Force Increase Necessary for War on Terror, Leaders Say
Topic: War on Terrorism
9:16 am EST, Feb 18, 2007
"The extra soldiers and Marines ... will prepare the forces for missions in areas besides Iraq and Afghanistan ... I believe we're a nation at war. I think that Afghanistan and Iraq represent the first battles of this long war ... this war against Islamic extremists."
These guys are Big Army. They just don't seem to understand that the "long war" is 5% brawn and 95% brain. From the QDR:
Finally, by emphasizing greater cultural awareness and language skills, the QDR acknowledges that victory in this long war depends on information, perception, and how and what we communicate as much as application of kinetic effects.
Nor do they seem to realize that the forces are more effective when deployed in small numbers for focused, low intensity missions. From Robert Kaplan in 2005:
Several years into the war on terrorism, one would think that Pashto would be commonly spoken, at least on a basic level, by American troops in these borderlands. It isn't. Nor are Farsi and Urdu—the languages of Iran and the tribal agencies of Pakistan, where U.S. Special Operations forces are likely to be active, in one way or another, over the coming decade. Like Big Army's aversion to beards, the lack of linguistic preparedness demonstrates that the Pentagon bureaucracy pays too little attention to the most basic tool of counterinsurgency: adaptation to the cultural terrain. It is such adaptation—more than new weapons systems or an ideological commitment to Western democracy—that will deliver us from quagmires.
This latest testimony is rich with meaningless buzzwords and jargon:
"... the proper slope ..."
"... whether or not we should look at off-ramping [2, 3]..."
SEC. RUMSFELD: Once we started --
LT GEN RENUART: It started much earlier than that --
SEC. RUMSFELD: -- Earlier than that, in terms of the timing and the preparation and all of that. And then we said, okay, should there be some on-ramps or off-ramps if you need to add somehow. And they did. They came back with some --
We all have a long, imaginary shelf of masterpieces we have not read. For years I was embarrassed by my ignorance of War and Peace, and Tolstoy's massive novel had sat on the shelf, glaring at me. Not until the mid-80s, when I passed a lovely spring on the Amalfi Coast of Italy in a tiny rented house, did I find myself ready to tackle it. I would rise at dawn (we had two babies then) and take my coffee to the terrace. There was a grove of lemon trees behind me, and I could look all the way down the coast from Amalfi to Salerno, the sunlight on the sea like scattered coins. I was absorbed for two months in that astonishing novel, making my first acquaintance with Pierre, Natasha, Bolkonsky, and the rest of Petersburg society. Forever I will associate that story with that place, and that time in my life.
I doubt you'll ever find yourself associating a YouTube video with a place and time in your life.
Haskell is a computer programming language. In particular, it is a polymorphicly typed, lazy, purely functional language, quite different from most other programming languages. The language is named for Haskell Brooks Curry, whose work in mathematical logic serves as a foundation for functional languages. Haskell is based on lambda calculus, hence the lambda we use as a logo.
Intel has announced an expansion of Intel architecture—a new instruction set that constitutes the most impactful instructions since SSE2 and represents the next major leap in Intel's fast-paced trajectory to deliver products with superior performance, capability, and energy-efficiency.
Building on the Intel® 64 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), these new instructions will enable our microprocessors across all volume market segments to deliver superior performance and energy efficiency to a broad range of 32 and 64-bit applications.
These new instructions include: ... * Application Targeted Accelerators that will provide a new foundation for delivering low-latency, lower power fixed-function capabilities for targeted applications.
These instructions represent another milestone in Intel's new cadence for the continuous development of next-generation silicon processes and processor architectures. Applications that will benefit include those involving graphics, video encoding and processing, 3-D imaging, gaming, Web servers, and application servers. High-performance applications that will benefit include data mining; databases; complex searching and pattern matching algorithms; audio, video, image, and data compression algorithms; parsing and state machine-based algorithms; and many more.
An Interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Topic: Arts
8:34 am EST, Feb 18, 2007
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the 33-year-old director of The Lives of Others, is an imposing man with an even more imposing head of curly hair. "I hope you'll tell your readers to see my film," he said, imposingly. He also had to know my take on the (to his mind) unjust success of Pan's Labyrinth at the American box office. The Lives of Others goes up against Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 25.
Last Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat of California, and Dave Weldon, a Republican of Florida, sponsored the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act, to ban the practice of patenting genes found in nature.
k wrote:
I couldn't find the bill on THOMAS ... I look forward to reading the bill ... perhaps someone else can find it ...
To amend title 35, United States Code, to prohibit the patenting of human genetic material.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 9, 2007
Mr. BECERRA (for himself and Mr. WELDON of Florida) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To amend title 35, United States Code, to prohibit the patenting of human genetic material.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Genomic Research and Accessibility Act'.
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON PATENT OF HUMAN GENETIC MATERIAL.
(a) In General- Chapter 10 of title 35, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:
`Sec. 106. Prohibition on patent of human genetic material
`Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no patent may be obtained for a nucleotide sequence, or its functions or correlations, or the naturally occurring products it specifies.'.
(b) Table of Contents- The table of sections of chapter 10 of title 35, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`106. Prohibition on patent of human genetic material.'.
(c) Applicability- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall not apply to a patent issued before the date of the enactment of this Act.
Starting February 18, Fox News will offer what some are calling "The Daily Show for conservatives". The man behind the show is "24" creator Joel Surnow; he rejects the Daily Show comparison, instead calling it "more in the spirit of the old and rebellious 'Saturday Night Live'."
The Politics of the Man Behind '24' | The New Yorker
Topic: Politics and Law
12:30 am EST, Feb 14, 2007
What Would Jack Do?
“24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors —— cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”
Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”
