After the pink goat

• Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows
• Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky
• US military embraces robot 'revolution'

Three very interesting articles on weapon industry in the USA. One would think that when a president gets a Nobel prize for peace, there would be some change in the attitude on this issue, but nothing like this happens. The income from the military industry grows (even in times of crisis), they develop new nasty weapons for crowd control and they even try to automatize them.

Ok, it's holidays time, the Christmas spirit is all around so maybe such articles are weird for you, but not for me. I think this is that while idiotic movies (or Coca Cola commercials) tell us to be good and noble, we have to account for our aggression and for the suffering it causes to the world. Because otherwise, it's pure hypocrisy.

What I really cannot understand is why people deny that we can exist without war and violence. Even in his Nobel speech, Obama defended war! Isn't this disgusting and deeply disturbing? Isn't it denying humans the ultimate right to evolve and to become better. War isn't always necessary. I remember I published a study that showed the history of war and that there were tribes that survived without the use of war (and didn't necessarily die because they didn't practice it). If that could happen centuries ago, why it cannot happen today? True, this sounds little bit weird from me - a descendant of the Thracians who after all were famous (if not notorious) with their warriors. But while back then, war was usually for survival, because invaders tended to slaughter everyone in sight, today war is no longer a mean for survival. 99% of the times, it's purely based on economics - someone has something you need, or a situation must occur so a war is needed - well, let's have one. I'm sorry, but this isn't noble or fair. There's nothing good in this. I can understand wars for survival (defense). But I cannot understand when the president of the biggest seller of weapons receives the biggest award on the Planet for Peace and he defends war. And his nation profits from war. From selling weapons to developing nations and to "third parties". What third parties, who are they, why do they need so much weapons to be included in the statistics. This is profoundly wrong. And just when you start arguing that it's not so wrong, you read the next articles.
A new version of an old non-lethal weapon is being developed which will enable flying machines to beam down microwaves to angry crowds and "cause them to flee" by not hurting them. First, ain't such a weapon against the right of free meetings of people (how do you protest if they scorn your skin?). And second, does anybody believe this is harmless? How harmless it is to stuff your arm (or head) into the microwave oven? Not really. So imagine what this could do in a crowd full of people with different devices and metallic objects. Or pacemakers. Or who knows what else! This cannot be serious and I can't believe how happy they advertise they new "exciting" work. It's not exciting, it's troubling. (check to source page, there is even a picture)
And last but not least, check the article on robots in the army. While I adore robots in general, I must remind you the latest carnages in Afghanistan - part of them were caused by bombing by drones. Isn't it little worrying when the soldiers turn into gamers? Because this is what the article imply - that managing missiles and drones is just a game, you push the button and you win. The little detail is that people die from such actions and somehow the guilt becomes very unclear - how to expect officers to fear from doing the wrong thing, when everything is so similar to a game. You don't see the blood spilling, you don't see the mourning relatives, eventually you hear about what happened in the news, but there is no distinct connection between your action and their consequences. But all this doesn't seem to bother the people from the industry - they make their shows, show their products and everything is all shiny and nice. But they forget that they show weapons (or support), they forget that those are devices for killing, not for else. And the saddest thing is that the industry goes well, it earns well, it makes huge profits and nobody asks the question, why? Why don't we invest into defense devices and to forget about it? Why should we invest into devices requiring war, if we want to stop war? Isn't this little bit illogical. No, actually it's absurdly logical and leads back to the speech of Obama - always some nations will need war to gain something, to rob somebody or simply to show how useful our new devices are.

Why can't we invest into interstellar transport? Colonization of Mars? Eliminating cancer? Improving our immune systems? Eliminating poverty and famine? Improving our lives? Why can't we invest into our better future instead of making sure it's bad? I don't understand economy based on the idea that there always will be a nation that is poorer than us, where we can outsource our products and so on. How noble is this? Or how fair? Where is the Xmas spirit in this!
Have good holidays and please consider this. I don't care if you are left or right or whatever. I care if you are human or not. There is nothing good in war, pain, death and damage. Then why should we pursue them, why should we justify them? We shouldn't! Let's try to create a better life. A life in which the pain isn't needed for the joy. And this is what life is about - knowledge and joy. Everything else is a lie, because when you lie into the hospital and you are afraid for your life, it doesn't matter if you are rich and successful or poor and miserable. In this moments we are all equal. No matter how banal it sounds. It's true. In the moment of truth, nothing of these matters. All that matters is who you are and how good and noble you feel. And this isn't a feeling you acquire trough self-deceit, no matter how skilled you are. In these moments, you cannot lie to yourself. So make sure that in those moments, you don't have to fear. It isn't religion, it's just common sense.

Despite Slump, U.S. Role as Top Arms Supplier Grows

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.

The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before. (Italy and Russia second and third)

The increase in American weapons sales around the world “was attributable not only to major new orders from clients in the Near East and in Asia, but also to the continuation of significant equipment and support services contracts with a broad-based number of U.S. clients globally,” according to the study, titled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations.”

The United States was the leader not only in arms sales worldwide, but also in sales to nations in the developing world, signing $29.6 billion in weapons agreements with these nations, or 70.1 percent of all such deals.

The top buyers in the developing world in 2008 were the United Arab Emirates, which signed $9.7 billion in arms deals; Saudi Arabia, which signed $8.7 billion in weapons agreements; and Morocco, with $5.4 billion in arms purchases.source

Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky

• Updated 17:09 23 July 2009 by David Hambling

THE Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.

The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, has now called for it to be upgraded. The US air force, whose radar technology the ADS is based on, is increasing its annual funding of the system from $2 million to $10 million.

At the heart of the new weapon will be a compact airborne antenna, which will be steered electronically and be capable of generating multiple beams, each of which can be aimed while on the move.

Jürgen Altmann, a physicist at Dortmund University in Germany, showed that the microwave beams can cause serious burns at levels not far above those required to repel people. This was verified when a US airman was hospitalised with second-degree burns during testing in April 2007.

Dave Law, head of the technology division of the JNLWD, says the new antenna will operate at the lowest possible effective power level and will have a sophisticated automated target-tracking system. source

US military embraces robot 'revolution'

August 13th, 2009 by Dan De Luce
...
The rugged little robot searching an enemy building is called a Pakbot, which can climb over rocks with tank treads, pick up an explosive with its mechanical arm and dismantle it while a soldier directs the machine from a safe distance.

There are already 2,500 of them on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lighter version weighing six kilograms (14 pounds) has arrived that can be carried in a backpack, according to iRobot, the same company that sells a robot vaccum to civilians, the Roomba.

"We're spending billions of dollars on unmanned systems."

Kessler and other Pentagon officials compare the robots to the introduction of the aircraft or the tank, a new technology that dramatically changes strategy and tactics.

Robots or "unmanned systems" are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.

The use of robotics in the military has exploded in the past several years as technology has advanced while Washington faced a new kind of enemy that required patient, precise surveillance.

In 2003, the US military had almost no robots in its arsenal but now has 7,000 unmanned aircraft and at least 10,000 ground vehicles.

The US Air Force, which initially resisted the idea of pilotless planes, said it trains more operators for unmanned aircraft than pilots for its fighter jets and bombers.

In the fight against Al-Qaeda, drones are Washington's favored weapon.

Predator and Reaper aircraft, armed with precision-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles, regularly carry out strikes in Pakistan's northwest tribal area, causing an unknown number of civilian casualties.

Last week, a drone strike is believed to have have killed the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

The drones and ground vehicles are often operated using joysticks or consoles familiar to a younger generation raised on video games.

Military officers insist the robots are a complement and not a substitute for traditional aircraft, and pose no threat to the careers of their fellow pilots. source

Публикуван от Denitsa в 7:18 PM | 0 коментара    

Етикети: war, weapon industry

I offer you two very interesting articles that could add up to your (non-)conviction of the importance of global warming. I, of course, disagree we have nothing to do with global warming - natural cycles or no, the rise of greenhouse gases in the last 20 years is a fact. We're not talking only about CO2 here! And since this is a fact, it's obvious those gases will have an effect and that if they continue to rise, this effect will become bigger and bigger. So, it is absolutely obvious we have to limit our emissions. Anyway, let's get back to the exciting articles I'm offering.
The one suggests that human brain increased its volume thanks to the drop in the global temperatures, since heat dissipation according to this scientists was a major problem for evolving humans. So, imagine what would happen if the global temperatures rise with 2-5 degrees. Maybe we'll devolve to apes :) Ok, this is unlikely, but since, it's an interesting viewpoint to consider.
The second article, on the contrary, suggests that the rise of the Incas were due to the warmer weather. Go figure!

So if you were confused about global warming, I'm sure I didn't de-confuse you. But I found this articles very interesting, so I hope you'll enjoy them.

But first, of course is the dramatic subject of the "hacked email archive". I don't think anyone think this happened at random exactly before Copenhagen meeting. Also, I read couple of reports which concluded that this doesn't change the conclusion of other scientists about global warming - although it might be hard to believe, USA and UK are not the axis of the scientific world and there are many more scientists who are more or less independent of the scientists whose emails got stolen and those independent scientists support the idea of man-made global warming. As for me, I'm convinced we have to take responsibility for the damage we do, regardless if we're the major cause of the warming or the co-author of it. Energy efficiency, smart metering and intelligent renewables are good for everyone and we have to use the moment and change our society. We have to continue to evolve and this cannot happen while we're irresponsible consumers of Nature's resources. We can not only destroy, we can also create, so why not start doing it. And finally - I find the way those emails were stolen and published everywhere and discussed for extremely disgraceful. Even if they are from university server, they are still personal and should be confidential. It's sad to see how people doesn't respect the privacy of other people.
Anyway, enjoy :)

1. Hacked archive provides fodder for climate sceptics
2. Did an ice age boost human brain size?
3. Hotter weather fed growth of Incan empire
4. Climate scientist warns about Arctic ice melt

Hacked archive provides fodder for climate sceptics

• 18:01 24 November 2009 by Fred Pearce

Climate scientists are reeling this week from the discovery that someone has hacked into the email archive of one of their most prestigious research centres, the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK, custodian of the most respected global temperature record.

Climate sceptics have gleefully blogged that the emails, now widely published on the internet, reveal extensive data manipulation and expose a conspiracy behind global warming research. An analysis by New Scientist finds scant evidence of data abuse, but does show persistent efforts to suppress work by climate sceptics.

Mostly the researchers are exposed as doing what they are supposed to do: engaging in an often adversarial process to arrive at the truth.

What will prove more damaging is evidence that the researchers, who often attack their critics for not publishing in peer-reviewed journals, have sought to ostracise journals that did publish them.

Mann says his complaint was that the peer-review process had been distorted to allow "extremely poor papers" to be published and points out that the journal's editor-in-chief and half the editorial board had resigned in protest.

But other comments are more difficult to justify. In 2004, Jones said of two published papers he regards as flawed: "I can't see either… being in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

"Let me assure you there was no attempt to keep any material out of the IPCC assessments," Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told New Scientist.

The correspondence also shows researchers trying to prevent critics gaining access to raw data, notably the CRU's temperature data.

But equally the emails reveal researchers adamantly opposed to releasing hard-earned data to critics, to avert what they see as time-consuming harassment. This week's events suggest those decisions were ill-advised. source

Did an ice age boost human brain size?

• 29 July 2009 by Bob Holmes

Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors' brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow.

For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton, accounting for nearly half of our resting metabolic rate. About a decade ago, biologists David Schwartzman and George Middendorf of Howard University in Washington DC hypothesised that our modern brain could not have evolved until the Quaternary ice age started, about 2.5 million years ago. They reckoned such a large brain would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times, but they lacked evidence to back their hypothesis.

Now hints of that evidence are beginning to emerge. Climate researcher Axel Kleidon of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, modelled present-day temperature, humidity and wind conditions around the world using an Earth-systems computer model. He used these factors to predict the maximum rate at which a modern human brain can lose heat in different regions. He found that, even today, the ability to dissipate heat should restrict the activity of people in many tropical regions.

If keeping cool is a problem now, Kleidon says, it would have been even more challenging - perhaps too challenging - 2 or 3 million years ago when temperatures were a few degrees warmer than today.

A new study by Schwartzman and Middendorf suggests that a small drop in global temperatures may have made a big difference. The pair used basic equations of heat loss to estimate how fast the small-brained Homo habilis would have been able to cool off. Assuming overheating limited the size of H. habilis's brain, they then calculated what drop in air temperature would have been needed for Homo erectus to be able to support its bigger brain. They found that a drop in air temperature of just 1.5 °C would have done the trick.

To help narrow this down, Geary collected data from 175 fossil hominin skulls, from 1.9 million to 10,000 years old. Then he looked to see whether brain size was best correlated with climatic variability.

Geary's analysis found that population size was the best predictor of brain size, suggesting that our ancestors' need to outcompete their neighbours in order to survive may have been the strongest driver of brain growth. source

Hotter weather fed growth of Incan empire

• 00:01 27 July 2009 by Andy Coghlan

The meteoric rise of the Incan empire between 1400 and 1532 was driven by a sustained period of warmer weather, new research on Peruvian lake sediments suggests.

The sediments, from a core going back 4000 years, contain biological and organic evidence revealing sharp changes in land use and agriculture around Marcacocha, a small lake near Cuzco at the heart of the ancient empire.

The higher temperatures, starting around 1150, ended thousands of years of cold aridity, and enabled Incan farmers to build mountainside terraces for growing crops at altitudes previously too cold to support agriculture.

The extra warmth, lasting around 400 years, also supplied extra water for irrigation in the shape of melt-water from Andean glaciers at higher altitudes.

Fed by bountiful surpluses of maize and potatoes, Incans were free to engage in other activities such as establishing huge networks of roads. Most importantly, the surpluses enabled them to build fit and well-resourced armies and weaponry. From 1400 onwards, they rapidly conquered territory stretching southward 4000 kilometres, from what is now Ecuador to midway through Chile.

The empire met an abrupt demise in 1533 when the invading Spanish armies arrived.

The Incans also planted alder-like trees (Alnus acuminate) on the mountain-sides that grow well on eroded soils and fertilise it by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere. Seeds from the alders begin appearing suddenly around 1150, and were absent from all preceding core samples.

There was a surge in organic matter in the cores too, and of oribatid mites, spider-like arthropods that feed on dung from herbivores. "They eat the excrement of llamas," says Chepstow-Lusty. The mites provide evidence that llamas were by now being grazed on pastures neighbouring the lake, he says. source

Climate scientist warns about Arctic ice melt

The scientific consensus that melting ice in Greenland will contribute to a five centimetre sea-level rise this century is outdated, with the actual figure "more likely" to reach 14cm, says Dr Jan-Gunnar Winther, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, in an interview with EurActiv.

Winther's declarations come as a major international summit is underway in Copenhagen to decide on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The United Nation's fourth assessment report on the science of global warming, published in 2007, had projected that sea levels could rise by 18cm to 59cm by 2099. But Winther says the report has probably been too optimistic.

"Now, the research done after that indicates that it could be three times higher as the ice flows faster in Greenland, delivering icebergs to the ocean. So it is more likely that we will get a 14cm sea-level rise this century from Greenland ice melt." source

Публикуван от Denitsa в 1:34 AM | 0 коментара    

Етикети: global warming