What American accent do you have?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

AI Seduces Stanford Students

Kevin Poulsen notes a recent experiment where an AI Seduces Stanford Students — although "seduces" is a bit strong:

Researchers at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab strapped 69 student volunteers into an immersive, 3-D virtual-reality rig, where test subjects found themselves sitting across the table from a "digital agent" — a computer-generated man or woman — programmed to deliver a three-minute pitch advocating a notional university security policy requiring students to carry ID whenever they're on campus.

The anthropomorphic cyberhuckster featured moving lips and blinking eyes on a head that nodded and swayed realistically. But unbeknownst to the test subjects, the head movements weren't random. In half the sessions, the computer was programmed to mimic the student's movements exactly, with a precise four-second delay; if a test subject tilted her head thoughtfully and looked up at a 15-degree angle, the computer would repeat the gesture four seconds later.

For the other half of the participants, the program used head movements recorded from earlier students, ensuring they were realistic but unconnected to the test subject.

The results, to be published in the August issue of the journal Psychological Science, were dramatic: Only eight of the subjects detected the mimicry (one of them falsely). The remaining students liked the mimicking agent more than the recorded agent, rating the former more friendly, interesting, honest and persuasive. They also paid better attention to the parroting presenter, looking away less often. Most significantly, they were more likely to come around to the mimicking agent's way of thinking on the issue of mandatory ID.

For Better or For Worse: Entrepreneurs, Families, and Inequality

In For Better or For Worse: Entrepreneurs, Families, and Inequality, Arnold Kling argues that "marital choices interact with trends in entrepreneurship to tend to increase inequality of income":

Since World War II, our economy has evolved in ways that reinforce the financial differences between strong families and weak families. As the earnings of women have risen, "assortive mating" (men and women of similar educational levels tending to marry) tends to widen income differences. The surge in entrepreneurship further rewards strong families. Finally, the rise in divorce and single motherhood puts severe stress on the lower part of the income distribution.

Difference in Deference

Bryan Caplan cites an amusing Difference in Deference:

Consider how differently the public treats physics and economics. Physicists can say that this week they think the universe has eleven dimensions, three of which are purple, and two of which are twisted clockwise, and reporters will quote them unskeptically, saying "Isn't that cool!" But if economists say, as they have for centuries, that a minimum wage raises unemployment, reporters treat them skeptically and feel they need to find a contrary quote to "balance" their story.

California sea lions attack humans

California sea lions attack humans:

In the most frightening of the recent episodes, a rogue sea lion bit 14 swimmers this month and chased 10 more out of the water at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, a sheltered lagoon near the bay. At least one victim suffered puncture wounds.

Some scientists speculate that the animals' aggressive behavior is being caused by eating fish contaminated by toxic algae, or by a shortage of food off the coast. But wildlife experts say even healthy sea lions are best left alone.

In Southern California in June, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach and bit a man before waddling into the water and swimming away. In Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized last spring after a sea lion took a chunk out of her leg.

Last year, a group of sea lions took over a Newport Beach marina and caused a vintage 50-foot yacht to capsize when they boarded it. And a lifeguard in Santa Barbara was bitten three times while swimming off El Capitan State Beach.

In Alaska, a huge sea lion jumped onto a fisherman's boat in 2004, knocked him overboard and pulled him underwater; he escaped without serious injury.

Sea lions, which can reach 1,000 pounds, typically bite only if they feel threatened or cornered. And they are more likely to flee than fight if they can escape. Researchers have described the most recent attacks, in which some swimmers were chased through open water, as abnormal behavior.

Still, with a population numbering about 200,000 and growing, these playful, social creatures are increasingly likely to cross paths with humans.

Sitting straight 'bad for backs'

Researchers using new positional MRI machines have concluded that sitting straight is 'bad for backs'. Leaning back slightly is better.

Does growth matter?

Does growth matter? Yes, and sometimes in surprising ways:

The popular mythology of Women's Liberation regards it almost entirely as a political movement. And yet there is no other historical movement so completely economically determined.

A majority of women work outside the home today for two reasons:

1. Most workers are no longer used as slightly smarter horses
2. Labour saving appliances have reduced the amount of housework that must be done.

The first point is obvious, though often overlooked: so long as muscle and speed were important job qualifications, there were almost no jobs that women could do better than men; in consequence, they were inevitably at an economic disadvantage. And the second is shamefully neglected, possibly because almost no one has any idea just how hard a woman's work was, before the invention of modern conveniences. Feeding, clothing, and sheltering a family was a full time job; given the demands of pregnancy and infant care, and their competitive disadvantages in the labour force, it is not reasonable to imagine that anyone but women was going to do that job. There is a reason that sufragettes were relatively wealthy women: they had servants to take care of their homes.

A partial list of the consumer goods (so much derided by the left) that made women's lib possible:

• Refrigeration means that people don't have to cook three meals from scratch every day, and spend another hour or so shopping for same
• Airtight packaging has saved hours of time grinding coffee (by hand), shelling nuts, chopping chocolate, baking bread (or buying it at the bakery), cleaning fish . . . the list goes on and on. It also makes it possible to buy things in bigger lots, saving shopping time.
  
• Flash freezing puts wholesome, tasty vegetables, seafood, and meat on peoples' tables within minutes, at low cost. Even frozen dinners have done their part by taking a lot of terrible cooks out of the game
  
• Self-regulating ovens mean that dinner can be started as you walk in the door from work, without waiting for the oven (and the house) to warm up; and that many things can easily be cooked at once
  
• Central heating has eliminated hours of work sweeping ashes, scrubbing grates, carrying coal or wood, and dusting . . . your great-grandmother (or her "help") used to dust the whole house every day, and with good reason
• Hot and cold running water make cleaning indescribably easier, particularly in concert with modern chemical concoctions; end the work of drawing baths; immeasurably speed the work of washing dishes and doing laundry
• Dishwashers have knocked out a half hour or so of labour after every meal
• Washers and dryers have liberated women in a way that is impossible to overstate. Women's magazines from the 1920s and 1930s are full of ads bemoaning "that Monday evening feeling" . . . that feeling being stark exhaustion, after spending a full day heating water and wrestling with tubs full of sopping wet cloth. A woman who has to spend hours at hard labour every week just to keep her family's clothes clean is not a woman free to start her own coffee shop or go to law school

Undoubtedly readers could come up with other, equally critical devices, to add to the list.

But the point is that in the 1930s, almost no one imagined that all these worthless, decadent consumer goods had the power to revolutionize gender relations. Aldous Huxley thought we'd have to invent increasingly equipment-intensive games to use up all our excess production; George Orwell envisioned a world permanently at war to destroy these dangerous goods; John Kenneth Galbraith foresaw corporations tricking consumers into buying all their useless geegaws through slick advertising. The reality was that for the first time in history, an average Western woman could have her own family, and her own home, and still have a career besides cooking and cleaning for them. We are no doubt similarly blind to the people who might be empowered by economic revolutions still to come. How can we possibly declare that the things we don't now know that we want are morally unimportant, when we don't even know what those things are?

The amazing electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster

Paul Boutin of Slate looks at the amazing electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster — which is made by a friend of his:

Eberhard is that unsung breed of Silicon Valley genius: the hardware engineer. I crossed paths with him briefly 15 years ago when we both worked for a startup that made computer workstations. It was obvious he was the company's secret weapon. He went on to launch one of the first e-book readers, then used his buyout money to build electric cars. Tesla operates more like a consumer-electronics maker than a traditional auto manufacturer. The company's headquarters are in the Valley, where a team of designers creates specs for parts that are manufactured and assembled around the world. The first batch of cars is being assembled in England by Lotus, a small-volume sports-carmaker.

Eberhard says traditional carmakers have failed with electrics for two reasons. First, they market them as "penalty boxes" for environmental do-gooders and gas-mileage-obsessed penny-pinchers. Second, they just don't understand batteries. The Tesla's giant lithium-ion battery pack gives it the power to hit 60 in four seconds, to run 250 miles without a recharge, and to charge rapidly at its home charging base (a one-hour charge will take you 80 miles; it takes a 3.5-hour charge to go 250 miles). You can even plug into a wall socket at a roadside stop in a pinch. That makes the Roadster a viable commuter car and weekend day-tripper. The company claims energy costs as low as a penny per mile.

The two-seat debut model, a $100,000 pop-top sports car about the size and shape of the Lotus Elise, has room for two people and a set of golf clubs but not much more. Tesla is working on a 2009 model aimed at competing with BMW's 5-series, a $50,000 to $75,000 sedan with room for five adults and a full-sized trunk. It may also license the electric-motor tech to other carmakers—an all-electric Prius isn't out of the question.

Entrepreneurial Deathtraps

Back in 1996, Frederick Beste of Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds gave a talk on Entrepreneurial Deathtraps:

1. 50-50 Partnership
2. Three Musketeers
3. One or Two Customer Overreliance
4. "Mousetrap" Teams
5. Inadequate Pricing
6. Insufficient Start-Up Capital
7. Failure to Look at the Downside
8. Failure to Look at Industry Norms
   
9. Lack of Focus
10. Bringing on the Vulture
11. First Class from the Start
12. Inappropriate Distribution Path to Market
13. Emotional Litigation
14. Product Never "Ready" for Market
15. Low Barrier to Entry Growth Industry
16. Inadequate Market Research
17. Failure to Segment Market
18. No Reason for Customer to Change
19. Payback Can't Be Calculated
20. Failure to Admit a Mistake
21. Step Function Growth
22. Betting the Ranch
23. Ignoring the Handwriting on the Wall
24. Spiraling Costs
25. Silliness Phase
    

Why the U.S. Loses ‘Small Wars’

In Why the U.S. Loses ‘Small Wars’, Larry Kahaner (AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War) goes back to Small Wars, a book written in 1896 by C.E. Callwell, a colonel in the British army, who learned its lessons in the Second Afghan and Boer Wars:

He notes that the primary object in a small war is to force insurgents to fight on the regular force’s terms by drawing them into conflicts in which their superior firepower and discipline could prevail. Unfortunately, the history of small wars has shown that insurgents play hit and run — striking boldy and then retreating quickly, and rarely engaging the larger force head on.

The other, and much bigger obstacle to winning small wars, brings a moral dilemma. According to Callwell, to win small wars, mere victory isn’t enough, the enemy must be thoroughly and utterly destroyed to the last man, woman, and child — which means enormous civilian casualties. For citizens of most modern democracies, this is an unacceptable stance. The level of violence and barbarism it would take to beat an insurgent force — torture, wholesale executions, leveling of towns — is a place where most democracies refuse to go. This keeps victory out of reach.

Small wars are also lost because of the larger army’s lack of national commitment which ends in inadequate or misspent funds and deployment of too few troops. For insurgents fighting for their own soil, the commitment is 100 percent. If they lose the war they lose everything. Without ‘skin in the game’ national commitment by the larger force’s country usually wanes.

Women talk three times as much as men

Women talk three times as much as men:

In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day — 13,000 more than the average man.

Army Game Proves U.S. Can't Lose

Army Game Proves U.S. Can't Lose argues that the Army's new Future Force Company Commander game offers an unreasonably optimistic view of U.S. military action, because the enemies don't learn from experience like real insurgents:

"The first time a UGV toddles in for reconnaissance, insurgents will stare at it until the air strike follows," he says. "The second time, they'll throw a blanket over it and run. The third time, they'll immobilize it and plant an IED because they'll have figured out someone has to recover that million-dollar piece of equipment."

Of course, it's not easy to program a game's AI to learn from experience as well as humans do.

How mirrors can light up the world

How mirrors can light up the world:

Two German scientists, Dr Gerhard Knies and Dr Franz Trieb, calculate that covering just 0.5% of the world's hot deserts with a technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) would provide the world's entire electricity needs, with the technology also providing desalinated water to desert regions as a valuable byproduct, as well as air conditioning for nearby cities.

Just "0.5% of the world's hot deserts" sounds pretty small, but, of course, it's not. Desert land is cheap though.

CSP is not new technology; it's the form of solar power that's been used in the Mojave desert for over a decade:

There are different forms of CSP but all share in common the use of mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays on a pipe or vessel containing some sort of gas or liquid that heats up to around 400C (752F) and is used to power conventional steam turbines.

The mirrors are very large and create shaded areas underneath which can be used for horticulture irrigated by desalinated water generated by the plants. The cold water that can also be produced for air conditioning means there are three benefits. "It is this triple use of the energy which really boost the overall energy efficiency of these kinds of plants up to 80% to 90%," says Dr Knies.

Note that these impressive efficiencies only come about if you manage to use the shade and the desalinated water for horticulture and the cold water for air conditioning — with no additional inefficiencies.

Is it competitive?

The German reports put an approximate cost on power derived from CSP. This is now around $50 per barrel of oil equivalent for the cost of building a plant. That cost is likely to fall sharply, to about $20, as the production of the mirrors reaches industrial levels. It is about half the equivalent cost of using the photovoltaic cells that people have on their roofs. So CSP is competitive with oil, currently priced around $60 a barrel.

Dr Knies says CSP is not yet competitive with natural gas for producing electricity alone. But if desalination and air conditioning are added CSP undercuts gas and that is without taking into account the cost of the carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

I must admit, this part threw me at first:

[T]he reports recommend a collaboration between countries of Europe, the Middle East and Africa to construct a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) grid for the sharing of carbon-free energy. Alternating current cables, which now form the main electricity grids in Europe, are not suitable for long distance transport of electricity because too much is lost on the way. Dr Trieb, of the German Air and Space Agency, says the advantage of DC cables is that the loss in transport is only about 3% per 1,000 kilometres, meaning losses between North Africa and Britain of about 10%.

Thomas Edison's original power transmission system used direct current (DC), but it was quickly supplanted by Tesla's alternating current (AC) system. I didn't realize exactly how AC transmission was superior, and thus how an HVDC system might have its place:

Low voltage is convenient for customer loads such as lamps and motors. Early electric power distribution schemes used direct-current electrical generators located near the customer's loads, which distributed power at the same voltage as the lamps and motors needed. As electric power became more widespread, the distances between loads and generating plant increased. Since the flow of current through the long wires resulted in a voltage drop, it became difficult to regulate the voltage at the distribution circuit extremities. Customers near the generator would have a higher voltage than those at a distance. This was undesirable because lamp life was reduced by excess voltage, and performance of motors was reduced by low voltage.

For a given quantity of power transmitted, higher voltages reduce the transmission power loss. Power in a circuit is proportional to the product of voltage and current, and the power lost as heat in the wires is proportional the square of the current. So, higher transmission voltages increase the efficiency of transmission, for a given size of conductors. Another way to reduce transmission loss is to increase the size of conductors, but since the cost of wires is approximately proportional to their weight per unit length, this strategy becomes un-economic.

The principal advantage of AC is that it allows the use of transformers to change the voltage at which power is used. With the development of efficient AC machines, such as the induction motor, AC transmission and utilization became the norm (see War of Currents). Manipulation of DC voltages is considerably more complex, and has only become economically feasible with the development of high power semiconductor devices: Thyristors, IGBTs, MOSFETS, GTOs, etc.

Churchill 'borrowed' famous lines from books by HG Wells

Churchill 'borrowed' famous lines from books by HG Wells:

Dr Richard Toye, a history lecturer at Cambridge University, has discovered that the phrase "the gathering storm" — used by Churchill to describe the rise of Nazi Germany — had been written by Wells decades earlier in The War of the Worlds, which depicts an attack on Britain by Martians. Dr Toye also identified similarities between a speech Churchill made 100 years ago and Wells's book A Modern Utopia, published in 1905.
[...]
Wells wrote A Modern Utopia in 1905. The book was an attempted update of Thomas More's Utopia, which championed radical ideas including basic state support for citizens. Churchill, then a junior minister in the Colonial Office, did not get around to reading it until his holidays the following year.

Two days after writing to Wells, Churchill gave an address to the Scottish Liberal Council in Glasgow in which he said the state should support its "left out millions". Historians now regard this as a landmark speech of Churchill's career.

In 1908, Wells supported Churchill when he stood in a by-election for the seat of Manchester North-West.

In 1931, Churchill admitted that he knew Wells's work so well he could pass an exam in it. "We need to remember that there was a time when Churchill was a radical liberal who believed these things," Dr Toye explained. "Wells is often seen as a socialist, but he also saw himself as a liberal, and he saw Churchill as someone whose views were moving in the right direction."

This, evidently, was a period in which the term "liberal" shifted meaning.

Some of the "liberal" ideas Churchill and Well shared:

• On the state:
  Like Wells, Churchill said the state should support its citizens, providing pensions, insurance and child welfare.


• On Utopia:
  Wells entitled his book A Modern Utopia.
  
  Churchill, two days after expressing his "debt" to Wells, described his own vision of the supportive state as a "Utopia".


• On selective breeding:
  Wells advocated the idea of selective breeding, arguing that people should only be able to have children if they met certain conditions such as physical fitness and financial independence.
  
  Churchill told Wells he particularly admired "the skill and courage with which the questions of marriage and population were discussed". Churchill was then described by a friend as "a strong eugenist".


• On English-speaking peoples:
  Wells predicted the political unification of "the English-speaking states" into "a great fed eration of white English-speaking peoples". Churchill often argued for to the "fraternal association" or "unity" of the English-speaking peoples, and even wrote a four- volume history of the English-speaking peoples.

BASE Jumping

BASE jumping is the sport of using a parachute to jump from fixed objects:

"BASE" is an acronym that stands for the four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump:

• Building
• Antenna (an uninhabited tower such as an aerial mast)
• Span (a bridge, arch or dome)
• Earth (a cliff or other natural formation)

The acronym "BASE" was coined by film-maker Carl Boenish, who in 1978 filmed the first jumps from El Capitan to be made using ram-air parachutes and the freefall tracking technique, which effectively defined modern BASE jumping.

The World BASE Fatality List records 104 deaths from BASE jumping, typically by wall or cliff strike, often by equipment malfunction, and sometimes simply by impact.

As my friend Todd noted, "if you touch the wall, a deployed chute collapses, never to open again." Quite a thrill...

Giant Carnivorous Centipedes

Giant Carnivorous Centipedes are, of course, super-creepy. Perhaps you've seen footage of one eating a mouse. What I didn't realize was that they also eat bats:

Centipedes in general are carnivorous, though this term usually refers to a diet of smaller bugs or scavenged remains. The Amazonian giant centipede, however, creeps out at night to stalk even larger victims. Groping through the darkness with its long antennae, the centipede will make a meal out of any number of unsuspecting small animals, including lizards, frogs, birds, and mice. With one quick motion the S. gigantea snags its prey and injects an extremely potent venom. The animal is dead after a very brief, thrashing struggle, allowing the centipede to gorge itself on the catch.

But the natural hunter's most impressive skill is that which is demonstrated inside the caves of the Amazon jungle. In an environment completely devoid of light, the centipede scurries across the damp floor, stepping over writhing mounds of beetles to scale the wall and clamber across the ceiling into a position near the center. The giant centipede then grips the stone with it rear legs, allowing its forward segments to dangle into the cave below. Its front section sways as its legs wriggle through the air in search of the intended target: a passing bat.

The fast-flying bats have little warning of the centipede's presence, and within moments one is snatched from the air in mid-flight. The S. gigantea's toxic venom works quickly as the bat hopelessly attempts to squirm from the grasp of many legs, only to succumb to the poison seconds later. There, dangling from the cave ceiling, the centipede eats every scrap of flesh from its prey over the period of about an hour. It then pulls itself back up to the ceiling and climbs down the wall to return to the dark, damp corner of the cave from whence it came.

If you enjoy creepy-crawlies, watch the video.

A Rare Material and a Surprising Weapon

Polonium, discovered by Marie Curie and named after her native Poland, is A Rare Material and a Surprising Weapon:

Polonium 210 is highly radioactive and very toxic. By weight, it is about 250 million times as toxic as cyanide, so a particle smaller than a dust mote could be fatal. It would also, presumably, be too small to taste.
[...]
Polonium 210 does its damage by emitting alpha particles, which have enough energy to tear apart the genetic machinery of cells, killing them outright or causing them to mutate into tumor-producing forms. It gives off 5,000 times more alpha particles than does the same amount of radium.

Alpha-emitters are not picked up by normal radiation-detection devices, a British expert said, so it would be relatively easy to take the substance across a border.

The particles disperse through the body and first destroy fast-growing cells, like those in bone marrow, blood, hair and the digestive tract. That would be consistent with Mr. Litvinenko’s symptoms, which included hair loss, inability to make blood cells and gastrointestinal distress.

It is also a better match than the symptoms caused by thallium, a heavy metal that was first suspected when Mr. Litvinenko fell ill after eating at a sushi bar on Nov. 1. Polonium is so radioactive that it gives off heat, and tiny amounts have been implanted in satellites to make heat and electricity. It was also used in the Soviet Union’s Lunokhod moon rovers.

Don't misunderestimate yourself

Don't misunderestimate yourself, The Economist advises:

A study just published in Evolution and Human Behavior by Sarah Hill, a psychologist at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that people of both sexes reckon the sexual competition they face is stronger than it really is. She thinks that is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

Dr Hill showed heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to the opposite sex, and how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women.

Dr Hill had predicted this outcome, thanks to error-management theory—the idea that when people (or, indeed, other animals) make errors of judgment, they tend to make the error that is least costly. The notion was first proposed by Martie Haselton and David Buss, two of Dr Hill's colleagues, to explain a puzzling quirk in male psychology.

As studies show, and many women will attest, men tend to misinterpret innocent friendliness as a sign that women are sexually interested in them. Dr Haselton and Dr Buss reasoned that men who are trying to decide if a woman is interested sexually can err in one of two ways. They can mistakenly believe that she is not interested, in which case they will not bother trying to have sex with her; or they can mistakenly believe she is interested, try, and be rejected. From an evolutionary standpoint, trying and being rejected comes at little cost, except for hurt feelings. Not trying at all, by contrast, may mean the loss of an opportunity to, among other things, spread one's DNA.

There is an opposite bias in women's errors. They tend to undervalue signs that a man is interested in a committed relationship. That, the idea goes, is because a woman who guesses wrongly that a man intends to stick around could end up raising a child alone.

Putting the Coca Back in Cola

The Columbians are Putting the Coca Back in Cola:

An ad featuring the slogan "Coca Tea — the Holy Leaf of the Sun Children" hangs above a colorful, cloth-draped sales booth in the Santa Barbara shopping mall in Bogotá. As recently as 10 years ago, any mother would have yanked her child hastily to the side if they had passed such a stall. But things have changed: Coca tea, coca wine, coca cookies and a variety of similar products have become an integral part of every street festival and flea market in the Colombian capital.

Such products are also beginning to become standard on store shelves. David Curtidor and his wife Fabiola Acchicvé started selling coca tea to students at Javariana University seven years ago. Their product was such a hit that marketing and packaging it more professionally seemed the logical next step. Now, Curtidor can point to the boxes of teabags stacked in the corridors of the Nasa Esh building — the headquarters of the company Curtidor and his wife founded on behalf of the Nasa, one of more than 60 indigenous tribes in Colombia.

But Curtidor's spacious store room features more than just teabags and crates full of Mate de Coca: Other boxes contain coca wine and the small company's latest product, Coca-Sek — a yellowish cocaine-based soft drink. The invigorating drink hit the market at the end of last year and has made headlines far beyond Colombia's borders.

The soft drink has a fresh, slightly sour taste, like lemonade. Curtidor says he and his wife spent six years developing the flavor. The drink is natural, he says, just like tea — and, unlike cocaine, it's completely harmless.

Man grabs girl's arm – now he's a sex offender

"The law is a ass." Man grabs girl's arm – now he's a sex offender:

A man who grabbed a 14-year-old girl's arm to chastise her after she walked in front of his car, causing him to swerve to avoid hitting her, must register as a "sex offender," the Appellate Court of Illinois has ruled.

Fitzroy Barnaby, a 28-year-old Evanston, Illinois, man was prosecuted for attempted kidnapping and child abduction charges following a November 2002 incident in which he nearly hit the teen with his vehicle.

The girl testified Barnaby yelled, "Come here, little girl," when he jumped out of his car and grabbed her arm. She broke away and called authorities. Barnaby says he was merely trying to lecture her for her carelessness.

The trial jury accepted Barnaby's version of the story, but found him guilty of unlawful restraint of a minor – a sex offense under Illinois law.

As a convicted sex offender, Barnaby is required to be listed on the state's sex offender registry and must keep authorities informed of his place of residency.

Danger: Assassins at Work

Danger: assassins at work — from Russia, but working around the world:

On November 1, Alexander Litvinenko, a 43-year-old Russian who used to work for the FSB, (the post-Soviet version of the KGB), had lunch at Itsu, a cheap-and-cheerful Japanese eatery, with an Italian spycatcher. By that evening, he was feeling so ill he was admitted to hospital. Doctors wasted 10 days trying to treat him for food poisoning. His condition deteriorated — hair falling out, difficulty speaking, white blood cells disappearing, unable to eat, even nourishment from a drip causing him to vomit. It was only when they listened to his pleas to investigate whether he had been poisoned that doctors realised Litvinenko's body contained three times the fatal dose of thallium, a tasteless, odourless killer used in rat poison until, in the 1970s, it was banned as too dangerous. They are now trying to neutralise the slow-acting poison; but it may be four weeks before it is clear whether the ex-secret service man will live.

Litvinenko's friends in London have been quick to accuse the Kremlin of being behind this poisoning. They say Russia wanted to stop Litvinenko investigating the assassination last month of another high-profile critic of the Russian government — his friend, the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya. They believe the Kremlin was also to blame for Politkovskaya being shot outside her Moscow apartment door.
[...]
In 1978, operatives from one of the Soviet Union's satellite states, Bulgaria, decided to bump off Georgy Markov, a diplomat who had defected to Britain. In true James Bond fashion, his assassin prodded a ricin pellet under the defector's skin from the point of a doctored umbrella while he stood in a bus queue. Markov, who felt a sharp pain as the pellet entered his body, died after three days. When Bulgaria's Communist regime collapsed a decade later, a stock of special assassination umbrellas was discovered at the interior ministry in Sofia.
[...]
In the winter of 2004, the pro-western candidate for Ukraine's presidency, Victor Yushchenko, was poisoned with dioxin, a drug that thickened his film-star features into an elephant-man mask and nearly killed him. The poisoning has often been blamed on pro-Moscow secret service operatives. In the autumn of 2004, Politkovskaya, the journalist, said she had been poisoned aboard the plane she was taking south to the Chechen frontier, hoping to help negotiate a peaceful end to the hostage drama at Beslan school. In the summer of 2004, a Chechen separatist leader called Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated in Qatar; two Russians were arrested for the killing, though Moscow denied any connection. Earlier that summer, as Putin jailed Russia's richest oligarch, his political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on fraud charges that the billionaire says were politically motivated, a helicopter carrying Khodorkovsky's British lawyer, Stephen Curtis, crashed on the English south coast. Curtis had said shortly before the crash that if he died mysteriously, "it would not be an accident".

Books for Brooks

Nick Schulz suggests some Books for Brooks — books for New York Times writer David Brooks, who complained that "big books" of "politically useful" thought have been replaced with blogs:

Brink Lindsey, Against the Dead Hand
Robert Shiller, The New Financial Order
Robert Fogel, The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death
William Lewis, The Power of Productivity
Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena
Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches
Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies
William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth
Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, The Bell Curve
Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian
Charles Murray, In Our Hands
Arnold Kling, Learning Economics
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital
CK Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Deirdre McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics For an Age of Commerce
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist
Jerry Muller, The Mind and the Market
Richard Thaler, The Winner's Curse
David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
Michael Cox, Richard Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor
Jonathan Rauch, Demosclerosis
Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter (forthcoming)
Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near
Andy Kessler, How We Got Here
Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative
Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Empire

Oases in Navajo desert contained 'a witch's brew'

Doctors believed that Navajo Neuropathy was a rare genetic disorder, until they realized that the oases in the Navajo desert contained "a witch's brew" of dangerous substances — like uranium:

In the mountains and mesas of the Navajo reservation, mining companies drilled tunnels in the sides of cliffs to extract uranium for the nation's nuclear weapons program during the Cold War. But in the red and ocher sands around Cameron, where deposits were shallow, the ore was blasted out of the plains, creating pits.

As demand for uranium eased in the late 1950s, the U.S. government allowed the companies to leave without filling in the craters. The pits collected snowmelt in the winter and runoff from summer torrents. The holes, some as deep as 130 feet, soon formed oases in the desert.

Lois grew to depend on them as she ranged far from home, covering as much as 10 miles in a day. At dusk, she often camped for the night. She got in the habit of filling and refilling a small container with her drinking supply as she moved from one "lake" to the next, watering her herd.

Every few weeks, the Neztsosies butchered one of the sheep. They ate each one down to the bones, which they sucked around the fire. They destroyed the lambs that could not walk.

Deformed animals were showing up in other sections of Dine Bikeiyah, Home of the People, as Navajos call their homeland. In areas around old mines, lambs and cattle developed shaking limbs, yellow eyes and white patches on internal organs that were discovered after slaughter.

Word of these strange developments did not reach the Neztsosies. Navajo families tend to live miles apart from one another. They prize their privacy. Local officials heard occasional complaints about damaged animals, but no one discerned a trend.

This is where it gets "messed up":

Laura Neztsosie, now 36, is the oldest surviving patient from the Indian Health Service registry.

She and her mother live in two-stoplight Tuba City (population 8,000). Laura drinks protein shakes and takes a periodic table of vitamins, as recommended by Rosen. Her mother dresses her every morning. Nearly blind in one eye, she flips her Bible open with one gnarled hand to find her favorite verses, highlighted in pink.

She also cares deeply about the healing ceremonies held under the wide dark skies outside town. Lois parks her truck close so Laura can watch the dancing from the front seat.

Later, at home, Lois lights a pipe packed with dried mint and mountain flower and holds it to Laura's lips. Lois waves the sacred smoke toward her daughter.

After years of firelight and kerosene lamps, they have electricity. Treated water runs from kitchen and bathroom taps.

But old habits hang on. One day, on her way to visit Linnie's grave on the sagebrush plain, Lois pulled over at a familiar spot. While Laura waited in the truck, the mother walked a short way from the dirt road and lifted boards that had been placed over a natural watering hole to keep coyotes away.

Lois was thirsty and didn't hesitate. She leaned down and drank deeply from the spring.

Altered cottonseed could feed millions

Altered cottonseed could feed millions:

Scientists have found a way to use the cotton plant, long a source of fiber for clothing but inedible by humans, to feed potentially half a billion people a year.

Texas A&M University plant biotechnologist Keerti Rathore and colleagues reported on Monday they have genetically altered the plant to reduce the levels of the toxic chemical gossypol in cottonseed, making it fit for human consumption.

"It actually tastes pretty good. It reminds me of chickpea. It's a fairly good-tasting seed," Rathore said in an interview.

"It tasted better than soybean, I can tell you that," added Rathore, who admitted he had not tasted it until being asked repeatedly about its flavor in the days before the research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new-and-improved cottonseed could be ground into a flour and made into bread and other foods, Rathore said.

Rathore and his team turned to a technique also being used in cancer and AIDS research — so-called RNAi or RNA interference technology that can "silence" a gene — to cut the amount of gossypol in the cottonseed, home to significant amounts of protein. When eaten by people, gossypol can damage the heart and liver.

The researchers left gossypol intact in the remainder of the plant because it guards against insects and disease.

"So the trick is not to affect the levels of these compounds in the rest of the plant, but eliminate it from the seed only. And that's what we have done," Rathore said.

This cottonseed could serve as a high-protein food for the world's hungry, and falls well within the criteria set by the World Health Organization and U.S. Food and Drug Administration for food consumption, the researchers said.

"Potentially, if all of the cottonseed today which is produced can be utilized for human nutrition directly, it can meet the protein requirements of 500 million people on an annual basis," Rathore said.

Cute Overload

This Cute Overload is, well, a cute overload. The bunny is just the beginning.

The unlucky star in a new Jaws movie

This fur seal has become the unlucky star in a new Jaws movie — or, more accurately, the BBC's Planet Earth series.

Friedman Sampler

Emily Parker and Joseph Rago compiled a Friedman Sampler from The Wall Street Journal:

On the Free Market
What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.

— from "The New Liberal's Creed: Individual Freedom, Preserving Dissent Are Ultimate Goals," May 18, 1961

On Social Security
I have long been a critic of Social Security, basically because I believe that it is not the business of government to tell people what fraction of their incomes they should devote to providing for their own or someone else's old age. On a more pragmatic level, Social Security is another example of the generalization that government programs typically have effects that are the opposite of those intended by their well-meaning sponsors (what Rep. Richard Armey calls the "invisible foot of government").

The well-meaning sponsors intended Social Security to ensure a minimum income to the poor in their old age. It has largely done that, but at the cost of what they would have regarded as a perverse redistribution of income from the young to the old, from black to white, from the relatively poor to the relatively well-to-do.

From its inception, Social Security has been an unholy combination of two items: a flat-rate tax on earnings up to a maximum with no exemption and a benefit program that awards subsidies that have essentially no relation to need but are based on such criteria as marital status, longevity and recent earnings. As I wrote many years ago, "hardly anyone approves of either part separately. Yet the two combined have become a sacred cow. What a triumph of imaginative packaging and Madison Avenue advertising!"

— from "Social Security: The General And the Personal," March 15, 1988

On Hong Kong
By some accident of officialdom, the colonial office assigned John Cowperthwaite, a Scotsman and a disciple of Adam Smith, to serve as financial secretary of Hong Kong. Cowperthwaite's free market policies are widely credited with producing the subsequent economic miracle that led to a phenomenal rise in the average level of living despite a nearly 10-fold rise in population.

It is hard to conceive of a more severe test of free market policies. Hong Kong is an island devoid of any significant natural resources other than a great harbor. When the Communists took over China, refugees came streaming over the borders with only the possessions they could carry. They and their successors produced a rapid rise in population. Hong Kong received negligible if any foreign aid to assist the assimilation of the refugees.

Under these adverse circumstances, the salvation of Hong Kong has been its complete free trade and free market policy. No tariffs on imports, no subsidies or other privileges to exports. (The only restrictions are those that Hong Kong has been forced to impose by pressure from other countries, including the U.S., as under the multifiber agreement.) There is no fixing of prices or wages; few if any restrictions on entry into business or trade; and government spending and taxes have been kept low. The top tax rate on personal income is 25%, with a maximum average rate of 15%.

What a contrast to the experience of most of the colonies to which Britain gave their freedom after the war. And what a striking demonstration of how much better free trade and free markets are for the ordinary citizen than the protectionism of Mr. Buchanan and the "fair trade" of President Clinton. "Fair" is in the eye of the beholder; free is the verdict of the market. (The word "free" is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with "freedom." The word "fair" is not used in either of our founding documents.)

— from "Hong Kong vs. Buchanan," March 7, 1996

Sharpest cut from nanotube sword

Damascus sabres may get their famed pattern and strength from nanotubes in the steel:

Sabres from Damascus, now in Syria, date back as far as 900 AD. Strong and sharp, they are made from a type of steel called wootz.

Their blades bear a banded pattern thought to have been created as the sword was annealed and forged. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.

Materials researcher Peter Paufler and his colleagues at Dresden University, Germany, have taken electron-microscope pictures of the swords and found that wootz has a microstructure of nano-metre-sized tubes, just like carbon nanotubes used in modern technologies for their lightweight strength.

The tubes were only revealed after a piece of sword was dissolved in hydrochloric acid to remove another microstructure in the swords: nanowires of the mineral cementite.

Wootz's ingredients include iron ores from India that contain transition-metal impurities. It was thought that these impurities helped cementite wires to form, but it wasn't clear how. Paufler thinks carbon nanotubes could be the missing piece of the puzzle.

At high temperatures, the impurities in the Indian ores could have catalysed the growth of nanotubes from carbon in the burning wood and leaves used to make the wootz, Paufler suggests. These tubes could then have filled with cementite to produce the wires in the patterned blades, he says.

Ephebophilia

Carol Sarler discusses Ephebophilia:

Given the fussing and carrying-on, you would think the poor man had advocated massed orgies with infants. He hadn’t. All that happened was that Terry Grange, the Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys and spokesman on child protection for the Association of Chief Police Officers, suggested greater clarity in the labelling of sex offenders: for instance, he says, it is incorrect to say that those who have sex with underage teenagers are paedophiles — and if we say they are, we risk overestimating the scale of the problem of paedophilia.

With predictable fury, Michele Elliott, the director of the children’s charity Kidscape, rounded on the policeman’s wish to reclassify those who have sex with youngsters between 13 and 16: “He is saying they are not paedophiles and they bloody well are.”

If Miss Elliott would care to borrow my dictionary, she would discover that they bloody well aren’t. A paedophile is defined as one who is sexually attracted to children; children are defined as those between birth and puberty. What our teen fanciers are, in fact, is ephebophiliacs: adults attracted to postpubescent adolescents.

Galactus is Coming

Galactus is Coming is "the long rumored, but never confirmed, collaboration from 1983 between Marvel's Chairman Emeritus Stan Lee and religious comic tract creator Jack Chick."

The Human Calculus of National Security

In the wake of Senator Boxer's comments that staying in Iraq is not worth three military deaths per day, Philip R. O'Connor examines The Human Calculus of National Security:

In the full sweep of U.S history, from the commencement of the Revolution on Lexington Green in April 1775, until the sunny morning of September 11, 2001, our average daily sacrifice has been between 14 and 15 military fatalities (1,217,000 fatalities/83,461 days = 14.6/day). Since 9/11, the average daily sacrifice has been 1.7 per day (3200/1900=1.68).

From the Revolutionary War until the American entry into World War I, the average daily rate was about 11 per day (578,000/52,231=11.07). From World War I through the break up of the Soviet Union, the rate was over 16 per day (636,000/38,811=16.39). Or in our long running confrontation with Soviet communism following World War II until the collapse of the Soviet empire, the rate was over between 6 and 7 per day (112,400/16,892=6.65).

As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?

I enjoyed the Seventh Seal allusion in the graphic, by the way. Or was it a Bill and Ted reference? (No, they play Battleship against Death. And Twister.)

Casino Royale Vocabulary

Ian Fleming's James Bond novels make no literary pretenses, but like much adventure fiction for the common man of 50 to 150 years ago, they are chock full of vocabulary that I do not use on a daily basis. Casino Royale, for example, contains a number of words I wouldn't expect to find in a John Grisham novel:

Main Entry: ¹cosh
Pronunciation: 'käsh
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from Romany kas, kast stick, piece of wood
chiefly British : a weighted weapon similar to a blackjack

Main Entry: an·trum
Pronunciation: 'an-tr&m
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural an·tra /-tr&/
Etymology: Late Latin, from Latin, cave, from Greek antron; akin to Armenian ayr cave
: an anatomical cavity within a bone (as the maxilla) or hollow organ (as the stomach)
- an·tral /-tr&l/ adjective

Main Entry: ²boule
Pronunciation: 'bül
Function: noun
Etymology: French, ball -- more at BOWL
: a synthetically formed mass (as of sapphire) with the atomic structure of a single crystal

Main Entry: BEM
Function: abbreviation
1 bachelor of engineering of mines
2 British Empire Medal

Morris Minor
The revolutionary Morris Minor (originally called Mosquito) was launched at the Earls Court Motor Show on 20 September, 1948. Named for an earlier Morris Minor car , it was the work of a team led by Alec Issigonis, who later designed the Mini. Sir Alec became famous for his creation of the Mini but he was really proudest of his participation in designing the Morris Minor. He considered it as being a vehicle which managed to combine many of the luxuries and conveniences of a good motor car with a price suitable for the working classes, while the Mini, introduced in 1959, was a spartan mode of conveyance with everything cut to the bone. The Morris Minor, when compared with competitor products in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, excelled as a roomy vehicle with superior cornering / handling characteristics.

Main Entry: strep·to·my·cin
Pronunciation: -'mI-s^&n
Function: noun
: an antibiotic organic base C₂₁H₃₉N₇O₁₂ that is produced by a soil actinomycete (Streptomyces griseus), is active against many bacteria, and is used especially in the treatment of infections (as tuberculosis) by gram-negative bacteria

Main Entry: de·fal·ca·tion
Pronunciation: "dE-"fal-'kA-sh&n, "dE-"fol-, di-; "de-f&l-
Function: noun
1 archaic : DEDUCTION
2 : the act or an instance of embezzling
3 : a failure to meet a promise or an expectation

Main Entry: baize
Pronunciation: 'bAz
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French baies, plural of baie baize, from feminine of bai bay-colored -- more at BAY
: a coarse woolen or cotton fabric napped to imitate felt

Main Entry: ¹dock·et
Pronunciation: 'dä-k&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English doggette
1 : a brief written summary of a document : ABSTRACT
2 a (1) : a formal abridged record of the proceedings in a legal action (2) : a register of such records b (1) : a list of legal causes to be tried; also : the caseload of a court or judge (2) : a calendar of business matters to be acted on : AGENDA
3 : an identifying statement about a document placed on its outer surface or cover

superhet
The superheterodyne receiver (or to give it its full name, the supersonic heterodyne receiver – often abbreviated superhet) was invented by Edwin Armstrong in 1918.

mairie
French, city hall.

Main Entry: car·il·lon
Pronunciation: 'ker-&-"län, -l&n, 'ka-r&-; 'ker-E-"än, -"On, 'ka-rE-; k&-'ril-y&n
Function: noun
Etymology: French, alteration of Old French quarregnon, modification of Late Latin quaternion-, quaternio set of four -- more at QUATERNION
1 a : a set of fixed chromatically tuned bells sounded by hammers controlled from a keyboard b : an electronic instrument imitating a carillon
2 : a composition for the carillon

Main Entry: mi·mo·sa
Pronunciation: m&-'mO-s&, mI-, -z&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Latin mimus mime
1 : any of a genus (Mimosa) of trees, shrubs, and herbs of the legume family that occur in tropical and warm regions and have usually bipinnate often prickly leaves and globular heads of small white or pink flowers
2 : SILK TREE
3 : a mixed drink consisting of champagne and orange juice

Main Entry: par·terre
Pronunciation: pär-'ter
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Middle French, from par terre on the ground
1 : an ornamental garden with paths between the beds
2 : the part of the main floor of a theater that is behind the orchestra; especially : PARQUET CIRCLE


Main Entry: prink
Pronunciation: 'pri[ng]k
Function: verb
Etymology: probably alteration of ²prank
: PRIMP
- prink·er noun

briar pipe
A briar pipe begins as a Burl (or growth) on the root system of the White Heath Tree, a squat, hearty, shrub-like plant which grows primarily in the dry, arid, rocky wastelands around the Mediterranean Sea. Of all woods, the Briar Burl is unique for making pipes; its tough, porous and nearly impervious to heat. Burls for fine quality pipes can often be 50 to 100 years old when harvested for pipe making.

Hoagie Carmichael
Hoagland Howard Carmichael, famous (white) jazz musician.

huissier
In France, a huissier de justice is a member of the legal profession whose responsibility it is to make available to the public the decisions of the courts and is in charge of the execution of the courts' decisions, such as seizures and evictions. The most common English translation for huissier de justice is bailiff.

"Mais n'enculons pas des mouches"
"Let's not split hairs." French, literally, "But let's not bugger flies."

Ronson
Brand of cigarette lighter.

Main Entry: paw·ky
Pronunciation: 'po-kE
Function: adjective
Etymology: obsolete English dialect pawk trick
chiefly British : artfully shrewd : CANNY

Main Entry: rack rent
Function: noun
Etymology: ⁴rack
1 : an excessive or unreasonably high rent
2 British : the highest rent that can be earned on a property

Main Entry: ¹gib
Pronunciation: 'gib
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Gib, nickname for Gilbert
: a male cat; specifically : a castrated male cat

Main Entry: ²gib
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
: a plate of metal or other material machined to hold other parts in place, to afford a bearing surface, or to provide means for overcoming looseness

Belinograph
Early fax machines.

Main Entry: ²flex
Function: noun
Etymology: short for flexible cord
chiefly British : an electric cord

Main Entry: tre·foil
Pronunciation: 'trE-"foi(-&)l, 'tre-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin trifolium, from tri- + folium leaf -- more at BLADE
1 a : CLOVER 1 ; broadly : any of several leguminous herbs (as bird's-foot trefoil) with leaves that have or appear to have three leaflets b : a trifoliolate leaf
2 : an ornament or symbol in the form of a stylized trifoliolate leaf
[trefoil illustration]

Main Entry: ²cosset
Function: transitive verb
: to treat as a pet : PAMPER

Main Entry: tus·sah
Pronunciation: 't&-s&, -"so
Variant(s): or tus·sore /-"sOr, -"sor/
Function: noun
Etymology: Hindi & Urdu tasar
: silk or silk fabric from the brownish fiber produced by larvae of some saturniid moths (as Antheraea paphia)

Main Entry: dis·trait
Pronunciation: di-'strA
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French destreit, from Latin distractus
: apprehensively divided or withdrawn in attention : DISTRACTED

Main Entry: Nem·bu·tal
Pronunciation: 'nem-by&-"tol
Function: trademark
-- used for the sodium salt of pentobarbital

Main Entry: sa·loon
Pronunciation: s&-'lün
Function: noun
Etymology: French salon, from Italian salone, augmentative of sala hall, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German sal hall; akin to Lithuanian sala village
1 a chiefly British : SALON 1 b chiefly British : an often elaborately decorated public hall c (1) : a usually large public cabin on a ship (as for dining) (2) : the living area on a yacht d chiefly British : SALON 4 e : BARROOM
2 : SALON 2
3 British a : PARLOR CAR b : SEDAN2a -- called also saloon car

Main Entry: trip·tych
Pronunciation: 'trip-(")tik
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek triptychos having three folds, from tri- + ptychE fold
1 : an ancient Roman writing tablet with three waxed leaves hinged together
2 a : a picture (as an altarpiece) or carving in three panels side by side b : something composed or presented in three parts or sections; especially : TRILOGY

Afghanistan: Let 'Em Eat Hams

Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, describes the situation in Afghanistan by analogy:

If your exterminator says he just killed 200 rats down in the basement, is that good news or bad news?

On the one hand, it's good those rats are dead. On the other hand, I thought we got rid of them years ago, and now there's hundreds? What's going on?

That's the Big Question everyone should be asking in Afghanistan. NATO's claiming we killed 500 Taliban near Kandahar this month. That's a mighty impressive body count, sure, but if Nam taught us one thing, it's that body counts are a bad sign. For all sorts of reasons, starting with basic common sense: if we're killing that many, how many more are running around out there?

Then he offers a solution, of sorts:

Too bad we didn't give the Brits total control of the so-called GWOT and let them play it their way. I can tell you what the old 19th c. Brits would've done. Problem: huge, restless tribe (Pushtun) smarting from recent defeat and totally uninterested in "peace." Solution: ship every Pushtun of military age to Sunni Triangle as honored guests of the British Empire and give them enough ammo to make the place as quiet and boring as Mary Poppins's bedroom.

The Pushtun would be happy as the Seven Dwarves, whistling while they worked on quieting down the Sunni; the Sunni would be. .. well, maybe not happy but definitely quiet — "quiet as the grave," as the saying goes. And the Brits would step back into the shadows and let them fight it out till the end of time. A great system, worked for centuries.

Dime and Dimer

In Dime and Dimer, Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, describes Dense Inert Metal Explosives:

This is a weapon designed to splatter thousands of tiny tungsten pellets into everybody within a 4-meter radius, without hurting anybody who happens to be standing outside that radius. In tests at the Air Force Research Laboratories, the freakish thing worked so well that it destroyed most of the instruments placed within its 4-meter destructo-zone. They actually had to design new metrics that could withstand those high-temperature tungsten pellets.

At the same time, a big part of the design effort was developing a casing that wouldn't hurt people. They came up with a nice light carbon-composite casing that shreds into harmless confetti.
[...]
To see why they've put so much effort into a weapon like this, you have to understand that it's being used in Gaza by the IDF. There've been reports out of Gaza that when the Israelis blast one of these Hamas guys outside a coffee house or his home, there've been weird injuries to the people standing next to the target