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I have expanded the comment on the economies of scale of an international military force, which is part of "Uniforce: An International Military Force" by Vexen Crabtree (2007): "Once an international military force is established, there will be less need overall for the massive offensive armies retained by today's powers. Much of the surplus can be changed into a defensive, mostly part-time home guard. A study for the European Parliament in 2006 highlighted the fact that NATO-Europe maintains several different models of tank and 11 types of frigate (whereas American only maintains one type of each), and sixteen types of armoured vehicle against 3 in America. All these varieties require factories, contracts, research costs, warehouses, maintenance schedules and supply chains. If ten countries contribute to the costs of a single model of tank, then, it is as if research costs have become a tenth of what they were when those ten countries researched their own unilateral models. When such economies of scale apply across the full range of military equipment and training, the savings are staggering." Current Location: Afghanistan
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I want more life! More time to write, more affection, more hours in the day, more time to read, more intelligent conversation (only one person at my work can maintain intelligent commentary on whatever topic we hit upon). I have to sleep less, work faster, type faster, think clearer... and find a way past my present location's complete FTP-ban (and ftp proxy ban) in order to upload texts. I have to make a greater name, make a bigger difference, teach more people, be harder, overcome my own weaknesses and failures, and get more out of everything I do. Because, like, I've lived a third of my life, and I haven't done a third of what I wanted to have done. Tags: life, vexen
Current Location: Afghanistan
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I have been very busy and mostly offline due to work, but I have been doing some offline stuff. I uploaded some today. Here is a new section on my Science page (excuse the stray footnotes, they exist only on the full version online): The Scientific Method: The Ionians
“2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away. [...]
In the 6th century B.C., in Ionia, a new concept developed, one of the great ideas of the human species. The universe is knowable, the ancient Ionians argued, because it exhibits an internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. [...] This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos. [...]
Between 600 and 400 B.C., this great revolution in human thought began. [...] The leading figures in this revolution were men with Greek names, largely unfamiliar to us today, the truest pioneers in the development of our civilization and our humanity.”
"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)18
The city of Alexandria was the greatest in the ancient world. Its famous Library of Alexandria was constructed in the third century BCE by the Greek Kings, the Ptolemys. It became a scientific research centre and publishing capital of the world. Ionians forged ahead in many arenas of knowledge. "Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth [...], Hipparchus anticipated that the stars come into being, slowly move during the course of centuries, and eventually perish, it was he who first catalogued the positions and magnitudes of the stars to detect such changes. Euclid produced a textbook on geometry from which humans learned for twenty-three centuries" [Sagan (1995)19]. Such astounding wisdom backed up by studious thinking and experimentation could have launched the world into the modern era. But it didn't.
Rising superstition, the taking of slaves and the growth of monotheistic religion led to the demise of scientific enterprise. The culture changed. The last great scientist of Alexandria, Hypatia, was born in 370CE at a time when the "growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture". Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, considered Hypatia to be a symbol of the learning and science which he considered to be pagan. "In the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint"19.
The last remains of the Alexandrian Library were destroyed not long after Hypatia's death. Nearly all the books and documents were completely destroyed. The Western Dark Ages had begun, and all knowledge and science was forgotten in the West for over a thousand years. Current Location: Afghanistan
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I am incredibly offline at the moment. My only access to the Internet is via satellite links that are difficult to maintain. In my new location at work, I am administering a network of over 100 laptops, 3 stacks of servers (DC, exchange, backup storage units and routers) plus spares, and a system of about 10 radio stacks that form the long-distance parts of the network. I've got fibres, cat5s, coax, switches, converters and radio links hiding in every crevice for kilometers around, and I am pretty much on my own in keeping it all together. I'm in the desert, by the way... so sandstorms, freezing cold and melting heat all conspire to continually knock parts of the network offline. Also, 600 non-IT users play their part too. I'm slowly getting settled and forcing the network into a state that makes me happier than it does now. I have merely two guys; they serve as helpers rather than administrators, but they are pretty loyal and one of them has good IT senses. The other hates IT and isn't interested in doing anything at all, I have to manage him all the time, it's a pain. I live in a tent with ten other people. The company is good, but the noise, smell, and space constraints *aren't*! At least we've got hot running water, heating conduits for the freezing nights, and a stable power supply! We are so far from the nearest villages that none of us have ever been to them - not that there's anything there we'd possibly want! Please be patient with me; I can hardly check emails, let alone continue discussions on places like LiveJournal. Love you all! Tags: offline
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