[via LIFE]

The efficacy of war is manifest in many ways: technological advances, societal refinement, economic benefits, and, most importantly, global unity. Undeniably, war is responsible for the marvels of today’s society, and, inversely, the absence of war is the cause of American society’s current state of stagnation.

- The Necessity of War

The Enola Gay‘s sister B-29 Bockscar dropped Fat Man fifty-five years ago today. Though the fire-bombing of Japan claimed more lives, the immediate devastation wrought by a single weapon proved (for a second time) that human ingenuity could ultimately confound humanity.

We no longer live under the constant perceived threat of nuclear annihilation, however, the only thing that has changed in the last fifty-five years is the number of armaments waiting to be unleashed.

Think 100 terajoules is insane? Try four times that – because the size of the fireball and the number of bodies vaporized (or lining mass graves) are all that matters when nation-states compete.

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave ‘S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ wast,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

- To a Mouse by Robert Burns [1785]

I reflect upon my life at times and worry I’ve fallen short of my potential.

I then reflect upon the state of the world and am full of pride.

Perhaps I have reached my potential for hubris.

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that “news” is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different – in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.

- Robert A. Heinlein

Estimates of “the total number of people who have ever lived” published in the 2000s range approximately from 100 to 115 billion.

An estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived was prepared by Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in 1995 and subsequently updated in 2002; the updated figure was approximately 106 billion. Haub characterized this figure as an estimate that required “selecting population sizes for different points from antiquity to the present and applying assumed birth rates to each period”. Given an estimated global population of 6.2 billion in 2002, it could be inferred that about 6% of all people who had ever existed were alive in 2002.

- World population at Wikipedia.org

Assuming that you could meet each of the 115,000,000,000 people who have ever lived for exactly one second, it would take you 3,646 years to meet each of them (though the birth rate – 157,500,000 children per year – would ensure that you never catch up).

One, one-thousand…

How much can you learn about a person in one second?

What lasting impact can any -

…. two, one-thousand…

- individual have if it would take more than a year to simply recall the names of each person born that year?

…. three, one-thousand…

Will your existence matter in one hundred years, after tens of billions of others of your kind have born, aged, and died?

…. four, one-thousand…

Consider, for a moment, what it is that makes you different – are you really that different from the 114,999,000,000 people whose names you can’t remember?

…. five, one-thousand…

LIAR!

Admit it, you can’t even remember one million other peoples’ names.

…. six, one-thousand…

Try it, write them down.

I’ll wager you recall less than 10,000.

…. seven, one-thousand…

You know what the odds are of being an Einstein or a Charlemagne or a Nebuchadnezzar or even a Judas Iscariot?

…. eight, one-thousand…

They’re infinitesimal.

You’re infinitesimal.

…. nine, one-thousand…

You hardly even matter in the solipsist dream you like to pretend the rest of us trespass upon…

…. ten, one-thousand…

Translation: Active Measures

Demoralization: Can you trust America’s most trusted news channel..?

Destabilization: A little anarchy in the streets.

Crisis: Terror. Confusion. Fear.

Normalization: Deus ex machina. Manufactured chaos resolves, embrace the savior apparatchik.

Why send troops where “journalists” will suffice?

NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION

You make a false distinction between “politics” and “science,” one based on argument and the other on “objectivity.” They are of exactly the same form, conducted in exactly the same way, by exactly the same people.

Both are done by humans, humans who want. Whatever truth is out there is barely detectable through the mist of envy and need and hope. They will make their words and their numbers say anything they need them to.

- Are Women Prone To Paranormal Beliefs? at TheLastPsychiatrist.com

… and it is far easier to report on “research” which reinforces an agenda – the problem of sorting out fact from contrivance (particularly if the “researcher” believes his or her own distortions of truth) cannot and should not be left to the news media but, most unfortunately, it cannot be left to the news consumer either.

Update: T+37:20:00

Need examples of the organizations disingenuously blurring the line between politics and science? An institute is defined by Princeton WordNet as “an association organized to promote art or science or education” – the following are, in fact, political lobbyist organizations and industry trade groups. The organizations’ names belie their intentions, because who wouldn’t trust Gavin Gibbons of the prestigious National Fisheries Institute?

He must be a respected scientist and not just some lame PR flack, right? *

They don’t research anything, they just game the system with political contributions and spew a seemingly-endless stream of press releases.

• Advertising Research Foundation
• Marketing Research Association
• Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
• American Beverage Institute
• American Frozen Food Institute
• American Institute of Constructors
• American Iron and Steel Institute
• American Meat Institute
• American Petroleum Institute
• Community Associations Institute
• Edison Electric Institute
• Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries
• Investment Company Institute
• National Fisheries Institute
• Nuclear Energy Institute
• Pellet Fuels Institute
• Tobacco Institute

* Yes, I pick on Gavin Gibbons regularly. Why? Because he seems to be using automated means to post comments to blogs like this one (in which case he is a spammer – if not that, then at least blithely foolish) and he says things like “I have had a look at an advanced copy of the Sept/Oct edition of Mother Jones. And I must say “Tuna Surprise” is not much of a surprise coming from such a blatantly agenda-driven outfit.” while he works for an industry trade group and, quite obviously, minimizing and/or discrediting negative press is his employer’s sole agenda where posting comments to my blog is concerned. If you can find a more transparent hypocrite, please let me know.

[via Steve Dekorte]

This is literally targeting the Americans specifically and killing them.

This cannot be done in this way.

This is truly an extraordinary shift – it really highlights, by the way, that this isn’t just a left-or-right, Republican versus Democrat problem, this is something else altogether.

- Former CIA Special Agent Jack Rice

Nelson, a 44-year-old white woman, keeps getting snared at the Canadian border because she apparently shares some key identifying information with a black man, possibly from Georgia, who is in trouble with the law. While such cases of mistaken identity at border points and airports are not unique, Nelson’s case is unusual in that only some of her crossings set off an alarm and because federal officials have not fixed the problem after almost two years.

- NY woman questioned again and again over ID mix-up

The accuracy of a bureaucracy’s database is inversely proportional to the number of records on file.