Friday, May 21, 2004

PM.  The US fatalities in Iraq are low because of one thing:  body armor.  Upwards of 80% of life threatening injuries are to the arms and legs.  The low KIA (killed in action) numbers enabled by body armor conceal the level of violence in the country.  Of course the elite guerrillas (the core fighters that have learned from the mistakes of the cannon fodder thrown at us over the last year) are starting to use body armor too. [John Robb's Weblog] The picture is a good catch by John Robb. Whoever wrote the caption didn't get the significance of the guerilla wearing armor--or even that he's wearing US military armor. 12:46:40 PM    comment () New Post to Global Guerrillas. Homemade Microwave Weapons.  New forms of warfare often require the development of new weapons (instead of the other way around).  For global guerrillas it will be directed energy weapons (particularly microwave weapons) that destroy computerized systems.  These weapons are inexpensive, (built with) common equipment, powerful, non-lethal, fast, light-weight, easy to use, and quickly replenished.  Within the context of global guerrilla swarming on infrastructure, they are the perfect weapon. [John Robb's Weblog] I note that this sort of weapon would also be very useful for ordinary, decent people trying to defend themselves from some of the larger and more dangerous terrorist groups. In fact, I remember reading a short story on a website somewhere in which something like this was done, but I can't remember the site. 10:41:40 AM    comment () AgroWaste Oil Plant Starts Production. An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo, and others has a story about the first Waste-to-Oil plant going online, and selling the oil commercially. Using TCP (Thermal ... [Slashdot] I wrote about this about a year ago. So far it's not producing very much, but then it's only the beginning. 10:32:37 AM    comment ()

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