There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
It's the Emotions, Stupid!
Topic: Politics and Law
2:19 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2007
More on Drew Weston.
When we think, we think through networks in which concepts or ideas come with associated emotional resonances and colorings. In short, thinking is feeling -- and vice versa.
So why do Democrats have a hard time grasping this fact? Part of it has to do with the progressive tradition and its commitment to dispassionate social analysis.
The predilection toward objective, fact-based thinking is not in itself a flaw, but it can lead progressives to forget that people are driven by factors that often elude social scientific analysis and that all problems cannot by solved by social programs.
Two conclusions?
1. There are times when you just have to knock some heads. 2. Facts are often overrated.
US Must Keep Terror Threat 'Real' to Other Nations, Official Says
Topic: War on Terrorism
11:08 pm EDT, Jul 6, 2007
I have to wonder to what lengths we might go in order to "keep it real" ...
One of the biggest challenges facing the United States in Asia is keeping the region’s leaders focused on the terrorist threat, a recently retired senior defense official told reporters here today.
That’s particularly important among nations that don’t see themselves as terrorist targets, said Richard Lawless, who retired last week after almost five years as deputy assistant secretary for Asian and Pacific affairs.
“If we don’t keep people’s attitudes and eyes focused on the threat, they tend to drift away to other subjects,” he said. “And keeping people focused on that issue has been very tough.”
Lawless acknowledged that some Asian-Pacific countries “are just simply not impacted by terrorism.” Others have gone so long since experiencing a terrorist attack within their borders that they have shifted their attention elsewhere ...
... to things like individual rights, economic development, global free trade, eliminating poverty, fighting AIDS and reducing the risk of global pandemics, and so on. How dare they!
Just what is it going to take to instill fear, and maintain that fear, when some people have nothing to be afraid of?
The Director, Defense Research and Engineering, John Young today announced a public prize competition to develop a wearable electric power system for war fighters. The competition will take place in the fall of 2008 and the prizes are $1 million for first place, $500,000 for second place and $250,000 for third place.
The prize objective is a wearable, prototype system that can power a standard warfighter’s equipment for 96 hours but weighs less than half that of the current batteries carried. All components, including the power generator, electrical storage, control electronics, connectors and fuel must weigh four kilograms or less, including any attachments.
See the prize website for more information. (I think they should start by having a competition to design a better website for the competition.)
Why has the pace of fundamental innovation in military technologies slowed? Why, six years after 9/11, is there no mega-research project -- along the lines of the crash Manhattan Project that 62 years ago produced the first atomic bombs -- to address the plausible security threats to the United States in the 21st century? These two questions say a lot about how innovation happens today, and why concerns about national security, which once motivated civilian scientists and engineers to make crucial contributions to military technologies, may again shape innovation priorities.
As he described the practice, one of his assistants shook his head no and politely corrected his boss. Finally, the director confessed, "I don't know what we do."
Christian Bale and Steve Zahn star in Rescue Dawn, an action drama by Werner Herzog and based on the director's acclaimed 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. The film recounts the true story of German-born Dieter Dengler, who dreamed of being a pilot and eventually made his way to the United States, where he joined the military during the Vietnam War era. He was shot down over Vietnam and captured.
From the reviews:
... a film you won’t soon forget ... captivating, flat-out astounding ... sensational ... electrifying ... wrenching ... harrowingly realistic and unsentimentalized ...
The question I am asking is, how long will it take us to grow plants with silicon leaves?
Dyson has been honing this piece for a few years now, and it just keeps getting better. If the US had a Scientist Laureate, it would be Dyson.
Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers and GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology?
I believe that the answer to this question is yes.
Here I am bold enough to make a definite prediction.
I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.
Join the Homebrew Cloner Club, which meets every first Friday in the mall food court next to Chick Fil A. Please, no chimeras over 36 inches, or the mall police will hassle us. Unless, of course, you are the chimera. Also: plants that make loud noises have to be left outside, unless they have a headphone jack or a mute button.
I wait in eager anticipation of Grey Goo Graffiti.
Meanwhile, Dyson plows right into Joyland:
First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally?
It's time to reinvigorate the hacker ethic:
Whatever Carl Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his "New Biology" article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer.
"You shared your code, you shared your genes, ..."
