I've heard that this shortfall (and I'm not convinced that it really is a shortfall) is adressed in his follow-on book "On Combat" but I have yet to read it so I don't know for sure.
Don't forget the other part. Getting back from WW2 took a nice slow ship in the company of your comrades, where you had plenty of time to talk through a lot of what you had seen and done, and generally had an opportunity to "come down" from battlefield conditions.
Whereas in Vietnam, you could be in the bush on Sunday, and back home a civillian on Monday. No chance to adapt to the new surroundings, no suport network, and just to rub salt in the wound, a rather unsympathetic populace.
I don't think you can hang Mai Lai on traning tactics though. A better source of blame is an unprofessional (in the literal sense) and undertrained soldiery who got all the technical training but little of the ethics and ethos.
One of my major tasks, back in my Armoured Recce days, was to always know exactly where I was (to a resolution of 100m) without the aid of a GPS, while commanding a group of moving vehicles.
To do this, one must hone one's spacial recogition skills to a particularly fine pitch. I got to the point where I could see contour lines on a map, and visualize the terrain so represented from the POV of an observer on the ground.
Through a combination of mental dead reckoning, spacial awareness, and map reading skills, I could usually keep track of where I was at any given moment as a kind of mental background task:
"I'm here, moving a little west of north at 30 Kmh, so I should be crossing this stream in about a minute, where I'll be be able to see this hill here and there's a cemetary on the left another 600m up the road and the road bends a little left another 300m up from that and then I'll see this woodline here and....."
But to pull that off, you need an accurate map and sightlines to all the features you use to orient yourself. If either of these is lacking, a plain old ordinary mil-spec Silva Compass can be a real lifesaver.
I was on a trace once in Gagetown when a thick fog settled in, limiting visibility to about 300m. Somehow, I got turned around in the fog, and the references I kept expecting to encounter weren't there. I dragged out the compass, and it indicated that I was moving 90 degrees off from the direction I thought I was (the fog was diffusing the sunlight to the point where I couldn't even use *that* as a reference)
This was a profoundly disorienting experience. I *knew* North was that way ^ but the compass said it was this way . I actually thought that the metal hull of the track was confusing the compass, and I had to dismount and walk a couple of hundred metres away from it before I was finally convinced that *I* was wrong and the *compass* was right.
With the "which way is North?" question sorted out, I was able to re-establish my actual position in relatively short order, and resume the trace.
I would recommend that the OP spend a good deal of time doing map and compass work, learn how to do that, learn how to annotate a map, and once those skills are honed, THEN get the GPS. The combination should ensure the best possible chance of success, and doesn't place his life in danger if his batteries die.
Another tip - laminate all your maps with maptack (it's a sticky clear film availible at map supply houses) on BOTH SIDES of the map, and use Staedtler "Permanent" markers to annotate it (the markers will clean off with alcohol, but will not run in the rain).
I'm glad some LDAP-savvy mods had points to play with. It's the +5 funny being modded +5 funny that makes the whole joke work. Props to those that got it!:)
I'm nowhere near the guitar geeks you guys are - I have no clue about who any of these guys are.
But I once saw a guy at a pub in London, Ontario, play *both* parts of "Dueling Banjos", simultaniously, on a single guitar.
It had a lot of strings, and both hands were really busy.... flat out blew my mind. I'm very much impressed with what some of you can do with that thing.
Islam, like Christianity, is not a homogeneous bloc. I do not claim that "Islam" does not discriminate between military and civillian targets, but rather "elements of Islam".
However, independant of that disclaimer, the entire concept of a hard separation between legitimate and illegitimate targets in war is largely a Western cultural phenomenon. That's not to say that non-Western cultures make NO discrimation, but rather, that the discrimination is much more fuzzy than it is in the West - at least on paper. (One need only see a picture of a naked pile of Iraqi prisoners to see that the situation in Western nations isn't pure black and white)
That's a pretty good summary of the situation. It skims over some of the complexities, but such is the nature of summary.
Lest somebody think you or I anti-Semitic (which I don't think you are) allow me to add that I think the creation of a Jewish state in the "Promised land" was an absolute good, and did a lot to restore some of the West's collective karma where mistreatment of the Jews is concerned. Yes, it solved the tactical problem of "what to do with the Jews" and undoubtedly some of that was fueled by an anti-Semitic desire to keep them out of one's own backyard - sad, but probably true. But ultimately, I think the creation of Israel was a good thing overall.
Where it went wrong was in the execution. There had to have been a way to create Israel without simply "brushing off" the local Arab populations and pissing them off, without sowing the seeds for the subsequent wars, which in turn magnified the Israeli siege mentality that is in turn used to justify their treatment of the Palestineans - which in turn sows the seeds for all the terrorist problems we have today.
Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to see how the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions. Now that there is 60 years of bad blood and poor behaviour on all sides to deal with, I worry if it will ever be possible for the situation to ever get sorted out.:(
The problem here is that the primary purpose in Iraq - jast as it was in Vietnam - is a "hearts and minds" campaign.
It is very difficult to convince somebody that you are the good guys when you have just blown his wife and children to bits, no matter how accidentally.
Even damage to infrastructure works counter to the goal. It's hard to like the Americans much when the lights don't work, the toilet doesn't work, and you have to hump 10k to pick up water at the local water point because the water isn't running.
Collateral damage creates andger and resentment among the civilian population. This leads to opposition to the American-backed authorities, and is fertile recruiting ground for terrorists and insergents.
Targeted or not, a victim is still a victim, and independant of the morality of victimizing innocents, collateral damage aids the enemy.
Keep in mind that the primary weapon during the American Revolutionary War was the smoothbore musket. A smoothbore has an advantage over the rifled musket in its rate of fire, primarily due to much less effort needed to ram the ball home.
The downside is greatly reduced accuracy. This was overcome by placing large numbers of muskets into a tightly-packed formation of troops, and having them fire volleys in unison. No individual soldier could be sure of his individual target, but a rectangular cross-section of space to the immediate front of the formation would become very hazardous to occupy.
In fact, the word of command preceeding "fire" in the British Army was not "aim" but rather "level".
Now if you are hunting food, it is very rare that you are presented with a tightly-packed formation of deer, ducks, turkeys, or whatever. Aim counts when you are substancence hunting, and so the natural weapon of the hunter is the rifle, not the smoothbore. Slow rate of fire does not matter when your target is not shooting back, and when it is likely to run or fly away after a miss.
Most of the firearms extant in the colonies at the time were hunting weapons used to obtain food, not military weapons. So the American Revolutionary Army make a tactic of not forming up in ranks to blaze away (as per current accepted military custom) but instead preferred to hide in the bushes, take a potshot, and then fall back into the woods - hit and run tactics, rather than stand and fight tactics.
(Your typical American Revolutionary was also ununiformed and so hard to identify as an "enemy combatant", where the British wore easily identified bright red coats)
The standard tactics of the guerilla throughout history - see, for example, the Mongols vs the Romans, or the Vietcong vs the US Army.
Seen from the point of view of a commander vastly outnumbered in terms of men and firepower, this is a natural and sensible thing to do. Seen from the point of view of the commander with the bigger battalions and the greater firepower, it is cowardly, sneaky, and unfair. Seen from the point of view of the line soldier, for whom death lurks behind every tree, this is... terrifying.
The major differences between the modern Islamic extremist "terrorist" and an American Revolutionary "freedom fighter" (besides the fact that the Americans won, where the Islamics are still in doubt - and never forget that the victors write history) is that, as far as I can recall at least, the American Revolutionaries limited themselves mostly to military targets (although the odd Loyalist homestead was not immune) where your modern Islamic terrorist draws no such distinction between "soldier" and "civillian" - and that is largely a cultural thing.
As far as "there being no reasoning with them" being a source of irrationality... if the Soviet Union had invaded the US (not that there was ever a real liklihood of that ever happening, but let's pretend) would you rest until all the invaders had been thrown out of your homeland? Would you accept the argument "Well they're here and they have all the guns, so we might as well just learn to speak Russian and be done with it"?
Do NOT mistake "They won't do what we want them to do!" with "irrationality".
Also, do NOT mistake "one must study the reasons why they are acting the way they are and seek to understand their point of view" with SYMPATHY for their cause. The American invasion of Afganistan was COMPLETELY justified, and I shed not a single tear for any Al-Quaida member or Taliban member killed in the process.
But one must also keep an open mind, and if one finds that one's own government has behaved badly and to some degree provoked the activity, it is just good sense to rectify the problem. Just because the terrorists want something doesn't mean that what they want is WRONG.
If I were the American President, I would have:
1) Utterly destroyed Al-Quaida in Afganistan and anybody who aided and abetted them. Utterly. Finding Bi
Having never attempted to create a poison frag bomb, and so not really being up on the availibility and lethality of commonly availible poisons, I wouldn't know for sure.... but there are bound to be similarities to chemical weapons, and I do know a fair amount about those, thanks to the army.
There exist agents that are spectacularly lethal, where pinhead sized droplets can kill in minutes after exposure to the skin. Some of the nerve agents out there are really terrifying.
And there are undoubtably poisons that may not be as immediately lethal as military-grade nerve agents, but would do the job in a homemade device, especially if we can deliver direct to the bloodstream (via a wound) rather than needing through-skin absorbsion.
(Quick trivia point - if your agent evaporates or otherwise breaks down faster than the rate of through-skin absorbsion, it won't work. This is a big part of why modern chemical weapons have such ridiculous toxicity. It's not enough to bring the target in contact with the agent; the agent must be delivered in sufficiant quantity to be lethal (or at least incapactating) and absorbsion rate vs dispersion/decomposition rate is a big part of that)
So if we stick a vial of some agent in with our bomb, we can count on that volume of agent being blasted more or less uniformly away from the centre of the blast, which means that the volume of agent per volume of space is going to follow an inverse cube relationship with the distance away from the centre of the blast (at least initially) with a skew towards a slightly denser than normal distribution closer to the blast point as agent that was blasted "up" falls back to earth.
Even with the hyper-lethal military grade stuff, you wind up needing a LARGE volume of agent if you want to deliver a lethal dose at the edge of the blast area. If your agent of choice is less lethal, the amount of agent required goes up accordingly. Volume affects dispersal/decomposition as well - a small volume is likely to be dispersed as a fine mist, which is going to evapourate or break down quicker than large droplets.
All this tends to require larger volumes in order to make the agent effective at all.
Plus you still deal with masking effects. Those close to the blast will tend to shield those behind them, such that somebody two or three ranks behind the blast may not come into contact with any agent at all. You kill those in the first rank - but blast and/or fragmentation would have done for them anyway.
So you don't really make the device all that much more lethal, but you DO make it bulkier and heavier. You also make assembly and transport much more difficult. Most homemade explosives tend to be unstable enough as it is (many would-be terrorists take themselves out with unintended premature detonation); to have the device full of something lethal that could potentially leak or spill while on route does nothing for your delivery rate.
The people who you WOULD impact the most would be rescue and cleanup crews. Assuming a reasonably persistant agent and suitable density, rescue crews or first-aiders who move to the centre of the blast will put themselves in contact with the agent, and you might get a couple of them before they wised up - again, assuming sufficiant volume.
If this is starting to sound like you need *gallons* of agent in order to be able to do anything, then you're getting the picture. I've always considered the basic unit of chemical weapons volume to carry out a reasonable terrorist-sized strike as the "tanker truck".
Even in military use, the primary use of a chemical strike were its second-order effects, not its immediate lethality. A chemical strike forces all those in the theatre to climb into their bunny suits and gask masks. From personal experience, this is a SERIOUS pain in the ass - it's hot, uncomfortable, you can't see, talk, or breathe as well, simple things like eating and defecating become major operations, and the area struck is off limits until a chemical r
Oddly, bombs are nowhere near as lethal as you might think. If a bomb goes off in a crowded space, you get a lot of injuries, but typically only the people immediately near the blast are killed - and even then, pure blast effects are usually survivable.
If there isn't a lot of fragmentation, and/or if there is another person between you and the blast, you will probably survive.
The follow-on effects are more dangerous - structural collapse, fire, smoke, trampling etc. In a bus, I would expect very few of these to play any real part, and so would expect outright fatalities to be small.
Like most things, the truth lies between these two extremes "We did something bad to deserve it" and "terrorists are insane and irrational".
Your typical terrorist does indeed usually have a rational goal in mind. These are not people who blow up stuff just for fun, or because a little voice in their head told them to do it - there is usually a very real and logical justification behind their actions.
Where things start to diverge from the typical American worldview is that things that do not matter the slightest bit to an American might matter a great deal to a terrorist - and vice versa. Plus there is often the same confusion of motive between terrorist and Americans as there is between Americans and terrorists. And finally, terrorists are by definition willing to do things considered unconciencable in the American (really, Western) value system.
For example, Western society makes a distinction between "church" and "state", and further makes a distinction between "combatant" and "civillian". Other societies may not, and in particular, the branches of Islamic fundamentalism that are causing all the problems these days do not.
The fundamental problem here is a clash of cultures with very, very different value systems. There's a lot of perfectly normal Western behaviour that to an Islamic fundamentallist of the correct flavour, would be the Western equivelant of painting pentagrams on chruch altars. Certain elements see Western civilization (and American civilization in particular) as being every bit as evil as Nazism, and they are willing to go to great lengths to attack it.
Cast in the right light, the French Resistance during WW2 was a "terrorist" organization. So too was the American Revolutionary Army, with George Washington subbing in for Bin Laden.
That might seem over the top, a sort of psudeo-Godwinesque claim, but there is an essential core truth in there. The French Resistance and George Washington tended to limit their hostillities to military targets, which is seen as "honourable" in Western circles, but that's the Western distinction between soldier and civillian talking. If your culture makes no such distinction, then attacking civillians is not de facto an unconciencable act.
So it is very much a mistake to make the assumption that terrorists are simply irrational killers and dismiss them as such. It behooves Western civilization to understand exactly what the beef the terrorists have, and to examine those complaints in the cold, hard, RATIONAL light of the truth.
Because part of that truth is that the West - and again, America in particular - is not entirely innocent. When people call you the "great Satan" there is usually a reason or two behind it.
In particular, the Israelis have been treating their Arab Palestinean population very, very badly for quite some time now - and the staunchest supporter of Isreal is the USA. That does nothing to endear the US to Arabs in the area - and when the US invades Iraq under false pretences (bringing more Arabs under American colonial rule) that starts to look a lot (from an Arab perspective) like a cultural war being waged on Islam.
The invasion of Iraq has to have been the biggest strategic blunder since the invasion of Poland (or perhaps the invasion of Russia, I'll accept either) by Hitler. How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.... If the US had concentrated on eliminating the terrorist cells in Afganistan, and then had Marshall Planned Afganistan, the world would be a MUCH safer place right now.
Now as far as the "no single death on American soil" argument goes... Al Quaida has NEVER had much of a presence on American soil. Prior to 9/11, the holder of the most successful terrorist attack in the US was Tim McVey and co, a group of AMERICANS upset at their own government. Al Quaida had made a couple of attempts at the WTC, but they had been dismal, almost laughable, failures. Al Quaida simply wasn't in the business of setting off random bombs at sporting events and shop
I've done my share of political commentary on Slashdot, and I can't say that I share your pessimism.
There are trolls, yes, and there are radicals on both sides. But I've found that if you post reasonable discussion and stay away from preaching, that you can get reasonable discussion in kind.
Slashdot's moderation system, on the average, works. Yes there are some injustices done on occasion, and I wish the pure trolls would just stay away... but overall, the system does an excellent job.
Keep in mind though that the Americans were not entirely without their own ambitions to destroy the USSR. Patton, in particular, wanted to see an all-out invasion of Russia to take them out while they still had a massive army on the scene.
The display of the atomic bomb on Japan *might* (historical hypotheticals are slippery fish indeed) have prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Personally, I suspect a Soviet Army that had borne most of the heavy lifting involved with beating the Nazis and had suffered horrendous losses in so doing was just as eager to lay down their arms as anyone else... but with Uncle Joe in charge, that's hard to know for sure.
But I *also* think that the USSR's very rapid acquisition of nuclear weapons and the delivery system to employ them stopped a potential American -led invasion of the USSR.
And I think that the evidence provided by Hiroshima and Nagasaki as to just how horrible a nuclear war would be is what kept *both* sides, once so armed, from risking it anyway.
I totally do not buy into the theory that the atomic bomb saved lives in WW2; I think Japan would have found a way to surrender without requiring the oft-touted monsterous casulties associated with an invasion.
But I *do* think that the evidence of just how bad the destruction associated with even small atomic bombs was acted as deterrent through the 50's all the way to the present day. I think that without Hiroshima and Nakasaki we have no MAD, and it was MAD that prevented (and continues to prevent) WW3.
One of the things I've always thought the Americans got right, and could be justifiably proud of, was how they rebuilt both Germany and Japan after WW2.
While not _completely_ innocent of a Machiavelllian scheming (what is, in politics?) the effort to NOT seek revenge by punishing the enemy, and instead to do everything possible to rebuild their economies and get them back on their own, *independant* feet, I think was one of the wisest political decisions made in human history. The contribution to the stability and well-being of the world since is incaluable.
The sad thing is that it appears that the lesson learned there has been forgotten. Can you imagine what the world would be like today, if the US had, instead of invading Iraq, chosen to bring the Marshall Plan to Afganistan?
Not only would the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people been improved (an absolute good in of itself) an America that chose to treat Afganistan benevolently, that rebuilt industry and infrastructure and got the country cleaned up and back on its feet, would have torn the heart out of the support base for the people who attacked the US in the first place. It's hard to get people to hate the guy whose making your life better....
As a Canadian, and a retired Canadian soldier at that, thanks for noticing our contribution at Normandy - and I say that without irony; the fact that Canada had a Normandy beach all to itself, and was in fact the only country to reach its D-Day objectives, is sadly often overlooked.
But your comment "I don't think Canada would have had that level of involvement without US cooperation" is well off the mark.
Historically, Canadians don't give a fig about what the US does when it comes to going to war. We are our own independant country, and we make our own decisions.
We joined WW1 and WW2 within a couple of days of both wars starting, and in both cases Canadians were busy fighting and dying well in advance of any American involvement.
Even in the case of war material Canadians have gone it their own if they had to. In WW1 we brought the Canadian made Ross rifle (sadly, a steaming hunk of shit and a political boondoggle) and we started WW2 with our own tank, the Ram (design elements of which eventually made it into the vastly superior Sherman) When US material, usually much cheaper to obtain rather than building it ourselves, became availble we'd use it, but having access to US equipment was never a precondition to Canada going to war.
In fact, it's interesting to see which wars Canada has chose to get involved in, and which ones it chose to avoid. I think we have a pretty good batting average when it comes to finding the just ones:
WW1, WW2, Korea, Gulf War 1, and Afganistan we all get into immediately. Vietnam and Gulf War 2 we purposely pass on.
And then there's all those UN peacekeeping missions: Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti....
Anyway, thanks for noticing our proud military heritage. We think we've done OK over the years.:) But please don't assume we're an American puppet state, militarily - we are not.
You and the previous posters are all dead right about self-confidence being sexy - in fact, self-confidence can make up for a lot of lacking physical attractiveness. So can a sense of humour.
Although hygene *IS* important.
If you are clean, and you are confident, and you don't whine or grovel, and you can be a little funny... you'll do just fine, even if you aren't going to be on any calendars anytime soon.
These are all prime numbers, of course - but what if you had never been taught about prime numbers?
Or maybe:
"Up is to down as anterior is to: 1) posterior 2) interior 3) dexter 4) sinister"
which is primarily a vocabulary test, not intelligence.
It's more of a problem on the low side, where you may be dealing with illiterates. A "complete the series" test is pretty hard if you can't read the numbers. But an inability to read doesn't mean a low intelligence. If Einstein had been raised by wolves, (and, one presumes, wound up illiterate) would he be any less of a genius?
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to this particular definition ("intelligence is measured by its expression") because I have experience with this too: I drive a race car. My success at any given event is in very large part an expression of my performance at that event. Some days, I'm so good I'd make you weep at the sheer beauty of it. And other days I couldn't drive sheep.:)
It's hard to boil this down into a single "talent" number to compare against other drivers. For sure, there are a rare few who seem to have much less variability in their performance (they are consistantly at the top of their game, where I occasionally have a "sheep day") but when I'm really "on", I'm the equal of even these lucky few. (and I'm convinced that my variability could be eliminated with the proper coaching)
So lets say that intelligence follows a similar pattern. Some days you express well; other days, not so much. There is some variability to the expression of your intelligence depending any number of outside factors.
Well then, that makes determining a link between genetics and intelligence DOUBLY hard, because now you have to account for expression performance.
I have seen an entire field of drivers have a "sheep day" all at once, where *everybody* is off his game, and if *anybody* rises to just an "average" performance he'd wipe the field. So it's possible that Group A has a good day, and Group B has a bad day, and now you have data showing that A is smarter than B, when really what you measured is that A expressed better than B.
Now you could make the argument that, by virtue of expressing better, that at the time the test was taken that A *really was* more intelligent than B. By your definition, I agree. But that doesn't prove that A's intellectual genetics are superior to B's - in fact, if we assume the variability ranges overlap, on a retest B might be smarter than A, or they might even be tied.
So either way, we are making life very difficult for anybody seeking proof of a genetic link to intelligence. Taken the first way, the test doesn't really measure intelligence. Taken the second way, it does - but "intelligence" is highly variable and hard to nail down. Either way, it makes any study claiming a direct link between some factor and intelligence highly suspect.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a word you don't see every day - unless you're Stephan R Donaldson of course.
Good job!
DG
You crazy kids with your 8-way joysticks and your so-called "fire" button. Bah!
In my day we had a single left-right knob, and we LIKED it!
The video game industry peaked with Pong. All else since has been over-decorated frippery.
DG
Huh? What? Did somebody say something?
Damn kids keep interrupting my nap.
DG
What do you mean? Today IS Groundhog Day.
Isn't it?
DG
I've heard that this shortfall (and I'm not convinced that it really is a shortfall) is adressed in his follow-on book "On Combat" but I have yet to read it so I don't know for sure.
It's on my to-read list though.
DG
Lt. Col Dave Grossman "On Killing" - great book.
Don't forget the other part. Getting back from WW2 took a nice slow ship in the company of your comrades, where you had plenty of time to talk through a lot of what you had seen and done, and generally had an opportunity to "come down" from battlefield conditions.
Whereas in Vietnam, you could be in the bush on Sunday, and back home a civillian on Monday. No chance to adapt to the new surroundings, no suport network, and just to rub salt in the wound, a rather unsympathetic populace.
I don't think you can hang Mai Lai on traning tactics though. A better source of blame is an unprofessional (in the literal sense) and undertrained soldiery who got all the technical training but little of the ethics and ethos.
DG
One of my major tasks, back in my Armoured Recce days, was to always know exactly where I was (to a resolution of 100m) without the aid of a GPS, while commanding a group of moving vehicles.
:)
To do this, one must hone one's spacial recogition skills to a particularly fine pitch. I got to the point where I could see contour lines on a map, and visualize the terrain so represented from the POV of an observer on the ground.
Through a combination of mental dead reckoning, spacial awareness, and map reading skills, I could usually keep track of where I was at any given moment as a kind of mental background task:
"I'm here, moving a little west of north at 30 Kmh, so I should be crossing this stream in about a minute, where I'll be be able to see this hill here and there's a cemetary on the left another 600m up the road and the road bends a little left another 300m up from that and then I'll see this woodline here and....."
But to pull that off, you need an accurate map and sightlines to all the features you use to orient yourself. If either of these is lacking, a plain old ordinary mil-spec Silva Compass can be a real lifesaver.
I was on a trace once in Gagetown when a thick fog settled in, limiting visibility to about 300m. Somehow, I got turned around in the fog, and the references I kept expecting to encounter weren't there. I dragged out the compass, and it indicated that I was moving 90 degrees off from the direction I thought I was (the fog was diffusing the sunlight to the point where I couldn't even use *that* as a reference)
This was a profoundly disorienting experience. I *knew* North was that way ^ but the compass said it was this way . I actually thought that the metal hull of the track was confusing the compass, and I had to dismount and walk a couple of hundred metres away from it before I was finally convinced that *I* was wrong and the *compass* was right.
With the "which way is North?" question sorted out, I was able to re-establish my actual position in relatively short order, and resume the trace.
I would recommend that the OP spend a good deal of time doing map and compass work, learn how to do that, learn how to annotate a map, and once those skills are honed, THEN get the GPS. The combination should ensure the best possible chance of success, and doesn't place his life in danger if his batteries die.
Another tip - laminate all your maps with maptack (it's a sticky clear film availible at map supply houses) on BOTH SIDES of the map, and use Staedtler "Permanent" markers to annotate it (the markers will clean off with alcohol, but will not run in the rain).
PS - Hey Kevin, long time no see.
DG
Heh, I know. Isn't that awesome?
:)
I'm glad some LDAP-savvy mods had points to play with. It's the +5 funny being modded +5 funny that makes the whole joke work. Props to those that got it!
DG
I'm nowhere near the guitar geeks you guys are - I have no clue about who any of these guys are.
But I once saw a guy at a pub in London, Ontario, play *both* parts of "Dueling Banjos", simultaniously, on a single guitar.
It had a lot of strings, and both hands were really busy.... flat out blew my mind. I'm very much impressed with what some of you can do with that thing.
DG
Islam, like Christianity, is not a homogeneous bloc. I do not claim that "Islam" does not discriminate between military and civillian targets, but rather "elements of Islam".
However, independant of that disclaimer, the entire concept of a hard separation between legitimate and illegitimate targets in war is largely a Western cultural phenomenon. That's not to say that non-Western cultures make NO discrimation, but rather, that the discrimination is much more fuzzy than it is in the West - at least on paper. (One need only see a picture of a naked pile of Iraqi prisoners to see that the situation in Western nations isn't pure black and white)
DG
That's a pretty good summary of the situation. It skims over some of the complexities, but such is the nature of summary.
:(
Lest somebody think you or I anti-Semitic (which I don't think you are) allow me to add that I think the creation of a Jewish state in the "Promised land" was an absolute good, and did a lot to restore some of the West's collective karma where mistreatment of the Jews is concerned. Yes, it solved the tactical problem of "what to do with the Jews" and undoubtedly some of that was fueled by an anti-Semitic desire to keep them out of one's own backyard - sad, but probably true. But ultimately, I think the creation of Israel was a good thing overall.
Where it went wrong was in the execution. There had to have been a way to create Israel without simply "brushing off" the local Arab populations and pissing them off, without sowing the seeds for the subsequent wars, which in turn magnified the Israeli siege mentality that is in turn used to justify their treatment of the Palestineans - which in turn sows the seeds for all the terrorist problems we have today.
Hindsight being 20/20, it's easy to see how the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions. Now that there is 60 years of bad blood and poor behaviour on all sides to deal with, I worry if it will ever be possible for the situation to ever get sorted out.
DG
The problem here is that the primary purpose in Iraq - jast as it was in Vietnam - is a "hearts and minds" campaign.
It is very difficult to convince somebody that you are the good guys when you have just blown his wife and children to bits, no matter how accidentally.
Even damage to infrastructure works counter to the goal. It's hard to like the Americans much when the lights don't work, the toilet doesn't work, and you have to hump 10k to pick up water at the local water point because the water isn't running.
Collateral damage creates andger and resentment among the civilian population. This leads to opposition to the American-backed authorities, and is fertile recruiting ground for terrorists and insergents.
Targeted or not, a victim is still a victim, and independant of the morality of victimizing innocents, collateral damage aids the enemy.
What part of this is a good idea?
DG
Keep in mind that the primary weapon during the American Revolutionary War was the smoothbore musket. A smoothbore has an advantage over the rifled musket in its rate of fire, primarily due to much less effort needed to ram the ball home.
The downside is greatly reduced accuracy. This was overcome by placing large numbers of muskets into a tightly-packed formation of troops, and having them fire volleys in unison. No individual soldier could be sure of his individual target, but a rectangular cross-section of space to the immediate front of the formation would become very hazardous to occupy.
In fact, the word of command preceeding "fire" in the British Army was not "aim" but rather "level".
Now if you are hunting food, it is very rare that you are presented with a tightly-packed formation of deer, ducks, turkeys, or whatever. Aim counts when you are substancence hunting, and so the natural weapon of the hunter is the rifle, not the smoothbore. Slow rate of fire does not matter when your target is not shooting back, and when it is likely to run or fly away after a miss.
Most of the firearms extant in the colonies at the time were hunting weapons used to obtain food, not military weapons. So the American Revolutionary Army make a tactic of not forming up in ranks to blaze away (as per current accepted military custom) but instead preferred to hide in the bushes, take a potshot, and then fall back into the woods - hit and run tactics, rather than stand and fight tactics.
(Your typical American Revolutionary was also ununiformed and so hard to identify as an "enemy combatant", where the British wore easily identified bright red coats)
The standard tactics of the guerilla throughout history - see, for example, the Mongols vs the Romans, or the Vietcong vs the US Army.
Seen from the point of view of a commander vastly outnumbered in terms of men and firepower, this is a natural and sensible thing to do. Seen from the point of view of the commander with the bigger battalions and the greater firepower, it is cowardly, sneaky, and unfair. Seen from the point of view of the line soldier, for whom death lurks behind every tree, this is... terrifying.
The major differences between the modern Islamic extremist "terrorist" and an American Revolutionary "freedom fighter" (besides the fact that the Americans won, where the Islamics are still in doubt - and never forget that the victors write history) is that, as far as I can recall at least, the American Revolutionaries limited themselves mostly to military targets (although the odd Loyalist homestead was not immune) where your modern Islamic terrorist draws no such distinction between "soldier" and "civillian" - and that is largely a cultural thing.
As far as "there being no reasoning with them" being a source of irrationality... if the Soviet Union had invaded the US (not that there was ever a real liklihood of that ever happening, but let's pretend) would you rest until all the invaders had been thrown out of your homeland? Would you accept the argument "Well they're here and they have all the guns, so we might as well just learn to speak Russian and be done with it"?
Do NOT mistake "They won't do what we want them to do!" with "irrationality".
Also, do NOT mistake "one must study the reasons why they are acting the way they are and seek to understand their point of view" with SYMPATHY for their cause. The American invasion of Afganistan was COMPLETELY justified, and I shed not a single tear for any Al-Quaida member or Taliban member killed in the process.
But one must also keep an open mind, and if one finds that one's own government has behaved badly and to some degree provoked the activity, it is just good sense to rectify the problem. Just because the terrorists want something doesn't mean that what they want is WRONG.
If I were the American President, I would have:
1) Utterly destroyed Al-Quaida in Afganistan and anybody who aided and abetted them. Utterly. Finding Bi
Having never attempted to create a poison frag bomb, and so not really being up on the availibility and lethality of commonly availible poisons, I wouldn't know for sure.... but there are bound to be similarities to chemical weapons, and I do know a fair amount about those, thanks to the army.
There exist agents that are spectacularly lethal, where pinhead sized droplets can kill in minutes after exposure to the skin. Some of the nerve agents out there are really terrifying.
And there are undoubtably poisons that may not be as immediately lethal as military-grade nerve agents, but would do the job in a homemade device, especially if we can deliver direct to the bloodstream (via a wound) rather than needing through-skin absorbsion.
(Quick trivia point - if your agent evaporates or otherwise breaks down faster than the rate of through-skin absorbsion, it won't work. This is a big part of why modern chemical weapons have such ridiculous toxicity. It's not enough to bring the target in contact with the agent; the agent must be delivered in sufficiant quantity to be lethal (or at least incapactating) and absorbsion rate vs dispersion/decomposition rate is a big part of that)
So if we stick a vial of some agent in with our bomb, we can count on that volume of agent being blasted more or less uniformly away from the centre of the blast, which means that the volume of agent per volume of space is going to follow an inverse cube relationship with the distance away from the centre of the blast (at least initially) with a skew towards a slightly denser than normal distribution closer to the blast point as agent that was blasted "up" falls back to earth.
Even with the hyper-lethal military grade stuff, you wind up needing a LARGE volume of agent if you want to deliver a lethal dose at the edge of the blast area. If your agent of choice is less lethal, the amount of agent required goes up accordingly. Volume affects dispersal/decomposition as well - a small volume is likely to be dispersed as a fine mist, which is going to evapourate or break down quicker than large droplets.
All this tends to require larger volumes in order to make the agent effective at all.
Plus you still deal with masking effects. Those close to the blast will tend to shield those behind them, such that somebody two or three ranks behind the blast may not come into contact with any agent at all. You kill those in the first rank - but blast and/or fragmentation would have done for them anyway.
So you don't really make the device all that much more lethal, but you DO make it bulkier and heavier. You also make assembly and transport much more difficult. Most homemade explosives tend to be unstable enough as it is (many would-be terrorists take themselves out with unintended premature detonation); to have the device full of something lethal that could potentially leak or spill while on route does nothing for your delivery rate.
The people who you WOULD impact the most would be rescue and cleanup crews. Assuming a reasonably persistant agent and suitable density, rescue crews or first-aiders who move to the centre of the blast will put themselves in contact with the agent, and you might get a couple of them before they wised up - again, assuming sufficiant volume.
If this is starting to sound like you need *gallons* of agent in order to be able to do anything, then you're getting the picture. I've always considered the basic unit of chemical weapons volume to carry out a reasonable terrorist-sized strike as the "tanker truck".
Even in military use, the primary use of a chemical strike were its second-order effects, not its immediate lethality. A chemical strike forces all those in the theatre to climb into their bunny suits and gask masks. From personal experience, this is a SERIOUS pain in the ass - it's hot, uncomfortable, you can't see, talk, or breathe as well, simple things like eating and defecating become major operations, and the area struck is off limits until a chemical r
Oddly, bombs are nowhere near as lethal as you might think. If a bomb goes off in a crowded space, you get a lot of injuries, but typically only the people immediately near the blast are killed - and even then, pure blast effects are usually survivable.
If there isn't a lot of fragmentation, and/or if there is another person between you and the blast, you will probably survive.
The follow-on effects are more dangerous - structural collapse, fire, smoke, trampling etc. In a bus, I would expect very few of these to play any real part, and so would expect outright fatalities to be small.
DG
Like most things, the truth lies between these two extremes "We did something bad to deserve it" and "terrorists are insane and irrational".
Your typical terrorist does indeed usually have a rational goal in mind. These are not people who blow up stuff just for fun, or because a little voice in their head told them to do it - there is usually a very real and logical justification behind their actions.
Where things start to diverge from the typical American worldview is that things that do not matter the slightest bit to an American might matter a great deal to a terrorist - and vice versa. Plus there is often the same confusion of motive between terrorist and Americans as there is between Americans and terrorists. And finally, terrorists are by definition willing to do things considered unconciencable in the American (really, Western) value system.
For example, Western society makes a distinction between "church" and "state", and further makes a distinction between "combatant" and "civillian". Other societies may not, and in particular, the branches of Islamic fundamentalism that are causing all the problems these days do not.
The fundamental problem here is a clash of cultures with very, very different value systems. There's a lot of perfectly normal Western behaviour that to an Islamic fundamentallist of the correct flavour, would be the Western equivelant of painting pentagrams on chruch altars. Certain elements see Western civilization (and American civilization in particular) as being every bit as evil as Nazism, and they are willing to go to great lengths to attack it.
Cast in the right light, the French Resistance during WW2 was a "terrorist" organization. So too was the American Revolutionary Army, with George Washington subbing in for Bin Laden.
That might seem over the top, a sort of psudeo-Godwinesque claim, but there is an essential core truth in there. The French Resistance and George Washington tended to limit their hostillities to military targets, which is seen as "honourable" in Western circles, but that's the Western distinction between soldier and civillian talking. If your culture makes no such distinction, then attacking civillians is not de facto an unconciencable act.
So it is very much a mistake to make the assumption that terrorists are simply irrational killers and dismiss them as such. It behooves Western civilization to understand exactly what the beef the terrorists have, and to examine those complaints in the cold, hard, RATIONAL light of the truth.
Because part of that truth is that the West - and again, America in particular - is not entirely innocent. When people call you the "great Satan" there is usually a reason or two behind it.
In particular, the Israelis have been treating their Arab Palestinean population very, very badly for quite some time now - and the staunchest supporter of Isreal is the USA. That does nothing to endear the US to Arabs in the area - and when the US invades Iraq under false pretences (bringing more Arabs under American colonial rule) that starts to look a lot (from an Arab perspective) like a cultural war being waged on Islam.
The invasion of Iraq has to have been the biggest strategic blunder since the invasion of Poland (or perhaps the invasion of Russia, I'll accept either) by Hitler. How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.... If the US had concentrated on eliminating the terrorist cells in Afganistan, and then had Marshall Planned Afganistan, the world would be a MUCH safer place right now.
Now as far as the "no single death on American soil" argument goes... Al Quaida has NEVER had much of a presence on American soil. Prior to 9/11, the holder of the most successful terrorist attack in the US was Tim McVey and co, a group of AMERICANS upset at their own government. Al Quaida had made a couple of attempts at the WTC, but they had been dismal, almost laughable, failures. Al Quaida simply wasn't in the business of setting off random bombs at sporting events and shop
I've done my share of political commentary on Slashdot, and I can't say that I share your pessimism.
There are trolls, yes, and there are radicals on both sides. But I've found that if you post reasonable discussion and stay away from preaching, that you can get reasonable discussion in kind.
Slashdot's moderation system, on the average, works. Yes there are some injustices done on occasion, and I wish the pure trolls would just stay away... but overall, the system does an excellent job.
"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" after all.
DG
Keep in mind though that the Americans were not entirely without their own ambitions to destroy the USSR. Patton, in particular, wanted to see an all-out invasion of Russia to take them out while they still had a massive army on the scene.
The display of the atomic bomb on Japan *might* (historical hypotheticals are slippery fish indeed) have prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Personally, I suspect a Soviet Army that had borne most of the heavy lifting involved with beating the Nazis and had suffered horrendous losses in so doing was just as eager to lay down their arms as anyone else... but with Uncle Joe in charge, that's hard to know for sure.
But I *also* think that the USSR's very rapid acquisition of nuclear weapons and the delivery system to employ them stopped a potential American -led invasion of the USSR.
And I think that the evidence provided by Hiroshima and Nagasaki as to just how horrible a nuclear war would be is what kept *both* sides, once so armed, from risking it anyway.
I totally do not buy into the theory that the atomic bomb saved lives in WW2; I think Japan would have found a way to surrender without requiring the oft-touted monsterous casulties associated with an invasion.
But I *do* think that the evidence of just how bad the destruction associated with even small atomic bombs was acted as deterrent through the 50's all the way to the present day. I think that without Hiroshima and Nakasaki we have no MAD, and it was MAD that prevented (and continues to prevent) WW3.
DG
One of the things I've always thought the Americans got right, and could be justifiably proud of, was how they rebuilt both Germany and Japan after WW2.
While not _completely_ innocent of a Machiavelllian scheming (what is, in politics?) the effort to NOT seek revenge by punishing the enemy, and instead to do everything possible to rebuild their economies and get them back on their own, *independant* feet, I think was one of the wisest political decisions made in human history. The contribution to the stability and well-being of the world since is incaluable.
The sad thing is that it appears that the lesson learned there has been forgotten. Can you imagine what the world would be like today, if the US had, instead of invading Iraq, chosen to bring the Marshall Plan to Afganistan?
Not only would the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people been improved (an absolute good in of itself) an America that chose to treat Afganistan benevolently, that rebuilt industry and infrastructure and got the country cleaned up and back on its feet, would have torn the heart out of the support base for the people who attacked the US in the first place. It's hard to get people to hate the guy whose making your life better....
Ah well.
DG
As a Canadian, and a retired Canadian soldier at that, thanks for noticing our contribution at Normandy - and I say that without irony; the fact that Canada had a Normandy beach all to itself, and was in fact the only country to reach its D-Day objectives, is sadly often overlooked.
:) But please don't assume we're an American puppet state, militarily - we are not.
But your comment "I don't think Canada would have had that level of involvement without US cooperation" is well off the mark.
Historically, Canadians don't give a fig about what the US does when it comes to going to war. We are our own independant country, and we make our own decisions.
We joined WW1 and WW2 within a couple of days of both wars starting, and in both cases Canadians were busy fighting and dying well in advance of any American involvement.
Even in the case of war material Canadians have gone it their own if they had to. In WW1 we brought the Canadian made Ross rifle (sadly, a steaming hunk of shit and a political boondoggle) and we started WW2 with our own tank, the Ram (design elements of which eventually made it into the vastly superior Sherman) When US material, usually much cheaper to obtain rather than building it ourselves, became availble we'd use it, but having access to US equipment was never a precondition to Canada going to war.
In fact, it's interesting to see which wars Canada has chose to get involved in, and which ones it chose to avoid. I think we have a pretty good batting average when it comes to finding the just ones:
WW1, WW2, Korea, Gulf War 1, and Afganistan we all get into immediately. Vietnam and Gulf War 2 we purposely pass on.
And then there's all those UN peacekeeping missions: Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti....
Anyway, thanks for noticing our proud military heritage. We think we've done OK over the years.
DG
You and the previous posters are all dead right about self-confidence being sexy - in fact, self-confidence can make up for a lot of lacking physical attractiveness. So can a sense of humour.
Although hygene *IS* important.
If you are clean, and you are confident, and you don't whine or grovel, and you can be a little funny... you'll do just fine, even if you aren't going to be on any calendars anytime soon.
DG
I just sent a letter to my MP.
If enough of us do it, the message will get through.
DG
I don't remember the specific questions on the test I took - that was *sigh* almost 20 years ago.
But those *are* questions typical of some of the IQ tests that have been fielded before.
Gould's book has more examples. Some of them are real howlers.
DG
Complete the series: 1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17
These are all prime numbers, of course - but what if you had never been taught about prime numbers?
Or maybe:
"Up is to down as anterior is to:
1) posterior
2) interior
3) dexter
4) sinister"
which is primarily a vocabulary test, not intelligence.
It's more of a problem on the low side, where you may be dealing with illiterates. A "complete the series" test is pretty hard if you can't read the numbers. But an inability to read doesn't mean a low intelligence. If Einstein had been raised by wolves, (and, one presumes, wound up illiterate) would he be any less of a genius?
DG
Well... OK, let's run with this for a second.
:)
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to this particular definition ("intelligence is measured by its expression") because I have experience with this too: I drive a race car. My success at any given event is in very large part an expression of my performance at that event. Some days, I'm so good I'd make you weep at the sheer beauty of it. And other days I couldn't drive sheep.
It's hard to boil this down into a single "talent" number to compare against other drivers. For sure, there are a rare few who seem to have much less variability in their performance (they are consistantly at the top of their game, where I occasionally have a "sheep day") but when I'm really "on", I'm the equal of even these lucky few. (and I'm convinced that my variability could be eliminated with the proper coaching)
So lets say that intelligence follows a similar pattern. Some days you express well; other days, not so much. There is some variability to the expression of your intelligence depending any number of outside factors.
Well then, that makes determining a link between genetics and intelligence DOUBLY hard, because now you have to account for expression performance.
I have seen an entire field of drivers have a "sheep day" all at once, where *everybody* is off his game, and if *anybody* rises to just an "average" performance he'd wipe the field. So it's possible that Group A has a good day, and Group B has a bad day, and now you have data showing that A is smarter than B, when really what you measured is that A expressed better than B.
Now you could make the argument that, by virtue of expressing better, that at the time the test was taken that A *really was* more intelligent than B. By your definition, I agree. But that doesn't prove that A's intellectual genetics are superior to B's - in fact, if we assume the variability ranges overlap, on a retest B might be smarter than A, or they might even be tied.
So either way, we are making life very difficult for anybody seeking proof of a genetic link to intelligence. Taken the first way, the test doesn't really measure intelligence. Taken the second way, it does - but "intelligence" is highly variable and hard to nail down. Either way, it makes any study claiming a direct link between some factor and intelligence highly suspect.
DG