"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Nov 23, 2010

Militarize Everything

"An unusual breed of Asian snakes can glide long distances in the air, and the Department of Defense is funding research at Virginia Tech to find out why...

...As video of the reptiles show, they undulate from side to side, in almost an air-slithering, to create an aerodynamic system. It allows them to travel from the top of the biggest trees in the region (almost 200 feet high) to a spot about 780 feet away from the tree's trunk...

'The snake is very active in the air, and you can kind of envision it as having multiple segments that become multiple wings,' he said. 'The leading edge becomes the trailer and then the trailer become the leading edge.' 

It gets stranger. During a technique not yet understood, some of the snakes can actually turn in air. What's more, they all take a flying leap off their perch to get airborne, then drop for a while to pick up speed before starting the motion that keeps them aloft much longer than they would otherwise. 

Socha's initial research was sponsored by the National Geographic Society, but his most recent work and paper were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency is involved in advanced military technologies of all kinds, and Socha said the physical dynamics of snake flight (and how other creatures stay in the air) is of great interest to the agency
.
DARPA did not respond to an e-mail asking for more information. However, Socha's upcoming paper on the dynamics of gliding snakes in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics does list DARPA as its financial sponsor..."

Source.

  ...everything is a resource to capital, and to its enforcement organs. Everything. When they've militarized snake flight, it will be to militarize more of the human mind. Unless, of course, your mind flowers from a body which happens to have been stupid enough to be born underneath capital's bombs...

5 comments:

AlanSmithee said...

An army of flying snakes? Oh that's just spiffy! The pinheads in the Pentagon have become comic book super villains. Who's the head of our Joint Chiefs these days? Doctor Octopus?

Ethan said...

Well, at least the snakes are really, really cool.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like DARPA scientists asked a group of 7-year-old boys what would scare girls the best.

*************

word verification: plessi

Oxtrot connection: Plessy v Ferguson

Randal Graves said...

Who knew that Snakes on a Plane was a documentary.

If they're going the supervillain route, wouldn't it be easier to simply outfit our special forces with a Green Goblin flying doodad and a bunch of pumpkin bombs?

Ayurveda said...

nice posting.Eye