military
mikethemadbiologist | June 14, 2010Or something. Look at what we found in Afghanistan:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits -- including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium -- are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one…
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2010When it comes to war, we should spend more time listening to those who have seen it. With that in mind, I bring you this by Andy Rooney, from last year's Memorial Day:
Amazingly, Rooney received death threats over this piece.
That explains a lot, actually.
sciencepunk | May 2, 2010
On January 15, 1961, the US coastguard raced through the darkness toward a tiny point 84 miles southeast of New York City. There, 28 crew members of Texas Tower 4 were waiting desperately to be evacuated from their station. As huge swells and high winds pounded the hull of the ship, their radios picked up a frantic transmission from the tower: "We're breaking up". And with that, Texas Tower 4 and all of its occupants were pulled beneath the waves.
Built in 1957, the five Texas Towers were intended to become part of the USA's advanced early warning system against Soviet bombers. Named for…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2010If those who are upset about runaway government spending were serious, they would look at defense spending, which has increased in nominal terms by 75% percent. Consider what even a small level of war department waste would buy for us:
With a price tag now approaching $330 million per plane and a total program cost of well over $65 billion, the C-17, produced by weapons-maker Boeing, has miraculously evaded every attempt to squash it. In fact, Congress even included $2.5 billion in the 2010 budget for ten C-17s that the Pentagon hadn't requested.
Keep in mind that $2.5 billion is a lot of…
razib | February 14, 2010A few weeks ago I remarked on the relatively high current defense spending for the United States. In hindsight I think this was somewhat unfair, the proportion of the budget that the United States spends on defense is rather small in a world-historical context. I was reminded of this by a datum in The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China (highly recommended by the way), even this exceedingly civilian dynasty allocated ~80% of its budgetary outlays toward military expenses. Historical surveys of the Roman Empire also infer that most of the expenditure was directed toward…
razib | February 1, 2010I got the following chart from Wikipedia, and it suggests that on a per capita inflation-adjusted basis we're spending more on defense today than we were during the Reagan build-up, or Vietnam! Is this for real?
mikethemadbiologist | December 13, 2009I've described the Mad Biologist's Rule of Base Ten Numbers before:
My colleagues have all heard of the Mad Biologist's Rule of Base Ten Numbers: when you see too many numbers that end with zero, become skeptical. That's because only one in ten numbers should do should end in zero.
I then added:
...if you read news reports that routinely say, "Today, American forces blew the crap out of [number that ends with zero] enemy forces" (and with a globe-spanning garrison empire, we do read a lot of those, don't we?), nobody has a good idea what actually happened.
Sadly, thirty has become the new…
ddobbs | December 7, 20091. Maybe it was just the headline ... but the runaway winner was "No pity party, no macho man." Psychologist Dave Grossman on surviving killing. Actually I think it was the remarkable photo, which looks like a painting. Check it out.
2. I'm not vulnerable, just especially plastic. Risk genes, environment, and evolution, in the Atlantic. The blog post about the article that led to the book.
3. Senator Asks Pentagon To Review Antidepressants
4. Gorgeous thing of the day: Sky's-eye view of the Maldives & other islands
5. The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants, even though it was from Oct 1…
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2009In light of the April 15 protests, I think this chart by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities which describes the federal budget is appropriate:
You'll notice that the largest component of the budget is defense spending (it narrowly edges out Social Security), and unlike Social Security, there is no designated revenue stream (which incidentally has a surplus). Any discussion of budget balancing that does not consider defense spending is simply not serious. The other thing to note is that this does not include tax expenditures, the largest being the employer healthcare tax deduction…
mikethemadbiologist | April 19, 2009ScienceBloglings Greg Laden and John Wilkins have discussed whether or not CIA employees complicit in torture should be exempt from prosecution. The debate has revolved around the 'following orders' issue. But this misses a key point:
CIA personnel are not military personnel.
There is a specific reason the CIA is a civilian agency and not a military command (in fact, there are strict regulations about the percentage of military personnel that can work for the CIA). In a military command, soldiers can disobey orders if those orders are found to be unethical. However, if the orders are…
bioephemera | March 31, 2009
My friend John Ohab is hosting a new DoD webcast called "Armed With Science." Sure, it has an over-the-top logo reminiscent of the Syfy Channel (I like to intone "ARMED WITH SCIENCE" with the same cadence as "PIGS IN SPACE!"), but the show turns out to be really well-done and interesting. Each episode is a half-hour interview with a researchers in a scientific field relevant to the military: sometimes that means SONAR or geopositioning, but they also take on general science topics like Brain Awareness Week at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. It's a nice mix of topics, and it's…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2009This is the kind of story that makes me sick to my stomach--soldiers stateside were expected by their base commander to applaud for Pastor of Evil Rick Warren:
The following is an email from one decorated combat officer, a man with the courage to repeatedly put his life on the line on the battlefield, being wounded twice, but who could not muster the courage to resist the pressure of his "serious and committed born again Christian" commanding officer to applaud Rick Warren. The author of this email is typical of the majority of servicemen and servicewomen who contact MRFF for assistance. Like…
mikethemadbiologist | December 3, 2008In case you missed it, there's a fascinating, albeit horrifying, article about the intersection of the business interests of retired military officers with their depiction in the mainstream media as unbiased commentators who are putting country first. Here's a sample:
The company, Defense Solutions, sought the services of a retired general with national stature, someone who could open doors at the highest levels of government and help it win a huge prize: the right to supply Iraq with thousands of armored vehicles.
Access like this does not come cheap, but it was an opportunity potentially…
mikethemadbiologist | December 1, 2008Apparently, humanism is selfish. That would have been news to Albert Camus, Nobel Laureate and resistance fighter. This is from a military chaplain's presentation about suicide prevention that apparently is cribbed directly from evangelical preacher Rick Warren:
In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-…
mikethemadbiologist | September 17, 2008Here's another resounding success of the Bush Doctrine. Erm, not so much (italics mine):
"It's like the good old days," Oleg Mikhailishchin, a pilot in camouflage uniform, told reporters during a rare visit by foreign media to the Engels base last month, before the war with Georgia further raised tensions with the West. More than 20 Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers could be seen on the runway near the Volga River at this once top-secret base, where the two Tu-160 "White Swan" planes that landed in Venezuela on Wednesday flew from.
Russia is also dispatching a nuclear cruiser and other warships and…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2008Orac is right to call out Stoller for referring to McCain as cancer-ridden--it's not true.
Worse, it's cruel, and I should have made it clear that I've never supported the 'cancer critique.' (I have called McCain many things, but never that). At the time, I thought it would be dishonest to cut out that one sentence, but I was absolutely wrong to not to call out Bowers on this. The part that I highlighted--which was why I thought the post was worth quoting:
Our nominee should crush this guy. And if he doesn't, then next year, the Generals are going to come out and undermine Obama unless…
mikethemadbiologist | July 2, 2008By now you might have heard about the faux outrage at Gen. Wesley Clark's obvious statement that being a POW is not a qualification for the presidency--or a disqualification either. As Maha put it:
So a televised wingnut hollered that McCain was being swift-boated by Gen. Clark. Hello? Clark didn't make unsupportable claims that McCain is lying about his war record or that he had behaved dishonorably in the service, as the swifties did to Kerry. He's saying that being a fighter pilot and then a POW doesn't qualify someone to be President.
Dear wingnuts: This is a simple statement of fact.…
cevans | May 29, 2008Although I've read a great deal about the fantastically oblique heraldry and insignia of the purported "black world" of the U.S. military -- namely in the (recommended) work of Trevor Paglen -- I've never come across it in the flesh, er, vinyl decal. Imagine my joyful surprise at discovering a treasure trove of mission stickers, identifiers, and decals at the small-aircraft annex of the Portland International Airport this week. Apparently pilots of all stripes pass through and leave their mark. Decode at will, and read more here.
mikethemadbiologist | April 25, 2008From a long time ago on a blog far, far away (and now chomped by Blogger) comes this post about how responding to bioterrorism requires a public health, not security infrastructure.
Salon is running a story that claims the anti-war march of Sept. 24 might have been subjected to a botched tularemia bioterrorist attack. I have no idea whether or not this is correct. Nonetheless, it highlights something very important-an appropriate and adequately funded public health response to bioterrorism is needed, since it is often impossible to distinguish between terrorist attacks and natural outbreaks…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2008
Squooze my fascist, baby!
...there's a good chance we're both onto something:
In fact, Senator McCain has indicated that not only would he like to unleash the U.S. military on substantial portions of the rest of the world, as president, he would work to militarize American society. In a 2001 article in the Washington Monthly, after lamenting that it was "not currently politically practical to revive the draft," McCain went on to praise and argue for the expansion of the National Civilian Community Corps, a federally-administered program where volunteers "wear uniforms, work in teams, learn…