Smouldering Bagels
Well, what an ignominious end to our World Cup showing. Beaten by Ghana :P And for all the bitching that's going on over the penalty kick, they really did outplay us. They certainly deserved to advance more than our guys.
*****
I wonder if we'll blow up North Korea's missile? It'd be kind of cool in a John Wayne sort of way, but probably an over-reaction. What amazes me is that William Perry, who used to be Clinton's Sec'y of Defense, is rather frantically calling for pre-emptive strikes against their launch facility. I recall much the same thing happening during the run-up to the attack against Iraq. The left was carrying on constantly about the threat from North Korea, and how we needed to worry more about them than about the Arabs. At the time, I dismissed it as being an effort to divide public opinion, but even then I wasn't entirely sure - a lot of them seemed quite sincere. I have to suppose now that they were, although I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of North Korea as a dire threat. As far as I can tell, all they're trying to do is to keep their ramshackle little dictatorship afloat. Toward that end they need food and money to keep the army from revolting, and they need to be seen to get these things by threatening, to keep the lower ranks' morale high. They're a nuisance, but nothing more.
*****
I wonder if our current missile defense system even *can* shoot down a live enemy? It's a shame we never developed the Spartan / Sprint system. All other considerations aside, Sprint was just about one of the coolest Cold War devices ever. Sprint relied on the fact that only after the enemy's warheads entered the dense part of the atmosphere, under a minute before impact, could you tell the real ones from the decoys. The missile was literally blown from its tube like a bullet, then accelerated at 100G to hit the target before it could detonate. The test films were deeply impressive. It flew upward so fast that it was cloaked in a fireball from atmospheric friction. Imagine batteries of these ringing major cities. It's like Missile Command in RL.
*****
You can read the "Ernor" comics online now for free. That's spherically generous of them, I think. If you've never read Ernor, you should. It's just a plain nice comic.
*****
I wonder if we'll blow up North Korea's missile? It'd be kind of cool in a John Wayne sort of way, but probably an over-reaction. What amazes me is that William Perry, who used to be Clinton's Sec'y of Defense, is rather frantically calling for pre-emptive strikes against their launch facility. I recall much the same thing happening during the run-up to the attack against Iraq. The left was carrying on constantly about the threat from North Korea, and how we needed to worry more about them than about the Arabs. At the time, I dismissed it as being an effort to divide public opinion, but even then I wasn't entirely sure - a lot of them seemed quite sincere. I have to suppose now that they were, although I have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of North Korea as a dire threat. As far as I can tell, all they're trying to do is to keep their ramshackle little dictatorship afloat. Toward that end they need food and money to keep the army from revolting, and they need to be seen to get these things by threatening, to keep the lower ranks' morale high. They're a nuisance, but nothing more.
*****
I wonder if our current missile defense system even *can* shoot down a live enemy? It's a shame we never developed the Spartan / Sprint system. All other considerations aside, Sprint was just about one of the coolest Cold War devices ever. Sprint relied on the fact that only after the enemy's warheads entered the dense part of the atmosphere, under a minute before impact, could you tell the real ones from the decoys. The missile was literally blown from its tube like a bullet, then accelerated at 100G to hit the target before it could detonate. The test films were deeply impressive. It flew upward so fast that it was cloaked in a fireball from atmospheric friction. Imagine batteries of these ringing major cities. It's like Missile Command in RL.
*****
You can read the "Ernor" comics online now for free. That's spherically generous of them, I think. If you've never read Ernor, you should. It's just a plain nice comic.