Some interesting statistics on wars from the Revolutionary War to the (first) Gulf War, on things such as:
- Percentage of population enrolled in the military
- Number of casualties (both absolute and percentage)
- Cost of the war (converted to 1990 dollars)
- Duration of war, average casualties/month, and so forth

Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars

Jello wrote:

] Russia is angry about getting fucked out of the $8 billion
] Iraq owes it. That's only 8 stealth fighters to the US... but
] its a substantial chunk of change to the ever-ailing Russian
] federal budget.

and herein lies the reason for most of the 'strange' behavior of various countries. Why does France, Germany, and Russia oppose action against Iraq? Because of money. Why will people line up against action on North Korea? Because of money.

It's not WMD, or terrorism, or fundementalism that's killing this world. It's money.

RE: Iraq Chemical Warfare Clues

quoted:
===

San Francisco -- The anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco have proved to be a powerful magnet, drawing law-breaking protesters from as far south as Mexico, as far north as Washington state and as far east as Connecticut -- but only a minority from the city itself, arrest records show.

"Call them tourists with a cause," said Dewayne Tulley, a spokesman for the Police Department.

Officials provided a snapshot Monday of those arrested in the first two days of street-closing demonstrations last week following the start of the U.S.

war on Iraq.

Of the 646 processed by the Sheriff's Department Thursday and Friday, 239, or 37 percent, gave San Francisco addresses. The rest, almost two-thirds, came from out of town.

WAR ON IRAQ: The Home Front / Majority arrested don't live in S.F.

] Saddam Hussein has collected many things in his 24-year
] reign -- palaces, enemies. And the key to the city of
] Detroit.

Saddam received key to city of Detroit in 1980

So there's this 14 year old, "The Boss", and all he wanted to to do was figure out "how he could make money, fast." The plan? "The Boss envisioned making as much as $100,000 by assigning various 'jobs' to his friends, then taking a 25 percent cut for himself. The Boss, according to one of the lists he compiled, envisioned his "family" making money in prostitution, weapons sales, money laundering, recruiting hit men - even candy sales." Well, atleast they new their market with the candy sales. So the story gets better. Another student "arrested on the misdemeanor charge was nicknamed 'The Hacker' because he was supposed to alter grades in the school's computer system." Now, I won't ruin the plot or climax for you but I'm thinking this should be a TV show or movie called Youngfellows.

Middle-school 'mafia boss' arrested on felony charges

] A number of Pacific island nations are discussing using
] new Japanese technology that can both desalinate seawater
] for drinking and produce electricity by exploiting the
] difference in temperatures between the surface of the sea
] and the depths of the ocean.

some good news for a change. NYT requires free registration.

Japanese Technology May Help Islands Reap Pacific's Waters

Delicate threads of spider's silk are about to solve a major problem in photonics: how to make hollow optical fibres narrow enough to carry light beams around the fastest nanoscale optical circuits.

To make the fibres, Yushan Yan and a team of engineers from the University of California at Riverside give the silk thread a glassy coating, and then extract the silk by baking. They soon expect to be able to make hollow fibres with cores just two nanometres wide - or 50,000 times thinner than a human hair.

New Scientist | New Technology

John Dolan's excellent reporting on a recent No Rules fighting match in Moscow... DAMN IT, I can't believe I missed this!

eXile #162 - Nostalgia for the Blood Mop - by John Dolan

] Keynote Systems, which regularly tests the response times
] of busy websites, said the responsiveness of BBC News
] Online suffered during the busy lunchtime period with
] average download times rising from 0.47 seconds to 1.88
] seconds.
]
] ITV News went through a more serious slowdown with
] average download times ballooning from 5.66 seconds to
] 15.84 seconds.
]
] As the conflict got under way, some sites such as that
] run by Arabic satellite TV broadcaster Al Jazeera were
] only intermittently available.
]
] The website of Britain's The Sun newspaper was also
] taking a long time to finish loading.
]
] Nic Newman, head of editorial development and technology
] at BBC News Online, said traffic to the site had already
] almost tripled and he expected it to grow further.
]
] Similar leaps in visitor numbers have been seen at the
] Yahoo and MSNBC news sites.
]
] According to Comscore Media Metrix, the top 15 news sites
] have seen traffic jump by more than 40%.

MemeStreams has been experiencing a steady increase in traffic since the 17th. We are currently up 166% [typo correction: 66%] for the period of the 17th thru 20th, vs 13th thru 16th. This is a mildly misleading statistic, as Saturday and Sunday are usually not very busy days. But no matter which way you slice it, we are experiencing a significant traffic increase. I'll post an update on this after I can compare a complete week.

I'd also be interested to know how much of that increase in traffic is from new users, vs. the existing users doing more hits than usual? For example, is it possible to tell how many unique visitors check out Memestreams on an average day?

Also of interest, "baghdad webcam" has very quickly become the top search term hitting the site, accounting for 5% of all search engine hits, and flying right past other "hot" search terms such as "ebonics translator", "isonews", and the everlasting "raver porn".

A quick visit to MSN's search engine shows that we are the top link for "baghdad webcam"..

Hee! I'm glad I tracked that link down via Mr. Kobeissi and MEMRI.

Good for us, bad for MSN users, as the page linked currently has absolutely nothing about webcams, let alone webcams in Iraq. The next link MSN search brings up is www.webcaminiraq.org, which was the link origionally on that page which caused MSN to index us as the top hit for that search term.. [shrug] I guess MSN's search engine isn't that smart. Or maybe it is, in a completely accidental way.. It is sending users to our "Current Events" top links page after all... :)

Perhaps we could add a blurb to the top of the "topics" page that says something like, "Note: This page changes on a daily basis. If you were directed here by a particular search engine, the article that you were searching for may have already scrolled off, but you can find it again by typing the same search term into the 'Search Memestreams' box in the lefthand column."

Thanks to Rattle for the status report!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Iraq conflict hits websites hard

] The bombing of Iraq was intensified after American
] officials revealed that their special forces had been
] holding face-to-face negotiations with Republican Guard
] leaders. The awesome display of firepower was designed as
] much to increase the pressure on them to surrender as to
] destroy targets crucial to Saddam.
. . .
] Mr Rumsfeld had earlier given clues about the extent
] of the unseen war being waged for the loyalty of Iraqi
] generals. "There are communications in every conceivable
] mode and method, public and private, to the Iraqi forces,
] that they can act with honour and turn over their weapons
] and walk away from them, and they will not be hurt," he said.

I fully agree with this. We don't *have* to fight. It's not about killing people and destroying cities. It's about changing the Iraqi leadership. So the quicker we can get through this, with the fewest possible casualties (on *both* sides), the better.

Times Online: The Other Unseen Part of the War