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Salaam Pax is covering the story of how his friend, Baghdad photo blogger “G” was knocked about by US soldiers. Those in the know around the blogosphere have enjoyed “G’s” candid shots around Baghdad. Here at Samizdata we don’t take kindly to our fellow bloggers getting roughed up. So whoever did it, go and apologize to him. NOW! Well, I’m waiting! August 18th, 2003 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Many of you probably know Burt Rutan drop tested the second stage of his suborbital passenger spaceplane on August 7th. You might be interested in some of the details of this historic event. White Knight, the first stage, was piloted by Brian Binnie with Cory Bird as co-pilot. SpaceShipOne flew with Mike Melvill at the controls. The flight report states:
The test flight time was 1.1 hours for White Knight and 19 minutes for SpaceShipOne. The biggest thing between them and a first suborbital private launch on the Wright Brothers First Flight Anniversary in December is a pile of US Government forms. These will hopefully be processed in time as the bureaucrats involved are, from what I have heard, doing their best within what the system allows. The process was begun very late… I will not go into details as I believe Rand Simberg may have discussed this earlier in the summer. August 17th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was probably one of the first in Europe to hear about the US blackout. I’ve customers in Manhattan. One of them rang me in Belfast as soon as she determined not only her Upper West flat, but also her Chinatown server rack were both affected. She has a big UPS but no backup generator. It just isn’t feasible for a facility her size. I advised an immediate controlled shutdown. It seems government officials were announcing “this wasn’t a terrorist incident” almost before people like my customer completed their emergency procedures. I found and still find this strange. It may well be true. It probably is true, but the haste to discount the possibility was unseemly. Terrorism and sabotage are not necessarily spectacular events. It doesn’t take a bombing or an armed attack to bring down a power grid. In 1964 the East Coast power grid came down all by itself. It was due to a cascade of protective shutdowns after a “First Cause” failure. That may be the case this week as well, but we don’t know yet. A sudden reversal of power flow on the Lake Erie power loop occurred instants before the cascading failures began. That is sufficient information to tell us absolutely nothing. Thus unarmed with facts, I will now sally forth into the vacuum of hard data and suggest some attack scenarios. The Saboteur. Someone with appropriate knowledge may have penetrated a targeted power facility and simply thrown a few switches. A “mole” at a power station would be best, but power stations are not Fort Knoxen. A trained agent could probably get in and out of some “weakest link” facility somewhere without being detected. Does anyone remember the incident of November 11, 2001 (see Charleston Daily Mail, “Guard Chases Men Near Power Plant”) during which a security guard slugged a person attempting to enter power plant grounds from the river? The Hack. Someone could have cracked a power company control system and “adjusted” a few things. I once authored software systems for control of large building complexes. Most such systems have queues of time based actions. If an attacker penetrated several systems, they could insert minor events synchronized to milliseconds. Even the actual queue insertions could be handled by stealthy, pre-positioned “Trojan Horse” programs. An innocuous looking message could trigger the countdown sequence. The trigger could be sent from anywhere on the planet. Perhaps the Microsoft worm was a diversion. Each event on it’s own would be insignificant, but the sum of all could be a big problem. A trail might be left, but it would be difficult to uncover if there was a dispersed attack. If only one site were involved it would be much easier to find evidence both because the source of the First Cause would be pin-pointed and because the event itself would be out of the ordinary. If the attackers were moderately good they would leave a trail only discoverable by computer forensics. The critical computer log entries would be gone unless printed on paper as they occured… or if they were intended to be found. These scenarios are an intellectual exercise. Taking down a power grid is an annoyance but doesn’t accomplish anything in and of itself. There has been no “other” event connected to it. No claims of holding American infrastructure under threat. No major attack during the early blackout confusion. No operational movements and pre-setting of people or material… hmmm. Just thought I’d keep y’all worryin’ over there! August 16th, 2003 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The DOD announced a site for a new US missile defense system today: Adak Island. This is exactly where I expected the first 21st century land-based ABM system would go. It is the most likely of two well placed islands in the Aleutians Chain extending south and west from Alaska. Adak Island is an old NSA Cold War listening post and has a military airfield. It also just happens to sit almost exactly on the great circle route on which a North Korean based ICBM must travel to reach American soil. The DOD release doesn’t mention that little tidbit. You’ve heard it first on Samizdata. August 15th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The American Liberty Foundation has an hilarious advert in progress called “Suzie and the Senator” which you can listen to here. They have previously produced some of the best Second Amendment adverts that have ever aired and are now targetting Washington DC with intent to Down Size. If you like what you hear, you may make a donation via the website. It is up to you to ensure “Suzie and the Senator” and ALF’s other marvelous adverts go on the air. August 7th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
According to Fox News, the FBI has released a new list of “things that can be used as weapons”. Airport security personnel are being briefed on how to spot the new no-no’s. I am certain we are all pleased the FBI are on their toes. In a mere two years they have discovered hidden knives and other weapons are available in martial arts catalogues. I’m sure we will all breathe easier knowing we are now completely safe. I am of course being facetious. The list is inadequate and will always be so. They could perhaps force us to check everything at the ticket counter and fly naked. That certainly would limit the possibilities for smuggling knives on board. While the idea does have its’ charms and would certainly ease the boredom of long transoceanic flights, it would be insufficient. There is an old adage: “There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous people.” In the hands of a trained warrior virtually anything is a deadly weapon quite capable of intimidation of the cowardly. One can do terrible things with bare hands. So let’s get real guys. You are wasting your time and ours at the gate. You will fail to spot the terrorists or their weapons. They will do something you have not thought of. They will get on board a number of airliners again one day. They will imagine they can intimidate an airliner full of Americans into submission again… and we, the flying public will then tear them into pieces too small for burial. There is a field in Western Pennsylvania that shows who the truly dangerous people are. August 7th, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Philip Lynds, a New Zealander and outsider to the theoretical physics community has recently had his theory on time published. No less a quantum mechanic than Dr. John Wheeler has weighed in on his side… at least to the extent of considering Lynd’s ideas fresh and of great interest. If Lynd is correct, we’ve been following a misconception of the nature of time since philosophers first put quill to papyrus. Read about it here. If anyone knows of a pre-print of the Lynd paper floating about the net, please inform me. I’d love to read it. August 6th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s a quick quiz for you… I’ll post the answers later on. 1) Whose idea was the Department of Homeland Security? 2) Who suggested the US use pre-emptive action against States harbouring WMD? Answer: Well, one person got very close, Gary Hart was indeed involved with both of these. These two items and a whole bunch of others are part of the final report “Road Map For National Security: Imperative For Change, PhaseIII”. This was a bipartisan two year commission which completed its’ draft final report (from which I am working) Jan 31, 2001. President Bush and his team had barely moved into their offices at the time. The commission was co-chaired by Hart and Rudman and was tasked with a total systemic review of US National Security. August 4th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
While I’m on subjects Astronomical… don’t forget to keep an eye on Mars. On August 27/28 it will be at its’ closest approach to the Earth in recorded history. Calculations show humans have not had a Mars show this good in perhaps 50000 years. It is hard to be certain because chaos takes its’ toll when you run the solar system backwards that far. This close approach is called an “Opposition”. It means the Earth and Mars are both in a line with the Sun and on the same side. It happens once every year when the Earth on its’ inner, faster track around the Sun catches up with the dawdling outer track Mars. The orbits of Mars and Earth are both slightly elliptical so the distance between the two varies with where the two bodies are on their elliptical paths. When Mars is at its’ closest to the Sun at the same time Earth is at its’ farthest, we have especially good views. The one coming up later this month is spectacular. This does not mean you will see a Martian disk with your unaided eye. It does not even mean you will see views like a Hubble telescope from that cheap refractor you got for Christmas when you were aged twelve. However, if you have any amateur astronomer friends, they may be acting like giddy twelve year olds for the next two months. They will certainly be showing up at the office with bleary eyes and silly grins. They will see detail they have never dreamed of seeing before. Of course there might be a global dust storm just after Opposition… in which case they will stare at the largest blurred reddish disk they’ve ever seen. July 31st, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
For the astronomically inclined there have been interesting goings on in the constellation of Scorpio these last three years. The star Delta Scorpii, a constant magnitude 2.3 for as long as anyone can remember, changed habits in July 2000. It has been a variable star ever since and not only that, seems to get a bit brighter on each cycle. It is now just a hair under becoming a first magnitude star. That means it is nearly bright enough to be seen in Manhattan and London. As to exactly what is going on, no one seems quite sure, but it shows the sky is a changeable thing even on a human timescale. July 31st, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tony Martin, a farmer jailed five years for the “crime” of shooting two burglars – but only managing to kill one – has been set free. His case is so notorious even the present government is considering changes in the law. On tonight’s news there was intimation of a new law to ban nonsense suits by criminals against defending homeowners. There may even be a broadening of the UK legal definition of self-defense. Under current standards in the UK, self-defense is almost non-existent, so anything is a vast improvement. Lift a jar or three to the heroic farmer Martin tonight! Later, when you visit the bog and return them from whence they came, do so in remembrance of the unmanned and unfortuneately surviving second thief. July 28th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Veteran space tourist Dennis Tito is ready to invest in a suborbital spaceship… but he is worried the FAA is going to regulate them like aeroplanes. He and others are worried this would kill the infant industry:
Perhaps one of our readers will drop in and expound on this at length. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge Jeff) This link from Xcor points to the written testimony. July 28th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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