March 28, 2008 11:00 AM
Mike's Blog Roundup
Jewcy: Americans have been deprived of access to a word that might allow them to reduce 1.2 billion people to one essential characteristic.
The National Protrusion: Bush asks history to preemptively pardon him.
WTF Is It Now?! OK, then how about some fraternity hazing-style waterboarding?
If I Ran the Zoo: And God won't take the time to sort your ashes from mine...
uggabugga: Or wrong...
Preemptive Karma: Christianists rabidly anti-Obama...and in a couple of related stories
Let me be first to say FIRST!
I studies algebra in college. Algebra came from Arabia, ergo, I am a muslim. Happy jihad everyone!
Pol Pot-O-Cheesesuace@2
Algebra was not invented by any single person or civilization. It is a reasoning skill that is most likely as old as human beings. The concept of algebra began as a reasoning skill to determine unknown quantities.
For example, an early human being (living nearly 7 million years ago) probably ran across the problem of food being stolen from him by other animals... He may have had 5 berries laying on the ground, but then, suddenly a bird flew by and now only had 2. He probably wondered how many berries the bird ate (an unknown quantity). He could probably reason that 3 berries were missing and thus 3 berries were eaten by the bird.
This is algebra, albeit a simple form of algebra compared to todays standards. But this reasoning skill is most likely instinctual rather than learned. It is a natural human instinct to detect quantities and notice changes in quantities, and from these changes, reason unknown quantities.
If you perceive algebra in this way, then no one invented algebra because it is a natural instinct encoded in our genetics... it is our ability to reason out quantities that produce algebra.
However, the subject that we NOW refer to as algebra has various origins.
The word 'algebra' itself comes from a book called Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala (translated: Calculation by Way of Restoration and Confrontation or Calculation by Completion and Balance) written by Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Mosa al-Khwarizmi (approximately) in the year 820 AD. However, this was not the first written record of algebraic concepts or manipulation. Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians, Chinese, among others have written records further developing the basic human reasoning skill into a structured, yet creative art form.
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Sorry about that kid!
U.S. Forces Out of Vietnam; Hanoi Frees the Last P.O.W.
By Joseph B. Treaster
Special to The New York Times
Saigon, South Vietnam, March 29 -- The last American troops left South Vietnam today, leaving behind an unfinished war that has deeply scarred this country and the United States.
There was little emotion or joy as they brought to a close almost a decade of American military intervention.
Remaining after the final jet transport lifted off from Tan Son Nhut air base at 5:53 P.M. were about 800 Americans on the truce observation force who will leave tomorrow and Saturday. A contingent of 159 Marine guards and about 50 military attaches also stayed behind.
The fighting men were gone, but United States involvement in South Vietnam was far from ended.
When Gen. Frederick C. Weyand presided over the furling of the colors of the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, this afternoon, he told a handful of American servicemen, "You can hold your heads up high for having been a part of this selfless effort."
In a second address later on in the afternoon, delivered in halting Vietnamese, General Weyland declared: "Our mission has been accomplished . I depart with a strong feeling of pride in what we have achieved, and in what our achievement represents."
As the last American commander in Vietnam said good-bye to the huge white tropical building that was sometimes called Pentagon East, a force of 7,200 American civilians employed by the Department of Defense was standing under the eaves.
A majority of these civilians are technicians who are already at work with the South Vietnamese armed forces, trying to fill the gap in special skills that the Vietnamization program has been unable to provide. Many are repairing helicopters, jet fighter-bombers, radar systems and computers, and some are instructing the Vietnamese in these tasks.
This afternoon at Tan Son Nhut, while waiting for his plane to take off, Col. Einar Himma, a naturalized American from Estonia, talked of his two tours in Vietnam. He had grown fond of the Vietnamese, he said, and he felt sad about their future.
"There's going to be a full blown war starting up after we leave," he said. "The fighting has never stopped anyway."
As he spoke a Government officer downtown was reporting that more than 100 military incidents had occurred in the last day- almost double the number reported in the last weeks before the cease-fire was proclaimed on Jan. 28.
Across the airport, 30 coffins with the bodies of Government soldiers had just been unloaded from trucks. A Vietnamese woman knelt weeping beside her husband's coffin.
Colonel Himma's candid talk was unusual for a military man. Many of his colleagues refuse to admit that in eight years, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers, millions of tons of bombs, a panoply of deadly devices and billions of dollars, they had not won the war.
Many offices still contend that the Army never lost a battle in Vietnam; their reasoning is that, at whatever price, the troops always took or held the terrain in question. But now the places where some Americans consider that the greatest victories of the war were achieved- Khe Sanh, Dak To, Hamburger Hill, the Ia Drang Valley, the rises and hollows south of the demilitarized zone- are controlled by the Communists.
Army publications and some officers describe the Tet offensive of 1968 as an allied victory even though many others say that its impact on the American public triggered the beginning of the United States' disengagement from Vietnam.
Admiral Moorer's Regret
Still, one general said the other day: "The Army leaves with its chin out and its chest high. It's done a commendable job."
Today, there were congratulatory messages from Washington and the Pacific headquarters and a fleeting note of regret from Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the war had not enjoyed "the full measure of support it deserved."
When the first big American fighting units began arriving in South Vietnam in 1965, there was a standard explanation for the United States presence.
"We've come here to stop the spread of Communism," the soldiers would say without hesitation. "If we don't stop them here we may be fighting them in San Francisco next." Sometimes the soldiers also mentioned giving the South Vietnamese the opportunity to live under a democratic system.
One officer who has been involved in Vietnam for several years conceded in an interview earlier this week that what the United States had achieved here was "certainly less than any of us planned in the beginning." He said that the United States had succeeded in giving the South Vietnamese "a reasonable chance to survive."
"Now," he continued, "it becomes a matter of will and determination on the part of the South Vietnamese."
To reach this point, the cost to the United States has been almost 46,000 men killed and more than 300,000 wounded. The military has become controversial, its self-confidence has been reduced and it has been forced into a new mold- a volunteer army spruced up to attract enlistees but anathema to many old regulars.
North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Vietcong have lost a million men on the battlefield. No one on the allied side knows how many Communist soldiers have been wounded, but it is doubtful that the number is fewer than the 400,000 South Vietnamese hurt in combat.
American officials estimate that perhaps a million South Vietnamese civilians have been killed in the war and that more than 40 per cent of the 16 million survivors have been uprooted by the fighting, their homes and belongings lost, their families scattered.
From the beginning American military men felt that the fighting in Vietnam would be like the fighting in Korea. But there were seldom front lines or large formations of troops to assault.
"In this war," a colonel said, "a squad of 10 or 12 men was considered an excellent target for wings of aircraft and battalions of artillery."
The Americans used such tactics partly out of frustration, but also because commanders were under pressure from Washington to keep their casualties down in an unpopular war.
Many Vietnamese civilians became victims. Wide areas of territory used by the Communists were declared "free-fire zones." These were places where bombs could be dropped or artillery fired at any time without special clearance. Peasants living in the areas risked death if they did not leave.
Under Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the American commander in Vietnam when the troop build-up began, there were "search-and-destroy" operations, in which sometimes thousands of soldiers would push through an area, often in tanks and armored cars.
The ambush was the greatest enemy tactic and the booby-trap was his most effective weapon until last spring, when the Russians began supplying 130-mm. guns that could fire a shell 17 miles.
One way that the Americans tried to overcome the ambush tactic was to expose the enemy's hiding places. The did this by defoliating thousands of acres and plowing down great stretches of rubber plantations and forest land bordering the roads.
But the favorite weapon of the Americans was the helicopter. This, as one general liked to say, freed the men from the "tyranny of the terrain."
In the early days the most popular helicopter tactic was the air assault. A general would pick a trouble spot, soften it up with artillery and air strikes for 15 or 20 minutes and then load up 400 or 500 men in helicopters and set them down on the edge of the objective.
Toward the end of the American experience in Vietnam, helicopters were mainly used for armed reconnaissance in which they would scout a suspicious area and shoot at anything that moved. In Da Nang last June a couple of helicopter pilots bragged about how they had made a farmer "dance" in his rice field and how another time they had shot down a boney cow.
As United States troops strength moved downward from its 1969 peak of 543,000, the pressure increased to keep down American losses and the use of bombers increased. This added to the cost of the war and almost certainly led to more inadvertent casualties.
My Lai Most Damaging
The most painful memory for the Army was the My Lai massacre. But an incident in which eight Green Berets were accused of killing a Vietnamese double agent in the fall of 1969 hurt the Army too. The eight- six commissioned officers, a warrant officer and a sergeant- were arrested and charged with shooting Thai Khac Chuyen in June, 1969, and dumping his body in the South China Sea. A little later all Special Forces soldiers were pulled out of Vietnam.
Often when American military men talk about the mistakes of the war, they conclude that more force should have been used. Many think that North Vietnam should have been invaded. Failing that, they would have preferred to march deep into Laos to try to cut the Ho Chi Minh supply network.
Early Training of Vietnamese
There is general agreement that the United States should have started building the Vietnamese armed forces from the beginning, instead of assuming the main combat role until it became clear that the American public would no longer support the war.
There is little question that in four years the Vietnamese armed forces have made strides forward, but they still have shortcomings.
General Weyand declared today that the Government forces had proved "their readiness, determination and capability to defend their ideals" during the North Vietnamese offensive of 1972.
In that campaign, several South Vietnamese units broke and ran, others suffered devastating casualties and, in some cases, entire battalions were captured. American and South Vietnamese officers said that the massive use of American air power had saved the country.
Although American advisers to Vietnamese units and Special Forces Soldiers often lived close to the Vietnamese, and often ate Vietnamese food, most American servicemen lived in isolation in compounds and barracks that were as much like home as they could make them.
Air-conditioners, soft drinks, beer, ice cream, the latest movies, television, tape recorders and pin-ups were standard. Most of the food was shipped from the United States. Generals prided themselves on elaborate messes.
Junior officers and noncoms took pride in building fancy clubs. The Air Force club in Pleiku was known for its huge crystal chandelier. One of the most popular clubs in Saigon used to be the top of the Rex Hotel, where the officers held barbecue cookouts every Sunday night. In the beginning there were slot machines everywhere, but they abruptly disappeared one day.
Heavy Ratio of Support
Men in support jobs outnumbered combat troops by more than 7 to 1. But there were line units with many helicopters, like the First Cavalry Division, where the "grunts," or fighting men usually got two hot meals a day and sometimes had ice cream and soda in the field.
The tour of duty in Vietnam was one year. Its brevity made the separation from family more bearable but it created great turbulence in the armed forces. Many officers felt that this short tour weakened the services structurally and created a situation in which, as one officer said, "We didn't have 8 years or 12 years, or whatever it was of experience- we had one year of experience eight times."
Officers spent six months in combat duty and six months in administrative or support jobs. This gave everyone some exposure to the war and increased his chances for promotion, but it also kept everyone in unfamiliar jobs.
With all the amenities, though, morale began to fall in 1970 and 1971. Drug use became endemic. A few units refused orders to go into combat and enlisted men occasionally "fragged" their officers- throwing fragmentation grenades. Soldiers began to wear love beads and peace symbols and let their hair run shaggy. It was only after units had gotten down to a hard core of "lifers," specialists and technicians that the American forces in Vietnam regained some of the lost discipline.
Today, as the last men were heading home, a reporter asked whether they were happy or sad. Several majors, lieutenant colonels and colonels glared fiercely and snapped, "No comment!"
[nytimes - 3/29/73]
Here is a bit more on that 22 year old ammunition supplier that C&L had posted yesterday. Apparently, that kid has more of a story to tell than was previously understood. He was convicted of battery, had a forged driver's license and bought large amounts of worthless, Warsaw Pact weapons and ammunition from some guy in the Czech Republic who, in turn was selling illegal weapons to Congo. They said that most of the ammunition that kid purchased for use in Afghanistan was so old and rotten that they U.S. military and NATO had to pay for additional programs to destroy the stuff safely.
US gave $300m arms contract to 22-year-old with criminal record
"Much of the ammunition comes from the ageing stockpiles of the old communist bloc, including stockpiles that the state department and Nato have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed," the paper said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/28/afghanistan.usa
Hey, all!
Lights Out Tonight! Join in Earth Hour 2008 (8 p.m. local time, March 29)
On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.
Spread the word.
"Feingold to increasingly
mean-spirited Obama supporters: 'Cool it'
The fight for the Democratic nomination for president has gotten personal in recent days, but U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold is urging calm."
Russ is telling Obama supporters to get ready to lose. Alienating millions of voters yet to vote was incredibly stupid and backfired. This race has drawn millions of new voters.
That is a great thing for the general so Clinton will be President.
God bless America!
what will they write about the end of the middle east wars?
Youtube video of NY Cops clubbing and kicking peaceful 'free Tibet' protesters in NY 2 weeks ago, near the UN building.
getalife @ 7:
you need to
Joe O. @ 5:
The real story is how a 18 year old teenager got a Federal gun dealer license and 100s million dollar contracts with the DoD.
Somebody somewhere had to have been payed off to grease the wheels.
The kid does come from a family of gun dealers, but he was AEY and thats who the DoD supposedly vetted and approved, then paid $300 million to for junk.
At 10c a round that 300M would buy 3 billion rounds of ammo, rather a large amount, and I doubt that was the purchase,
so theres the issue of what was the 300M for and how much was spent of junk AK47 stuff for Afghanistan and Iraq, and how much went elsewhere for what purposes.
No. 44 @ 6:
No thanks. We've went big time conservation, and all it did was increase my hydro bills because their profit margins weren't high enough.
Federal gun dealer license at 18 !!! surely prob needs to be 21 for such a thing, maybe explains his fake 4 year+ ID.
Oh ya? Oh ya? You can kill millions, you can invade and kill more. You can chase sheep around in circles in Afghanistan costing billions and doing nothing more than look foolish and inept. You can beat the war drums with Iran, like you did North Korea. You can point, blame, clap, clap, point, or outright lie about your "experience". You can ONCE AGAIN heap praise on your political party opponent, while saying how terrible a leader your own party candidate would be. But NOW you've pushed it TOO far!!
http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/stocks/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6619096
Without this, reality is more real! What about us poor schmucks that HAVE to have some kind of escape? These corporate bastards have no shame. Sigh. Rant over. LOL.
anybody realize we have automatic plate recognition system as a working usable system in the US NOW.
one of those 4th and 5th 'duh' moments.
link
ConcernedCanuck @ 12:
Oh thats right, its all about you.
diamondmc @ 16:
http://www.google.com/
The USS George W Bush
ConcernedCanuck @ 14:
oh those lovely GM monocultures, there was a good reason the environmentalists warned about the dangers of GM and 'single strain' crops.
GMO is akin to ID in biological terms, and we all know where and what Dominionist ID thinking gets us, proper F^%$ed.
How about a choice potpourri of worthwhile stories you may not have heard much about?
diamondmc @ 16:
Yes, at times it is. Nobody else is going to look out for me. If we enacted even half the conservation ideas that special interests groups wanted, we would have massive poverty unseen in mankind's existance. Would that save the earth? Turning out the lights when it's -10 degrees Celsius outside will save nothing. There is more hydro lost in transmission lines than anyone will save by turning off the lights. My house has new energy efficient appliances, lightbulbs, furnace, etc, and all that has done is increase my costs significantly. Did it save any hydro? NO it did not.
ConcernedCanuck @ 21:
The smart way is to buy better appliances when old ones need replacing, of course 90% compared to 40% efficiency on say a furnace recoups the cost quickly in cold climates, likewise with insulation and heating cooling.
An ex workmate of mine paid $400 one month for gas for his trailer back in jan 04 (if i remember), they had single pane plastic windows, cold and energy inefficient simply doesnt describe it, likewise 2" fiberglass insulation in most MH walls and 30YO louver windows in some peoples trailers up here in MN.
This cripples peoples finances, slows or stops people improving their homes and is bad for the environment.
Dubya :
Are you fucking serious!?!?
Mr Bush, with every day that passes I say to myself "there is no way Dubya could reveal himself any more ignorant or lacking basic icommon sense than he already has".
And there you are, proving me wrong every day I dare to think that you can't plumb further depths than you have. I don't know who to be mad at more;you, for being such a fucking waste of proteins,carbon etc...or ME for believing that even you have limits to your propensity for mindless evil. And now, you want History to forgive you?!? Is that the most we can expect for an acknowledgement of wrong doing? And that you would have the gall to add, "I could have done worse, but I didn't..." as if that makes what you have done less an insult to humanity at large....
The best punishment for both you and Mr Cheney is to suffer major health incidents that would leave you both imprisoned in your bodies at a "Right to life" facility, wishing for death, but never receiving it. I trust the site monitor will remove this if it is too over the top.
ferrofluid @ 22:
My house is as energy efficient as I can make it. The problem nobody addresses, is even if you killed the power to a whack of houses (cuz not everybody is going to "shut the lights off"), hydro will continue to be generated. It doesn't stop just because useage is down for an hour, or a day. So you are still having the same amount of power running through the hydro lines. Loss of power through transmission lines, consumes more hydro, than what is used. The problem isn't personal efficiency. It is inefficient hydro delivery that has never improved.
ferrofluid @ 18:
this is what I get from that link, ferro.
"Google
Error
Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL /s1600 from this server. "
Verdillac @ 25:
a pic of some ship rolled over onto its side with USS George W Bush written (photoshopped !!) on its stern.
first image return by google image search
image search 'uss george w bush' first pic is the one.
ConcernedCanuck @ 24:
by 'hydro lines' do you mean pipes full of water or electrical distribution lines ?
Power stations have tradidtionally store energy in off peak times through the use of fly wheels.
Verdillac @ 23:
ADX Florence would be a good second choice for them. nothing like the underground federal dungeon for the worst of the worst.
we would have to move the various inmates already there out into more humane above ground prisons, but it would be worth it.
The National Protrustion is a delight in these conflict-filled days!
ferrofluid @ 27:
by "hydro, he means that the power is created through Hyro power...It is very common for Canadians to refer as electrical lines as "hydro lines".
We all don't follow the "American Ideal Method of Defining Things As They Should Be Because America Says So Or Else"
Verdillac @ 30:
me an ignorant Limey not American :p
They will just use bypass valves and match the generated power to the demand.
electricity aka voltage is potential, its the current that is the 'load', with a fixed generator speed and a varying load the voltage will rise and dip.
if demand is increasing due to time of day or cold fronts then they will raise the generator speed to keep the voltage up and avoid brownouts.
ferrofluid @ 32:
right back at ya :P
I'll buy you a curry n' chips and a pint if we ever meet.
Hey everyone. I'm the author and editor of The National Protrusion, and I just want to make sure everyone understands that it's a satire site. I know it's conceivable that W. would in fact say such ludicrous things, but alas, in this case, it was made up. Hope you enjoy reading.
ferrofluid @ 28:
We pay a surcharge monthly for "loss due to transmission" as the method of transmitting hydro has been proven worldwide as inefficient and basically out of date. These lines lose more power than what arrives at your home or town. Proven. So they have to produce way more power than what is used. All the time. 365 days of the year. That is the case, in every nation.
neurome @ 34:
D'OH!
color me "pwned"
neurome @ 34:
neurome
I loved it! Not quite as over-the-top as The Onion, and in style wears a more serious tongue-in-cheek face.
Hey, thanks. That's quite a compliment, and it's much appreciated. Hope you keep coming by. I plan to update within the day.
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