U.S. Pushes Anti-Terrorism in Africa

WashPost: The Pentagon plans to train thousands of African troops in battalions equipped for extended desert and border operations and to link the militaries of different countries with secure satellite communications. The initiative, with proposed funding of $500 million over seven years, covers Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco and Tunisia — with the U.S. military eager to add Libya if relations improve.

. . .

Green Berets are trained to navigate foreign cultures, but both teams lacked Africa expertise and were short on French and Arabic speakers. Each team was designed to have 12 members, but Gary’s had nine men and Brian’s had six. They were given the assignment on short notice after the 3rd Special Forces Group, which normally covers Africa, was deployed to Iraq.

They landed in Chad with outdated U.S. military maps that still labeled the current capital, N’Djamena, with its French colonial name, Fort Lamy. To keep from getting lost, Gary fashioned his own crude map by plotting GPS coordinates for stores and gas stations. U.S. soldiers are relative newcomers in Chad, where France has had 1,000 troops and three air bases.

Exploding Clear Plastic Containers

WashPost:

[Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s antiterrorist branch] said the containers that held the explosives — 6.25-liter models made of clear plastic with white lids and bearing the brand name Delta — were imported from India and sold at 100 outlets. He urged any shopkeepers who sold five or more at the same time or to the same customer to contact police.

Ok, I’m no anti-terrorism expert or anything, but is this really what we’ve come to? That we’re going to start monitoring when people are buying plastic containers? And assuming that the terrorists read mainstream media, wouldn’t it be relatively easy for them to just not buy them from the same shop in quantities of five or more? And why five? There were four bombs each time. Why isn’t four the magic number? *sighs*

Lamb Festival

Because the the chowhounds seem to be down on the Gilroy Garlic Festival next weekend, someone also mentioned the Lamb Festival in Dixon, CA (towards Sacramento) on Saturday instead. It’s smaller, cheaper ($1/person), and closer (at least from Berkeley).

Who’s interested?

“The Pick-Up System No Girl Can Resist!”

This 40 minute album has eight actual recorded pick-up scenes to learn from. You’ll hear exactly how to pick up a busty college girl in a library, a tall pretty blond street, a dark-haired sexy swinger in a single’s bar. Each pick-up is introduced by Eric Weber, the famous author of HOW TO PICK UP GIRLS! Eric explains exactly how and what to say for each different kind of pick up.

Full MP3 here.

This is pretty darned hilarious.

via Metafilter

Update: There’s a book too!

DPRK Discovers the English Language

LA Times:

Teacher: Han Il Nam, how do you spell the word “revolution”?

Student A: R-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n.

Teacher: Very good, thank you. Sit down. Ri Chol Su. What’s the Korean for “revolution”?

Student B: Hyekmyeng.

Teacher: Fine, thank you. Have you any questions?

Student C: No questions.

Teacher: Well, Kim In Su, what do you learn English for?

Student D: For our revolution.

Teacher: That’s right. It’s true that we learn English for our revolution.

Tom Randall on press duty

This is from my Columbia buddy Tom Randall who I saw last weekend in DC. He’s an intern at Bloomberg in DC for the summer and occasionally is on presidential press pool duty.

i went to the state dinner with indian pm, george, laura, condi, don, dick, the whole gang. libby snuck in the back door. they kicked us out after toasts, but hey, i got to stand face to face with the pres for 5 minutes in matching tuxes.

[Edited July 28, 2010]

This Morning’s Interview on WRVA 1140 AM Richmond

I was up at 5 am this morning to do an interview on WRVA about robots. It went well overall, except that it had three minor issues. The first was that I was mistakenly credited as being the “editor of Macworld magazine” (Jason, I’m really not trying to take your job, I swear!). The second was that my interview was cut short due to breaking news of the 2nd round of minor London bombings. The third was that I forgot that there’s a time delay between what I say over the phone and what is broadcast on the Internet stream, so my recording is cut off by just a few seconds.

“Richmond’s Morning News with Jimmy Barrett”
(WRVA 1140 AM Richmond)
July 21 2005 [1.6 MB (3:23) 64 kbps]