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That popping sound you hear is moonbats across the country reading this article and going Scanners:
Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.
Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne.
“If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne.
“(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”
The Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service isn’t likely to spend more money on development until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.
Someone needs to get Mr. Wynne a PR flunky.
ADDENDUM: Predictably, Bruce is on the story, mixing in unsubstantiated accusations of the use of these weapons in Iraq with a pinch of 9/11 conspiracy theory.
ADDENDUM II: …And now Elaine burps up a meandering rant on the subject.
Anyone else catch the resemblance between this…
…and this?
Hey, look at that…
2006 Defenders of Capitalism Award
The following 5 people were chosen for the 2006 Defenders of Capitalism Award:
1) Thomas James
2) Dorian Snell
3) Ethan Eilon
4) Denise Lechtenberger
5) Dan Murray
The decision was based on their ability in the exit interview to make the best impassioned case for the moral defense of capitalism. The five recipients had the most persuasive arguments as to why capitalism is a moral system.
Since this is a new feature of the LPR program, there doesn’t seem to be an actual award for it (ie: a trophy or the like). As a joke, a fellow 2006 grad suggested having a chunk of railroad rail electroplated with a greenish-blue tint (to resemble Rearden Metal, as an allusion to Atlas Shrugged being on the program’s reading list). Anyone know of a coatings house that could do something like that?
Hmm…With any luck, NASA will drop Pro/E and move to a real engineering platform like Catia V5.
Well, it’s only taken about five years and three (possibly four) incarnations of the program to get this far, but the big day for CEV is finally here. Wish LM luck.
UPDATE: Hey, look at that: we actually won!
My condolences to the NG-Boeing team. I’ve worked the CEV proposal for most of the past 21 months, so I can imagine how disappointing it must be to be in the other position on this. I can’t speak for anyone else (or the corporation), but I think the general sense on our team all along has been that the NG-Boeing matchup made for a serious competitor on this proposal, one that we had to work hard to outdo. It will be interesting in the next week or so, after debriefs, to see just how the proposals compare.
Yes, I’m supposed to be on hiatus, but I’m stuck at home waiting for window installers. Might as well blog.
This Daily Mail article isn’t really news, since the idea of resurrecting a mammoth from frozen sperm has been making the rounds for several years. What’s interesting about the article is the attitude expressed in the comments section (cherry picked here for brevity):
It is a very intriguing and exciting idea. I personally do not have any problem with the thought of procreation through this method of retrieving shelved sperm. If dinosaurs, mammoths and dodos could be walking again on the face of the earth, I think it would be a landmark in achievement of science.
What I somewhat resent though, is the possibility of cloning or insemination in view of duplicating or procreating individuals like Hitler, Yvan the Terrible, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Henry the VIII etc.
It is about time that to ram down taboos and move on to unrestricted scientific ventures as long as they can be ethical, moral and spiritually dignifying and edifying.
– Sham Naarai, Mauritius
Yet again, someone confusing biological cloning (making what amounts to an after-the-fact identical twin) with sci-fi “cloning” (making an identical copy of an individual). Since no one has any way of copying memories, character, aquired brain structure, and other experience-influenced attributes from one individual to another, this should hardly be a concern. And never mind that even if it were possible, we do not have the source material for any of those individuals…their dead brains being somewhat less than fresh.
I liked Jurassic Park, but this might not be such a good idea in practice.
– Ryk, London
Cool! Just protect their ivory from poachers.
– Paul, Southampton, Hampshire
What’s the point?
Global warming will kill them quicker than it’s the Polar Bear.
– Simon, Leicestershire
Having been interested in pre-historical animals all my life, I found it difficult to take-in that scientists would even consider bring back the Mammoth. They lived during the last Ice Age and environmenal changes brought about their extinction. But they did exist in America when humans arrived there, and the humans killed them all off. I think that it would be a mistake to bring them back. what would be the point? We know how good scientists are at their jobs, there is no need sot show off.
– Dean Campbell, Staffordshire
It scares me to think of what scientists may be doing, probably better not to know, we don’t have any power to do anything about it anyway.
– Beryl Mcdiarmid., Usson du Poitou. France.
The attitude is a mix between luddism (opposition to new technology), misanthropy (humans are bad and not to be trusted with such power), and fatalism (the world is doomed anyhow, what does it matter?). Not a good omen for the future.
Busy with a couple different kinds of work, so I’m taking a blog vacation until August 31.
…ALH84001 seems to have become the “cold fusion” of the life on Mars debate.
Ten years later, the results have not been verified. Skeptics have found non-biological explanations for every piece of evidence that was presented on Aug. 6, 1996. And though they still vigorously defend their claim, the NASA scientists who advanced it now stand alone in their belief.
“We certainly have not convinced the community, and that’s been a little bit disappointing,” said David McKay, a NASA biochemist and leader of the team that started the scientific episode.
On the other hand, the study of ALH84001 has by no means been a wasted effort — more like a false-alarm-as-fire-drill:
Debating the claim has helped researchers develop standards that will eventually prove useful for evaluating the presence of life in other Martian meteorites or a sample from the red planet. It has given the scientific community ideas about exactly where on the planet they would most like to scoop up a sample, should they ever get to retrieve one.
In other words, the false alarm of the initial discovery and announcement generated interest in an area where scientific standards were lacking, these standards were subsequently developed in the process of testing the original claims, and as a result we now have a better handle on how to look for and identify extraterrestrial microbial life in the future.
Meanwhile, others are thinking about how to break the news to the public the next time there is a possible discovery of biological material on Mars.
This House Resolution seems to be blatantly missing two little words. Can anyone guess what they might be?
Here’s a hint: many of the 38 people being commended for their work securing MAF during Katrina were not in fact NASA employees, as the resolution implies.
Wow. Elaine has really gone off the deep end since the last time I checked in on her:
Some of the right wing clowns brought in to turn NASA into soupcon of space cadets out to conquer the universe make fun of me on their own websites. But what do they say about this? Eh? I predicted that Bush, being a malign fake human with some sort of alien parasitical life form squirming in his large intestines, would actively plot to destroy Planet Earth.
She later suggests exile to Mars for the Bush Administration, but allows that arrest would be cheaper. (Might I suggest Tretonin?)
But seriously, the item which has Elaine so exercised is merely a change in the NASA mission statement:
From 2002 until this year, NASA?s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: ?To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers … as only NASA can.?
In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase ?to understand and protect our home planet? deleted. In this year?s budget and planning documents, the agency?s mission is ?to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.?
David E. Steitz, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the aim was to square the statement with President Bush?s goal of pursuing human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.[emphasis added]
It sounds to me like NASA getting back to basics — no more pandering to environmentalists, as they have been doing since the ‘protect the planet’ phrasing was added in 2002, just a focus on what NASA has traditionally been expected to do. Indeed, this mission statement is more in line with the Declaration of Policy and Purpose in the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the legislation creating NASA:
(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;
(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space;
(4) The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;
(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;
(6) The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;
(7) Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results thereof;
(8) The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment; and
(9) The preservation of the United States preeminent position in aeronautics and space through research and technology development related to associated manufacturing processes.
It’s important to note that the new mission statement doesn’t preclude environmental observation and related activities, it merely subsumes such things under “scientific discovery” (item 1 above, and more directly Title IV) instead of according them equal status to the more obvious purposes of the agency (aeronautics and astronautics).
Predictably, some NASA scientists are as unhappy as Elaine with this change, since it’s their turf which has lost the equal billing, and they no longer have a mandate “hook” to hang their pet projects on when seeking funding…in other words, the change has pushed the science über alles crowd off their pedestal, and they don’t much like it.
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