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The Military

The Jet Fighter Laser Cannon 464

Posted by kdawson from the back-of-the-shark-calculation dept.
fahrbot-bot sends in a Register piece about DARPA issuing the penultimate contract for what is intended to be a jet-mounted laser cannon. The Reg outdoes itself in a BOTEC involving downsizing to shark scale. "The US military will shortly issue a brace of contracts for 'refrigerator sized' laser blaster cannons. One of the deals will see a full-power ground prototype built which will be the final stage prior to America's first raygun-equipped jet fighter. ... If it scales down far enough, this would seem to put handheld HELL-guns within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small-arms. A 9mm pistol bullet has about 750 joules muzzle energy: a 5kg portable HELL-ray weapon would put out this much energy in a blast less than a second long. ... A dolphin can carry a human being weighing up to 100kg along for a ride. A thoroughbred shark in good training can surely match this. Thus, we seem to be looking at practicable head-[laser] output in the 20-kilowatt range."
Government

Submission + - Drug adviser sacked for cannabis claim (guardian.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
thespeech
thespeech writes: "The British Government's chief drug adviser, Professor David Nutt from the University of Bristol, has been sacked a day after claiming that cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy were less dangerous than alcohol. "Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London, published yesterday. "Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively." Nutt said he was not prepared to "mislead" the public about the effects of drugs in order to convey a moral "message" on the government's behalf, and that "if scientists are not allowed to engage in the debate at this interface then you devalue their contribution to policy making and undermine a major source of carefully considered and evidence-based advice."
This is not the first time that the British government has ignored advice from experts in making drug policy decisions.
Some are worried that this will discourage others from giving their opinions in a field where, apparently, honest scientists are to be seen and not heard."
Space

Submission + - Chinese Rocket Pioneer Died at 98 (xinhuanet.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, also known as the Father of Chinese Rocketry, died at 98 in Beijing. (Announcement in Chinese by Xinhua News Agency.) During the 1940s Tsien was one of the founders of Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. During the red scare of the 1950s the United States government accused Tsien of having communist sympathies. Tsien and his family were wrongfully imprisoned. Undersecretary of the Navy Dan Kimball tried to keep Tsien in the U.S. commenting "It was the stupidest thing this country ever did...he was no more a Communist than I was and we forced him to go." The Chinese government later exchanged him with American POWs captured in Korean War. Tsien deliberately left his research papers behind when he left the United States. He later kicked start the Chinese missile and rocket program, which has successfully developed products ranging from ICBMs to manned spacecraft. Tsien was also invited to visit the US after the normalization of Sino-US relationship. But he refused the invitation because the US government only offered a compensation without apology for his detainment. He has received numerous state honors in China before his death.
Government

Submission + - UK govt fires drugs adviser for telling truth 2

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "Professor David Nutt of Imperial College was chairman of the British government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs — until today. On Wednesday night, he gave a speech ahead of a paper noting that on the basis of harm, alcohol was far more dangerous than ecstasy or cannabis. Today, Home Secretary Alan Johnson has fired Professor Nutt, saying that "It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine them." Such as inconvenient matters of reality-based thinking, apparently. He did this just in time for the six o'clock news, and the press is up in arms. Channel 4 journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy notes with amazement that "nobody will come on to defend Alan Johnson. They all prefer to issue statements that can't be questioned." It's already being tagged the War on Science."

Comment Malaysia's targeted food isn't even their own (Score 1) 330

by thespeech (#29502565) Attached to: Malaysia Seeking to Copyright Food?
Much of the food that Malaysia is trying to copyright include dishes that Singaporeans have considered all along to be their own. For example, Hainanese chicken rice (which was apparently created by a guy from Hainan who set up shop in Singapore), "all kinds of laksa" (essentially noodles in spicy soup with prawns) and even chilli crab, which is apparently the dish the island is best known for (and never Malaysia). Many Singaporeans here believe this to be a response by the Tourism Minister to recover her country's injured pride after having been given a kicking by Indonesia over the dance incident.

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