Thanks John... I KNEW there was a gap in my life. I miss Brin-L! Maybe that's the underlying reason why I wrote KILN PEOPLE... because I secretly wish I could make dittos to do all the cool stuff, like e-list participation, that I can't spare time for in just one body!<<<<
Please pass this on to the Brin-L gang. Tell'em I welcome feedback on the evolving http://www.davidbrin.com/
site... which in a couple of weeks should be revised yet again to include "Brin's Picks & Wants"... books & such that I recommend and things I want/need. See also news on coming events, like appearances in Minneapolis & LA.
I've been speaking/consulting a lot about sensors/sensing/terror/security lately. I assume most of you know about my much talked-about article on 9/11. See:
http://www.futurist.com/portal/future_trends/david_brin_empowerment.htm
>nuclear warfare & the Bush administration
> Continuing thread about the Bush administration's "Shadow Government"
> and the discussion of nuclear battlefield weapons.
W says the jury is still out on Global Warming. Meanwhile, the Navy is drawing up battle plans for an ice-free Arctic Ocean: http://www.adn.com/front/story/780638p-832316c.html
Re: nuclear weapons, I have an insight or two to share. See the bottom of this missive.
> Zim weighs in on this continuing thread: "The minor differences in genes
> distribution that characterize racial differences will be gone in a few
> generations. Imagine that. John Lennon was right"
Very significant. The recent news that smacks racists? There is more genetic diversity AMONG african sub-groups than there is between american whites and american blacks.
> Fool posts a short article, "Fish Fillets Grown Larger In Tank", by Ian
> Sample, about an attempt to grow meat.
cools!
>EnderConI
> Ronn directs us to a site where we can register for EnderCon. See:
> http://www.endercon.com
He gets a con and I get an e-list. Just lucky I guess!
>Kiln People race
> In this spin-off of the evolution thread, Chad asks if we think Brin was
> alluding to racial assimilation in Kiln People.
Some. Can't help it. I like showing future societies that are better than ours... and yet filled with angst-ridden quandaries nonetheless. I find that far more interesting than cliched nihilism/
>>Axis of Evil
> JDG posts a pair of articles about the North Korean Government. See:
> http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=90000453
> http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=105001733
Korea is obvious. What I detest is the administration's decision to declare war on IRAN! It is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. We should be using jiu jitsu, helping the young and the moderates there, not driving them into the Mullahs' arms. We should offer them what they've demanded all along, an APOLOGY for the stuff the CIA did circa 1950-1979.
What would it hurt us? Then in compensation, we should say, "mass your tanks on the Iraqi border and come in when we finish blasting the Republican Guard out of the Shiite ares in the south. That's where your Shiite brethren and holy sites are. That's where the oil is. We'll give you a 5 year protectorate plus 5 years use of the oil... and vengeance on Saddam... and all you have to do in return is forgive us."
With Iran friendly again, we could tell the Wahhabi fanatics in Riyadh "Watch it, bub."
Win-win scenario. And we'd only need one coalition partner and get rid of Saddam to boot.
Workshop on Scientific Requirements for Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and
>Asteroids
> Another article about asteroids posted by Ronn. See:
> http://www.noao.edu/meetings/mitigation/
cool!
>James White
> Ilana has recommended author James White,
May favorite of his was ALL JUDGEMENT FLED
>A Dark Day in American History
> JDG (and many others) don't like the new campaign finance reform bill.
> See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24747-2002Mar27.html?referer=
Oh, baloney. The bribers will find other ways, John. Never fear.
>A French Translation of A4P
> Trent posting some stuff about his Alliance for Progress Encyclopedia.
> See: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~tshipley/Encyclopedia/
double cool. Note, CONTACTING ALIENS: THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO DAVID BRIN'S UPLIFT UNIVERSE will be out in July. This will be a wonderfully fun tour of the many alien races that people have enjoyed in books like STARTIDE RISING and THE UPLIFT WAR. Those seeking yet another "uplift fix" can download the story "Temptation" from http://www.davidbrin.com/
Soon after that will appear Stefan Jones's revised GURPS Uplift Game.
>Suppose Sharon believes Jeroen
> Middle East spin-off.
I won't dive into the Middle east tar baby except to say that both sides have fallen prey to the most basic of human temptations. Their actions seemed based on the premise that their enemies are cowards. Yet, both sides have proved they are not. Physical intimidation will simply make the other side dig in. Yet each side continues believing the next act will succeed in cowing the other.
They also fall prey to the voluptuous pleasure of assuming the other side is stupid. In this case the facts are less symmetrical. The Israelis are right to assume this. The Palestinians have time and again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, pursuing courses of action that will only worsen their situation. They have never once recognized how the Sheiks have used them for 50- years. Nor do they see that the one people in the Middle East who are most like them are... the Israelis. In almost every way.
The fundamental Arab position is deeply flawed, that any measure they take will eliminate Israel in a satisfying way. Take the reductio ad extremum position. Say they succeed in crushing Israel completely. They never discuss what will happen next... the Jewish diaspora, including one quarter of all the Nobel Prize winners on Earth and a large fraction of the world's physicists and biologists, will be radicalized.
I would not want to live in any Arab country in the aftermath.
In order to merit serious negotiation, I would like to see the manipulators in Riyadh show any sign at all that their IQ is high enough to negotiate with -- by demonstrating that they have a plan for their own success. So far, I've seen no sign of anything but reflexive hatred masked by sophisticated Eton accents.
When that is replaced -- not by niceness but by genuine self- interest - I will start having some hope for the region.
>Original Axis Stuff>from Reykjavik, too.
>Brett Coster
>During 1941, well before Pearl Harbour, the US Navy was effectively at war
>against Germany's U-boats. In July US troops replaced British troops in
>Iceland (Iceland was a Danish territory, and Britain had occupied Iceland at
>request of the Danish government in exile to prevent it falling to Germany),
>and the US Navy thereafter provided some convoy escorts up to about Iceland
>across the Atlantic. I think US PBY aircraft flew anti-submarine patrols
I've always been curious as to why no airfields were established in southern Greenland, to fill the air gap. Then I flew over myself and saw the rugged terrain.
\
Interesting stuff!
Keep on thinkin' folks..
With cordial regards.
David Brin
www.davidbrin.com
\
====
4/6/02
Dear Wired,
In examining the latest incarnation of Strategic Defense under President George W. Bush, Theodore Postol and George Lewis claimed (WIRED 3/02) that today's favored mode of interception - which tries to "hit a bullet with a bullet" during ballistic midcourse - is fatally flawed because decoys are difficult to distinguish from warheads in the vacuum of space. They recommend instead concentrating on systems that attack ICBMs during boost phase, by stationing defensive systems such as high-powered airborne lasers very close to the borders of all potential nuclear aggressors.
Aside from the expense and danger of provocatively trying to surround every possible foe (except Russia and China) around the clock, there is another flaw in this reasoning. If midcourse interception were intrinsically absurd, why did Lyndon Johnson and Leonid Breszhnev feel rushed to craft an Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, back in the 1960s? The Safeguard and Sentinel systems developed under LBJ lacked today's fantastic radars and computers, yet were worrisomely credible. They had no need to physically strike one bullet with another -- because they were tipped with hydrogen bombs.
A near miss was good enough, then. That is, unless you lived in range of the EM pulse or fallout. Postol and Lewis call this option "not politically viable." And yet, dismissing it with one blithe phrase is cavalier and foolhardy.
Oh, I'm as creeped-out as anybody by the notion of firing off nukes to blast incoming warheads. Nevertheless, imagine that someday we find ourselves under blackmail by the desperate ruling clique of some East Asian nation possessing two dozen or so crude ICBMs. Suppose further that our Alaskan interceptor field lacks credibility because it's incomplete, or the "hit-to-kill" tests remain ambiguous. In that tense situation, picture a U.S. President abruptly declaring that "our interceptors now carry small-but-enhanced fusion devices, capable of knocking down anything within a hundred miles."
Suddenly, the overly-ambitious hit-to-kill scenario is replaced with a near certainty of successful interception -- albeit at disconcerting downstream cost. It's a very different equation than the one Postol and Lewis presented.
How would the public react? In the aftermath of 9/11 citizens showed remarkable resiliency and calm. Still, political 'viability' is a state of mind. Something that's outrageous in normal times may seem prudent, even laudable in a crisis.
Now consider the administration's recent proposal to develop smaller, more specialized nuclear weapons. Leaks suggest they're'bunker-busters', but who can miss the aroma of something else at work? Perhaps even deliberate ambiguity? Just a hint that nuclear tips lie in reserve would turn a small 'prototype' interceptor field into one that's plausibly effective enough to deter third-tier nuclear powers from investing in ballistic missiles, diverting their attention to alternate delivery systems.
Ah, but is that really what we want them to do?
David Brin
Author of The Transparent Society and The Postman
www.davidbrin.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TREATY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS ON THE LIMITATION OF ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE SYSTEMS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems the United States and the Soviet Union agree that each may have only two ABM deployment areas,1 so restricted and so located that they cannot provide a nationwide ABM defense or become the basis for developing one. Each country thus leaves unchallenged the penetration capability of the others retaliatory missile forces.
The Treaty permits each side to have one limited ABM system to protect its capital and another to protect an ICBM launch area. The two sites defended must be at least 1,300 kilometers apart, to prevent the creation of any effective regional defense zone or the beginnings of a nationwide system.
Precise quantitative and qualitative limits are imposed on the ABM systems that may be deployed. At each site there may be no more than 100 interceptor missiles and 100 launchers. Agreement on the number and characteristics of radars to be permitted had required extensive and complex technical negotiations, and the provisions governing these important components of ABM systems are spelled out in very specific detail in the Treaty and further clarified in the "Agreed Statements" accompanying it.
Both Parties agreed to limit qualitative improvement of their ABM technology, e.g., not to develop, test, or deploy ABM launchers capable of launching more than one interceptor missile at a time or modify existing launchers to give them this capability, and systems for rapid reload of launchers are similarly barred. These provisions, the Agreed Statements clarify, also ban interceptor missiles with more than one independently guided warhead.
There had been some concern over the possibility that surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) intended for defense against aircraft might be improved, along with their supporting radars, to the point where they could effectively be used against ICBMs and SLBMs, and the Treaty prohibits this. While further deployment of radars intended to give early warning of strategic ballistic missile attack is not prohibited, such radars must be located along the territorial boundaries of each country and oriented outward, so that they do not contribute to an effective ABM defense of points in the interior.
Further, to decrease the pressures of technological change and its unsettling impact on the strategic balance, both sides agree to prohibit development, testing, or deployment of sea-based, air-based, or space-based ABM systems and their components, along with mobile land-based ABM systems. Should future technology bring forth new ABM systems "based on other physical principles" than those employed in current systems, it was agreed that limiting such systems would be discussed, in accordance with the Treatys provisions for consultation and amendment.
The Treaty also provides for a U.S.-Soviet Standing Consultative Commission to promote its objectives and implementation. The commission was established during the first negotiating session of SALT II, by a Memorandum of Understanding dated December 21, 1972. Since then both the United States and the Soviet Union have raised a number of questions in the Commission relating to each sides compliance with the SALT I agreements. In each case raised by the United States, the Soviet activity in question has either ceased or additional information has allayed U.S. concern.
Article XIV of the Treaty calls for review of the Treaty five years after its entry into force, and at five-year intervals thereafter. The first such review was conducted by the Standing Consultative Commission at its special session in the fall of 1977. At this session, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed that the Treaty had operated effectively during its first five years, that it had continued to serve national security interests, and that it did not need to be amended at that time.
The most recent Treaty review was completed in October 1993. Following that review, numerous sessions of the Standing Consultative Commission have been held to work out Treaty succession -- to "multilateralize" the Treaty -- as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union and to negotiate a demarcation between ABM and non-ABM systems.
__________________
1 Subsequently reduced to one area (See section on ABM Protocol)
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"We fight against poverty because faith requires it and
conscience demands it." - George W. Bush 3/22/02
