Peter Singer, writing in the New York Times, asks whether a world without people wouldn’t be a better place. His argument is simple. If nobody is alive then nobody’s human rights can be violated. “Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? … very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself.”

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Two articles separated by the Atlantic Ocean deal with the subject of the previous post. That dealt with the question of whether one point of view was constantly trying to dominate the other by manipulating perception. Now  Dorothy Rabinowitz at the WSJ in her editorial “The Alien in the White House” notices that the incumbent seems to represent a wholly different nation from the one that is ‘out there’.  It’s like there’s another species in the Oval Office. She’s finds him speaking speaking a strange language and worshiping strange idols she never thought would never be on the public mainstream altar. Rabinowitz writes: “A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs.” Like Cortez upon a peak in Darien, she can’t quite believe what she sees. Rabinowitz describes her feeling of alienation:

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Two news stories, one which describes the secret history of Helen Thomas and the Reuters news agency’s removal from its photos of a knife in the hand of a peace activist standing over a bloodstained IDF boarder on the humanitarian flotilla raises the question of what else is out there that we don’t know? How can we estimate whether this is simply an outlier?

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The Peruvian media says Joran Van Der Sloot has confessed to the murder of Stephany Flores.  He told a fiscal and the police that on May 30 they both entered Room 309 at 5:15.  At 8:10 he left to buy a coffee at an establishment adjacent and returned only to find her at his laptop on a site which detailed his past notoriety.  He then struck her and grabbed at her throat, leading to her demise. Forty six minutes later, he was out the door to make his escape. Fox now has the news in English.

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Es de mi firma. Joran Van Der Sloot gets turned over to the Peruvians. In the video below the Interpol representative tells him what’s going to happen next in the presence of white-coated nurses and doctors present to certify he’s all in one piece before being shipped across the border.

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The word ideologue is defined as “an impractical idealist; an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology”. The term has been applied to a number of people. For a handy reference, Campus Progress tells us exactly who to beware of. There is Andrew Breitbart, “little more than a faux-outraged showman”; there’s Steven Crowder, “little more than a faux-outraged showman”; and then there’s Newt Gingrich, “the conservative mastermind turned Speaker of the House who engineered the 1994 Republican House coup”. There are very few ideologues on the Left.  As if to emphasize the point, President Obama told a gathering, “I am not an ideologue.”

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On June 4, 1942 — a long time ago today — 15 Douglas TBD Devastators under the command of John C. Waldron went to seek out the Japanese fleet off Midway Island. They didn’t even know precisely where it was. But it was estimated to be 160 nautical miles, 240 degrees from the Hornet, 90 minutes flying time away. Half an hour out Waldron’s squadron was observed to change course, but it’s true heading from the scouting line was never accurately determined. What we do know is that Waldron’s Torpedo 8 found the Japanese fast carriers and attacked without support at about 9 am local time.

Every one of the airplanes was shot down by the superlative Japanese Zeros and anti-aircraft fire. Only one aviator, Ensign George Gay, survived the carnage. But what he saw next while bobbing in the water was remarkable.

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From all outward signs the ‘international community’ is sleepwalking into a disaster. Turkey has laid out a demand for an Israeli apology which the Jewish state is unlikely to even consider. The Wall Street Journal writes “Turkey’s ambassador to the U.S., Namik Tan, laid out three demands for Israel to meet in order to maintain its relationship with Ankara. In addition to the public apology from Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Tan said the Israeli government must consent to an international investigation into the commando operation, in which nine Turkish activists died on a Turkish-flagged ship, the Mavi Marmara. The Turkish envoy, a seasoned diplomat and former ambassador to Israel, also said Israel must take concrete steps to ease its military blockade of the Gaza Strip.”

In the meantime, the Irish-Malaysian ship “Rachel Corrie” has rejected an Israeli request to land its cargo and accompany their supplies into Gaza, declaring it was their intention to break the blockade. This nullified an earlier offer by the Irish foreign minister. Unless the ship changes course, it will enter the embargo zone within two hours after this post is published.

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Defense Tech describes the development of a micro-UAV with very aggressive flight capabilities now under development at the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab.  “DARPA, as well as all the services, are funding research into Micro Air Vehicles, drones small enough to fit in the palm of your hand fitted with sensors that can penetrate deep inside buildings, tunnels, caves and urban canyons searching out the enemy. The Brits use the small 6-inch WASP MAV in Afghanistan.”

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YouTube Direkt

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Wired has a video depicting a robotic mine clearing device. The little machine fires a line charge across the intended path of advance and — boom — a path is cleared. It’s called APOBS, short for Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System. It’s proponents are at pains to say that “APOBS isn’t meant to kill people. But obviously, it could produce a deadly result.”. Deadly is now bad PR. Wired goes on to explain that the fundamental public problem with the concept of ‘killer robots’ is the ‘killer’ part.  So don’t worry: in the video below, not a single animal, unless you count the bugs crawling on the ground or flying in the air, were harmed in its production. It’s as harmless as the CGI in Avatar. And that’s the way modern Western man likes things. Clean and sanitary, untouched by human tears.

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