3002 Spinning around the webs

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Nostomania - An overwhelming desire to return home or to go back to familiar places.

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Sixty years since the Korean War (or "Police Action", if you prefer). I was a small child at the time, so about all I know about it comes from "MASH". For example, I didn't know that there were troops from 21 countries on "our side".

I've read differing accounts of casualties - one account says two million civilians on both sides were killed, and almost two million soldiers from the North Korean and allied sides.* That does not include maimed - that's killed. The active battle part of the Korean War lasted only three years! Given that the population was a lot lower then than now, that's unbelievable. Unbelievable that we now hear very little about it, about the toll. Unbelievable that there wasn't rioting in the streets. Compare those three-year numbers to the numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan over what, eight years?

Boston.com has a photo spread up.

(*One way that you get differing numbers is that some lower totals include only those who died during hostilities, on the battlefield, so to speak. Higher totals often include those who died some time later, but as a direct result of injuries suffered during hostilities. Also, since so many countries were involved, reports and therefore counts differ.)

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Go to cleverbot.com and you can converse with an artificial intelligence. Well, ok, with a program. Just type a statement or question into the box to get started, or if you click on one of the two "Think..." links, Cleverbot will start the conversation for you.

I didn't find it all that intelligent - it seemed more like a preteen with severe ADHD. I guess the key is to put only one topic in your responses. If there's two, he gets confused and thrashes.

I have to admit that a few of the stored conversations (the "Thoughts..." link) were kind of cute.

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Roba has a cute post about what your email address says about you.
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