Paintball this weekend at Miller Ranch - Saturday, April 28th

Due to popular demand, we are playing paintball this weekend, April 28th at Miller Ranch.

We will get started around 10am and then play until 1pm or we drop from heat exhaustion. We may end up playing this one campaign style, so make sure to bring out a ruck or bag for your extra paint and gear.

If you are a guest and need to borrow gear, please let me know ASAP.

I look forward to seeing everyone out there and shooting each and every one of you in the face.

A Blade Runner Tomorrow

Britain's Ministry of Defence recently published a 90-page report detailing the future conflicts likely faced by British soliders. Though it does have a decidedly British slant, it is very relevant for any Western countries as it details issues that will undoubtedly face Western culture. While it doesn't mention the nuclear holocaust scenario we all grew up fearing as kids, it is very dark and definitely lends itself well to the background of a Phillip K. Dick or William Gibson novel.

Here are some exerpts:

New weapons
An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used against a "world city" such as an international business service hub. The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The "explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles.

Technology
By 2035, an implantable "information chip" could be wired directly to the brain. A growing pervasiveness of information communications technology will enable states, terrorists or criminals, to mobilise "flashmobs", challenging security forces to match this potential agility coupled with an ability to concentrate forces quickly in a small area.

Marxism
"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest". Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".

Pressures leading to social unrest
By 2010 more than 50% of the world's population will be living in urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation and "new instability risks", and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035, that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to "inter-communal conflict" - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.

Some of these technical issues really sound like first glimpses of The Singularity we've been talking about for the past few years. I find the Marxist angle especially interesting as it really provides a pessimistic view of what is happening to the increasingly disillusioned middle class.

More here

Paintball this weekend at Miller Ranch - Saturday, April 7th

We are on for paintball this Saturday, April 7th at the Miller Ranch.

We'll get started around 10am and then play around the fields until 1pm or so. We may end up playing this one campaign style, so make sure to bring out a ruck or bag for your extra paint and gear.

If you are a guest and need to borrow gear, please let me know ASAP.

Be prepared for a special "Easter" scenario. Details are need to know only until op time.

Eisenhower's farewell speech

Ok - so it's not really on topic, but I spent sometime today looking for a poignant quote for my farewell e-mail at my current job. I've been here for almost 10 years and thought I should at least try to say something noteworthy - and not too controversial.

Anyway, I was looking at Eisenhower's farewell address from 1961 and found some cool lines that I wanted to add to the site. Very relevant for today's political/socio/economical environment.

It's a long post, but the highlights are in red:

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology-global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle-with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research-these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961 - http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/farewell.htm

It's amazing (depressing?) to see how the problems/questions are so similar to today's landscape, especially considering his direct mention of the longevity and long-term threat of communism. I know it's no longer popular to fear/blame the Russians - but given all of the recent poisoning weirdness, reports from the FBI about their major uptick in surveillance operations against the US, and oil deals with Iran - I think it's certainly something keep an eye on.

As for my final work email? What poignant phrase did I leave my former colleagues with?

Keep on Truckin' . . .