Author: Franklin C Spinney
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
Little Facts of Life
Author: Eddie Lunsford
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475977719
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
How many eyes does a spider have? How do you grow seedless plants? Could bacteria survive near nuclear reactors? Can you name animals that travel in coalitions, parliaments and mischiefs? These are just a few of the interesting questions youll find answers to in Little Facts of Life. Enjoy high-interest, paragraph-long readings that deal with topics from the plant kingdom, animals, genetics, ecology and the microscopic world. Learn about a fungus that nearly wiped out the most common tree in eastern North America in less than 50 years. Why would birds rub dead ants on their feathers? Study bacteria that are used to kill mosquitoes. How is chocolate made? The hinny, tiglon and cabbish are organisms that share something remarkable in common. How many stomachs does a cow really have? Read about algae that can grow 700 feet long. Spiders go ballooning, moths drink blood and devil dogs swim. Little Facts of Life: 350 Mini Readings in Biology is a fun and informative collection for young and old alike. Teachers, students, bathroom readers and trivia buffs will delight in learning more about the world in which we live! Good, clean fun!
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475977719
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
How many eyes does a spider have? How do you grow seedless plants? Could bacteria survive near nuclear reactors? Can you name animals that travel in coalitions, parliaments and mischiefs? These are just a few of the interesting questions youll find answers to in Little Facts of Life. Enjoy high-interest, paragraph-long readings that deal with topics from the plant kingdom, animals, genetics, ecology and the microscopic world. Learn about a fungus that nearly wiped out the most common tree in eastern North America in less than 50 years. Why would birds rub dead ants on their feathers? Study bacteria that are used to kill mosquitoes. How is chocolate made? The hinny, tiglon and cabbish are organisms that share something remarkable in common. How many stomachs does a cow really have? Read about algae that can grow 700 feet long. Spiders go ballooning, moths drink blood and devil dogs swim. Little Facts of Life: 350 Mini Readings in Biology is a fun and informative collection for young and old alike. Teachers, students, bathroom readers and trivia buffs will delight in learning more about the world in which we live! Good, clean fun!
Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1982
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1424
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 1424
Book Description
Department of Defense Appropriations for 1965
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1494
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1494
Book Description
Department of Defense Appropriations for 1965
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Department of Defense
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1492
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1492
Book Description
New Weapons, Old Politics
Author: Thomas L. McNaugher
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815718703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition—the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion—less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815718703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition—the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion—less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.
Department of Defense Appropriations for ...
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1400
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1400
Book Description
Review of Current Military Literature
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 606
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 606
Book Description
Trapped in the Net
Author: Gene I. Rochlin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822262
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
Voice mail. E-mail. Bar codes. Desktops. Laptops. Networks. The Web. In this exciting book, Gene Rochlin takes a closer look at how these familiar and pervasive productions of computerization have become embedded in all our lives, forcing us to narrow the scope of our choices, our modes of control, and our experiences with the real world. Drawing on fascinating narratives from fields that range from military command, air traffic control, and international fund transfers to library cataloging and supermarket checkouts, Rochlin shows that we are rapidly making irreversible and at times harmful changes in our business, social, and personal lives to comply with the formalities and restrictions of information systems. The threat is not the direct one once framed by the idea of insane robots or runaway mainframes usurping human functions for their own purposes, but the gradual loss of control over hardware, software, and function through networks of interconnection and dependence. What Rochlin calls the computer trap has four parts: the lure, the snare, the costs, and the long-term consequences. The lure is obvious: the promise of ever more powerful and adaptable tools with simpler and more human-centered interfaces. The snare is what usually ensues. Once heavily invested in the use of computers to perform central tasks, organizations and individuals alike are committed to new capacities and potentials, whether they eventually find them rewarding or not. The varied costs include a dependency on the manufacturers of hardware and software--and a seemingly pathological scramble to keep up with an incredible rate of sometimes unnecessary technological change. Finally, a lack of redundancy and an incredible speed of response make human intervention or control difficult at best when (and not if) something goes wrong. As Rochlin points out, this is particularly true for those systems whose interconnections and mechanisms are so deeply concealed in the computers that no human being fully understands them.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822262
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
Voice mail. E-mail. Bar codes. Desktops. Laptops. Networks. The Web. In this exciting book, Gene Rochlin takes a closer look at how these familiar and pervasive productions of computerization have become embedded in all our lives, forcing us to narrow the scope of our choices, our modes of control, and our experiences with the real world. Drawing on fascinating narratives from fields that range from military command, air traffic control, and international fund transfers to library cataloging and supermarket checkouts, Rochlin shows that we are rapidly making irreversible and at times harmful changes in our business, social, and personal lives to comply with the formalities and restrictions of information systems. The threat is not the direct one once framed by the idea of insane robots or runaway mainframes usurping human functions for their own purposes, but the gradual loss of control over hardware, software, and function through networks of interconnection and dependence. What Rochlin calls the computer trap has four parts: the lure, the snare, the costs, and the long-term consequences. The lure is obvious: the promise of ever more powerful and adaptable tools with simpler and more human-centered interfaces. The snare is what usually ensues. Once heavily invested in the use of computers to perform central tasks, organizations and individuals alike are committed to new capacities and potentials, whether they eventually find them rewarding or not. The varied costs include a dependency on the manufacturers of hardware and software--and a seemingly pathological scramble to keep up with an incredible rate of sometimes unnecessary technological change. Finally, a lack of redundancy and an incredible speed of response make human intervention or control difficult at best when (and not if) something goes wrong. As Rochlin points out, this is particularly true for those systems whose interconnections and mechanisms are so deeply concealed in the computers that no human being fully understands them.
STRONG ON DEFENSE: SIMPLE STRATEGIES TO PROTECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FRO
Author: Sanford Strong
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671522930
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Shows you how to make tough-minded survival decisions. It's a book you can't afford to live without.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671522930
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Shows you how to make tough-minded survival decisions. It's a book you can't afford to live without.
Defense Facts of Life
Author: Franklin C. Spinney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 133
Book Description
Air Force Tactical Aircraft programs are analyzed in a case study that illustrates the tendency for high investment weapon systems to take an unacceptable toll on the state of readiness. Investment plans change dramatically from year to year and the pattern of these changes indicates that these plans embody optimistically low estimates of future investment costs. It appears that our plans do not account for the future consequences of current decisions. We advocate increased budgets because we perceive a growing threat, yet at the same time we project low readiness to meet the same growing threat. What is required is leadership that can make real national defense take precedence over interests that would advocate technical sophistication at any cost.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 133
Book Description
Air Force Tactical Aircraft programs are analyzed in a case study that illustrates the tendency for high investment weapon systems to take an unacceptable toll on the state of readiness. Investment plans change dramatically from year to year and the pattern of these changes indicates that these plans embody optimistically low estimates of future investment costs. It appears that our plans do not account for the future consequences of current decisions. We advocate increased budgets because we perceive a growing threat, yet at the same time we project low readiness to meet the same growing threat. What is required is leadership that can make real national defense take precedence over interests that would advocate technical sophistication at any cost.