Except for those degaussing lines, she (he?) looks great.

Australia’s AUD8.5 billion (USD8.25 billion) Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project, the country’s largest current defence programme, is in “deep, deep trouble”, according to Defence Minister David Johnston.

In remarks reported in The Australian newspaper on 15 August and confirmed to IHS Jane’s by the minister’s office, Johnston also called the programme “a disgraceful mess”.

“The AWD will be one or two years late if we are lucky and several hundred millions over budget,” the minister said. “People are not wanting to be frank about how bad this project is.”

“One or two years late” and “several hundred millions over budget” translates to “a disgraceful mess” and accusations that “people are not wanting to be frank about how bad this project is.” Kind of makes you wonder what sort of language he’d use about the F-35 if it wasn’t American and therefore insulated from any and all criticism.

So basically you just have a problem with objectionable people…..that’s kind of hard to argue against…

…but it is a VERY different statement to ‘objectionable atheists’!

Their objectionable qualities are manifested through their atheism, however: their militancy, intolerance, and short-sightedness bordering on wilful incomprehension.

One of the major problems is that a large number of atheists (of the Dawkins variety, and the crowds that follow them) devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to attacking e.g. religious conceptions of creation, when those conceptions have almost nothing to do with the lived experience of the great majority of those who consider themselves religious. It’s not only rude, it misses the point. And these same people then pat themselves on the back for their superior evidence-based reasoning. One gets the distinct impression that if religion did not exist, these people would have to invent it in order to feel better about themselves.

Further, this missing of the point is integral to the contemporary atheist enterprise. For someone who is not a believer, it should by all rights be obvious what religion actually is, and thereby the proper means of assessing and engaging with it: as culture, history, politics, sociology, philosophy, art and literature. And yet, atheists instead spend their time trawling through holy texts in order to attack them with modern physics and evolutionary theory, in the manner of the medieval scholastics debating e.g. how to make sense of worldy suffering in the context of a benevolent God. It is fundamentally the stance of a believer, not an atheist.

What a meaningless statement; your reaction to the increasing number of atheists is to claim that they are stupid and violent and then add some political sounding techno-babble…

My reaction to the increasing number of atheists is one of increasing horror only because most of them are variously objectionable. Alas, it is the inevitable consequence of the great demographic transition. Formerly, by virtue of being raised in a more conducive environment, these sorts of people would’ve been objectionable Christians, objectionable Muslims, or whatever. Now, just as simply, they are objectionable atheists. Inevitable, perhaps, but as an atheist myself, I reserve the right to scowl at all the assholes gatecrashing the party.

…’short-sighted reactionaries’! Seriously?

See: the idea that religion is the principle source of conflict and turmoil in the world today, expounded by several posters in this very thread. It is a noxious and convenient fiction that, by demonising ‘the Other’, allows one to ignore both the explicitly material roots of conflict, and the complicity of our own governments in formenting it.

DCNS to Unveil Barracuda-based SSK Concept

Navy Recognition learned that DCNS will introduce a new submarine concept at Euronaval 2014 which be held from October 27th to 31st at Paris Le Bourget in France. The SMX OCEAN is based on a Barracuda hull, the next generation SSN of the French Navy, fitted with a conventional propulsion system (SSK) with AIP technology.

Now if we could just get JSR to write up the economic side of things to go with your political analysis we would have a complete picture.

My analysis was fine, the problem is that I didn’t have access to all relevant information — a difficult thing when you don’t read the language. In any case, if you care to look up the author of the article, I think you would have difficulty in dismissing his thoughts on the subject of Japan.