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Friday, September 26, 2008, 07:00 PM: Truthiness and Agnotology
Does the massive increase in communications, brought about by cable and satellite television, and, especially, the internet, help us find truth?
Or does it help spread doubt, confusion, lies, mythology, crackpot conspiracy theories, and the like? As internet bandwidth continues its upward spiral into the future, what should we expect in the future?
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Military
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Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.
Yank a country's water supply. Stage a military coup. the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) will tell you what happens next.
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The increasing deployment of gun-toting robots by the U.S. military and other armed forces around the world could end up endangering civilian lives and giving terrorists new ideas.
The prospect of armed, autonomous robots is enough to rattle Noel Sharkey, professor of computer science at the University of Sheffield, England. "One of the fundamental laws of war is being able to discriminate real combatants and noncombatants," he says. "I can see no way that autonomous robots can deliver this for us."
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A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
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 The Bush administration is expected to announce a massive series of arms deals in the Middle East tomorrow that are being seen as part of a diplomatic offensive against the growing influence of Iran in the volatile region.
The centrepiece of the deals is an agreement between the US and a group of Persian Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, that could eventually be worth at least $20bn, according to news reports. At the same time, 10-year military aid packages will be renewed with Israel and Egypt.
The main thrust of the deal is the supply of advanced American weapons to long-term Arab allies in the Gulf. They include Saudi and five other Gulf states: the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. All those countries have been jittery over the growing power of Iran and the possibility that Tehran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb. The supply of American arms to the countries not only gives them greater military power to counter Iran's but also cements them further as American allies.
In fact, so great is the White House's fear over Iran's intentions that the deal appears to ride roughshod over other American strategic concerns - such as Israeli fears over arming Arab countries and concern that Saudi Arabia has been supporting Sunni militants in Iraq.
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After spending 15 years on R & D, the Pentagon is outfitting soldiers for a high-tech battlefield network designed to cut through the fog of war. Popular Mechanics tests out the high-tech package and discovers why America's wireless warriors think it will slow them down in Iraq.
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China’s rapid rise as a regional political and economic power with global aspirations is an important element of today’s strategic environment – one that has significant implications for the region and the world. The United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China. U.S. policy encourages China to participate as a responsible international stakeholder by taking on a greater share of responsibility for the health and success of the global system from which China has derived great benefit.
China’s leaders face some important choices as its power and influence grow.
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Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), spotted the images, photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006.
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Microscopic metal wires marked with barcodes like so many boxes of grocery-store spaghetti maight someday help identify biological weapons much more quickly than today's methods. The technology would allow soldiers to use the right kind of anti-pathogen protection at just the right time.
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Thousands of people who may have been exposed to chemical or biological agents during military tests remain unaccounted for, and the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs have given up on tracking them down, according to a new report.
Some of the tests were conducted as part of a weapons testing program known as "Project 112." In others, individuals were intentionally exposed to hazardous substances such as blister, nerve, and biological agents as well as LSD and PCP.
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In a request issued in October, a government agency asked researchers for "innovative" ways to monitor the brain as it learns and acquires skills, such as by tracking when brain waves flip from those characteristic of novices to those of experts, and noninvasive ways to speed up the process. In February, the agency said it was interested in ways to use EEGs to detect when a brain had found what it was looking for in a photograph, such as a familiar face in a crowd.
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It is rather unusual when people who have significant disagreements with each other spend so much time agreeing with each other, but that is exactly what happened during a panel discussion titled “The New International Arms Race in Space—And How to Avoid It” held at The Independent Institute, a Washington, DC think tank, on March 7.
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Zephyr flies for months at a time using solar power plus batteries for continuous day/night operation.
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Before the Army builds any system, it rigorously defines requirements to ensure stuff fielded to the troops works well and only essential items are included. One reason is to save grunts from having to tote extraneous gear on their already overloaded backs.
Defining requirements for the Army's troubled Future Combat Systems -- which has an estimated final price tagof $230 billion, which tops the annual gross domestic product of Norway ($216 billion) -- took a real skid when it came to a requirement for a robot that a soldier would carry on his or her back, called a man-packed robot. Officials with iRobot told GAO that the Army has imposed a requirement that the 30-pound robot come equipped with a fire extinguisher.
Even small fire extinguishers -- such as the one in my house -- weigh more than 4 pounds.
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SprayCool, maker of advanced thermal management products and solutions for the military, won a follow-on sustainment contract with the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s ISR Systems Division to provide additional SprayCool liquid-cooled chassis for the Air Force Airborne Signals Intelligence Payload (ASIP) program. The additional SprayCool chassis are being procured to support operational sustainment of three systems installed on the Air Force's U-2 Dragon Lady high altitude surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.
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