" really how low the bar has been set now?
As for a different plan, perhaps a force more like the 300k troops to maintain order that Shinseki had discussed before he got shitcanned, without the pie-in-the-sky assumption that we'd be greeted with flowers, would have been a good start.
You are positing a U.S. offensive against North Korea, then. The scenario was "the U.S. is just minding its business when North Korea decides to launch a nuke." *I* specifically excluded "last-gasp" anyway.
Even if they did launch during a U.S offensive, it would almost certainly be against U.S. bases in Japan, just as the U.S. would have used them against Warsaw Pact forces and the logistic chain behind them. Hitting U.S. territory would be absolutely pointless, and do nothing. Hitting military forces while they are attacking is completely within the rules of war, and might have a slight chance of preventing utter defeat.
Diplomacy is practically free. Missile defense is fucking EXPENSIVE, you dimwit.
Plus, your 50% is highly optimistic. Pardon me if I don't feel it is a good idea to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for that extra 0.5% in protection, diverting money from dealing with REAL threats.
NOBODY believes a *massive* (did you miss that word?) attack can be prevented by a practical ABM system. That's the whole reason people abandoned the Star Wars model and came back with a scaled down system to protect against a *limited* attack.
Windows computer viruses are a present REALITY. ICBM attacks are a worst-case POSSIBILITY. The Soviet Union with thousands of ICBMs never attacked, despite our lack of ABM defenses. Funny, huh?
Kim Jong Il, if anything, is HELPED by the threat posed by the U.S. It justifies his militaristic regime. You probably think Castro is going to fall any day now because of the U.S. sanctions.
Plus, you TOTALLY ignored the cost aspect. Yeah, it would be nice to have a missile defense capability, if it cost nothing. And then, I might not care that it doesn't work.
I can go wrap my house in tissue paper to make an *in*effective defense against nuclear attack. And it would be cheap. But I still don't do it because it would be stupid. If I had to spend billions of dollars to get gold-plated tissue paper, it would be even more stupid.
Yeah, I was very imprecise in my description. I should have said "re-entry vehicles" instead of warheads too.
But antisimulation works in the IR too, with a little heater, or playing games with emissivities. North Korea has all the time in the world to think up tricks, and your IR sensing solution has to cover the whole range of possible tricks. We can't really know how North Korea's decoys are going to differ from antisimulated warheads. Brighter? Dimmer? All the precision in the world doesn't help when you don't even know the right sign. Keep in mind the decoys and targets in the tests so far have been deliberately made to look different.
All these solutions work great when you know what is being thrown at you. When your first time looking at the North Korean re-entry vehicles and decoys is on game day, then my confidence in any solution gets a lot shakier.
But what about the FREEDOM? Don't they have FREEDOM?
Oops, forgot the SARCASM tag.
It is funny that GWB likes to pretend that the Iraqis are just having a rough time comparable to the struggles of the founding fathers in developing the Constitution. Never mind that Alexander Hamilton didn't need an armed escort to travel around New York or Philadelphia at the time. And that the nation was free of foreign occupation by that time.
If one needed an Army convoy to get to Dulles airport, and dozens were dying everyday in D.C. from car bombs, we'd be worried about other stuff than our constitutional liberties, wonderful as those are. And if some other country had caused that problem, we'd be pissed off as hell.
Slashdot Mirror
For the millionth time, Immaculate Conception refers to MARY being born without sin.
Not that you have to believe in it, but for crying out loud, it isn't hard to look it up.
Non sequiturs in support of science are just as weak as the non sequiturs used to support religious doctrine.
Evolution being true (or "proven" to the extent that science can "prove" anything) is essentially separate from the truth or falsity of theology in general, though, of course, it does have some bearing on the truth or falsity of a particular creation chronology one might consider part of a religious doctrine.
Believing that finding a vague inaccuracy in the Bible invalidates all religious doctrine is a strawman argument. On the other hand, using the Bible as "evidence" for religious truth is circular reasoning, i.e. "believe in God because God wrote the Bible, and the Bible says to believe in God!"
Because state laws set down requirements that children attend school, and use government money to support that school.
If we fill that school with religious indoctrination, we act to create an establishment of religion. Just as if we mandated church attendance as a requirement to hold public office, or to vote.
If ID could be taught in such a way that it is not religiously-based, then it would be allowed. But that basically boils down to a contradiction.
He is accountable to appeals courts.
He bases his decision on the evidence presented to him in weeks of testimony by people who *do* have knowledge on the subject.
That's the best system we've got going. What alternative do you propose?
Uh, because your science fiction scenario has nothing to do with anything ever observed in the universe to date?
There are plenty of totally irrelevant fantasies that one could indulge in regarding the history of the universe and life on Earth. Part of being scientific is to actually limit oneself to ideas that have a basis in careful observation, and not just any fantasy that drifts into one's mind.
Intelligent design makes claims that are extremely sloppy in logic, if not utterly fallacious. Feel free to be stupid on your own time, or to teach your children to be stupid, but realize that is what you are doing.
Generally, it boils down to finding examples of complicated structures or systems in biology, and saying "see, this is complex enough that I don't think it could arise by evolution." It is a strawman---no biologist says that evolution has to result in structures that obviously arose from simpler precursors.
It is one step above young Earth creationists, who seek "geological evidence" to "support" their preconceived interpretation of the Genesis chronology. ID proponents are almost all seeking "flaws" in evolution to avoid threatening their preconceived notion that God played a crucial role in biological development.
Pardon me if I don't have much sympathy or respect for people who choose to support such stupidity.
That's completely off-topic.
The discussion is not whether Darwin's theory excludes "God", but whether "Intelligent Design" is scientific enough to be a goverment-mandated part of a science curriculum, or whether it is, instead, a creationist religious doctrine in a science costume.
If you think Darwin's theory excludes "God" in general, you are seriously obtuse. If you think the biological evidence suggests that God played any role in the development of life on Earth, you are straining credulity.
It's not the speed of light per se, but the fact that conductors need to conduct *current*, and the current is made up of electrons, which have a finite mass (and, therefore, inertia) a finite charge (and, therefore, a finite amount of current is created when one is moving), and a finite number of them in a given volume.
Metals work as good conductors through the visible because the electrons can move quickly enough in the metal to keep up with the changes in the electric field. With increasing frequency, at some point the electrons will be unable to keep up. This frequency is called the "plasma" frequency; roughly, omega_p^2 = 4 pi n e^2/m, where n is the number of electrons per volume, e is the electron charge, and m is the effective mass of the electron.
Above this frequency, the electrons cease to be effective Faraday shields against electromagnetic radiation. Instead, the acceleration of the electrons causes the electromagnetic radiation to be scattered and dissipate energy through Compton scattering.
Gamma radiation is far above the plasma frequency in all metals. To gamma rays, all material basically looks like a bunch of point charges to scatter off of. So you use something like lead which gets about as much electrons in a small space as possible.
Because RMS doesn't like Common Lisp, basically. He never has, and knowing how flexible RMS is, he probably never will. Also, GNU Emacs cannot be practically separated from either it's C substrate *or* the horrific elisp dialect and the nasty programming conventions that go with it.
Common Lisp people come back to this over and over, and some projects exist for Common Lisp-compatible Emacs-like editors, like Climacs and Portable Hemlock. You haven't heard about them because porting Elisp packages to them is basically a huge, impossible-to-reliably-automate task, with the payoff that you get an editor that does just as much as, but no more than, GNU Emacs, with some warm fuzzy feeling that makes *no* practical difference, because the packages will *forever* rely on elisp emulation.
# When you edit a REALLY REALLY large file, it just works. Even binary files.
Really? I last looked into this about 5 years ago, and found the 29(?)-bit integer encoding in my Emacs at the time made it impossible to visit a file over 128 MB in size.
This apparently will get bumped up to 256 MB. On 32-bit platforms, this is just about the biggest you could do with the GNU Emacs design. 64-bit systems work with larger files than this, but only by brute force.
Disk-based editing should, in principle, be able to efficiently handle arbitrarily large files, possibly using a mmap-like feature to load only a small window into physical RAM; the buffer design in Emacs, where "point" has to be located by a Lisp fixnum, and the whole buffer is present in (virtual) Lisp core seems to preclude this.
Or maybe my idea of REALLY REALLY big is your idea of REALLY REALLY REALLY big.
I agree completely; however,
1) many hackers learned to type control keys before the right-hand control key was common, or on platforms where it did not exist.
2) even today, right-hand control keys are not universally available or consistently placed.
3) lots of hackers have not had ergonomically sound typing instruction.
The result is that Control-X is typically typed with the pinkie of the left hand holding control, and some other finger on the left hand pressing the x key. Placing control to the left of the home row lessens the twisting involved in this motion.
(I've been thinking about this recently; Lisp machines actually had lower-left and lower-right control keys, and a rubout (delete) key to the left of A. Which makes me wonder how the original Emacs users learned to type control sequences. I'm toying with the idea of using foot pedals to do control/shift/meta, but would be worried about becoming "that nut who carries his footpedals around from computer to computer.")
Emacs does not actually belong to the UNIX family tree. It belongs to the "MIT hacker" family tree, along with dead OS's like ITS and the Lisp machines. Emacs itself was originally developed on top of the ITS TECO editor; versions were written for the Lisp machines by other AI Lab hackers. The emphasis of text editing in the AI Lab culture was on "ultimate support for the programmer." E.g., Meta-period to immediately take you to the location where something was defined, "compile this S-expression", "navigate to the next S-expression."
Of course, since RMS was an MIT hacker, Emacs was a requirement for the GNU system. That he chose UNIX as the OS foundation of the GNU system was something of an historical accident.
"True" UNIX text editing basically boils down to ed (the standard text editor!) and the vi visual front end, with the *roff macro packages to support typesetting.
Wikipedia has much more detail on Emacs's historical development.
Let's recap:
I feel Iraqis are unlikely to succeed in developing a stable multi-ethnic democracy with effective protection for civil rights anytime soon.
I know Iraqis are not ethnically what most people would consider white. I also think this has absolutely nothing to do with the first statement, or my reasons for believing it to be true.
Hope you don't totally miss the point of this post.
know it was false, *or* recklessly disregard that it might be false. I.e. you don't necessarily *know* it is false, but you don't care either.
This almost certainly varies by jurisdiction, but where speech crosses the line to "incitement", or a "true threat" then it can become illegal. IANAL, but I believe the standard for "incitement" is that the speaker is intended to cause imminent unlawful action, and is likely to produce the action. And, for a "true threat" a statement which, in context, would be interpreted as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm.
3 AC4A8F164DA30288256BBA0080B31D/$file/9935320.pdf?o penelement
So instruction on sniper shooting combined with, say, the home address of one person, pictured with a crosshair over his head, and inflammatory material linking him to something controversial like, for instance, providing abortions, could cross the line.
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/A
"Revisionism" is typically reserved for historical accounts which are meant to conform to a particular political dogma or, more rarely, to be self-serving, where those motives override the goal of "accuracy", whatever that means.
Simply inaccurate bullsh*t or libel doesn't count.
Who said it was because they weren't white?
Isn't it a bit naive to believe that America can invade and dismantle a country, and democracy will just sprout up like a weed out of the rubble, although the country had never any experience with democracy or democratic institutions, and has been scarred by *decades* of brutal dictatorship along ethnic lines, and we have insufficient soldiers to maintain basic order?
Don't come back at me with "Hitler's Germany." Germany had multiple advantages that Iraq does not have
1) at least a history of the Weimar republic, dysfunctional as it was. Hitler had only been in power for 12 years.
2) a central part in the culture of the Enlightenment, great universities, and a tradition of first class technical and industrial development
3) "occupiers" who were culturally and religiously compatible with German norms
4) had become a country on its own, not from external forces, without a past of colonial subjugation.
5) No guerilla aftermath; occupation which was overwhelming in its presence, yet, in the Western sector, generous with reconstruction efforts.
6) A commitment from the U.S. and allies sufficient to maintain forces there for 50 years.
I put Turkey in the Near East; basically, Europe. But, I'll admit it is more democratic than Iran. Lebanon is a more ambiguous case.
Still, Iran is not a single-party sham like Baathist Iraq. Yes, it is seriously flawed, especially by Western standards, but their recently-elected president (and his predecessor) were elected in basically freely contested elections. You think Ahmadinejad was not democratically elected? Yet certainly he is not pursuing policies that are favorable to the U.S.
I don't see "victory" yet. As in "achieve the stated goals." Yes we cleaned up against Saddam's regular forces. Luckily, there weren't any WMD to be used on our troops. Now we're pinned down in urban warfare that is chewing our Army up slowly but surely.
"Not as bad as Vietnam in body count" is not equivalent to "victory."
As for democracy, what's the most stable democratic country in the Middle East, excluding Israel? Why, it's IRAN! Oh, boy. Good thing Iran is not a security threat. Someday, Iraq may be a Middle Eastern democracy, too! Now who's view is distorted?
Getting your town gassed by Saddam for political reasons is a totally different threat than "can't drive to the Baghdad airport without a convoy, or without being attacked by a U.S. convoy because I get mistaken for a car bomber." Guess which one pisses off a Baghdad resident more?
Plus, give them time. Once somebody solidifies power enough to eliminate general guerilla conflict, I'm sure they'll bring back the torture chambers and ethnic politics in full force.
And, don't forget to count the civilians killed during the U.S. invasion and occupation. They're just as dead as if Saddam killed them, and just as randomly and unfairly.
Step back for a minute and think what you are claiming. "At least we are not as bad as Saddam was in some dimension." Is "not as bad as Saddam" really how low the bar has been set now?
As for a different plan, perhaps a force more like the 300k troops to maintain order that Shinseki had discussed before he got shitcanned, without the pie-in-the-sky assumption that we'd be greeted with flowers, would have been a good start.
You are positing a U.S. offensive against North Korea, then. The scenario was "the U.S. is just minding its business when North Korea decides to launch a nuke." *I* specifically excluded "last-gasp" anyway.
Even if they did launch during a U.S offensive, it would almost certainly be against U.S. bases in Japan, just as the U.S. would have used them against Warsaw Pact forces and the logistic chain behind them. Hitting U.S. territory would be absolutely pointless, and do nothing. Hitting military forces while they are attacking is completely within the rules of war, and might have a slight chance of preventing utter defeat.
Diplomacy is practically free. Missile defense is fucking EXPENSIVE, you dimwit.
Plus, your 50% is highly optimistic. Pardon me if I don't feel it is a good idea to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for that extra 0.5% in protection, diverting money from dealing with REAL threats.
NOBODY believes a *massive* (did you miss that word?) attack can be prevented by a practical ABM system. That's the whole reason people abandoned the Star Wars model and came back with a scaled down system to protect against a *limited* attack.
Windows computer viruses are a present REALITY. ICBM attacks are a worst-case POSSIBILITY. The Soviet Union with thousands of ICBMs never attacked, despite our lack of ABM defenses. Funny, huh?
B.S.
Kim Jong Il, if anything, is HELPED by the threat posed by the U.S. It justifies his militaristic regime. You probably think Castro is going to fall any day now because of the U.S. sanctions.
Plus, you TOTALLY ignored the cost aspect. Yeah, it would be nice to have a missile defense capability, if it cost nothing. And then, I might not care that it doesn't work.
I can go wrap my house in tissue paper to make an *in*effective defense against nuclear attack. And it would be cheap. But I still don't do it because it would be stupid. If I had to spend billions of dollars to get gold-plated tissue paper, it would be even more stupid.
Yeah, I was very imprecise in my description. I should have said "re-entry vehicles" instead of warheads too.
But antisimulation works in the IR too, with a little heater, or playing games with emissivities. North Korea has all the time in the world to think up tricks, and your IR sensing solution has to cover the whole range of possible tricks. We can't really know how North Korea's decoys are going to differ from antisimulated warheads. Brighter? Dimmer? All the precision in the world doesn't help when you don't even know the right sign. Keep in mind the decoys and targets in the tests so far have been deliberately made to look different.
All these solutions work great when you know what is being thrown at you. When your first time looking at the North Korean re-entry vehicles and decoys is on game day, then my confidence in any solution gets a lot shakier.
But what about the FREEDOM? Don't they have FREEDOM?
Oops, forgot the SARCASM tag.
It is funny that GWB likes to pretend that the Iraqis are just having a rough time comparable to the struggles of the founding fathers in developing the Constitution. Never mind that Alexander Hamilton didn't need an armed escort to travel around New York or Philadelphia at the time. And that the nation was free of foreign occupation by that time.
If one needed an Army convoy to get to Dulles airport, and dozens were dying everyday in D.C. from car bombs, we'd be worried about other stuff than our constitutional liberties, wonderful as those are. And if some other country had caused that problem, we'd be pissed off as hell.