Toxn

It's even nuttier than that. The US is supposed to be developing a vaccine for the virus, which was developed by dastardly Asians, and has done so in the form of a plot device kid with magic antibodies or something. The US is also going about this in the time-honoured fashion of using barely-controlled prisoners as guinea pigs for the cure testing. The South Africans want to steal it to allow them to develop a black-person version, because of course you just flip the 'melanin' switch a bit and away you go. Presumably step 2 is to dial down and eliminate the Indian and Cape Coloured population, before flipping the 'speaks english' knob and getting rid of the souties.

On the one hand, it's super difficult and harrowing to play. The 'always on' feature, especially. On the other hand, the prologue was awesome and the graphics are pretty decent.

Remember when Japan was going to join forces with the Apartheid South Africa and a bunch of middle-eastern terrorists to fight the US and a dying Soviet Union? Or what about the time when a bunch of South African mercenaries attempted to steal a race-specific virus from a top-secret site in America? Did I mention that the virus kills anyone without Asian ancestry?

This explains why I found a copy of it at my local bookstore...

My training as an academic proves to be my Achilles' heel again! Speaking of which, allow me to go into detail about the origins and metaphysical underpinnings of the myth of Achilles, as well as a brief discussion of its relevance in the modern discourse surrounding socio-political movements...

Another thought: I haven't gone into the issue of diet and conditioning, but my personal experience with family leads me to believe that a lot of women in less rural parts of the world are essentially starving themselves from late childhood onwards. This is a serious issue when combined with other cultural factors which may push women away from strength training and so on, as it tends to distort the underlying biological/genetic factors. Though not exactly pertinent when dealing with current methods of inducting soldiers (who go into the system with all these biases already loaded in), this does become a factor when contemplating what an 'optimal' system would look like. Finally; given the perennial issue of soldiers and hip/leg problems, I am quietly confident that lower leg exoskeletons/frames will be the saving grace for many a future soldier's joints. We'll see how this progresses as time goes on.

I think we're miscommunicating. My original comment: was meant to imply that we shouldn't even be giving soldiers the option to do stupid things that may result in pregnancy. This was meant to be put in the context of soldiers having their entire lives rigorously controlled (clothing, food, sleep, company etc.) yet the military inexplicably leaving them the option to father/mother children while on duty. The idea of making it contraceptive is that a person who is off-duty can then decide if they want to produce a kid on their own time. Thus no pregnancies during deployment, no foreign ladies heading back to the homeland in a family way and no uncomfortable issues with the locals beyond the direct deeds/misdeeds of the soldiers themselves.

Another, more rigorous approach to measuring strength differences in men vs. women is mentioned here* (warning: the article referred to is an evo-psych piece and thus should be ignored wherever it strays beyond the data). Interestingly, this seems to show a nearly equivalent difference when comparing height and lower body strength (around 2 SD) versus upper body strength (around 2.5 SD). Thus, my above conclusions for observed male:female ratios in an equal-selection army would be a bit different depending on how important upper body strength is to any given task. * A note on the comments: fantasising about beating your spouse back into the marital bed or beating "divorce-rape" lawyers as a viable means for ending divorce proceedings merely convinces me that you're a waste of flesh. I will also note Razib's rather constrained reaction to this sort of thing, compared to his response when people poke holes in his HBD bullshit.

I'd guess that he got it from he same place I heard the story (minus the widow-bribing): http://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743271734 Well, that or everyone is working off the same source.

Simpel drag models are actually a really tiny slice of the population, so using other models might have been a good idea.

The difference in velocity etc. between a snub-nosed revolver and a full-length carbine firing the same cartridge (example) is about 85%. The performance difference between a 25 pound bow and a 100 pound bow where everything else is the same is about 65%. Change the draw length, string weight, limb design and so on and you can end up with 4x or 5x differences in performance with the same arrow. For all practical intents and purposes bows have a much more dynamic performance relationship between the components than guns do. Hence "to a certain level of approximation". Feel free to come up with a less clunky way of saying all that and I will gladly include it in the post.

http://www.currentmiddleages.org/artsci/docs/Champ_Bane_Archery-Testing.pdf

Arrow physics: So one of the interesting things about bows/arrows is that, unlike guns/bullets the ammunition itself isn't providing the energy to launch a projectile. Accordingly a bow has a fairly complex relationship between the performance of the whole package and the individual components. In looking at how arrows maketh the bow, we first have to look at how an arrow gets its flying mojo. Simplifying somewhat, there is a transfer of energy from the bow limbs to the arrow as the limbs move and convert their stored potential energy into kinetic energy. This transfer is principally governed by the relative weight of the components in the system and maxes out (velocity-wise) at the point where the bow limbs simply cannot move any faster. There is accordingly a tradeoff between maximum speed (reaching a point of diminishing returns as the limbs get closer to max velocity) and maximum energy (reaching a point of diminishing returns as the arrow speed becomes too slow to be useful as a projectile). Finally, there is a direct relationship between draw length and energy (reaching a point of rapidly diminishing returns as the bow stacks and/or you run out of arm to pull with). This all means that, depending on what you want from your bow, you can diddle with the overall mass of the arrow a bit to trade off speed for energy; with the arrow having a minimum length based on the arms of the user. Once set into motion, the arrow now undergoes some fairly complex dynamic warping due to the force of the string, mass of the arrow and stiffness of the shaft. Archers paradox is pretty well studied, so I won't add much here except to mention the requirement for choosing an arrow with a correct level of stiffness for its length and the draw weight of the bow. Having left the bow, the arrow is now at the mercy of aerodynamics. Here, the length of the arrow, its mass and COG and the drag/lift provided by the flights and head are particularly important. Modern arrows tend to be very light, have a COG close to centre, as little flight drag as possible and are of the minimum length needed to obtain a full draw. This makes perfect sense for target shooting, where you want to extract maximum velocity from a low-poundage bow. It is, however, something of a poison pill for hunting; as it severely limits the size of broadhead you can fit without making your arrow as draggy as hell. I personally favour the idea of significantly longer, forward-weighted arrows to allow for generous head dimensions without sacrificing the performance totally to drag. That this tends to make correct spine less important is just gravy. Once the arrow has gone all the way to target it will have a certain budget of energy left over to do hurty things. This budget is the sum of everything which has come before: the draw energy provided by the bow minus the losses due to vibration and drag. Compared to a bullet the amount of energy available is paltry, but it is nonetheless usually more than enough to drive the arrow deep into flesh and cut a wound channel as wide as the head allows. The factors influencing penetration here are velocity, arrow length and head shape. Based on my understanding and past experience, calculating penetration depth will depend on the target material: flesh can be modelled to a fair degree of fidelity by simply using a drag model, while bone and other hard objects are much more of a pain to model, but tend towards something like Newtonian penetration. Modelling penetration (DeMarre) in steel using these results as a reference (which should be added to the list of resources for armour testing, in case I forget to do so), we see that penetration in hard targets should scale linearly with increasing velocity. However, it should be noted that modelling of arrow penetration is something of a cottage industry for cranks and people who like physics but hate maths and controlling variables (this is a standard example) and I should not count myself as the exception. As the general consensus here seems to be that momentum is the important factor (with weight being more important than velocity due to the effect of drag), I'm going to tentatively forward that as the 'true' measure of penetration. That it happens to support my long, heavy arrow idea is, I assure you, pure coincidence . To sum up, we can take a quick look at what the perfect bow/arrow setup looks like for different purposes: The perfect bow looks the same all over: limbs with negligible mass and the requisite stiffness/geometry to obtain a force draw curve which instantly ramps up to the maximum weight the user can draw comfortably and then stays there until the user runs out of arm to pull with. This maximises the area under the curve and puts as much energy into the system as possible. The perfect string is similarly massless. In the real world a compound bow with a really radical cam setup can get close to this curve, but suffers progressively as you get above 100m/s. The perfect arrow for target shooting is as light as possible to obtain the highest possible speed for the lowest possible draw weight. It is also infinitely thin and of the perfect stiffness to create the correct spine. Its flights are razor-thin and put out the absolute minimum of drag needed to stabilise the arrow in flight. The arrow head is a simple aerodynamic cap, weighted just enough to bring the COG forward of centre. In reality the issue of diminishing returns means that a too-light arrow will suffer from loud release and excess vibration, as excess energy in the bow gets converted to unproductive uses. A very light arrow also suffers from wind drift and the vagaries of drag, as it lacks momentum to plough through disturbed air or compensate for any imperfections in the aerodynamics. The perfect arrow for hunting is as long as possible, as thin as possible and heavy enough so that it is launched at the absolute minimum velocity needed to hit the target with some accuracy. It has a COG very far forwards so that aerodynamic forces from the gigantic broadhead don't overwhelm the stabilisation provided by the tail. Here the realistic ranges are probably something in the order of just over a metre long, with the mass being dependent on the force-draw curve of the bow and the maximum strength of the user. At the outer extreme of this approach you end up with what looks like a short spear being slung from a 100+lb bow - which is very much like traditional hunting and not at all like modern bowhunting.

Well that sucked.

Basically any military fiction involving South Africa becomes... weird. And quickly.

The joke is that this is what a lot of people are arguing for, yet the bureaucratic debate seems to revolve exclusively around 'no women' vs. '% of women by lowering standards'.

A lesser, but related, issue is that Hollywood seems determined to cast men who have the gym rat look rather than anything approaching a real fighter's physique. Oh, and the swordplay is bullshit. And the gunplay is bullshit. And nobody seems interested in showing aerial combat properly. And nobody uses tactics/strategy. And the science is bullshit. And the maths is bullshit. And nobody knows how legal or police procedure works. And people drive like idiots. And...

The alternative (actually having to find a few tall muscular ladies instead of using underfed waifs) seems to make Hollywood freak out badly. So expect more of the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_(Bond_and_Larkin_novel)

Genitals are pretty much physiology/psychology personified.

I see this one as being very unpopular with both sides of the debate, which endears it to me on that basis alone. But yeah, we have the technology to easily and safely control this stuff here and now. So it seems ludicrous that we allow serving personnel to use their genitals to decide things.

Some men just want to see the known universe burn...

So here's a few suggestions (beyond the obvious ones we've hashed out before): - Sterility for everyone! The guys get RISUG, the ladies get implants or IUDs. This means no soldiers fathering illegitimate sprogs and no pregnancies during a tour. This would also be a good way to enforce proper leave allocations (if such has not been done already), as some time would be needed to reverse things (if such is needed) between deployments. - Blinded tests. All tests get performed at one location and assessed at another sans identifiers. This should help to put a stop to both bias and people being politically prodded to stuff in specific demographics. - Promotions based on force-specific criteria. I don't know the intricacies here, so I'm open to correction on this on, but it seems like part of the problem is that your chances of getting promoted have more to do with breaking into the clubhouse than actually, you know, doing your job well. The standard approach here would be for the higher-ups to set specific requirements for competence related to each speciality, then stick to them going up the chain. - Be less retarded about relations between soldiers. One of the other problems that make it to my distant ears seems to be that there is an over-emphasis on nigh-useless sexual relations training in the US armed forces. The assumption seems be that soldiers only have two modes of dealing with other members of their group: neutral indifference and uncontrolled lust. This is obviously retarded, and would be retarded even if the force was single-gender and straight (straight dudes are eminently capable of forming bonds that span the gamut from 'tentatively friendly' to 'closer than blood' and this will warp the threads of authority accordingly). It would be better to just accept that there will be human relations of all sorts and build in an ethos of professionalism to the extent that, so long as it is not compromising performance, nobody cares what people get up to. If you can't beat even that level of professional conduct into your troops (something that companies manage to get right all the time) then your training is truly fucked. - Implement policy transparently and then stick to it. This, I think, is one of the things that annoy the actual military folks a lot - that the higher-ups seem to want to diddle with things rather than being upfront and following through properly. You can easily see this by sitting down and considering what a person with some actual guts would do if they decided to implement a policy, then comparing it to what is actually being implemented. In the case of introducing women in the US armed forces, it seems clear from the outside that this was done in a slap-dash and ill-considered way, with the result being that a lot of the 'fixes' end up being self-defeating. Worse, the bitty piecey approach gives the not-at-all-incorrect impression that each step is done for the sake of political expediency rather than with a coherent objective in mind. I figure the chances of any of this stuff getting put into practice are about nil, but figure that if you're going to do something it should be done intelligently.

Since ships in both universes move at essentially the speed of plot, I didn't spend too much time considering tactical mobility. If there are some solid numbers to back up our little imaginary-friend fight then I will happily concede them before finding another way for one group of fictional technologies to beat another. Well, that or start arguing for WH40K or something.