With CSD, developers are allowed to build homes on smaller lots if they leave a portion of the land undisturbed as protected open space. For example, if a "traditional" residential zoning ordinance requires a minimum lot size of 10,000 square feet, a 50-acre parcel could yield roughly 200 houses. In contrast, a CSD-friendly zoning ordinance might allow a developer to build the same 200 houses on 5,000 square foot lots if the other half of the land is left undeveloped. Some communities have even adopted incentive-based ordinances that offer density bonuses to developers that utilize CSD, allowing them to build more homes on a given parcel than would have been allowed under traditional zoning.

Compared to traditional subdivision design, CSD offers the full development potential of a parcel while minimizing environmental impacts and protecting desirable open spaces. The developed portion of the parcel is concentrated on those areas most suitable for development, such as upland areas or areas with well-drained soils. The undeveloped portion of a conservation subdivision can include such ecologically or culturally-rich areas as wetlands, forest land, agricultural land/buildings, historical or archeological resources, riparian zones (vegetated waterway buffers), wildlife habitat, and scenic viewsheds.

The irony is that both parties were trying to do the right thing. The troops were looking for a better way to do their jobs, just as we should want them to do. Their bosses were unhappy to see them spending their own money to do it, and rightly concerned about the risk of insecure radio communications and troop safety, just as we should want them to be.

Moreover, while the issue in this case concerned radios, similar flaps have arisen over issue items as diverse as combat boots and laptop computers, as soldiers have attempted on their own initiative to substitute newer and better commercial equipment for older or less capable military versions.

Nor is it entirely fair to criticize the military procurement system. The reality is that technology in many areas is outpacing the capabilities of current procurement procedures. Buying a new hand-held radio every year or so may cost an individual soldier a hundred bucks. Replacing several hundred thousand every year is another matter altogether, never mind issues of compatibility, reliability and security. The same problem applies to a host of other issue items, from field glasses to flashlights.

This dilemma is only going to get worse, and resolving it will require genuinely innovative thinking. That should include a serious reexamination of the way we fund, purchase and replace common-use military commodities, including increasingly ubiquitous small electronic devices, such as hand-held radios, that until now have not been considered commodities.

The joke is that Anna is a big dumb Texas-born hoochie, a white-trash Amazon whose lifestyle exemplifies the maxim popularized by social critic/Godfather of Soul James Brown, who observed, "You got to use what you got to get just what you want." The former Vicki Lynn Hogan worked as a topless dancer in Houston, and chose the nom de stripper Anna Nicole. Before a photographer discovered her and, with the help of cosmetic surgery and breast implants the size of dueling Astrodomes, got her into the pages of Playboy. In the early '90s, the big-boned Mexia, Texas, native went on to become a modeling superstar as the face and body of Guess? clothing.

In actuality, they [militant Islamists] attacked us out of self defense, as they viewed it. They were attempting to defend their faith against the heretical influence of our culture, and the slow but sure way that it is destroying what they see as the true practice of Islam. And as long as we believe in things like freedom of expression, and freedom of behavior, then to a greater or lesser extent we will continue to eat away at the roots of Islamic culture simply by existing.