Reclusland Research Links

ledgergermane:

• BEIJING — A top China air force commander has called the militarisation of space an “historical inevitability”, state media said Monday, marking an apparent shift in Beijing’s opposition to weaponising outer space.
• In a wide-ranging interview in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Daily, air force commander Xu Qiliang said it was imperative for the PLA air force to develop offensive and defensive operations in outer space.
• “As far as the revolution in military affairs is concerned, the competition between military forces is moving towards outer space… this is a historical inevitability and a development that cannot be turned back,” Xu told the paper.
• Superiority in outer space can give a nation control over war zones both on land and at sea, while also offering a strategic advantage, Xu said, noting that such dominance was necessary to safeguard the nation.
• “Only power can protect peace,” the 59-year-old commander said in the interview given to coincide with this month’s 60th anniversary of the founding of the PLA air force.
• China has long stated that it supported the peaceful uses of outer space and opposed the introduction of weapons there. Beijing has also sought to establish an international treaty to control the deployment of weapons in space.
• In January 2007, China surprised the world by shooting down one of its own weather satellites in a test seen by many, including the United States, as a possible trigger of an arms race in space.

Someone’s been playing too much Final Fantasy…

ledgergermane:

• These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression. While despair used to be classified as one of the seven deadly sins, it has now been medicalized and folded into the concept of clinical depression. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.
• There is abundant chatter today about “being spiritual” but scarcely anyone believes that a person can be of troubled mind and healthy spirit. Nor can we fathom the idea that the happy wanderer, who is all smiles and has accomplished everything on his or her self-fulfillment list, is, in fact, a case of despair. But while Kierkegaard would have agreed that happiness and melancholy are mutually exclusive, he warns, “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”
• Though it will make the Bill Mahers of the world wince, despair according to Kierkegaard is a lack of awareness of being a self or spirit. A Freud with religious categories up his sleeves, the lyrical philosopher emphasized that the self is a slice of eternity. While depression involves heavy burdensome feelings, despair is not correlated with any particular set of emotions but is instead marked by a desire to get rid of the self, or put another way, by an unwillingness to become who you fundamentally are. This unwillingness often takes the form of flat out wanting to be someone else. Kierkegaard writes:

• An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is “Either Caesar or nothing” does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it … precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he cannot bear to be himself.

• In America, there is endless talk of the importance of having a dream — that is, a dreamed-up self that you will to become: a millionaire, a surgeon, or maybe the next Dylan or George Clooney. But master of suspicion that Kierkegaard was, he goes on to note that while the man who has failed to become Caesar would have been in seventh heaven if he had realized his dream, that state would have been just as despairing in another way — because in that giddy self-satisfied condition, he would never have come to grasp his true self.

ledgergermane:

(via poortaste)

• Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—a rough draft of what could be signed come December.
• So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.
• The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

Don’t like this article one bit.  Since when does the WSJ stoop to conspiracy theories anyway?

The guy’s a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, which gives him a lot less credence as someone who’s actually against any kind of transnational conspiracy.

And besides, the gist of that article implies that rich countries will be giving poorer countries money to help develop environmentally friendly stuff.  Sounds good to me.

What kind of “national sovereignty” do we want?  The kind where rich countries don’t foot the bill for helping poor countries work on saving this planet that we all share?

Of course, governments don’t always live up to their own standards, but rather than framing this as an attack on sovereignty, it would be much more helpful to frame it as an attempt in the right direction that needs our help to hold the politicians to their promise.

Damn right I’d give up America’s place at the top of the heap in exchange for helping to develop the undeveloped nations and fix this whole “environment” thing (which will kill us off quick enough if we don’t). What’s the point of sovereignty when everyone’s dead?

And what kind of cover up is essentially hiding something that, at it’s core, seems to be some pretty good common sense?

• BIRDS that navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field rely more on their eyes than on the magnetic particles in their nostrils, an experiment on robins suggests.
• In one group of robins, the team removed cluster N, a brain region involved in processing signals from the “pair-forming photopigments” in the eyes thought to relay magnetic compass information. In another group, the team cut the trigeminal nerve, which sends signals to the brain from the magnetic particles in the nostrils.
• The robins lacking their nostril-to-brain connection weren’t tricked, locating the true and artificial magnetic norths just as well as the controls. But the robins without cluster N were unable to navigate.
• “It goes a long way to demonstrating that the magnetic compass response is mediated by the eye,”

Makes me feel sorry for the birds.  But being able to see magnetic fields would be really awesome.  I wonder if it’s like the aurora borealis all the time?

by Vijay Seshadri

How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street?
How strange if you liked yourself,
took yourself in your arms, married your own self,
propagated by techniques known only to you,
and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere.
Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts. It is
an abomination, but better that your
sweet and scrupulously neat self
emerges at many points on the earth to watch the horned moon rise
than all those dolts out there,
turning into pillars of salt wherever we look.
If we have to have people, let them be you,
spritzing your geraniums, driving yourself to the haberdashery,
killing your supper with a blowgun.
Yes, only in the forest do you feel at peace,
up in the branches and down in the terrific gorges,
but you’ve seen through everything else.
You’ve fled in terror across the frozen lake,
you’ve found yourself in the sand, the palace,
the prison, the dockside stews;
and long ago, on this same planet, you came home
to an empty house, poured a Scotch-and-soda,
and sat in a recliner in the unlit rumpus room,
puzzled at what became of you.