Modern Technology: Turning War into a Videogame

Will Saletan has an excellent article about this interesting topic in Slate on Feb. 12 called Joystick vs. Jihad. Below are a few choice quotes to give you the flavor of the article...

This is the future of warfare: hunting enemies abroad at little or no risk to ourselves. A year ago, at least 750 unmanned aerial vehicles were assisting American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; by now, the number is probably closer to 1,000. The Pentagon's budget and its Quadrennial Defense Review, released last week, propose a near doubling of our arsenal; within two decades, "45% of the future long-range strike force will be unmanned." ...

... In the Cold War, we used satellites to spy and intercontinental ballistic missiles to deter. We could track the Red Army level Moscow in minutes. But those devices won't work in the age of terrorism. You can't see an army, because terrorist don't have one. You can't threaten cities, because terrorists don't own any and don't care how many people die. Our lame attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden with cruise missiles in 1998 exposed the obsolescence of satellites and missiles. We need machines that can hunt and kill closer to the enemy...

...Drones fit the bill. In Kosovo, we used them to spy. After Sept. 11, we armed them with missiles. We hunted and blew away one al-Qaida operative after another—at least 19 hits in the last four and a half years, according to U.S. officials. Whenever a commando assault in unfriendly territory risked too many casualties, we sent a drone to do the job. We couldn't match terrorists' love of death, their willingness to take their own lives in the course of taking ours. But we could counter their expendable human killers with expendable inhuman killers. The joystick answered the jihad....

...Reluctance to kill was a big problem in World War II. By one military estimate, fewer than one in four American riflemen in combat pulled the trigger, and "fear of killing rather than fear of being killed was the most common cause." The Army tried to solve this problem by making its training exercises feel more like real combat. But what if we could do the opposite? What if we could make combat seem unreal? What if we could turn it into a video game?

Very interesting article that is worth a look in Slate.

DVR Undermines Olympics Ratings

Ratings of Games take dive for NBC�-�Sports�-�insider.washingtontimes.com

The real reason that the Olympics ratings are down compared to other television is the growing use of DVR. Many people watch their primtime shows while recording DVR so that they can fast forward through parts of the olympics they don't like (for me that would be all figure skating, biathlon, and some of the women's sports).

Because Nielsen doesn't yet provide reliale ratings for people who timeshift the primetime shows, it looks like olympic viewership is going down. However, I suspect that most people w/ DVRs (a growing share of the population) are simply watching the olympics during the pre-primetime hours and that total viewership is static compared with previous years.

Clinton Abandons Freedom of Speech

ISLAMABAD: Former US president Bill Clinton on Friday condemned the publication of Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) caricatures by European newspapers and urged countries concerned to convict the publishers.

What a coward. There's a reason that we, the United States, preserve and protect the freedom of the press - because it is essential to have as many different viewpoints as possible when operating a Democracy, as well as a basic human right (the right to free expression without fearing violence). But Freedom of Speech does not end becase somebody else is offended.

Now, I'm not saying the European Union is a democracy, because it's not. But civilized Westerners have been fighting for free expression since long before our Revolutionary War. The fact that Clinton would ask the US convict publishers shows that he really doesn't care about the values enshrined in our Constitution.
Clinton is backing away from American principles to appease the middle east and those in the West who sympathize with them. It really makes you wonder (again) whether he has any real principles at all, or is just a very talented opportunist.
Shame on him.

The Value of Lobbyists

The rise of the lobbyist is directly related to the poor pay on Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch. Every year or so, the Office of Personnel Management, the General Accounting Office, or the Congressional Management Foundation put out studies comparing the salaries of Hill Staff and Federal employees with their private sector counterparts. The results show private sector employees with the same education and background making upto TWICE as much money as their public sector counterparts.

Why does this matter? Because the people who do the legwork and have institutional memory leave the Hill or Executive Branch due to "status-income disequilibrium" (see Bobo's in Paradise by David Brooks). In other words, their salary is not commensurate with the prestige of the job they hold. So they look for a new position that pays more money. Thus Members of Congress thus lose the people who know best which policies and strategies have and haven't worked in the past.

However, Members still have access to those former staffers turned l0bbyists, and the former staffers still have access to their contacts including members. Without these former staffers turned lobbyists continuing to advise members, individual Congressmen and Senators would have to continually reinvent the wheel.

In short, lobbying provides a valuable service to Members of Congress, which is why they continue to flourish.

Oh- and the idea that a staffer can be bought off for a $50 lunch is absurd. Staffers value their positions, and want to protect their respective members, too much to do so.