Looking ahead 20 years was the subject of my last question posed to readers. The responses varied in tone …
A comprehensive perspective was contributed by L.R.K., from South Euclid, whose full comments appear online.
He has a cautionary view of the future …
“What will the world look like in twenty years? That is a very interesting question. I wrestle with it because my grandchildren will be in their mid-20s then. In the next 20 years we, the United States, will be or have been engaged in at least two regional wars. I don’t like the idea; but our enemies tend to choose us (as with Afghanistan) rather then we them (as with Iraq). My nightmare is not a nuclear war, which although possible is not likely, but an EMP attack which would put American society back to the 1820s. It would be totally devastating, and also relatively inexpensive, and therefore is more likely.”
The Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy is everywhere, indelibly written into a unique mythology alleged modern Americans hold dear.
A couple quotes from a Guardian piece, in which a historian/pundit explains the evolution of our search for primary enemies. It evolved on the necessity of replacing the Soviet Union with someone allegedly scary enough to keep the war machine funded.
So the new enemies, mostly Islam, are anyone somewhere else as long as they’re desperate, poor and look troubling.
Likewise, five of the original six Republican candidates for US president recently called for war with Iran for “posing a threat to the American people”. What threat?
It led Washington lobbyists to protect defence spending, as Truman was advised, by “scaring the hell out of the American people”. Today, a similar self-delusion leads Washington and London to claim the right to drop bombs on anyone they find “unacceptable”.
To this there is only one answer. Let no day pass without headbutting an ignorant politician, and kissing a sceptical historian.
One part the writer, Simon Jenkins, left out: “Cyberwar” and Anonymous.
Apparently one can make the top ranks on the backs of not doing anything but serving beverages and food at a minimum wage, as evidenced by Starbucks at 8 and McDonald’s at 11.
When a trademark bistro that serves nothing but coffee and some teas is in the top ten, what does it say about the giant multi-national American firms in the list? And what does it say of the list?
Lots? Well, no. Actually, damned by faint praise fits the bill.
General Electric, now pushing a daily brace of prime-time commercials in an attempt to erase its image as a rent-seeking tax dodger, is admired at #15.
Neem oil and turmeric are prescribed for smallpox, just in case the disease comes to your bugout location after the collapse. Turmeric is said to be good for acne, too.
Smallpox was eradicated in the world population in the late Seventies.
Watch now. The prepper disables embedding when she discovers the wrong people are watching. Hee.
You can also do the overdub the soundtrack trick I did with the Scorpions and Taxi Zum Klo a week or so back. Mute the smallpox prepper vid and immediately launch Act Naturally, below.
Much better!
All they gotta do is act naturally … I hope you’ll come and see ’em in the movies.
At the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, androids and jargon reign.
How do we know?
From the agency’s solicitations for design proposals, compelling evidence showing no trace of human thought or need for skills in use of the English language.
DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make portfolio programs is aimed at compressing at least five-fold the development timelines for new complex cyber-electro-mechanical systems such as military vehicles. Under AVM, DARPA is pursuing the development of several elements of enabling infrastructure aimed at radically transforming the systems engineering/design/verification (META2/META-II), manufacturing (IFAB)
and innovation (vehicleforge.mil) elements of the overall make process for delivering new defense systems or variants. Each of these capabilities is largely generic, i.e, applicable to any cyber-electro-mechanical system.
In order to excercise these capabilities in the context of a relevant military system, DARPA intends to build FANG — the Fast, Adaptable
Next Generation Ground Vehicle — a new heavy infantry fighting vehicle …
The on-going META program is on track to deliver an integrated capability for: [rest of astonishing run-on sentence deleted] …
DARPA recognizes that the metalanguage specification developed and being refined under the META program and associated follow on efforts is key to the representation of component and context models to be developed under TA1 and TA2. Similarly, the manufacturing model specification being developed under the IFAB program is essential to the representation data assembled under TA3. While these efforts are incomplete , they are mature enough to form the basis of this effort under this BAA …
And, yes, that was as excruciating to transcribe as it was to read.
It cannot have been produced by warm-blooded humans.
Where the whatevers that composed it made on our planet? If not, when did they arrive here?
And what is it like to be in a lunch room with them?
Questions which, obviously, have no answers. The META, perhaps not developed under the TA1 and TA2, does not fit the BAA.