Filed under: Government, Heinlein, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, tech
Not quite a year ago I wrote about the Raytheon Sarcos powered exoskeleton, which was a major step towards the Powered Armor of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Well, now there’s some competition:
HULC
Dismounted Soldiers often carry heavy combat loads that increase the stress on the body leading to potential injuries. With a HULC exoskeleton, these loads are transferred to the ground through powered titanium legs without loss of mobility.
The HULC is a completely un-tethered, hydraulic-powered anthropomorphic exoskeleton that provides users with the ability to carry loads of up to 200 lbs for extended periods of time and over all terrains. Its flexible design allows for deep squats, crawls and upper-body lifting. There is no joystick or other control mechanism. The exoskeleton senses what users want to do and where they want to go. It augments their ability, strength and endurance. An onboard micro-computer ensures the exoskeleton moves in concert with the individual. Its modularity allows for major components to be swapped out in the field. Additionally, its unique power-saving design allows the user to operate on battery power for extended missions. The HULC’s load-carrying ability works even when power is not available.
There’s also a video of the thing in action.
Now, this is not Powered Armor. Not even close. In fact, it doesn’t even provide support or enhancement for the arms – just the legs. The “load carrying ability” is nothing more than a extendable arm from the back of the unit, which is worn like a backpack – you could do the same thing with any kind of backpack rig.
That said, this is a very interesting piece of equipment. It is slimmer and more universal than the Sarcos system. It packs into a bag the size of a decent sized backpack, and can be unfolded and put on in about 30 seconds. Without the batteries, it weighs about 50 pounds. (I wonder what the battery load is?) As noted, it is worn like a traditional backpack when in use, the main unit looks to be only 4 or 5 inches thick, allowing for another more normal backpack to be put on over it. It will allow the user to run for prolonged periods at 7 mph, with bursts up to 10 mph, and seems more flexible than the Sarcos system. In fact, it looks like it wouldn’t be much worse in terms of limitations than the metal-sided knee brace I used to wear while doing SCA combat, and a lot better than the armor most people wear for such activity. If it actually works as shown, this would extend the functional exertion period of your average soldier considerably, as well as increasing their capabilities in terms of weight carried and speed of movement.
Beyond the purely military applications, I can easily see this sort of system in use to assist those who are partially disabled, as well as in some employment positions.
I doubt that we’ll see these units on the battlefield anytime soon. But they remind me of the early aeroplanes – those rickety and somewhat jerry-rigged structures which barely flew. They were of only marginal use in WWI. But look how far they developed by the end of WWII.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Terrorism, Violence, YouTube
This is what I was afraid would happen.
And it makes me, well, worried. Very worried.
Prompted by 9/11, we watched the fairly rapid curtailment of civil liberties during the Bush administration (though supported & enabled entirely too much by Democrats in Congress). The Patriot Act. The expansion of FISA. Warrantless wiretapping by the NSA. Legal opinions which effectively gave the president dictatorial powers, and which allowed for torture of terrorism suspects.
Coupled with this was a dramatic rise in rhetoric on the right, to the effect that failure to get in line -completely- with the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” was called nothing short of treason. Anyone who objected to the “temporary curtailment of civil liberties” was likely to be painted as a traitor, or worse. It was not a good time to be a civil libertarian, or a liberal, and for eight long years many felt that we were under seige. I half expected more violence or even some excuse to suspend normal civil law and elections. And I was hardly alone.
But the elections were held, and changes were made. A new president, with a very different concept of the rule of law, was elected and has taken office. Granted, it was during the worst economic crisis we’ve faced in 70 years, but a lot of us had hope for the future. Hope that we could indeed start to work together as a nation.
Of course, the losers didn’t see it that way. Oh, some did, and there has actually been a substantial increase in the popularity and public support of Obama since the election and since he took office. But the core of the right has just gotten wound tighter and tighter, to the point where the rhetoric has taken on violent overtones. It started back during the election, with Gov. Palin’s characterization of Sen. Obama as “hanging around with terrorists” and the sentiments that engendered among her audience. Since then, it has only gotten worse.
Former UN Ambassador Alan Keyes (who has run for a variety of offices under the GOP banner) via YouTube:
“Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it’s true. He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”
And
“I’m not sure he’s even president of the United States, neither are many of our military people now who are now going to court to ask the question, ‘Do we have to obey a man who is not qualified under the constitution?’ We are in the midst of the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen, and if we don’t stop laughing about it and deal with it, we’re going to find ourselves in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war.”
The ‘civil war’ theme has been picked and run with elsewhere on the right. There were the Glenn Beck “War Games” scenarios recently, which played out the idea of widespread civil unrest leading to civil war. You’ve got Chuck Norris writing an insane column for a major right-wing website promoting the idea of secession. Here’s a bit of that:
For those losing hope, and others wanting to rekindle the patriotic fires of early America, I encourage you to join Fox News’ Glenn Beck, me and millions of people across the country in the live telecast, “We Surround Them,” on Friday afternoon (March 13 at 5 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. CT and 2 p.m. PST). Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation. You can host or attend a viewing party by going to Glenn’s website. My wife Gena and I will be hosting one from our Texas ranch, in which we’ve invited many family members, friends and law enforcement to join us. It’s our way of saying “We’re united, we’re tired of the corruption, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
Again, Sam Houston put it well when he gave the marching orders, “We view ourselves on the eve of battle. We are nerved for the contest, and must conquer or perish. It is vain to look for present aid: None is at hand. We must now act or abandon all hope! Rally to the standard, and be no longer the scoff of mercenary tongues! Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father’s name.”
“Cell groups”? Really?
Sheesh.
But that isn’t what worries me. Well, it does, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry here. What really worries me is that this kind of rhetoric has prompted a backlash on the left that was entirely too predictable: a desire to use the powers of government already put into play by the Bush administration to quash this perceived threat. Not everyone agrees, but just look at comments in any of these different discussions and you’ll see what I mean. There are a lot of people who are fed up with the nonsense from the right, who say “shit, man, we put up with Bush for 8 years and you’re whining after only 8 weeks of Obama??? Fine, let’s take care of this now, using the tools you gave us.”
It’s a completely understandable reaction. But it is also extremely dangerous. It is, in fact, a poisoned well, and we drink from it at grave risk to ourselves and our Republic.
Because if we use those tools – if we employ the power of the government to suppress the freedoms of our enemies – then we legitimize all that the Bush administration did. And if that happens, I’m not sure there is any turning back. And down that path lies madness: violence, martial law, suspension of the Constitution, the whole crazy nightmare. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Government, Politics, Terrorism
Offered, without need for additional comment:
George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution
Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
Here’s Neil Lewis’s summary in the New York Times:
“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.
More from the NYT piece:
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.
* * *
The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.
And from Newsweek:
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.
* * *
In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, NYT, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Survival
for another happy-happy Monday morning post about the economy! Yay! Everyone gather around, and let Uncle Jim tell you a story…
“We’re screwed.”
Did you like my story? Oh, you want details? If you insist.
No, I’m not going to talk about the Dow being down below 7,000 for the first time this century (it’s at 6,900 as I write). Nor about the news this morning of AIG’s additional $61.7 billion loss last quarter. Those are just symptoms.
To really understand what is happening, listen to this weekend’s episode of This American Life, part of which I touched on last Friday. It’ll help explain how and why the fundamental problem is a political one: no one really wants to face the prospect of doing what has to be done to clean up this mess, because it would mean too many powerful interests get burned. Rather, everyone – all the bankers, all the investors, the US and European and Japanese governments – is hoping beyond hope that they can finesse their way through this, and things will skate by on the thin ice and get better sometime, somehow.
Why do I say that? Because, as they said in the “Bad Bank” episode, nationalization of banking systems has been done before. In fact, it’s been done a lot of times. But usually in this or that small foreign country, and under the direction/demand of the IMF as a condition of aid. Nationalization means that the government steps in to protect the overall economy by forcing corrections in the banking system directly – that is, the government takes over (to some degree) the operation of the banks for a period of time. And this means that while the government involved usually has to assume some of the costs, that shareholders and investors take the worst hit. Oh, and the bankers who created the mess usually get tossed out if not tossed in prison. (An aside: someone commented recently that if this were happening in China, that people would be executed. I can’t say that I think that would be a bad idea.)
But the current problem is so widespread, and involves so much of the business/monied classes in the US and Europe, that nationalization is generally considered a ‘nuclear option’, a last resort to be avoided at almost all costs.
Well, we’re seeing what “all costs” means, right now. I do actually want to talk about AIG a bit here. You should read Joe Nocera’s column from last Friday, titled “Propping Up a House of Cards“. Here’s a couple of relevant excerpts:
If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks “will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect.” A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.
* * *
There’s more, believe it or not. A.I.G. sold something called 2a-7 puts, which allowed money market funds to invest in risky bonds even though they are supposed to be holding only the safest commercial paper. How could they do this? A.I.G. agreed to buy back the bonds if they went bad. (Incredibly, the Securities and Exchange Commission went along with this.) A.I.G. had a securities lending program, in which it would lend securities to investors, like short-sellers, in return for cash collateral. What did it do with the money it received? Incredibly, it bought mortgage-backed securities. When the firms wanted their collateral back, it had sunk in value, thanks to A.I.G.’s foolish investment strategy. The practice has cost A.I.G. — oops, I mean American taxpayers — billions.
Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.
OK, still, AIG was just a symptom, even as central a role as it plays in this fiasco. What was the cause?
It’s tempting to say “greed” and just leave it at that. But the problem is bigger than that. It’s “trust”. Trust that housing prices would continue to rise, regardless. Trust that people would act rationally, and only buy homes that they could afford. Trust that loan officers would only loan to people who were qualified. Trust that bank managers would execute proper oversight. Trust that banking executives would exercise due judgment. Trust that credit markets would operate to offset risk with reserves. Trust that rating agencies would rate risk appropriately. Trust that the invisible hand of the marketplace would keep excess in check. And trust that failing any of these, the govermental regulatory agencies would intercede and enforce statuatory limitations.
Well, you can see where trust has gotten us. Take nothing on faith. Over the last couple of decades, regulation was relaxed and business sought to push the boundaries further, creating new financial instruments which the average person can barely understand. The experts told us it was all hunky-dory, and we believed them. But we should have noted that they were the ones to benefit from the whole scheme, and been less trusting. Or, more accurately, we should have demanded that our elected representatives in government were less trusting. But they stood to benefit as well, with the corruption of corporate donations to campaigns and lucrative Board positions once politicians left office.
I must admit to being sorely tempted to come to the conclusion that we deserve what is happening. Very sorely tempted.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Weather
It’s been a warm week here in central Missouri. 40s early on, up almost to 70 midweek. Yesterday it was 60s. With sun, and the sort of rain you get in early spring.
Little wonder that the trees are starting to bud, jonquils break through the topsoil, snowdrops in full riot.
Naturally enough, it’s supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow.
* * * * * * *
NPR had a fascinating – and frightening – story this morning:
Taxpayer Beware: Bank Bailout Will Hurt
A single piece of paper may just be one of the most surprising and illuminating documents of the whole banking crisis.
It’s a one-page research note from an economist at Deutsche Bank, and it outlines in the clearest terms the kind of solution many bankers are looking for. The basic message: We should forget trying to get a good deal for taxpayers because even trying will hurt.
“Ultimately, the taxpayer will be on the hook one way or another, either through greatly diminished job prospects and/or significantly higher taxes down the line,” the document says.
The story called the piece of paper a “Ransom Note.” Or, as the presenter put it another way, “That’s a nice global economy you got there. Be a real shame if anything happened to it.”
Shakedown, baby.
* * * * * * *
But it may be too late for that, already. Surprising everyone, the US economy contracted at an annualized rate of 6.2% in the last quarter of 2008. Overnight, the government worked out a deal to own upwards of 36% of Citibank Corp. Consumer spending has dropped off radically as people react to the uncertain economy and start to pay down the historically high debt ratios – ratios which haven’t been seen since 1929.
And it’s not limited to just us. Japanese manufacturing output fell 10% just last month, on top of a 9.8% drop in December – a stunning drop, the likes of which has not been seen for over 50 years. That is a reflection of the drop off in demand globally.
* * * * * * *
There will be snow tonight and tomorrow. How much damage it does to the flowers and trees will remain to be seen. But it sure seems that spring is a long ways off.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Hehehehehe:
City to OK water-bill surcharge
The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve a surcharge on city water customers to help cover the cost of a $22 million court-ordered rebate to water customers.
The rebates are for fire hydrant costs that were wrongly charged to water customers. Fire hydrants are a basic city responsibility and have to be paid for from the general fund, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
OK, read that again. Got it? The city screwed up and charged water customers for basic city infrastructure. So they have been ordered to pay said customers back for the overcharges. And to do so they are going to slap a surcharge onto water bills.
Gotta love it.
As someone in the comments said:
How to put the scr*ws to people four times in a row.
1. Charge some customers for a city financial responsibility.
2. Pay the lawyers to defend the city for wrongfully doing so that will be paid for by all city water customers.
3. Charge the customers for the refunds they have been ordered to pay the customers who were originally charged as well as all city water users.
4. Charge the customers for the legal fees it’s going to cost the city to defend itself from the upcoming law suit for wrongfully charging all water customers for the city being ordered by court to refund the fees it wrongfully charged “some” of the customers.
Brilliant.
Jim Downey
(Via BB. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Failure, Government, ISS, movies, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Travel, UFO
This item made the news yesterday:
Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
Wow: two satellites have collided in orbit, destroying both. This is the first time such a major collision has ever occurred.
The satellites were Cosmos 2251, a Russian communication relay satellite that’s been defunct for a decade, and an Iridium satellite, one of a fleet of communication satellites launched by Motorola in the late 90s and early 2000s.
* * *
There have been collisions in space before, but never from such large satellites — the Iridium bird was about 700 kg, and the Cosmos was about the same — and never resulting in a total wipeout like this. Again, if I have my numbers about right, the explosion resulting from the energy of impact would have been about the same as detonating a ton of TNT.
I had to chuckle at this comment in that thread at Bad Astronomy:
But wouldn’t the impact have made a new, ever more powerful hybrid satellite? It would have an over-arching need to communicate and would do so in Russian. The only way to make it stop broadcasting a constant barrage at us would be if it mistook someone for its designer at Motorola and then. . . Oh wait, this isn’t Star Trek.
No, not at all. When you have two large satellites, each moving at something on the order of about 5 miles a second hit one another at nearly right angles, then you don’t get any kind of hybrid. You get a mess. As in a debris cloud of upwards of a thousand bits and pieces of space junk, some of it substantial, most of it still moving at thousands of miles an hour, and all of it dangerous.
I’ve written previously about the threat of real ‘UFOs’ to our space exploration. From the quoted article in that post:
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Right now the bulk of that debris cloud is about 250 miles higher than the ISS. But it will slowly drift closer (the effect of atmospheric drag – even at that altitude, it will slow anything in orbit, meaning that the item in question will drop to a lower orbit). At some point, this could be a real threat to the space station.
And beyond that, it is a further complication to *any* effort to get into something other than a low Earth orbit. Currently we have something like tens of thousands of bits of “space junk” that have to be tracked – and while all of it will eventually fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, it can present a real danger. If we’re not careful, we could encase ourselves in a shell of so much junk that it would basically eliminate the possibility of travel beyond our planet for decades.
Jim Downey
Via dKos, this story:
Report: ‘Dirty bomb’ parts found in slain man’s home
BELFAST, Maine — James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.”
According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9.
* * *
It says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.
Also found was literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika. Cummings claimed to have pieces of Hitler’s personal silverware and place settings, painter Mike Robbins said a few days after the shooting.
OK, skepticism is in order. We’ve seen a “terrorist threat” hyped too many times in the last 8 years for me to trust any initial reports of some guy who may have just had a bunch of random chemicals in his house. But the whole story seems to hold together reasonably well if you read it. Be interesting to see what comes out over the long run. Certainly, it seems more credible to me that it is being handled in what I would consider an intelligent and professional manner, rather than the Attorney General holding a press conference to claim that some huge plot has been foiled.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 