war
milhayser | November 21, 2016The new film Arrival, based on a story by Ted Chiang, is unlike most any science fiction blockbuster at the box office these days. It's a tense, thoughtful, somber meditation on the human condition and the nature of a higher reality. In many ways, it is a religious film that deals with eschatology (the end times or judgment day).
Unlike Chad Orzel, I haven't read the source material, so I experienced the film with fresh eyes. I was immediately reminded of Philip K. Dick and his real-life experience of being 'touched by an angel.' Dick, both a life-long Christian and prolific author of…
oracknows | May 18, 2016Contrary to what some of my detractors think, I don’t mind criticism of my viewpoints. After all, if I never encounter criticism, how will I ever improve? On the other hand, there are forms of criticism that are what I would call less than constructive. One form this sort of criticism takes is obsessive repetition of points that have already been addressed and failure to pay attention to how they were addressed. This is the sort of criticism that will eventually provoke an exasperated shrug of the shoulders or even an angry—dare I say Insolent?—retort.
Another way criticism can get on one’s…
aardvarchaeology | December 9, 2013I read something annoying; always a good impetus for a blog entry. The offender this time is Nick Saunders of the University of Bristol, writing in Current World Archaeology #62 (Dec/Jan, available on Academia.edu). And the theme is what he calls ”the birth of Modern Conflict Archaeology”. This birth, he explains, began with a 1998 grant of his to study World War 1 trench art, stuff that soldiers made during and after the war. He has since gone on to do fieldwork on the ”Italian Front” along the border between Italy and Slovenia.
Battlefield archaeology is a long-established field of research…
milhayser | August 12, 2013Water may be the most abundant molecule on the surface of the Earth, but more than 99% of it is frozen, underground, or too salty to drink. Only .007% of the planet's water runs in rivers and lakes, yet this precious amount sustains massive populations worldwide. Agricultural societies have long gone to war over water, and as the Earth's population balloons toward 10 billion, global warming destabilizes weather patterns, and pollution sullies what little is left to count on, the conflicts will only get worse. On Significant Figures, Peter Gleick traces Syria's civil war in part to "drought…
jtoney | May 29, 2012
Dr. Jim Walsh
The imagination reels. Five dinners with Iran's President Ahmadinejad. What would you discuss? What would be your top questions?
MIT alumnus Dr. Jim Walsh did just that, and will report to us via an interview on Monday, June 4 via a live chat. From the announcement:
My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Discussions on Iran, North Korea, and the Nuclear Age
Jim Walsh PhD ’00 is an international security expert and a research associate at MIT’s Security Studies Program. He is one of a small number of Americans who has traveled to North Korea and Iran for talks with…
jtoney | April 3, 2012
Hunger Games - World Food Programme.
Hunger Games portrays a grim future in which the "bottom 99%" must ration their food to reduce the chance that their children will be sent as "tributes" to compete in a game to the death.
But -
What if, together, we can identify thousands of new paths out of poverty around the world in just 48 hours?
Imagine thousands of Katniss Everdeen-inspired avatars battling hunger - for real.
{Today} the Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) will join forces with people across the globe and ask them to help solve global poverty through…
jtoney | March 28, 2012
How could Israelis love Iranians? This compelling video points a simple truth: how can you hate someone you don't know? Could this be a game changer?
Such an approach can, and should be, applied to any culture. It's a beginning, and much is at stake.
From PRI's The World:
For the first time, Israelis went out to protest on Saturday night against an attack on Iran. About a thousand people turned up for the demonstration in Tel Aviv. Intentionally or not, the event got a boost from a couple who launched an anti-war campaign on Facebook a little over a week ago.
Israeli teacher and…
gregladen | March 20, 2012Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (signed by the author!) and I'm reading it with great interest, even though I'm totally swamped with other things. Damn you Rachel Maddow for writing such an engaging book!
I'm just starting it but wanted to share a couple of observations.
The nature of war in (well, 'by') America--and the nature of the military and government's relationship to it--evolved over time from the days of the Founding Fathers to the end of the Viet Nam era, as described in Rachel Maddow's new book, in very interesting ways. In particular, Maddow…
jtoney | February 1, 2012
Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red)
Credit: Arthur Friedlander
A university professor has allegedly mailed anthrax to the Pakistani prime minister's office in October, accoding to today's The New York Times. Could this be the beginning of a new anthrax scare? Is history repeating itself?
If true, any individual considering such "attacks" can no longer assume that their weapons are untraceable, as shown by the anthrax scare in 2001.
Below is an excerpt…
lborkowski | December 19, 2011J. Freedom du Lac reports in the Washington Post that Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman, killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 14th, was the 4,474th US servicemember to be killed in Iraq. With all the US troops now gone from Iraq, Hickman's death may well be the last servicemember fatality directly attributed to this conflict. The number of Iraqi deaths is much higher and much less precise; the Iraq Body Count website puts it between 104,122 and 113,700. And as a 2009 American Public Health Association policy statement points out, the consequences are greater than death alone. Here'…
stoat | October 19, 2011 Never blog when pissed [*] they said...
So, Kloor and Romm are having a dust up over stuff, and if you care you can read the details or even take sides (I'm with Kloor, you won't be surprised to learn). But we can take a step back and consider a more generalised problem, in the context of Doctors Warn Climate Change is "Greatest Threat to Public Health": suppose we care about famine in the third world (in the sense of wanting to do something about it, rather than in the sense of finding it interesting material to blog about it): what might we do?
* stop climate change (reduce impacts)
*…
jtoney | September 26, 2011Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestine's President Abbas gave back to back speeches last Friday at the United Nations General Assembly, a highly controversial event with Palestine's bid for formal recognition. As a scientist, such matters are far too complex for me, as they are embedded with layers of subtlety and inscrutable politics. I am much more comfortable in a world driven by logic and data.
My young children have been learning about the Israel-Palestinian conflict in various contexts and have shared these discussions with me. How can our next generation understand or process…
jtoney | July 23, 2011Anders Behring Breivik is an admitted mass murderer of the victtims at Oslo, providing some answers. He referred to his own crimes as "atrocious" but "necessary." More than 92 people are dead because of his actions.
Most media coverage has focused on the terrorist, the mass murderer, the anti-Islamist and far right fundamentalist Christian. No one really knows why he did this. I want to shift the focus to the story of one of the survivors. It deserves to be heard.
Leah McElrath sent this translation of a survivor's blog via Twitter. She describes herself as a "Human rights activist,…
jtoney | July 22, 2011
Hours after the terrible deaths in Oslo, police arrested a 32 year old man, Anders Behring Breivik, suspected for the crimes, described as "Nationalist, Anti-Islamic, Anti-Multiculturalism, liked and plays World of Warcraft."
Below is a news release, translated from Norwegian using Google Translate: (selected excerpts)
(AP) Anders Behring Breivik (32) who has been arrested for the bomb in the city center, and mass killing, has lived in Oslo's West End in his life, before he announced relocation of Hedmark for a month.
VG has received confirmation from several independent sources that it…
jtoney | July 10, 2011
Love can be explosive. This may be a bit much, or it may be just right.
From Molla Space:
War is destructive and bombs take away lives. But these beautifully sculpted ceramic love grenade coin banks are designed and made to plant seeds for future growth and prosperity. Convert your love to change and save it in "A Love Grenade" and donate it to those who are in need.
Part of proceeds benefits Biaugust's cause A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism).
I fully support efforts to promote human rights. This particular example is visually provocative, and raises an interesting…
jtoney | May 4, 2011
Credit: MIT International Review
Did undergraduate students pinpoint Bin Laden in 2009? A paper published in the MIT International Review indicates that they might have.
This story may well be a classic in the history of the war against terrorism and it is a compelling example of how students learning in the classroom can contribute to important, real-world problems involving human rights.
From ScienceInsider:
The bin Laden tracking idea began as a project in an undergraduate class on remote sensing that Gillespie {UCLA geographer}, whose expertise is using remote sensing data from…
jtoney | May 1, 2011
Source.
In a rare late night statement in the East Room of The White House Sunday, President Obama announced that Bin Laden is dead.
This historic announcement raises more than questions than answers.
How will this affect terrorism abroad and in the US?
How will this affect our relationship with Pakistan?
Did Bin Laden have a legacy plan for this possibility for the global network of cells?
What has been the cost, in lives and treasure, for this historic step, and the ripple effects in the future?
Will this strengthen our domestic security?
What will be the effect on the 2012 Presidential…
jtoney | April 16, 2011
To mark "Tax Day," April 18:
The White House website has just launched a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" calculator that shows you where those federal tax dollars go.
As an example, I used amounts from the 2009 tax return submitted by President Obama that reported payment of $1,792,414 in federal taxes from a gross income of $5,505,409.
{Give it a try, entering the amounts from your 2010 return!}
The results:
As you see, more than 50% of these dollars are allocated to national defense and health care. Will this ever change?
jtoney | March 20, 2011
The cover of Time magazine heralds "Target Gaddafi." Haven't read it yet? Read on.
This Time magazine cover is from April 21, 1986, approaching 25 years ago.
What are the implications for "Operation Odyssey Dawn," launched March 19?
Comments?
Here's a sample of Time's 1986 article:
By Sunday morning they were back on station in the central Mediterranean north of Libya: the carriers America and Coral Sea, 14 escort warships and two other support vessels. Once again, as in the clashes around the Gulf of Sidra three weeks ago, the flattops were prepared to launch their 160 fighters and…
jtoney | March 19, 2011
Source.
Casualties in time and space. The seasonal rhythms and shifting battlefields of the war emerge in this view of the 8131 Afghan civilians killed or injured over the past 2 years, recorded in a military database called CIVCAS. (No data were available for the first 5 months of 2010 in the Southwest region.)
CREDIT: GEORGE MICHAEL BROWER
I am at a loss for words with today's news of a missile strike in Libya.
PARIS -- American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes and missiles in the…