Peruse the digital footprints of the latest anti-government lunatic to die – J. Patrick Bedell, including his thoughts on marijuana as currency, 9/11 as an inside job, a love for libertarianism, and exactly the sort of insane, paranoid gibberish you would expect.
War
28
Dec 09
Regarding the Underwear Bomber
First, Bruce Schneier (from 2008) on “security theater”:
Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.
Next, Nate Silver:
There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.
12
Dec 09
Rebroadcast of “American Arsenal: Philadelphia”
This is a great 1-hour special on the Military Channel – American Arsenal – telling of the City of Philadelphia’s role in winning World War II. It is on 4 times in December – at 8 and 11pm on 12/12, 5am on 12/13, and 4pm on 12/19. Certainly a well-spent 60-minutes of your time.
11
Dec 09
What Climategate and Copenhagen are really about…
In a nutshell (Jeff McMahon at True/Slant):
[US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke] said unparalleled economic growth occurred in the 20th Century because of two factors: access to cheap, abundant fossil fuels and ignorance or disregard for the fact that those fuels produced greenhouse gas pollution that caused global warming. Both of those factors, he said, belong to history.
“Those days are over,” Locke said moments ago in Copenhagen. “What’s required is nothing less than completely redesigning the way we produce and consume energy…. We’re talking about creating an entirely new model of economic growth.”The world has spent a century investing in petroleum infrastructure, Locke said: refineries, pipelines, stations.
3
Dec 09
The Problem with Afghanistan
I’ll make this brief.We are not the first nation to tackle Afghanistan, and we will likely not be the last.
As a nation, America is accustomed to fighting wars with other nations.
22
Nov 09
Band of Brothers in the Pacific
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are currently working on the Pacific Theater’s version of Band of Brothers for HBO, titled “the Pacific” [IMDB]. Somehow, this has been known and on the internet since the early summer.
I had previously written about Band of Brothers both here and on Metafilter.
13
Oct 09
Truth, Stranger than Fiction
The fact that The Men Who Stare at Goats [IMDB, website] is based on a non-fiction book and a British Documentary make me want to see it all the more.
25
Aug 09
Tortured Logic
Military personnel accused of ‘torture’ often claim they were just ‘following orders’. During the court martials at Nuremberg after World Was II, ‘just following orders’ didn’t cut it (just like “ignorance of the law is no excuse”). Nuremberg focused on the planners of the depravity:
The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.
