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UPDATE! – In her latest diary, Anne Strieber writes: “Lately there’s been a great controversy about whether ‘the surge’?which sent 28,000 more troops into Iraq a year ago?has ‘worked’ or not, with the US military and John McCain saying yes, it’s been effective and critics of the war saying no, it hasn’t been. But to me the whole question is a matter of words and is thus completely meaningless.”

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…and how they save their herds from starvation – Elephants are amazing creatures. The legends say that elephants “never forget,” and a new study suggests that old female elephants?and perhaps their memories of distant, life-sustaining sources of food and water?may be the key to the survival of their herds during periods of famine and drought.

Researcher Charles Foley says, “Our findings seem to support the hypothesis that older females with knowledge of distant resources become crucial to the survival of herds during periods of extreme climatic events.”
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US military researchers are trying to figure out how to read your mind. Will this some day replace water boarding as an interrogation technique? Researchers have a $4 million grant which they will use to try to learn how to read brain signals, through electrodes placed on the scalp. They may even reach the point where a computer could “speak” the thoughts of the person being questioned.

But research is still in the initial stages. CNN quotes researcher Michael D?Zmura as saying, “To have a person think in a free manner and then figure out what that is, we’re years away from that.”

There may also be the problem of the enemy “thinking” lies, which could be even easier than trying to fool a conventional lie detector.

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Our soldiers return from battles with many physical problems. It’s now been determined that Vietnam Vets suffer from TWICE the rate of prostate cancer as the average man and this has been traced to a defoliant used there called Agent Orange. This is of concern again because of the possible defoliant spraying of poppy fields in Afghanistan.
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