Re: [liberationtech] [drone-list] How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins
While slingshots didn't exist, slings did (which is what the story means) and they they do basically the same thing but using different mechanics. Slings are very old and David certainly could have had one. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_%28weapon%29 -Charles On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:02 AM, Christian Huldt christ...@solvare.sewrote: Don't think that the story of David and Goliath had made the bible if Goliath had had the slingshot. Eugen Leitl skrev 2013-08-26 21:35: - Forwarded message from Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu - Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:32:58 -0700 From: Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu To: Drones drone-l...@lists.stanford.edu Subject: [drone-list] How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins Reply-To: drone-list drone-l...@lists.stanford.edu How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins By Brian Terrell The latest defense of remote control killing by the U.S. appears in the September issue of The Atlantic, “The Killing Machines” ( http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/ ) in which author Mark Bowden tells us “how to think about drones.” Known for his bestselling book, Black Hawk Down and for his curiously twisted justification of torture in the same magazine in October 2003 (“The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced.”) Bowden continues in this latest article to collect the facts that ought to lead to unequivocal condemnation of certain U.S. policies but cleverly presenting them in the end as ringing endorsements. “The Killing Machines” opens by asking us to “consider David,” and so Bowden initiates his attack on history by misrepresenting its earliest written records. “The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath. Armed with only a slender staff and a slingshot, he confronts a fearsome warrior clad in a brass helmet and chain mail, wielding a spear with a head as heavy as a sledge and a staff ‘like a weaver’s beam.’ Goliath scorns the approaching youth: ‘Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?’ (1 Samuel 17) “Technology has been tilting the balance of battles since Goliath fell,” asserts Bowden, supporting this theory by misremembering that “David then famously slays the boastful giant with a single smooth stone from his slingshot.” “What you have is a parable about technology,” says Bowden who describes David’s slingshot as “a small, lightweight weapon that employs simple physics to launch a missile with lethal force from a distance, was an innovation that rendered all the giant’s advantages moot.” The story of David and Goliath is a “parable about technology,” but the problems with Bowden’s telling of it begin with the fact that there is no slingshot in 1 Samuel 17 nor, actually, was a slingshot to be found anywhere on the planet in David’s day. To place one in David’s hands when he met Goliath 10 centuries before the Common Era is a wild anachronism at best. The “small, lightweight weapon that employs simple physics to launch a missile with lethal force from a distance” cited as a biblical game changer did not exist before the invention of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear, patented in 1884. The slingshot is an innovation of the 19th century and Bowden might just as well have had David slay Goliath with a Hellfire missile or with Luke Skywalker’s light-saber as give him a slingshot. David’s weapon in 1 Samuel 17 was not a slingshot but a sling. Hardly an innovation, the sling had already been around for a long time and is thought to have been invented in the Upper Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, about the same time as the bow and arrow. David’s sling was a primitive device for flinging stones. It was widely used by shepherds to ward off predators, a weapon of low prestige that justified Goliath’s disdain. It was Goliath, not David, who with his bronze armor and iron tipped spear brought the latest technological innovations to his last and fatal conflict. David himself is recorded in 1 Samuel 17 as saying “All those who are gathered here shall see that the Lord saves neither by sword or spear,” and the message of this story is the reverse of the lesson Bowden offers. The story of David’s victory over Goliath is one of many in the pre and early monarchial biblical history wherein the latest military innovations are defeated by simple men, women and children improvising crude household and agricultural implements for use as weapons. Judges 4 tells of Jael, a Hebrew woman who killed
Re: [liberationtech] [drone-list] How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins
Marshall Ganz talks about the David and Goliath story in terms of social movements. Sometimes the person or group with fewer resources wins… http://inthesetimes.com/article/4552/why_david_sometimes_wins http://leadingchangenetwork.com/files/2012/06/Why-David-Sometimes-Wins-Strategic-Capacity-in-Social-Movements.pdf http://publicsphereproject.org/node/233 Thanks! — Doug On Sep 4, 2013, at 6:14 PM, Charles Allhands wrote: While slingshots didn't exist, slings did (which is what the story means) and they they do basically the same thing but using different mechanics. Slings are very old and David certainly could have had one. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_%28weapon%29 -Charles On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 5:02 AM, Christian Huldt christ...@solvare.se wrote: Don't think that the story of David and Goliath had made the bible if Goliath had had the slingshot. Eugen Leitl skrev 2013-08-26 21:35: - Forwarded message from Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu - Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:32:58 -0700 From: Yosem Companys compa...@stanford.edu To: Drones drone-l...@lists.stanford.edu Subject: [drone-list] How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins Reply-To: drone-list drone-l...@lists.stanford.edu How Not to Think About Drones, or Goliath Died for Your Sins By Brian Terrell The latest defense of remote control killing by the U.S. appears in the September issue of The Atlantic, “The Killing Machines” (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/) in which author Mark Bowden tells us “how to think about drones.” Known for his bestselling book, Black Hawk Down and for his curiously twisted justification of torture in the same magazine in October 2003 (“The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced.”) Bowden continues in this latest article to collect the facts that ought to lead to unequivocal condemnation of certain U.S. policies but cleverly presenting them in the end as ringing endorsements. “The Killing Machines” opens by asking us to “consider David,” and so Bowden initiates his attack on history by misrepresenting its earliest written records. “The shepherd lad steps up to face in single combat the Philistine giant Goliath. Armed with only a slender staff and a slingshot, he confronts a fearsome warrior clad in a brass helmet and chain mail, wielding a spear with a head as heavy as a sledge and a staff ‘like a weaver’s beam.’ Goliath scorns the approaching youth: ‘Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?’ (1 Samuel 17) “Technology has been tilting the balance of battles since Goliath fell,” asserts Bowden, supporting this theory by misremembering that “David then famously slays the boastful giant with a single smooth stone from his slingshot.” “What you have is a parable about technology,” says Bowden who describes David’s slingshot as “a small, lightweight weapon that employs simple physics to launch a missile with lethal force from a distance, was an innovation that rendered all the giant’s advantages moot.” The story of David and Goliath is a “parable about technology,” but the problems with Bowden’s telling of it begin with the fact that there is no slingshot in 1 Samuel 17 nor, actually, was a slingshot to be found anywhere on the planet in David’s day. To place one in David’s hands when he met Goliath 10 centuries before the Common Era is a wild anachronism at best. The “small, lightweight weapon that employs simple physics to launch a missile with lethal force from a distance” cited as a biblical game changer did not exist before the invention of vulcanized rubber by Charles Goodyear, patented in 1884. The slingshot is an innovation of the 19th century and Bowden might just as well have had David slay Goliath with a Hellfire missile or with Luke Skywalker’s light-saber as give him a slingshot. David’s weapon in 1 Samuel 17 was not a slingshot but a sling. Hardly an innovation, the sling had already been around for a long time and is thought to have been invented in the Upper Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, about the same time as the bow and arrow. David’s sling was a primitive device for flinging stones. It was widely used by shepherds to ward off predators, a weapon of low prestige that justified Goliath’s disdain. It was Goliath, not David, who with his bronze armor and iron tipped spear brought the latest technological innovations to his last and fatal conflict. David himself is recorded in 1 Samuel 17 as saying “All those who are gathered here shall see that the Lord
