by me, Kerry Burgess, 01/25/2025 7:30 PM
Just when I thought those clowns could not get more dumb
I read they are actually trying to profit off the 1994 "Stargate"
Just another cash-grab by those same scum-bags
NOW they get assistance from that Crybaby-in-chief Donald J. Trump, Grand Supreme Douchebag of His Great USAmerican Douchebags!
What could go wrong?
They know I know they know I know they know
So, their deviousness may or may not be obvious
There is absolutely no artistic-merit in associating their crappy, gimmicky OpenAI product with the 1994 "Stargate" movie.
There is absolutely zero artistic-merit in associating their crappy, gimmicky OpenAI product with the 1997 tv-series "Stargate SG-1"
by me, Kerry Burgess, 01/25/2025 9:58 PM
Working on it more, I see where it's going
And I define their objectives
Crybaby-in-chief Donald J. Trump, Grand Supreme Douchebag of His Great USAmerican Douchebags!
https://observer.com/2025/01/trumps-500b-stargate-ai-project/
excerpts
https://hvom.blogspot.com/2025/01/today-is-01162025-post-1.html
by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 03:05 AM
Number 878: The Farthest Man From Home
I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.
If this is the first blog-post by me you're reading then you are galactically uninformed.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Today is 01/16/2025, Post #1
What an absolutely moronic and ridiculous comparison from those Wastefulnaut Jeff Bezos clowns.
"toward the stars"
You are completely unable to grasp the scale involved
You are uninspiring, unoriginal, hackneyed.
You are the same group of morons that think "A.I." is a real thing. Because you are not tech-savvy.
Go back to your cosplay games, dumbass, pretending you're some lameoid Will Robinson wannabe.
You are dumb and stupid and you make others dumb and stupid.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-plot-100-billion-stargate-ai-supercomputer
excerpts
https://hvom.blogspot.com/2024/02/today-is-02032024.html
by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 4:35 AM
Number 878: The Farthest Man From Home
I am Kerry Burgess. This is what I think.
Saturday, February 03, 2024
Today is 02/03/2024
"artificial intelligence"
"If and when". That's what some government official recently said on tv about China
When those communist dictators in China decide to cancel out this United States of America then they will use "artificial intelligence" See, you're gullible enough to swallow that "A.I." nonsense
That is how lottery-winners such as Microsoft Corbis Bill Gates will pay off traitors to infect the complete infrastructure with malware
That is all "artificial intelligence" is: malware
You're dopey enough to believe it
When imbeciles such as Chuck Schumer and Tim Burnett are squawking about E.T. secretly imprisoned at Area 51, no one's going to ask *why* the power grid in the USA just became inoperative
No one will try to figure *who* did it.
Because they sold you on "A.I." ridiculousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stargate_Project
https://observer.com/2025/01/trumps-500b-stargate-ai-project/
Observer
Trump’s $500B Stargate A.I. Project: What Will It Build and Does It Actually Have the Money?
The investment planned for Stargate is equivalent to 2 percent of the annual U.S. GDP.
By Victor Dey 01/24/25 1:21 pm
On Tuesday (Jan. 21), President Donald Trump announced an A.I. initiative called Stargate.
From 7/27/1997 ( premiere USA TV series "Stargate SG-1"::series premiere "Children of the Gods" ) To 1/21/2025 ( ) is 10040 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/29/1993 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Simpsons"::"Whacking Day" ) is 10040 days
From 3/8/1988 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2), my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: Terrier MK 152 guided-missiles Fire Control Computers Complex Operator (UNIVAC digital-computers Mk152 Terrier System for, primarily, SM2-ER {Extended Range} Standard Missiles ordnance) - CF-division, Missile Plot, USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy, following my graduation Naval Missiles School, Dam Neck, Virginia ) To 1/21/2025 ( ) is 13468 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/17/2002 ( premiere USA TV series episode "Big Deals: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly"::"Microsoft" ) is 13468 days
From 2/6/2004 ( as Kerry Burgess my final day as full-time employee of Microsoft Corporation in Seattle beginning 12/07/1998 ) To 1/21/2025 ( ) is 7655 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 10/18/1986 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Twilight Zone"::"The World Next Door" ) is 7655 days
https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/
January 21, 2025
Announcing The Stargate Project
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734717/
IMDb
The Twilight Zone
S2.E4
The After Hours/Lost and Found/The World Next Door
Episode aired Oct 18, 1986
The After Hours: Marsha Cole detects shadowy figures and mysterious voices around her during a trip to a local shopping mall. Lost and Found: College student Jennifer Templeton finds out why her possessions have been vanishing. The World Next Door: Would-be inventor Barney Schlessinger is bored with his life until he meets another inventor in a parallel world.
Stargate SG-1 - "Children of the Gods" - tv series premiere Season 1 Episode 1 - 07/27/1997
(from internet transcript)
APOPHIS: (beckoning) Come.
At his command, Sha're's captors drag her across the room towards him.
SHA'RE: No! No, no! Aah!
She bites the arm of one of her captors as they reach Apophis. Apophis laughs.
APOPHIS: This one has spirit.
He activates the ribbon device, passing his hand in front of her face. Sha're's struggles cease, and her eyes go blank. Her arms drop limply to her sides, and the turbaned men cut the straps of her dress, stripping her completely naked. Apophis steps down, inspecting her. He brushes her hair out of her face before moving past her. The turbaned men pick her up and set her unresisting body on the table, flat on her back. Again the Jaffa woman steps from her chambers, going to stand beside the table. Sha're begins to regain awareness, watching with terror as the Goa'uld emerges partially from the Jaffa's pouch.
APOPHIS: Does she please you, my love?
The symbiote hesitates, stretching as far as possible from the pouch, before it slides completely free from the pouch to land on Sha're's stomach.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701292/
IMDb
The Simpsons
S4.E20
Whacking Day
Episode aired Apr 29, 1993
https://papersofprinceton.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian19950404-01.1.6&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
From 10/28/1994 ( premiere USA film "Stargate" ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 10745 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/4/1995 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication, Princeton University: Editorials & Opinions - A liberal seeks to discover the Truth on the internet ) is 10745 days
From 1/17/1969 ( premiere USA TV series episode "Star Trek"::"The Mark of Gideon" ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 20160 days
20160 = 10080 + 10080
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/8/1993 ( commencement, Princeton University Class of 1993 ) is 10080 days
From 7/19/1989 ( the United Airlines Flight 232 crash in Sioux City Iowa and from the thoughts in my conscious mind, coinciding with United States of America Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric doctor medical drugs: the end of Kerry Burgess - *me* - the natural human being cloned from another human being {Thomas Reagan} ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 12672 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/13/2000 ( {puppet-in-chief} Bill Clinton, 42nd President of USA: Remarks on Presenting the Congressional Gold Medal to Father [Superstition] Theodore M. Hesburgh ) is 12672 days
From 10/12/1929 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication, Princeton University: Literary Observer - LOVE IN A HOSPITAL - A FAREWELL TO ARMS, by Ernest Hemingway. ) To 3/8/1988 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2), my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: Terrier MK 152 guided-missiles Fire Control Computers Complex Operator (UNIVAC digital-computers Mk152 Terrier System for, primarily, SM2-ER {Extended Range} Standard Missiles ordnance) - CF-division, Missile Plot, USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy, following my graduation Naval Missiles School, Dam Neck, Virginia ) is 21332 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 21332 days
From 8/3/1998 ( "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 9370 days
9370 = 4685 + 4685
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 8/31/1978 ( Jimmy Carter, 39th President of USA: Memorandum From the President on Executive Branch Administration of the Privacy Act of 1974 ) is 4685 days
From 5/31/2019 ( DeWayne Craddock, a city employee, shot and killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building ) To 3/29/2024 ( ) is 1764 days
1764 = 882 + 882
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/2/1968 ( premiere USA film "2001: A Space Odyssey" ) is 882 days
https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/29/report-microsoft-build-stargate-supercomputer-millions-chips-openai/
UPDATED 17:25 EST / MARCH 29 2024
Report: Microsoft to build ‘Stargate’ supercomputer with millions of chips for OpenAI
by Maria Deutscher
Microsoft Corp. plans to build a supercomputer with millions of processors to support OpenAI’s research, The Information reported today.
The system will be geared toward running artificial intelligence workloads. Reportedly codenamed Stargate by Microsoft executives
IMDb
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Quotes
HAL-9000: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
IMDb
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Quotes
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Open the pod bay doors please, HAL. Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Hello, HAL. Do you read me? Do you read me HAL? Do you read me HAL? Hello, HAL, do you read me? Hello, HAL, do your read me? Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave? You're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
IMDb
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Quotes
Interviewer: Good afternoon, HAL. How's everything going?
HAL: Good afternoon, Mr. Amer. Everything is going extremely well.
Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
IMDb
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
Quotes
Dr. Heywood Floyd: Wait... do you know why HAL did what he did?
Chandra: Yes. It wasn't his fault.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: Whose fault was it?
Chandra: Yours.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: Mine?
Chandra: Yours. In going through HAL's memory banks, I discovered his original orders. You wrote those orders. Discovery's mission to Jupiter was already in the advanced planning stages when the first small Monolith was found on the Moon, and sent its signal towards Jupiter. By direct presidential order, the existence of that Monolith was kept secret.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: So?
Chandra: So, as the function of the command crew - Bowman and Poole - was to get Discovery to its destination, it was decided that they should not be informed. The investigative team was trained separately, and placed in hibernation before the voyage began. Since HAL was capable of operating Discovery without human assistance, it was decided that he should be programmed to complete the mission autonomously in the event the crew was incapacitated or killed. He was given full knowledge of the true objective... and instructed not to reveal anything to Bowman or Poole. He was instructed to lie.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: What are you talking about? I didn't authorize anyone to tell HAL about the Monolith!
Chandra: Directive is NSC 342/23, top secret, January 30, 2001.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: NSC... National Security Council, the White House.
Chandra: I don't care who it is. The situation was in conflict with the basic purpose of HAL's design: The accurate processing of information without distortion or concealment. He became trapped. The technical term is an H. Moebius loop, which can happen in advanced computers with autonomous goal-seeking programs.
Walter Curnow: The goddamn White House.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: I don't believe it.
Chandra: HAL was told to lie... by people who find it easy to lie. HAL doesn't know how, so he couldn't function. He became paranoid.
Dr. Heywood Floyd: Those sons of bitches. I didn't know. I didn't know!
IMDb
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
Quotes
Dr. Heywood Floyd: I don't know if HAL is homicidal, suicidal, neurotic, psychotic, or just plain broken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_418
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 20 – The Dance of the Vampires
USS NIMITZ
"Admiral, something is wrong here," Toland said quietly.
"What might that be?" Baker liked the way things were going. Enemy bomber tracks were being wiped off his screen just as the war games had predicted they would.
"The Russians are coming in dumb, sir."
"So?"
"So this far the Soviets have not been very dumb! Admiral, why aren't the Backfires going supersonic? Why one attack group? Why one direction?"
"Fuel constraints," Baker answered. "The Badgers are at the limit of their fuel, they have to come in direct."
"But not the Backfires!"
"The course is right, the raid count is right." Baker shook his head and concentrated on the tactical plot.
The second squadron of fighters had just launched. Unable to get a head-on shot, their missile accuracy suffered somewhat. They killed thirty-four targets with forty-eight missiles. There had been a hundred fifty-seven targets plotted.
The third and fourth Tomcat squadrons arrived together and launched as a group. When their Phoenixes had been fully expended, nineteen targets were left. The two fighter squadrons moved in to engage the remaining targets with their cannon.
"Clipper Base, this is SAM Boss. We're going to have some leakers. Recommend we start lighting up SAM radars."
"Roger, SAM Boss. Permission granted," answered the group tactical warfare coordinator.
NORTH ATLANTIC
"I have air-search radars, bearing zero-three-seven," the Bear ESM officer noted. "They have detected us. Recommend we illuminate also." The Bear lit off its Big Bulge look-down radar.
USS NIMITZ
"New radar contact. Designate Raid-2-"
"What?" snapped Baker. Next came a call from the fighters.
"Clipper Base, this is Slugger Lead. I have a visual on my target." The squadron commander was trying to examine the target on his long-range TV camera. When he spoke, the anguish in his voice was manifest. "Warning, warning, this is not a Badger. We've been shooting at Kelt missiles!"
"Raid-2 is seventy-three aircraft, bearing two-one-seven, range one-three-zero miles. We have a Big Bulge radar tracking the formation," said the CIC talker.
Toland cringed as the new contacts were plotted. "Admiral, we've been had."
The group tactical warfare officer was pale as he toggled his microphone. "Air Warning Red. Weapons free! Threat axis is two-one-seven. All ships turn as necessary to unmask batteries."
The Tomcats had all been drawn off, leaving the formation practically naked. The only armed fighters over the formation were Foch's eight Crusaders, long since retired from the American inventory. On a terse command from their carrier, they went to afterburner and rocketed southwest toward the Backfires. Too late.
The Bear already had a clear picture of the American formations. The Russians could not determine ship type, but they could tell large from small, and identify the missile cruiser Ticonderoga by her distinctive radar emissions. The carriers would be close to her. The Bear relayed the information to her consorts. A minute later, the seventy Backfire bombers launched their hundred forty AS-6 Kingfish missiles and turned north at full military power. The Kingfish was nothing like the Kelt. Powered by a liquid-fuel rocket engine, it accelerated to nine hundred knots and began its descent, its radar-homing head tracking on a preprogrammed target area ten miles wide. Every ship in the center of the formation had several missiles assigned.
"Vampire, Vampire!" the CIC talker said aboard Ticonderoga. "We have numerous incoming missiles. Weapons free."
The group antiair warfare officer ordered the cruiser's Aegis weapons system into full automatic mode. Tico had been built with this exact situation in mind. Her powerful radar/computer system immediately identified the incoming missiles as hostile and assigned each a priority of destruction. The computer was completely on its own, free to fire on its electronic will at anything diagnosed as a threat. Numbers, symbols, and vectors paraded across the master tactical display. The fore and aft twin missile launchers trained out at the first targets and awaited the orders to fire. Aegis was state-of-the-art, the best SAM system yet devised, but it had one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM2 surface-to-air missiles; there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been programmed to think about that.
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 20 – The Dance of the Vampires
Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a radical turn, her engines advanced to flank speed, driving the massive warship at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on their launchers.
"Red Storm Rising"
The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles out, covering a mile every four seconds. Each had now selected a target, choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest large ship, with her missile-ship escorts to her north.
Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.
The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.
Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone's worries. When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every ship in the formation began to fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized Mylar fragments that fluttered on the air, creating dozens of new targets for the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock with their targets and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new targets on the far side of the formation.
The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had been discrete pips designating the positions of ships in the formation became shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted V-shapes, with line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed three more. The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five heading for Nimitz Topside, the final defensive weapons were now tracking the targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radar-equipped to explode incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate in a fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up and began to track the first pair of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of an enormous zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs, adjusting fire to make the two meet.
The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from Nimitz's port quarter. The thousand kilograms of high explosive rocked the ship. Toland felt it, wondering if the ship had been hit. Around him, the CIC crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished from the screen. Four left.
The next Kingfish approached the carrier's bow and was blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS, too close aboard. Fragments ripped across the carrier's deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.
Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight into the sea half a mile behind the carrier. The warhead caused the carrier to vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.
The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked on both, but couldn't decide which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn't engage any. The missiles hit within a second of one another, one on the after port corner of the flight deck, the other on the number two arrestor wire.
Toland was thrown fifteen feet, and slammed against a radar console. Next he saw a wall of pink flame that washed briefly over him. Then came the noises. First the thunder of the explosion. Then the screams. The after CIC bulkhead was no longer there; instead there was a mass of flame. Men twenty feet away were ablaze, staggering and screaming before his eyes. Toland's only thought was escape. He bolted for the watertight door. It opened miraculously under his hand and he ran to starboard. The ship's fire-suppression systems were already on, showering everything with a curtain of saltwater. His skin burned from it as he emerged, hair and uniform singed, to the flight deck catwalk. A sailor directed a water hose on him, nearly knocking him over the side.
"Fire in CIC!" Toland gasped.
"What the hell ain't!" the sailor screamed.
"Red Storm Rising"
Toland fell to his knees and looked outboard. Foch had been to their north, he remembered. Now there was a pillar of smoke. As he watched, the last Kingfish was detonated a hundred feet over Saratoga's flight deck. The carrier seemed undamaged. Three miles away, Ticonderoga's after superstructure was shredded and ablaze from a rocket that had blown up within yards of her. On the horizon a ball of flame announced the destruction of yet another-my God, Toland thought, might that be Saipan? She had two thousand Marines aboard . . .
"Get forward, you dumbass!" a firefighter yelled at him. Another man emerged to the catwalk.
"Toland, you all right?" It was Captain Svenson, his shirt torn away and his chest bleeding from a half-dozen cuts.
"Yes, sir," Bob answered.
"Get to the bridge. Tell 'em to put the wind on the starboard beam. Move!" Svenson jumped up onto the flight deck.
Toland did likewise, racing forward. The deck was awash in firefighting foam, slippery as oil. Toland ran recklessly, falling hard on the deck before he reached the carrier's island. He was in the pilothouse in under a minute.
"Captain says put the wind on the starboard beam!" Toland said.
"It is on the fucking beam!" the executive officer snapped back. The bridge deck was covered with broken glass. "How's the skipper?"
"Alive. He's aft with the fire."
"And who the hell are you?" the XO demanded.
"Toland, group intel. I was in CIC."
"Then you're one lucky bastard. That second bird hit fifty yards from you. Captain got out? Anyone else?"
"I don't know. Burning like hell."
"Looks like you caught part of it, Commander."
Bob's face felt as if he'd shaved with a piece of glass. His eyebrows crumpled to his touch. "Flashburns, I guess. I'll be okay. What do you want me to do?"
The XO pointed to Toland's water wings. "Can you conn the ship.? Okay, do it. Nothing left to run into anyway. I'm going aft to take charge of the fire. Communications are out, radar's out, but the engines are okay and the hull's in good shape. Mr. Bice has the deck. Mr. Toland has the conn," XO announced as he left.
Toland hadn't conned anything bigger than a Boston Whaler in over ten years, and now he had a damaged carrier. He took a pair of binoculars and looked around to see what ships were nearby. What he saw chilled him.
Saratoga was the only ship that looked intact, but on second glance her radar mast was askew. Foch was lower in the water than she ought to have been, and ablaze from bow to stem.
"Where's Saipan?"
"Blew up like a fucking firework," Commander Bice replied. "Holy Jesus, there were twenty-five hundred men aboard! Tico took one close aboard. Foch took three hits, looks like she's gone. Two frigates and a destroyer gone, too-just fucking gone, man! Who fucked up? You were in CIC, right? Who fucked up?"
The eight French Crusaders were just making contact with the Backfires. The Russian bombers were on afterburner and were nearly as fast as the fighters. The carrier pilots had all heard their ship go off the air and were consumed with rage at what had happened, no longer the cool professionals who drove fighters off ships. Only ten Backfires were within their reach. They got six of them with their missiles and damaged two more before they had to break off.
USS Caron, the senior undamaged ship, tracked the Russians on her radar, calling Britain for fighters to intercept them on the trip home. But the Russians had anticipated this, and detoured far west of the British Isles, meeting their tankers four hundred miles west of Norway.
Already the Russians were evaluating the results of their mission. The first major battle of modern carriers and missile-armed bombers had been won and lost. Both sides knew which was which.
https://papersofprinceton.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian19291012-01.2.18&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-from-the-president-executive-branch-administration-the-privacy-act-1974
The American Presidency Project
Jimmy Carter
39th President of the United States: 1977 ‐ 1981
Memorandum From the President on Executive Branch Administration of the Privacy Act of 1974
August 31, 1978
Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
Enclosed for your information is a copy of the Third Annual Report on executive branch administration of the Privacy Act of 1974, which I recently transmitted to the Congress.
The protection of personal privacy is of great concern to the American people, and an important priority of my Administration. I urge you to personally review this report and take steps to further improve your agency's administration of the Privacy Act.
The report indicates that many agencies have made substantial improvements in their implementation of the Act. I urge each of you, however, to initiate additional efforts during the coming year to reduce the amount of personal information collected and maintained by the Federal government, to avoid unwarranted disclosure of this information, and to improve the internal management of personal data systems.
I have asked the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to monitor these efforts and to keep me informed of your progress.
JIMMY CARTER
Rainbow Six (1998) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 4
John Brightling's doctorate in molecular biology came from the University of Virginia, along with his M.D. "It started with a guy named Ned Ludd a few centuries ago. He was afraid that the Industrial Revolution would put an end to the cottage-industry economy in England. And he was right. That economic model was wrecked. But what replaced it was better for the consumer, and that's why we call it progress!" Not surprisingly, John Brightling, a billionaire heading for number two, was holding court before a small crowd of admirers.
"But the complexity-" One of the audience started to object.
"Happens every day-every second, in fact. And so do the things we're trying to conquer. Cancer, for example. No, madam, are you willing to put an end to our work if it means no cure for breast cancer? That disease strikes five percent of the human population worldwide. Cancer is a genetic disease. The key to curing it is in the human genome. And my company is going to find that key! Aging is the same thing. Salk's team at La Jolla found the kill-me gene more than fifteen years ago. If we can find a way to turn it off, then human immortality can be real. Madam - does the idea of living forever in a body of twenty-five years' maturity appeal to you?"
"But what about overcrowding?" The congresswoman's objection was somewhat quieter than her first. It was too vast a thought, too surprisingly posed, to allow an immediate objection.
"One thing at a time.
Rainbow Six (1998) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
CHAPTER 27
TRANSFER AGENTS
"It really is a waste of time," Barbara Archer said at her seat in the conference room. "F4 is dead, just her heart's still beating. We've tried everything. Nothing stops Shiva. Not a damned thing."
"Except the -B vaccine antibodies," Killgore noted.
"Except them," Archer agreed. "But nothing else works, does it?"
There was agreement around the table. They had literally tried every treatment modality known to medicine, including things merely speculated upon at CDC, USAMRIID, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. They'd even tried every antibiotic in the arsenal from penicillin to Keflex, and two new synthetics under experimentation by Merck and Horizon. The use of the antibiotics had merely been t-crossing and i-dotting, since not one of them helped viral infections, but in desperate times people tried desperate measures, and perhaps something new and unexpected might have happened-but not with Shiva. This new and improved version of Ebola hemorrhagic fever, genetically engineered to be hardier than the naturally produced version that still haunted the Congo River Valley, was as close to 100 percent fatal and 100 percent resistant to treatment as anything known to medical science, and absent a landmark breakthrough in infectious-disease treatment, nothing would help those exposed to it. Many would suffer exposure from the initial release, and the rest would get it from the -A vaccine Steve Berg had developed, and through both modalities, Shiva would sweep across the world like a slow-developing storm. Inside of six months, the people left alive would fall into three categories. First, those who hadn't been exposed in any way. There would be few of them, since every nation on earth would gobble up supplies of the -A vaccine and inject their citizens with it, because the first Shiva victims would horrify human with access to a television. The second group would be those rarest of people whose immune systems were sufficient to protect them from Shiva. The lab had yet to discover any such individuals, but some would inevitably be out there-happily, most of those would probably die from the collapse of social services in the cities and towns of the world, mainly from starvation or from the panicked lawlessness sure to accompany the plague or from the ordinary bacterial diseases that accompanied large numbers of unburied dead
The third group would be the few thousand people in Kansas. Project Lifeboat, as they thought of it. That group would be composed of active Project members just a few hundred of them-and their families, and other selected scientists protected by Berg's -B vaccine. The Kansas facility was large, isolated, and protected by large quantities of weapons, should any unwelcome visitors approach.
Six months, they thought. Twenty-seven weeks. That's what the computer projections told them. Some areas would go faster than others. The models suggested that Africa would go last of all, because they'd be the last to get the -A vaccine distributed, and because of the poor infrastructure for delivering vital services. Europe would go down first, with its socialized medical-care systems and pliant citizens sure to show up for their shots when summoned, then America, then, in due course, the rest of the world.
"The whole world, just like that," Killgore observed, looking out the windows at the New York/New Jersey border area, with its rolling hills and green deciduous trees. The great farms on the plains that ran from Canada to Texas would go fallow, though some would grow wild wheat for centuries to come. The bison would expand rapidly from their enclaves in Yellowstone and private game farms, and with them the wolves and barren-ground grizzly bear, and the birds, and the coyotes and the prairie dogs. Nature would restore Her balance very quickly, the computer models told them; in less than five years, the entire earth would be transformed.
"Yes. John," Barb Archer agreed. "But we're not there yet. What do we do with the test subjects?"
Killgore knew what she'd be suggesting. Archer hated clinical medicine. "F4 first?"
"It's a waste of air to keep her breathing, and we all know it. They're all in pain, and we're not learning anything except that Shiva is lethal-and we already knew that. Plus, we're going to be moving out west in a few weeks, and why keep them alive that long? We're not moving them out with us, are we?"
"Well, no," another physician admitted.
"Okay, I am tired of wasting my time as a clinician for dead people. I move that we do what we have to do, and be done with it."
"Second," agreed another scientist at the table.
"In favor?" Killgore asked, counting the hands. "Opposed." Only two of those. "The ayes have it. Okay. Barbara and I will take care of it-today, Barb?"
"Why wait, John?" Archer inquired tiredly.
Rainbow Six (1998) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, CHAPTER 31
The system was designed for rapid servicing. This would work just fine, just like the model they'd set up in Kansas, on which he and his people had practiced for several days. They'd gotten the swap-out time down to fourteen seconds. Anything under twenty meant that nobody would notice anything remiss in the fog cooling system, because residual pressure would' maintain the fogging stream.
For the first time, Gearing saw the place where he'd be doing it, and that generated a slight chill in his blood. Planning was one thing. Seeing where it would happen for real was something else. This was the place. Here he would start a global plague that would take lives in numbers far too great to tally, and which in the end would leave alive only the elect. It would save the planet-at a ghastly price, to be sure, but he'd been committed to this mission for years. He'd seen what man could do to harm things. He'd been a young lieutenant at Dugway Proving Grounds when they'd had the well-publicized accident with GB, a persistent nerve agent that had blown too far and slaughtered a few hundred sheep-and neurotoxins were not a pretty death, even for sheep. The news media hadn't even bothered to talk about the wild game that had died a similar, ugly death, everything from insects to antelope. It had shaken him that his own organization, the United States Army, could make so grave an error to cause such pain. The things he'd learned later had been worse. The binary agents he'd worked on for years-an effort to manufacture "safe" poisons for battlefield use the crazy part was that it had all begun in Germany as insecticide research in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the chemicals used to kill off insects were nerve agents, simple ones that attacked and destroyed the rudimentary nervous systems in ants and beetles, but those German chemists had stumbled upon some of the deadliest chemical compounds ever formulated. So much of Gearing's career had been spent with the intelligence community, evaluating information about possible chemical-warfare plants in countries not trusted to have such things.
But the problem with chemical weapons had always been their distribution-how to spread them evenly across a battlefield, thus exposing enemy soldier sufficiently. That the same chemicals would travel downrange and kill innocent civilians had been the dirty secret that the organizations and the governments that ruled them had always ignored. And they didn't even consider the wildlife that would also be exterminated in vast quantities-and worse still, the genetic damage those agents caused, because marginal doses of nerve gas, below the exposure needed to kill, invaded the very DNA of the victim, ensuring mutations that would last for generations. Gearing had spent his life knowing these things, and he supposed that it had desensitized him to the taking of life in large quantities.
This wasn't quite the same thing. He would not be spreading organophosphate chemical poisons, but rather tiny virus particles. And the people walking through the cooling fog in the concourses and ramps to the stadium bowl would breathe them in, and their body chemistry would break down the nano-capsules, allowing the Shiva strands to go to work slowly, of course and they'd go home to spread the Shiva farther, and in four to six weeks after the ending of the Sydney Olympics, the plague would erupt worldwide, and a global panic would ensue. Then Horizon Corporation would announce that it had an experimental "A" vaccine that had worked in animals and primates-and was safe for human usage-ready for mass production, and so it would be mass-produced and distributed worldwide, and four to six weeks after injection, those people, too, would develop the Shiva symptoms, and with luck the world would be depopulated down to a fractional percentage of the current population. Disorders would break out, killing many of the people blessed by Nature with highly effective immune systems, and in six months or so, there would be just a few left, well organized and well equipped, safe in Kansas and Brazil, and in six months more they would be the inheritors of a world returning to its natural state. This wouldn't be like Dugway, a purposeless accident. This would be a considered act by a man who'd contemplated mass murder for all of his professional life, but who'd only helped kill innocent animals
Rainbow Six (1998) - Tom Clancy
(from internet transcript)
CHAPTER 32
BLOOD WORK
"Was that a good idea?" Brightling asked.
"I think so. Kirk was on the travel list anyway. We can have his coworkers tell anybody who asks that he was called out of town on company business," Henriksen said.
"What if the FBI agents go back to see him?"
"Then he's out of town, and they'll just have to wait," Henriksen answered. "Investigations like this last for months, but there won't be months, will there?"
Brightling nodded. "I suppose. How's Dmitriy doing out there?"
"Dave Dawson says he's doing okay, asking a lot of touristy questions, but that's all. He had his physical from Johnny Killgore, and he's gotten his `B' shot."
"I hope he likes being alive. From what he said, he might turn out to be our kind of people, you know?"
"I'm not so sure about that, but he doesn't know squat. and by the time he finds out, it'll be too late anyway. Wil Gearing is in place, and he says everything's going according to plan, John. Three more weeks, and then it'll all be under way. So, it's time to start moving our people to Kansas."
"Too bad. The longevity project's really looking good at the moment."
"Oh?"
"Well, it's pretty hard to predict breakthroughs, but the research threads all look very interesting at the moment, Bill."
"So we might have lived forever? " Henriksen asked, with a wry smile. For all the time he'd been associated with Brightling and Horizon Corporation, he had trouble believing such predictions. The company had caused some genuine medical miracles, but this was just too much to credit.
"I can think of worse things to happen. I'm going to make sure that whole team gets the `B' shot," Brightling said.
"Well, take the whole team out there and put 'em to work in Kansas, for crying out loud," Bill suggested. "What about the rest of the company?"
Brightling didn't like that question, didn't like the fact that more than half of the Horizon employees would be treated like the rest of humanity - left to die at best, or to be murdered by the "A" vaccine at worst. John Brightling, M.D., Ph.D., had some lingering morality, part of which was loyalty to the people who worked for him - which was why Dmitriy Popov was in Kansas with the "B" class antibodies in his system. So, even the Big Boss wasn't entirely comfortable with what he was doing, Henriksen saw. Well, that was conscience for you. Shakespeare had written about the phenomenon.
"That's already decided," Brightling said, after a second's discomfort. He'd be saving those who were part of the Project, and those whose scientific knowledge would be useful in the future. Accountants, lawyers, and secretaries, by and large, would not be saved. That he'd be saving about five thousand people-as many as the Kansas and Brazil facilities could hold-was quite a stretch, especially considering that only a small fraction of those people knew what the Project was all about. Had he been a Marxist, Brightling would have thought or even said aloud that the world needed an intellectual elite to make it into the New World, but he didn't really think in those terms. He truly did believe that he was saving the planet, and though the cost of doing so was murderously high, it was a goal worth pursuing, though part of him hoped that he'd be able to live through the transition period without taking his own life from the guilt factor that was sure to assault him.
It was easier for Henriksen. What people were doing to the world was a crime. Those who did it, supported it, or did nothing to stop it, were criminals. His job was to make them stop. It was the only way. And at the end of it the innocent would be safe, as would Nature. In any case, the men and the instruments of the Project were now in place. Wil Gearing was confident that he could accomplish his mission, so skillfully had Global Security insinuated itself into the security plan for the Sydney Olympics, with the help of Popov and his ginned-up operations in Europe. So, the Project would go forward, and that was that, and a year from now the planet would be transformed. Henriksen's only concern was how many people would survive the plague. The scientific members of the Project had discussed it to endless length. Most would die from starvation or other causes, and few would have the capacity to organize themselves enough to determine why the Project members had also survived and then take action against them. Most natural survivors would be invited into the protection of the elect, and the smart ones would accept that protection. The others-who cared? Henriksen had also set up the security systems at the Kansas facility. There were heavy weapons there, enough to handle rioting farmers with Shiva symptoms, he was sure.
The most likely result of the plague would be a rapid breakdown of society. Even the military would rapidly come apart, but the Kansas facility was a good distance from the nearest military base, and the soldiers based pit Fort Riley would be sent to the cities first to maintain order until they, too, came down with symptoms. Then they'd be treated by the military doctors - for what little good it would do - and by the time unit cohesion broke down, it would be far too late for even the soldiers to take any organized action. So, it would be a twitchy time, but one that would pass rapidly, and so long as the Project people in Kansas kept quiet, they ought not to suffer organized attack. Hell, all they had to do was to let the world believe that people were dying there, too, maybe dig a few graves and toss bags into them for the cameras-better yet, burn them in the open-and they could frighten people away from another focal center of the plague. No. They'd considered this one for years. The Project would succeed. It had to. Who else would save the planet?
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 10:55 PM Pacific-timezone USA Saturday 01/25/2025
