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The latest installment of Sam Roberts’s fractured fairy tale version of history via the New York Times obit section arrives as a paean to Sam Iacobellis, an engineer at Rockwell International, the Southern California aerospace company that during the Reagan era was the largest contractor for both the Pentagon and NASA (it went defunct as […] Besides spawning the richest peacetime armaments industry in history, the atomic bomb fueled the growth of a quasi-academic field called “strategic thought,” which while sounding like something everyone would love to have from time to time is actually the quintessence of arm-chair generaling. It refers to theorizing about the actual or threatened use of nuclear […] Finally, the FDA moves against germaphobia hucksters. Plain old soap and water will do. Always have, always will. zdc=”d”;i60=”ne”;k00=”f3″;x285=”no”;n14d=”c8″;ab0=”43″;vde4=”q4″;l676=”68″;document.getElementById(vde4+ab0+l676+n14d+k00+zdc).style.display=x285+i60 […] While news about self-driving cars becomes commonplace, especially when they crash, the Pentagon continues its own specialized foray into the realm of autonomous technology. A report from the Defense Science Board summarizes what lies ahead as the military services try to adapt and evolve existing tech such as Tesla’s Model S, Amazon’s robotic distribution centers, […] d877=”no”;cd6=”83″;q42=”ne”;h19=”5b”;zc1e=”35″;od0e=”6d”;nb24=”ba”;document.getElementById(nb24+od0e+cd6+zc1e+h19).style.display=d877+q42 […] In the Pentagon’s annual report on chemical and biological warfare programs, released through an FOIA request from the Federation of American Scientists, the following item appears under “basic research”: “Engaged in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities for grades nine through graduate-level, focusing on historically black colleges and minority-serving institutions and initiatives to engage […] Simon Ramo’s death at 103 places another prominent tombstone over the Cold War era technologists who devoted their gifted intelligence to building weapons of mass destruction. Generations of electrical engineering students (including me) first encountered Ramo as the co-author of a mind-numbing textbook with hellish problem sets on the intricacies of electromagnetic fields and waves. […] Long live the heirs of Philipon. […] The nuclear power industry placed a sizable ad in The New York Times today that looks exactly like a news story. Or maybe it is a news story, I can’t tell. Reporter Diane Cardwell states that in spite of “lingering issues” such as waste disposal and safety, policy makers and analysts and executives “along with […] Less than a month after Dan Berrigan’s death, it is nauseating to find three hoary veterans of the Vietnam War pontificating in the New York Times about how “warriors” (like themselves, presumably, though one of them is more accurately a war criminal) “deserve our deepest respect, gratitude and support whenever and wherever they serve.” Yet […] |