News Brief, Supermassive Black Hole Edition
Posted by Joshua Foust on 06 Jun 2007 at 9:33 pm | Tagged as: Notes on the war, Hugo Chavez, Military Matters, Media, Foreign affairs, Domestic Politics
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.
Defense
- I suppose it goes without saying that the Nintendo DS is already basically an “advanced sensor platform,” since it is natively wireless, adaptive, touch-sensitive (and easily modded for tilt), and has a microphone. But don’t tell that to DARPA, which seems more intent on the 1989 Gameboy, which was low-rez and black and white, rather than the DS, which is basically a portable SGI workstation (though from the mid-90s).
- Yesterday I wrote on some of the challenges and contradictions facing special forces in Afghanistan. I think it’s worth a read.
- Did Mitsubishi build a mock stealth fighter to ease U.S. concerns over export controls on stealth technology? Could be—after all, we don’t trust those wily nips with our advanced fighters, decades of close friendship be damned. ITAR is awesome for crippling our friends and limiting our high-margin exports, though, isn’t it?
- Meanwhile, the Navy isn’t quite as super awesome at anti-piracy as it would like to be.
- Modeling pareto outcomes in war analysis. This kind of thinking is very… ascendant within some military circles. But Robb gets it wrong: he (as well as Taleb) is not discussing Paretian-stable events, at least not as Taleb conceptualizes them. In fact, Taleb is explicit that these kinds of Pareto events are only a minor subset of extremistan events. Yes, I’m reading Taleb’s book right now (I took a break from Mulberry Empire and need to update the sidebar, I know).
Around the World
- London’s 2012 Olympics SS logo causes seizures. Just think: that tangled, epileptic mess took 12 months and cost $800,000 to design. Go Britain!
- The more I read of the closure of RCTV, and especially the hypocrite western journalists and intellectuals who support the suppression of free speech so long as it’s for a good cause, the angrier I become.
- Pretty soon we might get around to arresting Ratko Mladic. Maybe, if he can be found on his vast estate.
- The female head of an Afghan radio station was murdered in her sleep, for the crime (perhaps) of being an unsubmissive woman. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, hundreds of people were thrown in jail for the crime of not supporting our BFF in the GWOT, Pervez Musharraf.
- Bonnie Boyd does the intense leg work I’ve been unable to do on the Aliyev case, digging into the Austrian connections behind the arrests and noting the surreal conspiracy thriller aspects to the whole story. Really, go read the entire post.
- I hate putting it like this, but one of the reasons I really want to go to Dushanbe is its lack of a Hyatt, or rather its lack of standardized western tourist agencies. Call it culturally imperialist, but I like places that remain off the beaten path. Of course, the Hyatt is part of a grand scheme to turn Dushanbe into a tourist capital… destroying property rights in the process and making everyone generally worse off.
- An excellent interview with Barry Rubin on the real Syria.
- The Tamil Tigers, long known as a sort of think tank for insurgents, has expanded into hijacking TV satellites. Straight outta… well, any lame Sci-Fi movie ever, but for some reason I was thinking either Johnny Mnemonic or Hackers. And kinda cool.
- More surreality today? American prosecutors broke up a conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the communist dictatorship controlling Laos.
- And the Turks have invaded Northern Iraq, to quash possible Kurdish incursions. Let’s see how long they stay, and if they accomplish anything other than angering more Kurds to murderous Turk-hatred.
Back at Home
- An interesting live blog of the GOP debate, courtesy of David “The Snipe” Wiegel. Awesomeness? “8:35: Rudy points out that ‘we’re friends’ with Vietnam because we stuck it out and won.” One of the many reasons I will actively campaign against him if he squeaks out a primary victory.
- Drezner does an interesting comparison of Obama and Romney, showing how they’re really tough to tell apart. Romney, though, comes off as frightening in his calls for a “Civilian Proconsul” to handle each region of foreign policy—because truely, the one thing missing from our foreign relations is another layer of bureaucracy modeled after Imperial Rome.
- New York City’s Stalinist approach to public health is making it harder to make healthy choices about food. Meanwhile, we remain unable to deal with obvious public health concerns, even when all our warning systems behave properly.
- Oh look, June is Pride month. As everybody’s token gay, let me say I’m not too thrilled; most of my fellow gays have given me little reason to celebrate that one part of who I am (there are, of course exceptions). Though many years old, I find the Onion’s take both hilarious, and quite spot on.
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