Does giving up expectations of control necessitate giving up expectations of agency? Is a loss of control equivalent to a loss of agency?
Month: June 2016
The Role of Civil Liberties in the Fight Against Terror – The Atlantic
Source: The Role of Civil Liberties in the Fight Against Terror – The Atlantic
Politicians who want to violate civil rights to combat terror miss a vital point—if they strip them away, they’ll be equally defenseless.
A congressional investigative body springing from the impulse to consider members of major religions suspect because of words in their sacred texts ought to terrify folks on the religious right
America’s terrorist watch list is an opaque abomination. … It is already a scandal that a list like this can prevent a person from flying, as if moving about the country is a privilege, not a right. And now, Democrats are proposing that being on a secret, due-process free list should strip people of a constitutional right.
Although America can doubtless improve its approach to counterterrorism, its citizens, particularly its political leaders and television personalities, should take much greater care to avoid responses that are counterproductive or that infringe on civil liberties, because imprudent reactions to terrorism can cause far greater harm to the United States than lone-wolf jihadists.
My Dinner with Peter Thiel | Vanity Fair
Source: My Dinner with Peter Thiel | Vanity Fair
A window into the secret reality of Silicon Valley.
These aren’t the kind of people who simply retire on a beach … aren’t the patient type.
Should he succeed in destroying Gawker, Thiel won’t simply have silenced a site that he doesn’t like. He will have triumphantly instructed other thin-skinned, mega-wealthy people on how to silence journalists that write negatively about them. In the era of Donald Trump, there are few more chilling lessons.
Berners-Lee: WWW is spy net • The Register
Source: Berners-Lee: WWW is spy net • The Register
Inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned that the internet has become the “world’s largest surveillance network.”
“The problem is the dominance of one search engine, one social network, one Twitter for micro-blogging. We don’t have a technology problem; we have a social problem.”
– Sir Tim Berners-Lee
The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers | War Is Boring
Source: The U.S. Navy’s Big Mistake — Building Tons of Supercarriers | War Is Boring
The Pentagon behaves as if aircraft carriers will rule forever … they won’t
The Navy is developing a new class of supercarriers that cannot function properly, and has designed them to launch F-35 fighters that are not ready to fly their missions. This is all happening during an era of out-of-control budgets, which bodes poorly for American sea power and leadership ahead.
“If our fleet of small numbers is so fragile that it cannot afford the loss of a single ship due to budgeting, how will it survive the inevitable losses of combat?”
– Commander Phillip E. Pournelle
new anti-ship missiles “put U.S. forces on the wrong side of physics,”
– Andrew Erickson, U.S. Naval War College
In a 1982 congressional hearing, legislators asked him how long American carriers would survive in an actual war.
Rickover’s response? “Forty-eight hours,” he said.