Irony, meet paradox. The U.S. military, that paragon of technology-aided destruction, is setting its sights on environmental sustainability. Which isn’t a bad idea, given that the Defense Department alone uses a whopping 1.5 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S. (which, until recently, was the world’s single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases).
The Environmental News Network reports that the Army has begun working to reduce the carbon footprint at its bases, and is taking measures to cut its CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2015. Its efforts include spraying troops’ tents with foam insulation to reduce energy used for air conditioning (which, in places like Djibouti, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, can be a significant power-drain) and building combat training ranges out of recycled shipping containers.
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While Russian warships head to Abkhazia and arguments begin over who started it all, the conflict in Georgia has “paralyzed” scientific research in the country, according to Nature News. The director of the Georgia National Science Foundation said that 72 research projects, or 30 percent of all the foundation’s current work, have been halted because of the conflict.
In an example of terrible timing, the invasion hit smack in the middle of a new ramp-up in the country’s science-funding system, following a resurgence of young and skilled Georgian scientists. The GNSF had planned to double its national science budget next year, from $8 million to $16 million—which spells a lot of research and travel grants. But given the huge costs of post-war reconstruction (not to mention the hit Georgia’s economy will take from its loss of foreign investors), that money is now likely headed for recovery efforts.
Since we’re heaping on the bad news:
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As diplomatic relations with Russia plummet faster than a barrel over Niagara Falls, politicians and scientists are starting to worry about the effects the frosting relationship could have on our space program. As 80beats reported, the principle concern is the Russian Soyuz vehicle, which will be the U.S.’s only means of sending crew and cargo to the International Space Station once NASA retires the space shuttles in 2010.
Replacement shuttles won’t be available in the U.S. until 2015, which means that right now access depends on a $719 million deal with Russia to purchase rides on the Soyuz through 2011. On a larger scale, we’re looking at a Russian monopoly on sending humans into space—a leverage point that may affect the U.S.’s ability to take action against the country in the next few years.
The biggest Cassandra foretelling space trouble is Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who has announced that he “fears Russia’s aggressive action against Georgia may have some serious consequences,” such as “Russia denying us rides or charging exorbitant amounts for them.” Granted, it’s worth noting that Florida houses the massive Kennedy Space Center, and the money funneled into the state for space and research operations totaled $1.68 billion in 2006. Needless to say, a significant slowdown or axing of future missions due to political deadlock will put quite a damper on his state’s economy.
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We’ve covered the Torture Game, in which players can gratuitously torture a captive avatar to their hearts’ content. But the controversy over violent and potentially exploitative video games hit an entirely new level with Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, a free online game that lets players recreate the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School that resulted in 15 deaths (including the suicides of the teenage shooters).
MSNBC reports that the game “presents players with a low-res gaming experience that uses material culled from [the shooters] Eric Harris’s and Dylan Klebold’s own words, media reports and police documents.” Players are placed in the roles of the shooters and allowed to relive their last two days. No surprise, it’s sparked considerable uproar since its launch, so much so that the creator, 26-year-old Danny Ledonne, made a documentary about the aftermath.
Granted, while the Columbine game may be one of the most politically and emotionally charged, plenty of other games allow players to reenact national and international tragedies, from the JFK assassination to “September 12th,” which lets players send missiles into an Afghan Village. (For a list of these and other controversial games, go here.)
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Is the U.S. military’s overdependence on radar and indifference to UFOs a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists? That’s what the New York Times is claiming in an op-ed by Nick Pope, author of Open Skies, Closed Minds and the former head of UFO investigations for the British Ministry of Defense. Pope argues that NASA and the Air Force are ignoring potential national security threats by not investigating “UFO phenomena” such as a cigar-shaped craft that was reportedly sighted near the Channel Islands in 2007.
While he doesn’t explicitly say that these unexplained aircraft are of the invaders-from-another-planet variety, Pope claims that our skepticism towards anything “below the radar” makes us vulnerable to attack from human-made flying objects with which we’re unfamiliar (like oh, say, the secret invisible bombers that Al-Qaeda could be building in the Tora Bora caves?)
That the Times is suddenly handing the microphone to an avowed UFO believer seems a bit odd, particularly when you examine Pope’s history. Here’s a review from Booklist of Open Skies, which was a best-seller in the U.K.:
If Pope is correct, Earth is currently in the middle of an interplanetary war. He claims that while he was stationed at the “UFO Desk” of Britain’s Ministry of Defense, he studied UFO sightings as well as crop circles and cattle mutilations—all of which led him to the conclusion that the aliens are here, and they aren’t friendly. He believes it is time the British government and the world in general rally to confront the invaders. The author openly compares himself to Fox Mulder of TV’s X-Files in his struggles to bring forth the hidden evidence of the security danger to planet Earth… Although numerous incidents are cited, actual evidence is lacking, and logic is often absent from the author’s arguments.
Not exactly hard proof of anything other than the fact that Pope is good at spinning a narrative to win publicity. As fellow DISCOVER blogger Phil Plait put it:
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Americans love to hail our democratic system as the pinnacle of freedom and justice, the gold standard in the protection of human rights. But according to a new study by FSU political science professor Will Moore, countries with checks and balances systems in place are less likely to outlaw the use of torture.
The reason, Moore explains, is that a multi-faceted system of government makes it inherently more difficult to effect change:
“Checks on executive authorities are viewed as a positive attribute of liberal democracies,” Moore said. “Unfortunately, they are also associated with the continuation of the status quo. So this liberal democratic institution that at first pass one might expect to be positively associated with the termination of the use of torture is actually a hurdle to be overcome.”
After analyzing nine years of data from the CIRI Human Rights Database, which is based on Amnesty International and U.S. State Department reports, Moore found that other “traditionally democratic” aspects of government such as universal suffrage and a right to free speech increased a country’s chances of terminating the use of torture. They also found that 78 percent of the world’s governments used torture at least once during the last 25 years of the 20th century, and those who used it in a given year had a 93 percent chance of using it the next year.
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MSNBC has a review of “The Torture Game 2,” a game that is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Created by Carl Havemann, a 19-year-old in Johannesburg (who also graced us with “The Torture Game 1″), the game revolves around a limp, expressionless avatar strung up by his arms in a dark room. “Playing” consists of nothing more than torturing him with an array of repulsive paraphernalia including razor blades, ropes, spikes, guns, and, for the pièce de résistance, a chainsaw.
It’s fair to defend games like this by arguing—as many have—that they’re nothing more than escapist entertainment, and don’t translate into harm in the physical world (particularly a game like this that offers none of the realism of, say, Grand Theft Auto IV). And there’s evidence to support this point: To date, no definitive link has been drawn between playing violent video games and real-life acts of violence—in fact, some researchers have argued that violent games can even have developmental benefits for kids.
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Terrorism
The threat of terrorism is a fixture in the public consciousness, and scientists are doing everything from scouring the Internet to concocting vaccines to come up with ways of thwarting the next attack. Still, all the attention—and funding—given to preventing bioterrorism or dirty bombs may be based on assumptions that are at best overblown, and at worst flat out inane.
Nuclear Weapons
The number of nukes in the world—as well as the number of countries that have them—isn’t dropping any time soon, leaving scientists worried about the environmental fallout should one or more of them ever be used.
Military Technology
Can robots commit war crimes? It’s worth discussing, as robotic weapons technology continues to reach new levels of sophistication. Meanwhile, weapons advancements are emerging from labs as fast as scientists can generate them—with inspiration sometimes coming from the unlikeliest of places. Innovation hasn’t been restricted to deadly weapons—the non-lethal side has seen development of ideas from heat beams to laser guns to taser shotguns.
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