Refute this piece of crap

[Sarevok]

Take a look at this http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isyn/d ... n&LID=3800. While I agree with the points about landmines, internal combustion engines, coal power the rest is pure bullshit.

[Chris OFarrell]

This guy is a moron...

[Sarevok]

Of course he is a moron. The scary part is how he ever got to be a writter. I pity those who reads his books

[Vympel]

1. NUCLEAR WEAPONS

ONE CAN make some sound arguments for nuclear power-medical radioisotopes are quite handy, while far-traveling spacecraft can barely function on anything less-but there is no reason for us to go on pretending that we need to fry entire chunks of continents. Not only are nuclear weapons technically clumsy, but they betray a blatant death wish better suited to al-Qaeda than a civilization.

Nowadays, a well-organized state can deftly obliterate any conceivable target with exquisite GPS accuracy. Conventional "daisy cutters" and cluster bombs can be scaled up to any size or potency that the military might need. This leaves nuclear bombs with only one ideal function: terrorism. They are excellent weapons for nongovernmental predators to deploy against centers of government. They are quite useless for governments to deploy against terrorists. So why are governments still manufacturing these expensive, dangerous, easily stolen objects?

If all nuclear weapons vanished tomorrow, the world's current military situation would not be affected one whit. The U.S.A. would still be military top boss. Yet we'd be much less likely to wake up one morning to find Paris or Washington missing.

I'm afraid the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis would feel quite differently- nuclear weapons are a proven deterrent to hot war- the cost of maintaining these arsenals is a drop in the ocean compared to the loss of blood and treasure that results when two great powers get in a slugging match. The current arsenals are too large, but that doesn't mean they should be eliminated.

And to suggest that they are "easily stolen" is the dumbest fucking thing ever put to paper. Methinks he's confusing bullshit from technothrillers about missing Russian nukes with reality.

5. LAND MINES

THE PLANET is already cluttered with well-meaning nongovernmental organizations protesting land mines. Their plaint makes perfect sense when you realize that land mines are ideally suited to blowing up peacemakers once a war is over.

During a war, few soldiers step on land mines, because mines are placed by enemies waiting with rifles. Once the armies demob, though, and armies always do, land mines don't kill combatants anymore. They kill livestock, the brighter and more exploratory kinds of children, and the men and women who wander around after soldiers, attempting to restore the planet to habitability.

There is something to be said for the practice of automating bombs so that people can get killed without any human intervention. After all, there's a long technical trend there, and it strongly favors advanced societies with engineers over those among us who merely pick up hoes and axes in fits of tribal rage. But it's stupid to manufacture and spread lethal devices that don't know when a war is over.

Killing soldiers isn't the point of AP mines. Denying the use of certain areas of tactical advantage, lines of communication, etc. is. They should be cleared after the war, of course- this costs money unfortunately.

[Nathan F]

This guy must live in his own little perfect utopia... Almost everything he stated was either impractical or simply incorrect.

[Sir Sirius]

He is right about coal plants and lie detectors, but most of he's points are just unrealistic.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Oh yes, let's get rid of the internal combustion engine! That'll be easy!

[SyntaxVorlon]

In his defense he didn't say anything about easy.
And Vympel, both sides having the ability to completely annhilate eachother does not make for good peacemaking. The only reason we aren't still hovering over the button is the USSR disbanded. And didn't the russians 'lose' some of their arsenal not to long ago?

That said, I agree in one way or another with the first 5 and lie detectors, but the rest are utter bunk.
You've got to admit, he's right about incadecent lightbulbs.

[Vympel]

And Vympel, both sides having the ability to completely annhilate eachother does not make for good peacemaking.

Actually, it made for superb peace making. NATO and the Warsaw Pact never went to war.

The only reason we aren't still hovering over the button is the USSR disbanded. And didn't the russians 'lose' some of their arsenal not to long ago?

Nonsense.

[Nathan F]

And Vympel, both sides having the ability to completely annhilate eachother does not make for good peacemaking.

Actually, it made for superb peace making. NATO and the Warsaw Pact never went to war.

So much so that had nuclear weapons not been a factor, we most likely would have gone to war in Europe.

[darthdavid]

6. MANNED SPACEFLIGHT

ONE HATES to see this dazzling technology go, but when one resolutely sets the romance aside, there's not a lot left. Thanks to decades of biological research, it's now quite clear that flying around the solar system is bad for one's health. Without the healthy stresses of gravity on one's skeleton, human bones decay just as they do during prolonged bed rest while muscles atrophy. Cosmic rays blast through spacecraft walls and human bodies, while solar flares will fry astronauts as diligently as any nuclear bomb. I won't mention the fact that spacecraft are inherently rickety and dangerous, because that's a major part of their attraction.

There is little point in stepping onto the moon, leaving flags and footprints, and then retreating once again. The staggering price of shipping a kilogram into orbit has not come down in decades. In the meantime, unmanned spacecraft grow smaller and more capable every year. Until we bioengineer ourselves to enjoy cosmic rays, or until we've got rockets that can lift a Winnebago made of solid lead, this technology belongs on the museum shelf.

And it's people like him that mean i'll never own a summer home on mars...

[SirNitram]

Ah, 'Manned spaceflight should be abandoned until we can do it perfectly'. Except it will never be perfect without more work. Of course, people rarely understand this.

[Slartibartfast]

6. MANNED SPACEFLIGHT

ONE HATES to see this dazzling technology go, but when one resolutely sets the romance aside, there's not a lot left. Thanks to decades of biological research, it's now quite clear that flying around the solar system is bad for one's health. Without the healthy stresses of gravity on one's skeleton, human bones decay just as they do during prolonged bed rest while muscles atrophy. Cosmic rays blast through spacecraft walls and human bodies, while solar flares will fry astronauts as diligently as any nuclear bomb. I won't mention the fact that spacecraft are inherently rickety and dangerous, because that's a major part of their attraction.

There is little point in stepping onto the moon, leaving flags and footprints, and then retreating once again. The staggering price of shipping a kilogram into orbit has not come down in decades. In the meantime, unmanned spacecraft grow smaller and more capable every year. Until we bioengineer ourselves to enjoy cosmic rays, or until we've got rockets that can lift a Winnebago made of solid lead, this technology belongs on the museum shelf.

And it's people like him that mean i'll never own a summer home on mars...

Because, you know, manned spaceflight could be bad... for spacemen, not us. So why does he give a shit if someone WANTS to go to space? They can always recover later, and it's THEIR health

I agreed with points 1 to 5 (mostly) but this one is like, WE SHOULD BICYCLES BECAUSE CYCLISTS CAN FALL OFF AND GET HURT!

[darthdavid]

And it'll be reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy useful to launche winnebagos made of solid lead into space...

[Drooling Iguana]

And it'll be reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy useful to launche winnebagos made of solid lead into space...

Well, what else are we going to do with them?

[Darth Wong]

Is his list of bad technologies really so onerous? Let's look at it:

1. Nuclear weapons (because they're dangerous)
2. Coal-based power (because it's a polluting nightmare)
3. The internal combustion engine (see above)
4. Incandescent light bulbs (hopelessly inefficient)
5. Land mines (because they continue to fight wars after the wars are over)
6. Manned spaceflight (because it's dangerous and inefficient)
7. Prisons (in favour of tracking collars)
8. Cosmetic implants (because they're gross)
9. Lie detectors (because they don't work)
10. DVDs (because they're delicate, prone to delamination, and capable of disabling the player's fast-forward button so you can't skip past FBI warnings and commercials)

Of his list, I can think of only a few entries which are truly objectionable: prisons and DVDs. His idea of replacing prisons in favour of tracking collars is idiotic; I don't want criminals freely roaming society for many reasons. And his complaints about DVDs are stupid; they are not perfect, and something better will replace them someday, but they are vastly better than videotape, so they represent movement forward and cannot be seriously classified as a bad technology.

As for his other entries, the first 4 entries are motivated by environmental concerns, the 5th is motivated by the genuine dangers posed by landmines (although a timed self-disabling landmine would solve this problem without taking away a crucial defensive technique from land armies), and like it or not, manned spaceflight is seriously inefficient. While I don't agree with his entire list by any means, I think it's out of line to bash him as some kind of idiot based on this list, particularly since it was a self-described "irreverent" (read: semi-serious) list anyway.

[Vympel]

(although a timed self-disabling landmine would solve this problem without taking away a crucial defensive technique from land armies)

I'm pretty sure these landmines exist- however they're probably more expensive. An interesting study would be comparing the cost of producing these land mines to the cost of clearing regular land mines after the war. There's also the problem of defects- small munitions like landmines tend to have significant failure rates (cluster bombs have an especially dangerous, if not high, dud rate).