Monday, August 26, 2013

Today's Internets - First the olinguito, then Bigfoot.

You watch.
"Scientists in the US have discovered a new animal living in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. It has been named olinguito and is the first new species of carnivore to be identified in the Western hemisphere in 35 years. It has taken more than a decade to identify the mammal, a discovery that scientists say is incredibly rare in the 21st Century. The credit goes to a team from the Smithsonian Institution."

Well, that ends that "controversy" then.  
  
Of course.  The flaw in any system is people.  That's why any intelligent system needs to be designed to err on the side of limited instead of expansive power - LOVEINT: NSA spooks illegally stalking their romantic interests - Boing Boing


 "“You’d think the US government had bigger priorities than treating honors students like criminals, yet here we are” "


TeachThemHowToThink • : 
“Children don’t need to be sent every Sunday to Gravity School, because they experience gravity directly in their everyday lives. Beliefs that are true rarely need reinforcement, which is why after we use marbles to figure out the times table, we accept it and do not need to keep retesting it or reinforcing it. Beliefs that are false have a way of wearing out, drying up and blowing away, which is why we constantly need to reinforce them, usually through social chanting, singing or other kinds of mind deadening repetition.”

Know your history.  Of the Zen Objectivist Conspiracy Theorist Ambiguous Anti-Hero.  No wonder he's my favorite character.  The Dennis O'Neil series of the late 80s was fundamental in my own intellectual and psychological development.  Obvious, with hindsight.  [Though I don't get at all what they're doing with him in the New 52.]


 "The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture. "The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew," he told Foreign Policy. According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983."





No comments:

Post a Comment