At what altitude is the area above your land no longer considered your airspace? Something like 30 miles?
This time he's taking the words out of my mouth
Must have been while he was kissing you.
If we don't control space, how will we prevent a new Caliphate from arising?
Now that you're his roomie, can you please make Yglesias (and Ackerman) shave? I die a little inside every time I see a bearded face. Also, tell Ackerman we want gratuitous Joa/nna An/gel stories; they don't have to be true.
That's a really good point, M/tch. I had not even thought about the danger that the Space Caliphate would pose!
Not to mention the giant mutant lobster menace.
Wait, Ackerman's dating Joa/nna An/gel? What??
All those towers on the mosques -- a location for calling the faithful to prayer? Or concealed rockets?!
You could also encourage Sausagely and Ackerman to start dressing a little better. You know, like Ezra Klein.
Which reminds me, what the hell was up with that pro-GQ article Ezra put out recently?
That movie deal doesn't feel so impressive now, does it, Drymala?
Wait, Ackerman's dating Joa/nna An/gel? What??
He had a post saying that they were friends from back in the (I assume pre-porn empire) day. Which makes both him and her sound more interesting, no?
1: I think the traditional value has been `however high your anti-aircraft systems can work. Take it in the spirit of the way the US honored national airspaces once it had high altitude spy planes ....
13 to 10.
She has a punk/porn site which featured some great articles. Burnin//gAn//gel.com.
Oops, I probably should have googleproofed that.
Yeah, me too, all the way through. I think she's a Goth erotic model (or the owner of a Goth erotic modeling site). Anyway, I just decided I don't want stories. I'm sure shit gets creepy for her really fast.
So, in addition to lamenting the militarization of space, I'd like to say that Joa/nna An/gel looks like a really dirty girl.
Not Goth! Punk! I'd never read articles on a Goth porn site. Jesus.
18: I'm actually sorry I brought her name up. I did think it made both him and her more interesting. Can we not talk about her? I'm feeling a fair bit of guilt over this.
Didn't Ackerman write a post about it?
Ackerman doesn't know from militarization.
Not to mention the giant mutant lobster menace.
Yeah, those fuckers are mean.
21: Yeah, but she didn't. I don't think it was wrong of Ackerman to mention her or anything; he is (or was; I forget) her friend, and is well-placed to act appropriately. I'm not, really.
Clearly it's time for one of his housemates to up the ante and start dating Buck Angel.
I googleproofed the name, as people seemed to want it that way.
With what authority are we making these unilateral decisions?
We're the United States of fucking America, people. What more authority could we possibly need?
"goth erotic model" s/b hard-hardcore punk pornstar
So I probably shouldn't make a joke about m-fun and Burning Angel being invited to* our party.
* but not attending
It's odd how you can mix up those two, really. (goth model/ hardcore pornstar)
Non goth porn space militarization here:
http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/21-169.aspx
Remind me to crash your next party, guys.
But this is what they are worried about:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htspace/articles/20060926.aspx
Non goth porn space militarization here
Non-goth porn-space militarization here?
Non-goth-porn space-militarization here?
Non-goth-porn-space militarization here?
Non-goth-porn-space-militarization here?
If you want Goth porn space militarization links, they're NSFW. Lots of tentacles, though.
Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum et ad inferos. See 1 Coke, Institutes, 19th Ed. 1832, ch. 1, 1(4a); 2 Blackstone, Commentaries, Lewis Ed. 1902, p. 18; 3 Kent, Commentaries, Gould Ed. 1896, p. 621.
OK, so Justice Douglas said this ancient doctrine "has no place in the modern world." In dicta. Our American caliphate isn't really part of the modern world either.
I like the idea of ownership of distant galaxies changing faster than the speed of light as the earth turns.
23- It's even more dangerous when horseshoe crabs try to mate with the giant mutant lobsters.
Derail: Dunno how late I am on this, but Firefox 2 (beta) is now available for download. One of the neater features is the online spell-check. (Sausagely!)
For the theologically impaired, "at common law ownership of the land extended to the periphery of the universe."
LB, that's exactly why the US can assert ownership over all of space, not just that which is directly overhead at the moment the policy is adopted. This is an overbroad claim, though, because the US cannot claim ownership of the Southern Cross, for example.
(That's humor, by the way. 28 is exactly the point).
17: Yeah, when porn stars get involved with policy wonks, often creepos are attracted to them, and their porn careers crash and burn.
The assertion of control of space is a standard power play, compatible with the monopolar view. An idionatic translation would be something like, "So? What are you planning to do about it, suckers?"
Nuclear weapons in space, punk, hot throbbing gristle. We have it all here.
I'm just a lurker - the repartee is just too much for little ol' me. But, I wanted to bring to your attention the recently updated "mission statement of the United States Air Force."
Here it is:
"The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests - to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace."
Personally, I don't know how they are flying and fighting in Cyberspace, but I guess the "hands off Space - that's our property" is an example of delivering a sovereign option.
flying and fighting in Cyberspace
Tron was a documentary, man.
And do chime in whenever you feel the urge -- there's no need to spend all day here to contribute, and new people are always interesting.
I thought I remembered that the US was party to some treaty that barred the militarization of space.
Wikipedia says I'm not on crack:
In summary, the treaty initiated the banning of signatories' placing of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the treaty and it entered into effect on 10 October 1967. As of January 1, 2005, 98 States have ratified, and an additional 27 have signed the Outer Space Treaty.
new people are always interesting
This is a bit of an overstatement, unless "interesting" is meant to include not just interesting but also "interesting".
Although I'm sure Anna in Portland (was Cairo) is genuinely interesting.
Dude, check out her blog. She appears to be or to have been in the Foreign Service, which gives you major cool points, and has a kid (born in the early 90's) named Osama, which has to be extremely difficult.
Can we get a moratorium on new people named Matt, though. It seems like we have enough of those.
Having been one of six Elizabeths in a highschool class, I am loath to shun the banally-named.
re: 50
They're party to a treaty (they = the US administration) but they've also made several clear indications recently that they intend to press ahead with their militarization of space while simultaneously denying others the right to do the same.
Was 53 directed at me? I said she seems interesting. Comment 47 was very interesting, and funny. I just wanted to avoid blanket "all new people are interesting" generalizations, because they're not. I myself am fairly uninteresting for example. We also met some uninteresting people back when Labs wouldn't stop throwing rocks at the beehive.
I will be so pleased when we get back to an administration I don't have to be shiftily embarrassed about all the time.
Yeah, the Bushies don't seem to be too big on Article VI.
Ignoring treaties whe3n convenient is SOP. Who's going to do anything about it?
Ignoring treaties whe3n convenient is SOP. Who's going to do anything about it?
re:60
I know. We (Europe) are richer than you. We ought to just sanction your ass. But it's never going to happen. Sanctioning your ass would also mean sanctioning our (British) ass too -- since we (the Brits) are the wimpy kids holding your coat while you throw your weight around.
50: that treaty is only about nuclear weapons. Space has been militarized pretty much from the get-go; the first application was somewhere for ICBMs to fly though, the second was spy satellites. Pretty much as soon as that happened people started trying to figure out how to shoot down spy satellites. The Soviets built such a thing, but in the context of massive global thermonuclear war it wasn't hideously useful, and they ran out of money, so it went away. But pretending space isn't already militarized is senseless.
50: Breaking treaties is the American Way (TM)
New people have to prove their worth.
Who was pretending, Jake? We were talking about unilaterally taking over space. And if we want nuclear weapons up there, we'll put them up there.
See, this is why I just now got nerve to actually comment. (I read this site every day compulsively)I am afraid of all of your coolness. My teenagers constantly remind me how completely out of it I am. And now have to impress B. w-lfs-n as well. It's just too much. anyhow remember the airforce may fly in here and fight you if you contest America.
But Cyberspace, man? Is this Press Enter stuff or crack Seal Teams in hobbit disguise at WoW?
67: Some of us (ok, at least one occasional poster) aren't cool at all. If that doesn't throw you off though, by all means stick around for the fruitbasket.
67: Some of us (ok, at least one occasional poster) aren't cool at all.
At this point I'm not sure unf qualifies even for "occasional poster".
Who was pretending, Jake? We were talking about unilaterally taking over space. And if we want nuclear weapons up there, we'll put them up there.
OK, maybe I'm not looking at the right policy. What I read said that the US should go for the same level of dominance in space that it has on the oceans and in the air, and that we should oppose new treaties to limit further militarization of space. This is a minimal change from what we currently say or do, with the exception that we might now admit that anti-satellite systems would be useful to have. Which was obvious to anyone who thought about it before.
68: Cyberspace is like russian organized crime stealing your credit card numbers, but the USAF screwing with your military's networks.
These may help define the threat that the USAF is trying to counter
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/china/articles/199
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20010910.aspx91206.aspx
http://www.strategypage.com/onpoint/articles/20010719.asp
TLL: they might, except the first two are broken links for me, and teh third not so relevent. Nobody is denying that the general militarization of space is a possibility, or that it opens some scary scenarios. The point is, at this juncture there is absolutely nothing of substance to be gained by this sort of sabre rattling, and lots to be lost.
Two of the three links you put up, TLL, did not work for me (page not found) - guess the Chinese had already hacked them.
Regarding the article (the third link), it says:
"Cyberspace becomes a critical theater of war. A military website I visit got hacked last weekend. The attackers claimed to be Chinese. The webmaster says he can't confirm the attackers' claim, but the site is critical of China's handling of the EP-3 incident. Small-scale information warfare? Who knows. However, a concerted digital attack on the U.S. stock exchanges is an act of war. "
Whoa. A concerted digital attack on the US stock exchanges? Has this actually happened?
One of the problems with the Bush administration is that so much of what they do is ill-intended that if any of it is justifiable, it will get lost in the shuffle. Shitheads call this "Bush-hatred" as though it were a psychological problem, but his administration and his supporters have pumped out such a flood of malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, incompetence, disinformation, misrepresentation, fraud, meanness, bigotry, self-aggrandizement, bullying, fakery, and so on that rational people have stopped looking for the pony amidst the shit.
I apologize for the broken links. They were in response to the "fighting in cyberspace" aspect of the USAF mission statement. The thrust of the article was that the Chinese have active programs that test the defenses of not only military sites, but commercial as well. The Chinese recognize that our strength is in our economy, not a little bit of which is net centrered. The USAF is grabbing that particular mission before anyone else in DoD does.
As for space militarization, IIRC, Neil Armstrong was picked to be the first man on the moon because he was no longer in the military, as most of the asronauts were.
As oppossed to astronauts.
Link here
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htspace/articles/20050519.aspx
rational people have stopped looking for the pony amidst the shit.
Have they also stopped caring if there is a pony amidst the shit? "Whatever it is, it must be bad, and I don't care if it isn't?"
Basically, the idea you want us to consider is that this one time the Bush administration is OK, even though what they're doing seems clearly to be another part of a well attested, consistent, multipronged powergrab in the areas of civil liberties, separation of powers and governance, and international relations. I'll oppose it right now, and if someone wants to bring it up again after Bush is out of office, we can talk about it then.
You do seem to have this habit of arguing your points in a vacuum, Jake. TLL has his cards more or less on the table now -- he's a McCain hawk, I think -- but I have no idea whewre you're coming from. For me, certainly, my mistrust of Bush trumps anything defenders of the administration might say, because Bush is the immediate threat to me and mine. He and his coterie really want to remake the US entirely in ways I find abhorrent.
Anna who used to be in Cairo is hardly a n00b. Don't condescend her away, w-lfs-n!
72: Yeah, I figured the Chinese. Like, "Hmm, how can we piss off the Chinese in some laughably belligerent way?"
"How about we bomb one of their embassies?"
"No, I mean, how can we piss them off in some laughably belligerent way that we haven't tried already?"