People want to believe medical science gives us, at any given moment, the best of all possible worlds.
And of course, the best of all possible worlds must have its enemies: the quacks who sell unproven snake oil.
So let’s look at some facts.
As I’ve been documenting for years, the medical cartel has been engaged in massive criminal fraud, presenting their drugs as safe and effective across the board—when, in fact, these drugs have been killing and maiming huge numbers of people, like clockwork.
I’ve cited the review, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”, by Dr. Barbara Starfied (Journal of the American Medical Association, July 26, 2000), in which Starfield reveals the American medical system kills 225,000 people per year—106,000 as a direct result of pharmaceutical drugs.
CNO Actual has arrived, more or less, at the same point I defined in 1992. That was the year when I was nearly fired by an outraged mob of Navy Captains for daring to suggest, in the Joint Strategy Board or whatever it was called, that we needed to drop at least two carrier battle groups (as I recall we had 13 at the time), and focus instead on a distributed expeditionary Navy that increased amphibious and littoral capacity from under 10% to just over 30%.
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Below are the references. I wrote to various CNOs over the years, receiving only one response from N-85, signed by a Marine Corps Major General who told me, in essence, “go spit in the ocean.”
I am certain of two things. Yes, we need a 450 ship Navy. No, CNO has no one that can do that and simultaneously engineer the necessary 30% cut in the Navy's budget over 4-6 years. CNO has found the words. Now, can he actually devise and execute a plan to make it so? I doubt this very much. Certainly this is a righteous mission I would be glad to help with.
The orginal shorter version was written in 1999 with help from Ron O'Rourke at CRS and Norman Polmar at Janes. Accepted for publication by USNI Proceedings in that year, it was withdrawn by author after they kept postponing publication in favor of articles from Admirals.
This is a draft updated version that brings in the knowledge I developed in the 1990's and then presented to the US Army Strategic Studies Institute, on the four threat classes and the four forces after next. It adds the 10 high-level threats from 2004 integrated into a holistic analytic model in 2006. A tiny handful of us have been preparing for this day. We know how to win over Congress, the vendors, and the increasingly anti-military public. We know how to nurture the larger DoD context within which a 450 ship Navy is affordable and achievable.
Around the world, 768 million people don’t have access to safe water, and every day 1,400 children under the age of five die from water-based diseases. Designer Arturo Vittori believes the solution to this catastrophe lies not in high technology, but in sculptures that look like giant-sized objects from the pages of a Pier 1 catalog.
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His stunning water towers stand nearly 30 feet tall and can collect over 25 gallons of potable water per day by harvesting atmospheric water vapor. Called WarkaWater towers, each pillar is comprised of two sections: a semi-rigid exoskeleton built by tying stalks of juncus or bamboo together and an internal plastic mesh, reminiscent of the bags oranges come in. The nylon and polypropylene fibers act as a scaffold for condensation, and as the droplets of dew form, they follow the mesh into a basin at the base of the structure.
Yay for the Smithsonian! They are making available files to reproduce historical items on 3D printers for teaching purposes. Excellent use of 3D printing!
Smithsonian x 3D is a platform that provides teachers and educators access to a wide variety of 3D materials and artifacts stored in the popular Smithsonian museum. These materials can be used as the scaffolding to tell stories or send students on a quest of discovery.
Teachers can also print different 3D models from this site provided that they have access to a 3D printer and for many of the 3D materials, raw data can be downloaded to support further inquiry.
“The SIx3D viewer offers students the ability to explore some of the Smithsonian’s most treasured objects with a level of control that has never been possible until now. We hope this revolutionary level of access to the Smithsonian collections will spark your students’ curiosity and that the exploration of these objects will enable them to build lifelong observation and critical thinking skills.”
World economics seer Louis-Vincent Gave, of the Gavekal Partnership, has explained the pivotal meaning of the Crimea Incident in a larger context which he calls a looming “World War IV” —the conflict between the Shia and Sunni branches of Islam, in which Sunnis control larger reserves of oil, but Shia populations are restive in the very places where that oil is pumped. If a rising axis of Russia, Iran, Syria and Iraq takes hold – (the latter three Shia-ruled, currently) – then fear will tighten across the Sunni belt.
(* Clearly, in its decades of tension and expense and geopolitical importance, the Cold War was a tepid-simmering “World War III.”)
Tensions will drive arms sales and raise oil prices, which is the only condition under which Russia prospers. U.S. efforts to sap the strength of that alliance make a major reason for the Obama Administration's peace efforts with Iran… which Vladimir Putin will try to wreck.
It is also a good reason to ponder whether Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan — himself politically embattled — might do the one thing that would settle matters in Syria… sending in the Turkish Army. Even with the excuse of humanitarian reasons, it would be risky. (The threat to Russia's Tartus naval base would raise tensions to stratospheric levels, though.)
The real locus of what-if pondering must zero in on Saudi Arabia. Are they sufficiently unnerved by the Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria axis… and simmering problems with their own restive Shia populations… to decide upon a change in policy? To back off from their blatant efforts to manipulate and poison American political processes, for example, and to instead meddle in more constructive ways?
We learned on March 26, 2014 suggesting that the German search vendor Intrafind has been looking for the next big thing. The company may have found it, and we expect that this low profile vendor will be plugging into the Elasticsearch power cable. Wikipedia already has, joining hundreds of other firms looking for a solution to doggy indexing in some other open source centric solutions.
Elasticsearch repackager SearchBlox has rolled out Version 8 of its hosted Elasticsearch system, according to Timo Selvaraj, Co-Founder/VP Product Management of SearchBlox.
As if these two recent developments were not enough, GoveWizely, a Washington, DC engineering services firm, has added Elasticsearch to its arsenal. GovWizely, operated by Erik S. Arnold (yep, that’s my boy) has moved adroitly to capitalize on the surging interest in Elasticsearch’s high performance system.
Contrast Elasticsearch’s rise as the go to open source enterprise search system with the struggles of other open source search vendor and some commercial outfits. LucidWorks has ingested $2 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. Elasticsearch has received $34 million in funding. Parity, right?
Not so “fast”. (A gentle nod to the fascinating proprietary system shoe horned by Microsoft into SharePoint.) Elasticsearch seems to be catching up to LucidWorks or winning the critical struggle for developers. Here’s the Elasticsearch pitch:
