Of course the Dobsons have a television set. But it is connected with the telephones as well as with the radio receiver, so that when Joe Dobson and a friend in a distant city talk over the telephone they also see each other. Businessmen have television conferences. Each man is surrounded by half a dozen television screens on which he sees those taking part in the discussion. Documents are held up for examination; samples of goods are displayed. In fact, Jane Dobson does much of her shopping by television. Department stores obligingly hold up for her inspection bolts of fabric or show her new styles of clothing.

Automatic electronic inventions that seem to have something like intelligence integrate industrial production so that all the machines in a factory work as units in what is actually a single, colossal organism. In the Orwell Helicopter Corporation’s plant only a few trouble shooters are visible, and these respond to lights that flare up on a board whenever a vacuum tube burns out or there is a short circuit. By holes punched in a roll of paper, every operation necessary to produce a helicopter is indicated. The punched roll is fed into a machine that virtually gives orders to all the other machines in the plant. The holes in the paper indicate exactly how long a reamer is to smooth the inside of a cylinder, just when a stamping machine is to pass a sheet of aluminum along to its neighbor with orders to punch 22 holes in indicated places. There are mechanical wrenches that obediently turn nuts on bolts and stop all by themselves when the bolts are in place, shears that know exactly where to cut a sheet of metal for a perfect fit. Every operation in the plant is electronically and automatically controlled.

One of the more remarkable electronic machines of 2000 is a development of one on which hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent in the middle years of the 20th century by Dr. Vladimir Zworykin and Dr. John von Neumann. The purpose of this improved Zworykin-Von Neumann automaton is to predict the weather with an accuracy unattainable before 1980. It is a combination of calculating machine and forecaster. The calculator solves thousands of separate equations in a minute; the automatic forecaster carries out the computer’s instructions and predicts the weather from hour to hour. In 1950, meteorologists had no time to deal with the 50-odd variables that should have been mathematically handled to predict the weather 24 hours in advance.

Following suggestions made by Zworykin and Von Neumann storms are more or less under control. It is easy enough to spot a budding hurricane in the doldrums off the coast of Africa. Before it has a chance to gather much strength and speed as it travels westward toward Florida, oil is spread over the sea and ignited. There is an updraft. Air from the surrounding region, which includes the developing hurricane, rushes in to fill the void. The rising air condenses so that some of the water in the whirling mass falls as rain.

Read the whole thing at the link. They were so close in a  few places, but laughingly wrong in others.

Pyongyang has boycotted six-country talks aimed at persuading it to abandon its atomic arms program for almost a year since the United States froze its assets in a Macau bank. Washington has said the move is part of a crackdown on suspected North Korean counterfeiting, money-laundering and drug-trafficking.

Unless they are trying to say that we have to trade, give aid and/or assistance to anyone who demands it. Sorry China, that isn't the way it works.

GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections.

But shortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects -- not just the physical barrier along the southern border. The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of a "virtual fence."

Stoning, or rajam, is a punishment in Islamic Law, meted out to adulterers. Under orthodox law, a person who engages in pre-marital sex is to be lashed 100 times while a person who engages in illicit sex outside of marriage is to be stoned to death. The verse which proscribes punishment for sex crimes in Islam is verse 2 of the 24th Chapter:

The woman and the man guilty of ZINA - flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.

Ali has a list of action items that may help. Who knows, it may work and if it may work, it is worth doing. For those who do not believe in moderate muslims, I submit that Ali seems to definately be one.

The commander of the NATO-led force, British Lt. Gen. David Richards, called the move “historic” in a ceremony attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.

The U.S., with 13,250 troops, will remain the biggest contributor of troops to the 33,000-strong force.

The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support — a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war.

Instead of massing firepower to destroy Republican Guard troops and other enemy forces, as was required in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, the draft manual emphasizes the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. “The more force used, the less effective it is,” it notes.

The only Korans I saw, or even heard about, being placed in toilets, torn, or thrown onto the tier were done by detainees. The guards and medical staff never even touched the Koran if at all possible. We always called for an interpreter (a Muslim one, not all were) or the camp librarian to handle any Koran. The only times I witnessed a guard touch a Koran was during a search for contraband where there was probable cause that some would be found. Those were witnessed by an interpreter or the Cultural Advisor. Even when a detainee threw their Koran onto the tier, it stayed until we could get an appropriate person to collect it. We were always cautioned to be exceptionally careful about Korans because of the previous (and subsequently disproved) accusations.

Whoa. The part I have bolded above caught me by surprise. Stashiu saw detainees mistreating the Koran? I followed up with a question about that, and he replied:

Saw Korans thrown on the tier or torn, but these were by individuals without complete control of their behavior, such as a psychotic episode. Heard about two Korans in toilets by the same type of detainee prior to being admitted for psychiatric restabilization. We were very careful about Korans because of the previous media reports, even though they had been discredited.

We need 25 laptops (we have 25 wounded troops requesting them that are Wait-Listed RIGHT NOW) with voice recognition software for our wounded troops to stay in touch with their family and friends.

Most of these troops either have severe burns or wounds to their limbs or have been paralyzed and can't use a standard computer set up. Communication with loved ones is paramount to a successful recovery and Valour-IT seeks to help facilitate that essential communication.

The article is amazingly accurate and even-handed. The things that COL Bumgarner tried were good-faith efforts to make the best of the situation. Many of the detainees also made good-faith efforts to improve things, but I believe that any concessions were hijacked by the extremists and used against everyone else’s efforts. For example, the lights being dimmed, extra bedding, etc… were all used to facilitate the successful suicides. But, before those changes had not been at least tried, the extremists escalated the rhetoric against us saying, “See? They will not do anything to make things better!”

As the article explains, there were competing objectives among the detainees. Simply, we were in a Catch-22. If concessions were made, one group would say that they could get even more by continuing to cause problems. If concessions weren’t made, the reasoning was that they just weren’t applying enough pressure. There is a hardcore group of AQ there that will try to turn everything they can to their advantage. They circulate untrue stories of torture, poisoned food, desecrated Korans, and many other things. This keeps the tensions high and then they find a way to light the match.