First, let your hair grow

Elisabeth Bumiller has an engaging story in the New York Times about what the US Marines painfully call a Female Engagement Team, which no doubt will be rendered and pronounced as FET. They're training at Fort Pendleton CA for deployment to the 'Stan. The idea--more than eight years after the Marines landed--is that if American women accompany American men into Afghan villages, then Afghan women are less likely to take fright. The Marines think of everything: “If you have a pony tail,” said Marina Kielpinski, the instructor, “let it go out the back of your helmet so people can see you’re a woman.” Blue skies! -- Dan Ford