Sad but true... by Kwicko

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Sad but true...

POSTED BY: KWICKO
UPDATED: Thursday, September 1, 2011 14:47
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 3:58 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Fortunately, I'd wager that more Browncoats know who the guy on the left is than know who the girl on the right is.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:02 PM

BUP

No more running. I aim to misbehave.

I have no idea who either of those people are. What do I get?

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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:24 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Bup:
I have no idea who either of those people are. What do I get?

An "F" in Physics, most likely.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:26 PM

WISHIMAY

Fear not...all is not lost. I am but 31 and I know the left is Carl Sagan,(SHHH, don't tell PNews- HE WAS JEWISH

) but it's mainly because Imma PBS junkie, a sci-fi addict....and because I found some great astronomy videos on You Tube a few years back.

The Other...thing... is the dreaded Snookie who I think was on Jersey Shore, but having never have watched it and would only if I were paralyzed and unable to hold my breath to kill myself....I wouldn't completely know for sure...But she's in the news...a lot....

However, I will say I blanked out the other day on one of these and totally didn't recognize the Vice President of the United States...

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Wednesday, August 31, 2011 6:25 PM

TWO

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Fortunately, I'd wager that more Browncoats know who the guy on the left is than know who the girl on the right is.

I knew Snookie from Jersey Shore before I knew Carl Sagan. Snookie is slightly less profound than Carl. Here he writes from page 288-289, “When Scientists Know Sin”, The Demon-Haunted World (1997)

Also in the 1980s, Teller sold President Ronald Reagan the notion of Star Wars—called by then the "Strategic Defense Initiative," SDI. Reagan seems to have believed a highly imaginative story of Teller's that it was possible to build a desk-sized orbiting hydrogen-bomb-driven X-ray laser that would destroy 10,000 Soviet warheads in flight, and provide genuine protection for the citizens of the United States in case of global thermonuclear war.

It is claimed by apologists for the Reagan Administration that whatever the exaggerations in capability, some of it intentional, SDI was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is no serious evidence in support of this contention. Andrei Sakharov, Yevgeny Velikhov, Roald Sagdeev, and other scientists who advised President Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that if the United States really went ahead with a Star Wars program, the safest and cheapest Soviet response would be merely to augment its existing arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In this way Star Wars could have increased, not decreased, the peril of thermonuclear war. At any rate, Soviet expenditures on space-based defenses against American nuclear missiles were comparatively paltry—hardly of a magnitude to trigger a collapse of the Soviet economy. The fall of the USSR has much more to do with the failure of the command economy, growing awareness of the standard of living in the West, widespread disaffection from a moribund Communist ideology, and—although he did not intend such an outcome — Gorbachev's promotion of glasnost, or openness.

Ten thousand American scientists and engineers publicly pledged they would not work on Star Wars or accept money from the SDI organization. This provides an example of widespread and courageous non-cooperation by scientists (at some conceivable personal cost) with a democratic government that had, temporarily at least, lost its way.

Teller has also advocated the development of burrowing nuclear warheads—so underground command centers and deeply buried shelters for the leadership (and their families) of an adversary nation might be dug down to and wiped out; and 0.1-kiloton nuclear warheads that would saturate an enemy country, obliterating its infrastructure "without a single casualty": Civilians would be alerted in advance. Nuclear war would be humane.

As I write, Edward Teller—still vigorous and retaining considerable intellectual powers into his late eighties—has mounted a campaign, with his counterparts in the former Soviet nuclear weapons establishment, to develop and explode new generations of high-yield thermonuclear weapons in space, in order to destroy or deflect asteroids that might be on collision trajectories with the Earth. I worry that premature experimentation with the orbits of nearby asteroids may involve extreme dangers for our species.

Dr. Teller and I have met privately. We've debated at scientific meetings, in the national media, and in a closed rump session of Congress. We've had strong disagreements, especially on Star Wars, nuclear winter, and asteroid defense. Perhaps all this has hopelessly colored my view of him. Although he has always been a fervent anticommunist and technophile, as I look back over his life it seems to me I see something more in his desperate attempt to justify the hydrogen bomb: Its effects aren't as bad as you might think. It can be used to defend the world from other hydrogen bombs, for science, for civil engineering, to protect the population of the United States against an enemy's thermonuclear weapons, to wage war humanely, to save the planet from random hazards from space. Somehow, somewhere, he wants to believe, thermonuclear weapons, and he, will be acknowledged by the human species as its savior and not its destroyer.

When scientific research provides fallible nations and political leaders with formidable, indeed awesome powers, many dangers present themselves: One is that some of the scientists involved may lose all but a superficial semblance of objectivity. As always, power tends to corrupt. In this circumstance, the institution of secrecy is especially pernicious, and the checks and balances of a democracy become especially valuable. (Teller, who has flourished in the secrecy culture, has also repeatedly attacked it.) The CIA Inspector General commented in 1995 that "absolute secrecy corrupts absolutely." The most open and vigorous debate is often the only protection against the most perilous misuse of technology. The critical piece of the counterargument may be something obvious—that many scientists or even lay people could come up with provided there were no penalties for speaking out. Or it might be something more subtle, something that would be noted by an obscure graduate student in some locale remote from Washington, D.C.—who, if the arguments were closely held and highly secret, would never have the opportunity to address the issue. - http://issuu.com/sindorej/docs/the_demon-haunted_world

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, September 1, 2011 2:28 AM

BUP

No more running. I aim to misbehave.

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by Bup:
I have no idea who either of those people are. What do I get?

An "F" in Physics, most likely.

Those transcripts are supposed to be private.

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Thursday, September 1, 2011 2:30 AM

BUP

No more running. I aim to misbehave.

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Fear not...all is not lost. I am but 31 and I know the left is Carl Sagan,(SHHH, don't tell PNews- HE WAS JEWISH ) but it's mainly because Imma PBS junkie, a sci-fi addict....and because I found some great astronomy videos on You Tube a few years back.

The Other...thing... is the dreaded Snookie who I think was on Jersey Shore, but having never have watched it and would only if I were paralyzed and unable to hold my breath to kill myself....I wouldn't completely know for sure...But she's in the news...a lot....

However, I will say I blanked out the other day on one of these and totally didn't recognize the Vice President of the United States...

Thanks for the support, Wishy. AT least I was honest about my knowledge or lack thereof.

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Thursday, September 1, 2011 4:07 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Bup:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by Bup:
I have no idea who either of those people are. What do I get?

An "F" in Physics, most likely.

Those transcripts are supposed to be private.

In the age of the internet, pretty much nothing is private anymore! ;)

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Thursday, September 1, 2011 2:47 PM

BUP

No more running. I aim to misbehave.

There are still one or two things.

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