Peter Borst quoted Mother earth and the LA Times:

> including a "mechanical elephant" that never made it
> into the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy research that never quite afforded
> the U.S. the ability to engage in psychic spying.
They are using the classic and reprehensible technique of citing a 
couple of projects and tarring the entire body of work. God help us if 
our lives were judged by some of our posts here on the BeeL. You could 
easily go into the archives and find posts where I (or anyone) did not 
get the facts right. That does not make our entire body of work incorrect.

In essence, because one project may have been a waste of money, it does 
not make Jerry's or all of DARPA's work a waste of money.

> According to DARPA's current chief, some 85%-90% of its projects fail to
> meet their full objectives.
>
>   
I love this sort of quote that is totally misunderstood by the reporter, 
but it is the LA Times and Mother Earth, so not unusual.

Truth is, if DARPA is meeting 10 to 15% of their objectives for pure 
research, that is the unusual fact. I would not have expected it to be 
that high. If so, it is money well spent. It also means that they are 
coming close in a lot of areas and may fail in others. That is not 
unusual with pure research. After all, it is research. My friend and I 
worked on our thesis projects. We both set out to prove something and I 
did and he failed since he did not meet his objectives. Truth is, we 
both  succeeded since he actually proved something could not be done, at 
least by his methods. Sometimes research fails but succeeds in failure. 
How may trials have you conducted that failed? I know I have done plenty.

If you read magazines like MIT's Technology Today, you will see DARPA is 
behind most of the cutting edge research they cite. Truth is, if you 
want to make some money, just check and see what DARPA is interested in 
and invest there.

But don't invest in the LA Times which is hemorrhaging readership.

Finally, if Jerry succeeds only in a small part, he is a major success 
in my eyes. The number of land mines in the world is staggering and 
people are killed and maimed daily. If his bees are a way to rid 
countries of that scourge, he will have done more good for the world 
than any of the recent recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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