You are not logged in.
Oops.
Link:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/08/1083911455208.html]The Story
Kinda funny...
The John Frum movement first emerged in Vanuatu in the 1930s when the islands were jointly ruled by Britain and France as the New Hebrides. Rebelling against the aggressive proselytising of Presbyterian missionaries, dozens of villages on the island of Tanna put their faith in a mysterious outsider called John Frum.
They believed he would drive out their colonial masters and re-establish their traditional ways. The cult was reinforced during World War II when the US military arrived with huge amounts of "cargo" - tanks, ships, weapons, medicine and food.
On Tanna, islanders became convinced that John Frum was an American. They have spent the past 60 years dressing up in home-made US army uniforms, drilling with bamboo rifles and parading beneath the Stars and Stripes in the hope of enticing a delivery of "cargo" again.
The story got even more surreal because the islanders in question have started a holy war with the local Christians.
Just when I thought life couldn't get more surreal... :laugh:
Er... actually the idea was to put the myoglobin in muscle tissue. That's why seal meat is so dark; the muscles have their own store of oxygen built right in. Increasing the blood's oxygen supply, as you note, wouldn't be helped by myoglobin, although artificial polymerized hemoglobin is a more effective oxygen carrier.
Hmm.... actually, that plymerized hemoglobin is capable of holding far more oxygen than normal blood. Perhaps an 'artificial organ' could be manufactured, basically an implant of a super-high concentration of polymerized hemoglobin. As the chemical is capable of 'handing off' oxygen to blood cells, if a way of preventing the stuff from entering the bloodstream while handing oxygen to the blood cells itself could be found...
More easily than what? You're going to have to go to an awful lot of trouble to grow any plants...
Actually, I recently saw a report saying that the military had all the recruits it needed. Looking it up now so you have a link...
Or maybe I can't find the damn thing. Someone needs to develop a Google variant that searches only your Temporary Internet Files folder. This site talks about the US military's oversupply of recruits, but the site I was looking for in my Internet History was an actual official site. http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/wars/a/draft.htm]Some Site
Re-enlistments are at an all-time high. In fact, the Air Force found themselves in the embarrassing position of having too many troops this year (2004), and are actively encouraging several thousands to apply for early discharge. Recruiting is doing so well this year (2004), that new recruits, who are accepted, often have to wait six or seven months in the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP) in order for a "slot" to open up for them.
So we aren't low on soldiers, at least.
As far as your other question: I've heard that Hitler wanted peaceful relations with Great Britain myself, and I believe that. Part of the reason he stopped the tanks at Dunkirk - apart from Goering's insistance that he could crush them by air power alone - was that he thought slaughtering the British troops would make it difficult to reach a negotiated peace with them. Another reason is Hitler's bizzare Germanic racism; as "Anglo-Saxons" were of Germanic stock, he felt they would be natural allies of his empire.
However, apart from Mosley's kooks (Sir Oswald Mosley (I believe that's the name) was a British fascist) I don't really think there were that many British people enamored of the idea. The British didn't want war for the sensible reason that it would get a lot of people killed. Remember that WWI, with its static, relatively immobile lines and senseless slaughter were still fresh in the memory of the British. Churchill was turned to because peace was no longer possible, as the invasion of Poland showed, and large numbers would die anyways.
One thing needs to be made clear: Great power declines come in two kinds, the relative and the absolute.
I really don't think I need to explain the 'absolute' kind. That's the classic Fall-of-Rome type where the great power in question suddenly comes unglued.
The other is the relative decline, which is what happened to Britain for the most part. Remember that power doesn't come from territory, power comes from the capability to enact your will, whether or not this capability is actually used. Tiny Venice was equal to the vast Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean for a long period of time, remember. In the long run, of course, fortune favors the bloat, which tends to stack the deck in favor of nations like the US, Russia, China, and India, who are huge w/o colonial possessions. But it's not neccessary. Britain in 1945 had all the strength it had in 1938 relative to many countries, such as France and most other countries. It was quite strong.
But it did not have overwhelming power; it could not turn that strength into the ability to exert its will on world affairs. It had less to do with Britain than it did with the sheer power that both the United States and Russia commanded. It suffered a relative loss of Great Power status, which is tacitly admitted by the very term 'superpower' which got attached to the US and Russia.
To bring this back to your original question about the US declining, I argued that there were no structural reasons the US would suffer a sudden decline of the absolute kind. It's also true, however, that the appearance of a rival superpower is fairly low on the probability meter, and the appearance of an 'ultrapower', a state with as much power relative to the US as the US had to Britain at the end of WWII (the neccessary condition for a relative decline) is about as close to zero as possible; think for a minute of the sheer bulk of the US economy and military strength and then think of what it would take not just to equal that but dwarf it. It ain't happening.
The worst case scenario for relative power loss is that China and India catch up economically and the world returns to Cold War style staring contests internationally. In such a scenario, the US and EU would probably suddenly forget about their disagreements again. But even that would be something that would occur in the 2050-2075 timeframe.
Of course. One must beat the hell out of the aliens in Counterstrike, for the dignity of the human species... of course, the lag problem is kinda bad....
Dude, I don't know why you think I am drawing different conclusions from the same data. I'm agreeing that a nuclear response is likely. Helloooo. I'm also suggesting that such a response is stupid, and that it will not achieve the desired results.
That would be why I draw that conclusion. :laugh:
You know what our most likely response is, but you must feel there's a better response (otherwise you'd not think the nuclear one is 'stupid')
Anyways, there's five different scenarios that could credibly transpire after a nuclear attack:
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE: Not really singing Kumbaya together. The option here is simple: Let them (the Middle East) rot. As pointed out by someone else, revulsion and hate will be generalized to Arabs even if it's only terrorist wackos. Noncitizens from the Middle East would be deported, possibly even citizens, depending on the level of national outrage. US policy and power would be hellbent on marginalizing the Middle East and making it a dirt poor backwater no one cares about, instead of a place where strategically important oil is. The possibilities here lie from pursuing energy autarky to possibly just grabbing the oilfields (cut China and Russia in on the action, there's plenty for all, and no one will screw with you). Very unlikely, to say the least, but I have heard this variant of 'screw you' expressed with regards to the Middle East. Benefits: Low casualties, is probably acceptable to all Americans and even Europeans, even if most would like a more bellicose response. Disadvantage: Does not totally neutralize terrorists.
HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB: Armageddon option, bombs fall like rain, and between Israel and India pretty much everyone is dead. The US has a pile of sanctions slapped on it and retreats further into isolationism; the world economy goes into a horrible depression. The aftermath of the whole mess has to be resolved by generational turnover. Benefits: International terrorism is certainly dead. Disadvantage: Lots of other things are dead, too: whole countries, international trade, and much cooperation.
TITS FOR TAT - Limited nuclear response. The most likely candidate for helping the terrorists with WMD has its capital city, army, and possibly other assets fried. Benefits: Sends strong message, not blatantly genocidal like the full nuke option above. Probably produces more "Libya" type defections from radical Islam. Disadvantages: Could make extremists even angier, if that's physically possible
YOU WANT ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE, YOU GOT IT, ***** - Here the US decides that if its enemies are going to go the path of using asymmetry, they will, too. There are indications the US is already doing this in Iraq with a new weapon called Viper Strike, essentially a flying assassin robot. Some reports say that the Pentagon is considering mating Viper Strike with face recognition software. In the aftermath of a nuclear strike on America, the US, if following this path, starts mass producing them by the boatload and letting them loose to stalk and kill terrorists throughout the Middle East, and comes up with other nasty semi-conventional strategies. The War on Terror turns into the first worldwide shadow war. Benefits: Reasonably civilian-kind on our part. Being stalked by mechanical killers has a definite psychological impact above and beyond merely being bombed. Americans unlikely to care about how many robots died in a foreign country. Disadvantages: Will annoy the hell out of ME countries to have US robot assassins endlessly violating their airspace, so countries might increase support of terrorist groups. Might need to be combined with Osirak-style raids on WMD production sites.
CONVENTIONAL WAR - With possible nuclear strikes against stuff way out in the boonies. This would be basically what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan on a somewhat grander scale. Would require a larger US buildup of troops, so I would expect the draft to be reintroduced, etc. Would take a few years but would definitely crush countries and overrun them, as the military superiority is too overwhelming. Benefits: It will not freak out the rest of the world... probably. Success is pretty much guaranteed, if somewhat slow. Disadvantages: It is somewhat slow, and costly.
I view limited response or a conventional war to be the most likely outcomes, but the first and fourth are interesting alternatives. Non-facial recongition Viper Strike units have apparently been used with some success in Iraq; they are too small and too quiet to be seen, and attack with what is essentially a laser guided hand grenade.
You think Colonel Anonymous was the recipient of such a message? :laugh:
As for Clark, well, it's obvious he's drawing very different conclusions from the same data. As I could sit here and refine and explain all day and he'd have issues with it, because he's obviously got his own opinion, I'll just smoke it out in the open so we can all save time:
What options, military and political, do YOU deem expedient in the aftermath of a nuclear terrorist event?
My question would be:
"Could you aim your telescope at our yellow white star? We are switching to visible frequencies."
Why go with slow data transmission from radio? Build a big laser to transmit more data. We can pay for it by telling the Pentagon that they can use it to set things on fire when there's a war.
Judging by Kerry's riverboat experiences, I'd say there's a pretty good chance the nukes fly fast and loose if everything goes to hell.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, some serious analysis:
One, people have not changed in their fighting character since World War II. This flies in the face of prevailing opinion, but it's true. You had peaceniks and the like clamoring against war for various reasons: in the case of extreme-leftist types, that changed when the Soviet Union came under attack, and in the case of others, Nazi Germany was, well, full of NAZIS, who quickly eroded away the sensibilities of anybody with peaceful inclinations. Also, bomber crews at first balked at the idea of hitting cities. They didn't want to do it. By the end of the war, they were levelling cities, but that was because of a continuous desensitizing war.
Two, there are targets to strike against if there is a nuclear terrorist event. Iran has nuclear facilities, which it keeps jerking arouind with the UN about. Pakistan's ISI has been complicit in leaking nuclear secrets. And it's no big secret that Sauid Arabia funds terrorism and Islamism globally. Terrorism cannot exist without money and ideological/religious support, so Saudi Arabia is actually the most deserving target.
Now number one is interesting, because if you quietly ask around, you'll start to see that the desensitization to war is already well underway. There is a very high percentage of Americans who have already convinced themselves that someday this will go nuclear. If you don't believe me quietly ask around, the results will surprise you. These people are effectively the hair-trigger of the American nuclear arsenal now. Fry a city, and they will instantly become a constituency for massive retaliation. And there will be others, too, who join in the chorus - how many depends on where/how many people were killed in the attack. Standing US doctrine, as well as simple deterrence, means that once this occurs, there WILL be a nuclear response, and the American citizenry WILL support this for the reasons outlined above. The only question is where and how bad.
The second item there tells us where that nuclear response will almost certainly go. Iran's supposed nuclear facility is a no brainer, because it's an obvious military target without a huge number of civilians around. Pakistan will probably get nailed, too. And Saudi Arabia will get hit. In addition, the military forces of all three nations will probably be nuked, because whether or not you can consider a legitimate target of war because they support terrorism, they'll definitely consider themselves at war with the US if they are hit with a nuclear bomb.
Were I President, I'd certainly have made up a hitlist of things to be nuked if there were a WMD strike on this country. I find it inconceiveable, in fact, to think that Bush has not done so, because he had the military draw up nuclear strike plans on every nation who has or could have nuclear weapons, no matter how preposterous the proposed war would be, a few years back. What I don't understand is why he hasn't specifically told whatever nations are on the list "If an American city is mysteriously destroyed, we're holding YOU accountable" and used this to back them off supporting terrorism.
As far as the rest of the world... well, let us say that mentioning that the alternative is blockading Saudi Arabia in preparation for an invasion will suddenly find a whole lot of people in favor of dropping nukes, as opposed to crippling the world's economy.
Perhaps it would be more interesting to wonder if it's theoretically possible to make a vaccuum surviveable human, or rather a short-term Mars surviveable human.
Problems -
oxygen supply. I can think of a few things off the top of my head here. Myoglobin and polymerized hemoglobin both greatly increase the ability to retain oxygen; myoglobin is naturally found in seals/whales and presumably the necessary genes could be copied into humans. Seals can stay up to two hours underwater; that's plenty for most EVAs.
Pressure integrity. Problem areas here are the mucus membranes, lungs, eyes, groin, ears, and, er, anus. The last would be the easiest (stronger sphincter... all Martians would be anal-retentive). The eyes maybe could be protected by a clear (nicitating?) membrane (you'd probably want them because of the dust, too). Dunno what to do about the nose. Maybe you could simply deaden the sense of smell and line the inside with normal skin, but I doubt people would like that. The ears, I have no idea.
Heating/cooling - well, as far as keeping warm, subcutaneous fat does the trick for marine mammals in the arctic and could do the trick for us, too. Or maybe we'd just give up and relegate this bit to electric sweaters, unless you have any ideas.
Could you vaporize the water in Mars's polar caps with nukes? Both we and the Russians are getting rid of a bunch; might as well put them to use.
Of course, realistically you'd have a political conniption fit over shooting large numbers of warheads into space. However, pretend that someone slipped valium into the DC water supply. Would it matter? Or would it just look really cool with no postive effect? :laugh:
Actually, your examples reinforce the argument for slow decline, if any.
Remember, the Soviet Union had profound economic problems; apart from a clunky consumer economy in which the black market was rampant and widespread, they were spending a truly mindboggling percentage of their GNP on defense, something like 20% IIRC, and they were also propping up their satellites and allies with whatever aid they could. Also, they were chronically short on foreign exchange, which was not helped by the fact that the US realized that and did whatever was expedient to make that shortfall a crisis. Add to that a general lack of real support for the government and economic system, you can see that they are something of an aberration. Their economy was so strongly tied to and identified with their government that when one collapsed the other followed. This is not true of the United States.
On the other hand, there was little difference between Britain at the start of the 20th Century and Britain in 1938 in terms of relative power in the world. The decline came after 1945. In the intervening period:
1) There were two world wars, conflict on a hitherto unimaginable scale, requiring total mobilization of the country's resources.
2) A horrible, catastrophic worldwide economic depression occured.
That would be a lot of history to cover. While the 21st Century has started off with a bang, I don't see any World Wars on the relative level of the other two occuring (by which I mean that countries with the military power of the US, Russia, and China have to fight with everything they have), mostly because the countries that can fight such a war are not flamboyantly suicidal. So military action which would seriously weaken the United States is not likely to pass. That leaves economic catastrophe, and the only plausible economic collapse would revolve around oil, but that's the whole world's Achilles heel, not just the USA's, so a sudden depression because of oil prices, while bad, would be equally bad everywhere. The relative power of nations would not shift much.
The only possible alternative is the sort of slow, boring historical processes that take generations to play out. As that is what is left, that is what will happen.
That other nations would be conspiring against us like that is pretty straightforward Balance-Of-Power stuff, which has nothing to do with US policy. That sort of BS was already underway before Bush's administration, it's just that under the Clinton administration, it was a quiet period in history, a gap between the Cold War and whatever this little part of history will be called. That alliances would shift and shift unfavorably to the US after it won the Cold War is elementary stuff.
As far as needlessly pissing away part of our lead, I actually agree with you on that, though I don't think it's as bad as you think. I also think that while Bush has done shortsighted things, he's no worse in that regard than his father or Clinton before him, nor would Kerry be any improvement. The blame for squandering effort and capital (of all kinds) goes much further than Presidents; it goes to Congress, the courts, and to the citizenry as well, and IMHO mostly derives from an indecisiveness of the national spirit, toying with a new right, toying with a new left, and with no clear vision of the future.
That sort of thing has happened before - I think here of the post-Civil War period and pre-FDR period - and it will be resolved when someone takes the helm... hey, is anyone running a candidate named Rooseveldt? Same family ended the spinning both times. :laugh:
Bill White, I have to disagree with you. There are -zero- countries that can overtake the US in the next 50 years. None. Not unless an asteroid hits North America or something of that nature happens. Those that have the economic base to do so will not have the demographic base (population implosion/social welfare problems in EU, crazy demographics in China from one-child) and those that have the people won't have the cash (Middle East, much of the rest of the planet).
Even were the US led by the most inept and corrupt President possible, the US will keep its lead by default. That's nothing to be proud of, but it's reality.
I give us until 2075 or so before someone emerges to give us a scare. My money's on India, BTW.
Burke said that in 1770; it took until the 20th century for his prediction to come true. The loss of power and destruction of great states comes from either other great states or going a bridge too far. The United States has not yet begun to fight with any seriousness, nor is there another great state rising to replace it (yes, I know about China and the EU; neither are going to be at that level for at least a generation).
There will be a time when events conspire against the United States and, like all things, it slips from summer to fall. But this is not that time.
If he was tracking large numbers of sunspots, he was using a projection screen. Eyes can see sunspots, but you miss the smaller ones that way.
Ahh, Gennarro's true colors are revealed!
1) No, the US did not supply the chemical weapons. Several European countries were involved in that.
2) No, President Bush never said they were about to launch a WMD strike. What he said was that Iraq had the capability to provide terrorists such materials in the future. He never used the 'imminent threat' language wrongly attributed to him. His reasoning was that by the time it was an imminent threat, it would already be too late. As it turns out, he was wrong about the WMD, though in all fairness the only people who knew the truth appear to have been the Iraqis who were supposed to be making the WMD's, as everyone (including Saddam) thought he had them before the war.
3) "Ask yourself" is always asked with the overtone of "It's your fault!" It isn't, at least here; Islamic fundamentalism crops up from time to time whenever there's a general failure in Islam as a whole. It's a historical pattern and has more to do with economic sluggishness and other (non-Israel) factors. Rage over Israel is a symptom, not a cause.
4) No, Israel does not call the shots. Get a grip. Conspiracy theories aren't worth squat.
Well, from what I remember, the Jesuit who discovered sunspots back in the time of Galileo projected them onto a screen. Presumably that method was what the guy in the 1840's used, because even through fog and heavy mist will fry your eyes through a telescope.
Nice pictures, though, keep 'em rolling.
If you stoke a hornet's nest everyone will get stung.
One mighty big hornet's nest got whacked on 9/11.
It also worries me because what it might imply in way of sentiments of the large groups of mid-east people European countries have unwittingly allowed within their borders.
Now, the criminals who assault and murder ethnical Swedes will simply be fed another shadow of excuse for their wrong-doings and general hatred of us, their beneficiaries.
Well, look at the second part of this comment I quoted here... if they already hate, attack, and murder you, they would do it with any excuse or none. You are in SWEDEN of all countries, it's not like Sweden has been involved in the Middle East in any meaningful way.
My general feelings on the whole matter are that, regardless of whether the great majority of Arabs would be capable of dealing with their future (I think they would be) they may not have a future if extremist groups continue along their current path. Some terrorist group gets a nuke - the Chechens, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, it doesn't really matter who - they'll attack a major nuclear power with it and... and what? Russia/US/Israel sit on their hands and arsenal? Hell no, they'd shoot off a bunch of stuff in a rage and obliterate half the region. So something needed to be done, and sweet reason wasn't working. I certainly have problems with who and how this was done, but it's better than the alternative, which is hoping all the turmoil in the Middle East goes away of its own volition.
Ecrasez_lenfame, the June 30th handover of power has been something Bush has been sticking to for a fairly long time, since last year, and has doggedly ignored calls to change the date one way or the other. It has nothing to do with the prison mess. That we'd leave if requested after the June 30th changeover is nothing new either. It's just a case of some reporter trying to make some smoke so he can say there's a fire - no story here.
My choice was Star Wars, not because of any inherent realism in the show, but because Star Wars was full of crooks, scheming politicians, weird mystics, and the like, had spacecraft that actually looked used, and didn't magically change human nature or unite us all under one banner. It fails on science. But on human nature, it's head and shoulders above Star Trek.
Given the chance to pick one or the other, though, I'd probably pick Star Trek. You can't beat holodecks and replicators for material convenience, and there's enough interesting stuff to see to keep anyone occupied. Give me a starship with those two things and I think I'd never stop wandering the Federation.
If I were an alien watching Cold War news shows, I'd probably be mortally convinced that the society sending them has annihilated itself and I won't know about it until the last radio signals of frantic news reports about nuclear explosions cross the gulf between the stars and reach me.
That would depress the hell out of the aliens, I bet.
Michael Moore is Newtonian: for every action he undertakes, he creates an equal and opposite reaction in the opposition. The GOP knows that, and the Florida GOP itself is sufficiently Machiavellian to realize that and thus wouldn't be pressuring Disney. The more likely reason is that Disney quite rightly has no desire for any of the mud Moore tends to sling to stain their corporate image.
Moore undoubtedly will find another distributor. Equally undoubtedly, he'll have no net effect on US politics, except maybe to polarize it some.