Third Bullet Bonus Code

Gary Watts asked:


I suspect that many of those who are opposed to the tactical changes in Iraq explained by the president in his speech to the nation on Jan. 10 and reinforced in his State of Union speech this past week do not believe that Iraq is a major front in a wider war.
They don’t accept that we are at war with Islamic fascists. When these people use “war” and “terror” in the same sentence, they don’t mean military war. They mean rhetorical war as in “war on drugs” or “war on organized crime.” Sen. John Kerry stated this position clearly in his campaign for the presidency, “The war on terror is … occasionally military … But it’s primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation …” To these people, bringing the troops home from Iraq means that the war is over.

Here is the argument: To view terrorism as war exaggerates its threat. You don’t give in to terror, but you do not use the military as the tip of the sword - and certainly no massive pre-emptive military strikes followed by invasion. Acts of terror are crimes. Some are horrific, yes, but still acts committed by criminals, not soldiers of a sovereign state - with whom wars are fought. The American criminal justice system with its individual liberty guarantees is the institution that should be responsible for apprehending and judging any alleged perpetrators.

Viewed through this lens, the detainees at Guantanamo are not “the enemy.” Rather, they are “the accused,” innocent until proven guilty in an American court of law. Similarly, the NSA counterintelligence program must be “domestic spying” because we are not at war with any foreign nation.

When queried about the aftermath of a troop withdrawal from Iraq before Iraq is capable of handling its own security, those who favor such a move say, “Not our war - not our problem.”

President Bush’s position is that premature withdrawal from Iraq will result in both a catastrophe for the Iraqi people and a major setback in the war against the Islamists. The president believes that defeat in Iraq will give Islamists a home base like they enjoyed in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 from which they can plan and coordinate attacks against the United States.

The New York Times editorialized on the morning before the president’s speech, “Mr. Bush must acknowledge that there is no military solution for Iraq,” but just five paragraphs later the Times wrote, “Nor can America simply turn its back on whatever happens to Iraq after it leaves. With or without American troops, a nightmare future for Iraq is a nightmare future for the United States, too, …”

So, we bring the troops home, but we don’t turn our backs. What does that mean? If our leaving results in a regional war or “Iraq’s people and its oil fields fall under the tightening grip of a more powerful Iran,” which the Times speculates could happen, what do we do? Talk, discuss, engage, negotiate like we should have been doing all along, right?

In my view, those who think that negotiations are silver bullets for every possible situation either haven’t had much experience negotiating or are terribly naive. Iran is the perfect case in point.

People engage in negotiations if it is in their self-interest and for no other reason. During the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated with each other because each could be destroyed by the other. Society survival was the self-interest of both parties.

Years of negotiating with European powers to the contrary, the present leadership of Iran has decided that becoming a member of the nuclear bomb making club is in their self-interest. On the other hand, the leadership of the United States has decided that a nuclear-armed Iran is not in our best interests.

Iran is a major player in encouraging unrest in Iraq because it is in its self-interest - civil war is good, anarchy even better. There is only one incentive that would, in the short term, keep Iran’s hands off of Iraq. Let them have the bomb.

The president will not allow this.



2008 WSOP

John Barban asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 John Barban

Exercise is the closest thing we have to a magic bullet when it comes to personal health and well being. First of all, any amount of exercise above what you are already doing is most likely going to be better for you (unless you are already an elite level athlete and in peak physical condition). Also, exercising is totally free; you don’t need to spend one red cent to get all the health promoting benefits of exercise. So if we all know it’s good for us, and its free, why don’t more people do it?
I think the problem lies with our distorted view of value and money. In a society driven by money that measures worth based price, how could something totally free be of any value? So it must not make sense to many people that something completely free could be of such incredible value and worth. Most people can tell you what a house is “worth” or what a car is “worth”. But ask them to tell you how much a few hours per week of exercising is “worth” and you’ll most likely get a blank stare. How can you put a dollar figure to the benefits of a lifetime of exercising and living a healthy lifestyle? The answer is, you can’t! There is no amount of money that can buy you back your health once you let it go! But this concept must truly be lost considering the amount of people that are succumbing to lifestyle disorders like diabetes, heart disease and obesity. All of which can be reduced or flat out removed by living a healthy lifestyle and exercising.

Instead of putting a little effort into regular workouts most people would rather take a drug to deal with lifestyle disease problems. I believe this happens for three reasons.

1) Because this makes more sense to them, it is a simple value for a dollar equation. After all, prescriptions come from the best that medical science can offer. And obviously the more expensive the drug or treatment is, the better it must be, again value for the dollar. You work hard for your money, and you are trained to believe that money should be able to buy you everything else you need in your life, including your health. And this couldn’t be further from the truth. Isn’t it ironic that the pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars researching and marketing drugs that do the same thing as a few (free) workouts per week can do!

2) People are just too busy to “fit in” a few workouts per week. People who have not grown up with the habit of exercising simply do not factor it into their daily routine. As little as three 30 minute workouts per week would do wonders for anyone who doesn’t exercise at all. But even this little amount of time spent (1.5 hours per week) seems to be too much.

3) Effort. Even though exercising is completely free and can provide more health benefits than all the drugs in the world, most people don’t want to put in the effort. I believe people feel they work hard enough at their jobs, school, raising a family and whatever else they are involved in. Ask a person to spend some of their precious free time working out and it must seem like the work never ends.

So the answer is there, we all know what to do, but most people won’t own up and do what it takes. Not having enough time is simply an excuse. Even the busiest person on earth can find 1.5 hours per week of spare time to throw in a few short workouts. But for some reason, even though everyone knows exercising is good for them, they still avoid it.

And this is the most troubling point of it all. Exercising is free, and has more health benefits than any amount of drugs could ever have. Regular exercise can reduce blood cholesterol, reduce blood lipids, improve cardiovascular functioning and fitness, lower your blood pressure, improve your insulin sensitivity, help improve symptoms of type 2 diabetes, reduce body weight, reduce body fat, improve the overall look of your body, increase bone density, build strong muscles, improve your self image and self confidence, helps to alleviate depression, adds structure to your day, provides a gratifying experience that builds confidence and character, and teaches you the concept of delayed gratification and a bit of self sacrifice for long term gain. Now could you imagine a drug that could do all of that!



College Forum

Debra Loomis asked:


Hundreds of innocent people nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded over two years ago, and the FBI has yet to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing.

The Basis for Compositional Bullet Lead Analysis (Comparisons)
Background

When the physical markings of a fired bullet recovered from a crime scene are too mutilated for visual comparison or the firearm used in the crime is not recovered, the bullet can be compared with other bullets associated with a suspect by its elemental composition.

When a crime-scene bullet contains the same analytical elemental concentrations (i.e. match in composition) as the bullets from known cartridges, a single source of these bullets cannot by excluded. During the manufacturing processes, thousands of lead specimens (bullets and bullet cores) are produced with analytically indistinguishable compositions.

However, those lead specimens that share the same composition are generally packaged within the same box of cartridges, or in boxes of cartridges of the same caliber and type at the same manufacturing plant, on or about the same date.

When the differences in element concentrations are small but analytically significant, a comparative examination can be used to differentiate among bullets made of different alloys or to exclude a single source for bullets of the same alloy.

Comparative bullet lead analysis was developed in the early 1960s by researchers at General Atomic (now General Activation Analysis, Inc. located in Encinitas, California) under a federal grant to develop uses for neutron activation analysis (NAA).

Researchers developed procedures for analyzing such materials as gunshot primer residues, glass, paint and bullet lead. The results of their research were published in U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Reports (Lukens et al. 1970), the Journal of Radioanalytical Chemistry (Guinn 1982; Guinn et al. 1987), and the Journal of Forensic Sciences (Lukens and Guinn 1971).

In one research effort, the group acquired and analyzed samples from bullet lead manufacturers. The results of these analyses confirmed that a cast billet poured from a pot of molten lead is relatively homogeneous, but that leads poured from separate molten batches are distinguishable.

As a result, comparative bullet lead analysis has been adopted by laboratories and accepted by courts internationally (Andrasko et al. 1993; Blacklock and Sadler 1978; Brandone and Piancone 1984; Capannesi and Sedda 1992; Cohen et al. 1988; Desai and Parthasarathy 1983; Dufosse and Touron 1998; Gillespie and Krishnan 1969; Guy and Pate 1973; Kishi 1987; Krishnan 1973; Krishnan and Jervis 1984; Sankar Das et al. 1978; Screenivas et al. 1978; Suzuki and Yoshiteru 1996).

The NAA technique used at many laboratories has been replaced by inductively coupled plasmaoptical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), previously known as inductively coupled plasmaatomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) (Peters and Koons 1988).

OES was adopted because people confused AES with auger electron spectrometry (Boss and Fredeen 1997). Since the 1970s, ICP-OES has been widely accepted and is the method of choice for most inorganic analysis (Koons 1993; Montaser and Golightly 1987).

One advantage of ICP-OES is its ability to determine the concentrations of as many as 70 elements simultaneously in some samples. ICP-OES instrumentation is used in environmental, manufacturing, research and forensic laboratories throughout the world and has been used by the FBI Laboratory in casework for the past 12 years.

The ICP-OES procedure currently used in the FBI Laboratory can determine the concentrations of seven elements (antimony, arsenic,copper, bismuth, silver, tin and cadmium) in most bullet leads. The main disadvantage of ICP-OES is that it is a destructive technique, requiring acid digestion of approximately 60 milligrams of each replicate sample of bullet lead.



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