[philco]

rapjr9 - I commend you for using your talents to help the world instead of hurting it. From one human to another, thank you.

[senordevnyc]

I commend them for following their conscience, but I would also commend someone for going to work for the defense industry because they thought it was the best way to protect people. I don't think there are any easy moral answers when it comes to defense.

[joshcsimmons]

Why? He was building tools. Tools can be used to defend or to attack.

[rapjr9]

The tools I built were used to defend aircraft. So they were protective. But the aircraft have missions, which are often destructive, but not always. The company I worked for got bought by Lockheed Martin, which very definitely makes weapons of destruction. So that was a factor in my leaving.

[squarepizza]

'In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few years ago, General David Sarnoff made this statement: "We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value."

That is the voice of the current somnambulism.

Suppose we were to say, "Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Or, "The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value." Again, "Firearms are in themselves neither good nor bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value." That is, if the slugs reach the right people firearms are good. If the TV tube fires the right ammunition at the right people it is good.

I am not being perverse. There is simply nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium.'

[b112]

The next day, raging hordes of enemy troops breach the walls, we are all killed, the end.

(There is always another point of view.)