True Agenda

Quote I found:

Climate eschatology really is the ultimate in big lie crisis politics. The far-left has failed so comprehensively to make the case for its vision of society and economy that the only thing left to do is to brazenly and repeatedly assert that the world will literally collapse unless we implement this otherwise indefensible vision.

I think most politics (to varying degrees) slips into this realm. Some more than others, but it's always useful to understand the other side's real agenda.

Aegis Success

From StrategyPage:

The U.S. Navy, capitalizing on the success of its SM3 anti-missile missile, wants to equip more ships with it. So far, the seagoing Aegis radar system has used SM-3s to knock down nearly 90 percent of the test missiles fired towards it. This includes shooting down a low flying space satellite. There are 18 U.S. Navy ships equipped with SM-3, and the navy would like enough money to equip all of its Aegis equipped ships (90) with the SM-3.

Plasma Rocket!

How cool is this?

Rather than heating chemicals and directing the resulting gases through high-temperature metal nozzles, VASIMR uses radio waves to create and speed up free-flying, electrically charged particles known as plasma. The concoction is then herded through nozzles made of magnetic fields, not metals like traditional rocket engines.

Russian Cyberwar

21st Century Warfare:

The Georgian embassy in the U.K. has accused forces within Russia of launching a coordinated cyberattack against Georgian Web sites, to coincide with military operations in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Probably a fairly easy thing to do knocking out your enemy's websites with denial of service attacks while at war. And probably just as easy to recover against.

I would be more impressed if Russia has accessed Georgia's defense network and done mischief.

The Long View

One of the best from Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."