A Guide To Killer Robots Everywhere

Semi-Autonomous Killer Drones From Around The Globe -- Killer Apps/Foreign Policy

With the United Nations Human Rights Council debating the development of lethal robots at its meeting in Geneva today, Human Rights Watch is ramping up its campaign to get world governments to preemptively ban the use of killer robots that can decide to attack a target without consulting their human controllers first. Despite the fact that the Pentagon has said that U.S. drones will not be able to fire weapons without "appropriate" levels of human control, HRW worries that battlefield necessity will do away with such voluntary restrictions.

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My Comment: A brief but concise review.

Interpreting Global Flight-Path Maps

Global Flight-Path Maps: Five Interpretations -- BBC

Michael Markieta's images depicting flight paths across the planet attracted huge interest from our readers. What do the maps reveal? We asked five experts to give their interpretation.

The art critic

Wow, it's beautiful. It is not only dealing with two-dimensionality, it's trying to create three dimensions, or four dimensions - giving you a notion that you are travelling across the surface of this image.

It's almost like contemporary fractalisation - based on fractals, those beautiful divisions of science and nature. A number of artists have exploited them. Max Ernst based a lot of his surreal landscapes on fractalisation.

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My Comment: Northeastern U.S., Europe, and northeastern Asia .... those are the hot spots for air travel.

WHO Chief: Novel Coronavirus 'Poses A Threat To The Entire World'

 

New SARS-Like Virus Is A 'Threat To The Entire World' -- CNN 

(CNN) -- A new SARS-like virus recently found in humans is "a threat to the entire world," according to the director-general of the United Nations' World Health Organization.

The so-called novel coronavirus "is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself," Margaret Chan said Monday in her closing remarks at the 66th World Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

The world needs to pull together its resources to properly tackle the virus which, Chan said, is her "greatest concern" at present.

"We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat," she said, and more information is needed "quickly" and "urgently."

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More News On The Novel Coronavirus Posing A Threat To The Entire World  

UN health chief urges global cooperation to tackle novel coronavirus threat -- UN News Centre
WHO Chief Sounds Alarm Over Novel Coronavirus, 'A Threat To The Entire World' -- RTT
WHO calls Middle Eastern virus, MERS, ‘threat to the entire world’ as death toll rises -- New York Daily News First coronavirus sufferer in France dies in hospital -- Reuters
French man, 65, dies from SARS-like virus as World Health Organisation warns deadly disease is global threat -- Daily Mail
A timeline of SARS-like virus -- Global Post/AFP

What It’s Like Inside A Violent Tornado (Video)

Incredible Video: What It’s Like Inside A Violent Tornado -- Washington Post

It might strike you as foolish, but storm chasers Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey literally rode out a raging tornado with winds to 175 mph from inside a motor vehicle on Memorial Day. 

Watch the astonishing, “ear-popping” video below… 

But the vehicle, positioned intentionally to bear the brunt of the raging Kansas vortex, is no ordinary vehicle. 

Called the Tornado Intercept Vehicle 2 (TIV2, the second vehicle of its kind), it is designed to withstand a top of the scale EF-5 twister, with winds over 200 mph. 

Wikipedia offers the following details on this 14,000+ pound, armor-reinforced machine:  

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My Comment: What a terrifying experience lasting two minutes.

Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998" (Video)

From YouTube: The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map.

As the video starts out detonations are few and far between. The first three detonations represent the Manhattan Project and the two bombs that ended World War II.

After a few representative minutes the USSR and Britain enter the nuclear club and the testing really starts to heat up.

Even though the video does not differentiate between sub-critical "safety" tests and full detonations, you get a good idea of the fever of the nuclear arms race. T

he time line does not extent to tests by North Korea (October 2006 and May 2009).

Video credit: goes to Isao Hashimoto (www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isa­o-hashimoto/) The video was cleaned up, re-sized and edited to fit You tube's 10min limit by the folks at Bit of Fun  

My Comment: A mesmerizing video .... check it out.