Comments Posted By crosspatch
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 70 Comments
I think the more likely result is going to be blogs going to moderated comments.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 28.07.2006 @ 16:50
Seixon (note spelling) has apparently been the victim of mistaken identity by Leopold et al. But because of this mistaken identity, these people have managed to expose themselves for what they are.
I wouldn't expect to see much out of Leopold in the future, at least not in any significant way. Johnson has managed to make himself a bit more irrelevant in all of this too. The behaviors being exhibited in all of this are just amazing. How embarrassing.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 26.07.2006 @ 14:48
A LAZY FRIDAY AFTERNOON MILLENNIAL INTERLUDE
And a note: My grandparents home had an "Edison" system to provide electricity for lighting and water pumping. I believe it was a 32 volt DC system but was replaced when the rural electrification program came about during the depression. Some of the old wires and insulators are still in the basement.
Their house was a Sears kit purchased by my great grandmother as a wedding gift and one of the first in the area with indoor plumbing.
Edison had more than an impact on our culture, he managed to define it.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 23.07.2006 @ 02:18
The discussion of which is better, ac or dc, is secondary to the concept of having generating stations (Edison's used DC, Westinghouse wanted AC) and running wires to people's houses allowing them to have electic lights and motorized water pumps that allowed indoor plumbing ...
But such things as recorded music (which needed no electricity on a mechanical device using wax cylinders) and his several other inventions define our culture today. And not just American culture but world culture.
Also, Frankin did not discover electricity. He suspected that lightning was electricity and proved it allowing him to invent the lightning rod which saved many from fire but hasn't really defined our culture as Edison's inventions have.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 23.07.2006 @ 02:06Italian physician Girolamo Cardano returned to the subject of electricity in De Subtilitate (1550)[1], distinguishing, perhaps for the first time, between electrical and magnetic forces. In 1600 the English scientist William Gilbert, in De Magnete, expanded on Cardano's work and coined the modern Latin word electricus from ηλεκτÏον (elektron), the Greek word for "amber", which soon gave rise to the English words electric and electricity.
He was followed in 1660 by Otto von Guericke, who invented an early electrostatic generator. Hiraga Gennai developed the elekiter in Japan in the mid 18th century. Other pioneers were Robert Boyle, who in 1675 stated that electric attraction and repulsion can act across a vacuum; Stephen Gray, who in 1729 classified materials as conductors and insulators; and C. F. Du Fay, who first identified the two types of electricity that would later be called positive and negative.
The Leyden jar, a type of capacitor for electrical energy in large quantities, was invented at Leiden University by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745. William Watson, experimenting with the Leyden jar, discovered in 1747 that a discharge of static electricity was equivalent to an electric current.
In June, 1752, Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Following these experiments he invented a lightning rod and established the link between lightning and electricity.
Oops, forgot recorded music ... he was the grandfather of the iPod too.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 22.07.2006 @ 00:21
Imagine a world without radio, without television, without nightlife, without movies. No internet, no computers, no space program, no culture as we know it today. That would be the world without Thomas Edison. The vacuum tube was discovered through experiments on the "Edison effect" of thermionic emission. The vacuum tube led to the amplifier which led to radio which led to the transister, the integrated circuit, the miroprocessor ...
First power plants, electrification ... we owe our entire culture to Edison.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 22.07.2006 @ 00:20
"My point is that it seems to be business as usual – no one willing to change so that problems such as you mentioned can be attacked from a different direction. This is the culture that many have commented on, including the 9/11 commission."
And I would counter that by saying there are some significant changes going on. Maybe not enough yet, but making major changes in intelligence operations in the middle of a very active period is difficult.
We are also stuck with a bunch of leakers someplace and that causes two problems. First, information has to be routed around "leaky" organizations and second, it makes it difficult to get agencies to share information if they fear the information will be leaked from the agency they are sharing with.
I have some degree of faith that these issues are being addressed, just not sure yet how effectively and I am not sure I want or need to know.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 21.07.2006 @ 00:17
"The real problem is that even if they( they being the CIA) were demonstrably corrupt /inept, our country lacks the realpolitik ability to eliminate them."
No, but they can mitigate the impact of them and I believe that is well underway. CIA is apparently being reconfigured around the NCS (National Clandestine Service) and will be a HUMINT heavy group. Other work that had traditionally been done by CIA/DI (Directorate of Intelligence) is either being moved under DNI (Director of National Intelligence)or pieced out to other groups.
Most of the people such as the VIPS and Plame, etc. worked for DI. It looks as if these departments are not being moved wholesale. New departments are being created at DNI and being staffed from scratch. The old departments at DI are then disbanded and the employees dispersed across the community where they are needed.
The net effect is that the knots of troublemakers are dilluted. So you have CIA/DI WINPAC group being replaced by DNI NCPC (National Counterproliferation Center) but the WINPAC people not being moved wholesale to NCPC.
Also, CIA is no longer in the business of providing the daily intelligence brief to the national leadership. That is also the task of DNI. So what is happening is a reconfiguration of the US intelligence community so that the past problems are mitigated but it takes time.
One part of the problem was that CIA had both a fairly significant collection opersation as well as being the central analysis point for information. It would be natural for a group doing analysis to favor their own collection product. In other words, if a judgement call was to be made and there is conflicting information, one might lean toward their own product in reaching a conclusion. Either that or they so hedge their analysis that they are "right" no matter how things come out. In other words, they produce useless analysis.
So now the analysis is moved up a layer and the collection groups feed into that. There is no locally produced collection product at DNI so the input can be weighed on its merit and an analysis provided.
Give it time. Things are changing, I believe for the better but it is going to take a while to take root.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 20.07.2006 @ 11:55
It doesn't matter how bright the people there are. Being bright or politically correct or whatever doesn't get you this kind of information. What ultimately gets you the kind of information you need is people helping you. Currently it is very much out of "fashion" to be pro-US in almost every part of the world. People would almost take pleasure in tripping up an intelligence operation. And I don't mean our own media, I mean across the globe.
Before we can go about infiltrating countries and governments and organizations, we need people who want to help us and see us as the good guys. The problem is that people growing up reading the papers overseas see us as always the bad guy. So instead we rely on foreign agencies to do it and share information, and then our media blows that and so even that cooperation stops.
There is really not much the CIA can do about it, I think, no matter what they do. It is more about the environment they are operating in than their competence.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 20.07.2006 @ 00:08
That is sort of what happens when you play the role of reacting to events rather than the role of setting the agenda. Right now Iran is setting the agenda and calling all the plays and we are playing defense. We can only hope we know what they are capable of. Times like these always favor the aggressor because everyone else is reacting their moves and the aggressor, of course, knows their own moves and capabilities in advance.
That is pretty much going to be the name of the game until we get the ball. Imagine a game of football where after the 4th down you get an automatic 1st and 10. That is what we keep giving Iran. We might be able to hold them most of the time but they are going to get some yardage sometimes and they will eventually score.
People have such short attention spans. Iran has been working towards this since 1979. They have been planning this for 30 years. They have had 30 years with of oil revenues to pour into preparations with almost no investment in their infrastructure. We haven't seen anything yet, I fear. Wait till the Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea cards are played.
Comment Posted By crosspatch On 19.07.2006 @ 21:36
