h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The book made it very clear that every person has the right to enter the service regardless of disability. They had military and non-military options.

Federal service may be a term from the movie, but it seems to include the same idea of the book.

I don't neceisarily think we should change our way of granting the privledge to vote to the method shown in the book. The idea has some merit though.

I don't like pascifism. As individuals they're okay, but I do resent the fact that they're unwilling to defend their nation.

I'm having a real hard time typing. I burned my thumb, and I'm having to type one-handed while I'm waiting for the burning to stop.

Della, two-bit pointed out that soldiers not being able to vote was a situation from the book, not from the actual US. I was relieved to hear that

Two Bit, regarding pacifism I agree with you (although I think it is more important to defend what you believe in than your country. If Scotland decided to follow a political path I hated and fight for it they could kiss this potential soldier goodbye (not that they'd be missing much ).

I have no idea what a supercarrier is . I doubt the Royal Navy has any. I doubt the Royal Navy really needs any. Of course, if we dumped our pointless nuclear weapons arsenal we could probably afford one, but we have higher priorities (National Health Service, Public Services). I think we should have a referendum on the British nuclear arsenal, but then, I'm kind of going off topic here

Hope your thumb gets better, btw

Just read that and realised how stupid the "thumb" comment was. I would assume your thumb *will* get better. I should have said "hope it gets better soon"

I was refering to carriers that airplanes can take off and land from. My impression is that the Royal Navy only has those little carriers that you have to use with Harriers. We have a couple of them for the Marines.

Most of our carriers are carriers that can project sigifcant amounts of air power.

I accidently touched some metal on my pizza cooking thing when I took it out of the oven. I can still feel it burning. I hate burns because you actually have to treat the injury or the flesh will continue to cook. I'm not patient enough to hold the injury under running water.

Harriers are so cool, we only *need* little carriers

Burning your finger sucks! I didn't know you had cool it for a long time to prevent the injury getting worse. I'll bear that in mind the next time I sear the roof of my mouth with a pizza.

The meat will keep cooking for a little while. I think I may have carried it too far. I was using ice. Now I suspect the bottom part of my thumb hurts because of frost bite.

I just can't win for losing.

Naw. Ice is what you need. What I do is continue to keep it under ice until it stops hurting, or until I fall asleep. The cold keeps the circulation going, and helps heal it faster. It isn't actually cooking as you sit there - but the outer layers of your skin, which include all those nerves, are seared, and your pain nerves will continue to tell you they're burning, even when they're not. The longer you can keep the ice on it, the better.

Worst burn I ever had was when I worked in a McDonald's during the summer. I pulled the fry basket out of the fryer, shook it, and went to dump it out in the fry bin (where fries go to die.) I raised my arm just a little too high, and burnt my wrist on the ceiling of the fry bin, where the heat lamp sits. Even now, twelve years later, I still have a dark spot on my wrist.

Back to Starship Troopers... I really liked the concept of the powered armor, and we're not far away from being able to do that for real.

One of my friends and I are looking into armour making. He's largly in favor of simple stuff, but I've been looking into fully articulated stuff that it would be possible to put an exoskeleton onto. I don't have near the engineering knowledge to pull something like that off, but I hope I will later, and the plans come in handy.

About the pacifism, Heinlein was strongly opposed to pacifism, at least as it is seen now. He wasn't opposed to conciencous objectors, however, as he also hated the draft. He wasn't opposed to a dislike for violence, but rather the belief that some pacifists hold that their beliefs exempt them from helping their country in times of trouble. Somewhere in the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, he mentions that no state has the inherent right to survive through conscript troops. Basically, his philosophy was that if citizens didn't care enough about their country to fight and possibly die for it, the country shouldn't survive in such form.

Hope the burn feels better soon.

Powered armour is an interesting idea. I heard the Japanese have already created fully-automated androids (albeit not intelligent ones). Those could certainly be the basis for powered armour.

That also raises the posibility of mechanised troops. It's always struck me as slightly weird that sci-fi and space-opera always believes that wars will continue to be fought by people actually on the battlefield. I suppose there is the argument that mechanised troops are prone to breakdowns and suchlike.

I agree with Heinlein in some respects, I don't like the draft but I don't care for pascifists either.

I doubt we'll ever replace infantrymen with robots. There's a lot of on the spot decision making that takes place at the individual level. Soldiers have to be able act independently to support the mission.

The thumbs all better now.

On the Brit/US military comparison. The US annual defence budget equates to almost half of Britain's entire GDP. President Bush's recent increase in the defence budget is more or less the same as Britain's entire defence budget. The Pentagon would have a place in the world's richest top ten nations if it were a country. Afghanistan (GDP <$1bn) could probably be rebuilt and industrialised entirely out of petty cash. "Power projection" is a good term; "overkill" is another.

BTW, Britain is **supposed** to be commissioning 2 super-carriers to enter service in about 10-15 years from now, so that the knackered old Invincible and co can be retired.


I've not read the book, but I loved the film on a couple of levels. I like the idea that the vote was "earned", although I wouldn't restrict service to just the military. On another level, I thought the bugs were very well done and the plentiful bangs, flashes and violence kept my lower brain functions happily entertained. Great fun.

The bugs were pretty one dimensional, but they really weren't the focus of the book.

Power projection or overkill, call it what you will. I'm willing to do an awful lot of damage to preserve our soldiers when they're deployed. Some will die, but I'm willing to invest money to keep the number of our casualties low.

You might be interested in the book Forever Peace, by Joe Haldeman. It involves wars being fought by powered armour called soldierboys. They're basically robots being controlled from a long ways away by people with a direct neural interface to the robots and eachother. The book also has some other interesting concepts in it. Well worth checking out.

TBTPM,

I'm not debating the idea of investing in weapons technology to protect soldiers. I'm all for it. But what I am pointing out is that the US defence spending is an order of magnitude more than anything else on the planet. But could those resources be better used?

Just consider for a moment what could happen if just 1% of the US defence budget was transferred instead to the aid budget. That's the shiny end of $4bn. Would that materially affect the US military? Probably not, but that same $4bn represents a full year's GDP for several of the world's poorest nations combined. And by helping those poorest countries, wouldn't potential hotbeds of unrest be cooled down, thus contributing to the security of the US?

Good movie. Better Book.

Dorian

I guess I was responding more to the idea of overkill. We invest in ordnance that kills a lot of enemy troops and causes some collateral damage in an effort to protect our force.

I don't know what all we spend money on in th emilitary now days. When Iw as in half of the military budget was dedicated to manpower. We have an all volunteer force with some large organizations. We have to pay well for the military to be a practical career.

There are probably large areas that could be cut. I used to foten joke that the best way to start off a war was for us to bomb the Pentagon so we could get the useless staff types out of the way of the fighting Army. I guess that's in rather poor taste now days.

A lot of the budget is driven by political needs. For instance, early in the Clinton adminstration, the Navy wanted to cancel the Sea Wolf submarine program. It's not terribly useful unless fighting a conventional war against another navy. Still President Clinton along with the support of Senator Spector (R-PA) funded the program. Another thing that really struck my facny was when the Pantagon was ready to cut the Selective Service Adminstration (they adminster the draft), but the Clinton adminstration kept the program. (Talk about dripping with irony.)

My concern with cutting military spending is that it most likely come from funds that are needed to keep operations functioning properly and keeping equipment maintained. The military budget may seem huge, but it's stretched. During the Clinton adminstration, morale declined maintance, force strength, and readiness declined.

I don't like waste, but I know where the cuts would come from. They wouldn't come from the waste line item.

There are plenty of places that cuts could be made in the federal budget. There are all kinds of farm subisidy programs and coroparte welfare that are a total waste of government money.

Of course, you have to be careful about how you divert the funds to. What good does it do to feed the third world? That just creates more dependent poor people. Show me a program that will get them on their feet and functioning on their own. That would interest me.

"Show me a program that will get them on their feet and functioning on their own. That would interest me." - again no argument. The point was that the sheer scale of the US military spending probably dwarfs most of the problems it faces. Rather than spending to defend against the problem, it could be more productive to spend on solving the problem.

"...The military budget may seem huge..." - darn straight. IT'S UTTERLY MASSIVE!! And in fairness, for an organisation that has more resources than most nation states to plead poverty & claim it is overstretched..... well that's ludicrous, innit?

Yes, but if you just start throwing money at everything that might be a threat, then you create a lot of dependencies at the cost of your defense establishment. It works fine if you're the Japanese and you can reimburse the United States for handling defense matters for you. It works less well when you're the sole surviving super power.

It's not ludicrous at all. The military deploys in fairly large chunks. If you deploy a division to Korea, a few divisions to Europe, and the better part of division to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Before long your force is spread all over the place and you're only left with bits and pieces back in the states.

Ah... the notorious war on two fronts concept...

Reducing the number of military personnel is a hot topic nowadays. Most of the veterans and current military personnel believe that we still need the same number of people; the techophiles are of the opinion that many functions served by people can be replaced by machines. This is already happening. The war in Afghanistan, for instance - Afghanistan lost approx. 6000 natives, while America lost nine of their soldiers. Most of the casualties were due to bombing - very little of it was hand-to-hand, or rifle-to-rifle combat.

In a situation where there's a choice between sending a person out in a mine field to look for live mines, or a robot, I'd rather send the robot. But robots to fight the wars for us...? I don't know. I've seen too many movies and read too many books for that to sound like a good idea. (Terminator, Screamers, etc.) And it makes the military into a killing machine, which isn't what it's for.

I'd really like to see powered armor used in football. Reinforce the spine and neck so the player can't break their neck or injure their skull; power the arms and legs so the throwing power and running power is magnified, and make the stadium twice as big. Give 'em powered binocs for those long passes. (Anybody ever play Speedball?)