I'm with Haninah on the string theory article. Sure, its a vague theory, but spouting well-worn criticism is easy - trying to validate a new approach is hard. I'm sure my 19 year old nephew who is studying physics at UCLA could write a pretty convincing book criticizing string theory as well.

Also, I don't see how MIT could justify all of the heavy breathing on cruise missile proliferation. First of all, the topic has been covered a number of times in scholarly journals since before the Rumsfeld Commission report. Also, there is a reason why anti-ship cruise missiles are on the MTCR's catergory II list - that horse has been out of the technological barn for decades.

Anti-ship cruise missiles are designed to hit large, slow moving metal objects moving across a flat plane (the ocean). Its not hard for any state to cobble together an altimeter, barometer, clock and simple active or passive radar homing system. The "DIY cruise missile" guy in New Zealand got pretty far before the U.S. pressure the Kiwi government to clamp down on his website.

Although anti-ship cruise missiles in the hands of Iran do pose a threat, we should keep the origin of that threat in perspective. Bronze medal (20-30 year-old) weapons technologies proliferate pretty quickly once their science hits aviation and engineering textbooks. Hyperventilating about it does nothing.

Posted by: Robot.Economist at August 30, 2006 10:03 AM

About that Wired article... as a physicist with no horse in the string theory race, I have to say that the guy is a total hack. There is no one in mainstream physics who denies that string theory is a) still a vague collection of mutually contradictory models and b) unproven. That's why even while the whole lay world, including this guy, is obssessed with string theory, the professional world is still considering it only as one type of approach, which may prove to be incorrect, and is busy looking for alternatives. What he's basically bitching about in the article is that no alternatives to string theory are being presented - *at a conference on string theory*! This guy is trying to make an easy dime by picking one side in a very healthy scientific debate and pretending it's a neglected orphan that he's riding in to rescue. Tool.

Posted by: Haninah at August 30, 2006 8:57 AM