Word: phosphorus
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...those characteristics include literary sensibilities, then that's no bad thing. Tram's observations of the war's everyday agonies are powerful and haunting. On July 29, 1969, she describes the flesh falling off a 20-year-old soldier brought to her after being burned by a U.S. phosphorus bomb: "His smiling, joyful black eyes have been reduced to two little holes - the yellowish eyelids are cooked. The reeking burn of phosphorus smoke still rises from his body." Later, she rages against the American enemy that has killed so many of her friends: "Hatred is bruising my liver, blackening...
...year ago, when the U.S. military denied using chemical weapons in the Fallujah offensive, the Pentagon said white phosphorus (WP) was used only to illuminate the enemy's position. So when DAILY KOS this month unearthed an article from the Army's Field Artillery magazine in which Fallujah vets described WP "'shake and bake' missions"--to flush the enemy out of trenches and spider holes--the lefty megablog crowed, "Let's see them deny this s___ now." The Pentagon last week admitted that it used WP against insurgents but not against civilians, and said it therefore violated no chemical-weapons...
...company, the whole group starts to take fire. "I can hear yelling and talking to the north," a Marine tells Captain Bradley Weston, the company's commanding officer. A bunch of Marines jump up and fire back in the general direction of the noise. Others lay down white phosphorus to mark the area where the insurgents' fire seems to have come from. A tank pumps in more tracer. From the roof of an unfinished building, Marines blast the target with machine guns, providing protective cover. The rest of the Marines pull back, running across a field and over to bushes...
...thought brown was the proverbial new black, think again. Researchers at the National Physical Laboratory in Britain have developed a nickel-phosphorus compound called NPL Super Black that absorbs 99.65% of visible light. Black paint absorbs only about 97.5% of visible light--positively shiny by comparison. Not just cool, the new black is useful too. Precision optical instruments depend on eliminating any and all stray reflected light to get their readings. The blacker the black, the less reflected light, the better the data. That makes NPL Super Black a pretty bright idea...
...levels of nitrates, ammonia and fecal coliform bacteria. A farmer hired an independent water-monitoring firm and learned fecal coliform counts in his creek were running from 50,000 units per 100 milliliters to millions and even billions of units. The maximum is supposed to be 200. The increased phosphorus downriver threatens the water quality for the whole area. John Young, editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald, says the water is not fit for carp. He also says there have been so many taste and odor "events"--the euphemism for bad days--that the town should fly a green flag...