It's against that background that Friedman can at times sound confounded by his Iraq-war critics, some of whom, scornful of his ability always to see at least a glimmer of future hope, began referring in 2006 to a "Friedman Unit": a period of six months, starting at the present, during which events in Iraq would prove decisive.
The process may sound confounding at first, but the truth is once you're registered and know where and when to vote, that's pretty much it.
"I was always fascinated by how sound confounds us," Strickland says.
This, countering all those higher-purpose-sounding sound bites during the lockout, confounded Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, among others.
Putting their mooing, quacking, neighing and baaing to good use, the animals swap sounds and so confound the crooks, so they end up being nabbed by the police - who arrive in an equally noisy car.
While this may sound simple, computers are constantly confounded by small changes, like switching "Robert" to "Bob" or shortening a middle name to an initial.
The New York Times, reviewing the tour for her third album, 2011's Strange Mercy, which peaked at No 19 in the US charts, noted Clark's "confounding" sound: "dry, compressed drums; neon synthesiser glare; aggressively processed guitars; calm, dispassionate singing".
When the New York band, Suicide, arrived on the scene in the early 70s, audiences were rather confounded by their mixture of confrontational music, performance, and sound art.
Whatever idea you might have of how Cuban music sounds, this album will confound it.
These observations are potentially confounded by the fact that whisker/snout contacts could in themselves produce sounds.
