Rich asks: What characteristics of other systems do you consider desirable? Interesting discussion precedes that question, of course.
Tag: politics
A No-Brainer Still Requires A Little Brains, I Guess
Apparently so. WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — With construction of many new nuclear reactors under discussion, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is grappling with the question of whether they should be designed to withstand a Sept. 11-style airplane attack. Ask yourself an obvious question, and the obvious answer becomes… well, obvious. Especially given that there are potential domestic threats in America, just as there are everywhere else in the world. Oklahoma, people. Remember? You can’t be serious thinking that no water on planes to America makes sense, but that a plane crashing into a nuclear plant and having a remote chance of …
한국 리
Lime, my girlfriend, was reading a book by a Chinese exchange student named Wang Xiaoling (I’m guessing, from the Hangeul 왕 샤오
THANK GOODNESS! by Daniel C Dennett
Here’s an excellent little piece by Dennett on why he thanks goodness, and not God, for his survival of a medical emergency. Quite worthwhile to athiests out there. Here’s a snippet: One thing in particular struck me when I compared the medical world on which my life now depended with the religious institutions I have been studying so intensively in recent years. One of the gentler, more supportive themes to be found in every religion (so far as I know) is the idea that what really matters is what is in your heart: if you have good intentions, and are …
Sometimes I think of Olaf Stapledon…
You know, the guy who wrote Star Maker, that novel in which a man wondering if all intelligent species just destroy themselves is taken on a trip through spacetime to see that, indeed, they probably do. Sometimes the news puts me in mind of him, and I wonder what he’d say or write if he saw this: THE SPECTRE of a nuclear race in the Middle East was raised yesterday when six Arab states announced that they were embarking on programmes to master atomic technology. Then again, there’s always Martin Rees.