Sturgeon

So yeah, being that there's alot of tension between Taiwan and China for really obvious reasons, they themselves have been focusing alot on anti ship and landing based weapons to delay an assault if one ever did happen, their latest is a rather large land/ship based missile with a 150 km range and a speed of mach 2.0-2.5, but yeah, here you go.
 
http://www.janes.com/article/46788/taiwan-releases-first-firing-footage-of-hf-3-carrier-killer
 
(Note; for the most part, I hate Janes because they talk completely out of their ass alot, but, unfortunately they were the first with the story.)

Yeah, indeed. Sorry for not posting about Ukrainian MBT performance in civil war, i am little bit too busy currently. 

Here's to Orion, SLS (both block 1 and definitely not theoretical block 2), and a faint glimmer of hope for missions beyond LEO. Here's to where we should have  been in 1980.
 

Irony: old school environmentalism is inherently conservative in outlook (this works now, if anything changes it won't work anymore)
As mentioned, I prefer the idea of managed ecosystems. This includes niche filling, even where an 'invasive' organism is doing the filling. Going further, I'd argue that synthetic ecosystems are not only a good thing but also potentially better in terms of providing environmental services.
I'll take working systems over doomed attempts to isolate and fix in place existing ones.

What? You'll go a runnin' off to that half-mad German git? He'll be too busy talking to trees! Why I have more Royal Blood in my left gonad than the entire Royal Family put together!
No, I'm serious! Given that I'm related in a round about way to King Edward IV (the most battle winningest, sex havingest of the English monarchs) and the recent paternity issues that have cropped up after the discovery of Richard III.

Get that hippie-dippie Federalism crap out of here!

Part of the issue is environmentalists have been pushing the idea of indicator species as a way to affect action in terms of "protecting" the planet. You see this with polar bears and global warming where we're lead to believe that the Coke Christmas mascot will go extinct unless we stop driving SUVs. This is despite the fact that the species is increasing in population annually and has survived periods of climatic temperatures much higher than today.
It also presupposes that all extinctions of animals are related to human activity. This came to play with the sub-species of the Northern Spotted Owl in my neck of the woods. It was theorized that the Northern Spotted Owl populations were declining because of logging in old growth forests on - mostly - federal property. There's no need to go into the details but after much media attention and after many "Spotted Owl Tastes Just Like Chicken" bumper-stickers were put on trucks, the owl became protected, logging was prohibited on vast swathes of public land and communities like Hoquiam and Aberdeen (Union and Democrat voters btw) became ghost towns (later to spawn Kurt Cobain, Nirvana and Grunge).
It turns out later, that Northern Spotted Owls don't necessarily need old growth forests to nest. Also, the reason for their decline is because they were being out-competed by the Barred Owl.

Cue the lumpers v splitters debate...
On a more serious note, I want to thank all the people participating for not making me want to burn the thread down.
Know that, when it comes to threads on phylogeny or dinosaurs, this is about the highest praise I can give.
Beer and a medal for all of you.

I thought it was quite interesting hearing the aggressor guy talk about his aircraft:

I don't know that elected politicians have much effect one way or another.  Does anyone remember how Bush II initially ran on a platform of "humbler foreign policy" in contrast to the ambitious nation-building programs undertaken by the Clinton Administration?  Fast forward three years and "neocon" is shorthand for "panders to the religious right, but also engages in ambitious nation-building programs."
 
It's almost as though politicians say whatever they think will get them elected, proceed to get elected, then find out that they are completely unqualified to do the job they were elected to do, end up having civil servants write all their policy and legislation for them, but take credit for it because they have enormous egos and no self awareness.

As most of you know, during the summer I work in an industry where conservation and stewardship of a natural resource is vital for that industry's continued survival. The Bristol Bay sockeye run is the largest and last natural run of its kind in the world with roughly 25-35 million fish returning to spawn each season. This has been made possible in part because the Bristol Bay region is largely devoid of human development. It's also because it is highly regulated with a limited entry permit system and rules in place stating when and where we can fish, with what gear, how big of boats, etc. They are (mostly) good rules. If they weren't in place fishermen would (by economic necessity) destroy the run in ten years, something that most responsible fishermen don't want to see happen.
We've also - so far - successfully fought measures to build the Pebble Mine - which would be the largest open pit copper and gold mine in the world - located smack dab in the middle of the region.
To me this is good environmental stewardship.
For the rest of the year I live near Seattle in the Pacific Northwest which used to have the largest salmon runs in the world. The advent of 10 million people living cheek-and-jowl next to riparian streams, overfishing, pollution, hydroelectric dams, agriculture and meddling with farm and hatchery fish has caused the runs to dwindle to a fraction of their former glory although runs have been increasing of late.
I've witnessed the debacles of the environmental movement here first-hand, watching dairy farms in Western Washington go belly up because they aren't allowed to graze their heifers near any creek, stream or ditch because of "pollution". The farmers then sold their land to developers who paid the state to let them build "Master-Planned Developments" with Mc-Mansions which they sell to California liberals who now are clamoring for locally produced farm produce and want to "Save the Salmon".
Such is the chaos inherent in the system.
Back in my days as a newspaper reporter I covered a story where a Seattle environmental group was suing farmers (Apple and Pear orchards) and their irrigation district for killing salmon in Chelan County, Wash. A hundred years ago, farmers built diversion dams in nearby streams and channeled some of the water to their fields. These dams were usually 2-4 feet high. A local do-gooder had found dead salmon in front of the dam and got this group on the case since the group had been bullying other irrigation districts with the same tactic. The farmers opted to fight the lawsuit. It turned out some plucky reporter found out that the dead salmon were actually left-over hatchery salmon that had been dumped there by the Washington Dept. Of Fish and Wildlife to help enrich the stream. The diversion dam wasn't killing salmon after all. I left before the story's conclusion, but the upshot is the farmers caved, agreed to modernize their canal (which they had planned to do anyway) while agreeing to pay "scientists" from the environmental group to monitor their progress.
To me this is bad science. But good organized crime.

I have realized by understanding of the origins of the avemetatarsalia isn't as good as I thought it was. I am conceding that feathers were likely on all dinos. 
 
I've never had a conversation with people who could explain the paraphyletic status of repitles, I knew that even though I've never heard the term before. It does clear up my understanding. 

It's called "phylogenic bracketing."  The earliest ancestors of tyrannosaurs clearly had feathers, so for the more derived species to lack them they would have had to have had some mutation which caused them not to grow feathers.
 
The default assumption is that this would not happen.  Note that even naked mole rats, domestic swine, humans and other weird mammals with apparently naked skin actually have very fine skin hairs.  Hell, even cetaceans have hair.
 
We know that theropod dinosaurs had feathers left and right, and now there are... at least three I think fossils of ornithiscian dinosaurs with suspiciously feather-like hollow keratinous integument.  Unless theropods and ornithopods independently evolved hollow, keratinous insulative structures, the most parsimonious assumption is that the last common ancestor of both theropods and ornithiscians had feathers.
 
This would mean that basically all dinosaurs had feathers as the basal condition; bizarrely, feathers would be the basal condition for sauropods too.
 
You think feathered theropods look weird, try imagining feathered sauropods.  It's possible that sauropods secondarily lost feathers, but again, in the absence of other evidence that should not be the default assumption.
 
My hunch, and hopefully better fossils will come out to prove me wrong or right, is that the suspiciously proto-feather-looking hollow keratinous insulative structures on pterosaurs are homologous with dinosaur feathers.  That would mean that entire dinosaur/pterosaur clade (can't remember what it's called) would be feathered by default.
 
I could kinda buy that some larger tyrannosaurs were naked-skinned by analogy with elephants, rhinos and hippos; there are some skin impressions of larger taxa showing bare skin, but those are small patches and hardly vouch for the condition of the entire animal.  However, yutyrannus, which is allosaurus-sized had feathers, and mammoths had fur.

A Decidedly Brief And Altogether Inadequate History And Description of The Small Caliber High Velocity Ammunition Concept: A Treatise On Extended Nomenclature And Extraneous Verbosity For The Individual Highly Valuing The Immediate Temporal Period

(THIS ARTICLE ASSUMES FAMILIARITY WITH BASIC SMALL ARMS TERMINOLOGY ON THE PART OF THE READER)

"Small Caliber; High Velocity" is nothing more or less than what it says. Relative to the contemporary norm, ammunition and the guns that fire them should be smaller caliber, while also achieving higher velocity; doing both will increase performance while decreasing weight, recoil, and materiel usage.

Why is this desirable? In brief:
 
1. The bullet weight of a cartridge is a major driving factor in that cartridge's characteristics. A lighter bullet weight is, from the perspective of the shooter, better than a heavier bullet weight. Lighter weight bullets will induce less recoil, all things being equal, than heavier ones. The bullet of a rifle cartridge also typically makes up a third or more of the total weight of the round; reducing bullet weight is a good way to reduce the weight of ammunition.
 
2. A faster bullet produces a superior trajectory to a slower one. Less adjustment is needed for distant targets, and the error possibilities for incorrect range estimation are lower. Contrary to popular belief, 5.56mm produces an excellent trajectory for its size; in fact, I have a hard time noticing a difference between it and 7.62mm NATO until about 800 yards. Ballistic tables bear this out; along its supersonic flight range, 5.56mm has a very flat trajectory. PEO Soldier sets 5.56mm's Maximum Effective Range when fired from an M4 at 500m. Compared to that, 7.62x39 lags behind by about 120m, despite having a very similar bullet shape, sectional density, and ballistic coefficient. Note that 7.62x39 produces 80% of the velocity of 5.56 when fired from the same barrel. I created a graph to illustrate the relationship velocity and ballistic coefficient have in terms of informing trajectory. It plots the ballistic coefficient necessary to produce the same drop at 500m as a .151 G7 BC bullet fired at 2,970 ft/s. Note that below 2,700 ft/s, a tremendously high BC is needed to achieve this level of performance. In short, muzzle velocity is the overwhelmingly primary agent in producing a better unadjusted sight trajectory at normal and even extended ranges. If sight adjustment is assumed, this changes, but that is not relevant for the discussion of modern military small arms.
 
3. For a given trajectory and specific energy*, a smaller-caliber round will be lighter and smaller than a larger-caliber counterpart. This is only true within a certain bound of performance, but the performance needed from modern military rifle ammunition lies well within this bound.

4. Sectional density, a major factor in both penetration and drag, can be maintained as caliber is reduced relative to length. Sectional density is calculated, in common discussion, as mass/diameter^2. Imagine a cylinder .5" in diameter that is 1" long, made from steel. Now imagine another cylinder, also made of steel and still 1" long, but now .25" in diameter. Both cylinders have the same sectional density, but the second cylinder is one quarter the weight of the first.

*Specific energy, .5*mass*(velocity^2)/(diameter^2), is an important metric in approximating target penetration characteristics when assuming homologous bullet design.
 
Now, how is this bounded? Well, in a couple of ways:

A. In conventional rifle ammunition, the projectile diameter and bore diameter are both coupled together. Change the diameter of the bullet, and you need a wider or thinner bore to accommodate it. Because of this, you reach a limit where so much powder is being used to try to attain a higher muzzle velocity through such a small bore that the fluid flow rate is limited by the extreme necking down of the cartridge case. Therefore, for normal modern rifle ammunition, muzzle velocity does not typically exceed 4,600 ft/s. However, if bore diameter and bullet diameter are decoupled (as through a sabot), or unusually light projectiles are used, velocities at the limit of nitrocellulose's capability are possible, out to around 6,000 ft/s.

B. Military ammunition has other concerns that limit it further. One is the barrel wear of the ammunition; militaries are economical organisms, and they do not want to be throwing away barrels too quickly. Because of this, and because trajectory and weight gains are minimized beyond around 3,500 ft/s, velocity is limited. Another concern is weapon overheating: Beyond a certain temperature, rifles lose a great deal of their accuracy; thus ammunition is maintained below the heat flux threshold for a desired sustained rate of fire for the rifle. This doesn't limit velocity as much as it limits over-boredness, the ratio of the caliber squared over the chamber volume. A small caliber, high velocity round will want to be as overbore as possible, so this does limit the concept for military use.

C. Spin-stabilization only works out to a point, and that point is "about" a 7 caliber length-to-diameter ratio. For military use, the limit is closer to 5 calibers due to stability being absolutely essential from a wide variety of barrels and conditions. Remember our dieting cylinder example up there? Once it gets down below about .18" in diameter, it will begin to have problems.

Now, if one decouples the bore diameter from the projectile diameter, and drag-stabilized, instead of spin-stabilized the projectile, they would run into very different limits. Research into this area, which began in the early fifties with the SALVO project, resulted in micro-caliber finned flechettes fired at velocities up to 5,000 ft/s:
 

 
These high velocity flechette rounds weighed very little, while producing exceptional penetration and flatness of trajectory. So, they can be considered the ultimate evolution of the small caliber, high velocity concept.
 
A detrimentally brief history of SCHV:

SCHV has been around for a while. .45-70, .30-40 Army, and 5.56 NATO were all considered "small caliber" and "high velocity" for their day; all of the principles I describe above were known well before the 1870s. However, the term "small caliber, high velocity" doesn't really get used in official literature until the 1950s when experiments with .22 caliber military rifles really took off. In the context of today, small caliber high velocity refers to a cartridge optimized for low weight and a flat trajectory out to 300m, typically with a caliber under .24" and a velocity above 2,800 ft/s. However, it's important to remember that caliber does not inform performance; A 6.5mm cartridge may perform much the same as a 5.56mm one, if the velocity is high enough and the bullet weight low enough. It's better, then, not to group ammunition sharing a bullet diameter together, but rather group together cartridges that share similar performance characteristics.

I've covered the GPC before, several times on my blog. Feel free to click through these links and read that material, too:

The Case Against a General Purpose Cartridge
 
The New Caliber Mafia

The General Purpose Cartridge Revisited

It's at this point that I want to share the story of my brother's girlfriend's daughter's Chihuahua Mac'n Cheese. Don't ask me why a three year old was allowed to name a $1,500 "show quality" dog or why they had to spend that much on something whose highest and best purpose is to feed snakes. I came to learn that Chihuahuas are notorious for having a weak bladder and you can't house train them. They are also stupid as evidenced by the time it crawled up to sleep with me on the couch and then, in the middle of the night, pissed on the pillow I was sleeping on.
So we/they had a dog that you couldn't leave inside and you couldn't leave outside because it would die from the elements or be eaten by a raccoon. So my brother built a heated, lighted dog house for Mac'n Cheese (and their other two dogs). One night we had freezing rain at temperatures around 34 degrees. The other two dogs (a mutt and a Cockapoo) were smart enough to go into the heated dog house. Mac'n Cheese stood by the back door in the freezing rain, waiting to be let in and died of exposure.
The End

My wife, in her capacity as a veterinary nurse, endorses this comment. But also adds a disclaimer that 'alpha training' (where you dominate the animal physically, roll it and so on) is also bullshit.
 
The thing with dogs is that you need to provide them with consistent feedback, consistent behaviour and a secure place in the hierarchy. Getting mad and punishing the animal is wrong, just as rewarding it without reason is.
 
Another part of the problem with long leashes (besides their pathetic design and construction) is that by allowing your dog to roam you remove him from your sphere of control and thus remove your ability to correct his behaviour.
 
Finally, the real sign of the end times isn't the leash, it's the proliferation of Dachshunds, Pugs and other useless 'purebred' animals. Using 19th-century (in)breeding practices to make an animal conform to an arbitrary list of breed standards is evil, yo.

Having seen this film earlier today, I'm fairly certain he did not (not that I was particularly paying attention).
 
I'm going to commit heresy and say that while this film was by no means perfect, I did find it entertaining. Better than the short bits of Gravity I've seen in any case. While it is true that the movie gloriously shat all over scientific plausibility, I don't get the feeling it was trying be some sort of super-duper scientifically plausible thing (like Gravity claimed to be), so I can excuse that. The cliched message about love and/or environmentalism was also a bit annoying, but overall, I though the visuals were pretty good, so I managed to ignore that too. I wouldn't recommend actually paying to go see it, but if you're willing to abuse copyright law, there are worse things to waste a couple gigs of hard drive space on.
 
If somebody releases an edit where all of Matt Damon's lines are changed to "MATT DAMON", I would recommend at least seeing it on netflix.

The Russians have been big on grid fins for a while now, e.g. AA-12 Adder, and I think some anti-shipping missile I can't remember (because shooting at airplanes is sexier than shooting at ships).
 
I think grid fins work well at high speeds for the same reason twin tails do on supersonic fighters; the shock waves reach such an angle that the fins/potato masher lines no longer interfere with each other.
 
BUT WE WOULD KNOW FOR SURE IF A REAL AEROSPACE ENGINEER POSTED HERE.

Note: I decided I'll make a separate thread about Taiwan at a later date so it's less cluttered.
 
So yeah, I made a vehicle and vehicle weapons thread, might aswell make a small arms thread dedicated to the PLA too, while the focus is on the newest and upcoming generation, I may add some older designs when I feel like it.
 
11/28/14 Made some slight updates after receiving new information.
 
So, let's start off with the 5.8x42mm round, which as you probably know, is the latest round issued to front line troops and, while it's in essence a SCHV round, Olifant and I have decided is supposed to act like a GPC in the PLA's doctrine (why GPC advocates think a SCHV is completely incapable of being a GPC is a mystery.) How does it perform?
 
Well, This 6mm projectile (Sorry Olifant, I had to do it!) has 2 main variants, the "Short" standard 72 grain round, the DBP-10, which replaced the older, lighter 64 grain DBP-97/95 rounds in service and will eventually replace the DBP-88. (see below) It features a "special hard" H90 double copper/brass layered steel cored gliding metal jacket, which is very hard by bullet jacket standards and allows it to stay together under high stress, a hard cast lead-antimony fused core and an improved sub caliber hardened tool steel penetrator superior to that from the 87 and 95, the core is approximately 4mm wide which combine to give this round excellent armor/material penetration (12+mm RHA at 300mm, compared to 10mm in the older series) and "barrier blind" characteristics. Because of several aerodynamic improvements over the older 87 and 95 series, This is also a quite accurate round with a flat trajectory and excellent energy retention over long distances. It's also worth noting that, because the pressure is significantly increased in the DBP-10 compared to the older rounds from 42,000 psi to 58,000-60,000 psi, it maintains It's rather impressive velocity of 3,000-3,050 feet per second from standard service rifles (18.5 inch barrel and 20.5 inch respectively) despite the heavier round. Giving it an overall muzzle energy of around 1,500 ft/lbs or just over 2,000 joules. for comparison, the 5.56x45mm M855A1 weighing 62 grains gets 2,970 feet per second from a 14.5 inch M4A1 barrel for 1215 ft/lbs or around 1650 joules (I Don't know how fast it travels from the M16 unfortunately), and the 5.45x39mm 7N22 from a 16.5 inch AK-74M barrel achieves 3,000 feet per second, for 1140 ft lbs or around 1550 joules (math is rounded mind you, I'm lazy), so while the 5.8x42mm does get slightly higher raw performance then It's 2 main counterparts as advertised, which is helped by the longer barrel lengths used by the PLA's service weapons, It's not a massive advantage really.
 
And, while the DBP-10 does have alot going for it, it does also have it's flaws, the most prominent being that the design that gives it excellent material penetration and barrier blind ability means it doesn't tend to shatter like other high velocity rounds upon hitting softer flesh, usually ice picking right through a target leaving an exit hole only slightly larger then the entrance, the DBP-10 is noted to have slightly better terminal effectiveness then the 87 and 95  (partially due to the longer, more tail heavy bullet being more likely to yaw/causing a bigger wound channel when it does in soft flesh and when shattering bone), though this wasn't a massive priority in the design.
 

 
 
And the "Long" Heavy round meant for MGs and Sniper/DM Rifles, the DBP-88. This 77 grain projectile can't be used in the standard QBZ-95 rifle, carbine, or the QBZ-03 rifle due to the fact it's about 6mm longer then the standard projectile on account of the extended tool steel penetrator that starts in the nose as opposed to the base like the DBP-87 and 95, however, this heavy, long bullet is perfect for sharpshooters and machine guns that can suppress from far away, as the bullet offers even better energy retention, flatter trajectory, very good accuracy, and retains it's penetration power quite well compared to the DBP-87 and 95, being able to still punch through 3-4mm of RHA at 1km (may not sound like much, but for a small round that's pretty good.)  this particular version is set to be scrapped as the PLA wants ammo standardization between all weapons, However, There's some evidence that a dedicated "Match Grade" round will be made for 5.8mm DMRs and Sniper rifles, previously thought to be an Ap round but that's no longer believed to be the case.
 
Updates: I've found some new documentation that surprisingly suggests the DBP-10 isn't just a compromise round between the DBP-95 and DBP-88, but actually outperforms it in basically every category, almost assuring the DBP-88 will infact be retired as planned/
 
First off, the main service rifle, the QBZ-95-1, aka the best Bullpup style AR.ever.
 

 

 
QBZ-95-1 Rifle and QBZ-95G Carbine
 

 
QBZ-97 Export model with a flat top kit. (note the STANAG mag well and how much deeper it runs.)
 

 
Actual FTU kit installed on older QBZ-95.
 

 
With various accessories. (a vertical and angled foregrip also exists but isn't shown here.)
 
So yeah, bow down inferior bullpup rifles to your clear overlord, the QBZ-95-1 is, as you may have guessed from the name, an improvement from the older QBZ-95 first seen in 2010, mainly addressing feedback regarding ergonomic comfort and controls, aswell as some other improvements like a thicker barrel with an improved muzzle brake,this rifle will rule you, it has plenty of accessories for almost any mission yet keeps modularity to a reasonable level, is very reliable and quite durable, pretty accurate (not amazing, but for a service rifle its quite decent) while also featuring light recoil due to it's well made recoil buffering system, and is quite light and rather spacious, and somewhat simple, however easy to use iron sights.
 
The Carbine variant is mostly the same, however it does fire notably faster under the same circumstances as the full size rifle, one oddity however is that the front handguard is so short on the carbine variant it actually has nowhere to mount the 35mm grenade launcher or bayonet the full sized rifle can.
 
Specifications to sperg over
 
Caliber - 5.8x42mm DBP-10 (5.56x45mm using STANAGs in the QBZ-97 export variants)
 
Official rate of fire - 650-750 rpm for older variants, 700-750 for QBZ-95-1 on fully automatic. (800-900 rpm for QBZ-95G)
 
Action - Gas operated, rotating bolt with short stroke piston.
 
Fire modes - Semi automatic - 3 round burst (optional) - fully automatic.
 
Magazine capacity - 30 round box magazine
 
Barrel Length - 20.5" (14.5" for QBZ-95G)
 
Overall length - 745mm (610mm for QBZ-95G)
 
Weight - 3.00 kg (6.6 lbs)  (2.7/6.0 lbs for QBZ-95G) Unchambered with an empty magazine inserted.
 
Effective Range - 600m point targets (400m for QBZ-95G)
 
Note to the above, I made a mistake on the weights and quoted the older versions which are heavier, it's been corrected.
 
------
 
I'll add content as I feel like doing so.
 
Be sure to check my other topics covering other branches of the PLA
 
http://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/80-the-plan-present-and-future-or-the-rapid-modernization-of-the-chinese-navy-and-marines/- Regarding the Navy, Marines, and Weapons used by them and also land based anti ship defense systems.
 
http://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/10-vehicles-of-the-pla-or-glorious-fear-mongering-about-china-over-wars-that-will-probably-not-happen-now-with-content/- Regarding land based vehicles, armor, and weapon systems
 
http://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/87-the-plaaf-and-airborne-a-look-at-the-past-present-and-the-future/- Regarding the PLAAF Aircraft and weapon systems, helicopters, and the Airborne.

The politicization of science is a rot that has utterly wrecked the soft sciences, and it's coming for the hard sciences soon too.
 
Take a fairly innocuous-sounding question; what was the pre-Colombian population of the New World?
 
This is interesting from a historical perspective; there are census records from the Roman Empire, so it's possible to make certain conjectures about the economy and society of the time without completely being in make-stuff-up-la-la-land.  Similar information would be much appreciated for the New World empires.  Exactly how big were they?
 
This is also an interesting question from a practical perspective; the New World was less dominated by agrarian societies than the Old World was; it was more of a patchwork of nomads, sedentary, agrarian and hunter-gatherer peoples.  This is interesting and has implications for ecology.  There is also the interesting case of the Anasazi,* who apparently switched back and forth between centralized, urban societies and dispersed, more nomadic existence due to local climate change.  That's absolutely fascinating and has enormous implications for modelling the economics of a society that is dealing with climate change.
 
An accurate assessment of the precolombian New World population and the population after the arrival of Europeans would also be very interesting from an epidemiological perspective.  Obviously, New World populations were decimated by European diseases.  But exactly by how much, how fast did they spread, and how quickly (if at all) did the populations recover?
 
But oh my god, if you start trying to do estimates on how many people there were in the New World, be prepared to be crucified for crimes you didn't even know existed.  Did you make your estimate too low because you're some sort of white supremacist who thinks that the Indians were too stupid to develop systems capable of supporting more people than that, or perhaps you're trying to downplay the enormity of the destruction of those cultures by the invaders from across the Atlantic?  Did you make your estimate too high because you're some sort of goddamn hippie revisionist who reflexively exaggerates the importance and scale of non-European cultures?

This sort of thing is a great way to guarantee that no work gets done on the question.
 
 
*apparently this name is politically incorrect now, and I just don't care.

I had read an analysis claiming that China doesn't really give a fuck about the islands, but they like stirring up trouble regarding the little rocks that are three-way-claimed by Japan, Taiwan and themselves because it could possibly strain US/Japanese relations.
 
This might be similar.

So China; trolling the world just for the LOLs.

For those of you who are not familiar with him, Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author of some note. He is probably best known for his advocacy of the 'Mars Direct' proposal, although he's also done quite a bit of work in the nuclear spacecraft propulsion field (he's the guy that came up with the NSWR). His wiki page says he's also written on other vaguely political topics, but I'm not familiar with them.
 
 
Personally, I find his work on spacecraft propulsion highly interesting, and it's good that we've got somebody putting forth cogent ideas for space exploration. However, I feel that some of his ideas are a bit too optimistic, especially in regards to his Mars Direct approach. I feel that it would be more optimal to gain more experience with long term off-planet living in a location such as the moon before proceeding to Mars, while also using that time to mature techniques such as nuclear rockets to actually get to Mars. On a related note, I showed his NSWR paper to a guy I know who has some not insignificant knowledge of nuclear physics, and he was a bit skeptical. Still, in my opinion, it's infinitely better to have somebody be a bit overoptimistic about how well their ideas will work, and keeps push them forward, then a bunch of limp wristed pessimists who are afraid to send anyone beyond LEO because it might cost a few million dollars.

And Douglas MacArthur turned this bunch of prisoner's-liver-eating, Chinese-peasant-murder-raping savages into a polite, first world economy how?!
 
Man should be a candidate for sainthood.

Tanknet: