Thought this was a pretty cool Face Vase.
If you add a digital home assistant to this (like Amazon Echo or Google Assistant) and make the lips move on this vase, it would be quite the futuristic home assistant!
I don’t think I’d feel comfortable living in my own house anymore. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So this is the dumbest military strategy I have ever heard.
NATO is planning a “rapid deployment force” of at least 30,000 troops, 30 naval ships, and 360 planes to fight off a Russian invasion.
Sounds good?
The only problem is that this rapid reaction is planned to occur “within 30 days” of being put on an alert.
Gee, a lot can happen in 30 days.
It took only a little over two weeks for Russia to invade and annex Crimea in 2014 in a blitzkrieg that completely took the West by surprise.
NATO continues to be shockingly unprepared for a Russian land grab.
Further, the 4,600 troops stationed on “forward deployment” and the 5,000 additional “spearhead force” to come to their aid “within 10 days” is again completely inadequate and ridiculous.
Israel won the 1967 War in just 6 days against invading armies from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and Israel again halted the advancing Egyptian army in the 1973 Yom Kippur War in just 3 days.
With modern weaponry, Wars are fought and won in days–not months and years anymore.
The long deployments we’ve had in Iraq and Afghanistan are not traditional wars, but wars of attrition again terrorism and dictatorships.
If and when there is a war with the “Great Bear,” it will be fought and won–OR lost in days–as well. Russia will act with stealth and speed and a ferocity that we remain blind to.
And I fear that when we are ready to fight back, it will be way too little too late–like in Crimea–and all that will be left–after the European lands are gone–is more meaningless sanctions that Russia will retaliate against, tit-for-tat, anyway. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Shhh! This is the story of drones.
Drones continue to go from battlefield to backyard.
Initially, developed for advanced persistent surveillance and later weaponized for targeting terrorists, we heard the like of Jeff Bezos promise drones for Amazon delivery.
Once again, the double-edge of drones continues…
This week we saw the introduction of scary, “Riot Control Drones” developed by Desert Wolf (a military contractor) that can shoot 4,000 rounds of pepper spray, paint balls, and non-lethal plastic projectiles, employs bright strobe lights and blinding lasers, and issues commands and warnings through loud speakers, and monitors crowds of protesters by high-definition and thermal vision cameras.
At the same time, we saw drones being used as Flying Bel Hops in the luxury Casa Madrona hotel and spa in California for delivering champagne, treats, toys, and even sunglasses to their $10,000 a night guests on their guest deck or even to a boat out on the bay.
And we are still only at the beginning, with drones, and robotics in general, moving to revolutionize our world.
Robots will surveil, they will attack and kill, and they will serve people everywhere from restaurants and retail to hospitals and homes.
You can’t shush the robots, they are on the march and they will have the means to help and hurt people–it won’t be simple, but it definitely will be completely invasive. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Going on 13 years since 9/11…
– Ukraine invaded by Russia seeking to annex Crimea
– Malaysia Airline with 239 aboard missing and still a mystery
– Sochi, suspected hijacker tries to divert plane, F-16s scrambled
– Syria aided by Hezbollah fighters, estimates of more than 150,000 dead
– Iran ships medium range missiles to Hamas in the Gaza Strip
– Iraq Suicide bombing a somewhat regular occurrence
– Pakistan death toll in war on terror estimated at 49,000
– Saudi Arabia concerned about Muslim Brotherhood and
Hezbollah
– Lebanon, twin suicide car bombings in capital
– Egypt, terror attack on tourist bus in Red Sea resort
– Somalia, car bombing at national intelligence headquarters
– North Korea accused by South of “reign of terror”
Where are we in the war on terror–are we really any safer?
All opinions my own.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This is an out-of-this-world topic that I don’t think I have written about before…ALIENS–no seriously!
MSNBC ran an interview with Seth Shostak, the chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Study Group (27 June 2012).
SETI is the well-known orgnaization that conducts the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence–they employ 150 scientists, educators and support staff, and their projects have been sponsored by NASA, Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, and many technology companies like HP, Sun, and more.
At SETI, they monitor radio transmissions and telescope observations for signals that “cannot be ascribed to noise.”
According to Shostak, he believes that we will detect alien signals by between 2025 and 2030, although he acknowledges that searching for alien life in the cosmos in like looking for a needle in a haystack, and it “never occurs when you expect them.”
However with advances in technology (specifically computer processing), we will get closer to be able to monitor “all-sky, all the time, all frequencies,” rather than searching a specific star system, for a specific time, at specific frequencies.
The really interesting question posed though is what happens if we actually detect an alien signal?
Apparently, most of the planning, according to Shostak is for the initial protocols for alerting everyone and even then “it takes something on the order of five days” to assess whether it is real or not.
The big concern is that “nobody is in charge” for handling such a global…no, intergalactic event.
And, he says “I don’t think there’s any large-scale effort to prepare humanity.”
Maybe, it’s that we don’t believe or want to believe that this eventuality will ever really occur.
Perhaps, it’s too frightening to think of ourselves as the native Americans being invaded by colonials with superior technology and firepower.
Yet according to a National Geographic survey, more than a third (36%) of people surveyed think aliens exist. And how many more people are afraid to admit it?
Aliens could be a good thing–coming here benevolently to share with us or they could act alien and try to take from us. From our own Earthly experiences, it seems the latter is far more likely.
We have a lot of fingers and weapons pointed at each other all time, I wonder whether we need to spend more time and effort thinking, planning, and preparing for something much more scary and threatening than each other.
(Source Photo: here with attribution to Chris at Oblong Pictures)
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