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HOW smart are the US military’s smart bombs? Can they, for example, count?
The question is prompted by the observation back in August 2008 on a blog called “Moon of Alabama” that “ around the Hindu Kush , 30 is a magic number”. The writer found it surprising how many reports of people – whether Taliban or civilians – being killed in Afghanistan put the death toll at 30. So what’s going on? Are the missiles and drones counting, then ceasing fire?
Marc Abrahams alerts us to a theory about the magic 30 proposed by Megan Carpentier of Air America. Carpentier documents multiple bloggers’ attempts at an explanation at bit.ly/magic30 . Her favourite comes from one Marc Garlasco , described as “the Pentagon’s chief of high-value targeting at the start of the war”. He is quoted on salon.
A colleague in Canada received a mailshot from utility company Direct Energy announcing: “Special Offer! Free maintenance – only $13.99 a month”
com as saying that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians “the air strike had to go to [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld or [President George W.] Bush personally to sign off”.
So the estimates – always a little difficult to make exact when the explosion has been energetic – might be predetermined? Perish the thought.
UNTIDYING Feedback’s desk, we find
an empty packet that once contained
six Cadbury’s Mini Rolls. Idly reading
the small print we discover that each
contained – and we now contain –
3.1 grams of saturated fat (so the six
Mini Rolls would add up to an entire
day’s allowance) and packed in 120
calories. Beneath this information
appears the legend “To be enjoyed
as part of a healthy, active lifestyle.”
What a wonderful phrase! We
have visions of a panel of lawyers,
regulatory consultants and marketing
people being responsible for this gem.
What other exhortations might such
a panel have considered and then
discarded? “ Not, in fact, particularly
nutritious” would probably have
hit the waste basket fairly early.
“Get off your fat butt, lard-bottom”
soon afterwards. Might “So don’t sue
us if you need bigger trousers” ever
have been in contention?
WE FAILED to get to the London Cartoon Museum before Rowland Emett’s exhibition of his “Engines of Enchantment” closed at the end of 2009 – so we are grateful to Ken Manley for providing us with Emett’s description of his Astroterramere: “a machine equally at home on land, sea or in the air”.
“The machine,” he tells us, “is steam-propelled when sea-borne, petrol-driven on land and has a jet propulsion unit based on almost unknown principles, embracing a centrifugal anti-static energiser, in which rotary condensers, passing between electromagnets, charge pith-balls with alternative negative and positive currents, so that they become confused and run violently up and down the static rods, thus building up a potentially powerful potential in the semi-atomic fully-siphonic closed circuit of especially lightened heavy water.”
We are delighted by this example of carefully crafted gobbledgook. If it wasn’t for the absence of the word “quantum”, it would provide a perfect template for the kind of quack-babble we often feature in this column.
TWO weeks ago we learned that
jumbo jets once had a tendency to
head towards the Atlantic Ocean
south of Ghana – specifically, to 0°
north by 0° east, otherwise known as
zero zero – if their direction wasn’t
checked and corrected ( 16 January ).
Now we hear that this interesting
location appears to be full of people
playing chess.
Ruth Wilson of Canberra, Australia,
tells us that her young son plays
chess online at playchess.com. The
site gives a list of all its online
players, with a flag to indicate their
nationality or location.
“We started noticing,” Ruth tells
us, “a surprising number of players
[located] at one spot, in what we
call the Gulf of Guinea. Funny place
for a cruise ship full of chess players,
we thought, especially as it stayed in
the one spot week after week.
“At one stage my husband
suggested that it could be an oil rig,
but there seemed to be far too many
players there for that. Then one day
my son was over there on the online
map, despite being right here in
Canberra. It took your item about
Dublin Ferry Port being located at
zero zero ( 22 August 2009 ) for us
to realise the significance of the spot.
Many thanks for that.”
FINALLY, it looks as if NASA has chosen its spacecraft to take the next generation of explorers to the moon, notes Geraint Day. On page 13 of the press kit “Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO):
Leading NASA’s Way Back to the Moon”, the agency tells us: “At the closest distance, it would take 135 days to drive by car at 70 mph to the moon.”
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64 | NewScientist | 30 January 2010
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