BILL HOBBS HAS NEW BLOGGING GIGS at ElephantBiz and EcoTotality.

A BIGGER ARMY?

Now that U.S. Army brass have come out in favor of increasing the size of the force, there is all sorts of chatter about where the recruits are going to come from. Well, they’re coming from the same place they’ve always come from. Today, the military has 2.2 million active duty and reserve troops, out of a population of 300 million. That means, out of every million Americans, 7,334 of them are military. But at the end of the Cold War, fifteen years ago, the military had 3.7 million troops, out of a population of 250 million. That was 14,800 military personnel for every million Americans. Then, and now, the military depended on volunteers. The “shortage of volunteers” the media talks about, does not exist. In the last fifteen years, the military kept raising its standards (mostly in terms of education, and scores on military aptitude exams) in order to exclude recruits it believed would be less successful as soldiers. Lower the standards back to 1991 levels, and you have all the troops you need.

But the military, particularly the army, likes the higher standards. This is something that is little discussed, and largely unknown outside the army itself, but those stratospheric recruiting standards have produced the most professional and capable military in American history.

Quality vs. quantity. One solution is to recruit foreigners, something that the U.S. military has done throughout its history.

PUSHING COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS at WalMart. Plus, Bush triples aid to Africa.

Lefties are in charge everywhere, apparently.

SOME COOL GUITAR VIDEO from Tom Spaulding.

PROSECUTE the Flying Imams?

MICHAEL YON: “Christmas seems to have escaped the bonds of Christianity. During the past month or so, I’ve seen Vietnamese preparing to celebrate Christmas in Hanoi, ‘Sings’ stuffing stockings in Singapore, and Muslims galore wearing Santa Claus outfits in Jakarta. . . . This war is strange. I never hear soldiers worried about their own morale sagging. Contrary, the war-fighters here are more concerned to bolster the morale of the people at home. . . . The morale at war is higher than I have ever seen it at home; makes me wonder what they know that most Americans seem to be missing.”

JON HENKE TAKES A NEW JOB.

And he’s right to say with regard to the blogosphere, “the Republicans are getting into the game a bit late.”

PAST, FUTURE, whatever.

PUT YOUR HANDS UP FOR DETROIT: I saw a Ford Edge the other day, and I have to say that it was very attractive. Don’t know what it’s like under the skin, but it was certainly pretty. Which I guess is why Ford is pushing it so hard.

UPDATE: Reader Joe Girardot emails: “Was your title for the post about the Ford Edge a Freudian slip? Shouldn’t it be: ‘Put your hands together for Detroit’? Or are you thinking about stickups?”

Actually, it’s a song by Fedde LeGrande, one of the big dance music hits of last summer. Though the title would have worked for last month’s effort by Big Three auto executives to get federal protection against imports . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a review of the Ford Edge.

FAKE, BUT not so accurate. And here, too.

Some things haven’t improved as much as they might have.

IS SAUDI ARABIA RUNNING OUT OF OIL? Actually, I hope so. (And it’s okay with me if Iran runs out, too). But it’s certainly a reason — well, another reason — to be pushing shale oil / tar sands, etc. Earlier post on this topic here, and don’t miss our podcast with Roger Stern and Lynne Kiesling, here. (Via PJM).

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MEDIA: The Red/Blue divide, and media cluelessness regarding same, in three letters. (Via Ed Driscoll).

UPDATE: Brian Noggle says that ABC is right, and the critics are wrong.

STORMTROOPERS AT THE ROSE BOWL PARADE: Though the ones in the picture look a little short to be stormtroopers.

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, William Burrows recommends five books on space.

They’re good recommendations, but here are a few of my own — besides the obvious, I mean — for your additional consideration.

1. Michael Collins’ memoir, Carrying the Fire. Insightful and very well written. Collins has written a number of interesting books, but this is my favorite.

2. Walter MacDougall’s …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Scholarly, but fascinating for pretty much anyone with an interest in the subject.

3. Ben Bova and Byron Preiss, Are We Alone in the Cosmos? The Search for Alien Contact in the New Millenium. If you’re interested in contact with extraterrestrial intelligences — and really, who isn’t? — this is an excellent source.

4. Bob Zubrin’s The Case for Mars. Zubrin’s Mr. Mars, and this is the best single explication of his case, though his Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization is also excellent.

5. Space produces good pictures. Kevin Kelley’s The Home Planet, a collection of pictures of Earth from space, is absolutely beautiful — I’ve given copies as gifts many times. I also like Michael Light’s Full Moon, full of beautifully reproduced photos from NASA’s master negatives from the moon flights.

The book I’d like to see — I considered writing it myself, but didn’t ever get around to anything — is a book tracing the ongoing private space race among private entrepreneurs ranging from XCOR to Armadillo to Scaled Composites and Blue Origins. A sort of space version of Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine. I’d certainly buy a book like that, and I suspect that a lot of people would.

DANIEL DREZNER: “Let’s end the year talking about trade.” Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown are discussed, too.

HAPPY NEW YEAR: “You’d never know it from the headlines, but, overall, things quieted down in the past year. Fighting has died down considerably, or disappeared completely, in places like Nepal, Chechnya. Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. This continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere.” Read the whole thing, together with Bill Roggio’s similar roundup below.

MORE FROM SOMALIA: “Defeated Somali Islamists fled their last stronghold and headed toward the Kenyan border on Monday in what looked like the end of nearly two weeks of war with the Ethiopian-backed government.”

BILL QUICK LOOKS AT MEDIA LOCKSTEP, but he also notes the fifth anniversary of the term “blogosphere.”

LOTS MORE KIDNEY-BLOGGING at Virginia Postrel’s. Just keep scrolling.

DAVE BARRY posts his year-end review.

THE INTERNET — is there anything it can’t do? In my last TCS column I mentioned my dishwasher’s annoying beeps. Reader Tim Hoffman sent this link to instructions on how to silence it, and they worked. Now our house is just a little bit more tranquil.

BILL ARDOLINO IS BLOGGING FROM BAGHDAD, and posts an interview with Quais Abdul Raazzaq, a correspondent for Reporters Without Borders who is nostalgic for the Saddam regime.

BACK FROM IRAQ, Bill Roggio looks at the worldwide state of jihad.

HAPPY NEW YEAR: “How does one know when the critical point in a Republic’s loss of its basic liberties like freedom of speech has been passed? A Dec. 22 notice from the Federal Election Commission looks very much like that point for America.”

A MAD COW BREAKTHROUGH, of sorts: “Scientists said yesterday that they have used genetic engineering techniques to produce the first cattle that may be biologically incapable of getting mad cow disease. The animals, which lack a gene that is crucial to the disease’s progression, were not designed for use as food. They were created so that human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood without the danger that those products might get contaminated with the infectious agent that causes mad cow.”

Just add a gene for no cholesterol and we’ll really have something.