James R. Rummel

There’s plenty of science fiction novels out there that feature nanotechnology as a major plot point. There seems to be something fascinating about tiny machines that, in their billions, could swarm over base matter and build something wonderful.

Of course, the phrase “in their billions” is key here. Any machine small enough to be considered nanotech is rather laughable. Too small, too underpowered, too insignificant to actually affect the world in any meaningful way. Get enough of them together, though, and they could do amazing things. Change the world.

So Big Media has been caught out shilling fake documents because it advances their own political agenda.

They didn’t get away with it because of the swarms of little guys who have blogs. The bloggers experimented with fonts, reproduced the forged docs on their own computers, tracked down typewriter enthusiasts, contacted document verification specialists, compared and contrasted. Rinse and repeat a thousand times.

So the bloggers nibbled at this, nibbled at that, everyone doing their part. One blog alone was too small and insignificant to do anything. Together they exposed a national hoax, and in record time.

So we’re the nanites of the information age. Wake up and blog, guys. I want to see what’s going to be built today.

It might just be that North Korea has finally gotten around to building a nuke!

Don’t trust the AP? Fair enough. Howsabout the BBC and the (shudder) NYT?

Okay, now what? What are our options?

Dunno. But I do know that this guy has some good analysis. Don’t agree? Then read this post.

Put this guy on your blogrolls and check him out daily.

What do I think we’ll do? Dunno. If NK just tested a nuke then they probably don’t have many. That might have been their only one. But if they’re testing then they probably have material to make more, so bombing the plants that enriches the fissionables would be a waste of time.

Invade? Those guys have taken paranoia to a high art, and they’ve had more than 50 years to fortify and prepare. They’d lose, but it would’t be cheap or easy for us.

Of course, this could all be moot. The blast took place on Thursday and we haven’t heard anything since then. Could be that someone made a mistake and a reporter just ran with it without getting confirmation. Not like we haven’t seen it before.

But let’s assume that it is a nuke. Does this change anything, and what do we do about it?

(Hat tip to Allah.)

Mike Spenis at The Feces Flinging Monkey received a comment from John Heslin, a major in the USAF.

In the comment he talks about what 9/11 means for him. It means a lot since he was working in the Pentagon when the plane hit.

But the thing that affected me the most was how he closed the comment.

Today, on the third anniversary, I’ll call my parents. And pray. And I’m going to raise a toast again; with an oath: To the dead, and the living, justice will be done. So help me God.

Amen

So have I mellowed any in the past year?

Hmmm. Let me check.

No. Still angry as I can get.

I don’t have anything profound to write this year. Nothing much happened to remind me of that terrible, terrible day three years ago.

But I do wonder what happened to the kids I met a few Octobers ago. Where they are now, how they’re getting along.

Most of them have probably started families. Some of them might have even been assigned to Iraq, and are there right now.

No matter where they are or what they’re doing, they have my most profound thanks.

Fusilier Pundit sent me an Email saying that I’ve been getting it wrong.

In all of my posts about the recent CBS forgery story, I’ve been referring to the Texas Air National Guard as TANG. He says that the correct way to do it is to refer to the State by using the Post Office’s two letter abbreviation.

So if I was writing about the Ohio National Guard it would be OHNG. The Ohio Air National Guard would be OHANG.

So both the words Air and the words Army start with an “A”. That would create some confusion, so to abbreviate “Army” they use the letters “AR”. Luckily this hasn’t come up yet so I could embarrass myself any further.

So from now on I’ll refer to the Texas Air National Guard by it’s correct abbreviation, TXANG.

Thank you kindly, Fuz.