Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
-
Electric Warship Heralds Evolution in Weapon Technologies
From Slashdot, looks like the US Navy has been busy, they plan to implement rail gun technology by 2011. DD(X) is in development by the Navy, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and other firms. When the new ship arrives in service it will be armed with very advanced,…
-
US, EU reach final accord in satellites row
The United States and the European Union have reached a final accord on resolving a transatlantic row over rival satellite positioning systems and will seal the deal at the US-EU summit this week in Ireland, officials from both sides said Monday. At one point, Washington suggested that the Galileo was an unnecessary rival to GPS…
-
Holding his Footnotes to the Fire
Peter is having a great time having a bash at George Monbiot and his book, the Age of Consent. He concludes, with some mirth I imagine: That doesn’t alter the fact that Monbiot has written something directly contradicting his sources. At least Jayson Blair could blame booze and coke and Philip Glass had a vivid…
-
The Pragmatist: Lakhdar Brahimi
Laura Secor profiles Lakhdar Brahimi – an educational article.
-
Five Days in Fallujah
Unfortunately Robert Kaplans excellent article on his time in Fallujah is not available on the Internet. But I will try and do something on it soon.
-
I Agree with Me
PJ O’Rourke has an entertaining article on right wing politics in the US. He poses the question I have often asked myself…When was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind? He likes Rush Limbaugh? Apparently so, but he still is not all that right: Me. I am a little to the right…
-
Plan of Attack: Bruce Hoffman
And we move on to Bruce Hoffman’s piece where he suggests that the insurgency currently in Iraq might come under a definition called “netwar”. This is a concept thought up by RAND analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in 1992. Defined as: Unconventional warfare involving flat, segmented networks instead of the pyramidal hierarchies and command-and-control…
-
The Indulgence Effect
Just remember that if you make donations to the Church, the bigger the donation the more likely you are not to go to Church at all… A recent study by an MIT economist finds that, on average, for every one percent increase in a household’s donations to religious groups, participation in faith-related activities, including attendance…
-
Betting on Bankruptcy
Third on the list are some truly staggering figures: Every year Americans lose as much money on legal gambling as they spend on movies, amusement parks, spectator sports, and video games combinedwhich is one reason that opponents of legalized casinos claim that gambling leads to financial ruin for many Americans. Now that is alot of…
-
Iraq by the Numbers
Second on the list is Iraq, with a report from the Brookings Institution. It provides some telling contradictions of the official US line on post war reconstruction, and on the status of the Iraqi army. It also provides some details of the progress being made in education and health. For instance, whereas Defense and State…
Got any book recommendations?