In the wake of the Newtown shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School I wanted to write a piece about Guns in America. First, let me state that I am a gun owner, have been since I ordered my first rifle at the age of 14 from the Sears catalogue, and it was delivered to my parents front door by a Sears delivery man.
My brother and I both ordered the same Coey 22 long rifle, single shot, bolt action rifle and by the age of 16 were both classed as marksmen by the appropriate government agency as we both belonged to a competitive shooting team. Since then my fascination with various firearms has increased until I have what some would consider to be an arsenal. I own, and shoot handguns, rifles and shotguns. I enjoy the challenge of reloading my own shells, working on the techniques of what is called precision shooting and reloading, and also teaching this sport to my sons.
I have never hunted, only once been involved in paintball "warfare", and do not use human form paper or manikin targets when I am on the gun range. I have walked out of gun ranges because of the apparent "attitude" of the shooters in the club, and choose not to indulge myself with high power, rapid fire weaponry.
Due to the nature of the love / hate relationship that society has with guns (and gun owners) I chose for a long time not to mention this sport to co-workers or friends. As time went on I would sometimes find myself in conversation defending sport shooting and people who own firearms. As governments moved closer to, and sometimes limiting or refusing people the "right" to keep and bear arms I became more and more vocal about gun ownership.
The NRA is perhaps one of the most vocal organizations of people adamant about those "rights", while organizations such as MADD are just as adamant about drunk drivers. Guns are used to kill, alcohol is also used to commit murder. The silence about drinking drivers is deafening while the noise about gun ownership is like a sonic boom.
Why the difference?
A dunk driving fatality is just as fatal as a gunshot. A drunk driving incident is just as capable of producing multiple fatalities yet it is so common place that we tend to ignore reports of drunken drivers causing death.
Why the difference?
Perhaps the difference can be explained in the way we view each 'weapon of choice". Guns were designed to protect us, and kill that which we deemed necessary to be killed, whether it be enemy or game animals, while alcohol and other spirits were designed to give us pleasure.
Death v/s pleasure....no contest...That is the difference even though both indulgences can lead to death.
This blog is about Guns for Brains. Perhaps in the situation of mass shootings, the populace has guns ON the brains. We see innocent children and their teachers being massacred and we righteously get upset to the point of desiring to take away everybodys' guns so this type of atrocity can never happen again.
The unfortunate reality of this righteous indignation is that America (and many other countries and companies) profit from gun sales. Guns are big business on the international market. America and other countries buy and sell guns to and from each other the same way a child would go to the corner store to buy jelly beans.
The "gun mentality" is not the private reserve of a few "nut cases" but is in the public domain in the form of the international arms shipments of weapons made by your government and mine, for the sake of profit. Our governments, the very ones who would try to strip away your ability to buy guns, are in the very market of selling guns.
Does your government representative balk at selling guns to a foreign body for profit, knowing full well that those guns may (will probably) be used to kill someone elses' children, brothers and daughters, parents and friends. The thought probably does not even cross their mind.
And yet, right now, because a couple of those guns were used to kill our own children and their teachers, we, North Americans, are again calling for the ban on the sale of firearms so this kind of tragedy cannot happen again. Where is the logic in that?
As long as we allow our government to produce and sell guns and other weapons, as long as we sell guns to anyone for the sake of profit, banning guns in our own society is hypocritical, and we are all, the hypocrites.
Politicians, and the general populace would not make good shooters as they keep missing the target.
To ban guns you must forsake profit, and neither the government nor corporate America will ever allow that to happen. You as a civilian in an armed society may feel like you have succeeded by getting a few guns banned from general circulation, but you have simply been hoodwinked by the arms dealing government and corporate America as they continue to sell for profit, elsewhere.
I do not financially support the NRA, nor do I have a membership in the NRA or any other shooting organization, But I believe that they have it right, and that society is aiming in the wrong direction.
Guns for Brains, or Guns on the Brain, you decide......but at the very least, hit the right target........
December 20, 2012
November 17, 2012
Backfire
Have you ever seen the results of a shell that blew up in the chamber? Seems to happen quite regularily and is often the result of poor quality control when doing home reloading.
In the case of the Taliban shooting little Malala Yousufzai it would seem that their gun blew up in their hands as well. Considering the amount of global condemnation the Taliban have received over that one shooting it would seem that they have had a tremendous blow back into their cowardly faces.
Taliban ZERO (Lots of guns but no Brains)
In this one act of terrorism it is little Malala who gets all the points....She may have been shot in the head but it is the Taliban that actually shot themselves in the head, and foot....
The Taliban are no more than a bunch of lazy guys running around shooting off at the mouth and muzzle who have lots of guns and guns for brains. No one will miss them when they are gone; No one will miss their brand of terrorism: They will be no more than a footnote in history.
They are important only unto themselves and the sooner people with brains get out their guns and inject some lead into these guys, the sooner the world can get on with it's life.
October 26, 2012
Intruder Beware
In a recent poll by a Canadian newspaper, 97% of respondents indicated that they should have the legal right to defend themselves against intruders. Unfortunately, protecting yourself from an intruder, violent or otherwise, is against the law.
I am going to digress a bit in this post as it is not about guns for brains but about how peoples rights to protect themselves (perhaps even using guns) is slowly and surely being stripped away by governments afraid of an armed populace. The mere fact that this type of poll is even necessary indicates a lopsided legal system engineered to defned the criminal, not the law abiding citizen.
Police-reported robbery statistics in 2008 have indicated that the nature and extent of robberies, as reported to police, has changed during the past decade. Commercial robberies have declined, while robberies occurring in residences and public transit facilities have increased.
Police-reported residential robberies, often referred to as "home invasions," increased 38% between 1999 and 2005.
Although there is no Criminal Code offence of home invasion, it is generally defined as a residential robbery in which force was used to gain entry and the accused was aware that someone was home.
In 2008, police reported 2,700 home invasions — robberies that occurred in a private residence. The rate of home invasions rose 38% between 1999 and 2005.
According to a United States Department of Justice report: 38% of assaults & 60% of rapes occur during home invasions. 1 of every 5 homes will experience a break-in or home invasion. That's over 2,000,000 homes! According to Statistics Canada, there has been an average of 289,200 home invasions annually over the last 5 years. Statistically, there are over 8,000 home invasions per day in North America
According to Statistics U.S.A., there was an average of 3,600,000 home invasions annually between 1994 and 2000.
Considering these statistics, wouldn't you want the right to defend yourself?
The legal right to defend yourself is not about gun ownership or people using guns to attain a nefarious goal but about the individuals right to live without fear, to live in peace, to simply live.
Those who would use guns to take away those rights of an individual or his / her collective rights to exist without you robbing and murdering them are the ones who use guns without brains. Your mentality of what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine as well should be met by what ever force is required to retain those rights over any intruder.
So, self defence is an inalienable right to exist while robbery, home invasion, rape and murder are situations which should not exist. I will support any law, any politician who has the guts to stand up for the rights of the law abiding populace to defend themselves against anyone, anytime, anywhere without fear of legal recourse.
My defense mechanism(s) would include the use of big dogs, knives, guns, or any other weapon of choice and convenience. Do I have guns for brains, no. Do I have a will to live without fear of intruders, yes.
If that is a mentality representing guns for brains, guilty as charged!
October 12, 2012
Child Soldiers
Malala Yousufzai and Roya Shams
Malala Yousufzai and Roya Shams both have one thing in common, The Taliban are terrified of them.
Malala was threatened by the Taliban, was not deterred from her path by that threat and was shot for her beliefs in the right of girls to have an education.
Roya Shams was raised by a father who believed in the same goals for women. He was a police officer who was killed fighting the Taliban. Roya continues his fight through her continued education and a desire to be a politician to help her country.
Two young girls in two different countries fighting the Taliban with brains and courage as their weapons.
According to Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers: " A child soldier is anyone under the age of eighteen who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity."
I would like to offer an alternative ddefinition which reads as:
"A child soldier is anyone under the age of eighteen acting alone or who is part of any kind of regular or irregular force or group in any capacity whose weapons of choice are courage and brains rather than guns and other weapons as a means of attaining a desired goal."
By the first definition, children are used as soldiers by adults. By the second definition children fight armed adult "soldiers" with the only weapons they have. Brains and courage.
Malala Yousufzai and Roya Shams are just two such soldiers. They have chosen to use brains and courage rather than guns and other such weapons to attain a goal.
Throughout this blog there have been and will continue to be only two categories of postings; Postings where Guns for Brains is the root of the subject, or, as in the case of Malala and Roya, Brains for Guns. ,
April 11, 2012
911
This day in history started like any other but would end in infamy. This was the day that will always be remembered as 911, when terror came to North America.
The terror attacks of 911 and the building of the Berlin wall were both directly attributable to people who have guns for brains.
April 9, 2012
Nahlah
Having seen and reported on so much of the Middle Eastern turmoil Nahlah is someone who could be classed as brains observing those who have "Guns for Brains"...However, that would be an understatement...
Brains in themselves are guns as guns bring about change. Brains bring about change slowly, or at the very least change peoples views of the violence that guns bring.
Observing violence, reporting on that violence, and now writing a book about that violence from a lifetime of experience qualifies this lady as having guns on the brain but not for brains. A very distinct and crucial difference...Now if only those who have guns for brains knew how to read....imagine the possibilities...
(Ignorance is bliss - to those who lead people who have guns for brains...)
March 29, 2012
Who's who on the list you don't ever want to be on
Isaias Afewerki, Eritrea
Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan
Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan
Bashar al-Assad, Syria
Thein Sein, Myanmar
Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, Turkmenistan
Raul Castro, Cuba
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea
Hugo Chavez, Venezuela
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya
Saddam Hussein, Iraq
Adolf Hitler, Germany
Benito Mussolini, Italy
Pol Pot, Cambodia
Idi Amin, Uganda
Mobutu Sese Seko,Zaïre
Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania
Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia
Jean-Claude Duvalier,Haiti
Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt
Fulgencio Batista,Cuba
António Salazar, Portugal
Alfredo Stroessner,Paraguay
They all have many of the same attributes:
Dictators
Brutal
No regard for human life
Self Serving
Usually of a military background
Guns for Brains
and one other common trait
and one other common trait
They were all squirrelly
March 28, 2012
Smart bullets act like a guided missle
Smart Bullet May Have Your Name On It
Fans of science fiction movies of the 80s might remember “Runaway,” in which Gene Simmons plays an evil scientist who invents “smart” bullets that seek out specific human targets.
Sandia National Laboratories has brought that a bit closer to the real world. Researchers Red Jones, Brian Kast and their colleagues invented a self-guided bullet that can hit targets more than a mile away.
To hit targets so far away the bullet uses an optical sensor, an “eye” that detects the little red dot of a laser beam pointed at a target. Tiny electromagnets steer a set of fins on the bullet to keep it on track. Unlike ordinary bullets, this one has a its center of gravity pitched forward, more like a dart than a bullet.
Another difference is the gun you fire it with. Most modern rifles have a groove that spirals down the inside of the barrel, called "rifling." The groove is there to make a fin-less, smooth bullet spin, which allows it to fly straighter.
The self-guided bullet needs to fly out without the spin, though, so a rifle that fires it has to have a simple smooth bore in the barrel, rather like an old-fashioned musket.
Each bullet has a guidance system that works somewhat like a guided missile, although it's less complex. Any projectile has a natural wobble when it's fired. With a missile, the wobble is slow, so any corrections have to be precise, because there are few opportunities to adjust the slow wobble in-flight. But because the bullet is so small, it wobbles faster -- about 30 times per second. That means there are more opportunities to make corrections and those adjustments can be less precise.
There is still work to be done for this to see action. As it is, the bullet is relatively slow, moving at about 2,400 feet per second when fired with commercially available gunpowder. A typical military rifle hits 3,000 feet per second, so some other gunpowder mixture will be needed. Sandia plans to seek a private company to build more prototypes and do more tests.
Bullets with Brains
New Army Rifle Fires Laser-Guided Smart Bullets With Onboard Targeting Chips
New rifles with explosive rounds can be told where to detonate
Smart Rifle You won't see the rifle or the bullet until it's too late.
It would be hard to describe a bullet as smart, but what if that bullet was laser-guided, radio-controlled, and carried an onboard targeting CPU? The US Army has announced the creation of the XM25 rifle, which can fire a new type of explosive round that fit that exact description. Imagine the implications: hitting targets inside buildings or hiding around walls.
First, the scope on the rifle has a laser that gauges the distance to the target. The soldier can set exactly where the 25-millimeter bullet will detonate by adding or subtracting 3 meters from that point. Then, the scope will send a radio signal to a chip inside the bullet telling it how far it should travel before exploding.
Now, here’s where things get truly nuts: Each bullet has a small magnetic transducer that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, generating a tiny alternating current every time it spins as it speeds toward the target. Measured against the gun's specially calibrated rifling, this means the bullet can keep track of how far it has traveled in real time.
The Army has proposed the uses can range from hitting enemies hidden in trenches (as pictured above), or even hitting a sniper hiding in a building by setting the range about a meter beyond the window. They are also proposed as a smarter alternative to grenade launchers, which can serve the same purpose but be less accurate and have limited range, making them more prone to collateral damage.
The Army began field tests with the XM25 and had hopes of deploying it into regular duty by 2012.
Guns with Brains, Bullets with brains, it's too bad that the human element has still not developed enough brains to eliminate the need for such tools.
March 27, 2012
Gun WITH Brains
Meet the 'gun with brains' - March 14 2003 at 10:26am
Popular Mechanics - Pretoria inventor Nic van Zyl Photo: Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics - Pretoria inventor Nic van Zyl Photo: Popular Mechanics
By Stuart Johnston
Pretoria inventor Nic van Zyl has developed what may be the world's first "intelligent firearm", a handgun that can be operated only by its rightful owner. It could make criminal abuse of firearms a thing of the past
It looks like a cross between a sci-fi raygun and an industrial high-pressure cleaning device. Bulky and block-like, it displays none of the black-metal menace inherent in most civilian firearms, and frankly, it is not a thing of beauty.
Then again, there's no rule that says a firearm has to be pretty. Some people might find the smoothly formed wooden hand grip and machined aluminium body downright compelling, especially if they're at the wrong end of the muzzle.
Say hello to the Intelligent Fire Arm, a unique and thoroughly South African device that could change the way we think about guns - and the people who wield them. Although still in prototype form, it will soon enter manufacture.
Inventor Nic van Zyl, 65, is an ardent believer in firearms with brains.
Until now, firearms have been dumb. They lie in your safe at home, or in your holster, and tell no stories. Naturally, this opens the door for all sorts of abuse. The Intelligent Fire Arm, also known as the smart gun', changes all that.
Van Zyl is managing director of Bansha Investments, the company that has produced the prototype of the IFA. Work began on the device in 1994, when the first of many patents was taken out. Now, eight years later, an international firearms company is poised to acquire the production rights to what may well be the world's first foolproof firearm - at least in terms of criminal abuse.
The IFA, as it's known, uses a biometric sensor located just above the handgrip to activate its firing capability. The sensor is encoded with the thumbprint of an authorised user (or users): unless it recognises the imprint, it remains inoperative. As Van Zyl says, an unauthorised person could use it to clobber someone over the head, but that's about it.
This is the first firearm to enter the electronics age in terms of authorised use. It could be used for personal protection, or in a responsible peacekeeping role. There is a real need for a gun like this.
In conjunction with the biometric sensor, the electronic chip located in the gun's pistol grip will be encoded with a range of additional information regarding the user's personal details, including fingerprints, identity number, and licence status (that is, whether the firearm is for personal protection, hunting, police or military use).
The device is designed to empower a country's authorities with absolute control over the gun's life history, says Van Zyl. When the firearm is issued, it can be loaded with one or more authorised users' details. This data is stored in a fixed memory that cannot be changed. And it records each and every shot fired by the IFA.
In addition to this record, we have added a tiny camera - similar to the devices used in mini-cam recorders - which takes a photograph every time the gun is fired. This information is downloadable by the authorities for use in a court case, if necessary, to document the circumstances in which the shot was fired.
Banshee intends to develop a smart card recognition system for the gun as a further safety measure. The smart card will be carried by the owner, and the proximity of the gun to his card activates the device to ready status. Again, it will not fire unless the biometric sensor above the grip recognises the authorised user's thumbprint.
The IFA dispenses with the conventional percussive firing action, instead employing laser technology to ignite the charge in the bullet. This has required the production of special bullets with a built-in window, allowing a laser beam to ignite the (conventional) charge. To prevent gas from fogging the laser beam, the inventor has installed a small plastic lens on the back of the bullet and an O-ring on each bullet.
Because there is no percussive or hammer device in the gun, it has been possible to incorporate the magazine and the barrel in one unit. The prototype uses a 10-barrel configuration, with two vertical rows of five bullets arranged side-by-side.
When all 10 shots have been fired, the magazine/barrel is simply ejected and a new, loaded barrel is installed, using a quick-release lever. The empty barrel (held in place by a clip that permits rapid removal and replacement) is returned to the dealer for reloading. It's virtually impossible for ordinary users to make or reload the uniquely coded, caseless ammunition.
Van Zyl says it would be possible to develop many barrel/magazine combinations - accommodating different calibres and types of bullet - and considerably improve firepower, perhaps for military applications. With a large-capacity magazine, the IFA could be programmed to fire 50 or more rounds in single shots, bursts, or fully automatic.
For a street-legal weapon that complies with civilian laws, it would have a 10-round magazine and fire single shots only, requiring the trigger to be pressed each time. The IFA has been designed to fire at the rate of three rounds per second - fast enough to make even a Wyatt Earp happy.
Sure, the prototype is bulky, but when we go into production it will be much smaller, he says. The prototype was built by Kentron, a subsidiary of South African armaments group Denel.
Says Van Zyl: A lot of the electronics contained in the handle or grip have yet to be miniaturised; the typical personal-use weapon can be made much smaller - the size of a conventional handgun, in fact.
Bansha Investments has acquired patents for the weapon in a number of countries, including Japan, China and Russia, but it is likely that the IFA will be produced by a European company, as yet unnamed. It's known that other major firearm manufacturers have owner recognition guns under development, but Van Zyl is confident that none of these offers the simplicity or user-friendliness of his invention.
Cost? About 50 per cent more than a conventional, or dumb firearm.
There are additional shot-recording features that are likely to be incorporated into the IFA, such as a GPS recorder, which will pinpoint the exact location where each bullet is fired.
The prototype already has a clock installed that records each shot, and by using flame spectrometry techniques, the bullet's DNA, so to speak, can be recorded. Even a fragment could be traced back to its origin, together with details on the person issued with that particular bullet.
Using special bullets will obviously complicate the infrastructure needed to get the IFA into production, but it should be remembered that this device could change our whole approach to firearms.
I'm only a scientist I can't change people's minds. But I can make it very difficult for people to abuse a firearm.
The IFA has been tested by the SA Bureau of Standards in prototype form, says Van Zyl, and the test results show that it operates well within the spec of a conventional firearm in terms of accuracy and firepower. The 9 mm, 100-gram bullet speed was measured at between 370 and 400 metres per second - as good as a typical 9 mm pistol.
Accuracy is no problem, despite the short barrel used on the prototype. By eliminating the percussion firing action, which necessitates locating the barrel and the trigger device at the top of the gun, we have managed to balance the IFA, so there's negligible barrel kick in an upwards direction.
Van Zyl says when the IFA goes into production it may well be for military applications, which saddens him a little. He's always viewed the IFA in terms of safety, specifically in cases of theft and shooting accidents involving children.
However, the United Nations has been moving more and more towards transforming military forces from aggressors to peacekeepers, and has made it clear that soldiers could be held liable for their actions under civilian law. In this respect the IFA could provide the necessary checks and balances to ensure that soldiers don't abuse the power vested in them.
It will even be possible, via the electronics, to establish a live link with headquarters whenever a soldier or policeman is deployed on an assignment. In effect, the curtains will always be open. When your neighbours can see in, you tend to be a lot more careful about the way you conduct yourself.
In the final analysis, a firearm serves the purpose of launching a missile - in this case, the bullet that comes out of the barrel. It stands to reason that these bullets should be controlled and accounted for… that's why we developed our system. Bullets are coded at the point of manufacture and recorded against the name of the purchaser, who is held accountable for their use.
This is the weapon for the soldier of the future - a specialist peacekeeper firearm.
This article originally appears in the March issue of Popular Mechanics
March 26, 2012
What would they think now?
July 20, 2007Guns and Brains
Posted by George Packer
Earlier this week, I received an invitation to a September conference on land and air power in counterinsurgency—routine enough, except that it is to be co-hosted by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which is part of Harvard’s Kennedy School. The day I received the invitation, I was at another conference, where I spoke on a panel about social scientists working with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. These events suggest one unlikely and hopeful outcome of the sad wars we’re living with.
I grew up during the Vietnam era and belong to a generation of educated liberals who came of age with a visceral dislike of the military. In the seventies and eighties, it was almost a reflex on Ivy League university campuses, where officer training was sometimes banned, to regard anyone in uniform as funny, if not sinister. At the same time, on military bases, anti-intellectualism became a badge of honor, a subscription to The New Yorker the mark of an oddball, and the words “liberal” and “academic” terms of abuse.
Here’s a crude generalization: after the sixties, intellect and patriotism went separate ways, to the detriment of both. This mutual hostility made intellectuals less responsible and soldiers less thoughtful. We’ve come to think of this antagonism as natural and inevitable, as it is between cats and dogs, but in fact it was a product of recent political and cultural changes in American life. The estrangement was compounded by professionalization on both sides and the adoption of inward-looking and jargon-ridden specializations: the all-volunteer military and the social-theory crowd became equally isolated American subcultures.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun to close the divide. I think the reasons are these: first, September 11th made military service more attractive to the kind of college students who used to find it unthinkable. It’s no longer unusual to have a friend whose son recently went from studying photography at the Pratt Institute to searching for weapons caches south of Baghdad. Second, the nature of these wars demands a soldier who is more than an artilleryman with an engineering degree. After the military’s failure in Vietnam, it tried to turn war into a matter of firepower and technology—which is why, when the Sunni insurgency began to take off in the summer of 2003, American forces had no idea how to react and made matters far worse.
By 2004, battalion commanders in Salahuddin were begging the Pentagon for information about the nature of Iraqi society. This year, the Army is actually deploying teams of social scientists with units in Baghdad and Afghanistan. The soldiers whose reputations have been made and not destroyed in Iraq—General David Petraeus, Colonel H. R. McMaster, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl—have doctorates in the humanities. The best soldiers I met in Iraq were eager to share critical views with professors and journalists. This past spring, when McMaster led a group of officials and private citizens to Iraq to assess progress there, he picked as one member an anti-war British political-science professor who happens to know a great deal about the country. Desperate times breed desperate measures.
I have no illusion that this rapprochement between guns and brains is widespread or guaranteed to last. Plenty of people on both sides undoubtedly find it appalling. Some soldiers will return from Iraq convinced that they’ve been stabbed in the back on college campuses and in the liberal media. Some intellectuals find the war and the Administration so objectionable that they regard associating with the military as a kind of crime. (An anthropologist headed to Afghanistan told me that she’s been “shunned at cocktail parties.”) But a superpower can hardly afford to have its thinkers and its warriors despise and avoid one another.
Posted by George Packer
reposted by:
Posted by George Packer
Earlier this week, I received an invitation to a September conference on land and air power in counterinsurgency—routine enough, except that it is to be co-hosted by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which is part of Harvard’s Kennedy School. The day I received the invitation, I was at another conference, where I spoke on a panel about social scientists working with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. These events suggest one unlikely and hopeful outcome of the sad wars we’re living with.
I grew up during the Vietnam era and belong to a generation of educated liberals who came of age with a visceral dislike of the military. In the seventies and eighties, it was almost a reflex on Ivy League university campuses, where officer training was sometimes banned, to regard anyone in uniform as funny, if not sinister. At the same time, on military bases, anti-intellectualism became a badge of honor, a subscription to The New Yorker the mark of an oddball, and the words “liberal” and “academic” terms of abuse.
Here’s a crude generalization: after the sixties, intellect and patriotism went separate ways, to the detriment of both. This mutual hostility made intellectuals less responsible and soldiers less thoughtful. We’ve come to think of this antagonism as natural and inevitable, as it is between cats and dogs, but in fact it was a product of recent political and cultural changes in American life. The estrangement was compounded by professionalization on both sides and the adoption of inward-looking and jargon-ridden specializations: the all-volunteer military and the social-theory crowd became equally isolated American subcultures.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have begun to close the divide. I think the reasons are these: first, September 11th made military service more attractive to the kind of college students who used to find it unthinkable. It’s no longer unusual to have a friend whose son recently went from studying photography at the Pratt Institute to searching for weapons caches south of Baghdad. Second, the nature of these wars demands a soldier who is more than an artilleryman with an engineering degree. After the military’s failure in Vietnam, it tried to turn war into a matter of firepower and technology—which is why, when the Sunni insurgency began to take off in the summer of 2003, American forces had no idea how to react and made matters far worse.
By 2004, battalion commanders in Salahuddin were begging the Pentagon for information about the nature of Iraqi society. This year, the Army is actually deploying teams of social scientists with units in Baghdad and Afghanistan. The soldiers whose reputations have been made and not destroyed in Iraq—General David Petraeus, Colonel H. R. McMaster, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl—have doctorates in the humanities. The best soldiers I met in Iraq were eager to share critical views with professors and journalists. This past spring, when McMaster led a group of officials and private citizens to Iraq to assess progress there, he picked as one member an anti-war British political-science professor who happens to know a great deal about the country. Desperate times breed desperate measures.
I have no illusion that this rapprochement between guns and brains is widespread or guaranteed to last. Plenty of people on both sides undoubtedly find it appalling. Some soldiers will return from Iraq convinced that they’ve been stabbed in the back on college campuses and in the liberal media. Some intellectuals find the war and the Administration so objectionable that they regard associating with the military as a kind of crime. (An anthropologist headed to Afghanistan told me that she’s been “shunned at cocktail parties.”) But a superpower can hardly afford to have its thinkers and its warriors despise and avoid one another.
Posted by George Packer
reposted by:
Col. Bob Denard
He came to prominence during the early conflicts in the Congo, when he led a raid on Stanleyville (now Kisangani) to rescue white civilians besieged by rebel forces. The ruthless efficiency with which his group of mercenaries carved through the rebel army earned them the soubriquet "Les Affreux" (the fearful ones).
Denard, who always insisted that he was "a soldier, not an assassin", trained the secessionist force of Moise Tshombe in the breakaway Katanga province, fighting there until the regime collapsed in January 1963.
In 1968 he was back in the Congo, attempting to invade Katanga with 100 men on bicycles. This farcical episode ended in failure, and Denard left the Congo for the last time.
For 10 years he was employed as a "military adviser" to the government of Gabon in West Africa. This job is believed to have had the backing of the French government, which was known to promote its widespread interests in its former African colonies by occasional unorthodox methods and operatives.
Denard, describing himself as "the pirate of the republic", took part in an attack on Guinea in 1970 and was involved in a failed coup attempt in Benin in 1977. Again both ventures were believed to have had the blessing, if not the connivance, of the French government.
In later years Denard became obsessed with the Comoros Islands, an impoverished but idyllic group of islands in the Indian Ocean which had been part of the French Empire. He overthrew the government of the Comoros on no fewer than four occasions.
He first helped to depose Ahmed Abdullah in 1975, after which a young maniac called Ali Soilih seized power, and a group of teenage tearaways ran amok for two years: the chief of police was 15.
In May 1978 Denard was involved in a counter-coup, in which Soilih was shot, though it is not clear whether Denard himself killed him. He certainly delivered his corpse the next day to Soilih's sister, and remained on the Comoros after Abdallah resumed power.
Denard had considerable business interests, and influence, in the Comoros, converting to Islam and eventually becoming a Comoran citizen. When Abdallah was deposed in 1989 Denard hotly denied having anything to do with it.
He then launched a coup against Haribon Chebani, who had automatically succeeded Abdallah, in favour of Said Mohammed Djohar, who became the third president within five days. France had, by this point, had enough, and Denard was flown to South Africa and placed under house arrest.
But in 1995 he was back on the islands, and Djohar was overthrown. Three thousand French troops were sent in to tackle Denard and his 30 soldiers. Denard conceded defeat.
He returned to France to face trial for his involvement in the coup attempts in Benin and the Comoros. Although he was convicted, his jail sentences were suspended after evidence was given that the now ageing mercenary was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
He also received outspoken support from the former chief of staff of the army, who declared that Denard had always operated in France's interests.
Robert-Pierre Denard was born near Bordeaux on April 7 1929, the son of a retired Army officer who later worked in the French colonial service, and grew up in the small village of Grayan.
He enrolled in a marine school and joined the French Navy, eventually serving in Indo-China as a corporal aboard a ship that was involved in patrol work in the Mekong Delta.
But Denard resented the injustices of the French class system; he left the navy and joined the colonial police in Morocco. He began to adopt aliases, beginning with André Maurin and then Gilbert Bourgeaud.
In Casablanca he fell in with Right-wing groups and was allegedly involved in a plot to assassinate Pierre Mendès-France, the Left-wing French prime minister. He served 14 months in prison on remand before being acquitted.
Denard returned to France, where he worked as a bathroom appliance salesman, complaining that he was "bored s***less". Then a friend showed him a newspaper advertisement for security men needed to guard mining companies in Katanga, and within weeks he had emerged in Tshombe's Katanga province in the Congo dressed in a commando's uniform and using the self-bestowed rank of "colonel".
He soon found himself leading the motley group of European and South African soldiers of fortune fighting what was in essence a guerrilla war in the African bush. He soon established a reputation as a flamboyant and fearless leader of men in battle.
When the Katangese secession collapsed, Denard reappeared among a group of French officer-mercenaries training Royalist soldiers in the Yemen. He was summoned back to the Congo, succeeding the British mercenary Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare in 1965 under the presidency of Mobuto Sese-Seko.
Mobuto soon became suspicious of the mercenaries he had hired, suspecting them of plotting against him. He ordered their disbandment, but Denard — along with the Belgian mercenary "Black Jacques" Schramme — attempted to overthrow the regime.
In the subsequent chaos Denard was wounded in an abortive attempt to relieve the beleaguered Schramme and fled to Angola, his reputation badly tarnished.
Denard was married officially twice, though he had a further five polygamous unions, and fathered eight children. He died at his home in south-western France on Saturday.
Why post this here/...The Col. was never one to hide his mistakes but often corrected his mistakes not with brains but with guns and bravado...Or maybe he just chose a more direct route than your average politician to take care of some of this tired worlds problems...Brains with guns?
Denard, describing himself as "the pirate of the republic", took part in an attack on Guinea in 1970 and was involved in a failed coup attempt in Benin in 1977. Again both ventures were believed to have had the blessing, if not the connivance, of the French government.
In later years Denard became obsessed with the Comoros Islands, an impoverished but idyllic group of islands in the Indian Ocean which had been part of the French Empire. He overthrew the government of the Comoros on no fewer than four occasions.
He first helped to depose Ahmed Abdullah in 1975, after which a young maniac called Ali Soilih seized power, and a group of teenage tearaways ran amok for two years: the chief of police was 15.
In May 1978 Denard was involved in a counter-coup, in which Soilih was shot, though it is not clear whether Denard himself killed him. He certainly delivered his corpse the next day to Soilih's sister, and remained on the Comoros after Abdallah resumed power.
Denard had considerable business interests, and influence, in the Comoros, converting to Islam and eventually becoming a Comoran citizen. When Abdallah was deposed in 1989 Denard hotly denied having anything to do with it.
He then launched a coup against Haribon Chebani, who had automatically succeeded Abdallah, in favour of Said Mohammed Djohar, who became the third president within five days. France had, by this point, had enough, and Denard was flown to South Africa and placed under house arrest.
But in 1995 he was back on the islands, and Djohar was overthrown. Three thousand French troops were sent in to tackle Denard and his 30 soldiers. Denard conceded defeat.
He returned to France to face trial for his involvement in the coup attempts in Benin and the Comoros. Although he was convicted, his jail sentences were suspended after evidence was given that the now ageing mercenary was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
He also received outspoken support from the former chief of staff of the army, who declared that Denard had always operated in France's interests.
Robert-Pierre Denard was born near Bordeaux on April 7 1929, the son of a retired Army officer who later worked in the French colonial service, and grew up in the small village of Grayan.
He enrolled in a marine school and joined the French Navy, eventually serving in Indo-China as a corporal aboard a ship that was involved in patrol work in the Mekong Delta.
But Denard resented the injustices of the French class system; he left the navy and joined the colonial police in Morocco. He began to adopt aliases, beginning with André Maurin and then Gilbert Bourgeaud.
In Casablanca he fell in with Right-wing groups and was allegedly involved in a plot to assassinate Pierre Mendès-France, the Left-wing French prime minister. He served 14 months in prison on remand before being acquitted.
Denard returned to France, where he worked as a bathroom appliance salesman, complaining that he was "bored s***less". Then a friend showed him a newspaper advertisement for security men needed to guard mining companies in Katanga, and within weeks he had emerged in Tshombe's Katanga province in the Congo dressed in a commando's uniform and using the self-bestowed rank of "colonel".
He soon found himself leading the motley group of European and South African soldiers of fortune fighting what was in essence a guerrilla war in the African bush. He soon established a reputation as a flamboyant and fearless leader of men in battle.
When the Katangese secession collapsed, Denard reappeared among a group of French officer-mercenaries training Royalist soldiers in the Yemen. He was summoned back to the Congo, succeeding the British mercenary Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare in 1965 under the presidency of Mobuto Sese-Seko.
Mobuto soon became suspicious of the mercenaries he had hired, suspecting them of plotting against him. He ordered their disbandment, but Denard — along with the Belgian mercenary "Black Jacques" Schramme — attempted to overthrow the regime.
In the subsequent chaos Denard was wounded in an abortive attempt to relieve the beleaguered Schramme and fled to Angola, his reputation badly tarnished.
Denard was married officially twice, though he had a further five polygamous unions, and fathered eight children. He died at his home in south-western France on Saturday.
Why post this here/...The Col. was never one to hide his mistakes but often corrected his mistakes not with brains but with guns and bravado...Or maybe he just chose a more direct route than your average politician to take care of some of this tired worlds problems...Brains with guns?
Blackwater and Haliburton
Blackwater: The World’s Largest Mercenary Army
Long but with a point...
“Blackwater is a company that began in 1996 as a private military training facility in — it was built near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. And visionary executives, all of them former Navy Seals or other Elite Special Forces people, envisioned it as a project that would take advantage of the anticipated government outsourcing.
Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration’s so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very right wing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bank rollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.”
Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration’s so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very right wing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bank rollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.”
“We absolutely want more oversight,” Prince said on 60 Minutes, discussing the September incident in which Blackwater forces killed 17 civilians in Baghdad. “We want a good name for this industry because we think it plays an important role for what the U.S. policies are going forward.”
Denard, no doubt, would never have used the word “industry” to describe his gun-for-hire business. Of course, that’s because Prince casts himself as the polar opposite of the self-styled colonel who called his men “les affreux” (“the terrible ones”). Instead, Prince refers to his “team,” as if they were salesmen hawking a new line of leisurewear.
“I think mercenary is a slanderous term,” Prince told Newsweek. “I’m a businessman,” he told the Detroit Free Press, describing Blackwater as “a temp provider.” The firm’s website is even more drenched in corporate p.r.-speak: “Blackwater Worldwide efficiently and effectively integrates a wide range of resources and core competencies to provide unique and timely solutions that exceed our customers’ stated needs and expectations.”
OK, then. But the juxtaposition of Denard’s colorful obituaries and Prince’s damage-control media blitz makes one thing clear: When it comes to unique and timely solutions that just so happen to involve large quantities of firepower, they don’t make ’em like they used to.
Would you want to read a novel about a person who says things like, “out of 16,000 PSD operations, our guys have resulted in any firearms use less than one percent of the time?” No. You want to read about the mustachioed menace who once invaded a Congolese province by bicycle.
In fact, someone did write a novel about Denard, sort of: He was widely said to be a model for Cat Shannon, the antihero of Frederick Forsyth’s mercenary saga, The Dogs of War.
Born Gilbert Bourgeaud in Bordeaux in 1929, Denard was said to have fought in the French Resistance. Later, he enlisted in the French navy, serving in Indochina during France’s doomed effort to maintain colonial rule. He eventually became a colonial policeman in Morocco, until he was accused in 1956 of plotting to assassinate the French prime minister. He spent a year in jail before being acquitted. On release, he worked as a salesman.
Bored, Denard drifted to the Third World, joining anti-communist efforts in places like Iran and Yemen. It was a good time to be a mercenary: Former colonies across the globe were becoming independent, and there was no shortage of people looking for gunmen to either prop up the frail new states or topple their governments -- or both.
In the Congo, the ultimate strife-torn post colonial republic, he helped separatists in the mineral-rich Katanga province fight a left-leaning central government. Later, he helped pro-Western dictator Mobutu Sese Seko put down a coup attempt by the former leader of those same separatists. (It was the tyrannical Mobutu who made Denard a colonel.) In 1968, he led a group of 100 men in an ill-fated effort to invade the province by bicycle.
In all, Denard was involved in more than 20 coups or civil wars -- almost always with the tacit, or not-so-tacit, approval of France. In Benin he launched a coup. In Gabon he put one down. He also picked up passport stamps in Angola, Guinea, Chad and Rhodesia, which despite the hopes of Denard’s patrons became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. He only faced the music back home once during these years, earning a suspended sentence for the coup in Benin. French officials testified that he had acted as an ally.
Denard’s favorite country, though, was the Comoros, a group of islands off the coast of East Africa. He took part in four coups in the archipelago over two decades. In 1975 he toppled its government. Three years later he restored the man he had overthrown, staying on as presidential security chief. He lived by the beach, wed a local wife (his sixth) and converted to Islam (he took the name Mustapha Mahdjoub). Alas, in 1989, the president was assassinated -- allegedly during a dispute with some of les affreux -- prompting Denard to leave the country in a hurry.
In 1995, he was back, aiming to oust yet another government. But with the Cold War over, Denard’s brand of soldiering proved a lot trickier to pull off. His old pals in Paris and Washington didn’t want to be associated with les affreuxith the Cold War over, Denard’s brand of soldiering proved a lot trickier to pull off. His old pals in Paris and Washington didn’t want to be associated with les affreux. And South Africa was under new management altogether. France quickly dispatched troops and arrested the visibly aged Denard. He stood trial, but never served time. By then, Denard was already showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, the ailment that finally did him in.
Unlike Blackwater’s Prince, Denard leaves behind no multinational company, no multimillion-dollar contracts, not even a corporate logo. He did, however, feel the same need as Prince to justify his service: According to Denard, he always acted in the name of anticommunism and patriotism. He also mirrored Prince in eschewing the term “mercenary.” Of course, Denard’s favored substitution wasn’t anything so bland as “temp provider.” Rather, he preferred the term he used to title his autobiography, Corsair of the Republic.
“The corsairs in France would receive written permission from the King to attack foreign ships,” he told The New York Times in 1993. “I didn't have such permission, but I had passports given to me by the intelligence services.”
Which, when you think about it, is just a slightly more dashing way of saying what Prince told 60 Minutes the day after Denard died: “I’m an American working for America. Anything we do is to support U.S. policy.”
Reposted from - Michael Currie Schaffer, a writer based in Philadelphia.
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So, whats the point...The point is Col. Bob Denard saw himself as a patriot and a man of principles while the rich man Erik Prince sees his work simply as the CEO of a company that sells death for a profit...Guns for Brains
Not satisfied yet that war is big business...????...Read on...
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The Secretary of Defence for the worlds most powerful military becomes the CEO of a company that later profits from untendered military contracts...
1992
Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root is paid $9 million by the Pentagon (under Cheney's direction as Secretary of Defense) to produce a classified report detailing how private companies (like itself) could provide logistical support for American troops in potential war zones around the world. Shortly after this report, the Pentagon awards Brown & Root a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. The General Accounting Office estimates that through this contract, Brown & Root makes overall $2.2 billion in revenue in the Balkans.2
1995
Without any previous business experience, Cheney leaves the Department of Defense to become the CEO of Halliburton Co., one of the biggest oil-services companies in the world. He will be chairman of the company from 1996 to October 1998 and from February to August 2000. Under Cheney's leadership, Halliburton moves up from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors. The company garners $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts, which almost doubles the $1.2 billion it earned from the government previously. Most of the contracts are granted by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.
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Hmmmm, I guess there is big money in war and death....If a CEO is supposed to use his brains to create a profit for a company and that company sells death such as does Blackwater and Haliburton, then I guess that Brains for Guns is also Guns for Brains?
March 23, 2012
Islam is / is not a religion of peace
The religion he founded, Islam, means “submission,” as in submission to the one God. Islam was resisted at first because of its novelty against the ancient tribal customs. Muhammad’s wife died in 620 and he acquired several more over the years. In 622 Muhammad was forced to flee from Mecca to Yathrib, which is now called Medina, and found his religion welcomed there. The date of that flight is called the hegira and that event marks the beginning of the Muhammadan era. His followers helped him punish the ungrateful Meccans, and after victory there extended his triumphs throughout Arabia.
The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an (لقرآن or al-qur’ān), means “the recitation” or “the lesson” – of God (لله, Allah). It was jotted down, on bits of skin and palm-leaves, during the last twenty-two years of the Prophet’s life. The fragments were collected in the year after the Prophet’s death, and an authorized version circulated in 650. It was Muhammad’s successor, a convert named Omar, and a genuine fanatic, who reunited the apostates after Muhammad’s death by declaring war on rich Persia. As one historian (W. Muir) put it, it was “the scent of war that turned the sullen temper of the Arabs into eager loyalty.” Or perhaps it was the scent of loot. As another historian (Becker) wrote, “hunger and avarice, not religion, were the impelling forces” of the Arab expansion, and that “it was not the religion of Islam that was disseminated by the sword, but political sovereignty.”
Inasmuch as the Koran reflects the ideas of Muhammad, a few points need to be made. First, neither in Islamic history nor in the Koran is Islam a peaceful religion. It was not moral suasion that made Muslims of millions from Spain to India, including non-Arab Zoroastrians like the Persians. Second, it is not true that Islam is a tolerant religion. If we discount the early suras in the Koran, which were revealed when Muhammad was struggling for acceptance, and concentrate on the later ones, revealed when Muhammad was master of Arabia, you will understand the context of holy words such as,
Muhammad in Jyllands Posten
22.9: As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron- rods.
(and)
47.4: When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives.
There is much uncertainty about the events of Muhammad’s life because, as with the life of Jesus, no one thought write down a history until many years after his death – in the case of Muhammad, until 100 years after his death. Furthermore, because Muhammad was illiterate, he memorized his visions and dictated them afterwards, sometimes long enough afterwards to have forgotten contradictory earlier visions.
Again, Guns for Brains....If this account is to be believed, the Prophet Mohammed started out by trying to convert people to his beliefs or claims of religious divinity with peace as the message, then when that was achieved to some degree, chose to revert to 'guns" as the means in an attempt to total conversion to none other than "himself' the Prophet Mohammed, as the center peice in creation, standing as the doorway between heaven and hell.
The Prophet’s Farewell
As you read this translation of the prophet's farwell
to the people consider the events of our world today
where extremists and fundamentalists have corrupted
such words of faith to their own devices.
"O People, lend me an attentive ear, for I know not whether after this year, I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am saying to you very carefully and TAKE THESE WORDS TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT BE PRESENT HERE TODAY.
“O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you. Remember that you will indeed meet your Lord, and that He will indeed reckon your deeds. ALLAH has forbidden you to take usury (interest), therefore all interest obligation shall henceforth be waived. Your capital, however, is yours to keep. You will neither inflict nor suffer any inequity. Allah has Judged that there shall be no interest and that all the interest due to Abbas ibn 'Abd'al Muttalib (Prophet's uncle) shall henceforth be waived.
“Beware of Satan, for the safety of your religion. He has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, so beware of following him in small things.
“O People, it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women, but they also have rights over you. Remember that you have taken them as your wives only under Allah's trust and with His permission. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers. And it is your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste.
“O People, listen to me in earnest, worship Allah, say your five daily prayers, fast during the month of Ramadan, and give your wealth in zakat. Perform hajj if you can afford to.
“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves.
“Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer your deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.
“O People, no prophet or apostle will come after me and no new faith will be born. Reason well, therefore, O People,and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the Qur’an and my example, the sunnah and if you follow these you will never go astray.
“All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. Be my witness, O Allah, that I have conveyed your message to your people".
Now consider this Blog's title and the previous posts...
and what the extremists and fundamentalists are
willing to do to others and to their own islamic brothers
and sisters to furthur their own version of such words....
You will see that Guns for Brains aptly applies...
If you read the next post you will see how
there are two "interpretations" of the
"peaceful" religion of Islam
Collider Creation
As with much else in modern physics, the idea involves particle acceleration, the kind of thing that goes on in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Before the LHC began operating, a few alarmists worried that it might create a black hole which would destroy the world. That was never on the cards: although it is just possible that the device could generate an artificial black hole, it would be too small to swallow an atom, let alone the Earth.
However, to create a new universe would require a machine only slightly more powerful than the LHC and there is every chance that our own universe may have been manufactured in this way.
This is possible for two reasons. First, black holes may as science fiction aficionados will be well aware act as gateways to other regions of space and time. Second, because of the curious fact that gravity has negative energy, it takes no energy to make a universe. Despite the colossal amount of energy contained in every atom of matter, it is precisely balanced by the negativity of gravity.
Black holes, moreover, are relatively easy to make. For any object, there is a critical radius, called the Schwarzschild radius, at which its mass will form a black hole. The Schwarzschild radius for the Sun is about two miles, 1/200,000th of its current width; for the Earth to become a black hole, it would have to be squeezed into a ball with a radius of one centimetre.
The black holes that could be created in a particle accelerator would be far smaller: tiny masses squeezed into incredibly tiny volumes. But because of gravity's negative energy, it doesn't matter how small such holes are: they still have the potential to inflate and expand in their own dimensions (rather than gobbling up our own). Such expansion was precisely what our universe did in the Big Bang, when it suddenly exploded from a tiny clump of matter into a fully-fledged cosmos. Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first proposed the now widely accepted idea of cosmic inflation Ð that the starting point of the Big Bang was far smaller, and its expansion far more rapid, than had been assumed. He has investigated the technicalities of "the creation of universes in the laboratory", and concluded that the laws of physics do, in principle, make it possible.
The big question is whether that has already happened is our universe a designer universe? By this, I do not mean a God figure, an "intelligent designer" monitoring and shaping all aspects of life. Evolution by natural selection, and all the other processes that produced our planet and the life on it, are sufficient to explain how we got to be the way we are, given the laws of physics that operate in our universe.
However, there is still scope for an intelligent designer of universes as a whole. Modern physics suggests that our universe is one of many, part of a "multiverse" where different regions of space and time may have different properties (the strength of gravity may be stronger in some and weaker in others). If our universe was made by a technologically advanced civilisation in another part of the multiverse, the designer may have been responsible for the Big Bang, but nothing more.
If such designers make universes by manufacturing black holes the only way to do it that we are aware of there are three levels at which they might operate. The first is just to manufacture black holes, without influencing the laws of physics in the new universe. Humanity is nearly at this level, which Gregory Benford's novel Cosm puts in an entertaining context: an American researcher finds herself, after an explosion in a particle accelerator, with a new universe on her hands, the size of a baseball.
The second level, for a slightly more advanced civilization, would involve nudging the properties of the baby universes in a certain direction. It might be possible to tweak the black holes in such a way that the force of gravity was a little stronger than in the parent universe, without the designers being able to say exactly how much stronger.
The third level, for a very advanced civilization, would involve the ability to set precise parameters, thereby designing it in detail. An analogy would be with designer babies - instead of tinkering with DNA to get a perfect child, a scientists might tinker with the laws of physics to get a perfect universe. Crucially, though, it would not be possible in any of these cases - even at the most advanced level - for the designers to interfere with the baby universes once they had formed. From the moment of its own Big Bang, each universe would be on its own.
This might sound far-fetched, but the startling thing about this theory is how likely it is to happen and to have happened already. All that is required is that evolution occurs naturally in the multiverse until, in at least one universe, intelligence reaches roughly our level. From that seed point, intelligent designers create enough universes suitable for evolution, which bud off their own universes, that universes like our own (in other words, suitable for intelligent life) proliferate rapidly, with "unintelligent" universes coming to represent a tiny fraction of the whole multiverse. It therefore becomes overwhelmingly likely that any given universe, our own included, would be designed rather than "natural".
While the intelligence required to do the job may be (slightly) superior to ours, it is of a kind that is recognisably similar to our own, rather than that of an infinite and incomprehensible God. And the most likely reason for such an intelligence to make universes is the same for doing things like climbing mountains, or studying the nature of subatomic particles Ð because we can. A civilisation that has the technology to make baby universes would surely find the temptation irresistible. And if the intelligences are anything like our own, there would be an overwhelming temptation at the higher levels of universe design to improve upon the results.
This idea provides the best resolution yet to the puzzle Albert Einstein used to raise, that "the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible". The universe is comprehensible to the human mind because it was designed, at least to some extent, by intelligent beings with minds similar to our own.
The great British astronomer Fred Hoyle suggested that the laws of physics were so uniquely conducive to human existence that the universe must be "a put-up job". I believe he was right: the universe was indeed set up to provide a home for life, even if it evolved through a process of natural selection, with no need for outside interference. It isn't that man was created in God's image - rather that our universe was created, more or less, in the image of its designers.
If you have read this far you may be wondering how this applies to guns for brains. It does, but only if you are willing to agree that as a species we tend to settle our differences, including those about creation, with violence when others disagree with us...which happens more than it should!
God did not create the Universe
He had previously argued belief in a creator was not incompatible with science but in a new book, he concludes the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. The Grand Design, part serialized in the Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something," he concluded.
OK..Here's the Guns
For those of you who thought this blog was about guns,
here is a picture of some guns...
Question - How many are too many?
The problem with guns is you need someone
willing to pick them up and use them.
March 22, 2012
Divinity War
Thou shalt not kill.
It's OK to kill your children to regain personal honour.....
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour.
It's OK to rape your neighbours wife and daughters as they will be
blamed for your sexual aggression....
In some religions and cultures children and women are treated as slaves of the man or the community while others strive to protect and care for them. In some religions, children have been sacrificed to appease the Gods. In old religions and some cultures such as ancient Egypt the populace spent their entire life preparing for death while in nations such as those influenced by Islam, the populace is prepared to die to attain what, a promise of a virgin in the afterlife?
Christianity is generally about "care and protect" while Islam is about "abuse and neglect". Some may not agree with this view but until those of Islam who disagree with the statement stand up to those who adopt abuse and neglect as their mantra, the entire faith of Islam is subject to scrutiny.
Christian countries will use the gun to fight the countries of Islam due to the wide disparities in ideology while the simpler way to resolve the issue of extremist Islamists is for the countries in which they reside is to make them irrelevant.
Brains over guns rather than guns for brains.
The Ultimate Soldier
A child does not understand the impact of shooting someone the way an adult would and is therefore a better soldier for not questioning if this action is rightly justified. A child is now a soldier with a gun but without formed thought. Guns for brains!
March 21, 2012
Creation to Strife
How does man respond to the great unknown of the universe and our existence?
We respond with violence.
We do this because we are incapable of resolving this most basic of questions and we must prove our belief about creation by two methods: One is by conversion and the other is by eradication of opposing beliefs.
When a nation is incapable of resolving its issues, it goes to war.
A countries answer to strife is armies.
When a religious group is incapable of moving its beliefs forward in the form of conversion, it responds with war
When you as an individual are incapable of resolving an issue peacefully, what do you do..You respond with violence.
As long as we are incapable of resolving our differences, our beliefs on creation, our personal trials and tribulations, we will respond with the "gun"...Hence the name of this blog..."Guns for Brains"
March 20, 2012
In the Beginning - Creation
"In the beginning"
is perhaps the one phrase that has lead to the most destruction
due to our different interpretations and beliefs that we attribute to
the beginnings of life, time, our universal home and indeed,
our own existence.
Consider the list below, it is an indication of the categories of different creation theories, each category having numerous different mutations of the main theory within.
Science - Big Bang Theory; Cosmology: Evolution; Large Hadron Collider; Out of Africa; Paleontology; Panspermia and Exogenesis; Physical Sciences; Precession of the Equinoxes
Reality as a Consciousness Hologram - Consciousness; Ellie's Theories; Holographic Universe Reality
Gods and Goddesses - Ancient Astronaut Theory; Ancient Civilizations; Clockwork Universe Theory; Creationism; Gods and Goddesses Files; Earth's History in Art; Hermeticism, Hermes; Intelligent Design ; Sumerian Gods, Reptilians, Dragons, Metaphors; Flood Stories, Gilgamesh, Noah
And then of course, there are the "Current Theories in the News".... (These can be found in later postings)
Essentially, the universe was "created" in man's mind and it is in man's mind to be either tolerant or intollerant of anothers concept or belief in the creation. We as a species find it intollerable that the universe (and others concepts of the universe) do not adhere to our individual beliefs and we are prepared to do what ever it takes to ensure that our beliefs are the one and only belief. Fundamentalists and extremists and cults and to some degree, main stream religions all behave in the same way...."My way or No way"...and that concept has led to more bloodshed than has any other.....Guns for Brains.....
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