How does the military come up with those enemy body count numbers you see on the papers and hear on television news? Well, the methodology for counting corpses is quite varied. The military has all sorts of ways to do it. You could even say there's a science to it. An inexact science, of course. Still, it's interesting, as Phillip Carter explains it in his dispassionate analysis of the arithmetic of war. He even quotes Robert Browning in his title. Or maybe that's the Slate editors. Either way, it's very poetic.