Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Aw yeeeeah...
CNN: Ray gun makes targets feel as if they are on fire 
The technology is supposed to be harmless -- a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.
Military officials say it could save the lives of civilians and service members in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010, but all branches of the military have expressed interest in it, officials said.
During the first media demonstration of the weapon Wednesday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios U.S. troops might encounter.
The crew fired beams from more than 500 yards (455 meters) away, nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.
While the sudden, 130-degree Fahrenheit (54.44 Celsius) heat was not painful, it was intense enough to make participants think their clothes were about to ignite...
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My message is unrelated to the topic above.
I got this piece of information from one of my friends, who is a professor at Salem (MA) State College. He was present at a lecture given by Kenneth Reardon, associate professor and Chair of the department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, Ithaca NY. The talk was given to the annual retreat of the College of Arts and Sciences.
My friend, who does not want to be named, is a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to exist and got very upset about something that happened during this presentation.
Prof. Reardon was giving a very interesting lecture on ties between communities and colleges based on the work he did at the University of Illinois, when suddenly without any reason he switched to topic of Carter's anti-Israel book "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid". He said that he likes the book and completely agrees with everything written there.
Considering briefness of prof. Reardon's anti-Israel remark and the fact that he did not go on ranting about Israel (he did not even mention Israel), my friend thinks that it can be that, he was simply selling himself for money and/or help that he perhaps had received from one of Urban planning organizations connected to Carter, e.g. "Habitat for Humanity".
Has anyone heard Reardon speak elsewhere and has he ever made other references (direct or indirect) to Mid-East politics? Does anyone have any ideas about why an otherwise intelligent, innovative academic would be taken in (duped) by Carter and his writings?