Back of the Envelope

I spent an inordinate amount of time working on this. This chart shows the five-year rolling average of Americans killed by Middle-Eastern Terrorism:



This data was taken from this webpage, maintained by the the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. The page's objective is to show that US citizens are victims of Middle Eastern terrorism as well, so they don't distinguish between Americans being specifically targetted, and Americans who are killed in attacks on Israeli and other targets. I wasn't too concerned with the distinction either, since what I was curious about was this statement in a post by Doc Rampage:

Cliff pointed out in a comment that the expected deaths from terrorists each year in the US is about 300. This is roughly the same as the number of people killed by lightening. Cliff suggests (I infer from his irony) that we are spending too much time, money, and energy in combating what is statistically a minor problem. he problem is... Well, the problem is that his logic makes a weird sort of sense. Like Cliff, I'm an engineer and I detest inefficiency. Especially inefficiency for emotional, anti-rational reasons.

Being the experimentalist that I am, I'm always leery of snapshot statistics, and I'm more interested in trends. For something like terrorism, where attacks come at irregular intervals and the number of deaths per attack depends on a number of factors, I prefer to smooth out the data, in this case using a rolling average. I'll have to think about the best ways to analyze the data: large attacks cause spikes, yet you can't ignore the large attacks. One thing I noticed, though, is that throughout the nineties, there was a rise both in the number and effectiveness of attacks. This follows a drop off at the end of the eighties.

New Post: What was originally an update to this post, a plot of attacks rather than deaths, has been moved to a new post here.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 9: Home again

If you're wondering, you should read the comic first, then read my comments.

Torg and Riff are on their own against the alien. On the bright side, they now have big guns and a plan. On the dark side, they're using the guns to blow up random stuff and it's a really bad plan. But when they find the way home, it all works out in the end. Well, except for the fact that the alien is loose to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting population... Hey, look, there's Zoe!

Things I noticed:

1. Monday's comic is beautiful. I'm not sure the guys can tell the difference between their lives and a first person shooter. Considering how crazy their lives are, this may be a good thing.

2. Tuesday: Torg as bait. I intend to take his advice if I'm ever in that situation.

3. Thursday: "We have to open the portal now!" "I have to eat you guys!"

4. Friday: "Could I just throw a shoe at it?" In the next comic, you can see the shoe in the alien's hand.

5. I wasn't sure the guys would make it home. Heck, we've had nearly as many comics in the alternate dimension as the real world. How do we know the "real world" wasn't just the set up.

6. Zoe is reintroduced in Sunday's comic. Bet you thought she was just a temp for a week. Turns out she's the neighbor. This comic also establishes time--it's been about a month since they left, the same amount of time as has passed in real days. It's not always easy to tell with comics. Pete makes an effort to have the holidays line up, but other than that, it can take a month to cover the events of a single day in comic time.

7. So not only is the alien loose in our world, advanced weapons are now in the hands of Torg and Riff. They're not exactly the folks I'd pick to bequeath advanced technology to, see Monday's strip.

8. Sunday's comic also has my favorite line for the week: "Oh yeah, the girl from the park! I didn't recognize you conscious, upright, and unmangled!"

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

Captain Ed points out another Bush foreign policy success. No doubt the Democrats will be explaining why it's really a disaster... From the Telegraph:

A peace deal to end Africa's longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives.

Decades of recrimination were put aside as the two factions inched towards agreement on how to share power in a new transitional government, as well as on the future of three contested regions - the final hurdles in over a year of tortuous negotiations hosted by the Kenyan government.

The conclusion of the fraught negotiations - in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States - hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country.

If Bush has too many more of these "rare" foreign-policy successes in Muslim countries (Libya, Iraq, reform movements in Iran and Syria gaining steam, and a statement of principle from the Arab League to move toward democracy), in a hundread years people are going to be wondering what all those references about unrest in the Middle East in the late 20th, early 21st centuries were about.

Doc Rampage should be happy.

Update: I read the article more carefully. It appears that this deal doesn't cover the conflict in the Darfur region, which was what the Doc was concerned about. I'm hoping that bringing resolution to the main conflict in Sudan will calm things down in Darfur.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 8: The Alien

If you're wondering, you should read the comic first, then read my comments.

Now the Alien parody is in full swing. If it were Star Trek, then only the extras would die, but here, they're all extras. You do the math.

Favorite parts:

1. Tuesday: "Wow! It knows to go after the extras first!" "All aliens do."

2. As usual, in a dangerous situation, Riff takes charge. Torg makes jokes.

3. Saturday: "On my way, and thank God for dandruff shampoo!"

4. Sunday: "By the way, I'm not going to turn around so you can get the satisfaction of seeing me gasp in fear before sucking my brains out." "Fine, I'll just find someone who will!

5. Also Sunday: "What is this? A sci-fi thriller or a goofy buddy movie?" Gulp! "The defense rests."

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

A long, long time ago, I mentioned that there were a couple of papers of mine in the process of being published. Well, they're out now. They've actually been out for a while, I've just been negligent. Now that I have them, here are the full references:

dc measurements of macroscopic quantum levels in a superconducting qubit structure with a time-ordered meter
D. S. Crankshaw, K. Segall, D. Nakada, T. P. Orlando, L. S. Levitov, S. Lloyd, S. O. Valenzuela, N. Markovic, M. Tinkham, and K. K. Berggren
Phys. Rev. B 69, 144518 (2004)

Energy Relaxation Time between Macroscopic Quantum Levels in a Superconducting Persistent-Current Qubit
Yang Yu, D. Nakada, Janice C. Lee, Bhuwan Singh, D. S. Crankshaw, T. P. Orlando, Karl K. Berggren, and William D. Oliver
Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 117904 (2004)

They're available online, if you have a subscription. Or you could look them up in a local university library. Or you could just e-mail me and I could send you a copy if you really wanted it.

I'm not pro-choice, and I'm glad to see that some pro-choice folks have a better understanding of the pro-life movement than those organizations (such as NARAL) who see themselves as the defenders of abortion rights, who label any restriction as an assault on women, and say that those who argue for such are would-be oppressors.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 7: Engineers

So, now that Riff and Torg are the engineering crew, they're on their way to the dimensional rifts that will take them home. It's not clear how well Riff understands the technology (even a technological wizard would need some time to leap forward a few hundred years in technology), but Torg doesn't have a clue. Still, they can fake it fairly well. Unfortunately, they get sidetracked, and the Star Trek (with a little Star Wars) parody makes a head-on collision with Aliens. Some things I noticed:

1. So this Confederation dumps toxic waste into random dimensions? That's not very nice.

2. First Officer Brenas. The less said, the better.

3. I like the technobabble: "Gamma-Gozer rays" and "Stabalizorama" from Riff, and "Chocolate Doh-doh waves" from Torg.

4. Torg and Riff make inappropriate use of the ship's resources. How very like them!

5. "Space station 9-Bab-5" Obviously a hash of Deep Space 9 (a great show, IMO) and Babylon 5.

6. Saturday's is great: "Keep forgetting we're the engineers." "Beats being expendable."

7. And on Sunday, Star Trek meets Aliens. Apparently they aren't so tough in zero-G. My favorite exchange: "Have you tried communicating with them, Chief Riff?" "But Sir, they are ugly and really weird looking!" "Very well, continue firing." Star Trek meets Aliens indeed.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

Old Post: I complained about the term "homicide bombing" below.

James Taranto at WSJ's Best of the Web also has problems with Fox's use of the term "homicide bomber." He also has a lot more information on how the term came about.

I haven't decided how I feel about the investigation of Chalabi yet. I don't think the CPA raided him because he was problematic to the UN. Or because he was an attention-getting embarassment. He may be both. I guess I just believe better of the CPA, and the Bush administration, than some people. I think that Chalabi is sincerely suspected of wrongdoing and is being investigated. From what I read, the evidence against him was too strong to ignore. I don't know whether he's actually guilty of wrongdoing, but I guess that's what the investigation is meant to uncover. Rich Lowry has a rather detailed post on him in The Corner, which also shows a lot of ambiguity.

Posting has been fairly slow for the last few days, with just the Sluggy Archive Review going up every day. There are a few reasons for that. The first is that I was working hard on A Phoenix in Darkness. I tend to work harder as the end comes into sight, so I've finished the second revision on Part 3 and revised all of Part 4 in just a few days. I've also been going to bed earlier so that I could get up earlier for work reasons, so that's kept me from doing any late night blogging (and also limited what I can get done every night, so I've had to prioritize). Finally, nothing's caught my attention and really demanded that I write. Sometimes I hear about something and I just can't help myself. It's hard to predict what will do that, but it's often when I see factual errors left unaddressed, or have a theory that I feel a need to share. It hasn't happened recently, however, and although I have thoughts on some of the things in the news recently, I haven't felt the need to comment, so I haven't prioritized the time to do so.

I'm now 80% of the way through the second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness, meaning that I've finished the revision of Part 4. Part 4 is the longest section, accounting for 22% of the story, and it contains a lot of action. I'd be done by next weekend, but I'm going on a short trip then, so I'm not certain. We'll see.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 6: The Dimensional Flux Agitator

The guys are still trying to get rid of Bun-bun. In their efforts, they accidentally zap themselves to another universe.

1. This is the first indication that Riff is something of an inventor. "Something of an inventor" in the sense that he can create a device which proves the many-worlds quantum theory.

2. For the record, there are only a few many-worlds adherents in the physics community. There are a few, I'll grant, but most just tune them out, considering the many-worlds hypothesis implausible, unproveable, and unnecessary.

3. Random reality pathways?

4. "Let me check my notes." Words to strike dread into the heart.

5. This is actually the introduction of sci-fi into the Sluggy universe. Of course, we already know that the supernatural exists there, from the first week if we take Satan in the computer seriously, and certainly the third.

6. The borg need to be more careful whom they assimilate. Torg and Riff throw the whole collective off, so that the borg end up kicking them out.

7. I loved Sunday's strip. There's plenty to love: "No problem, careful is our middle name." "No, you have no honor!" And the nod to Star Wars. "Trusting and compassionate?" "Gullible. I lied on our resumes and got us jobs on the ship."

8. To be honest, I spent most of the Sci-Fi adventure wishing they would just hurry up and get home. That and wondering whether Pete had decided to change the entire premise of the strip six weeks into it. I wanted to know whether Zoe would become a regular.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

This is a continuation of the Sluggy Archive Review. It's a chance for you to become familiar with Sluggy Freelance by going through the archives one week each day. You can start here.

Week 5: Zoe

Pete finally gets around to introducing some women to his strip, starting with Zoe, some hot girl, and the suicide-bikini-frisbee girls. Zoe's really the only one who has any characterization in this strip, or even a name given to her. Her role this week is to suffer. Things to notice:

1. She's wearing a Ranma 1/2 T-shirt. When I first read the archives, I knew nothing about Ranma 1/2. If I had, I might have made something of the shirt. I'd at least think that Zoe read manga.

2. Torg and Riff come across as real jerks this week.

3. Zoe meets Bun-bun. Her response to Bun-bun is the same as most people's, and Bun-bun's reaction to her is the same as for most people.

4. Torg also comes across as rather gullible in Saturday's strip. Overall, I thought that was the funniest strip this week.

5. Sunday's strip shows that it's been a very bad day for Zoe.

Please do not post spoilers, or speculation that looks like a spoiler, in the comments of this post. This has been cross-posted in the Sluggy Freelance forum for all your spoiler needs.

As usual, this post is timestamped to put it at 12:01 am on Sunday, even though it was written around 7 pm. I don't consider the timestamp too important on this post. It covers my significant posts for this week.

Sarin used in attack in Iraq, or Terrorists have WMDs! -- I try to get across the idea that the use of a Sarin shell in Iraq is a very bad thing.

Christian Carnival XVIII -- I host the Christian Carnival. See what other Christian bloggers are saying.

Sluggy Freelance Archive Review Week 1: August 25-31, 1997 -- I've started a review of Sluggy Freelance. It's a great way to experience Sluggy if you've never read it before.

Angel Series Finale -- My thoughts on the series finale of Angel.

Opposing the Iraq War -- My thoughts on what good reasons for opposing the Iraq War are. I was originally rather ambivalent towards the whole enterprise.

Third Revision Progress -- A quick summary of how A Phoenix in Darkness is going.