Monday, August 30, 2004
MIL-TECH MILESTONE
On August 24, the US Army's Tactical High-Energy Laser shot a salvo of mortar rounds out of the sky. If this technology can be made small, cheap and reliable enough, one of the chief weapons of our low-tech adversaries will be neutralized. This is a truly revolutionary development, potentially ending the 500-year reign of artillery over the battlefield.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:51 PM
Friday, August 27, 2004
KERRY QUERY
What's wrong with John Kerry? A CNN poll shows Bush is slightly ahead in Electoral College votes, before the RNC this coming week in New York. Kerry's raised lots of money -- more than any previous Democrat by far, and basically about as much as Bush. So Kerry can't say the Republicans have "the money advantage," the typical whine from the Democrats. With the exception of Fox, all of the mainstream media is heavily in Kerry's favor, as is, of course, all of Hollywood. And the 527s have been unleashed against Bush for over a year.
Could it be that Kerry and his supporters are clueless? Could it be that they thought they could win by simply not being George Bush? Did they just read the New York Times, and therefore think everyone else hated Bush as much as they did? Who knows? But what's clear is that they are struggling against the most inarticulate president of the media age, despite having every advantage.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:13 PM
MONSTERS IN THE MAINSTREAM
For years, transhumanism was ignored, then derided as fringe lunacy. As Ron Bailey at Reason notes, now transhumanism is being taken seriously by none other than Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama has identified transhumanism as his answer to the question posed by Foreign Policy : "What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?"
Although it's a shame that Fukuyama (who has done some really great work in the past) has signed up with the likes of Leon Kass on the side of fear and reaction, being labeled by a leading public intellectual as "public enemy number one" is a step in the direction of entering the mainstream of ideas. Remember that the key insights of the Enlightenment were also seen as dangerous and fundamentally threatening to the basic order of human life.
Don't know what transhumanism is? Take a look at an introductory essay I wrote back in 1997.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:34 AM
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
DUMBOCRACY
I've never held "democracy" per se as a primary political value. It is, at best, a secondary value; a means to an end. This article makes me feel better about my relatively low ranking of democracy in the hierarchy of political values.
Some readers may wonder what I hold to be matters of more fundamental value than democracy. Liberty and the rule of law, for two.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:59 PM
DICK CHENEY, LIBERAL
Dick Cheney's made public comments in which he distances himself from his boss' condemnation of the idea of gay marriage. What cognitive dissonance this must cause on the left!
I'm not a Cheney fan -- he's seemed to me like a liability to the Bush ticket, since he's a lightning rod for the "blood for oil" allegations of the looney left. But this quote is unassailable:
With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to. Good for you, Dick!
GB,m THHotA
posted by Greg 8:38 AM
BUSH'S HONORS
Meanwhile, here's a look at George W. Bush's medals. The Kerry folks should take a look at this. Thanks to Dougan.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:14 AM
FAILED NATION-BUILDING
Via Instapundit (whence all my opinions come, according to the comrades at my office), this nice little bit about failed nation-building:
Sixty years after Paris was seized by the "Allies," and the beginning of the American occupation, France remains a failed nation, mired in political corruption and beset by vast pockets of Muslim extremism and anti-semitism, into which the gendarmerie fear to tread. The economy continues to struggle under economic policies driven by failed ideologies, and many of its best and brightest continue to flow out of the country, with only ex-dictators and their families, and hysterical movie stars willing to move there.
Read the whole thing. Wish I'd thought of it.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:09 AM
KERRY, SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Here's a view of the Kerry campaign's foolish stress on their man's Vietnam experience from the Telegraph in England.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:07 AM
IT'S OFFICIAL
The Boston Globe, official organ of the John Kerry campaign, has an article in which the cat jumps completely out of the bag:
With the exception of the Fox News Channel, the liberal tilt of the mainstream media - the major newspapers, the networks, National Public Radio, the news magazines - has long been a fact of American life. No one observing the coverage of this year's presidential campaign with both eyes open can have much doubt that the media establishment is pulling heavily for the
Democratic ticket.
Is this a problem? Not really. Everyone knew it already and, with the development of independent media, people now have a chance to find things out for themselves.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:00 AM
Monday, August 23, 2004
AGITPROP
I know I shouldn't do this because I'll be accused of being "partisan" (this was an epithet thrown at me by some comrades at the office recently), but I can't help it: This cracks me up. (Check out the posters here and here.)
All the left in America would have to do is really repudiate Marxism, and it would stop being funny. But they won't, so it won't.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:25 AM
XIN HUA
That's the name of the official China news agency, but it also means "New China," and that's the subject of this article in the NYT about the state of the Chinese Communist Party, political reform and the legacy of the little man that could, Deng Xiao Ping, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, which was yesterday. A good overview.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:11 AM
Sunday, August 22, 2004
KILLER ROBOTS, LARGE AND SMALL
Here's two notes about developments in UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The Navy has funded the first development stage of its full-scale carrier-based UAV. And here's a report of a successful test of a small flying military robot. "Weighing only 8 lbs., the Scout is designed to operate innovative clandestine reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and could be hand-carried into battle to perform hunter-killer missions."
I just hope they don't run on Windows...
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:35 PM
Saturday, August 21, 2004
HUBBLE TROUBLE
This article makes an extremely persuasive case for letting the Hubble Space telescope "die a natural death," rather than spend the money to try to develop a crash robotic mission to save it. Instead, the author contends, for roughly the same investment, two new telescopes could be built and put into orbit that would be more capable. If these figures are right, it's hard to argue with him.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:33 AM
Monday, August 16, 2004
SINGULARITY FOR THE MASSES
Here's an article from, of all places, Popular Science, that discusses the work of a couple of young hard-science SF writers (one of whom frequents some of the same corners of cyberspace as me). The piece gets the concept of the Singularity basically right and doesn't recoil in terror. How about that!
There's a good discussion over at Slashdot following the article.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 3:29 PM
BBC -- THE VOICE OF JIHAD
Here's a report from a BBC correspondent from among al Sadr's forces in Najaf and Kufa. Naturally, he's sympathetic to the people killing Americans. Imagine a BBC correspondent reporting on German soldiers like this in WWII. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical: These people just don't understand that they are slowly but surely signing their own death warrants. In the back of their minds, do they secretly think that America will protect them from the Islamic whirlwind when it comes to their own country?
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:06 AM
Saturday, August 14, 2004
NEW BLACK BIRD?
Here's an article about a secret program to develop a supersonic, stealthy unmanned reconnaissance and strike aircraft.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:37 PM
MOVIN' ON
First there was moveon.org. Now there's this. I like it better.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 6:35 PM
Thursday, August 12, 2004
LOOK UP!
Ron Bailey reviews a recent gathering of transhumanists. I had many friends and acquintances there and wish I could have been, too.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:06 PM
WORK, WORK, WORK
Here's an article about a genetic experiment that blocked dopamine receptors in rhesus monkeys. The result? Monkey workaholics.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:47 AM
CHINA SLOWDOWN(?)
The buzz about China's superheated economy has died down; perhaps because a slowdown has begun.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:45 AM
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
GETTING IT WRONG
Here's an article about a new book that calls the founder of the Wahhabi sect of Islam a "man of peace." Wahhabism is Osama bin Laden's flavor of Islamic poison. The level of starry-eyed nonsense reflected in such apologies for the bloodthirsty ideology of global jihad never ceases to amaze me. As far as I'm concerned, it's suicide by niceness.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 1:09 PM
Monday, August 09, 2004
BURCHISMO IS IN THE HOUSE
I've been away from blogging for some time as we had Anthea's nephew visiting and we finally have begun construction on the major addition to our house that we've been planning for years (which involved the air conditioning being disabled in the old part of the house for three days -- a disaster in Houston in August). But I'm back now and will be blogging regularly soon. In the meantime, here are some interesting things I've spotted while I've been surfing on the run:
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 8:29 AM
|
|
