Category — politics

Nuclear Bunker Buster (RNEP) Animation:

The Nuclear Bunker Buster
Robust Nuclear Earth Pentrator

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you have to wonder where our government gets its ideas. this seems right out of the 60’s, any non-moron can see what the UCS says is a likely and even highly probably prediction of events. So…. Why?

Our President needs your help:

So GW is at Johns Hopkins School of International Studies when he gets an interesting question from a graduate student.  It’s a real stumper, a veritable legal connundrum.  So please take the time to view this video and see if you can answer the thorny question.  And if so, then call the White House.  Or better yet, just show up.  Immediately. 

Obviously, the President is eager to figure this out.

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a very disappointing response….

nightmare science:

In short, the elite that has been created by practice of the scientific method uses the concomitant power not just to express the results of particular research initiatives, but to create, support, and implement policy responses affecting many non-scientific communities and intellectual domains in myriad ways. In doing so, they are not exercising expertise in these non-scientific domains, but rather transforming their privilege in the scientific domains into authority in non-scientific domains. Science is, in other words, segueing back into a structure where once again authority, not observation, is the basis of the exercise of power and establishment of truth by the elite. But the authority in this new model is not derived from sacred texts; rather it is derived from legitimate practice of scientific method in the scientific domain, extended into non-scientific domains. Note that this does not imply that scientists cannot, or should not, as individuals participate in public debate; only that if they do so cloaked in the privilege that the scientific discourse gives them they raise from the dead the specter of authority as truth.

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there is a difference between authority, truth and power. my famous example is the use of the idea of hell in the bible…. what purpose does it serve, who does it empower, and why are there so many bibles produced that never mention hell? where did it come from and where is it going, for whose benefit?

Where We Live Now:

Brad DeLong summarizes the ongoing restructuring of American society:

1. The rise of a very powerful, successful, exploitative upper class.
2. Further increases in inequality as the tax and transfer system becomes less progressive.
3. Increases in risk that threaten to move middle-class families sharply downward in the wealth distribution.
4. Skill-biased technical change that sharply raises the benefits to education.
5. Holes in the safety net–the fall in the value of the minimum wage, time-limited welfare, and so forth.

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yes, perhaps it is time again to read the declaration of independence…

Disappearing Government Information – New paper by Susan Nevelow Mart:

You can download it for free from SSRN.   Susan Nevelow Mart, Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet be Reclaimed

Abstract:     
This article examines the legal bases of the public’s right to access government information, and examines and analyzes the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet and the rationales given for the removals. The concerted use of FOIA by public interest groups and their constituents is suggested as a possible method of returning the information to the Internet. There article concludes with a brief review of recent FOIA cases that might provide some guidance on the litigation sure to follow such concerted requests.

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this is important

http://state-machine.org/agency/:

this is pretty cool

http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=1397&date=20050509

China “suspected of spying at Swedish universities”

(AFP/The Local) China is suspected of hiring scientists to spy and steal unpatented research from Swedish universities, Swedish public radio reported on Monday.

Quoting an unnamed detective within Sweden’s security service, Säpo, radio news program Ekot reported that guest scientists from China were suspected of stealing unpublished and unpatented research from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

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wow! just wow. this is the sort of thing i just don’t expect to come from Sweden. Oh, I can see it happening… that is not an issue, knowledge is ’stolen’ or more precisely ’shared’ all the time. That is the nature of science, it is communal and shared. It is not personal/private and owned. However, when states stop underwriting knowledge generation and knowledge producers have to turn to profit and guarantee mechanisms to ensure their future livelihood and the continued existence of their institutions, traditional understandings start to fade awy.

Yahoo! News – World Photos – AP

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oh my… this is a new low.

Leiter Reports: The Horowitz Attack on Academic Freedom Arrives in Ohio

The Horowitz Attack on Academic Freedom Arrives in Ohio

The bill introduced in the state legislature is here.  (Thanks to Joshua Smith for the pointer.)  As one news story (for which I could not locate a URL) stated, the bill would regulate what professors can say in class, and that’s exactly right.  Here’s some illustrative provisions:

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gack! this is fake academic freedom, it is meant to allow ideological freedom, not academic freedom and they are not the same thing. my students in political economy for instance generally can’t pass if all they demonstrate is an understanding of work not presented in the course, likewise, i’ll mark students down for having fundamental misunderstandings or ideological understandings of economic systems, but that is what most of them want to do, they want to say ‘market freedom is good’ and never say why or even acknowledge market failure…. education isn’t about ideological freedom, i’m sorry. this bill needs to fail.

Yahoo! News – Top Stories Photos – AP:
Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers. Several hundred students walked out of classes at several Seattle colleges and universities to protest the inauguration of President Bush (news – web sites). (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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interesting….. but it isn’t about what the recruiters are…. it is about who they represent. the professional military are fine, but there are real issues with the civilian leadership.