Chomsky on American decline and UN vetoes

One index [of US decline] is vetoes at the United Nations. Until the mid-’60s the world was so much under US control that the US didn’t veto a single resolution at the Security Council. Since the mid-’60s the United States is far in the lead in vetoing Security Council resolutions. Britain, which is a client state, is second. Nobody else is close. That’s a reflection of the decline in capacity and power, meaning ability to influence and control.

Paul Davies: How to Build A Time Machine

Time travel makes great science fiction, but can it really be done? Travel into the future is already a reality, but visiting the past is a much tougher proposition, and may require fantastic resources such as a wormhole in space. Nevertheless, if going back in time is allowed, even in principle, then what about all those paradoxes that make time travel stories so intriguing?

George Dyson – Turing’s Cathedral

Dyson’s account of the origins of modern computing, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic developments: the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.

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