Gongol.com Archives: November 2024
November 3, 2024
Who's got the plan to shoot down evil drones?
One of the things that should land near the top of any list of problems that should keep thoughtful public leaders awake at night is the risk that someone is going to weaponize a remotely-piloted aircraft and use it to cause harm to a large gathering of people. Hampering efforts in this regard appears to be a dreadfully murky legal framework that doesn't appear to shed any of the much-needed light on who bears responsibility or authority to do anything about it. ■ The vast majority of drone applications are harmless or even helpful. But the lack of a framework for deciding how to do things like protecting large gatherings with some kind of anti-aerial defense is an unconscionable omission. A thing that is 99.999% good but that happens a million times still needs some kind of framework for addressing the bad. ■ This is one of the problems that emerges from letting our political debates be driven by individuals who are chronically dishonest, self-absorbed, and prone to fabulism. The more we let crazy talk set the agenda and crowd out real policy discussions, the more we hobble ourselves from preparing for the problems of the future. ■ Our problems don't get easier to solve just because we ignore them, nor because crazy talk gains more click traffic than sober debates. Making politics into a form of entertainment is an act of civic self-harm. ■ We have lunatics reviving long-debunked conspiracy theories about fluoride in drinking water instead of serious proposals to keep people safe from a threat like drone attack -- a threat that is obviously already serious (see how Russia has been using them to assault Ukraine) and utterly certain to become even more hazardous with time. There is a real cost to letting carelessness and unseriousness prevail in politics -- unfortunately, it's not always obvious what that cost is until it's too late.
China swaps crews at its space station
As part of its pursuit of a Moon base -- and probably quite a few other ambitions in space -- China has launched three astronauts into orbit to staff the country's space station. The launch was an impressive sight -- witness the reflexive grin on the face of the correspondent from The Australian in his video report from the launch. The noise, heat, and chest-rattling rumble of a large rocket launch are an incomparable sensation. But beyond any one launch, the direction of any national space program tells a lot about the country's ambitions.
Nigeria's death penalty threatens kids
CNN reports that 29 children, ages 14 to 17, could face the country's death penalty for participating in a protest over economic hardship. Nigeria should get more attention than it already does from America's news media, if for no other reason than that it is a country of 236 million people, making it the 6th largest in the world. When a country that large is experiencing a 30% inflation rate, it's a situation of increasing hardship on a very large scale. To put children in the potential peril of a death sentence over political protest is both newsworthy and morally unconscionable. AAnd while the treatment of those particular minors is a matter for serious legal protection, the conditions that lead to a per-capita GDP of $1,600 a year merit tough scrutiny from those who know anything about economics. That kind of poverty on that kind of scale is injurious to so much human welfare that fixing it ought to be both a national and an international priority.
A 550' tall building in Manhattan has no windows except for some glass panels at its entrance. This architectural curiosity began as an AT&T switching center, and has evolved into a role in other telecommunications-related duties since then. While it stands out for its height, the alert observer will note that there are windowless buildings in almost all cities of any size -- generally on the periphery of the downtown core. That's what the land-line phone system once required (and to some extent still does). In mid-major cities like Omaha, they're usually as close as possible to downtown without being close to any high-rent features like the local waterfront. In small towns like Stuart, they're usually a block or two away from the town square or Main Street. For those who travel to new places with some regularity, finding the old telephone building can be a fun puzzle to solve, since they're usually found near the most interesting parts of a town anyway.
