blessed britons

President Suharto, who ruled Indonesia, had massacred over a million of his fellow citizens when he seized power in 1965. Over 30 years later, he was waging a vicious war against an independence movement in East Timor. (Foreign Secretary) Robin Cook said he supported the delivery of Hawk aircraft to Indonesia. He claimed that the Indonesian government had assured the Foreign Office that the planes were only training aircraft and would not be used against the people of East Timor. The Hawk was originally developed as a trainer but was also marketed by British Aerospace for use as a cheap ground attack plane. The Hawks were delivered to Indonesia and used to bomb villages in East Timor.

mad world

Global military spending has been increasing steadily over the past five years, reaching a massive $1.2 trillion (£0.6 trillion) for 2006, a figure likely to be an underestimate... The USA government is responsible for the lion’s share of this global spend and its funding of military research and development (R&D) is expected to reach an astounding $78 billion (£39 billion) in 2007, a 57% increase since 2001.

— Study War No More

a report on military involvement in UK Universities

ants

the hidden hand of the market?

Submitted by antarchi on April 24, 2007 - 16:35.

The Principle of Emergence
“…the ant queen does not direct an army of drones. Drones take direction from a small set of simple signals released by other drones. A drone collecting food leaves behind a special scent, and other drones that pick up that scent will follow the path to the food source. The most direct path to the food becomes the most successful and so pragmatic behavior helps drones to “determine” the best path to take. No one drone knows where the food is or has a map of the terrain, nor does the queen: the emergent system is smarter than the individual members of the colony and acts as an effective decision-making process.”
That's fine for a system. Very good, in fact. Of course you can forget about ant-rights, and you can forget about systems outside that system - like Africa, Antarchia, or the year 2088. Ants, at least, are limited (for the moment) by their physical capabilities: British ants can't reach the food sources of African ants. But if they ever could, and if they became capable of carrying home far more than they could ever consume themselves, building themselves ant-butter mountains, ant-European fortresses, ant-weapons of mass destruction to keep the other anthills under their control...
Which little British ants would be prepared to stop the march to the food source?

ant nuggets

Submitted by antarchi on January 16, 2007 - 06:19.

ants

A lot of useful, small things to know about ants...
See them all together here.

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heavier than humans

Submitted by antarchi on October 13, 2007 - 00:29.

* The combined weight of the earth's ants outweighs that of humans, and they have the highest population of any animal on earth.

* They are prolific: the only places without an indigenous ant population are Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland and a handful of remote tropical islands.

vicious driver ants

Submitted by antarchi on October 13, 2007 - 00:27.

* There are more than 12,000 different species of ant, ranging in size from 2mm to 25mm (about an inch).

* African driver ants are so vicious they have been known to kill humans. Although cases are rare, babies or already unconscious adults are occasionally found killed by the creatures, which attack in swarms of up to 100,000.

high risking OAPs

Submitted by antarchi on October 12, 2007 - 23:52.

worker ants tend to take greater risks as they get older. Scientists have shown that this behavioural trait benefits the colony because certain risky activities, such as foraging far from the nest, are best done by ants coming to the end of their useful lives – it doesn't pay to put young workers in high-risk jobs.

As a result, younger ants tend to do housekeeping chores around the nest, which is inherently safer than travelling further afield.

supreme altruists

Submitted by antarchi on October 12, 2007 - 23:50.

In evolutionary terms, worker ants are the supreme altruists because they dedicate their lives to bringing up the offspring of another individual – their queen – while remaining sterile themselves. This is also true of many other social insects, which perplexed Charles Darwin and generations of biologists who came after him because it appeared to contradict the central idea of evolution – leaving behind as many of your own offspring as possible.