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Well, neither of these are particularly recent stories, but I was just going through a list of things I meant to blog about last month and never got around to.
I figure posting them together with some related topic will work for now. As for the others, I figure there is a reason I didn’t write about them then, and, well, they are kind of old news now. Moving right along…
First up, let’s look at what New York has decided not to spend money on anymore: As a state we will no longer receive nearly $4 million of federal funds for abstinence-only sex ed programs.
While we are losing out on $4 million from the government, conversely we will be teaching a sex-ed program that might actually be beneficial in the real world, focusing on teaching good sexual health and about how to avoid getting pregnant (and while I am guessing abstinence will be one such suggested method, it will no longer be the only one taught).
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Social Networking has just hit a new low–or high. I guess it kind of depends how you look at it. Anyway, the U.S. Intelligence community is planning on opening a new social network this December specifically aimed, well, at members of the US Intelligence community. Supposedly the idea behind it is to facilitate the sharing of information between departments and to link-up intelligence operatives (spies) with operatives from other bureaus who might work in the same field.
Now let’s overlook a few potential problems here, like, hypothetically, someone hacking in and posing as an intelligence operative in order to gain information, and let’s us focus on the real problem this system is going to face. As we all know, no matter what the initial purpose of a social network is, it devolves into a popularity contest of folks trying to build up as many friends/contacts/buddies as they can. Spies will be spending valuable spy-time updating their profiles, customizing their pictures, and befriending other spies. No valuable information will change hands and the spy community will be brought to a standstill when the spy network goes down.
While open lines of communication are a necessity in the US Intelligence community, maybe there are better ways to get the ball rolling than online social networking, What’s next Spy-Match.com?
And yes, I am aware that Bond and Smart would not be friends as Bond is not part of the US Intelligence community.
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Are you tired of Ebay? The idea of auctions intrigues you, but you prefer live interaction with people, the thrill of raising you paddle and out bidding other folks in classic auction style.
Actually being able to see and touch what you are bidding on rather then just have a cheap picture taken with some ones phone camera has its benefits now you have the chance to be a part of these types of auctions.
In fact, the US government has a bunch of these auctions on a fairly regular basis, you can attend auctions on anything from International Real Estate to Toys to Alcoholic Beverages, Airplanes to Digital Cameras to Jewelry. Te US Government has it all, and now you can find out where and when these auctions will be held with this nifty government website. Check out GovSales now for an auction near you.
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Today on American Madness we are going to have a bit of a theme- the military and their new ideas for Super Soldiers (with of course some variations on the theme).
First we will start with a bit from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to their site DARPA is “the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.”
Few can argue that it would be a bad thing to have soldiers who are stronger, faster and harder to kill (well as long as they are on your side), and that is the line of research Michael Callahan, a program manager at DARPA, proposed at their bi-annual conference. According to Wired the research would focus on studying animals that live and thrive in hostile environments or have exceptional endurance and by learning what we can from them applying it to the human model for advanced military training and development.
Callahan also hopes to focus on pathogens, currently we only have defense against “7 of 44 dangerous pathogens” he hopes to up that number by studying pathogen evolution and predicting mutations and the evolutionary cycle of the pathogens so as to develop vaccines prior to the evolved pathogen becoming a threat.
It all sounds really interesting, the idea of studying pathogen evolution actually sounds similar to the curent method for developing flu vaccines. Each year the flu virus evolves, to have vaccines ready in time for flu season, doctors research and guess how the virus will evolve, based on the most likely course of mutation and evolution they develop various vaccinations against the flu which they then incubate in poultry eggs. Once flue season is upon us the researchers can check which strain has become dominant and release the correct vaccination to the general public. Interesting concept, except there is still a bit of guess work involved. One wrong guess and you end up with a year without full strength vaccinations.
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I couldn’t decide on the title, so you have the either or to choose from up there.
Apparently the Department of Defense spent close to $100,000 in 2002 on developing a bullet that, on impact, would explode, releasing laughing gas or another gas agent. The non-lethal bullets would have disarmed opposition by exploding on contact, leaving a bruise, and releasing their payload.
The other benefits to these new bullets is that they would not have required specialized guns and would have been non-lethal at all ranges (as opposed to the current bullets serving similar purposes).
I guess we should all be happy that for a project that did not get out of the first stages of development. Our governemnt only dumped $92,000 into its development.
