Is a Nuclear Armed Neighbourhood a Peaceful Neighbourhood?

Over a decade ago, Dr. Colin S. Gray proposed that a nuclear armed neighborhood may indeed be a more polite neighborhood. His argument was an extension of the classic pro-gun lobby in the US: if people have guns, assaulting them is more difficult and therefore less likely. (The weakness of that argument is that plenty of people in the USA have guns, and the gun-related crime rate heads unerringly upwards anyway. Heck, since Missouri passed it's concealed-carry law Columbia has started to see drive-by shootings!). Anyway, I've been mulling the concept a little this morning in light of the repeated news announcements about Iran's nuclear capability.

Dr. Gray (and related theorists) are also opponents of the concept of 'existential deterrence' - that is a nuclear deterrent that you keep simply for the purpose of deterring an enemy, with questionable resolve to actually use your deterrent if pressed. This is an interesting line of thought, since supposedly having a gun deters gun-violence - but having a nuclear arsenal does not deter military action. The differentiator is intent: if you have a gun, you have to be prepared to shoot someone (in self defense) if they cross a certain line. Likewise, a nuclear deterrent is meaningless if you aren't prepared to nuke someone for crossing another line. In deterrent theory it has even been stated that not knowing where the line is helps the deterrent: otherwise you may actually have to pull the trigger.

Israel has nuclear weapons. By all accounts, they have modern, accurate, deliverable systems. Despite this, while they have possessed the capability they have been shelled from the Golan Heights, lost a war in Lebanon, and suffered under Iranian/Syrian-led Hezbollah. Israel has exercised great restraint and hasn't launched nuclear weapons at anyone; for that, they should be commended. However, Israel certainly doesn't seem to have deterred anyone.

The USA also has nuclear weapons (and a current doctrine that permits first-use in some circumstances), and despite a prima facea attack on US soil by a group housed and sponsored by the government of Afghanistan - we didn't nuke them. Again, laudable restraint - but we really didn't deter Al Quaeda or Afghanistan.

Russia has nuclear weapons, and a clearly stated doctrine permitting first-use. Despite this, there has been very little indication that Russia might actually nuke any of the parties involved in disputes around their borders and satellite nations. Again, laudable: but how deterred were the Chechen's, Georgians or Moldovans?

One often-cited example in Dr. Gray's defense is that of India and Pakistan. Since both parties became nuclear, there have been fewer incidents close to all-out war along the Kashmiri border. However, India also had a significantly more pro-Muslim government for much of that time period. The real test will come when two radically opposed governments are once again in power in the two countries. It seems likely that neither side wants a nuclear war - but doesn't that just mean that convention struggles can continue (as they do!) without regard for the 'ultimate deterrent'?

Dr. Gray could reasonably argue that since all of the countries listed above lack a willingness to pull the nuclear trigger, their deterrent is hollow - and therefore not a deterrent at all. However, for as long as that argument remains solid then it must follow that a nuclear-armed-neighbourhood is not significantly different from a conventionally armed neighbourhood. Once nuclear first-use has happened in a conflict, that may change - we simply don't know. While praying to avoid that situation has worked thus far, sooner or later there will be a nuclear strike somewhere in the world. It's entirely possible that the strike will demonstrate that while nuclear weapons make a mess, they aren't significantly more useful than conventional rounds in modern warfare - at which point, whither deterrent?

While I'm grumbling...

The whole place still reeks of smoke, but it's getting better. Anyway, I just saw that Phelps is planning on demonstrating at the VA-Tech student's funerals with his usual range of unpleasant placards. I know he has a right to demonstrate; the question is - how far does that right go in terms of being an unpleasant *!@@? I mean, it's one thing to blame the disaster on your belief that God has condemned the United States (and, by some accounts, declared Phelps to be a demigod) - but demonstrating at the funeral of shooting victims is just plain insensitive. Asshole.

Sometimes, I wonder how humanity ever made it....

I have a big family occupying the two apartments next to mine. They are quiet and ignore me most of the time. Anyway, today they had a barbecue. Fair enough, but when they finished they decided to:
a) Dump all the hot coals on the wood-shavings bed in front of my apartment window.
b) Not put the coals out.
c) Leave.

So I was working away, and smelled smoke. Lots of smoke. My first response was to check my kitchen (no stove on, appliances fine) and my server (it was fine). So I go outside, and sure enough - the coals have set the bed on fire. Only about a 1' patch was burning (with big, HOT flames), but it was spreading fast. Stomping on it didn't do any good at all other than make my foot smelly (safety boots rock - no burns), so I dumped a few liters of water on it. Fire went out. Now my whole apartment reeks of smoke, I have some soot around, and it's just plain yucky.

I think I'm going to talk to the landlord. Last time I tried to talk to my neighbours they were less than friendly, and I'm really not going to put up with having my place burned down by idiots with barbecue grills... GRRRRRRR.

RAM

It really is nice having RAM in my server again. It let me move some RAM around and have 3gb in my Vista machine, too! Vista is actually pretty nice with 3gb. The 64-bit edition I was using was barely usable with 1.

NewEgg

I had a RAM chip in my server go out this morning (not hard to diagnose - it has scorch marks!), and I need it back urgently for ongoing projects. So, I went to NewEgg, gritted my teeth and placed an order. Since I'm practically dead in the water without it, I had to go for next-day shipping and rush order... and within seconds of submitting the order NewEgg were in touch assuring me fast service.

Why is the server so important? It's currently running all the development versions of our new backup product. Ouch!

Jingos and the Gila Monster!

Last night was nice. Mel & I went to a new Chinese place, Jingos (it used to be the Mandarin Express). The food was really rather good, and heaped on the plate. We talked, ate, and other than it being cold in there - it was a good time. Then we watched a 50s monster-flick, Attack of the Giant Gila Monster. Utterly cheesy, but fun because of it. Finally, we fell asleep on the couch... only for me to wake up and do my taxes.

Overall, a good night!

PostgreSQL Connection Pooling

I use npgsql for quite a few projects, and it performs really well. I ran into an interesting error today, though. Sometimes a transaction dies while incomplete, and all subsequent connections will fail with "current transaction is aborted". It turns out that the connection pooling in Npgsql is a bit optimistic, and will keep trying to re-use the connection with the aborted transaction on it!

I solved the problem by adding Pooling=false; to my connection string.

LOTRO Tonight

I spent some time playing LOTRO tonight. So far, it really is a great game. It does have shades of World of Warcraft in its design (primarily crafting and the quest system), but overall it's a fine game - with much more involving content (for me, at least) than WoW.

I think I've figured out the crafting system. Endemonia is a scholar, Feltspar an armourer, Gooseberry a tinker, Leafwyn a Woodsman, and Eleanor an Explorer. That gives me all of the major professions, and the ability to mail resources back-and-forth and not depend upon the auction house. I'm never a fast leveller on the crafting scale, but I'm having fun with it!

So far, my characters:

• Endemonia, level 7 human loremaster. I haven't really played her enough to comment on the loremaster, but she seems solid enough.
• Gooseberry, level 9 hobbit burglar. I'm not a big fan of burglars, so far - sneak and inflict damage doesn't really do it for me. I think it will pick up when I take some more time to learn the class.
• Leafwyn, a level 7 elven huntress. She's the classic elf with a bow, and quite a lot of fun. Hunters (archers) are much better balanced in LOTRO than they were in other Turbine games; they are very good at range, but weak if surprised.
• Eleanor, level 10 human captain - complete with a herald following her around waving a flag. She's a lot of fun. Captains are a hard class to solo at first, but every time I've been in a fellowship (group), I've felt really useful. It's a lot like the Paladin of Diablo 2: mediocre damage, mediocre buffs to oneself, and great buffs when you have friends along. In particular, after the fellowship slays a monster there are various battle-cries you can issue - providing buffs ranging from heal-over-time to everyone, to attack bonusses. She can also make the whole fellowship run faster.
• Feltspar, level 12 dwarven guardian. Guardians are a pure melee tank class, and play like one: you can take an absolute beating, and still ask for more. Damage output is on the low side, but when you can take the slow'n'steady approach and know you can outlast most things - it doesn't matter. I've had a blast with Feltspar, so far. I've discovered that Guardians are in high-demand for groups - their aggro control is really good, and with a bit of effort you can keep everyone else safe. Poor Feltspar has died once, when the healer in the group decided that melee was more fun than healing. :-

So overall, very much worth the pre-order. If anyone wants to join me, I'm on Elendimir.

Porting my blog

As you may have noticed, most of the entries from my old blog are in here - and yet, I'm running Blogger. No, I'm far too lazy to type them all in - instead, I used Google's C# API to pull my posts from the database and post them. I ran into a few issues; Google have a rate-limiting feature (to stop spammers, a noble goal) that cut me off a few times mid-post, and I forgot to flag which posts I'd added the first time and ended up having to delete a lot of stuff and repost it.

You can get the API from this site: http://code.google.com/p/google-gdata/

My import code is neither pretty nor very well written, but if it helps anyone here are some snippets: (Note that the URI is the address of the atom feed of your blog)

To Retrieve a Feed (all entries are in Feed.Entries)
private static AtomFeed getFeed(out Service service)
{
FeedQuery query = new FeedQuery();
service = new Service("blogger", "DataMigrate");
NetworkCredential nc = new NetworkCredential("user", "pass");
service.Credentials = nc;
query.Uri = new Uri("URL");
query.NumberToRetrieve = 500;

AtomFeed feed = service.Query(query);
return feed;
}

To delete an entry
service.Delete(e);

To add an entry
static void InsertEntry(string title, string body, DateTime date)
{
FeedQuery query = new FeedQuery();
Service service = new Service("blogger", "MyProgramName");
NetworkCredential nc = new NetworkCredential("user", "pass");
service.Credentials = nc;
query.Uri = new Uri("URL");

AtomEntry entry = new AtomEntry();
entry.Content.Content = body;
entry.Content.Type = "html";
entry.Title.Text = title;
entry.Published = date;
service.Insert(query.Uri, entry);
}

Seems to have worked!

Lord of the Rings Online

I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) a lot recently, and thought I'd make a post about it. This is really just an excuse to try out the editor a bit!

Anyway, so far - I love the game. Character generation is moderately flexible, it's visually gorgeous, and the quests are wonderfully written. While occasionally running into people with names like 'killa' in Middle Earth is disconcerting (especially when that's a hobbit!), the GMs are doing a great job keeping things under control.

Here are some screenshots:

Trying out Blogspot

There are probably a few million posts like this one! Anyway, I'm trying out Blogspot. My old site hasn't been updated in ages - partly because I let the codebase suffer a terrible case of code rot. When I get some free time (ha!), I'll set it up - with this blog embedded if I like it.